The deeper life, what is it, and how
can I enter into it?
I really haven't a text, but I have
been reading this verse in chapter six of
Hebrews, therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine
of Christ.
Let us go on unto perfection, not laying
again the foundation of repentance from dead works
and of faith toward God, of the doctrine
of baptisms and of the laying on of
hands and of the resurrection of the dead
and of eternal judgment.
Let us go on unto perfection.
It has been a sort of an overall
text.
Then I have also shown from 1 Corinthians
3 and other passages of scripture that one
of the great problems, even of the early
Church, was that of the static Christian.
It is one of the great problems today.
I think it is a problem even greater
than that of getting people converted.
The problem of the static Christian, how to
get a Christian interested in becoming more than
an average run-of-the-mill type of
believer that you see everywhere.
And so many of us become static, or
are static.
It is the static Christian is one who
is retarded in his progress.
Paul said, What doth hinder you?
You did run well, but now you are
hindered.
And thus the progress is stunted and retarded,
and the growth stunted.
And then there is the lack of moral
dynamic which every Christian ought to know.
Now, this is the static Christian, and I
believe that if we will listen, we will
hear God speaking.
He that hath an ear to hear, let
him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
churches.
And I believe that if we hear what
the Spirit says in our day, we will
hear God say, Moses my servant is dead,
therefore arise, go over this Jordan, and into
the land which I have given to you.
Every place the sole of your foot shall
tread upon, that have I given you.
I believe we will hear the Spirit of
God say, Let us go on unto perfection.
Let us go on beyond repentance from past
sins.
Let us go on beyond forgiveness and cleansing
from past sins.
Let us go on beyond the impartation of
divine life.
Let's be sure, however, that we get these
first things settled first, to the point of
absolute assurance.
There can be no deeper life until there
has been life.
There can be no progress in the way
until we are in the way.
There can be no growth until there has
been birth.
And all the efforts toward a deeper life
will only bring disappointment unless we have first
settled the matter of repentance from dead works,
and the forgiveness of sins, and the impartation
of divine life in conversion.
But now to break down the deeper life,
I want briefly to mention that it's two
things, as I shall say today.
It's more than that, but two I want
to mention today.
One is a complete forsaking of the world,
and the other is a turning wholly to
the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's not only my opinion of it, but
that is what the Bible teaches about it,
and that is the standard formula that has
come down to us from the very early
days of the Church.
You will find it written into the great
hymns of the Church, and you will find
it written into the great books of devotion
of the Church down the years, that these
two things are necessary for a Christian who
will go on and break the static condition
and become a flowing, moving, progressive, dynamic Christian.
There must be a complete forsaking of the
world and a turning wholly to our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Now we'll talk first about this forsaking of
the world.
It's entirely possible to be religious and not
to have forsaken the world at all.
The proof of this is that you will
find professed Christians wherever, or at least almost
wherever, you will find non-Christians.
I want to be as broad-minded and
fair as I can about this, and I
suppose there are places where you will not
find men claiming to be Christians.
I don't know whether gangsters who habitually and
as a system destroy by death those who
are their rivals, take them out and shoot
them.
I don't know whether you would find any
professed Christians among or not.
Although I do know this, that when certain
gangsters have died by the bullet, they have
been mumbled into the kingdom of God and
squirted into the kingdom of God by oil
and all the rest, and their leaders have
tried very hard even to get those bloody
men into the kingdom of God, unsaved, unblessed,
untriven, unforgiven, and without time even to say,
God have mercy on me, a sinner.
And yet people try to get them in.
So I presume that there are those who
claim to be some kind of Christian who
even engage in the mutual extermination of each
other for the sake of the South Side
or the North Side or the West Side
racket.
I do remember of a young man who
was a murderer who was sentenced to the
chair a few years ago and was to
die out here in Cook County Jail, but
they set his death hour for a certain
day and then later reversed it and changed
it because they said it fell on a
holiday of his religion, and they didn't want
to put him to death on a day
that was a holiday of his religion.
So they changed it so he didn't have
to die on a holiday.
So I suppose that you will find Christians
just about everywhere, or men who claim they
are Christians, I mean.
