Tag: Faith

“The Personal Application of Christ’s Coming into the World”

Sunday, February 28, 1954

The seventeenth verse of John’s third chapter, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” This is really a part of John 3:16, joined to it by a connective for, for God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

Now, our Lord makes, or the verse here makes, three related statements. And these statements are so meaningful, so momentous, so critically important to the human race, that in the most conservative language we may properly say of this verse that it constitutes a proclamation extraordinary.

Now, there are three statements here. One of them is that God sent His Son into the world. The other one is that He did not send Him to condemn the world. And the third is, that He sent Him in order that the world might be saved. To show you that I do not read anything into it, that I merely show you what is there. Let me read Charles Kingsley Williams’ translation. He puts it in the positive instead of the negative. The meaning is precisely the same. For God sent His Son into the world, not to judge the world, but that through him, the world might be saved. That’s the same verse stated in the positive.

Now, I have been mulling this over this last week knowing that tonight I was going to attempt a sermon on it. I’ve been lying at night thinking about this, and walking around thinking about it. For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that through Him the world might be saved. And I have a question that I want to ask, not about that verse, but about our reaction to it. It might be called the unanswered question. And that question is, since this is the proclamation extraordinary; since this is and constitutes a proclamation so meaningful and so momentous, then why the apathy concerning it on the part of the people, even Christian people.

Now, in the full sound of this proclamation, this proclamation that God sent His Son into the world, that He did not send him to condemn, that He did send Him to save. I say in the full sound of this proclamation, more gravely significant this proclamation is than any declaration of war or proclamation of peace, any plague, or any news from afar, any discovery of any new continent, or even a new world would not be compared with this. And yet in the full light of it, people are indifferent. Upon our eyes there seems to have fallen a strange dimness. And on our ears, there seems to have fallen a strange dullness. And in our minds, there is a stupor, and in our hearts I I’m afraid, a great callousness. The very fact that one feels bound up, that in reading this over and thinking about it, and seeing the brilliant shining quality of it, and the significance of it to the human race, that this has been heard and we’re so little stirred up about it. That is as wonderful as the verse itself, in a different way. So wonderful, so terrible that this verse should be here.

Now if it wasn’t here, I could understand why we could go our way, and as Tennyson says, nourish a dumb life within the brain like sheep. If that verse was not there, then I could see why we could all come to church and sit in stoical silence. Why we could kneel in prayer and mumble into a deaf ear that doesn’t hear us. Why we can rise in the morning and I’m more concerned to whether the paper has arrived than with whether this verse is here or not. If the verse hadn’t been here, I could understand our apathy. I could explain our indifference, I could say it is the indifference of despair. I could say it is the apathy of despair like the Israel in Egypt for 400 years; generation that followed generation in slavery, generation after generation in bondage. And therefore, when a new generation of Jews came up, they didn’t expect anything but bondage. They were someone like who had languished in a prison camp for so many years, their friends have died and forgotten them. And they had no hope ever of having it otherwise. So their jaws hung and their brows sloped and their shoulders were bent and they had no expectation.

If this verse were not here, I’d know why we’re the way we are. If this proclamation extraordinary had not been made, I could understand how we can be so unhappy. I can understand how the human race should walk around looking down at the earth like the beasts and rarely looking at the sky. I could understand it then. But in the light of the fact that it was made 2,000 years ago, then I asked the question, what’s the matter with us? What’s the matter with Christians? And what’s the matter with the unsaved man who hears the message. What’s the matter with people every place?

Now, I say that this great stupor is upon us. And I feel it even here tonight. I sense it even here tonight. People think this is a spiritual church. I wish they knew all I know about it. And I wish they had to live with it all the time. I think a lot of people would change their mind if they knew how little of response there was, how little of that sensitivity of the Spirit, how little of that urgency of the heart, and how much of the world. I believe that this apathy that is upon us, is a tactical victory for organized evil. I don’t know too much about the dark spirits that move up and down in the world. I know as much as I want to know. I want to know even less as I grow nearer to God in grace. But I know that the Bible teaches, that there are sinister spirits that walk up and down. There are even organized spirits. Perhaps it’s what it means when He talks about principalities and powers and mights and dominions. It does not mean the good ones, then it must mean the opposite ones. There are undoubtedly abroad, invisible to the naked eye and perhaps even inaudible to the ear, but they are abroad and they are the legions of hell. They are the fifth column of iniquity present in the world, and their business is to subvert, introduce and destroy and bind and kill, like the thief that got into the fold.

I believe that after years of beating the propaganda of hell into human ears and beating us over the head until we’re groggy and punch drunk, and without any aspiration or hope, and without immortal dreams. I believe it’s a tactical victory for the devil. And I believe more than that, the very somber countenance you and I wear tonight is an astonishment to the unfallen creatures yonder. For there are the unfallen legions, the watchers, the holy ones, the seraphim, cherubim, the angels, the archangels, the holy creatures that never fell. And I know not how much they know, but they must know something, for they have been sent to announce the birth of Jesus in one instance. They were sent to announce the resurrection of Jesus in another instance. And in the book of Revelation we see them fly in midheaven and move about among men. So, they must be there, or rather, they must be here. And that we can take all of this with such indifference, must be an astonishment to holy creatures.

We say it is just that we are not like holiness people. We don’t roll in the straw and claim tent poles, that we are more sober, we’re better educated, that were more cultured. If I thought that were true then I would say, Thank God. But I don’t think that’s true at all, because as soon as the benediction is pronounced here, you couldn’t hear the archangel Gabriel if he blew his horn twenty feet up above the earth toward heaven because of the talk and the noise and the exuberance and the freshness and the interest and the smiles and all the rest. But when it comes to such a proclamation as that God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, we take it with an apathy and indifference. That is not a proof of our culture, but a proof of our sin. Not the proof that we are better educated, but a proof that we are more hardened.

Now, I believe not only is this a victory for organized evil and an astonishment to unfallen creatures, I believe also it’s a great grief to the God on High. I believe God loves enthusiasm. Not the enthusiasm of fanaticism, but I believe that God loves enthusiasm.

The Lord Jesus Christ had a special fondness for babies. And I think that He loved babies because they were so vigorous and buoyant and unsophisticated and fresh. And their reactions were unmediated, and they were not sickly dour with the pale cast of thought, to quote from Shakespeare. They just do what they do out of simplicity and its immediate response of their young hearts. And the Lord must have loved them. He laid His hands on their head and said that the kingdom of heaven is like these and made a great deal of the babies. And the theologians of course ever since have been tossing and kicking these babies around wanting to know what it all means. And simple-hearted people know that Jesus just loved babies was all. That’s all. He loved the bald ones and the hairy ones and the redheads and all the rest of them, because there was something about them that hadn’t yet been spoiled.

