In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of taking on the yoke of Jesus. He uses the analogy of a train staying on track to illustrate the importance of being in bondage to the will of God. The preacher emphasizes the idea of being witnesses and martyrs for Christ, willing to suffer for Him. He shares a story about a young man named Hughie who faced impending death with joy and anticipation of seeing the King in His beauty. The sermon concludes with a reflection on Jesus' prayer in John's gospel, highlighting the significance of knowing God's timetable in one's own life.

The hymn we were singing was written by William Williams, a Welshman. And when it was first printed, there was a misprint in it. And instead of being land me safe on Canaan's side, they printed land my safe on Canaan's side. But you can't take it with you. Alright, this is the second course. You have the first course already. And this morning we want to meditate on the greatest prayer ever prayed by the greatest man that ever lived, John chapter 17. There are, you may remember, 26 verses in this wonderful chapter. I remember that Dr. Tozer began preaching the first Sunday morning of a new year on this prayer. And he finished the last Sunday morning. Preached 52 sermons on the 26 verses. And so my friend Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones in London preached 52 Sundays on John 3.16 without repeating himself. Takes a lot of doing. Again, it at least suggests to me what one man said many, many, many years ago. The Bible is like a, like the ocean. It's so shallow at the edge that a lamb can frisk in it. And it gets so deep that an elephant can swim around in it. Again, I remember hearing Dr. G. Campbell Morgan say on one occasion he was about 70 years of age and he had written 60 books on the Bible. And he said without any modesty, I know so little about the Word of God. The man who knows most about it graduated last June with a diploma and is looking for a church worthy of him. But the man who studies it most recognizes how little he really knows of this profound Word of God. If you approach John chapter 17 as I approach it, I think you'll feel like Moses. You want to slip your shoes off your feet. For this certainly is holy ground. Now notice it is the Lord's Prayer. Someone told us yesterday to pray the Lord's Prayer. You can't pray the Lord's Prayer. You can pray the disciples' prayer. Jesus could not pray the disciples' prayer. The disciples could not pray the Lord's Prayer. This is essentially the prayer of the Lord Jesus himself. I don't think it's the longest prayer he prayed, because we're told that often he spent whole nights in prayer. But it certainly is the longest recorded prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's good to keep reminding ourselves that Jesus was an incarnation. He was not a reincarnation. He existed before he became a man, but he did not exist as a man before he became a man. He existed as God. And in this chapter he's praying about the glory he had with the Father before the world was. But since he came from another world, with the power of another world, his whole life was a dramatic life. It was not theatrical, but it was dramatic. Jesus never sought publicity. He ran away from it. Those boys that you listened to yesterday morning on TV, the big evangelists, they speak it and speak it and try and get another station and get more popular. Jesus did the very opposite. When he raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead, he said don't tell anybody about it. When they'd been on the Mount of Transfiguration, he said you don't share this. When he had even declared that he was the Son of God, he said tell no man. And then right after that he rode on a donkey into Jerusalem. And it seemed a contradiction. But you see, this wonderful prayer begins with Father the hour has come. This is the seventh time in this version of the Gospel. There are not four Gospels. There's one Gospel told by four different people. And this is the seventh time that Jesus has used this phrase, or as it's recorded by John, the hour has come. If I could write another beatitude, it would be blessed is the man that knows God's timetable in his own life. Nobody pushed Jesus around. He pushed everybody else around. God is never in a hurry, but he's never late either. The life of Jesus was full of drama. I would like to have been with Jesus on all occasions, but some outstanding occasions. I would like to have seen Jesus raised from the dead. That would be quite exciting. I would like to have seen him straighten withered arms and unplugged deaf ears. I would like to have seen him walk on the water. That would be quite interesting. But if I had my choice, of all the events in the life of the Lord Jesus, I would like to have heard Jesus pray. I believe it's true of Jesus, as it's true of you and me, that nobody is greater than my prayer life. This prayer of the Lord Jesus was read to John Knox every day for the, I think, the last three weeks of his amazing life. He said, I want to get saturated in this prayer of the Lord Jesus. It really is the holy of holies in the place of prayer. The famous preachers around will tell you that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the synoptic gospels. The gospel of John is called the autoptic gospel. It's unique because 92% of what John says has not been said by anybody else. Sure you've got wonderful things in Matthew, Mark and Luke, but there is no parallel to the 17th chapter of John. There is no parallel to the 15th chapter of John, the message of the vine. And as I said, I think Saturday night for the few that came, and that was very fine. I shared this thought that there is no such thing as people in a church under the best minister in the world. They do not all develop the same. A friend of mine told me something recently that was very interesting. He had been up the west coast of this country where, as I guess you know, there are many