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[Music] Tide Riding, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Field. [Music] Let us continue in our worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word

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as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew, the 26th chapter, beginning the reading at the verse numbered 36. "Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, 'Sit here while I go yonder and pray.'

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And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, 'My soul is very sorrowful even to death. Remain here and watch with me.'

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And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed, 'My father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.' And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping.

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And he said to Peter, 'So could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.' Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed,

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'My father, if this cannot pass until I drink it, thy will be done.' And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words.

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Then he came to the disciples and said to them, 'Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.'

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And while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and the elders of the temple. And may the same God who inspired these words

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incline our hearts to their understanding. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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During the Second World War, the forces of Nazi Germany attempted to block the entrance to the harbor at Eritrea in Africa with large barges filled with concrete, and then pushed down underwater until they rested on the bottom of the sea

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at the very mouth of the harbor. When the Allies captured the area, they faced the very serious and complex engineering problem of how to lift those great concrete-filled barges from the deep and sucking muds of the sea bottom

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in order to bring them to the surface and remove them so that the harbor could be used. Our engineers managed to solve the problem in this way. They took some gasoline tanks, not the gasoline tank of an automobile, but those great huge gasoline tanks that you see near refineries,

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each one of them larger than many houses. They took these huge tanks and sealed them so they were airtight and would float. Then when the tide was out, they set them afloat above the barges and fastened chains from these floating tanks to the barges below.

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When the tide came in, the buoyant tanks went up with the tide, and the chains pulled up the barges below from the sea floor, where they could be handled and removed. They chained the barges to the tanks.

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They chained the tanks to the tide. They chained the tide to the moon with its mysterious effect upon the tide. They chained the moon to the cosmos. And all of this power, all of this drive, immense, indescribable, did the job.

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Now it is this awesome power of the tide that led William Shakespeare to some of his finest lines. In the play Julius Caesar, Act 4, Brutus is giving some words of counsel to Cassius. This is what he says. "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

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but omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries. On such a full sea we are now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." What Shakespeare is saying through the lips of Brutus is this. There are mighty tides that move through the affairs of men.

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If one can catch the tide, if one can move with the tide, if one can throw himself into the flood, when the flood is full, one will be carried on to success in one's ventures. But if you miss the tide, then you are left, as Shakespeare says, in shallows and in misery. In a single sentence, the message is this.

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Learn to ride the tides, to capture the great moving opportunities which are part of your life. Now tonight I would ask you to come with me to a lonely garden outside the ancient and sleeping city of Jerusalem. We go down the hill through St. Stephen's Gate, we cross the Brook Tidran, and into Gethsemane. We are fully thirty-five miles from the sea, and yet great tides are flowing through this garden this night.

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Jesus has come here with his disciples following what we now call the Last Supper. He is caught up in the raging torrent of the will of God, and the cross is just ahead. And he wants to go to his Father to see if there is any way in which the mission can be accomplished without the cross. Now Jesus ordinarily prayed alone, but in the midst of the agony of this moment,

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when all the tides of human history are flowing through the channel of his one great heart, he does not want to be alone. And so he takes eleven of the disciples, Judas has already gone to betray him, with him to the garden. He leaves eight at the gate, and then going into a remote glade, he takes the three disciples who were closest to him,

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Peter, James, and John, and says to them, "Watch with me, and pray with me." And then he goes off and beseeches his Father that this cup might pass from him. "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done." And caught up in all the tension of this prayer, he turns aside for a moment to be encouraged by the disciples,

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but when he returns, he finds they are asleep. "Waken," he says, "could you not watch and pray with me for one hour? Your spirits are willing, but your flesh is weak. Pray, lest you enter into temptation." And then turning again, he goes to prayer and prays the self-same prayer,

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and returning once again for encouragement and support, yet again finds them asleep. And now, despairing of finding any help from them, Jesus goes off and prays once again. He prays with such agony of spirit that his sweat comes like great drops of blood and falls as a kind of crimson rosary at his feet. His prayer is interrupted by the sound of coming troops.

