By Gipsy Smith
Sermonette #1
Then shall they also answer Him, saying, Lord when saw we Thee a hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. -- Matthew 25:44-45
The first thing a convert to Christianity thinks of is the other fellow. How often have I seen people at a revival fall on their knees and call out, "Pray for my mother," "Pray for my sister," or "Pray for my husband."
Why, if the Christian spirit should gain a stronger hold, there would even be fewer automobile accidents. People would never forget the rights of others. The man who takes his pleasure or profit at the expense of others is committing a great wrong. No one has any business hiring actors or other performers to risk their lives or their souls for his amusement.
Self becomes to the Christian a foreign thing. He thinks of others at all times. Who saves his life shall lose it. I am most truly my own when I have given every vestige of myself. I am most truly alive when willing to die for others.
In the 91st Psalm you will find in one verse: "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust." In the next verse the psalmist expresses the idea, "I'm safe, you may be saved, too," in these words: "Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence."
The selfish life does not think of anybody. When one becomes a Christian, self goes with the last road. We save our soul in saving others. It is not the question if that man out there will be saved if I do not go to him, but the question is, Will I be saved if I don't? Socrates said, "Know thyself." Jesus said, "Deny thyself."
The real Christian studies large maps; he can't help it. It is a big thing to be a Christian. It requires big thinking and big living. And it is possible to any man of strong will or strong faith.
Sermonette #2
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Isaiah 55:12.
Religion is never a killjoy. All God means to kill is the ugly, the mean, and the sinful.
Yet many think the sadder they are, the safer. They go around with faces as long as a wet week. But sanctimoniousness is not sanctity.
There is more religion in a hearty laugh than in a grouch. Let there be more joy and less jaw.
I remember seeing in a religious weekly in England a few years ago an advertisement by a lady and a gentleman who were going to take a trip around the world. She wanted to engage a companion, "Christian woman preferred, but she must be joyful."
Can you imagine anything more ironical than this -- and the sadness of it. One chief characteristic of a true Christian is happiness, smiles, laughter. "The joy of the Lord is your strength," and "Then was our mouth filled with laughter."
There are far too many briars and thorns in this life. People don't draw close enough together for fear of getting scratched. What religion is meant to do is to take: the scratch out of us. Less briars, more roses, more violets, lilies of the valley and perfume of the beauty of the Lord.
I say this in spite of the fact that I know that there is no real Christian life without its sorrows and its suffering. Through my life God means to bring refreshment and inspiration to those about me. After the storm we see the rainbow of hope, and He takes the sorrow out of the heart by removing the curse of sin.
Religion was never meant to make an undertaker weep. Let there be joy!
Sermonette #3
Modern man is very clever, and no doubt some of his achievements would seem supernatural to the primitive people of the past. There is danger, of course, that in their pride over brilliant inventions or remarkable discoveries, some people today should forget the one behind these scientific wonders.
It would be possible for an uneducated race to confuse an aviator for an angel.
Some educated people, in much the same way, may consider that they have conquered divine laws and freed themselves from dependence on any power except that within themselves. But the foundations were not laid by man.
The possibilities for inventions existed long before man suddenly stumbled upon something illumined by God.
Who put the coal, the iron, the copper and all the minerals beneath the earth for man to mine? It was God, making wise provisions for man's need.
The airplane can't stay up, but must come down. There are limits to all the powers of man. Once in a while in my country, one comes upon a road across a private estate, which is open to the public except on one day each year.
On that one day the owner bars the: way in order that his ownership, may not be forgotten. Once in a while God puts the chains across.
Man can harness the forces of nature; he can hardly be said to master them, but only to work with them. He can invent machinery, but he did not invent the materials.
With all his cleverness, he can't invent anything to heal a broken heart, kiss a tear into a jewel, mend a broken life or take the burden of misery from a guilty soul.
I know something that will do that, for all who come unto God through Him whose name is Jesus.
Sermonette #4
The arena of woman's toil is in public places today, but she can still be as close to the angels as ever.
