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Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10.
Can you not do more for God? As we were going last week through
Ephesians 2, Ephesians 2 verse 10 really jumped out at me. For
we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
We are His workmanship. created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Now, we know we're not saved by works. We believe in sola
gratia, salvation is by the grace of God alone. However, as Professor
Martin Luther said, while we're not saved by works, the saved
will do good works, not in order to be saved, but because we are
saved, not for salvation, but out of gratitude to God. And
so when you look at that, Ephesians 2 verse 10, we are His workmanship
created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand
that we should walk in Him. Now turn over to Ephesians 3. In Ephesians 3, we have a prayer,
a wonderful prayer. Ephesians 3 verse 14 to 21. Special emphasis on verse 20,
but let's read from verse 14. Ephesians 3 verse 14. For this reason I bow my knees
to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family
in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according
to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through
his Spirit in the inner man. that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith, and you, being rooted and grounded in
love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the
width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ
which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do
exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think according
to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church
by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Now we
know verse 20 because it's a wonderful chorus. We've all sung that.
Now unto him who is able to do, in fact it's a lovely benediction
and a wonderful prayer. But see the emphasis here. It's exceeding, abundantly, above
all we could ask or even think. God is able to do far, far more
in us and with us and through us than we could ever imagine.
And so we need to think bigger and better. In fact, A. W. Tozer said that the most important
thing about us is what comes into our mind when we think the
word God. He said, God forgive us for thinking
so little of God and for having views of God that are sub-biblical. We need to free our minds from
the constraints of this world to think of God the infinite,
the eternal, the immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present,
holy, righteous, creator, redeemer, eternal judge, saviour. There is so much more we need
to understand about God. And as was so well described
by William Carey in the great sermon that launched the modern
missionary movement, expect great things from God. Attempt great
things for God. Now that sermon, summarized in
those words, launched the modern missionary movement. The 19th
century was the greatest century of missions because they had
a great God and realized they needed to honor God with great
faith and great acts of obedience and taking great risks. It is to our shame when we think
too little of God, and we expect too little of God, and we attempt
too little of God. We should all be aiming to do
more, and to think more, and to worship more. But before we
get into that, let's just look at a few other passages in the
Bible that speak about honoring God with our works, with good
works. Now remember, good works are
not done in order to be saved, but good works are done because
we are saved out of gratitude. to seek first the kingdom of
God. In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord Jesus said in Matthew
5, 16, let your light so shine before men that they may see
your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. So if people
would glorify God more, we need to live more Christ-centered,
God-honoring lives. expecting great things from God,
attempting great things for God. Let your light so shine before
men that they may see your good works and praise your Father
in heaven. That's a verse that we tend to have given at the
introduction to every one of our Sultanate radio programs
for 27 years. Colossians 1 verse 10, that you
may work worthy of the Lord. fully pleasing Him, being thankful
in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. See
how increasing in knowledge of God goes along with being fruitful
in every good work. The more we get to know about
God, the more we should want to know God personally, the more
we should want to follow Him, to follow in His footsteps, to
glorify Him, to honour Him. Missions exist because God deserves
all praise, honour and glory. and he is not being worshipped
by everyone on the planet. Far from it. And so missions
exist in order to reach everybody, to give all praise and honour
and glory to God with all of our heart, with all of our mind,
with all of our soul, with all of our strength. So the great
hymn in Revelation 5, all glory, honour, praise, majesty. And so Colossians says we need
to walk worthy of the Lord. Now honestly, And truly, there's
very few Christians who can say that they're walking worthy of
the Lord. Can anyone really say we are
truly walking with the Lord? I mean, many aren't even walking
close to 1% worthy of the glory of the Lord. 1 Timothy 6 verse 18, let them
do good that they may be rich in good works, ready to give,
willing to share. That's 1 Timothy 6.18. We are
expected as children of God, as servants of God, to be rich
in good works, to give and to be willing to share. We are saved
to serve. We are blessed and ought to be
a blessing. We're not to be buckets, we're to be hosepipes, we're
not to be reservoirs like the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is dead
because All the rivers flow into it, and none flow out of it.
