The strongest natural desire of the human heart is to live. And the great decisive question for each living soul is: How shall I live? Let us read together the first three verses of the 12th chapter of John and see how the three people here spoken of made a living:
“Then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom He raised from the dead.” That’s how Lazarus got his living: straight from Jesus.
“Then they made Him a supper; and Martha served; but Lazarus was one of them that sat …
In 2 Kings, the first chapter, we find the story of a king in trouble and God’s dealing with him because he turned to an idol, “The God of Flies,” in his distress. First of all, let us look at this great truth: namely, in an hour of trouble there is a splendid chance to see the working of the right arm of God. If we throw away these chances by turning to help outside of God we lose the key to a door that would have opened into God’s treasure house.
My subject tonight is “Bright Lights”—not Christian bright lights, but what the world calls “bright lights”—the “big bugs.” I want you to see how they go out—so suddenly, so surely. The switch goes off very easily, the connection is broken, and they vanish into darkness. They shine like diamonds; then they envy the sun, and out they go. Notice this verse in Numbers 16:2: “And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown.”
The first fourteen verses of the sixth chapter of John tell us of a great supper—not the final supper, the marriage supper of the Lamb, the supper where we shall all sit down together in glory; but the supper that Jesus made right here on this Earth.
It was a wonderful supper. Five thousand guests! How would you like to cook for such a crowd as that? How would you like to wash that many napkins, or serve that many plates? And how would you like to get it all up in fifteen minutes? That is quite a supper, isn’t …
My subject this morning is “Losing,” and my text is a part of the third verse of the second chapter of the second letter to the Thessalonians:
“For that day shall not come except there come a falling away first.”
There are also four or five verses in the eighth chapter of Jeremiah that I want to use as a backbone of the things I wish to say to you. I want to show how we “lose out”; how we “fall away.”
I want to talk very tenderly—as tenderly as I know how, by the power of the Holy Spirit, …
“The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
These words you notice in reading the 46th Psalm, make up both the seventh and the eleventh verses and we could well call them the chorus of the psalm. I want to talk to you this morning about this beautiful chorus.
In this time in which we live, strange things are happening—things that men cannot understand and men cannot fathom; not very strange as far as war is concerned, for war is old, but there are stranger things happening in society, there are fine old standards …
These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. —1 John 5:13
There are two classes who ought not to have assurance. First: Those who are in the church but who are not converted, having never been born of the Spirit. Second: Those not willing to do God’s will; who are not ready to take the place that God has mapped out for them, but want to fill some other …
“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whosoever confesseth and forsaketh them shall obtain mercy” Proverbs 28:13. I like the “shalls” of the Bible, for they mean just what they say. Oh! That we might learn to take God at His word and know that when He says “shall” He means just that thing; nothing more and nothing less. A man says, “I shall do so and so,” but a hundred things may happen to prevent him carrying out his word, but not so with God, who says, “All power in heaven and in earth is given unto …
“And sounded and found it twenty fathoms; and when they had gone a little further, sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms.
“Then fearing lest we should have fallen on the rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern and wished for the day.”—Acts 27:28–29
Paul had expressed a desire to go to Rome; he is now on his way. He had hoped for a prosperous journey—it’s a perilousjourney. The twenty-seventh chapter of Acts records the perils of it. The text chosen brings us to the crisis. They were drifting, and the sensible thing to …
“Perhaps in the morning His face we shall see— The Redeemer and Savior of men; And oh, what a glorious day that will be— He is coming, is coming again!”
Dear friends, that is the song to sing above the Christian graves today. That is the hope, praise God! Perhaps all our tears of today will be wiped away by tomorrow morning; we may never have to shed another. Glory to God for that blessed hope. He will come into mid-air and catch away His own, His waiting Bride, the regenerated ones, the ones born again from above. Praise God, …
