That true goodness comes not from self-effort but from making room for the Lord Jesus Christ within one's heart. It uses the example of the "good man of the house" who prepared a guest room for Jesus, illustrating that inviting Christ into our lives is the sole means to become good and righteous. The message contrasts this with the common misconception that good works lead to salvation, asserting that Christ's indwelling presence transforms us, enabling us to do good works. Ultimately, the sermon calls listeners to give Christ the preeminent, first place in their lives, allowing His goodness to flow through them.
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with you junior citizens of glory at the park of the farm has been a tremendous benediction to my wife and me. The Lord bless you all and lead you on to greater things in this wonderful foretaste of Emmanuel's land. I hope that some parks and farms and people like you in Emmanuel's land. Well, of course we will be because we'll all be there by his sovereign grace. Now don't you get the idea that you're getting old? You know, Caleb was getting a little bit that way, but he was really moving on when he was getting older and older, flagging not in any way.
So Winston Churchill once was invited back to his old school. harrow in Middlesex, a public school which in Britain is a private school. And the headmaster said, now boys, the great Sir Winston is coming. One of our old boys, the greatest of all our old boys is coming back today. Get your pads ready, your pencils ready. He's going to make a speech today. And this is Holy Spirit. And when he was formally introduced with a lot of Ballyhoo, as they call it, Sir Winston stood up and he said, Boy, never give in.
Never give in. Never give in. Never give in. Never. Never give in. Never give in. Now of course the scripture says, let us go on with me. Never give in. Greater things ahead. Better days ahead. The glory timing before us. Let us go on to perfection. Let us go on to glory. And Emmanuel's land. And Caleb was going on and on and on.
And they got to Canaan. Here's the outstanding Old Testament example of an overcomer, you know. He overcame when he was a young man at the age of forty. Please note the earth. At the age of forty, a young man, he went into Telen and brought back a good report and must have great things. And he said, we are well able to go in because we believe God. However, he was still overcoming when he was a middle-aged man between the age of forty and eighty. Please note the year. Middle-aged man between the years of forty and eighty, when he was wandering in the wilderness for no fault of his own, because they undisputed God, and from Hades on here they went back into the wilderness for forty years.
He thought he'd better go, you wouldn't say, with a fellowship in their sufferings. But now he was over eighty. He was beginning to be a little older man now. And he was eighty-five, and they said, Caleb, we'll be riding up the land of Canaan. I think we ought to give you a nice little bit in the balance here. We're at a nice calm season, a beautiful part, in a little river. And it seems it's a cost to us, sir. We're getting on now, you know, Caleb. He said, please. He said, give me this mountain. But as he came at your age five, he said, give me this mountain. But they said, Caleb, that's a mountain.
He said, give me this mountain. But they said, he said, the giants are there. The other kings are there. He said, yes, that doesn't matter to me. The Lord is with me. And I, holy, honor the Lord. Give me this mountain. Let us go on to greater things. There's far more in store for you in Christ than you'd ever consumed up to this present moment of time. Let us go on and on and on until we think it's forced us on the cause of eternity in Emmanuel's land. And then, well, any time we have yet to be there as a part of it. Well, that was just a little informal introduction.
We've got the formal one to come in. We must read the scripture from Mark chapter fourteen. Now, we have a lot more in March, of course, to meditate on, but this will be our last chapter that we're looking at on this occasion, because I have to go up to Greenwood Hill later on in the year for a week and talk on March there for a week. So we'll have to leave these chapters from morning onwards up there. You see, it's just, well, maybe it's going to be up there now. I wouldn't dream of repeating myself. It might be plain repetitions. from your point of view.
Let us read the scripture together from the fourteenth chapter of Mark and verse twelve. The first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover, his disciples said unto Jesus, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the Passover? And he sent it forth two of his disciples and said unto them, Go into the city, and there shall a man, and meet you, a man bearing a pitcher of water, follow him. And whosoever he shall go in, you shall say to the good man of the house. And the master says, Where is the guest room, the guest chamber, where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples?
