James T. Cleland - "The Conversion of a Good Man" (February 5, 1961)

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	(microphone buzzing)	0:04
Reverend	Let us pray.	0:31
	Let the words of my mouth	0:34
	and the meditations of our hearts,	0:37
	be acceptable in Thy sight,	0:39
	oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer.	0:44
	Amen.	0:48
	There is one phenomenon	0:58
	upon which the church has depended	1:02
	right down the center.	1:06
	It is the conversion	1:11
	of a good man.	1:13
	A good woman.	1:17
	Now we usually think of conversion in terms of	1:20
	bad man and women,	1:24
	drunkard, prostitutes,	1:27
	wife beaters,	1:31
	bums, good for nothings.	1:33
	Consequently, we forget the equally important to part	1:38
	of the transformation of highly modeled folk	1:44
	into sons and daughters of the Living God.	1:49
	Yet, they are the people who give the church a new impetus,	1:55
	a fresh outlook,	2:03
	a transfusion of spiritual blood.	2:06
	They move from a second hand knowledge	2:12
	of the things of religion,	2:16
	to a firsthand experience of God Himself.	2:19
	The event has been rightly described as,	2:26
	second birth.	2:30
	Now let us examine these circumstances	2:33
	via analysis of the conversion of Isaiah,	2:37
	which was read for us as the morning message.	2:41
	Isaiah, whose name means, Yahweh saves,	2:47
	was born around 760 BC	2:53
	and his rebirth occurred when he was about 20 years old.	2:58
	about your, the age student body.	3:05
	It's dated by the death of King Uzziah roughly 740 BC.	3:09
	Isaiah was evidently a member	3:16
	of the ruling classes in Jerusalem	3:18
	and had access to the inner courts of the temple.	3:22
	He has described his call for us.	3:27
	"In the year that King Uzziah died,	3:31
	I saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne,	3:35
	high and lifted up.	3:40
	His train filled the temple.	3:44
	Above Him stood the seraphim, each one had six wings.	3:48
	Two cover His face, with two He covered his feet	3:53
	and with two flew and one call to another saying,	3:57
	holy,	4:02
	holy,	4:04
	holy is the Lord of Hosts.	4:06
	The whole earth is full of His glory.	4:10
	The foundation of the threshold shock	4:16
	at the voice of Him who called	4:20
	and the house was filled with smoke."	4:22
	Here is a man who had gone to church.	4:27
	He had rested his eyes on the sculptured figures	4:32
	in front of the Holy of Holies, as he had often done before,	4:35
	but on this occasion, something cataclysmic happened to him.	4:41
	The curved seraphs,	4:47
	representatives of the heavenly creatures	4:50
	who attend God	4:54
	came to life	4:55
	and sang, they sang to Him.	4:58
	The smoke of the incense seemed to fill	5:02
	the whole inner chamber with a cloud of glory	5:05
	and the very threshold vibrated in response.	5:09
	Isaiah saw God.	5:15
	His inner eye was opened.	5:19
	God on his own free will have revealed Himself	5:20
	and this young prophet was never the same again.	5:27
	He was converted, that is, he was turned around	5:35
	and stood face to face with the Living God.	5:41
	God showed Himself as holy.	5:45
	Holy in a double sense.	5:49
	Majestic,	5:52
	omnipotent,	5:54
	eternal,	5:56
	the creator	5:57
	and on then the other hand, morally perfect.	6:00
	They all righteous, the blessed one.	6:04
	And Isaiah was never the same man again because	6:08
	an ethical man became a spiritual man.	6:12
	This has been a recurring experience for good men and women.	6:21
	Saint Augustine writes,	6:26
	"Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise	6:28
	for thou madest us for Thyself	6:32
	and our heart is restless, until it reposes in Thee."	6:38
	Johannes Eckhardt, the 14th century mystic writes,	6:44
	"Know then that God is bound to act,	6:48
	to pour Himself out into thee,	6:53
	as soon as ever He shall find thee ready.	6:56
	Finding thee ready, He is obliged to act.	7:01
	To overflow into thee."	7:08
	Tolstoy writes, "I really live,	7:11
	when I'm conscious of Him."	7:16
