I'd like to read with me, please, from Paul's letter to the Colossians chapter one. Paul's letter to the Colossians chapter one. And for the sake of time, we'll read from verse twelve. This time apparently is taken as an opportunity for presenting the gospel. At the same time, we'd like to make it profitable in some way. to those who have already accepted it, because I think that here we have some aspects of the Gospel brought before us that it's always good for believers as well as unbelievers to consider them. I think they give us seven wonderful aspects of the Gospel. Now that may sound rather heavy, and perhaps you think that you're in for an all-right, an all-night session. Well, you're not so relaxed. But it is as though... The Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, were here taking a very precious gem and turning it round in the light and showing to us seven of the great blessings and benefits, seven great and outstanding aspects of what we call the work of atonement. What God has done to bring us to himself and what is necessary what is necessary for us to have in order to be God's children. Verse twelve of chapter one to the Colossians. Giving thanks, or since we're breaking in, we could change that first word into let us give thanks, or we give thanks, unto the Father who has made us meet or suited, fitted, to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. I'd like you to notice that there are seven active verbs in a handful of verses here, and it is to these seven verbs that I would like you to pay attention and to consider as we go over them rapidly with you. The first one is he has made us suitable. He has fitted us. Who has delivered us from the power? The word is authority. He has delivered us from the authority. So we have... He has made us suitable. He has fitted us. He has delivered us. Then he has translated us into the kingdom of his dear son. The word translated, as used by Paul. The word which is translated here is translated. means to take out of one standing or position and moved over into another standing or position, that is, from a standing, say, of condemnation into one of justification, from a standing in darkness and death into light and life, a taking out of one standing and a putting into another standing. in whom we have redemption. Our redemption is not quite the same as being moved over into another kingdom, nor is it quite the same as being delivered. It adds another angle to this wonderful salvation. We shall look at it. It means to be bought, to be bought out of the slave market, or to be redeemed from beneath a penalty passed upon us in a court of law. The next word is redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. For redemption does not in itself, that is, in human terms, I could buy a slave out of the slave market and give him his liberty. But if he had been guilty of a crime previous to being bought, I as a human being would not have the power to forgive that crime. I could buy him and liberate him, but he would still have to go to court and answer for crimes committed as a slave. So the words are different. And then we go further down to verse twenty-one, and we read, And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now have he reconciled. That's a different word again. Gives us another aspect of the gospel. We have been reconciled to a God. with whom we had been at war, against whom we had been in rebellion, from whom we had been alienated. There was a barrier of antagonism, antipathy, hatred between the two of us. And then finally, verse twenty-two, reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, that is the body of Christ, through death, to present you wholly, unblameable and unreprovable in his sight, to present you as a finished product in the presence of a holy God. To bring you into that light unapproachable, who were once a sinner, and to bring you into that light so that even the eternal holiness of God can find in you no blame. and nothing to be reproved. And so these are the seven things I'd like you to think about for a moment, to fit us, to deliver us, to translate us, to redeem us, to reconcile us, to present us. Now, all of this is put together in words that we can fully understand to redeem us. I forgot when I was going down those, to redeem us and to forgive us. All of these can be put together under the one word salvation. That's the word that's used so often in Scripture. Salvation refers to what God has accomplished in Christ to take me out of a position of danger, of doom, of judgment, altogether. He has saved me from this imminent danger. Conversion means the transformation that takes place in me when God does this to me. And they're again not quite the same words. We buy a hearse and we convert it into a passenger car. We buy a bus and we convert it into a caravan. We buy a military rifle and we convert it into a sporting rifle. We change the thing in question. to put it to a new use. And that's what God does. Converted is a really good biblical word. I have been saved by God to take me out of the grasp of Satan and to save me from the imminent doom which was hanging over my head, a doom which would have meant eternal death and banishment from the presence of God into the lake of fire. But when I am saved, He not only saves me from doom, but He changes me. And I am converted. I am changed not only around in direction, but I am also transformed. For if any