And he shall show you a large upper room in the furnace. and prepare their made ready for that. And his disciples went forth and came into the city and found as he had said unto them. They made ready the Passover. Now verse twenty-six, when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives. Jesus said unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night. For it is written, I will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. But after that I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee.
Peter said unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet will not I. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, that this day, even this night, before the cock crowed twice, thou shalt deny me Christ. But he spoke the more vehemently, If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any way, likewise also in the Lord. The Lord blessed for us the reading from his precious word. There is the good man here, and the principle of preeminence for the saviour.
And there is Peter here, and the principle of the cross. There are other people here and other principles underlying their stories too. We'll just see how far we go. Maybe we'll only just talk about the first one. If possible, we'll mention the second one. But that will be all for this morning. May God bless to us our meditation in His Holy Word. And may we again this morning see the Savior. This future prayer I have. in the front of my binder. I ask thee not for supples for, for pictures exquisitely raw, for speech of grand and gracious terms, for tones that thrill and words that burn, but let me touch thy garment's end, and bear the praise unto them.
The house was filled, with the odor of the ointment, and may the atmosphere of the presence of the Lord be with us today, as we again seek to exalt him, so that they saw no man save you the holy name, and pray that he is here for us to be here. Now they said, Lord, where shall we prepare this our favor that's coming up? and he said, go into the city and follow a man. He will be your guide. You cannot mistake the man because he's doing a woman's job.
He is carrying a picture of water. You'll meet him at the gate of the city. If you follow him, he will go into a certain house, and in that house there is another man who is the good man of the house. And you shall say to the second man, the good man of the house, the master said unto thee, where is the guest room for me and my disciples, where we can eat the Passover? So they went and they found exactly, as the Lord Jesus said unto them, the first men carrying a pitcher of water, and they followed him. He unconsciously detained their guys.
They probably didn't know that these were following him. That's not in the case, of course, with you and me. And our lives, especially as we have little ones and children in our homes, our lives are always an example to others, whether for good, or evil, we are unconsciously guiding others, let's hope and trust and pray, with God by our lives and witness and guiding others to the Saviour himself. For no man liveth to himself and no man dyers to himself. And so it was that they came to this house and he entered in and they met the tenant of the place.
Now this is really all that this means. in actual exegesis and interpretation of the word. He was either the owner or the tenant living in the place at the moment. The master said, you shall say to the good man, where is that death room for me? But of course, although this man was only the tenant, he was a good man in a very scriptural sense. Because he had done something which makes a man in the spiritual sense a good man. And it's the only thing which does make a man a good man.
This man had got a place prepared for the Lord. The point is, you see, the Lord is good. And none is good, say one that is God. And Jesus is God. And you never become good through your own goodness or praise. You become good in his goodness by finding a place for the good Lord, as this man did in his home, who and I in our hearts are room for him. Like David said, I will not be asleep to my eyes tonight, or slumber to my eyelids tonight.
until I find out a place for the Lord, habitation for the mighty God of Jacob. The Lord wants to come and dwell with you. It is for you to swing the heart's door widely open and find a place for the Lord, and then by the good Lord within you will be a good man. Now you see some people try to make themselves good through and their own good works. It doesn't happen that way. It's unscriptural. It's the wrong way. Flesh is flesh. We must invite the Savior in and do what this good man did.
We must find a place for the Lord. We read of Barnabas. He was a good man, it says. A good man. And it goes on to say he was full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. Well, of course Barnabas was a good man. He had found a place for the Lord. He was full of the spirit of Jesus. The Lord Jesus by his spirit was not only living in him, but controlling every avenue and department in him. It is no wonder he was a good man. Now Luther's matching was this. We don't become good by doing what is good.
