In this sermon, the speaker discusses the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament, using the book of Matthew as a bridge. He highlights the 400 years of darkness and lack of divine intervention between Malachi and Matthew. The speaker also emphasizes the repeated captivities and lack of learning from the Israelites throughout their history. He concludes by stating that the main role of a teacher is not just to impart truth, but to impart life through the activation of the Spirit of God.

Very often I hear teachers say that I'm here to impart truth. And I guess there's an element of truth in that statement. But I think that the main thing that a teacher has to do is to impart life. You can impart truth, as Dr. Tozer once said, twice 2 is 4 and twice 4 is 8, twice 8 is 16, twice 16 is 32, twice 32 is 64, twice 64 is 128. Now he said that's truth, has it helped you? It doesn't do much for us if it isn't activated by, again, by the Spirit of God. And one thing I think I shared with the men last night was that the outside of the Word of God, the most fascinating thing, I think, is to discover how God made men. Also how he made women. Because this is what it's all about. Meditation and contemplation and adoration certainly make an awful, awful difference in the life of an individual. I know people who read, well, something like Oswald Chambers every morning or Screams in the Desert or Spirits in the Wilderness or something, and they wouldn't go out of the house without reading that. And without just casting a prayer, it's almost a superstitious act. I've got to do it, otherwise God may cover me. If I don't say, Lord, preserve me on the road, well, I may be in trouble. I remember years ago, a doctor, no, he's not a doctor anymore, I don't know how he escaped it, but Norman Grubb said on one occasion that your devotions for an hour in the morning are no license, which was the essence of what he said, he didn't say it literally, but they're no license for you to live as you like during the day. I don't know who said this, but I picked it up about two weeks ago. Somebody had said that what you live is what you are. Pardon me, what you live is what you believe. Now if you say, well, I believe, for instance, in the Sermon on the Mount. I think it's the most perfect picture we have of the Christian life. And yet during the day you live carnally, and you live selfishly, and you live greedily. Well, it's true that what you have lived is what you are, the rest is just talk. And who's going to take any notice of our talk anyhow? As the Word of God says, we are supposed to be living epistles. People may not read the epistles, but they read us. And you can make all the excuses you like for carnality in your life, but I'll tell you one thing, the world won't give you one excuse for it. Somebody once asked Mahatma Gandhi, do you like Christians? He said, no, but I like Christ. That's pretty rough. There's a great disparity, he's saying, between the product, that's supposed to be, again, the product of redemption, and the actual living of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, that may not cover all I said last night, I don't remember all I did say, except again, emphasizing the fact that it is very, very profitable to find every biography, autobiography. Whether you take Madame Guillen, or Hudson Taylor, or C.T. Studd, or Gilmore of Mongolia, or read a fascinating life like that of, who's the man that went to India? Henry Martin was one, William Carey was the other. Carey was a shoemaker. Somebody said to him one day, aren't you a shoemaker? He said, no, a cobbler, because an ordinary cobbler can't make shoes. He would not take any dignity. When his son eventually quit being a missionary, and became the ambassador to India for the court of St. James, as we call the English crown, somebody came to visit the old man and said to him, what about your son? Is he on another mission field? He said, no, he's stepped down to be an ambassador. Most of us would think that's a step up. You even find a preacher of somebody and say, oh, my son, of course, he's not a preacher, he has a PhD in some university, or he's a distinguished politician. That's a step down. There is no higher office. I don't care if you're taking care of 16 people on the back of a desert or prairie. There is no greater office, this side of Eternity, than communicating eternal things to mortal beings. It's the highest office that there is. So again, the objective is not merely to get information. The objective is to impart life, something that quickens. The Word of God is what? Quick, powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. Now that's pretty strong going, isn't it? Everybody else, maybe everybody today expects the Bible to be a sedative. You know, with enough trouble in the world, give us something smooth and easy. Well, it's true, we receive eternal life and various other things. But you know, when you whisper that in somebody's ear, you should whisper in the other ear. But one of the guarantees of Jesus was, in the world you shall have tribulation. That's a guarantee as much as my peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. As Dr. Tolga said, ever since Adam fell in the Garden of Eden, mankind has been living in an emergency state. We've been a bunch of rebels from the beginning to the end. We're getting better at it. It really means we're getting worse at it. We're more rebellious now. The nations are more rebellious. People are more rebellious, morally, politically, every other way. It's a state of rebellion. And so there must be an answer, and there is an answer. Yesterday I talked to Elish for a while on this great theme of sanctification. And