Grace College's Evangelism Banquet 1981

Thanks very much. I need that glass of water, please. You say it's going to be a dry message. Well, I've had a bit of a throat problem and that won't do me any good. But at least it gets me something to play with. I asked for a glass of water once at a banquet and the lady said, "You're going to drink it?" I said, "No, I do a high diving act after the..."

I think the combination of the music and the Dean's report makes anything I would do an anticlimax. Old Deans never die, they just lose their faculties, you know. Old bankers never die, they just lose interest. You never heard that one, huh? But old real estate agents never die, they just lose ground. I think that's the way that one goes.

It's always a delight to be here at Grace because I find here a beautiful blending of academic excellence and spiritual blessing. That's a hard thing to keep balanced. Really is. And I commend you for the beautiful balance that we have here to the glory of the Lord.

A few weeks ago I received a letter from a pastor whom I've never met. This happens frequently when you're on the radio, you get all kinds of mail. A lady wrote one day and she said, "I really appreciate your messages." This really happened now. She said, "I tape them. And every week I take them up to a rest home in our neighborhood and play them for those dear elderly people." And she said, "Brother Wiersbe, your messages are exactly what they need because most of those people have lost their minds."

Now, I kid you not.

And of course you receive the usual crank mail as well. But I received this letter from a young pastor out East and he said, "I need help." He said, "If something doesn't happen to my spiritual life, I'm going to have to leave the ministry." And so he spelled out what he felt his symptoms were. So I wrote him a letter and encouraged him and put him on my daily prayer list and began to pray for him. And didn't hear anything from him. So I wrote him again. Just dropped him a quick note and said, "I'm praying for you. Wonder how things are going?" The other day I received the letter from him and he was appreciative. And he said, "They're going much, much better and I feel the Lord is helping me."

And I thought to myself, you know, God has given me the privilege of doing for him what other men did for me 30 years ago. I can recall in my first pastorate when I would finish a board meeting and all my best ideas were trampled right into the rug. And I would be licking my wounds and I would get in my car the next day and drive over to see one of two pastor friends that I had. And they were older in the Lord and more mature and they'd encourage me, saying, "I keep on going. Just keep on going." And then a few years later after I met my dear friend Dr. Howard Sugden, how many times we have phoned each other. There have been some days when both of us have been looking out from the shoelaces of our boots. And so we just encourage each other.

The ministry of encouragement. And I've come to a conviction in these last two and a half years of itinerant ministry, preaching mile after mile, what a month ago was in Venezuela and I was out in Pennsylvania and just as my son says, going to and fro upon the earth. I'm discovering people out there are hurting. They're hurting. Young pastors and their wives are hurting. And fellows who have come to that middle-aged time of ministry and nobody's given them a degree yet. And nobody's dedicated a book to them. And the big churches haven't discovered how great they are. People are hurting.

So I have dedicated myself in a new way to be an encourager. Alexander Maclaren said if he had his life to live over again, he'd preach more to broken hearts. And for this reason I've been living more and more in 2 Corinthians 4 where the key word of course is encouragement. And Paul says this in chapter 4.

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, literally this kind of ministry, we do not lose heart.

Now, what I'd like to do, and I know it's difficult to do at a banquet, because very few people bring Bibles to banquets; they come with their appetites, which is fine. But what I'd like to do is just sort of wend my way through a couple of chapters in 2 Corinthians, not a verse-by-verse exposition, but just to present to you some encouragement. Paul gives to us in chapters 2 and 3 and 4 of 2 Corinthians a number of illustrations of the local church and its ministry. And I think if I understand what the church is and what I'm supposed to do, I'm going to be greatly encouraged.

The problem is we're getting our evaluation of the church these days from Madison Avenue, from television producers, and Paul doesn't do it quite that way. 2 Corinthians 2:14-17. Paul says, "don't give up in the ministry, keep on going because you are a conqueror." Here's the picture. "But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ, and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death, to the other the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?" That's a question. This calling we have is serious because it's a matter of life or death. "Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. A lot of that going on. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God."

Now, as most of you know from your own studies, the picture here is that of a Roman ticker tape parade. You watch the ticker tape parade in New York City when some of those hostages were being feted. I think the Guinness Book of Records says that the greatest ticker tape parade in New York City's history was when the astronauts came back from the moon, I may be wrong about that, and the second greatest was when General MacArthur was welcomed home. Harry Truman loved them for that, I'm sure.

