In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of gratitude towards God for the privileges and blessings we have. He encourages the congregation to share their faith and be soul-winners, inviting others to experience the love of Christ. The preacher also acknowledges that just like babies, Christians have different starting points in their faith journey, but the Holy Spirit has a message for everyone. He reassures the listeners that nothing can separate them from the love of Christ, even in the face of tribulations, persecution, or danger. The sermon concludes with a story about the significance of small things, reminding the audience that God can use even the seemingly insignificant to make an impact.

Tonight we'll begin with the first talk and say that we're met here in the name of Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God and he's the Son of the Virgin. He is unique in history, unique in the universe, and it is said about him that after he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. And it was said about him later by the fathers that after he had overcome the sharpness of death, he opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Now, what is taught about this man, who is also God by the mystery and wonder of the union of the nature of man and the nature of God in the hypostatic union, the incarnation, what is taught about him in the Bible, among other things, is that after he had by himself purged our sins and after he had overcome the sharpness of death by the resurrection, he sat down on the right hand of God, having opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. And because he had done this, God the Eternal Father made him to be and declared him to be God, Head of the Church, because he's God and man, Head of the Church and Lord of all. Now, he said, All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth, all authority. And it is said of him that God made this same Jesus, whom he crucified both Lord and Christ. He is the Lord of his church, and he will be the Lord of the world. How does he exercise this lordship over the local church? How does he do this? One way is by inspiring his apostles to write as they were moved by the Holy Ghost to the various churches. You will remember that it says in the Bible in these various books of the New Testament, the epistle of Paul to the Romans, the epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Thessalonians, the epistle of Paul to Timothy, to Titus. In these epistles, the man of God explained and instructed in doctrine. He did this. He explained and instructed, and he set forth his authoritative injunctions with the purpose of correcting faults for those new churches that were born out of the raw material of paganism by the wonder of the new birth and baptized into the body of which Jesus Christ is head. They had a lot of needed instruction, because they were pagans, they had come out of paganism, and their gods had been the gods of pagans, the pagans, their concepts of righteousness the same. They knew nothing of God or Christ, but they believed on Christ, and now the Lord of the Church writes to these churches and explains the truth and instructs them. But he also sets forth authoritative injunctions to correct any faults that might be among them, and to solve their local problems, because they had many of them. Some people panic as soon as there is any problem arises in the church. Somebody's nose gets out of joint, and the dear sensitive Saints hold up their hands and run for cover, and they say, Isn't this just terrible? No! The men of God, Paul and Peter and Jude and the rest of them, they had to deal with people whose noses were crooked, too. And they wrote letters as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost to get their noses straight again and get things straightened out. They solved those local problems, and in solving them, they solved them for all time and for us all down the years. Then there were some troubled Christians. There are always some people that are troubled. They are built like that. They would be troubled, I suppose, if they were in heaven. Unless, of course, they were glorified, and then God would take away the ability to get troubled when they are glorified. But if you took them as they were and put them down beside the silver sea and gave them two archangels to look after them, babysit for them, they'd wake up in the morning troubled. Now, I'm not saying that sarcastically, because some people just are troubled. They are born that way. They are not optimistic, they are pessimistic. And some of them, when they become Christians, carry that over. You carry your temperament over into the kingdom of God with you. You carry the temperament, if you are a bright fellow, you carry that over into the kingdom. If you are a gloomy fellow, you carry that over into the kingdom. You just carry your temperament with you. But the point is, temperament isn't sin. Temperament is the way you are. And then, when you get converted, the Lord has to deliver you from what's wrong in your temperament. Some people are troubled Christians. Now, our Lord is the same today, and his church is the same today. So he does the same things today that he did back there before the New Testament canon was closed in the first two centuries. He does the same thing, and you will notice that there were thousands of people who lived in Rome, and thousands and tens of thousands who lived in Corinth and who lived in Galatia and Thessalonica