In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of living by faith and how it changes the basis of our lives. He highlights that we are not justified by our own efforts or works, but by the death, blood, and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The speaker encourages the audience to stop struggling to believe and instead trust in the faith of Jesus Christ. He also mentions that God's plan of redemption was established from the foundation of the world and encourages the audience to immerse themselves in the Word of God to receive its transformative power.

Into our subject then for this morning, beloved, into the Ephesian letter, that is, to pick up our theme. And I'm sorry that I'm needing to inflict myself on you three times today. It's a bit of a job to get seven meetings, or seven themes, into about five days. We shall be having, and doing this quite with John's consent, a meeting this afternoon, and then again this evening. I don't know what Roger will be doing, but I shall be, by the Lord's grace, this afternoon taking one baptism, and this evening one God and Father of all to complete our sevenfold headings. This morning then, one faith. In the fifth verse of the fourth chapter, one faith. I suppose it will inevitably happen to me, until I leave this world, that when I reach and read this great word of one faith, it always floods back into my mind, a statement made by a young man, I was then a young man, whom I met at a certain place, under certain conditions, where we all lived and worked together for a time, and he said he had a book called The Faith of the World in One Volume. It's always stuck to me, The Faith of the World in One Volume. I suppose it must have been a mighty tome. But the fact of the matter is, there's only one faith. Nobody else has got any. I understand that. There's only one faith. The rest are beliefs. You say, well, they're the same. No, they're not. The Muslims believe this, certainly, and the Hindus believe this, too, but they're not faith. That's the thing, I've got to go to Poland and write. Flipshod thinking leads us into many errors. The accepted phrases always encapsulate, or hide, error. You know, in that sort of realm. We need to be more definite. That's what I think. We must have a breadth of understanding, but we must be more definite. We must be able to comprehend, as far as our limited brains will allow us, all sorts of things, but we must be very definitive in our own thinking. And that's very, very wonderful. You have it in this place. One body, one spirit. This is definitive, all right. Specific. One hope of your calling. One Lord. One faith. Only one. And either you and I have it, or else we do not. And that's the point. There are no approximations to it. There are leadings up to it by that which we call believing. For instance, if you are a conservative, you will be believing you have four or five rosy years ahead. Let me disenchant you at the moment. Not that I'm a slaver or anything else now. But you don't need a disenchantment. Now, here's the thing. You see, beliefs on our part can change, but the one faith never does, nor can it. The one faith commits of no expansion and no diminution. It is the faith of God. That's the one faith. It's in the scriptures. And if God didn't start out in one faith which would only be his, because there's only one God, which we'll take there probably sometime tonight, he thought these things, he did these things, and listen, he did them all by faith. You keep that very clear. And that's why the Bible says the just shall live by faith. It isn't they can do or they may do. Now you listen to this positive word. They shall or else they shall not even exist. That is what the Lord is talking about. And this, beloved, is what the gospel presents to us. Amen. I wonder if we have seen it. Because of the varying degrees of what we call faith in people's lives. You know, that comes over. If you had enough faith, you could have come to this conference in a Cadillac and not in an old T4. That sort of thing. If you had enough faith. If you had enough faith, you could have a palace with wonderful gardens, you could have a heated swimming pool and all the rest of it, which leads us into the melodious area of prosperity thinking, and hallelujah, a sort of a conservative position as opposed to labour thinking. You know what I mean. Excuse me, I don't want to be political, but I want to sort of bring the idea to your mind. And God wants us to get away from all that claptrap. Of course, these things can be made to work. As when the Lord Jesus was on the earth, they said, you're casting out devils. Ah, the prince of devils, Princess, all right. By whom do your sons cast out devils then? Well, were they casting out devils? Yes, they were. They made it work. But they hadn't got the real faith. How did they do it? I don't want to raise a problem. I just mention it. I give you a principle of its operation. We leave the rest. It may be a very good thing for another Bible. But here, then, is the wonderful thing for us to see. Now, it has been written somewhere, that in this great list of ones, this one, that one, that, it's all one because it is one's. It is one person's. One person's body. One person's spirit. One person's hope mediated or transmitted to us because it's the hope of our calling as well. It's one Lord, and you know who that is. It's one person's faith. It's one person's baptism, administered by that one person, of course. And it's one person's God and Father of our Lord, if we like to use that word, and He has to become our Father. His body must become my body in the sense that I am in it. His spirit must become my spirit in that I have it. The hope that's in His heart, in what He was called Jesus, and sent into the world must be in mine. One hope of mine called heart, that I become of Christ's Spirit. Very little C now, not capital C. One Jesus, I must be a Jesus person. It's all the same. It's Him. It's His, the Lord. It's His Lordship, and the faith is His. Amen. Now, we live in a world when we do hear these words about faith, faith, faith. It lies really, beloved, in that which I was saying the other morning. I don't know whether it sank in, but let me say it again. We often do need it repeated, repeated, and sometimes, when are things repeated long enough, we say, oh yes, I can see it. Somehow you see. If not, they're different from me. You're much superior to me. But sometimes, I hear, and now I