Overcoming Guilt,
Shame And Rejection My theme tonight is: Overcoming
guilt, shame and rejection. I would suppose that there are, maybe at least 25 percent
of the people here this evening have one or other of those
three problems: guilt, shame or rejection. And there is a place
where they can be healed. Tonight I’m going
to speak about that. The place is the cross. And in Hebrews 10:14,
we have this statement: For by one sacrifice He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. That one sacrifice is the death
of Jesus on the cross. And notice the language that’s
used. He has perfected forever. It’s perfect,
and it goes on forever. It never loses its validity and it never is incomplete. By one sacrifice Jesus has made total
provision for every need of humanity. Many people do not realize that the death of Jesus
on the cross was a sacrifice. In Hebrews 9:13 it says:
He [Jesus], offered Himself through
the eternal Spirit to God. Jesus was the Priest, He was
the sacrifice. He offered Himself and He did it through
the eternal Spirit. I remember the second time I went to a revival service.
I had no idea what it was. It was in the Assemblies of God.
I’d never heard of them. I didn’t know anything
about all this. But, I’d been to one previous service where the Holy Spirit had put my hand
up at the appeal. I didn’t put it up, He put it up. Which is a frightening experience,
believe me. I had enough knowledge to know they
were going to do that kind of thing, which was totally
foreign to me. So sure enough they got
to the end of the message, and everybody who wants
this put your hand up. So I thought somebody else
did it for me last time I couldn’t expect that to happen twice,
so I’ll put my hand up, and I did. That’s all they were waiting for, then
they carried on with the service. Later the pastor came to me
and talked to me and I think he realized he
had a problem on his hands. And he said, Do you believe that
Jesus Christ died for you? I thought it over. My whole background was in
philosophy and definitions. And I said: To tell you the truth I can't
see what the death of Jesus Christ, nineteen centuries ago, could have to do with the sins
I’ve committed in my lifetime. And he didn’t argue with me. which was to his credit. But they prayed
for me and about two nights later, in an army barrack room,
in the middle of the night, clad only in my underwear, I had a personal encounter with Jesus
Christ which radically and permanently changed my whole life. And that was... 58 years ago. So this was no
temporary flash of emotion. Later, when I was reading the New Testament, and I was
reading it in the original Greek, I read that Scripture, Jesus
through the eternal Spirit offered Himself
without spot to God. And I knew the meaning
of the word eternal. It means something
that’s out of time, that’s not subject to
the limitations of time. And then I saw the answer
to my own question. On the cross Jesus comprehended,
took upon Himself, the sins of all humanity, from Adam to the last one
that ever is to be born. It was not within
the limits of time. It was an eternal sacrifice
out of time. And that completely solved
my philosophical problems. So I want to talk tonight
about how I entered into this. When I met the Lord
I was a soldier in the Army. Salvation brings promotion. I was a medical orderly because I
had been a conscientious objector, and so I was not eligible
for a promotion. But the Army is a bit mixed up. They sent me on a
Junior NCO’s course in Leeds,
on this vast parade ground, which stretches much further
than this building here, and being from a totally
military background, all my male relatives have been officers in
the British Army —I passed the test. So then they had to promote me. I didn’t know all this was
going on so I came back, and the commanding officer,
who was a doctor, sent for me and said: We’ve made you a Corporal.
I said: Yes sir. He said:
How’s the cooking going? Well, you know, you learn in
the army to be pretty discrete, so I thought to myself,
it’s about as bad as usual, but I didn’t want to tell him that. So I said: It seems about
the same as usual, Sir. He said: Didn’t you know that you
were the Corporal Cook of this Unit? I said: No Sir, nobody told me. He said: We had to promote you and
the only vacancy was for a cook. So from now on you’re
the Corporal Cook. By title I continued that way
for several years but I never did any cooking. Which was a real blessing for my
fellow soldiers. I can tell you that. I was a local acting unpaid Lance
Corporal when I went on that course, and I came back a Corporal.
So you see, promotion follows salvation. Now I want to tell you how I
got to this. Then the Army sent my unit, which was Number
One Light Field Ambulance, to the Middle East, and I spent the next three years
in the desserts of North Africa, Egypt, What's the next country? The one West.
Libya, that's right. and then finally the Sudan. I was in the Battle of El Alamein
at a safe distance in the rear, and then I followed
the advancing forces up in my Number One
Light Field Ambulance. But I developed a skin
infection on my right toe, and they did everything
they could because they really wanted
to keep me in the unit, but they couldn’t.