Certainly you will find them at the racetrack,
and certainly there never has been a sporting
vendor so vile and violent and vicious that
you will not find Christians sitting around there
with their New Testament in their hip pocket.
And I don't think that there is a
gambling hall where you won't find some kind
of Christian there.
I don't think that there's any worldly pleasures
where you don't find them.
It's possible to be religious and not to
forsake the world.
Yet nobody can be a Christian in the
right sense of the word until he has
forsaken the world.
Second, it is possible to forsake the world
in body and never forsake it in spirit
at all.
It's possible to forsake the world externally and
still be worldly inside.
Now, the situation with the monks and the
nuns down the centuries has been exactly that.
Now, I'm not saying this is the Protestants,
I'm letting themselves say it.
Some of the great Christian souls were those
who tried to reform these monasteries and nunneries,
and to get them to be in their
real inner life what they were in their
external, outer life.
They were hidden away from the world in
their bodies and dressed a certain way in
order that they might be separated from the
world.
And yet some of these great souls declared
that these who had thus separated themselves were
more surely and certainly worldly than some of
those who were not thus separated.
So we have Bernard, and St. Francis, and
we have Teresa, and Nicholas of Cusa, and
Richard Rowland, John of the Cross, and you
could name them one after the other of
those persons who were trying hard to rouse
the Church that they might be inwardly what
their profession showed them to be outwardly.
Now, Walter Hilton lived 200 years before Luther
was born, and so he never heard of
Protestantism or the Reformation.
And yet Walter Hilton, the English Christian, was
such a Christian that he wrote a series
of letters to the nuns in a certain
convent and warned them of the very thing
I'm talking to you about.
And they called that series of letters The
Scale of Perfection.
It's a most wonderful book.
Don't ask to borrow it.
I'll tell you where you can buy one.
But this Scale of Perfection, the opening part
of it at least, is devoted to this.
It is devoted the same to these sisters.
Now listen, sisters, you have come out of
the world and closed the door on yourself
and put on a certain garb which indicates
that you're separated from the world.
Now, said Walter Hilton, look out, ladies, that
you don't take the world with you into
the monastery or into the nunnery and be
as worldly in there as if you were
out on the street.
He said, remember that it's a forsaking of
the world in your heart that makes you
unworldly.
And so there were several great chapters written
urgently warning these women that it was entirely
possible to put on the garb of the
nun and to live in a nunnery, and
still at the same time be worldly inside.
So I say it's possible to be religious
and not to forsake the world, and it's
possible to forsake the world in body and
not in spirit.
And it's never possible, however, to forsake it
in spirit and not forsake it in practice.
Now, I feel it necessary to mention this
because there are some supposed broad-minded Christians
who will do almost anything that anybody will
do.
I've noticed this, brethren, maybe I've mentioned it
before, but I've noticed this, that in this
day in which we live, all you have
to do is to add for God or
for Jesus onto a thing, and lo and
behold, that which the Church has repudiated and
all earnest Christians have written years is suddenly
sanctified.
I'm doing it for God, I'm doing it
for Jesus.
And if you can just get for God
or for Jesus, those little prepositional phrases dangling
on the end, and lo and behold, that
which wasn't ever counted right by the Church
down the generations is now suddenly counted right,
because we've added, I'm doing it for Jesus.
That takes in almost everything that the world
has ever done, and I'm expecting one of
these days to hear about the association of
Christian bartenders who are doing it for Jesus.
They say, Oh, we're not like the world,
we're not serving up this poison just in
our own name.
We used to before we accepted Christ, we
used to deal this out for our sakes,
and the money we made out of it.
Now we're doing it for Jesus.
Now, we haven't got that far yet, but
give us time, brother, we're on our way.
And all we have to do is wait
a little, and we will sanctify almost anything
by saying you can do it for Jesus.
I warn you, brother, you can't do anything
for Jesus that Jesus wouldn't do, and you
can't do anything for God that God has
interdicted and turned the canon of His judgments
against.
The only thing that I can do for
God is that which is holy like God,
and the only thing that I can do
for Jesus is that which Jesus has allowed
and permitted and commanded me to do.
But to live like the world and say,
I'm separated from the world in spirit, I'm
separated in spirit, and I don't have to
come out of the world because I'm separated
in spirit.
