First of all I do bring you greetings from
the city of Chicago, that city of righteousness, and love and truth and justice. The city where there are only two kinds of
people, the quick and the dead. I wish that I could stay here in Florida for
a couple of more days and soak up the sun because in Chicago it can get very cold, mighty
cold. Now you won’t believe this but it was in
the news. One day not this past winter but the winter
before, because we had a very warm winter but the winter before it was so cold, if you
can believe this, but according to the media, and if it is in Trib you know it’s true. According to the media, it was so cold that
some members of the Chicago city council were actually seen with their hands in their own
pockets. It gets cold in Chicago. In fact there was a kid in Chicago who bought
a Ferrari and he wanted to get it blessed and so he drove up to the local cathedral
and he said to the priest, “Would you bless my Ferrari.” The priest said, “Well normally we don’t
bless inanimate objects but we do want to be relevant,” he said, “I guess I could
bless your Ferrari.” But the priest said, “I do have a question.” The kid said, “What.” The priest said, “What is a Ferrari?” Well the kid couldn’t believe this and he
got into his car and he zipped over to the local Baptist church and found the Baptist
minister and said, “Would you bless my Ferrari?” The Baptist minister said, “Well, you know
normally we don’t bless inanimate objects but I do want to be relevant,” he said,
“I guess I can bless the Ferrari and,” he said, “but I do have a question.” The kid said, “what?” The Baptist said, “What is a Ferrari?” He couldn’t believe it. He zipped over to the local Unitarian church
and found the minister and said, “Would you bless my Ferrari?” The Unitarian said, “Oo, he said a Ferrari,
0-65 in 4 seconds, 119 miles an hour in 3rd gear, winner of the grand pre three years
in a row, the most fantastic car that has ever been built. He said I’d love to bless your Ferrari,”
but he said, “I do have a question.” The kid said, what? The Unitarian said, “What is a blessing?” One more story, I do have to say that this
has been a delight to be here at the conference, but I have to tell you I’ve never been surrounded
by so many Presbyterians. They’re all over the place. I was at breakfast today with some Presbyterians
and they hadn’t even heard about the Presbyterian who was marooned on an island, most of you
I’m sure have. I would think that the Presbyterians would
know, the man was marooned on an island, this Presbyterian, and 30 years later they found
him. So when they found him they said, so give
us an explanation of how you survived. They noticed that there were three huts and
they said, what’s this hut and he said that’s my home. They said, what’s the other hut? He said that’s my church. And they said, well, what’s the other hut? He said, oh, that used to be my church. I do need to tell you on a more serious note
and by the way how many of you have been to Moody Church? Can I see your hands. Only that many? It’s not necessary to visit Moody church
to go to heaven but you know why take a chance? I’ll be flying back this afternoon, speaking
in the pulpit of Moody church on Sunday. My wife and I live close to Old Harris field,
great big huge jets fly over our house. In fact, one day I was just walking from the
dining room to the bedroom and a stewardess told me to sit down. But on a more serious note, it’s been a
delight to be here and I do need to say that this conference is very special and very unique. I speak at many conferences around the country
and I appreciate them all and they all benefit but I don’t know of any other conference
that is intentionally dedicated to the truth’s that once made the church great. And I commend all of you; I commend all of
you for coming and especially for staying. You know I thought because I was the last
speaker and it was Saturday and it was near noon I expected R.C. maybe to be here and
maybe his wife but that was about all, and here I see so many of you and thank you so
much, and what an honor to give the last message. And R.C didn’t trust me exactly so he even
gave me the text. Be Doers of the Word. It was Johann Goethe, the father of the German
Enlightenment, who made this statement that “Only God knows who I am,” he said, “and
may he graciously preserve me from finding out.” Goethe understood that self-discovery can
be very painful, what the perhaps didn’t understand is in the process of self-discovery
it is then that we can receive reconciliation with God and the kind of fulfillment that
we as human beings need. Self-perception lies at the heart of who we
are, lies at the heart of how we behave, you give a four-year-old boy a cowboy hat and
he will ride every piece of furniture in the house. You give a girl dolls and she’ll begin to
act like a mother. There was Lutheran minister who told his seminarians
that they should always wear their clerical collar because he was convinced that if they
did that, they would be less likely to fall into immorality or pornography, remembering
who they were, he said, would help. But the question is, how do we find out who
we really are? When we are born and when we are raised in
