Full text of Derek Prince’s sermon titled ‘It Cost All He Had’. Key takeaway from this message: Your value in God’s eyes is revealed by the price He paid for you.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Derek Prince – Bible Teacher
When I looked at the program of our whole itinerary here in New Zealand, and I focused for a while on Christchurch, I asked the Lord to show me what should be my theme. I’m a preacher who likes to deal with a theme. I don’t like to just take one little snippet and then another. I like to deal with some area of truth thoroughly and systematically.
And I felt the Lord showed me that the theme He wanted in Christchurch was the Cross. We’ve had two very profitable seminar sections last night and this morning… four sessions that focused entirely on the Cross. Specifically on how we as Christians need to apply the Cross to our own lives, which is a very challenging theme, just as much for the preacher as it is for those who listen.
I want to continue all through the services here in this auditorium on the same theme of the Cross but to deal with different aspects of the theme.
Tonight is Saturday. We’ll be here to Sunday and then Monday a healing service is announced. I want to say that in a certain sense, tonight and tomorrow will be both preparation for the healing service. If possible… if you need healing, or if you have friends who need healing, or if you want to be in some way involved in the healing service, it is desirable, if you can manage it, that you be here tonight, tomorrow night, Sunday and Monday.
I’ve observed in the healing ministry of Jesus that He spent sometimes days on end in healing ministry. He didn’t just get people aside for a couple of hours and then pray for them. In Matthew 15, it relates that He held a healing service on top of a mountain. How many of us would do that? And the blind and the lame and the maimed came to Him at the top of the mountain.
And after three days, He said to His disciples, “I have compassion on the people. They’ve been with Me three days and they’ve had nothing to eat.” How many of you would come to a healing service like that on top of a mountain for three days without any food?
What I want to emphasize is the fact that healing is not just a little sort of dab of something that God puts on you. It’s really learning to adjust your whole being to what God wants to bless you with. And the process of adjustment often takes more than one meeting.
Tonight I want to deal with perhaps the most glorious theme of the Bible. And I have to say right now I feel unworthy to deal with it, but I feel God wants me to do my best and that’s all I can do.
CROSS REVEALED LOVE OF GOD
I want to say tonight that the cross revealed the love of God in a way that perhaps nothing else could ever reveal it. And the love of God, I believe, is the greatest single fact in the universe. It’s the explanation of the universe. That’s why there is a universe. Because of the love of God.
All creation, all God’s activities, all proceed out of His love. What a difference it makes when you realize that this earth and this universe is not just a series of accidents, but it all proceeds out of the loving heart of a Father God. What a difference it makes to your life when you realize you’re not an accident looking for somewhere to happen. You’re part of a divine eternal plan conceived in love.
I want to turn for my first Scripture tonight to Deuteronomy 7 and read verses 6, 7 and 8. In these verses, Moses attempted an impossible task. He attempted to explain the love of God. And it’s very interesting to see just where he ended up. He’s speaking to God’s chosen people of the old covenant, Israel, and he’s trying to tell them why God chose them and why God loved them. And he tells them why God — he explains one reason that was not the reason for God’s love.
But when he comes to explain the reason for God’s love, he just stops. Let me read the words and you’ll see.
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Deuteronomy 7:6-7: “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself…” I want to point out that God’s choice is the decisive factor in our lives. Not our choice, but God’s choice. He has chosen you to be a people for Himself… “a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples.” You were the most insignificant, the most unlikely. How many of us could identify with that?
God didn’t choose me because I was so great or so wonderful, or so talented, or so righteous. In fact, I was the least significant, the least important, the most unlikely.
Have you ever noticed how God delights to choose the unlikely people? When I was at Cambridge University as a student, and later as a member of the faculty of my college, King’s College, Cambridge, I was far from God. I had abandoned Christianity. I’d given it up as an outmoded relic from the past, and I had turned to philosophy and other studies to find the reason for life. And I lived a very carnal, self-pleasing God-less life. And in some ways I was somewhat notorious.
And during the seven years that I was at Cambridge, no born-again Christian ever once witnessed to me of his fate. Well then called into the British army in World War II. In my first year in the army, I had a dramatic encounter with the Lord Jesus, came to know Him in a very personal way, was called into His service, and about seven years later returned to Cambridge.
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