The Red Sea, the Dead Sea, receives, but it doesn't give out. No water
flows out of the Dead Sea. Why? That's the lowest point
on Earth. And everything flows into it,
and the Dead Sea is so dead, no fish can live there. You can't
use it for irrigation. You'll kill the crops if you
use the Dead Sea for irrigation. Dead Sea is dead. And there's
a lot of Christians who are like that. They're so low. They take
the blessings but they don't pass any on. We are not to be
buckets, we are to be hose pipes, we are to be channels, we are
to be irrigation methods in order to pass on the blessings to others.
In Titus 2 verse 7 we read, in all things showing yourself to
be a pattern of good works. In doctrine showing integrity,
reverence, incorruptibility. This is a refrain throughout
the Bible, to be rich in good works, to be a patent of good
works. And in our doctrine to show integrity,
reverence, and incorruptibility, our doctrine should determine
our deeds. Our creed should determine our
conduct. Our belief should affect our
behavior. And the problem is that we've got a lot of schizophrenics
out there. A lot of Christians who might be Christians in their
hearts, but they're pagans in their minds. Or they might be
Christians in their heads, but their heart is far from them.
Or they might be Christians in their hearts, but not in their
hands. It's not what they do. We're meant to be body, mind,
and spirit. Love God with all of our heart,
soul, mind, and strength. If we go to Titus chapter 2 verse
14, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every
lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people zealous
for good works. God expects us to be zealous,
to be enthusiastic for good works. Titus 3 verse 8. This is a faithful
saying and these things I want you to affirm constantly. That those who have believed
in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are
good and profitable to men. Are we profitable? Are we fruitful?
Are we zealous? Are we continually being a pattern
of good works and being careful to maintain good works? I remember
as a new Christian having this sense of worthlessness. I'm saved, but what good am I?
I can't do anything. I mean, there's all these people
around here so gifted, and all these people with so many abilities
and so on, and here I am, I know nothing about anything, and I'm
a brand-new convert, and I don't even know about Daniel of the
Lion's Den. I mean, I'm just learning everything for the first
time, brand-new Christian, age 17, and, well, I got the chance
to put up the hymn numbers, and to help with the printing, and
with the old Gestetner, what was it? Yes, the rodeo machines,
we used to literally hand grind it out and smell the meths and
you'd sort of get high doing the printing. running the tracks
down and handing out leaflets and putting up posters, and I
just kept feeling, but it's not enough, I'm not doing enough,
I need to do more. What the Lord has done to me
is just such a need to get involved, EE, door to door. Not enough, get out there in
the train stations, distributing literature, ordering boxes of
literature, and just the need to express the love of God and
the joy of discovering or having revealed to me. This is the thing. At first I thought I chose God,
and later I found he chose me. At first I thought that I'd found
God, but he wasn't lost. He was the one who found me.
And this is it, to just be able to communicate what I'd learnt,
which at that time wasn't much, but it was a start. But I'm deeply concerned to see
a lot of people today are very happy to just sit and receive,
you know, like the Dead Sea. Just give me, give me, give me.
Hand open. Someone must bless me, feed me, teach me, give me. But they don't want to get involved
in helping. Maybe we can't do much, but we
can all do something. We can all do more. And the average
Pastor and church leader is struggling and needs a lot more people to
volunteer the services and make themselves available. And we
need a redistribution of work and responsibilities because
the harvest really is large and the workers are unbelievably
few. So we've got to be careful to
maintain good works, good works that are profitable to men. Hebrews
10 verse 24 says, let us consider one another in order to stir
up love and good works. When we're told in Hebrews 10
not to forsake the assembling together of one another. but
to be careful to consider one another, how we can stir up and
provoke good works and good deeds. Well, that's important. That's
one reason why we should be regularly gathering together in congregations
and Bible study fellowships and home cells and accountability
groups, that we can stir one another, that we can provoke
one another to good deeds, that we can inspire and encourage
one another. People need a lot of encouragement
now more than ever. Never has the church been shut
down, silenced, blinded and silenced as much as it has under this
COVID cult over the last 19 months. It's just bizarre. And to get
people out of lockdown lethargy and get them back out into the
streets and back out door to door and get them back into the
community, evangelising, witnessing, doing something. James 2 verse
17, we should all know it. That's also faith. If it does
not have works, it is dead. What do you do in first aid?
