I wonder how long it is since we took time to thank the Lord for the hymns. One of those things, like the freedom that we enjoy in this land, that I fear we take for granted. The hymns of the church. You know, there is a covetness that I think it's all right for a person to have. One of the things that I would like to have been able to do, which the Lord has not privileged me to do, because he knows what he's doing, is I would like to have been able to put into words some hymns like we've been singing this morning. Wouldn't that be a privilege and a blessing? You know, the Lord gives the church one or two in every generation, it seems, who have a special gift of writing the lyrics, all the prose, poems. They can be set to music by those who are gifted in this. They can be used in the Holy Spirit down through the years to cheer and to bless and to encourage and to strengthen the people who sing them. And I don't know how it affected you or not, but I was very, very conscious this morning of the Spirit's guidance in the selection of the hymns. And as I thought of the meaning of some of these hymns have brought tears to my eyes. My wife here, she could tell you, I'm not a sentimental type person like some people are. We are made up differently. People are made differently. But when I stop to think about the grace and the goodness of God, I tell you, many a time it's brought tears to my eyes. Well, I hadn't intended to say that, but I just wanted to say it because it was on my heart. And when we get into the method, you'll understand why I thought of this. There are many methods of Bible study. Some of them can be done by just common ordinary grassroots folks like ourselves. Others of them, you have to have a knowledge of the original language. There are some tools and equipment which all Christians should have. If they want to do any real study of the Word of God, a good Bible, a number of good reliable translations, a good concordance. It would be helpful to have a dictionary of Greek-English words and a Hebrew-English lexicon, if you can learn how to use one. Another very simple instrument a piece of equipment that a Christian should have in order to study the Bible, and somebody's going to be surprised when I say this, but after you think about it, you won't be. Is a dictionary, a common ordinary dictionary. Did you know that there are a lot of words that we use, and we really don't know the meaning of the words, we just use them, you know. And we know one little shade of the meaning. Two weeks ago tomorrow, I believe it was, Yes. Two weeks ago tomorrow I was in Waynesboro, Georgia. And I've gotten into the wonderful habit of taking a siesta on Sunday afternoon. And that's about the only time I take a siesta. And my body's gotten conditioned to it, and if I didn't get a siesta tomorrow afternoon, I wouldn't feel right tomorrow night. Just every seven days, you know. But I went up to this room in this big colonial home. with a room by twenty or twenty feet, I suppose, at least. And then I do a little study after my siesta, and I looked over on the desk in this room where I was, it was kind of my, the guest room, I suppose. And that was a common ordinary dictionary, except that it was a little unusual in that it was an elementary school dictionary. And I looked up some of the words that I'm going to use this morning in that elementary school dictionary. And you know what? The Lord spoke to me. The Lord said, you know, Shockley, when you get into the pulpit, if you could use the words that a fourth and fifth and sixth grader could always understand, he'd always reach the people. You know, I think that's one of the reasons why the Lord used H.A. Ironside the way he did. If you ever had the joy of hearing Dr. Ironside speak, he used very few long syllable words. He spoke in the common, ordinary manner. And look at D.L. Moody. You'll find the same thing about D.L. Moody. He used words that most anyone could understand. Now this morning, I'd like for us to study for a little while, and I'll tell you now, before we begin, we're not going to finish. We're just going to... start this morning and then we're going to take up tonight before we leave off this morning. I'd like for us to look at some of the phrases and some of the terms that are used in Second Corinthians to describe Christians. And we're going to read quite a bit of Scripture. There was a time in my ministry just after I was saved when the devil, I think it was. gave me the idea or the impression that if you read a lot of Scripture that it would be boring. But you ought to use a lot of illustrations and so forth. Well, illustrations are fine. I like as near as possible to use at least one illustration for each main point and a message. But I come to the place as I get older and, you know what, I'm a day older today than I was yesterday. Did you know that? And you are too, by the way. I come to a place where I have very little confidence in a message unless it has a lot of the Word of God in. Because after all, the Word of God is what the Holy Spirit can use because the Holy Spirit is the author of the Word of God. So we're going to look at some Scripture in Second Corinthians this morning. Look at some of the titles and the names that Paul uses when he's speaking about Christians. He's talking to the Corinthians here, but everything that he said about the Corinthians would be true of us. The first one is in Second Corinthians, Chapter Two. And with your permission, I'm going to read from the William translation. Now, most of you have the King James, which is good. Fine, but I think it'll be a little blessing perhaps. I'll read to you the fourteenth and the fifteenth verses in the Williams. But thanks be to God, for He always leads me in His triumphal dream, through union with Christ. And everywhere through me keeps spreading the perfume of the knowledge of him. Indeed, I am the fragrance of Christ to God, alike for those who are being saved, and for those who are perishing. To the one a deadly perfume that leads to death, and to the other a living perfume that leads to life. And we will not be coming on the latter part of those verses because