say, yes Lord. As a matter of fact, that's the art of what you call Bible study in preaching. You read it, and all of a sudden I say, wow, Lord, what an idiot I've been. I remember when God revealed things to me in the beginning. In a flash, I saw the whole situation. I thought, what an idiot I've been before this. And that's the way it goes. It must come like that. You can't get into these realms unless it does come to your heart like that, because we're so obtuse, normally. But we can believe a million things. No we can't, that's too many. But we can believe a thousand things anterior to that, before that comes, and you say, well he's got faith for this, he's got faith for that, he's got faith for the other. Ah, but this hasn't come. Let me show you what I mean. I'll go back to that which I've already referred to, what I said the other morning, in a moment or two. Come with me into the Galatian letter. Now, you must treasure this Galatian letter. Really, you must. You must read it until it runs out of your ears, if I may say it that way. You must get it. Absolutely right. It's reckoned to be the first epistle that Paul wrote anyway. It's wonderfully foundational. Let's see what he has to say about faith. It's in this great second chapter of Galatians. Right. Let's start. First verse fourteen, chapter two. When I saw that they, that is the Jews that dissembled with Peter's talking, teaching, whatever he was saying, they were carried away, Barnabas, they were carried away with their dissimulation. But, when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before the morn, If thou, being a Jew, why don't you use your common sense, Peter? If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compelst thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? Most of us, when we're around, we're absolutely self-contradictory. You check that out. We become absolutely self-contradictory. We can only stand off from ourselves and see ourselves. If only we could. But, of course, that's not given to us, because we are the sum total of what we think, really. That is in the manner of our living. And, therefore, because we are that, we can't stand off from it most times, and see the thing, objectively. You can't think without becoming emotionally involved in it, as much as you may think that you're a cool, calm professor. You can't. And here, then, is the great sin. Now, listen. We, verse 15, who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles. You will understand that he's not sneering at the Gentiles. He's taking the Jews up in the position that they hold. All right. And he says, we know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by having faith in Jesus Christ. Is that what your book says? It doesn't. It says, by the faith of Jesus Christ. You thought you were justified when, by your faith, didn't you? Romans 5 and 1. But, you see, this has been said, and let me say it again, that you should not read the Roman letter before you read the Galatian letter, because the Galatian letter was written before the Roman letter. And when you get instructed on the beginning of things, you call Genesis the seedpot of the Bible. Don't you? Well, if you don't, you should. Then Genesis, then Galatians, is a kind of Genesis. You understand that? And you get the key thoughts of how to read the Roman or any other letter that follows. You say, well, I didn't think it was written on a schematic document. That's because we're so heterosexual, whatever we are in our teaching. That's why. That's because we're so humanly static, if I may say so. We don't think, although we say the Bible is inspired, we don't think there's any brains behind it. We think there's a lot of hodgepodge, but do you really think that? It's reading the Bible properly that's the secret of everything. The secret of everything, once the Holy Ghost has come. You get that clear. So that when you read in the Roman letter, oh, that's good, I think we've looked at it before, but let's just get it. You read in the Roman letter these words. Verse 1 of chapter 5. Therefore, being justified by faith, what a misunderstanding the translators had. Even my beloved old, you know, old English Bible, you see. You're told in the last verse of chapter 4 that Jesus Christ was raised for our justification. That's the thing. And you and I were justified by the faith of Jesus Christ. Therefore, being justified, comma, that's where you put the comma, because it's been done in the annals of history, because it's been done in the purposes of God, because the one all-sufficient sacrifice, the oblation and offering for sin, if you want to come on to the Church of England statement, has been offered, it's done. The great justifying work has been done. Hallelujah. Now then, by faith let us, that's a better translation, by faith let us have peace with God. Come to peace, come to terms with God upon the fact that the justification has been attained. The justifying act has been done. And you won't be justified with God until you come to terms with God and you enter into it, and that's why faith is imparted to you. And you say, imparted? Oh, yes. Because faith, as Paul says in this Roman letter, chapter 10, comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. All right. Is that clear to you? Well, we'll go on papers and go over it, and do a microscope if you want, sometime. Here is the thing for us to understand and get it into our being. Of course, you don't always understand these things in the beginning. I didn't. I don't know that I understand them much now. God is still at this place. But here is the glory of it. Time is an invention of God. Everything is an invention of God. We're all whirling round on this old ball, beloved. And somewhere pivotal in the middle of it, Christ came into the world. God moved. He put up a cross in the centre of things. Okay. And it operates all around, and it's all been done. In the Old Testament they were justified because it was going to be done. In the New Testament we are justified because it's done. Hallelujah. And when we talk about going to be done, it was only going to be done covering the Old Testament because in the heart of God it had been done from the foundation of the world. What a world of things. That's right. Amen. But we are dealing with God, not the boss of a country. And it's so wonderful. I tell you the thing to do with this is to read it and then go and lie down on your bed and don't go to sleep and let it soak into