So I was admitted to hospital. And I spent the next year in military hospitals
in the Middle East, and that is not an experience
I would choose for anybody. I had sunk to what John Bunyan
calls the Slough of Despond, the pit of despair, and I was sitting there in the bed thinking: There’s nothing left. And then I opened my Bible and I was saying to myself: I know
if I had faith, God would heal me. Then the next thing I would say:
I don’t have faith. And there I was back
in the Slough of Despond. But I opened my Bible by chance at
Romans 10:17 and I read these words: So then faith cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God. So I said to myself: If I don’t
have faith I can get it. It comes. And I want to tell
every one of you that. You don’t need to be without faith.
It comes if you do the right thing. The right thing is hearing
the word of God. So I said I’m going to
do this systematically. I armed myself with
three colored pencils: one blue, one yellow
and one red. And the blue pencil
was for every passage in the Bible that had
anything to do with healing. I read the whole Bible through
because I had plenty of time. And you know
what I ended up with? A blue Bible. So I really was convinced
healing is in the Bible. You see being a philosopher I made
everything as difficult as possible. I said: Sure God heals, but He’s not interested in the
body. He only heals the soul. So then I was reading
Proverbs 4:20-22, it said: My son, attend to my words; incline
thine ear unto to my sayings, let them not depart from thine eyes;
Keep them in the midst of thine heart; For they are life to
those who find them, and health
[the margin says medicine] to all their flesh. And when I read flesh I said not even a
philosopher can make flesh mean soul. So I saw that God had provided medicine
for all my flesh, my whole body. Well then, I was in the hospital for a long while and
I was transferred to another hospital. I narrowly avoided being transferred
to a psychiatric hospital because I was telling the doctors by
that time, I believed God would heal me. And something
descended on me. You know what it was? It was a Salvation
Army Brigadier. A female Brigadier because in the Salvation Army if your
husband dies, you take his rank. So her husband had died, and she was a
militant salvationist but just as militant about speaking in
tongues as others are about salvation. And bless God, she’s with the Lord
now, but I’ll always honor her memory. She got hold of a
New Zealand soldier her American lady co-worker
[and she herself was Australian], they got in this little
four-seater car and they drove fifty miles to Alballa on
the Suez Canal where I was a patient. She was fully attired. She had
her bonnet, her ribbons, everything. She marched into the ward and
overawed the sister, the nurse. And said: Can I take this young man
out and pray with him in my car? The sister said yes and they never
asked me whether I wanted to pray. So I found myself sitting
in the back seat of this little four-seater car
with the Australian Brigadier and the New Zealand driver in the front seat,
and the American lady co-worker,
a young woman from Oklahoma, on the back seat beside me. And we all started to pray,
and then this young woman beside me
began to vibrate and speak in tongues. And then I began to vibrate
and I wasn’t choosing to do it. And then everybody
in the car began to vibrate, and then the whole car
began to vibrate. And we were stationary. The engine
was not running. But I knew somehow that God
was doing this for my benefit. and that He wanted to convince me. And so then this young lady
got a message in tongues, an utterance in tongues, and the interpretation. I don’t remember the whole,
interpretation, but I have never forgotten one particular part. It said this... And she was from Oklahoma, and if you know America, people
in Oklahoma don’t talk like graduates from Cambridge. That is an understatement. But when she gave the
interpretation, it was in perfect Shakespearean English. And I thought
this has to be God. And now I’m coming to the point
of what I’m going to say. The interpretation was longer than
this, but this is the part I remember. Consider the work of Calvary, a perfect work, perfect in every respect, and perfect
in every aspect. And I knew that the Lord was talking to me about
the death of Jesus on the cross and that He was telling me it
was perfect, it was complete, there was nothing omitted,
it covered every need. But when I got out of the car
I was just as sick as when I got in, but I knew what I had to do: Consider the work of Calvary. So putting that together with my experience with the Scripture
from Proverbs chapter four, I went to the doctor and I said I
want to be discharged at my own responsibility. Now he was a Nicodemus.
He was very interested, so he didn’t discharge me immediately.