vineyards. And if you go up the coast it says stay here, you know, this is where we raise certain grapes. You know, I would think that logically Jesus would have said I am the vine and ye are the grapes, and he didn't say that. Supposedly not fruitful enough, but anyhow. He didn't say I am the vine and ye are the grapes. Because you see, grapes are useful even if they're bad. You can make vinegar out of them. Of course there's a lot of Christians like that too. And then grapes, if they get ripe, are luscious, they're beautiful. And grapes, if they get overripe, make raisins. You can use grapes in any stage. You can't use Christians like that. The type of a Christian is the type of salt. If it loses its flavor, it's not only a curse to itself, it kills everything else. You put dead salt on your garden, even if it's dead it will kill your garden. It's useless. So are Christians that lose the anointing of God. And my friend said to the man in the vineyard, I'm interested in the vine. And he told him a lot of things. I want to pass one on to you. He said, you know, well how many bottles do you make out of a crop? And he said so many. Then he said, well of course if you get, you know, a whole vineyard, and you take all those grapes and you crush them, and you make wine, and you bottle it, then of course all that wine, if you have 15,000 bottles, it's all the same. He said not two bottles are the same. Well he said, how is that? He said, I don't know. Oh, you've not been in the game very long. I've been in the game all my life, but nobody knows the reason. They all get the same rain, they all get the same sunshine, they all get the same fertilizing, they all get the same pruning. And they all get squashed up in the same machine, and the juice runs out down there, and it gets bottled. And you could take 15 bottles, and somebody with a very delicate taste, I don't know a thing about wine, but somebody with a delicate taste would say not one of these bottles are the same. Why? I don't know. Sometimes we wonder if some bottles are thicker than others, and they let more light in. Sometimes we think that maybe there's a little too much air at the top. Sometimes, he said, the bottles will stay there so long, and you go in and they burst and splash the walls and everything. Are they bottles? You could plant them, leave them there for centuries, they won't move. Like a lot of Christians, you can't get them moving anyhow. But the fact is, you see, that it doesn't matter how you treat the grapes, give them all the same treatment. Again, prune them all the same, give all the grapes the same sunshine, give them all the same pruning, give them all the same fertilizing, bottle the wine in the same temperature, and put all this on. That's true of Christians. Some people can sit under a ministry and they blossom, and they bear fruit, and they become lovely, and others are dried up old sticks. They can sit under a ministry and a palm tree and not move at all. As I said yesterday, you see, there is a human dependence. The Lord's going to take care of me. Nonsense. What do you mean? I mean what the Bible says. It says keep yourself in the love of God. It says you will lay aside every weight. It tells us over and over again in Hebrews, let us, let us, let us do this, let us do that, let us do something else. God has made all the provision in the world for you to be one of the greatest saints that ever lived. And look where you are today. I mean, and think of all the land that the rest of you possess. The whole secret again is in that marvelous sermon which we may begin tomorrow, the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst. Many of us don't, we're not hungry, we're just an appetite. They're not thirsty, we're just dry. How dry. But you see, it all depends on your appetite. As I said yesterday, no man that ever lived ever had a bigger Bible than you have. Nobody ever had more resources to God than you have. God's very fair. In fact the gospel is the only fair thing in the world. Taxation isn't, and the government for sure, but the word of God is. And as I reminded you yesterday, and this has got to me so much in the last few, few months, that with all the talk we have about the Holy Spirit and gifts and everything, you know, honest to God, before the Lord, I don't see many giants coming out of our groups these days. And yet a little fella like Spurgeon, 15 years of age, got saved. And in four years time, without going to Bible school, without access to many books, in four years, from 15 years of age to 19, at 19 they built him a tabernacle seating 5,000 people and he packed it twice a day for the rest of his life. And then you have some smart little guy around the corner with a little two-by-four experience in a two-by-four church who says, you know, it's a pity he didn't speak in tongues. I mean, how sour can you get? There are lots of things that Spurgeon didn't do, but there are lots of things he did that we don't even touch. Somebody said there were more people healed through Spurgeon's ministry than all the doctors and hospitals in London. And he never preached divine healing. You know, if you join a church today, they have a list and at the bottom they say, you agree with what we agree with? Oh well, you're great. Sign on the dotted line you're one of us. Don't forget to type. And that's nice. And I think sometimes the difference between the Christians of today and the Christians of the New Testament is this. That we sign articles of faith and they acted in faith. Makes all the difference. There's a great chasm between. Now you don't look too joyful, so I better get on with this reading right here. Luther had a famous friend. I think sometimes he was his secretary. At least he worked with him a lot. Melanchthon. And he said about these 26 verses here in John, that this is the most holy, the most fruitful, and the most sublime chapter in the whole of the Word of God. Somebody has said it's the most sublime thing that