In this sermon, the preacher focuses on the terrifying testimonies found in a specific chapter of the Bible. He emphasizes the importance of genuine faith and warns against hypocrisy and pretense. The preacher highlights the need for individuals to come to the Lord with humility and surrender, acknowledging their own unworthiness and guilt. He emphasizes that salvation is a gift of grace and cannot be earned through human efforts. The sermon also references the parable of the vineyard, illustrating the consequences of producing "wild grapes" instead of good fruit.

Matthew chapter 7, verses 24 through 28. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. The rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand. The rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. It came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one having authority, not as the scribes. These sayings of mine is the word of our Lord Jesus Christ, but what were his sayings? We made the statement this morning that the Jehovah of the Old Testament was the Jesus of the New. Then it is a truth that the sayings which were heard in the voice of thunder over Mount Sinai were his sayings, and that which he revealed through Moses was much his sayings, and the revelation that he gave through the prophets was his sayings. There is but one testimony and one witness throughout, from beginning to end. God hasn't had several messages to the fallen race of wicked men. From Genesis, the third chapter, right on through the last of Revelation, the message is made so clear that he that runneth may not err therein. And there's no reason for anyone to fail to understand what the Lord is trying to say. Whether he's saying it from the top of Sinai or from the Mount of Transfiguration, he's saying it so clearly that anyone who wishes may understand. But we realize that there are other voices which have come and spoken and said, this is what the Lord meant. This is what he meant here, and this is what he meant here. But our Lord is very able to speak for himself and tell us what he meant. I have heard it said, perhaps you have, that in the Old Testament the Lord really meant that people were to be saved by keeping the law, and that salvation was on the basis of their obedience to the moral law, the civic law, and the ceremonial law. And that in the Old Testament God saved people on the basis of their works. That this has now been changed, that today he doesn't. He saves people on the basis of faith. Now I heard that, and for some time he did it as though it were true. But a careful study of the Old Testament shows that it's not quite so. The very same day that the Lord Jesus wrote with the finger of his glove upon the tables of stone the Ten Commandments and gave them to Moses, that same day he gave the pattern, the plans, the blueprints, if you please, for the tabernacle and the law of the offerings. He spoke then just as he spoke here. For you understand that if you think for so much as a moment that in the Old Testament people were being saved by something they could do, then you must recognize that God in a great measure of caprice has dealt with men differently. But it's the everlasting gospel that our Lord Jesus came to proclaim, just as he's the eternal Son. And the gospel was the same in Genesis, the same in Exodus, and right on down through Matthew and even to the epistles of Paul, always the same. Some time ago I heard a preacher write, or saw where he'd written, that the trouble with someone, and he spoke of this individual, the school of thought he represented, was that he still got his gospel from Christ instead of from Paul. And the implication was that there was a difference between the two. But the sayings of our Lord Jesus are so clear, he—let me make it so obvious to you that you won't understand, you can't misunderstand. He didn't intend people to be saved in the Old Testament by what they did. The law wasn't given in order that they, by their efforts, should earn salvation. No. The law was the means by which they could discover their need. It was the means by which they could measure themselves and learn that they had come short of the glory of God. It was the scales by which they could weigh their motives and test their attitudes and discover that they were, indeed, sinners under judgment and the sentence of death. He said, the soul that sinneth it shall die, and then he gave the law, this is required. Why? Because he felt that they would thus keep the law and somehow escape from the sentence of death? No. It was just as true then as it is now, that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Way back in the Israel, it was that way. Way back in the Old Testament, it was that way. They'd sinned, they'd come short of the glory of God, and were under the sentence of death. Why then did he say, thou shalt not, do this and thou shalt live? Simply because he wanted to have the means by which they could discover their need, their rebellion. And the sayings which they were to keep was the word which they were to lay upon their consciences and their minds, and by which they were to discover themselves. It was then as it is now, it has ever been as it is today and will be in the future, that the law is