and Ephesus. There were thousands, hundreds of thousands of them. And yet the epistles say to Paul, to the Romans, Paul, why did he write to the Romans or Corinthians? He wasn't writing to the masses at all. He was writing to the small minority group within the Roman Church, that is, within Rome, the Church of Corinth. The point is, he didn't write his letter to the Romans and send it to the Mayor of Rome, or to Corinth and send it to the Mayor of Corinth. He wrote it to a company of funny people that were so different from everybody else. Who were these people? Well, they were Romans and they had Roman noses, or they were Corinthians and they had the heavy hair of the Greek. They were just people. But when they got converted and heard about this Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of the Virgin, who had opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers and who had by himself purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of God, something came over them. There weren't Romans and Greeks any more, there were new creatures in Christ Jesus. So they had to have help, you see. So the apostles wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit to these different ones and helped them, straightened them out, inspired them, instructed them, and above all, told them what they had in order that they might have courage to go on. Though there were thousands of people in these cities, the Holy Ghost didn't address his epistles to those people. He addressed them to that peculiar people that were within the others, that wheel in the middle of the big wheel, that company of that minority group called the Church, who called Jesus Christ Lord, as the historians said, and prayed to him as God. One old Roman historian said that about Christians. He said, There are those people who called the man Jesus Christ Lord and prayed to him as God. He was perfectly right, even though he was a secular historian. And Jesus addressed himself to his own followers, to the Christian community within a city, the local church. Now, I say he does the same thing today as he did then, only he does it now not by writing new epistles. He does it by applying the inspired epistles to the situations in the different towns. So it's perfectly right and legitimate and proper that we should say the epistle to the Torontonians. And we don't mean the Mayor and the City Council, we don't mean the people that make up the mass of the city, we mean a company of funny Canadians, funny people. They are funny in that they are different from the average rank-and-file. The Canadian people are known around the world as being immoral people. That is, they are not quite as bad as the Americans, and they are immoral people. But that's not the crowd he is talking to. He is talking to another people within that company, a peculiar crowd of Canadian people, and a peculiar company of Torontonians, people who have heard a voice and have heard about this Son of the Virgin, who came and was God and died for men, and rose and opened the kingdom of heaven to believers and sat down in the right hand of God. They heard about him, and they came together and they believed and they worshiped. Do you suppose that he forgets us? Do you think he has nothing to say to us? Oh, yes, he has. I say he doesn't do it by having Nathan Bailey or somebody write an epistle. He does it with the epistle he already has. So what I plan to do over the next few weeks is to let Paul and the other Apostles, particularly Paul, speak to us here, we who are not all the Christians in this city. We are not all of them, but we are some of them. So to this company I want to address myself, because this is God's way, letting ministers and teachers and elders and those who are gifted of God and prepared of God for the purpose to recognize needs and see what should be done, and then apply his inspired truth to those situations. I claim no inspiration, in addition to any other man. I have to pray and ask God to help me, and what light I get is from him, and I claim no inspiration. So don't go out and say, Tosia thinks he's writing another epistle. No, I'm not doing anything of the sort. I'm borrowing from the epistles already written, and then I'm aiming it to you that are already here. I bring you God's word now, and bring it to the Torontonians and out of the epistles already inspired of God and apply it to this company. What are these Apostles who write the epistles? What do they do? They do about five things I want to mention now. They charge, the head and Lord of the Church charges the members. They charge the members. Somebody wrote me one time, and I get my education from letters skinning me, but somebody was skinning me one time with something I'd said, written somewhere and something, and I wrote back and I told them that I didn't believe that the New Testament ever gave any advice. And I don't think so now. I don't think the New Testament ever gave any advice. When the Lord Jesus Christ spoke, he didn't say, I'll tell you what I'd advise you to do. He said, Ye have heard it been said, but I say unto you. There it was. That's not advice. That's a prescript from the head of the Church to his people. And when Paul writes his epistles and Peter and the rest, they write out of the authority of divine inspiration. And they don't advise, they command. So these prescripts, these orders of the great God Almighty, come to us. And they come to about five groups of people within the Church, the New Christians, and they're