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This is Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman titled "For Those Who Can't Seem to Get Ahead." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and

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all rights are reserved. Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourselves or others is heartily encouraged. It is recorded in two of the Gospels. I shall read first from the Gospel according to Matthew,

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the seventh chapter, and then from the Gospel according to Luke, the sixth chapter. Beginning in the seventh chapter of Matthew, verse 21, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast

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out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.'" And then the passage continues with the story of the wise and foolish builders, but I'm going to pick up that story as it was related to us by Luke in the Gospel, which he wrote.

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It's in the sixth chapter, beginning at the 46th verse. "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation upon rock, and when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house

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and could not shake it because it had been well built. But he who hears and does not do my words is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation, against which the stream broke, and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Let us pray.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Whenever you announce that you are going to speak on something related to one of the great creeds of the Church, you will immediately find those who object. They object that we ought to be concerned with Christ and not with creeds about him, with the faith as it

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is lived more practically and not with formulations about it. I can remember a church in the community where I previously served who put in the newspaper every week in its advertisement, "No creed but Christ." And on one occasion, their pastor gave me a piece of poetry which he said summed up their ideas. It went, "Jesus frozen in a book isn't worth a second look. Jesus locked

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within a creed is not worth a thing indeed. But putting Jesus in the hearts of men is what brings him back to life again." That is not only abysmal poetry, it's rotten theology. For the fact of the matter is, in order to know Jesus, you must know some things about him. And as soon as you know anything about him and say anything about him, you are affirming

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a creed. No one will ever write a creed about us because we, in the total scheme of things, are not important. But men have written creeds about him, for which they have lived and for which they have died, because he is the supremely important person in all of the world's history. It is vitally important that we know him, and what we know of him is asserted in the

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creed. It is the statement of our experience of him. So to announce and proclaim the creed is to announce and proclaim him. And in the creed we say, each one of us, every Sunday, Our Lord. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, Our Lord. Once we make that affirmation, once we say yes to that statement,

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yes, he is our Lord, we can never say no to him again. But perhaps I better begin at the beginning. There are a great number of people who are deeply disturbed with the fact that they don't seem to be getting ahead in the spiritual life. Jesus talked to us about these people. In two of the Gospels, we read his story of two men who set out to build a house.

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Both of the men built. One of the houses stood, one of the houses fell. That is, one of the men in building a life succeeded, the other came to sad conclusion. One of the men got ahead in the spiritual sense and thus in the living of life in toto, the other did not get ahead spiritually and consequently his life was a failure. Jesus speaks to us of

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those who make it and those who do not. And it's very important to notice the differences between these two people, the one who makes it and the one who does not. The first thing we can tell from the story that Jesus tells is this, whether you make it or not is not a matter of your theological orthodoxy. Both of these men cry out, "Lord, Lord." Both

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of them call Jesus by the title which is rightfully his. Neither one of them holds back. You can't say that the one man got ahead because he was a conservative and the other man didn't because he was a liberal. You can't say that one of them got ahead because he was pre-millennial and the other one didn't because he was post-millennial. You can't say the one got ahead because he

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believed in tongues and the other one didn't get ahead because he didn't. That is not the distinguishing characteristic. Theological orthodoxy is much to be desired and we must forge for ourselves the best and most responsible the theology that we can. But we must understand that whether a man makes it or does not make it in the spiritual dimension is not principally

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dependent upon his theology. You can have a perfect theology and not make it. James says to us that the devil believes and trembles. And even the most casual study of the history of the church will assert that there have been people, countless people across the centuries, who have believed all of the right things and never been a part of Jesus Christ. Our

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Puritan forefathers had a saying about false peace. It was used to describe those who believed with the top of their heads but not with the bottom of their hearts. They held to all of the right theological affirmations. You couldn't find a chink in their apologetic armor. They were orthodox but they were not a part of Jesus. These two men, as we look at them,

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both say, "Lord, Lord, there is, on the face of the story, no evidence that they departed from one another theologically." Another thing to notice is this. There is no evidence from the story that one of them had worthy goals and the other one not so worthy goals. Both of the men were trying to build the same thing. Both of them were trying to build a house.