Instead of finding work at home many are forced to enter offices, mills, shops, banks, warehouses and almost every conceivable line of trade.
Every one likes to see a woman remain a woman, and whether she is strong as a mountain or fresh as a rose, she can still hold her true place.
While she has more freedom, equality and higher education, we still ought to remember that she is a woman.
The memory of mother, sister and wife ought to force upon the mind of every man who associates with a woman in a business way, that she is entitled to the same consideration as his own womenfolk.
The desire to have one's own children treated well ought to lead every employer to treat those who serve him in the same way.
On the other hand, woman ought not expose herself to or expect any other treatment. She should check immediately any word or action that trespasses on virtue.
If a woman is true to herself and to her sisters, and, mind you, she has only to be true and every man will respect her, she can command any treatment she really wants. Lots of beautiful things come to us if we are only good, honest, pure and true.
I cannot imagine Mary, the mother of our Lord, with skirts too short, wearing bobbed hair, smoking or drinking.
I believe a woman has as much right to smoke as a man, but I can't imagine Mary doing it.
When I see a woman smoke it hurts me, way down deep, and I believe it hurts other men, too.
The Bible is the foundation of woman's rights, but further than that Christianity has taught men to reverence women.
It is among the idle rich that the most liberties are now being taken. The morale of women workers is, on the whole, sound.
And to all women I would say, think long and hard before you throw away any of your title to the respectful admiration of men.
God meant woman to be a mother -- the sort of mother to whom her children can look up, and upon whom in years to come they will look back with a love and understanding that influences their whole attitude toward the sex.
Sermonette #5
Whichever way one turns, unrest, confusion, chaos and wild passions possess the breasts of multitudes. Jealousy, hatred and envy are reigning supreme in the minds of men.
We read in the scriptures of one person who had seven devils in her, and one man had enough in him to drown two thousand hogs when they were cast out of him. Nations are like that, and they can be saved only by casting out the devils.
As we look across the face of the globe today and see the conflict as manifested, what is there beneath all that we don't see? What about the inward rumblings that only ears divine listen to, and the seething unrest which the human eye cannot detect?
But, ah, every honest, intelligent man knows just a little about it if he will look within his own poor, distracted heart.
And as I sit here this morning and think of these things, I cannot help but ask who is sufficient to the task? Is there anybody that can step in amidst the dark confusion and world misery and still its storm and hush its tempests?
And my heart leaps up with a great bound, saying, "Yes, Jesus, who stood on the Galilean lake and lifted His hand amidst the tempest and said, 'Peace, be still,' and the wind and waves obeyed and crept away in silence to lick His feet."
If the world would but invite Him to enter its life and its sorrows, He would come and point a way out. He would bring peace because He would still the storm of sin, That's the cause of all the confusion and strife.
Wherever Jesus is listened to, obeyed and enthroned, men become as brothers. What is true of individuals, homes, hamlets and cities, is true also of nations and would be true of the world, and it only needs to be given a trial. Peace doesn't follow the munition train; it follows in the wake of the Prince of Peace. That's the way to brotherhood.
Sermonette #6
We stand today nineteen centuries nearer to Christ. Instead of the figure on the cross growing dimmer, it is clearer now than in those first days. People then saw Him at close range, defeated, frustrated, and apparently conquered; misjudged, lied about, persecuted and condemned to all the cruelties of a common soldiers' barracks; finally hanged like a felon between two thieves.
How could they reconcile these experiences with the words uttered only a few hours before: "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world"?
To multitudes of people in those days Jesus must have seemed a contradiction. All that arose "because they were slow of heart to believe the Scriptures."
But we are standing in the nineteenth century, and we look back and know. The evidence of the centuries is the triumph of Christ and His cross.
All the good in the world, all the uplift, all the love, all righteous sentiment, every benevolent institution, every soothing influence which makes the sorrows of the world easier to bear and the burdens lighter, have resulted from Christ's coming and Christ's loving presence.