the ones that I want to particularly speak to tonight, the New Christians, and then the careless Christians. It's an awful thing to think that anybody who has seen heaven opened and seen glory of God can yet become careless afterward. But it is true. I was talking with somebody, and I can't recall who, so many people have me on the phone, or I'm talking to them, or they come to see me, or I meet them somewhere, and we talk things over. And somebody said, Well, if you've been baptized with the Holy Spirit, could you ever backside? And I said, Keep this in mind. There is nothing that God can do for you in this world, short of glorification in the world above, there is nothing that God can do for you that you can't be careless about and drag it in the dust and make a mess of it. Now, that isn't a problem and a question, and I'm not raising the question of eternal security or the opposite. I'm only saying that even a man filled with the Holy Spirit may allow the cares of this life to dull his spiritual life, may neglect his prayer life, and lose out in his spiritual life. Nothing God can do for you now can fix you like concrete so that you will always be good. You have to walk with God. So there are careless Christians, and we read about them in the epistles. So these new Christians have to be instructed, and these careless Christians have to be warned and cautioned. And these Christians in error, they have to be corrected, for some of them were in error. Some of them had the bad idea, the wrong idea, that there had been no resurrection of the dead. So Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15, and he put them straight. Some of them believed the Lord had already come, and he wrote 1 Thessalonians, and he put them straight on that. I mean, the Lord's return and secondary coming had already taken place. And then there are the carnal Christians. What's a carnal Christian? A carnal Christian is a who is truly and indeed a Christian, and who has the seed of God in him without doubt, and the root of the matter in his soul without question, who is the child of the Father, but he also has in him a great big hunk of lust and jealousy and high temper and a lot of other things, those evil things called carnal out of the Latin meaning flesh. But not the kind of flesh that I have and you have in our hands and bodies, not that flesh. God's never mad at your body, keep that in mind. The Lord isn't angry with your body because your body is just a poor horse you ride on until it crumbles under you and you go off to heaven. So don't think the Lord's mad at your body. There's nothing in your body that can do wrong. Your body is a neutral thing, and it's only your spirit as it leads your body, just like your automobile. There's nothing in your automobile that can do wrong. But if you get behind a wheel, you, because you have will and spirit and intellect, you can take your car and do wrong with it. So there's nothing in your body that can do wrong, but your spirit can rule your body and lead it wrong. And a carnal man is a man who, while he's born again, he has so much of the old carnal nature in him yet that he's not living a very good life. So the Holy Ghost wrote to the apostles, to such as those, they must be delivered from fleshly lusts. And then there were the contentious people and there were the rebellious people. Some people are contentious by disposition, they just won't agree with anybody. I remember walking by a man's house one time, just in a neighborly way in a small town in the south state of West Virginia. I said, Good morning, nice day. He said, Well, it could be better. I said, Looks nice and clear. He said, I'm not sure it won't rain. Now, that boy, he had it, really. He was in bad shape. He wouldn't agree to anything. So they're contentious people, that's all. I've sat on boards, not, thank God, in this church nor in my Chicago church, but I have sat on boards with men who sit there like a cat watching a mouse. They're determined that they're not going to let anything get by. Not only that, they're suspicious of everybody. They love their brother until he's elected to the board, and they're suspicious of him. Then when they get elected, they're still suspicious of everybody but themselves. So they're contentious, ready to spike whatever is said. Mr. Chairman, I object. God help us, there are hours spent because some people are contentious by disposition. So the Holy Ghost writes to these contentious brethren, and there are some who are rebellious, they won't listen to anybody. And there are some who are divisive, that is, they just are born to divide the brethren. Now, all of those appear in the New Testament, and the Lord writes to them through his apostles epistles to straighten them out. Now, I want a little bit tonight, and we're not going to have a long meeting, and what I want to do tonight is talk to the Christians. We've got some new Christians around here, quite a number of them, and just new in the last little while. Some of them are going to be preachers, you see that, they're going to be preachers, missionaries. I'm telling you, I'm not suggesting it, I know. And there are others who have said to me, well, I wouldn't know how many have said to me, Mr. Tozer, I have grown in grace in the last few years, in the last few months, in a way that I never knew before. Well, I want to talk to those new ones and the younger ones and the fresh ones, and then of course it will be for everybody, too. But one of the first things that