The call to service is presented as a vital aspect of Christian life, urging believers to represent Christ and be channels of blessing. The sermon draws parallels between Jesus calling fishermen to be "fishers of men" and the woman at the well leaving her water pot to spread the news of Christ. It emphasizes that opportunities to serve and witness are unique to this life and will be lost if not seized, contrasting eternal service with the immediate, tangible opportunities on earth. The message concludes by calling for a complete consecration of one's life as a living sacrifice, actively displaying Christ to a perishing world, and highlights that even seemingly small acts of service can yield a great harvest.
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Now, just before we read the scriptures, I would like to cover the ground in your thinking of a week at Keswick. In many of the conventions around the world, these weeks of listening to God's word, God's people say on the Monday... the things that hurt and spoil the Christian, sin and selfishness that want to reign in our lives. And so, so often the knife of God's word has to open up the inner places and reveal the things that are hurting the health of the child of God.
On Tuesday, the teaching from God's word is the wonderful remedy. How in the risen Christ and by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Word of God, a Christian can be kept clean in a dirty world. How the precious blood of Christ cleanses from all sins. How if we fall or stumble, our great advocate will restore us. How if we confess our sins, he is just and faithful to forgive you.
Then we move on Wednesday to the claims of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The one who died for us to be our Savior, to give us pardon, comes to possess his possession. He wants no rival. He wants to be sovereign Lord of his blood-bought child. And on Thursday we move to the gracious work of the comfort of the Holy Spirit who can be everything to us on our journey. The one who came on the day of Pentecost and will go on with his work until he presents a church without spot or wrinkle to the coming bridegroom house.
And how he can indwell us and fill us and give to us divine unction and wisdom for everything. When we get to Friday, we face the holy service of God. As a royal holy priesthood consecrated to God's service, we can stand before God and stretch out our empty hands and have them filled with all that speaks of Christ and set in motion as a wave offering toward the world around. The call to service. there's a work for Jesus, none but you could do.
A corner that you can fill that nobody else can fill. And to be led into that place of service and know that this is what the Lord has entrusted you with is so vital. All the honor and the privilege of representing Jesus Christ, of being his advertisement, of being a channel of blessing to display him, in the sphere of influence where he has put us. Now we've reached Friday, and this is our subject, and we are going to turn to two short portions of Scripture in the New Testament. Matthew four, verse eighteen. And Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee saw two brethren, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers.
Jesus said unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. They straightway left their nets and followed him. Going on from thence he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother. In a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father and followed Jesus. One of those beautiful gospel pictures that we never tire of looking at. Wholesome, hard-bitten fishermen.
Born and bred by the lake of Galilee. Climbing into the boat with daddy. learning to handle the nets, feeling the splash of the water in their face and the breeze, thrilled with the tug of the nets as they haul in the fish. And at the end of a hard day's work, perhaps coming back to the home and relaxing, good food, warm fire, comfortable bed. This was life for them. The Lord watched them. Walking that lakeside, he saw those wholesome men casting their nets.
Have you ever cast a net? You've got to learn how to do it. It's a skilled job. And he saw them mending their nets. They'd got jagged against the rocks, and they were mending them. And another gospel says they were washing their nets and putting them up to dry in the air. And as he watched these skilled men, all of a sudden, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they left their nets.
they left their vote and became his disciples, the men who were going to be the apostles. And after he had died upon the cross of Calvary and won that great gospel for a perishing world in risen power, he looked into their faces and he said, When you are endued with power after Pentecost, you will go into all the world and make disciples of all nations Just as you caught those fish, you will go out into the great stream of humanity in the deep waters of men and women. You will catch men alive for me.
You will make disciples for me. What a tremendous job. Now, if you go through the Gospels, you will see the Lord training these men. Again and again and again he had to teach and re-teach lessons. Sometimes he's speaking to them alone. Sometimes he's speaking to the crowds. Sometimes he will beckon to three of them, Peter and James and John, and he will say, Come. And they'll go into the house of Jairus, and he will let them watch as he raises a little girl to life.
Sometimes he beckons and says, Come, and he leads them up to a high mountain apart, and they see him talking with his father, and then with Moses and Elias, and he's transfigured in all his glory. He led them even into the dark shadows of Gethsemane to hear his sobs and see his crying. These are the men, wholesome men, that he was going to make. fishers of men after he had left. Now will you turn to John's Gospel, chapter four and verse five.