there are many ways of interpreting this. For instance, as I tell you, I can't draw very well. But if I were to draw something like this, and put some things like this on it, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and then I put a ring around it, you might guess I'm trying to tell you that that's a diamond. A very good one too, but anyhow. If you take a diamond, you know, you can tell when a girl has a cold. In fact, you can tell when she's engaged, she always gets a cold. You know, she rubs her nose more than, she's rubbed it for years. Just to show you the thing sparkles, it's not from Woolworths. Not a real diamond, but don't tell anybody, but there it is. And you know, when you turn the diamond, it flashes green one way, red another. All the colours in the sun up there come down, what, 25 million miles or more, 75 or something. And they flash in that diamond. It's only one diamond. But it shoots off red one way, green another, purple another. Now this is the same with truth, any truth. It's true, shall we say, in the overall picture of the Word of God itself. But it's true even of the theme of sanctification. Here is one shot, it comes off here, and it becomes one Thessalonian, that we had yesterday, 523. Okay, 523. This colour will flash down here, and it's the Sermon on the Mount. Over here it flashes another colour, and it's Romans 6. Over here it's Paul writing to the Philippians. They're all different aspects of the same truth. Now, we're going to try, we'll never do it of course, Scripture. Scripture's truth is inexhaustible. But we're going to talk at least for a little while, the next two or three days, about the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest man that ever lived. That is obviously the Sermon on the Mount. Now, how do you compare it? Well, it doesn't compare with anything, it contrasts. I think that just as you have a range of mountains, you know you get mountains, let's say like this. And I remember being in Northern India, and I went into Nepal to try and just get one view of this great marvellous peak up here called Mount Everest. It's what, 27,500 feet I think. The most inaccessible mountain in the world, the most challenging, and in some ways the most beautiful. But it is unique that you don't find a dozen Mount Everest. There are other peaks here about maybe 23,000, and others down here 21,000 and so forth. But this is supreme above all. It's the king of the creation of mountains. Well, I claim this for the Sermon on the Mount. It is the greatest teaching ever. It surpasses anything in the Old Testament, and I'm quite sure it's a catalyst if you like. It's a reservoir out of which all of the truth comes. So we can call it the, again, the Mount Everest of revelation, divine revelation. This, the version we're going to take in the Sermon on the Mount is in the 5th chapter of Matthew. It goes right through to the 7th chapter. Now there's an alternate version in the Gospel as recorded by Luke, but it is much shorter version. This is the full version. Now before we go to it, let's look at this thing this way. Let's make this the end of the Old Testament here. And say this is Malachi, M-A-L, okay. You've got a chasm there, and then here you get Matthew. Now here you need a bridge, and actually this is what Matthew is. It's a bridge from the Old Testament. It covers 400 years. It's an abyss of darkness. There has been no manifestation of God as far as we know. There have been no prophets given, no miracles done, no divine intervention. One thing that scares me right now here in America, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, since we're in America, is that we're in a very critical and dangerous situation. I'm not afraid too much about the invasion of Communism as another thing. What I'm afraid of is God will walk out on us. You see, if you say to people, you know, God was once married. And they didn't know that. Thought that was a very earthly thing. Some of you just got married, you think it's very heavenly. But anyhow, the Lord was married. God was married to Israel. She played the harlot, and he wrote her a Bill of Divorcement. Now this past Sunday was what? Palm Sunday. And usually the preacher preaches on Triumphant Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Well, you can't question that. He rode into the city on the back of an ass, and so forth and so forth. But was it the Triumphant Entry? I changed those two TE rounds from Triumphant Entry to Tearful Exit. Jesus walked out of Jerusalem, and he never went back. They haven't got a prophet for 2,000 years. They've been kicked around like a football. The people of Israel have been annihilated, almost annihilated. I think the lowest they ever got to was somewhere near less than a million. Five times in history, there have been programs or Hitler-type men who have determined to liquidate them. They always come up. Because, you see, God promised two things. That if you bless them, he's cursed them. And if you curse them, he's blessed them. Now you've got a problem on your hands, think that up. But for 400 years, remember in the Old Testament, pardon me, way back here, 400 years, they were under the domination of Pharaoh. They were in total bondage. And again, I remind you that when they needed God most, he did not give them the instructions on how to build a tabernacle and get sacred vessels and raise a priesthood. He left them. Languishing in prison, in darkness, suffering for 400 years. And then they have repeated captivities, you know, the Babylonian captivity, so forth and so on. It's amazing that they never learned their lesson. But before you saw your Bible or hymn book out then, how many lessons have