I know where that came from, boy, I
know where that came from.
If you would sniff that a little, I
know what you'd smell.
You'd smell brimstone, because that argument came from
hell and certainly belongs there and doesn't belong
in the Church of Christ.
Never possible to forsake the world in your
spirit and not forsake it in reality.
Now let me give you an example of
what I mean.
Bible examples I have here, Noah.
God said to Noah, I'm going to destroy
the world, make thee an ark, make up
a gopher wood, and so on.
And Noah did that thing.
Now, suppose that I'd preached on separation from
the world and I'd have said to Noah,
Noah, don't you think you ought to get
into the ark?
Boy, Noah said, that's the old-fashioned idea.
After all, what is the world?
Give me a definition of what you mean
by the world.
The Church can't agree on what's meant by
the world, and therefore I'm separating from the
world in my heart.
But I'm going to stay right down here
on the ground and sleep under the bush
and eat off the tree and live like
other people, but I won't be like other
people because I'm separated in my heart.
You know what would have happened to Noah?
He'd have been sending up bubbles before very
long when the fountains of the great gate
broke and the rain came down and the
flood covered the mountaintops.
Noah's carcass would have floated and bloated and
distended along with the rest.
But Noah knew that to forsake the world
meant to forsake the world.
So it said he went into the ark
and God closed the door.
Take Abraham.
God said to Abraham, Get thee out of
thy country and out of thy way from
thy kindred unto a land which I will
show thee.
Now Abraham could have said, Now I have
had a call from God to forsake my
country and my people and to go to
another land.
But he said, I don't think I should
take that literally.
I think that that means forsake them in
spirit, and so I'm going to live right
here in Ur of the Chaldees, but I'm
going to go into the Holy Land in
spirit.
No, my brother, Abraham had to go out
in fact.
And so Abraham departed and Lot with him,
it says.
Abraham went and took some people with him.
Then take Lot, for example.
When Lot finally got into Sodom and became
mayor of the town, the angel said, Escape
for thy life and look not behind thee.
Well, Lot could have said, he could have
even written several articles on it.
He could have had a debate on it
and a panel discussion on it, especially among
young people who don't always know it all.
He could have said, Now let's have a
panel discussion on Escape for thy life and
look not behind thee, what it means.
And while they were discussing it, the fire
could have fallen and destroyed Sodom and Lot
along with it.
But Lot knew that Escape for thy life
meant, Get out of Sodom and stay out,
I'm sending fire on you.
Then when those first Christians were told that
to love the world and the things of
the world meant that man didn't love God,
they didn't hold discussions on what the world
meant, or what was meant by the world,
or how far they could go and still
please God.
They got out of the world and they
separated themselves completely from everything that had the
world's spirit.
And the result was they brought down fury
on their own heads.
And that same world exists today that existed
then.
And hear me say this again, some of
you have told me you don't believe it,
but listen to me while I tell you
again, and repeat it again, and the great
God Almighty either now or later will confirm
the truth of it, that the world is
no different now from what it was when
it crucified Jesus and martyred the first Christians.
It's the same world.
Adam is always Adam wherever you find him,
and he never changes.
And the reason we get along so well
is that we have compromised our position, and
we have allowed the world to dictate to
us while we, in turn, are permitted to
dictate a little to the world, and so
we have compromised it.
And the result is there are very few
people that are in any way embarrassed from
the world.
I'm afraid if we ever get too popular
or the community accepts us here, I'm afraid
of that.
The church that this unsaved worldly community accepts
is never a church full of the Holy
Ghost.
A church full of the Holy Ghost who
is separated from the world and is walking
with God will never be accepted by the
community.
It will always be looked upon as being
somewhat off-center.
So maybe if the laws are such that
you're protected, then civilization is such as it
is now, you won't be attacked, but you'll
be looked upon as being a little bit
off-center.
Now, somebody says, you preaching brother told you
that everybody should probably get in a spacesuit
and zoom out of here and get away
from the world?
No, I'm not saying that at all.
I am saying that there is a part,
a world that is not the world God
means when he said forsake the world.
You can eat and work and live and
drink and sleep and bathe and grow and
beget your kind and bring them up.