Having become good in his goodness, we begin to do good things. I use the word good. He used the word righteous. We don't become righteous by doing what is righteous, but having become righteous in his righteousness, we begin to do what is righteous. Now, we must learn this. This is the only way of blessing, of goodness, of salvation. He died that we might be forgiven, and he lives to make us good by his own indwelling presence. That's the secret of the normal Christian life. Now, you never work yourself into goodness.
You'll never work your way to the good heavens. Nothing that defiles you'll ever enter there. You must find a place for the Lord. One of my friends, Edwin Lewis, who's now gone home to glory, a great evangelist in Britain, decided on one occasion that most of the people in his meetings who came unconverted were not converted, were not Christians because they felt that they could make themselves good and so acceptable to God, that God would look upon them because they're trying to be good. Now, it is that the biggest ignorance that I know in my evangelistic ministry. Oh, I know what I'm going to do.
He said, Prince David, next time you have a mission, you've got to speak every night for a two or three week on one text. By grace, by you say, through faith, not of work, not of good work, lest any man should be. By grace, through faith, and not of work. And this is what he did. Very clever evangelist, a different sermon every night for three weeks. but all on the same topic and from the same text. He was saying, you are saved by the grace of God alone. You put your faith in what God has done in His grace through His Son on the cross of Calvary and give up your word, lay your deadly doing down at Jesus' feet.
And it looked like this for so many weeks. And there was a lady there who had been listening and said, along regularly. He didn't know her, so he thought he would introduce himself on the last night. So he said, I'm Edwin Lewis. He said, glad to see you coming along for me. He said, I have missed one. Well, he said, I'm delighted. Thank you very much for coming. Had you received a blessing? Oh, yes, he said, I would have missed one of them for work. Well, he said, now that time, lady, he said, tell me what are you depending upon for your soul's salvation? Well, he said, listen, Mr. Lewis, I'm doing the best I can. And he's been preaching against that for three weeks every night. It just goes to show you that men cannot prove that their goodness is not good enough for God.
That their good works and deeds enable in it is no use in the sight of God to try to cover their sins. They cannot see that salvation is by the grace of God in his goodness, and through the work of Christ on the cross, without anything that they can do. They cannot see this on rest. The Holy Spirit illumines the mind and takes the veil away. That's why we not only have gospel meetings, but prayer meetings as well. Often the Holy Spirit will immediately remove the veil, but men may see their goodness, their righteousness, and their eternity. within the Lord Jesus and as a result of inviting him into their life.
Behold, you say, I stand at your half door and not, and if you will open the door and let me in, I will come in and I bring all my goodies and all my goodnesses and all my provisions with me. I will come in and talk with you, share your life, but more importantly, You will start with me. I'm bringing in a lot with me my righteousness, my victory, my peace, my rest, my salvation. My goodness is all procured for you at the cross of Calvary. If you let me in, then the blessing is yours for small.
So this man was a good man in the scriptural sense of the word because he had a place said for the Lord. Now when this good man was thinking of the stranger coming his way, because he heard the usual rumors that he shone about to shock his head back. Jesus of Nazareth. They said, I don't believe it. They said, well, it's Elijah then. He's preaching and he's mighty and he's witherpotted. It must be Elijah. Come back from the dead. He said, I don't believe it. So they said, well, it may be that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, the Savior of the world. He said, I believe that. And when he comes my way, I must find Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, a place in my heart and in my hope.
And I'll find him a place in my home to show that I found him a place in my heart that I believe in Jesus. Now, did I know what I'll do? When he comes this way, I'll get a room ready for him. I know that that shed down the yard, which we used to keep lumber in, we'll get that cleaned out and whitewashed. And we put a little table and a chair in that, and that will do for the master. Did he? Not on your knife, sir. No, sir. He said, up there is my best food, and my biggest food.
