His Spirit Was Stirred Within Him (Urbana 57)

Speech Delivered at Urbana 57
by Eric Fife

The qualifications of the Apostle Paul did not make him a missionary. They made him a persecutor of the church of Christ. It wasn't primarily his mind that made him the man -who won souls for Christ. It was that he was a man who was capable of being stirred.

I want to read to you verses 16 and 17 from the 17th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. I feel this is the word to which the Lord would draw our attention. I am reading from the Revised Version.

Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he beheld the city full of idols. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons in in the market place every day with them that met with him.

Now when Paul waited for them at Athens, and saw the city given over to idolatry, his spirit was stirred within him. Therefore. And those are the two thoughts that I want particularly to bring to your attention this evening.

I hardly need to detain you with the details of this story. Paul had visited Philippi and had been beaten with many stripes and cast into prison. From there, he went to Thessalonica and again he was persecuted and hunted out of the city like-an animal. From there he went to Berea and again persecution was his lot. Like a fugitive he was hunted and eventually taken to Athens. And here at Athens he was on his own, and he saw a spectacle of a city wholly given over to idolatry.

Historians record that every street in the city of Athens had its quota of shrines and temples and idols. In fact, one secular historian sums it up by saying that in Athens at this time it was easier to find a god than it was to find a man. And when Paul beheld this spectacle, his spirit was stirred within him.

The Apostle Paul was a man who was unusually well qualified for the task to which God called him, a man of strong and virile personality, a man of keen and brilliant intellect, a man prepared by a first-rate academic education, a man who in every sense of the word was highly qualified. But let's never forget this. The qualifications of the Apostle Paul did not make him a missionary. They made him a persecutor of the church of Christ. It wasn't primarily his mind that made him the man who won souls for Christ. It was that he was a man who was capable of being stirred.

I have no time at all for emotionalism, but I feel today we are in danger of neglecting the dynamic driving power of a warm heart toward Jesus Christ and the ability to be stirred when we see cities and nations and cultures given over to the worship of idols. It wasn't his mind, it wasn't his qualifications that made him the man he was. It was his heart.

This, in almost every sense of the word, is a remarkable congregation, and I count it a privilege to be called to minister among you people. You bring to this place an amazing array of preparation and education; your medical qualifications, your teaching qualifications, your engineering qualifications. But let me say this. God is not interested in your qualifications. He is interested in you. He is not so concerned with the work you do. He's primarily concerned with the kind of person you are. He's not merely concerned that you should be challenged by missions, but that you should be challenged by the living God. Not even so much that your heart should be moved with pity for these people who are without Christ and without hope in the world, but that your heart and my heart should be drawn out in love to Him, so we can say with the Apostle Paul, "It's the love of Christ that constrains me and drives me on." This is the ability to be stirred - it is devotion to Jesus Christ.

Many of you tonight have stood as an indication that you are prepared to go to the foreign field. This may not indicate true and complete surrender to Jesus Christ. For instance, you may be willing to go to Africa, but be quite unwilling to go through life as a spinster. You may be quite willing to turn your back on your home for Christ's sake, but be quite unwilling to go and live in that home and testify to your loved ones to the saving power of Jesus Christ. This is the subtlety by which Satan would deceive us and delude us. God will overlook many things in you and me, but He will not overlook a lack of love. Let's never forget that that church at Ephesus, an orthodox church, fundamental church, persecuted church, loyal church, discerning church, was a condemned church because it had no love for Jesus Christ, or insufficient love. And even as I preach to you in this way, I feel a rebuke to my own heart.

Just over twenty years ago I gave my heart to Christ and began to preach. I look back and see the mistakes I made and thank God for the measure of maturity that He's given, but sometimes I wonder if that maturity hasn't been gained at the loss of something of the fire of enthusiasm for our blessed Lord and His service. Oh, how we have to watch it.

Some of you young men, the test of your love might be that you will be prepared to delay marriage for ten years till you are thirty-five and give ten years of your life to blazing the gospel as a pioneer missionary, and giving yourself whole-heartedly and unreservedly to the study of the language and getting down to the business of evangelism. It might be.

I'm not advocating celibacy. I'm in no position to do so. I have three little girls of my own. But I sometimes feel we have lost sight of the fact that Jesus Christ spoke of those who were willing to be eunuchs for the kingdom of Heaven's sake, and that He called men to love Him more than they love wife or husband or son or daughter.

But as a matter of fact, the significant thing about this (Acts 17:16-17) to me is not so much that Paul was stirred, but it was the way in which he was stirred. The Revised Version doesn't read that he was stirred. It says, 'While Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him." Not pity or humanitarianism, but anger, anger.

Did you ever think of anger as a motive for foreign missions? Here was a man with such a blazing zeal for the glory of God that when he saw this city given over to the worship of idolatry, he blazed in anger and it was an anger that drove him to do something about this challenge.

It seems to me that this is a much neglected truth so far as missionary motives are concerned. We know that our God is sovereign. We know that Jesus Christ is victorious. But throughout the world tonight He is being trampled underfoot, His glory is being ignored. Does that not provoke any sense of longing in our hearts that He should be vindicated and enthroned, that all men should know that God has made Him both Lord and Christ?

Oh, that we might know something of the longing of the psalmist, "Declare his glory among the heathen and his wonders among all people, for great is the Lord and greatly to be praised." His greatness is unsearchable. Oh, that the greatness of our God would fill our hearts and drive us on.

