General Conference Bulletin, vol. 4

SERMON

M. C. Wilcox

April 19, 7 P. M.

Just a short time ago, a number of us came from the golden State of California. Now and then there is some new mine found in that State, and somebody becomes almost fabulously rich in the opening of that mine. Sometimes some of our brethren own mining stock there. If our company which left there the other day had brought news to this Conference that some of our brethren had become millionaires from the opening of some new mine, and that that wealth had been dedicated to this people to use to the glory of God, I know that many, very many, here would have been jubilant had they been assured that all that was true. If it had come home to those of us who were here that we had a personal interest in those mines, that the ones who had invested in them, and who were realizing from them were our own relatives, and that their hearts were opened toward us, we would have felt very glad over that indeed; but, friends, I come to you with a better story to-night than all of that,—a better one for this whole people; a better one for every individual soul among this people. GCB April 22, 1901, page 400.3

The story that I bring to you to-night is found in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians. It is one over which the Apostle Paul was thankful; it is one over which every one of us may be thankful here to-night. Beginning with the fourth verse: “I thank my God always, concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything ye are [or were, as the Revised Version puts it] enriched in him, in all utterance and in all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was conformed in you, so that ye come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall confirm you unto the end that ye may be unreprovable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.” GCB April 22, 1901, page 400.4

That is a glad story, isn’t it? “I thank my God always concerning you,” and that means us, right here. It was true to the Corinthian church when it was spoken. It is just as true to us here. It is pre-eminently true of those who are “waiting for the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” “I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus.” What is grace? It is God’s unmerited favor which he bestows on every one of us; it is even more than that; it is the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the revelation of God through Christ. It is God’s glory veiled to poor, sinful, human mortals. It is God revealing himself, so that men can grasp him; so that he can be a reality to them. If he visited us with his unveiled glory, we should die in the sight of that glory; but he veils that glory when he appears to us, and God’s veiled glory is the manifestation of himself through grace. God’s grace—God’s glory, God’s goodness, the revelation of himself through Jesus Christ,—is given you in Jesus Christ now. We may put it in the past tense as it is in the Revised Version: And it was given to us when the Lord Jesus Christ was given. It is not something that we buy by anything that we can do. It is not something that we must reach a certain condition before we can accept of it. When God gave his Son, Jesus Christ, in the beginning, he gave all that grace concerning which the apostle thanks God. He gave it for you, he gave it for me, and he has been holding it out with open hands before us who are here to-night. “The grace of God which was given in Christ Jesus, but who was Christ? He was the eternal Son with the Father. It “pleased the Father that in him should all the fullness dwell;” “for in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;” and when the Father gave his Son, revealed himself in that Son, gave himself in that Son, he gave all that fullness for his children. GCB April 22, 1901, page 400.5

That is the message that God brings to us here to-night. God comes to us—to us who are here,—with all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, revealed through his grace in our Lord Jesus Christ. We have it in him. That in everything ye are enriched in him. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” I wish that our souls could drink in the wonderful promise God has given us here. He does not want us to come and ask according to our conception of what our sins are, nor according to the conception that we may have of the amount that is necessary to forgive those sins, but that we may ask according to the richness of his mercy, “according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.” And the riches of his grace includes all the boundlessness of the love of our God. GCB April 22, 1901, page 400.6

The riches of his grace are such he can not reveal them all here; it is only in the ages to come, throughout all eternity (and they will not be exhausted there), that he would show to us his kindness through Jesus Christ. Friends, these are the riches of God’s grace which are brought to us to-night in our Lord Jesus Christ. GCB April 22, 1901, page 400.7

How may we take it?—Simply receive it by receiving him. “Simply believe on me.” God has said to us here in his word of promise which I have just read to you. His grace is a great boundless storehouse, and he who believes unlocks the door. Let me read you a text found in Romans 5th chapter and first two verses: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” GCB April 22, 1901, page 400.8

Grace takes away the sin, grace justifies the sinner, and he stands complete before God. Faith opens that door of grace, and gives the sinner access to the great storehouse of the eternal riches of God’s grace. Do you believe it? Do you long for more of his grace? God offers to us all that grace simply by believing on him. “That in everything,”—in everything,—“ye are enriched by him, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you.” GCB April 22, 1901, page 400.9

Now, I am not going to talk on the spirit of prophecy,—for the testimony of Christ is the spirit of prophecy,—I am going to take it in the common acceptation of the term, that God wants that testimony or that witness in us, in every one of his children. That does not mean that we will all be prophets; but it does mean that every one of us must have that testimony of Jesus Christ. And as that testimony of Jesus Christ is confirmed in your heart and in my heart, so God will reveal to us more of the eternal riches of his grace. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.1

