By Gipsy Smith
Isaiah 53:1 -- "Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?"
The lasting effect on your heart will determine whether you are really and truly born again. I want to say a little more about that, but I want to tell you where that picture is really seen in the Scriptures. It is in the 53rd chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah.
"Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground."
A beautiful thing in an unlikely place. A glorious flower grown in poor soil, a root out of a dry ground.
"He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him."
And I want to say that to some of you this morning ,Jesus is not desirable. If He had been, you would have sought Him. There is nothing in Him to attract you. You know why, don't you? It is because your heart is hard and your eyes, your spiritual eyes, blind. As the Book says in another place, "You are blinded by the god of this world." You don't see Jesus, you know you can put a very small thing over your eyes and shut out the light of the sun, and you don't see any beauty in Jesus or attraction in Jesus. He does not interest you. There is no beauty in Him. You don't desire Him.
Listen! The first state of the natural heart where Christ is concerned is not desiring Him, and that is a desperate state. You are so dead that you don't realize what Jesus is. So dumb you don't hear what Jesus says.
So careless, so indifferent, so occupied with other things, the earthly and the perishable, that you don't see the eternal. So occupied with man and mankind that you don't see the Divine. The spiritual is dead and paralyzed that you don't see Jesus. You know you can stand near a beautiful flower and never behold it. You can stand close to a beautiful piece of music and never hear it. You can stand close to a beautiful painting and have no soul for it and no mind to perceive and conceive the glory and beauty of that canvas.
A lady, once looking at one of Turner's masterpieces, turned to the great artist and said, "Why, I really don't see anything in it." And he replied, "Don't you wish you could?" And there are some of you looking at Jesus that way but He does not interest you. You think of the cross, but it does not interest you. You think of the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, but it does not interest you. You think of life and death, but they do not interest you. You are so taken up with the trinkets of earth, the playthings of time, the things you can handle. Listen, no desire -- no desire for Jesus. Can this be the state of your soul? Oh, man, oh, woman immortal, this morning! No desire for the Son of God. And that's a description of you. There is no beauty that you should desire Him. Now, listen! You are not going to stay there. You are going to get worse or better.
If you don't get better, if you don't turn around and desire Jesus, you are going to despise Jesus. That's the next step. Listen! No desire! He is despised. And it is written down in God's book against you. You have positively witnessed by your own language. You did not desire Him, then you despised Him, and you won't stay there. You will reject Him. That's the third step. No desire for Him, despise Him and reject Him.
He is a man of sorrows and grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He is despised and we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs. Where are you? Where are you? Have you no desire for Jesus? If you have this morning, follow the desire.
Listen! If you have a desire for better things, a purer life, to walk with God, to do your duty as a Christian, to round out your life as in the light of God, and to have it count as fully for goodness and God -- that is the gift of the Holy Spirit. No real desire for good things springs from the heart that is at enmity against God. I say this to impress you with the fact that every thought or hope, or desire for a better life, is the inbreeding of the Holy Spirit into your heart and mine.
"There is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected." Have you got into the despised state? Did you say before you came to this service today, "I don't believe in this revival; I don't believe in this Gipsy Smith; I don't believe in this movement; but I will go and see it; I will just see what they are doing down there"? Is that your attitude this morning? That's the rejecter's attitude, and you had better been born .among the pigmies of darkest Africa than been born in a Christian land. Your Hell will be hotter than the people who never knew, and it ought to be. That's equity. For you will be judged not as those who never knew, but as those who did know and refused to obey. Where are you this morning?
Where are you? Listen to me! Will you put Jesus in your life, where He ought to be? If you do, lots of things will have to go out. If you do, you will stop going to some places you go to now. If Jesus is to be enthroned in your heart and life, you will stop doing some things that you have been doing and if Jesus Christ comes into your life, those things will stop.
Listen! Here is a little text to take home with you. "She that liveth in pleasure is dead, while she liveth." That's God's word. Don't forget that. And when Jesus comes into your life, my sister, my brother, you'll want to do what He wants, because you lose the desire for the other things. You won't want the world.
A society woman in one of your beautiful cities attended every one of my meetings some time ago. I saw her sitting there, night after night, and one night she sat close to me. When the meeting came to the place where the cards of decision were being signed, I held a card to her myself and said, "Won't you sign that for Jesus' sake?" And she looked up and her eyes filled with tears and she said, "Yes, yes, I will sign it for Jesus' sake." She did it, and the next morning she called me up on the phone and she said, "Can I come and see you?" I said "Yes." She came. She said in ten days from then she was to have a bridge party at her house. "What am I to do about it? Am I to call it off?" I said, "No, it is too good an opportunity. Don't you call it off." I said, "Let them all come, and give them the best meal that you gave at any party in your life, and when you have given them your meal, then tell them of your conversion. I will pray for you." She said, "Good, I will do that."
She came to see me again before the party came off. When I met her in the room I said, "How are you this morning?" She said, "Sky high; they are all coming. They don't know what they are coming for, but they are all coming."
That day was Tuesday. I was preaching and I was praying for that woman, and those society people assembled, and the next morning before I went down to breakfast my phone rang, and when she said, "Do you know who it is?" I said, "Yes, Sky High." And I said, "How are you?" and she answered, "Sky higher." She said, "I told those people Jesus had saved me and they put their arms around me, and expressed the wish that they might possess the same courage."
People know when they meet those who are real. They know and they admire the man or woman who takes the stand with Jesus Christ. That's the secret of the heart of the man and the woman who follows Christ.
You look at that dear Christ, as He hangs there, bleeding for you, dying for you, and you'll hear Him say, "I suffered this for you. I gave my life for you. What hast thou given me? What hast thou done for me?"
Listen! After all, what are the perishing things of earth compared with the things of eternity? "Be gone, vain world, thou hast no charm for me." And I tell you this morning that the world with all its glitter, with all its pomp and with all its pride is empty. It is empty, and if all of it were laid at my feet without Jesus, my life would be worthless without Him, absolutely worthless, and I don't know where I would go to hide myself or lay my tired head or my heart if I had not Christ.
I don't know what I would do if I had not Jesus. The world -- I am spoiled for the world. I have sounded its depths. I have tried to scale its heights, and I want to say to you this morning, after traveling the world and touching five continents, and looking into the faces of more people than any living man, Jesus for me! And life would be worthless without Him, and I don't know how to exist without Christ. Take Him into your life this morning. Take Him into your heart this morning. Open the door; let Him in.
A lady friend Of mine who has a lovely little boy, took him to see Holman Hunt's great picture, "The Light of the World," and she described the picture to that child's mind as well as she could: Jesus standing there with a latch in His hand, knocking at the door. She then said, "You know, darling, Jesus is trying to get in there, and the people behind it must lift the latch, and He cannot get in until the people behind the door lift the latch and then open the door. That's what he's waiting for. One of these days Jesus will knock at your door like that, and when He knocks you'll let Him in, won't you? You will open the door and let Him into your heart." And the child answered: "Mother dear, I have never closed the door against Him."
Oh! If we could all say that. I will never close the door against Him. Listen, men and women, aren't you ashamed of yourselves this morning to think of the times you closed the door in His dear face? Don't you loathe yourselves this morning that you ever closed the door in His face? I could weep for you. Oh! I do thank God I let Him into my heart when I was a boy, and I have never dosed the door against Him. God help you to let Him in this morning.
