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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 entitled "You and God are a Majority." This is the second in the series on Saul, the first king of Israel.

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As soon as the voice stops on this side of the tape, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission

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of Dr. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged. If you would like a catalog listing other tapes available, write to People Moving Power at the address on this cassette.

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The scripture reading of the morning is taken from the book of 1 Samuel, portions of the 11th, 13th, and 15th chapters, beginning in chapter 11 at verse 1. Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabash-Gilead. And all the men of Jabash said to Nahash, "Make a treaty with us, and we will serve

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you." But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, "On this condition I will make a treaty with you, that I gouge out all your right eyes, and thus put disgrace upon all Israel." The elders of Jabash said to him, "Give us seven days' respite, that we may send messengers

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through all the territory of Israel. Then, if there is no one to save us, we will give ourselves up to you." When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, they reported the matter in the ears of the people, and all the people wept aloud.

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Now Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen, and Saul said, "What ails the people that they are weeping?" So they told him the tidings of the men of Jabash. And the Spirit of God came mightily upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was

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greatly kindled. He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, "Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen."

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Then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out as one man. And on the morrow Saul put all the people in three companies, and they came into the midst of the camp in the morning watch, and cut down the Ammonites until the heat of the day.

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And those who survived were scattered, so that no two of them were left together. Then the Philistines mustered to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen and troops like the sand on the seashore in multitude. They came up and encamped at Micmash to the east of Beth-Avon.

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When the men of Israel saw that they were in straits, for the people were hard-pressed, the people hid themselves in caves, and in holes, and in rocks, and in tombs, and in cisterns, or crossed the fords of the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul was still at Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.

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He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel. But Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him. So Saul said, "Bring the burnt offerings here to me, and the peace offerings." And he offered the burnt offering.

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As soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came. And Saul went out to meet him and salute him. Samuel said, "What have you done?" Saul said, "When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come

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within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Micmash, I said, 'Now the Philistines will come down upon me at Gilgal, and I have not entreated the favor of the Lord.' So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering."

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And Samuel said to Saul, "You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which he commanded you. For now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom shall not continue.

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The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you." And finally, from the fifteenth chapter, beginning at the first verse, "And Samuel said to Saul, 'The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel.

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Now therefore hearken to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'I will punish what Amlek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amlek, and utterly destroy all that they have.

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Do not spare them, but kill both men and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.' And Saul defeated the Amlekites from Habilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. And he took Agag, the king of the Amlekites, alive, and utterly destroyed all the people

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with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings and the lambs, and all that was good. And he would not utterly destroy them.

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All that was despised and worthless they did destroy. And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, 'Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.' And Samuel said, 'O, what then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of

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the oxen which I hear?' Saul said, 'They have brought them from the Amlekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed.'

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Then Samuel said to Saul, 'Stop! I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night.' Saul said to him, 'Say on.' And Samuel said, 'Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the

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tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel, and the Lord sent you on a mission and said, "Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amlekites, and fight against them until they are consumed." Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord?

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Why did you swoop on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?' And Saul said to Samuel, 'I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag, the king of Amlek, and I have utterly destroyed the Amlekites.

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And the people, they took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, and the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.' Samuel said, 'Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

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Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.' Samuel said to Saul, 'I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.'" And may God bless to us this reading from his word.

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You may be seated. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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One of the most distinguished anthropologists of our time is Dr. Loren Eiseley. He is also a most capable author. In one of his books, he records an experience in which he was trying to capture and study two hawks, a male and a female.

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In the process of the capture, the female escaped, but he had the male. The day after he caught the bird, he intended to build a cage for it. He took the bird out onto the hillside. He could feel the pounding of its heart against his palm.

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And he looked up, thinking that he would see the female hawk somewhere circling about, waiting for her mate. But he did not see her. And then, as he began to prepare to build the cage, he looked about him at the beauty

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of the day, the crystal clarity of the air, the shivering aspen leaves, the gentle breeze. And he found he didn't have it in his heart to imprison this quivering bird. He decided to let it go free. So he took the bird and he set it on the grass.