There are multitudes who see grief thus wiped away from sorrow's face, and who realize that the world is steadily growing better, yet do not connect these things with Christ. These are his direct fruits. It can still be said that He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
As the apostle said, "We love because He first loved us." The love of God in Christ is the inspiration of everything beautiful in this world.
Sermonette #7
Some one says that Christianity is all very fine, but that the trouble is that it has never been tried. In a large way this is true: God has never been given a fair chance.
Take the Sermon on the Mount. Suppose every man and woman in Omaha just took that to heart for twenty-four hours, and said nothing and did nothing in deed or thought which they could not reconcile or harmonize with the teachings to which Jesus Christ gave utterance in that wonderful sermon.
Can anybody in the wildest flight of imagination estimate what would happen? Why, you couldn't put it into words. Any vocabulary would be absolutely worthless to describe what changes would come about in a single day if the Sermon on the Mount were to be practiced. And no one would want to go back to the old sinful ways, for there is more happiness in doing right.
The nearest I can come to expressing it is to say that heaven would have come to earth. And that's what Jesus Christ came to do, to teach men and women to live on earth as they would in heaven. This is the meaning of His great prayer, "Thy will be done. on earth as it is in heaven."
But some will say, "How is this to be done?" My answer is simple. Christ's words and will can only be fulfilled by me, a human being, as I honestly seek to understand the Christian spirit.
Men boast of the Golden Rule. They'll never understand or be able to practice the Golden Rule until they are born again into the spirit of the nature of Him who taught it. "The letter alone killeth. It is the spirit which giveth life."
The simple reason it is not practiced is that men are dominated by self. But Christ did not come for self, but to give Himself.
What this world needs is thorough-going Christians. It does no good to tinker. We've got to start with the whole man, not at the finger tips, but deep within the heart.
The thought I wish to leave is that irreligion, which is responsible for the misery of the world, is not a skin complaint.
Sermonette #8
I read the other day of a cashier who embezzled $11,000 in order to have the means to shine in the eyes of the woman he was wooing. A woman who would lead a man thus to live beyond his means is as bad as the man. Even in these days of shallow morality and false values, it is plain to all that no such marriage could be a success.
What sort of woman makes a good wife? First of all she must be not only lover, but friend. When the glamour of the honeymoon has worn away, she must be his companion and in the day of stress and strain, an anchor and a source of strength and inspiration. Blessed is she, who, if storms arise, will be strong enough and true enough to say to her husband, "I have shared your joys, I am here to share your troubles."
And if health and wealth and friends be gone, if she is the kind of girl to make a man happy, she will put her arms about his neck, look into his face and say, "Darling, though everything is gone, you've got me. I'm here to stay. You took me for better or for worse, and I am not the kind to forsake you or show less love simply because ill fortune has overtaken you."
That's the kind of a wife a wise man wants, and she is to be found.
A pretty character will outshine a pretty face. Assuming the fellow is worthy -- what he ought to be, clean, straight, pure -- he deserves something more than a butterfly or a model for smart clothes. If he is not, he ought not to demand the love of a sweet, pure girl. Let him marry one of his own kind. A man can't expect more of a girl than he is prepared to. give. Home training, a mother's influence, Sunday School and Church, all influences for eternal right, are required in the blood and bone to make this kind of a woman, as well as a real man. Only the religion of Jesus Christ can produce noble, pure and strong men and women.
I think of what Solomon well said: "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing." He tried many, but he was thinking of the kind of wife I've been describing. The best wife is she who is a good chum to her husband, a pure mother to her children and a builder of home.
Sermonette #9
Love God, love the world.
Trouble came into the world with disobedience to God. Then man began to choose his own way, and sowed the seeds which have brought forth the harvest of alienation from God and separation from our brothers. This means discord, bitterness and strife.
Apart from God the heart of man grows worse. Instead of love for God and man, the tendency is for rebellion against God and hatred of one another. God's program of redemption is to correct all that.
The divine purpose does not merely take in this man or that little group, but the whole of human kind. He wills that men should brothers be, the wide world o'er;
This is to come about by saving man from sin. God deals with causes. He is seeking to get rid of the thing that is eating the life out of the body politic. When that's gone there will be love for God and love for our fellowmen.
