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[Music] Going into Arabia, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] The scripture reading of the evening is taken from the letter of Paul to the Galatians,

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the first chapter, beginning at the verse which is numbered six. Galatians 1 at verse 6. "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel.

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Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again,

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if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. Am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ.

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For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the Church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.

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So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.

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I went away into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days, but I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you before God, I do not lie.

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Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea. They only heard it said, "He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy." And they glorified God because of me. And may the same Spirit that inspired the Apostle Paul to write these words

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incline our hearts to their understanding. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Time magazine has recently run an article in which it attempted to assess the mood of America.

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And in the article, Time suggests that most Americans are digging for their roots. They're trying to make their lives smaller and more simplified. They are, to quote Time directly, "building bulwarks against the tides of social disintegration." That's quite a change for America.

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Two weeks ago, I was in Australia, and I had the dubious privilege of watching an ugly American tourist display himself at his very worst. He was roundly berating an Australian waiter for not being quick enough. In a moment of privacy, a few minutes later, I went to the waiter and apologized to him for the behavior of my countrymen. The Australian looked at me and he said, "Oh, that's okay, Yank. We understand that you Americans are always in a hurry.

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After all, it was an American who invented the rocking chair so that he could feel like he was going somewhere and doing something even when he was sitting down." I thought that was well put. But if the Time article is right, a lot of Americans are heading for their rocking chairs now because they feel life has gotten too fast and they want it to slow down. They're looking for a period of repose and rest when they can focus their minds on long thoughts and think about deep things.

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They are, to use Paul's phrase, "going into Arabia." The phrase is from the passage of Scripture which I just read in your hearing. The Apostle Paul is writing to the Christians who are in Galatia. The church which he himself founded some ten years before.

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Now considerable theological discord has arisen in the church. And in an attempt to straighten it out, Paul writes this letter. And he begins by reminding those who will read the letter of his ecclesiastical credentials. He kind of presents a catalog of his certification as an apostle.

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And he suggests in the midst of this catalog of his credentials that after his conversion, after his whole life was turned around, in the midst of all the swirl and the twirl of it, he took some time to, using the parlance of our time, to get his head on straight. He says, "I went off into Arabia." Into a time when he could think about the big issues, understand who he was and who God was, and what the two of them had to do together.

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I can see the Apostle Paul there, seated in some oasis caravanserie. And the Bedouin come and the Bedouin go, and the camel drivers come and refresh their animals and then disappear over the horizon of the world. And Apostle Paul sits there and he listens to a sound which is far more subtle than the whining of the desert wind. He listens for the whispers of the voice of God.

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Perhaps he sits there until very late at night when he is accompanied only by the brightness of the Syrian stars. And there in that context, not writing, not reading, not preaching, just focused on God and the things of God, he carves out the deep convictions of his soul. He hammers out the credo on which he's going to build the remainder of his life. He wrestles with the things of God until God possesses him and he possesses God.

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And later, in referring to this experience, he sums it all up with the single phrase, "I went into Arabia." Now, if the Time magazine article is right, then it's interesting to notice that one of the things they point out is that there are three times as many Americans engaged in religious activities and thought today as there were five years ago. And that would seem to suggest that a lot of these Americans who are hurrying to their rocking chairs or to places of peace and quiet are focusing their thoughts when they get there on the things of God. And if that's true, it's good. It's very good.

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Because, you see, going into Arabia and thinking about God is the best way that I know to avoid the barrenness of busyness. I think busyness robs our days of more meaning than any other single thing. An endless round of appointments and responsibilities and dates and assignments can wear us down quicker than anything else that I know. And most of us are caught up in that kind of rat race.

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This is the reason so many Americans today are trying to get involved in things like Zen and Maharishi and Transcendental Meditation, EST, and all the rest of it. I heard about a new group the other day called CYST, C-Y-S-T, Citizens Yearning for Something Terrific. Well, the something terrific, which most Americans are looking for today, is just something they can be sure of. Something that they can rest upon with confidence.