man be in Christ, there is new creation. Old things are passed away. All things have become new. That's conversion. So these words are all different, all distinct, and yet they all form parts. of the great work of God in the human life and soul. Now I suggest to you that if you are in this meeting this evening and you have not experienced God's salvation as a personal thing, then you need every one of these seven things. Let's look at them very quickly, for time goes a great deal too quickly. He has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. Now I have my own ideas about what the participation, the partaking of the inheritance in the saints of light might be. But I don't want to go into the theological depths of that. I would like rather to look on this as a making us ready for the eternal consummation of things, make us ready for heaven if you want to put it that way. There are people who somehow or other think that they can live almost as they like down here. And then finally there will be the great end-day judgment. And God will weigh up deeds and, you know, even if we're not born again, if we've been fairly good and made a reasonably serious attempt at doing things more or less straight up and down, God is after all a merciful God. And somehow or other, He'll find a way of pardoning us and taking us into heaven. My dear friend, I'm afraid if you say that kind of thing, you don't really understand what heaven is going to be like. I'm not too sure that you would fit in heaven unless you were changed very radically. For the things that you live for and go in for today, the habits, the vices, the things that have enslaved you, the things that you long for, that you live for from day to day, the pleasures or whatever they may be, you will not find those in heaven. And if you went into heaven unchanged, you would be in a sphere, you would be in a place for which you were not prepared. You would be craving satisfaction along the lines that you craved on here, the pleasures of the world, drink, booze, if you will, drugs perhaps, smoking. And unless you're changed, you would never find any of those things in heaven. How do you think you'd get along without them? Oh, it would be a different place. I'm not talking about place. I'm talking about you. How would you get along without them? I have seen, indeed I have experienced myself, though not in all the details that I'm going to relate, but I have seen people who somehow or other have got themselves into the company of a bunch of Christians in a private home, perhaps. And they're going to have a little Bible study and a sing-song and enjoy a little bit of fellowship together. And somebody invites this person to come along. They don't know what they're getting in for, so they walk into it. And I'm not too sure that it's wise to do that, but that's a separate subject. I think people should be warned what you're inviting them to in some measure. They go in and they find everybody talking about the Lord Jesus that they're not interested in this. And they find everybody, the one who's saying, let's sing choruses for a while. And they begin looking at their watch and saying, I wonder when this is all going to be over. This is a boar, a deadly boar. Time goes on and they read the scriptures and they talk about the joys of the Lord's coming and this person begins to become more and more uncomfortable because they don't want the Lord to come. They're afraid of the Lord's coming, that they're going to have to face the God against whom they've sinned. Added to this, they're dying for smoke. But they look around and they notice that there aren't any ash trays and there aren't as nobody else smoking. And after a little while of that, they start biting their nails and looking for a way out. And it hasn't gone on for an hour yet. Supposing you were transferred by some freak or other, some freak accident, you were transferred to heaven, unchanged. And you had all these acquired habits of yours. And you liked smutty jokes. And you took the Lord's name in vain. and you defiled your mouth the things you know perfectly well you shouldn't say not necessarily blasphemous but dirty and you couldn't stand for a day without a smoke or a drink or a fix if you're that kind of a person you wouldn't be up there for an hour my friend because those who go into the glory of God's presence are there for all eternity I believe that without prior fitness for heaven heaven would be hell to a person who was not converted. How would you stand it? Of course, you couldn't be there, because to enter into the presence of God in your sins, you would be immediately destroyed. The Lord Jesus Christ said, If you die in your sins, where I am, you cannot come. He didn't say, You may not come. I wouldn't let you come. He said, It's a moral impossibility, because not that the final shall enter there. You must be prepared for it. The old-time preachers used to thunder and ponder Bibles, and God help us. We need some of them back once in a while. And they used to say, Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. Do you remember that when you're older people? And it's true, you know. It's true. Paul says in writing to the Philippines, the things that I counted gain, the things that I thought were all right. I came to a certain point when I met the Lord Jesus face to face, and every one of those pluses became a minus. I discovered that the things that I most