Then cometh Jesus to a city of Samaria, which is called Saikah, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's will was there, Jesus therefore, being wearyed with the journey sat thus on the will, and it was about the sixth hour. And there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said unto her, Give me to drink. For his disciples, Peter, James, John, Andrew, and the rest, were gone away into the city to thy meat.
Verse twenty-seven. And upon this came his disciples, Peter, James, John, Andrew, and the rest, and marveled that Jesus talked with the woman. Yet no man, none of the twelve, said, What seekest thou, or why talkest thou with her? The woman then left, left her water. Went her way into the city, and said to the men, Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did, is not this the Christ.
I'm going to ask you to keep your Bibles open at John four, and I'm going to ask you to try and come with me in nineteen sixty five right into the heart of this picture from the word of God that we will build. The Lord hasn't changed. He is the same yesterday and today and forever the unchanging Christ. The world hasn't changed. The same throbbing, expanding world of humanity as around us. But the Lord pointed to when he said, Go and make disciples of all nations. There are men and women like the men and women of Saika all around you.
Just as those disciples left the nets and left the fishing boats, and just like this woman in the freshness of her first love left the water pot, the Lord wants us to leave many a legitimate thing Because he's calling us to something bigger, grander, greater, far more wonderful. It's our one little opportunity, as Christians, of serving him and representing him in a world that doesn't like him very much. Now, Christian, get hold of it.
Through the never-ending ages of eternity, you are going to serve him. You will walk with him in white. You will see his face, and his servant shall serve him. Through the never-ending ages of eternity, you are going to have the priceless privilege of being coerced with Christ in his eternal glory. But never, oh God, It's hard to say it because it sweeps over my soul. Do I really believe it? Never will you be able to pick up a telephone up there and bring up a sinner and invite them to a gospel service.
Never will you be able there to give out a tract with a prayer behind it. Never will you be able to face a hostile world and represent your Savior and try and win them for him. Everybody loves him up there. It's only down here in this little planet that swings round the sun... It's only down here amongst the children of Adam's race, deceived by the fallen angel, Lucifer, son of the morning, Satan, that the kingdom of darkness is found in strength.
It's only down here they spit in the face of the Son of God and trample underfoot his blood and are careless of his claims. And God saves you, Christians, and it's only down here. you'll be able to serve him and represent him in a hostile world. Your opportunities are slipping away fast. And the tragedy is we are losing the opportunities. You say, how do you know? Because I know my own heart. Again and again and again when the day is over with all its responsibility and rush, you're tired out and you can only as you go to bed say, Lord, we are on the same old terms.
Could you give me a good night? If I've grieved you and failed you during the day, will you forgive me? And as you search your own heart in his presence, It's not some disgusting sin. It's not some rank evil. But again and again you have to say, Lord, you gave me a day. And right through this day I met the butcher and the baker and the newsboy. I went into the store. I said, how do you do to the mailman? I spoke to my next-more neighbor. But Lord, Lord, I missed so many opportunities. I never spoke of thee to them.
I never seized the opportunities to try and love them for thee. And it's not so much the things one did. It's the things that are under us that you have to confess to your Lord. Sometimes your heart is stirred and jolted as you see others. doing what you fail to do. You see a man in his car it loaded with good sound literature and every time he stops to fill up his gas tank he gives a reason why or some good book to the man that serves.
You see a dear woman and somehow with the radiance of the Lord you see her witnessing and touching other lives and you feel a sense of shame and say, oh, I can't do this or I don't do it. The lost opportunity. Now catch the picture. It's from John's Gospel. It's not a synoptic Gospel in order. It's hard to know when it took place, for there's a structure about this unique gospel that displays the word of God, the Son of God.
But I can see them coming, that little band Jesus and his loved disciples, the men that God had given him. And they're coming up the great highway. They must needs go through. Semaria, the land of the mongrel people, the mixed races, and proud, pure-blooded Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. There was racial tension and racial feeling then. It's around the world today, it's deep-bitten in people's makeup.
Nothing new. It's just the selfish outreach of the old natural man. I don't like a person because they're not just like me. This is what's filling our world with distress and trouble, anxiety, perplexity, and conflict. Well, they come to Saika and they come to Jacob's well. It was a deep well. And our Lord was tired. You can understand that. Virtue was going out of him.