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Something that they can trust to the utmost. Something that will give them a little peace and security in the heart. Now, anything that takes the peace and security out of your days, any busyness that crowds itself into your life so that it robs you of what is yours as a created child of God, well, that kind of busyness is as destructive as badness. When a life has no time for Arabia in it, that life is in trouble.

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A few days after the beginning of the Christmas break, I sat down in Pittsburgh and had lunch with a young man whom I had not seen for many years. It was my great privilege to lead him to Jesus Christ when he was in high school. And now, after almost 20 years, we were sitting down to catch up on things. The same fellow, the same smile, the same laugh, but much, much deeper.

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And in the course of the conversation, he told me of how he had joined the ranks of one of America's major corporations. And had, across the years, risen to the fourth from the top position in the Pittsburgh area, which was one of the largest markets for this corporation. In other words, he was very successful. But he said as he did this, he found, and this was his phrase, that all the quiet was seeping out of his life.

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And then a moment of important decision came. There was a vacancy on the national level, and he was picked for it, and he had to decide whether he would take it or not. And he said, "I sat down and I began to think about this, and it suddenly dawned upon me that I was so much upon the merry-go-round of the organization of which I was a part, that its music was drowning out the voice of my wife and the voices of my children and even the voice of my God. So I decided to get off."

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And he got off that merry-go-round and sought employment elsewhere. And he said, "Now there's a new peace and a new power. I have time for God, and I find that God is spending lots of time with me." Now those words uttered by this man spoke to me very deeply. Not because he was, as a young fellow, one whom I led to Christ and whom I love in a special way because of that,

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but because of what he was saying. This one whom I had once led was now leading me. The fact is that at the end of the first semester, I was physically and emotionally and spiritually exhausted. In the last 45 days of school, I had preached 41 sermons.

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I spent a lot of time talking, but not very much time talking to God. I spent very little time on the things of my own soul. I was played out. And what this young guy was saying to me was, "You haven't been spending time in Arabia."

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Now Arabia isn't just a rest time. I mean, in the first semester, there were evenings when I sat down and watched the tube or read a good book or caught a concert or a play here on campus. But you see, concerts and books and plays and the tube, all of those kinds of things, that's just another form of busyness. Being in Arabia is being quiet.

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It's being alone. It's entering into the place of prayer. It's talking to your own soul. There's a lot of that in the Bible, you know.

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The psalmist says to his own soul, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?" It's when the deepest thing in you reaches out to the very deeps of God. It's when you start to put some worth on your own soul. It's funny how we count our souls so cheaply.

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Evil puts a high value on them and tries in every way it can to ensnare them. The angels so prize the worth of the soul that there's no celebration greater for them than when a soul is saved. And Jesus Christ so valued the soul that he offered his life to save it. But most of us, most of us, we don't even go into Arabia often enough to feed it and nourish it.

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It hasn't been that way with the greatest Christians. The greatest Christians, the greatest children of God, have found time to strengthen their souls. Moses turned his back on the sophisticated debauchery of the Egyptian court and goes out into the wilderness where he tends the sheep of his father-in-law, Jethro,

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and it is there, in the solemn meditation and communion of that experience, there and nowhere else, that he sees a burning bush which ignites his whole life. What made David the kind of person that he was? Was it his ancestry? No. Was it his education? No.

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But God took him and sent him to following the flocks, and out in the wilderness following the wandering robbies with great cliffs frowning down and great boulders stretching up. It was out there where no one could interrupt the communion of his soul and God's spirit.

