These days, we call them the now generation,
when people can't be bothered with the past.
Perhaps I run a risk talking about what
God has done in the past.
There are some people who think that history
is a bore.
I think that people who think history is
a bore are a bore.
On Sunday night, I spoke to you on
the subject of repentance.
It means to change, to change your attitude,
to change your lifestyle.
And then on Monday night, I spoke to
you on the work of the Holy Spirit,
who convicts of sin.
And on Tuesday night, I spoke on forgiveness
and confession of sin.
In every great revival, Christians confess their faults.
Tonight, I thought I would speak on the
standards that Christians must measure up to.
We begin with that prayer, search me, O
God, and know my heart.
Try me and know my thoughts.
See if there be any wicked way in
me, then lead me in the eternal way.
Now when I speak about double standards, I'm
thinking of what our Lord Jesus Christ said
when he spoke on the mountain.
We call it the Sermon on the Mount.
Seeing the clouds, he went up into the
mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples
came to him.
And he opened his mouth and taught them
in this way.
First of all, we have the Beatitudes.
Now this is what came to my attention.
Verse 21, chapter 5.
You have heard that it was said to
the men of old, you shall not commit
murder.
And whoever commits murder is in danger of
judgment.
Was this new to them?
No, murder was wrong to a Jew, murder
was wrong to a Roman, murder was wrong
to a Greek.
Murder is wrong in the United States, murder
is wrong in Canada, murder is wrong in
Cuba.
We all know this.
You have heard it said by men of
old, you shall not commit murder.
And whoever commits murder is in danger of
judgment.
But I say to you that everyone who
is angry with his brother is liable to
judgment.
What a comparison.
He speaks of murder on the one hand,
now he speaks of losing your temper.
But when you realize that when you lose
your temper, you are possessed of a desire
to hurt, it's murder in the heart.
Perhaps you don't want to go to jail
for it, you certainly don't want to go
to the death chamber for it, but you'd
like to hurt that person as much as
possible.
The quickest way is by losing your temper
with them.
With whom do we lose our temper?
Generally with people who have to take it
from us.
I have seen men turn down the window
on the freeway and shot a stream of
abuse at some other driver.
I have never seen anyone do that with
a traffic policeman.
There was a sergeant in our outfit who
had such a bad temper, the men said
of him, when he spat on the ground,
the grass burst into flames.
One day he came into an illicit man's
mess hall, and somebody had put a vase
with daffodils there.
He thought this was sissy for soldiers.
So he said, who put those flowers there?
Nobody answered.
He said, I said, who put those flowers
there?
And the PFC said, the colonel put them
there.
The sergeant said, pretty, huh?
The scripture says cease from anger and forsake
wrath.
A lot of people don't know that bad
temper is a sin.
And here we have the standard.
You have heard people say, don't commit murder,
if you commit murder you are in danger
of judgment.
But the Lord Jesus says, I say, no
murder in your heart.
Don't take it out on anyone.
Yet lots of Christians think nothing, not using
angry words.
Here is what the Lord Jesus says, you
have heard that it was said, you shall
not commit adultery.
Was this new to them?
No, no.
Adultery was forbidden by the Jews, forbidden by
the Romans, forbidden by the Greeks, forbidden by
the Parthians.
I don't know any society that encourages adultery.
It hurts the family so much.
But then the Lord Jesus went a little
bit further.
He said, but I am saying to you,
now to whom was he speaking?
His disciples came to him, and he opened
his mouth and taught them.
I say to you that everyone who looks
at a woman lustfully has committed adultery already
with her in his heart.
The same idea exactly.
It's not enough to abstain from adultery, but
don't have it in your heart.
I remember having lunch with a Christian man,
and a rather pretty waitress came by.
He said, boy, would you look at that.
He said, that's the sort of dame I'd
like to marry if anything happened to my
wife.
What a thing to say.
If your marriage is what God intended it
to be, you wouldn't have time for remarks
like that, let alone time to think about
them.
The scripture is very clear.
Not only keep away from sexual indulgence, but
don't dabble in it in thought.
No impurity of thought.
Job said, I made a covenant with my
lips, why therefore should I think upon a
maid?
Yet, of course, the society in which we
live is full of tantalizing, all suggestiveness.
But a Christian should abstain not only from
the sin, but from the thought of sin.
Let's extend this a little further, take sins
of wrongful possession.
Everyone knows the scripture says, you shall not
steal.
Well, the average Christian wouldn't be caught dead
stealing, I mean, he'd be ashamed if he
was arrested for shoplifting, or stealing something.
But I find that Christians sometimes help themselves
to things.
It's funny, in every language I know, there's
a word for this, the American word is
swipe.
The British word is pinch.
You know, Americans talk about pinching pennies, that
means being careful with money.
But to pinch pennies means stealing some child's
money out of the piggy bank in Britain,
to pinch money.
In Dutch, I think the word is fasle.
Lots of us take liberties with things that
don't belong to us.
During the revival in Ireland in 1921, when
God greatly used W.P. Nicholson, a Presbyterian
minister from Glendale, California, there was such a
movement with such restitution that Harland and Wolfe,
the biggest shipbuilding yard in the world, they
built the Titanic, put a notice on their
gates, employees becoming converted and desiring to return
stolen tools are requested by the management to
keep the same at home.
We have no longer room to store them.
So many workmen brought back tools they had
taken home with them that caused a problem
of storage for the shipyards.
That always happens in times of revival, when
Christians get concerned about swiping things.
I used to work in a large bakery
of concern, in a clerical capacity.
I always had a sweet tooth.
The company had a practice of offering slightly
damaged pastries at half price.
They didn't want these slightly damaged pastries to
go on public view.
It was understood we wouldn't sell them.
