In this sermon, the preacher recounts a personal experience where a stranger attended his church service. The preacher was captivated by the stranger's demeanor, sensing that he had experienced great sorrow. As the service proceeded, the preacher observed the stranger's attentiveness and perceived a sense of life and vitality in the congregation. The preacher contrasts this with the hollowness and unreality of religious formalities and emphasizes the importance of living a life in the Spirit. The sermon concludes with a prayer for the congregation to continue walking with the Lord and to be mindful of their actions and attitudes outside of the church.

We do ask thee, Lord, to pick us up once more in the hands of thy Spirit, to refresh us and revive us and to carry us on, on toward the goal which was in thy thought and heart in bringing us here and do give to this hour something of really vital importance to thyself in us and then through us. In the name of the Lord Jesus we ask this. Amen. Going to resume where we broke off this morning, this matter of the riches of wisdom and knowledge as in the all comprehensive unsearchable riches of Christ. Before I continue, may I just say this, that what I feel and believe the Lord is really seeking to do with us at a time like this is to bring us into understanding of what a true Holy Spirit Christian life is. None of us expects that we shall come into all that is being said this time. It would be too great a burden upon us individually and altogether to make that expectation that you're going to reach all that is being said in one week. But it is important for us from time to time that we should be made to know if it's reminded or shown for the first time really what a spiritual life is according to the word of God. That you may go away and that the Lord will have ground upon which to work all time to come to bring you into that. And that is why the Apostle Paul said, let the word dwell in you richly in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Now it is this spiritual wisdom that we are concerned with at this time, the riches of wisdom. You will remember that we reminded ourselves that the chief connection of wisdom in the word of God is the building of the habitation of God, building of the house of God. That in Solomon, representatively and typically, the Old Testament, the summit of the Old Testament is found in Solomon and the building of the house. David said, Solomon my son is young and tender and the house that is to be built is exceeding magnificent for the Lord my God. The masterpiece of wisdom. And so it is in the New Testament, the masterpiece not of time but of eternity, not of earth but of heaven. The masterpiece is the building of God's spiritual house. And we are seeking to see something, if it be but a little, of what that house really is. And the wisdom which builds that house. I need, I think, hardly remind you that it has been the thought of God from the beginning before he set his hand to creation to have a place here where he himself could dwell. He came into the garden. It was his thought, desire and longing. The mystery of it, of course, is beyond us, to dwell amongst men. And that was the governing thing in his speaking to Moses concerning the tabernacle. Let them make me a tabernacle that I may dwell among them. And all this pointing toward the day when he would be present in the person of his son and in the corporate expression of his son, the church. Emmanuel, God with us, is the climax of everything. For when we reach the end of the Bible, the end of the Bible, the tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them. That is the last thing. So that the building of this house for God is the governing object of the dispensation, or this house by God, the Holy Spirit. Solomon is referred to in a comparative way by Stephen who had seen, I think at that time, more than any other apostle had seen, seen what his great successor, his great successor, Paul the Apostle, came into fully. As Stephen said, Solomon built him a house, but how be it? God does it not in temples made with hands? The heaven of heavens cannot contain him. And yet it is his desire and pleasure to dwell with me. And that is always the first test of whether anything is a true representation or expression of the house of God. Strip the idea and the language of the house of God of everything else and come right down to this, the heart. Is God there? Is that where you really meet God? Can you say that every time you touch that, you touch God? My, that's testing isn't it? Testing for you, for me, because you know the word says, ye are a tabernacle, a temple of the Holy Ghost. And the quotation is in this context, for God has said, I will dwell with them. Ye are a temple of the Holy Ghost. If any man destroy the temple of God, him shall God destroy. It's a very consequential thing, isn't it? And it raises this issue for us personally. When people meet us, come into touch with us, or when we pass amidst people and have passed through this life, is it possible for people to say, when you met that man, that woman, you touched God? You met God. Is there something of God about that person? I think we could have nothing more challenging than that. What is the influence and impact of our having passed through this world and this life? What registration do we make