our families, our parents begin to reflect back to us what we are really like and we
begin to understand and if you have a healthy home where you get some good reflection that
influences the way in which you perceive yourself, it will influence the way in which you behave. If your from a destructive home you’ll soon
discover that those negative feelings, I’m thinking of a man, for example, who told his
son, your nothing but the product of a one night stand. You see the thing that if he would have killed
his boy he’d be in jail but he can verbally abuse him and cut at the heart of who that
child is and destroy him at his very core. So we begin to find out who we are by our
parents we being then to find out by those who know us, by teachers and eventually those
of us who were married as our wives our mates who help us find out who we really are. But there’s a problem with that and that
is that human judgments are sometimes are skewed, they are not accurate at all. Because the values that a person may have
may not accurately reflect who you are down deep inside and that’s the other problem
is that no body knows what we’re really like. I remember counseling a woman who had been
married for 14 years and she went home in the middle of the morning unexpectedly and
discovered that her husband was dressed in woman’s underclothes prancing around the
house. Fourteen years, of marriage, she did not know
that she was married to a transvestite. So you see the people around us might be helpful,
but they don’t really reveal to us who we are. I think for example of a house of mirrors
that I went in many years ago. It was one of these mirrors at a county fair,
where you go in and you look at one mirror and you’re just absolutely tall, you may
be ten feet tall and very skinny and then you go into another room and you look at that
mirror and you are to use a good term very rotund, shall we say? Very rotund and maybe with a big head and
maybe with a small head. Every mirror makes you look different and
when you stop to think of it particularly the unconverted world but it’s true of Christians
too, they’re running around trying to find a mirror, to try to find out who they really
are and of course they gravitate to those mirrors that make them looked good and so
what they begin to do is they hang around people who give them significance or they
grab onto money or they grab on to stature. Because what they want to do desperately want
to do is to look good and they will find anyway they possibly can to look good to themselves
and to others. But let me ask you this question, at the end
of the day when all that has been done, who really are we? There’s only one way to find out and that
is to discover that there is a mirror mentioned in
Scripture and you may take your Bibles now and turn to James chapter one. James chapter one where he uses that imagery
of a mirror to help us to understand that God’s Word has a very special ability and
that ability is first of all to be able to reveal to us who we are in God’s presence
and I want to say to you today that who we are in the presence of God is really who you
are nothing more and nothing less. Calvin was absolutely right, Calvin was right
about a lot of things, he was wrong about some things like Baptism and all. But I mean he was right about many many different
things, a little bit of humor here. When he said that it is not possible for us
to know ourselves until we know God. Look at what the text says and I need to pick
it up in verse twenty-three though we will be dealing with some of the other verses in
context. “For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and
not a doer he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror for once he has looked
at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently at the perfect
law, the law of liberty and abides in it not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual
doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does.” My agenda for the next few moments is to contrast
the passive listener to the Word of God to the active listener of the Word of God. And what we’d like to do is to take a look
at this man who’s a passive listener. I just read the text hear, it says that he
looks in the mirror and then he goes his way, verse 23 he is like a man who looks at his
natural face in a mirror. What can we say about him? First of all he is a man. And James here I believe uses the Word “Anair”
which is maleness as opposed to femaleness. This is not mankind in general; specifically
he wants us to know that he’s talking about a male. He’s a good observer of human nature. It is men who look into a mirror and then
go their way and then straightway forget what manner or men they are. May I say this about you dear ladies, it’s
not been my experience that ladies look into the mirror and then go there way quickly and
forget what manner of lady they are. I remember reading the book of Exodus and
it says in Exodus that Moses, when he was going to build a tabernacle he needed a lot
of material. It says that the women gave up their mirrors
and I read that and I thought now that is revival. So James wants us to understand that as men