the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. It is by means of the law that sin acquires the character of transgression and sinners discover their guilt. The law was given that the mouths of the self-righteous and the spiritually proud and egotistical should be stopped, and their guiltiness should be discovered, and they should stand bankrupt in the presence of God. Then as now, the purpose of the law was to reveal sin and to discover to the sinner his true attitude toward God. If you can see this and understand this, then you will recognize that what the Lord Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount was exactly what he had said the Sermon on Sinai. For there, as he had called Moses from among the people and brought them up into the thick cloud that covered the mountains, he gave to Moses in written form that which he had spoken. And with it, he gave the answer to the discovery of their sin. Moses came down not only with tables of stone, but having seen a blueprint of what God wanted to do, how he wished to reveal Christ back there in the Old Testament. And the tabernacle in the wilderness was the visual aid that God used to reveal his mercy and his grace in the person of Jesus Christ to that people which have the law as the instrument of death, to discover their true need of grace. And every part of the tabernacle, even from the silver sockets in which the board, the post of the gate, did stand, to the badger skin that covered the holy place, to the altar of burnt offering inside the gate, every part of it spoke of Christ, revealed Christ. And when you see that Israelite meditating in the law of God, and by means of the law discovering his sin, go to his flock and take from it a lamb of one year without spine, and gently carry that lamb on his hip until he should come to the gate of the tabernacle and call for the priest from within to come out to him. And then he should stand there in the presence of the priest, holding his hand upon the head of the little lamb, and confess his sin. Do you think for a moment that Israel was in such ignorance that they thought that the blood of the lamb washed away their sin? I don't. The scripture tells us that Moses chose to suffer the afflictions of Christ rather than the pleasures of sin for a season. Christ, the anointed, the Messiah, the Savior, was revealed back there. I believe that Adam whispered it to each of the children that came, generation after generation. And if you consider how old Adam was and how long he lived, you'll discover that he was able personally to give testimony far longer than we usually think. But I am sure that the message began there, as he told Alan the Pooh the evening the Lord had walked, calling to him, and in his rebellion, in his sin, he was drawn by loving him. Then he told Allah the Lord spoke, saying that the seed of the woman should come. And the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head, even though the serpent should bruise his heel. I'm sure that Adam said that there's going to come a time when there shall be one born of woman that will bring deliverance. Then I can hear him as he gave the prophecy of the anointed one, the Messiah, the Savior that was to come. I can hear him say, and then that day he took a lamb and he slew the lamb and he lifted the skin from the lamb that he had slain and he wrapped it around me, and by it, he said, Adam, your sin shall be covered by the death of God's seed that is born of the woman, pictured by the lamb. And that this testimony continued until here when Israel is in the wilderness and they have slain the lamb of Passover, and now they're outside the tent, around it in rank and in order by their tribes, they know that salvation isn't by keeping the law. They come to Christ. They come to Christ. They come to him as he's pictured, the lamb of promise, the one that is to come. The Israelite, I say, that stands there, if he has any insight or understanding at all, is looking down across the years to the day when one shall come that shall fulfill all the pictures and all the shadows that are cast by all the lambs of all the centuries that were led and offered in sacrifice to God. But you know, our Lord Jesus said that. He said, blessed is the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are they that hunger and thirst. He didn't say, do this and live. He didn't say, now work yourself up to try and become poor in spirit. He didn't say, try to be meek and seek to be pure in heart. Wasn't what he said. Wasn't what he said. He said, the only ones that are blessed are the poor in spirit. The only ones that are blessed are the meek and the pure in heart. But he didn't say, do this and live. He said, those that are alive, do this. These are they who have been made alive, the ones that are meek, pure in heart. It wasn't instructions as to how to become. It was a description of the one who had become. Then when the answer came in this message, well Lord, how shall these things be seen? I am but a man. How shall these things be seen? I have no power in me, no strength in me, no ability in me. I can't walk this way and be this kind of a person. Then his loving invitation comes, ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. You can't