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It was there that God forged in him the kind of soul which could lead the writer of Scripture to say, "He was a man after God's own heart." Or take a man like Benedict, the founder of the monastic movement. He grew up in a tumultuous capital city, and tired of all the busyness and crowding of the day,

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he went off into a period of solitude, into aloneness, into an Arabia, if you will. And it was there that he got the idea for establishing the Benedictine Order, the first of the monastic orders. And I stood at that little town in Italy, which is at the foot of the mountain, Montecassino,

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where that great monastery now sits. It's called the Mother of Monasteries. And as I looked at it, I thought to myself that it was there, in that place, that the hands and the heads and the hearts of men were trained to keep alive

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nothing less than the very flame of civilization during the time of the Dark Ages. And Gregory the Great, the great mission pope, prefect of Rome, all kinds of authority in the most populous city of its day, and he turned his back on it, and he went off into his Arabia, into a period of aloneness.

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And there he got a vision, a vision of a Europe on its knees before Christ, of a great Britain reaching out for the gospel. And he came back, and they elected him pope, and he fired others with the vision which was his. And he sent out legions, not legions of soldiers as the Roman Empire before,

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but legions of missionaries. And he won Europe and the British Isles. He won far more than the Scipios or the Caesars had ever dreamed of. Arabia is the place where you carve lines into your heart.

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It's the place where you pummel your spirit until it's brought into obedience with God. Arabia is the place where you temper your dedication, where you make promises to him that you intend to keep, and where you hear in your soul's ear the promises he makes to you,

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which alone are always dependable. It happens in Arabia. That's where deep soul beliefs are found. Paul, when he writes to the Galatians, says that while he was in Arabia,

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he did not confer with flesh and blood. He means, you see, that he was talking instead with God. There was this inner communion going on. You know, the older I become, the more convinced I am

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that the great challenges and contests of the human experience are not fought exterior to a person, but are fought within a person. Let me illustrate that this way. I did something this summer, which I've done a lot of last summer.

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I reread some of the plays of Shakespeare. I believe that no one has seen into the heart and mind of man with the clarity of Shakespeare except the authors of some pages of scripture. Now, if you think about the principal characters in Shakespeare's plays,

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you will notice that he puts them on different fields of action. But the greater, the more noble the character, the more Shakespeare confines that field of action. Take a rather elementary character, a primitive character like Henry V.

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We come to understand Henry V in relationship to his environment and those about him, his father, his friends, Princess Kate, and so on. Now move to a more distinguished character, to one that is more finely developed and complicated, a character like Macbeth.

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Now, we learn about Macbeth in terms of his relationship with others, too, Macduff and Malcolm and Lady Macbeth. But there are as many lines in the play which concern Macbeth's wrestling within himself as there are lines concerning his dealings with others.

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Now move to the noblest character that Shakespeare created, to Hamlet. And suddenly, everything in the play that is exterior to Hamlet becomes unimportant. Horatio is outgrown, Ophelia is forgotten, and there on center stage, holding the minds of all those who watch him, is a single man.

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And what transpires in the greatest pages Shakespeare ever wrote is a study of the surging forces within a single soul. And I've become convinced that the greatest battles any woman ever fights, that the greatest contest with which any man ever has to do,

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are not those fought outside, but those fought inside. So I stand here tonight, I think of a night 30 years ago, in a place called Hillside Dormitory on the second floor, room 202, on the campus of Westminster College, not very far from where we're seated.

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I was attending my first religious conference. I was younger than most of the delegates, so the experience was a difficult one for me. My mind was stretched in the classes, my body was stretched on the athletic field, my soul was stretched in the devotional times.

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On Friday night, the last night of the week, there was a consecration service. And I can remember the minister's sermon. I did not know the minister then. He is a personal friend of mine. He's retired, but we're still in touch. And at the conclusion of his sermon, he said that each of us was to go back to our room,

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and we were there to wrestle out the whole meaning and purpose and goal of our lives in terms of our obedience to Jesus Christ. I remember we were all given little candles which we lighted, and I got my candle the whole way back to the dorm without it going out.

