Greetings,
this one part of the message has stood out to me and i wanted to share it here
Bless you ....><>
from a sermon transcript which varies slightly to the sermon recorded above
I was going down the street in Oldham, which is nine miles outside of Manchester. I was in my early twenties. I pastored the largest church in town; in fact, the largest Holiness church in England. I was going down the street one day. As I passed a house, the lady opened the door,
"Hi! You’re the pastor at the Tabernacle. I often come to your church. I sit on the back seat. I’m very poor. I can’t give anything in the offering, but I want to do something for you. Would you come into my house and drink a cup of tea?"
Well, usually, of course, I want tea, so I said, "Yes." I went in, and boy! did that house smell. I got in there and she had finger nails clogged up with dirt. The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes.
There was a plate with some old bacon covered with mold.
That fuzzy horrid looking stuff.
She reached into the kitchen sink to a stack of cups and picked one. You know, the tea had dried on the outside. Oh, mercy on us! It looked as though it had about a hundred bugs at the bottom: dried, dirty, rotten old tea leaves. In fact, some were moldy.
"Well, now" she said, "I’m going to get you a cup of tea."
I said, "All right."
She poured the tea into the cup. It was as black as my shoes, and I don’t like black tea.
"Do you take cream?" "Yes." "Well, I have none."
"Do you take sugar?" "Yes." "I have none."
With that dirty hand shaking, I saw the black stuff that was supposed to be tea, cold as ice.
I hesitated. I felt like tipping it up. But I knew I was on trial.
She held the cup up, "Drink it!"
As she handed me that cup of dirty tea, my mind went 2000 miles away to a place called Gethsemane, 2000 years back. The Father gave a cup of all the dregs of impurity and wickedness. He didn’t give it to Gabriel. He didn’t give it to Michael the Archangel. He gave it to his Son!