There will be no room in the heart for doing my brother. The Golden Rule will be the order of the day. Rightness and righteousness will cover the earth, as waters cover the deep. God's purpose is not a trickle, it's an ocean. As the angels sang, "Peace on earth, good will to man."
Socially, economically and universally, there is work for all. There is bread enough and to spare. But all must be willing to take their just share for the common good. There must be no idlers, no one living the selfish life, but all with the open hand and the ever ready heart. There is a place for all who are born into this world, in work, service and reward.
God put enough food on the earth for every bird, but they have to scratch for it.
Sermonette #10
Brush the dust off your Bible. Half the sorrows of the world come about because people don't read their Bible. They simply don't know and can't understand the great truths it contains.
Every one likes to hear a secret, and the divine confidences and revelations are fascinating from every point of view.
Jesus once said to the people, "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."
In that wonderful walk which He had with His disciples to Emmaus, after the resurrection, He said, after they had expressed their unbelief: "Oh, fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?" The next verse tells us much: "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself."
These two men, after it was all over, said: "Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us by the way?" Now, then, all He had done was to make the Scriptures live.
Many really good people, anxious to do what's right, fall into all kinds of blunders and some are led away by popular heresies which are easy to the flesh, simply because they don't read and ponder and inwardly digest the living, abiding words of the Lord.
The greatest among writers and statesmen have been devoted readers of the Bible. The works Of Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, Emerson and all the classic writers are saturated with Scriptural phrases. In world politics it is the same. What strengthened Lincoln, John Bright and William Gladstone and gave them their powers of expression but knowledge of the Word of God?
Jesus, when only twelve years old, sat among the doctors of thought and literature, and He sits there today, while the greatest masters bow in His presence.
If we only will read our Bible and listen to its echo within us, we will not fail to bow to righteousness, take off our hats to truth, and like Moses, our shoes as well, feeling that we are standing on holy ground.
Sermonette #11
When people get the real thing, they will show as much enthusiasm over their religion as their sports.
Pleasure is a passing scene, gone in an hour. Faith will outlive the stars. I prefer to hitch my life to eternity.
Almost $1,000,000 was spent for seats at the world series base ball games. Another $1,000,000 was spent for a prize fight. If men of the world value their enjoyment so highly, what ought Christian men and women to do in return for the highest joy that life can hold?
Nothing in the world so arouses my enthusiasm as my religion; no thrill can equal that of seeing a man turn his face from sin. What can any one see in a foot ball or base ball game every day? I can understand enjoying it once a week, and I like a game of golf once in a while myself, but kicking, throwing or chasing a ball is far from being the chief end of man.
The cry of a heart in hunger and despair for new life through Jesus Christ excites me as nothing else can do.
Where a man works just for things he can see and handle, for the superficial pleasures of earth, he has nothing for the storm. When the cyclone of trouble strikes, where is he to find shelter? When health gives way, when riches take wings and fly off and sorrows come, what is left for him? Nothing but darkness.
The man who loves God and has made a friend of Jesus Christ seeks to have him in all his pleasures. Then in an evil day, he finds he has a friend that sticks closer than a brother.
All this comes under the Master's great words, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven."
God is whispering to the inner consciousness, "I will not leave thee; I am thy God, even forevermore."
The man who finds his joy in righteous doing is investing for eternity.
Sermonette #12
The heart of man is naturally proud. He objects to be called or thought a spiritual pauper. He doesn't like to admit himself a beggar at the gate of mercy, and yet that is exactly the position all have got to come to.
As the prophet says: "All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way." And Paul said later, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
The average man and woman is quite prepared to confess the other fellow is a sinner, who must repent and turn to God. But it is the feeling of deep conviction in my own heart that I have sinned and that I am a rebel against God that is absolutely necessary.
Jesus has nothing to say and nothing to do for the self-righteous, He came for sinners. When a man feels his sin and how undone it has made him, he will be ready to call for the doctor who can cure his disease.