Let us drop the word, “testimony,” and take the simple word “witness.” The same word is rendered “witness” in other parts of the New Testament. “Even as the witness of Christ was confirmed in you,”—not, “confirmed to you.” In Hebrews 2nd chapter and 3rd verse, I read the words: “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.” There is a difference between having all things confirmed unto us and confirmed in us. Those to whom it was confirmed,—the apostles,—pleads with them that they do not neglect that great salvation. It was confirmed to them by the witness of those men who had seen our Lord Jesus Christ, who preached his Word, and through whom God wrought miracles and mighty works and signs. They had evidence before them to show that those things were facts which those men told. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.2

And, dear friends, there is great danger of our resting upon the mere facts. We have had confirmed to us God’s precious truth, we have had it told to us so plainly, so plainly proved by the Word of God, so clearly demonstrated in the lives of others and what it will do for others, that our own hearts say again and again. “It is truth: we know it is truth. But we may hold all these things as facts, as simple, naked, outward facts, and they will do us no good whatever; we will only be condemned at last. All these things have been confirmed unto Satan. The devils believe and tremble: they know that any of these great facts of the revelation of God are true. But they must be more to us than facts. Facts are simply cold, dead things. They may be those things which will cramp us and narrow us, but God wants us to have more than mere facts, a mere aggregation of knowledge; he wants it to be to us living truth. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.3

Truth is living. Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life. Truth is expansive; it grows, it develops, it magnifies. If it is in the heart, received by faith, it will make the individual grow, it will enlarge his heart, it will make him a useful servant for God. He will not be a dried-skin bottle, that will burst with the new wine, but will grow with all the expansive power of the truth of God. And so God wants us to receive him, Jesus Christ our Saviour, not as a fact, but as a living truth. Jesus Christ, the truth, the life. He wants to be that unto us. He wants to be confirmed in us. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.4

Let me read from another passage of Scripture what it means,—the reception of the witness of Jesus Christ. Even as the witness of Christ was confirmed in you, do ye become enriched in everything. 1 John 5:9: “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. He has the demonstration of the truth in him. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.5

God gives us a twofold witness. He has given that to his people and to his church, all the way through the ages. He has not asked us to believe on the testimony simply of his Word; he is willing to confirm that Word not only to us, but in us, and it will be only those to whom that Word is confirmed, who will lay hold of that truth clear through to the very end. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.6

Take the witness of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. He tells us in the fifth chapter of John: “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” They did bear witness of him from the very first of Genesis to the last chapter of Malachi. They were continually bearing witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and his mission. But when Jesus Christ came, he was the living Word. God wrote that word again in the living person of our Lord. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.7

In the fifth of John Jesus says: “There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true.... But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.” God gave to Jesus Christ himself that witness which was from above, in writing in his own heart and life and flesh the very words which God had before given through him; and God gives Jesus Christ to this world, that he may be in himself and in the word, a twofold witness to this world. But more than that, God not only wishes to give a witness unto us of the truth that is in Jesus Christ, but he wants to confirm that witness in us, that every one of us may know of ourselves that we are Christ’s and he is ours, that he is a living Christ in us. That is the witness that God has given concerning his Son. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.8

My friends, it is not that the Lord wrote his word away back eighteen hundred years ago. He did write it there, but he is writing it again, and he wants to write it again before all the world; he is writing that prophetic word by his own providence and by his own power in all the nations of the earth, in all the signs that are occurring; he is writing that glorious law of his that was given on Mount Sinai, a witness of himself, in the hearts of his children. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.9

The “two witnesses” are not simply alone the Old and New Testament, but they are the Scriptures of God’s truth, and those living Scriptures, written again in the hearts and lives of his people. God wants it to be so now: Roman Catholicism has counterfeited that truth in the sacrifice of the mass which it is continually offering; but God wants his children to hold out before the world the light in the living testimony which they themselves are giving to the world continually of the mighty power of God, the working of the Lord Jesus Christ in them. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.10

Let me read further in the fifth chapter of 1 John: “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar: because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning his Son. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” But it is given to us: and that man that by living faith yields to God, accepts of the Lord Jesus Christ, receives in him the eternal life of God. It is not something, dear friends, that is theory. It is something that is a living tangible truth. Do not let our unbelief keep it from us. There is no hope for us, unless we can get some power that is above the human, some power that is not working in the mere carnal man. GCB April 22, 1901, page 401.11