God made that.
That's not the world.
The world is that organized thing filled with
unbelief which has got to amuse itself and
which is built upon doubts, unbelief, self-righteousness,
and Adam.
And the other, of course, Jesus was in
the world, but not of the world.
There's no contradiction here in what I'm saying.
I'm making a distinction between that part of
the world which is divinely given to plant
and reap and cook and eat and sow
and do our work and live in the
world meant it to be so.
And that's not worldliness, but the worldliness is
the pride of life, the pride of the
eye, and the longing of the ambitious soul
for position, and all of that which the
world does because of the rising of its
sin within it.
All that's the world, and it overflows into
a thousand things that the Church has habitually
rejected.
Down the years, the Church has rejected.
Now, the second matter is, turn wholly to
our Lord Jesus Christ.
First is, forsake completely the world.
And that's all negative.
Notice that?
That's all negative.
Somebody says, "'Told you he's a negative preacher.'
I believe in the negative and in the
positive.
I do not apologize for preaching negative.
I have a quarter here in my hand.
On one side is a head of Benjamin
Franklin, and on the other side is an
eagle with its wings outspread.
And one of those is the negative, and
one on the positive side.
And the electricity that lights this building has
a negative and a positive, and so their
negative and positive goes all through the world.
You turn your back on the North, that's
negative, and travel toward the South, that's positive.
And so I turn my back on the
world, that's negative.
And then I turn wholly to the Lord
Jesus Christ, that's positive.
And every effort to preach the positive without
the negative is like dividing this quarter edgewise,
cutting it through, and then trying to ride
on a bus with that.
He'd fling that back to you and say,
"'That's only half here.
You need the other side.' I'd better you
say, "'I've got the head of Benjamin Franklin
there, driver.' I know, but I want the
eagle on, too.
That's the other side.
How can you have an electric light with
only the positive?
You have to have both.
And so if we're going to turn ourselves
wholly to the Lord Jesus Christ, there's going
to have to be a complete forsaking of
the world, all that is worldly in its
spirit, all that is wrong for sale, all
that is unlike Jesus, all that is unlike
God.
You must forsake that no matter what the
world thinks about us.
That's negative.
And then turn wholly to our Lord Jesus
Christ.
And this turning unto the Lord Jesus Christ
I want to talk about a lot more.
Next week I want to talk about that
a little more, and I want to talk
also next Sunday morning, developing this thought further,
about the deeper life in Christ leading us
to a place where we're free in our
hearts from fear and inordinate loves.
Now, it's this that gives the deeper life,
not the turning away.
That's negative.
You can forsake the world, quit gambling, quit
drinking, quit smoking, quit living for the world,
never go to any of the worldly places
of amusement, don't gamble, don't dance, don't do
any of these things.
You can quit all that, and that's negative.
That has no power to impart any life
of any kind.
That's negative.
But it's necessary before there can be any
positive.
Well, the positive is, then, that you turn
to Jesus Christ.
That gives the power and the purity and
the deep satisfaction and the joy unspeakable and
full of glory.
The negative can never shine, the negative can
never be musical, the negative can never be
fragrant.
And the man can go to a cave,
you can go to a cave and leave
it all in utter disgust like time on
a vacuum.
Go into the woods and live in a
cave and still not have any power, any
radiance, any joy, any inward glory.
It's turning unto Jesus Christ that gives that.
And the two can be done in one
act.
If I'm facing north and God commands me
to turn south, if I still remember, I
don't know whether I could out-face or
not anymore and do it in two motions.
I used to be able to do it
from the time I was in the service.
But if God says, You're facing north and
it's the wrong direction for you, thou facest
march.
You can turn from the north and to
the south in one easy motion.
And so when God says, Forsake the world
and turn to Christ, it's one motion.
I do it in one free easy act.
And my turning from the world is my
turning unto Christ.
It doesn't always work that way, but it
can be, I say.
So the joy unspeakable is when we see
Jesus' deep satisfaction.
Suppose, let's hunt around for an illustration.
Maybe it's ridiculous, but it will illustrate anyway.
Suppose that somebody decided and had the power
to do it, and he had a lot
of gremlins or angels or something at his
command, and he said, Now I'm tired of
this darkness.