you until everything says, Oh, yes, Lord. You know, like the dry barren land that hasn't had rain for three years. And it lies there under the rain when it comes and says, Oh, yes. And up go all the shoes. Do you see that? Now, I'm telling you a principle of understanding. You think I may be raising smiles about you, but I'm telling you the truth from which if you depart you will never know. You will be merely people hanging on words of Scripture, favourite text. But if you get soaked you'll get the spirit from which the text came. And then you will begin to understand. But if you won't give God time, give up hope of ever coming to know. Then you'll be dependent on preachers and things like that. What a marvellous truth, then, if this was to understand. We are justified by the face of Jesus Christ. I want to put my bars up and say, Hooray! If it had been on my face I'd have been on my way to hell. Justified by the face of Jesus Christ. I love it. Oh, I turn it over in my mind. I don't know whether you do, but I suppose the trouble is that instead of putting the Galatian letter before the Roman letter, they didn't quite know where to put it in the Bible, but then you don't know what to do with things, the juxtaposition of things, until you understand. So when you read the Galatian letter first, when you approach these verses in Romans, you say, Justified by the face of Jesus Christ. Not by my face in it. You understand. What happens is, when you come at last to believe it, you throw the switch. All the power in those mighty atomic stations flows into you. That's all you do. You're wired for it. Hallelujah. And it's marvellous. This is why sin goes. This is why life comes. This is why everything comes. Like you throw the switch and the light comes on. Of course, some of these, they bleed about a bit first. But nevertheless, it comes on. Amen. It's His face. Good job, people, for trying, looking at me, looking at you. You know, somebody looks at you and says, Oh, she's a hopeless case. It's one poor little man talking about another poor little creature. But God doesn't look like that. He doesn't see that at all. It isn't that way with God. Now, the confusing thing about it, and here I'm coming back. If I'm galloping a bit this morning, it's because I'm wondering how much time I'll have later on in the day. We look back, then, into the Gospels. Let me repeat what I said the other morning, brother. This is most important for you to understand. I didn't understand it for years upon years upon years. And I'm afraid much of the preaching that was going about didn't enlighten me. Here it is, that the first three Gospels, called the Synoptic Gospels, all right, they are about Jesus, the Jew's Messiah, coming to His own. Now, that's where Paul... John 5 says, He came to His own, and then leaves it. That's all he says. The other three Gospels, they're all contained with Him coming to His own. And so all you have to do is to walk about and sometimes you say, well, according to your faith, the answer is that their faith was coming out. And that's why when you get the John's Gospel, you never read the word faith. It isn't in the Gospels. You get the word belief, which is associated, of course, with power, with movement, with a personality going. All right. Now, here then, is the great secret. And that's why... Reach out your hand, touch the hem of His garment, but you will find that that's always for things like healing, which is quite free in the land in those days. They could just come and say, He's our Messiah. Of course we believe He's our Messiah. It wasn't long before they changed their opinion. You know what I mean? It all happened in three and a half years. They came, touched, it was theirs. Hallelujah. But John said, He came to His own, His own received Him not. That's in the first eleven verses of the Gospel. And He's now moving out to the world. You say, well, aren't these things of the world? Yes, yes, yes, yes. But they are all pre-crucifixion Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The thing that happened before the crucifixion. You say, but, but, but, but, but... Yes, it's right. Why don't they just splutter for a start? But it's true. Oh, I say, I've got a baptism. I mustn't go on it now, I'll come and talk to you later. I've got a baptism to be baptized with. Oh, I'm so straightened, I'm shut up just to be Jews. Until then, all... Don't you see? So, it was the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, and that's what Matthew keeps saying. I'm a Zionist. John says, you've got to be born again and then you'll get into the Kingdom of God. God loves the world. You see the precalculation of ideas. You join them together. You begin to understand what is this message coming through this Bible that I've loved and read for years. So, the Lord is speaking. So, he leaves it there. Yes, yes, yes. It's in the package, if you know what I mean. Hmm. The great thing about the Lord Jesus is that he came to justify us by his faith. He believed. And he couldn't be off from believing except that as God manifests in the flesh, he was at liberty to think otherwise than God because he was a man. And that is why the devil presented the temptations to him always on his manhood aimed at his Godhead to destroy him. Here's the first temptation. If thou be a son of God, you're hungry, aren't you? Command these stones that they be made bread. Here it is. And the Lord was unthinkable to us. Now we know the whole story. But they didn't know that he was God manifesting in the flesh. Now we know the whole story. It's all unthinkable to us that the Lord sure said, OK, all right, I'll make myself some bread. But he who said at the end in Gethsemane, don't you know I could have twelve legions of angels if I wanted them? Wasn't going to be tempted to make stones into bread just for his body. Poor, or I don't know, stupid Satan. He didn't understand. He thought he did. Hallelujah. What I want this morning, beloved, and I'm more after your souls though I've kept them approaching you through the mental processes this morning. I don't want it to be too heavy. I want you. I'm not concerned whether you have these tapes and drum them into your mind. I'm not concerned whether you understand up here the things that I'm saying. I'm concerned that somehow power reaches your soul and you come into this grave. From here. That's the big thing. The saddest thing is that you should come to these meetings and then go home