But the Roman Empire, the Roman government, had their own ticker tape system, without the ticker tape. It was called the Roman Triumph. The Roman Triumph was a parade that was given under certain conditions. The qualifications were rather strict. You had to be a commander-in-chief; that’s first thing. You had to have fought on foreign soil, and you had to have had a complete victory, with at least 5,000 of the enemy slain, and you had to have gained new territory.

So if you were a General MacArthur on foreign soil who buried 5,000 of the enemy and gained new territory and won a complete victory, when you got back to Rome, they would meet you and put you in a golden chariot. And before you and behind you would be some of the captives that you had won and brought back, the loot that you had brought home, the priests would be in the procession with their incense, and of course you'd be heading down toward the Coliseum, and they would give you a great festivity there. The captives would be thrown to the lions, and you and your soldiers would be held in the highest regard and praised.

So the picture's pretty obvious. As they're marching along, the commander-in-chief is enjoying all the victory. Those poor slaves who had been captured were smelling that incense, and to them it meant death. They were going to be thrown to the lions. The soldiers who had shared in the victory, they smelled that incense, and to them it meant life. They were going to get great reward.

Now, you and I are in a triumphal procession. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the commander-in-chief. You know, it's a great day in a Christian's life when he discovers he's second in command. You know, Joshua discovered that before he fit the battle of Jericho. He went out that night before to kind of look things over and turned the corner and there stood a soldier with a sword in his hand. But I like Joshua's courage. He steps up and says, "you for us or against us?" And the Lord Jesus said, "I've come as captain of the host of the Lord." And in that instant Joshua discovered he was second in command.

It's a great day when you discover that, because as Christians we do not fight for victory, we fight from victory. And our Lord Jesus Christ is the commander. He came to foreign soil, and he won a complete victory over sin and death and hell. He gained brand new territory, and by the time you get to the third chapter of the book of Acts, 5,000 of the enemy had been slain and turned into a part of that great triumphal procession.

Now, this has encouraged me on those days when it looks like the devil's winning, on those days when Ephesians 6 comes to my mind and I'm reminded Paul wrote that not to unbelievers but to believers. The devil wants to use believers to create problems. When you've prayed and you've worked and some sanctified obstructionist comes along and wrecks the whole thing, and you're discouraged, you're ready to quit. And then the Lord Jesus says to us through the apostle Paul, "now look, hang in there. You're a conqueror. Hey, you're a part of my parade. What I've given you to do is a matter of life and death."

As I reread 2 Corinthians, I said to myself, Paul would have been flunked by Mr. Thornberg, who was my English composition instructor at Indiana University. Because Mr. Thornberg said, no careful writer ever uses the word "always." Now you be careful when you write with that word "always." It'll get you into trouble. I've gotten into trouble with it.

Paul likes to use the word "always." Look at it. He says we are always triumphant. "Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal procession." How about 2 Corinthians 4:10? "We always carry around in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus." 2 Corinthians 5:6: "Therefore we are always confident." 2 Corinthians 6:10: "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." I wouldn't dare use that word, but when you're an inspired apostle, you can use it. Always, always triumphant. We're conquerors.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I look at the church at Corinth, when I read 1 Corinthians, man, I don't see much victory. Every once in a while I hear some preacher say, "we need to get back to the apostolic churches." And I always say, "which one? Take your pick, which one do you want? Corinth?" When I lived in Kentucky, we had a Corinth Baptist Church. I would have changed the name of the church. They were suing each other, they were getting drunk, they were... oh, Corinth. You can have it.

How about the churches in Galatia? There's a good crowd for you. Biting and devouring one another. They must have had some fantastic business meetings. Paul had to write to the Ephesian congregation, "now look, please maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and don't lie to each other." And the Philippian church, that was a case in point. "I beseech Euodia, I beseech Syntyche, they be of one mind in the Lord." Two women who couldn't get along with each other. Strange problem. Dr. Ironside used to say it's no wonder they couldn't get along, one was odious and one was soon-touchy. I think that's the Ironside translation.

Colossian church had a bunch of intellectual snobs walking around. People have been people down through the years, haven't they? And the older they get, the peopler they get. And yet Paul looks at that Corinthian situation, he says, "hey, we're marching in triumph. I know their problems, but we're marching in triumph. We may lose a few skirmishes, but thank God we're going to win the war." We are conquerors marching with the Lord.

Then in chapter 3 he changes the picture and he tells us not that we're conquerors, we're transformers. Listen to this. "Are we beginning to commend ourselves again?" By the way, you ought to trace that word "ourselves" in 2 Corinthians. It's a great little study. We don't preach ourselves, we preach Christ. We don't commend ourselves. "Are we to commend ourselves again? Or do we need like some people letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts."