earn it. You can't secure it by your efforts. But when you come admitting your inability to achieve it, when you come having discovered your unworthiness and consenting to your guilt, and you stand at the door knocking as a beggar who would but for a scrap, then you'll receive. It's the gift of grace, it's all of grace. There's no conflict between the old and the new, as though the Lord had one principle here and reversed it here. These sayings of mine carry them clear back. But we discover as we meditate on this for just a moment that there were some people that had built another house, not the tabernacle in the wilderness and not the house of truth based upon what the Word was meant to teach, but they built another house. This house that they built seemed to be the same, for they still had a tabernacle and later a temple, and they still had psalms to chant and sing and offerings to bring and holy days to observe. But the Lord looked through it and into it and saw their hearts and gave his indictment. I think you'd do well to see it in Isaiah, the first chapter, as he describes the house that's built upon the sand, this house that must fall, and those who are inhabiting the house. For in Isaiah, you have the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ through his servant—remember, it was the Lord he saw high and lifted up, the same one that was transfigured on the mount before Peter and James and John was revealed in his pre-incarnate glory to Isaiah. They simply glimpsed a bit of what Isaiah had seen. Same wonderful Lord, and now through his servant, here in this first chapter of Isaiah, he describes the house that is built on the sand. Listen to it. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord? I am full of the burnt offerings of lambs, and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of sheep. When you come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblation. Incense is an abomination unto me, the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies I cannot away with. It is iniquity even with solemn meeting. Your new moons and your pointed feasts my soul hateth, they are trouble unto me, I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine up. What are they doing wrong? Did not the Lord say to you, O Israel, that you should not do evil? Did the Lord command bullocks to be brought, and the fat of lambs and of fed beasts? Yes. And didn't he command incense to be offered? Oh, yes. And didn't he also command days to be set aside and assemblies to be held? Yes. And didn't he also command prayer? Oh, yes. And what's the matter? They're orthodox in what they believe. They're zealous in what they do. They're sincere. But what lack they yet? Ah, you see, they have the house all right. They have the pattering. They have the studying and the clapboards and the floor plan and the roof. Got it all. What's lacking? What's missing? Foundation. Foundation. There's nothing underneath. Well, what was the purpose for his saying to the Israelites, bring a lamb of the first year? What was his saying? What was his reason for saying that? Because he wanted a lamb? Because he wanted to see smoke rise from a beast that burned? Was that the reason? God took no pleasure in the fat of fed beasts. Well, why did he say it? Because he wanted them to have to put out money in his behalf? Wanted them to spend a little bit so they would thus find out that it doesn't, crime doesn't pay? No. That wasn't it. What was the reason? The reason was that it gave a means by which a repentant heart could find the avenue of faith. But without the repentant heart, it became simply a vain, empty, useless right that was nauseating to God. In other words, God said, it's not the smoke from the fat of a lamb that pleases me. It's not the blood from the bullet that pleases me. It's the repentance and faith of the heart. And here was Israel, with a beautiful temple at this time, of which Isaiah writes. And Israel in the land, for they're there in Jerusalem. And Israel now returning again from the worship of Isaiah. And the people say, isn't it splendid, look what we have. The deserted temples now filled. The courts that knew not for generations the sound of psalms ringing in the corridors, now have the continuous chant of worshipers. The altars that had gone out for a word of sacrifice now are filled, and the gutters run with the blood. My, what a wonderful day. Why, we're in the midst of revival. Would have been the answer of the hour. Because all of the accoutrements were there. All of the things that go along with it were there. They had the floor plan, they had the walls, they had the doors and windows, they had the roof, they had it all. Except for one thing was on sand, just on sand. In other words, he said, the doctrine that man has sinned isn't enough, and the doctrine that sin demands atonement isn't enough, and obedience and bringing the lamb to the bullock to be slain for atonement, and the exacting of tithes and fasting and offerings and holy days isn't enough. There's something missing. There's something more. You must have a foundation under all of this if it's to have any meaning. And the Lord told about it over here in the fifth chapter of Isaiah. Here you have the temple filled. Here