we have a tendency to look into the mirror and then we go our way and we forget what
we have seen and I think that he uses a maleness here for another reason and that is that,
could I just be honest and say that we as men, our hearts are not usually as open to
God as the hearts of women. Women have a certain tenderness a certain
openness a certain sensitivity to sin and to the Spirit that we as men don’t have. The Holy Spirit works within us to bring that
about but men are the ones who tend to go their way, if you know anything about working
with men, even when they say they are working through their pain, what they might really
mean is they are finding another way to rationalize their actions. Men are very very difficult to work with,
we who belong to that gender, we know that. But let’s look at the text. What kind of a person is the passive listener? You’ll notice it says in verse twenty-two,
“Prove yourselves to be doers of the Word and not merely hearers who delude themselves,”
he is a hearer of the Word. The Greek word that is used, was frequently
used for auditors. Not talking about book auditors, I’m talking
about young people and others who are in classrooms today who are auditors. Normally I wouldn’t say this but because
I’m at this conference I do have to tell you a very interesting story. About thirty years ago I was in a class with
Dr. Gerstner and I was an auditor. I’m not sure that Dr. Gerstner appreciated
auditors exactly but what made it more difficult was that I was a dispensational auditor. And I learned something about him, first of
all his passionate love for God and later on when I became a professor I discovered
that I didn’t like auditors. I’ll tell you why, auditors come into class
and they fold their hands like this and they say, I just dare you to bless me, I just want
you to entertain me, I want you to instruct me and this better be interesting but are
you going to do the papers? No. Are you going to take the exam? No. Are you going to do the reading? No. I’m just here for whatever goodies you may
happen to give me. I don’t know about you R.C., but I just
don’t like auditors. James says, that you can go to a conference
on War in the Word and just be an auditor. You listen to the Words but you don’t do
the assignments you don’t follow up and in the end of the day it makes very little
difference in your life simply because you have heard the Word and he says, you deceive
yourself. The Greek word is “paralogidzomi”, logidzomi
means to reason, paralagizomi means to reason along side of, in other words your deluded,
you aren’t clear in your thinking and you deceive yourself. Why do we deceive ourselves like this? Let me ask you this question, if you are deceived
would you know it. Not if it’s a genuine deception. You see the whole point about deception is
that you think that you are right but you are genuinely deceived. I remember one man talking to me and he says,
you know I don’t have any blind spots. How in the world would he know whether or
not he had any blind spots? The whole point about a blind spot is that
you simply don’t get it you simply don’t see it. And then what happens to the hearer of the
Word, the passive listener, is he begins to build up resistance to the truth of the Word
and he beings to live in denial and that denial might be conscious denial or unconscious denial
and he begins to filter everything through his filter and the Word of God cannot penetrate
because he has rationalized so long. In its worse description it looks something
like this, he begins to live in two worlds, in world A he may be a Sunday school teacher,
he may even be a pastor, he may be well through of in the church. His reputation is meticulous in world B he
may be committing adultery he may be molesting his children, he may be into pornography and
world A and world B are never allowed to meet because between them there are these rationalizations,
this wall. In fact I wrote a book, which isn’t here,
that was our fault, entitled “Why good people do bad things.” You’ve often wondered that, haven’t you? Why do good people do bad things? Where I try to look into the human heart and
try to show its deceptions. One of the chapters is deceived and loving
it because we are deceived sometimes and we want to be deceived because we tell ourselves
all the little lies that we want to believe. And so this man who is an auditor, he hears
the word and he things to himself, well I was at the conference. I bought Dr. Sproul’s books but it hasn’t
affected him, it has not changed him. He does not really hear. Even this morning there could be some of you
here who have heard the words so often and maybe your here and not even at your own request
but because somebody brought you or whatever and the truth of the Word has just gone past
you and it’s been like water on a marble slab because even though you have heard the
Word you haven’t really heard it. You know Jesus said, he who has ears to hear
let him hear. I remember as a young person reading my Bible,
I through now that’s strange. He who has ears to hear let him hear. Of course, he would have ears to hear, if
he heard. But he doesn’t really hear. There was a man who was attending a concert