thrilled and blessed perhaps but virtually not changed so that in a month you're back where you were before. That's the tragedy. That's the tragedy of all conferences, all churches anyway. Not that they shouldn't be. Don't go away from the church just because that's happened. You don't go away from conferences just because that's happened. You don't go away. You keep on and on. You and I were justified. God did the justifying act. That's why John, if I may, I know it's my favourite gospel and I hope you never tire of it either. That's why John tells you the real truth of the cross that none of the other gospel writers tell you about. They tell you about the cross, the objective cross. It's there, Golgotha, Calvary, whatever you want to say. But John says, Ah, do you know what that cross was? It was an altar. The Lamb offered Himself to God. Matthew, Mark and Luke don't say that. You go into the third chapter and you say, Do you know what that cross was? That was a cross on which the serpent was dealt with. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. That's where the devil was dealt with. That's where the devil's nature was dealt with. The others, they don't say that. Because they're dealing with the revival, the greatest revival that Israel ever had. That's what they're dealing with. But don't we take things from those three gospels? Of course we do. I take things from the Old Testament as we saw the other night. It's there, it happened, and it's happened today. Not the exact thing. I don't expect to cross over the River Jordan and go paddling through and then find somewhere where I've got to do some fighting and all that sort of thing. No, no. But we get the lesson, we get the truth. Because we understand the truth, because the spirit of truth has come since the truth and the way and the life died on the cross, the Rosary. Simple as anything. Once you'll allow God to change your basic carnal thinking. I'm not accusing anybody. I'm talking to everybody. That's it. Do you see? Not in vain, the scriptures say, the natural man does not receive the things of the spirit. That's why all of them in Palestine in that they did not receive the things of the spirit. And they did not receive Jesus Christ. He crucified Him. And now people like that, they can get healed, they can get blessed, they can hear the marvellous teachings, they can do everything, even if they've never passed it. Confound all the beliefs. Chop out all that the great faith preaches and teaches, teaches and preaches. But you've got to live by faith. That's different. This means a change of the basis of all life. Not just from truth, which came in, of course, through lack of faith, in what God said in Eden, you should know all about this, what is the meaning of these things? It's a change of the basis of life. I see that I'm not justified by reaching out the hand of faith. I see I'm justified by the death and the blood and the sacrifice of faith. Jesus Christ. Amen. This changes everything. I'm backing Galatians now. I just want to follow it through. This great thing. So that I read this. In the end of chapter four, it says this. Where shall we start? Listen. Verse twenty-two, chapter three. I beg your pardon. Verse three, verse twenty-two. The scripture hath concluded all under sin. There. The promise by faith of Jesus Christ. Again, not by my faith in Jesus Christ. Just notice it. By faith of Jesus Christ. It's to project your mind to that person saying, all this greatness of faith, of the person, of his very being on earth, of his very presence, everything he did, by faith of Jesus Christ. All right. It's petrified for us at the moment, but that's the whole realm in which your mind must go. Faith of Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. It says this. Actually that word is faith-born. It's a very marvelous thing. Out of or out from Jesus Christ. All right. The promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them. That's indeed. But before faith came, what do you mean? He's talking about the Jews here, not just himself. We. We talking about the Jews. What do you mean before faith came? How about Hebrews 11? It says Noah had faith. It says Sharon had faith. Abraham had faith. Sarah had faith. What do you mean before faith came? That's right. That's what you're supposed to start thinking. What does it mean? Let's keep that in the back of the mind. We'll pass on. Before faith came, we, he's not talking about you, he's not talking about just an individual, but it has a reflected position in each believer's life. Because here in Christ, everything is gathered up. The partial faith of him, the spark of faith there, the flashing through of faith somewhere else, that's all history. It's all in Christ. We'll see it in a moment. Here we go. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up under the faith. Didn't they exercise what we call faith before then? Yeah. Because we believe this. We believe the other. We believe something of yours. We shut up under the faith. What a tremendous thing. I'm glad that God shut me up under the faith. Oh, but this is for Jews. But don't you understand? God gave the law not only to a nation, which he did, but he gave it to a condition which was the same in every nation. You must understand that. And you were shut up under this faith that you've asked of Jesus. Hang on. I believe this. I believe, well, she's saying a prayer. I believe I should go to church. I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. I believe, well, I believe the law. Hallelujah. I'm very grateful I did. But I saw that I was kept under that because it was directed to the law of human beings. You say, oh, what do you mean by that? The law of human beings, which is the same for Jews or Gentiles. Just the law of human beings. And it was directed under that. The law of human beings is this. We may not be conscious of it. Most of the great things of life are beyond our consciousness and lie deeper. We all were believers. You say, what do you mean? We all were believers? There's no life of any kind, even human life, without faith. You know, very little faith, little air. You can't believe. You believe in your mother, don't you? You believe in your father. You believe the proof they gave you wasn't poison. Sure, but that's sort of unnatural. Exactly what I'm talking about. The law of being. It's there. And that, bless God, is expected by Him to shut you up unto the faith. Hallelujah. And when you come and