Guard the Truth Audio

You're listening to the sermon podcast for the Gate Church in Lethbridge, Alberta. For more information, to contact us or to support this ministry, please visit thegate.org. So the Lord has a way of working through Gareth and it's such a privilege to have him come out here from Victoria and I would love it, Gareth, if you'd come forward. I just want to ask the Lord's blessing upon you as you share the word.

Father in heaven, we thank you for the gift, the beautiful gift it is that you sent Gareth here. You brought him here and I ask, Lord, that your spirit would just continue to be upon him, Lord, that you put into his heart and his mind the things that you have prepared for him and for us to hear. Lord, open our hearts, prepare us to receive from you, Lord, a message.

We ask these things, believing in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Good evening. Whatever he has told you about me, all the good things are true. Don't believe the rest.

Can you hear me clearly, everybody? Oh, good. Appearances can be deceptive. I look like an 87-year-old man, but my mind is that of a 60-year-old man.

My heart is that of a 25-year-old young man, but my arthritis tells me I'm 102. So I have a chair here because if I find a standing is too difficult, I will sit down if that's okay. But I'm excited to be here, bring my friend James, my close, dear friend with me, and we're looking forward to a wonderful weekend.

I trust you are. I was a schoolteacher for many years. When I ask a question, I expect answers, okay? And please, please hear me.

If you want me to stop anywhere and you've got a question, please do so. All right? I'm very at ease with that. I was a schoolteacher for 20 years.

Let me go back. I came to the Lord when I was 16 years of age in Wales, my home country, through a lady who had asked me a question that I could not answer. She simply said these words, tell me, Gareth, what will you do with the Lord Jesus Christ? I didn't know what she meant.

I knew the Bible. I'd been to Sunday school as a little boy. I lost my mother when I was 13.

I hadn't gone to church after that, but I believed in life after death. I played a lot of soccer, and if I scored a goal, I always said, Mom, I hope you were pleased. She never answered me, but I talked to her.

I believed. And then this woman says to me, tell me, Gareth, what will you do with the Lord Jesus Christ? I didn't know how to answer because he died 2,000 years ago. What could I do with him? Next week, I went into this little home where she was holding these meetings, and she asked me the same question.

I still didn't know the answer. So each week, she'd say, I want to talk with you, and I knew exactly what it was for, and I said, no way. So I hid, didn't go into the kitchen where she was.

For about five weeks, I avoided the question. But over those five weeks, I came to realize the whole crux of Christianity is this, that Jesus is alive, just like my mother is alive, I believed. And if I could talk to my mother, then surely I could talk to Jesus.

Then one of the boys in our group said that next Sunday, my brother is going to be speaking at the little church in the village, which is a church of about 15 people. Why don't we all go and swell the congregation for him? So that Sunday, I put on my best clothes, and I went to church for the first time since my mother had died. The speaker was a prefect in the boys' school where I attended.

He knew me, I knew him. We were four to five years apart. At the end of the service, Austin and I started talking.

He asked me what I was doing with my life, and I said, I'm doing my A-levels. He said, what subjects? I said, math and physics. He said, what then? I said, well, I hope to go to university.

He said, what then? I said, well, I'd like to become a schoolteacher. He said, what then? I said, I don't know. He said, tell me, Gareth, what will you do with the Lord Jesus Christ? Exactly the same questions, word for word.

Hasn't God got a strange way of doing this? I went home that night to my empty house. My sister was out, my father was out. I knelt by my bed, and I said words like this, Jesus, if you can hear me right now, would you please come into my heart? Forgive me my sin.

And I said a little song, a little chorus, said into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today, come in to stay, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. I meant it.

Amen. Nothing happened. I got up off my knees.

I didn't feel any different, but I meant that prayer sincerely as a 16-year-old boy. Went to school the next day, and in this boys' grammar school I attended, about 300 boys, you have a little group. It wasn't a gang, but they were my close friends.

I wasn't the best rugby player. I wasn't the best academically. I didn't have the prettiest girlfriend.

I wasn't the best at anything except at telling dirty stories. I had a vivid, I was going to say a good imagination, but a bad imagination. I could tell the best dirty stories.

I knew if I was a Christian, I couldn't tell my dirty stories. So when a friend comes up to me and says, hey, God, have you heard this one? He starts to tell me a dirty story. I move away, and I said, I need to talk with Peter, but at the same time, I want to do the punchline.

That's an awful place to be. The second day, the same thing happened, and I'm going quieter and quieter, and my friends are beginning to see something's different with me. And on the Wednesday, I felt so miserable because my friends didn't quite know how to talk to me, and I did not know how to talk to them.

And Wednesday night, I said, God, I can't go on like this. I can't go on like this. I'm so miserable.

Is this what being a Christian is all about? I'm so miserable. Went to school the next morning. One of my friends comes up to me and said, hey, God, is that right what I've heard about you? They were in a boys' school.

If they've heard something about you, some girl has been talking. So I said, what have you heard about me? Have you been going to that house with that religious woman? And I said, yeah. And I said, uh-oh.

They found out. Have you got saved? Yes. Hey, fellas, that's what's wrong with them.

He's got religion. Hey, say a prayer for me. Can I kiss the ring on your finger? They started making fun of me.

You have to understand, any boy growing up in Wales, we live next door to big England, 60 million people. We are 2 million people. Every little Welsh boy grows up in an inferiority complex.

It's part of our nature. And when a boy has an inferiority complex, he tends to talk a lot and boast a lot and show off a lot. That's our character, my character.

And my friends were making fun of me. And I wanted a hole to open up in the ground to swallow me. And the bell rang for us to go into assembly.

And I followed my friends into assembly. As I walked through that door, suddenly, I knew that I knew I was a child of God. I didn't have any flashing lights.