you have all of the preaching and the singing and the praising, but he tells you what's missing here in this fifth chapter. Now he changes the analogy completely, but he gives us to understand what's the matter. Now I will sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved, touching his vineyard. My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein. And he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes. Then go now to, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the heads thereof, and it shall be eaten up and break, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant. And he looked for judgment, but behold oppression, for righteousness, but behold a cry. And our Lord, here in the first chapters of Isaiah, has struck a death blow at religion that thrives without reaching the heart of the problem. Oh, what men will do for God. You say, but, but, but, think of what they did. They fasted, they tithed, they prayed, they brought offerings and sacrifices and took holidays and had holy days and, and all the rest of it. Oh, was certainly, this was the, the pure evidence of, of the fact of the genuineness of what they'd done. Now, not so, not so. You see, and he would speak now to our generation, it's not the words you say. It's not the gospel truths that you memorize. It's not the scripture that you quote. It's not the plan of salvation that you repeat. It's not the prayer you offer. These things do not say. The plan of salvation is the floor plan of truth. The scripture versus the sidings. The testimony and the profession is the roof. He said, look, you can have the floor plan of doctrine, you can have the study, the sidewalls, the scripture, and you can have the roof of profession. And it looks from the outside as though it's good. Looks from those that see it as though it's real. Only an expert that knows that the heart of the problem is below the surface is going to be able to tell the difference. You know the difference, because you know when and how the house was built. But the part that gives the evidence of the genuineness of the work of God is not that which meets the ear, or the eye, or that's written or said. It's something that has to transpire underneath the sight. That's the reason why I've said to you repeatedly over and over again that no man, no woman, no pastor, no evangelist, no Sunday school teacher, or personal worker has ever been given of God the right to tell another human being they were saved. Never, never has been granted. God never gave it, didn't permit it. The fact that we do it today simply proves that we're not as far away from Rome as we thought we were. And we have acquired a Protestant papalism in which young evangelists, and nobly pastors, and godly Sunday school teachers, and loving parents, without having any clerical guides to become between a soul and God and say, I heard you say this. That's the floor plan. I know you understand this. That's the wall. And now this proves to me you have the roof on, you're saved. But wait! You don't know what's under the surface. You don't know what the foundation may be. You don't know whether or not it's been digged solidly. You thus have no right. Because he said they look alike. From the outside they seem alike. But only the individual who's done it and the God who's seen it done knows whether or not this is actually anchored in Christ. You see, my friend, it wasn't the temple in Israel that saved. It wasn't the Old Testament teachings concerning the offerings that saved, nor was it the blood of the smoke of testimony that someone had called or brought an offering that saved. It was repentance and faith. It was the fact that a heart had discovered its high crime against God and, smitten and broken, had come to stand a self-confessed sinner and take sides with God against himself and let the offering be but the testimony of the faith that reached out across the years and down across the centuries to the one who should come and by whose sinless life and atoning death his guilt should be paid for. But they made it an end in itself. And God looked at it and he said it's wrong because the people that profess to be part of it, the people that declare that they are now the people of God because they come to the temple and because they recite the Scripture and because they bring their cattle for offering and sacrifice and because they chant the Psalms, think that they're right, but yet the fact still remains that the change necessary to identify them as the people of God has not been wrought. For when you look at the fruit that comes on their lives, you discover that it is wild fruit. Now I shall say to you that that which I'm about to read is the wild fruit. We have a mixed metaphor here, and I trust that you will not have any difficulty because of it. We have on the one hand the house of doctrine, of truth, of profession, and the other hand we have the vine. But I want you to have no confusion about them. Put it this way, when the rock has been reached in the foundation and when reality has come into the light, then at the same time the nature of the vine has been changed and the fruit that it bears is contrary to that which once it bore. And our Lord has previously used this, speaking of