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There's no suggestion in the story that one of them was trying to build a better house than the other one. No suggestion of that kind, whatever. The goals of both of the men are the same. Now you hear people say that one man gets ahead in the spiritual life because he has worthy aspirations and the other man does not get ahead because he does not have

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worthy aspirations. Well, insofar as this story of Jesus is concerned, aspirations do not principally determine whether a person makes it in the spiritual life or not. Look at the passage as it's recorded in Matthew. Jesus lists there some of the aspirations that some of these people who don't make it have, some of the goals which they have achieved

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or seek to achieve. They say, "Lord, we prophesy." Now to prophesy is to bring a direct word of God to men. Some of these people are able to be revelatory agents of God. There are individuals today who claim to be able to prophesy, and I am not the one to say that this cannot be so, but I would point out that these people to whom Jesus refers were prophets

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described so by him, and yet he says to them, "Depart from me, for I never knew you." You may be able to prophesy and not be a spiritual success. They are able to subdue the devil, to cast out demons. Jesus himself says this of him. This man who is denied is able to drive the evil out of other men, and still he himself is not one of the faithful. That

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shouldn't surprise us. After all, when Jesus sent out the disciples on their first training mission, they came back and they said, "Lord, even the devils are subject to us." And I would point out that one of the disciples who went out and came back with that triumphant affirmation was Judas Iscariot. You may be able to drive demons out of others and utterly

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unable to drive the evil out of yourself. And notice this about these people. They were able to do, Jesus says, many wonderful works. They were able, as it were, to do miracles. They could lay their hands on people and they would be healed. They could bring to pass fantastic demonstrations of power. Listen to what Jesus says. "In that day many will

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say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy? Did we not cast out demons? Did we not do many wonderful works?' And I will answer, 'Depart from me, for I never knew you.'" You may be able to lay a hand on a man so that he rises up and walks and not be a part of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not a matter of your goals or of your spiritual skills.

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And it's not a matter of your zeal, your ardor, the passion with which you throw yourself into your Christianity. There's no indication that the man who built the house that fell and the man who built the house that stood were any different in this. There's nothing there that says that one worked very hard and the other one didn't work at all at it.

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There's nothing there that implies that one gave everything he had to it and the other one held back. There's no suggestion of this whatever. They both throw themselves into the task evidently with everything that they have. There's a great deal of passion in them. They don't just say, "Lord," they say, "Lord, Lord." There's ardor here in both of them.

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But this is not the determining factor. And you only have to look at the lives that you see about you to know that's true. We have a tendency sometimes to believe that the man who's inside the church every time the doors are open or the man who's always busy about this activity or that activity in the name of the church or the name of Christ or the

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name of whatever spiritual or religious organization he is serving, it happens to be, that that man is somehow more in Jesus Christ than the individual who perhaps does not throw himself into those things as ardently, as passionately. We say the one is growing, is making it in the spiritual dimension, the other is not. This passage of scripture would not confirm

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such a view. I've known people who were always on the spiritual go, go, go, their whole lives around the spiritual activism and then, and then, illness laid them on the shelf and they were separated and isolated for a time. And in their isolation and separation, they fell apart. Why? Because their spiritual life had been nothing but a ceaseless round of activity

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and there was down inside of them none of that bedrock out of which real faith comes. Put the story of the wise builder and the foolish builder next to one another. See how one man makes his life move ahead in the spirit and the other does not. And study these lives and discover that the principal difference between those who make it and those who do

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not is not a doctrinal difference. It's not a stewardship difference and it's not a difference in passion. For those who excel in all three of these areas may make it or they may hear Jesus say, "I never knew you." And make no mistake of it, there are many who are going to hear that. That is not my judgment. That is the judgment of Jesus. The passage begins

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with these words, "In that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord.'" And I'm sure there are some of you who are here this morning who read the title of this sermon for those who are not getting ahead and who've come here today because you want to get ahead spiritually and you recognize that you're not doing it and you're hoping for a word of help. And

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I praise God that you're here for that reason because you've been honest enough to admit your need and that's the first step toward meeting it. And I'm sure there are a certain number of people here this morning who have come here knowing that they're already advancing in the spirit and they're coming here to hear their gains confirmed and supported. They

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say, "I am already getting ahead." And they're right. They are getting ahead. And I praise God for them and I rejoice that there are many of that number who are part of this fellowship and who are here to share with us and praise with us and pray with us and for us. But there are a certain number of people here who think they are getting ahead in the spirit but who

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really are not. Who think they are advancing in the Christian life and who really are not. And this word is for the many of those people. For these individuals who come to Jesus saying, "Lord," are surprised, shocked when they hear him say, "I never even knew you." That which indicates reality in progress and lack of reality is the storm. The storm, you see,

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comes upon the houses, the one stands, the other falls. Now notice, Jesus does not say that the storm may come. He says the storm came. Storm comes into every life. If you are part of the life process, related by filaments of affection to other men, in a law-abiding universe, you are going to know storm. If you have not known it yet, do not be self-satisfied.