highly prized were things that had brought me into collision with God himself. And I was found to be a persecutor, a blasphemer, and injurious, that I was ignorant and unbelieving. and I only obtained mercy because God is a God of mercy. That's the Apostle Paul. And then he says, the things that I once kind of gain, I now count loss. All my sense of values, my whole scale of values has been reversed. The whole polarity of my life has been reversed. The people I once murdered, for he did, he said, I pursued them even to death. Paul was guilty of murdering some of God's children, the members of the body of Christ. And he never got over that. We say very glibly, oh, Paul said, I'm the last and I'm less than the least of all the apostles because he was the greatest of sinners. No. Paul said, touching the law, I was blames. Why then did he consider himself to be less than the least of all the apostles? Because he said, I persecuted the church. I marred the body of Christ. I heard the screams of people in torture, and I didn't realize that every pang that tore those human hearts, the man of sorrow, had a heart. Until he stopped me on the Damascus Road and he said, Saul, Saul, whatever are you doing? Why are you persecuting me? And so his whole life was changed. And he said, the things that I once hated, I now love, and the things I once loved. and I consider them to be not just dross, dung and dross. The word is garbage. It's a word which was used for the great pits outside the slaughterhouses in the east, where when they killed the animals in the slaughterhouse, all the innards of those animals with all the contents were thrown into these great pits, and over them was a cloud of buzzing flies, and the stench went out, anything that would just make any person shrink in revulsion from this horrid, corrupt, maggot-infested mess. And he said, the things that I gave up, I didn't give them up, as though I were giving something up a great cost. Oh, I'm giving up all this to be a Christian. He said, I shrink from it in utter disgust. I'm glad to be rid of it. That's a change, isn't it? And so I can just see an unpleased unchanged, unconverted sinner being ushered into the presence of that wonderful company in Revelation and hearing the great choir striking up. Worthy is a lamb that was slain. And they're standing there. They hear another one. Thou art worthy, for thou was slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood. But they can't claim it. The horror of it all would drive them insane. My dear friend, think of those men who go to the moon. They were never made to live on the moon. I'm not saying they were ongoing. It's none of my business if they want to go to the moon. They think they're doing a big thing, but God put a man far before the moon two thousand years ago. We're way ahead of these space people. There is a living man in the immediate presence of God who went up from earth to heaven, and he is a human body like ours. A perfect human body, but with the marks of Golgotha still upon it. So they put a man on the moon. Our master put a man in the glory two thousand years ahead of them. No big thing there, is it? But you know those men who go to the moon, they couldn't live there. If they go, they have to take cylinders of the earth's atmosphere with them, because there is no atmosphere that they could breathe or use up there. You see, they were never created to live on the moon. And so they have to wear boots weighing, I don't know how much each, to keep them down. And they have to have cylinders of earth's atmosphere on their backs and masks and helmets and goggles on them to keep whatever it is up there. If it doesn't have atmosphere, then I'm not quite aware of what's keeping that. Probably rays of one sort and other. They're not made, they're not fitted to live there. And that would be just like a sinner in the glory. Now it says Paul. We give thanks because God has fitted us. He has made us suitable for living in heaven. And I'm glad of that. When I was a young boy, I used to go to large Easter conferences in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. That's where I come from. That's where I belong. From there that I was commended to the Lord's work, in case you're having curiosity about my foreign accent. And as a young boy, the Lord's coming was talked about a great deal. back in my homeland, and they used to sing at the Easter Conference almost every year some hymns about the coming of the Lord. The building held about three and a half thousand people, and to hear that great congregation of people singing, O child of God there is for thee a hope that shines under the gloom, a gladsome hope that thou shalt see thy Lord, for he will surely come. My heart was in my boots, my mouth was as dry as chalk, and I was just patrified of the Lord's coming. They sang all sorts of hymns about this. Our Lord is now rejected by the world its own, by the many still neglected, by the few enthroned. But soon he'll come in glory. The hour is drawing nigh. The crowning day is coming by, and by night's own. Lord, spare me one more day, and I'll go home, and I'll get saved. I'm not ready to go. And then I got saved. Toward the end of January, and the Easter conference came around, and I was sitting there singing, I just hope they sing some hymn about the coming of the Lord. Because you can come anytime, my Lord, I got saved, as though I were the only one who was waiting