you had to learn over again? Huh? The Lord taught you a lesson, you forgot. He had to teach you again, you've forgotten again maybe. And so the word is quick, he prods us with the word. As Van Tavner once said, you know, the Bible is a very remarkable book, it comforts the disturbed and it disturbs the comfortable. So you have to find out which category you're in. But again, for 400 years, there had been no prophet since Malachi. Do you remember how he finishes? He says, And who shall abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? So for 400 years you have a midnight with no stars, like the 27th of Acts when the ship was being destroyed. You've got 400 years of stillness without any prophetic voice. And then suddenly and dramatically you have an amazing man called what? J.B., John Baptist. But you see here, Matthew doesn't begin his prophecy, that's what it is, he doesn't begin his book like the others. Now let me change this a minute, put it this way. You see, we bunch together Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. What we ought to do is put Matthew here, have us place Mark, Luke and John. Why? Because again Matthew bridges the gap between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Can you remember how Matthew begins without looking? The book of the generation of Jesus Christ. The son of David, the son of Abraham. Well who was David? He was the king. What is Matthew about? Matthew is showing the Lord Jesus Christ as the king. I forgot how many times, I think about 25 times he mentions the kingdom. Now let's remember this, that when Jesus came on earth, the nation that he loved and God loved was in slavery. We used to live in a city in England, the city of Bath. It was started in 50, indeed it was a city or a town in 55 BC, which as you know means before Christ. The Romans had already spread their dominion right across the world, or much of the world. And again Christianity was not served to the world on a silver platter. Christianity was born in a sophisticated totalitarian society. It was born in a slave system. Now Matthew says that Jesus Christ was the son of David. This connects him with kingship. Ten times Matthew mentions that he was the son of David. But the end of the verse says that he was also the son of Abraham which connects him with the altar. David is a king, Abraham is the priest in the sense that he made a supreme offering. Now in verse 22 of Matthew 1 it says this. All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord by the prophet saying, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. Now what God is trying to get through to the people of Israel is this. That the promises that he made have been fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ. If you read that carefully right through Matthew you'll discover he mentions fulfilled 15 times. It is mentioned in Matthew. I believe that's more than all the other gospels as we say Mark, Luke and John added together. In fact if you read carefully and you take note as you read it going through Matthew, you'll discover that he has more references to the Old Testament than the Mark, Luke and John all added together. The scripture has been fulfilled. What's the scripture? Well it's the scripture that Jews are still wailing for at the wailing wall. From Isaiah a virgin shall bear a son. How many books are there in the Old Testament? 39. So Matthew is the first book in the New Testament. So 39 and 1 make what? Good you all graduated. It's the 40th book. Well does that ring a bell? How long was Moses up in the mount? 40 days, 40 nights. How long was Jesus tempted? How many days from the resurrection to the ascension? 40 days. And 40 signifies a period of probation, a period of testing under the eye of God. Now God had been with his people and yet they turned traitor so often. Now they're in a state of probation in the presence of God. In what way? Because he has come down in flesh. And they're going to be tested now what they will do not with Isaiah and the prophets and so forth. They're going to be tested with the presence of Jesus Christ himself. That's why on the day that we have just forgotten maybe by now. When Jesus turned his back on Jerusalem he wept. Well why should he weep? They were throwing the garments in the way. They were giving him a standing ovation if you like. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ wept. Why? Because he's saying, oh you stupid people, look. My father gave you, the children of Israel, the people of Israel, the choicest gifts he ever had. Where outside of the scripture do you find a man of the stature of Isaiah? Where do you find a towering figure like Jeremiah? Wherever is there a person in history? Like the man that the Jews still think was the greatest man that ever lived, Moses the lawgiver. Now my father gave you all those. And what did you do? You stoned them. You got rid of them. Now what in the world makes you think if you live a very saintly life all the world is going to bow down when you go in the shopping market? Or people are going to revere you. They'll hate you. The more spiritual you get, the more hatred you get. Because the holiness of your life will show up the corruption in other lives. All you have to do is to take a... If you take a ruler and put it to the side of a corkscrew, that corkscrew looks far more twisted than if you leave it by itself. And you see when we live in righteousness and truth and holiness, the world is embarrassed by our presence. So they have these towering figures, these men of amazing prophecy. Moses went on the mount. Oh there's a picture there that I've never heard anybody preach on this, I'd like to. If you hear of anybody going to preach