Oh, so constantly he was. Letting the sick touch the hem of his garment. And every time it happened, healing came and virtue went out of him. Who touched me? He knew. And again and again you can see him with the teeming crowds, breaking bread for five thousand to be fed. How exhausted. Standing and preaching those tremendous sermons and then moving on, and tired and weary under the midday sun, he sits down on the wellside and eager disciples say, Master, we'll slip up into the city.
We'll visit the butcher and the baker. We'll get some T-bone steaks and some fresh rolls. And they left him. And if you will ponder the story carefully, you will find that as they went up that road they passed someone who was coming down. Now these men knew life. They weren't fools. As they saw her coming down, a woman of Samaria with a big stone pot on her head or shoulder, men sometimes pass remarks amongst themselves that they wouldn't say in a woman's company.
And I wouldn't be surprised. We'll be able to ask them by and by in the glory land if they didn't whisper to each other, look at this type. and they steered to the right of the road to let a woman pass by with her water pot. Not coming in the evening hour with the chattering women to talk the doings of the day in the shadows, coming under a burning sun. She had gone out and found her water pot empty, that vital water pot that stood outside her door, that water pot that she couldn't live without from the early morning to wash her face, to make a cup of tea, to cook her food, to scrub her floor, dipping, dipping, dipping, and all too quickly it went down.
And she comes under the midday sun. When the shadows lengthen, she's about other business, nasty business. She comes to the well side and she meets Jesus and I don't know, honestly, I don't know anything quite like that interview with Jesus as an instruction for soul winning. John's gospel is filled with sevens, seven miracles, seven great I am titles, and there are seven approaches of the great fisher of souls toward that woman.
And her response is, until at last she says, I that speak unto thee in brackets, and he's revealed himself as the I am. the one who stood amongst the clouds and said, I am the living bread, I am the way, I am the good shepherd, I am the resurrection and the light, has revealed himself to a woman as the I am. And she left her water pot Just like those disciples left their nets and left their boat and left mother and father, I will make you fishers of men.
She left her water pot and she's gone up the road. Now listen. She couldn't live without that water pot. Why did you leave your home, lady? A water pot. Why did you come to the city streets and out of the gate? A water pot, empty. Why did you come down the dusty road to the well side? A water pot. She's left. Why did she leave her water pot?
She's going up the road, and as she goes up the road, she passes them. Yes, you read the story. Peter, James, Tom, Andrew, the whole crowd, a big bunch of boys, and they've got their baskets full. They're feeling like you are on a Friday night when you've been for a good shop. They've got T-bone steaks. They've got hot rolls. They've got everything. And they're coming down the road. And she slipped past them. She's going as fast as a woman's legs can carry her. And they come to the well, and they say, Master, eat.
Look what we've got. And she said, No, thank you. And they were surprised that he had spoken to the woman at all, but they said, Did anyone give you anything to eat while we are gone? And he said, No. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work. He sent me into the world not to condemn it, but to save it. He sent me into the world to capture the hearts and lives of men and women in a fallen race, that I might give them spiritual life, a fountain of living waters that will spring up within their hearts into eternal life.
The Father seeketh such to worship Him. He wants to produce worshippers out of fallen men and women. And I see those amazed men standing back. There's the food. The master's not hungry. And all of a sudden he lifts up his eyes to the gate. And lifting his hand he says to them, Lift up your eyes and look. Every eye of a disciple turns to that gate. As they look, Jesus says, the fields are white or ready to harvest.
He or she that gathereth or reapeth wages, gathereth life unto fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. Men, I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor. Other men labored. You're entered into their labors. And I could see those men looking. And they saw, coming through the gate, the big white hats of the Samaritans. Have you seen pictures of them? The big white gowns that they wore. The men of Samaria, they're coming out.
And as they move along the road, in their midst is a woman. And she's saying, Come. Come see the man that told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ? They're coming. And Jesus said, look on the fields, white to us. Have you ever seen a wheat field growing? Have you ever seen the green shoots growing until at last the stalk comes and there's the head? The little corn of wheat that fell into the ground is now reproducing and it's becoming ahead of sixty or eighty or a hundredfold.
And it's green and as the sun kisses it and kisses it, it's growing ripe, the golden grain of the wheat harvest, moving like this in the wind as the wind blows through it. But if it's not reaped at the right time, the gold turns to white. And if the white isn't reaped, it begins to grow out, and the little tiny pieces of grain fall from the head, and the harvest can be lost if it isn't reaped. White! To harvest.