Do you know Wordsworth’s famous conceit? It is only a conceit, and is probably not true, but there’s something fresh about it. He says that when we are born, we come down from God trailing clouds of glory, that coming from the fresh hand of God; we come trailing clouds of glory and a little bit of heaven lies around the growing boy. Then as he travels further from his home, sad and tragic as it may be, as he travels further from his home, the glory disappears and evaporates. And that little bit of heaven that lies around the newborn boy, disappears like dew before the sun and finally, it’s no heaven anymore, and no glory anymore. But, he forgets God and his heart is hard and the earth shuts around him and he’s a carnal man in a fallen world.

My God, that we might have something happen to us that would toss us suddenly back into our childhood again, that it would grab us up and throw us back into the cradle of the human race and lay us and stretch us on the cool ground, and get us once more in rapport with the powers of God in the world and in grace. But these hard crusts get over our heart, this lack of sophistication, or this sophistication, this lack of simplicity, this defensiveness. I’m hardly talking to a man or woman or a young person tonight above ten that doesn’t have his guard up against me. They’re not afraid of me. They have known me around here since the beginning. But, they’re afraid, nevertheless of what I’m going to say; there’s a guard up there, and there’s a quick parry. Every preacher that preaches to congregation these days is fencing with masters. He lunges and plunges, and I don’t know the language of the fencers. I never fenced and don’t intend to. I’ve mended fences. And he’s always fencing with his audience.

And it’s very rare that anyone comes anymore to the house of God, and with guard down and head bowed and sits before you to hear what God will speak unto us. We have become so learned and so worldly and so sophisticated and so blasé and so burned out and so bored and so religiously tired and beat up, the freshness and delight, the trails clouds of glory, seems to have gone from us. And it’s the great need of this hour my friends that a verse like this when it is read, should have an instant response in the human race, a response afresh and alive. The very fact that I have to talk like this is incriminating in itself.

And I want to know why this is that God’s should send this proclamation extraordinary, “God sent His Son into the world.” He did not send His Son to condemn the world, but He sent Him that the world might be saved. And we take it with such apathy. Who has poisoned our cup? What evil alliances have we made? What has sin been doing to our hearts? What devil has been working on the strings of the heart of our soul? Who’s been giving us sedatives? Who’s been feeding us the medicine of apathy. What’s happened to us, that we can talk about this, sing about this, preach about this, and it leaves us untouched? O Dear God. I sympathize with old Wordsworth when he said, “I would rather be a heathen, a heathen, and believe in an outworn heathen creed than stand on the shore of the ocean and  imagine that I could hear old Neptune or old Triton blow his horn and have something alive in me than to be a civilized Christian to which everything has died. The world is too much with us. Getting and spending late and soon we wasted our powers.

Well, God sent His Son into the world. But He didn’t send Him into the world as a judge. He sent him into the world as its Savior. There are the three ideas in that verse. And I say that for importance, there’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like this in other related scriptures that say about the same thing. Nothing like this in all the wide world. For the human race in its present condition, this is it. There may be a time way out yonder in the glorious tomorrow when all this is over and sin has passed away and the shadows have been driven from the sun and the brows of men are no longer furrowed and we are like Him and know Him and see Him as He is. And His name is on our forehead as we gaze on His countenance, and the slippery path we once trod is now only a memory fast fading. It may be that there will be other and newer and grander proclamations that God may make based upon this one. But, for us in our present condition, there is no proclamation as great; this is it. The proclamation extraordinary that God sent His Son into the world, and sent Him into the world that the world might be saved.

Now, it says, God sent His Son into the world. And I’d like to take one word and change it here and not change it at all, but just change it for you tonight. And yet, it’s exactly what God said and meant. The “world” there doesn’t mean geography. He doesn’t say, He sent His Son into the Near East. He sent His Son into Palestine. He sent His Son to Bethlehem. He sent His Son to the corner of second and ninth, if there were any streets in that sweet, tiny little town where he was born. No, it doesn’t have a geographical or an astronomical meaning. It has nothing to do with kilometers and distances and continents and isles and space and topography and mountains and towns. He came to Palestine. Of course He came to Bethlehem. Certainly He came to the Near East. Certainly He came to the little land that lies between the seas. Sure, all that’s true, but that isn’t what it meant here, and that isn’t why He came.

God sent His Son into the world means, He sent His Son into the human race. The “world” here, that God so loved the world doesn’t mean God so loved geography. It doesn’t mean that God so loved the snow-capped mountains or the sun-kissed meadows or the flowing streams or the great ice peaks of the North.  God may love all of them. I think He does. I think you can’t read Job and the Psalms without knowing that God’s in love with the world He made, but that’s not what it means here. God sent His Son to the human race. He came to people, Jesus Christ came to people. If we could only remember that friends. Jesus Christ came to people, not the white people, not capitalists, not communists, not Republicans, not Democrats, not carpenters, not artists, not writers. He came to people, people, people! These other things are only incidental, but it’s people that He came to. For some reason, God loved people. And we can use generic terms you know, and general terms and pretty soon we’ve become scientific in our outlook. Let’s break that all down. Let’s dump it out the window. God sent His Son to the people of the world. And His Son came into and unto and upon the people of the world. And He even became one of those people. God sent His Son to the people of the world.

He sent His Son to the people, living people. Look at them, think of them, call them before us tonight. Imagine if you could be like Puck and draw a ring around the earth in forty weeks. Imagine that if you could be like some star above, or the moon and gaze all over the world in twenty-four hours. Imagine what you would see. You would see the crippled and the blind and the lepers. You would see the fat and the lean and the tall and short. You would see the dirty and the clean. You would see them walking the avenues, bold and upright without fearing a policeman. You would see them skulking in back alleys and crawling through windows. You’d see them twitching and twitching in the last agonies of death. You’d see them kicking footballs over the field or running around the track. You’d see them tiny and sick and you would see them great and brawny and strong. You’d see them ignorant, not being able to put one letter behind the other. And you’d see them walking gravely under the elms in some college town, dreaming deep dreams of the fourth dimension or dreaming up some great poem or play, to astonish and delight the world.

People. You would see plain people and black people and people whose eyes slant differently from yours, and people whose hair is not like your hair at all. People whose diet is not like your diet. You’d gag on what they love and they’d gag on what you eat every morning for breakfast. Their customs are not the same. Their habits are not the same, but their people. Nevertheless, they’re people. Their differences are external. Their similarities, internal. Their differences have to do with custom and habit. Their likeness has to do with nature. So they would be there, the thief and the liar and the truth teller and the martyr, the mother of many and the dying soldier and the boy in the basket were sent away to the sound of the Star Spangled Banner and came back in the basket to be forgotten out of Hines Hospital, people nevertheless.