was ever written. And we approach it with, almost with fear. If you want to study the prayer life of Jesus, you would read the gospel that was recorded by Luke. Because in every event in the life of Jesus, Luke always puts prayer there. Jesus was in the Jordan and the Spirit descended upon him. But Luke says it was while he was praying the Spirit descended upon him. The other evangelists say that Jesus was crucified, and John says that even while he was crucified he was praying. Father forgive them. The other evangelists say that he was on the Mount of Transfiguration, and John says that it was while he was praying he was transfigured. Every incident in the life of Jesus, Luke gets prayer attached to that situation. It was after he had spent all the night in prayer that he chose twelve disciples. Wouldn't it be nice if every church spent all night before it ever chose deacons? Most of them wouldn't get in. But that's the way Jesus did it. You see, Luke of course is showing Jesus Christ as a man. Matthew shows Jesus as a king. Mark shows Jesus as a servant. Luke shows him as the man, totally dependent on God. John shows him as deity. Jesus was not divine. You and I are divine. If we are born of God we are made partakers of the divine nature. But he was beyond being divine. He was deity. In fact, I think the whole of this marvelous gospel of John is capsuled in that first verse. In chapter one. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. All right. In the beginning is eternity. The Word was with God equality. The Word was God deity. Now there's enough for you to chew on for a week. It's all pushed as it were into that one amazing verse. In the beginning. Not the beginning of his life. In the beginning there. Not just the beginning of time, but way, way, way, way back in the ages of the ages that we don't know anything about. He was God. Very God of very God. Now amazingly enough, while he shows the majesty of Jesus in prayer, he does not record, as the other evangelists do, what we do call the Lord's Prayer. It's a misnomer. The disciples prayer. He taught the disciples to pray. But John doesn't mention that prayer. And then you remember the greatest prayer of all. My, my. My own opinion is that the greatest human privilege ever offered to men was to go share a guest's family with Jesus, and they fell asleep. Don't you think that was a heartbreak for him? Peter. It's not long since he said, Lord you can't depend on Thomas. He's always doubting. And you know the others. But me. Oh you can depend on me. I die for him. I remember a lady who said I could often die for him. It's living for him that's the job. That's the hardest thing. A lot of people would like the Lord to come today. Be raptured. But it's only because they're too worried and anxious and there's too many bills. They love the Lord so much they get out of a lot of mess if he came today. That's why most of them, and in case the tidal wave comes, it would be nice to get away, wouldn't it? The great mysterious prayer of Jesus in the garden. And yet John does not record it. He mentions he went into the garden, but he doesn't mention his sweat and his grief. The place where he's praying in that prophetic psalm, all my billows have gone over me. When I was pastoring a church, I pastored one or two, that I was a young man full of enthusiasm. We had a lively church. People used to line up on a Sunday night to get in like a movie house. And for three years we had revival. Not because I was a good preacher, but because I had a marvelous bunch of old saints in 70 and 80 years of age that had traveled for 40 years for revival to come to that city. And we went to a city and raised a church of 700 people in six weeks. Right from the grassroots. And it's still existing today. That was 19, oh then not 10, oh yes I will, 1934. And we had some outstanding people of prayer. That's the thing that really sticks in my mind about that fellowship of people. We inherited the prayers of these great saints who for years and traveled, they prayed. We had an old man that used to come to the prayer meeting and I loved to see him come. I didn't care if he came Sundays, I couldn't teach him much anyhow. You know I remember one Sunday morning when there was a real wonderful atmosphere. And I just felt I was the king of the world you know. I, oh man look at this great crowd and I was having a marvelous time and the Lord just hit me like that. I felt like saying will you please go home. You know the Lord told me in the middle of a marvelous meeting when I'm having an anointing and everybody's listening breathlessly. The Lord said to me, son you're not the most spiritual man in this church. Isn't that delicious. You just look at that old man there. He was praying before you were born. Look at that little lady and she did wear a bonnet with springs on it. That woman knows more about prevailing prayer than you've ever learned and ever read about. My, that was a great thing to inherit a situation like that. The thing I was going to say was this. I was going down the street in that town one day. I remember it was five o'clock at night. It was a summer night and as I went past the house the door opened and the lady said come in pastor. I said I'm sorry I don't have time. I've got to be home in five minutes. You don't want to come in because I'm poor. Well that wasn't the problem. The problem wasn't poor. She was so dirty that's why I didn't want to go in. She had a house that would have won a world championship in silk. She'd give you anything, particularly fleece. And I went in and she said now I know you don't have long to stay but you take a cup of tea. I said no no I'm just going home for tea. We call it like you say supper. We're going home. I'm going home for tea. You don't want to drink in my house. Oh I said okay. And it was a little house and there was a sink here and it was stacked up with dishes. Now how she got them all isn't my business because she lived by herself. But