you see the faith, Acts 2, verse 16, the faith of Jesus Christ, when you meet Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, because nobody can until then, you say, oh, Lord. And this is why you get extravagant, almost, language of the worthless. Confound or power me, you see. These are the thoughts. These are the words, not that we've got to say the right words, they're nicely said. This is why we say, oh, Lord. The faith, come. Hallelujah. Shut up unto the faith, which has asked us to be revealed. That's why when you read the Hebrew's letter, the famous faith chapter, you go right down to it and you say, Abraham's faith, Noah's faith, Enoch's faith, Sarah's faith, Moses' faith, and all that they're achieved by, they say, you come down to the bottom of the chapter and you say, Amen. Well, you don't. And then you pass the chapter, about chapter 12, I think, Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of the faith. You've got the word hour in, isn't there? Just take it away. It isn't just the author and finisher of our faith, which is, once it's all finished, you understand this, our faith is being started and lived and completed and it's finished. And you've got to come into that faith, the completed, if I may put it this way, faith that God's prophesied. So that you're not just sort of reaching out and getting a little bit to be out, a little bit of, oh, I can believe this morning for sanctification, or I can believe, I'm not mocking, I can believe this morning for justification, I can believe, do you know why we use that language? Because we're talking human beings. That's what we're talking. The limitations of our humanity. We thank God for His mercy and His pity and His grace. Amen. That's what we do. And you can even find a verse in Scripture to support it. Bless God! For there are stepping stones of verses and there are, for those that are needing it, hallelujah, God is not like this weeping, neocognitive creature. He's got it all there in the Word. And you can come, and if you're coming in a limited way, give me a hand, and we can walk step by step, and I'm not mocking. He's, you know, here a little, there a little, so on and so on. That's God coming down to our limitation. And then God came down into our limitation and exploded forth as God in Christ. Reconciling not me, but the world unto Himself. Hallelujah. The great sweep of God. I think most of us ought to really be on our knees at times of begging God to forgive us for putting limitations upon us in our thinking. Out of this comes all the squabble of doctrine, wrongly. They come out of the little thinking of men. I'm a man too, so you say, that means you're jealous. That's how wonderful it is. You know, the other morning, the other, the other day, I said something. What you discover is that you really get it all in the beginning, and the rest is a, that is more an enlightening of your understanding, and renderings of your understanding. And I saw something going like this. Human. Yes, I saw something. I put in the Word what you really knew inside. May not have come as clear as when I said it, but that's the truth. And here then, is the thing. The faith of Jesus Christ. Shut up. I'm so glad he shut up. So now, I heard this, I heard that, but you see, he shut my ears first. Well, I heard, but this is what my teacher said at school. North it goes in one ear and out the other. All right, okay, I've shut that, but somehow the spirit of God grabbed it and put a lot of it down in here, so I didn't lose it. Here is the thing you see. Don't you, don't you, now shut up, and then I heard a word. He said, well don't you, he said, yes, I said this, it's in the Bible. You only ever see anything in retrospect, you must understand that. You don't see anything in prospect. Go ahead on, you may think to do, but you don't. Hallelujah. And you look back and say, Jesus, what an idiot I've been, Lord. Yes, glory be to God. Someone's got some furrows down their forehead. Here then, is the thing. You just open and drink. If the drinking sets your mind working, that's okay, but don't you try and take what I'm saying from the tip of your mouth. Open your spirit. Beloved, I've come here, look, the law, he says, verse twenty-four, chapter three, was our schoolmaster, pedagogical, I won't stop on that, to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, see, that was the faith that was to be revealed. Shut up, under the faith to be revealed. After that faith is come, we're no longer under the schoolmaster. For ye all are the children of God. Amen. And I don't need the law. Now, do you understand why I talk about the new covenant and preaching it, and not the old? I don't need that. We're no longer under that schoolmaster. That's what Paul's writing. This is why a whore is constantly preaching from the Old Testament. We don't need it. Oh, it's beautiful. Of course it's beautiful. It's in the Psalms. But don't you see, you don't need it. It's that we're not under it. I can learn from it, which I do. I'm preaching new covenant to you, really. The whole truth is there. I feel our blood is insulted. Oh, not always by sin, but by our persistence along the old line. In the early church, it was persistence along the old line of I must be circumcised, and keep the law, and believe in Jesus Christ. Now Paul is invading against that, because we do not need it. We are not under it. That's an interesting thing. Hallelujah. That isn't the same God and prophets and great men of the Old Testament, of course. Yes. But in our, if you like, specific thinking, we must see that everything has come to us through the faith of Jesus. That's why he must be the precious one. That's why we have to live in his adoration of us. But listen, beloved. Only as being shut up, my, excuse me for using this word, once I've used it about enough, as being shut up unto Christ. You say, what do you mean? Well, everything in my body is shut up unto me. Is it? You haven't got it, have you? That's what the body does. It keeps all that's inside in. I'm glad I've got it. You see, here's the point. We are shut up unto Christ. What do you mean? Well, not objectively. He's my head. Shut up unto him. Hallelujah. Don't feel worried. This is what it's all about. But we've never, never been directed to it. I'm speaking quite generally now. We've never, never understood it. We use terms like the body, we use all these kinds of things. But, but, who is living in the body? I don't know. Did you