He used to send to me at night and ask me questions about the Gospel. I decided I know what to do, I’ve
got to consider the work of Calvary, I’ve got to take the Bible
as my medicine. And then I said being a Medical Orderly:
How do people take their medicine? The answer is: three times
daily after meals. So I said from now on I’m going
to take the Bible as my medicine, three times daily after meals. Well, when I was
sent out from Egypt, in a few days I was sent to the Sudan which is a much worse
climate than Egypt. But I said I’m going to take my medicine
three times daily after meals. So after every main meal I got away by myself,
opened my Bible, started to read it. I said:
Lord, you said this is my medicine. Well I can’t tell you of
all that transpired, but the answer is:
the medicine worked. In one of the worst climates in the
world, in a very unsuitable condition, I was completely
and permanently healed. The medicine works. Now I’ve got here a little
booklet that’s based on this called God’s Medicine Bottle. And you can have it for
whatever the price is. Let me tell you one more
thing about this little book. About a year ago
I was in Jerusalem and a young woman came
up to me from the Philippines. She said: Brother Prince,
I want to tell you something. And she told me
the following story. Her mother had been
diagnosed with cancer in one of the best
hospitals in Manila. They said you’ve got
three months to live. She was flown to the United States,
went to a hospital in New York. They told her exactly the same,
you’ve got three months to live. Well, somebody gave
the daughter this little book. And so the daughter looked at the title, handed it to her mother, and said: Mother, why don’t you
try this? You’ve got nothing to lose. And the mother must have been
a woman of tremendous character, she said: I’ll do it. And for nine months she took God’s Word as her medicine
three times daily after meals. When she went back to the doctors
they could not find any trace of cancer anywhere in her body. I want to tell you
the medicine works. I want to say, however, that
you need to bear in mind that God has got more
than one way to heal you. If His way is the medicine,
it will work. If He has another way, then you have
to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and find out
what the other way is. But after all you’ve got not much
to lose, it’s quite a cheap book, and if you don’t get healed
by it somebody else might, like the woman whose mother
was healed completely of cancer. So that brings me back to Hebrews 10:14: By one sacrifice He [Jesus]
has perfected forever those [us]
who are being sanctified. It covers every need
of every human being from Adam
to the last one to be born. Spiritual, physical,
mental, emotional— every need is covered by the
sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Consider the work of Calvary,
a perfect work. Perfect in every respect,
perfect in every aspect. Every need of all humanity
has been provided for by the sacrifice of
Jesus on the cross. Now I want to talk to you
about provision for three, what we could call emotional needs: guilt, shame and rejection. God through the sacrifice of Jesus
has provided for complete deliverance from each of those things:
guilt, shame and rejection. But my experience is that many, many
Christians, born again Christians, are not fully free
from guilt or shame or rejection. So I want to talk to you tonight about deliverance from
each of those three things. And I would estimate at least 25
percent of the people here this evening need some kind of deliverance from one or the other
of those three things. Now let’s start with guilt. Being guilty. And you know what people say—
conscience makes cowards of us all. If you have a sense of guilt you can never be a fully liberated,
victorious, effective Christian. And God doesn’t want you to have
any lingering sense of guilt whatever. Isaiah 53 verse 6,
which is the prophetic description, given 700 years before the event
through the Prophet Isaiah, of the sacrifice of
Jesus on the cross, and it says:
All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one,
to his own way; You see that’s the
problem of all humanity. We have not all necessarily
committed some specific sin such as murder or adultery. But we’ve all done one thing. We’ve turned to our own way and
our own way was not God’s way. And God calls that
iniquity or rebellion. And it goes on to say, And the LORD has laid on Him
[Jesus] the iniquity of us all. All our rebellion was
visited upon Jesus on the cross
that we might be free. In John 1 verse 29, John the Baptist introduces Jesus and
he says: Behold! The Lamb of God who carries away
the sin of the world. Jesus was the Lamb upon
whom God laid every sin of every human being
of every time and every place. And He carried it away that it
might never again trouble us or cause us to feel guilty. How do we avail ourselves of that?
I’m speaking very simply tonight. Nothing complicated. You know my conclusion this is only for myself but it concerns me us if I can’t
explain something simply it is because I haven’t
understood it clearly. And I work at it
until I can. I think of my precious first wife who
used to sit in the front row and pray for me. And I mean she prayed earnestly. But when she bowed her head
and clasped her hands I thought to myself,
Now what have I done? But God answered her prayers. You see she was much older than
I was. An experienced missionary. She could have lorded it over me.
She could have dominated me and she didn’t. She backed off, took the position of a wife and
let me be the head of the family. And in the long run, and it was
a long run, it paid off. I could have easily been submerged
beneath my much more experienced and gifted wife. And some of you wives maybe you’re making
that mistake. You’re much sharper, you’re much quicker, you’re much
cleverer than your husband, but don’t take his place because the result is confusion. Now how do you avail yourself
of this provision? It’s all very simple. Proverbs 28 verse 13. He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and
forsakes them will have mercy. So what do you have to do? You have to confess
your sins. In 1 John chapter 1:9 it says,
If we confess our sins, God is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. So if we confess our sins,
God will forgive us. But if we refuse to confess,
God will not forgive. God has committed Himself
to forgive every sin concerning which we repent
and confess it to Him. But if we refuse to confess
we receive no forgiveness. You see there’s a tremendous
tension and tendency not to bring sin out into the open. When Lydia and I were first married
she had a dream one night and through that dream God
spoke to her and He said this, Time does not cover sin. And I’ve carried that
with me ever since. Time does not cover sin. You
may have sinned fifty years ago, but if you’ve not repented
and confessed and forsaken, you’re still accountable for that sin. I think one of the things that
God is doing in my life is from time to time reminding
me of sins I have not confessed. I don’t believe in making a search for sin. I don’t think that way. But from time to time God shows
me a sin that I committed and never confessed
and never repented. And all I have to do is say, God
I’m sorry. I repent. I acknowledge. And it’s gone. But until I confess
it hasn’t gone. You see we feel bad about
bringing our sins out into the light of
God’s countenance. But that’s the only place
where they are forgiven. If you withhold confession you will not receive forgiveness. Let me read that
again, Proverbs 28:13: He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and
forsakes them will have mercy. It’s not enough to confess.