we don't have time. But I do think that it's helpful to compare the Williams with the King James. The King James says, For we are under God a sweet savor of Christ. A sweet savor. A perfume. A fragrance. and aroma. Now some people like perfume and some people don't. I frankly like it. My wife and I have a rather good friend in Columbia. She used to come over to the house and visit occasionally. And whenever I'd come home at the end of the day to the house, if she'd been there, I'd say, well, Mildred's been here today, hadn't she? I don't think she used perfume, she just bathed in it, you know. And I knew the particular aroma, a scent or whatever you want to call it that she used, and if she'd been in the house during the day, I'd know it. Now that is not what Paul is talking about. Paul is talking about an influence that reminds people of Jesus Christ. Some of you know Mrs. Harvey Farmer in Tampa, and others of you knew her dear husband. It was my privilege to get acquainted with Dr. and Mrs. Farmer in Vietchenburg, Switzerland, in nineteen hundred and forty-eight, and then to see them on numerous occasions until dear Dr. Farmer went to be with the Lord some years later. I was in Birmingham, Alabama, and Dr. Farmer had been there on numerous occasions at the Southeastern Bible School, which later became the Southeastern Bible College. And I was in a home, and I happened to mention that I had known the Farmer's, and this lady said, let me tell you something that happened in our home. She said, Dr. Farmer stayed in our home when so-and-so was a little boy. He stayed with us for a week. And after he'd been gone a week or two, my little son came to me one day and said, Mommy, when is the man that looks like Jesus coming back to visit us? And that little boy didn't know what Jesus looked like, but he heard about what Jesus was like. And because of what he saw in Dr. Palmer's life, it reminded him of God's Son, Jesus Christ. Wouldn't you like for that to be said about you? A sweet fragrance, a perfume, and a rumour. And there we come to why I thought about these hymns. We started singing that wonderful hymn by Fanny Crosby. I shall see my Savior, first of all. Did you know that this dear lady, from the day she was a little baby, never saw the light of day that you and I are enjoying today. She was blind all of her life. And yet, by God's grace, she heard the simple message of Jesus and His love, and she responded, and she opened a heart, and she received the Lord Jesus Christ in. And through the minister of others, she grew in the Word and the things of the Lord. And before she departed this life, she wrote two thousand hymns that were published, besides the ones that were not published. And after we sang that hymn, I just started thinking of some of them that she wrote. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a full taste of glory, divine air of salvation, purchase of God, born of his spirit, washed in his blood. This is my story. This is my song. Praise is the Savior all the day long. Saved by grace, and I shall sing the story. saved by grace. Thou my everlasting portion more than life of life to me, close to thee. Tis the blessed hour of prayer, Savior more than life to me. I am thine, O Lord, I have heard thy voice, and it told thy love to me. All the way my Savior leads me, only a step to Jesus, Jesus is tenderly calling today, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. And there are only about a thousand, nine hundred and eighty-five more that he wrote. A fragrance, a perfume, an aroma, a blessing. That's what a life was. And if you could go, I believe it's in Upper State, New York, where her earthly body was buried. Honor the epitaph. You know what it is? Ain't phanic. She hath done what she could. Isn't that sweet? Wouldn't it be wonderful? if when we had departed this life and they've laid our earthly tabernacle, if the Lord be not come, in the ground, they could put our name and they could say, He or she has done what she could. Their life was an aroma, it was a perfume, it was a fragrance of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm very interested in the ministry that God has raised up in this country to international students. Because I think this is one of the greatest methods of foreign missions in the world, is to try to evangelize some of the three or four hundred thousand internationals in this country who go back to that country, as many of them closed countries, educated. And if they can go back as evangelicals, as Christians, they can go back as missionaries to their own people. And as you know, that many of these dear internationals that find the Lord, they find the Lord because they have been put into contact with Christians, and they can see in their Christians' lives that they behold a difference from the common run-of-the-mill American that they see. And you see, what The image of America and of the United States especially in other lands is very, very poor because what they see mostly is the vile, lewd movies that are produced in this land. And so the image they have is very poor. But when they come to this country and God in His providence and His grace puts them in touch with people whose lives have been changed and transformed by the gospel of the grace of God, they see a difference and many of them haven't seen Christ in the life. have been brought to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what we're talking about right now fits very closely into the next truth, right here in the third chapter of this book of Second Corinthians, beginning with a second verse. Once again I read in the Williams, and you are my letter of recommendation written on my heart read and understood by everybody. For you are always showing that you are a letter of Christ, produced by my service, written not in inks, but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stones, but on human hearts." Now there are two thoughts here. about the epistle. And you know what an epistle is? An epistle is a letter. It's something that carries a message. Paul says, first of all, you are my or our epistle. In other words, what you do and what you don't do speaks