There is a power working in the carnal man, but it is a perverted life. God wants that life to come into you and into me, not a perverted life, but the life as it flows out from the glorious Fountain. God is the Fountain of life, and from that great Fountain of life there pulses out to all parts of his great universe the eternal life of God. To everything that is in harmony with the law of that life,—God’s voice, his character, the expression of that character in our Lord Jesus Christ,—that life flows into that soul as the eternal life of God, as the living power which only God can give, to lift that man above the sins that have bound him in the past, lift him above the low ambitions that have held him and tied him to this world, lift him above the passions and emotions of his flesh, lift him above everything that is low and gross and earthly, and enable him to live the life of the Lord Jesus Christ here on this earth. And so the Lord Jesus Christ will witness again through his own children through his own body; the Head will manifest itself through the members; the thoughts of God will express themselves among all his people everywhere. O the fullness of Jesus Christ will be manifest when the members of his body will come into that relation to God where they can receive all the exceeding riches of his grace. GCB April 22, 1901, page 402.1

But, friends, it comes home to us tonight to receive him as individuals. We often hear individuals asking, “Why is not more power manifested here? Why is not more power manifested there? Why does not this man have more power? or that man have more power?” The thought should come home to each heart, Why have not I more power? It is an individual work between me and my Lord Jesus Christ, and I praise God that there are no walls that humanity can erect, no societies or organizations or orders of men or priests or cordons of ecclesiastical police of any kind, that can separate the soul from the abundant grace and mercy which the Lord Jesus Christ holds with open hands to give to every one of his children. GCB April 22, 1901, page 402.2

O, I think of that Laodicean message, so glorious and wonderful it is: “Behold. I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” But what have I to set before my Lord when he sups with me? What can I put on my table?—Nothing but my poverty, nothing but my sins, nothing but my utter nothingness, but the Lord takes that with me, he becomes one with me in the human flesh. Then he asks me to sup with him, and his table is crowded with all the delectable bounties of heaven. God asks me to sup with him, and to partake of the glorious riches that he has brought. O friends, this is the story that comes to you to-night, that in everything ye are enriched by him, in everything. Lord, I come, all clothed with my own filthy rags; but he takes the rags away, and he clothes me in the garments of salvation, he places upon me the robe of righteousness. “As a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with jewels,” so God clothes me in his own glorious righteousness, and I stand complete in him. GCB April 22, 1901, page 402.3

I come to him blind. He reaches forth those hands that touched in actual physical touch the blind that they might see when he was here upon the earth, and he touches my spiritual eyes and he helps me to see visions of God. That is what the Lord wants us to do, brethren and sisters—see visions of God. Visions simply means “seeings”—seeings of God. Though the Lord may not give us that vision originally, he wants us to see just as he sees, to look at it just as he looks at it, to come up into the mount with him and look at these wonderful, glorious truths and the blessed great field of possibility and beauty and glory that lies before us, looking upon that just as God looks upon it. So he touches our eyes, that we may see. GCB April 22, 1901, page 402.4

I come to him poor. I have nothing, nothing, but poverty: in all the poverty of my soul I come to him, poor in spirit, and he gives to me the gold tried in the fire. And so I might go on and enumerate all of these different weaknesses. I have no speech, I have not anything, I can not do anything to glorify my Master: but he brings me into the great storehouse of his grace, and he gives me all that I need in order that I may glorify him. GCB April 22, 1901, page 402.5

O friends, these are the riches that are brought not to this congregation as a congregation, but to this congregation as individual souls. To these who are here before me, to every soul that I see to-night, God has opened the great storehouse of his riches, and he wants to have them open their heart that he may come in with all these riches,—that they may minister his life to others. GCB April 22, 1901, page 402.6

Well, we can do it, friends; will we not do it? It is not a hard thing to do. It seems to me that it is the easiest thing to do of all, that when he comes so wonderfully, so good, so kind, so tender, so compassionate, and asks us to accept all, there is nothing but our own pride of heart that will prevent us from opening the door and letting the Saviour in. We can not do anything ourselves. Let us know that that is so, because God says so. That is the witness that he has given us concerning ourselves. Let us accept it, and say, Lord, it is all so. But he has given us that witness concerning ourselves, that we may accept the witness concerning his Son, that in that Son all fullness dwells, and ye are complete in him. My friends, there is rejoicing in that. O, there is rejoicing every day of our lives in that. GCB April 22, 1901, page 402.7

