Cut Down to the Roots

Cut Down to the Roots

by Judson Cornwall

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Would you like to turn with me to the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles? 2 Chronicles, chapter 29. And I failed to ask the brother hand of the tape whether you’re running a C60 or C90. Which one do you have, a 60 or a 90? You have both? Okay, you’re always safe with a 90. But as tired as I am tonight, you might get by on a 60. I preached 18 times last week, besides rather severe traveling. And so I don’t really feel up to a three-hour message tonight. We’ll probably cut it in half.

2 Chronicles, have you found it? Would you like to stand together and honor the word of the Lord while I read to you from this book? Having found chapter 29, I’m going to read from chapter 28. I want to get a connecting thought from verses 24 and 25. Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the house of God and cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God. And shut up the doors of the house of the Lord, and he made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem. And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense unto other gods. And to provoke to anger the Lord God of his father. Now, to chapter 29, verse 27. And Hezekiah commanded to offer the burnt offering upon the altar. And when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord began also with the trumpets and with the instruments ordained by David, king of Israel. And all the congregation worshipped. And the singers sang and the trumpeter sounded. And all this continued until the burnt offering was finished. And when they had made an end of offering, the king and all that were present with him bowed themselves and worshipped. I do not do this out of ritual. As a matter of fact, I identify average doing this twice a month.

But since this is our first session and we’re having just a little difficulty getting together and flowing together, may I lead you in prayer? And let’s just see if our spirits can all flow now in one direction. Heavenly Father, we’ve come together from distant areas. Some of us know one another. Most of us do not. But we’ve come with one common need. We’re hungry for You. We desperately need You, Lord. We have a sense of dearth. A sense of need. Lord, we could go through this whole week and not have that need met. But we dare at the very beginning of this camp to open our spirits and say, “I need You, Lord. I need You. But I probably don’t know the way in which I need You. So pay no attention to what I ask You to do. Do what needs to be done in my life. Don’t answer me the way I ask You to speak. Speak the way I need to hear You speak.” Father, I ask that Sis and I will be very gentle and sensitive in hearing Your voice, that we may say to these, Your children, what You want to say to them. For You’ve chosen to cloister us together now for a whole week. That we just sit here and have nothing to do but enjoy one another and enjoy You.

So, Lord, in this setting, with the world pushed out for a little while, talk to us. Instruct us, instruct us, correct us, inspire us, quicken us, and anoint us with Your own presence. And we’ll thank You for it in Jesus’ name. Amen. You may be seated in His presence.

I’ll just make this one apology for the whole camp. My voice is raspy because I caught myself a bit of a summer cold at the last conference. I’m anticipating getting rid of it this week. We have an unusual contrast painted for us in the two passages I read to you. For in chapter 28, I read that Ahaz had caused Israel to depart from true worship of a true God. Remember now, this is the Ahaz, king of Judah. Do not confuse him with Ahab, king of Israel. Israel departed from God, was sold into captivity, and never recovered. But Judah was special to God. God’s select people. At the time under Rehoboam that the tribes divided, Judah maintained Jerusalem and true worship. And it was through Judah that Jesus Christ eventually was born. The very word Judah means praise. And whenever we think of Judah and read of it, we think of something that’s a notch above the others in the callings and commissions of God. I suppose we could call Judah the select of the elect, or the charismatics of the day. And yet, here they have a king who turns his back on God, not instantly, but progressively. Primarily because of fear. He is pressed by outsiders. And little by little, he strips the things of the Lord and gives it to the enemy to try to buy him off, when actually all he ever bought was a little bit of delay in the inevitable.

And here I read that he closed up the doors of the house of the Lord, broke up the vessels of the house of the Lord, and then offered the people a substitute religion. Remember that God had commanded that all Jewish males, and they were invited to bring their families, must come to Jerusalem three times a year for convocations.

These were great times of worship, but they were compulsory. There were seven feasts of the Lord. Don’t ever say they were Jewish feasts, because repeatedly the Bible calls them feasts of the Lord. They did not belong to the Jews, they belonged to the Lord. Convocations are unto Him. But they had to come for Passover. They had to come for Pentecost. They had to come for Tabernacles. But the king said, “This is getting to be very difficult for you. You’re living farther and farther from Jerusalem, and your life is becoming more and more complex. There’s no need for you to come to Jerusalem to worship. I will build altars in all of your cities. And you can worship the Lord right where you are. The important thing is not where or how you do it. The important thing is the desire to do it,” was his philosophy. And we’ve picked up on it in our country too, haven’t we?

And then he said, “Even if you did come to Jerusalem, you would not be allowed into the holy place to burn the incense unto God anyway. So I will put golden altars in some of your key cities, so that you can either burn incense unto the Most High God or to any god. I just want you folks to find worship a very convenient thing.” Now I have news for you. All the way through the scripture, I’ve watched God bless some supplements, but curse all substitutes. Whenever you offer God a substitute, He’ll curse it. You either give God what He asks for, or He wants nothing else in its place.

And I think that we are on the verge, if not in the big fat middle, of substitute worship, even among the charismatics. Repeatedly, I am asked for a counseling session in conferences similar to this, or camp meetings. And I say, “Well, I really believe that the ministry of counseling belongs to your pastor. Why don’t you discuss this with your pastor?” “Well, I don’t have a pastor.” “You don’t. Is your church between pastors?” “No, you see, I no longer go to church.” “Well, why would that be?” “Well, you understand, Brother Cornwall, that in our area, there’s nobody that’s really flowing with what God’s doing. And it’s just death warmed over. And I’ve just given… It isn’t necessary anymore. I’m on the cable, and I can get Christian television 16 hours a day. And we have gospel radio beamed right into our area. And I have cassettes. I have all of Sister Tompkins’ cassettes. And I have two of your books. And I can sit in my home and watch television and read books and hear cassettes. And I can get a lot more spiritual food than I’d ever get at church. So I don’t go to church.”

