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THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NE S S
I heard a person say the other day that they spoke to someone and they got such a warm rebuke, they declared they would never speak to the person again. Stop that! Some of you are here and out of hell and on the road to heaven because somebody was not easily shaken off when you did not want to be spoken to. Says one: “ At last I stood upon my dignity.” My dear fel lows, come off it. You never looked smaller— never. It’s a shaky stool. The Lord may let you down with a shock, and you deserve it— standing on your dignity! Oh, friend, why not venture some for Jesus Christ? Try the Mas ter’s plan before you sleep tonight. Try the intellectual person. Try the thing that seems to break through convention. Jesus broke through it. The worst of all is to be so conscious of the difficulties as never to do it at all. Try it tonight. You live at 'the same house, sit at the same table with the lost. Time is flying. Christ is soon coming. God help you friend— rouse a bit! Break through as Jesus broke through and intimately accosted the public offi cial at his public work and said, “ Fol low me”— and it worked. The man was ripe and ready, and maybe twenty of US' would have passed him by saying we were doing the wise and proper thing and talking about the dangers of zeal without discretion. What we want is more zeal without discretion, rather than so much discretion without zeal. We are fairly stuck with it. Just look at that case again. What did Jesus say? “ Follow me.” Two words—and it detached him from sel fishness and things that were holding him down. Must we stand and preach all we know for forty minutes, and twenty minutes and sixty minutes and then hold an after-meeting and spend another hour in a private room— and even then they won’t get landed. What has gone wrong? Two words! “ Follow
me.” My Lord— show me how to do it! \ . Levi left all forever. Two words swept like a sword through every bone. He left all and rose up. Oh, Lord Jesus, why is it that we preach, and talk p e r sonally and privately and then so little done? Oh, Master, Master, come back to us and fill us with your Spirit. 1 have known one word in the Master's power, to rouse a sinner’s heart at once. One word— but it must be the Master’s word and the Master’s power. That’s our need. THE WORK THAT WORKS Our Lord never saves en masse. We talk about the redemption of society as if we expected the Lord to reach out somehow and take the whole race into His arms as one man, and lift them up. My brethren, we will never lift society except as we lift the individual who makes it. Salvation must begin with the individual and extend to the individuals before the mass is uplifted. Now, if that was the purpose of Jesus in coming to this earth, and in living His life on it and- dying His death for it, what is our purpose? Our text declares that: “ As the Father hath sent me, even so I send you.” That is to say the mission that Jesus had we have. And if that be true, the supreme purpose of the Church, and every man and woman in it, is salvation; and the church which is not evangelistic is not evangelical. We satisfy ourselves too frequently with the. thought that we are evangel ical. That is not what the Lord wants. He wants more than that. We should be evangelical and evangelistic, saving the lost, and if we are not perpetually doing that business we have no right to claim to be the Church of Jesus Christ. More and more I realize that this is the fact, therefore more and more I lay stress upon the specific work of soul winning.— Dr. Len Broughton.
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