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And it didn't move. At no time while he was holding it did it even look at him. Its eyes seemed pointed skyward, as if they were looking at something far beyond him. The bird did not even stand upon its legs.

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It simply stayed flat against the grass. There it was by itself. And as he looked at it, he felt that its heart was somehow already far beyond that place, so far beyond that place that it did not recognize at that moment that it had been set free.

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And then, suddenly, so suddenly that there wasn't even a warning beat of the wings, so suddenly that there wasn't even the flexing of a muscle, at least so far as he could see it, but as he describes it, in the flicker of an eye, the bird was gone. It flew straight skyward.

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And as it flew, he heard a cry coming down from above, not the cry of the male bird ascending. He stepped back into branches of a tree and looked up so that the leaves of the tree somehow shaded him. And he could see swooping down out of the very eye of the sun the female hawk, which

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he'd almost caught the day before. She came soaring down. Evidently, she had been hurtling up there so high he could not see her, swooping at such an altitude that he could not detect her, even though the male bird could.

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And she now came soaring down, crying, and as she came, the male bird answered with his cry. And the glory, he said, the ecstasy of those two cries, of those birds meeting in freedom in the sky, up there in all that towering emptiness, was such that every peak about

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them echoed with the splendor of the sound. And he said, "Even as I write these words, years later, I can hear that sound tingling in the coffee cup on my table." Well, I wonder, have you ever wanted to soar skyward like that?

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Have you ever wanted to hear a cry above and answer it with your own cry and then to go off into all the crystal towering space that God has provided for himself and his holy angels forever? Have you ever wanted to know the ecstasy of breaking loose of anything that might enslave

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you and trap you in life and to go off with him sunward? Have you ever wanted to have your heart flip over at the joyous freedom of being so much in God and having God so much in you that everything else seemed to be unimportant? Well, if that's ever been a desire of yours, then I'd like to ask you for a few minutes

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this morning to focus with me on these three snapshots from the career of Saul, three battle scenes as it were, each one of which illustrates a different approach to the life of freedom and to the life of faith. The first scene we want to look at, not the first chronologically, but the first one in

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the sense and the order of this thought which I'm sharing with you today, is recorded in the 13th chapter of 1 Samuel. Saul and his armies are gathered to go to war against the Philistines. An arrangement has been made with Samuel, who's God's man on the scene, to come and

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bless Saul and the troops as they are gathered preparing for the battle. But at the time of the appointment, Samuel fails to appear. And as the people wait and he does not come, they begin to drift away. The army, in other words, begins to separate itself.

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Things aren't going the way they're supposed to, and so some of the people begin to move away. And as they do, fearful of their departure, Saul decides to bless the troops himself. He had no right, no prerogative, and no authority so to do.

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But he was so afraid of the departure of the people that he himself proceeded to depart from the will of God. He was so afraid of what the crowd was doing that he changed his allegiance from God to them.

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He began to operate, you see, under the formula, "God and me and others make a majority." He didn't have sufficient confidence in God to stand with him. He didn't have sufficient confidence in God and himself to stand with them. He had to have the support of others.

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And when the support of others was withdrawn, when the crowd moved the other direction, he collapsed. And when Samuel beheld this, he said, "Saul, you're going to lose your kingdom." Now, that's really not too remarkable a prophecy.

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For isn't it true, whenever you encounter an individual so influenced by the crowd, it's safe to say that person will lose their sovereignty. Samuel was saying what was old at the time of Saul and is older even now, "Vox populi non vox dei."

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The voice of the people is not the voice of God. A few weeks ago, I came upon the rules and regulations which were issued to travelers in Wells Fargo stagecoaches a hundred years ago here in our area. They were very good rules, I thought.