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Your time of testing will come. The rain will beat upon your house. One of my favorite stories concerns a man who was quite a student of foreign affairs. He was an Australian. And about two years before the beginning of the war between Japan and the United States, he, through his study of foreign affairs, came to the conclusion

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that such a war was about to begin. And living in Australia, he figured that was a rather hot spot, and that he would get his family to some other place where they would be safe, out of Australia. Well, he couldn't go to Europe because the war against the Nazis was in full process there. Africa was in terrible turmoil. Asia was going to be engulfed in

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this war which he imagined would start in another two years. He was trying to find some place and so finally he located a very remote, a very unimportant little piece of real estate out in the middle of the South Seas, a little atoll, a little island, a lovely little place. He decided he'd take his family there and he would stay there until the whole thing

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was over, and that's what he did. And the name of that little atoll was Guadalcanal. You can't get away from the storm. The storm will come. The question is, when the storm comes, are you going to depend on your theology to hold you up, if that's what you're depending on, it won't work. Are you going to depend, when the storm comes, on the noble

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goals and aspirations you've had in your life, if that's what you're going to depend upon, it's sand. When the winds swirl about you and the rain falls upon you and the flood breaks all about you, are you going to depend on your zeal and your passion and your ardor? If you are, it's sand and your house will fall and great will be the fall of it.

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The only thing which makes the one house stand when the other house falls is that the one house is built on the rock and the other house isn't. And what is the rock? The rock is the surrender of the will to the will of Jesus Christ. The surrender of the will to the will of Jesus Christ. It's not a matter of intellect, theology. It's not a matter of emotions, goals,

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ardor, passion. It's a matter of will. There are three dimensions to the personality. They might be viewed as a triangle. One is the mind or the reason. Now we need mind and reason in our faith. No man should have to take off his head to get through the front door of the church. No one should be required to give up what he knows, his knowledge, his

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understanding in order to be a Christian. The Christian church does not fear the word rational. Jesus lived the most rational life that ever was lived. You don't have to give up your intelligence to be a Christian, but intelligence alone is not enough. You can know all kinds of things and never do anything about them. And it's the will that leads you

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to take the affirmation of the mind and change them into actions. The will. The Christian faith has plenty of room for emotion or feeling or passion, ardor and zeal. There are ecstatic moments, moments of mystery that are uplifting, moments that we cannot describe, moments when we are caught up by the spirit into dimensions which are beyond our ability to cope with

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and understand. There are such moments in the Christian faith. But if the Christian faith consists only of such moments and these moments are not disciplined so that they are brought into harmony with the mind, and if these emotions are not torn to positive purpose so that they move out to be blessing to other men, that is, if the emotions are not controlled

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by the will, they profit us nothing. The most basic dimension, then, of the personality for the Christian is not the intellect and not the emotions, but the will. And to build one's life into spiritual success requires the surrendering of that will to the will of Jesus. It's building your spiritual house on the rock, on the rock that stands when

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nothing else stands. It's saying, "Lord, Lord," and really meaning it. That's the difference between the two men. They may use the same word, but it's obvious that they mean different things by it. What does the word "Lord" mean? Well, first of all, it means the Messiah, the Christ, God. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is

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Christ the Lord." When we call Jesus "Lord," we are asserting his deity, and that means we offer to him reverence. We offer to him awe, what the King James Bible calls "fear." Not what we mean by fear, but a total response in astonishment to the blessed, holy, perfect, glorious, magnificent person he is. We're very casual today about Jesus. We talk about

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him in speech, which sometimes I think lacks reverence. We come into his presence on a Sunday morning so stuporous from having been out too late the night before that we cannot focus upon his word, proclaimed, read, sung, prayed about. That is not a reverent act. We are late coming into his presence. We're on time at our job. We're on time in the classroom.