And God sent His Son to the people. He is the people’s Savior. Jesus Christ came to people like your family and mine and people like us. God sent His Son into the world of people like you and me. Not to the learned theologians, not to the man who can spout Greek and Hebrew only, He came to them too. Their ability to spout Greek and Hebrew, that is only incidental. What they are is exactly the same as the ignorant boy whose language simply will not order itself. You see, you scratch a professor and you find a hillbilly. That’s all you have to do. You just take a pen or a knife blade and prick the skin a little of that dignified lady with the carefully groomed eagle claws walking around with the latest book under her arm, or on her way, don’t you know to hear about Geoffrey or some opera. Prick her a little and she’s just one more squalling woman.  Scratch her a little and you’ve got one more female. And as the sarcastic old couple of has it, “Judy O’Grady and the Colonel’s lady are sisters under the skin.”

And out on the bus, oh, I saw this on the street car. I shouldn’t tell it. But I saw this on the streetcar. It was some time ago. I saw a white man this time, but he was drunk. And he was just drunk enough to be humorous. You know, they go through stages. They get bright eyed and then they get humorous. And then they get mean and then they get vomiting. And he was in the humor stage. And he was standing up in front clowning and now he was funny, that’s all. And everybody was laughing, including your undersigned, but a dignified lady sat there with a little boy. This is Junior. He had been brought upright, and no doubt she’d been off to finishing school. I don’t know what she was doing on a street car. I thought that was for us plain people, but there she was. And the little guy would look at this drunk fellow who was going through his contortions and making his funny remarks, and he’d giggle and she’d pat his shoulder. “It’s not funny, Charles. It’s not funny Charles. It’s not funny Charles.”

And I had as much amusement watching that dignified mother trying to tell her boy that that funny guy wasn’t funny. But listen to me now, three seats back of this dignified, well-groomed woman who wouldn’t stoop to laugh at a drunk man, there may have been an overstuffed, not to clean, gum chewing, loud talking, laughing colored woman on her way to do somebody’s wash. Different from each other you say? Scrape the skin a little, you’ll find, just the same. The dignified, learned and cultured lady, and the happy go lucky, uncultured woman on her way to do somebody’s wash, seem; Jesus knew that and he paid no attention to class. Class? The Lord knows nothing about this class business everybody talks about. He came to people. He came, God sent His Son into the world to people. He came to us, people. And He didn’t say, how’s your IQ? He came to us. He didn’t say, have you traveled much? He came to us, the people. So, thank God He sent Him and He came. Both of those are truth, no contradiction. God sent Him and He came. He came because He was sent and He came because His great heart urged Him to come.

Now, what was the mission on which He came? We’ve stated here already half a dozen times. But you know what I was thinking? If you knew that the Son of God was coming to the world, and you had never known the Son of God was coming. Let’s think ourselves out. Let’s think ourselves back to paganism. Let’s throw out our Bible and the hymnbook and our 2,000 years of Christian tradition. Let’s say we’ve never heard and somebody suddenly arrives with a proclamation “God is sending His Son into the human race. He’s coming! What would be the first thing you thought of? What would your heart tell you immediately? You’d run for the trees and the rocks, and hide like Adam among the trees in the garden. I won’t add one shadow to your heart, but I’ll ask you, ask your own heart. What mission logically should they have come on? God being a holy God high and lifted up and we being the kind of people we know we are. I ask you, what should have been His mission? He was a man with a mission. What should that mission have been?

Why did God send the angels to Sodom? To decide and fix judgement and take two or three out and burn the rest to cinders. Let your own heart tell you why would the Son of God come to our race? Our own hearts tell us why. Sin and darkness and deception and moral disease tell us why. And the lies we’ve told and the temper tantrum we’ve thrown and the jealousies we’ve felt tells us why. They tell us why. The sin we can’t deny tells us why He might have come to judge the world. If He hadn’t told us that, the Holy Ghost never would have said, not to judge the world. Why did He ever say it? Because he knew that the human conscience could only say one thing. O God, if you’re sending someone from your throne, find a place for me to hide. For my heart tells me I ought to die. My heart tells me that I’ve piled up iniquity and I should be sentenced, and I should die. And if the Righteous One is coming, then I ought to die.

But says the Holy Ghost, He didn’t come to judge us. He sent His Son into the world, true, but He sent His son not to judge the world. That wasn’t His purpose at all. He came that men might be saved. Ah, not to condemn but to reclaim was the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why did He come to men and not the fallen angels? I have said before from this pulpit, and I’m the only person that ever says it so I could be wrong. But also, I could be right. I believe He came to man and not to angels because man had been originally made in image of God and angels haven’t. I believe He came to fall on Adam’s brood and not to the brood of fallen devils, because the fallen brood of Adam had once been made in the image of God. I believe it was a morally logical thing, that when Jesus Christ became incarnated, He couldn’t become incarnated in the flesh and body of a man. Because God made man in His own image and though fallen and lost and on his way to hell, he has the potentialities that could take the Incarnation. God Almighty could pull up the blankets of human flesh up around His ears, and be a Man to walk among men. But there was nothing of like kind among angels and fallen creatures other than man.

So, He came not to condemn but to reclaim. And now I would close, but I would ask you to think of this in personal terms. God sent His Son into the world. The cross is not mentioned here, and the cross is not mentioned in John 3:16. We who preach, sometimes imagine that we have to open our mouths and in one great, big round sentence say all of the theology there is to say. God is not so squeamish. He says it all somewhere in the book. And the cross stands out like a great, bright shining pillar in the middle of the Scriptures. And without that cross on which the Savior died there could be no Scripture, no revelation, no redemptive message, nothing. But he didn’t say anything about the cross here. He simply said He sent his son and He gave His Son, those two words, “sent” and “gave” in the verse above and this verse. He gave His Son, He sent His Son. And later it developed that in giving His Son, He gave Him to die. But, He didn’t say so here.

Now, I want you to think of this in personal terms. Christ taught us to do this. In that story of the prodigal son, which Dickens said was the most pathetic, that is, it had more pathos in it than any other story that was ever told by mortal man. He was afraid we’d get generic, you know, and theological with it all, and get it into a book, you know, and put a period on there and have Article One, Section Two, Subdivision B. He’s afraid of that, God was, so He said, now, I’ll tell you about a boy. He said, a father had two boys. And one of them, the youngest one of them, the younger of the two came to him and said, Father, “give me my goods that followeth to me.” So, he divided unto him his living. Not many days after, the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, were he wasted his substance with riotous living. And then he joined himself to a citizen of the far country, who sent him into the fields to feed swine. And he feigned would have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat but no man gave unto him.