Paul always did was lay a foundation. He always laid the theological foundation. He didn't get up and exhort them like a medicine salesman, but he first told them how things were in order that they might have some encouragement to hear the exhortation that followed. So now, if you're a true Christian, whether you were saved recently or a longer time ago, whether you have grown normally in your Christian life or done wonderfully well or not done so well, life has hit you hard and battered you around and you've been in and out and up and down, and every morning when you get up you think to yourself, I'm going to quit this whole Christian business, I don't feel good. And then after you've had a cup of coffee, why, you feel a little better, and maybe you read your New Testament and you say, Well, I'm sorry, Lord, and you want to go on. But it's like that, it's like that. You live like that. You'd be surprised how many Christians live like that. They are gloomy. They get up in the morning and they just don't feel like it at all. Our son was up over Easter, he waited until he was 36, and then he found the greatest girl in the world, absolute nobody like her. But he laughs about trying to get her up in the morning. She teaches school and he has to wake her, and she always turns flat on her face and says, Oh, I don't feel good. He said, I don't feel nothing wrong with it, he just doesn't want to get up. And people are like that, you know, it's all a big funny joke with them. But people are like that, they just don't feel good in the morning. I haven't much trouble that way. Ever since my army days, when the first call woke me, I got up and went wide awake. Well, it's possible to wake up in the morning and think for a moment that everything you knew and all you thought you had and all you thought God had done for you was all a mistake. And maybe later on you find your way through, and for a while you're discouraged. Well, some people are like that, so the Lord has to encourage the people. And if you are truly saved and you are truly his child, even though you haven't had a very bouncy Christianity or your Christian life hasn't been exactly what you would call a bouncing Christianity, you that have reared children, you know that some babies, it takes them a long time to find themselves. They are little skinny fellows. Our children are usually large, I think our daughter, even though a girl was at 9 pounds and 14 ounces, a very big thing. And the others were large, too. But we had one or two, boy, they were really little. And one of them looked like a squirrel, the kind of skin. I remember my wife, the first one, asked me what I thought of it, and I said, Well, he's a marvelous little boy, he's not exactly pretty. And she broke down and thought he was pretty. But no stretch of the artistic imagination could you say he was pretty. He's become a great, tall, handsome man now. But then he certainly wasn't pretty. So babies are born, some of them get a running start in life. Some of them drag along and have a pretty tough time of it. Same with Christians. Some Christians are born into the world bouncing Christian babies, and others are pretty thin, and they have a long, hard time of it. So the Holy Ghost has something to say to all such people as that. Now, you say, Mr. Tudor, why don't you preach evangelism? You mean, why don't I tell stories about little boys that broke their foot and Mama cried over them? Why don't I tell stories about dogs that went out and brought in sheep? Have you all ringing your handkerchiefs? Well, what I'm preaching here is the best kind of evangelism, for it tells people why they ought to be Christians. And because they'll know why they ought to be Christians, they'll become Christians. If you let them know what they have and what they can have, and what God offers them, and what we Christians believe, they'll come and say, How can I get in on this? Lecture 11 Justification and Sanctification 2 Well, do you know, you Christians, and particularly you new Christians, do you know what's happened to you? Do you know where you stand, and do you know what you have? And do you know who you are now? Well, I want to go to the epistles of the Christians in Toronto. Here are my texts, a number of them. 2 Corinthians 5.17. I think you ought to mark these down and read them when you get home, too, so as not to lose anything. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, and behold, all things are become new. He is a new creation. That word creation is the right one there. He is a new creation, and all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. Now, what's reconciliation? Well, let's think of a silly reconciliation. Let's think, for instance, of Khrushchev and Jack Kennedy weeping on each other's shoulders, kissing to beat the band, and crying over each other and saying, Oh, we're so sorry that we had that fallout. Well, that's a pretty silly illustration, but at least it gives us in a rugged, raw kind of way what reconciliation is. Reconciliation is when two enemies come together in love. And God, who is the enemy of sin, and man, who is the enemy of God because of sin, were reconciled in Jesus Christ. And when Jesus, who is God and man, died on the cross for man, he brought them together. So he says, All things are of God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. Notice, it was not we that reconciled ourselves to him, but he that reconciled himself to us. And it is given to us, the ministry of