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But we do not hesitate to come into the presence of God to praise him late. That is irreverent. We come before him ill-prepared, not having purified ourselves with a casualness which contradicts his holy presence. And if we say "Lord" and mean it, that should not be true of us. The word "Lord" not only means Christ of God demanding our reverence. The word "Lord"

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also means "master" or "owner." The owner of sheep was sometimes called their kureos, their lord. A magistrate who ordered citizens about was called the kureos, lord. The commanding general who ordered his troops was called kureos, lord. You submit to that kind of lord. Now there are a lot of people who are willing to give Jesus reverence, but that's all. They

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see him as something like a rare piece of art put up on the wall and they stand back and they say "Oh" and "Aww." They admire him. But they never let him down off the wall right out into the midst of their lives. When you say "Lord," you're not only saying that he is an object of awe and reverence, you're also saying that he is your owner and that

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you submit to him in every dimension of your experience. Let me give you one illustration. Jesus said we ought to tithe. He did not make it an optional matter. I heard an interesting parable the other day. It was about a shepherd and sheep. This shepherd was very democratic with his sheep. He let them express their views and

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express their opinions and he often had little meetings in which they could do this. On one occasion he called all the sheep together and he said to them "Now wool production is very much off this year and I think that something ought to be done about it because the wool is not coming forth as it ought to come forth. What do you think?" And one of the ewes got

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up and said "Well you know it's been a very bad year this year, shepherd. Pastures haven't been as green, the water hasn't been quite as abundant. You can't expect us to do the same thing this year that we've done in other years." Then there was a young buck who got up and said "And we've done an awful lot of moving around this year. You know, if only

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the flock would move a little bit more slowly and wouldn't undertake all the things that it undertakes at one time. If you just learned to take the flock from pasture to pasture a little more deliberately then we'd be able to run off all of our wool, you see. We'd be able to do better under other circumstances." Then one of the middle-aged ewes got up and

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said "Well it's true that wool production is off this year but we've had a lot more lambs so that means there'll be a lot more lamb chops and roasts and things of that kind. You can't measure production by only one standard. There are a lot of other things. The spirit of the flock has been better this year than it's been in other years. We've got to keep

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that in mind." There was another sheep who got up and said "Now I just don't like the way that they shear us. They just came along and threw me down on the ground and took my wool away from me." And she got up and showed some scars that she had and everybody owed an odd over

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the scars and agreed that sometimes the method of shearing was absolutely terrible. Another sheep got up and suggested that the difficulty was that there were too many newcomers who had come to the flock in order to enjoy the pasture and to enjoy the water and to enjoy the company of the shepherd but they weren't producing wool like the old ones did and that

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made the total average go down. And what really ought to be spoken to is the newcomers and not those who'd been part of the flock for a long time. But the sheep who got the most applause was the one who got up and said "I think you'd be able to get a great deal more wool out of the flock if you'd be more careful what you do with the wool after you get it.

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We just don't like the way in which our wool is used and therefore we are holding back on production." That got a great deal of approval. And then all the sheep waited to hear what the shepherd would say and he was very loving, he was very tender, he was very self-sacrificing and so they expected from him a word of love and a word of tenderness and a word of sacrifice.

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But instead he looked at them and he said "Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever shall keep his wool shall lose it and whosoever giveth up his wool for my sake shall save it." And I say to you, and believe me there is no pun intended, no man or woman, boy or girl who has ever lived has succeeded in pulling the wool over the eyes of Jesus Christ. He

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is owner, he is master, he is Lord and if we so call him then we must so submit to him. And this word "Lord" means one other thing. It was the word commonly used to describe the king, the emperor. Now to your king or to your emperor you give loyalty. I was interested to read not too long ago of a state banquet given by President Nixon in honor of U Thant,

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the retiring General Secretary of the United Nations. It was held in the White House in Washington, a magnificent occasion in one of those rooms so redolent with history. The gold plate was brought out, the tables were splendidly decorated, the assemblage was inclusive of America's most distinguished citizens, strolling musicians walked up and down the

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aisles. It was a gorgeous occasion. Many speeches were made honoring Mr. Thant and after the speeches were at an end he got up to give his response. He first said that he believed he was unworthy of all the praise that had been given to him that night. But then he went on to say this, "If I am worthy of any of it, it is because I am a devout Buddhist.