You have to forsake. That’s repent. You have to turn away from it.
When you confess and forsake you are guaranteed God’s mercy. And now when God saved you it’s a perfect
work as I was told in that little car when
it was vibrating with the power of God. And I want to confront you with
just one beautiful and glorious and holy and wonderful effect
of confessing our sins. It’s in Isaiah chapter 61 verse 10. Isaiah 61:10: I will greatly rejoice in the LORD,
My soul shall be joyful in my God; That’s pretty exciting isn’t it? That’s not just religion.
That’s salvation. You know as a boy growing up
in the Anglican Church I listened to all those
beautiful prayers and things, and I loved them.
They’re so beautiful. And all the confessions
that people said. But I said to myself afterwards, If they’ve really confessed all those
things why do they walk out looking just the same
as they walked in? It doesn’t seem to have
changed them at all. So I concluded it
didn’t work. I was wrong and later I discovered
it does work. But anyhow,
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, My soul shall be joyful in my God; [Listen. What’s the reason?] For He has clothed me with the
garments of salvation, He has covered me with
the robe of righteousness, Now there’s two things there the garment of salvation,
the robe of righteousness. Many, many Christians and
some of you here tonight have received
the garments of salvation but you don’t realize you’ve been
covered with the robe of righteousness. Not your righteousness,
but Christ’s righteousness. A righteousness
which has never known sin, which has no guilty past, which
has no nothing to be ashamed of. And bless God, God didn’t just drape
it on you, He covered you with it. There’s no area of your personality that is any longer exposed
to the accusations of Satan, because He’s covered you with
a robe of His righteousness. And when you realize that
you’ve confessed, forsaken, and received salvation,
all you need to do is let God put on you
the robe of righteousness. When you wearing that
robe of righteousness there’s no room
for a guilty conscience. There’s no room for remorse, there’s not room for doubting
and questioning. It’s all taken care of at the cross. So that’s God’s remedy for guilt. Let me say it very simply,
it’s the garment of salvation and then the robe of righteousness.
Now many people have received the
garment of salvation but they’ve never understood that there’s also that goes with it
a robe of righteousness. Not your righteousness. God’s righteousness imputed to
you through Jesus Christ. And when you put that on
it covers you. The devil can look at you
from any angle, but he’s got nothing of
which he can accuse you because you’re covered with the robe
of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That’s God’s remedy for guilt. There are many of
you here tonight that have never fully availed yourself
of that remedy. Before this message closes
I’ll give you an opportunity to do it. I want to go on now with shame. Shame is such a cruel
and ugly thing. Very often it’s the result
of sexual abuse or being made fun
of at school. I read a story recently about
one boy out of a class. The headmaster of the school said,
Stand up whatever your name is. Then he said, I want to tell you all, all of you have
passed your exams, except and he named the boy standing up. Well how
could he feel anything but shame? Many of the things that happen in
our childhood can be causes of shame. You see the things that
happened longest ago are sometimes the hardest
to get out. First in is often last out. And there are some
of you here tonight who are not free from shame. Perhaps the commonest
single source of shame tonight in this country and in our Western civilization
to our eternal shame be it said, is sexual abuse. And I’ve dealt with, I can’t count
how many people. I think of that one woman I knew when she was a little girl of about nine, her father who was
a professing Christian sexually abused her. And she was left with
this awful question: Is there something bad in me
that made him do it? And only when she came to the cross was she set free
from that shame. I want to tell you that Jesus
has borne all our shame. Let me give you just a few Scriptures. Isaiah 50 and verse 6. This is a prophetic utterance which
describes what Jesus did for us and it says verse 5:
The LORD God has opened My ear; And I was not rebellious, Nor
did I turn away. [That’s Jesus] [Then it says.] I gave My back
to those who struck Me, And My cheeks to those
who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face
from shame and spitting. You notice Jesus says, I gave My back. He could have saved Himself, He could have called for
twelve legions of angels. But He didn’t. He gave His back. And let me tell you the pretty little pictures we see of the
scourging of Jesus have very little to do with reality. It was a horrible scene because he was scourged
with a scourge that had little pieces
of metal or bone in the thongs. And when they fell on a man’s flesh they tore it away and exposed the
flesh that was under the skin. And that’s what Jesus endured. He did it for our sake. But He says, I did not hide my face
from shame and spitting. So on the cross Jesus bore
your shame and my shame. Let me just read a brief account of what happened after
the arrest of Jesus. Matthew chapter 27 verses 27 through 31. Pilate had handed Jesus over to the
soldiers to take Him out to execution and it says in verse 27 and following. Then the soldiers of the governor
took Jesus into the Praetorian and gathered the whole
garrison around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him.