I didn't have goosebumpy feelings. But I knew, deep within my soul, that I was born of God. I knew.

From that day to this, I have never a question of doubt that God did a work in me that night. And my sincerity and my little boy, in simple words, come into my heart, Lord Jesus, come into stay. The first thing that I was taught as a Christian was you stop playing.

You do not drink alcohol. You do not smoke. You do not go to dances.

You do not keep company with people who do those things. These were the scribal laws that I was told. And the fifth one is you do not play soccer.

Well, I was very keen on soccer, you see. And in Britain, the soccer is associated with football pools, gambling. And Viv, the household man of the house, the woman's husband, played soccer for the local team.

And he had disobeyed God because God had convicted him about playing soccer. And he had fallen over in the game and broken his little finger. And God had judged him and given him sugar diabetes because he was so disobedient to God.

That's what I was taught. The very first things I was taught as a new Christian. I loved those couple.

I loved that couple very, very much. But that was the legalism that I was taught. I thank God I was a radical.

I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. I didn't go to dances.

But I sure played soccer. I always, from the very beginning, was outside the box. And then, to their horror, I started attending a local church in a local town, a Pentecostal church.

Oh my goodness, that was the worst thing that I could ever possibly do. But I loved that couple, and they loved me because God had obviously done the good work. And I grew up in that kind of culture.

I was radically different. I wanted reality. I did not want fakery.

I wanted something real. I had met God in a real way. That day I walked into the school assembly, I knew that he was real.

My first pastor's father came to Christ during the Welsh revival. And Wyn Lewis, the son, my pastor, had a fire in his belly. He had flat feet and a fire in his belly.

And his kind of passion was this, you ship up or you ship out. I'm not interested in you being part of my church if you're not going to follow Jesus fully. I don't want any half-hearted people in my church.

That was his message. I'll give you an example. One day he says to us, we're going to Cairo on Saturday night, up the valleys from our little town where we lived in Wales.

We're going to Cairo Saturday night, and Mel, you're going to sing a solo, and Gareth, you're giving your testimony. I said, well, pastor, I'm sorry, but we're playing away. We're playing a game away in the league on Saturday.

I won't be able to get there. You'll be there or else. I was there in my football kit giving my testimony.

That was my pastor. I thank God for a man like that who took hold of me as a young believer by the scruff of the neck and said, you're going to ship up. I don't want you in this church if you're going to play games with God.

I thank God that man stacked the wood in me that the Holy Spirit lit and set a fire. I got a fire burning in my belly. It has never gone out.

I look back at those days with Wynne Lewis, my first pastor, and I want to see a fire lit in people's bellies. You understand the crudity? I was with a senior pastor in Victoria, oh, six, eight years ago. He was the leader of a ministerium, and Bruce and I were walking.

Bruce said, Gareth, I love being with you. You've got a fire in your belly. My reply was, I know it is a compliment, but my reply was, why doesn't everyone else? Why doesn't everyone else? My passion in traveling, I've traveled and spoken at many conferences.

I speak at a lot of youth conferences. I want to see people getting enamored with Jesus. I want to see people set on fire by Jesus, loving him with a passion.

That's my burden. That's my calling. I came to Canada in 1975.

I was a teacher. I came to teach physics. I taught in Britain.

I taught in Germany with the British forces. I taught in Hong Kong, and then with the joy of coming to Canada in 1975, and I taught in Toronto, and I was teaching at the Hebrew Academy in Toronto. I was the only non-Jew in a staff of about 40 teachers in a very Orthodox Jewish school, Miracles.

I could tell you more stories about that. I was a schoolteacher, but I started attending a Christian and missionary alliance church. We don't have that in Britain, but I'd been in Hong Kong, and I'd worked with missionaries who were with the alliance, and so our first week in Canada, we drive into People's Church.

You may have heard of People's Church in Toronto, Oswald Smith, a very famous church, and we're a bit late, and on route, my wife says, look, there's an alliance church. Why don't we go in there? It's the same with these missionaries, so we went into this alliance church, and we enjoyed it. We enjoyed the pastor and his family, and we felt at home there.

I'm teaching at the Hebrew school, and then the district superintendent asked me if I would consider becoming a pastor. I said, pastor, I can think of no greater honor than to be a pastor, but there's no way I'd become a pastor unless I knew God had called me. And there are too many men in the pulpit who are called pastors, but they do not display the giftings of a pastor.

They're good men. You know what I'm saying? I'm not saying bad men, but they're good men. He said, what are you waiting for? A flash of light from heaven? I said, yeah.

He said, all I want, Gareth, is the witness of the brethren. Then he said, then I said to him, but Mel, I said, I can't afford to go to seminary. I've got three teenage daughters.

I'm earning big money right now, but I haven't got savings. It's the first time I've ever heard big money. He said, I want you as you are.

To cut a long story short, for the next eight months, I'm agonizing with God about this call. I'm the highest paid teacher in Canada when I was at the Hebrew school, other than headmasters. Hebrew school paid way above the odds.

I was earning 33,000 when teachers were getting 28,000. And here I am considering giving it up to become a half-paid pastor on a half salary and a half pension. You don't do that lightly.

The last thing my wife wanted was to be married to a pastor. Her father was an itinerant evangelist. They lived as paupers while he was in Norway.

And finally, after eight years, I said to my wife, Anne, I think God is calling me into the ministry. And my wife, being a godly woman, she always said these words, if God is calling you, you better obey. If God is calling you, you better obey.

She didn't say it, but she meant it. But I don't want to be a pastor's wife. And I left the Hebrew school to become a pastor with the Christian Ministry Alliance.

