Listening for Transformation: A Personal Encounter with God

"Listen oh these things sound so simple don't they and yet these are the things that happen whenever any person becomes a Christian the whole trouble with most people who are not Christian is that they never listen that's why they never here you see we all come into this world and start in this life imagining that we know all about Christianity and we are very young indeed when we all start expressing our opinions about Christianity we know all about it we've never read the New Testament of course but that's immaterial we've never read never read a book on church history that makes not the slightest difference we know and especially in the 20th century we know all about it so what is Christianity well Christianity is something for me to demolish something for me to denounce and to expose and to make a joke about I know all about it and I'm doing the talking and I'm speaking about Christianity and I'm saying what I think and what I'm going to do then my friend you find yourself in the position that you're listening and it's the most glorious thing that can ever happen to you it's the best sign that you're on the way to becoming a Christian if indeed you've not already become one the man who is breathing out the threatenings and the slaughter and expressing his opinions is silenced and he's listening and someone saying so and the eloquent speaker becomes an auditor oh my dear friends I'm not here to make a psychological analysis of conversion or of the case of Saul of tsus I'm here to speak to you directly I have no time for theoretical interest these matters are of life and death importance and value to every one of us so I ask a simple direct plain blunt question have you yet got to the listening stage have you beg to listen to it it's speaking it speaks out to the word do you come to the word as the critic in order to find the flaws and the errors and the things you're talking about and in order to expose it all or are you suddenly driven backwards and it stands out and it comes up to meet you and it's looking at you and it's speaking to you and you're conscious of being addressed and you've become the auditor which is it there can be no question there's no argument about this every man who's become a Christian has passed through this stage of Silence when you've been apprehended and arrested and pulled up and made to think for a moment and you're Dum and you just listen and you're aware of these things coming to you he be became silent he became for the first time the auditor or to put it in still another way let me put it to you like this The Voice came and said Saul Saul why persecutest thou me and for the first time I think in his life these things became to Soul of tssus personal concern here again is something I'm sure that we all have known something of inexperience it's almost incredible but it is surely the Masterpiece of Satan that he can make us consider these things even these things in an impersonal manner we all assume the position of the judge on the bench when it becomes a question of Christianity oh I think I've quoted to you once before that perfect state statement of this position I'm trying to outline the words were uttered by Lord Melbourne who was Queen Victoria's first prime minister he put it like this he said you know things are coming to A Pretty P if religion's going to start being personal what's religion well of course religion is something that's uh far away from the person religion well it's a sort of Institution it's a part of the British Heritage part of western civilization it's what is your religion well it's the great background to life it's something mainly cultural you can divide it up in various ways it's got a great philosophy it's got an element of pageantry so that if you've got a great Civic occasion or a state occasion well of course religion comes in it adds a sort of Final Touch it's a kind of show that you put on as it were well not only that it's it's something very interesting to to reason about and to argue about it is after all a view of life and there are various views of life you can read about Christianity you can read about the other great religions of the world you can go back and read Greek philosophy now these are all very interesting because life is rather problematical and things are not easy and we're all surrounded by difficulties and it's interesting therefore to consider any Theory or proposition or point of view which may have something to contribute to this tremendous problem which confronts us and this is one of them but of course uh it it doesn't say anything about me personally and uh when you're discussing these things you must never become personal that's the height of Bad Manners apart from anything else one one a thing is General it mustn't be made particular and when it's for everybody it's not in particular for me so we go right away back we take our seats in the gallery or on the bench as I say and we look down upon an arena well yes of course there are certain phenomena in connect in connection with religion and some people talk about being converted and a great change in their lives and we investigate it it's particularly interesting to look on and to see exactly what happened as I said last Sunday night is this some sort of psychological complex is it some sort of disease is was this a manifestation of epilepsy in in the case of Paul now how interesting it is to talk about all that and to discuss it oh yes but while I'm doing all that you see I remain the non-Christian I'm in the state of unbelief that was Saul of tssus before this thing happened to him but here he's addressed Saul Saul you men we're discussing you not somebody else and he's facing himself for the first time Christianity is first and foremost personal it isn't your views nor mine that matter it's you yourself Christianity is about you about your life about your destiny about your Immortal Soul it speaks to us one by one you can't be saved in countries or in families that's the LIE of the devil there's no such thing as a Christian Nation it's individual it's personal and For the First Time The Apostle this man Saul of tus who became the Apostle Paul had to face these things from his own personal end and his own personal angle the relevance of these things to him now you see up until this point Saul had been the great advocate of Judaism and we all like being Advocates we take up a case you see but when I take up a case I'm not involved it's the Cas it's outside me the barister takes up the case in court he's eloquent you think he feels it he loses his temper but he's really not interested personally at all he's gripped by the job for the time being he's moved by his own eloquence as he defends his client or as he cross-examines another but of course he's not in it personally is not engaged at all it's the enthusiasm for the case now that was all of tus you see but here he himself was put at the very center it was all about him he he was being dealt with he I say has become the object and no longer the subject for the first time he himself as a person became directly related to these things oh my dear friend I don't apologize for asking some simple questions as we go along tonight