It’s a substitute. For when Paul was writing to the Hebrews, he said, “Not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is. And so much the more as you see that end day approaching.” I hear a lot about these being the end days. The last days. Eschatologically, I’m not all that certain where we are. But I know they’re my last days. And I see that they’re the last days for some of you too. And I’m afraid they’re the last days for our nation. Or for the form of living that we have known. And for morality. And I think that Paul was writing about our day when he said, the closer you see the last days coming, the more imperative it is that you get together for your worship. Would you understand why?

I’m so glad, sister, you did not sing it. I hope you don’t even know the chorus. But in the circles that I have traveled for some years, they love to get excited about singing, “He’s all I need. He’s all I need. Jesus is all I need.” Don’t you believe it?

Jesus is not all you need. We need one another. If God could totally meet man’s needs, He’d have never made Eve. But He recognized that while He, God, could totally meet Adam’s spirit needs, He was not totally satisfying his body’s soul needs. And so He made one of His own kind, but the alter ego, mirror image, in order that there might be a total meeting of needs.

We are not all spirit. We’re spirit, soul, body. Our spirit needs are totally met in God. But our soul needs, which would be the emotional and intellectual, are not totally answered in God. We need one another. Our body needs are not totally answered in God. We need one another. And so when we say, “I can sit in my own home and get more than if I went to the church,” we are either deceiving ourselves or lying. Because you cannot get interaction with other people sitting in your own home alone. We need fellowship. We need counsel. We need love. We need guidance. We need chastisement. We need what others can give to us. But Ahaz was saying, “You don’t need to come together here. Yeah, I’ll just make it available to you right there where you are.” Watch out for substitutes. They’re a trick of the devil to keep you from getting the provisions of God for your life.

He caused them to so totally depart from the true worship of a true God that many of them entered into false worship of a false God. The rest of them entered into false worship of a true God. And would you allow me to suggest and postulate that I fear that in America many of our churches have led the people into a false worship of a true God. And I use the word false as being any worship that is not divinely prescribed. Anything that is an improvement upon God’s way. Anything that is a substitute for God’s way.

Little things like Hebrews… I’m sorry, James… John… John writes in 4:24, that the Lord must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And yet both those have been stricken out in many of our churches. They do not want any operation of the Holy Spirit and they don’t care whether there’s any truth or not. Just fake it. Just so it looks good and sounds good and smells good, it’s called worship. But that’s not God’s way. And we’ll either worship God’s way or it is not cataloged as worship. It may be meditation. It may be religious exercise, but it is not worship.

And God wants us to come back to true worship. Ahaz led them into false worship of a true God. Which I fear may be even more dangerous than true worship of a false God. At least we know that’s false. But when we are led into a false approach to a true God, we can be caused to see the truth in God to where we think that same truth is in us. The fact that we never get to His presence and never have any interaction doesn’t seem to distress us that much because we’ve been led to recognize we’re worshiping the true God. Now wait a minute. We must truly worship the true God or the worship is not acceptable. God is rather fussy about how you come into His presence. Very particular about what you do once you get there. It’s not difficult, but it is prescribed.

Jesus spoke of Himself as being the way, the access, the route into God’s presence and then went on to say, “Anyone who tries to get to the Father except through me is a thief and a robber and is going to be expelled from the divine presence.”

Now in contrast to Ahaz, who had produced such departure from God, his son Hezekiah brought the people to true worship of a true God. And there are just 30 verses between false worship of a true God and true worship of a true God. But you do not bring any group of people from false worship to true worship in one giant step. It must be done progressively. We progressively were led away from true worship. Now we must progressively return to true worship. And in this 29th chapter I see eight or nine steps of their progressively coming back to the worship of God. Obviously we will not get them all covered, but it won’t be that important. I am slowly beginning to learn it is not as important that you know everything I know as that you really know something that I know. And so I would rather that you learn one step as verse 3. And it’s one step we’ll look at tonight. In order to see that, may I read the first three verses of chapter 29.

Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem, and his mother’s name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. Are you ladies aware that most regularly, with only a few exceptions, when a woman’s name is given as the mother of a king, the next statement is, “And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord”? If he did that which was evil, we’re usually only told the father’s name. I’m not sure why it works out that way.

He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. Isn’t this mercy? I’m not sure that you’ve been told, but 2 Chronicles is really history as God sees it. It’s a rewrite of Samuel and Kings, but this time as God sees it. In Kings we are told that Hezekiah’s father was Ahaz. Here we’re told that he did all that was right according to the ways of his father David, and you’re having to go back a couple of hundred years to get the name of David, and yet the scripture says that was his true spiritual father. How kind that God did not visit the iniquity of his earthly father upon Hezekiah. Some have made so much of the two occasions in the Old Testament God speaks of visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons. I like to bring them back to such passages as this and say, yeah, but He can give you a new father. God becomes the Father, and you’re visited with the righteousness of your Father God, not the iniquity of your earthly father, when we’ve been born again. Isn’t it fun to be born again? We have a whole new genetic lease on life when we get a new father.

Praise the Lord. Verse 3 is our text for the evening. He, Hezekiah, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. Now that is not politically astute. He didn’t wait to get the reins of power in his hands. The very first month of his reign he began to reverse his father’s rule. Now he had one thing going for him. He had served as co-regent with his father for seven years, but give him this much credit, that he risked some political struggles by starting instantly to do what should have been done under his father’s reign. And step one in bringing people from false worship to true worship is to have a change in leadership. A change in the king.

And I would like to make several applications. The most obvious one is that until Jesus Christ is really our king, we’ll never worship. Oh, I know that we charismatics sing loudly, “He is Lord.” But almost always after we’ve had that rousing chorus, “He is Lord, He is Lord, risen from the dead, He is Lord,” comes the period of time when we give orders to the Lord. They’re called prayer requests. At which time we fill Him in on unknown information and tell Him what to do, where to do it, how to do it, when to do it, and to whom to report back after He’s done it.

I believe that our actions speak more loudly than our singing. It’s one thing to sing “He’s the Lord of my life, the Lord of glory, He is Lord,” but unless we submit to it and function as submitted to His Lordship, we’re only mouthing it.