notice I said living? I'm not doing it. What a tremendous thing. We're coming to it when we get to one baptism. I'll get in. But here is the great truth. That we see what it's all about. And allow it all to happen. And of course it goes on then. You're all the children of God, by faith in Christ. And so he goes on. Because he is a being of faith. Coming back now to chapter two. We know, said Paul in the sixteenth verse, that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. That we have believed in Jesus Christ, he says. It seems that we might be justified by the faith of Christ. Twice he said it in this verse. Justified by the faith of Christ. Hallelujah. And not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found ministers of sin. Oh dear. Found sinners. Is therefore Christ the minister of sin? No he isn't. God forbid. If I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I to the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God. This is just to live by faith. Too many people are trying to live by their faith in Jesus Christ. Instead of coming away, coming to a place of no works at all, not even trying to do work up to faith, work this, work that, but living by the faith of Jesus Christ. Here I rest. Here I am relaxed. Here the conflict ceases. Here the struggle ends. Here the trying ends too. You say, do you really mean that? Yes, I mean that. How many of us really believe that? Ah! How many of us are living it? I live by the faith of Jesus Christ. Ah, it's such a wonderful word. Such a wonderful word. And every head is willing to nod at it. You see, it is a precious truth. But Paul was giving his testimony. He wasn't offering you a tip to hang on to. He was just telling you, look, I'm living by the faith of Jesus Christ. Paul didn't mean, you know, don't say that you believe in Jesus Christ, and you believe him when this comes, and you believe him when something else comes, you believe him when something else comes. No, I don't. Don't you? No, no. And how do I know? Because I'm living the same way. But this is how I know. I'm not boasting about death. We can only boast in the cross, as he says in the last chapter of this precious book. It's all you're boasting. This isn't an effort of trying, of believing for this, or believing for that. You just live. Listen. Are you alive? Dangerous to sit in the front row. I always ask the front row. Are you alive? Are you trying to live? Of course you're not. You'd be an idiot if you'd said yes. You just live. And all you do is not do anything conscious of that life. Like committing suicide, or in some way or another, like taking poison, or stopping eating, or stopping drinking, or getting on drugs, or smoking, or alcohol, or, I don't know, whatever symptoms you get. Well, a lot of diseases in the world. Yeah. It really chokes you. That's right. You say, well, we've got doctors in the room. I'll tell you the same. You say, that's not it. It's just a system, right, that can near enough reject every germ there is in the world. It's all right, John. That's life. They're in the air. You breathe them. You know, you're eating ever so many microbes this morning. You'd better stop breathing. Don't you understand? You say, you can catch diseases. But, you see, you come to this. You come to this. My wife and I came to this years ago. It was in the war, actually. A great person. It's so nice, you see. They shall not come now, he. That's right. They shall not come now, he. Yes, that's right, beloved. What God wants us to do is to get away. I know I need to take aspirin at times, and I need to do this, that, and the other, but it's not a deadly disease. It's weak. We all want to die of something sometimes, I guess. But that's not the point. Don't you see? We'll see. A person's always catching something. It's a poor, weak, sickly thing. Don't say that in a despising way. You know, it comes on a very blissful, what you might call unnoisy time in the morning, when you say, Don't forget about your sister. And that lasts for as long as you've seen it. If you've been thinking about yourself before you started, then you keep on thinking about yourself after. That's right. That's right. All this terrible world, that keeps us concentrated upon hell. So that you get the food fanatic. Oh, you must eat meat. You must be a vegetarian. Oh, I'm a vegetarian. Oh, cows are vegetarian too. Don't you understand, beloved? If you're a food fanatic, you've got to go and get forgiven. Oh, you must eat ground bread. You must eat... Oh, can't eat white bread. They're all as good as this. I mean, you know how I live. I'm 74. I've ate white bread all my life. Well, occasionally they give me brown. I don't care. They give me black. You see, don't you see? Don't you see? What if you'd been born an Indian and that had been brought up on chapati or something? Oh, that's fanaticism. I mean, isn't there a good, such a wonderful Christian home? Well, mind you, I don't like my dinner served up on a dirty plate. But you do understand, beloved, don't you? Get away from self and trust God. That's right. Then you won't have to pay out so much money for fancy food from the health store. Trust God. You can give a lot more to God then. But don't you like health? Don't you cook? I like any food. Well, there's got to be limits. Sunlight, hot curry, for instance. But, but, but, the whole thing. I think what you want to do is you want to go home this morning looking at God and then laugh at yourself. Say, what an idiot I've been. And that's what everybody else is doing, that's what I'm saying. They're laughing at you, but they're very polite to your face. Here, here, here is the thing. Here is the thing, he says. The life I now live in the flesh I live by the face of the Son of God. Don't I, Lord? And he knows whether you are or not. It's so wonderful. Isn't it? And that doesn't mean to say that you walk out of the door and an angel comes along and carries you off somewhere because you live by the face of the Son of God. It doesn't happen to Jesus. And he's after that poor blind woman for five more minutes. See, we go to ridiculous extremes in our thinking. We won't be normal people. Jesus Christ was God's normal man or representative man, to use another term. You and I have to live by the face of the Son of God who loved me, gave himself for me. For me. Therefore, so that I can live by his face. And unless we live by his face, we are not really living. Because you say, this is advanced truth. Well, Jesus