I'm tired of this darkness.
I want you to wipe the heavens clean
of darkness.
And he got a thousand or a million
or two million or ten million gremlins, or
some of the kind of imaginary beings of
Moss, and they mopped the heavens of all
darkness.
It would still be dark.
You don't have to worry.
You go back to bed, gremlin.
Just wait till the sun comes up.
The coming up of the sun will do
what all the mopping of the heavens would
never do.
Just wait for the sun.
So some people try, by the negatives, to
get themselves blessed.
They won't do this.
I remember one boy who wouldn't drink pop,
and he stood at a soft drink counter
over in Ohio and was very disturbed about
a glass of pop.
He said that he thought it was whirly.
Well, he was an unhappy man, and I
have never seen a happy Christian yet that
was ever world conscious.
Never.
If he's trying to get loose from the
world, or if he's worrying about what is
the world, or if he's writing letters to
find out what the world means, he's never
a happy man.
He's busy with these negatives, and I've never
seen a happy man yet that wasn't up
with Jesus Christ the Lord.
The sun comes up and the darkness goes
out, and not all the little creatures in
the universe could wipe the heavens clean of
darkness as long as there's no sun.
But when the sun peaks up, the night
departs and the clouds flee away, and the
shadows are no more.
So when we turn with all our hearts
unto Jesus Christ our Lord, then we find
the deeper life.
Then we find in him the power and
the purity and the satisfaction and the joy
unspeakable and full of glory.
Nothing can't be something, and the negative can't
sing, and negative doesn't smell good, and negative
can't give off fragrance, and negative can't feel
delight.
Only the positive.
Only when I turn my eyes and gaze
upon the Son of God and my inner
heart is taken up with his person, then
every instrument inside my music room gets tuned
and music starts.
Then radiance comes to the light and joy
breaks out, and Peter said, joy unspeakable and
full of glory.
So it is.
That's the deeper life.
Two acts can be done at once.
Turning from the world, turning unto Christ.
Then all the natural things, eating and drinking,
buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage,
and all the natural things which God created
to be done, and which are not of
the spirit of the world, but are natural
and of God, they'll all be sanctified, too.
And they'll become fuel for the fires of
the altar that rise day and night unto
God.
So the common things, the things we call
secular, won't be secular anymore.
The mundane things won't be mundane, they'll be
heavenly, too.
Because the commonest thing, the peeling of a
potato, the commonest thing can be done for
the glory of God if we have turned
from the world and the world's ways and
are looking full in the face of the
Son of God.
Then the sun will shine, and all the
gremlins of hell can't wipe the sunlight away.
If hell should send up a legion to
wipe away the sunshine, it could wipe the
face of the earth and desperately follow the
sun around the earth and never succeed in
keeping the sunshine away from the earth, because
when the sun shines on the earth, it's
sunshine.
So hell can't destroy your spiritual happiness if
you're gazing at the face of Jesus, for
he is the Son of Righteousness, revealing in
his wings.
Turn from the world, turn full heart unto
Christ.
Next week I'll have more to tell you.
Let's pray.
Our Father, we well know that spiritual things
can't be reduced to formulas, even though we
struggle so hard to do it.
An impulse of faith, a sudden reckless daring
of the soul in its leap after God,
could do more for us than all the
carefully laid-out sermons could ever do.
But we've done all we can do.
We've appealed to the intelligence, made some explanations,
tried to say in our bracing modern English
what has been said with great and stately
dignity in our Bibles.
My God, now take this that has been
spoken and apply it to our hearts.
May we, one after the other, turn from
Adam's unbelieving world, with its self-confidence, its
self-reliance, its arrogance, its pride, its mad
pleasures, its love of wealth, its love of
praise, its love of publicity, its inordinate love
of clothing and of fine things and of
rich things.
Turn us, we pray Thee, from it all,
not only in our hearts but in reality.
And then turn us to Jesus Christ Thy
Son.
We need him, Lord.
If we gave up the world and didn't
have him, we'd be in a vacuum.
Thou'll quickly take us through that little vacuum
and take us to Jesus Christ, who is
the radiant source of everlasting life and peace
and joy, world without end.
We ask it in Christ's name.
Amen.