I’m thinking, and it’s not too kind an illustration, of a woman pastor that my sister and I both love and appreciate for her ministry. But of course the rule of thumb is that if a woman is to be in ministry, she must be submitted to her husband. And oh, how this woman loudly proclaims from her pulpit and from convention pulpits that she is totally submitted to her husband.

You ought to be in the home and watch that little mouse scurry across the floor when she walks in. I suppose if he ever did speak up and make demands, she might obey him. It’s never happened in 40 some odd years of marriage, but it might happen someday. But here she’s playing the big game, you know, that he’s the Lord of the home. “I’m totally submissive to him. Anything he says I’ll do.” And yet he just runs in fear and quietness and always takes orders, not gives them. And every time I’m guest in their home I say, “Lord, that’s the way the Christians treat You, isn’t it? In public they brag that You’re the boss. We’re submitted to You. You’re in charge. Anything You want. But in private we treat You like the servant, and we tell You when to do and what to do and where, etc., etc.” I believe, saints, it’s overdue for all of us, no matter where our spiritual level is, it’s overdue for us to let Jesus Christ be Lord of all. For it was R.A. Torrey, during his days, that loudly proclaimed, “Jesus Christ will be Lord of all or not Lord at all.” And when He is Lord there are tremendous changes that take place in our life. Things that have been locked up get opened up. Things that have been dirtied up get cleaned up, etc.

Etc. We need to let Jesus Christ be Lord, but I would like to make the application far more personal than that. I’m convinced that if in fact there is going to be a return to true worship, then there’s going to be of necessity a change in leadership. I hope it is not necessary that we will have a change in personnel, although I think it only fair to tell you that that’s not too inconsistent with the way God does things. Joshua was trained and stood on the sidelines for many, many years. God wouldn’t let him lead until Moses was buried.

God used Moses to bring the people out of, but Joshua to bring them into. And church history shows that repeatedly, God has let the leaders of one major move of God die in total peace and satisfaction before He raised up leadership in a second or third or fourth move of God.

And it may be necessary to have some change in personnel before people can be led from the false to the true, because if the personnel has been the persons who led us into the false, then they’re not going to lead us into the true.

And do not be too surprised if you see new persons coming on the scene. Just watch for the anointing. Check and double check their teaching. It may be that God says, “I just have brought the people as far as I can bring them unto this man. I will have another.” But I personally hope that is not true. I hope that it shall not be necessary for God to create a change in personnel when it seems the New Testament teaches His desire is to change the person. God wants to change us, not exchange us for another person. I read repeatedly in the New Testament such expressions as being renewed in the spirit of your mind. The concept of being born again is the concept of being renewed.

Being, even genetically, taken back into the womb and brought forth differently. Paul and Peter make a great deal about putting off of some things and putting on of new. Paul declares to the church at Corinth that if we’re really in Christ, we’re a new creature. The old life has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Montgomery translates that in the present progressive sense. “If any man is in Christ, he is becoming a new creation. The old life is passing away. Behold, the new is coming.” God wants to renew us. Make us new. So that we will not be the persons this year we were last year. And hopefully next year shall not be the persons we are now. You see, while it is true that we are sons of God, it is also true that we are born as babies. All sons start as infants. And God sees us as sons in maturing.

Or you say, “Well, I’m the bride of Christ.” Well, then you’re a bride in preparation. Or “I’m the church of God.” Well, then you’re the church under construction. The New Testament does not see anything completed. It sees it begun and so purposed in God that it shall be completed.

For everything that God begins, He completes. So with this concept in mind, allow me to suggest that this first step in coming from false worship of a true God to true worship of a true God will be that we be made new. That God be allowed to do a work in our life that renews our thinking. Our concepts about God.

Most of us have very stunted concepts about God. Very limited. More people have learned their theology from the hymn book than from His book. And I think there are probably more lies per square inch in a hymn book than any other religious publication in our church. Or at least half-truths, which is the most dangerous form of lie. I don’t know if you’ve heard it. I was preaching at a conference in Dallas, driving back and forth from my own house two weeks ago. Listen to the Christian radio station. My, it sounds great. Goes into great length about Jesus borrowed the bed in which He was laid, and He borrowed the boat from which He preached, and He borrowed the nets from which He fished, and He borrowed that, and He borrowed that. But the cross that He bore was His own. And listen to this. My, I wish that fellow had read the Bible. That was a Roman cross made by Jewish carpenters. Whoever got the concept, that was his. Can you imagine Jesus carrying around that cross for three and a half years of ministry just so He’d be sure and have one when He needed it?

Sounds beautiful on the radio. It has no more truth in it than a lot of the other songs that are sung. My point is that because we sing it, we believe it’s true, and we come up with some very weird concepts of God or, at the very best, very limiting concepts of God. Some of the songs that have been sung in the past 15 years have so humanized God that it’s a little bit difficult to worship Him. Much of the teachings that have been shared have humanized God. We put Him down on a level where, with the right formula, we can get anything we want from God. And we are almost in total control of God by what we say and what we think and what we accept and what we reject. And therefore, who needs to worship of God that’s so small I can manipulate Him? We only worship something that is greater than ourselves unless we are self-worshippers. We need to be made new in the spirit of our mind. We need to be renewed in our human spirit. We need to be renewed in the soul level. And some of us need renewing in our bodies. And it’s God’s provision that we be made new. Now, I find it rather interesting that of all the many, many, many titles that Jesus was given by the prophets in the Old Testament, He only chose to confer one of them upon His disciples.

Never do I hear Him say, “I call you Prince of Peace.” Or “You are Mighty God.” Or “You are Everlasting Father.” Or “You are the one upon whom the government of this world shall increase.” Or that you are a rock, a sword, a shield, a buckler, a reward. Or a shadow of a rock in a dry and weary land. None of these titles did He confer upon His disciples, but one He did. And that one was given to Him ten times in the Old Testament. Ten times He’s called the branch. And to His disciples before His departure, en route to Calvary, Jesus said, “I’m the vine. You are the branches. What I have been determined and called and prophesied, I confer to you.” Now, there’s no end to what can be taught from this. Surely the most fundamental truth is the need for abiding. The branch cannot, independent of the vine, produce anything but dry wood. And it is only as we abide in the vine that anything productive can come.