Come across someone lying on the street. First thing you do
is you feel for a pulse. If there's no pulse, check, is
the person breathing? If they're not breathing, if
there's no pulse, the person's probably dead. I mean, these
are just some of the indications. The heart's not beating, there's
no pulse, and there's no breathing. Now, if there's not evidence
of life, you've got to assume that there's death. And so this
is how we look at the fruit. Is there the fruit of the flesh?
Is there the fruit of the spirit? Is this indication of spiritual
life or not? Now, when you go to a doctor
and the doctor starts to ask you questions. What's your appetite
like? Things like this and exercise.
If a person says, you know, I haven't eaten anything in two weeks,
don't feel hungry. You know, the person's getting
sick, or the person's got endless headaches. He looks for symptoms
and tries to work out, OK, if I take all these things together,
what are the possibilities of what causes? Now, when you get
a Christian who, no, haven't been to church in a year, I haven't
read my Bible in months, haven't prayed in many months, and so
on and so forth, what are you to assume? This is the evidence
of spiritual death. This person isn't just sick.
There's real problems, because how can you be alive if you're
not breathing? And when Charles Spurgeon was
asked, what's more important, to pray or to praise? And he
said, what is more important, to breathe in or to breathe out?
You need to do both. It's not a question of either
or, it's both that. You need to trust and obey. There's prayer
and praise. I mean, you've got two legs,
bird has two wings, you've only got one, you know, you've got
a circle for your bird. It's not very helpful if you've
only got one string or one foot or one wing. We need to have
both, we need balance, trust and obey, prayer and praise.
Breathe in, breathe out. James 2, verse 18. But someone
will say, you have faith, an eye of works. Show me your faith
without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
And this is a key message in the book of James. Faith and
works go together. Works do not create faith, but
faith produces works. Faith produces the fruit of good
works, just like what's the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control. And through the flesh, well we
know that, that's all around us all the time. So faith and works
are not meant to be enemies, they're meant to be friends.
Charles Spurgeon was once asked, how do you reconcile being an
evangelist with being a Calvinist? He says, I don't need to reconcile
friends. It goes together. You believe
in the sovereignty of God, you believe in evangelism. How on
earth can you separate the two? Unless you believe that God can
save and that God is powerful to save, why would you even be
an evangelist if it's all up to me to persuade people and
I've got to save people? That kind of God doesn't save.
Our God saves. He answers prayer. He's all-powerful.
This is the God of the Bible. And so, as I said, I see no contradiction
between my Calvinism and my evangelism. You can't have one without the
other. 1 Peter 2 and verse 18, having your conduct honorable
amongst the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers,
they may buy your good works, which they observe. Glorify God
in the day of visitation. In other words, you will be criticized.
You know you'll be criticized. Jesus suffered for us and he
was hated. If he was hated, then we mustn't
expect to be loved by the world. And so if he has spoken against,
we must expect to be spoken against. But let them acknowledge that
you shouldn't be persecuted for self-righteousness sake, you
shouldn't be persecuted for wickedness sake, you should be persecuted
for righteousness sake. They should, even while they attack
you, they should have to acknowledge the good deeds, the good works,
the fruit of real faith. We read of Dorcas in Acts 9 verse
36, a woman who is full of good works and charitable deeds. Read
in 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 3, remembering without ceasing your
work of faith, your labor of love, your patience of hope in
our Lord Jesus in the sight of God our Father. So this is one
of the observations, the evidence of good faith is good works. Revelation 2 verse 2, the first
letter, to the churches in Revelation is a commendation. I know your
works, your labor, your patience. You cannot bear those who are
evil. You've tested those who say they're apostles and are
not, but you found them to be liars. And so the Lord expects
us to be discerning. He expects us to be profitable
in work, to be patient in our labors. All of these are good
signs. These are all things that we
should be involved in. James 4, verse 17 says, anyone
remember that part, James 4, 17? To know the good that you
ought to do and not to do it is sin. To know the good that
you ought to do and to fail to do it is sin. So we need to be
those who are zealous for good works, those who maintain a pattern
of good works. And I remember being up in Northern
Ireland back in 2009, the guest of Dr Ian Paisley, and it was
the 150th anniversary of the Ulster Revival, the great Ulster
Revival, 1859. And he took us to the actual schoolhouse where
this revival began. And it started with these words.