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Their torches shine like fireflies through the olive leaves. And so going to his disciples, he says, "Rise, the hour of my betrayal is at hand. Judas is here." And moments later, he is taken away, and the garden becomes silent.

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Only the sound of the disciples, hiding amongst the bushes, weeping. Because, you see, they've missed the tide. First of all, they missed the tide of growth in character. Every one of us needs to grow in character.

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There is no person within sound of my voice tonight, and no person who will ever hear the tape of these words, no matter how far in the future that might be, there is no one of us, least of all the one who speaks, who does not need to grow in character. We need to feed our character, to strengthen our character, to encourage our character, to nourish our character.

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A few days ago, I sat and talked with four fine young men from the Word of God, a Christian community located near Ann Arbor, Michigan. And one of them, a lad named Andy, said to me, in a very sad way, "I lament at the loss of character which we see in our time."

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And what I said to him in reply to that, I say to you tonight, in a society where behavioral psychology has so much influence, and where we are taught that in fact we cannot make our decisions, but that they are made for us by our environment, and in a society where there is no common respect for any moral standard that has about it any worth whatever,

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and in a society where the pseudo-sophisticated laugh at morality whenever it reveals itself, in such a society it should not come as any surprise that there are so many who are so weak in character. We need to grow in character. But we also need to learn that one cannot always grow in character. There are moments, there are times, there are tides which encourage us in growth in character,

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but there are other moments when such growth is virtually impossible. In my first pastorate, I labored in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. There are many great steel mills there, and McKeesport is famous the world over for its production of pipe, pipe that has no seam.

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And I stood many times in the great machines that make that pipe in the control booth. They call it, interestingly enough, the pulpit of the machine. And you watch that metal come like some great golden sparkling snake, and it squirms and surges out of the furnaces down into the machine,

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and then it is cut off, and then it is spun at a very great speed, and by centrifugal force it opens from the center out and becomes a perfect pipe without seam or blemish. And I've been told by the men who operate that machine that the most important ingredient in the whole process is this. It will only work when the metal is at precisely the right temperature.

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If it is allowed to cool even a few degrees, it will not be successful. And there are molten moments in character development. There are times when we can be molded and changed and grown. But there are times when we can develop and climb higher.

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And when those tides come, we must be ready to catch them. There in Gethsemane that night, Jesus was demonstrating to the disciples strength of character, purpose and goal. He wrestles with His Father in prayer and yet prays again and again, "Not My will but Thine be done." He was showing that pain and despair can be best defeated not by resenting them, but by accepting them and triumphing over them.

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What an example! You know how it is when you see some person, some person who's known some crushing blow or hardship, some person who is handicapped in life, and you see them rise above that handicap. You see them do great things in spite of it.

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That thrills your soul when you see it. And that's the kind of thrill of soul that they could have had that night. But they slept. They missed the tides.

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Matthias Grunewald, the great German painter, is best known for his representation of the crucifixion. It was painted when the Black Plague was surging across Europe. It hangs in St. Anthony's Hospice. Now the monks of St. Anthony were those who went out and tried to minister to those dying of the plague.

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One of the most horrible manifestations of that plague was that the legs would swell and putrefy while death had still not come. It was very painful. And they would bring those who were dying or those who were very near death into the hospice. And they would place these poor, pathetic creatures before the great painting of the crucifixion by Matthias Grunewald.

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And they would place them there because when Grunewald painted his picture of Christ, he painted him as if he had the plague, green and black with swollen legs, a dead Christ against a dead sky and a dead sea. And not everyone who was brought in was even well enough to see.

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But those who could see could think to themselves, "If Christ could die as I am dying, and out of that death God could make victory and triumph, then out of my dying God can do the same." Their character was strengthened. Courage was infused by looking upon Jesus. That's what the disciples could have known.

