You and I are living in a harrowing day when 1/3 of all American families break up in divorce. Only one out of fifty among church members actually break up in divorce. And only one out of five hundred where both parents read the Bible and pray.
Listen to Lennard Darbee here:
Now, that suggests something tremendous to me. Mankind is seeking an ideal, but that ideal is not an abstraction. That ideal can be found only in a person, and Christ is that person. You see, the word was made flesh. I pointed out to you in my other broadcast that John 1: 14 is the most vital verse in all of scripture, the word was made flesh and dwelled among us.
But you see, the word must be made flesh in you too. When I was in South America, up in the Andes, conducting a Bible school for young people from all over Peru. As some of them left, they said to me, We will never forget you. I thank God for that. I said in my heart, I represented something to them. The word was made flesh. Now then, borrowing spiritual values, the greatest joy in my life is in being a father.
But do you know that being a parent is a very risky business because it begets heartache? If anything strikes your child, it’ll strike you. Its sorrows are your sorrows. Its sin is your sin. Now, through the centuries, rings David’s poignant cry over Absalom: ‘Oh Absalom, Absalom, would God that I had died for you? Oh Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son.’
You see, the godliest people often have the ungodliest children. It was so with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, with Samuel, with David. Billy Sunday’s son committed suicide. Well you say, ‘All right, children are expensive in the first place. They’re an awful nuisance right from the very heart, then why do parents have children?’
To which we reply as the very nature of love, to create objects to love. Now, was it any different with God? Would he sit isolated in some ivory tower in the heavens contemplating his own perfection? Well, not if he were love.
You see, the word had to be made flesh. There was no other way. You can’t save a man from drowning without getting your clothes wet. You can’t save a man from fire without the smell of smoke upon your garments.
And you cannot do redemptive labor without utter exhaustion. Years ago, there was a ferry caught in a typhoon between two Japanese islands. Now, a missionary on the ferry gave his life jacket to a young Japanese. Some 1400 persons perish when the ferry went down, including the missionary.
But you see, he had to do it because the cross is etched in the heart of every real Christian. And in such an hour as that, their platitudes won’t do. As with Jesus, the word must become flesh. Now, I realized that Mark Twain, the American humorist, scoffed at the love of God. He pictured the Ark of Noah turning back to pick up one housefly. He said, In order that the little beast might dip its feet in all the filth of the world, the manure and all the rest, and then gom our food with its filthy feet, thus bringing us disease and death.
He said, This is the handiwork of the loving God. He asks, Why the tiger? Why the cobra? Why the mosquito? Why the earthquake? To which we reply that God is love. But the main purpose of God is not to make us happy.
The main purpose of God in our lives is to produce character, and this simply cannot be done in a perfect environment. You see, character is forged by opposition and by obstacles. Without Satan, we never would have known God’s love. And without obstacles, the world would never know our love.
You remember in 2 Corinthians 1, Paul cries out and says, ‘Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able also to comfort them which are in any sorrow, but the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. You see, the word must be made flesh.
When Dr. Talbot raced into that home in Chicago where the little boy had just drowned, he knew the mother well. There she sat in front of the fireplace with an insane, rigid stare on her face. He saw that her mind was about ready to snap. He quoted her every verse he could think of, verses of comfort, verses of truth. But he was giving her the their word, and the word did not take hold. Just then the door opened and in came a woman who herself had lost a little boy a little while before.
The woman merely called the other woman’s name. Instantly, the awful tension was broken, and the bereaved mother cast herself into the other woman’s arms. Why? Because the word had been made flesh.
Now, perfect beings in a perfect world might be ideal to your way of thinking. But how could there be any growth? How could there be any love where there’s no need for help? Why, such a world might be served with the word alone?
But would that be a perfect world with no love, no growth, everything absolutely static? You see, in our world, we must be servant of all. Now, the catch is in that last word. I’ll serve my race all right, or my family, or my social equals, right?