on it let me know, I'll be there. Um, where is it? Let me read this to you and then you can put the note down, don't read it now. Then went up Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and the 70 elders of Israel. Now listen to this astounding thing. They saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone. And as it were the body of heaven in its clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand. Also they saw God and he'd eat and drink. Now go work that out, there's some homework for you. There's nothing that parallels that for majesty in my mind except the book of the Revelation where John looks through the little door in heaven and he sees that marvelous scene. He sees all the fantastic, unbelievable, unimaginable beauty of eternity in the presence of God. But look there's a process of elimination here. Jesus, pardon me, Moses is down here with Israel. There's Israel. Out of Israel there comes 70. Out of the 70 you get Moses and those strange names, what are they? Abihu and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu. I'm glad your mother didn't christen you with one of those names. Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the 70. So you've got a process of elimination. Here you've got the 70 plus Moses and Nadab and Abihu and so forth. And then they go up the mountain here and God says now you quit and leave the 70 and then he says come a bit higher and then leave the other fellows and you come up here and I'll wrap you in a cloud. I think that's a process of elimination in your life and mine if you walk with God. As I said yesterday there were 12 disciples. Only 3 of them went in the Garden of Gethsemane. Only 3 went into the Mount of Transfiguration. You know we talk about the wonder of prayer, that's alright. But prayer is very dangerous. God may take you at your word sometimes. Something comes in your life you can't understand, just go hot back, don't ask somebody's opinion, say well what did I pray the other day? I dared to challenge God to strip me. I dared to challenge God to test me with loneliness. I dared to challenge God with something else. And then when it comes up we start asking the question why? And we look for a prop on which to lean. Now the amazing thing is this, to me anyhow, there's this process of elimination from the multitude in Israel and the 70 and the others and a little bit you go up and then the 70 drop off and then there's 3 people here and then Moses up there with Joshua and Joshua sits here by himself and Moses is up there. Well surely as soon as he comes out of this process like this, God says well here my son I've been waiting for you. I've watched you drop off these people, that person and the other. I've watched you struggle up this mountain and I'm ready and I'm going to talk with you. Well read the rest of the chapter because it says he stayed there for 7 days. The glory of the Lord appeared on the Mount Sinai and the cloud covered it 6 days and the 7th day he spoke to Moses. Don't you think that most of us would say after a long pilgrimage like that, you know, it was my imagination, I should never have come. There's nobody here. Oh that cloud of glory, yeah you know that could be a kind of a super sunset or something. And he kept waiting for 7 days. And then the sight of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, he got in the mount and Moses was in the mount for 40 days and 40 nights. Now Moses was in the cloud and he was there by himself. In the Sermon on the Mount you get the very opposite. Now notice it's a Sermon on the Mount, that's what it is, it's a peak here somewhere. Here are peaks, Jesus is always appearing on Mount. He's going to come finally to a mountain. He was crucified on a mountain, he ascended from a mountain. But it doesn't give you the name of the mountain. I don't remember that Jesus venerated any sacred place at all. I don't remember he said well I'll teach you if you can find a rock on which Elijah brought down fire from heaven, it's not far from here, go search for it and call me when you're ready. He was transfigured on Mount Hermon, in the wonderful, wonderful transfiguration. But you see the difference here, that when God is going to speak the greatest thing I think again ever spoken to man. He doesn't say now look, I'm taking Moses and these other fellows up the mountain. Now look, if you come, it's a kind of a fence. If you pass that fence, you know what, I'll kill you. If you get through that fence, you'll suffocate with a glory and majesty and the things that are burning, you'll die. This is sacred, this is sanctified area. It is only for Moses, because he's going to drop everybody off before he gets up there. How different when Jesus sits down on the mountain. We don't know the mountain. Some say it was just a mound. And he sat there and he taught them. I thought this morning I'd be a literalist and really have this chair, because I get a bit tired, you know, I broke my back and legs a while ago and they still ache a bit. So I thought I'd sit and teach them, because I thought Jesus did. It says he sat down and he says listen, you take authority, because the chief priests and others, they sit in Moses' seat. Moses taught sitting. When the Holy Ghost came in the upper room, they were all sitting. Now when this amazing sermon on the mount is given, I'm driving this nail horn. It wasn't just a hallowed few that were allowed to come. It wasn't some who said, well, we were with him on the mount. We, of course, we didn't get into the final chapter of the thing, because there was glory round about him and we trembled when Moses disappeared. It's very different here. There's a multitude round about him, but he is not