reconciliation, to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing the trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation. That's one picture. You see what happened to you there? You were reconciled, you Christians, and you say, The way I feel, I wasn't. He didn't say you feel reconciled. He says, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, and he has been reconciled. Now, if you see that, the first thing you'll want to do would be to go out and tell somebody else about it. That's evangelism at the grassroots, evangelism in depth, as they might call it now. Look at another passage of scripture, Colossians 1, 12-14. Look at that, what the Holy Spirit wants to say to us. He says, Giving thanks unto the Father who has made us meat. Who can give me a synonym for the word meat as it's used there? Speak right back to me, don't be afraid. He has made us meat, but worthy. He's made it appropriate, he's made it right and becoming. He's made us worthy to be partakers of what? Partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in the light. There isn't a Saint Paul nor a Francis of Assisi, and there isn't a Saint anywhere that has any more right than you have, my friend. For if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, and he has been reconciled, and God has made him meat to be a partaker of the inheritance of the Saints in light, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. Now, there's the translation I believe in, the translation out of the kingdom of darkness and the power of darkness. When you hear of the terrible things that men are doing, you wonder why. It's because they're in the power of darkness. And when they hear about this Virgin Son, this wonderful, mysterious man who came from the world above and who reconciled us to God, and they believe that, then they are delivered from that power and translated over out of the old kingdom into the kingdom of his dear Son, or the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin. When you got converted there, young fellow, here's what happened to you. This is what happened to you. Read it, see it for yourself. This is what happened to you. You don't know all that's happened to you. This happened to you. You've been made worthy now to be a partaker. You weren't worthy, and you aren't worthy, but God made you worthy. He made you so. And when God makes anybody so, my old mother-in-law used to quote, "'What God has cleansed, call not thou unclean.' She thought it was wrong for anybody who had been forgiven to bawl about it afterward and go to God over again. No, if you've been forgiven, act like it. What God has cleansed, don't you call unclean. And if that thing God cleanses you, you do nobody any good by lying down like a whipped spaniel. Get up and thank God you've been made worthy to be one of God's children delivered out of the power of darkness, and you have redemption through his blood.' Now, let's hear what else God would say to the Torontonian Christians. Let's look at Ephesians 1, 3-12. I think this is so beautiful that I don't know whether I can stand up under it. Listen, "'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.' Some people think a heavenly place is a church. I've heard the dear old Saints say, we thank thee, Father, for being able to sit down in this heavenly place.' They were sitting in a church. No, that's not what he had in mind. The word places is in italics, as you see there, and shouldn't be in English. The word heavenly there is a plural word. It means heavenlies. It means in the realm of the Spirit and in the realm of heavenly things, he has blessed us with how many spiritual blessings? All spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. Now, he has done that, you new Christians and you troubled Christians and you discouraged Christians and you worried Christians. He has already done this. He has blessed you with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ, according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. Now, somebody will rear back on his haunches and say, Is that man teaching election? I'm just reading out of the Bible here, is all. I'm not teaching anything. I'm just reading out of the scripture. It says he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. Do you know that the God who is eternal and has already lived all our days? Our God is because he is God, he is at the end of time as well as the beginning of time. For time is simply a little incident on the bosom of God. So God surrounds time, and God has already lived all the tomorrows there are. So that back before time was, God saw you, knew who you would be, and knew what your name would be, knew how large you'd be, knew whether you'd be man or woman, knew whether you'd be married or single, knew whether you'd be Canadian or German or Japanese, or whatever you might be. He knew all about you, and he smiled and laid his hand on you. You say, Oh, but why didn't I know it sooner? Well, I don't know that. The mystery is all there, but I do know this. You'd never have come to him if he hadn't told you. Don't you ever get up and stick your chest out and say, I sought the Lord, you sought the Lord after he had made it tough for you and had gotten after you and had pushed you and had urged you. He is the aggressor, not you, my dear fellow. So he chose you way back there, and he had a hard time getting you to see it. But finally you did, and you thought you had done it. No, you hadn't done anything, only come, and the Lord had to get behind you