with his wife and she was into concerts and his cultural quotient was somewhat circumscribed
and limited so he didn’t really enjoy these but this one he seemed to enjoy. He didn’t complain about hits length, he
kind of had a smile on his face at times, I mean, she looked at him and he was going
like this and making all kinds of motions, and on the way home, she said I want to just
commend you for coming with me and for really enjoying that concert. He said, well, he said, honey to be honest,
don’t misunderstand, I have to really tell you, I had a transistor radio in my pocket
and I had a little hearing device and I was listening to a baseball game. That’s the way sometimes we listen to the
Word of God. And James says, we delude ourselves, why? Because we substitute knowing for doing. After all don’t we have the truth? Don’t we borrow the truth? Can’t you buy the truth here? Isn’t this where the truth is manufactured? I speak as a man and as a result of that you
see we think that we’ve responded and we haven’t. That is the passive listener. Let’s go on now and take a look at the active
listener. You’ll notice it says, and now I’m in
verse 25. “But the one who looks intently at the perfect
law, the law of liberty,” now that’s interesting. The Bible is the perfect law, it is the perfect
mirror, but it’s also the law of liberty. I always thought that liberty was to live
without laws. But you can see here the juxtaposition of
these two, it is a law, yes it is a law. But ultimately it is the law that brings liberty. And the one who looks intently at it, there
are certain characteristics of him as well, he is the active listener. What can we say about the active listener? First of all he is obviously cleansed by the
word, I want to go back to verse 21 where James introduced this whole theme, where he
said putting aside all filthiness and that word was also used for wax in one’s ear. Again the whole idea here of hearing becomes
very very important. He says that, the Scripture says there in
verse 21, “putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness.” Wow, I remember the kings James, this is where
I think we got the superfluity of naughtiness. My translation, which happens to be the NASB
says, “overflowing of wickedness, or all that remains of wickedness.” We put it all aside, the active listener. Listen to this careful is willing to do anything
that God’s Word shows him even at great personal cost. I believe that one of the reasons that our
churches are so week, one of the reasons is because there’s sin in peoples lives that
the Holy Spirit of God may point out and that sin is not adequately dealt with. And as a result we shut off the Word of God,
we deaden our conscious and we no longer hear that God is trying to say and God is speaking
through his Word but we are not listening even though we may be physically present. I think for example of a man who was not injured
on the job, he was injured in a hunting accident and yet he filled out papers as if he was
injured on the job so he could get compensation. A Christian minister spoke to him and said,
don’t you realize that this is wrong, you’re sinning, you have something on your conscience
here, you have defrauding the government, you’d better make it right. And the man said, “What do you think I am,
do you think I’m stupid?” he said. “Do you think I want to go to jail?” I want to tell you something today, there
are some things that are worse than jail and one of them is to live out of fellowship with
the Holy and Living God. And what we need to do in our churches is
to recognize that sin must be adequately dealt with. If it is superficially understood, it is superficially
dealt with and we must be willing to say God am I willing to pay any price. For some people that price is a monetary price. I know of one may who builds houses and as
a result of building he actually built with inferior materials, but when the Hoy Spirit
of God began to work in his life, when he began to see the Scriptures and he comes into
the mirror called the Word of God, he was so convicted, he went to the bank and he borrowed
money to pay back all that he owed years back, why? Because when God comes it is then that we
are right with him, when we say God, no matter how painful this is, no matter how it hurts,
I want a conscience that is void of offence before God and before man and whatever our
spirit shows to me, that I will do. That’s the active listener. He’s cleansed. I need to talk to you just very personally
today. I want to look into your eyes. I can’t look into the eyes of all of you
though. I think you can look into my eyes more easily. What is there in your live that you know right
well, if you got real honest with God that you’d have to deal with. Maybe its anger, maybe it’s a relationship,
maybe it is dishonesty. Whatever it is God the Holy Spirit says to
us today, are we going to be active listeners that simply say God show me what, who me in
your mirror who I am. I’m willing to see it is all of its ugliness. I think it’s in Pilgrims Progress that we
read these Words, “The man who continues in the mirror called the Word of God, he sees
things that are more wonderful than his own face. He sees not only his filthy garments” and