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For example, there was one, you could not drink alcoholic beverages in the stagecoach unless you shared the bottle with all the other passengers. You could wear a buffalo robe, but you could not wear a robe made out of hogskin because it smelled so bad.

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You could wear that robe if you would agree to ride up above with the driver. You were permitted to sleep as long as you did not snore and lean on the passenger seated on either side of you. It was absolutely forbidden to discuss stagecoach robberies or Indian uprisings.

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And then there was one rule, the last one, which I thought very interesting. It said that gentlemen could chew tobacco as long as they were careful to always spit with the wind. Well, it's a long way from a stagecoach to Gilgal where Saul and his armies were gathered.

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And it's a longer way from a stagecoach, I suppose, to where we're sitting this morning. But isn't it true, and can't we all agree, that there are a lot of people who always spit with the wind, always go with the breeze, and because they stand for nothing, fall for anything?

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Don't you know people who applaud for movies they really don't enjoy simply because they hear other people saying that those are very sophisticated films? Don't you know individuals who defend political positions that aren't really of their heart just because they believe the majority are standing for that particular political understanding?

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Don't you know people who are willing to sacrifice anything for the security of inclusion in order to be a part of the group not sufficiently strengthened by the presence of God, not sufficiently strengthened by the spirit of God dwelling in them? As soon as anyone in the crowd begins to drift away, they change their allegiance.

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Those people lose their kingdom. I suppose a man who did as much for baseball as anyone else who ever lived was Branch Rickey. He was a fine man, a fine sportsman, and a great Christian. On one occasion when he was the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he was engaged in

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negotiations with the president of a professional football team that wanted to use Ebbets Field on the weekends for their games. It was a deal which involved many hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the middle of the negotiations, Rickey stood up, threw his pencil on the table and

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said, "That's it, I'm through." The man said, "Why are you through?" "I'm through because you have been consistently in this conversation saying very evil things about a close personal friend of mine."

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The man said, "I haven't been talking about anybody at all. What do you mean talking about a friend of yours?" He said, "Oh yes, you've been talking about a friend of mine. You have been consistently insulting that person who means more to me in life than any

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other." The president of this football club, you see, had repeatedly been taking the name of Jesus in vain in the conversation. So frequently he didn't even realize what he was doing.

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And Rickey proceeded to explain to him what he had been doing and said he would negotiate no further with such a one. The man apologized and Rickey counseled him, witnessed to him, and then went back to the negotiations.

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Now some years later, Branch Rickey died. And when he died, the president of that football club revealed this story on himself, revealed exactly what had happened, told it as it were on himself, and then he went on to say, "Branch Rickey was the greatest man I ever knew.

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He was acknowledging, you see, that here was one who didn't go with the crowd, who wasn't influenced by the hundreds of thousands of dollars, who wasn't persuaded by earthly allegiances. He made one commitment and having made that commitment, he stuck to it.

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And that commitment was to the divine. That man keeps his kingdom. Branch Rickey was the greatest man I ever knew." You tell a little joke about there supposedly being two gates to heaven.

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One has over it, "Conformists, enter here," and the other has over it, "Non-conformists, enter here." And according to the story, there were great multitudes lined up in front of the gate that said, "Conformists, enter here."

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And there was only one man in front of the other gate, and he was a real mousy little fellow, a kind of a Casper Milquetoast, real timid, sissified-looking character. And St. Peter walked up to him and said, "What are you doing standing in front of this gate?" And he said, "Well, my wife told me to stand here."

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Well, who tells you where to stand? Who tells you where to stand? And the answer to that question hangs the future of the kingdom in your life. Now the second scene from the life of Saul we want to look at is recorded in the 15th

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chapter of 1 Samuel. Now Saul has gathered his armies to go against the Amalekites, and he's received very specific instructions as to how the battle is to be fought. They go out and they fight the battle, and after the battle is over, instead of doing

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what God has told him to do, Saul has a better idea. He's supposed to sacrifice all that he has taken prisoner. Instead of that, he keeps it. Instead of destroying it, as God said, he retains it.