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And it was the only light in the room, and I set it on the windowsill. And I fell on my knees before it, and I prayed longer and harder and more earnestly than I'd ever prayed in all my life. And it took till dawn to do it, but by dawn it was done,

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and I'd surrendered myself to Jesus Christ. Anyone who knows me knows that my surrender has been a shoddy thing, and there are many times when it has been far less than it should have been. But I can say to you tonight before God and all of you as witnesses

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that I have never been tempted to own any other Lord than him. I took a verse that night as my life verse from the sixth chapter of Isaiah. "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then said I, "Here am I. Send me."

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And God knows and I know and a lot of you know that there have been many times when I have failed to go as he has commanded me to go. But I say to you tonight that I have never gone out in the service of any other Savior. The convictions arrived at in that Arabia are as solid and as strong and unshakable in me tonight

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as they were thirty years ago. And this is all that Paul is saying. You see, when he wrote these words to the Galatians, it was twenty-five years after the event. And in that intervening twenty-five years, he had gone missionary journeys,

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he had been shipwrecked, he had been beaten, he had been thrown in jail, he had established churches. And still, confronting these Galatians in the midst of their arguments and theological discourse, he can say, "What I resolved in Arabia then is true now. The gospel I experienced and preached to you out of that is as valid today as it was then.

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And if anyone preaches to you any other gospel, let that one be accursed." That's the kind of soul-centered belief that's forged in Arabia. I want to be very frank tonight. And I want to say a word to some of you older people, faculty and older friends of the college

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who come to our Sunday evening Vespers services. Have you been to Arabia? I'm not talking about any kind of dramatic conversion experience. Not everybody has a dramatic experience.

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It may very well that you were led to Christ as a youth, and you were led so gently that you were unaware of it when it was happening, and that's very beautiful, and I thank God for it. But I know that there has to be some time in every Christian life

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when you go into an Arabia of the Spirit, and where you sit down and you say, "All right, God, if I'm yours, what difference is that going to make?" There has to be a time when you sit down and consider what the claims of Jesus Christ really mean. Now, have you come to that place?

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Have you arrived at those deep conclusions of Spirit on which you can depend for all the days that are yours? Have you so wrestled with the Holy Spirit of God and been wounded by Him that the marks and the scars of it are on your very soul?

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How do things stand between you and Christ tonight? Is your discipleship growing? Is your faith of the flesh, or is it of the Spirit? These alliances with God which you've made, are they the first-order alliances in your life?

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Are you a Republican who happens to be a Christian, or are you a Christian who happens to be a Republican? Are you a teacher who happens to be a Christian, or are you a Christian who happens to be a teacher?

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If you're not certain about these things, then I urge you to go into Arabia to talk to your pastor or to talk to someone whose faith is more mature than your own. Work these matters out. Get certainty and conviction into your life.

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Please turn your cassette to the other side. [The Word of God] And I'd like to say a word to you students. Many of you are away from home here at college,

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and one of the advantages about going away to college is you have the opportunity to think for yourself, and that's good. I hope you're thinking for yourself in terms of your faith. I hope the faith that you're depending upon is not just the faith that's been passed down to you in your family.

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It's a beautiful thing when faith is passed down in a family, but that kind of faith is like an antique. It's nice to look at, but you wouldn't want to put your whole weight on it. As you are experiencing education here at the college,

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are you spending some time in Arabia? Are you arriving at some conclusions? At a crate, are you picking up the sword of the spirit, the weapon of belief, and learning how to use it? I sometimes think of the college as a kind of armory,

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and we offer swords to our students. We offer the sword of knowledge, and there are a great number of our students who pick it up. And we offer the sword of eloquence and the ability to express your ideas, and great numbers of our students pick it up.

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And we offer the sword of wit and polish and humor, and most of our students pick that up. And we offer the sword of personality and charm and sophistication and manner, and the vast majority of our students pick that up. And we also offer the sword of faith, but when we hand out the sword of faith, we have to say,

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"Look, this is something you have to win for yourself in Arabia. I mean, we can direct you and we can guide you, and we can bind up your wounds when you come back from the struggle, but this is a sword that you have to win for yourself. You've got to wrestle it out with God.