to the people around about you about me. and some of the greatest sorrow that ever comes into the heart of a Christian soul-runner, an evangelist, or witness for Christ, is the conduct and the action of those who are professed faith under his or her ministry, as the case may be. Many times these converts that we've had the joy of pointing to the Savior have brought real happiness, real joy to our hearts. On other occasions, those who have been the brightest at the time of their profession have not grown and developed and matured as we had hoped they would, and they brought great sorrow and sadness to our hearts. So Paul says, remember, you're my epistle. What the people in Corinth, who are unbelievers, think of me is going to depend upon how you conduct yourselves. But there's someone else that we represent that's far more important than the person who led us to Christ. That is, he says, ye are the epistle of Christ. what people think of Christ is going to depend upon what they see in your life. The way you act in the supermarket when you go to check out your groceries. And I dare say that especially for you people that live here in the colony, When you go down to the best food store or whatever the name of that store is down there, and I was in it yesterday, sometimes they can tell by the way you dress and the way you conduct yourselves that you are from part of the pond. And you're set aside, don't forget. And they expect more from you than they do the people that live out in Keystone Heights. Because after all, aren't you Christians? And when you think something's thirty-seven cents, but you found out that it's gone up to forty-three cents, and you don't like it a bit, the way you conduct yourself has a lot to do with what kind of impression you've given them, not a part of the poems necessarily, but of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, if it's anybody in the world that ought to be easy to get along with, it's a Christian. Even if it costs you money, even if it costs you your pride. Just remember, they are watching your life. Now I know some of the people here don't live at Park of the Ponds, you're visiting for the weekend, but it's very important and the same thing holds true right where you are. There's a man in Florence, South Carolina, that I had the opportunity or privilege of pointing to the Savior one day. I really had very little to do with it. I just happened to be there the day that he was ready to be plucked for the Lord. That's all it was to it. Mrs. Parker knows him well. And I had the joy of pointing to the Savior one day, and here's what he said to me. He said, if God can do what he has done to my wife since she's been saved, I can't live any longer without him. Some of you had known and heard of a wonderful gospel singer he's man in heaven, been there about six years, by the name of Bill Carl. A bass singer sang in operatic roles for quite a while, and the Lord saved him through the Minister of Youth for Christ, and he traveled a length in the breadth of the land many times and around the world several times before he went to heaven in sixty-three. And for the first three years that he was saved, his wife, didn't like it too much. Thought he was wasting his time running over the country singing little gospel songs, as she said. But finally, one New Year's, when he was away up in the East some way singing, and she was back by herself in California, she got to thinking of a tremendous change in Bill Carl's life. She got down by the side of her bed, and she said, Oh God, if you can come into the heart of my husband and change him the way you have, I cannot afford to live no longer without you in my heart also. This is what I'm talking about, being an epistle of the living God. You notice that word in the King James, and you notice again a little later in another phrase that we're going to have, the Holy Spirit has injected in here the living God. You see, that was the difference between this wonderful truth of Christendom and Christianity and the religions that these people had been accustomed to. The religions had a dead founder or a dead leader. It was gold or it was silver or it was wood or it was clay. But this one, this man Paul, had been proclaiming a message of a living God. And that makes all the difference in the world. Ye are our epistles. Then he says, Ye are an epistle of Christ. Alright? Let me see. I believe there was a... Yes. Turn to verse six. There's something there I want to show you. Verse six of chapter three. Let me read it to you in the Williams. For the letter kills... but the Spirit gives life. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Have you ever known a Christian that could give you the letter, but there wasn't any sweetness in the Spirit when they gave it to you? Christ did not... seemed to be attractive because of their lives. They knew the law, they knew the Bible, but there was no sweetness there. I have a friend like that or have an acquaintance. He's forgotten more of the Bible than I'll ever know. He's a graduate of a college and a seminary. He can read in either the Greek or the Hebrew, it doesn't matter. in the original language. He knows it up here. But when he gets down here, apparently something is missing. And he stands up and preaches and people can marvel, man, how he knows the Word. He really knows the Scriptures. But there's something missing. There's something missing. The letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life. Look on down at verse seventeen. Now the Lord means the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. King James says, Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. One of the most important things that is essential to being blessed in the ministry, whether it be leading the music or playing the piano or leading the singing, or ministering the words, or witnessing to an individual is the fact that the Holy Spirit of God gives you limited in what you do. I know of some musicians that know music, but it's mechanical. There are others who seem to have a natural touch and it's done with liberty. And it's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's