my dear friends we have to see that in our lives and you know the older I get the more
impressed I am by two things. Number 1: the depth of our wickedness and
the matchless grace of God. You’ll notice he says, he sees not only
his filthy garments, not only his spots and stains in his life, he sees Christ, the Christ
of the thorn crowned brow, the Christ of the cross, the Savior who’s blood cleanses from
sin, thankfully that God never devastates us, he never just simply leaves us there but
he sows us up after we have been deeply cut and that’s ’what the Word does, it does
both it shows us who we are as a mirror but then it heals us through forgiveness and cleansing,
and restoration and forgiveness and God’s Sprit begins to work in our hearts and in
our lives. What is the first characteristic of someone
who is an active listener of the Word? First of all he has been cleansed by God. So I have to ask you. Have you been cleanses by God? Secondly he has humility, I’m still there
in verse 21, “Therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness
in humility receive the Word implanted which is able to receive your souls.” We are broken before the Word. If we have more insight than somebody else
we take no glory in it, we do not because knowledge puffeth-up. Therefore we are humbled by what we know and
the more we know the more we are driven to the foot of the cross in great humility and
when we listen to the Word preached, we listen with great care because we might be hearing
our name so to speak. Not all of us can preach like John MacArthur,
not all of us can be as interesting as R.C. Sproul. All of us who preach, we’ve all preached
our share of unforgettable messages. But the simple fact is, if we are listening
to the Word of God and as one might listen to a will that is being read by an attorney,
if you think that a rich relative may have left you money, you wouldn’t care whether
he was interesting, you wouldn’t care whether he had all the right voice inflections. You wouldn’t care whether his outline was
as neat as outlines are supposed to be because what you are doing is your listening for your
name and when we open God’s Word, what we are doing is we are looking for God who’s
on every page, but we are also looking for ourselves and we are saying God help me in
great humility to receive the Word of God that is able to save our souls. Let me ask you a question if you’re in Christian
work. Do you rejoice over the successes of people
who are more successful than you? I’ve always prayed, oh God, I thank thee
for those who are more successful than I am, I thank you Father God for those who’s ministries
are greater, I rejoice in all that you are doing through them more successful than me
and I just pray, oh God, never, ever, ever may I be envious of those whom you use. By the way, have you ever noticed God uses
people that you and I wouldn’t use if we were God? I’ve sure noticed that. The older I get the more amazed I am, whom
God uses. I could tell you stories about God of people
whom God has used. Isn’t he gracious? How in the world do you think he uses one
of us except by sheer undeserved, matchless daily grace, there is no other way. And so he receives the Word, he’s cleansed
by the Word, we’ve looked at that, he’s humbled by the Word and now he becomes a doer
and the Bible says that hw is going to be blessed in his deeds and what does he do well,
notice in verse 26. It says first of all if anyone thinks of himself
to be religious and yet does not bridle his tongue. One of the first evidences of the transforming
work of the Word is our tongues. We begin to bridle our tongues and we begin
to speak at the right time. James says, let everyone be swift to hear
and slow to speak. But we do speak; we do speak the matchless
Word’s of God. No matter how long I preach the gospel, I
am still thrilled by the gospel and I still love to share the gospel and look for opportunities
of sharing the gospel wherever I may be, whether it is on a plane, or whether or not it’s
even at a bus stop somehow the Holy Spirit of God just gives me a question to ask or
something because I never know but this might be a divine appointment and who knows but
that in God’s providence, these people have been brought in my life for such a time as
this. Tell you many stories of incredible providence,
but here’s the point you can too. Simple fact is, imagine five thousand people,
or maybe there’s four thousand here today, all leaving here giving credibility to the
Christian message because of what we speak, we speak the gospel, we not only serve the
Lord by speaking the gospel but notice who we are to help, it says verse 27, “This
is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God and our Father to visit the orphans
and the widows in their distress and to keep one’s self unstained by the world. You want to know a proof that the Word of
God has done His work, you begin to visit the orphans and the widows. What significance is that? Well you say they need a visit. Yeah, but It’s deeper than that. What James is saying that if we are broken
by the Word and humbled and cleansed by the Word, we’ll be able to visit people, number