false prophets, saying that they come to you as sheep, but outwardly sheep, but inwardly ravening wolves. So don't be surprised. The product of their efforts are going to be fruit. Then you'll know by whether or not the prophet is sound by the fruit he produces. For the true message is going to produce true fruit, and a false message is going to produce counterfeit fruit. And you're going to be able to tell whether the prophet was a god or whether he wasn't by the life of the people that profess to follow. You'll know, you'll know then. You just look at the life, you look at the—see what's happened. The prophet speaks and he says, turn in here. Here was the Pharisees saying to the Jews of his day, turn in here. This is the way. Come in by means of conversion. Come in by circumcision and baptism. Come into Israel. Come into Judaism and be saved. And Christ said to his day, now you watch what happens in their lives. If they turn in this wide gate of religion that leaves man unchanged without a supernatural work of God, you'll know it. If they're of God and their message is of God, the people that turn in their gate are going to have a miracle performed upon them, and they're going to be a different kind of person. You'll know whether the prophet is true or not by the products of his effort. Those that turn in the straight gate and come the narrow way are going to have a miracle performed upon them, and you'll know it. You'll know it. They'll say, Lord, as much as will the others, but they'll say, Lord, with a passionate desire to see his will done in their lives. They'll build a house, but the house will have a foundation, a foundation of repentance and faith and reality that will stand when God shall judge. You'll know the difference. You'll know it. You'll know it by what you see. And you can know it. You turned in a gate of some sort, come through the door into the house, so most of you here have come into some kind of religious testimony. You've either turned in a wide gate that may be a bit shallow or superficial or light, that may have the floor plan of salvation, that may have the walls of salvation, may even have the roof of testimony. But the question is, has a miracle performed on you? What kind of fruit resulted from it? What happened? What took place? Now this, God's Word gives us the clusters of fruit that you'll find on the wild vine. Romans, for instance, the first chapter, that portion to which I've carried you so many times in the past, gives you an opportunity to see the kind of fruit that is on the vine that brings forth evidence that had his work done upon it. Here in this 28th and 29th, 30th and 31st verses, he tells us the fruit that you'll find on the wild vine, the vine that refused to accept the ministry of the husbandman and shall bring the bearer down to death. And he tells us that this fruit, this cluster of fruit, is unrighteousness and fornication and wickedness and covetousness and maliciousness. And it's full of envy and murder and debate and argumentativeness and deceit and malignity and whispers and bad biters and haters of God, despiteful and proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable and unmerciful. Here it is. Now, he said, they that do such things are worthy of death. And someone says, well, look, I have a house. Here's the floor plan. Here's the door. Here's the floor plan. And I've come in, I've built a house. I've built it on the doctrine of the plan of salvation, and this is the floor plan, the plan. And here are the walls of Scripture verses, and I can build a wall around each room. And here's the roof of profession. I profess that this became mine, and so I'm all right. The purpose of a house is for pleasure, for security, and for protection, for rest. And you've come into it. Ah, but said our Lord, look well, look well, look well, because there have been false prophets standing outside of a wide gate and saying, turn in here, and saying, if you say, Lord, and say it simply from the lips and build the house, that's all that's needed. Not so, said he, not so. Because in addition to a gate, a wide gate, there's a straight gate. And in addition to true prophets, there are false prophets. And in addition to saying, Lord, Lord, as simply a testimony that he's Lord in heaven, there's also saying it, Lord of my life. And in addition to having a house with a floor plan and walls and roof, there's to have a house with a foundation. So he said, take good heed to yourself. Examine yourself, whether you be in the faith. Prove your own self. This is the message of Christ to his day. This is the message to an Orthodox people, a fundamental evangelistic missionary, devout people. This is the message that the Lord Jesus, the greatest speaker that ever addressed the hearts of men in love, had to say to his day and to our day. Said this matter is of such paramount importance that everything else pales in significance compared to it. If, said he, you have built your house on the foundation of repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, and if Christ has come into your life, for Christ after all is the rock upon which we must build, not only the testimony of the Bible regarding Christ, but that testimony of the Bible regarding Christ now having been made real in our own experiences. If, said he, Christ is in you, the hope of glory, and you be not reprobate, then there will be fruit by which the genuineness of your testimony can be seen on every hand. I've given you that fruit in the past. I give it to you again, my firm conviction. No one has a right to think that he has built his house upon the rock of Christ unless there is in his heart a hatred of sin and a purpose to please God. If you've been born of God, you've had to partake of the divine nature. And if you've partaken of the divine nature, you feel the same way about sin that Jesus Christ felt. Not just some sin. Not just the sin that have the stigma of social rejection on them. You know, there are some people that hate sin. Down south, for instance, we had a lot of evangelists that preached about sin up in Chicago. And they told about the terrible sins in Chicago. And they told about gangsters, and they'd get carried away with the nudist camps in And oh, how they did decry and carry on about sin in America. But it was always north of the Mason-Dixon line. Strangest thing about that. And if you got any closer, then it was like the lady said, Nah, the preacher's quit preaching, now he's gone to meddling. He's gotten a little too close, come too near home. And I submit to you that there's an awful lot about preaching about sin right and well enough, but it's the very things that the world itself curls its lips about and lifts its nose regarding. And people find it very easy in church to get quite excited about drunkenness and immorality and thievery. Ah, but when it comes to the sins of wrath and variance and emulation and strife and backbiting and whispering and undermining of lawful authority and tail bearing and sowing discord among brethren and things that God has said that he hates and he abominates, it's not nearly so significant. But I submit to you, my friend, that when you've been born of God and have partaken of the divine nature, you feel the same way about sin as Jesus Christ felt. You can't make peace with it. You can't make peace with it. I didn't say that there wouldn't be sin in your life, but I said it wouldn't be there with your satisfaction and your pleasure. And if you've been born of God and there is sin in your life and failure in your life, the evidence that you're a child of God is the fact that this that is in you that's unlike Christ has your hatred on it and your purpose to be delivered from it. This I know. This I'm certain of. I'm convinced that if your house has been built on the rock, on the foundation, solidly fixed in a vital living relationship with Jesus Christ, you've declared war upon sin in all of its forms, subtle in the motives, in the mind, in the words, in the attitudes. And I wouldn't go so far as to say that if you have known sin in your life with which you are content to live, that you have every reason to be suspicious as to whether or not the house in which you reside has actually been founded on the rock. For when he gives you his life, he gives you in that life his attitude toward that which is contrary to him. You hate sin. You can't make peace with it. You can't be reconciled to living with it. And even if your doctrine says you must sin, you still can't enjoy it and you can't go on with it, and you're going to have to find some way to escape into the deliverance that your heart tells you is yours and that God's word makes so plain and clear to be yours. And the second thing. If you have been built your house on a rock, if you've actually come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, if you've passed from death to life, you have a hunger for God. He who brought life, he who gave you his life and made you alive, gave in your heart a desire to be like him and to have fellowship with him. My, how my heart aches. And as I've gone around the country this summer again, I've been brought face to face with it. Young people would have said to me something like this, you know, we don't like to play with the adults. We don't want to do that. We want to have our own prayer meeting. I can't understand it. When God gave me his life, he gave me a love for the people that shared that life. And I lost all sense of the color of hair. And I found it just as much a delight to kneel with the oldest and pour out my heart to the Lord that he redeemed us both. It's together with my own. And as I've seen young people across the year who have made a cult out of young peopleism, I'm opposed to it. I see the church of Jesus Christ, nothing but the church of Jesus. You may have built your house on a false foundation and made a cult out of it. But if you've been born of God, you have a hunger and love for the people of God. You lose all sense of age. Lose all sense of social distinction. You meet as those that have come stripped, broken, bankrupt, hopeless, and helpless to the foot of the Lord Jesus. And there have pledged for mercy and received in his loving, lavish hand. And when you look around and you see someone else that shares that life, you care not who he is or where he is. You've been bound together by life in him. If you've built your house on the sand and it's never gone down to the rock of regeneration and life in