So one day he came to himself and he said, “how many hired servants of my father have food to spare and I perish here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father. Do you notice “I, I, I, I, I?” The Lord says, I want you to personalize this, I don’t want you to be thinking about this racially. I came to save people. I came down here for folk, people, and I want you to think about it in personal terms. And so, He told us that wonderful story. I will arise, I perish, I am hungry, I remember my father’s house, I will go. He said, “I.” So, he rose and went. And his father ran and you know the story too well, so well. Perhaps it has lost part of its meaning. And he threw himself at his father’s feet and the father fitted him out and killed the fatted calf and filled the house with unseemly music. That’s what one person thought. He said, why all this nonsense? Why all this music around here? Is somebody getting married? What is all this music? And the father ran out shining faced and forgot all about his angina. He came tearing out and down the steps, you know, like a boy of fourteen. He said, Your brother’s back!

And this sour Pharisee exploded on him and turned a glowering face and said, I’ve lived with you from my babyhood and you never gave me as much as a kid. And now this, thy son, wouldn’t even own him. He didn’t say, “my brother.” We used to call him “Buddy” in the early days, Buddy. Slept with him, loved him when he was little, but now a religious jealousy has gotten into his heart, and he didn’t even call him by his little old nickname. He said, your boy. He wasn’t his brother anymore. He said, he’s devoured his living with harlots. He used the roughest language he could use, the most shocking. He said, he gets a fatted calf and the father almost turned pale, I suppose, and said why boy, I never knew you felt this way about it. Why, everything I have is yours. But he said, can’t you see, something’s happened tonight. Your brother, my son, he was dead. He’s alive! He was lost and he’s found! And after that one little blow, I think he bounced back and went and turned back up the steps to tell somebody else, “strike up the bank.”

God is capable of getting you morally excited, you know, in the right sense of the word. And I want you to think about you tonight. God sent His Son into the world to save you. And not to save the heathen– save you. Heathen, sure, but only as individuals, save you. And you’ve got to have faith about yourself. Now, I wanted to say that, and I was afraid to say it. Even I sometimes am a little afraid to certain phrases for fear somebody will get down my neck or write me a dirty letter. But I want to say this, you’ve got to have faith about yourself. Not faith in yourself, but faith about yourself. Faith in Christ and faith about yourself. That is, you’ve got to believe that you’re the one he meant. If you don’t, all the general faith you have in God won’t do you a bit of good.

The Lord is “the” Shepherd, I shall not want. No, He couldn’t have said that. Or, if He’d said, The Lord is one Shepherd, one shall not want. He maketh one to lie down in green pastures. He would have gotten an “A” on that in school, but it wouldn’t have meant anything because it wouldn’t been personal. He said, He’s my Shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down. The prodigal son could have said, one’s father has goods to spare and one parishes with hunger. One should arise and go on to one’s father. Make it general like that, make it religious, you know, and it didn’t amount to anything. But he said, I am the hungry boy. God’s my Father. My father is back home. I am going back home. Now, you make that personal and see if it doesn’t mean something more to you.

For you see, unbelief always hides behind three trees. Here they are: some where else, some other time, some body else. Those are the three trees in the garden behind which unbelief hides. Somebody preaches a sermon on John 3:16 and we say, yes, somewhere else it’s true of somebody else, it’s true. Some other time, but not now. Faith believes about itself, believes in Him and about itself and says now wait a minute. If God sent His Son into the human race that he might redeem the human race, He can’t redeem the human race en mass. He has to redeem and save human beings as individuals. That must mean me. Don’t pay attention to grammar. Don’t say that must mean “I.” That’s right, but that isn’t right. Say, that means me Lord. Believe about yourself and say to yourself, well now, wait. Not somewhere else, but here. Not some other time, but now. Not somebody else, but me. In that most famous, most wonderful and most terrible of all hymns, Brother McAfee tells me how to pronounce it but I pay no attention. The “Dies Irae,” he says in one place that he pictures the judgment and the world coming apart like an old tent. And the dust and shock and terror of it, and graves opening and men screaming before God’s bar of judgment and the world is on fire. One of the old-fashioned general judgment ideas. And then he prays this tender, lovely little prayer. He is going to be there and he says, oh, remember Jesus, I was the cause and reason why Thou didst come on earth to die. He says, in that awful day God, in that awful day Lord, remember Jesus, I was the cause and reason why Thou didst come on earth to die.

What is your name? Mary? Alright, Iet’s suppose it’s Mary. I don’t know many Marys these days. There are more Shirleys and Marylands and Beverly, but let’s call it Mary. O Jesus, remember I am the cause and reason why I’m Mary and Thou didst come on this earth to die. John is it? O Jesus, remember I am the cause and reason why, I John, single yourself out. Not somebody else, you, actually you. Jesus Christ came not to condemn you, but to save you. Knowing your name. Knowing all about you. Knowing your weight right now. Knowing your age. Knowing what you do. Knowing where you live. Knowing what you ate for supper and will eat for breakfast, where you’ll sleep tonight. How much your clothing costs, who your parents were, knowing you individually as though there wasn’t another person in all the world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only last one.

What about it tonight? If you’re out of the fold and away from God, why don’t you put your name in there and say Lord, it’s I, it’s I. Remember Lord, I’m the reason, cause and reason why, Thou on earth didst come to die. That’s faith you see. That’s positive, personal faith in a personal Redeemer. And that’s what’s saves you. And if you will just rush in there, you don’t have to know all the theology in the wide world.

I got two calls on the telephone last week. One wanted to know what the Greek word for cousin was in order if he could find out whether Jesus had brothers and sisters, or whether they were His cousins. So I looked it up in Strong’s, who is my strong refuge, and another fellow want to know if Jesus could ever sin? So, what in the wide world would a poor, lost fallen man worry his poor, little old empty head about theological niceties. When he ought to be saying to himself, in view of the judgment, O Jesus, remember I am the cause and reason why Thou on earth didst come to die. I am the one Lord and all the little theological niceties that men argue about, let them go! I am the one He came to die for.

Do you believe that? Will you tonight believe it means you? Will you put your name in there? Now, I insist on it, put your name in there. Don’t you go out on here tonight, put your name and read it in, whatever that name is. Put it in there, write it down in your heart and say, Jesus, this is “I”, Thee and I, I and Thee as though there were no others. That kind of personalize believing in a personal Lord and Savior. Once that takes place in the human breast, they don’t fool with that fellow anymore. And the Lord God Almighty witnesses within His soul something has happened there and he belongs to God and God to him. You don’t have to feed him on a nipple and run around with luke warm, watered down milk for him. He grows in grace because he’s had that personalized, individual experience of knowing it means, “I.”

“The Once-born and the Twice-Born”

Sunday, February 7, 1954

John 3:7-11

We have read the three opening verses of the third chapter of John at least three times, so I’m not going to read them again tonight. Only this one, verse seven, to sort of get started. Jesus said, marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. I gather from this, marvel not that I say to you, you must be born again, that I gather that there must be good sound reasons back at all and that there isn’t anything strange or astonishing about it, and that it’s quite an order and reasonable and logical. And I want to talk about that tonight.