My very first day in the church in Kitchener, the very first day, a woman comes up to me with a book. Pastor, can you put this back in the church library, which is in my office? A little church of 40 young people. I said, what's it about? She said, it's called Wingspread, written by Toza.

Now, I'd heard of Toza. I said, what's it about? She said, E.B. Simpson. I said, who's he? She said, he was the founder of the Christian Missionary Alliance.

I'm a pastor with the Christian Missionary Alliance. I do not even know the name of the founder. So I bluffed my way through it.

I said, oh, I knew that, of course. So I took the book home. I said, I'd better read this.

And my heart sang as I read this book, because everything I believed. I knew I was in the right place. But I made the foolish assumption that every other Alliance pastor believed the same.

And to my amazement, as time went on, I discovered many of them didn't even believe what the denomination believed. It's called historical drift. John Wesley, if he came back today, would he recognize the Wesleyan Methodist Church? His heart would bleed.

Historical drift is a common phenomena in all churches. Let me talk about Paul. Paul is a great, great evangelist, preacher, travels the world, his world, proclaiming the gospel in the book of Acts, we read.

Establishes churches in many places. Comes to the city of Ephesus, and there he proclaims the gospel, preaches the word, and he finds out 10 believers already there, maybe converted where they've been in Jerusalem, maybe at Pentecost, or maybe when Jesus was crucified. They found 10 believers there, and he nurtured them and built a church He stayed there for two years as their pastor.

And in Acts chapter 20, we read about his time with them, how he was faithful in preaching the word. Let me look at that with you. Acts chapter 20, listen to the words that we read about him there.

Verse 17. After he leaves them, sorry, he goes, he comes back, and he's in Miletus, and he calls the elders of the church to come to see him. He doesn't get back to Ephesus, but he calls them down to him.

And when they come to him, he said to them, you know from the first day that I was with you in Asia, how I was with you, serving the Lord with all humility, with tears, with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you everything that was profitable, teaching you publicly from household, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance towards God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now I'm on my way to Jerusalem, bound by the spirit, not know what is going to happen to me except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me that I will have bonds and affliction await me. I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself.

I may finish the course and the ministry which I received from the Lord to testify solemnly the gospel of the grace of God. And then he goes down and says this, was to the people there, be on guard, be on guard for the things I taught you, guard them. Then he leaves them at Miletus and he journeys on and he sends his young boy who he's mentoring, called Timothy, he tells him to stay on at Ephesus to be the pastor of the church.

He sends him back with the elders. Then Paul goes on and he ends up in prison. And from prison he writes a number of letters, two of which are to Timothy in Ephesus.

And he says to Timothy, guard that which has been entrusted to you. The theme of this conference in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 1, guard that which has been entrusted to you. And my question this evening is, what has been entrusted to Timothy? The message that Paul proclaimed, the truth that Paul proclaimed.

He said to them and to Miletus when the elders came, there are going to be ravenous wolves coming in who are going to try to tear away that which I taught. So Timothy, I want you to guard it. Just as I've entrusted to God my life, he has entrusted to me a ministry.

Timothy, I'm charging you to guard that which God has entrusted to you. The theme of these three days is, what has God entrusted to us? Tonight I want to speak about the message. What message has God entrusted to us as his children, his church? I'm not just talking to pastors and teachers and elders, I'm talking to all of us.

What is the message? Tomorrow night we're going to be speaking about God, the giftings that every one of you has received from the Holy Spirit. And on Sunday, I'm talking Pentecost, I want to guard the fire, the anointing of God. Let's deal with the message.

What is the message that we are called to preach? John the Baptist went around proclaiming, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus, we read, went around preaching, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. He sent his disciples out to the message, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

What do you mean by that? We are offering our churches today community. We are offering them wholesome entertainment. We are offering them good self-image.

We are offering them a utilitarian God who exists to bless us. And we're offering them an unrealistic hope of a future life. Well, it is my sad experience that many of our churches will never even come to the place of repentance and new birth.

I had the privilege of moderating some conferences with Sermon Index. I don't know if you've heard of Sermon Index on the webpage. Sermon Index was started by a young man called Greg Gordon in Toronto, he now lives in BC.

On that Sermon Index, he started with some sermons by an American preacher, his name slips to me at the moment. He put many, many sermons on Sermon Index. There are now tens of thousands of sermons, you can listen online to them.

I was listening to a number of his sermons and I was very blessed except they were so numerous and I'd go on thinking I was going to be listening about something and in the middle of the sermon, the man would say, of course, the day of miracles has passed. I'd go, what? I don't want to hear this man anymore. And so I wrote an email to the webpage.

And I said, is it possible to put your sermons into categories so that I can find the kind of sermons I want to listen to? I get an email back the very next day saying, my name is Greg Gordon. When you write to an email, when you write to a webpage, it could be anywhere in the world. Next thing I said, my name is Greg Gordon.

I'm coming to Victoria at the end of the month, will you mentor me? So I said, yes, I would. So a month later, a young man came and knocked my door six foot six tall with a big black beard. I'm Greg Gordon.

And cut to the chase, he started conferences on revival. And I moderated a number of those conferences for him in Atlanta, Georgia, in Canton, Ohio, in Glasgow, Scotland. And we had this conference, speakers came from all over the world to speak at these conferences.

And we saw God move in a wonderful way. But at one of those conferences in Atlanta, Georgia, Paul Washer stood up to speak. Ten indictments against the North American church.

It was two hours bar one minute long. When I got home, I said to my wife, what do you think of it? Because she's watching it live on TV. She's watching to see that my tie is straight and my hair is combed.

I'm a moderator after all. And she said, I was riveted to the TV. I could not leave the TV.

It was not an easy sermon to listen to. But at the end of that service, a fellow moderator and I are sitting in the front row, maybe 800 people present in that church in Atlanta, Georgia. And Don, my fellow moderator, who was moderating that meeting said, Gareth, I don't know how to close.