they'd been there for weeks or maybe months and they were dirty. And she had a teapot that didn't look too good. Now I like tea. I don't like it too strong or too weak and I like cream in it and I like a little sugar in it. That's the way we have it in England usually. And she said all right. And she reached in the sink for a cup. You could see all the juice running down the side you know where she hadn't washed it. And there were some tea leaves inside that didn't look too good. They certainly weren't young. And then she reached for the teapot and she poured this black liquid that looked like oil from the sump of your automobile. And she said do you take cream? I said yes. She said well I don't have any. You take sugar? Yes. And she gave me just a little sugar. Here you are. And it was nearly cold and I don't like cold tea. And I just looked round that and thought what a stinking hole this is. She hadn't been washed honestly for days. Everything smelled in the house. And she gave me this dirty cup with black cold tea in it. And the rim marked where she had drank. And I took that cup and she was talking. She said drink. And she lifted her cup and she drank. And I lifted this cup and as I did you know as the tea came back I saw those dirty horrible leaves at the bottom. I noticed the juice marks round the side and I thought yuck. Fancy giving some. And you know a scripture about the Lord said wait a minute. And I learned one of the great lessons of my life. As I lifted that filthy cup to my lips my mind went two thousand miles away from England two thousand years back. And I saw a man in a garden drinking a cup with all the filth of the world in it. And it so revolted the purest man that ever lived. And he said father if it be possible let it go. But he drank it. You know I didn't have any problem drinking that dirty stuff after that. I just drank it. And I did do what you said in everything. I gave thanks for it too. It was a very simple lesson. You see that section is so great that God won't even let us know about it. I remember going to Dr. Joseph's church in 1951 and talking with one of the deacons there J.S. Chase the great American artist. Wonderful man of God. And he said we're glad to have you so forth and so on. I said well I'm glad to come and get in this famous church just to meet the doctor and talk with him. I hope we'll get some prayer. Well he said Brother Ravenhill I suppose you'd be surprised to know Dr. Joseph never comes to a prayer meeting. I said never comes to a prayer meeting? What do you mean? Well he used to come to a prayer meeting. And he would bring, he'd get us to sing some lovely hymn about prayer. And he'd bring a dissertation on prayer. Usually very very penetrating. And then he would say let us pray. We got he said about 70 people to the prayer meeting. He would say let us pray. Nobody prayed. They waited and waited and finally the doctor prayed. And there was silence. Nobody prayed after him. They were afraid to pray before he prayed and they were scared to pray after he prayed because he prayed in a dimension that they didn't understand. He prayed with a depth. He prayed with a power. He prayed with a penetration that everybody else felt they might as well say A B C D E F G H I J. That was all they knew in prayer. And so for the sake of the congregation he stayed away from the prayer meeting. I suggest to you, you see I cannot find any record in the Word of God where Jesus ever prayed with his disciples. Do you know one? It's told they prayed in an area that these people never knew. Well what about the Son of God? I said to the pastor and I mean this. In a church like this you should have, if you have advanced classes, you have classes for this, you should have an advanced prayer meeting. You should by now have some people that pray in a higher grade if you like, or in a deeper grade, or with a more fervent passion. People know something about the fellowship of his suffering. You see everybody wants to be filled with the Spirit for kinks, for joy, for ecstasy, for thrills. Oh I go to a group and boy we have a marvelous time. Do you ever get on your belly and groan for a world that's damned? We feel good and pious when we sing Oh to thee like thee blessed Redeemer. Do you mean you'd like forty days in the wilderness to be battered by the devil? Would you like a Judas in your life? Would you like a Gethsemane? You want to be like him. Where? Where you pick and choose. I think outside of reading the Word of God itself there's nothing more profitable than reading the biographies of great men. How many of you read the life of Howells? Reese Howells, intercessor. Good, good, good. Great book. I preached at his college a number of times in Wales and the last time I was there Mrs. Howells said after the morning session, Brother Ravenhill come, come. And we walked up the staircase of that fine old millionaire's home that is now a college. And when we got on the veranda looking over the Welsh coast there she said, Brother Ravenhill, Norman Grubb did a great job on writing my husband's life, but she said I want to tell you something. You see that little door there? She said my husband went into that room at six o'clock in the morning and stayed there till six o'clock at night every day for eleven months. Twelve hours alone with God every day for eleven months. The only time he went out was when his mother died. You see all our ideas so often about the Spirit is full of energy and life and overflow and you're stuck and show yourself and say how you were healed and say this. Look if you haven't had forty days somewhere quite with God you haven't got it made yet. You'll be amazed how many letters I get. I get quite a lot. I get an awful lot from students. I get an awful lot from men who say well I've only so many weeks in seminary and I've done Bible school and I've got my grades this way but Brother Ravenhill I'm not ready to go out. I don't feel adequate. I don't feel I can go out into the