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You've got to make some promises that you're going to stick with for all of your days." Most of our students turn away from that sword. And I find that very sad, because you see, when every other sword is broken and in the dust, it's only the sword of faith that still sparks like a meteor.

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When every other sword is trampled under feet, it's only the sword of faith that keeps gleaming. When every other defense in your life is broken down, if you have the sword of faith, there is one defense that will still stand sure. Do you remember that great scene in the death of Arthur?

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When King Arthur, who is dying, takes his magnificent sword, Excalibur, and he hands it to one of his soldiers and he says, "Go and hurl it into the sea." And the soldier takes the weapon and he throws it out over the water, and before it touches the water, a white and mystic arm reaches up out of the water

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and grasps the sword and brandishes it in the air three times and then draws it beneath the waves. That is to me a parable of life. The sword which is of greatest worth is the sword that's been baptized with the dues of heaven. And that's the sword that stands high.

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That's the sword that has about it a mystery which never comes to an end. And that's the sword that can only be won in Arabia. You see, Arabia is where you learn to be tough when things get rough. Once on the Queen Elizabeth, we were caught in a big storm, and the ship was pitching and tossing.

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I was on one of the higher decks. The Queen Elizabeth had 16 decks. And you know, the higher you are in a ship, the more the pitch and toss are exaggerated. And I was standing up there, and every time the ship would lean to the left, I'd push down on the right. And every time it leaned to the--and I weigh a lot, but it was not enough to really make any difference.

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And you know, you really wonder how this great steel thing-- there were 2,300 passengers on board and 1,700 crew. It was the biggest ship afloat at the time. And you really wondered why when it pitched over, it didn't go all the way,

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why it didn't fall into the water and just go under. And I was with the purser of the ship, and I asked him why it didn't happen. Have you ever seen one of those children's toys that has a round base and a weight in it, and every time you knock the toy over, the weight rolls back and it pulls the toy up again?

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Well, the ship operates just like that. It has a curved base, and down there in that base are great tanks filled with fuel and with water as ballast. And every time the ship rolls over, that liquid rolls to one side, and then it rolls back. And when it rolls back, it pulls the ship to an upright position.

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Well, you see, the convictions and the credo and the confidence in God and the trust that God has some confidence in you, those things won in Arabia are like that weight. So that no matter how your life is pitched and tossed--and believe me, it will be-- that weight always comes back to the center,

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and it holds you up when there's nothing else to hold you up. Gladys Alward was a missionary to China. It was said that she was so small that when she sat down in an ordinary chair, her feet didn't touch the floor. She was remembered quite significantly in a film a few years ago.

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Some of you may have seen it. It was called "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness." In any case, there was a moment in the life of Gladys Alward when she was called to the office of the governor of Yangcheng Province in which she was working. The governor explained to her that they were having a riot in their prison,

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that one of the prisoners had gone berserk with a weapon, had already killed two of the prisoners, and had chased out all the guards. She listened to this, didn't know why he was telling her, and all of a sudden he looked at her and said, "And we want you to go in and take the weapon away."

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And she was aghast. She didn't know what to say. She swallowed and she said, "Why are you asking me to do this?" And he said, "Well, you've been going all around here talking about Jesus Christ and how you've committed your life to him and how we ought to do the same,

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and how he will never forsake you but will always be with you, so we figured you were the one to send in." And in that moment she recognized that the whole validity of her ministry was on the line. And she closed her eyes and she went back to her Arabia's. She went back to those moments when she and God had been most personal with one another.

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And because there had been a lot of those moments, she had the strength at that instant to say, "I'll go." And they opened the door to that part of the prison and they put her in and they closed the door immediately behind her. And there was a long dark tunnel ahead of her and she started to walk down that tunnel.