And when the stranger comes, that's what he's getting from me. My biggest food, my best. Now, that reminds me if you know your husband. I'll pull up and snap the watch, I'll tell you. You know your husband. Colossians chapter one and verse eighteen three, which means a third part of the eighteenth verse, where it says that in all things he might have the preeminence, the first great. And the apostle goes on to show these Christians at Colossians and you and me this morning, a part of the farm, that God has given Christ the preeminence. He's made him number one interrogation.
Not that he's the first born of creation. Doesn't mean he's the first to be born in creation. This next verse says that he's creator. No, it means he's the number one of all creation. In other words, he has been preeminent one. First born in the church. First born in the resurrection. The head of the church. And the first in the resurrection, number one. And first in conservance. He is a preeminent one upholding all things by the word of his heart. So we go on in Colossians chapter one. And the Apostle, of course, was refuting an error in Colossae, but one man, according to chapter two, and four times over you can do that one in chapter two, but one man was bringing this error into the church, but Christ was not sufficient for our salvation.
We need a lot more, we need a lot more intermediaries between men and God, because we are so sinful and God is so, oh, we are not an angel. Well, as the Lord says, It's one of a number of intermediaries, somebody said, well, that's not right. And the apostle goes on to show that if it's right, Christ is the one. He's the first in every sense in the estimation of God. And so he said to us, well, often he should be number one in your heart and heart. You make a place for the Lord and make your first place. Give him the preeminent place. Like the good man of the house said, I'll give to the master, my best will must tell, which is my biggest dream everywhere.
And then when he was thinking of the master coming this way, maybe he sat down and looked into the fireplace. Oh, they don't have fireplaces there, do they? He was looking through the window and saying to himself and thinking and saying, well, now, if the master comes this way, I must, of necessity, Give him the best place in my house to show him I've given him the biggest place in my life. But I must leave some of the furniture there for him. I don't want to leave it all because the furniture is rather good. And teaching there, valuable. You wouldn't go for the disciples to come in with the master and use that nice piece just there.
That's called it. And it wouldn't be for the master to open that drawer in that set of drawers there. Not that setting drawer down. He wouldn't be able to look into it. Now, I'll either have to get the whole piece taken out or else lock that drawer up. And that nice piece I'll take outside and put it in my own down below. Did he say like that? He must have been there. He said, no, he said, when the master comes, he's going to have her playing with me. What are you saying this morning? I'm doing your house. I know you have. You respond very well to God. You're not responding to me. It's the Lord who's saying in everything Christ should have the preeminent, the first place.
And when you do something tomorrow morning, say, no, it's Jesus first in this. Is it for his Lord? And just don't forget that it's right or right or wrong or meek or please or digging. For the Lord Jesus is in the first place. I never think you do. I know you are this woman this morning. Now this man said, not only am I going to give the Lord Jesus of God, my only Savior, the biggest room, but I'm going to leave all the furniture there in its place and all at the master's disposal. Now you can ask me, is all your furniture at the master's disposal for me?
I'm not talking about your chairs. and your tables and your pieces of furniture in the home. And I know that's quite true with many of you. You've given your homes and your furniture to the Lord and you invite some of these foreign workers from Britain and other places and you treat them as though they're Americans and you show real furniture in your homes and you give them the best chair to sit on. And I remember I had some furniture once two or three years ago in a certain home And they gave me a chair to sit on, and I broke the chair. Oh, what do we do in a case like that? And lo and behold, when we came back to do a year's ministry in that same assembly, and other assemblies around as well, I have to say that because, you know, and other assemblies around as well, lo and behold, the assembly had given to us a nice little house, and they had bought a set of furniture for one of the things, and there was a chair that was up in those things.
He walked out of his head and he said, Mary comes back to Ruth, says he said, after all that time. Well now this man, he found a place for the Lord, he found a big place for the Lord and he put all the furniture at the Lord's disposal. Now I like that. And I wonder if all your gifts in power from the callous and energy are at the Lord's disposal. I learned a great blessing myself one day through a brother some of you may know his name, Richard Dennis. And in one morning he put himself at the Lord's disposal.
