Chapter 36, it is a great privilege for
me to be here this morning and I
always marvel at the grace of God that
he could pull a man like myself up
from such a dung heap and allow him
to stand before his own people.
I've often said that in 1st Corinthians chapter
1 where it says not many noble, not
many wise, but the vile in the base,
that I'm probably the greatest living example of
that verse on the face of the earth.
What I'm going to be talking about this
week is, so many times people think so
much of men that they should not think.
There are no great men of God, there
never have been, never will be.
Only been pitiful, weak, sinful, unbelieving men of
a great and merciful God.
The old Reverend Duncan Campbell speaking about the
great Hebrides revival, anytime he would speak about
it he would always start off by saying,
Duncan Campbell did not bring revival to that
place.
And what are men but corrupt creatures that
have been saved by grace, regenerated by the
Holy Spirit, and kept sustained in that grace
by the power of the Holy Spirit.
There's no expert here to teach the needy,
there's no teacher in Israel but the one
who sits on the throne.
I'm as needy of revival and reformation and
work of God as anyone in this room.
That is our only hope, to recognize that
every one of us in this room is
in desperate need of God.
We remain that way.
Now let's look in Ezekiel chapter 36.
Verse 22, Therefore say unto the house of
Israel, Thus saith the Lord God, I do
not this for your sake, O house of
Israel, but for mine holy name's sake, which
ye have profaned among the heathen, whether ye
went.
And I will sanctify my great name, which
was profaned among the nations, which ye have
profaned in the midst of them.
And the heathen then shall know that I
am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when
I shall be sanctified in you before their
eyes.
For I will take you from among the
heathen, and I will gather you out of
all countries, and will bring you into your
own land.
Then will I sprinkle clean water on you,
and ye shall be clean.
From all your filthiness and from all your
idols will I cleanse you.
A new heart also will I give you,
and a new spirit will I put within
you, and I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will
give you a flesh, a heart of flesh.
And I will put my spirit within you
and cause you to walk in my statutes,
and ye shall keep my judgments and do
them.
Although this passage is found in the Old
Testament as required or where it is one
of the greatest illustrations of regeneration of what
it means to be born again found in
all of Scripture.
If you look back into the great awakening
in Europe, if you look back into most
great moves of God, you will find out
that they break forth in this context.
There has been prior to that revival a
reductionism of the gospel in which in some
way the gospel has been reduced down to
a ritual or a few set of superstitious
laws that if someone assents to them, they
are Christian.
In the great awakening, one of the greatest
things preached other than simply the cross of
Jesus Christ was a need for men to
be born again.
And a declaration that the great majority of
that which was called the church was not
the church at all, but simply unregenerate church
members.
Now, we have a greater problem today than
they had back then, and it is this.
We use the term born again.
They did not.
They out and out denied it.
They had turned Christ's religion into nothing more
than a superstitious ritual.
But we've done something more deadly.
We have a lot of truth in what
we do.
But a lot of truth and not all
truth is deadly because there's enough truth to
deceive people that the rest of it is
not really true.
And we have in America today not a
country that is gospel hard not at all.
We have a country ignorant of the gospel,
as well as most preachers ignorant of the
gospel, and not simply the TV evangelist, but
the Baptist conservative.
Because we in the same way have taken
the gospel of Jesus Christ and reduced it
down to nothing, and we've taken regeneration, which
is a manifestation of the power of God
just as great as creation itself.
We have taken that and reduced it down
to nothing more than repeating a superstitious prayer.
And if you've done that, you're saved.
To give you an example, in modern day
evangelism today, we see something like this.
Someone walks up to someone and says, do
you realize that you're a sinner?
If the person says yes, then they go
to the next question.
Do you want to go to heaven?
If the person says yes, then they go
on to the next question.
Would you like to pray right now and
ask Jesus to come into your heart?
I submit to you that's heresy.
And it has led more people to hell
than every tavern on the face of the
earth.
Because if you look at it from a
biblical standpoint and a historically Christian standpoint, especially
a historically Baptist standpoint, if you ask someone,
do you know you're a sinner?
If they answer yes, that means absolutely nothing.
Go ask the devil if he knows he's
a sinner or not.
See what he tells you.
Of course he is, and he knows it.
The question is not, sir, do you know
you're a sinner?
The question is this, after hearing the gospel,
do you hate the sin you once loved?
Has there been a supernatural work of the
Holy Spirit in your heart so that you
begin to delight in the things of God
and hate the things of the world that
you once cherished?
So the question is not simply, do you
know you're a sinner?
The question is, do you hate your sin?
And the question is not, do you want
to go to heaven?
Have you ever had anyone stand up and
say, why no, I'd rather go to hell?
The question is not, do you want to
go to heaven?
Everyone wants to go to heaven, they just
don't want God to be there when they
get there.