and will abide? Those who knew us had anything to do. Will it be possible for them to say, well you know, that man, that man did have God, something of God about him or that woman. And we came to sense God, know something about God, by having come to know him or her. And the same must be true of our gathering, the other handful, the two and the three, or larger. The only, only justification for our existing and talking about ourselves as a house of God, or any other term that means the same thing, the only justification, the only right that we have for meeting together, is that anybody who comes here, that comes in there, meets God, meets God, comes and goes and say, we've met the Lord today, we've been in the presence of the Lord today, the Lord has been there today. Wonderful thing, isn't it, when it's possible to say that. Oh, it does challenge us and it will do a lot of things with us once we get hold of that conception, that truth, that reality of the house of God. Once it's registered in us, we'll be reverent, we'll be reverent. I'm tempted to remind you of that wonderful little sermon by Dr. A.J. Gordon, How Christ Came to Church. You've read it? How many of you have read that? Ah, yes. But that has so often challenged me, and I think I would like people to read that, so it takes ten minutes, every time they gather together. Just read it. He had his dream on the start of the afternoon. While he was preparing his sermon for the next day, as he dreamt, he was in his pulpit, his service at Clarendon Church, Boston, and the door opened when the whole congregation was seated, crowded church. The door at the back opened and in walked a stranger. He says, my eyes were drawn to that stranger. I saw him turn to the usher, find him a seat, and the usher looked and then let him down the aisle, found him just one seat, and the stranger sat there. And Gordon said, the service started and proceeded, but I could not get my eyes off of that stranger. Something about him that held me. There was a look on his face as though he had had some great sorrow. And he sat and he listened. He listened to the choir. He looked at the congregation. He looked at the ornate building. He looked at the pulpit. He was taking it all in. But he said, I could not take my eyes off that man. He held me all the time I was speaking. And I decided that as soon as the service was over, I would find out who that man was. I'd make contact with him. So I closed the service and made my way down. But before I got there, he was gone. And I said to the usher, that stranger that was here, do you know who he was? I did want to speak to him. Do you know who he was? Oh, yes, said the stranger. But you know who that was? That was Jesus of Nazareth. That was Jesus of Nazareth. Oh, I am so sorry that I didn't speak to him, make contact with him. Why did you let him go? Oh, said the usher, don't worry. He's been here today. He will come again. And then Gordon went back. He said, I sat down and thought, Jesus of Nazareth being in my church at my service, what did he think about our congregation? What did he think about our choir? What did he think about my preaching? Jesus of Nazareth, what did he think about it all? Well, out of that, of course, came Gordon's two books. First, his life of the Lord Jesus. He has been here today. And then his other one, he will come again, the second coming of the Lord. But I mention that. It's just a parabolic way of presenting what I'm trying to say. You see, it's the presence of the Lord that makes the house of God, not all these other things, not even the congregation. It's the presence of the Lord. And if that is not true, that's not the house of God. Well, that he might dwell amongst us. That's the idea. To be found where we are. The people should say, you know, I met with a certain little company in such a place today, or I went to such a place, and I met God. I met God. You can't be frivolous. You just cannot be frivolous. You cannot be careless, if that is true. Well, let's get on. This is what is meant by this thing that God is seeking to build by the Holy Spirit today. Then we went on to say that it is the house of God is the embodiment of the truth. It is in its nature the truth to the woman, neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem, neither nor but in spirit and in truth. It is not a geographical location. It is not necessarily here or there. Neither nor but, and the great but comes right down on in spirit and in truth. That's the house of God. In spirit and in truth. We were pointing out that the Lord Jesus came as the very temple of God himself, with the intention to extend his own person, gather into himself his corporate organic relatedness, born again believers, in order that he might in himself and therefore in them undo the historic lie. Undo the historic lie. Has God said? God knows. Thou shalt know. Yes, you may have a wisdom, independently of God. And if you have it, well that will be the realization of yourself and of everything. If you have that wisdom, that will realize everything alive. Right at the inception of human life. And you know as well as I do, that that lie is working out to destruction. We stand almost holding our breath of what's going to happen next in this world. Because of this lie, that man has sufficient wisdom to fulfill and realize his own destiny. All