Christ was advanced truth, wasn't he? He was truth advanced into flesh. So the Lord leads us on in this great, great life. Amen. Just to pick into the Hebrew data, just to look at it, you go right through that wonderful 11th chapter and come to the end of it. And then what do you think of this? Listen. The last verse says, God's provided something better for us. What? Better than Abraham had? Yes. Or better than Noah had? Yes. Or better than Moses? You know what you're saying, man. You know, I know what I'm saying. I'm saying what the writers of the Hebrews said. I must be right, mustn't I? But you see, we've all let ourselves believe it. Because we're Old Testament believers, you see. It's got such a grip on your thinking that you're bound by it. Yes. Verse 2. Look off, all these. This is the power of the Greek. Look off. Look away from them. Look away from Abraham. Look up. But man, you've written a book on Abraham. Yes, I know. Because lessons he can take. See? The author and finisher of the faith. You should put out the word our if it's in your version. It's not in the Greek. He's the author and finisher of the faith. Let me say it again. I love it. He commenced faith and he finished it. That's it. And we can have the law. Here it says. Would you like to live like I lived when I was on the earth? Yes, of course. Because you're fancying it. You think you're going to raise Lazarus from the dead or something like that. That's got nothing to do with it at the moment. In these 30 years before we did any of that you've got to get this clear. And we're talking about living. Living. Marvellous, isn't it? Lord, the joy that was set forth endured the cross. The scythe in his hand and he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Now, I'm going to read the next verse. Put your eye on it. Listen to me. Let's consider Abraham. Let's consider Moses. No, that's not what that verse says. Well, why don't you do what the verse says then? Consider him. Consider him. Hallelujah. Now, I consider Noah. Let me go back and have a look at old Noah. He's a marvellous man. But of course we need to learn the lesson of endurance and patience from him. Yes. I'm grateful that Jesus didn't take a hundred years to knock an ark together. I'm really grateful. Besides, if you go, dear, I've had a hundred years of cutting down trees and knocking arks together. More, more, more. No. That is to teach you the endurance of the Lord Jesus Christ. As you said, I thought it was to teach me that I've got to have endurance. Yes. Because he endured. In one moment, if we can call it a moment, one period anyway in time, he embraced everything. Whatever you say is in Abraham and bless God it was in him. Look at the stars and or Noah that built an ark or Enoch that made the sacrifice. Sorry, Abel that made the sacrifice. Enoch that was translated to heaven. You can go through them all. It's all in Christ. You never need it. I don't really think the greatness of Christ has entered into us as it should have done. When we come here, beloved, we find in him all that made Noah endure. We find in him all that made Abraham leave home, go to the other land. It's all in him. So it could go on. But for time's sake, I want to just leave you. You see, beloved, the face of Jesus Christ. I'm always the one to check it out in Mark's Gospel. You know the famous chapter, I'm sure, verse 11. Chapter 11. Mark. You know the famous verse where the Lord Jesus said have the face of God. What a wonderful thing that is. Verse 22. Have the face of God. Written has face in God but the Greek is have the face of God. Many Christians say to themselves Peter, you have face to lead the boat. You have face to follow me. You have face. Now listen, I'm going to tell you something. Good boy, Peter. Good brother. Now listen. Have the face of God. Have the face of God. Hallelujah. But what does it mean, have the face of God? You mean to tell me that God has to believe? No, no, he doesn't have to believe. He just does. But you see, it's his being. It's his constitution, part of his constitution. Don't you read in the beginning of Hebrews 11, face is substance. It's something substantial in the being of God that makes this life of spirit, for God is spirit, substantial. Hallelujah. Or, as you come into the Roman letter, it says in the marvelous fifth chapter, third chapter, I take this one, it says this, that we're all justified, or whatever you want to say, by the law of faith. It's a law in the being of God. It's law. In other words, God wouldn't be God unless this power, this virtue, this what it is, was in him. It's projected out from him, it's verbalized from him, it's given a name, this law is called faith. That's it. Don't get tied up with letters that form words. Faith is a power in God. It is, I don't know, how are you going to talk about these things? You're a bundle of law, you wouldn't be a human being if you weren't a bundle of law. That's right. Isn't that right? You are, you're a bundle of law. That's all. And that's all God is. I'm not talking about the Mosaic law. And because all these laws work right, he's God, he's wonderful. Now that is what you and I are invited into. If you're finding it a struggle to live by faith, then you're not living by faith. Living by faith takes the struggle away. Don't you see? Faith is the harmonizing factor. Faith is the stressful factor. You will know, you will know, you will know that I live in a place called Ockenheath. That's my wife. Alright. In Ockenheath, there was a young man, see, his name was Howard, and it's still is. He was a poor, little, crippled, up, seeing, you won't mind saying this when you hear this, in a chair, could walk, and be pushed around. Couldn't start school, because he was eleven. Not that he hadn't got brains, and improved, being from university. But, couldn't go, hard as he, to Blue Club. Now, hunchback, twisted, yeah, you now know him. Got a lovely wife, and a lovely baby. You see. What was wrong with him? When they searched his appendix, they couldn't find it, because he had appendix problems. His appendix wasn't in the right place. His bones weren't in the right place. He had all sorts of things wrong. You know what was wrong? When they examined him, they found his heart, had got a force of blood, and a struggle for life. His heart, was about half as big again, as it should have been. Grows, and developed, to push the blood from veins, to the scops of Robert, which they said, they'd