Just sit, just sit silent. And so he sat silent. And finally, I got up and I walked up the aisle of this large church, one of these sloping churches.

And I'm the only one on my feet in the entire auditorium. And I got near the back and a man came out of the back rows and grabbed my arm, walked out through the back door, turned left into his offices to the senior pastor of that church. He took hold of my, basically my lapels.

I said, Gareth, tonight you heard a prophet speak. And the church in America had better sit up and take notice. I tell you that not to be condemning, but to say there is a sadness, a sickness upon the church, so much of the church.

And I trust it's not going to be this church, because we have watered down the gospel to become accommodating to people. I want to talk about repentance. A few weeks after my conversion, I'm in that little chapel in the village.

Maybe there's 15 people there. And I'm crying. And I do not understand why I'm crying.

I didn't cry when my mother died at age 13. I was too big. You know, you're not allowed to cry if you're a 13-year-old boy.

And I didn't cry. But here I am crying. I couldn't understand why.

And the people say, are you all right, son? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you sure? Yeah, yeah, I'm all right. But I didn't know why I was crying.

But as I was allowed to cry it through, I realized that God had given to me, as he did to the house of Cornelius, the gift of repentance. He had taken me to the cross. And I saw what my sins did to Jesus.

And the only way I could respond is in tears. What is repentance? Well, I'll give a little illustration first. Well, the first time I met Shane Christie, first time I met Shane, not Christie, was in Port-au-Prince in Haiti.

He was a youth pastor in the church. And I was the speaker that day. How that happened, I have no idea.

But I was. And when I left there to go back to the missions base that I had been visiting, which is maybe 100 kilometers away, we stopped halfway to have coffee with some other missionaries. And while we're sitting around together, one of the missionaries there, his ministry was this.

He was from America. And every week, he would come down to Port-au-Prince to bring out three doctors who were coming from the States. He'd take them to one of his 13 villages up in the mountains, where they had no electricity or running water.

They would preach the gospel, but treat the people medically for any sicknesses. Then he'd bring them back down on a Sunday, take them to the airport to send them back to America, and then pick up three more doctors who would come to the next village. And he did a circuit of 13 villages.

When they finished working in the village with the medical thing, they'd come down to an office, and they'd write up their reports for his medical records. So in a circuit of 13 villages, he had medical records kept by these visiting doctors. And he's there at this coffee time as I'm coming back from Port-au-Prince.

He tells us a story. He said, yesterday, we just finished at the village, and the three doctors are with me typing up their reports. And we suddenly see there's a fire up the hill in the village that we've just come from.

So we jumped in a vehicle to go back up the hill, up the mountain to this village. And when we got there, we found the voodoo doctor, we might think of him as the mayor, the most prominent man in the village, was standing by the burnt-out ruins of his home. We began to commiserate him with what happened.

And he said, no, no, no, no, no. I'd just given my heart to Jesus. So I got all my paraphernalia, put it in my house, and burnt the lot down.

That is repentance. It's a new life, a new beginning. Repentance is not a negative word.

It is a positive word that enters you into all the blessings of God. And I would suggest that without repentance of that kind, you cannot know the blessings of God. Here again, repentance is not a negative word.

It is a positive word. We have people in our churches who come for the community. The little church that James and I attended, we had two brothers come in six years ago, probably Shane and Brian, in their late 20s, good-looking young men.

And they made it very clear the reason they come to church, because they were looking for community. And they realized the best, safest community to be in was in a church community. Brian's hobby was hiking, and I loved hiking.

In those days, he did a lot more. So he and I would hike, and sometimes there'd be 15 of us, sometimes there was just Brian and myself going up all the hills and mountains of Vancouver Island. And I would talk to Brian about the Lord, and Brian would always say, yes, it's okay for you, Gareth, but you know, I got my life ahead of me.

He's an opera singer, by the way, now. He's a trained opera singer, Brian. This is six years ago.

And I prayed for Brian all the time. He's a special guy, but he came to our church openly for community. He called me just before Christmas, living in Vancouver and doing UBC music.

Gareth, I want you to be the first to know. I said, what's up, Brian? I've just given my heart to Jesus. Hallelujah.

He'd taken a trip to northern BC with two cars to a wedding. On the way back, they got caught in a fire. Then they found a garage that was closed because of the fire.

There were so many incidences on their journey back home, and there were two girls in those cars who were Christians, and every time they had problems, they prayed. And Brian gets home to his apartment in Vancouver, and he sat down, and he said, God, I now believe. He gave his life.

But he came to our church for community, and I suspect there are others in our church. If you ask them, how do you know that your sins are forgiven? I suspect there may be several who could not tell you. Have you ever experienced an inner witness of the Spirit of God that you are a child of God? And I suspect, because we're given easy believerism in our churches, say this prayer after me.

Repeat the four spiritual laws. Do you know God has a wonderful purpose for your life? God's purpose for your life is hell unless you receive Christ as your Savior. But we've given them all these platitudes, easy believerism.

Are we afraid of the truth when the truth is so liberating, so gloriously freeing? Let me repeat. Repentance is the key that opens up all the blessings of God. Pastors, if you're a pastor, never, ever fail to preach repentance.

Bring people to the cross. Let them see their sin. Let them cry.

I was in Mexico. I lost my heart in Mexico City, and I went to Mexico City to a young couple with three young children. I love them dearly.

They live in a two-room concrete block with no running water, no electricity. When I went there, they gave me their bedroom, and all five of them slept in the other room. That was how much they loved me.

I went out with him, and we spoke at pastors' conferences, and large, large conferences he pulled together. But I listened to him preach, and my Spanish isn't that wonderful, but I looked at the charts he had, and I had some strange thoughts. Where is he getting these thoughts from? I'm lying in my bed one day, and I saw alongside me some pile of papers.

