But I think it is evident that the Lord helps sometimes beyond what we realize. And here is an example, I think, of that. This is from a young Yale graduate, now in Chicago, and honorably endeavoring to see the Lord do in Chicago what the Lord has done here and at Yale. And these words from a letter. He says:

“I want to thank you for your good counsel on the phone. I [needed] someone to listen, to field questions and to answer calmly, drawing on some of the Lord’s wisdom. You did this with grace—thanks.

“Let me give you a bit of an update on things here. I was able to share my concerns about my own state with the Chicago group on our extra Wednesday night meeting. Curiously enough, while you were actually speaking with me, I had taken the phone outside, and as you were speaking about the need for sacrifices to build up God’s Church, I saw an ant (that’s A-N-T), trotting—no, laboring—across our patio with a piece of Lucky Charms cereal five or ten times its size. I was able to use this image in my confession to our group. As you were talking, I thought about that ant. Why was he struggling with that giant purple chunk of cereal? Now, I tell you, any nutritionist would stop that ant right there and take—in mercy—take away a giant purple chunk of what. But there was something about that that the ant esteemed as nourishing. He would get no personal reward. He would possibly get no credit or even a taste of the Lucky Charms cereal. Yet it was clear to me he was straining himself to do the impossible so as to build up his colony. The ant family is so important that each individual gives his all to see it build up and prosper each individual.

“I can’t say that everything is clear or unperturbed in Chicago meeting at this point, but some people needed the very things the Lord brought me to say on that Wednesday night. And one key relationship was well strengthened. But we still see or rather feel the need for laborers.

“I was recently in a nasty mess with my parents. Phil Chamberlain was extremely helpful when I telephoned him for help. Perhaps he can relay the story of being a help for a dear [enlisted] brother on the phone from Phil.”

And that led to a series of thoughts, which I think bear upon us as a church on the matter of sacrifice. And as I address this, all things do not equally apply to all obviously. Sometimes sacrifice is called for by sheer emergency necessity. That is, something comes upon the church and people as it were run to stand and run to help, or possibly by a kind of instinct run for cover. But beyond that kind of emergency response when the alarm bells ring, there is also deliberate, creative sacrifice that’s almost instinctive to those who are engaged with the Lord for His Body, the Church. Putting aside one thing that exerts a real claim to some degree for a far better thing having to do with the Church.

The progress of the early Christian church was entirely built on sacrifice—people who went way beyond ordinary measure to see the Lord’s work forwarded—and they did it with joyous brilliance. They darkened the jails at midnight with their hymns and praises. And nearly the whole prehistory of us as a fellowship is built on I would say extraordinary degrees of sacrifice for the vision. The vision was clear; it was living, it was real, it was deep sacrifice, and you know our breaking out now… Our breaking out can be by no other means but the totality of individual sacrifice.

The Yale Standard thrives today, thank the Lord, under the blessing of God. Of the Standard, [?] have ceased to be. It was well begun, it came from a vision from the Lord, it was thoroughly begun, but it would have ceased to be.

If Philip Chamberlain had not, after he graduated… I should say after he came back from military service, set his face to that campus and give of himself week after week after week, mile after mile after mile, with tires and gasoline and time, going to Yale to stand with a few students, to pray with a few students, to encourage a few students, and you know for years with very little evidence. There was some reward, but for the measure of the sacrifice of time, the visible return for a long time was very narrow. And yet every single constituent of that continuity of purpose in the Lord was necessary to bring things down today where Prem says, “I’ve never seen so many. I don’t recall seeing so many present in a Standard meeting.”

Some will not really stretch themselves out to the measure of sacrifice for some aspect of the work of the church for which they might give themselves in a costly way. I’m not talking about wild extremes. But giving of oneself in a costly way.

And a person can say, “Well, you know, yes, but I just can’t think of anything; it doesn’t come to mind.” And if there is a vacancy of mind on that, it really betrays an indisposition of the soul toward it.

You know, when it’s the expression of the self as it is, by nature the human soul is reliably commercial. Reliably commercial. It looks to the get in nearly all its exertion or giving. Quite carefully calculating, not so much by a wholly direct mental exercise as kind of an automatic process inside. Quite carefully calculating what is in it for me? What’s the return? And then rather strictly proportioning most effort on that basis.