world and face the job I've been training for for seven or six years whatever it is. What do you suggest? I say go to a farm and tell a man you'll work for nothing if he gives you a glass of milk and a few things and spend as many hours as you can alone with. Stay there three months. Stick your head in a haystack as I say to them. And if the fire is still burning at the end of that isolation you'll know you've got what God wants you to have. If you haven't got it well either seek it or quit. Don't become a liability to God. You see so many people are trying to get on a kind of escalator or an assembly line and you do this and don't do that. You get this gift and you don't do that and you do something else. Very fine but it's not the answer. As I said I think Saturday night you see in the 11th chapter of Matthew verse 28 it says come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Fine fine. And then you cross the bridge to the second half of the text which says take my yoke upon you. You say the spirits in life is freedom. The spirits in life is bondage. We were snorting down a railroad track a while ago and I said to the conductor my this train's really going. What's it what's it doing? He said well this is the straightest fastest stretch we're doing between 80 and 90 miles an hour and I said I hope it stays on the track. Oh boy he said so do I. Now the only reason it could keep up that speed was it was in bondage to the track. If it got off the track disaster. As a matter of fact we were going through a village and I noticed there was a kind of a loop line and I said boy I'm glad he got through that fork. If he jumped the track we'd have shot through and demolished the village. You see if you have power you need power not to use that power. People are prodigal with power. Ah but you see he says we should be witnesses. Well that isn't witnessing as you think of it. That word there is martyrs. The ability to suffer for him. If we suffer we shall also reign. Do you think anybody's going to pay five dollars to go to a banquet or a breakfast to hear a message on suffering? Huh? I've been to two meetings in the last three years I guess where where they guaranteed me certain crowds. I didn't go for that. I felt I had a message and at least 300 people and another hundred standing the place will be packed. And when I got there there were 15 people. This has never happened in our monthly meeting. Oh if we get somebody coming with courage and I'm not knocking the charismatics not a bit. I'm showing you that we've got an unbalance. I was going to preach on revival and holiness and they'd no appetite for it. I went to another place where they said oh there'll be far more than 400 people every meeting twice a day for the next three four days. They're just crowding. People have read your books and this that and here you come. And we never mustered a hundred any day. You see there are two sides to the coin. And this is no day for spiritual dwarfs and this is no day for people who we've got to be infants admittedly and growing great. But we're moving into the tightest bottleneck in history. We're moving into that period where if the church has anything nobody else has anything. There's nobody else speaking with a voice. And if the church has anything today well she better stand up and speak up or shut up. Isaiah says there'll be a day when a man shall be as a hiding place. A man, not a government, not a church. In the sense of a man shall be as a hiding place. And people will run to that man because he has the only thing that will keep people anchored in the in the turbulent storm that's already breaking on the world. The greatest storm that any human being ever entered was entered by the Lord Jesus here in this 17th chapter. You see if you think of a river that gets deeper and deeper and deeper you start with the 14th chapter of John. You get deeper into the 15th, deeper into the 16th, down into the 17th, down into Gethsemane, down into the grave, the cross and so forth and up to the other side in the mighty resurrection. And that's exactly what life is like. I was at theme challenge for two years and I used to teach the staff twice a week and our theme song was deeper deeper in the love of Jesus daily let me go. Higher higher in the school of wisdom more of grace to know. Oh deeper yet I pray and higher every day. A lot of people just want to jump from Sunday to Sunday. Oh we're going to that meeting Wednesday night. Boy I'm living for that. Also you live on meetings not on Christ Day. As I've told you I have a fine church, two dozen members, and I'm trying to get them to the place. I have literally about 24 people I teach every week. That's my only church. I enjoy it. Not sure they enjoy me but I enjoy them anyhow. And I keep telling them I want them to get so stabilized in God that if we do end up in concentration camps and you've no Bible and you don't have the fellowship of the saints and you don't have the word of God you'll be as strong as John was on the Isle of Patmos. You'll be able to do what the pastor said this morning. Peter and John's text. Isn't it amazing when you think of those prison epistles of the apostle Paul. He's saying to people who are having all their liberty, rejoice in the Lord. And I say rejoice and rejoice and rejoice. Oh dear how can you rejoice he's in prison. He didn't get free courses to every mean. It was hardship. But he gloried in tribulation. We just put up with it. Don't we? Honestly don't we? If the Lord said you can go down easy street today or I'll give you a burden ten times greater than you've ever had. Which would you take? He says we glory in tribulation. I don't just grit my teeth and say well I'm sanctified. I suppose I'll have to put up with this but I'm not getting a fair deal anyhow. Everything was grist to his mill. Tribulation, necessity of reproaches, imperils of the deep, imperils of mine own countrymen. Read the end of Romans chapter 8 and he tells you things that