one, who can never repay us and number two, who do not give us any significance at all. You see you and I are programmed in such a
way, we want to hang around with the people who give us significance, we want to draw
our significance from important people, the rich people, the famous people, we gravitate
to that, that’s right in our hearts as part of our fallen nature but if we are broken
by the Word, we are willing to minister to people in obscurity, people who have never
and if people never hear about it, because this we do for God. This we do for God. So James says that is we are going to be doers
of the Word, it affects our tongue. It affects our credibility in those whom we
help. Do you know how the gospel came to North Africa,
bishop Sam Wills who died in a hail of gunfire with Onmar Sedaf in the early eighties, told
a friend of mine. He said you know how the gospel captures north
Africa, he said, the African culture North Africa in the early century was very cruel,
now I know that we have church historians here who may have a different interpretation,
I’m just telling you what bishop Sam Wills said. And he said, Christians gain credibility through
their acts of kindness. For example, there was no abortion in those
days, but children who are unwanted; babies were simply left to die. And so the church would organize baby runs,
they’d go throughout the town and they’d take these babies, now let’s remember friends,
let’s be clear here, there were no such things as baby bottles. So these infants were taken by nursing mothers
and adopted as their very own and he said, the world was so impressed and they said,
where’s this love coming from and then he said there were bodies that were thrown and
in those days they just believed that bodies particularly during plagues and so forth were
thrown to the garbage. Christians would take these bodies and they
would wash them and bury them arguing that even unbelievers have the right to a descent
burial in light of their coming resurrection. And through those acts of kindness you see
as Christians began to gain back, you see, their credibility people began to say, who
in the world are these people anyway? This is a separate subject which I can’t
get on to but the image of Christians in America today is not good, and without defending our
statement, I’d say that a lot of it is our fault. We’ve had a lot to do with the fact that
the image politicalization of Christianity and all. So that simple fact is James, is saying if
you want to be a doer of the Word, what you need to do is begin to live it out, even in
obscurity, no matter where you are, there are, as Francis Schaeffer used to say, there
are no little place, there are no big places, there are only faithful people and unfaithful
people that’s all that there is. And then he says what you need to do is live
it out in terms of your values in relationship to people. You know when he says keep yourselves unstained
by the world I don’t think that James is just leaving it to us to interpret what that
means, we know what John talks about when he says that world, but I think James, remember
chapter divisions are no inspired. I think that he’s going to illustrate worldliness
in the very next chapter, it says this is an attitude of worldliness, verse 2 “if
a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and thee
comes a poor man in dirty clothes you pay special attention to the one who is wearing
the fine clothes and you say sit here in a good place and you say to the other man stand
over there. Haven’t you made distinctions among yourselves
with evil motives?” Boy this is strong. Let me simply say that verse 6 have you dishonored
the poor man, is not the right, the ones who oppress you and personally drag you into court,
do not they blaspheme that fair name by which you have been called? I’m going to skip now to verse 9. “If you show partiality, you are committing
sin and are convicted by the law as transgresses.” Wow. What James is saying is, if you give special
attention to the rich, after all, they are the ones that pay your church budget, you
know. You’d better not cross the guy, and those
of you in smaller churches you know that every church has a church boss and you’d better
not cross him because he’s the one who got the last pastor to resign and so take car
of yourself. But James is saying that if you make these
distinctions among men, this is a serious charge, why is it so serious, because as I
understand it, it comes to the very heart of the gospel, if we are prejudice in relationship
to the rich and the poor, the Asian American and the African American and all of the other
races and cultures that God has brought into America, if within the body of Christ we make
these distinctions, James says, that we are, what is the world that he uses here, you are
convicted by the law as transgressors. Why? Because in Christianity alone we are all equal
at the foot of the cross. We are equal at the foot of the cross. There is now no distinction because all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. God has shut everyone out to sin, there is
nothing else that we can do except to cast ourselves helplessly at the foot of Jesus
and accept him as our substitute in and our sin bearer and in that sense we are all alike