But I’d like to share another principle that is also evident to all who know anything about a vineyard. The first time my sis and I shared ministry together was years and years ago. As a matter of fact, it almost defies our imagination to remember that far back. It was shortly after the pilgrims landed. Well, maybe it was a little after that. We were in Kennewick, Washington, together, which is vineyard country. Beautiful country.

Acres and acres of vineyards on rolling hills. And I learned a little bit about the growing of grapes there. Not a vast amount, but I learned that in the springtime, growth came. Just as surely as the seasons changed. And the growth at times seemed very rapid as those branches just began to shoot forth from that vine. And they’d just be a tangled mess all over the ground. And they sent out some very specially trained men whose job it was to untangle the branches, lift them up, clean them off, and tie them to the wires that were strung between the posts. Now, the specialness was not just to be able to untangle and clean, but the way they were tied determined whether they’d ever produced grapes or not. If they tied them too loosely, the winds that were rather strong up that Columbia Canyon would whip them all over and ruin the grapes. But if they tied them too tightly, as that branch continued to grow, it would choke off the flow of sap. And again, there would be no fruit. So they had to have some knowledge from experience and training just how tightly to tie them. Can you relate to that when I read in the Gospels that the Father is the husbandman and any branch of His He purges it?

That word purges simply means cleans it up, washes it. That He is the one who picks us out of the dirt, because so often in our growth we find ourselves down in the soil. He picks us up, cleans us off, washes us if necessary, and ties us just right to a level that we might grow out, not down. That we should be lifted up and not always down in the depths of the earth. After being tied, the branches continued to grow, but now the runners stayed consistent with the wires. And a little later, leaves begin to bud and develop and mature. And that’s when the vineyards looked so beautiful. Only if you went into the vineyard would you be aware of blossoms, because the blossoms always came under the leaves and are well hidden unless you lift the leaf up. But you could be aware of the blossoms for the fragrance as the wind wafted through the vineyard. Then as the blossom dropped off, tiny buds of fruit appeared, not much bigger than the head of a small pin, straight pin, to begin with. But they continued to enlarge and grow and take cluster form and continue to enlarge until finally they’d reach full maturity. And then they began to sweeten, ripen, and change color.

For these were the purple slip-skin grapes that churches use in the grape juice. And that was when the vineyard had its most beautiful fragrance. You could smell those grapes for miles in any direction. And now you had such contrast from the green leaves to the purple grapes hanging down in full, ripe clusters. This was the purpose of the cycle, to produce fruit. But when the fruit was at its peak of maturity, thieves came in with knives and began to cut off the fruit. The thieves were called harvesters. I use the word thief because if we were the branch, that would be our concept.

What is so often forgotten by Christians is that fruit is for a season, not perpetuity, and that fruit is never borne for the sake of the branch, but always for the sake of somebody who came into the vineyard.

We talk so much about bearing the fruit of the Spirit that flows from Christ through us, and all my life is just gloriously ripened with love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance, oh, and what a blessing it is to my life. It shouldn’t necessarily be a blessing to your life. It’s supposed to be a blessing to the lives of others.

Grapes are grown for the sake of others. But I have seen churches that resist the harvesting. They’ve gone through such a cycle to produce fruit, and now they have a bumper crop and they post guards all the way around. No one comes into this vineyard. “Oh, may I but taste to see that the Lord is good?” “You don’t need to taste. Just take a look. Isn’t it beautiful? Don’t you wish you had something like this? You can have it if you’ll sign this card, pay your tithes, join the church, rent the pew, do this and that and the other thing. You can grow and you can have what we have.” But you know that if you do not harvest grapes, you do not preserve them. You dehydrate them and you end up with raisins.

And if the raisins are not harvested, you end up with rot. Now other churches take another tack. When their fruit is at its prime, they send key photographers out to take colored photographs. And when all the fruit has finally rotted, they tie the colored photographs on the vines so that year after year after year you can see what a marvelous crop they had in 58.

Sis and I have gone to groups who, one of the first things they want to do, is pull out their scrapbook and let us know what a marvelous crop they had just four years ago. And look at last year. Now I don’t mind looking at a scrapbook, but if I want grapes I don’t want a photograph. I’d like to see something in the present.

Now there are other churches who recognize that the fruit will decay if not harvested, but they don’t want it eaten, so they preserve it. And they become those sticky sweet Christians where everything is just, “Oh, dear, isn’t that just wonderful? Oh, God is so good. You’ve never seen the goodness of God like we see it in our church.” And you’re just constantly eating grape jelly. Everything is sweet, sweet, sweet. Sometimes I cry, “Oh, God, isn’t there a pickle in the crowd?”

But the purpose of the growing cycle is the harvest. How is the world going to know the love of God if they can’t taste it from you? How will they ever experience the joy of God if they can’t take one of your grapes and eat it? How will they ever know peace if in the midst of the turmoil they can’t reach to you and pull off one grape and know the joy, the peace of God, etc., and it fit them all through the fruit of the spirit? It’s borne by the Christian for the sake of the non-Christian or the brotherhood. That’s the cycle. But that’s not the end of the cycle. Jesus said, “You haven’t chosen me, I’ve chosen you. I’ve ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain.” Now some misunderstand that, and that’s when they try to keep the fruit from being harvested or they try to preserve it with sweetness. But I understand that the Greek concept is not remain by staying but remain by returning. That in this season there will be another crop and another crop, which is consistent with the wealth of Christ’s teaching that He does things in season. If you can be assured that what God did He will yet do again, then it wouldn’t be so bad when people strip you of what God did.