these satanic lie of humanism and all such ideologies. The embodiment of the truth is the house of God. You and I individually and together to embody the truth. Because Jesus says, I am the truth. The truth. The destroyer of this lie, this basic lie, in man, in the creation, in the whole world system. This deception. Man is living in a deception. He's a deceived creature. Heart of man is deceived. Deceived. And this lie needs a lot of breaking up. Has too many aspects, of course, for us to comprehend or even mention. But anything that is not real, is not true. Anything that is pretense, pretense, make-believe. I got myself into a lot of trouble once when I changed make-up for make-believe. So it is something that you love. And you put on to give the impression which is not true. It's not true. That's Jezebel. Jezebel started that, you know. I was shocked last week when the economic problems of England were being dealt with in Parliament and it was announced as to what the exports of Britain were. And amongst them, so many million false eyelashes. One of the great exports. My! What have we come to? And all for make-believe. Well, forgive me, sister. I'm not out for, you know, dealing with those things as such. But there's so much in the system which is unreal, untrue, make-believe, artificial, pretense. And what other words can I come out to say the same thing? And in Christianity, in its organized form, so much that is pretense, pretending to be something, putting on something, make-believe. And it's not true. It's hollow. It's not true. You may have a very religious manner during an hour or two service. But it's not true. Get outside. Really, it's no more true than in those realms where it is most pronounced. I remember once, during the First World War, I was in Malta and I went to the festival of Corpus Christi in the cathedral in Valletta. And you know, they'd be marching around the town with the seven expressions of the cross, these great, these huge representations of the cross in lifelike figures, marched around all the morning, sweating under this thing. And then they all came into the cathedral for the festival of Corpus Christi, and I was there sitting on the chair. And then the priests, the bishop came and elevated the host, and they all went on the ground. And because I didn't, they turned and looked at me as though something was going to happen to me. I pulled through the bottom of the judgmental garden. They said, kneel down, senor, kneel down. I didn't kneel down. I sat where I was. And then it was all over. And we went outside. And we were not outside five minutes before these people were all at one another's throats with their knives out. The most awful scene of carnage and quarrels and feuds. And not an hour after, all this. Now that's an extreme thing, you see, expression. But, dear friends, see how hollow and unreal religion can be. And if it is in a more modified form, it can be, even in what we believe to be very devout, it's in the soul, it's all of the artistic and the aesthetic temperament, unreal. And do you know, there are several things in the Bible which are said to be an abomination to God. And if you look into your New Testament, into your gospels, you will see that the thing which was most abominable to the Lord Jesus was hypocrisy. Oh, he could bear with a lot of things. He could bear with a lot of things. Sinners, the harlot, and all that, bear patiently, God bring him into touch with hypocrisy. And he was moved to his death. The most vehement words of denunciation, the most awful things that came through his lips were against ye hypocrites, ye hypocrites. Why? Because he had come as the very embodiment of truth, reality. Utter transparency without a shadow or a vapour of what is suspicious and doubtful and questionable. And so his whole being rebutted against the lie. Strangely enough, in religion, no, the house of God is that, is that. You and I must be that. God help us to be clear, transparent, no guile, no deception, no falsehood, no pretense, no make-believe, nothing that is not the genuine thing. He started by saying, we are here to know what true Christianity is according to the Spirit. And that's it. That's it. In spirit and in truth. That is, it is not ritualistic. It is not sacramentarian. It is not any of these things which people think make up the Church. It is in spirit, pure, clear spirit and truth. God help us. Well, that's it. You see, spiritual wisdom, spiritual wisdom, is something so contrary to worldly wisdom. So contrary to worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom cannot fathom this thing, cannot get hold of this thing. Its wisdom is altogether a different type of wisdom from spiritual wisdom. And if I can illustrate, many years ago I knew an old wit. One of those, you know, people that come, not too many of them. We could do with a lot more of them. We call them eccentrics, but they're something different, something too like peculiar. And I knew a man like that. He had a wooden leg, before the days of artificial limbs, you know, stomping along with his wooden leg, if you hear him. And he was in a country town, and he went into the marketplace one night, one evening, and there was a great crowd, and in the midst was an infidel. An infidel jeering at God, laughing at God, making fun of the idea of such a being as God, making the