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And every step as she walked she said to herself, "Jesus be with me. Jesus be with me." She saw men running back and forth at the end, panicked. Finally she got to the end of the tunnel and just as she did so, she confronted a huge man, naked from the waist up, holding a meat cleaver that was dripping blood.

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And he looked at her and she looked at him and she said to him, "Give me the cleaver." And there was just a moment's pause and he handed it to her. And she said, "Now you men line up over here." And they lined up and the guards came in and the situation was settled.

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Now that story is true. It's well documented. And you may, if you wish, explain it in a variety of ways. You can say that what led this fellow to turn over the cleaver was the sudden shock of seeing a woman in that environment or the authority with which she approached him.

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You can explain it psychologically. Do what you will with it. I don't care. The point I wish to make is this, that at the moment when the challenge came, she was ready to say, "I will go," because she'd been in Arabia. Because the promises and the commitments, the hard lines of belief had been built up before.

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A great ball player is great because he practices. A great actor is great because he rehearses. A great teacher is great because he never stops learning. The Christian becomes great when he never stops practicing and never stops rehearsing and never stops learning because he goes again and again into prayerful communion with God

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until he and God are so well acquainted that he can pray and know his prayer will be answered. Jesus be with me. Now I want to say to you tonight, if you are falling before temptation again and again, if your Christian life is not growing,

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if the commitments that you've made are shoddy and tattered things, and there is no progress in your discipleship, it is probably because you're not spending time in Arabia. And you have never known the mystery of the moment

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when the Spirit of God so moves into you that you are born of that Spirit and take upon yourself nothing less than the authority of a child of God. I sum it with this. This week there was put into my hands the manual prepared by the United States government Peace Corps for use by its volunteers in South America.

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I was particularly interested in a page designed for those who work in the Amazon jungles. And this page told these Peace Corps volunteers what they were to do if they were attacked by an anaconda. Now an anaconda is the largest snake in the world. It's a relative of the boa constrictor.

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It grows to 35 feet in length and weighs between 300 and 400 pounds at the maximum. And this is what it said. If you are attacked by an anaconda, do not run. The snake is faster than you are.

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Lie flat on the ground. Keep your arms tight against your sides, your legs tight against one another. Tuck your chin in. The snake will come and begin to nudge and climb over your body.

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Do not panic. Think about that. Do not panic. After the snake has examined you, it will begin to swallow you from the feet end. Always from the feet end.

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Permit the snake to swallow your feet and your ankles. Do not panic. The snake will now begin to suck your legs into its body. You must lie perfectly still.

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This will take a long time. When the snake has reached your knees, slowly and with as little movement as possible, reach down, take your knife, and very gently slide it into the side of the snake's mouth, between the edge of its mouth and your leg.

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Then, suddenly, rip upwards, severing the snake's head. The last two suggestions were the ones that got me. Number nine, be sure your knife is sharp. And number ten, be sure you have your knife.

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There are a lot of things in life that are ready to swallow you. There are a lot of things that are ready to crush you. There are a lot of things that are ready to constrict out of you all the good that's been put there. The way to deal with those things is to be still, to be quiet, to have a plan,

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to know what you are going to do and the way you are going to do it, and to have your weapon ready for the moment when it is needed. The place where you learn stillness and you learn the promises of God and you get the sword of the Spirit is in Arabia.

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Have you been there? If you haven't been, go. In a world like this, it's a matter of life or death. Let us pray.

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Oh God, we know you want us to come. Take from us anything that might take us from thee. Call us to deep, quiet, lonely times where, like little children, we can scramble into your lap

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and feel the breath of your love and the strength of your arm and the infinite wisdom of your word. And then, made calm inside, send us out into the world, unafraid, because you are ours and we are yours

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and there's no doubt at all about it. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you

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and give to you and to all those whom you love and to all those whom nobody loves his peace.