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A little bit later, Samuel comes on the scene and he says, "Did you do everything that God told you to do?" And Saul says, "Yes." "Oh, and then what's all the bleeding of these animals that I hear and the lowing of these

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cows? What's this?" "Oh," Saul said, "it was the people who did that, and I helped them. You see, I had a very good idea.

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I thought we could make some special burnt offerings to the Lord." You see the new formula. It's no longer God and me and others. Now it's just God and me.

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God had an idea, but I have a better idea. I know this was God's plan, but I've improved it a little bit. God has certain wisdom, but you see, I want to add to it mine. God has certain commandments, but I've embellished these a little.

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And Samuel says to Saul, "Saul, it is better to obey than to sacrifice. Saul, do what God has told you. It is not yours to add to the word and the will of God." But there are people who still try to do that all the time.

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God and me, hey, we make a majority. I'll never forget shortly after I became a Christian. Jesus Christ had entered into me, and I knew the joy of being part of Jesus Christ. And then there were a lot of people who came along and told me now what I was supposed

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to do because I was a Christian. These people were all anxious to help me grow in the Lord. That was their great concern, you see. And growing in the Lord meant that every one of the soldiers of Jesus should be dressed

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exactly alike, and they were the ones that picked how they should be dressed. They gave me a whole lot of do's and don'ts. They told me what church to go to. They told me what version of the Bible to read.

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All Christians read only one version and no other versions. They told me I, of course, should never vote Democrat. Presbyterian Christians never do that. They told me that I should be a tither.

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They told me how I was supposed to have my daily devotions. They told me, and then they had, of course, the don'ts. They had all these rules and regulations, these things which were part of their style of Christianity, which is all right.

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It may be their style, but you see, what they began to do was to put that style on me. Oh, now you're a Christian. So these are the things that you will want to do because you are a Christian. It's not enough, you see, to be a Christian.

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What you have to do now is add all of these additional things. So I went into a period in which I had certain goals concerning my life. I wanted to reason like C.S. Lewis, not like Bruce. I wanted to preach like Clarence Edward McCartney, not like Bruce.

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I wanted to be as witty and entertaining as Gertrude Bahana, not like Bruce. I wanted to be as evangelical as Sam Shoemaker, but not like Bruce. I wanted to be as self-disciplined as Elton Trueblood, but not like Bruce. I wanted to be all of these other people.

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These were the requirements, you see. This is what it meant to be a Christian. And you see, things weren't my thing. (Pause)

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If you don't have daily devotions every day, then you're not a Christian. Where does it say that in the Bible? And the longer your daily devotions are, the better Christian you are. Where does it say that in the Bible?

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Unless you say, "Praise the Lord," a lot in your speech, there's something wrong with your Christianity. Where does it say that in the Bible? That's the latest one you know, "Praise the Lord."

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We insert that every once in a while in the paragraph to give us that certain aura of divinity. I must confess that I've been getting so irritated about that, I've developed a response.

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Somebody says, "Praise the Lord." And I say, "Okay, let's do it. What shall we do?" And they look at me as if somehow that's an improper question. Praising the Lord, uttering that phrase in that way

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is exactly like a Buddhist spinning a prayer wheel. You don't praise the Lord just by mouthing three syllables, "Praise the Lord." That is not adequate praise.

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You might just as well write your prayer and simply hold it up for people to see. The fact of the matter is that's not praise. And that kind of thing is not talked about.

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But unless you do that a certain number of times according to some people's style, well then... And have you received the second baptism? If you haven't, well then there's...

