1 Sept 2013
Dear Phyllis,
Last week I preached what was probably the finest message of my life. By that I don't mean the delivery. I mean the message. Homiletically, I may have preached better messages, but the content of the message was as wonderful as any topic I ever discussed.
For a couple of weeks I have known that Singha, the head of the kindergarten where I teach, was coming to hear me. Having a word from God for him, has been more on my heart more than anything I have experienced in a long time. I tried to do a little work on it Saturday night, but the Lord gave me the message at 6:00 Sunday morning.
I started off by saying, Jesus told us unless we become like little children we cannot enter the Kingfdom of heaven. The obvious reason for that is that little children will believe anything they hear. I have saying that I like to use on small children – “I liked to eat little children”. When I was living with the Hirotas, their little daughter had a 4 year old friend over one day. I pulled that on the little girl, and she took off for home like a shot. Mari chan laughed and ran after saying, “It is alright. Uncle Bill won't eat you.” Children will believe anything you tell them, but the greatest minds in the world are edging towards insanity with impossible, irrational, theories on where the earth came from. I once asked a friend, who was a Buddhist priest, what Buddhism taught concerning the origin of the earth. He honestly replied, “The only answer to that question is found in the Christian Bible”.
I said, “Very simply the Bible says, “In the beginning God crated the heavens and the earth.” But the first time we see the first person pronoun used concerning God in the Bible is not “ME” or “My”, but “Us” and “Our”. The reason for that is that the first person pronoun for God is always plural. It is that way in the English Bible, the Japanese Bible, the Thai Bible, and the Hebrew Bible. God is plural. The reason for that is that God had a Son. The Father gave Him an equality with Him in deity, and all things were created by the Son and for the Son (Col. 1:16). God loves His Son very much. He loves His Son so much He has given Him the highest position in heaven. Anyone who speaks against God's Son has a serious problem in heaven. And anyone who says a negative word against the Son of God in front of me has a serious problem with Bill Cook. I have zero tolerance with people who teach and speak poorly about my Lord Jesus.
At this point I had Kichikun's wife, Ying, who was my interpreter, read John 5:16-30. But first I told Ying, “I want to pray for you.” “Now?” “Yes, right now. I want you to read this like something you have never read before.” Then I laid my hands on Ying and poured out my heart to God, that the Holy Spirit would enable her to read that passage, not as words, but as spirit and as life. Never have I desired so intensely that the Word of God would stand my itself, and have unusual power to penetrate the hearts of the hearers.
The scene in John 5 is where Jesus healed a paralyzed man on the sabbath. The Jews were so angry they wanted to kill Jesus. I told the folks that morning, “There is nothing as dangerous as religion. You challenge their religion and they will kill you.” Is there something wrong with healing a man on the sabbath? Only when it touches their religion. And them Jesus begins one of the greatest passages describing His relationship with His Father. Oh my goodness, I cannot write in a letter what transpired there that morning as Ying read those astounding passages, and I commented on them one at a time as she read along. The Son only does what He sees His Father do. The Father loves the Son and shows Him all things. The Father raises the dead and the Son quickens whom He will. The Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son. All men should honor the Son as they honor the Father. He that hears My Word and believes on Him that sent Me has everlasting life... not condemned, but is passed from death to life.
At this point I emphasized the amazing truth that if a person would simply do two things they could have eternal life. First they must hear the Word. And I said, “Many of you are not listening. You have something else on your mind, and you aren't listening to a thing I am saying. But for those of you who are listening, if you will simply believe what I say, you can have eternal life.” It seemed that the Holy Spirit got the point across and there was pretty serious interest from there on.
Verse 25 says, “The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the Voice of the Son of God and they who hear shall live.” I said that the problem is that we are all born dead. God said to Adam, in the day that he touched the fruit of that tree he would die. And he did. Adam did not die physically, but something inside him died. His spirit died. And every offspring of Adam to this day is born with a dead spirit. That is why it is imperative that a person must be born-again. And that is what happens at the new birth; the spirit comes alive. A new life springs up inside that person. They that hear live.
But verses 28 and 29 talk about a general resurrection. The day is coming when every cotton-picken grave on this planet will be opened. Rev. 20:13 says that “the sea will give up the dead which were in it”. That is a pretty amazing statement. There have been millions who have been buried at sea. What happened? The fish probably ate most of them, and the sea water dissolved those bones until those molecules were scattered to the seven seas. But God will put all those molecules back together again, and everyone will have to stand before God in their physical body. Hitler thought he would dodge the bullet by committing suicide, and having his butler burn the body, so no one could ever find his bones. But he is going to get that body back again for judgment, and then be cast into the lake of fire.
