Gracious Heavenly Father, we rejoice this Lord's Day morning in the opportunity given to us to come to worship Thee in spirit and in truth. We are conscious that this great privilege was bought for us at a tremendous price. We thank Thee for the apostles We thank Thee for the early confessors of the Christian Church, those that followed the apostles in their ministry. We thank Thee for those that endured under the tyranny and persecution of pagan Rome. We thank Thee for those that endured under the persecution of people Rome. We thank Thee for the Reformers. We thank Thee for the martyrs of the Reformation period. We bless thee for those undaunted spirits of the Scottish Covenanters who through fire and flame preserved the testimony of Jesus Christ and loved not their lives even unto the death. We thank thee, our God and Father, for our fathers in this land of Ireland. who made this plantation of this northern province so prosperous and left us a glorious heritage, a heritage of civil and religious liberty. And, O God, we pray that Thou wouldst save us for this day from the forces of potpourri and apostasy. We pray that our province may be kept through to the gospel and through to the glorious heritage of our fathers. We realize that there are sinister forces at work, the great conspiracy in our midst. to sell it over hand and foot to potpourri. Lord, deliver this province from such a catastrophe. We need Thee today. Men are turning to their follies. Men are trusting in pop music and in the follies of man's devices for peace. And we know that peace will only come when Jesus Christ is preached. in the power and demonstration of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Lord, in the midst of the rioting, send us a great revival. In the midst of the disturbance, send us a spiritual deliverance. In the midst of darkness, burst forth with us the light into the hearts of man. We pray for our Roman Catholic fellow countrymen who are deluded by priestcraft, who are bound by idolatry, who are under the jacked boot of Roman tyranny. God, break their fetters and set them free. And we pray for those Protestants who have an aim to live and are dead, who know nothing of the grace of God and the power of the gospel. God, bring them to Christ. and grant that we shall see in our day a great movement of thy Spirit. Remember those Protestants who have been persecuted for righteousness sake. Remember that old lady in Hooker Streaker's home was burned out last night. We pray that you would put your arms of love around her and comfort her with the comfort of heaven. And, O God, we pray that thou would keep this province from the subtle plans of the Church of Rome. We pray, our God, that Thou wouldst in Thy own way work a great deliverance. Thou didst help us in days of crisis in the past, and Thou art still the same. God of our fathers, be the God of their succeeding race. Grant us Thy power and Thy blessing for Jesus' sake. Amen. And the people of God said, Amen. You know, the gospel is a personal thing. Paul spoke about my gospel. Was the gospel the gospel of Paul? No, it was essentially and in reality the gospel of Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ had become a living, personal Savior to the Apostle. And the gospel of Jesus Christ had so possessed had so dominated, had so controlled Paul's personality that he could rightfully speak of it as my gospel. Happy the man who can say with confidence, Jesus Christ is my Savior. Brice, happy the person who can say the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is my good news. For it has entered into my heart, it has regenerated my soul, it has brought pardon and peace and joy to my being. I am His and He is mine forever and forever." What a thrill to know that the gospel is my gospel. Now, in this 14th verse of 2 Corinthians, Paul says, Now thanks be unto God. which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. I have taken as the title of this message, Conquering But Not Conqueror. I want you to get the theme. The theme is this. the believer conquer, but he is never the conqueror, for the real conqueror is Jesus Christ himself. It is summed up in what Paul said. It is by the grace of God I am what I am. The great theme of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the theme of grace. Paul's great message was the message of grace, the undeserved, unmerited, free fever of God, wonderfully and freely bestowed on him by the power of the Spirit of God. Now, if you look at this verse carefully, you will find that there are five distinct views of grace in this verse. Could I say this, it's the grace of God that saved me? It's the grace of God that called me to be a minister of Christ. It's the grace of God that has helped me, through good report and ill report, through imprisonments and misrepresentations, to continue to this day. It's the grace of God that's going to bring us into our new church. It's going to bless us as we continue our ministry. It's the grace of God that's going to keep us to the day of the Lord's coming, or if before that we pass through the article of death. It's the grace of God that's going to take us to heaven. It's the grace of God we're going to sing about throughout all the unending ages of eternity to come. It's great. And we have five views of grace. When grace opens your mouth, you give thanks. And that's the first view of grace we have in this verse. Look at it. unto God. There you have grace and adoration. The first form of grace is gratitude. The robe that grace is worn in is the robe of thanksgiving. The posture of grace is the posture of prayer and the posture of worship. Grace and adoration. We enter God. That's the first view of grace. I want to come back to that in a moment or two. And then the second view of grace, we have grace in demonstration. Praise God, when the grace of God starts working in your life, there is a demonstration. Praise God, there is a demonstration of God's wonderful power which always causes us to triumph. It doesn't say that we triumph sometimes. It doesn't say on those special occasions there is grace to make us triumphant. But the grace of God makes us always triumphant. Hallelujah. I don't care what the circumstance may be. Praise God, there is wonderful grace to keep us and preserve us and to bless us. and to make us a blessing. So we have, secondly, grace and demonstration. I'll come back to that as well. Today there is grace in adoration and demonstration. Then, of course, we have grace in origination. Where does it all come from? Look at that little word tucked in there, in Christ. Here is the unending source of our unending supply. Listen, friend, go to Christ today. You can fill your bucket at the well of salvation this morning. The table of the Lord is full. There is no stinginess with our God when He supplies us. O ye who are hungry and thirsty, rejoice, for ye shall be filled. Don't you hear His sweet voice inviting you now to the banquet of God? Step out on the promise. Get under the blood. Thank God for the origination of grace. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Note the order, friend. If truth had come first, the burning power of truth would have burnt us to a cinder. But, praise God, grace came first. Pardoning grace. Grace that saves. Grace that clothes. Grace that preserves. And then the truth came. prepared by the grace of God, we can receive the truth. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Then there is something else. There is grace in manifestation. And make manifest the saber of His knowledge. When the grace of God is in demonstration and in adoration, it leads to a mighty Manifestation! And what does the man that's saved by grace manifest? He manifests the savor of the knowledge of His wonderful law. And what a thrill it is when a sinner changed and transformed goes home to manifest the grace of God. I was preaching away up at Carn Borg in Fraserburgh. I was telling you about that meeting. We had 13 souls came to Christ, but there was a 14th. And I was down in Ballymena. I called with my brother-in-law last night, and he said, I want to tell you something. He said there was a man came home from Scotland from his holiday, and he was telling people about a great meeting that I had conducted there. And he said, you know, a lot of people got saved. And then he stood among his companions and he said, I want to tell you something, Mr. Paisley and other people didn't know, but I got saved too. And he said, I've come home to witness for Jesus. That's the grace of God and manifestation. My, there's men sitting here and I knew you years ago and you weren't manifesting the grace of God. Some of you were drunkards. Some of you in the Lord's day would have been with a card school and in the old alcoholic club, but praise God, God has saved you, and the old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new. And you're in God's house this morning, and in your home there's the savor of His knowledge. That's the manifestation of grace. Of course, this is not a message for one sermon. This is for a series of sermons. There's so much meat and good in this blessed text of His Word. In fact, you could preach the whole twenty-three years on this verse. It's a tremendous verse. Look at the last part of it. There's grace and humiliation by us in every place. And the robe that grace loves to wear is the robe of humiliation. Grace never looked so wonderful when it was wrapped in the mortality of our Incarnate Christ, the grace of God, by us in every place. Grace and humiliation. You know what he says over here in verse 7 of chapter 4? Have a look at it. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Oh, there's nothing spectacular about the vessel. It's only a piece of clay molded in the powder of the wheel of God's eternal providence and grace. Then praise God, the glories in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Humiliation. Let's come back to it. Grace in adoration. Now, thanks be unto God. The best thing we could all do would be burst out this morning in thanksgiving. My, we thank God that God dug us out of that great pit of sin one day. We were among the mass of unbelievers. And we were running as fast to hell as our feet could carry us. And our eyes were blind. And our hearts were depraved. And our souls were stained with sin. And then, praise God, the light of the glory of God was shed into our hearts. That was a great day when the light came in. And we saw our falling. And we saw the road that we were traveling. And we beheld the awful place to which we were most certainly headed, the awful damnation of everlasting fire and hell forevermore. Praise God! There was a right about turn. The grace of God turned us. Why did we turn? Our companions went on in their sin. Their friends went on, heedless and careless as ever of their souls' eternal welfare. But we, something happened to us. It was the mighty grace of God they'd hold upon. And we discovered that we had something to thank God for. He preserved me when my feet made haste to hell. And there I would have gone, but Thou has done all things well. Thy love was great. Thy blood was free that from the pit delivered me. My, we can thank God that He kept us even in our sins and preserved us to the day of our salvation. And from that day he has kept us. I can look over those past twenty-three years. I'm glad God didn't tell me what was going to happen in those years, or I would have shrunk away and would have turned my back and ran for a ship like old Jonah in his backslidden condition and paid the fare and gone down into backsliding. God didn't show me I was going to spend some time in the Crumlin Road prison. God didn't show me that. He didn't show me I was going to be maligned and misrepresented and face the full barrage of a press that hates the truth and refuses to accept the truth when it's openly manifested before its unbelieving eyes. But my friend, I want to say today I can thank God that today I am the happiest preacher in the face of God's earth because God's presence is bubbling over in this heart of mine. My, we have something to praise the Lord for. 23 years ago when the call was signed for me, there were 66 people. After six months, we have 30. We lost the Sunday school superintendent, and we lost the leader of the choir. And we lost the treasure. Good thing to lose the treasure and find the money, isn't it? That's a good thing to do. And we lost it all. And we were down. I remember being right down before God. And our offerings then were 350-odd pounds a year. And when you lose 30 of your congregation, you don't have 350. If you get 150, you're doing well. And yet last year when we