Well, you will understand, I imagine, that there is a great deal that could be said, but we just have no time to develop that thought. But I want to leave this other word with you. Paul was stirred: "therefore, therefore." On the first night of this conference I sat behind the curtains in the auditorium and as that terrific surge of singing swept over the building (well, maybe I'm sentimental) a lump came in my throat. I said to Charlie Hummel, "This is tremendous." He said to me, "This is your parish."

This has been a stirring convention. The mere fact of being gathered together with over 3,000 other like-minded people, the wonderful singing, the inspiration of the messages - all this is stirring. But we know that there is a danger even in a stirring. Impression without expression very soon leads to depression. God has impressed your heart and mine this week together, but if that doesn't show itself by some outflow, it will be of grief to God. It will grieve the Holy Spirit of God, and will bring stagnation into our own experience.

An emotional stir that doesn't lead to some positive action is sheer cheap sentimentality. Paul's spirit was provoked within him, therefore, therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons. He didn't feel his responsibility was fulfilled then. He then went out into the market place, so he could meet with the people there day by day. Eventually he met the philosophers on Mars Hill in the Areopagus and preached the truth to them.

The great danger of a conference like this is that you will be stirred, that I will be stirred, but that in two weeks' time the stirring will have evaporated, and left behind merely a stagnation and a staleness.

I was asked to speak this evening on "Where Do We Go from Here?" Well, where do we go from here? What are the practical steps? Well, what is your "therefore," and what's my "therefore?" We have our synagogues and we have our market places. You are going back throughout the United States and Canada to your churches and to your campuses, and may God grant that there will be about our testimony an intelligent fanaticism, a holy recklessness, a fire of the Holy Spirit that will prove to be irresistible to those among whom God has placed us.

Oh, that we would learn to delight in doing the impossible. Oh, that some of you younger people would put God to the test in these coming weeks, and believe Him to enable you to do that which you know you are totally incapable of doing according to your own qualifications or talents.

Learn to exploit your weaknesses.When you know you are in an impossible situation, learn to say, "Lord, this is a supreme opportunity for you to show your tremendous power, for you have chosen the weak things, and the foolish things, and the base things, and the contemptible things, and I qualify on all four points. Now use me."

Ah, what a difference it would make to these campuses if we went back in that spirit, not merely stirred, but because we've been stirred, therefore doing something to reach the people to whom God has called us.

The second step I would suggest is to start praying for missions and start praying now. Not merely for the missionaries, but praying for a new sense of missionary commitment and conviction throughout the whole of the student world. Nobody would doubt, I think, that if this world is to hear the gospel it will do so very largely through the way the students of the United States measure up to their responsibility.

There was a time when this task was borne fairly evenly between my own country of the United Kingdom and the United States. Sad to say, that time is gone. If the world is to hear the good tidings, it must hear it through you and through me. Letts start praying for missions now. Let's start a missionary program on our campus.
Now don't go back and plan for fifty people. If there are two of you here from your campus, remember you have a burden to take back there. Get together for prayer, if it's only two of you, if it's only three of you, in believing daily prayer that God will work in this our day and generation.

An excellent start would be to take that little study book, "Therefore Go," and gather a small circle. It doesn't matter if it's small, but begin to do something. Put into practice the very stirring you have experienced here.

Fourthly, prepare for the field. Start to do something. I was telling the students this morning from the Christian colleges when I came back from Africa after the war, having been there in the Air Force, I said to the Lord, "Lord, I'm willing to go as a missionary." And I've only since come to realize how totally inadequate was that attitude. Not merely willing, but longing.

I believe with all my heart that not one of you ought to go unless God really calls you, but this isn't merely pacifity; this is sharing something of the longing of the Apostle Paul, "My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that she might be saved. I could wish myself accursed for Israel that she might be saved."

We're told to covet the best gifts. In the days ahead it's your privilege to covet that God would send you out as an apostle, a special messenger of Jesus Christ to the uttermost parts of the earth. Maybe a very practical step for you would be to come to Missionary Training Camp in the summer. You don't know if God wants you to go to the foreign field or not. This might be His way of showing you. Certainly you should be doing a good deal of missionary reading so you may be informed about the situation. One final piece of advice, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." A student in England who had perhaps the most brilliant sporting career of any man who had lived up to his time, or since, and who had a fortune, and who had an assured place in English society, summed up his attitude when he said this, "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then nothing can be too great for me to give to Him." That was C. T. Studd. Or in Isaac Watts' words,

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands [it does, it demands] my soul, my life, my all."

It means total surrender, a life of fellowship, ruthlessness with sin, a refusal to be put off. Oh yes, there will come dark days. I remember dark days in 1940 when the Germans had raced through Norway. They defeated the British Army in France, they had taken away our arms, they had captured our whole peacetime army. We had lost battle after battle and the temptation was to say, "What's the use?" But there was one rousing voice that reminded us that a battle was not the war, that you can lose a battle ami still stay in the fight. And we did, and we lived to see freedom.

You have no need to sin. I have no need to sin. There is victory over sin. But what if we do? Then let's not waste a moment, let's get back to God, recognizing that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us.
It's possible to live a life of absolute fellowship with Jesus Christ. Let's go on in that spirit of dedication and love. Stirred? Yes, and therefore taking steps to implement the vision that God has given to us in these precious days together.

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His Spirit Was Stirred Within Him (Urbana 57)

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December 27-31, 2009