But let me begin by saying that this teaching of our Lord is more than teaching. It is of vital and far-reaching importance, so important that it would be difficult to overstate that importance. Sometimes we can exaggerate when we make statements. By using a superlative, we can go too far and be guilty of exaggeration. But it would be difficult to exaggerate this, the vital importance of a teaching of our Lord in the opening verses of John 3. It is wholly revolutionary, more revolutionary than any teaching of any religion in the world. It is sharply classifying. It distinguishes, it excludes, and it includes, it classifies men and it distinguishes men from each other. And it excludes certain men and includes certain other ones.

And I say that it differs from all other religious teaching, in that it is more than religious teaching. It did not originate with the Teacher. It is not a pattern of truth woven out of many threads as most religious teaching is. And it is not and does not represent simply the highest and finest and noblest thoughts of a lofty soul woven together. It is not anything like that. It is rather practical reporting. When a man goes to Asia or Washington or London as a reporter and he sends back what he has seen and heard, we do not say this is the teaching of this man. We say this is factual reporting.

And Jesus said in the 11th verse of this chapter, we speak, that we do know, and testify that we have seen. He there took upon Himself the character of a reporter. And he said, I am reporting to you what I know and have seen. So you see, it is not pieced out teaching. It is reporting. It is a report to men on earth what He, the Lord of Heaven, had seen and heard and knew while He was in Heaven. For no man ascended up to Heaven, save the Son of Man, who has come down from Heaven. And this teaching is what He saw. He is telling us on earth what He saw in Heaven, and a lot of people don’t accept it. He said, if I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, then how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things. No man hath ascended up to Heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven. That was His explanation when Nicodemus asked, how can these things be? He said, this is not teaching merely, this is reporting. I am telling you what I know and what I have seen.

And He says that this is to be believed or rejected by everyone. And it will be believed or rejected depending upon our opinion of the One who does the reporting. He said, there are those who will not believe my testimony that I give coming down from Heaven. They will not believe what I tell them that I saw and the way I know things to be. They won’t believe it and they will reject it. And there will be two reasons for it. One will be that they love the earth and sin too well, and the other, that they will have no confidence in the One who is reporting. That is unbelief in the Savior, the Son of God.

We usually don’t know that unbelief is not a failure of the mind to function. It is not simply a weakness in the department of our credulity. It is an opinion of a man. When we do not believe in Jesus, we have an opinion of Jesus, and that opinion, prevents us from believing. A man Goes to Washington, and sees and hears, and comes back and reports in the newspaper or wires it in, and we shrug it off. It is not because we’re unable to understand it, nor would it be because we have some psychological weakness. It is because we have no confidence in the reporter. We say we don’t believe that man. He has a reputation for misunderstanding or misrepresenting, and reproducing things that never were said and we don’t accept it.

Now, our Lord said in these chapters, these verses which I read to you before that that is exactly what takes place when His message is proclaimed. There are those who said it to their seal, that God is true, and they believe this message. There are those who deny that God is true, or at least that Jesus Christ is God’s Son. And they doubt the veracity of the reporter, and refuse to accept the reporter’s record.

Now we want to break down what our Lord said here, that that I have said before is introductory too. This which I shall now say about the new birth, our Lord talked about. We’ll break it down in the light of Scripture, not holding entirely to these verses, but going elsewhere in the Bible, and show what our Lord taught here, and what is back of this all. So, that it may be said, marvel not that I said unto you, you must be born again. In the light of Scripture, there is nothing strange about it. It’s quite normal. It’s sound, philosophically. I want you to take a notebook if you don’t have a good memory. And I want you to put down five, well, really four items here. And these items are contrasts. As for instance, where our Lord says, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. There’s what I mean by a contrast. And I give you four contrasts here which are taught in the Bible, taught here by our Savior and also taught by the apostles elsewhere in the Scriptures.

First, that there are two heads of the human race. There is that first Adam, the first head of the race, the head of the natural race. How it says in 1 Corinthians 15:22, For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. Showing that in Adam, who is the head of the race, all died. And in Romans 5, it tells us even more plainly this thing. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll read quite an extended passage here for what I could read would be more beneficial than what I could say. The man of God, the same Paul wrote Corinthians is writing and he says this, Wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who was the figure of Him that was to come. Adam was a figure of the Christ who was to come, being the head of the old race. And not so as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift. For the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses under justification. For if by one man’s offense, death reined by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ. Therefore, by the offensive of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation. Even so, by the righteousness of One, the free gift came upon all men, the justification of life.

That’s familiar reading, for what it teaches here is, that there are two heads of the race. There is Adam, the head of the natural race, who is the forefather of us all. And we are his natural children, born by natural generation. And then there is a second head of the human race, which is Christ, the last Adam, Head of the redeemed human race. And we read about that many places, but we read about it in 1 Corinthians 15:44, I think it is or 49, where it says that it has sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body, for there is a natural body and there’s a spiritual body, as it is written, the first man Adam was made a living soul and the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. There you will have the contrast between the two heads of the human race. Adam, the head of the natural human race, and Christ, the head of the spiritual human race, for He was and is a quickening Spirit.

The first man is of the earth, earthy, and the second man is the Lord from heaven. Now, that’s what the Holy Ghost teaches here regarding the two heads of the human race. And so, for the present, we have two human races. You know, this sounds like Russellism, or Eddyism or something else, because it’s so little heard in the churches. The very bringing of it before an audience puts one on the defensive. You say to yourself, now wait a minute, I hadn’t heard this before, hadn’t heard this preached. People aren’t preaching it, but it’s here. And it is the reason our Lord could say, don’t marvel at the thought that I said, that you must be born again. For there’s a reason back of it all. There’s a sound philosophy that rests the mind. One of the reasons is that there are two human races, that there is the race that is in Adam and there’s the race that is in Christ. There is that which is of earth and that which is of heaven. There is that which stems from Adam the first and there’s that which stems from Adam the second.

Now, these two human races are coexisting and commingling. The ones that belong to the first Adam are human beings of everywhere, and the ones that belong to the other, they are the new ones who are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. And thus, he has a new head which is Jesus Christ, the Lord. Adam is no longer his head. He does not go back to Adam. He goes back to Christ. He does not take his life from Adam. He takes his life from Christ. And he gets his likeness from Christ and not from Adam, for Christ is the new head of the new creation and of those that are born of the Spirit.

Now, these two human races coexisting in the world, that’s the trouble, the reason for persecution and trouble, religious trouble, because in every city, there are two human races. There are, in the city of Chicago. There’s that part of the human race or that block that belongs to Adam that grew out of Adam, and stemmed down from Adam, was born once of Adam’s seed, and so it’s Adam’s race. And commingling and coexisting along with that race. there is a smaller race in this same city, living in houses, eating regular food, doing work, driving automobiles, talking on telephones, and paying bills, and doing everything that the old Adam’s race does. But lo and behold, mystery of mysteries, something wonderful has happened to that group. They look like the others, but they’re not. They can hardly be distinguished, but they’re different from the others in that the others are born of Adam’s seed, and no more; and this other race is rescued from Adam’s seed and born into the kingdom of God. So, that leads us to two kingdoms coexisting also, the kingdom of the flesh, and the kingdom of the Spirit, which we also call the Kingdom of God.

Now, this kingdom of the flesh is the realm inhabited by Adam’s descendants. And these descendants of Adam are related by blood and by common origin. Do you know, I said here a long time ago, and I just got it off a tape on to type here the other day, and I was rather shocked at what I had said, but I edited it and left it in to shock me, it probably shocked you, and it might as well shock your readers to what I said was that I believe in the brotherhood of man. And I know that some would faint immediately and want to be carried out, and would have be brought to by strong smelling salts, to have any man say that he believes in the brotherhood of man, but I do. I believe there is a universal brotherhood of the once-born. And then I believe in a universal brotherhood of the twice born, where our modernistic and liberal friends make their mistake is they do not distinguish between the twice born and the ones born. They make a universal brotherhood then say everybody is in, then Jesus Christ makes a universal brotherhood and says everybody is out, except them that are born in.  There’s the difference. The liberal says, I believe in the brotherhood of man; and all that universal brotherhood are children of God. Jesus Christ says, there is a universal brotherhood of the flesh, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. And no man will ever enter into the Kingdom, except he gets in by a birth.

So, I do believe in the universal brotherhood of man, the universal brotherhood of fallen man. And then I said, and I repeat now, that I believe in the fatherhood of God. Do you know, the modernists have labeled that and have taken it to themselves so that we shrug our shoulders and refuse to accept the fatherhood of God. But I believe in the fatherhood of God, not the fatherhood of God over the whole race of Adam, for that not so, but the fatherhood of God over them that are born anew, that are saved. The Christians have God for a Father. The man in the old world who is born of Adam, has Adam for his father, not God. God created Adam and Adam had progeny. And their whole world is populated with the progeny of Adam, who are universal brothers descended from one ancient father, but not children of God. But, when we enter the kingdom of God and are made children of the Most High, then we enter a new brotherhood, the brotherhood of the redeemed of which God is Father and Jesus Christ is the Head.

Now these two kingdoms I say, there’s a kingdom of the flesh inhabited by Aaron’s descendants, and they’re related by blood and by common origin. They are separated also, by color, and language, and minor racial marks. The human race is united by blood and common origin, but as we see it scattered over the earth, it is separated by color and language, and minor racial marks. Some sub-races of the human race have long heads. What did they used to call those in biology?  Here I go, again, the long heads and the narrow heads, Nordic type. Yeah, that’s what I thought. But anyhow, we’ve been out of schools so long we forget the terminology, but it has to do with the shape of their heads. Welsh people, for instance, have a certain shaped head in the sciences. They talk about the shape of a Welchman’s head. He has a certain racial head, and Dutch people have a head. I tell them sometimes they come into the world with wooden heads and wooden shoes. But anyway, they have a certain racial trait. You can pretty near always tell them; tell the Anglo Saxons by the shape of their heads and a few other traits.

And so, the human race is united by blood. But it’s divided by language, and time and space, and racial characteristics and the color of the skin and the shape and slant of the eyes, and the hair, whether it’s blonde, curly, or what it is. But they’re all nevertheless sons of Adam. And they’re all of one blood that inhabit the face of the Earth, says the Holy Ghost in the Bible. So, there is a unity of the whole human race. And there is also minor divisions in the whole human race, racial divisions, and linguistic divisions, and color divisions.

Now, there are also differences, these are minor. There are differences of cultural level. There are some of you that never had lorgnette in your eye, and never will have, thank God. And there are others in the city of Chicago that do. There are some that say I wouldn’t go “either.” But there are others that wouldn’t be caught dead saying “either” either. They are more cultured. And so, they use a word that doesn’t exist, “either.” I go along with the Irishman. They say, that which is right, either or either and he said, neither. I accept that definition myself, and neither. Well, there are differences in cultural level, and differences in education, and differences in advancement of scientific achievement and degree of civilization.

They have what they call the Stone Age. That was the age when the only weapons they had, the only machinery they had, were made of stones. Then came the Iron Age. It advanced a little, and then the age of steel. And now we’ve come to the age of the atom. But it’s all Adams race nevertheless. He can ride in a plane, or ride on a wheelbarrow. It’s the same old son of Adam. He’s just the same and he isn’t a bit improved over what he was before. He can say either or neither, or neither, or neither. And it’s all the same. He is still a son of Adam. He’s just the same as he was before. There are differences among the sons of Adam, but they’re all one, in that they are all sons of Adam, and they inhabit the kingdom of the flesh.

Then, there’s the kingdom of the Spirit. Sometimes I say, called the Kingdom of God. And it’s inhabited by the Spirit-born. And they are separated just as we have separations in Adam’s kingdom, the kingdom of the flesh, linguistic and color and shape of head and so on, separating group from groups; so we in the kingdom of God, certain separations too. For instance, the Brother talked this morning about language barriers. There are Christians that are kept apart by language barriers. The only two words they know that are alike are amen and Hallelujah, like in all the languages, but they kept apart. And then there is space that keeps God’s people apart. On the day of Pentecost, they were all of one accord in one place. That would be totally impossible now to get all the church together in one place. There are too many of us. There isn’t any stadium in the world big enough to hold all the redeemed people of God. They’re a company that no man can number, and you cannot get them; spatially, it’s impossible to get all God’s people together.

And then, we don’t live together in time either. Some are already dead. Some have been dead a long time. And if Jesus tarries, some Christians are not yet born. So, there’s a time division, and there’s a space separation. And then there are all the little incidental separations. For instance, you’re a Lutheran and you’re born again and brought up and really a Christian in the Lutheran Church. And by a certain narrow, limited view of things, maybe you don’t know there are any other kinds of Christians at all. And one Baptist man said down in the South, he said, I never have gone to any other church in my life except the Baptist church. He didn’t know what he was missing. There are other Christians here and there, so that we may not mingle with certain other truly born-again people, inhabiting the same spiritual kingdom we do, because we can’t speak their language, they’re dead before we were born, we’ll die before they’re born, or they’re across another part of the world, or they belong to some remote denomination that we don’t mingle with. And so, we just don’t get together, but there are nevertheless a people, extant, inhabiting a Kingdom, born of the Spirit into the spiritual Kingdom, of which Jesus Christ is the Head of which God in Heaven is the Father.