I can do that, but I’ll never be like Jesus. That is not the word made flesh. For that said, ‘He who is greatest among you must be servant of all. ‘ Will you say, Preacher, I want to be happy. Well, did not Christ come to give us beauty for ashes? And you say, Now you’re asking me to be servant of all. You’re asking me to get involved in their sins, in their heartaches, et cetera.
How can I be happy and have beauty for ashes if I’m involved in all the sin and all the heartache and all the degradation. We reply that the happiest people on Earth are those that get involved. And the most miserable people on Earth are those that are always having to be served, always having to be entertained.
The other day over the radio, a Harvard doctor said that the very health of our country is being endangered by the aimlessness and lack of purpose purpose of our people. You see, the vast misery of the world is the neurosis of emptyness. And life without God is always sick and is always empty. Life without service is a wasteland of futility.
Once my mother was filled with the Holy spirit, you couldn’t keep her simply warming a pew in church. No, she went to the hospital, then to the jail. Ultimately, she wound up on the tide flats of the city of Tacoma, a place called Hollywood on the tide flats, helping harlots and hopheads and drunkards and fugitives from justice. No woman dared to go there alone, but mother took a couple of other godly women with her, and the word was made flesh in my mother.
Now then, we turn to Jesus. Was the resurrection of Jesus merely a spiritual resurrection? Well, if so, then only the spirit is redeemed, and the physical is left completely out of the redemption. Was the word made flesh, deleted from the final trial? Job says, in my flesh, I shall see God.
And after the resurrection, Jesus could turn to his followers and say, I’m not as spirit as he supposed me to be. Handle me and see. He said, I’m flesh and bones even as you are.
So the word victory was not an idea, nor a doctrine, nor a hope. The word victory became flesh, not a philosophy. The first sign of Jesus was that they should find a babe. The word become flesh. Not a teacher, nor a philosopher, nor a metaphorsition, but a babe.
Now, there’s nothing hazy, nor speculating even more inaccurate here. He lived a life completely human from a babe on up. A life like your life, only it was sinless. When you watch that life, you see God’s ideal for man. Now, you’re never going to get a revelation of God through table wrappings or divine science or any such garbage as that.
It’s through a life, but a life lived in the flesh. Will you say, I have it in my New Testament? No, you do not. The New Testament is not a revelation of God. That would be the word alone. It is merely a revelation of the revelation of God, and that revelation is Jesus, where 2 Corinthians 4: 6 tells us that God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Now, that gospel was not a mere system of ideas. It was an accomplishment. In his flesh, he triumphed over death. When all others died, they left only their teachings and their philosophies. They left us no power to fulfill. And you see, the word alone, even in the Bible, is above us. But But Jesus left us more than a word. He left us the power of an endless life.
Well, a fellow says to me, ‘I don’t know. All religions seem alike to me. How do you know the right one?’ Well, I only have sense enough to know this. If I were walking along a road and came to a fork in the road and there were two persons there, one of them was a corpse, the other a living person, I think I’d have sense enough to inquired of the living person.
Now, there’s only one who’s gone through death and come out alive forevermore, and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. It was their utter reliance upon that living Christ that explained the secret and the power of the testimony of the early church. You see, their faith was not built on the doctrine of the resurrection. They counted on him to forgive sins. They counted on him to heal a sick. They counted on him to baptize with the Holy Ghost.
And so, my friends, the word was made flesh. Is that word reigning in your life? Is Jesus living his life through you?
You say, ‘No, preacher, sin is too much for me.’
Well, why don’t you call on the name of the Lord right now? For in deathless assurance, my Bible says that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
In one day in the in Chicago while I was broadcasting, two people turned from lives of immorality and gave their hearts to Jesus Christ. One of them actually turned from a life of perversion. The other one from a life of straight immorality and gave their hearts from Christ. That same day, a third person wrote in to say that the divorce had been called off, that Jesus was now a real force in both his own life and the life of his wife.
My friends, that same Christ can solve your problems. He’s been through life’s pathway ahead of you, and he’ll meet your need with the power of an endless life. So why don’t you call on his name just now?