This sermon is a heartfelt prayer addressing the timeless nature of human struggles and the need for genuine repentance, salvation, and spiritual renewal. It emphasizes the importance of seeking God's mercy, surrendering to His will, and living with a sense of urgency for spiritual growth and evangelism. The speaker prays for a deep longing for God, a revival of faith, and a transformation of hearts towards a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ.

Let's pray. O Lord Jesus, we've just been thinking of an incident that took place in Thy earthly life back in old Judea. Here we are, Lord, in another part of the world, on another continent, among another kind of people, in another period of history. Human nature hasn't changed at all. Men still have two eyes and two ears, their head still on top of their body and their feet underneath. They still grow old and die, and children are born. Everything is the same. Color, cultures, distances, they change. O Lord, Thou knowest. People remain the same. There are people here tonight, eager people who would run to inquire, How can I be saved? Then when they find out, they would go the other way. There may be people who would eagerly inquire, How can I be filled with the Holy Ghost? When they find out, sorrowfully turn away. My Lord God, thou must grieve thy heart as it grieves ours a little bit, it must grieve thine with infinite grief. We sorrow a little, thou must sorrow with boundless sorrow. Thou, man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, we hid as it were our faces from thee, and turn our back and go away. Sorrowing we go, but go sorrowing. O Lord, have mercy, have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us, O Lord. For thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst humble thyself to be born of a virgin. For thou hast overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all that lives. We therefore pray, O Lord, save thy people, which thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood. Lift them up, make them to be numbered with thy Saints in glory everlasting. O Lord, this night, Shepherd of Israel and ours, find that lamb. O Shepherd of thy flock, find that strange sheep. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Father, we pray that thou would be pleased to bless these words. Thou knowest how our words fly about like birds around a chimney. O, but Jesus, take the words, at least the text, and carry it home to our heart. Put in us, we pray, a great longing after thee, a great longing desire to know thee in living encounter by the Holy Ghost, through the blood, until all our self-confidence is gone and we rest not. We ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, our Heavenly Father, we are before thee. We think that it's hot, and we're just slightly uncomfortable. But O God, if we knew for a positive certainty that thy Holy Son Jesus were coming at midnight tonight, nobody would mention the weather. We'd be alert, and our loins would be girded, and our lamps lighted, and our shoes on our feet, and our staff in our hands, and we would be looking and hoping. But, Lord, we pray thee that thou wilt help us to live now, and to think now, as if that coming was, indeed, as soon as midnight. And we pray that thy blessing may be on us as we think together about the call of the Holy Ghost to men. O God, help us, we pray. May our minds be brought in from the busy world out there and from the noise, and may they be centered upon holy things and holy thoughts. But I know us, Lord, it's not certain how much longer any of us will be this side of the border. So we pray thee, while we are here and opportunities ours, to live hold of it and do what we can to make our calling and election sure. Help now tonight in a giving of this word, we pray in our Lord Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Now, let's pray. O love of God, thou hidden love of God, we have found thee, we have found thee, for thou hast found us. For we were not looking for thee, thou art looking for us. We have found, and thou hast found, and we know thee, or rather, as Paul said, we are known of thee. O God, bless this fellowship, this group that's heard these words tonight. May we go out amid horns and airplanes overhead and noises of every kind. May we hear this gentle, insistent, sovereign, authoritative, lonesome voice calling us to be Christians, calling Christians to be good Christians, and calling good Christians to be still better Christians, calling us to put the world away and focus our attention on eternal values and to be here after kingdoms have fallen and democracies have gone down in the dust. Great God, help us over these days just ahead, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we pray for these who raise the hand. We have no way of knowing what the need might be. Thou knowest about it. But the great thing is that the heart is determined and the will is set, that they'll hear this voice of the blood of Jesus speaking and pleading like a lawyer before a court, pleading for his client. So, our Advocate above, Savior by the throne of love, please. And we pray that they may hear that voice. May quietly tonight turn away from everything, everything that could possibly slow them down, put away every weight and everything that could keep them from being the kind of