people laugh with his jokes about the idea of God. And so he went on. And my friend listened until he was finished. And up to the infidel. I wish he'd come along and see me tomorrow morning, we'd have a chat. Oh yes, I'd come. Very well. Next morning, the infidel went along and found my friend sitting in his garden, under a big oak tree. A big oak tree. Now I must go back, because the infidel, in his laughing at God the night before, had said, well look, here's an idea. This will show you how silly God is, if there is one. Here's a mighty oak tree. Massive thing of hundreds of years old. And the only fruit that God can put on that majestic tree is a little acorn. Here is something almost like a weed, crawling on the ground. And God puts on that, watermelons. Great big watermelons. Now he said, if there was such a person as God, do you think he wouldn't put the wonderful big fruit on the oak tree, and the little acorn on the crawling weed? My friend knew what he was doing when he invited him to come. He was sitting under his oak tree. And they began to talk. It was at the time when the acorns were beginning to fall. And an acorn fell right on the top of the infidel's head. And my friend said, get down on your knees and thank God Almighty that that was not a watermelon. Well, I'm not wanting to make you laugh, but sometimes you get home to your point with a story. The wisdom of this world, you see, and the wisdom of God, they're so different. Spiritual wisdom is so different from natural wisdom. They are as remote from one another as the heaven is from the earth. The Lord is needing to teach us spiritual wisdom and understanding. For only with that can his house be built. It is going to be the embodiment of truth and the embodiment of his wisdom in a mystery. In a mystery. When Paul was making this great comparison between the wisdom of this world and spiritual wisdom in his first letters to the Corinthians, he said, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, their foolishness to him. He said, he that is spiritual judgeth all things, but he himself is judged of no man. He is an enigma to this world. He is unfathomable to this world. Of course, you know that, don't you? You are the Lord, you know the world can't understand you a bit. It's like that. There's a hidden wisdom. We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery. And it's that wisdom that we need to know for building up, for building up, for building up one another, building the house of God. But I must hurry on this old clock. The next thing is that the house of God is the expression of the livingness of God. Livingness is an essential and primary feature of the house of God. Livingness. You see, it's the house of the living God. The house of the Spirit of the living God. The Spirit who is the Spirit of life. The hallmark of what is of God is livingness. It's a test again. A test of you, of me, a test of our meetings, our local companies. What is the effect of contact with us? The effect of people coming amongst us? Are they able to say, even at least, at least, able to truly say, well, I didn't understand all that was said. I couldn't grasp all that they were talking about or the preacher was talking about. But the thing that I found there was life. Life. Something answered to a deep desire in me, a deep need in me. Life. Those people have got the secret of life. Life. Livingness. And that stands not only in the days of Christ and the days of Israel's spiritual declension, but that stands in Christianity today, life as over against and opposed to mere formality. Formality. The blight, and I can call it nothing other, the blight of crystallization. Is that what it means? God does something, moves in life, notices taken of it, but it's not long before men take hold of that and crystallize it into something static. This is how it's to be done. This is what you are to believe. And before long, the compass is box of teaching, of truth, of how to do it in assembly life. This is how we do it. And if you don't do it this way, well, you don't belong to us. To us. Oh, the curse of such a phrase. I've mentioned it again and again. He doesn't belong to us. He doesn't belong to us. And what they mean is, he doesn't come within the strict orbit of what we believe and what we practice and how we do it. The whole thing has been crystallized and set and fixed. The dead hand has come upon the thing of God. That's the history of Christianity. Isn't it? Again and again when God moves, man takes hold of it and systematizes it and says, this is it. And immediately the Holy Spirit's liberty is quenched. The Holy Spirit's prerogative to do as he will and make innovations if he wants to, is not allowed. It's not allowed. Now there is a liberty which is licensed. I'm not talking about death. And that there is that abominable thing of trying all the time to have innovations, do something unique and unusual, to make an impression of life. That's what I'm talking about. But dear friends, this matter of livingness means that the Holy Spirit is perfectly free there to make his own order, to check us up on our fixed things and break through our bounds, our limitations, our strictures, and do something unusual. Something unusual. That of course was the difficulty of the great transition from Judaism to Christianity. And poor James had a bad time over it