So, just as the one human race, one human race, one kingdom of Adam, one kingdom of the flesh is scattered every place. We have a hermit in a cave, who never mingles with it, but he belongs to it. We have the Egyptians who died and gone long ago. And they had never heard of us. We only hear of them in history, but it’s all the same race, same people, born of the same flesh, all descended from the same man.

And there’s the kingdom of the Spirit, I say. And there are those who say that if all Christians are supposed to be together in one denomination, or one religious front. And certainly, divisions are terribly to be deplored between Christians that they know they are divided, but you can’t help but to have certain divisions between Christians. It’s impossible. We’re scattered all over the face of the earth. We never see each other’s faces of at all, but yet, in spite of those temporary and surface separations, we’re all one; united by birth out of one Spirit, baptism into one Spirit, membership in one Body, with one Father, and one Savior, and one Lord, and one Bridegroom, and one heaven toward which we’re moving. So, instead of sneering at the song, we are not divided, all one body, we all that one in hope and doctrine, one in charity. Instead of making a wry face, let’s thank God that it’s true. Let’s thank God that it’s true, that there is a kingdom composed of those who belong to the spiritual world, and they are all one and they are undivided. And Jesus said that they all may be one. And so we are one, just as the human race is one. The human race is all one.

I preached three days at Fort Wayne last week at the Fort Wayne Bible college. And there I saw predominantly German people. Predominantly German names. A young lady sang a solo named Miss Nieunswander. No Irishman there. And so, Germans, Germans, but along with those Germans and sitting right down in the front seat, there were young men and women from Hawaii. They didn’t look like the Germans at all. But nevertheless, the Germans and the Hawaiians are all one flesh and of one blood. Not a one language, not a one color, not a one height, but of one blood.

In the city of Chicago tonight, there are probably people from every nationality all over the wide world. And they’re separated by language barriers. And outside of a little broken English, they could not communicate at all with each other. But they are brothers. In that they all descended from one seed. And they’re all of one blood on the face of the earth. Separated maybe, maybe warring against each other, but one blood. And in that glorious Kingdom, the kingdom of the Father, there is also a redeemed and renewed race, dwelling and they are all one. One not by blood, one not by flesh at all, but one in Spirit. One in being born of one Father, of one Spirit, and baptized into one body. Now, I’ve repeated that three or four times, I want it to sink in. I’m not out to deliver an oration, but to give you truth, which I want you to take home with you.

So, there are the two kingdoms. And again, we have two births. I have already mentioned that, and we will be as brief as we can. But there are two births, that which is born of the flesh. What does Jesus Christ say about that which is born of the flesh. He settles it forever in two words, and puts a period down and turned around, and walks away from it, and leaves it there forever. What does He say, that which is born of the flesh, is flesh. I don’t know any more terrible thing to say than that. And if all the workers of the world were to get busy and call to their command the finest language that the races and nations know, they could not add anything to the finality, the fatal finality of that expression. That which is born of the flesh, what Lord? What is flesh and He turned around and left it there. And that which is born of the flesh, can never be anything but flesh. It can never cross over into the kingdom of the Spirit. And not all the religious education you can give it won’t cross it over into the kingdom of the Spirit. And not all of the discipline and teaching and instruction and education you can give the flesh won’t make spirit out of it. Though we have all the reasoning of Plato, flesh still remains flesh. We have all the art of Michelangelo, and flesh is still flesh. We may have all the music of Beethoven. Flesh is still flesh. And though we have the genius of an Edison, and though we have the strange, sheer penetrating abilities of a scientist like Pasteur that could make it possible for a man bitten by a rabid dog to get well again, it’s still flesh that gets well. Or if it didn’t, it would be flesh the died. 

Though we have an Einstein, whose amazing mind could penetrate down and down and back into the dark, unseeing and unseen recesses of the atom and could lay the foundation for the physicist who came and has brought us the H-bomb and the cobalt bomb and the a-bomb. Though we have all that genius, Edison was flesh and Pasteur was flesh and Einstein is flesh, and Beethoven is flesh, and Plato is flesh and the learned societies of the world, they’re flesh, and the great operatic societies are flesh. And the great literary societies, they’re flesh, and the great libraries are flesh. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh. And, you can’t by any means known to mortal man, bring the flesh across into the Spirit.

Then, there is that which is born of the Spirit. And that birth is a new creation, just as the first birth is a new creation. Mr. and Mrs. Jones lived at 1721 North Boulevard. You go down to see them. They’re there. And you go back in a year and you sit talking with them and you ask, what is that I hear? She smiles and gets up and says, that’s Junior. He’s waking up for his bottle. Junior? Why, I was here a year ago and there was no Junior. No, the Junior has come around since that. A new creation, where’d he come from? I don’t know. I have no remote idea. I only know God Almighty made him and he is lying in there now begging for a bottle. A new creation has come, a creation that is flesh. And that which is born of the flesh is flesh.

But, when we’re born of the Spirit, there’s another birth that’s also a new creation. It is just as real and just as literal, and just as actual as the first birth. And I am sure I’m sure that when Jesus Christ said to Ananias, Ananias, go down to the Straight Street and ask for a man name, Simon the tanner. There is something down at his house. Lord, what is down at his house? I’ve been down there. There’s nothing down there. Oh, yes, there’s somebody down there that’s praying. But Lord, a year ago, there was nobody down there that prayed. I know. But there’s has been something that happened since. But a man named Paul, and Paul is down there. And he was born since that time, and he’s down there and he’s a praying man. Go down there and pray for him that he might receive his sight. A new creation has taken place. And Paul wrote, that if any man be in Christ Jesus, he’s a new creation. He knew what he was talking about. There was a new man down there, so that there are two births. There is the birth that makes us flesh and puts us in the body of Adam. And makes us inhabitants of the kingdom of Adam. There is a birth which is of the Spirit and puts us into the Kingdom of God and makes God our Father and Christ our Head.

Didn’t I say to begin with that Jesus Christ classifies and distinguishes and excludes and includes, destiny and fate, and Heaven and Hell right on every classification. We had better listen to Him. We better stop fooling with our religion. We better stop coming to church to hear the music, and pay no attention to the truth preached. We better get down to business on this. For that which is born of the flesh is flesh. And there are two destinies, that which is born of the flesh remains flesh, and that which is of the Spirit has another destiny all together.

Now it says in Daniel 12:2, they that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to eternal life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. There’s your division again. There’s your classification. There’s your inclusion, your exclusion. There is the sharp distinguishing of the Spirit of God. There are two destinies in eternal life. You know I don’t preach very much about Heaven. I don’t know much about heaven. I read about it and I like to sing and read over all the long verses of the Celestial City, Bernard’s conception of Heaven, being founded upon the Scriptures. But I don’t know too much about Heaven. But there is that which God calls, Eternal Life. It is the kingdom where those that lived who have life eternal. It is the Kingdom of the Father. It is the Kingdom of God. It is the Kingdom of Life. And all that are born the second time, who inhabit the spiritual kingdom, and are members of the new body of which Christ is the head. their destiny is to enjoy eternally, that Eternal Life.