That's why I have such a problem, and
this will probably get me in a lot
of trouble here possibly, but that's why I
have such a problem with what you call
southern gospel singing.
Because it's all about heaven and it's not
about God.
The carnal man wants heaven, why wouldn't he
want heaven?
Sometimes a book or a film will come
out that might have some cultural significance to
it, and although we don't use television or
do any of that kind of stuff, sometimes
I'll grasp a hold of something to understand
where my culture's at.
Several years ago there was a film that
came out called What Dreams May Come.
It was about a doctor, basically agnostic, who
dies and goes to heaven.
And of course Hollywood did a miraculous job
on portraying heaven.
But something in that film was so important
to let us know something about our culture,
because when the doctor gets to heaven being
an agnostic, that ought to tell you something
right there.
He's agnostic, he arrives in heaven, he said,
look, I didn't believe there was such a
thing as heaven, but here I'm seeing it
with my own eyes, so is there a
God?
And the angel goes, well yeah, there's a
God.
And the agnostic says, well where is he?
And the angel goes, he's up there.
And the whole point is this, in our
modern day culture, where is God?
He's in heaven.
You can't know him and you most certainly
can't know his laws.
How convenient for us as a culture.
But you get to heaven now, and we've
kicked him out of heaven and moved him
one step higher so that we still do
not have to deal with him there.
Because men, by and large, do not want
God, and unless their hearts have been regenerated,
they hate God.
And so this is why the teaching of
regeneration, almost having to avoid using the term
born again, because we have this thing, born
-againism, in America, in which 65% of
the country believes itself to be born again.
The great problem is those 65% of
them, or 100% of the preachers believe
that 65% of them are born again.
And that is the great problem.
That is the tremendous problem.
Now I want to say one other thing
before we get into our text.
We hear today the people lamenting, Christian leaders
lamenting, over the state of the church.
That the church is in a horrible condition,
that the church is ungodly, that the church
is like the world, that there's just as
much pornography and abortion and death and divorce
and everything else.
Homosexuality in the church is outside of the
church and the walls of the church.
That is not true.
Let me submit to you something.
The church in the United States, not just
in northern Nigeria where she's being persecuted, the
church of Jesus Christ in North America is
broken, humble, following her Lord, and even though
sinful, she has been cleansed and she is
glorious.
The problem is today that what they're calling
the church is not the church.
It's like when you hear some deacon stand
up in a congregation and say, brothers, we're
Christians, we shouldn't be hating one another.
If you're hating one another, you're not Christian.
You see, I heard a great famous apologist
stood up and I was just so infuriated,
I just wanted to scream.
He actually stood up and he said, we
have to do something to reach our Christian
youth because 75% of them do not
believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is
important.
And I'm going, if they don't believe the
resurrection is important, they're not Christian youth.
But where does this all come from?
It comes from false belief with regard to
the doctrine of regeneration.
We believe that salvation is nothing more than
repeating a prayer and you're in.
When we talk about assurance of salvation, whether
or not a man can be assured of
his salvation, we always take him back to
a point in time when he prayed a
prayer and if he did it sincerely, we
deem him Christian.
When the fact of the matter is to
discern the state of a man, of a
man's soul, you do go back, you talk
to him about his conversion.
But the emphasis in the New Testament is,
if you are not still repenting now unto
salvation, you did not repent then.
If you're still not, if you're not believing
at this moment unto salvation, you didn't believe
then.
And that regeneration is a supernatural work of
God whereby, folks, a new creature is created.
It is not just jumping, deciding, making a
human decision that you want to jump out
of the line going to hell in order
to jump into the line going to heaven.
It is a supernatural work of God.
And when you forget that, you've lost everything.
Now why have we forgotten it?
Again, I want to go back and like
old Leonard Ravenhill used to say, now you're
going to understand why preaching a lot of
Baptist churches once.
Why is it?
Because of our ideas of what it means,
our carnal, fleshly, wicked, proud ideas of what
it means for a man of God to
be a man of God.
If he has a lot of people, if
he has a big building, if there is
a huge budget, if he can go around
and preach in conferences everywhere, obviously he is
a man of God.
Obviously not.
And what's going on today is in order
to become number one in all our different
little denominations, camps and groups and everything else,
we are willing to build huge churches on
the bones of unconverted church members.
And that's what it comes down to.
We have to be careful.
And you young men, be especially careful because
you have no idea how powerful this is.
So many times I have been approached where
if I would drop a few things, I
could become great.
You drop those few things, you may become
great, but then you go to hell.
It is very, very, very, very clever.
Now let's look at this passage.
In verse 22, Therefore say unto the house
of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, I
do not this for your sake, O house
of Israel, but for my holy name's sake.
You see, everything gets clear.
It is like a light just burning through
fog when you set in your heart this
one thing.
Everything God does, He does for His own
glory.
Come what may.