and even Peter had a bad time over that. This transition where the Holy Spirit has taken things in hand and has struck against rigid tradition and called upon them to do things that they would never have done unless they had surrendered to the Holy Spirit. Livingness, you see. Oh, this incorrigible tendency to legalism. Legalism is not only the mosaic law and Judaism. It's a persistent tendency all the way along to reduce things to a form, an order, man-controlled, man-controlled. Read it down there. And then it isn't long before the element of exclusiveness arises. And if you don't do it our way, you're outside the pale. You're outside. Oh, the Holy Spirit is much bigger than our conception. The Lord Jesus is far greater than our minds. His wisdom far surpasses all that ever we have yet imagined. And that is one of Paul's superlatives, isn't it? Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. I notice that most people put in a word can there. Well, that may be right. We can ask or think. It's not in the Bible. It's nothing to stumble at. But beyond exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. I never thought of that. In my wildest moments, I never thought of that. I have gone around this problem and I have approached it from every point of the compass to see how it could be solved. And then the Lord came in with a point that is not on the compass and just like that solved it. I never thought of that. That was outside of my universe of imagination. The Lord did it so simply. A wisdom, a wisdom that is not of this world. I close by reminding you that this life, this life of the Spirit, this life of His wisdom is a very sensitive life. This life of the Spirit is a very sensitive life. It is. Anyone, anyone at all who lives in the Spirit knows anything about life in the Spirit really is a person who is sensitive, is very sensitive. They're not hard. I believe you know, and of course you do too, that the Holy Spirit makes gentlemen of us and ladies. Perhaps you don't use those words in this country so much. You talk about men and women. We mean something more than that when we speak of a gentleman and a lady. Yes, there's a female person. You can say that woman. But you can't say, or we can't, we do say, you know, she's a lady. He's a man, that's a man, just a male person. You can say that man. But you can say he's a gentleman. You know what I mean? I believe that the mark of the Holy Spirit is courtesy. Courtesy. Sensitiveness to what is proper, what is good, what is, and I use the word nice, what is kind, what is thoughtful. Not riding roughshod over all sensibilities and hurting. You know, I believe, I've said years ago that I got into trouble for saying it, that I very often have felt that in making a present of a Bible, I would also like to make a present of a good volume of etiquette. Forgive that statement, but you know what I mean? Sometimes Christians can be so discourteous, so rough, so rude, so insensitive. Isn't it true? And the Holy Spirit is not like that. He is gentle. He is kind. He is thoughtful. He is sensitive. I remember going sometime some years ago to a garden we have in London where rare plants are collected and cultivated. And I went and the curator took me around. And as we were going around and pointing out this and that and telling me about these things, all the camouflage in nature and so on, we came to a wonderful shrub standing upright, looking so strong and healthy. And he stopped. And he said, will you touch the leaf of that shrub as gently as you can? I stretched out my hand and so, so gently I touched just the leaf. And the whole thing went down. The whole shrub collapsed to the ground. And he looked at me. He said, you know why? It's a plant of the jungle. And when some wild beast comes through the jungle and just creeps against that shrub, it collapses and the wild beast jumps out of its skin and rushes away. This sensitiveness is the salvation of that shrub from the ravages of the wild beast. Then I saw this shrub after a minute or two begin to come up again. It came right up as before. Marvelous thing in nature. God's wisdom in nature. But there you are. I believe you know that we should be more like that as we grow older. More sensitive, more an expression of the spirit who is easily grieved, it says. Grieve not the spirit. He is easily entreated. Very sensitive. You know one of the most difficult lessons that I have found to learn is the gentleness of the Holy Spirit. In seeking guidance from the Lord with all my heart, I poured myself out to the Lord for guidance on some matter. I have expected the Lord almost to send an angel from heaven to open the heaven and speak out and say it in unmistakable terms what I ought to do. He never does it. But I have noticed that the slightest touch of something, just the slightest touch, the voice of gentle stillness, hardly perceptible, I have noticed it. Not always taken note of it, but I have noticed it. And afterward, either for my joy or for my sorrow, I have remembered. If only I had paid heed to that very gentle touch of the Spirit, it would have saved me all this trouble. It's so gentle. You know, that's the way of education, spiritual education, to learn, to learn how the Spirit quietly governs the life so that we, in our own spirit, have a registration. We've said something about someone or to someone