And the soul therefore draws away from and almost stunningly avoids the true element of sacrifice by which giving is detached from getting and thus becomes purified giving. It works the soul most willingly, joyfully gives for the sake of that far higher and the development and progress of the blessed Church of God.

That element of sacrifice is essential and indispensable to all real advance of God’s work. Look over history and markets and see how do certain things come along: sometimes by heroic sacrifice, sometimes by systematic sacrifice, sometimes by small seeming but real sacrifice. And it’s the souls who have entered into death to self who give the Lord and to the Church in this grand way, this grand and heavenly manner.

The soul linked to self as the soul naturally is and will be short of what? Of death to self. That soul knows little to nothing of true, deep, effective, productive sacrifice nor wants to. Its motions, what it does, are nearly always reliably those centered on self-interest in some form rather than on kingdom interests and on kingdom gains. And those interests and those gains are the highest privilege, apart from knowing the Lord, to which any of us have [suffered] in our lifetimes.

Jesus died to save us from…? Two things chiefly: from sin, and that’s wonderful, and we receive that most gladly. But he died also to save us from self. And that’s a critical matter.

I have noticed of late that there are some younger members who just whenever there’s a depression of need, they flow like water, right into that place of need, and supply it without formal asking. It’s just seen and they are found there, meeting the matter, quietly, unostentatiously, most effectively; it’s beautiful.

If the soul shrinks back from sacrifice, by an almost reflex action, it is a signal that things are primary to that soul that do not have to do with the actual advance of the gospel and of the Church as Christ’s Body.

Now there’s one deficiency, there are many no doubt, but there’s one that is pretty obvious to me for which I feel rather unqualified to do very much, though I suppose there might be something done. But one thing we need among others is more music, songs with words for children. We have a number, but if you’re here for about 15 weeks, we tend to recycle like the hit parade.

If you don’t know what a hit parade is, it was a song years ago where they played the ten top hits of the week in reverse order, so you’d be… sort of, the drama would draw you to number one. What’s the number one hit of the week?

And I’m sure there are such songs in existence—delightful, Biblical songs—and we can enlarge our capacity to deal with the children’s hour in the meeting if we have some of those available and we learn them and then we do them with and for the children.

Now in none of this do I speak of a strain. Paul spoke of a strain in that end, of course he was straining with that huge object. I’m not speaking of a strain or a grim sacrifice—we don’t need any grim sacrifice in the Church! You know what John Wesley said? Sour godliness is the devil’s religion.

But there is a glad and a giving and a forward looking and almost heedless to self sacrifice and a happily heedful attention to what heaven is about, which is just marvelous. There’s a hymn verse that says these words, “Where duty calls or danger, be never wanting there.”

And we know tomorrow Monday is Andrew’s I-don’t-know-what birthday, it’s one of his birthdays, and I thought of that verse, “Where duty calls or danger, be never wanting there.” And I look back over the whole life in Christ virtually of Andrew Burrows, and I can never remember a time when what he saw as duty in the Lord even to the point of danger. He didn’t close the gap between where he was and that situation just as fast as he could close it. He has been the most consistent man to be right there, and much of that duty was very ordinary with merely connecting one day to the next to the next so that the peak days could and would be reached, and there were many remarkable peak days. In Egypt, in Israel, in South America, in New York, etc.

You know, he gave himself for years just to stand close day by day and to support and help and pray with and to help get to where she belonged, the widow of the man with whom she had shared the vision of the Body, and for which they gave themselves with such magnificent sacrifice.

And Andrew stood there, days mounting into weeks, mounting into months, mounting into years, stretching out over a considerable body of his young life, to stand with a bearer of the vision and to get much growth out of it, but also to give very much in it. Remember him in your prayers.

But this I ask. Take an honest inventory on the matter of the willingness to extend for the sake of the Body of Christ. Look it over, measure it honestly and see how much readiness is there.

Have you heard of the little couplet: “Only one life, soon ’twill be past; only what’s done for Christ will last”? That’s a gem in two lines or four lines, because it’s utterly true.

Life is short. We saw Holly’s father in apparent health. He was out at a sport, was it gaming—what was it? Pigeon-flying, stepped off a little thing, fell, broke the hip, into the hospital, complications; we trust he will survive it, for he’s been near to the gate of death out of apparent complete health.

The life that is consumed on self and self-interest in any form, under any color, is finally a wasted life in the eyes of God. And the last thing we want to do is have a saved soul with a wasted life at the throne. And we don’t have to. Amen.