him, there are many things you can do. But when you have been rooted in the experience of regeneration, you discover that the foundations have been laid in a place where you can't shift them and change them. And laid in him, you have a hunger for God and a love for God's people. Knows no age limit. Knows no social distinction. Knows no class level. Because if you're in him, you come through the same wicked gate, the same straight gate, the same narrow way. It's been given of him. I think the best evidence is a hatred of sin and a hunger for God that leads you into fellowship with his people. His people. His people. And they can do this where they are, where they're from, who they are. They've been born of him. Born of him. I don't believe in saying this, that there aren't functions. I'm not for a moment saying that we've got to take the kindergarten class into the women's Wednesday afternoon prayer meeting. But I am saying this, that when the Church of God meets those that have partaken of divine life, they're going to find that they're at home. They're at home. They're at home. My friend, if you have built your house on the rock, you're at home with people that have, wherever they are. You have a longing for God and a yearning for God and a love for his people and delight in fellowship in him and with him. Then there's something else. If you've built your house on the rock, if you've actually been born into God's family, you not only have a hatred for sin and a love for God that leads you into loving fellowship of his own, but you have also a burden for the lost. It's there. You don't have to work it up. You don't have to work it up. You say, well, I don't have a burden for the lost. Well, I want to make it clear what I mean. I don't mean necessarily that you're going to have to be a soul winner. You've heard me expatiate in the past saying that I didn't believe God called us to be soul winners anyway. He called us to be witnesses. Witnesses. If you've been born of God, if you've built your house on the rock, if you've actually passed from death to life, you're going to have burden given of him for those without him. I didn't do anything. But God did something. When he sent me home from Red Rock camp meeting in 1932, he sent me home with a burden for Ted Cowman, our hired man. And I yearned and groaned and agonized for Ted's salvation. I didn't ask God for a burden. Nobody had a program. Nobody said, now this week we're going to be burdened for hired men. Nobody did that. Nobody put a chart on the board with a thermometer up and said, now we're going to see how many people we can pray for. Nothing happened. Except I met God, and God gave me his burden for the lost. Didn't ask for it. We didn't have a meeting. I had to do something, that was all. Didn't have to wait for it to be planned and scheduled two months in advance. God gave it. When they didn't have prayer meeting at church, Bob Reed would meet us in the hall and say, I've got to pray. And we'd say, well, we've got to pray too, Bob. And he said, come over to my house when you get your studies done. So we'd get over there about 930, go upstairs to the third floor to the guest bedroom in the Reed's big home, and we'd start to pray. And about 1230, Mrs. Reed would come and say, boys, don't you think you'd better go? And he said, oh, Mother Reed, we're so burdened, and so on and so on. We said, well, what was that? Well, we were in the 11th grade, 10th grade in high school. Nobody was making us do it. Something happened. Something happened, that's all. I submit to you, it wasn't unusual. I'm not saying I'm any different from anybody else. I didn't ask for it. He gives it. And if you've been born of God, he's given it to you. Maybe somebody threw pails of cold water over you years ago when you first came into the church, and the embers have gone down under the ashes, and take something like this to stir them up and let them get a breath of air and come to life again. If you've been born of God, if your house is built on the rock, God gave you something of Calvary love for those around you. I'm through. I'm through saying to Christians, now you ought to love souls. I'm just simply going to start saying, look, if you don't love souls, there's something wrong with your Christianity. It doesn't measure up to New Testament kind. If you can walk past the multitudes on New York City streets and have a burden for the people out in India and have no burden for the people in New York, there is something radically wrong with your kind of Christianity. I'm not going to say any longer, get a burden. I'm going to say get New Testament Christianity, because when He gives you His life, when He pours His life into you in the work of regeneration, He gives you burden for those around you without Him. This He does. When He drives the stakes of your relationship down into the rock, Christ, He brings the nature of the rock up into you. So, it isn't a question of exhorting Christians, have a love for the lost, no more than you exhort sheep to bear lambs. It's their nature to do it. Their nature to do it. Now perhaps there's an illness that's come, a spiritual malnutrition from which we suffer. That I couldn't say. But I do say that those who have their house