and push to get you to come. That's the way it all is. All of God's people came like that, so don't feel bad about it. He has chosen you before the foundation of the world. God knew my name before there was a sea or a mountain, before there was a star or planet. He knew my name, that you should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children. Now, what does predestinate mean? Well, pre, of course, just means before, and destinate means to choose a destination or destiny. So it's just repeating what is said in verse 4, that he beforehand he determined your destiny. And what's the Christian's destiny? It's to be made child by Jesus Christ to himself. And why did he do it? He did it out of the good pleasure of his will. God wanted to do it. God said, I want to do that, you didn't worry about it. What's that to thee? I wanted to do it. It's out of the good pleasure of God's will. And it's in whom we have, yes, verse 6, to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he has made us accepted in the beloved. You see, nobody can come straight to God and be accepted. I wish all of you would see that. Now, I know that some people don't like that, and some people say this idea that Christians are unique and that Jesus Christ has to be there to have anybody entered into the kingdom. That's all wrong. Most people talk like that are not Christians. A Christian is one who believes the truth that there is only one door, and that door is the Son of God himself. We're accepted in the beloved. That's why I can't go along with all these nature poets and all these religious poets and all these strange people who teach how you can come anywhere, anyway. There's nothing unique about Christianity, they say. God has spoken to Greeks. Somebody said, as I heard on the air the other night, an Anglican rector from somewhere was giving a lecture. He didn't say what he believed, but he was just teaching and giving a series, and he said that there are those who say that God didn't speak to the Jews alone, he spoke to the Greeks at Plato, and he spoke to the Mohammedans in Mohammedan, he spoke to the Buddhists in Buddha. Well, let anybody believe that that wants to. That's not Christianity, brethren, and that's not what the Bible teaches. And anybody who thinks he's still a Christian and teaches that, he's been educated beyond his intelligence. He needs to start over. The simple fact is, there is only one way, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. You cannot walk straight out of the woods into heaven. You come by the only door there is, Jesus Christ the Lord. But thank God that door is as wide as your knee. He's made us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. For in these abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence. Well, I sense that you're getting tired of hearing me read, so I'm going to stop reading now and read somewhere else. Go to Romans 5, Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Peace. That is not the peace in your heart that everybody is running after now and taking pills to get. I'm going to go down to the Tamblyn drugstore and buy a bottle of, I have no peace. You'll never get it in a bottle, sister, never, never. But then that's not the kind of peace he's talking about. He didn't say, being justified by grace, you have peace of heart. He didn't say that at all. He said you have peace with God. A man who is under sentence of death hasn't got peace with the state. When a magistrate has a man stand up trembling before him and says, I'm sorry to have to do this, but the testimony of witnesses and the laws of this dominion require me to say that you shall be kept in such and such a jail until such and such a date, and then hanged by the neck until dead. There's a scream in the courtroom as his relatives hear it. He turns gray, tries to smile at his lawyer, and is led away. No peace there, no peace in his heart. But that's not what I mean. There's no peace between him and the dominion, no peace between him and the government. The government says, you've got to die. So there was hostility between God and men. Man had sinned and violated the laws of God and incurred death, and the soul that sinned of it shall die. And there was no peace between the man and his God. Then came Jesus and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, and now therefore, being justified by faith, you have peace with God. The high court of heaven is no longer angry with you, and no longer says you must die, but says you may live in peace with God, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we now stand, this state of grace. Don't think that God doesn't give you peace of heart, too. I don't mean to leave that impression. But that's not what we're talking about here. That we have access by faith into this grace, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, not only so, but we glory in tribulations. A dear old sister said, Why, honey, she said to the young Christian woman who was having a time at home with her children, the croup and the colic, and she was in great trouble. She was telling the dear old Saint, and the dear old Saint patted her face and said, Why, honey, God didn't say, We grumble in tribulations. He said, We glory in tribulations. She said, You are having tribulations here. Learn to glory in them. Knowing that tribulation worketh what? Patience. We say, Oh, God, give me patience. Well, God doesn't give you patience as you might go and buy a quart of beans at a grocery store. He gives