Can you not do something more for God? A school teacher called
a young teenage boy to himself and he said to him, can you not
do something more for God? Can you not gather a few of your
careless friends together and start a Bible study and prayer
fellowship? And this young man, who was zealous for the Lord,
got four other friends together and they went to the schoolhouse
on a Friday evening, every Friday evening, and they would each
have to carry some coal to put in the fireplace, because it's
very cold in Northern Ireland in winter, and they'd heat up
the room with a fire, and then they would heat up their souls
with the Word of God and pray. And this little group of five,
they gathered and they read through the Bible, they prayed, and so
this was just a teenage boy leading his friends in a Bible study.
And this Bible study grew. It grew, and it grew, and it
grew, until it was 50, meeting every Friday night for Bible
study and prayer. And revival started. There was
conviction of sin. There was a real move of God.
And the day came at the school classroom where this teacher
had spoken to this pupil, that he saw one of the students was
under plain conviction of sin. So he asked this young boy, Can't
you take him out and pray with him, see if you can bring him
some guidance and consolation, because he obviously was under
conviction. And as he was outside in the
playground area, praying with this young boy, suddenly conviction
of sin came on the students inside the classroom. And they fell
on their knees and started to weep and confess their sins and
pray, including the teacher. The girls, who were in the upstairs
section of the school, looked out the window, saw, they heard
the sounds, they looked out, and they just saw this one boy
and the other on their knees in the playground praying. And
conviction of sin came on them. They fell to their knees in the
upstairs classroom, started each one praying to the Lord. Some
adults were walking by outside, and they heard this strange sound,
and they were going towards school to see what's going on. Hearing
these high sounds, and people crying out to God. And conviction
of sin came on them, and falling on their knees in their dusty,
dirty road. Ladies, gentlemen, serving people,
people carrying deliveries, fell on their knees in the street,
and started to weep, and to pray, and to confess their sins. And
it was 11 o'clock at night before the school could lock up and
the last person had gone home. The next day the people gathered
in the town square and again Ian Paisley took me to this very
site where it is. We've got the books on the Ulster
Revival of 1859 in the bookshop and the library. And went to
this area where the ministers of the town, four different ministers,
came to the village square and there was everyone gathered there.
of the town. It looked like everyone was there.
And there were so many, they knew they couldn't speak to them
all. So the four ministers divided the people into four groups so
that they could address them. And the people were all on their
knees, praying and seeking to get right with God. It got so
extensive that Charles Spurgeon came to speak. And they showed
me the church. In this Presbyterian church where
the people came, you can see that the stone pillars have been
moved to the side. You can literally see, this is,
you know, it's slightly off because the people wedged in there, harbour
workers, dock workers, sailors and others, they crammed into
church so much that the stone pillars were shifted. And to
this day, you can see it. And the people poured in so much.
There were so many people in this one church that they were
afraid the upper gallery would give way, because they'd built
these upper wooden galleries. You see some of them downtown,
quite popular in the old churches. They said they were afraid the
upper galleries would break. All the people gathered outside,
and it was drizzling. which is quite common in the Emerald Isle.
That's why it's always green out there in Ireland. A lot of
rain most of the time. They went outside and in the
parking area where the people had their horses and horse carts
and so on, the people knelt in prayer and they prayed in the
rain. the entire congregation. And the conviction of sin was
so great upon them. When Charles Spurgeon came, they
found the church wasn't big enough, the hall wasn't big enough, the
music halls weren't big enough, the town hall wasn't big enough,
they had to go into the gardens. And they had big rallies and
crusades. This spread over people who'd
been to Northern Ireland, were so impressed by this, they went
to New York and began a prayer meeting in New York. And it was
a premium that just kept growing. And there were many premiums
and multiplied premiums. And it spread to Cape Town. It started
in Worcester, 1860 revival under Andrew Murray. There was such
revival, it spread to Sweden. It spread all over the world.