on the sand, have the plan of salvation in the Scripture to reinforce it, and the root for profession to cover it, but haven't driven it down to the rock, have no hatred for sin, no real hunger for God or love for His people, and no burden for souls to speak of, unless it's on an organized program basis. These three things? Ah, we could add to them. But to what end? If the point isn't carried, further exhortation won't carry it. What am I saying? This, if any man is in Christ, he is in creation. He doesn't have to try to be. He doesn't have to strain to be. He is a new creation. He has a hatred for sin, no longing to be like Christ. He has a love for God and for God's people. He has a burden for the lost. But again, let me ask you, where's your house? Built on the sand or built on the rock? I don't know. I'm not looking at any one of you and say yours is on the sand or yours is on the rock. I don't know you that well. And He didn't say that I would do it, blessed be His name, you'll never have to stand before me and give an account of the deeds done in the body, nor I before you. But God commanded all men everywhere to repent in that He has appointed the day in which you will judge the world by Jesus Christ, that man whom He has appointed. And that day He will discover whether my house was on rock or sand, your house was on rock or sand. But oh dear friend, don't wait till then. Do it now. Discover now. Discover now. Shall we pray? This is the last of a series of messages of the most terrifying chapter in the Bible. When our Lord cuts through all of the sham and make-believe and pretense and play-acting and hypocrisy and gives us these terrifying testimonies one after another, narrow gate, wide gate, good fruit, bad fruit, Lord in truth or in pretense, house on the sand or on the rock. Never again in the preaching program or ministry of this pulpit, unless the Lord leads right back to this same chapter in a similar manner in the future, never can will there be brought such pressure to bear upon our testimonies as this brings. You can slip out tonight with questions and doubts and serious inner uncertainties. I can't stop you, and if I could, I wouldn't. But alter what a day of. Look, it's your life, your heart, your relationship to Him. He doesn't wound to hurt, to injure. Faithful are the wounds of this friend who gave his life for you. If he's wounded you, be wise, be wise, be wise. If you sense the sand giving way under your foundation, don't wait, don't prop it up, don't put more sand against it. Come, come to Him. I can't guarantee that you will be saved if you come, but I can guarantee in prayer, in treaty, in instruction in the Word, in deep affection and longing for you, the wisest thing you can do is to come, make known your need, put yourself in the place of help, rest, Tuesday night, after the service, up at Pinnacle. A young girl, sixteen years of age, in one of the fine churches in New Jersey, came up to speak to me, and she said, two weeks after I professed to be saved, I thought nothing happened, and I've been trying to pretend I was a Christian, hoping it would come true. But now I know I've never been born again. Help me. Pray for me. We did help her. We opened the Word to her and prayed for her, and she met God, and God broke her heart and reckoned her in the night seasons and showed her her sin. And Thursday night she came saying, God has wonderfully saved me, wonderfully, wonderfully assured me now, and I know, I know, I know. Ah, dear friend, dear friend, I can't save you, but if you have uncertainty, if your little boat rocks in the wave of God's Word, oh, don't, oh, try to sink it with ballast to hold it steady. Come, put yourself in the place where God can meet you, and God can help you. I'm not going to sing tonight. I'm not even going to ask you to raise your hand. I'm just going to say that if you're here and you have reason to think that things are not well with your soul, that you get up and don't come to the front, go to the back and go right off to the Wilson Chapel here to the right of the pulpit. Just get up now. We're going to stay here and pray for a moment, and if God has spoken to your heart, you just get up and go. I'm not going to sing for you. If you have need and God has shown it to you, and you're aware of it, and you want to pray and help you, just slip out and go back to the back aisle and down to the right of the pulpit into Wilson Chapel, and after we've had a word of prayer, we'll come in and talk with you and pray with you. Now, don't linger. If God has burdened your heart and you are all you have and need, you get up and go. Now, Father, thou knowest those to whom thou art speaking. Lord, thou knowest those that have felt the wave of thy truth upon their little back. Lord, we pray thee that now thou wouldst move, for we are only to have, only to open the word and pray and counsel with needy hearts. And, Father, we don't want anyone to go with uncertainty when thou art so graciously willing and ready to meet them that they can say, I know. Move upon them, Lord. Only is thou dost move, only is thou dost draw. We plead the precious blood. We stand for the release of every heart here from the relying deceit of the enemy. Oh, God of grace, move.