Say ye not there are four months and then cometh harvest. I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields wiped to harvest. The little band of men who have left the fishing boats and the nets are being taught one of the deepest lessons of their discipleship. What? They had lost the harvest of Samaria. because they thought more of meat than men. They had left Jesus and gone into the city to buy meat.
The woman left her water pot and said, Men, Oh God, by thy spirit and through thy word convict me and my beloved Christian friend. If you spend as much time and exercise on men as meat, revival would break out all through America tomorrow. You don't. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work. around Psyche as well, Jesus and twelve disciples and a woman and an unnumbered men of Psyche gather and they say to him, Jesus, would you come and live in our city for a bit?
He said yes. Would you come and sleep on our bed? He said yes. Would you come and eat at our table? Yes. Would you tell us the way of the upstream of eternal life in our hearts? You said yes. Jesus was no separatist from the world. Don't misunderstand me. One of the greatest mistakes I see amongst Christians in North America is they have rightly separated from the world and come out to Jesus Christ and in that separation they have produced a selfish isolation.
Me and my nice little circle and my nice little fellowship, and we can gather for our midweek prayer meeting and our breaking of bread, and we are, oh, my little circle of friends. They have not faced the pointing finger that says, go into the world, for God never brings men and women out of the world without wanting to commission them and send them into the world. No need to dance with the world. There's no need to flirt with the world. There's no need to sin with the world. But God wants men and women in the world to meet.
It's hurting me. I suppose it's hurting you. Why is it we spread our table and get three or four or five or six of our choices, Christian friends, to come in and have a banquet and a lovely little selfish time as Christians all together? And we've never yet invited the publican and the sinner in to our spread table and lovingly giving them our best food with the object of women and of course. And until this isolation of the Church of Jesus Christ in the name of fundamentalism and strictness and exclusivism is broken, and we go out across no man's land, and we are among them, you'll never reach.
He went. He spent two days there. When it was all over, they crowded to the city gate to wave him goodbye, and you should read what they said. The men of Sumerius stood there, and they said, as they saw him going, they said, Woman, now we believe, we are believers now, not because you told us. We've seen him ourselves. We know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. And he left behind the harvest of Samaria, one by a woman, a young convert in the freshness of first love, with the upspringing waters in our heart who had left the water pot.
God, come, come, see the man that told me. Now I was having a gospel campaign in a local church, and we were having very happy meetings, but we were finding it pretty hard, pretty hard. I was preaching night by night to about ninety-nine percent of saints and seats, and it's very hard to make converts for Jesus Christ from saints or seats. A lovely Christian woman came up to me and she said, Mr.
Wildish, thank you for your gospel preaching. I am enjoying it so much. She said, I haven't been able to get anyone to come and hear you. She said, you see, I've been saved a number of years and all my friends are Christian. So I said to her, well, you're rather ashamed of yourself, aren't you? She stared at me and she said, what do you mean? And I said, aren't you ashamed to think that all your friends are Christians? She said, oh no, she said, ah, I've been converted a long time and she said, I don't know any people in the world, I have nothing to do with them.
I said, aren't you ashamed of yourself to think that you aren't friendly toward them because the great friend of sinners? mingled so freely with publicans and sinners, and he could always speak a word of cheer, and they thronged around him with confidence. Oh, she said, I can't go into the world, can I? I said, of course you can. I said, you haven't got to go to the gambling den. You haven't got to go to the, uh, to the dance. You haven't got to go to the house of ill fame. But I said, around you, isn't there a young mother with a baby? And couldn't you stop and say, oh, what a wonderful baby you've got, and couldn't you say, well, if I could give any helping hand to you?
Haven't you got someone around you who grows daffodils or roses or tulips, and you could stop and talk tulips and be a friend? Isn't there someone around the corner who you could talk something with on the friendly neighborhood basis? Because these people haven't got Christ, and they have sicknesses and sorrows and battles and problems, and they need a friend. And I said, if you were friendly with them, and they looked upon you as the nicest neighbor that they had, oh so kind and thoughtful, When you rang them up or you spoke to them about that servant of God coming into town and would they come with you to listen to him?
They would say, well, our best friend asked us, yes, we'll go. As I piled it on a little, she said, I never saw it like that. There are thousands of Christians in their separation from the world which is right, have produced an isolation from the world which is utterly selfish. The pointing finger says, the world, the perishing world, you left those fishing boats to make disciples. Sometimes God has to use a new convert in the freshness of first love, with the mounting waters of the living stream of eternal life, to leave her water pot behind, to teach men who've been in the business of soul winning, with the master himself for months and months, haven't learned the lesson.