[They stripped Him naked and then they mocked Him.] When they had twisted a crown of
thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand. And they bowed the knees before
Him and mocked Him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! Then they spat on Him, and took
the reed and stuck Him on the head. And remember he was
wearing a crown of thorns and every blow of that reed
pressed the thorns into His skull. But He did not hide His face
from shame and spitting. Then it says, And when
they had mocked Him, they took the robe off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and
led Him away to be crucified. So actually He was exposed
naked twice in that scene. And then we read further on in Matthew 27 verse 35. Then they crucified Him, and divided
His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet: They divided My garments
among them, And for My clothing they cast lots.
Sitting down they watched him there naked on the cross
for three hours. You see you will never see an accurate
picture of Jesus on the cross because they’ll always put
a little loincloth on Him. But there was no loincloth.
He was exposed naked. His shame was exposed to everybody who
passed by and mocked Him. And then we could
turn for a moment to the Epistle to Hebrews just to emphasize this truth. Hebrews chapter 12, it says in verse 2: Jesus the author and
finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set
before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, He bore our shame
but He despised it. And then what is the
opposite of shame? How many of you can tell me? I think the best
opposite is glory. And in Hebrews
chapter 2 and verse 10 it says speaking of Jesus: For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things
and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the author of their salvation
perfect through sufferings. Notice He was bringing
many sons to what? Glory. What’s the opposite of shame? He bore our shame that
we might share His glory. So those of you, and
there are many here tonight, who for some reason or other have a background in your life of which you’re ashamed, something you’ve never
fully got away from, something that haunts you
and follows you up and disturbs you and threatens your moments when
you’re wanting to worship and praise God, remember Jesus bore our shame completely, naked for
three hours on the cross, that we might share His glory.
Isn’t that wonderful! Thank you Lord! Now I was teaching this in Holland
a few years ago and I received a testimony from
a Dutch woman in writing. I haven’t got the written
testimony here but I want to sum up what she said. As a young girl she
had been sexually abused. She’d been gang raped
by a group of young boys and suffered further
sexual molestation. Then she married but her marriage was not happy because she had a deep bitterness
in her heart against all men including her husband. She also could never
escape the shame of what she’d endured
through sexual molestation. And then the Lord did
something so wonderful, I believe it because I know the
Dutch minister that sent this testimony to me, and he sent it to me because he said it establishes
exactly what you’ve been preaching. Sitting in her bedroom, alone, she had a vision of Jesus on the cross and He was absolutely naked. Then she realized two things. First of all He had borne her shame. She didn’t need to
have shame any longer. Jesus had borne it. The second thing she realized was
Jesus was a man. She was so bitter against men; she realized it was a Man
who paid the penalty of her sin. Wasn’t that beautiful? So there you are.
If you are wrestling with shame just bear in mind, naked on the cross, Jesus bore your shame. He’s exposed to the jeers and
the taunts of passers by. The primary object of crucifixion was to make shame,
to impose shame on people. Jesus endured it all
but He despised the shame. It didn’t get Him down
because he knew why He was bearing your shame
and my shame that we might share
His glory. Amen. Now we come to the last
of these three problems. I’ve dealt with guilt.
I’ve dealt with shame. I’ll deal with rejection. Now I consider rejection to be
the deepest wound of the human spirit. And I was reading recently
something written about Mother Theresa after
she had died and she made this simple statement, Not being loved
is the worst sickness. And I have to say on the basis of my dealings
with people over many years, I totally agree. The worst sickness
is not being loved. And there are some of you here
tonight sick with that sickness. You may be Christian,
you may be saved, but you’ve never realized
what it means that you’ve been loved. You’ve never absorbed it.
You’ve never taken it in. Now there are various
possible courses... Let me say, in the United States
where I spend some of my time, I would guess that, this is the lowest estimate, twenty-five percent
of the population have a wound of rejection. I think that’s an underestimate. I think it’s an epidemic and I think it’s not probably
very much different here in Britain. It is the number one sickness in our culture today due mainly to the
breakdown of the family. Now I’m going to give you just some simple examples.