and therefore let us not make these distinctions. I noticed that many of you have never been
to moody church, I hope that that changes but I do need to say this, that at Moody Church,
one of the reasons that I love it is because of it’s diversity. I tell the new people at Moody Church as we
have people who come. They may be from India they may be from South
East Asia, African Americans, whatever their origin, whatever their nationality. I tell people at Moody Church that we want
Moody Church to be as diversified as heaven. Because that is what Christianity is about
and that’s where our faith is lived out. What am I trying to say today? What I’m trying to say is that if the Word
transforms us and we are honest in God’s presence and we allow that transformation
to happen and it has to happen over a period of time, you can’t do it in a meeting. James says he gazes intently at the law of
God. You take time. You get alone with God, you invite the blessed
Holy Spirit of God to point out sin in your life that you’ve not fully dealt with and
you are committed to obedience then what happens is God, the Holy Spirit begins that transformation
through the Word of God and we in turn spill out into the culture and we begin to see the
transformation take place in the lives of other people. Many years ago I was in Amsterdam and the
tour group that I was with was given a lecture at a museum on Rembrandt. Now I’m not much into art but I discovered
that day that art can be incredibly interesting because this tour guide was really up on Rembrandt
and was exceedingly interesting in what she said. If I remember correctly she said that Rembrandt
painted about 400 pictures and something like 20-25 % were of himself. Well that’s very interesting. You say well, was he an egoist. No. I think he was a very earnest humble Christian. Because when Rembrandt painted himself he
did not touch himself up and he was not that good looking. People who looked at the pictures said, hey,
you know you’re an artist; you can do a little bit with this and you can do a little
bit with that. You could make yourself look a whole lot better
with a stroke of a brush. But Rembrandt is to have said these words,
“I cannot paint other people as they are until I’m willing to paint myself as I am.” My dear friends we could leave this conference
and we could be judgmental and we could be angry and we could be a whole lot of other
things, because there is a war out there and we’ve learned a tremendous amount about
how to fight that war, but I’ll tell you something today, that we have to leave here
today as those who say, I see my own sin and I see my own need and is see God’s own matchless
undeserved grace in my life. Now who am I that I should not share that
undeserved grace with a world out there that is so broken and so hurt and it’s so hurting. I’ve been awake since 4 o’clock this morning
because I was awakened by screams next door. I don’t know exactly what was going on because
I was still partially in sleep, but I don’t know if a woman was being abused and I through
well if this goes on I’m going to call the authorities, I didn’t because it ended and
I thought to myself, what a world we live in. Maybe right next to my room in the hotel,
who knows what that dear woman was going through? I have no idea. Are we going to reach out to that broken world
and say that we are recipients of God’s matchless grace and therefore we are going
to be doers of the Word? We are going to be cleansed, we are going
to be broke and we’re going to go out there in the name of Jesus and in the love of Jesus
speaking lovingly the truth of Jesus we are going to see transformation in our churches
and in our lives, because the Word of God has transformed us. We know who we are in God’s presence, sinners
saved by grace, now we can begin to share with others the grace that we’ve received. There is a story of a little boy who was lost
in a city and the police didn’t know what to do because he didn’t know his address
and he didn’t know. He knew his name but he didn’t know the
address and didn’t know the street that he lived on. He was a little boy and they said well, what
are we going to do. And then the little boy said this he said
you know, if you take me to my church. I think I can find my way home. And they said, well fine, what church? And he said you know it’s the church with
the cross. He said you know if you take me to the cross,
he said, I can find my way home. As we leave here today folks burning in my
heart is one single agenda. Let’s bring people to the cross so that
they can find their way home. That’s what doers of the Word do. Let’s pray. Our Father we ask in the name of Jesus that
you will do a miracle in all our lives show us our great need. Help us to deal with those issues that you’ve
brought to our attention and by your grace transform us. Yes, we are in a battle but father this is
the time now for us to be an army. An army that fans out throughout the length
and breath of the united states of America and maybe other countries of the world. Actively joyfully, courageously, representing
the matchless grace that you have brought to us. Make us doers we ask, in Jesus name. Amen.