You know that He’ll do it again. But after the vineyard is stripped, it’s left alone. Who wants to go into a vineyard that has no grapes? It still has some aesthetic beauty, although it has been somewhat torn up by all the equipment they’ve run through it in the harvest. Then comes fall, and in the early frosts the sap stops running and the leaves start dying. And death is so beautiful in nature, isn’t it? Supposed to be beautiful in Christians. I wish that we could get rid of the carnal mind and come back to the mind of Christ and realize that when the scripture says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints,” He really means it. For we watch nature die and the leaves turn the most beautiful colors. We remark. Some of us drive for miles to get into special areas to see it. I for several years have tried to arrange my bookings so that I can be in the New England states in fall for at least one visit. It’s worth it. It’s a beautiful sight. Though we are remarking this beauty, and I’m loaded with colored slides I’ve taken of it, the truth is what I’m doing is saying, isn’t the death of this year’s crop of leaves beautiful because they’re dying.

And then it goes from the early shades of yellow right into the reds and then the browns and the decay, and finally, since no more life is flowing, the leaf falls off and leaves the most straggly sight you ever believe possible. For branches that have neither leaves nor fruit offer no aesthetic beauty whatsoever. And they’re allowed to stay there for the whole of the winter. But come early spring, they send another crew of trained men into that vineyard with pruning shears.

And almost mercilessly they start cutting off all of that wood that produced the fruit. They cut those branches way back, just sometimes just inches from the vine, a few feet, leaving a runner now and then to give quick leaf covering for the rest of it. But most of it is cut back to where they have huge stacks of wood. In those days they hauled it out and burned it. I would hope by now they’ve learned how to recycle it into something. I’m not sure some of these breakfast cereal I had eaten tasted like it could be that.

As a matter of fact, it does happen in some of the instant foods that were given. And it disturbed me. And because I have an extremely active mouth connected to a wagging tongue, I went to the vineyard to point out that it seems unfair to devastate a vineyard that had given a bumper crop. I said, “We’re not devastating it. We need a bumper crop again this year, Reverend.” I said, “Then why are you cutting back all these branches? Why are you pruning it so severely?” I said, “Well, you don’t understand, Reverend. You see, in the vineyard, wood that has produced fruit will never ever again produce fruit. Fruit only comes on new growth. And so we’re cutting off everything that has produced in order to force new growth which will be productive. If we leave the old wood and the vine puts out new growth, and the next year puts out new growth, in about a ten year period the vine will die because it cannot support all of that unproductive wood.”

It was years before I realized that’s exactly the action of the Father in our lives. He grafts us into His Son the vine and lets the Son’s life and life cycles start a growth process in us, and He picks us up, purges us, ties us, and through us come leaves and fruit, and the harvesters come in and marvel at the glory of this crop, and we say, “We’re so satisfied and humbled that God would use us so.” And then everybody forsakes us. Coldness sets in. Our beauty fades. Our leaves drop off. We go through a cycle of total uselessness, and then the pruners come and cut it all off, and it’s taken out and burned. And we are left in a state of dormancy. We don’t even have memories of the past to look at. It seems harsh and unfair. Even unkind. But God’s goal is not to produce long lines of what has been. But to produce fruit. More fruit. Much more fruit. And in order to do so, we must be pruned and pruned. The same principle is true in your fruit tree, but there it’s a two-year cycle. Fruit grows on wood that is two years old.

Would this give you some clues to what God has been doing in your life? Have you observed with me that having been grafted into Christ and a new life of the Spirit flowing in you, that there came a growth and a fruit production on you that was valuable to others? And they came to eat of your clusters. Gathered in your home, perhaps, on the job. And they feasted on Christ in you. And then they started leaving you alone. And then One came into your life and cut it all off. Threw it on the fire and burned it. And left you totally inactive. Devastated. Ruined.

That’s the love of God. That’s the hand of God. That’s proof that you are the planting of the Lord. For the New Testament declares from the lips of Jesus, “My Father is the husbandman.” Paul says that we are the planting of the Lord. And if you’re His, He not only will graft you in and water you and tie you in right position and clean you and fertilize where necessary, He will also see that somebody gets the fruit that grows, and He Himself will prune you back in order to produce more fruit.

Some people only bear fruit because they resist the pruning action. But Jesus said He would be glorified if we would produce more than fruit, but more fruit. We read of the percentages as being 30, 60, 100 fold. I suppose that can apply in many directions, but it always means there has been an allowing of the husbandman to do what is necessary to increase the yield. It doesn’t say that some seed is better seed than other seed, but that some soil is better soil than other, or some plants have responded to the care better than other plants. And if we are to bring forth a threefold yield unto the Lord, it means we’re going to be pruned at least twice.

Let me speak of it in two directions. When Sis and I pastored together for some close to 10 years, God did a very beautiful thing in both of our lives. We felt that the beauty stopped when He started separating us. But He did it gradually. Kind of like, you know, you don’t want your dog to suffer too badly, so you only cut off his tail one inch at a time.

We had a woman in our church before we, or at least I, even knew anything about tape libraries, before we had cassettes, way back there in the old reel-to-reel, who had come to us from a denominational background that was very different than ours, and she was so stirred by what she heard in Iverna’s teaching and my teaching, she insisted on bringing her tape recorder and recording it, and she started sharing it with her neighbors and friends from her other church. And from that, to shorten the story, with much resistance from me, she founded a tape library, which began to send tapes all over this country and to other countries of the world. As a result of those tapes came invitations for me to share ministry with these groups. Little by little, I went out, and then I went out more and more, until before I resigned the church, I was averaging being in my own church less than a week per quarter, which isn’t all that fair to a church. Would never have survived, but my sister was there as pastor.

When God began to release me from the church and finally released Iverna and I totally for ministry to the body of Christ at large, there was a great need for teachers. They were in dearth of supply in the early charismatic days. And it wasn’t all that long until I had been caught up in the larger circle, the big conventions, the big churches. And when you get in the big circuit, you hardly need to do any scheduling. They’ll do your scheduling for you. Because when you’re with big number one and you’ve done right in his eyes, then he phones big number two and says, “You’ve got to have Cornwall.” Then he comes to you and says, “Big number two wants you next week,” and no matter what you say, you end up in big number two’s group. And then that is passed to the next. And you’re bragged on and called the greatest and well cared for. It’s quite a secure life to get into. I was in that circle.