and inside the Spirit very gently, not in words, but this is what it is. You can have the platform if you like. The growth in the life of the true Christian, the spiritual life, is just this, that you know somewhere quietly inside the Spirit has said, that was not right. That was not true. May I give you another instance. Back at home, that's all. This goes back years. I was with a friend of mine in Ireland where I went for an annual convention and he said to me, you know, we had some special meetings recently and we had so-and-so mentioning a well-known servant of the Lord. We had him as the speaker. Now I knew that this man's one message was the Holy Spirit. He never spoke on anything else but the Holy Spirit. And my friend said to me, we had so-and-so and in a conversation between us alone, your name came up and I saw his face drop. He said, oh, I could never have fellowship with Austin Sparks. My friend said, why? Why? I know him very well. He comes here for our annual convention every year. The Lord is with him in Houston. Why? Tell me why? This dear man gave him 11 reasons why he could not have fellowship with me and they were the most terrible things. You see, one, I give you an example, one was that unless Austin Sparks baptizes a person, they're not properly baptized. He teaches that. He says that. And 11 things, some of them worse than that. Well, my friend said to him, you know, I know that you're wrong. I know that you're wrong altogether. But why not write that in a letter to me? Put them down and let me send it to him and he'd give you his own. Well, he demurred. It was a long time before he'd be persuaded to give the promise, but he gave the promise and went away and presently he wrote the letter. Here they were all tabulated. My friend sent it on and he said, here you are old man, here's your chance. When I looked at these things, I didn't know what emotion was going to be uppermost. I could have wept. I could have been angry. Oh yes, all the emotions sprang up in me for the whole thing was a tissue of untruth. I wrote back, of course repudiating, categorically denying the truth of any one of these things. But at the end of my letter to my friend, I said, after I had said all of this, the thing that puzzles me, the thing I cannot understand is that a man, a dear man of God can go up and down the country speaking on the Holy Spirit and then he can tabulate so many things that are not true about another brother and the Holy Spirit never tells him. The Holy Spirit never says, that is not the truth. The Holy Spirit, I'm not just saying that it was a doctrine only with that man, but you know you can say, I believe in the Holy Ghost. And you may believe all the teaching and truth and doctrine of the Holy Spirit and be talking about it all the time when the Holy Spirit never have a chance to say, look here, this and that that you are saying that you are doing is not the truth. That's false. This kind of Christianity is a very practical Christianity friends. The Holy Spirit is very practical, does not believe in our doctrines as such. He only believes in reality. Well I think, although I haven't finished, I've said enough of the present. You see the house of God is this. It's where those who belong to it are very sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Life is a sensitive thing and we ought, whenever we by word or deed touch something that is not true, not right, not living, we ought to suffer inwardly. Feel it, know it, know it. Have a bad time about it until we get it right. Get the cleansing of the blood over that and the Lord covering, pardon, ought to have a bad time. That is the way of spiritual growth. Thank God there's another side and it wouldn't do for me to close on the merely negative side. That is good and yet it's very positive after all. But you know it's a lovely thing to have the Lord well pleased. It's a grand thing. Without congratulating yourself and patting yourself on the back and saying, what a good boy am I. The Lord's smile can be upon you and you can feel, yes, the Lord is well pleased. Perhaps the grandest thing that could ever happen, will ever happen to us, will be knowing how full of faults, failures, wrongs we are and have been. The Lord will say, come ye blessed of my Father, enter into the kingdom prepared for you. I think if ever we've fallen on our knees in utter adoration, astonished, bewildered adoration, it will be when the Lord, if ever it is so, says, well done, well done, good and faithful. I've often said in years gone by, the epitaph that I want to be written over my life is the Lord's words to Daniel, O man, greatly beloved. Don't you want that? What could be better? O man, greatly beloved. It will be according to how we live the life in the Spirit. And so walk with him who was meek and lowly in heart. Lord, we commit this all to thee. We're going to get up out of these seats now, we're going out of this place. What are we going to be occupied with next? How are we going to spend even these ensuing minutes? We do pray that if the Spirit has been present speaking, his hand may keep upon us. We will abide under the hand of the Spirit, while in joy and in gladness, blessed fellowship, nevertheless, in the quiet holiness of the presence of the Lord, well pleasing unto him. Be it so, and I accept our worship through our Lord Jesus. Amen.