There was a phenomenal amount of missionaries were recruited
at that time. And from 1860s, the amounts of
missionaries going out just quadrupled. They didn't have enough ministers
in the Western Cape when the 1860 revival hit. There was,
I think, four theological students in the whole of Stonebush University.
The next year there were 50 new theological students. That kind
of growth. One poor pastor in Calvinia had
for years held a prayer meeting where not one single member of
his church had ever attended the prayer meeting. Not one.
He had had these prayer meetings. He was the only one there. Not
a deacon, not a member. And suddenly the church couldn't
contain the prayer meeting. Same thing happened in Paal,
Stonebosch, Wellington. You can go all over the Western
Cape and you can see Dutch-formed churches where it used to be
a rectangle, and then they had to build out the sidewalks, and
then had to build the upper galleries to accommodate the explosion
in church attendance in all of these towns. And it spread all
the way up to Crofinet. Absolutely amazing. But how did
it start? Bible study and prayer. And a
simple challenge. Can you Not someone else. Can you not do something more
for God? That simple challenge, acted
on by one young teenager, which led to a prayer meeting and a
Bible study, which spread, and one of the most extraordinary
outpourings of conviction of sin They calculated the numbers
added to churches at the end of 1859 in 300 and something
thousand just in Northern Ireland. That kind of church growth is
phenomenal when you think of the amount of people they had
there. And this isn't numbers who made a stand at a meeting,
this is numbers added to church membership on the ground. And
the very physical In fact, you can go along and look at the
architecture of the churches around Cape Town. You can see
in Stonebush, in Franschhoek, all over where they put, when
did they build the side wings? 1860 or 1861 or 1862. And when
did they build the upper galleries? 1860, 1861, 1862. That's just,
it's there on a plot, that's part of the history. The stone's
crying out. When we look at the challenge
in Ephesians 2 verse 10 which we looked at last week. How we
are being called in Ephesians 2 verse 10 We are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before and
that we should walk in. God has good works for each one
of us. Some things that only we can do, unique. I mean, there's
some people each of us are in contact with that no one else
is in contact with, where we have relationships that no one
else has that relationship. There are some people's skills
and giftings more obvious than others. But remember, the last
will be first, the first will be last. Sometimes what we look
down and think is not so significant can be most significant. Our
Lord said that little widow who put in those two little coins,
the smallest coins you could put in, put in more than all
the rest, because they gave out of their abundance, but she gave
all that she had. And often it's the small things
that make the big difference in the long end. In fact, a chain's
as strong as the weakest link. And we part of the church, you
think of Andrew, he's not considered one of the most spectacular of
the apostles. And yet Andrew brought Peter
to the Lord. Andrew brought this little boy
with his lunch to Jesus, which the Lord multiplied into a meal
for thousands. Andrew, whenever you read of
him in the Bible, he's bringing someone to Jesus. Now we don't know much
of what Andrew did, but we do know he brought people to Christ.
And that affected the world. And we need to have this understanding
of what God's done for us, and who God is, and how great he
is, so that we will expect great things from God, and attempt
great things for God. That we won't dishonor God by
small faith and small obedience, but we'll honor God with great
faith and great obedience. And Bill Bethlehem used to love
saying, God just loves to be trusted. God loves to be trusted. And so often in missions, I must
say, we look at it and the people are saying, no, can't be done,
shouldn't be done, there's no money, it's too dangerous, this
isn't the right time, you're not the right person. And no
end of discouragement. There's all the people, the gifts
of discouragement's on. But you know, we can see in our history,
looking back over four decades, the naysayers were wrong. And
the step of faith was blessed by God. So looking back, we can
say, when we stepped up in faith, God blessed it. But if we stayed
at home and did nothing, what would we know of God's provision
and protection and grace? One has to, what can we do more? Well, we can all read the Bible
more, that's for sure. One chapter of the Bible a day.
can get through the whole Bible in one year, in four years. It
says 1,187 chapters of the Bible. If you read four chapters of
the Bible a day, it gets through the whole Bible in one year.