for. And when they started to sing one of these hymns, my, how I sang, what made the difference? I was made fit for it. I was ready. Are you ready? Look at the second word, and we're going to have to go a lot faster than this, aren't we? He has delivered us from the power of darkness. The word power here doesn't mean strength or might so much as authority. And you'll notice the parallel to it. He has delivered us from the authority of the darkness, it should read, and has translated us over into the kingdom of his dear son. It's obviously two kingdoms that are in question. He has taken us out from under one authority and placed us under another authority. And that's really the rub about conversion. You'll have to get under a new authority. He has delivered us. He has given us liberation. Not liberation to do what we like. But he has made us free to please him and to do what he likes. And our will is now, our meat rather, is now to do the will of him who has sent us. He has liberated us from the authority of the darkness. That's the prince of the power of the air, according to the twin epistles of this, Ephesians chapter two. But he says, at that time you Ephesian Christians, before you were saved, at that time you walked according to the fashion of this world, the lifestyle of this world. according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works actively in the children of disobedience, meaning all those who are characterized by disobedience, the sons of disobedience. Everybody who rejects in disobedience, God's gospel, leaves themselves wide open to be brought under the energy, the working, the practical working, of the prince of the power of the air who is safe. Do I believe in demon possession? Of course. I lived thirty-four years of my life in the heart of savagedon, where demon possession is a very real thing. But I would come a little closer, for Ephesians chapter two teaches clearly that everybody who rejects the liberating lordship of Jesus Christ, by that rejection, they put themselves under the authority of the Prince of Darkness. You say, I never thought of that. It doesn't matter whether you thought of it or not. That is the fact as stated by God. That you are dominated by the powers of darkness. Even now, as you hear the gospel, Satan is working in your heart and saying, don't get into this tonight. Maybe next year. Maybe next week. Maybe Monday morning. Maybe you could talk later on to somebody, but not now. All hell is here to try to keep you from accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. You are dominated by that spirit. There are men and women walking the streets of your city, if it's the same as cities that I, other cities that I know, who would give a finger, a right hand, a left hand. They would give everything they possess to be liberated from some of the vices in which they are held. And there is no liberation for them. They will never be out of it, except they are liberated by Christ. It's a dreadful bondage. It is a degrading servitude. Two or three years ago, a young boy close to our home just in the next time ship over, went into a school, his own high school, with a loaded shotgun and a loaded hunting rifle. And he shot four or five or six, I've forgotten exactly how many, two or three of them dead and two or three of them he marred for life. And then he turned the shotgun on himself and blew his head off, a high school youth. His mother went to his bedroom to look into things afterwards and she found a note on the pillow. He says, Mom, please forgive me for what I'm doing. I'm at the end of the road and there's no way out. That wasn't a way out. That was a way in. For if he died in a sin, then he's out for all eternity. About a year later, people on Young Street in Toronto, very respectable sort of city on the whole, very self-righteous kind of place, but we've got our troubles and mountainous doses. A young man running around with hands up at his eyes, bumping into people in a crowded sidewalk, and one or two people gave him a shunt that, you know, where are you going? Can't you see? Aren't you looking? You know how people do. And then somebody looked and saw that there was blood on his arms, took a second look, called for policemen. It took six strong policemen to rope him to a stature to take him away, As he was, he had taken LSD. He had seen such awful things that he tried to shut them out by putting his fingers up to his eyes, staggering along the sidewalk in a frenzy. And by the time the police got to him, he had stuck his four fingers right through his eyeballs. They carried him away insane and blind for life. That, that. is the authority of the darkness. There is only one way out, and that is the liberating gospel of the Christ who died and rose again, that he might destroy the works of the Satan. And so he says, We have been liberated. Sin shall not have dominion over you. We've been hearing about people up in Bismarck who were involved in Satan worship and drugs and all the rest of it, and the liberating power of the Christ of the gospel sweeps into these lives. turns them inside out and turns them back to front and prepares them for a place in the glory where they would never get any drugs or anything else and makes them fit for that and liberates them from the power of Satan. The next step is he translated us into the kingdom of Azir's son. Now the two go together, and you can't have the one without the