teaching the multitude. He is teaching the twelve. The others were eavesdropping. What's the biggest problem in the world right now, do you know? Yeah, you say, yeah, sin. Well, I guess you're right. I think the biggest problem in the world today is the problem of human relationships. We can't get on with each other. And that's true in the hope. You know, if people believed and practiced the sermon on the mount, you know what I believe? I believe if every professing Christian in America lived the sermon on the mount today, we'd shake this country from end to end. As dear, wonderful Mrs. Wesley said, and she needed a lot of wisdom with 19 children. But, you know, she used to say, you've two things to do with the gospel. Believe it and behave it. Now, we've been very heavy on the believing and very light on the behaving. Behave the gospel. What you do every day is what you believe. The other is all mental stuff. It's a lot of junk up in your mind. You can talk about the loveliness. Lord, I want to be like Jesus. Oh, to be like the blessed Redeemer. Most of us don't mean it anyhow. I never found anybody become like Jesus by singing about him. I want to be like Jesus. You do? Well, I'll start at the wrong end. You want to be crucified, you mean, eh? You want to get seminic. You want to be slandered. You want your mother and brothers to say you're insane. You want 40 days in the wilderness by yourself. You want to die and have a resurrection. And as I say, I think the resurrection morning, next Sunday morning, Easter morning, is the most disappointing day in the life of Jesus. Because there wasn't a single person there to welcome him. Isn't that disgusting? After three years of teaching, by the greatest man who could ever teach, that he was wisdom. He didn't have it, he was wisdom. He was righteousness. He was sanctification. It must have been very wonderful to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear the Lord Jesus giving these amazing truths to those disciples that I think must have been shocked when they heard the things that Jesus said. Why has the world rejected the Sermon on the Mount? Because it's the answer to every labor problem. It's the answer to every domestic problem. It's the answer to every problem that we have. And I finished yesterday morning by saying Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting. It's been tried, found difficult and rejected. And that's exactly it. Do you know why it rejects the Sermon on the Mount? Because in it, there is everything that human governments want. And they can't get it, so they'll have to ask God to do it. And they'll go to hell before they'll ask God to do it. I can remember First World War. I can remember before that as a matter of fact. And it started in 1914. Now remember men marching through our city. They're going to war. It's a war to end wars. This ugly monster, we're going to cut its head off forever. There'll never be a war after this. Millions of men perished. And right after it, we had the greatest flu epidemic in history. 16 million people died in Europe. The war virtually, we'll say, ended in 1939. 20 years after, pardon me, 1919. 20 years after, just 20. We entered the Second World War, which again was designated as a war to end wars. You see, if you think I'm cynical, you may be right. I haven't a scrap of confidence in anybody in the White House or the British Parliament or anywhere else. Now if you don't have children now, maybe you'll have some one day. And you'll sit them up one night before they go to bed. And you'll tell them some very wonderful things. You know, like Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Isn't that wonderful? Will anybody stand up and tell me who Humpty Dumpty is? Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. That's a children's nursery rhyme. No, no, no, that's one of the most profound things ever said. It's way beyond the intelligence of children. Humpty Dumpty is described as an egg, usually. When you see the sketch, Humpty Dumpty's on the wall. And Humpty Dumpty falls down. And all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put it back together again. What it's really saying is there was a time when the world broke up, it shattered. And men can't put it back together again. Now here's a solution to all our wounds and our bitterness and our hurts and everything else. All our national and international problems. Again I say that the main problem in the home, the main problem amongst individuals is that we can't get on with each other. There's something brittle in us. Very often a couple will live in ecstasy the first few months of their marriage, then there's a snag and wait a minute, there has to be an adjustment. They're two personalities. They've come from two different families. They've never thought alike or acted alike and suddenly they're brought together and now you're going to have some problems. You know, man has been trying to put the world right. I guess, I don't know, but let me, for my argument, maybe the first classic on this, putting the world back together again is in Augustine's City of God. Have you read that? There are two Augustines, so be sure you get well. There's only one more of the City of God. He felt he had the answer. Now you can go from one extreme, that's an intellectual thing, it's worth reading, it's slow, it's difficult, it's hard, but it's beautiful. It's almost a dream like John Bunyan's. And so on one hand you get Augustine's City of God and at the other hand you get another children's story, Gulliver's Travels. You read those? You've got to read them, they're marvelous. But what it is, it's really trying to liberate humanity. It's trying to get the nation out of