And I was beginning to believe what they said about me. I actually got to the point where I believed the way I was being introduced. And that’s dangerous. In Phoenix, Arizona, the body of Christ there is a bit segmented, or has been. I cannot speak too clearly for present circumstances. But for reasons that only God would understand, when I ministered in that town, usually there was a coming over the barriers and we could fill any church or auditorium that they was secure. Also in that town, there was a man with a very strong prophetic ministry. Some even classified him as a prophet. He’s a man that was so convinced it was God speaking that when he spoke, his whole manner convinced you it was God speaking. There was nothing mild or gentle about it. It just came out bombastically and strong and with a flow of faith. And people almost always did what he said.

I was called to Phoenix for a conference. Groups got together. Lovely church building used. And this man was seated on the platform where he could get to a microphone. Even with his voice, he could not have been heard in that size auditorium without it.

First service. Song service. Announcements, offerings, and all the things we tend to call preliminary were done. And now they were giving the introduction to E. Judson Cornwall. And I sat there checking out the introduction and, you know, they were saying almost everything. There were two or three things they were leaving out, but I can weave that into my introductory remarks.

And “We’re so glad to welcome Brother Judson Cornwall.” And I got up in that pseudo-humble walk, you know, and I got about three steps from my chair when this man jumped up, grabbed a microphone, and began to prophesy. And his prophecy went something like this. “Thou hast grown into a mighty tree, and thy branches have spread out over the wall, affording shelter and shade to people of many religious heritages and cultures. And they are very pleased with thee. And you are very pleased with yourself. But I’m not pleased with you because you have the wrong fruit. Therefore, I’m going to cut you down. Not as Nebuchadnezzar was cut down, for there I left a stump. But I’m going to cut you down below ground level so the memory of you can fade from the face of the world you live in.

“But if you will be faithful to me during that period, I’ll leave life in the roots. And eventually, I’ll let a little bush grow up. And it’ll have the right fruit on it. But I’ll never let you be a tree again. I can’t trust you.”

And he sat down. And the audience went stone cold. And I didn’t know what to do. It was about the same distance to my chair as to the pulpit. But I’ve been introduced. And the show must go on.

And I stepped up and cleared my throat a couple of times. And stepped on a cup of water. And I looked at him. Then I looked at the people. And I realized nobody knew who he was talking about. Have you noticed that God can spank His children in public and everybody thinks they’re getting a pat on the back?

So I waded in and preached the sermon as best you can preach when you have no sense of God on your side. It’s a little lonesome. When he just said, “I’m going to cut you down.” You know, there wasn’t one thing in there, “Unless you repent, unless you turn to me.” He just plain said, “I’m going to do it.” Soon as the service was over, I went directly to the pastor’s study, knowing that the elders would be waiting on this man. And sure enough, they were working him over. “That could not have been from God. Nobody received it. We don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you know what you’re talking about?” I just opened the door and said, “Leave him alone. I know what he was talking about and that was from God.” Closed the door. Went out to the parking lot to get in the car. Pre-arranged. My wife would meet me there. Before I turned the key, I said to my wife, “That is the weirdest prophecy I’ve ever heard. I wonder what he’s talking about.” She just reached over and put her hand on my hand. She says, “Honey, both of us know who he’s talking about, don’t we, dear?”

I said, “Oh, you know.” I said, “Dear, we’re here for four days. We fly directly from here to New Zealand, ministry in Australia, in Hawaiian Islands, and then back. Let’s join hands and ask God not to cut me down until I get back to America.” And we did.

I got sicker and sicker and sicker the whole of my time being gone. But I wasn’t cut down. But 21 hours after I arrived back on American soil, I collapsed in my brother’s pulpit preaching the morning sermon and spent the next 16 months most of the time looking at the ceiling. Heart attack.

I was unconscious for the first day and a half, and in deference to a walk I have with God and a commitment with the Lord, my wife didn’t take me to a doctor. But when I got conscious, she said, “Please let me take you to a doctor, because if you should die and the body of Christ finds out I didn’t get medical help for you, they’ll never forgive me.” I said, “You’re right, let’s go.” After a preliminary exam, his attitude was, “My God, let’s get you to the intensive care of the heart ward.” Called to make an appointment at the hospital and was devastated that they were filled and crowded and couldn’t take me in until tomorrow. I told him that was good enough for me. I’d survived this long. One more day wasn’t going to make the difference, and he didn’t seem to feel that way. He felt that there might be another day, but I said, “Just let it go.” Went back to the little apartment my wife had secured. And my brother came in and said, “There’s a man here to see you. He’s got me on the phone and I told him, ‘You’re way too sick to see anyone.’ But he says, For you to know that God gave him a message for you.”

I said, “That man has a prophetic ministry. I trust him. Bring him.” It was better than an hour before they came back. He said, “Having heard how sick you were, it didn’t seem fair for you to have to trust or judge this prophecy. So I’ve gone out to get hold of three elders that I’ve ministered with in times past. And we’re going to have a little time of prayer so that they can judge this prophecy. Judson, I am returning home from Bogota, Colombia, South America. Two days ago while I was ministering there, the Lord said, ‘Here’s a message for Judson Cornwall. When you get back to America, give it to him.’ I only phoned your brother to find out where you were. I was going to call you long distance.” They prayed and this was the prophecy. “Judson, welcome home. You’re here for a lot longer than you think you are. As for this sickness, don’t sweat it. It’s not judgment, punishment, or even chastisement. It’s a process to change you into the bush with fruit.”

And it was so obviously from God, I wept. The brethren said, “If we’ve ever heard a word from God, this is a word from God.” So as soon as they left, I sent my wife to call the doctor to cancel him and the hospital. Isn’t it Brother Bob Mumford who has popularized the expression, “If God fixes a fix to fix you, and you fix the fix before the fix has fixed you, God will just fix another fix to fix you”? At least I knew what this fix was.