That was like the chart I just saw on the wall in the conference, and I picked it up. It was a cult. It was a sect run by an American woman in New Mexico.

He was translating for me, and I thought he was a Christian. He is a brother, but the sect was so strange in some of his teachings. I'm in Brazil.

I'm staying at the home of a pastor in Brazil, and he says to me, and I don't want to give names, but a very famous American evangelist is down there. He's got all his tapes. He wanted me to listen to him, and I said, I never listen to him.

It's all you need to. It's wonderful stuff. So to humor him, I listened to his tape, and the teacher, please forgive me, I don't want to give names, is teaching about the tabernacle in the Old Testament.

He's got this beautiful chart, and he's made a model tabernacle in the desert down in Arizona somewhere. He starts talking about the curtains. These represent this, and these three rings, these ropes made of three strands, because three strands.

I said, where did he get that from? Where did he get that from? Then I saw them all sitting down with these beautiful, beautiful binders that these evangelists had produced, and inside, they're following, everybody's doing the same thing, and they're ticking off these same things, and number one, it's excellent. Number two, but number three, and four, and five are his own imagination, nothing to do with the Bible, and I said to my Brazilian pastor, this is not biblical. Oh, yes, it is.

It's a tragedy what has been taught in some old churches, and it's a tragedy within the Christian and Missionary Alliance, that the Alliance pastors don't even believe in God, the message. Timothy, there is ravenous wolves coming in who are going to rob you of the message. God, the message to me.

This word, God, is a very interesting thing. It's paratheke, not message, but God, that treasure, the treasure. The Greek word is paratheke.

I'm not a Greek scholar. I did study Greek, and I did quite well in it, but I don't claim to be a Greek scholar, but I often look at the Greek words, because they say so much more than the English word, and a paratheke is a sacred deposit. In the times of Jesus, people didn't have banks.

If you had wealth, if you had money, and it was sold properly, you didn't put it in a bank. There were no such things as banks, so you kept it hidden somewhere in your home, but if you're going to go away and travel, do you take it with you, or do you trust it to a close friend whom you can trust with this, knowing that you're going to get it back when you return? That's what they had to do, and that was called a paratheke, and Paul says to Timothy, Timothy, God wants you to be like a paratheke. He is entrusting you with a treasure, because he wants to see this treasure come into fruition.

It's his treasure, not yours, but he wants you to be the guardian, guard the treasure, and Timothy, I'm charging you, guard that which has been entrusted to you, the message. Paul then wrote a book, one of his beautiful books, the book of Colossians to the church of Colossae in Asia Minor. It's a beautiful book, and in it he talks about his supremacy of Jesus, the glory of Jesus.

He's in prison when he's writing it, because he writes at the same time as he writes the letters of Philemon, because Philemon lives in Colossae, and Onesimus, his slave, has been converted. Paul has amended him. He's now going to send him back to his master in Colossae, and he sends a letter to the Colossian churches at the same time, naturally, but he's so caught up with the theme of Colossians, he decides to write another book to send it to all the churches of Asia Minor, and he says to the people of Colossae, you're going to get another letter coming to you from Laodicea, and pass on to those churches the letter I'm sending.

He wanted these letters to circulate the seven churches of Asia Minor, but there isn't any letter in the Bible addressed to the Laodiceans, is there? But there is a letter addressed to the Ephesians, where Timothy is pastor, except that it's a very strange letter, because there's no mention of any of the friends that Paul knew in Ephesus, even though he'd been pastor there for two years. Every other lad, he says, pass my greetings on to so-and-so, pass my greetings, and don't remember, but to the letter to the Ephesians in your Bible, there is no personal note at all, but Paul pastored there for two years. You see, it was not meant for the Ephesian church.

It's meant to be circular to all the churches. It is Paul's most precious letter, and because Timothy is involved with Ephesus, it's my favorite book. I want you to understand the treasures that the message has for you, as seen in the book of Ephesians.

Well, why don't I look at it with you? You've got your Bible, look at the letter to Ephesians. We're going to go very quickly to see some of the blessings of the life that has been repentant. Listen to these words.

In Him, we have redemption. Blessed be the God and Father, Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ. Can you give testimony today of being blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus? This is the inheritance of the man or woman who's come through repentance.

This is the doorway, the key. The whole letter is like this. Paul is so enamored with the thoughts in this letter that he actually runs off and on and on and on, and his scribe is trying to write.

In this letter, there are three sections that are so long that you could not possibly say them without breathing, but in the Greek, there are no commas at all. My favorite book. Have you ever heard of the book, Sit, Walk, Stand by Watchman Lee? Have you ever heard the book? It's 90 pages long.

When I was a young youth pastor and young youth leader in Wales, somebody gave me the book, Sit, Walk, Stand by Watchman Lee, written from prison in China. It's 90 pages long. It's based on the book of Ephesians.

For this is the word that Paul says in Ephesians letter to us. In Him, we have been seated in heavenly places. Is that the message that your people in your church know, that you have been seated in heavenly places? It's one I revel in, that in Christ, God has accepted me in Him.

That I'm seated in Him. In Him, I have received an inheritance. In Him, in Him, in Him.

I want you to read it yourself when you get home. See how often the phrase in Him comes up. This is the blessing of the repentant of life.

By the way, I was going to say a little while, and I omitted it. This young couple in Mexico, I went to their church, and as you came into the church, there were tissue boxes at the doorway, Kleenex tissues, and everybody picked up some tissues and went to the pews and wept. Everybody.

For 10 minutes before the service, they'd be at the pews weeping. Whether they were confessed, I didn't understand it, but they felt the need to repent in the public act of weeping, because the Anglican confession has it. We confess our sins as part of the confession.

