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     1. Romans 8   (29:12)
     2. Christ Is Coming, verses 1 and 2   (3:03)

Romans 8:24-25.  For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?  ²⁵But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

Romans 8:13.  For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

We were discussing Romans 8 this morning, and in Romans 8 he says, “We are saved…”  That’s the song that we sing everywhere: “We are saved,”  “We’re saved.”  When I first came here, a Schwäbish brother was telling about years ago, and he says, “I war no net g’saved jena Zeit.”  Jetzt ischd’r g’saved.  Bisch du au g’saved?  We are saved.

But the Bible says, “We are saved by hope.”   And that’s the thing that gives me great joy: to know that the work we do here, we don’t do for a few years only, or for some glory—for some crown upon this earth, or recommendation by men.  We’re not… we’re not geared to Brooklyn, or to this time, but we’re geared to eternity, to heaven, to the New Jerusalem.  That’s the thing we have been working for, praise God!  And 32 years is really a very, very short time when you think that the seed we sow is going to result in a harvest that’s going to go on forever and forever to the glory of God.  And how very, very important it is that we get the sight of it—that we get the light of it.

Romans 8 make very clear who it is that is saved by hope: “Hope that is seen is not hope.  For what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?  But if we hope for that we see not, then do we patiently wait for it.”  That’s the word: patience.  “Ye have need of patience that after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” 

What does patience mean?  Why, it means sticktoitiveness.  Lots of people start out, you know.  They’re “saved.”  But they’re not “saved by hope.”  They don’t cast their anchor into the New Jerusalem, and then hang on and let the Holy Ghost pull them up.  Their anchor is cast somewhere else, and it doesn’t matter where it’s cast because they’re not going to go on.  But, oh, thank God, we belong to the bridal procession, not the bridal profession.

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“They that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh.”  Mind you, if we had advertised a good moving picture here tonight, what would have happened?  That’s one reason why I stopped showing pictures: because the motley the crowd that comes out when you show pictures—oh, it attracts flesh like a manure pile attracts horseflies!  “Where the carcass is, there will the vultures gather,” and where some fleshly interest is, why, “they that are after the flesh” will be found.

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“They that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh.”  “They mind earthly things.”  It doesn’t mean that they go to the circus, or to the movies, or sit for hours in front of the television.  It doesn’t mean that at all.  But their whole heart is occupied with things of earth and things of self.  Beloved, you’re not in the flesh.  “You are not in the flesh,” you’re “saved by hope,” thank God!  You’re […] out of the flesh, out of the world, “out from among them.”  You don’t belong among them anymore.  Tell me who you associate with, and I’ll tell you who you are.  But “our fellowship is with the Father.”  That’s where we love to be.

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“They that are after the flesh” may seem very religious.  And you go through the world and into the church today.  My, what people can do to make themselves appear religious, even in Pentecost!  They can even speak with tongues and prophesy, and they can remove mountains by faith.  But it doesn’t profit them anything if they’re not in the Spirit—if they’re not moved and animated by the Spirit of God.

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The Corinthians said to Paul, “What kind of a body are we going to have when we rise from the dead?  What is it going to be like?”  “Whose wife shall she be in the resurrection?”  Oh, what carnal ideas we have about the resurrection!  Beloved, we’re “going to be like Him”—the “life-giving Spirit,” not like the angels.  We’re going to be like Jesus Christ, but only if we live in the Spirit here on earth—only if the Holy Ghost has His way with us, if today the Spirit of God controls us and not the flesh—not fleshly considerations, but the Spirit of the living God.  “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”

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And who is it that looks for Him?  Why, they who are “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.”  What do they do in the meantime?  Why, they “seek first the kingdom of God.”  The Holy Ghost has hold of them, and they “pray in the Holy Ghost.”  That’s another expression for “walking in the presence of God,” having “fellowship with the Father and with His Son”.  Your whole life becomes an expression of the prayer—the Lord’s prayer: “Hallowed by Thy name.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” 

Beloved, that prayer must be my flesh and my blood and my bones.  The warp and woof of my whole being must be a cry—every atom of my being, every pore in my skin must be a mouth that cries, “Thy kingdom come!  Thy will be done!”  And if my soul is opened like that to God, why God will give Himself like that to me.  That’s why He says, “Every one that asketh receiveth; and every one that seeketh findeth; and he that knocketh, to him it shall be opened.”  He’s talking about “the sons of the living God,” to whom He says, “How much more shall your heavenly Father give…”  Beloved, that’s “living in the Spirit.”  It’s being on the receiving end all the time, it’s being a vessel.  It’s being a channel through which the life of God flows unceasingly.

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Beloved, tonight we ought to search our own hearts and see whether we belong to that company—to that bridal procession—or whether things have begun to die within us.

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Beloved, that’s the only way to hear the word of the Lord.  A person that is not in the Holy Ghost does not have a hearing ear, does not hear the voice of God.  No matter how it thunders, no matter how wonderfully God pronounces His will, it leaves Him dead.  Oh, these natural ears hear the sound of the voice, but, oh, how different when I hear from heaven!  It enters right into my heart.  It produces life.