That's fantastic. When Paul came to Corinth, he found a mess. In fact in chapter 6, you remember what he says, "such were some of you." And he lists that long list of hideous sins. And he says, "such were some of you, but you've been washed, you've been justified." Now he says, "I came to Corinth with the word of God, and as I ministered the word of God, God did a marvelous thing. He wrote you on our hearts, and we wrote him on your hearts."

You see, when we're ministering, we are involved in heart surgery. I wonder how many of us would walk into the local hospital and say, "well, here I am." "Good, who are you?" "I want to do some heart surgery. I've been interested in auricles all of my life, you know, and I'd like to do something, I'd like to operate on somebody." "Well, what are your credentials?" "I haven't got any. But I've watched television and in fact I was watching General Hospital one day and my set broke and Blue Cross paid to have it fixed, you know. But I've watched enough of this, I've watched... and I think I can do it."

Amen. You're not walking into our surgical arena. Every once in a while you read in the newspaper about some fellow who pawned himself off as a doctor, and actually did it. In fact, you remember that case out East where the salesman performed the surgery? Wouldn't that be interesting to get your medical bill from Sears Roebuck?

Now, what am I saying? I'm saying this: for a man to walk into Wesley Memorial Hospital and operate on somebody's heart, he's had to have preparation. I think when God wants somebody to step out and use the word of God to minister to people's hearts, he better have some preparation. Some spiritual preparation. Oh, I know people say, "well, Peter and the apostles were ignorant and unlearned men." Don't you kid yourself. They sat in the best seminary anybody could sit in for three years. And then when God wanted to get another apostle, he laid hold of a brilliant fellow named Paul.

The apostle Paul is saying, "look, don't get discouraged. You're a transformer. As you take this word and minister this word, the Spirit of God is writing it on the hearts of people and there will be changes made." Whenever Christmas Eve day arrives, that's the 24th of December, you know, every once in a while on Christmas Eve day, I'll have a little bit of déjà vu, it'll just come over me, an experience I had many years ago. I was sitting in the study at Calvary Baptist Church in Covington. Now you don't know where Covington is, that's right across the river from Cincinnati. Covington is a wicked city that I think is probably run by gamblers and people who make hooch, often still some place.

Phone rang. It was one of our good Sunday school teachers. He said, "Pastor, do you have time to talk to a friend of mine?" I said, "Sure." He said, "well, he's coming down." Fellow walked in, and I took one look at him and said, "what is this?" He sat down, he said, "Brother Wiersbe," he said, "I need help." I said, "tell me about it." He said, "well, I'm a skydiver." Now for those of you who don't know, a skydiver is a fellow whose hobby is diving out of airplanes with parachutes. Don't do it without a parachute. I said, "So?" He said, "I'm scared." I said, "Quit skydiving." "No, no, no," he said, "it's not that." He said, "I was just fishing around to see what's really going on." He said, "whether I skydive or whether I'm walking down the street, I'm not ready to die."

This fellow used to carry alcohol, used to carry whiskey in his thermos bottle to work. He was single and making pretty good money. Well, I had the joy of leading him to the Lord. Right there he just accepted the Lord. I said, "now let's see what happens." Started coming to church, started coming to Sunday school. Before long he wasn't coming alone; he was filling his car up with some of the mangiest urchins I'd ever seen. I don't know where he found them. He must have seined a sewer or something because... and then before long he said, "you know, my car is not big enough," so he went and bought a van. And he filled that van up with kids. I don't know how many people found the Lord through this fellow's testimony. And I watched his life transformed.

Now what did it? The word of God. And whenever I get a little discouraged in the ministry, I think about Bob. He's been married, has several lovely children, lovely wife, and he's still serving God, just a humble layman in a church, and I don't know how many hundreds of people have found Christ as their savior because of this boy. What did it? The word of God on his heart. And you know, whenever you get discouraged, just remember you're part of a miracle of transformation. We are conquerors marching with the Lord. We are transformers writing a whole new translation on the hearts of people by the Spirit of God.

Now, one word to my preacher friends who are here. Be prepared. Don't walk into that pulpit unprepared. You're working on people's hearts. When a man walks into the pulpit and says, "now folks, this morning I just want to talk to you out of my heart," that means he's not prepared. You pray over that message, and you prepare that message because you're ministering to people's hearts. You are a transformer.

And it gets better. Chapter 4 he compares us to creators. My, listen to this. "And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." What a fantastic name for the gospel. It's the gospel of the glory of Christ. "For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus Christ."