They’re by no means all inclusive. There are others I could give, but one of the commonest causes
of the wound of rejection is a baby that’s rejected
in the womb. People don’t realize that
there’s in that womb, in that embryo there’s a sensitive
little person who wants to be loved. Now at a certain point
when I was conducting regular deliverance services
in the United States I saw that there was
a certain age group that so commonly had
the problem of rejection. So I worked it out. When were they
born? The answer was about 1930 and if you’re an American the date 1929 is indelibly
printed on your mind. It’s the year of
the Great Depression, when everything fell
apart financially. Most people were out of work. Few people had enough to eat. And you can imagine a woman
finding herself pregnant in that situation she’s got six little kids
to feed already and there’s a seventh coming and she doesn’t have
to take any violent action. She just resents that little baby. And that baby is born with
a spirit of rejection. I believe my wife Ruth would permit
me to say this. She was born in 1930 in a large, rather poor family. And she had that problem.
She had a spirit of rejection. She was wonderfully delivered, but she told me, she said: That’s
something I always have to guard against is rejection. It often tries to come back. Then, every baby as I understand it
is born into the world craving one thing more
than anything else which is Love. And if parents
don’t love their baby or maybe love it but don’t
know how to express their love, to manifest their love... You see
unexpressed love does a baby no good. It’s not a psychologist. It can’t work out: Well behind all
that external there’s real love. It has to feel love; it has to have love expressed. And a baby that doesn’t feel love, and I would say particularly
the love of a father, if you’ll forgive me ladies
for saying that. I mean the love of a
mother is wonderful, but the love of a father
is particular. Let me say this and I’m speaking from
my first wife, Lydia was one of the strongest
characters I’ve ever met. And she did a work in Palestine
amongst Muslims and Arabs that few people would have
had the courage to do. She was often without
sufficient money, she often had even the
missionaries criticizing her, but she stuck through it.
And you know I thinking it over later, I realize
one factor in her character was she was the youngest
of four sisters and she was her
father’s favorite and he always affirmed her. And do you know that makes
all the difference in a child’s life if the father affirms the child. And an unaffirmed child, it may be provided for...
I was provided for I mean I had every need met, but I never knew in
my family what it was to be loved. I mean I was loved
but nobody showed it. We were, you know what they say:
the stiff upper lip. Never show your emotion.
Never tell people you love them, just keep it cool, keep it cold. I want to say this. It’s personal
and I find it hard to say it. But I’m saying it not for my
benefit but for yours. When the Lord took Ruth it’s the hardest thing that’s
ever happened in my life. And I made up my mind
I’m not going to be a slave of the stiff upper lip. If I want to cry I’m going to cry. If people don’t like it,
that’s their problem. But I’m not going to
suppress God-given emotions because my culture
doesn’t agree with it. And you know what I think you know what I’ve observed?
My family was a good family. They really were good people, but that stiff upper lip produces
stunted deformed personalities. They never really learned
to express themselves, and something that’s not expressed
is something that suppressed. So I’ve made up my mind.
Let people enjoy it or dislike it, but if I want
to weep I’m going to weep. I don’t want to weep, but
if I feel like weeping, I’ll weep. And if I feel like dancing
I’ll dance. The problem
with me with dancing is, I used to be a great dancer. Believe me I’ve led lots of
congregations in dancing. But now at this age,
my feet just don’t obey me. So I stand there and tap my feet
but I can’t really let myself go. Anyhow, then another very commonplace
where rejection starts is at school. I was sent off to
a boarding school in Westgate-On-Sea in Kent at the age of nine. My family has
a photograph of me ready to go to school. I was attired in a three-piece suit and I had a bowler hat on. That was my culture. And when I got there, there were
several other little boys of the same. And I remember one boy. He was uninhibited. He just started to
cry. He said: I want my Mummy, I want my Mummy.
He didn’t get his mummy. It was a hard life. British life has often
been hard you know that. I don’t have to tell
some of you that. We’ve imprisoned ourselves
in our own culture. I mean you can understand every male relative
I’ve ever known in my life was an officer in the British Army. I was educated in Eton and went
on to Cambridge. If anybody was inculcated with a
stiff upper lip it was me. But I rebelled. I decided I’m not
going to be enslaved. If I want to dance I’ll dance. And if I feel like crying I’ll cry. You know I’ve got a very good
example. You know who He is? Jesus. Have you ever read the
account of the death of Lazarus? Jesus arrived four days late and when he went
to the tomb it says the shortest verse in the
whole Bible. Two words, Jesus wept. He wasn’t weeping for Lazarus because He knew He was
going to raise him up. He was sharing the
grief of Mary and Martha. And you know one
thing about grief? It helps to have it shared. Oh I’ve been so blessed since God took Ruth home. I can’t count the number of people that have shared
their love with me. My family has been wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Three of my daughters came, one after another,
to Jerusalem to look after me. First my African daughter, Jesika.