	God for these men was central, life without Him	7:21
	was not life, it was just existence.	7:24
	Moreover, He was more to them now,	7:28
	than a carried stern.	7:32
	They would agree with Harry Emerson Fosdick's words,	7:35
	"God outside of us	7:39
	is a hypothesis.	7:42
	God inside of us	7:46
	is an experience."	7:50
	And yet, that is hardly the climate	7:55
	of our academic thinking.	8:00
	Listen to Patrick Braybrooke discuss this in his book,	8:03
	The Genius of Bernard Shaw.	8:07
	"You're free in our time to say that God does not exist.	8:11
	You're free to say that He exists and is evil.	8:17
	You're free to say like good old Renault,	8:22
	that He would like to exist if He could.	8:26
	You may talk of God as a metaphor or a mystification.	8:29
	You may water Him down with gallons of long words	8:34
	or boil Him to the rags of metaphysics.	8:38
	And it's not merely that nobody punishes but,	8:42
	nobody protests.	8:45
	But if you speak of God	8:49
	as a fact,	8:52
	as a thing like a tiger,	8:55
	as a reason for changing one's conduct,	8:59
	then the modern world will stop you somehow,	9:03
	if it can.	9:07
	But the man who knows God will tell his fellows	9:12
	in every century, that God is real	9:15
	and he knows God because God makes Himself known."	9:20
	A recurring fact is that	9:27
	good folk have found Him in church	9:29
	and have become better men and women.	9:36
	You see what Isaiah's vision means for us?	9:40
	God may reveal Himself on any Sunday in the year	9:46
	to someone worshiping in this place.	9:51
	He may do it through an anthem,	9:56
	or a hymn.	10:01
	An old hymn like that second one.	10:04
	Kind of I stupid in some ways but you sang it.	10:11
	You sang it well.	10:15
	Because suddenly then God becomes real in some line of it	10:18
	and lays hands on you.	10:24
	He may do it through the hearing of the lesson	10:26
	or even in the sermon	10:28
	as He did for Charles Haddon Spurgeon,	10:32
	the great English preacher of last century,	10:34
	who was converted on a miserably snowy day,	10:37
	when the minister couldn't get there.	10:41
	And an old shoemaker stood up in the pulpit	10:43
	and repeated the text 10 times	10:48
	because he had nothing else to say.	10:49
	He may do it through the prayers	10:55
	or through the sacrament of the Lord's supper,	10:58
	which Wesley described very wisely,	11:00
	as a converting ordinance	11:05
	as well as a confirming ordinance.	11:08
	Shouldn't surprise us that	11:12
	God may reveal Himself in His house to us.	11:13
	It does suggest though, that we be ready for Him	11:16
	on tiptoe,	11:22
	with expectation.	11:24
	Now, how did Isaiah react to this song of the seraphim?	11:27
	He tells us.	11:33
	"And I said, woe is me.	11:36
	I'm lost,	11:40
	for I am a man of unclean lips	11:42
	and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips,	11:44
	for mine eyes have seen The King.	11:48
	The Lord of hosts."	11:51
	Quite simply,	11:55
	Isaiah expected to die.	11:57
	This was the end of him.	12:02
	Curt.	12:04
	He'd been brought up to believe that	12:07
	no man could look upon God and live,	12:08
	it doesn't say so in the law.	12:12
	He had intruded on The All Holy when Isaiah was not holy.	12:16
	It's all very well for the celestial seraphim	12:23
	to chant holy, holy, holy,	12:26
	but Isaiah was an earthly man,	12:32
	of unclean lips.	12:36
	He couldn't really sing it,	12:40
	neither could the people round about him.	12:42
	To do so would be blasphemy.	12:44
	And to look on God in Isaiah's condition	12:48
	was the ultimate blasphemy.	12:51
	No wonder he ejaculated, "I'm lost, goodbye."	12:54
	Individually, as a single man, he was unclean.	13:01
	Socially as a member of a community,	13:06
	he was undone because it too was unclean.	13:08
	He knew anxiety.	13:12
	He cried out in dismayed.	13:15
	He awakened the inevitable end,	13:17
	his number was up.	13:20
	A sensitive person re-experience	13:27
	Isaiah's predicament on two counts.	13:30