you patience by letting you suffer tribulation. Nobody likes that. We say, Lord, I wish I could do it differently. I smile sometimes at the old Persian poet Omar, the tentmaker, who said, Oh, love, could you and I with God conspire and grasp this sorry scheme of things entire? Would not we shatter it to bits and make it nearer to our heart's desire? Everybody has felt that way. They'd like to get a hold of this world and make it better. But I heard that answered one time. A fellow was lying under an oak tree. He had always said that if you leave it to him, he could make things better than God made them. He said, Well, give us a sample. Well, he said, for instance, look, oak tree takes a hundred years to live a hundred years or more. Very strong, powerful, mighty thing that winds can't break. And look at the fruited bears, little acorns. He said, Look at a pumpkin vine, a brittle little pumpkin vine that can break off in your hands. And look at the fruited bears, great big pumpkins. He said, That's silly. He said, If I'd been making the world, I'd have made the pumpkins to go on the big oak trees, and I'd have made the little acorns to go on the tiny little tender vines. And one day he was lying under an oak tree with his friend, and a squirrel cut an acorn down and it hit him on the forehead. And he turned and looked sheepish and said, Thank God that wasn't a pumpkin. You see, you'll see, sir, that God knows best after all. So if he put tribulation in there and said, If you want patience, I'll give you patience by giving you a little trouble along the way. Would you like a little trouble? You say, Lord, I want all my highways paved. The Lord said, I'm sorry, I can't accommodate you. I'm going to let you run over some bumps occasionally. Why do I do it? So you'll have patience. You don't like the bumps, but you'll like the patience. If you want the patience, you'll have to take the bumps. Lecture 10 The New Life in Christ 11 And what is patience? Experience. Oh, these old experienced Christians, I love them. We've got some of them around here. I just smile with a broad grin, as broad as I can get, when I look at them. They're experienced Christians, they know God from a long time back. And hope and hope makes not a shame, what else do I? I just want to read one more passage now, and then we're going to sing. Listen. What shall we say to these things? This is Romans 8. Here's what you have, you see, you young Christians and you scared Christians and you troubled Christians. If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yea, rather it's the right hand of God making intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? No, sir, no, those bumps won't do it. Or distress? Or persecution? Some of you live in homes where you get laughed at for your faith, maybe even kicked around for your faith. Shall persecution do it? No. Or famine? No. Or nakedness? No. Or danger? No. Or sword? No. It's written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. All right, you Torontonian Christians, do you see where that puts you? Do you see if you are truly born and truly love Christ, do you see where that puts you? Do you see you are something new in the universe? You are something different in the population. You are a privileged person and an honored person. And you are rich, and under God you are wonderful. So we ought to thank him and continue to thank him. Next week I want to go on and I want to tell you what the knowledge of this ought to do for you, from sending you out to tell the story everywhere and win others for Christ. I believe that this Church ought to be a soul-winning Church, and it's becoming that now a little at a time. And we're getting some people that are being won by soul winners, people who invite them to their home and take them out and help them and try to live so as to win them. That's the way it should be. If this, if Christianity is what I've described here, then we ought to be active men and women, handing out the truth to men and women everywhere. Again, I say in closing, if this is the kind of Christianity you believe in, this is the kind of Church you believe in, then this ought to be your Church, if you are worthy to become a member of it. This ought to be your Church, your Church home. If that's the kind of Christianity you believe in, if you want something else, if you want thin blue-john, milk-and-water Christianity, part Christianity and part fun and part nonsense and part embarrassment and all the rest, okay, there are lots of Churches where you can go and find that. But if you want what I'm talking about and what our people have and what God offers you, then this ought to be your place. You ought to see to it and you ought to get back of it. You ought to come to me and say so, and say to the elders and ushers and everybody you can find, and thank God I've found somewhere where I hear the things I want to hear about the truth. Well, now I said to the good brother here that I wanted to sing a song. And my smiling friend, he said, You mean you want to sing that to close with? I said, Yes, nobody else would do that but me. But we want to sing this closing song. It's one written by Charles Wesley, and I want to sing all the verses, and I want to sing it up to tempo, don't drag it, and I want to sing it full voice, and I want you to get the theology in it. If you are a sinner and don't believe you ought to be a Christian, there's something wrong with your head. All right, let's sing it. It's number 111 in our book.