Christians they ought to be. And we pray for any who may not be Christians or who may be on the border, who are not sure of God in Christ's name, we pray that they may turn to thee with all their hearts. For if ye call upon me with all your heart, ye shall most surely find me. Help us now, Lord, as we wait a little further and sing thy praise in Christ's name. Amen. We pray thy blessing upon the truth. Lord Jesus, we would be clean men and women, we would put away evil, we would cease to do wrong, we would amend our ways. But all this we would do knowing that in us there dwells no good thing, knowing that left to ourselves we could not possibly wash ourselves nor make ourselves right nor live right. We thank thee for the Holy Spirit, we thank thee for the power of the gospel, we thank thee for the retreat of prayer and the hiding place of devotion. We thank thee, Lord, that it's possible to live as becomes saints in an evil and adulterous generation. Grant that we may, for Christ's sake, amen. Let's pray. Lord, how thou didst ever find us, when so many millions go their way perilous tonight. We'll never know, but it's grace, sweet grace, eternal, that taketh all our sins away. And David, the royal countenance, washes us clean. We thank thee. We pray thee for all present to see us. We pray that there might be a searching of hearts and an exposing of our nature before thy light, to know whether indeed we belong in heaven or in hell, whether indeed we are sons of Adam or sons of God. O God, save us from carelessness. Here in Canada and down in the United States and many a few other countries in the world, we're like this rich man. We have so much. We live sumptuously in our way, making us forget that sometime soon we're going to die and we're going to go where the claim is laid to us, where we belong. O God, help this evening, this hour. Let us pray. Let us sing, and if now or after the service you want to see me, I'll be available. It could be that somebody would like me to offer a prayer for you. Last Sunday night after service, a young man from another country, who was a Roman Catholic, came to me and said he had heard me twice, and he was concerned. I can't recall word for word, but something to the effect that he was deeply concerned about his soul and his relationship to God, and could I help him? I prayed with him, exhorted him, and then told him to read the gospel of John, prayerfully asking God for life. Maybe he's here tonight. I hope he is. He promised to keep in touch with me. Maybe you would like to have me pray for you. If you would, the simplest old-fashioned way I know is just to raise a hand so I'll know who wants a prayer. Would you raise a hand? Who would like to have me pray for you? For any need at all that might be in your life. Put the hand up. We'll know that somebody wants to pray. Dear Lord Jesus, we pray tonight that thou wilt help us to share thy people. Oh, we thank thee for that glorious Jerusalem, the golden, milk and honey-blessed, where dwell the spirits of just men made perfect, and where thy Church will someday be. We thank thee, O Lord Christ, victorious, triumphant Lord Jesus. God, who made thee both Lord and Christ, and hath set thee head over all things to the Church, and made thee heir of all things, thou who art the shining forth of his glory and the express image of his person, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, we love thee, Lord Jesus. We want to be a Christ Church, indeed. We repudiate the ways of worldly churches. We repudiate the psychology and philosophy of worldly churches. We insist we want to be a New Testament Church. Make it so, Lord, we pray thee. Bless these dear friends, for Christ's sake. Amen. How unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests unto his God, the Father. To him be glory and dominion, now and forever. But before we sing, we want to pray. Let's pray. O our kind Father, we thank thee thou hast not left us in our sins. Thou hast taught a way for us. Thou hast turned it in Christ Jesus thy Son, our Lord. Thou hast worked it out by blood and tears and bones and death and the miracle of resurrection and the wonder of ascension to the right hand of the throne. Thou hast sent the Holy Ghost to stay everywhere throughout the world. He that believeth in him on him shall not perish. For the calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. O thanks be heavenly Father. Time is running out. It is later than we know. And thou hast warned us gently and carefully to be careful what we do with this message. Be careful lest we take too much for granted. To be careful lest the devil get the seed, lest the carriage of life take the seed, lest we be Christians only who have a name that we live but forget. My God! It would be better that we should perish from the naked slopes of the Ballywah and from the rich frequents of Toronto. It would be better that we should die pagans cutting off the necks of chickens, trying to appease some celestial God. And to die Canadians and Americans and Englishmen and Scotsmen who heard from their childhood this wondrous message. They would have let it go. O God, what do we say to thee in that time? What answer can we have from the bawling, naked, savage men smeared with pig grease and clay who stand up and say we never heard it? But who hears and thinks? O God, we've