Not every preacher really could honestly quote that statement. I have to examine my own heart. "For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' (Genesis 1:3) made his light to shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Paul was making a very fantastic statement here. It's hard to believe. He says not only are we conquerors and not only are we transformers, we are creators.

Now, God didn't need my help in the first creation. He didn't even have a committee. That's why it went so well. But God needs our help in the new creation. Paul is describing an unsaved person. The unsaved person is spiritually what things were physically back in Genesis: darkness, formlessness, emptiness. And the earth was without form and void, empty, and darkness upon the face of the deep. Now Paul picks up that image and says that's the condition of unsaved people.

The reason their lives are in a mess is because they're empty and they're dark. And then he proceeds to form and fill, form and fill. That's what the Christian life is all about. That's what ministry's all about, forming and filling, forming and filling. And he starts with light. "Let there be light." The entrance of thy words giveth light. It's unfortunate that some preachers when they preach, it's more darkness than light. They're answering questions nobody's asking, they're using language nobody understands, they're invisible during the week, incomprehensible on Sundays.

Paul wasn't that way. Paul said, "when I preach the word of God, I am sharing in the new creation because this word brings light into people's hearts and then God starts to form them and to fill them." We had in the first church I pastored a very fine family: mother with a son and a daughter. They had a father, but he never came to church. He would drive them to church, park his car right in front of the church, and sit there and read the Sunday paper. It wasn't a very good-looking thing, but what can you do about it? You can't go out and say to an unsaved man, "hey man, go read the paper someplace else."

So we just prayed. Mabel said, "hey, pray for Joe, boy pray for Joe, he needs the Lord." That's pretty obvious. One Palm Sunday, Joe opened up the paper and lo and behold it said on the front page of the Tribune it was Palm Sunday. He said, "You know, it's Palm Sunday. I should go into church." And so he did. Left his newspaper, came in, sat down, and got saved. It was just remarkable. God just spoke to his heart and down he came. I had the joy of baptizing Joe. He became one of the trustees in our church, he was a leader in our building program, my what a help he was. A soul winner, taught a Bible class. A few years ago was retired down in Florida, passed away, went home to be with the Lord.

But I watched that man as God formed him and filled him, form... he used to come to me and say, "now, Brother Wiersbe, you know," Brother Warren, it was my first church, Brother Warren he used to say, "you know," he said, "I haven't got much education." I said, "who cares? Let God teach you." And God did. Now, we could go around this room and you could multiply this same illustration. There are people in your church who were formless and empty and dark and you ministered the word of God and a new creation came along and then God began to form and to fill. How can you quit when you're a part of that? You can't. Because we are creators.

Now there's a final picture here. Lady said to me, "when I listen to you, I get numb on one end and dumb on the other." I don't want that to happen here. Not only are we conquerors marching in the victory of Christ, not only are we transformers writing the word of God on the human heart by the pen of the Holy Spirit, not only are we creators as we speak forth the word of God, the light comes and God forms and fills. But to balance all of this, you know I'd get kind of proud. "I am a conqueror. I am a transformer."

My single son at home is an electronics engineer and he said, "Dad, you aren't a transformer, you're a resistor." Well... I could get proud. I am a trans... I am a creator. Watch out boy, here comes creation. In order to balance all of this, the Lord does a beautiful thing. 2 Corinthians 4:7: "But we have this treasure in jars of clay." Why did God do it like that? You'd think God would have made me into a jar of gold or at least steel. I mean Superman was a man of steel. Jars of clay. "To show that this all-surpassing power," aha, this all-surpassing power that makes us conquerors and transformers and creators, "this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us."

It's a terrible thing when a servant of God gets the idea that God is his servant. It's a terrible thing when the servant of God thinks he's God. That's what transforms a pastor into a dictator. That's what transforms a servant into a celebrity, and we've got enough celebrities today. You heard about the lady who was filling out the application blank for summer camp for her daughter and she came to the question that said, "is your daughter a leader?" Woman thought for a while and wrote, "I don't think so, but she's an excellent follower." She received a letter back from the camp director saying, "your daughter will be the only follower at camp this summer. Everybody else is a leader."

Now it used to bother me that I was human. That I'd get weary, that I would have sickness, that here I am being a part of a creation and a part of transformation and a part of conquering and yet God permits me to have headaches and defeats and criticism. The very idea of anybody criticizing us. Lady came to John Wesley and said, "my gift, my talent, is telling people the truth about themselves." Wesley said, "madam, bury that talent." But every church has them, every church has them. Every church has a conscience.