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You see, there are moments in our lives when we are open to character development, moments of our own suffering, moments when someone who loves us has died, moments when there's some mysterious urge that rises within us, moments when stern conscience points a finger at us,

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moments when an example is held before us, a word of Scripture, a sermon, the words of some preacher, perhaps this preacher, perhaps these very words. The tides are flowing. Henry Kissinger said, "Opportunities cannot be hoarded.

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Once passed, they are irretrievable." And the disciples slept. Don't miss the tide. Jesus said, and we should hear his words tonight,

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"Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation. Your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak." Watch and pray. Don't miss the tide. Then also, the disciples that night missed the tide of growth as the children of God.

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You can light a match any time you want to. You can ignite a candle whenever you wish. You can set a bonfire whenever it is your desire so to do. But the fire of the Holy Spirit, the igniting fire of the Spirit of God,

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no man has the power to light that. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is like fire and like the wind that blows where it will. It comes and goes according to its own desire. Well, there in Gethsemane that night,

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the fiery breath of the Holy Spirit of God was all about. And the disciples slept. You notice in the story that when Jesus came the second time and found them sleeping, this time he did not bother to waken them.

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He offered no word of counsel and direction. And I find that fact very chilling. It is as if, "I have wakened you once, but I shall not waken you again. And the Spirit is abroad and you will miss it."

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I think of this, I think of our space shots. We recently spent a space vehicle out to explore Jupiter. And it has been on its way for days and days and weeks and months. And it came to Jupiter and took and sent back the most remarkable pictures of Jupiter that we have ever seen.

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And now it has gone beyond that planet and continues every day getting farther and farther away from Jupiter. We are like that. We go through life and we come closer and closer and closer to Jesus, day by day and week by week.

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And then there comes some time when we are in closer approximation to him than in any other moment. And after that moment is past, the distance between him and us becomes wider and wider and wider. And so many of us sleep so we do not recognize the moment when it is ours. David Brainerd, the great missionary to the American Indians, wants witness to achieve.

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And sought to bring him to Christ. And the chief heard all that he had to say and asked good questions, but he would not make any decision. He would not resolve the issue, he would not wake him. And finally in a sense of urgency, Brainerd jumped up and took a stick and drew a circle about the chief and the soft earth.

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And he said, "Decide before you cross that line." Now why this sense of urgency? Because Brainerd realized that at that moment the spirit was blowing through the life of this chief. The fire of God was all about.

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And if he missed that moment, he might never have the opportunity to reclaim it again. If the walls of this building could speak, if every stone had lips, and if these oak beams could join in some kind of chorus, they would say to us tonight that hundreds and thousands of students have sat where you are now sitting.

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And the whisper of the Holy Spirit of God was all about them. And they were, as the Bible says, not far from the kingdom of God. And they got up and they went out asleep and missed the tide. Never to have the opportunity to claim it again.

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Please turn your cassette to the other side. Some ten years ago in California, a telephone rang at 2.30 one morning. I answered. It was a long pause. I said, "Hello? No voice." "When someone calls at that hour of the night, you know that it's some matter of urgency and so you wait."

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I waited. And finally a masculine voice said, "Can I see you at 8.30 tomorrow morning?" And I said, "What's your name?" And he told me. And he said, "Can I see you at 8.30 tomorrow morning?"

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And I said, "Yes, I'll be in my office." And at 8.30 the next morning, he came, a businessman. He was in Glendale to attend a conference. He'd come in a day early.

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On a beautiful Sunday evening, he went out for a stroll and he happened to walk past our church. It was a very imposing red brick structure, caught as much by the architecture as anything else. And seeing worshippers going in for the evening service, he entered. He was quite surprised to find that many people at church on a Sunday evening.

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He didn't think people went to church on Sunday evening anymore. He hadn't been inside a church for 15 or 20 years, he told me. He found a seat over in the corner, let himself get caught up in the spirit and the movement of the service. I preached that night about accepting Jesus Christ as Lord.