That your mate is to do the will of him who sent you, and to finish his work. No, there is such a thing as consecration to service. I can see those priests of old being led out. They've gone through their dedication, and God has accepted them. They're consecrated and set apart to His holy service, and now clad in their garments about to face their priestly ministry. They stand with empty hands. And from the altar they have taken the most excellent pieces of the meat offerings.
All the fat and the excellencies of those offerings are put in their hands. And you see the priests of the old economy offering a wave offering to the Lord as they begin to move their hands and display these excellent pieces of the sacrifice in a wave offering. And God has given to you and to me Christ, the excellent Christ, in our consecration and our dedication to his service, to display to a perishing world. Not to bottle it up, but to display it to us.
I'm going to ask you, as I close and tell you one story, I'm going to ask you, are you willing to bring your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your intelligence service, and yield it? to a pathway of service not conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may tread that good and acceptable and perfect path of God's will that he planned for you. You say it's too late, Mr. Waddish, I'm too old. That's defeatism talking.
That's the cause of your defeat and uselessness. Lord pointed out to those disciples, he said, this kind cometh not out, but by prayer to fasting, sacrificial prayer that will give up something in its intensity and desire for that man's need to be met. Let me tell you, right here on the old Florida coast, with all the sunshine and the fishing and the shuffleboard, there is a field and a sphere of ministry and missionary work. It is tremendous. I have been to Florida now for thirteen years on and off to Boca Raton and to Hiram, and I have seen midst all the Gold Coast and the coast of Florida, men and women that I could name to you who have been so well.
Only today there came to me at the door a dear brother in Christ, and he said, I have just come from Smyrna Beach. you swooner, and I've just been at the bedside of Mrs. Torrenson, and my mind went back to Chicago City, the great windowed windy city. Mrs. Torrenson, the first time I met her seventeen years ago, the whole ambition of her life is others, others, a smile, love, a kindly act, a word in season. God knows the treasure that she's lifted to the glory land from the dying sobbing world. This is sorry.
And she's getting weaker and dying now in her old age at Newtland. She's won many a trophy on this old gold coast of Florida. The harvest truly is plenty of Say ye not there are four months and then comeeth harnessed. All around you right now, if only you would stand in your dedication and say, my hands are empty and at thy service, to take and display Christ with all. Here it is.
away in the land of idols, for I can call it nothing more, the land of idols where they say there are more idols than people. In one of the villages there was a great big temple built for an idol god, and the idol god ruled and reigned over several of the Indian villages. There was a man in that idol who used to serve as a priest for this idol god. And he noticed with the passing of the months that the people were bringing their offerings and laying them on the idle ledge, on the little altar ledge. And they were bringing all sorts of second-rate things.
They were bringing odd bent coins. They were bringing sheep that were wounded or lame or blind or some animal for sacrifice that wasn't much use out on the fields. Second-rate. Wondering how he could challenge those people to devotion to the great idol God, he sent a message to the villages and asked them all to come and gather in front of the great temple because God, their God, was going to speak to them and display himself to them. The story as it came to me was that they gathered... And he stood in front of those big doors, and inside those doors was their idol God that they very rarely saw.
And he stood there, the priest, and he said, I'm going in to speak to our God, and I'm going to ask him what he demands of us. He's not satisfied, and he harangued them, and he spoke to them, and he told them their faults. Then he went in. And after a bit when he came out he looked into their faces and he said, Our God is righteously angry. He demands sacrifice. He demands a young man, a young Indian man, to give his life. He pleaded and pleaded until at last a young Indian stepped forward and the priest caught hold of him and dragged him through a small door into the presence of the God.
People outside waited and then they heard a noise. It was the noise of blows, the noise of a sharp sword hacking and hacking right to the bone. And then horrified they saw blood coming out from underneath the temple doors. Then when their priest came out, he had a great curved sword in his hand dripping with red blood. And he said, our God is not yet satisfied. He demands another, another young Indian. And he pleaded and cajoled until he got another. And the same horrid happening, led in the sound of blows and a fresh outpouring of blood underneath the gate.