How many of you met Jesika? Then my Arab daughter
who’s here tonight, Kirsten. And finally one of my
seven Jewish daughters, Anna, who’s here tonight,
took me into her home and she and
her husband, David, gave me half the upper floor
of their house to live in. I tell you I’m proud
of my family and when I think of
how that family began... My first wife, Lydia, in 1928 took in one little dying
Jewish baby girl and everybody, all the
missionaries criticized her. What’s the good of that?
Why isn’t she preaching the gospel? Well there’s different ways
to preaching the gospel. You can do it in word and
you can do it in deed. But if you don’t do it in deed
it’s not much good doing it in word. And out of the one little deathly sick Jewish baby,
whom God raised up, there has grown up a family of more
than one hundred and fifty persons. If I’m boasting I’m not boasting
about myself. I’m boasting about God. You see, so many people want
a big impressive ministry. I think most big things start small. I was ignorant. I mean I’d just
been saved. I didn’t know that the gospel was
to the Jew first. But my first congregation
was Jewish. It wasn’t large and it wasn’t old,
but it was Jewish. And then the Bible says, Pure and undefiled religion
before God is this... What is it?
How many of you can tell me? to care for the orphans and widows and to keep himself
unspotted from the world. So I cared. I started by caring
for the orphans and widows. I wasn’t spiritual. God just thrust me into it. It was the last thing
I would ever have planned, but I’m oh so glad I did it. Another common reason for rejection, all too common today, is
the break-up of a marriage. A woman has given herself
unreservedly to a man and like Brother Ed Cole was telling, a pastor turns up one day
unannounced with divorce papers. What is such a person
to experience? You’ve given yourself
without reservation, you’ve done everything you can, you’ve loved, you’ve served,
and suddenly you’re no longer wanted. Anybody that doesn’t feel
rejection in that situation has got to have a very
close walk with the Lord. And then one other
kind of rejection and I’ll come to the end
of this little list, is self-rejection. And again that’s a terrible problem. You’d be amazed, or maybe
you wouldn’t be, how many people reject themselves. I think especially
women or girls. They’re just
not the right length too long, too short,
too thin, too fat, eyes the wrong color,
hair’s not straight or it’s kinky. Whatever it is you’ve made it a reason
to reject yourself. You look at other people
and wish you were like them. You know your problem? Selfrejection. Now I want to tell you the remedy. It’s found at the cross. In Luke 23 verses 13 to 24 we have the scene
when Jesus is before Pilate and Pilate is trying
to get him let off. And the more Pilate tries, the more Jesus’ own people shout, Let Him be crucified.
I’ll just read it quickly. Then Pilate, when he had
called together the chief priests, the rulers, and the people,
said to them, You have brought this Man to me,
as one who misleads the people. And indeed having examined
Him in your presence, I have found no fault in this Man concerning those things
of which you accuse Him, no neither did Herod,
for I sent you back to him; and indeed nothing worthy of
death has been done by Him. I will therefore chastise Him
and release Him for it was necessary for him
to release one to them at the feast. And they all
[now this is all the Jewish leaders] they all cried out saying, Away with this Man, and release to us Barabbas who had been thrown into prison
for a certain insurrection made in the city, and for murder. Pilate, therefore, wishing to
release Jesus, again called out to them. But they shouted, saying,
Crucify Him, crucify Him! Then he said to them the third time,
Why, what evil has He done? I have found no reason
for death in Him. I will therefore chastise Him
and let Him go. But they were insistent,
demanding with loud voices that He be crucified. And the voices of those men
and the chief priests prevailed. How do you think Jesus felt? His own people from whom He’d come turned Him down, rejected Him in favor of a robber and a murderer. Don’t you think that you or I
in that situation would have felt totally rejected? I believe He did. But that wasn’t the end. Going to Matthew 27 verses 45 and following. Now Jesus is now on the cross. Now from the sixth hour
until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus
cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is: My God, My God,
why have You forsaken me? Some of those who stood there
when they heard that, said: This Man is calling for Elijah! Immediately one of them ran
and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine
and put it on a reed, and gave it to Him to drink. The rest said: Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come
to save Him. Jesus, when He had cried
out again with a loud voice, yielded up His spirit. He didn’t die of the
wounds of crucifixion. People crucified could live
sometimes twelve or more hours. What killed Him? Tell me in one word? Rejection. And it was bad enough to be
rejected by His people, But now, He was rejected by His Father. After His agonized cry there came no answer. Because Jesus was identified
with our sin God had to deal with Him
as He would deal with sin. He closed His ears
and averted His eyes and Jesus died
of a broken heart. Not of the wounds of crucifixion. What killed Him in one word? Rejection. That is the most terrible wound the