other, but I'd like to distinguish the one, shall we say, is more negative than the other. God could have delivered us and said, all right, now this is the theory of some people in main nine denominations. If you get this deliverance, then you're on your own. God said, I'm washed you up. I've tidied you up. This is reformation. Now, you'd be good. You'd be good. And keep going. Imitate Christ. Work your way to heaven. Oh, no. That would never do. You see, liberating me from the power of sin is only one part of the job. Saving the children of Israel from death by the destroyer would never have taken them out from the bondage of Pharaoh. the Lord might have passed over them and not slaughtered them for their sins of idolatry because the children of Israel worshiped the false gods in Egypt. The Bible says so. And when they had a moment to themselves, they made a golden calf, a golden bull, like the bull of Egypt, and danced around it naked, worshipping it, three months out of Egypt. They went back to what they'd been in. And had they not put the blood on the door, they would have died. But they could have had the blood, let's say, and the destroyer not destroyed them. And God said, all right, now do your best to get yourselves out, and it would never have worked, for there were still in Egypt. But there were two sides to his salvation. He saved them from death by the blood. He saved them from bondage by his strong right arm. He delivered them. He not only took them out, he took them in. He put them under a new authority. He gave them his word at Mount Sinai. He made a covenant with them. He said, you're now my citizens, citizens. of this great nation in covenant relationship with God. He liberated them, set them free from an evil power by bringing them under the authority of a power of blessing and holiness and good and light and life and liberty. And that's what this word says. He translated us, took us out of the old standing of condemnation and brought us over and put us on a new standing. The psalmist did pretty well when he said, He took me from the Myrie pit. He took me from the Myrie clay. He took me out of the pit and from the Myrie clay. He set my feet upon a rock establishing my way. You'll notice I can remember the sounds much better in meter. I was brought up to memorize them as a good Presbyterian back in my own country. And so I can remember the sounds in meter. But there it is. He took me out of the pit of Myrie clay. He didn't leave me there and said, now wash yourself off and then do the best you can to scramble your way to heaven. He said, he put my feet upon a rock. And that's the difference between liberation from the authority of darkness and bringing us over into the kingdom of the Son of his love. Another word comes in in whom we have redemption. We have been bought out of the slave market. We owed a debt. You see, slavery in many cases we hear about men's swarming into villages in Africa and shooting everybody and then grabbing slaves and running away with them. This probably occurred in some cases, but not by any means in the majority of cases. People, in many cases, sold their own kiss and kin to slave traders, Arabs and others, who later took them down to the coast. The white men were far too big cowards to go up the rivers into the interior and do these things. But they bought them down at the coast and became partakers and participators in one of the greatest evils our world has ever seen. But we have domestic slavery in the lands where I've lived for thirty-four years to this very day. A person gets in trouble, they have to pay a fine, they don't have the money, and they come to somebody, say, I want to borrow it, say, all right, I'll give you the money, but leave a pledge. The pledge must be a person. If they take a niece or a nephew and they give it to me, they give him or her to me as a pledge, and that person becomes a slave of mine until they pay the debt and clear them and redeem them and take them out from under it. And this is what's known as domestic slavery. And it exists all over Africa to this day. Illegally, of course, but it's there. I live there, I know. I was there two or three weeks ago. We had sold ourselves under sin. We had given ourselves up for a morsel of potting, a plate of soup. We had put ourselves under the power of Satan by playing games with him. And we couldn't buy ourselves out again. For, of course, the longer the slavery goes on, the less able the person is to redeem themselves. And as we stood, and this is one of the meanings of the word, as we stood naked in the slave market, with anybody bidding for us and taking us, Satan using us for his own purposes, tools we are of his evil purposes. And as we stood there, nobody had any pity on us. When there was no eye to pity and no arm to save, my eye pitied, said God, And my right arm brought salvation. How did he get it? How did he do it? He bought us. That's what he did. He paid the price that I could never pay. What was the price? The soul that sinneth it shall die. The wages of sin is death. And the eternal son of the eternal God took upon him a body in order that he could die for my sin. The Apostle Paul, I'm sure, with a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes, said, Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. John says he'd so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Paul says he loved the church and gave himself for it. It's