He came out, and the same awful thing happened. He said, Our God demands one more. There must be three. And after pleading and pressing at last, he almost constrained one young man to come. And he was led in, and the same thing happened. The priest didn't come out. They saw the great big gates beginning to move, and they knew that they were going to slide back, and they were going to see the face of their God. And as the sunlight streamed into the darkened temple, an awed crowd outside gazed in, and as they gazed upon the face of their God, they noticed just inside the gate three men standing with their faces toward that great idol God.
And then as it became clear they saw down on the ground just inside the leg of the gate three goats all hacked to pieces by a sword. And it was the blood of the goats that had come out underneath the gate. And then their priest came out with the great sword and he said, Our God is satisfied. These men were willing to present their bodies a sacrifice to death. But our God doesn't want them to die. He wants them to live. They don't belong to themselves anymore. They belong to this God. They're going to stay with me in the temple. And it was a hushed crowd that went back to the villages, leaving three to serve in that temple.
Christian, Christ man, Christ woman, you turned to God from Eichael, to serve the living God, servants of the living God. I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Could you go out into Florida life with all its peculiar temptations to easiness?
To say I am going to be a living servant of one who sent me. Each new day will be an adventure. to lead me to some soul today, to write a letter, to give a tract, to ring a phone, somehow to make Christ known to those around me. For if this harvest isn't gathered, it will be lost. Shall we pray? Lord
Jesus, very simply we could do it, bowed in thy presence, present our bodies either for the first time or afresh, for this thing must be done again and again. A living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, our intelligence service. Lord, there's a young man here tonight with all life and its possibilities ahead of him. Perhaps looking into thy face, he's going to mean it. Take my life and let it be.
Perhaps there's one with the passing years feeling old and perhaps weary with life's journey, and yet all the past of their life has enriched them with knowledge and personality. and gifts to be in the evening of life a fruit-bearing Christian that will bring forth the fall sweetness. Lord, leave no one out in my claim. May we stand before the men and women, dedicated and consecrated, with empty hands to be filled with Christ, and set in motion to display him to us. each one in the corner where thou hast placed us.
Thank you for those who serve in the kitchen, for those who serve on the ground, or those who serve in the schoolhouse, or those who are shut in the small room to sound out the radio message. Thank you, Lord, for those who can move out in the sunshine in their cars, to eat, to drink, to play, to swim. But to each one of us, may there come the call to yield afresh what we have to thee in glad surrender, but thou mightest use it. Lord, in a moment's time we are going to sing that old hymn, Take my life and let it be, consecrated, Lord, to thee.
Take my moments and my days, let them flow in speechless praise. And may we sing it with tested hearts asking ourselves, Do I really mean that my life, what's left of it, what it is, belongs to thee, Lord Jesus. Now would you like to turn in your hymn books to number three hundred and thirty five? To Francis, Ridley, Havergill's great consecration hymn. Would you like to look down those four verses which we are going to sit and sing?
And after the singing of it the benediction and the service is over we shall go out into the moonlight, out onto the grounds to greet each other. But as you sit and sing it, I've got to ask you to do something. You may have known Christ for long, long years. You must say, Mr. Wowlish, I meant that when I was a girl or a boy. I met Christ and he became Lord and I sang that one night back in the old home city. And somehow from then I've sought to serve him. I know I make mistakes. I know I'm frail, but Lord, you know the attitude of my heart.
I want you to take what I've got. Now look down those verses, and I'm going to ask all of you, if with honest hearts you can do it, to pick out one verse. One verse. And as we sing those four verses, I want you to pick out your verse. that you feel you could stand before the Lord and sing. And as we sing through those four verses, you will stand to sing it. That is, during the first verse, there may be six or seven people. During the second verse, there might be ten or twenty people. During the third verse, there might be fifty people. During the fourth verse, there might be one.
No one can say which verse you will pick out, but look down those verses and ask, could I stand before my Lord and say, I am singing this, him with God's children and meaning it. And I'm going to stand before thee and join in one verse standing and then sit down. The first group of the first verse will be seated. There will be a pause. Then the second verse that others may rise and so on. But by that simple act, standing before the Lord for one verse, you confess that this is the answer of your heart, Lord. I want you to take me. ever only all for thee.
So every Christian, some perhaps for the hundredth time, every one of you, some perhaps for the first time, stand before God, saying, That's what I want, my life to be taken and used in his holy service. What I have is at his disposal. Now fix the verse that you feel you should stand for. And as the singing begins, will you rise to the verse you chose? Thank you.