human heart can ever experience. But the next verse
tells us why it happened. Then, behold, the veil of the temple
was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked,
and the rocks were split, That’s the thick curtain
that separated the Holy place from the Holy of Holies. And only one man
could go through that, the High Priest,
only once every year. But when Jesus died on the cross That thick curtain was split
in two from the top to the bottom. In other words,
it was God’s doing. What did that indicate? That by the death of Jesus
on our behalf the way was open for us
into the presence of a Holy God. Jesus endured our rejection. Now in Ephesians 1 in the King James Version we have a wonderful,
beautiful account of that. just a brief summary. Ephesians 1 verses 3 through 6. Verse 4. Just as He chose us
in Him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption
as sons by Jesus Christ Himself, according to the
good pleasure of His will, to the praise of
the glory of His grace, by which He has made
us accepted in the Beloved. So Jesus endured our rejection that we might
have His acceptance. Can you see all the evil
came upon Jesus that all the good might be
offered to you and me. And it was all resolved
by one sacrifice on the cross. By one sacrifice He has
perfected forever us who are being sanctified. He never needs to do another thing. It’s all done. All we have to do is appropriate
what He has done. So now I want to
give you an opportunity To receive what God has provided through the death
of Jesus on the cross. I want those of you who still
have a problem with guilt to receive total forgiveness, to receive the verdict of the court
of heaven which pronounces you NOT GUILTY Those of you who have battled with shame, and
I know there are many here tonight, I want you to receive your healing, bearing in mind that on the cross,
totally naked, Jesus bore your shame that in place
you might share His glory. And for those of you who have
struggled with rejection, I want you to receive
your healing tonight bearing in mind that
on the cross, Jesus was rejected by His Father,
the ultimate and cruelest of all rejections,
died of a broken heart because He bore our rejection that we might have His, what? Acceptance. You see as a child of God
you’re not just tolerated. You’re welcome. You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to
make an appointment. You can come anytime and the Father will
always welcome you because you come through Jesus. Now I want to help you if I can and it’s not all that easy
but I’ll try my best. If you have any of these
three problems or all of them guilt, shame or rejection and you want tonight to claim the healing which has been
provided for you through the cross, I want to lead you in a prayer, bring you to the cross and then let the cross
do its work in you. If you want me
to lead you in prayer, For either guilt, shame or rejection, And you are ready to do it now. I just want you to stand
to your feet, wherever you are. You receive it by faith.
You don’t have to struggle. You don’t have to improve yourself. You don’t have to make
yourself good enough. You just have to believe
what I’ve been preaching that on the cross Jesus bore your shame, your guilt and your rejection and begin to thank Him. You no longer need
to be ashamed. You no longer need to feel guilty. You no longer need
to struggle with rejection. Jesus has done it all and you can walk out
of this place tonight feeling that a load has been
lifted from your shoulders. You can be FREE! Free! So I want you very simply
to say this prayer after me. I don’t have it rehearsed.
I’ll pray as I feel led. Will you say these words.
Lord God, I thank you that you know my
problem here tonight. You know what
I’m struggling with whether it’s guilt or shame or rejection. I thank you, God, that Your word clearly reveals that on the cross Jesus endured all three. He endured guilt, He endured shame and finally He endured rejection that
I might be delivered. That I might be free from guilt. That I might be free from shame. That I might be free from rejection. That instead of feeling rejected I can know I’m
accepted by God, My Father. I belong to God. I belong to the best family
in the universe. I have nothing to apologize for. I don’t need to be ashamed. I don’t need to be second
class. God has no second class children and I’m one of them. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father. Thank you. Now as you stand there after that prayer, I’m going to
pray for the Holy Spirit to minister to you
all that you’ve prayed for. Heavenly Father, we thank You tonight for Your love and Your mercy
and Your faithfulness. That on the cross
You permitted Jesus to endure those agonies of guilt, of shame and rejection that we might be delivered, that we might be set free, that we might know that
we are no longer guilty, we no longer have any need to be
ashamed, we are no longer rejected. We’re children of God. We belong to the best family
in the universe. Father, let this truth penetrate now into the hearts and the minds of
those who are standing before You. In Jesus name
receive your release. And thank God for it now. Begin to thank Him. That’s the purest
expression of faith it just thanking Him.
You can’t do any more. You can’t earn it,
you can’t deserve it, but you can thank Him for it. Just take plenty of time to thank Him here tonight. Thank you, Lord.