And God did quite a process in me. But it does seem that the fruit on this side of that experience is better than the fruit on the other side. And it is interesting to me also that though I canceled during that period two years of scheduled meeting in the bigs, none of them know that I’m alive. Only one has ever invited me back to his church. The others don’t even seem to see me when we’re in the same conference. Their attitude seems to be, “Judson who?” For with these in the larger circles, you fail them once and they erase you from their memory circles. Now I don’t mean that negatively. That’s just the way they function. I don’t exist. You might as well have buried me back there when my wife called and said, “My husband cannot come if he’s had a heart attack.” They just went, erase. There is no Judson Cornwall.

I wish I could tell you that’s the only cutting down that’s been so. That’s the only time He had to cut me clear down to the roots. But do you know that every time this little bush shows up with some fruit, God cuts it down? He prunes it and prunes it and prunes it. Until every ministry that I’ve come into, when it begin to bear fruit, God cut it down. Somebody asked me, “Judson, what on earth are you trying to do? Wrote five books last year alone and traveled 50,000 miles and preached constantly. What are you trying to do? Kill yourself?” “No, not at all. I’m just trying to get as much fruit in this ministry before God prunes it out of my life.”

Are we understanding one another? But if God didn’t prune me, this bush would take on the character of tree. But would have no fruit. Because the fruit only grows on the new wood. And so God keeps new wood returning.

It’s only in the areas of new growth that we ever produce anything that looks like God. In the old growth, we have that which looked like God looked. We can tell you about how God was. What God did. But people are only given a sample of God in the here and now. What God is doing. What God is saying. How God is flowing. And that will require regular pruning.

Now two or three concluding marks, because we’re just exactly eight seconds beyond the hour. I didn’t say there’d be short conclusions. I said there’d be two or three concluding thoughts. One. Don’t prune yourself. We’re not capable of self-pruning. And when we attempt it, we do not prune, but introspectively, we destroy. We destroy our faith. We destroy our confidence. We often even destroy our love by coming into senses of unworthiness. If you’re the planting of the Lord, it’s His job to prune you. Don’t try to prune yourself. Number two. Don’t let other people prune you.

You do not belong to other people, so they have no right to prune you. In December, I was in the Washington, D.C. area, and after a conference of leadership, a young man came up to me and said, “Can I have just five minutes of your time? I need guidance.” I said, “Yep, you’ve got it.” “I have moved to this area from such and such an area to join myself to Brother X. I have submitted myself to him, and there’s a group of us that are working out from under his blanket and covering and so forth. And God has really blessed us. But we’re having some problems.” I said, “What’s the nature of the problem?” He said, “Brother X won’t let us prune him. And he desperately needs to be pruned. And several of us have gone together and we’ve gone into him and we’ve tried to prune him and he won’t let us.” I said, “Oh, thank God he won’t let you. Now, do I understand you correctly? You left city such and such to come here to be under this man, to be trained by this man, to be brought into a discipling of this man, and now you think you can prune him?”

He said, “Do you think I’m wrong?” I said, “I can guarantee you that you are wrong.” He said, “What do you recommend?” I said, “I recommend an immediate transferring back to the city you came from. Get out of this man’s life. Get out of his hair. Your motives are wrong. Your attitudes are wrong. You’re here to trim him down when originally you came and told him you were here for him to trim you down.” Do you know some people who seem to think their whole ministry in the body is to cut and slash other people? Now, don’t misunderstand me. Surely we exhort one another and we even correct one another. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about that actually reaching in and cutting off an area of life. Let me give you a concrete example. A phone call came to me from a pastor in Hawaii. “Brother Judson, what’s going on?” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Mr. XY, a very close friend of mine, we were in college together. He’s coming to recent flow in God. He is an absolutely fabulous musician.” He said, “I think that he would make Dino sound like a beginner on the piano. And his voice is tremendous. God has used him quite widely. But one of the well-known names in discipleship heard him and said, ‘Join us.’

“We’ll make you world-renowned as a gospel musician.” They said he fell for it. And he went down there. But after a couple of weeks of not being used in any other activities, he approached them and said, “Well, don’t you want me to exercise my musical ministry?” And they said, “No. You will sit for two years and do nothing. And if at the end of two years we believe that you have learned true submission, we’ll let you play the piano for our services.” He said, “What should I recommend to him?” I said that he’d get out of town instantly. By air if you can afford it, by bus if you can’t, hitchhike if you must, but get out.

And he did. Do you have the right to tell somebody they will no longer testify? Do I have the right to say you will no longer operate a gift of the Spirit? Do you have the right to say you will no longer preach, you will no longer play the piano, you will no longer play the violin? It’s being done, but it’s not being done according to the Word of God. The Father is the husbandman, not the shepherd. Shepherd take care of sheep, but let the Father take care of growth of vines. Oh, I know, I know that the blade of the scissors will sometimes look like your husband, or your wife, or your pastor. Don’t look at the blade. Look at the hand that’s controlling. If that’s God’s hand, amen. If it isn’t, resist it.

Because one of the favorite tricks of the enemy is to cut off the vine while it is in the process of bearing fruit. God always waits until the process is complete. And cuts it back. A third principle I’d have you gather from this is this does not mean that a group of people will have a time of prolific fruit bearing and then a period of fruitlessness. For I always read the Bible with a Western mind because that is the culture I was trained in. But it was written for the Eastern culture. When I was in Indonesia for my first series of ministries there, I was so overwhelmed with their rice harvesting methods, I kept taking pictures of it. Pictures until when I got home and counted, I’d taken over 500 colored slides of rice fields and the activity in it. See, I was raised in California where we know how to grow rice. There we go in with great big equipment and plow up acres at a time and dike it. And then we flood multiple acres at a time. And then we go in and plant multiple acres. And then we drain them at the same time. And we harvest it all at the same time and start the cycle all over again. Not so in Indonesia.

In the Eastern cultures, every stage of the harvest is going on every day of the world. I would see in a small rice paddy, family paddy, one portion of the family harvesting enough rice for today. While another segment of the family was plowing what was harvested yesterday. Somebody else in the family was flooding what had been plowed the day before. Somebody else was planting what had been flooded the day before. For every stage in the growing of rice was going on every day of the world. So that they were always plowing, always flooding, always planting, and always harvesting. And there was a perpetual harvest. Not a seasonal growth. And I believe that if we let God do the pruning, there will always be grapes in the church.