	He knows he is a creature in the presence of the creator	13:36
	and he doesn't enjoy the contrast.	13:42
	He's almost literally scared to death.	13:45
	F.B. Meyers, the great Baptist preacher from London,	13:51
	once told a self-satisfied,	13:57
	West End, Glasgow congregation this.	14:01
	"You want to come into the presence of God?	14:06
	Don't be ridiculous.	14:11
	Two minutes, you would be crying to get out.	14:15
	You couldn't stand His glory."	14:21
	I was eight years old when I heard that	14:26
	and I've never forgotten.	14:31
	It's not necessarily an enjoyable encounter	14:36
	to come face to face with the Living God.	14:40
	At the very least, we're apt to feel spiritually woozy.	14:47
	Death would be a welcome release.	14:53
	We're somewhat like the woman who consulted the psychiatrist	14:56
	because of an inferiority complex.	15:00
	After the examining her, he said, "Madam,	15:04
	you don't have an inferiority complex.	15:07
	You are inferior."	15:10
	Even a good man face to face with God	15:18
	knows it's high time for him to leave,	15:22
	to disappear.	15:26
	God is the eternal and we are creatures of a day	15:27
	and the realized contrast can be devastating.	15:32
	There goes a second count in the predicament.	15:37
	Man is not only a creature, he's a sinner.	15:40
	So much of his life has been in rebellion to God.	15:46
	Sometimes of his own freewill,	15:52
	sometimes because of misunderstanding,	15:55
	sometimes because of social pressure,	16:00
	that he's aware of that in the clear	16:05
	shining of God's presence,	16:09
	there are dark places in his private and corporate life,	16:13
	which cannot stand the focused light	16:21
	of God's modeled perfection.	16:26
	Biographies of the saints are full of with this fact.	16:29
	We need to spell it out for ourselves.	16:35
	What is the sin	16:40
	which doth so easily beset us?	16:42
	Arrogance?	16:47
	Anger?	16:50
	The capacity for always saying the unkind word?	16:53
	Cussedness?	16:59
	Self-centeredness?	17:02
	Or is it pride of cast?	17:04
	Racial clannishness?	17:08
	Denominational tribalism?	17:12
	My country	17:16
	right or wrong?	17:18
	I think of that phrase turning each word	17:21
	over very slowly	17:24
	in your mind.	17:27
	The sin	17:29
	which doth so	17:31
	easily	17:34
	beset us.	17:37
	What is it?	17:40
	Now, place it under the eye of God.	17:42
	What a result.	17:50
	We're lost, fini.	17:52
	But cheer up,	18:00
	Isaiah isn't finished yet.	18:01
	"Then flew one of the Seraphim to me,	18:06
	having in his hand a burning coal	18:10
	which he had taken with tongs from off the altar.	18:12
	And he touched my mouth and said,	18:17
	behold,	18:21
	this has touched your lips.	18:23
	Your guilt is taken away	18:26
	and your sin forgiven."	18:30
	Now that was a tremendous moment for Isaiah.	18:36
	At the depth of his depression,	18:40
	as he contrasted God's purity	18:45
	and man's filthiness,	18:48
	as he was scared to death	18:53
	by the awful vision of God,	18:56
	God gave him a dramatic sign	19:00
	of forgiveness	19:05
	and accepted.	19:07
	One of the seraphim, with a hot coal from the altar	19:10
	seemed to come and cauterize	19:15
	his uncleanly lips,	19:19
	as if to destroy the infection of sin.	19:22
	This was not in any way Isaiah's doing.	19:27
	He did literally nothing,	19:32
	nothing to persuade God to forgive him.	19:35
	God moved.	19:40
	God acted.	19:42
	God sent the seraph.	19:44
	Isaiah was on the receiving end	19:47
	of the whole transaction free,	19:50
	gratis,	19:54
	for nothing.	19:55
	And to clinch the figurative act,	19:59
	certain words were spoken.	20:03
	"You stand acquitted."	20:06
	When anyone says to you,	20:12
	that the difference between the Old Testament	20:14
	and the New Testament is that,	20:17
	in the Old Testament, a man is right with God	20:20
	because he keeps the law	20:24
	and that in the New Testament,	20:27
	a man is right with God because	20:30
	he accepts God's willing offer	20:32
	to accept Him as righteous,	20:35