the rut or people out of the rut. I would have done this to this degree, I've not memorized this totally, but let me tell you what I think here. The New World Order is all news. It existed before you folk here were born. Maybe Brother Dale and I just came in at the time that we're shouting about it. A New World Order, a New World Order. One of the bloodiest revolutions in history was the French Revolution. Now Leckie, his name, in case you look up anything of his, his name is spelled, it's very simple, it's L-E-C-K-Y. Leckie. The thing to remember about Leckie is this, he is a secular historian, he is not a religious or a Christian historian, he's a secular historian. And Leckie says this, when the bloody revolution swept over France, they pulled down the monarchy. They trod religion in the dust. They put up their tricolour, you know, everybody has red, white and blue, they borrowed it from England, but anyhow there it is. You've got red and then you've got a gap there, white and then you've got blue, I'll say those three. Red, white and blue. And they put liberty, equality and fraternity. This is a New World Order, liberty, fraternity and equality. But to do it? Well, they were going to show their contempt for everything, amongst other things religion. So they dragged the harlot into Notre Dame Cathedral, stripped her and put her on the high altar to defame it. Another day they brought down a squealing hog. And they slit its throat and let the blood defame the altar in Notre Dame Cathedral. They threw the monarchy into the garbage can, they got rid of their kings. They dissolved parliament. It was a state of anarchy and lawlessness. Maybe that's why somebody says a bad government is worse than none. Well, we've got the bad one, we don't get none. But this was the argument that Leckie has. He says, listen, this bloody revolution, this awful mass of impurity swept over France, pulled down the monarchy, put into the dust the Roman Church. Just, as we're doing now, threw morals into the garbage can. And when they'd done their deadliest, their damnedest, I think he says, it looked as though that great gulf of impurity would go and swallow little England, which is only 21 miles away across the English Channel at one point. Leckie, a secular historian, says that when it looked as though England would be submerged, God raised up a man, this is a secular historian, not a Christian historian, God raised up a man who turned that revolution round. He stood like Joshua and bed the walls fall down. Or like Joshua commanding the sun to stand still. The little man, of course, was Wesley, who had borrowed the torch, I guess, if you're really honest about it, if you read Whitfield, and if you read Whitfield, you'll need to get the best volume ever written. I had at one time lots and lots of books on Whitfield. There is no book like Arnold Dalimore. I talked with Arnold Dalimore about this book. He lives in a little place away in the other, I don't know, 50 miles, maybe from Windsor, Ontario, and he worked for 17 years on that book. He crossed the Atlantic four times to the British Museum. He has the best library on Whitfield, as far as I know. Other men know he has the greatest library on Whitfield of any man in the whole world. Now he has lived and breathed and eaten and slept Whitfield. It took him 17 years to write the book. If I had told you about that book about three years ago, you could have got it for about eight, nine, I don't know, eight dollars, something like that. Now it's about 16. You won't make a better investment, because again, you'll see how first God made a man. You see, God's ways are not our ways. We'll never rationalize. I'll tell you one thing, as I get older, I realize this. You can never explain God. But I'll tell you what you can do, you can experience him. And there's a lot of things you can't explain. You say, I'm in love. All right, I've got half an hour. Sit down and tell me what's love all about. How did you fall in love? You don't know. Something clicked inside. Could have been your appendix. How do you know it was what it was? You can't rationalize God. Let's say here, this peak here is the royal family. Ah, royal family in England. Oh, that's a bad art. I should write art all right, shouldn't I? And I can't. The next highest family is W. Wesley. This is in English social life. Down here, there's a little guy working in a tavern in Bristol. This is Bristol. And W means Whitfield. Now, this man, Wesley, is loaded with culture. He's a scholar, a gentleman, his father was a poet, his mother was a poet, his brother was a poet. There's no family in England higher than the Wesley's except the royal family. And God takes him from that peak right down here to the coal miners and makes him the evangelist of coal miners. A brilliant intellectual man. He scintillates with wisdom. He learned new languages just to keep his brain alive. Like you do, but anyhow. He comes from the heights of social standing right down here to teach the miners. Here is a man who lives in a tavern and God takes him from there up to the social life of England. And for the first part of his life he talked to society ladies at high tea in English millionaires' homes where everybody dressed formally and you knew the ladies were coming. You could hear the rustle of their silk garments, smell the fragrance. You see how God works? He takes a brilliant genius down to the coal miners. He takes a man that, oh, he didn't like education because, again, he did go to Oxford. But by the same token, his social life is all out of kilter with this. And God takes him and puts him up with a wealthy. And God takes a super intellectual and puts him down with the coal miners. Now