In his prayer, said, Lord, here I am. What do you want me to do? And the Lord said to him, ring up David's finger. So he rang me up. And the result of that, you know, was a tremendous blessing for me. And to the work of the Maulans Bible College that I represented at the time. It's a long story. I'm not going to dream of giving it a tin barrel this morning. But to see what happens when you put yourself and your furniture, all your spiritual health at the law of Jesus. There was a woman once who wasn't very good looking in her own opinion.
And she said to a young man that was looking over the hedge into her garden, she said, Oh, don't look at me. She said, I am blessed. The sun has looked upon me. And she said, Don't look at my vineyard. It's fruitless. I can't give you anything. It's a thing to do, you see. when you go into the East countries of the French, you give them some soup. Like when I visit you, you give me a cup of England. You come to England and you're all welcome. Don't all come at once. I give you a cup of English food. And she hadn't got any soup, could you? But in spite of her fruitlessness and her uncumbliness, she loved her just the same.
And then she started to respond to his love. She said, tell me, oh, how? Who might so love is the way you are going. I'm from your way. Why should we turn aside by the flock of our companions? No, you are for me. Your love is wonderful. It's great. It's loving, acting to the unlovely and undeserving. And so she followed her. And she started now to do something that has been you. For whom? in a new way. She was compelled by love for him to show such grace to her, to purge very well in ding-dong stintingly.
And the result was at the end of chapter seven, quite a contrast from chapter one. In chapter one she said, there's no proof in this book. But in chapter seven she said, come my beloved, she took him by the hand. She did go for a walk together. and he agreed, and she said, let's go into the vineyard and see whether the tendered vine is to you. And she said, let's see if there's any fruit there. If the vine is flourishing, she knew very well there was lots of it. She wanted him to see what she'd done out of mercy. And then she said in the last verse, at our dates there are all manner of present things new and old.
Which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved. And she said to him, Don't only look at me, but take it with all you know by all. That is all for Jesus, and all my beings are ransomed. With all your concern, sir, that the Lord will show you. talking about finding a place for the Lord and giving him the preeminence there. I was thinking of kindly mold the beloved man of God, the Bishop of Durham, now forced onto his reward.
I'm sure must have been a great man. He really knew his job. And his writings are most helpful from the Scripture. And he, on one occasion, was very, very perturbed and restless in his spirit. And he was sitting in his study, so he was trying to prepare a sermon. It just wouldn't go. And he looked around his study and he said, there was a terrible mess, papers and books and rubbish everywhere. And he said, I hope my wife doesn't come in. And he said, what a terrible thing it would do for the Lord to come and find his place.
And then he said, look at me. And he slept over his desk, you know, had a good nap for a few minutes. And he dreamed that he was in his cabin when he was. And he dreamed that he'd heard words that the Lord was coming to visit him. And he started rushing up out of his studies, putting the book up in the shelf, and then putting the library right, and then picking up the waste paper here and taking it outside. And he was rushing around, and he'd only got a little way when there was a knock at the door. And he didn't know whether to let him in or not.
It was a knock. And there was still quite a lot of distress. He opened the door. He said, come in there. Then he woke up. Then he sat down to write, Alas, ill-ordered, so it was really loomed. The household soft lies deep amidst the gloom, the table empty stands, the Kaohsiung breath. Oh, what a welcome for the eternal breath. Welcome now, and yet this doleful scene is in itself my cause to hailed him in, this dark confusion in at once demand by an own bright presence, Lord, and ordering man.
I seek no more to obtain and mend before the coming of so great a friend. All were just on scenery, and were ill, above all else, to keep me waiting for you. Come in, O come, but all stands open now. I knew thy voice, beloved, it was thou. Come not to find, but to make this troubled heart a worthy dwelling place for thee, as thou art. To take the gloom, the terror, and the king. Come, all thy spirit, and they come.