closed our books, we had over 34,000 pounds. Only God could do that. We never had a daffodil tea or a pea soup supper or a jumbo seal or anything like that either, or a domino dinner. Praise God for that. God has met our needs. And the little church has grown, yes. And the Lord has given us a presbytery of churches, 32 of them now, that God has given to us. And the end is not yet. And God's going to continue to bless us. His blessings are new every morning. And God has blessed us. He's blessed us with a family. We praise God for a faithful helpmate who stood beside us in the battle. We praise God for the little ones that God has sent to us. We praise God for the blessings of faithful men sitting behind me who have stood with me in the battle. And no Kirk Session had a harder pastor to look after than this one. But God has helped us. And we are here today. And, of course, before us in this province there are dreadful days, and we know it. But, my friend, if God gives us another twenty-three years, and please God He shall and will, we will be able to come back and say, Thou shalt be unto God. The glory of the Lord is this one. Let's give the Lord the glory. I'll give Him all the glory for His goodness to us. I'll tell you something more this morning. Up yonder in the glory land, wearing robes of immaculate whiteness, with harps in their hands, there's a great multitude, and they're there because God blessed the preaching of these lips to the salvation of their soul. And we can say, as Samuel Rutherford said, isolated and exiled in Aberdeen, and if one soul from Anwerth meet me at God's right hand, my heaven will be two heavens in Emmanuel's land. But, pray God, there is a great multitude, some of them we have even forgotten today, And they're in the glory land, saved by the mighty grace of God. My, we have something to give God thanks for, haven't we? Grace in adoration. Look at this second one, grace in demonstration. We'll only have time to deal with this one, and then we'll have to quit grace and demonstration. Which always causes us to triumph. Did you ever have a look at Paul's life? Paul, this is a tremendous secret. When you were stoned yonder in Asia Minor, when the Christians stood around and the stones were bouncing off your flesh and you were battered, bruised and broken, and in fact, the people thought you were a dead man, Paul, were you triumphant? Paul says yes. I was triumphing, sharing the sufferings of Jesus Christ and preparing for the glory that was to follow. Paul, when you were sitting side by side with Silas in the prison cell at Philippi, your feet fast in the storks, your back running red rivers of blood, sore and broken, were you triumphing then? Yes, says Paul, I was triumphant. I wasn't only triumphing, but I was singing a duet with Silas. And when pastors are in harmony, there's always blessing. And, my, there was blessing in an earthquake. It's no wonder if you've got two preachers like me singing, you would have an earthquake, all right. And they had an earthquake. And they had the old jailer saved, hadn't they? My God caused them to triumph. And at the end of his ministry, I have read, I have pondered, I have sat with a book before me and I have read these words and they have staggered me. Paul sat down and he took his quilt and he said, All Asia is turned against me. Who was it that evangelized Asia? Who was it that planted the churches there? Who was their spiritual father? Paul and the very churches he founded closed their doors on him. And the very people who were begotten together unto a lively hope of resurrection through his blessed ministry, they too rejected him. This extremist, this man who had always tumults and riots as a result of his ministry, and in the wake of his ministry there was discord and controversy and clamor and conflict. And they turned against him and he writes, he says, have turned against me. At my first answer, no man stood with me. Paul, are you triumphing now? Yes, says Paul. Nevertheless, the Lord stood with me. And when he was rejected and forsaken and in bitter isolation, he could say, thanks be unto God who always causes me to triumph. And one day the old tailor opened the cell for the last time and brought him out, Paul, with the brandings of a ministry faithful to Christ upon his body, with the marks of suffering from head to foot upon him, a broken man whose bodily presence was contemptible because of the sufferings that he had endured. And you know, my friends, Paul was told that day, it's going to be the day of your execution. And he went out and he laid his head upon the block. Paul, are you triumphing now? And Paul says as he lays it down, he says, I have fought a good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the field. You ask me, am I going to try and praise God? I'm going to wear a crown today. When this head rolls in its blood upon the dust, my redeemed and liberated spirit will soar to the throne of God. And I'll see my Savior face to face and clasp His Neil Pierce feet. And I'll join in the song of eternal triumph on the crystal sea of glass before the throne of the everlasting Jehovah. He always causes us to triumph. I wonder what your heartbreak is, mother. I wonder what your headache is, dear brother, today. Let me tell you grace and demonstration. Maybe there's someone in our service this morning broken by sin. And you have never received Christ as your Savior. You know Him not. He is a stranger to you. You have never bowed at His feet and received His pardon and heard His voice saying, Daughter, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. Praise God, you can meet Him now. He is here. There is in Christ, Christ of infinite grace, Christ of infinite compassion and everlasting love. He wants to pardon you and heal you and forgive you and cleanse you and make you eternally His and bind you to Him forever in the bonds of love that is immutable, as immutable as the character of the God from whose bosom it emanates. May God grant that you'll experience that love in your heart. And let us all give the Lord thanks for what He has done. And let me say something. The best has yet to be, and the end is not yet. Praise the Lord. Let's have the doxology. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures sing. We all praise Him, our Father ye heavenly hosts. God and Holy Ghost