That's not a very big undertaking. Four chapters a day, 20, 25 minutes,
just to read it? Surely that's doable. Get through
every book in the Bible in one year? Can we all pray more? We can. Instead of revving our
engines at a traffic light, which doesn't make the traffic light
change quicker, we could do what someone I heard says, every time
it gets to a red light, they pray for someone. That's a good idea. I know people
have got the practice of praying before they start their car and
drive. That's a good practice. Praying
before meals is always a good practice. We've instituted no
mission. having hymn and prayer at the
beginning of our day and having a chapter that we share reading
before lunch. That's just something added.
Can we not do something more? And hopefully it'll stimulate
people reading through saying, you know, I want to know more
about that, and let me check what the Reformation Study Bible
footnotes say about this, and let me open up a commentary,
let's discuss this. But hopefully it'll make some
people go back and study more. Just the fact of reading the
Bible more, having a New Testament in our pocket, having a Bible
in our bag, having a Bible in our car, having a Bible where
we need it, that is always helpful. All I've found over the years,
It's very good not to take your own personal Bible with you when
you go out on the streets. Yes, you might end up wanting
to give it to someone. So take a clean Bible, or New Testament
Gideons or whatever, so that you can, if you meet someone
who needs a Bible and you've prayed to someone, you can give
them the Bible you've got with you. Instead of taking your own well-worn,
precious, no, I can't let you have my Bible. But to be able
to use the Bible that you've been using in the streets, or
in the field, or door to door, and give that to people. We can
all do more Bible reading and Bible study. And we can all pray
more. This mission started in all-night
prayer meetings, praying through the night. in the army when they
kept you busy anyway during the day. It's not like we had a lot
of spare time. But we prayed, we thought, we lose sleep for
the army. We've got to stand guard duty. You've got two hours
on, and you've got four hours off, and you've got two hours
on, and you've got four hours off through the night. So you'd lose sleep. Now if we did that for the army,
let's do it for the Lord. So we'd have our prayer duties.
And we'd pray in uplosses through the night, take an operation
world, and we'd pray by twos. Later, it got bigger groups,
and we could actually really spread out and even have several
prayer meetings going on in the army chapel each night. But it's
a wonderful thing. And by the way, early frontline
camps, We would have guard duty through the night at every one
of our camps, and prayer duty as well. So everyone was on prayer
duty and guard duty through the night. frequently. We had a fire bell
ring and everyone's got to come out to put a fire on. It sort
of basically worked on how to deprive people of sleep on our
campsite courses, which isn't difficult. I did notice that
people were not retaining much of the lectures at that point,
which is why we pulled off a bit of this. But the point is that
we started, we were born in prayer. And yet, and it's interesting,
I can show the pictures. of the signs they had in the
prayer meetings in Ulster and New York and so on at the time.
No one to pray longer than five minutes, please, to allow everyone
to pray, and no more than one prayer at one
prayer meeting for each person, to allow everyone a chance to
participate. Now, honestly, we don't need those signs these
days, because you can get to prayer meetings and most people
don't pray. I was shocked to go, when I first joined Hospital
Christian Fellowship, the first mission I was with, to go to
Bitira, a Dutch-formed church at Bitira. Well, at Bitira, a
prayer. That sounds good. But I found
it wasn't an hour. It was less. And prayer was not
most of that hour either. They called it bit here, but
there was a lot of other hana-hana and notices and this and that.
But the actual prayer was a lot less. What is the matter? Why
is it so hard to get people to pray? Why is it so hard to sustain
people in prayer and to keep people focused in prayer? Why
do we need to twist people's arms to get them to a prayer
meeting? And the amount of people who, when we invite them to a
life train or March for Life or something like this, I've
got to pray about that. And funny, they never seem to
be led to come. And it's just, I must pray about
that. It's often a spiritual way of
saying, no, I'm too lazy. And they don't want to say, no,
I'm too lazy, I'm not interested, I'm too backslidden. They come
up with a higher sounding, I must pray about that. And when they've
done it, I said, great, you can join us for our prayer meeting.