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I was raised by parents who loved and honored Buddha and they taught the precepts of Buddhism to me so that they have become a part of my life. I believe Buddha to be the greatest religious leader that the world has ever known. I spend time in meditation with him every morning and every night. I have committed my life to him and to what he has taught.

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He, Buddha, is the answer to all of the problems of the world." And I thought to myself as I read that, he was addressing an audience of Americans. I doubt if there were any other Buddhists present. A few Jews perhaps, the majority would have claimed to be Christians. But how many of them in a similar situation would have even

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thought of saying of Christ what he said of Buddha? And if they would have thought of it, how many would have gotten up and said it? That is loyalty and that is what one is to have for one's Lord. For love is expressed in obedience, offering one's will to the will of one's Savior. And you will never make progress in the spiritual life until you have broken

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your sword and made that kind of commitment. The earliest creed of the Christian church was, "Jesus is Lord." Rome, when it set out to break the back of the church, demanded that Christians affirm Caesar as Lord. They understood, just as Jesus understood, you can't serve two masters. You serve one Lord

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or the other. The Christians claimed Christ. Rome said you will claim Caesar or die. Well, in one Roman legion, there was a group of Christian men who were known throughout all the empire as the Forty Christian Wrestlers. They had distinguished themselves in the military games. They were the pride of the legion. And when the order came from Dacius the Emperor

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that every soldier was to claim Jesus not as his Lord, but Caesar as his Lord, the commanding general of this legion tried to figure out a way in which he could save those Christians from having to make the false affirmation. He couldn't figure out any such way. Everyone was required to make it. And when those Forty Christian Wrestlers were brought forth, they

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refused. They refused to say Caesar is Lord and clung to their commitment to Christ. The general pleaded with them, "You don't have to change your way of life. Just utter the words. I don't care what you do after that. Just the words." And they would not. He threatened them and they would not. And so finally, in the midst of the cold and bitter winter, he

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had them stripped of all their clothing and he drove these Forty Christian Wrestlers out on to the icy surface of a Swiss lake. And as they, freezing in that cold, stood on that lake, they sang, "Forty Christian Wrestlers, wrestling for thee, O Christ, for thee we claim the victory, from thee we claim the crown." And as the day wore on, the song grew

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weaker as one after another succumbed to the icy cold. Till that night, no voice could be heard. And then one of the guards guarding the bivouac was astonished when, crawling through the snow at his feet, there came one of the Christian Wrestlers. And he looked up at the guard and he said, "I will take Caesar as Lord." And the guard staring at

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him said, "Since thou hast proved the coward, I will take thy place." And stripping off his own clothes, he went out on to the lake and took up the song, "One Christian Wrestler, wrestling for thee, O Christ, for thee I claim the victory, from thee I claim the crown." And when the sun rose the next day, they were there in the flesh, all gone. But they were

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with Christ in the Spirit, and they had claimed the crown from the only one who can give it. You all know the Apostles' Creed. Let me remind you of what you are saying when you utter it. I believe in Jesus. There's the full manhood of the Savior. And I believe in the Spirit of the Savior, involved in all of life. Christ, there's the deity of this one whom

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we worship. The very Son of God, his only Son, the reflection of the Almighty, the image of God made perfect, the love of God incarnate. Our Lord. That is, the only one. And the only Lord, that is, our Christ, our owner, our King, our Emperor. To say that and mean that is to build on the rock, is to surrender the will, is to get out of the way of the devil,

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is to get ahead in the things of the Spirit. To say that and not mean that is to someday hear him say, "Depart from me, for I never knew you." And that is the only way to get out of the devil's way. "For I never knew you." Hail Jesus. Hail Christ. Hail Son. Hail Lord. Lord. Let us pray.

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Father, many of us have offered to thee our minds, our hearts, our hearts, our hearts, our feelings, and our wills. If, Father, there are any in this number, this day, who have not made all of these commitments, who have not claimed thy Son as Lord, who have not claimed thy Son as Lord, and are living in loyal submission and reverent awe of him,

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bring them face to face with the reality of their failure, and show them the way, the way, the truth, and the life. Show them and claim them for the Lord. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit the Comforter, be and abide with you both now and forevermore. Amen.

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Amen. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]