narrowing down. But again he said, the Son of God, who loved me, That's the individual. That's what brings salvation. I have been redeemed. But of course, this has very great meaning for me, doesn't it? If I have been liberated from the power of the authority of darkness and have been put into the kingdom of the Son of His love, it means that I should live under that lordship day by day, that I am a citizen of a new kingdom, that I am living under a new authority, the authority of the Word of God. It means that I am not my own. I have been bought with a price, and that is a direct quotation. from the end of chapter six of first Corinthians you are not your own you have been bought with a price that's what the word redeemed means it also had the sense of a person who was sentenced either to imprisonment or to a fine and somebody came into the court and liberated them from the execution of the sentence by paying the fine and that's also true of me was true of me and it's true of everyone here tonight And if you are not a Christian, you are still standing in the dark, and the words over your head and ringing your ears are these. He that believeth not is condemned already. Condemned already. Condemned already. You see, isn't there going to be a judgment? The judgment is for the execution of the sentence. The sentence has already been passed. What's the sentence? The soul that sinneth, it shall die. How does that make you feel? If you die in your sins, where I am, you cannot come. These shall go away into everlasting punishments. Whosoever's name was not found written in the book of life, was cast into the lake of fire. There is no way out. But thank God a kinsman redeemer, who has made himself our kinsman, by taking a human body, came into the human race, made himself one of us in everything except sin. He had no sinful nature. He had a perfectly sinless nature. And he came into this world and gave himself a ransom for all. He paid this price. He redeemed us. Oh, well, you say, then, if he redeemed us, and paid the price, then we don't need to die. Everybody's saved. Oh, I think you have had men not so very long ago. One man in particular that I remember who was actually pardoned of the death sentence and said, no, I don't want that pardon. I don't want that pardon. I don't want to go to jail. I'll die. And it went to court, and the court said, your own Supreme Court said, no, no. If he rejects the pardon, that is, rejects the remission from the death penalty to a sentence in prison, he has the right to do that. And he went to the gas chamber and he died. It's said that the greatest American in my eyes who ever lived, Abraham Lincoln, once gave a pardon to a young man who was in the death cell, who hated Lincoln politically. And when the pardon was brought and given to him, he... looked at it and it was signed by Abraham Lincoln. He threw it in the ground. He said, I'd rather die and receive a pardon from that animal. And they said, well, we'll have to take you out by far. He said, no, you can't. And they took it again through the courts. And the summation of your own Supreme Court was a pardon is only effective if it is accepted as such by the person involved. You must accept it, or else accept the do under which you sit. Forgiveness of sins I have already touched on. I could redeem a man from slavery. Indeed, I have done so. But I couldn't forgive him the sins. The fact that I have paid the price to liberate him from slavery doesn't mean that he doesn't have to answer to the law courts of the land for murder or whatever it happened to be. You say, oh, but you have redeemed me, and now I don't have to answer for this. Oh, no, no. I have redeemed me, but I can't save you from the law courts. But when God redeems, he also forgives. Isn't it a wonderful thing to be able to sing, my sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole is nailed to his cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. Even the forgiveness of sins, past, present, and future. Total absolution. Indeed, it's more that we do not have here, but this word justification is a word which means that I have not only been proclaimed innocent because I am not innocent, but I have been proclaimed righteous. Not only have my sins been erased, leaving me negatively without anything to blame, but I have had all the righteousness of God imputed to me, enveloping me as a garment. I have been accepted in the beloved. I am as pure as the Son of God, because I am part of him, because he accepted me when I came to him to sin. forgiveness of sin. That sin which would bar you from the presence of God and which would doom you to an eternity in the lake of fire shut off from all hope of escape or salvation for the ages of the ages, doomed for eternity. The sin which would put you there has been answered for by Christ. He asks you to accept the receipt. To acknowledge him as savoury Lord, and to walk out free. Free from the law of happy condition. Jesus has died, and there is remission. This is almost a literal quotation for Romans. There it is, therefore, now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. Forgiveness of sins. Two more we put together, reconciliation. Oh, you say, well, if sins are forgiven, that's reconciliation. No, no, not necessarily. Not necessarily. Some years back, there was a gentleman called Profumo in the United Kingdom. He was a man high in the government. He was not only