We've got a prayer vigil outside Palm Beach. Do you think they
turn out for that? No, they don't turn out for that either. I suppose
they prayed about that and the Lord must have told them, no,
you're not to pray. Do we need guidance from God to do what
he commands us to do? He commands us to pray. He commands
us to witness. And yet, you've got these creative
excuses that people come out to do nothing, or to do less,
or it's someone else's fault, or I didn't feel led. But now,
it's never been easier to be lazier than now. In the age of
lockdown lunacy, because now we have lockdown lethargy and
lockdown laziness, because people can say, I felt like I might
have had a cold coming on. What on earth is it going to
take to get people out of this paranoia and back into being
normal people, if there is such a thing? We can all witness more. It's not difficult to witness.
Conversations. A person mentions their name.
A person tells you their name is Grace, and you can start to
understand what Grace means. God's riches at Christ's expense.
A person comes up with a name like Timothy, gift of God. If
we know the meanings of the words, then we can start to get into
conversation, or they want to talk about the weather, you can
talk about, you can transition to spiritual matters, like the
Lord took the woman at the well, talking about water, talking
about spiritual water, living waters and into eternal matters. There's many good ways that we
can transition from the physical and the temporal to the spiritual
and the eternal in our conversations. Charles Spurgeon said, if I can
get a person to think about eternity for five minutes, I can lead
him to the Lord. I'm sure he's more eloquent than
all of us, but still, it's a good challenge. If we can get people
to think about eternity. And you think of this man, Frank
Jenner, who for how many years, every day, went onto the streets,
witnessed to tens of thousands of people, calculate over 100,000
people, personal witness, giving them a track in the streets.
Good day, good morning, good afternoon. May I offer you something
to read? Can I ask you, if you were to
die today, do you know if you'd go to heaven? And are you saved? If not, you will go to hell."
Very short sermons, one sentence, but over those years he didn't
know if anyone had come to the Lord through it. And yet later
it was revealed there were vast numbers had, through this ripple
effect of his faithful witness. Now that's faithfulness. There
he was, he's a naval seaman from a debauched heathen background
who was converted. The person used to be a drunkard
and now he's sober. But he did something for God, and did it
consistently. And it's a testaments example.
We can all witness a lot more. And it's easy. Taking tracts
with us, just offering someone. We've got to stop at toll gates.
We've got to stop at petrol stations. We have to go to shops. We have
to deal with different things. If we've got tracts for each
occasion, we can give people gospel literature. We start conversations.
Sometimes they may say, thank you, put away. Might not be open
to conversation right now. Other times you can go a bit
further. You know, what is this? And you get into conversation.
The point is, We can all do more Bible study, we can all do more
praying, we can all do more witnessing, and we can give more. It's extraordinary
how much can be given. Do you know, you take someone
like Mary Slessor, who's got to be one of the poorest missionaries
ever, and she was given by support of her mission 60 pounds a year,
and she decided if she could do without white bread flower
and all this other thing and so on. She could use that money
to help care for her sick mother and sisters at home. And so here's
this missionary in Calabar, Nigeria, sending her most of her 60 pounds
back to help her family who's even poorer in England. Because
she just works out, OK, I'm going to live on the land, and I'm
not going to have any of these luxury things, which we wouldn't
think are luxury at all. You get someone like David Livingston
who determined to give all that he did not need. One of his most
basic subsistence to the cause of missions. And this is while
he was working in the cotton mills. And people who, literally
widow's mites type of things. We can all give more. Everyone
can pray. Most of us can give. And some
of us can even go. And what about remembering the
persecuted and those less fortunate than us? There's always people
who know less than us who we can teach. There's always people
who know more than us that we can learn from. And there's always
people worse off than us that we can share something with.
To speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. It's not
much to make a standard life change once a year. Very few
people do. It's only a commitment of two
or three hours. And yet, Not many will turn up for that, or
March for Life, or Mission No More, or Camps, or Courses, or
Outreachers. I don't know how many have actually
read Jonathan Edwards' resolutions. I think we've got them in the
stands, some chapel library reprints. Jonathan Edwards' resolutions,
what phenomenal resolutions he had. And it's not a bad idea
to make some kind of resolutions for ourselves. Simple ones. I remember the first one I was
challenged to make is Bible before breakfast. Simple resolution. Scripturian slogan. They're those
people who make an excuse, and they're those people who make
a plan. Of course, in Bor Makan Plan, we should be the kind of
people who make a plan. It's easy to make an excuse.