"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed." You mean you can be spiritual and be hard pressed? Yes. "Perplexed," oh come on, how could anybody who's been to heaven and back be perplexed? Paul was. "Board says now Pastor, what are you going to do next? I don't know." You don't know? You're a seminary graduate. They didn't know either. I don't know. "Well we've got this, we've got this crisis." I know, what you... "I don't know what I'm going to do."

Well you aren't a very good leader. Well Paul wasn't a very good leader. "Perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body." Now here's the verse most church members never apply to missionaries and pastors and Sunday school teachers and Christian workers. "So then death is at work in us, but life is at work in you." They don't stop to realize we have to die that they might live.

So we're vessels. Just clay vessels. You say, "well I hurt," you're a vessel. "But I'm being jostled," yeah that's the way God spills some of the blessing out of the vessel, just let somebody run into you. "But I don't like it," I don't either. But it's God's way. Reminds us that we're human. Accept your humanity. It's as much a part of your ministry as your new nature. I didn't say your old nature, accept your humanity.

You say, "well if I were spiritual, I wouldn't get discouraged." Moses said, "Lord, if it's going to be like this, take my life." Elijah said, "I'm no better than my fathers," nobody told him he was, he thought he was, "I'm no better than my fathers, I want to die." Now he didn't really mean it because if he'd wanted to die Jezebel would have taken care of it. We're human. We're human. R.W. Dale was one of the greatest theologians that the British Congregationalists ever produced. Now I don't agree totally with Dr. Dale's theology, but he was a brilliant man, a great man. He went to hear D.L. Moody preach. Now you couldn't find a more opposite, two men more opposite than D.L. Moody who had perhaps a fifth grade education. They said he said Jerusalem in two syllables when he was reading scripture, when Moody was reading scripture... that's true. When he was reading scripture, when he came to a hard word he couldn't pronounce he'd stop, make a few comments and start on the other side. That's true.

And here's R.W. Dale, brilliant theologian, masterful preacher, very proper British. Dale went to hear Moody preach. Now out of this came two statements. Number one, R.W. Dale said, "there's only one man I've ever heard preach on hell who has a right to preach on hell and that's D.L. Moody because he preaches as though it's breaking his heart that people are going there." The second quote is this, as he watched R.W. Dale said, "this work has to be of God. I see absolutely no connection between what's going on and that man standing there."

That's great. Whenever I come to the Winona Lake grounds, I... waves of nostalgia go over me from my Youth for Christ days. Some of that we'd like to forget. But some of it was tremendous. Bob Cook used to say to us, "if you can explain what's going on, God didn't do it." So folks come to hear you preach and God is blessing and and you're just a clay vessel and God fills you and you spill over and every once in a while God allows somebody to elbow you or needle you just to remind you that you're human. And God's blessing and people say, "I don't understand it." That's good. That's good. It shows God's doing it.

We are vessels. We're human. As vessels we have to... we don't have to manufacture anything. We just receive and share. Receive and share. We're not manufacturers, we're distributors. All I have to do I think is keep myself clean, available, and willing to be human and willing to be used and God will do something. My hobby is Christian biography. I guess I have 600 or 700 volumes of Christian biography in my library. All the way from brilliant theologians like R.W. Dale to mightily used evangelists like D.L. Moody. There's some strange people on that shelf. Billy Bray is on that shelf, my what an eccentric he was. A.W. Tozer's on that shelf, never had a theological education, and yet he sent many people to seminary.

It's marvelous the way God trains people different ways and reminds each of us that we're human. We're vessels. A Methodist preacher wrote to Alexander Whyte one day and said, "I'm through. What do you suggest I do? I've had my training, I'm preaching, nothing's happening, I'm discouraged. What should I do?" And the great Alexander Whyte wrote him a letter and said, "The angels in heaven envy you for the privilege you have of preaching the gospel. Never quit." Because after all we are conquerors and Jesus is leading the way. We are transformers and the Holy Spirit is writing on hearts. We are creators, the light is shining into the darkness. And we're vessels. And God has ways of reminding us that we're vessels. He fills us, he spills us, he fills us, he spills us, and it's a great way to live.

Therefore, seeing we have this kind of ministry, we don't quit.

Heavenly Father, how good you are to us. To create us in the image of God, then to save us and give us the very nature of God, and then to call us and give us the message of God, and give us the priceless privilege of sharing in the victory of Christ, sharing in transformation, sharing in the new creation. Keep reminding us Father that we are vessels, that the excellency of the glory, the all-surpassing glory might be yours and not ours. Oh may people receive the blessing that we give and be mindful of the Savior who gave it and may they not pay attention to the vessel. Keep us clean, keep us available, for Jesus' sake. Amen. Amen.