never seen. In fact, the scops are the greatest surgeons, in Scotland, all along this life. Vascular surgery. Okay. They ripped him down the sphincter, they opened his ribcage, they took out his heart. All the doctors will know, how much they can do. They cut off lumps of his heart. They put a little tube in there, so that the blue blood, didn't get into his veins, and stopped the arterial system. And they did all kinds of things, and sewed him up again. And though he lived, what was wrong? He had blood in his veins. He had a heart. His, uh, his appendix, I don't know where they found that. You see. Now he's married, now he's got a baby, right up to nine months in, and even the last things, of the deformities, going off his shoulders, as you can say, the miracle of life. He's married. He had to counter-live it, and now, don't you see, beloved, the law was wrong. The law said, that, arterial blood should stop in arteries. That's the law. Oh no, they said it should, but it's the design. And I could go on, and I could go on about clubbing, and I could go on about everything. The law apparently said, that if the heart was right, soon that old frame would start to get right too. That's what the law said. Once we begin to see it, if you're struggling to keep your faith, as they call it, or keep alive, you've never got the faith, and you've never had it. Do you not see that? Of course people say, oh no, you've got it, you've got it, you've got to believe this, you've got to believe that, you've got to believe the other. Dear Lord, dear Lord, dear, this poor woman's been deceived. This poor man, he's been deceived right from the beginning. Everything is gift, even faith, the faith's got to be given to you. It comes, I don't know how it comes. You say, well you do, it just said so. It says, it comes by hearing. Yeah, but I don't know what somehow, I mean, I hear it somehow. In fact, for years before that, I've never heard it. That's right. I hear it, years before, I never saw it. Of course I saw it, it happens, it's a miracle. Before faith came, we were shut up to some system of believe this, believe that, believe that. And then the faith of Jesus Christ came, and I didn't have to believe anything. I got it as a gift. Don't you see? I don't have to believe anything. Strange creature you are. But this is true. I'm going to ask you a question. Why did Jesus Christ say, you destroy this temple in three days, I'll raise it again? And then you read that it was God that raised him from the dead. He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. Why? You say, well now there you are, you see. That's what I don't understand about the Bible. But I do. I understand that ever so easily. It doesn't stray, it doesn't straddle. It was just a synthesis of belief that made it all one. Don't you see? A synthesis of idea and thought and power. It's as simple as that. And that's how it's to be with you. I don't know whether I can believe that. I don't know whether I can believe that. Now beloved, if you're having a struggle to believe anything, give up trying to believe it. Stop it straight away. You have to live by the faith of Jesus Christ. So many of us in our time have struggled to believe for years about, for someone, or come to. You say, bit of a job, isn't it? And then somebody comes up with a little parade and usually a woman says, Well, I'm believing for him. I'm believing for him. Usually it's a woman. They're made that way somehow. I don't know. There's nothing wrong about it. There's nothing wrong with it. But this is it. Something about a woman is beautiful, I guess. The way they're constructed. And that's why you might think I'm talking through like God never imparted men to bear babies. That's right. Mother love is faithfulness in it of a quality that some in this area may haven't got. You mention you, let me knock down. No, I'm not. I'm telling you the truth. It's all there, isn't it? You can find it in the animal world. Don't worry about animals. I mean what I mean is this. You see the mother dog or the mother lion or whatever it is. She'll look after the cubs. The old man won't be. He'll be out there having a good old feed. Don't you see? If he gets killed she'll bring those cubs up. There is something in this. Isn't it wonderful about the nature of women? How about that? In case someone's been lambasting the women I'm all for you. In your place. All right. Ah, that's important. In your place. It's when you try to be equal with men that it's when you're in trouble because you haven't got it in you and you think you have but you haven't. Like I haven't got it in me to have it. It's what you've got. Do you understand that? It's good, it'll open your eyes to a lot of quarrelling that goes on in churches. To keep you clear. How marvellous it is if we're all equal, said a lot of monks. You women wouldn't look like me, would you? You say, well, I mean in Christ. Well, I mean in Christ. A lot of darkness. Let nature teach you. And be sensible. And don't try and bring it into the church. This will cause division. Accept your position, woman. Accept your position, man. But that's not how it's done. Here, power is contained and then you'll work harmoniously together. It's you for a patient that causes trouble and the Lord is wanting us to see. Woman, well, I'll come back on that. Woman, you can be as strong as you like in your position. Don't you go beyond that. Man, you've got to be strong in your position, do you? Poor weak-kneed thing. You've got to get up and do something. Amen. You can't always rely on your wife to pop you up. Get up and do something. For God. Be a man. Jesus Christ. Is the man. Just a little bit over there. All right. Because I've only just started the subject. The Lord wants us to understand that if you've got to have the faith of Jesus Christ not your faith in Him. That's a substitution. That's the ruination of your life. Substitute the leading instead of the faith of Christ. This will take your life on. This will take you on in the life of Christ. The other one, I wish I could describe it better. I just have to leave the Holy Spirit to apply it to you. That's Christ. Father. Oh, Father, I'm sorry, Father, that it's beyond words. We love you, Lord. We open our hearts. Oh, Lord. Lord. Without your faith we don't get to that. We're trying to convert our lives to yours. Before then, by our faith. Now, Lord, do thou come in and grow in us. Alleluia. Alleluia. Precious Lord. Amen. Amen. Amen.