But can you rejoice when you are imperfect? We do not rejoice in any perfection that we have. We rejoice in the perfection that is in our Lord Jesus Christ. I praise God for that. I am glad that he has led me to see that he is not a tyrant that holds me off and give me those glorious riches. I am glad demands of me a ransom before he will that he is a kind, loving Father that sees the need of his children, and tells me to come. O, come! Does he show me my imperfection? Yea, he does every day, but oh, so kindly he has done it, so wonderfully kind that I can only kiss the hand that has pointed out the defects. Day by day he does it. I look back over the work of yesterday. It seems such an imperfect offering to render unto him, but he has accepted it all in the Beloved, and he tells me to go on, and he points out newer, clearer, higher progress than I have ever made before. He tells me that my words are so imperfect, the words that I use to express his truth. However others may look upon them, it seems as though they fall so far short of what they ought in order to express God’s glory. He reveals our defects and imperfections in order that all may be corrected. I know that I love my children, but in that there is only the expression of what God has implanted in me toward my children; and the one that has placed that in my heart and my life is infinite kindness toward me and toward every other soul that walks upon the face of this earth. Friends, there is so much joy; oh, there is so much joy in looking upon our Lord as our Father. He is one that always welcomes us, he is the one that wants to take us into nearness to himself. It does not exalt ourselves to get a right view of God; it does not make us feel that we are perfect; it does not bring us into a high state of feeling. It brings us into greater longing, a longing of the heart that we make know more of him. We want to drink deeper of the draughts from that cool spring of Lebanon. The world seems more and more a dreary desert; and Christ more and more a wellspring of joy. He wants to be with us all the way. He wants to live in us, witness with us day by day, not for our worthiness, but because of his love to us. He is all in all to us - a Father, a Brother, everything we need. GCB April 22, 1901, page 402.8

But he is all this to us only as he comes into my heart as the revelation, the witness, of God. It is he himself; it is his life. He wants us to accept that. He does not simply want us merely to say that that is a fact, but to believe it in a way that God by his life writes it as a part of our very being, in our character. He wants our faith open toward him, to receive these streams of life that are flowing out from the great Fountain; yielding ourselves to him, that we may minister his life to the world, in order that we may reveal Christ to the world, sons of God through Jesus Christ, priests of God under Jesus Christ, ministering his life to the weak, the hungry, and the needy in soul and body. GCB April 22, 1901, page 403.1

“In everything ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge.” He does not mention those two to exhaust the subject. Those are simply illustrations of what God wants to do for his children if they will only accept Jesus Christ. I do not know what gifts God has in store for me. I do not know what gifts he has in store for you, know what gifts he has in store for you, but I do know, for God’s word witnesses to it, that for every soul that will yield him, God has some gift or gifts which that soul can use to God’s glory and which will glorify him throughout all eternity. He has it for you; he has gifts for every soul, but we bind about his giving. Our narrow faith compasses us about. We build walls on each side of us. We limit it, instead of laying the heart open and receiving all that God has for us, expecting, continually expecting more of his wonderful grace; more and more of his life. GCB April 22, 1901, page 403.2

There is another text that comes into my mind upon that: 1 Corinthians 2:1. “And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.” The Revised Version gives it “The mystery of God.” And the mystery of God is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” GCB April 22, 1901, page 403.3

It is simply receiving God by living faith, brethren, day by day, hour by hour. It is a joy to work for him when you can come, morning by morning, laying your heart all open before him, and saying, “Father, I need thee to-day; just grace for to-day,” and then with the heart open toward God to receive him, to receive his truth, to drink continually from that Fountain which God has opened for you. GCB April 22, 1901, page 403.4

Brethren, that is the outlook that lies before us. It comes right to us now. Let us accept it now, right now. If we have not known Jesus Christ before, let us receive him with all the riches of his grace to-night. Let him confirm, not simply to us his witness as he has done and is doing, but let him confirm it in us. Let the heart be established by Christ. “Believe in the Lord God so shall ye be established,” “confirmed,” made firm, not carried about by winds of doctrine, not shaken by the darkness, the trials and conflicts of the day, but trusting, resting in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the great Father of us all, who shall confirm you unto God, that you may be unreprovable in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle expresses it in another place: “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.” Oh, there is no question about it. GCB April 22, 1901, page 403.5

There was published in The Signs of the Times, February 22, 1899, these words: “Jesus is now sending his message to a fallen world. He delights to take apparently hopeless material, those through whom Satan has worked, and make them the subjects of his grace. He longs to deliver them from the wrath that is to fall upon the disobedient. He has committed himself to the work of our redemption. He resolved that he would spare nothing, however costly, withhold nothing, however dear, that would restore the moral image of God in man. And he holds in store gift upon gift, waiting for the proper channels through which he can communicate the treasures of eternal life.” GCB April 22, 1901, page 403.6

Oh, will you be a channel for the Lord Jesus Christ? Will you, brother? Will you, sister? Will you all be channels that God may work through, and give to the world those gifts which unbelief is holding back? GCB April 22, 1901, page 403.7

God grant that we may receive of the fullness of his grace, of his glorious life, and be indeed sons and priests of God. GCB April 22, 1901, page 403.8