But back to my message in Ephesians, listen to some of the riches. In Him, in Him, we have received these things. Let me read this prayer.

Think of these words, listen to this now. In Him, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed, you have been sealed in Him. If you're sealed, you can't lose that.

This is the treasure. Be faithful to God, this treasure, with the Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us a pledge of our inheritance. And then comes these words.

For this reason too, I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which exists among you and your love for all the saints. I do not cease giving thanks for you, make a mention of you in my prayers. This is Paul's letter.

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that God will give to you wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. He's not talking about this knowledge.

He's talking about an intimate relationship with God. How many people in your church, including you, have an intimate relationship with God? That you know Him with such a depth that He is closer than a brother, that He is that close to you? Or is your knowledge of God simply this? The treasures of the Christian life for that man, that woman who's come through the cross, who's come through repentance, the key that opens into the blessings of being in Him, inheritance in Him, seated in Him. Paul prays now that you would have a revelation, the knowledge of Him.

Such knowledge only comes by revelation. God gives it. I had the joy of leading a man to the Lord.

His name was Les Smith. Les Smith was a quiet, strong man. He's having problems with his teenage son, and he actually confessed to me he's afraid that one day he might lose his temper and injure his boy.

So as we talked in my church office, he wept, and we prayed together, and he gave his life to Christ. He said, Pastor, would you come to my home, please? I've got so many questions to ask you. So I said, sure, Les.

So on a Saturday morning, my wife and I went to his home, and his wife, Anne, and my wife, Anne, and they'd invited others, and there were 14 of us sitting in his living room. And I'm sitting on the lazy boy chair. Do you have lazy boy here? With the feet up, I'm the guru.

And there's Les across from me, and I'm answering his questions. And then Les says, Pastor, please teach me how to pray. So I said, well, Les, I said, prayer is simply talking to the Lord and listening to Him talk to you.

Do you believe the Lord is here tonight? They did exactly the same. They nodded their heads, all 14 of them, or 13 plus me. I said, where is he? I can't see him.

They said, well, he's a spirit. Okay, I said, so let's imagine that he, the spirit, is sitting right here. And I pulled a dining room chair up alongside me.

Didn't plan it this way, but it turned out that I was actually closed in the circle. Then I laughed. They said, did you see what I just did? It didn't cross my mind, but I kicked down the lazy boy chair when I pulled this chair in.

Because there's no way I could be lounging there if the king of kings is sitting right next to me. They said, what would you do if the queen walked in here today? And somebody said, well, we'd all stand. I said, yeah, you'd all stand very quietly, very reverently.

You wouldn't speak out to turn unless she spoke to you. I said, we're far greater than the queen is here. The king of kings is here.

He's sitting right there. Am I making fanciful stories, or is that the promise of Jesus? Where I am, where two or three are gathered. Do you believe that? I do.

I said, let's just sit right here. I said, prayer is talking to her. I turned to the chair and I said, Lord Jesus, I want to thank you so much for being there tonight with us.

I want to thank you for dying on the cross for me, Lord, and for making me your child. I'm going to tell you I love you, Lord. I said, let's talk to the Lord.

And Lez looked at the chair and he said, Lord Jesus, a week ago, I didn't know you as my savior, but now you've come into my heart and into my home. Oh, no, no, no, no. This isn't my home anymore.

This is your home, Lord. I never taught him that. Brand new Christian.

Then his wife talked to the chair. Then my wife talked to the chair. Then Jenna talked to the chair.

We went around the room. We got halfway around these 14 people and I could feel a hair on the back of my neck going up. Something was being birthed in this room.

He came around to Gordon, the last one, he whispered to the chair. And every single one of them, 14 people had tears running down their faces onto their chins. They weren't even wiping them away.

They were on their chins, every single one of them. I said, you know what's happened, don't you? I said, the Lord is here. Oh, no, no, no.

I said, he's been there all the time. But he's made his presence known. The following Sunday in our church, we were having worship time and people were offered to a prayer.

Lez got up and prayed a beautiful prayer because he knew whom he was talking to. It could have been in his presence. When was the last time you were in church and you walked us in? God was here.

Is God here with us tonight? The Lord here with us tonight? Is your heart such that he would make his presence known to you? Because he wants to. And Paul's prayer for you, as it is for the Ephesian church, these are the treasures that we have. I pray that the God and Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, will grant you wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of himself.

Not the knowledge here, but the knowledge here. I've experienced that a number of times. Oh boy, I wish it was continuous.

But every time I hunger and hunger and hunger, I've heard an audible voice three times. Please, please, please, this doesn't make me stupid. I know people.

I'm working on a ship in Africa. I'm the pastor of the ship. I'm a spiritual leader.

I'm in Cardiff, Wales, doing the advance work for the ship. It's due to come in in three weeks time. I'm walking back across the fire gardens in Cardiff.

Beautiful, beautiful park. Seven o'clock in the evening. It's dusk.

Beautiful evening. There's a lot of litter lying around. I pick it up to put it in the garbage bin, and I look at it and it's pornography.

And I felt so dirty. That was my bane when I was a non-Christian. And I felt so dirty.

And I put it in the garbage bin and I sat on the bench and I started to cry. I'm a pastor. I've spoken in huge churches by this time.

I'm known throughout Europe at this time. I'm known in Africa, but I'm dirty. I began to cry.

And I heard the Lord speak. He said, do you think I love you any less now than I did before you picked that paper up? Do you think I love you any less now than I did before you picked that paper up? I said, no, Lord, I know you love me. I love you.

I made you the way you are. And I'm pleased with what I made. And I began to worship him.