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He said there was nothing about the servant that struck him, except the fact that I said it as if I believed it, and my illustrations were out of today. When the service was over, he left and went back to the Golden Key Motel where he was staying, watched television for a while, and went to bed. Sometime after 2 o'clock in the morning, he wakened. There was moving through his mind a consciousness of the sermon that had been preached.

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On the table beside him was the bulletin from the service. He picked it up and read through the bulletin, reliving each part of the service. My name and telephone number were there. A sense of urgency was on him that if he did not at that moment reach out and claim what had been offered, he would never have the opportunity to do it again.

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So he picked up the telephone and he called me and he said that as he heard the telephone ring, each time it rang, he prayed, "Be there, be there, be there." And when I answered, he said it was as if a great weight rolled off his shoulders. He said, "I'm not a particularly sinful man. It's just that my life has no power and no joy, no zest, no enthusiasm." He realized, of course, that these things were true of him because he was a sinner, and because he was desperately in need of that salvation which is to be found in Jesus Christ.

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But there, that morning, this man who responded to the tide when it came, was changed. And in the short life which was left to him, and he died at a very early age just a few years later, he was different because he caught the tide. Satan once stood in the center of hell and with the scepter of wickedness called out all the agents of evil. "Which one of you," he said, "will go to earth and aid men in the ruin of their souls?"

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And one shade slithered forth and said, "I will go." And Satan said, "And what will you tell the children of men?" He said, "I shall tell men that there is no heaven." Satan said, "They will not believe you, for it is written in the heart of every man, 'Heaven and the hope of heaven.' You may not go." And another creature came forward and Satan said, "If you go, what will you tell the children of men?"

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And the shade replied, "I will tell men that there is no hell." And Satan said, "They will not believe you, for every man knows within himself that there must be a time of reward and judgment for everything under heaven and on the earth. You may not go." And now one last creature came from the darkest corner of that dark, dark place and he said, "I will go." And Satan said, "And what will you tell men?"

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And he said, "I will tell men that there is no hurry." And Satan said, "Go." And that spirit still moves abroad upon the earth. But there is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune and omitted all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and misery. It is time to hurry. It is time to wake up. You do not know if the tide will ever come again.

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The disciples had the opportunity to grow as the children of God. And they missed it, because they slept. And one last thing. They missed the tide of growth as the friends of Jesus.

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It is always good to have friends, but there is never a time when friends are so wonderful as when you are in trouble. The hammer of adversity has the way of welding friends together. I remember a year ago at this time, in the hospital I had developed a serious infection. I was told that I had to stay for thirty-five more days, and that was quite a blow. But it got worse.

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You remember what last winter was like. People could not get to the hospital. There was serious illness in my own family, so that my family could not get there. I was so heavily doped by the medication that I could not read, won tires of television very quickly. It was long, and the days went by at such a slow pace.

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But there were two friends, two students now graduated from this college, Faith Ivansic and Matt Thompson, who were there to see me almost every night, no matter what the snow, no matter what the circumstance. I shall never forget them. When you are in trouble, friends, friends, that's what you need, friends.

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And Jesus was in deep trouble, and so when he went off to Gethsemane, he took with him his friends, inviting them to watch and pray with him. And they fell asleep. When he came with his robe stained with the earth of that place, for it says he fell upon his face in an agony of prayer, there was no friend there to brush him off or to put the arm of encouragement about his shoulders. They slept.

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When he came later, his brow moist with sweat like blood, there was no one to wipe it away or to give to him the kiss of peace. They slept. When he came, caught up in a world of hurt and loneliness, there was no one to give him a word of encouragement or support. This Christ, who was the soul of compassion, who when he saw the hungry fed them,

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when he saw the lonely spent time with them, when he saw the ill healed them, this Christ, who when he saw people in need, saw them as sheep without a shepherd, and came to them as shepherds, this Christ, when he reached out for friends, they were asleep. Peter would go on to become the Prince of Apostles.

