Determined not to quit

(Here's an outtake from today's sermon at Shorewood. I will post conference stuff tomorrow. I've had an especially rough re-entry into reality after coming home from the Bible conference. The return is always hard but this one has me especially down. Among other sorrow-makers, my dear friend of 20-plus years is in Northwestern Hospital in downtown Chicago and I visited her there when I was in town. She is part of a very experimental stem-cell program for patients with multiple myeloma and is experiencing a stroke-like aftermath from the side effects, including speech impairment. I don't have much family at all (now down to just my 86-year-old mother, my older brother and his wife, one niece and two nephews) and she's been so gracious to have made me feel like a sister all these years. She is Jewish and doesn't believe.)

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"If you don't preach the message God gave to us through the Apostle Paul, you're going to fail to do what God wants done. You'll be like in Ephesians 4 where you produce saints 'tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine' and carried off into confusion," said Richard Jordan Sunday morning.

"We have a book in the office where all the pastors of our assembly from 1900 to today signed it when they became the pastor. On September 1, 1923, J.C. O'Hair signed it. The ministry he had until 1958 had to do with the 'preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery' and standing for dispensational Bible study and that continues with us. That's what we teach and preach. His people, the ministry of the old North Shore Church--the grit, the determination. They were determined not to quit.

"When my wife and I moved up here in 1979, here was a church that at one time had been 1,000 to 1,200 people and it was down to about 60 and all the people in the church that were still there were over 60. My wife and I show up in our mid-30s and these great saints who loved the Lord, loved the message of grace, loved His Word, but one thing, they weren't going to quit.

"They were at that little corner down there at Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road in Uptown--the worst neighborhood in the city of Chicago at the time. Most dangerous neighborhood in the city of Chicago. You'd get out of the car in the bank parking lot across Wilson Avenue and get in a group and it's all secured and fenced in and walk across over there.

"I remember Beulah Peterson, she was the organist and taught school . . . If you teach English in the government schools in Chicago you're pretty tough. We walked up those steps one evening and there was a drunk sitting there and Beulah says, 'Get out of the way,' and he looks up and says, 'Give me a kiss,' and like that, she took her pocketbook and 'POW,' hit him on top of the head. 

"Franklin Anderson and Roy Faber grabbed him by one foot and the other foot and dragged him out to the curb and I'm sitting there thinking, 'I ain't messing with her. She might be old but . . . '

"And they loved God's Word and they loved the message of God's grace and they weren't going to quit. They had a zeal for the sound doctrine and to reach other people with it. They were part of the first missions that went around.

"Pastor Kurz's mother, Julianna, got saved because some people from the church--Bob Price went door to door sharing the gospel and Alex, who was 7 years old, started coming to the assembly. Bob made Julianna so mad she was going to come and set him right, but she wound up getting saved.

"They actually had a radio station with a transmitter in the bell tower of the church back when you used a crystal. It was there until the '30s when the FAA came in and took over all that stuff. They wanted to get the message out and share it with others.

"Well, our folks here, the same kind of way. No less noteworthy in spirit and determination and grit and sound doctrine. Our ministry extends all the way around the world through that kind of effort. The TV, the radio . . . 

"The love of Christ constrains us. Why does it do that? The love of Christ is made manifest. You know what motivates the life of a Believer? It's not, 'Oh how I love Jesus.' It's, 'Oh how much He loves you and me.'

"When you see how much He loves you and you fall in love with Him who is the lover of your soul, and you're not doing it to get Him to love you, you're doing it because you can't do less for someone who loves you that much, the love of Christ constrains us.

"I've told you before, that word 'constrain,' when my wife and I were dating, she's shorter than I am, and I would stand down on the step and she would stand up a step, and our noses were nose to nose. 

"I would put my arms around her and pick her up and walk across the porch with her and I would say to her, 'One day I'm going to take you home with me,' and I'd sit her down and one day I put my arms around her and picked her up and walked off and I still got her.

"The love of Christ puts its everlasting arms around you and picks you up and walks across the portals of life into eternity. That's the constraining power."