have you really faced these things personally have you realized where you yourself come into it in all these matters have you realized that you really can't be a spectator where God is concerned that there's no such thing as a Detachment that scholarship as I said last Sunday night makes no difference at this point at all we are all here in this world and we are passing through it and we're all personally involved soul soul where do you stand personally relative to these things that's inevit and then I go on to my last Point under this personal aspect which is this there takes place This Dawning Consciousness that what rarely matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks of me I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth what's that mean it means this that his soul concerned there was with his opinions of Jesus of Nazareth and he wasn't slow to express them and he was very sure of them and that to him was the big thing and the important thing suddenly here the whole thing is reversed again and he sees that what rarely matters is what that blessed person is just seen there in the heavens thinks of him all these steps are clear obvious you see you become object rather than subject you listen instead of speaking you're involved in it yourself it's not detached its direct and personal and above all I say you are aware of judgment coming upon you instead of you expressing your judgment soul soul my dear friend have you ever heard it coming to you like that have you heard yourself being addressed are you aware of the fact that God is dealing with you and is speaking to you no man can be a Christian without that it's impossible you can't accept Christianity as a philosophy of course you can do that but that doesn't make you a Christian to merely give an intellectual Ascent to these things it's not enough it is really and truly an encounter with God it's a meeting not with this traumatic intensity perhaps you don't see Christ Paul saw him that made him Apostle because he saw literally the Risen Lord the face of the Lord on the road to Damascus you and I don't have that but we meet we know we have felt the presence we've known he's dealing with us and we've known that he's dealing with us individually and directly personal and then of course I go on to the next step which is conviction of sin the interruption the awareness of the other the person and the personal involvement and that leads of course to the conviction of sin listen Saul Saul why persecutest thou me what does this mean well again let me break it up into its simplest components the first thing this means of course is that I come to a realization that God knows me this great God I've thought of and spoken about and have argued this kind of philosophic EX this great Creator the absolute the Eternal somewhere in the distant Heavens who's fashioned the cosmos and who's interested in the whole world I awaken to the dread the almost terrible realization that he knows me individually soul soul have you had such a meeting with God have you had such an awareness of God's personal intimate knowledge of you indeed I go on to emphasize that Saul of tsus not only discovered here that God knew him personally he discovered that he knew all about his life and that's a thing of course about which the Bible speaks everywhere it's the last thing men comes to know we are so clever at eluding one another and in fooling one another that we finally imagine that we do exactly the same with God and we imagine that God does not know all about us we imagine that we can go on doing things and that nothing matters nothing happens but sa of tsas here discovered that he knew all about him and no man becomes a Christian without realizing that God knows all about him all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do nothing is hidden from his sight the sist juicy are full of this sort of thing they try to get away from him they take their flight as it were to Heaven he's there they make their bed in hell and lo he's there they go to the East and to the West they try to get away from him but they can't get away from him God's everywhere and he knows all about us it's a vital part of this process God knows I say every every single detail of your life there's nothing about you that is not known to God and it's a man coming to the realization of this who is a man who's always on the way to becoming a Christian suddenly the things that he himself has forgotten come back to him they've been brought back to him by God the things he's explained away are again put in front of him and he can't get rid of them it's God doing its conviction of sin and take it still further and it comes to this that God brings home to me my sin and its enormity that was one of the things that happened to sa of tsus on that road wasn't it it made him see himself as he really was and it made him see the things that he'd been doing as they really were the breathing out of the threatenings and the slaughter the way he'd given his vote against these people his desire to exterminate them suddenly he sees these things as they are for the very first time he'd never seen it before the of it all the ignorance of it all the arrogance of it all the fness of it all oh he's eloquent in many places about this we've looked already at the sth of Romans there it is isn't it the proud self-satisfied self-justifying Pharisee comes to see that in me that is to say in my flesh dwelleth no good thing you begin to see yourself and your life now you've been evading and dividing yourself the whole of your life hither to we've all done it we all try to do it and we all still go on doing it everything that face ourselves honestly but when this encounter takes place you must see yourself he holds a mirror up before you have you rely faced yourself and your life look back across your record are you pleased or are you displeased can you really justify everything that's in it are you proud of it all things done things said things imagined things thought the spirit the desires all these things suddenly this man was face to face with them all and he saw them and he hated them and he was amazed at them the wrongness the ignorance the arrogance I say and especially when I go on and put it like this all that in its relationship to God the thing that he never got over was this that the words uttered by the Lord were Saul Saul why persecutest thou me he thought he was persecuting Christians he's told he's persecuting Christ all that he's been doing is not only wrong but it's terrible when it's put into the relationship with him and that is the essence of the conviction of sin what makes sin sin is not so much that we do things that are wrong my friends what makes sin sin is that we do such things against God that's the thing that came home to David wasn't it though he was guilty of adultery and of murder what he actually said was against thee thee only have I sin and done this evil in thy sight it's a terrible thing to commit adultery it's a terrible thing to murder a man that there's something infinitely more terrible that I've done all this against my maker and Creator the one who fashioned man at the beginning and made him in his own image and set him the perfect in the garden that's" [00:18:37]