Excuses come so easy. To have an excuse why I couldn't
do something or why it wasn't the right time, whatever, that's
easy. But to do the job, to do it, and to do it thoroughly,
and to do it well, and not to make an excuse. I don't know
how many of you have heard the story about four people. It's
a story about somebody, everybody, anybody and nobody. This is a
story about four people. Everybody, somebody, anybody
and nobody. There was an important job to do. And everyone was asked
to do it. Everybody was sure somebody would
do it. Anybody could have done it. But nobody did it. Somebody
got angry because it was everybody's job. Everybody thought anybody
would do it, but nobody realized that everybody wouldn't do it.
It ended up that everybody blamed somebody, when nobody did what
anybody could have done. That is just so true to human
nature. And this is why socialism can
never work. You cannot have everybody expected to do everything. Someone's
got to take initiative. We're walking towards the kitchen.
There's a dirty plate. There's a dirty mug. This belongs
there. I'm going that direction anyway. Just pick it up on the
way. No problem. Walking down a path and you see a bit of litter
there, takes two steps out of your way, pick it up, take it
to the bin and so on. See something skew, straighten
it. See something's in the wrong
place, put it where it belongs. Somebody's obviously been separated
from their whatever, just take it and put it in a place where
they'll see it. There's so many things on a daily
basis, without even thinking, without any inconvenience, we
could just Do what needs to be done. Straighten. switch off,
switch on, whatever the case may be. But unfortunately, most
people miss the opportunities. I don't know why. Maybe we need
to be more alert. Maybe we need to take more initiative.
Maybe we need to care more. But we need to be looking out
for those good works that God has prepared beforehand for us
to do. Whether it's the person to speak to, the person to counsel,
the person to witness to, the gift that we can give, the time
that we can give, or how to use our time. I must say, I praise
God for the gift of reading. My mother taught me to love reading.
And I always had a book. And in the army, it was so good
because it had these side panels on your trousers, and I'd always
have a book in there. And I can still remember, to
this day, those books and chapters and paragraphs and so on that
I read sitting in the shooting range, four off-losses. So I
had three-quarters of the time to just read. I went through,
run, baby, run, crossing the switchblade, God Smuggler, and
Tortured for Christ. Those four books I went through
on the shooting range. Literally reading most of it
there, while everyone else was just sitting there looking around.
I didn't have to pay attention if I wasn't shooting. So a quarter
of the time I'd be on the shooting line, and the rest of the time
there's, I mean, four lines, three quarters of the time you're
wasting your time. But if you've got a book to read, those cues,
those times of home affairs, those times waiting at hospital,
wherever it is, we can redeem the time by reading. There's
so much we can do. In fact, it was well pointed
out by George Verver. He said, it dates him a bit,
but he said, the tape deck is one of the best inventions ever
made. And he said, you can get, in your commuting time, whether
you're talking about New York, London, whatever, the amount
of time, people spend hours every day in commuting time. If you
will use a tape deck and have sermons or lectures, you can
get the equivalent of a college degree amount of lectures in
eight years of utilizing your commuting time, either in the
car or with a Walkman or whatever, CD player, as the case may be,
traveling by the tube, the underground, the railway, the bus, whatever
it is, or in your car if you happen to have car transport. And how many people, I mean,
I wish I had time to study. But of course, if we utilize
the commuting time, we actually do have, if we're wisely selecting
good lectures and so on, which is what so much of what's put
on sermon audio which is all free. And so much of what's on
the William Carey site, there's a lot of ways we can redeem the
time. It's just so important. We just sang, where duty calls
or danger, you're never wanting to. That's part of the stand
up, stand up for Jesus. It's a wonderful prayer here. Just to conclude with Ephesians
3 verse 20, Now unto him is able to do exceedingly abundantly
above what we ask or think according to the power that works in us.
To him be the glory in the church by Christ Jesus for all generations
forever and ever. Amen.
Can You Not do More for God
Series Devotions
| Sermon ID | 104211342173019 |
| Duration | 45:41 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Language | English |
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