	then you refer him to Isaiah.	20:40
	Isaiah did nothing.	20:45
	No thing at all to make God except him.	20:47
	God did it all.	20:52
	That's what's meant by the theological word,	20:54
	grace.	20:57
	The history of religion is from one angle,	21:02
	the repeated story of those who believe that	21:07
	man is a servant of God, approved by good works	21:10
	and others who say that man is a son,	21:15
	woman is a daughter,	21:22
	adopted by God,	21:24
	because God is perfectly willing	21:27
	to acknowledge him,	21:29
	to acknowledge her.	21:30
	The dramatic moment spiritually,	21:34
	in the life of a good servant of God,	21:37
	is when he realizes that he doesn't have to prove himself,	21:42
	to be on good terms with his master.	21:48
	He is on good terms if he wants to be.	21:53
	Why?	21:57
	Because that is what God wants.	21:59
	Then a person moves from the status of servant,	22:03
	to that of son or daughter.	22:07
	Tell you who could confirm that, Martin Luther.	22:09
	Martin Luther struggled to be right with God	22:14
	by fastings and self-denial.	22:18
	He said, "If any man could have been saved by his monkery,	22:21
	I was that man."	22:27
	But he wasn't saved.	22:30
	That is, he wasn't spiritually healthy.	22:32
	And then he read saint Paul.	22:39
	And he read where saint Paul said	22:41
	that a man is saved by faith.	22:43
	And what does that mean?	22:46
	Faith,	22:50
	is assenting to the fact,	22:52
	that God accepts a person,	22:56
	just as he is.	23:00
	Why?	23:03
	It's God's nature.	23:05
	Now ordinary good folk don't believe that.	23:08
	That's why they never become	23:14
	extra ordinary good folk.	23:17
	You see what this means for us?	23:21
	The first fact in the conversion of a good man,	23:25
	an ethically good man is to stop struggling	23:29
	to be right with God and relax.	23:33
	Relax?	23:38
	Yes.	23:39
	Relax.	23:41
	Let us lay hold on the that it's God who forgives,	23:43
	not because it's His job, as the cynics say,	23:49
	but because it's his nature.	23:54
	He forgives,	23:56
	we accept.	23:58
	We take a long breath,	24:00
	say thank you,	24:04
	and unwind.	24:06
	We let the tension go out to us,	24:08
	then we exhale.	24:12
	Smile,	24:16
	and that to that.	24:18
	This is the gospel.	24:20
	The good news of God which	24:23
	most religious folk believe is	24:26
	too good to be true.	24:28
	Are we willing to risk it?	24:34
	Hold it?	24:39
	Augustine did,	24:41
	Luther did,	24:43
	Wesley did,	24:45
	years before any of them,	24:47
	Isaiah did.	24:50
	And years from now,	24:52
	maybe in this chapel,	24:55
	an occasionally person,	24:58
	will rediscovered it	25:00
	and his whole life will be changed.	25:04
	But there's one more scene in the drama	25:09
	of Isaiah's conversion.	25:11
	"And I heard the voice of the Lord saying,	25:13
	whom shall I send,	25:17
	who will go for us?	25:20
	Then I said,	25:23
	here I am,	25:26
	send me."	25:28
	Relaxation is not the climax of conversion.	25:32
	A man is not supposed to sit at ease in Zion	25:39
	while he's on this earth.	25:44
	He's saved to serve.	25:46
	God needs agents.	25:50
	Or God will use servants,	25:53
	even better.	25:56
	That's what most of us are.	25:58
	But He prefers sons and daughters	26:00
	who are willing to do His work	26:05
	after Him, for Him, because of him.	26:07
	One doesn't go through such an experience,	26:12
	as Isaiah, is to loaf.	26:15
	Isaiah didn't say, "Here am I, thank God.	26:19
	Send him.	26:23
	Send her."	26:26
	He realize that	26:32
	a commission accompanied his acceptance by God.	26:34
	He exclaimed and he meant it.	26:39
	Here am I, send me.	26:42
	And for 40 years,	26:45
	he was the unofficial secretary of state	26:48
	for Judah.	26:53
	Building its foreign policy on the fact of God.	26:55
	So it's always been,	27:02
	Paul becomes the apostle to the Gentiles,	27:05
	Thomas goes to India,	27:08
	Francis heads for the down and outs,	27:11
	Santa Teresa builds hospitals,	27:14
	John Knox claims Scotland for Christ,	27:18