it's true that this man talked to coal miners too. But I'm showing you how the ministries were changed. I would have thought the best way to get to the intellectuals would be to... The best way to get to the intellectuals would be to have a genius of their comparative intellect and put him with them. Well, it says no. I'm going to take a man who you might think is socially in the wrong pond, if you like, swimming with the wrong fish, but God changes them right over. You see, everything about God is unpredictable. Now I'm saying this, that that revolution... What we need in the country right now, I think two things. One is we need a revolution, not a social revolution. Maybe we need that. But first of all, we need a spiritual revolution. What we need right now, although we'd assassinate him in three weeks, we need a... Really, we need a spiritual dictator in the country. We need a man that says, look, this is the law. And it's going to be put into action. As I said yesterday, God gave us ten commandments, not ten suggestions. Any nation will hold together that has ten commandments. It will hold together. No nation will hold together that doesn't have them. So man has dreamed of a new world order. It's an old, old, old, old dream that man has had. And I say as far back, let's take it here again, as far back as... What would I say? Augustine? Read Augustine, City of God, go to the other end of the spectrum and read Gulliver's Travels. Tell you what I find in between. I'll tell you what the brilliant people said. Plato said that his new republic would be an ideal state, the people would be ruled by a philosopher and by philosophy. That's how the state was going to be ruled, by a philosopher and by philosophy. That's the argument of Plato. More in his Utopia said we can have emancipation from all our ignorance obviously just by education. Francis Bacon wrote a classic by the title of The New Atlantis and he said that we can have a new world order through scientific conquest. Hitler said we can have a new race of men by racial supremacy. He told the Germans they were the master nation and he'd pull all the other nations onto the edge of the world. Well he did it. The only good thing he did I think was allow the Volkswagen to be made but apart from that everything else that he said would happen. He said if I don't make Germany the master nation of the world sitting on a circle of the earth I'll pull all the nations down. You know the world has never recovered since World War II. It never has, it never will. So Hitler said all you'd have to do is purge out the weak. You know it's a case of exterminate those of least resistance and get to the strong and get people intellectually and physically strong and we'll get a new race of men. Karl Marx said that he would have a new utopia. He called it the proletarian utopia which he said will be accomplished by abolishing the flabby, faulty, bourgeois morality and establishing a classless society by a world revolution. Virgil sang about a new world order that would come about because there was one who was able to comfort us in our sorrow and heal all our wounds. Well I think he got nearer to the statement of Jesus than anybody else did. There's a book, I didn't notice it on your bookshelves but you can get it now. It used to be three or four dollars and now it's in a paperback for I don't know about two fifty. Old books are crazy, prices anyhow these days. But it's called, if you haven't read it and if you have read it, read it again. It's called The Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians. The Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians and it's by a man by the name of Gilchrist Lawson. L-A-W-S-O-N, Gilchrist Lawson. The Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians. And you see how God approached the hearts of individuals in so many different ways. As I say again, the main problem, the root problem in personality. Look, if everybody lived a sermon on the mount, there'd be no splits in any churches. You know, one of the most difficult things we have most of us to get over is a thing what we call pride. I have a friend who lived up in Tibet before Tibet was closed. Let's say here is a range of mountains going up like this. I'm thinking now from the ground level and here's a range of mountains going up like this and here, these peaks jutting out. There's a footpath up here, you know, you climb up, there's the top of the mountain. And there's one here and then there's a gap there maybe twenty feet. You go on a track and it's poetical, a yak track. You know what a yak is? A yak is very much like those big beasts over there but it has long horns and it has long hair. And a yak puts its feet, it crosses its feet so that it can walk on a big thing. It can walk on a path less than two feet wide, sometimes only about eighteen inches. That is if its body isn't rubbing against the wall of a canyon. But you know this yak will go looking for food and he's going around this bend here and Mr. Yak is coming the other way or Mrs. Yak or somebody. So they yak together and one says you get out of my way and the other says you get out of my way. And then they put their heads down and then they suddenly realize, look if we have a fight here and you pitch me off I'm going to drop right down there which is about fifteen thousand feet. Now I'm measuring you up, I think I'm stronger than you are, you think you're more tricky than I am. Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. You know what could happen? It could so happen on this little narrow thing about this width where we're fighting that I pitch you over but in pitching you over I lose my balance and I get destroyed. And so this brother told me he said Len it's an amazing thing to watch them. You sit back and you watch and you say okay, okay. Sometimes it happens with the big goats up there. Sometimes it happens just with the big yaks. And they'll back off and look as though they're going to hit each other and back off. And then they'll stop and look each other right in the eye. And then one of them will lay down and let the other one walk over it. Don't you wish some folk were yaks? Hmm? We don't even have the sense of yaks sometimes. We just go on yakking and get nowhere. There's something brittle inside of us. And this is what Jesus is talking about. I've got a few minutes then I'm going to start another way about this marvelous statement of Jesus, this Sermon on the Mount. There are as we say here eight clear beatitudes. Eight clear beatitudes. I think of them as pearls. You know a lady has eight beautiful pearls. I don't mean not graduated pearls. I mean I don't mean these artificial pearls or woolworths. I mean genuine pearls. And she says well find me the best one and put it in the center. Now I don't know which is the best pearl out of these eight. Actually the Sermon on the Mount is divided in there are twelve outstanding statements. Because twelve is the number of divine government. Maybe that's why Jesus took twelve disciples. There are twelve gates to the city aren't there? And so twelve is the sign of perfect government. There are twelve divisions really. But there are eight main beatitudes. Now there are three ways you can deal with this thing. One is to say that well it's a social gospel. Isn't that what it's all about? Help the meek, help the weak, do this, do that, be kind and so forth. Work it out. This is a utopia that man can make. I don't know why. But last year when I was meditating on this just before Christmas. I suddenly realized that while I've heard fifty interpretations of the spirit-filled life. I have never heard anybody say if you want to check your spirit-filled life. Read the Sermon on the Mount every day. That's a spirit-filled life. What is the Sermon on the Mount? It's the life of Jesus Christ. Isn't it? Blessed are the meek. Wasn't he meek? Blessed are the poor in spirit. Wasn't he poor in spirit? Blessed are the merciful. Oh that was one of the great signs in his life. Blessed are the pure in heart. It's like reading. If you go to what? 1 Corinthians 13. What is 1 Corinthians 13? A what? Love. Agape love. OK. 1 Corinthians 13 in Roman numerals. It has 13 verses. Now how many times have you read it? You know that's a chapter that you should memorize I'm sure amongst others. I don't like versions usually but I'll tell you one that's the most penetrating version of all. And that's Moffat's translation of 1 Corinthians 13. I don't do it now. Maybe I should. But for years I read 1 Corinthians 13. I memorized it sure but I still read it so I wouldn't make mistakes. I read it on my knees every morning for about 13 years. It's got an ugly word in it. The word charity. What do you mean by charity? You give away your surplus cash and your old clothes. Well that's exactly what charity is not. Charity suffereth long. There's no suffering in giving away surplus cash when there's some left in your pocket. There's no suffering in giving away your old suit. It's when you give the new ones and wear the old ones yourself. You see charity gives away the old things and it gets the new ones for me. And love buys somebody else a suit and I wear the old one. I take a 40. But the thing is this you see again. If you take that word charity out and you put love there it reads beautifully. Love suffereth long and is kind. Love envieth not. Love vaunteth not itself. It's not puffed up so forth and so. Well take love out. And put carnality there and read it backwards way. Carnality doesn't suffer long. Carnality is not kind. Carnality envieth. Carnality vaunteth itself. Carnality is puffed up. So you take out charity and you put in love. It's beautiful and smooth. And then you take out love and you put in carnality. And then the best way to read it is put Jesus there. Jesus suffers long and is kind. Jesus envieth not. Jesus vaunteth not himself. Jesus was never rude. Jesus was never resentful. Jesus was never glad when others go wrong. It's a full length portrait of Jesus Christ. Now that didn't hurt you did it? You like that. You say thank you Mr. Raven. We'll read it that way. Well I haven't finished yet. Here's the hard part. I gave you the sugar. Here's the bitter part. Instead of taking out charity and putting love there. Instead of reading it taking love out and putting carnality there. Instead of taking carnality out and putting Jesus there. Put yourself there and read it. Read it in Moffat's translation. I suffer wrong. I'm kind. I envy nobody. I'm never rude. I'm never resentful. You know what it says? It says I'm never irritated. Now the authorized version says not easily provoked. Oh thank God for the easy. I mean I'm not easily provoked. But boy I mean I saved it up so long. And then I burst every six weeks. So you shattered everything. 1 Corinthians 13 says he's not easily provoked. Do you know what the Greek says? It doesn't have easily in. It's not provoked. Love does not get provoked. Love does not envy. It's a parallel interpretation of the spirit filled life. That I don't. Everybody else finishes 1 Corinthians. They finish at Corinthians 12. You see they've proved the point about gifts. And they're going to restore them in the 14th chapter. And argue their head off. That they slide through the 13th chapter pretty easily. Until you read it that way. Do you think God made Adam to be imperfect? Well think that over and let's have a break.