battered his mind and battered his spirit and battered his body. And then he puts his shoulders back as though he's laughing at the devil and he says listen I want to tell you something. There's nothing that you can produce on earth or in hell that can separate me from the love of God. And since I can't lose that what else does it matter that I do lose? Now tell me this morning have you prayed for the saints in prison this morning? Paul talks about praying for those who are in suffering as though you were suffering with them. I try to go to the Gulag archipelago every day. Have you read Solzhenitsyn's book? Make your hair stand up. Read it. Give you a nightmare. It's just what you need as a Christian. Time you discovered what hell holes there are in the world as much as we're trying to fellowship with Russia right now. We could strangle them tomorrow. We could make a Russia bow the knee. But we'd rather give them all the wheat we have so we can sell a few machines. We could break Russia tomorrow. Her von Kissinger says that wheat isn't a weapon but I'm quite sure that it is but he didn't use it. The great power in the world in the next two years will not be oil it will be food. And America could make other nations bow the knee but we won't do it. Certain boys won't. I don't see why one man anyhow should speak for the whole nation. Like that. That's another area. It's got nothing to do with us. It's got an awful lot to do with us. When I look around I see a sick, sick, sick world. A sick economy. A sick dollar. A sick international situation. And the greatest tragedy in a sick world is a sick church. And if I didn't think you were interested in this then I wasted my time coming. I don't go out preaching more than about four times a year now. I refuse to cast my pearls. Well you know the other. Because fellows will phone me a thousand, two thousand miles and beg me to go. And when I preach two days they say a deacon called me this morning at two o'clock. He couldn't sleep. I said that's great. That's great. It's worth coming to keep a deacon awake all night. But you see we thought kind of you'd do this. I said no, no, no, no, no. You didn't. You didn't really. But now you're getting a backlash. You see when you go, when you go to preach anywhere you have one of three choices. You can tell people what they already know and if you do that you're a good guy. You can tell them what they want to know and they'll give you a pat on the back and flip you a few dollars. Or you can tell them what God wants them to know and usually they get pretty mad about it. Now how grown up are you? Do you want me to tell you what you already know? You've read something in Watchman Meek. You've read F.B. Meyer and others and you like it and you thought I'd just warm it up and serve it for you in an omelet. Tell me what you already know. I'm wasting my time. I'm too old. I have too much writing to do. I could be in Australia, New Zealand this week preaching to one of the greatest conferences in the world if I'd chosen to go. I didn't choose to go. I chose to come here. There's no, I'm not saying that in a proud way. I'm not a hero for doing that. You've got to go where you feel God wants you to go. Where the Lord tells you to go, go. But again we serve up either what you want to know or what we'd like you to hear. You'd like me to say I believe the Lord's coming today. Well I don't. You'd like to say I believe we'll miss the tribulation. I don't believe that for a minute. Pre-tribulation theology wasn't known in the world until a hundred and twenty years ago and a hundred and twenty years ago it was a heresy. Now you can, you can kick any holy cow you like but don't disagree with Schofield. You go to perdition. Well I happen to think that Schofield was haywire in quite a number of things and I find a lot of the best scholars are leaving him even. Now you don't like that because you've just got a new edition of the Schofield Bible. Why don't you put it on the shelf and see what, what do you want to chew on at Schofield? If I brought you a dinner my grandmother made a hundred years ago, would you warm it up and eat it? What do you read all the stuff he read 150, 60, 70, 80 years ago? Shut it up. I have a friend, one of the greatest Bible teachers I know. He's in the Bible School of Wales. If he ever comes to this country I'll tell you. Put him up. He was a very small man with a very neat kind of voice. But he spread it out for God in China. He knows Greek and Hebrew and Latin and Welsh and English. He has a profound insight to the world. In fact, I'll tell you this, if you could get him for a month, you'll be smart to have him here for a month and let him teach four weeks in succession. And he teaches, he's a marvelous, marvelous man of God. He has a great deep insight into the Word of God. I hope you'll have him sometime. I'm getting digressed here and it's time to go. Spurgeon was fond of an old teacher called John Brown and he said that John Brown said of this 17th chapter of John, it's the most remarkable section of the most remarkable book that was ever written. All right. These words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven. Now I'm just going to stay with this and I don't know maybe we'll go on with it tomorrow. I don't know. I did not know why until about two weeks ago I was meditating. As the pastor said this morning, he got some inspiration. My inspiration came this way. Jesus lifted his eyes to heaven. Why? Why? Why? It's not the only time. It's recorded one other time. But there's a special significance here. I'll tell you why Jesus lifted his eyes to heaven. Because there was nowhere else to look to. That's why. The whole world had fallen apart. His world had fallen apart. You see, he has made a promise to them that the Holy Spirit of God will come. And you remember what he calls him there in John, what? Sixty? The Comforter. Oh, I can remember Samuel Chadwick saying, gentlemen, when he addressed us, it was a college