Lord Jesus, I do hope you will. You will let him. Don't try to make yourself good. Just let the good Lord be good. I do hope this morning you will give him the first place, the preeminent place. You make him number one in your life. Like he said in the heart of Africa, dying for the sake of Christ in his ministry, worn himself out in missionary work. And his wife sent him such a lovely letter, a knight endearing, you know, who I stand from dying.
And he wrote back and he said to her, lovely letter, thank you very much. Mary said, I would prescribe for you the following three times a day before me. Say this, Lord Jesus, my Savior, thou art to me, dearer than ever, I will be. That in all things he might have the preeminent. And then, of course, place your penance. All that you have, what is in your hand, your peasant, distant hand, as the Lord said. Well, you might be much older than Caleb. years of nothing with God.
He didn't say, if you're twelve years of age, you may be baptized. He didn't say, if you're over eighty-five years of age, you can't ask for a mountain and do anything else for God. He didn't say, if you're over eighty-five years of age, you can't ask for a mountain and do anything else for God. You don't come into it with the everlasting almighty God. And when we place ourselves and all that we have are his disposal, you do. Why? how God is going to bless you by the indwelling presence in your tongue and use your gifts and powers in your holy spirit. Now, there's not a lot of time left to mention this other very important principle, but I think we ought to in the five or six minutes that are at my disposal now.
I'll just give you a rough idea of what I had in my mind, and I hope you won't forget what I've already said. You think you're inclined to forget, well, don't listen to this next thing, okay? Because I think that's the message for somebody here this morning, because I think there's somebody here who needs to open the heart and let the Lord be. I do. And I think there's somebody else who needs to open the heart wide as I can be, and let him in all his fullness and take the prayer. I think that's the main message for the people. You can see what my problem is now. The Christians have lots of problems. They're not angels. They're elephants, yes.
My problem is whether to close now or give you this last idea. I'll give you the idea. Because you see, Peter in the second portion of the world was accepting the principle of the cross in his life. But he was accepting it in the... Now earlier on in Matthew chapter three, he was blankly refusing the principle of the cross. And he said to the Lord Jesus, Do it far from you, Lord. You are not going to suffer and die. And the Lord Jesus said, Now you get behind me, Satan.
We must come to you. We need you, Peter. It's Peter. I'm not sure that Peter was not taken upon fire. at that time, and just as Christ was tempted to give up his cross words in the hour of temptation by Satan, so again by Satan through Peter was a similar temptation. Now this principle of the cross was the principle of life for the Savior leading to death. He was born that he might die and give his life a ransom for others. And he saved others, they said, when he hung on the cross, and himself he cannot save.
And this principle for the Savior and his cross work. The Christ and his suffering are inseparable, and they are inseparable for the believer as well. This is the binding principle of all true service. As we give a praise for the Lord and give him all our gifts and powers for his service, we must appreciate this that Christ will lead us on to the end of ourselves so that we can find him in his glorious fullness. Whosoever will lose is not. for myself, that is the one who's really going to find us. Except that we call into the ground and die the bodies alone, but if it dies, it will bring forth much truth.
That which counts is always that which costs. We must believe someone has said if we would rest. We must lose ourselves if we would pain our day even. And what we selfishly repay, we lose. What we sacrificially give up, we gain. You see the Christian life is a paradox. We die to live. The more we live, the more we die, and the more we die, the more we live. His life comes as for the cross, my life.
I give We conquered by nearly this morning, somebody read through us a beautiful portion of Scripture in the first meeting from the late chapter of Romans, where the Apostle said, we are killed. And that's the same word as used earlier in the chapter in verse thirteen. Mortify the deeds of the flesh. We are mortified. We are put to death. We go to the cross all day long. very attitude we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. That's a funny way of conquering, dying all day long. It's continual identification with the hot work of Christ, the principle that Peter was fighting in his life and eventually submitted to.