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It’s within the great kingdom of God is established.  It doesn’t “come with observation.”  It doesn’t come so that “the princes of this world” can see it come.  No, but like “a thief in the night.”  It comes to those who are “children of the day,” and “children of the light”—who are “not of the night, nor of darkness,” who don’t “sleep like others,” who are not drunken like others, but they watch, and they’re sober.  And to them comes the voice of Jesus.  They have hearing ears.  They know when God speaks to them, and it means something.  They “tremble at His word.”  It transforms them.

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We don’t understand the glories of heaven.  But, beloved, there ought to be an understanding of the glory of walking with Him here.  There ought to be an appreciation of walking no longer “in the flesh but in the Spirit.”  We ought to have the taste of it.  We ought to feel the fire of God in our hearts.  If we’re made “alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” every atom of my being ought to shout, “Amen!”  Every time Jesus speaks, there ought to be a holy trembling within my soul.  Why, “it is God that works in me”—this great Master.

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Where would this assembly be, beloved, if people had “trembled at His word,” and had taken to heart the things that God spoke?  But, they’re dying.  Many are dead.  They can’t hear it anymore.  One man said to me, “You can’t preach to me!”  Why?  He was angry at me because I found out his sin, and he wanted to cover it.  It’s a dangerous, dangerous place.

“Bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  Beloved, that’s spoken as truly of the servants of the Lord as the other word, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom.”  We like that.  We like the word; we like to quote it: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  But what if I’m not a good and faithful servant?  What if I take the gifts of God and bury them, and hide them and say, “Well, Thou art an austere Master.  You demand too much”?

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If you want to, you can “know Him and the power of His resurrection.”  You can be united to Him.  But I don’t know any other way than the way the Bible points out to us: “Forgetting the things that are behind, and pressing toward the mark;” “counting everything but refuse for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.”

“Yes, but think of what I have to give up.”  People have said that to me, and I woke up.  I said, “Give up?  Give up?  What do you mean, ‘Give up’?  Look what I gain!  Oh, hallelujah!  Give up the dunghill for a palace of diamonds?  Give up the ashes for beauty?  Give up the world for heaven?  Give up the flesh and world and the devil for the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost?  What do you mean, ‘Give up’!”

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Beloved, as long as you talk about sacrifice, you haven’t seen Him.

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Jesus Christ is a master builder, and He is going to build a temple like has never been seen.  In all eternity, the angels have never seen such a dazzling structure.  “We are his house,” and He is still looking for “living stones.”  He hasn’t given us up.  If you give yourself up—if you count yourself unworthy of the crown that Jesus Christ is holding over your head because you desire to rake with your muckrake in the muck of this earth—all right, it’s your choice; you can.  But Jesus Christ has made His choice.

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Beloved, really, we ought to wake up.  If we don’t, somebody else will.

A dispassionate death notice represents the state of many Christian lives.  “Once they were alive… they had ‘ears to hear.’  A dead man has no ears to hear.  Today, they hear all the sounds of the world.  Oh, how these siren voices of the earth mislead them again, deceive them again, fill their hearts, fill their minds!  And they don’t know that they’re dying.”    (from 14:10)

An illustration of Adolph Hitler’s charm.  “He says, ‘I hated that man Hitler.’  Until one day, he stood at parade, and he says, ‘The Führer walked by me, and he just looked me in the eye, and I was a gone goose. … My heart was captured by that one look.’  Listen, does Jesus Christ have any authority at all?  Isn’t He ‘Führer’—Isn’t He ‘the captain of our salvation’?”    (from 20:15)

“I war no net g’saved jena Zeit.”  Jetzt ischd’r g’saved.  Bisch du au g’saved?

The proper German without the English words would be: “Ich war zu jener Zeit noch nicht gerettet.”  Jetzt ist er gerettet.  Bist du auch gerettet?

Meaning: “I was not saved at that time.”  Now he is saved.  Are you saved too?

Gestern Morgen um 10:35 Uhr hörte er auf zu leben, und alle Anzeichen haben bewiesen, dass er tod ist — Yesterday morning at 10:35 a.m., he ceased living, and all the signs indicated that the man was dead.

Befiehl, Führer, und wir folgen! — Command, Führer [leader, captain, or guide], and we follow!

The man with the muckrake, from Pilgrim’s Progress, part 2, by John Bunyan, 1684:

…the Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room, where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his hand: there stood also one over his head with a celestial crown in his hand, and proffered him that crown for his muckrake: but the man did neither look up, nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor.

Then said Christiana, “I persuade myself that I know somewhat the meaning of this: for this is a figure of a man in this world: is it not, good sir?”

Interpreter. Thou hast said right; and his muckrake doth show his carnal mind. And whereas thou seest him rather give heed to rake up straws, and sticks, and the dust of the floor, than do what he says, that calls to him from above, with the celestial crown in his hand; it is to show, that Heaven is but a fable with some, and that things here are counted the only things substantial. Now, whereas it was also showed thee, that the man could look no way but downwards, it is to let thee know that earthly things, when they are with power upon men’s minds, quite carry their hearts away from God.

Then said Christiana, “O, deliver me from this muckrake!”

“That prayer (said the Interpreter) has lain by till it is almost rusty: ‘give me not riches,’ is scarce the prayer of one of ten thousand. Straws and sticks and dust, with most, are the great things now looked after.”

Date: This talk was given as part of Ridgewood’s 32nd anniversary meetings in 1957.

Audio Quality: Poor