acceptable, it's useful. The same is true in the Lord's Word. I know people have gone out and witnessed and given out tracks and even given testimonies on street corners and sometimes they have done all these things in the flesh. There was no real liberty there. where there's no liberties, there's no blessing. And so we should covet. This is a kind of covetousness that we can have. We should covet, we should desire that what we do in serving the Lord be done in the liberties and in the freedoms of the Holy Spirit of God. And like we were talking about yesterday morning, If there is real liberty and freedom there in the Spirit, there'll be natural joy. It won't have to be forced. It won't have to be faked. It won't have to be put on. It'll just be epiphanous. It'll come out and flow out of us. How well I remember the man who led me to Christ, thirty-one years ago, next month. One day a group of us seated around a big table. And he was talking about what I'm talking about right now. He said, remember, fellas, in the Christian life, the blessing does not come from you or from me. The blessing comes from Christ as he overflows out of your life. And he paused a moment. He said, yes, remember, fellas, it doesn't take a big cup to run over. I like that. It doesn't take a big cup to run over. You don't have to be a Billy Graham or a D.L. Moody or Harry Ironside to run over. You can be just a little nobody at the Park of Palms or Keystone Heights or St. Petersburg or wherever you are. But as long as you are a little about it for Jesus and Jesus Christ by his Spirit is overflowing your life, Jesus, not you, will be a blessing to the people with whom you come in contact. One other thought, and we will close. Chapter four, verse seven. But I am keeping this jewel in an earthen jaw to prove that its surpassing power is God's, not mine." And the King James, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels. One of the things I liked about Paul is that whenever he says something as a rule, he goes ahead to explain what he says. He says we have this treasure in earth and vessel. He's talking about the power of God. Then he tells you why. You have it in just a plain common earth and vessel. One of the simplest creations of man is a clay pot. And why does he have it in just a plain common ordinary clay pot? Here's the reason. That the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. The power does not come in a mighty cathedral with mighty, beautiful, cut, stained glass windows, with a great molar organ and a paid choir. The blessing of God comes in the person of God's Son by His Spirit in the hearts of His people. He says, We have this treasure in a simple earthen vessel that the power may be manifested. It's of God. and not of an individual. Beloved Christian, brother or sister, you think you have troubles? Go visit with Paul a little bit. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted? but not forsaken, cashed down, but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." So he's talking about the power of the gospel, the power that transformed his life the power that's taken him from a blaspheming, Christ-hating, fanatical Jewish fighter, and it transformed him into a jewel of the grace of God. He says, what God has done for me, God can do for you. In another place, over in another book, one or two books after this. He says, now listen, you Philippians, you were all worried about what had happened to me, weren't you? He said, well, I appreciate your worrying about me, but I'd like to let you in on some very, very wonderful news. He says, the things that you were worried about, the detours in my life, the apparent defeats in my life, the apparent tragedy in my life about which you have been most concerned. He says, I'd just like to tell you, in case you're interested, that they have fallen out under the fotherance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what we were talking about last night, remember? And so let's remember that as for God, His way is perfect. He makes no mistakes. We make mistakes. But God makes no mistakes. And if we'll just leave the choices up to him, it's like I believe D.L. Moody or Hudson Taylor once said, God always gives his best to those who leave the choice up to him. And so, the Christian is for few. He's a fragrance. He's a sweet savor. And then, besides that, the Christian is also an epistle. And he's a treasure in an earthen vessel. And if God can take these lines of ours and get those three things into them and use them, our having come here this morning, on this Saturday morning, the last day in May, nineteen hundred and sixty-nine, will have not been in vain. Shall we pray? Our Father and our God, we know that God desires that our lives would be so completely molded into His image that the people who know Him not would see us and be reminded of Him. They'd want to know more about him because of what they've seen in our lives. We pray that all the characteristics of the flesh and of the world and of self would be done away with in our lives and that he'd make us so completely like the Lord Jesus Christ that others will be reminded of him whenever they see us. And we thank thee for this beautiful weather that you've given us. We thank thee for this pleasant, comfortable building that we've had to come into to sing these wonderful hymns by godly men and women such as Fanny Crosby and Francis Havergill and John Newton and others. We thank thee for these men and women of God. Oh, Father, whether it's our lot to write a hymn or a poem or to play the piano or the organ, Or to lead the singing or to minister the word. Or to pick up the dishes in the dining room. Or to cook the food. Or to clean the room. Or to make up the bed. Whatever it is. May we do it as unto Christ. Knowing that ye serve the Lord Christ. We thank thee, Lord, for the promise that you've given us there. In the book of Colossians. That we shall receive our reward. Father, may our primary reward be the consciousness that we are serving thee whom we love. Dismiss us now with thy blessings and go with us to our places of rest and recreation and use us for your glory in Jesus' name. Amen.