And it is we are more than conquerors through him that loved us only when we are mortified all the day long, because him that loved us cannot get his way through us until his life in us and through us until we are mortified all the day long. And that's why we must identify ourselves with the cross-cut of Christ continually, so that we can be identified with the risen victorious life of the Son of God continually, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, the principle of the Christ, so that the life also of Jesus should have made manifest in my mortal flesh. So we contrast by yearning, or dying, if you will, We get by giving, we win by losing, we live by dying, we save others only when self-absorbing his place to compassionate otherism.
And this, of course, is the mind of God. We have new existence, others in his mind, new in his mind, when he left the glory and told him that he might go to it. So in Matthew sixteen, Peter is refuting the principles of the cross. Here in this portion, in Mark fourteen, he's accepting the principle of the cross in the flesh. I will not follow thee. I will lay down my life for thy sake. Now the Lord said, be careful, Peter. Is that in the spirit or in the flesh? He said, I'm sure it's in the flesh. I tell you what, before the cross flows.
thou shalt deny me, and it happens. No good us getting up boldly in the flesh and saying, I'll follow the Lord wherever he leads me. Like one brother came to Spurgeon, did I tell you this, the other day, what is fourteen months ago when I was here, tell what my memory is like. He said, Mr. Spurgeon, thank you for your message, your wonderful message. He said, well, he said, are you a Christian? Oh, yes, he said, I love my Lord. He said, I follow him all the way. He said, like you were saying, yes. He said, are you baptized? He said, no. Well, he said, try following him through the waters of baptism, first of all.
because these are men of professing said, I'll go through fire and water from my Lord and follow him all the way. Well then thirdly, and this is why I'm very brief this morning because we only had a minute to go, in John twenty-one, if you compare this with two people, one, you find Peter accepting the principle of the Father for himself as well as for his Lord in the spirit of his Lord and Master. In two-page Peter He says in his letter to the Christians who were suffering scattered abroad, he said, Do you know what our Lord Peter has told me? That I must put off this time.
I'm going to die. The Lord Jesus had told him that at the end of the book of Gospel, and he thought it was a little bit more as well. He really was explaining how he was going to die. And you know how Peter died, don't you? And Peter understood, I'm absolutely sure, that now he accepted it from the Savior, the principle of the cross, according to me, as Mary said, according to thy word. He said, when thou art old, another shall push out thy hand. and take me where you would not of yourself really want to go. And this faith is the death whereby Peter was going to glorify the Lord.
And when Peter wrote his second letter, he told the Christians he was willing to do what the Lord had said. Go the way the Lord had went, and he crucified at his mark the way. And tradition says, and I think in this tradition is absolutely true, that Peter, for his Lord, has truly come. That's one. Oh, let me see thy footmark to the Lord, and in them plant mine own, my hope to follow. Keep his own land together, within thyself alone. But the principle of the cross must be a day by day, experience in the belief, as we all know.
turn to the Lord, committing ourselves to him, giving him the preeminent grace in our hearts and lives. All our gifts and powers are at his, we pray, and then say, with Peter, all the cross, that lift us up my head. I dare not ask this night to do. I lay in dust, my glory, my glory. And from the ground there blossoms red, life that shall endlessly, and life of the divine Son of God, in me, and soon as a fellow is behind me.
Thank you. Oh, Lord, what lovely fellowship we have with one another this morning. and especially with thyself and thy son by the sea, in this chapel, in these beautiful conference grounds, in this lovely country, with all these privileges that are ours, help us to realize something more of our responsibility, to give to the one who made all this possible for us, as well as the eternity in Emmanuel's land, to give to him. that which is his gift, our lives and all that we have.
Help us this morning now, in this moment of prayer, to swing the heart's door widely open for him to come in. Give us grace to give him the first place, and all our powers for his youth, and not show us like Peter to follow him all the way that he might be glorified in our bodies and spirit witnesses. Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus, the all-sufficientness of our wonderful Lord, be with us all this morning and this last day of the feast.