He will then be ready to confess his sin openly, if necessary, before the world, in order that pardon and cleansing may be his, and healing come to the wounds which sin has caused.
No conventions, no pride, real or false, and no shame will he allow to stand between him and the only source which can give him relief. He must confess openly -- and what is more, he desires to do it, when he gets to the place where he wishes sincerely to be healed and saved.
If, perchance, he fell on his knees in his own bedroom and made full surrender to God and trusted Him for salvation and received it, do you suppose he could keep silent about it? The very joy of it would send him out, and he would want everybody to know of the Lord's mercy.
This is the method of the working of His grace. Remember that Jesus said: "Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven."
Sermonette #13
We've only one life in this world and if we play the fool with it we have to answer somewhere and to somebody. If a man wastes his physical energies and destroys his health by his own sin, then all the doctors will tell him that he must stand before the judgment bar of health. Nature and the physical laws, whether we like them or not, always present their bill for payment.
Too often youth does not realize the value of life and the wisdom of living it as it should be done. Their need is not to prepare for death, but for showing a life approved by God.
What will help youth to live the best life -- the kind that brings satisfaction to the conscience and pride to mothers and fathers? Just one thing -- the religion of Jesus Christ.
And though youth may sometimes sneer and assume an attitude of skepticism, saying that religion is played out, the mightiest men and minds of this and past generations will all tell you that Jesus Christ and His message of love to the world is the only cure for the ills of the world, and the only power which comes into human life and stills its storms and gives peace.
Ask Sir James Simpson, the great discoverer of chloroform, to tell you what was the greatest discovery he ever made. He will answer, as he did to this very question put to him, "That I have a Savior." Ask Sir Oliver Lodge, the greatest living scientist, and he will say that, although an agnostic in his younger days, by sheer scientific research he was driven at the end to belief in Jesus Christ as the one real power and Savior of the world.
William Ewart Gladstone told the world that after all his experience as a statesman, all his thinking and reading, that he had come to the conclusion that all men had to receive Jesus Christ as a little child. These are only samples of the greatest minds in history. If these colossal brains could accept the teachings of Jesus Christ and believe Him the Savior of all men, surely where these could afford to tread, we may follow and find pardon for sin and strength for right.
Sermonette #14
No one should ever be able to say of any woman, "She made it easy for a man to do wrong." God never made a woman thus, to pull men down, but to be companion, wife, mother, friend and inspiration at all times.
I suppose you would call Herodias and her daughter, Salome, "vamps" today.
She danced Herod into the pit of perdition, and danced the head of John the Baptist off. Her whole life was given over to evil, self-indulgence and voluptuous pleasure. It ended in the ruin of the king and the disgrace of his court, the degradation of her own child and a place in Bible history as the cruel murderess of the forerunner and cousin of Christ.
Another example of a vampire woman is Drusilla, the mate of Felix, who left her first husband to live with the governor. When the Apostle Paul stood before the pair, he spoke pointedly of morality and future punishment. The governor trembled, but Drusilla was unabashed.
Just as it is possible for women to soar to heights unreached by men, so is it possible for women to fall farther than any man, once they start downward.
It is within the power of women to make the world anew. They can inspire the noblest instincts of men, and ought to do nothing through their general deportment and manner of dress that would lower the respect in which they are held.
The erring woman of the Bible who is best known is Mary Magdalene. 'She saw the folly and error of her ways and in penitence of tears sought the feet of Jesus. Looking into her heart, and knowing she was penitent, Jesus said: "Thy sins are forgiven." Oh, the love which forgets the sin and remembers the sinner, in mercy and compassion. That is the Christianity I am preaching today.
Sermonette #15
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.
That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. -- Romans viii. 3:4.
If you get your heart right, you will want your body to be right, too. We can't purify the well by painting the bucket. That is why it is a mistake to spend so much time tinkering with externals instead of dealing with the real, basic things.
There is a savage race in the Orient whose women wear seventeen skirts, but that does not make them Christians, or even moral.
As I said in my sermon the other night, "Let your heart dictate, not your head."