high in the government, he had friendship in the palace, he went in and out, he was invited to banquets, and so on, was a close friend of the royal family, and he was found to have been indulging in sin, which brought a stain on his office, And not only that, but endangered the public safety, because he had been playing games with women who were actually Soviet spies. And so he resigned his post in utter and absolute disgrace. He was sentenced to imprisonment, which was suspended, and he was out of the palace, which could not be, of course, identified with this. Now, he served a time in prison. And it would appear that this man was saved. I don't know. But anyway, he has given himself from that day to this to working among the slums in England. I believe bringing the gospel to those people and working among them and among the prisons. Now supposing he had said, now that I have served my sentence and I'm clear of the law and the rest of it has been remitted and I'm working in a good work, I think I'll just go along to the palace and have a visit with our family. Do you think it would have worked? It certainly worked. His sin had been atoned for in the form of serving a prison sentence, but that did not necessarily include the right to go back onto terms of intimacy with the royal family. For example, somebody came into my house, was accepted as a friend, and I trusted them, and they violated this hospitality and this friendship, and they did something very evil in my family. And I said, out of my house and never put your feet in it again, and I'm going to press charges against you with the police. I'm going to put you behind bars until you rot. And he comes and he pleads to me and says, look, I have a wife and family. Won't you forgive me this dreadful thing I have done? And I might say, all right, all right, I don't want to destroy your life and your wife and your family. I am not going to press charges so far as any In prison, any penalty is concerned, forget it. It's all over. Oh, it would be all right if I come around for lunch tomorrow. Not necessarily. The one doesn't include the other. I may have said I'm not going to press charges against you. That doesn't mean I want him back in the bosom of my family. But when God forgave me, he took me in his arms like the prodigal son. He brought me into his banqueting house with his banner flaunted over me. public association of himself with me, the forgiven sinner. And he sat me down at the table with the robe of sonship upon my shoulders, with the signet ring that the family crest upon it, with the sacrificial animal on the table before us for the reconciliation feast. And if he had known the hymn he could have sung, can it be that I an alien now a child shall ever be? Can it be that all forgiven, mercy is reserved for me? Yes, that Jesus lived at every looks at the ring. Of course, I'm back in the family. I have not only been forgiven, I have been reinstated, reconciled. There are no barriers between everything is peace and reconciliation. That's the gospel which we preach. And then finally he says, one day he's going to present me holy, without blame and unreprovable in his sight. That is, one day with a transformed body as well as a spirit and soul, he's going to lead me into the presence of his Father as his bride, with all the rest of the believers throughout the whole world, throughout all the ages from Pentecost to the rapture, the body of Christ. And he's going to say, Father, here's my bride. I bought her. She's mine. And I'm going to be part of that. And I'm going to be accepted into the love. and all the perfections of Christ will be wrapped around me so that my own self will never be seen again. I have been crucified. I have been raised as a part of Christ, reconciled to God, and now presented before the whole world as perfect in Christ. That's God's prescription. Made fit, made neat for heaven, delivered from the power of sin, power of the authority of darkness, translated over into the kingdom of his dear son, redeemed out of the slave market, no longer in bondage to sin. All the past, present and future sins forgiven, reconciled to God. And one day to be presented to God. Indeed, even now, I am seated in the heavenlies. In God's estimate, it's all done already. I am seated in the heavenly in Christ Jesus. present it already and accepted by the Father because I am part of his love what about your friends I'm going to do something about this tonight only a step to Jesus why not take it now you will never find a better time with loving friends all around your sympathetic people Some of them are probably praying for you right this very moment. You will never be among people more concerned about your spiritual welfare than now. You will never have a better time. You will never have a more opportune moment to dine with the barriers and to say, Jesus, I will trust thee. Trust thee with myself. Guilty, loss, helpless, as I can speak with all. I pray that you might do that just now. While we pray, that if you would like, myself, one of the brethren here, or if you happen to be a woman and you would prefer one of the sisters to talk to you, please don't go away, we'd be glad to chat to you about your soul. But you don't need to do that. While we pray, and then Brother Jim is going to lead a hymn, or perhaps we should have the hymn first, and then we'll close in prayer, and you deal with this matter now. of a large value.