For when God prunes me back, you’re about ready to bear fruit. Sister and I used to notice this when we’re pastored together. There would be times when God would put the shears to me and cut me back. You know that one of the tragedies, it so seems, when you prune, is that you throw everything into a state of inactivity. Dormancy. And I’d have one of those dormant periods. Nothing new was coming. No life. I couldn’t even prove I was saved by my feelings. And sometimes my faith wasn’t all that sure. Nothing was growing. I was just a stub sticking out in God. If I hadn’t had some good pictures, I couldn’t have proved I ever bore fruit. You know what was happening while I was dormant? My sister was growing like wild, fruit hanging out all over her, which made my dormancy look all the worse.

And then sometimes there’d be a reversing of roads. And as God was cutting back on her, I was coming forth with new life. As our staff grew, we could see in large stages. But in the mercy of God, He never pruned our whole staff at one time. And the whole staff never was bearing fruit at the same time. But all stages were there. If you leave it up to the Lord, no matter what service a visitor attends, he can get grapes.

But if we do it our way, we’ll all be pruned at one time. We’ll all be tied up at one time. We’ll all… And that’s not going to give this world fruit when the world wants it. Principle number next. What am I? I’m talking off the top of my head. I have nothing in front of me. Five, maybe?

No matter how often you are pruned, your next harvest will be the same as the harvest before. For the years that I stayed in Kennewick, Washington, and watched them prune back that same vineyard year after year after year, I never once saw them prune in such a way as to produce pears or peaches or plums. It always produced grapes. So I’m not suggesting that God is going to take an usher who has learned how to meet people with a smile and the grace of God and the love of Jesus and prune him back. And next time he grows out, he’s going to become the church pianist. He’ll get pruned back all right. But the next harvest is going to be that same capacity to be an usher.

So it’s not devastating when the Lord cuts us back. It is not to keep us from being what He has prepared us to be, but to make us to be that in life. If we violate that concept, we get into all kinds of problems. I was in a conference sometime back now. Such a sweet melting of the Lord. And there was response and praise and worship and openness. And a woman came up to the piano and kind of muscled her way onto the bench. And one of the brethren in charge went over, talked to her a little while, and came back to me and said, “She says she wants to play a number unto the Lord. She feels an anointing to play the piano unto the Lord.” Well, I happen to believe in that. So I said, “Well, let her alone. Let’s let her do it. She can’t hurt us.” How wrong I was. She poised herself to give us something from Beethoven, probably. And boy, she came down, but she couldn’t even play chopsticks. She didn’t know how to play the piano. And no amount of the anointing taught her how to play piano. And after a few minutes of hopeless noise, we gently lifted her from the piano bench and deposited her at the altar.

We will continue to produce consistent to what God has called us to produce. But it will be fresh. It will be new. It will be flavorful. It will be Christ-revealing. And then He’ll say to us, “I think it’s time for another period of dormancy. Oh, how hard you have worked. How you’ve run. How you’ve grown. How you’ve developed. How you’ve worked at this. And I’m pleased with you. But I think you need to come apart and rest for a while.” So He takes us apart.

You know, when Jesus told His disciples, “Come apart and rest a while,” He was hinting that if they didn’t, they’d come apart permanently. But the moment you come into anything akin to dormancy, people will heap condemnation and guilt your way. “What’s the matter? I don’t sense the anointing on you like I used to. You’re not acting for the Lord like you used to. There’s no fruit on your life. What’s the matter?” And we can pick up that guilt and we can begin to activate ourselves, but we cannot make ourselves grow. Growth is in the vine, not the branch. And when the vine sends forth the life for growth, that little vine can’t help itself. It’s going to grow.

Our only responsibility is to continue to abide in Him. Amen? All saints, this is going to be a great week together. It may not go the direction you expected. If you kind of thought I was going to bring a hip-hip-a-ray praise message, you’re too late. I stopped that about six years ago.

But if you can really hear what Sis and I are going to teach you, there’s going to be a hip-hip-a-ray praise time. But now, not out of a conditioned emotional response, but out of a deep abiding relationship, the praise will be because we’re aware His life is flowing from deep within us. Amen? So step one is change in the man, in the leader. That’s you. And the way He changes you may just plain be to prune you back recklessly. Not to destroy you, but to renew you in order that new life might be produced upon you. Amen? And let’s stand and surrender ourselves to it.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh, Father, we just surrender ourselves to this new life, to this new way of Your growth being produced through us. And if You must prune us, then prune us. Cut back. For I open my life to You to be available to the knife or to the scissors. Lord, anything that You know will never ever bear anything but leaves, cut it out, because You’re not in the leaf-bearing business, but fruit-bearing. Cut me back. Deliver me, Lord, from such a long memory that I’m forever telling people how good God worked through me yesteryear. And help me to just stay in such an abiding relationship with You that Your life is producing something new in me again and again and again. And keep me so related to my brothers and my sisters that even during my non-productive periods, my dormant cycle, it might be their productive period, that none is ever without the tasting of the goodness of the Lord. And deliver me, Lord, from being jealous of the brother who’s bearing the fruit. And deliver him from being judgmental when I’m the one that’s been cut back. But may we recognize that the husbandman chooses when and where to cut. And the vine chooses when the life shall flow. And I dare to believe, Lord, that there are seasons in God.

And that this perhaps is one of the more dormant seasons. But the new life is about to surge in Your body. And some who have been inactive and dormant and pruned back and just look like stubs compared to what they were shall again sense the life of Christ flowing through them, producing new growth that shall eventually lead into new fruit. Thank You for it. Thank You for loving me enough to prune me. And Lord, don’t ever pay any attention to me when I complain about being pruned. Cut me back anyway. What do I know? Do Your thing and do it well. For I’m Your child. And I thank You for this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. God bless your hearts. No, I only preach one hour, 13 minutes, and 15, 7 tenths seconds. So don’t let them charge you for a 90-minute tape. I didn’t go 90 minutes. Amen. Amen.