	Wesley picked the world at his parish,	27:21
	Lord Shaftesbury sponsors child labor legislation,	27:25
	Florence Nightingale reforms hospital nursing,	27:30
	Grandville journeys to Labrador,	27:34
	Schweitzer becomes a surgeon in Africa.	27:36
	Perhaps Gladston spoke for all of them when he said,	27:41
	"The supreme task of statesmanship	27:46
	is to find out which way	27:51
	God Almighty is going,	27:55
	during the next 50 years."	27:58
	And brother, that's the problem	28:02
	our trustees now have on their hands.	28:05
	What about us?	28:14
	It's not for me to say, for you as a teacher,	28:15
	as an administrator, as a Dean,	28:18
	as a student, as a doctor, as a nurse, as a housewife,	28:20
	whatever your status is,	28:25
	you'll know.	28:27
	The place of service will be determined by three things.	28:30
	Genuine response to the call of God,	28:34
	who asks only that we show the same kind of Goodwill	28:38
	that He's shown to us.	28:43
	Second, an awareness of a crying need somewhere,	28:46
	for that special manifestation of that Goodwill	28:51
	and thirdly,	28:54
	a realization of how our special talents fit that need.	28:57
	God doesn't expect lawyers to be lab technicians	29:05
	or plumbers to be nurses,	29:10
	or actors to be agricultural expert.	29:13
	But He needs us with our own skills	29:18
	because He works through people, for people.	29:21
	Service follows unforgiveness,	29:27
	if the forgiveness is really understood,	29:31
	The conversion of Isaiah tells us that	29:37
	there's a difference from being	29:40
	brought up in the faith	29:42
	and being a man of faith.	29:45
	It's the difference between being once born	29:49
	and twice born.	29:53
	And such a rebirth has happened in the Duke chapel.	29:56
	It can happen again.	30:02
	If God does appear to you,	30:04
	don't shut your eyes.	30:08
	Remember Isaiah.	30:11
	Remember too, that our old world	30:14
	needs the conversion of good men and good women	30:18
	into sons and daughters of the Living God.	30:24
	Amen.	30:31
	Let us pray.	30:33
	Almighty God, who didst call Thy servant Isaiah	30:40
	to be Thy messenger in a troubled time,	30:43
	grants that we in this chapel may also be ready	30:49
	for the revelation of Thyself.	30:53
	That our lives may serve Thee	30:56
	to the glory of Thy name and for a blessing to Thy creatures	31:00
	in the spirit of Isaiah and of Thy Son.	31:04
	And may the blessing of Lord come upon you abundantly,	31:09
	may it keep you strong and tranquil	31:14
	in the truth of His promises through Jesus Christ our Lord.	31:17
Male Voice	Ladies and gentlemen,	31:28
	we've just heard the Reverend Professor,	31:30
	J.T. Cullen speaking in the chapel	31:32
	on this the fifth day of February, 1961.	31:34
	The topic of his sermon this evening was,	31:38
	The Conversion of a Good Man.	31:41
	I think a very subtle point brought out by Mr. Cullen was	31:43
	the fact that God uses many types of capable men	31:46
	to do the work on earth,	31:50
	regardless of their status of life.	31:53
	That is Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and even Catholic.	31:56
	And now we take you back to Washington	32:02
	for an exclusive interview with the President,	32:04
	Mr. Kennedy and his staff on the subject of,	32:07
	Cambodian relations.	32:11
	Thank you.	32:13

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "The Conversion of a Good Man" (February 5, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r43n24g45

Date:

February 5, 1961

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0133
ref5470_4j5
uachapelsermaud
duke:628644
dcrau002152
ark:/87924/r43n24g45
3192b64e-e4f8-4376-85a3-6e143c733f21

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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James T. Cleland - "The Conversion of a Good Man" (February 5, 1961)

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1. James T. Cleland - "The Conversion of a Good Man" (February 5, 1961)

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