So I'd go to the pastry room and
say, any broken pastries, George?
He'd say, well, look along there, there may
be a dozen, pay me for six, and
I would take home twelve almost perfect pastries.
But sometimes the men had been careful and
hadn't damaged any.
So while George wasn't looking, I went around
and broke a few.
You laughed?
I laughed all the way home.
I thought that was smart.
But if Mr. Dixon, the manager, had seen
me do that, he could have dismissed me
on the spot and I would have lost
my first job with the stigma of having
stolen.
Therefore, we've got to be careful what we
do with other people's property.
If your boss says we have a wide
area telephone, you can use it any time
of the day or night you like to,
that's an added bonus, make use of it.
But don't make long-distance calls and charge
it up to the firm unless you've had
permission.
Stealing?
A Christian can't be too careful in these
things.
Maybe I've touched someone on a very sensitive
spot when I say, do you have any
books on your shelves that don't belong to
you?
The poor guy you borrowed that book from
has forgotten to whom he lent it.
I can tell you almost every week I
meet some friend who says, you know, I
lent that book out and I haven't the
foggiest idea where it is.
If you have it, you're a thief.
You may not like me for saying so,
but aren't you?
It's not yours.
Take it back.
What about sins of the tongue?
Every Christian knows that it's wrong to tell
lies.
Most Christians are ashamed to be caught telling
lies.
In fact, some will even tell a lie
to cover up a lie so they'll not
be caught in telling a lie.
They'll lie their way out of it.
But generally speaking, most Christians wouldn't tell a
lie.
But let me quote Charles Finney, he says,
what is lying?
Any calculated deceit.
If you try to convey an impression contrary
to the truth, you lie.
Therefore, always speak the truth one with another.
Better to say nothing than to open your
mouth and say things that are not true.
What about the sin of criticism?
Now if you look up the dictionary, you'll
find that the word is defined two different
ways.
First of all, if you go to an
art gallery, you can say, that's a real
work of art.
That just looks like the California desert.
Then you say, now I don't like that,
it's a little too glaring, and that's critical.
But it's constructive.
For instance, my wife, every time I go
away, she tells me, now don't forget to
comb your hair before you go to the
pulpit, don't forget this, that.
She says, the first time she heard me
preach in the Bijou Theater in Johannesburg, I
looked as if I'd just gotten up out
of bed.
I don't mind that kind of criticism, because
I know her motive is love.
Sometimes it lets you down a little bit,
you know, it fills you with chagrin.
But the other definition of criticism is unkind
criticism, destructive, where it's said to hurt, and
that's forbidden to a Christian.
But it's properly called malice.
It's talking maliciously.
Now these are the ordinary sins of the
flesh, but I can tell you, as far
as revival is concerned, what we call the
sins of the flesh are not half as
great a hindrance to revival as the sins
of the Spirit.
Our Lord was doubly lenient with the poor
woman taken in sin.
He was trebly severe with the pride of
the Pharisee.
You look up, take the troubles, look up
a concordance, look up pride or proud, and
find how often it's condemned.
It says God resists the pride, but gives
grace to the humble.
You can cry out, Oh God, help me,
and God listens to you, but if you're
filled with spiritual pride, he resists you.
It's the sin of Lucifer, who became Satan,
the adversary.
There are different kinds of pride.
Vanity is calling attention to oneself.
There's also even inverted pride.
I noticed when I was in England, I
heard of a man who had been influenced
by the Oxford group movement, after what's called
moral re-armament, and he thought, now they
teach absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute truthfulness and
absolute love.
I think those are the four absolutes.
He thought, now absolute honesty, I'm pretty honest.
I'll grade myself with an A.
Absolute truthfulness, or the other one was absolute
humility, I forgot that one.
He said, I'm not such a bad guy,
but purity, I'll give myself a B+,
but I'm not very humble.
I'll give myself a C.
So he went to work on his pride,
and did so well he finally raised his
grade to A.
That's a kind of inverted pride.
Some people who appear to be humble, but
they take great pride in appearing to be
humble.
We should just be natural, that's all.
Hypocrisy is another wicked sin on the side
of God, to appear to be something that
you are not.
And then, of course, we have the sins
of prayerlessness, the neglect of God's word, neglect
of witness, robbing God, which is really a
form of stealing.
Now why do I say these things to
you?
We can talk until we're blue in the
face about wanting to see revival, but in
the last analysis, we've got to pray, Lord,
send revival, and begin in me.
There has to be a humbling and a
confessing.
Sometimes God doesn't hear our prayers, because we
refuse to obey him in the convictions that
he gives us.
Therefore one of the great prayers for times
of revival is, Search me, O God, and
know my heart.
Try me and know my thoughts.
See if there be any grieving way in
me.
Do you remember the words of the Negro
Spiritual?
Not my brother, nor my sister, but it's
me, O Lord, standing in the need of
prayer.
Not the elder, not the deacon, but it's
me, O Lord, standing in the need of
prayer.
It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord,
standing in the need of prayer.
If we want to see revival in this
part of Maryland or in the District of
Columbia, remember it begins with us.
We ought to pray to that end.
Let us all pray.
We can't do better than to pray in
the words of scripture, if they apply to
our hearts.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to
thy steadfast love.
Blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse
me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions.
My sin is ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned and
done what is evil in thy sight.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
clean.
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than
snow.
Fill me with joy and gladness.
Let the bones that thou hast broken rejoice.
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot
out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence.
Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.
Uphold me with a willing spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways.
Then shall sinners be converted unto thee.
O God, help us when we pray for
another outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a reviving
of the Church, and an awakening of the
people, to begin with ourselves, and to pray,
Lord, send revival and begin first in me,
for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Good night, and God bless you.