All of this was preparation for the message. The message was from Mt. 22:1-14. Here we have a parable that, I believe, tells the Gospel story more clearly than any other passage in the Bible. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of heaven is like a king who made a marriage for His Son.” And he sent out the wedding invitations. I asked, “Can you imagine what it would be like if the king of Thailand was going to have a wedding for his son in Bangkok and personally sent an invitation to you to attend? What would you do?” What this passage is talking about is far more real and serious than if someone showed up at your door with a personal invitation from the king of Thailand. This is an invitation from the God of heaven to attend the Wedding of His Son.
Amazingly we see that there were five responses to that invitation. The first was to make a joke of it. Several years ago I was working with a crew of carpenters in Japan commuting about 40 minutes to and from the job site. One night, on the way home, one fellow asked me a serious question about salvation. For the next 40 minutes I had a rare opportunity to share Christ with those men. The next morning the job foreman thanked me for my talk the night before. Then he bust out laughing, “Oh, that was the funniest thing I ever heard.” The Gospel of Jesus Christ isn't a joke.
The second response was a little more polite but they were just too busy to take time off from the farm or the business to attend the wedding of the kings Son. That is a pretty sorry excuse.
The third response was open hostility. I told the folks, “If you get saved, you will have problems like you never thought was possible. Some of your best friends will turn on you.” I told about the time we were having a street meeting in front of Kay's bar in Fusa. We had a really a ugly crowd of GIs on our hand that night. Bob Black had just been saved a few weeks, and was standing on the wall in front of the bar. He shouted at the top of his lungs John 3:16 – For God so loved the world... that He gave His only Son ... ..” Then he stood there staring at the angry crowd and shouted, “What's wrong with that?!!” Good question. What is wrong with the Christian message. God is love. But you sure will have a fight.
He next two responses were positive. The fourth fellow said, “Oh yes. That is very nice. I would be delighted to attend.” He becomes a Christian, attends church every Sunday. He puts his coins in the plate and advertises that he is a Christian. But there is just one catch; to get in the Wedding you must have on the wedding garment. The garment is Christ. You must be born-again. You must be clothed in Christ. At the Wedding Feast an angel comes by and asks, “Where is your garment?” The poor man is speechless. He likes the Gospel message. Christianity is a good religion. He was quite religious, but He doesn't have Christ. He is bodily ejected. I fear there are an enormous number of Christians in this category. They just flat are not saved.
The fifth response is the one that blows me away. It is those whose name is written at a place at the Wedding Supper of The Lamb. The fact that my name is written there is a truth that reduces me to silence and tears. It is too wonderful to believe. Oh what will it be like? Oh the honor that God wants us to attend the Wedding Supper of His Son. Of course this truth is much deeper than that, but that is as far as I can go at this point.
After the service we were having a meal together, and Singha said to me, “I am some where between 4 and 5.” I said, “Hang four! Get on to five!” Kichikun tried to say something to me, but got his grammar mixed up. Finally I said to Sinha, “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?” He responded, “Yes I have.” Oh my goodness, I thought that was the Wedding Feast and I was already there. I turned to Kichikun and said, “Now disciple this man!” I said, “This has been a very good week. I lost a wife but gained a brother.” Since then Singha bears all the marks of a man who has come to Christ. He says he is reading the Bible three chapters every night and praying. This is one of the greatest gifts the Lord has given me in Thailand.
His son, Male, is a very outstanding lad. I like him very much. He couldn't go with his dad to church last week, but I was preaching at Pastor Peter's church this morning, and asked him to go with me. He did. Basically, for him, I preached the same message today. I don't know. The Lord knows. The text was the same, but there wasn't the intense anointing of the Holy Spirit on the Word today that there was last week. I later wondered if maybe I missed the mind of the Lord by not praying more about the message. I wanted Male to hear that message so badly that I never considered preaching on anything else. The fact that God has invited me to attend the Wedding of His Son is a subject that just completely blows me away. It is so real I can hardly talk about it.
One reason I like this message so much is that Jesus is the central focus – not man. It is His Wedding. It is for Him. We are the guests. So much of the Gospel today is presented that God is the plaintive begging men to accept His mercy so they can go to heaven and enjoy all the benefits of salvation. Man is the center and Jesus is an additive to make man happier. I am not sure it works that way.
This is my second Sunday by myself. It is quiet and lonely here. I had three dogs but got rid of two. Now it is just Black Canyon and myself. Pammy is in Lampan living and working with her sister. She calls occasionally and has a marvelous attitude, but it would be impossible for her to come back without a major miracle and working of the Holy Spirit in her heart.
But Jesus is with me. What grace!!!
bill
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