In my tears, I raised my arms and I began to worship him. And I learned right then whenever that arrow of evil comes in, I immediately turn it into praise. I tell you what, when you do that, Satan runs.

He's not interested in promoting that. These are the treasures we have as the children of God, his presence. He wants to make his presence known, but he will only make his presence known to the man or woman who's been to the cross.

Moses meets God at the burning bush. He goes and he sees the miracles, the plagues. He comes out across the Red Sea with God.

He's on the mountain with God. He hears God speak. He has the Ten Commandments.

And there is the golden bullet they made for worship. And Moses cries out, oh God, oh God, show me your glory. And God says, Moses, I cannot show you my face, or you will surely die.

But I know your name. And because I know your name, I'm going to tell you my name. My name is the Forgiven One, the Father who forgives the faithful.

That is my name. I'm telling you this. I'm revealing my attributes, my character to you, Moses, because I know who you are.

What is your name? Is it doubter? Fearful? Hypocrite? Timorous? Or is it faithful? Overcomer? Victorious One? What is your name? Because your name determines how much of God is going to reveal himself to you. And God wants to reveal himself to his people. This is not a utilitarian God who exists to bless us.

We exist to bless him. And as we pour out our praise and worship, he's pleased to make himself known to us. Don't you want that? That's the treasure we are supposed to guard.

But it only comes to the man or woman who has been to the cross and wept in repentance for the sinfulness. Let me go on to see what Paul says further in this prayer. You might have wisdom and revelation and knowledge of God.

He might make himself known to you so that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you know the hope of his calling. To Paul, hope was one of three treasures. Faith, hope, and love.

Now, we think of love, agape love, we hold in high esteem. We think of faith, but faith, well, but hope, you know, well, that's a dubious word. I mean, I hope it doesn't rain this evening, but it might.

Hope your marriage lasts, but it may not. It's got a negative possibility to it. That's the English word.

But the Greek word has no such possibility. The Greek word alpes means that which is certain. And when Paul speaks about it being a treasure equivalent to love and faith, he's making it a very, very precious jewel.

And Paul is praying that you might know the hope of your calling. Paul later was brought before King Agrippa. He's a prisoner in Jerusalem before St. Jerome.

And King Agrippa's got a visitor. Herod has come to visit him. So King Agrippa wants to show off his prime prisoner.

She calls him up from a dungeon to stand before Herod. And he said, Paul, bring him something. What do you want to talk to him? So Paul stands before these two leaders, these two great men and says, I thank you for the privilege of standing before you today.

These men, these Jews have accused me of insurrection, but I'm standing before you today because of the hope of the resurrection. He's not saying, man, I hope it's a resurrection. I hope I haven't given up a great career to follow as Jesus and have been all a fake.

I hope, he's not saying that. He said, I know that I know that I know. That's what hope is, an anchor within the veil.

And that's one of the riches that we have to God, but only comes to the man or woman who's come to the cross in repentance. I pray that you might know the hope of his calling, that you might know the exceeding greatness, that you might know the hope of his calling and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. What is glory? The very presence of God I just talked to you, that were glorious.

And there should be the norm in our churches that people should come to our churches and walk away saying, God was there. And that you might know thirdly, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power to us who believe. What power has the church got today? I work on the streets in Victoria.

18 months ago, I was with five pastors like myself, retired. Pastors should never retire. You can't retire if God has called you.

You may not be in the pulpit or in the salubrity. You can't retire. Come on.

And we pray for our city. And at that time, the provincial government of BC and the federal government are at loggerheads about whether drugs could be allowed in hospital for overdose patients from the streets. And we pray for our city.

One of the men with this comment, he said, when is the government going to realize they have no answer to the street crisis? Only Jesus is the answer. I took that as a cue and I went down Pandora Street, which is one of our major arteries in Victoria where all the drug addicts hang out. I went into our place, which was set up as a Christian ministry, which has now become secularized, historical drift.

You can't even mention Jesus there anymore. Lovely, clean place. I was impressed.

You could have showers in there. You could buy coffee in there. Lovely, but don't mention Jesus.

I walked across the road and there were a group of people with leather jackets on. And I wonder what was going on. And as I arrived, I heard them crying out and shouting.

A girl at the back had overdosed, a young woman. So they all rushed to her. So I said, what's going on here? One of the young men said to me, this is for drug addicts.

This was in November. This is a warming place. They can come in here and keep warm in the building here.

We only deal with drug addicts here. There's homeless, there's drug addicts, there's all sorts of people on the streets. I'm talking in the hundreds, many hundreds.

And then he said, you need to talk to Jimmy. So Jimmy came over to me. He comes up to hear me.

Twice my weight. He's got tattoos in every part of his body you can see. He's got rings on every finger.

He's got rings in his ears. He's got a mohawk hairstyle, shaved head. He's everything I'm not.

His father was a, he died last year. His father was a leading light in the Hells Angels in Quebec. A very, very violent man.

Jimmy has spent 15 years in prison. Violent, for crimes, violent, self-violence. This is the man I'm standing up with.

And I said, hi, Jimmy. I said, my name is Gareth. I'm a pastor in the city.

I said, I meet with some pastors and we pray for the people on the streets here, but we don't know how to pray. And I wonder if you can tell us how we can pray. What's the need that we can pray for? Because we believe Jesus is the only answer.

Jimmy said to me, Jesus is the answer. So I said, well, how much do you know about Jesus, Jimmy? He said, I'm trusting him as my savior. There you go.

This man, if he came into most churches, would not be welcome, believe me. He looks the part. You're the same to me.

I'm trusting Jesus as my savior. So he and I went into McDonald's to talk. He'd gone through a 12-step program in Vancouver.

He'd gone to a rehabilitation program, which had a Christian basis to it. And he and his wife, or his girlfriend, came out saved. They'd been together.