where there were only young men anyhow. There were no girls at the college. And he would say, gentlemen or brethren, listen, the Holy Ghost is a comforter, but he's not a nursing mother for spiritually sick children. That's a bad translation, comforter. The word comforter comes from two Latin words, comfortis, with strength. Actually, it says what? Ye shall receive power. Ye shall receive strength. The Holy Ghost coming upon you. They didn't like the news that Jesus was going. Oh, it's all right saying somebody will come better than you, but that doesn't work out. Reminds me of the pastor visiting an old lady and she was in tears when he got there. Yes, you announced you were leaving yesterday. My dear, he said, I've got good news for you. The man that's coming after me is far, far better than I am. She said, I don't believe you. The last pastor said that. Well, they said, Lord, we don't want you to go. You're good enough for us. You mean to say, listen, I'm going to tell you something. You're going into a world of sheep and wolves. They're going to devour you. Well, then, Lord, we need you to hold us together. We've been disagreeable and squabbling even when you were here. What will you do when you leave? He said, it would be a lot better for me to go. And the Holy Spirit of God himself will come. And then he says, at the end of that chapter, they are come us, in verse 32 of chapter 16, they are come us, yea, it now come that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone, and yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. Now, do you see why he said that? You're all going to fail me. You're going into trouble. I'm going into trouble. You won't be there. I know what's going to happen. You'll all collapse. You'll fall asleep. You'll run away. And I have to face the tightest, most difficult situation in my life, and I've nobody with me, but the Father is with me. And if I can take all that battering and buffeting and bleeding, and see nobody there, surely you can go in the world and see nobody, and know the Holy Ghost is in you. You see, Jesus never asked anybody to do what he himself had not done. So he says, these words take Jesus and lift his eyes up to heaven. This is a fantastic prayer. There are 26 verses in it. In verses 1 to 5, it's not only a precious prayer, it's a pattern prayer. I think it's the exemplary prayer of the ages. I think that Jesus here shows us how to pray. Verses 1 to 5, he prays for himself. Verses 6 to 19, he prays for the disciples. Verses 20 to 26, he prays for the world. Now I hear people say sometimes, you know that prayer of Jesus, he's praying for his own. He's not. That's not true. In one section he's praying for his own. In the other section he's praying for the world. The hour has come, glorify thy son, that thy son also may glorify him. Let's go to verse 3. And this is life eternal, that they may know thee. Now that's what he said, I didn't say it. Sometimes I go to holiness meetings, not often, I get into some, where their interpretation of the Christian life is that you get saved, and then you get sanctified. Which really means sanctified. I go to the other school, and they believe that you get saved, and then you get baptized with the Holy Ghost, the baptism of the Spirit. And if you go in the meetings, a conference like this, they'd say let's give ten minutes to testimony. And in one school they get up and say I was saved, and then three years after that I was sanctified. You go to the other school, and they say I was saved, and six months after that I got the baptism of the Spirit. And in either case, everybody nods their head and says amen, amen, amen. That's like I got it, except I got it a bit quicker than you. Now I suggest the next time you have a testimony meeting in your church, whether it's in another denomination, a holiness group, or a Pentecostal, or a Baptist, you don't use any of that terminology at all. Paul never did that. You just stand up in your church, and smile, and look sweet and heavenly, and say well friends I'm glad to tell you Christ liveth in me. And sit down. And your wife will nudge you and say George when did that happen? I didn't know I was living with Jesus. Man I'm glad you told me. If you'd have died today, I'd have been ignorant of that. You never told me. That was Jesus that lost his temper last night. That was Jesus that slammed the door going outside. I'll see you when I come back from work anyhow. Oh it's easy to get chivalrous isn't it? I'm saved and filled with the Spirit. Everybody says amen. So am I. I'm saved and sanctified. That's the way to do it brother. But Paul said, not the same thing though he had a marvellous endowment of power. In fact he put it this way. He said on the Damascus road God revealed himself to me, but there in the wilderness he revealed himself in me. And he said over and over again Christ liveth in me. Now the prayer of Jesus here isn't that we might get gifts of the Spirit and become marvellous healers and marvellous prophets. He says that they may know thee. Do we know him? That's why I tried to say yesterday, whether I got there or not, that the greatest thing in the world really is not prayer. We've taught people in our churches to witness and we've taught them to work. And we've taught them to tithe. Otherwise the preachers might have to go work. But we've taught them to witness and to work and to tithe. We have not taught them to worship. Again, prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with God himself. I meditate on his holiness. I meditate on his majesty. I meditate on the beauty, the flawlessness of his life. I see him in his great strength shattering the gates of hell. Breaking the bonds of death. There's a hymn that says, In holy contemplation we sweetly then pursue the theme of our salvation and find it ever new. Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the best hymn writers in America, wrote that lovely hymn, Lord of all being thrown afar. And he says, Before thine ever blazing throne. You see, when you see him in his majesty, you don't offer a petition. If you went into the over room or the grand ballroom of the White House and Mr. Ford was there in his tuxedo and his wife was there in some pretty dress, would you go up and say, Hey, do you happen to have a can of Quaker oil? I need it for my car. I ran out coming in the gateway. You'd feel an idiot, wouldn't you? I said, and I re-say, and one night I'll preach to some degree on it. But what we need, we're getting so indoctrinated. I say again, Christ is off-center. It's all the Holy Spirit. No, sir. There is no Holy Spirit unless Jesus comes. There are no gifts of the Spirit until he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. They're the gifts of Jesus distributed by the Holy Spirit. And you've no right to tell him what gift you want or what gift he shall give you. Now there may be a time when you're urged to pray for a certain, but I'm speaking generally. Yes, there's a baptism of water. Very beautiful. We saw some people baptized last night. There's a baptism of the Spirit. Sure there is, the word of God says. Many of us have enjoyed it. But do you remember the time when Jesus says, Look fellas, I've a baptism to be baptized with. Do you want that? Do you think he had any candidates? If he had, why did they fall asleep in the garden? Don't you think it would have been wonderful to edge it up to Jesus when he's wrestling in prayer and he says, My God, let this cup pass if you can. Will you understand if I tell you Jesus did not, N.O.T., did not die on the cross? He died in the garden of Gethsemane. Let thy will be done in me. You say baptism is an outward sign of an inward work. The cross was an outward sign of something he did in the garden. He'd won the battle. He died the death. You say about a man, a saint, they burned him at the stake and made him a martyr. No, that man died years before he got to the stake. I have a friend, Jock Purvis. He is one of the great men of the world, I think. He's a close friend. He's been a close friend of Norman Grubbs, I guess, for 40 odd years. He went and lived on the roof of the world today with Rex Babington, a Church of England minister. They did a marvellous job there. And he's a great scholar. He's a varsity man and he has a profound knowledge of the history of Scotland, particularly about the martyrs, the men that were burned at the stake. 1666 was the great fire of London. 1665, 64 was a time when the British were persecuting the particularly Presbyterians in Scotland and they died at the stake. And he gives the illustration amongst others. He talks about that famous man, John Brown, who had a beautiful wife with three or four children. He's had about one every year for four years. And one day the dragoons came up to the house. He slipped home. He didn't usually come home in the day. He came home at night, but he slipped home to see his wife, how she was after this recent birth of the church. And they followed him, the dragoons. That is, the redcoats followed him. They dragged him out of the house and they put a pistol to his brow. It's a nice pistol because it had diamonds in the handle. And clay the house and his bloody men were there. And they put the gun there and said, you either recant and promise to serve the state and recant on this gospel you preach or you die. And he said, treat art I die. And the man pulled the trigger and they said his brain's just shot out in a stream at the other side. And she put a little nursing child there on the floor and the other screaming children around her. And she took a handkerchief and she gathered his brains up so she could bury them with a godly husband. And clay the house and his gang said, what do you think to your man now? Ah, she said, I thought he was a saint while he was living. But he's a greater saint now. He laid down his life. But then he tells a lovely story of Hugh McHale. Hugh was about six feet two, big square shoulders. And finally they got him and took him to court in Edinburgh. And people lined the street. Ah, they've got Hughie. They've got Hughie. He was the Apostle Paul to them. Remember these people crept up a mountainside at midnight to have communion. They whispered their prayers and they had men dugging out, watching if they were going to be invaded, just like people have to do in Russia or China today. They caught Hughie McHale. They took him there into the court and they tried him. They sentenced him to die in the grass market in three days. And Hughie came out from the court and he was going down main street and thousands of people were lined up and then he had to take a complete right turn down another street. And the street was just white with handkerchiefs. Everybody was sobbing. Ah, Hughie. Ah, Hughie is going. How many men are they going to kill before the Lord? Ah, Hughie is going. And as Hughie turned the corner, there was another friend of his, an older man called Hughie there. And he was sobbing in his handkerchief and he looked up and he met the eyes of Hughie and Hughie waved to him. Ah, Hughie, you're going to die. You're going to die. You're going to see. Ah, he says, the young 23 year old fellow, put his shoulders back. He says, don't grieve, which is Gaelic for weep. Don't weep, he said. Sure, three days. Hughie, he said, only three days before I see the king in his beauty. Hmm? As much as you love him, would you like to quit right today and go into his presence? Not to escape world tribulation, a disaster, the shortage of food, or the increasing prices. Would you really go because you're so desperately in love with him that you want to see him? You see, that's why, that's why the devil could never get the victory over the apostle Paul. He says, well, if I live, it's Christ, and if I die, it's gain. Boy, that makes the devil sick when you get so spiritual. Ah, so what? If I live on, well, Christ lives in me. I'm already in heaven. This is the end of this message.