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And the Bible doesn't say that. Are you willing to spill everything out of your life, you know, get into these sensitivity sessions and put your guts right out there on the table

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for everybody to see? If you don't do that, well then there's something. Or are you willing to run the vacuum cleaner of your experience over the dirt in everybody else's life

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and pick it all up, you see? That's part of the way that you... If you're not that, well then, you see, there's something. You haven't been immersed?

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Well then, you don't believe in the virgin birth? Well, you're not a dispensationalist? You mean you don't accept what Hal Lindsey says? "Jesus isn't going to be here Tuesday?"

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Look, there must... You see, all of these things added on, it's all right for them if they want it. It's all right, they may hold their doctrines to themselves,

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but beware of people who say, "This is the faith plus me, my ideas, my style, my take." This church is more evangelistic than this church

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because they have altar calls. I haven't found an altar call anywhere in Scripture yet. This church is more Christian than this church because you have to go to classes before you can join this church.

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Where does it say that in the Bible? This church is a better church than this church because this church gives more admissions than this church. Is that the sine qua non by which a church is identified?

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I don't find that in the Scriptures. All of these things added on as if somehow or other we're all cut out by a celestial cookie cutter. We're all supposed to look the same.

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We're all carbon copies of one another. The Holy Spirit is a giant mimeograph who runs us out one after another. And unless everybody can pray the same way in public

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and everybody can cry on cue like some Christians seem to be able to do, and unless you like this kind of music or that kind... And they try to establish a consistency amongst Christians

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which is inimicable to the faith. Look, so you don't like to lift up your hands. So you don't say, "Praise the Lord," every other paragraph. So you don't baptize people in your swimming pool.

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So you can't sing beautifully. So you haven't had the experience of riding down the freeway and having an angel in your back seat say, "Jesus is coming," and then disappear.

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So you haven't been asked how much milk you drink. So you're not Pat Boone. The fact of the matter is you are you, and that's all God wants you to be, you.

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Beware of people who say, "Well, this is God's idea, but I want to add to that these other suggestions." It was a great day in my life when I discovered

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that it was not God and me that made a majority. That's not the formula. The proper formula is me and God. Do what I can, do my thing,

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do that which God has enabled me to do by the power of his Spirit dwelling in me, and recognize that's not enough to make a majority. But God comes in over and above that,

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and he's the one that makes things a majority. That's the way Saul understood things to be in the early part of his life. You go back to the 11th chapter,

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which is before these chapters we've already noticed, when he and his forces were going out against the Ammonites. Then he went out understanding that the power rested in God. He did everything he could,

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but he understood that wasn't enough, and his confidence was in God. His allegiance was in God, and he went out that way, and he fought like that, and he won.

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And when the battle was over, he said, "Yes, I did all I could, but the victory is the Lord's." And Samuel said, "Your kingdom will be yours." And all the people rejoiced.

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You see the difference? It's exerting yourself to the uttermost, but then understanding that beyond that must come confidence in the eternal.

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It's being loyal to what's royal in you, the gift of God there, but understanding that the final sovereignty belongs to the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

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I went through the New Testament last night and just picked out scenes that illustrate this truth. They're on every hand. Here were a group of men who couldn't do anything

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but bring buckets of water. So they did that. And God came and made the majority when Jesus turned it into wine.

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Here was a little boy who only had five loaves and two fishes. That's all he had to offer, so he offered that. And then God came and made the majority, and Jesus used it to feed all the multitudes.

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Here are some friends. All they could do was cut a hole in the roof to bring their friend to Jesus, but they did that.

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And then God came and made the majority, and Jesus said, "Rise up and walk." Here are the Bethanites, who couldn't do anything but roll the stone away,

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but they did that. And then God came, and through the lips of his only begotten Son said, "Lazarus, come forth."

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The power, you see, rests in him. When I came out of seminary and went to my first church, I was very scared.

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The church was 176 years old. It had a distinguished history. I was the youngest man ever to step into its pulpit. That's scary.