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James would go on to become the leader of the Church in Jerusalem. John would be given the great vision on the Isle of Patmos when he would see the very kingdom of heaven before him and would write the book of Revelation, which brings our Bible to such glorious close. Great honors would come to Peter and to James and to John, but you know,

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never in all their lives and in all of eternity were they able to say, "At the moment when our friend Jesus needed us the most, we were there to help." Never again did the tide of that opportunity come for them. I say to you tonight, February 4th, 1979, that there are friends who need you.

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There are loved ones who want your words and your acts of support and affection. There are those who are crying out to you, either aloud or in silence. I say that with certainty and I say this with certainty also, that on February 4th, 1980, some of those who call to you now will call to you no more.

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They will be gone. They will be gone finally in death or they will be gone from the circle of your friendship. They will be forever and forever beyond your reach. You will be surrounded by the grains of opportunities that came and were missed,

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by the sad echoes of voices that cried that you did not answer. Thirteen of our students have this very year lost parents since school began. No one of them expected this to be so. You see, the tide comes.

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You catch it when it is there or you spend the time wishing you had in shallows and in miseries. Last summer I got word that my most esteemed professor was dying in a Pittsburgh hospital. I called his doctor and found out that he had a few days. I had an engagement that night, but I felt I had to go.

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So I went down. When I walked into his room, one of his former students was already there. He looked up at me and said, "Feelman, old chap, you've come to help me die." That's good.

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We stayed with him for hours. He confessed his sins to us. He said, "I taught you in seminary and I taught you all wrong. I taught you about Christianity and I should have taught you about Jesus."

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He said, "At one point I'm taking my final examinations now and I couldn't even write my name on the paper if it weren't for Jesus." He talked about his wife and what a wonderful support she had been. He talked about how much more there was to do and how he wished he had more time to do it.

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He talked about a thousand things, every one of which is precious to my remembering. And then he said, "I'm going to go to sleep now. And when I awake, I may not be here." And he shook hands with us.

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He was uncomfortable. He'd slid down in bed. And I remember putting my arms about him and lifting him up and moving him up and thinking to myself, "How could one so great, so great, be caught up in a body so small and weak and frail?"

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And he closed his eyes. And I said to a nurse standing nearby, "I think you better step back from his bed." And she said, "Why?" And he looked at me with eyes open again and said, "Why?" I said, "Because when God comes for you, I think he's going to come like he came for Elijah

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in a fiery chariot, and I don't want her to be singed." And he laughed. And he took my hand. And he said, "God bless you for being here. And I love you very much."

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And he closed his eyes. And he went to sleep. And the tide took him away. But no matter what, no matter where, and no matter when,

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I will always have this memory, that at the moment when the tide came and he needed me, I was there. A preacher cannot come into the pulpit with any greater message than this,

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a concern for the souls of those to whom he preaches. Tonight I have spoken to you about character, which is the armor of the soul, and commitment, which is the salvation of the soul, and service, which is the function of the soul.

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And I have told you to catch the tide of these things while it is with you, today. Do not answer to me, "Tomorrow." Tomorrow is the word that the Bible does not know. If you can find one place in Scripture where the Holy Spirit of God says,

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"Tomorrow, I will leave this pulpit and never step into it again." Today is the word of the Spirit. "Now is the accepted time," He says. "Today, if you will hear my voice and harden not your heart," He says.

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"Now is the day of salvation," that's what He says. "Come while it is called today," that's what He says. Jesus Christ is saying, "Today." Don't answer tomorrow.

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Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, but lights the way for fools to dusty death. Come to Christ today. Grow in Christ today. Serve Christ in ministry to others today.

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Ride the full tides of the Spirit of God. Today. Tonight. Now.

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Now. Now. Let us pray. Spirit of God, descend upon our hearts.

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Wean them from earth through all their pulses move. Stoop to our weakness, mighty as thou art, and help us to love thee as we ought to love. Capture us on the tides of thy love.

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For Jesus' sake, for the whole world's sake, and for our own sake. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit the Comforter,

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be and abide with you both now and forevermore. you