Hazlitt, the English essayist, was right when he advised that in any question of moral or spiritual living, one who trusted his head alone was most likely to go wrong.
This isn't making religion a senseless, blind, foolish thing, for by letting the heart lead, the mind follows, and one comes to believe with all his mind, his strength and his soul.
I believe in setting up the New Testament standard of religion.
People are quick to accept this and say, "That's the thing I want; that's my mother's religion." Hearing the message in this way they don't shy off. The New Testament standard is "Ye must be born again." No man can live a new life with an old heart. He must be converted and become as a child. The new life demands a new heart.
We cannot keep the Ten Commandments as lawn they must become more of a personal contract with God. God is after the individual -- the last, the lost, the least.
Sermonette #16
There are some in this world who are debtors to the people, and the time comes when each of them must render an accounting.
Let it still be remembered that the Scriptures declare: "To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." So, some people are bigger sinners than they appear. The amount of my light determines the amount of my responsibility and the amount of my sin, if the light be not lived up to. If people sin in the face of light which shows them the right way, then their condemnation is all the greater.
The debtors of the people are its leaders. I wonder what would happen if the strongest men and women in the city would set the example of Christian living. I mean those strongest in an educational, financial and social way; those who are looked upon as the prominent ones in the city. If these will only conduct their lives with a clear conscience so they can take their stand and lead also in the spiritual world, what would happen?
No one can estimate the good that would be done if these pivotal people consecrated themselves to the service of Jesus Christ. After all, culture, money and breeding do count -- people look up to those fortunate enough to possess these qualities. And the holders should feel their responsibility to those less fortunate. For the God of Love who sits on the throne is also the God of Justice.
Some day He's coming back to this old earth, and Jesus is coming, coming back to claim His own. He will ask what the man of culture did with his learning, what the man of wealth did with his riches, what those of social position did with their opportunities and powers. We'll all have to render an accounting. Some day we'll find out that we are to be judged, not only for what we have done, not only for breaking the moral law, but for the things we might have done if we had been less selfish and less interested in the aggrandizement to be gotten out of our privilege.
Jesus once borrowed a man's fishing boat, and from that old fish-smelling boat preached a sermon to the hungry multitude. That boat was Simon's business, his daily avocation. And Jesus is saying to the man of culture: "Let me help you spread the knowledge that will save the world;" to the man of wealth: "Let me help make your dollars honestly and then spend them for the kingdom of righteousness;" and to the man and woman of society: "Let me come into your homes and leaven your program of entertainment, so that every flower, every note of music, the spread table and the evening of fellowship will show my presence." Let your every deed shine so that your friends will say, "This man and this woman have been with Jesus, and learned of Him."
Sermonette #17
Jesus thought less of property rights than of human rights. For all that, he did not preach that it was a sin to be rich. He was not interested in how much wealth a man had, but how he got it and what he did with it.
The great Master knew what He was saying when He uttered those arresting words, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom." Following that He said: "It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Of course, you know that the needle's eye was the inner gate of the city, to enter which the camels had to get down on their knees.
When prosperity becomes a god, men live only for making profits and satisfying their desires. In another place it is written, "If riches increase, set not thy heart upon them." We are also told that the love of money is the root of all evil. Jesus Christ when saying that it was hard for the rich to enter heaven was teaching the great fact that the rich have greater temptations to self-indulgence, to extravagance, to outward display and to dissipation than have the ordinary run of men. The desire to outdo all others in the race and to go the other fellow one better helps men to forget God and the needs of their brothers.
Those who possess wealth are under terrific responsibility. Let them read the closing verses of the 25th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus consigns to punishment eternal those who possessed the ability to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and comfort the sick and those in prison. These people were rich enough to do, but were so taken up with fulfilling the lusts of the flesh that they did not think of any one but themselves.
The greed of men is never satisfied, and the more they get, the more they want, as if their hands were born clutching. As though stocks, bonds, skyscrapers, automobiles, fine clothes, fast company and expensive dinners were the main things in the world. They forget that these are the things that go first and that honors perish and decay. That's the way of the world.