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But worse than that, the man who had been there before had been in that pulpit for 23 years. Now, that ought to be a law against any preacher

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being anywhere for longer than 10 years. Because what happens, you see, is he brings all of his ideas, all of his thoughts, into the life of that congregation,

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and they hear that so often from the pulpit and from the teaching desk and from staff members who are in obedience and subordination to him in the program of the church

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that they begin to add all this extra baggage on, and when somebody comes in with some new ideas, they're unable to hear them. The dye is so cast, you see, in the life of that church.

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Well, this fellow had been there 23 years. And to make things even more difficult, the last three years he had been a very, very sad cripple. He'd hardly been able to walk for two of those years.

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The last year he could not walk at all. I remember going up into the pulpit the first time and seeing the marks on the wall where he had steadied himself as he stumbled up those steps.

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Well, you can imagine what happened to a church with one minister and that one minister unable to get about. Sunday school had fallen off. Worship attendance was down.

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Offerings were way down. The mission and giving was practically nonexistent. The outreach was--well, there just wasn't any. There were no youth groups anymore.

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Even the building itself was in bad disrepair. And that's when I confronted him. But I came out of seminary with a lot of zeal, and I was going to get in there and straighten it out.

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By golly. And I threw myself at it with everything I had. As a matter of fact, for two years I never took a day off. I never took one day off.

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I worked Christmas and New Year's and-- I don't know how now, but I was able to do that. But for two years, I was at my desk at 5 o'clock every morning and usually did not get home until after midnight.

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I met with every committee in the church. Every committee. I had no assistants. I had no associates.

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Only had one secretary, and I think the Lord gave her to me to try my patience. So one night at about the end of two years, I had dinner one night at the Penn McKee Hotel.

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And I came over. I had two meetings scheduled for that night. And I sat down on the wall in front of the church, and the church was right down the main street.

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It would be like being on the corner of Brand and Broadway here. And I fell asleep right there on the wall, right on the main street. I don't know how long I slept.

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I woke up after a while, and I didn't feel good. Started to go to my office and didn't think I should go there. So I went back to my car, and I sat down in my car, and I fell asleep again.

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And I awakened about an hour later and decided I better drive home, which was a very stupid decision because I was not in any condition to be driving a car. But I did get home by the grace of God.

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The doctor's diagnosis, of course, the next day was complete exhaustion. And there was a long period of rest and recuperation before I took up the mantle of ministry again. And it was during that time that I learned

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it is not God plus me that makes a majority. It's me working within the responsible limits of my capacity and then going beyond that to rely upon God to do the rest. He's the one that makes the majority.

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And he's ready to do that, of course, because he's our father. And we're his children. They ask a little nine-year-old girl what the difference between family and friends were. And she wrote, "I don't exactly know what a family is, but I do know one thing.

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Your friends can go off and say they don't want to be your friends anymore. But folks just can't go off and say they don't want to be your family anymore." That's true. Family is family.

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And God is our father. And he never forsakes that relationship. He always stands ready to make the majority. So you see the story of that hawk ascending into the blue.

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It's a parable. Don't let yourself be caged by other people. Don't let yourself be trapped by their styles, their tastes, their demands. And what's worse, don't trap yourself.

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Don't cage yourself into trying to be more than God intends you to be. Just beat whatever wings God has given you and move toward the sun as far as you can. And you'll hear that cry coming down. Then you answer it with your cry.

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And you and God will go off together sunward into the sun, always into the sun. If you would believe that today, it would be the happiest day of my life. And more important than that, if you would believe that today,

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it would be the happiest day in your life. Let us pray. Oh God, help us to be free. Separate us from anything that would cage us, even from the things in ourselves that would cage us.

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Give us a vision of what it is to live in the crystal clarity of thy grace, in the towering vastness of thy love. Fly with us. Enable us to soar with thee.

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We pray it because we're convinced that Jesus wants it that way. And we ask it in his name. Amen. [BIRDS CHIRPING]