heard it and we've heard it and we've heard it until we're bored with it. God, forgive us. Give us a new something, a new baptism of interest, a new and newer plethora of fresh interest in the themes of the gospel. O God, we pray that the Lord help the saints here tonight. Lord, we pray for those who are well-saved, that they might become so keenly concerned for others that aren't saved, that they would continue to work for their salvation hard and struggle and pray and labor until one by one they got it in. Grant, we pray, O God, that there may be a harvest of souls at Avenue Road. We're overdue, Lord. It's long overdue. But God, we're not giving up. We expect to see it. We expect to see it, Father. We expect thee to give us a harvest. We expect to see young people brought in and older people. We expect to see very, very new faces and hear new voices and see the travail of thy soul, O Lord. We expect it. For thou art God, and because Jesus Christ, our Son, said if we wanted anything, ask in his name and he'll give it to us. Because that's why the gospel is being preached, that's why we're here, so expect to see it, God. We don't believe that God will speak to men vainly or say anything to anybody carelessly. We believe that when others make a promise, that promise is as good as gold. So we're expecting, Father, we're expecting thee to do it. O God, round the margins, our relatives, our friends, our neighbors, people all around here that are not here tonight, but they can be here and they can be brought in and they can be one, we pray thee, O God, fall on the churches, fall on this church, fall on our people, we pray with a new affluence of love for men, that we may not depend on the words from the Lord, that we may not take it only, but that we might supplement that word with earnest, soul-winning effort. Come on, we're looking for help, O God. Once more we remind thee that we have for this church a vision of a strong, Bible-based, morally right, solid, vigorous, active, loving church that the people will feel when they come in here that surely the Lord is in this place of truth. The Lord may be slow, but we believe it'll come. Now, as I said, first the little sprout and then the stalk and then the ear, and then the whole corn, it is. So put us through those stages fast, Lord, because we need the corn, and we need it fast, we need it soon. Pray, God, meet us. We pray thee for any tonight that are not committed, that have been, the Holy Ghost has found them somewhere there among the rocks, or on the wayside, or among the thorns. If God has found them, we pray thee that they might come out from there and be good ground, and receive the truth into our honest hearts, and bring forth truth and good patience unto perfection. We ask this in Christ's name. Now, let's sing this number please. We pray thee this night that thou would help the young man who is seeking thy faith, blessed Jesus. And then we pray for some who, for their own reasons, did not see fit to present themselves publicly, to pray for them, and ask that thou, Lord, will be with them, as thou certainly will be with them right on, and keep them in life until they've either said the last no, or have said a happy yes to thy invitation. Pray now thy blessing upon us, and may mercy and grace attend us all the days of our lives. Dismiss us now with thy blessing through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Then you will ever find at any other time, O Father, we beseech thee for all of these. Take them through the fire and through the flood, but above all things, through the blood. And if they have to sit by the river T-bar, as Ezekiel did, or be thrown down into a pit, as Jeremiah was, or be surrounded by dancing fanatical foes, as Elijah was, or be on the Isle of Patmos, as John was, or to fall flat down in a faint, as Daniel did, O, whatever the cost, we pray thee, make Christian worshipers out of these men and women. This we ask in Jesus' name. Everybody stand by the mat. Say, Father, first of all, help us. Thy name should be hallowed, hallowed, and that thy kingdom should come, and that thy will should be done all over the universe. Down here as it is up there, let that be first, and the other things fall in line. Blessed be God, and blessed be his holy Son, Jesus Christ. This we ask in Jesus' name. Love him, O God, our Father. We thank thee, we thank thee, we thank thee for Jesus Christ, thy Son. We haven't done anything that we can think of but what we are ashamed of. We haven't done anything but what we ought to be ashamed of. We haven't done anything, our brains, our minds, our bodies, our souls, our spirits, we haven't done anything ourselves except what thou has given us. What thou has given us, we are not ashamed of. We are glad for and we are deeply grateful for. We will go and appear and be there, dressed in thy righteousness alone, faultless to stand before thee. Thou will know us and claim us and not be ashamed of us, because we were redeemed in thy mercy. Poor, scarred, bruised, pathetic, pale-faced, dying, thou didst find us and save us and lift us and renew us and give us life. We are thine. Thou bless this congregation and we pray for any who may not be saved, that they might see what they are missing and turn quick to Jesus Christ and say, Lord, I am sorry for my past. From here on I am thine.