They were in Alberta. I won't remember to tell the story. He went to deliver a message to a man who was violating women in a city in Alberta somewhere.

Told his man, his friend, to stand guard at the door while he went in and sought this man. And by sought him out, I mean physically. He beat him up very badly, trusting that the man would never go to the police because the police don't want to know all these people.

When he comes out, his friend says to me, he heard footsteps running. So he went and found this girl hiding in the bushes. And she said to him, please take me with you.

She fled from Alberta law and came to BC. Ended up on the streets in Victoria. They both became drug addicts 15 years ago.

They had two children on the street. They lost them both to the social services. Jimmy ends up in prison having beaten up some social service workers because they were taking his child from him.

He comes out of prison and he says, I want my kids back. So he goes to a pastor on the street who was liberal, artistic. But none of us evangelical pastors would have anything to do with it because he was liberal.

But he was doing what Jesus would do. Two o'clock in the morning, feeding the hungry and giving his shoes away. He went to Al and he said, Al, I need to get my children back.

Please help me. Al sent him to a treatment. In this treatment, he gave his life to Jesus.

He came back on the streets, he and his wife to minister to the friends on the street for four years. I said to him over the next week, I said, in all your time on the streets, how many other Christians did you meet? Because there are other Christian ministries on the street. He said, you're the first Christian I've ever met.

My friend James now heads up a consortium ministering to him. And he is now a group of people forming this ministry of lion's pride. And God is moving in my city.

His power is being manifest because it's only his power that's going to bring down the walls of the drug addicts. And we are seeing drug addicts in Victoria coming to Christ. And most of the churches are ignorant of it.

That's what I'm involved in at the moment, because I want to serve a God who wants to make his presence known. A God who wants to manifest his power. And it's only going to happen in churches where they guard the message.

We're not interested in entertainment. It should not be. Well, don't get me wrong.

I love entertainment. I love sport. But I love my God, my Jesus.

And I want to see his message proclaimed in churches. Paul goes on in the book of Ephesians. He says these words, be filled with the spirit.

Keep on being filled with the spirit. Become worshipers, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks in all things, being servants to one another. This is the evidence of being filled with the spirit.

Then he goes on and says, fight the good fight, walk in light, walk in the truth. This is what he's ordering us to do. He's not inviting us to do it.

He's ordering us to do it. He says to his disciples, all authority is given to me. Therefore, go and preach this.

When he says all authority, he says, I'm the king. Listen to me. Listen to me.

I'm your king. A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. He didn't give you an option.

Where do we get this notion from? I can love the lovely, but I wouldn't love the rest. I disagree then theologically. So God excuses me for not loving him.

Where do you get that from? Where do we get that from? It certainly isn't God. It certainly isn't the message of the cross. It certainly isn't the gospel truth, the treasure with which we've been entrusted.

God has entrusted this to us and he's going to hold us accountable for it. Then he said, take up the whole armor. I want you to become soldiers.

I do not want you sitting at ease in your sunset, in your oases. So many churches today are oases. The oases are found in the desert.

I'm not interested in living in the desert with quails and manna. Quails and manna make me sick. I've tasted the honey and the grapes from Canaan and that only can satisfy I want a drink of the wells.

And yet so many churches are oases in the desert. Oh, God, shake us. Shake us until we become people of your word, until we become soldiers who fight in.

I'm sorry I get passionate about this. It's not my welshness. It's just this passion.

I feel so strongly about this. I was watching the Olympics from Mexico City. I don't know what year it was.

20 years ago. I was watching it on my TV. And the last event in the Olympic Games was the marathon.

I don't know if you've been to Mexico City. Mexico City is in a bowl. And the humidity, because the clouds come down, it holds the heat in that bowl at night.

It becomes a very, very humid city. And so to run the marathon, they decided to run it late at night, at nine o'clock or whatever it was starting. And the runners had come in.

It's the very last event. Next day is the big parade. And they'd come back, and the gold and brown and silver medals had already been awarded.

And the message comes back, there's somebody out on the road, still out there, one of the marathon runners. Any other marathon, they could have closed the marathon down then. But this is the Olympic Games.

So they have to let the man finish. And they closed the stadium down, except for lights along the grandstand in the final 100 meters. And there are people, maybe 200 remain, and all the officials down in the field.

And then this man comes through the gates. I think it was Sierra Leone, one of the African countries. He comes in, and he's got no shirt on, but his shirt is wrapped around his leg, and it's covered with blood.

He'd been knocked down by a vehicle on the road. I watched this. This was on my TV.

Albeit a recording, but there it was on my TV. And he staggered down that last 100 meters, and he crossed the line, and he collapses. And the doctors are there lifting him up.

And one of the doctors says, you should have come in. You could do yourself permanent damage. This young South African, or this young African boy said these words, my country did not send me here to enter the marathon.

They sent me here to complete it. And Jesus did not die on the cross for the lukewarm church that we have in Canada so many times. He's looking for a people of passion in whom He can reveal Himself and His power, that we will be a people of glorious hope, that we will walk in victory with Him coming to the cross, wanting to be soldiers who are well-disciplined, determined, as I am determined, to finish this race well.

Brothers and sisters, all of you, guard that treasure. Pastors, guard this treasure. People of God of this church, be open to the pastor's ministry as he nurtures you in becoming a good, good, good warrior in the battle.

Have done with lukewarm things. Have done with entertainment in the church. Have done with a utilitarian God.

Your God is worthy, worthy, worthy of so much more than we can possibly offer Him. So that we can offer Him the meager selves that we are is amazing to me, that you should love me as you do and be the God thou art, His darkness to my intellect, but such sunshine to my heart. Guard, guard the treasure that is entrusted to you.

Amen.