I remember when I was a young preacher, we used to sing a rather morbid, but pleasant little, old number. There’s no Disappointment in Heaven. Have you ever heard it? There’s no disappointment in heaven, no poverty, sorrow nor pain. And I liked it. Because it was better than nothing, but it certainly couldn’t compare with many of the great hymns on Heaven, but at least it did lift our hearts to remember that there is a place called Eternal Life. Now, God sometimes uses that expression. Paul says unto eternal life, sort of making eternal life synonymous with all the immortality, and the brightness, and the deathlessness, and the painlessness, and the cheerlessness, and the joy that is the saints throughout all the years, and eons that lie ahead, world without end the city upon which the sun will never go down. For the sun is the Lamb and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the destiny of the twice born is Heaven. The destiny of the twice born is eternal life, in that heaven of life, presided over by the Lord of Life, and surrounded with the life of God. This is the destiny of the twice born.

And then it says, those others, shame and everlasting contempt. Now, I hope we get this straight, that those who are of the old Adam and are brothers in a fallen race, the Scripture says shame and everlasting contempt is theirs in the day when they rise from the dust of the earth. They that now inhabit the old kingdom, they have the money. They have a good bit of the education. They usually run things, these sons of Adam, these strong bulls of Bashan; they push in and the meek Christian quietly lets them push and sometimes, I think too much so. And they take over, and they buy us and sell us, and they tell us how much taxes we pay and they tell us when we pay them. And they run us more or less because there’s more of them, and they’re more aggressive. They’re extroverts, they’re pushers. And they shove us out of the trough with their long horns and they take over and the humble Christian takes what is left and comforts himself that the meek shall inherit the earth after that bulls of Bashan get done with it, and the Lord renovates it and cleanses it. And they take over, these great, strong extroverted fellows. And we wear the clothes they decide we’re to wear. And the wicked old Frenchman over in Paris, tell you women up-down, up-down, up-down, up-down, and you slavishly follow them and do exactly what you’re told and then give a reason and say, why I know, they’re short because you get more sun. And then later, down, down because you do what you’re told to do. And I’m not scolding you. I didn’t design this. This they tell me is the result of TV. They make them like that because they show on TV. I don’t know. I just go buy them or get them given to me.

But anyhow, we’re all the sons in one sense of the whole world. And naturally, we’re pushed around and dictated to and ignored and tramped over and voted down and lied to and deceived and sold gold bricks, and we don’t dare fight back. We just have to wait until the day when God will judge the heart of every man by my gospel. But in the meantime, we’re living in another world too. We’re living on two levels at once the level of Adam, but we didn’t stop there. We were born up on to another level. And that’s the level of the Spirit, and there we meet and mingle with all the good saints down the years.

I believe in the communion of saints says the Apostles Creed. What does it mean? It means that I have a level in my life where I am one with all that have gone on before me, all who have gone before. My days among the Dead are spent around thee I behold, Where my roving eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old, said Lamb in his library. Reach up and pull down Plato. Reach over here, pull down Aristotle. Reach over here and pull down Jonathan Swift. Reach over here and pull down Shakespeare. He was communing with the mighty minds of old.

I’ve got something better than that. I can pick up a hymn book. And I can commune with the mighty minds of old. Here they are, these saints of God. Here’s one by Gypsy Smith and here’s one by Mrs. Morrison, that good holiness woman and here’s one by good old John Keeble. And here’s one by Joseph Heart, and here’s one by Ellerton and old John Fossett and Benjamin Schmoke translated into English. Here they are, where my rolling eyes are cast, around me I behold the mighty souls that have lived. And it’s not only in my imagination that I commune with him, but in my heart, I commune with them, and in my spirit, I commune with them.

I had the pleasure of preaching to a bishop when I was down in Fort Wayne. And he sat there just like anybody else. And I felt a kinship with him the brother. I felt a kinship. He was a bishop and I wasn’t, but I felt there was a certain likeness there, because he was born again. I know he was by his language. Bishops can get born again too and he was. He was born again. He was a real Christian. And I felt a sense of similarity there, a rapport; a tuning in with another soul. God’s people, have this future, and the poor souls outside of Christ, shame and everlasting contempt.

You see now, don’t you friends. That this that I’ve given you tonight, is not just religious teaching, not just the finest thoughts Jesus could bring and put down here that I’ve commented on, but it’s the way things are really. It’s the way you will find them to be when you come to investigate. It’s the way you will find them to be at last when you come to die. It’s the way things are really. It’s the way Christ saw them and knew them to be in Heaven and came and reported to us, that there were two heads of the race; two kingdoms in which those two groups move, but they co-mingle and live concurrently, and sometimes you can’t distinguish one from the other.

There’s an accident on the street. And the man is found lying badly injured. You don’t know whether he’s a Christian or not. You can’t distinguish him from from a sinner. Two shall be working in the field. One shall be taken, another left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill, one shall be taken and the other left. Two shall be sleeping in the same bed, one shall be taken and another left. And the man down the street didn’t know which was a Christian maybe. But God knew that two people live in the same house and live clean, and both go to church, and maybe nobody will know which is born again, which isn’t. If they both live reasonably right and that often takes place, often is true. Our Heavenly Father knows. He knows whether that soul is born into His Kingdom or not. He knows whether that soul inhabits Adam’s old world or the new Kingdom of the Spirit. He knows. Christ saw it and we’ll see it in that day.

And now do you in the light of all of this not value the invitation our Lord gives? Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden. Or the exhortation He gives, marvel not that I say unto you, ye must be born again. For unless you should be born again, you shall not see the Kingdom of God. These are not credo statements. These are reports on solid, serious things. Shall we not tonight think this over? I want to ask you bluntly. Where do you live? To whom do you owe allegiance? Where’s the source of your life? Where do you classify? According to the factual statements of our Savior, where do you classify? Whose child are you? To what race do you belong? What destiny is before you? But I’m not as good as that fellow. I have not said a word about that. I ask you, to what kingdom do you belong? Who is your father? Which level of the human race do you inhabit? Which kingdom do you dwell in? Which creation is it, the old or the new?

You had better think that over very seriously, very seriously, because that can be most important. And what I’ve given you tonight is the very essence of the Christian teaching, the very essence of the Christian teaching, held in some form by every evangelical church from the day Paul founded his first church. So we better take this seriously friends and ask ourselves the question, who’s my father? Where do I live? What level am I on? To whom do I owe allegiance? God help us.