The wisest of kings and the richest of men, after trying all that the human mind could think of or desire, before he left the world staggered amid his own misery of spirit, said, all was vanity and vexation. Put this alongside the words of Jesus to the people who left all to follow him, consecrating everything, such as it was, to the service of the Master and those for whom he died: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." (The world giveth excitement, he giveth peace.) "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
Sermonette #18
Paul said, "All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient." He was a big enough Christian and a big enough man to be willing to sacrifice even those things he liked, not only for the sake of Christ, but for the sake of his fellow men,
Hence he declared, "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings."
There we have self-denial for the sake of personal fellowship with God. Now hear him in his willingness to sacrifice his tastes and desires for the sake of the weak men and women around Him. And you hear these words, "If meat causeth my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore." That's the big spirit of Christianity.
I verily believe that I could do many things without sinning against God, or against my conscience. Some things I'm thinking of now I would enjoy doing. But what about the man who looks up to me, who hasn't my light and my point of view, and doesn't see as I see? Ought I to ignore him?
Should I not rather Consider his weakness? If I am stronger than he, should I not be willing to carry his burden -- him, too, if necessary -- in order that he may be saved?
I have no right as a Christian or as a man, either in public or private, to take my pleasures at the expense of another's ruin. This applies to all the walks of life, in business, in the home and everywhere.
We must apply the spirit of Jesus in all these matters, remembering that the apostle said of Him that even Christ pleased not Himself. Then he turns right around to me and says: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."
Sermonette #19
It has been said that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Next to the mother in influence comes the school teacher, whose task it is to train the mind of the future generation.
The teacher has the boy and girl under his or her influence in the formative, tender years, the impressionable years, when seeds are sown that bring forth the harvest. What the harvest will be, whether good or ill, depends on the home and the school.
What the children are taught in the first ten years of their school life largely forms the foundation on which they build their future. The structure can never stand unless it is built on a solid foundation. If I could have the mothers and fathers and teachers loyal to Christ for the next twenty years in English-speaking lands, we could capture the planet for the Lord Christ.
It is not enough simply to teach boys and girls to read, write, add figures and master science, art, literature and languages. They must be taught, like Timothy, the Scriptures, and learn to see God's view of men and things, and to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. This is essential if boys and girls are to grow up into a generation of pure, strong, noble, clean, honest, God-fearing men and women.
And surely that is and should be the business of the schools. Unless that is the purpose of school life, in the midst of mind training you may have a cultured person so far as learning goes, but with a heart filled, like the Pharisees, with uncleanliness. They were cultured, but Jesus said to them: "Ye cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full from extortion and excess."
Some of the biggest scoundrels I have known have been university men and women. The head may be trained and may be filled with all sorts of good things, while the heart is starved because it is estranged from God.
The truest culture is that which takes in mind, body and soul. That is the program of Jesus Christ.
Sermonette #20
If the Sermon on the Mount is read with as much interest as an article in the newspaper, the conclusion must be arrived at that society is wrong. No man can read it without feeling, if he is honest with himself, that civilization is far from perfect, that changes must come.
Two things are needful, -- the conscience to recognize the truth, to crystallize it devoid of impurity, and the determination to put truth into action.
Men and women are not dying today for want of light. The average man has light enough to distinguish between right and wrong. Knowledge is abundant enough, but conscience is scarce. No, we are not dying for want of light, but for lack of honesty. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light," and this is the reason, "because their deeds were evil."
And Jesus said: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." When men get adjusted to God, they soon get adjusted with their neighbors. Suppose, instead of a few working crystals, every man should be full of the godly light and love for his fellows. That would be like heaven. When Jesus taught us to pray, "Our Father" instead of "My Father," he was thinking of a united humanity.
This world can not be run by men. They can't run it by themselves along the line laid down in the Sermon on the Mount. The job is too gigantic. Only the fool says: "There is no God," or "I can do without him."
Let God come back to His own, and there'll be fellowship and friendship, the brotherhood of the world.
THE END