Then therefore, everything I do in my life
and my ministry, I do it for the
glory of God.
Come what may, if they bury me under
a dung heap, praise the Lord.
It's for the glory of God.
Because if it's for any other thing, sooner
or later, you're going to drop your standard
to meet your goal.
But it is for the glory of God.
I sometimes, and this happens to me, I
just think I don't want to be tried
about the attributes of God, but I just
got to believe that laughter is in there
somewhere in God's vocabulary, because He does this
to me so often.
I'm getting ready to preach on this passage,
and someone will come up and sing special
music, and it will be that song that
was written a few years ago.
It just asked this question.
I don't know why God saved someone like
me.
What worth did He find in me?
What value?
Or a song like, I'm just glad God
never gave up on me.
And I have to get up in the
pulpit and go, I know you just asked
the question, why did God save you?
What did He see in you?
Well, He saved you for His own glory.
He saw absolutely nothing in you, and the
only thing you could ever do in your
unregenerate state with regard to motivating God is
motivating a holy God to condemn you in
hell.
And then about God never giving up on
you, He has never given up on you
because He never put confidence in you in
the first place.
Everything God has ever done God has done
for His own glory, and if it weren't
for that fact, He would have saved no
one because man gave Him no reason.
It has always been about God.
For God to do anything for His own
glory, when we say that, it just automatically
splits the congregation into the saved and the
lost.
The saved bow down and rejoice in it,
and the lost go, well, I thought it
was all about me.
But He says, I did it for my
own glory.
You say, well, what about love?
He loves because He is love.
And in loving the vile and making a
way for their salvation, He gets glory for
Himself.
To take center stage and do everything so
that His attributes might be revealed is the
greatest, most kindest, most loving thing He could
ever do, because the greatest gift that God
could ever give you is Himself.
And that's why heaven is heaven.
Now, He says here, Therefore, say unto the
house of Israel.
Now, notice this.
It's not like it wasn't said before.
There are certain things.
You and I, in a sense, the reformers
always use the Latin phrase, sempre reformando, which
meant always reforming.
It's though you and I have a left
foot that always wants to stray off the
path.
We constantly need to be hearing that it's
not about us.
It's about Him, that it is about His
glory.
And our prayer ought to be, Oh, God,
get glory for Yourself out of these old
rags.
It is all about Him.
But we constantly need to hear it.
Therefore, say unto the house of Israel, say
unto the house of Israel, this one truth,
because if they grasp this one truth, it
will turn absolutely everything else around.
Say unto the house of Israel, thus says
the Lord God, I do not this for
your sake, O house of Israel, but for
my holy name's sake, which ye have profaned
among the heathen, whether ye went.
I look back, and for the young men
who are going to preach here later on
someday, I always looked at men, and I
thought that God especially used, and I thought,
Boy, they reached some level.
You know, they broke into some level that
in order to be used like them, I've
got to reach that.
And some of them preach as though they
like to portray that.
If you can get to where I am,
God will use you like He uses me.
Well, I would be a liar to deny
that God has used me.
Just in 22 years of preaching, I have
seen many things.
I have seen many miraculous things that God
has done.
But the only history that could be written
on that is whether I went, I profaned
His name, but for His own name's sake,
He did work.
I am ever astounded at the grace of
God.
I just, let me give you an example.
Young men, listen to me.
When God truly, truly moves in a congregation,
in a preaching or whatever, the only thing
you're ever going to be able to do
is to walk out of the pulpit and
find a closet to hide in from everybody.
And you're even going to want to argue
with God.
And the proof of that is Peter.
Remember, cast the net over Peter.
He cast the net over.
Peter draws in all that fish.
What does Peter do?
He falls down.
He says, depart from me, Lord.
I'm a wicked man.
When God truly does the miraculous, and He
uses a profane man to do it, that
man is so overwhelmed with the glory and
the grace of God that the only thing
he can do is almost argue with God,
saying, Lord, you should have never done anything
like this out of a man so profane
as I.
It is always marveling.
Always marveling.
Because I don't care what kind of camp
you're in, the celebrities abound.
Well, I got news for you.
None of them are worthy of anything you
would lay at their feet.
Now, he goes on and he says, I
will sanctify my great name, which was profaned
among the heathen, which he hath profaned in
the midst of them.
And the heathen then shall know that I
am the Lord.
Sayeth the Lord God, when I shall be
sanctified in you before their eyes.
Now, there's a few things here that are
extremely important.
Extremely important.
I mentioned earlier, God has saved thee.
You are saved because of His great desire
to glorify His own name.
That is also, I submit to you, the
only reason He keeps you saved.
Do you remember when God brought Israel out
of Egypt and He tested Moses?
He said, Moses, now just get away from
her.
I believe a couple of times this indicates
that it happened.
Just maybe now, get away from them.
I'm going to destroy them.
Moses goes, no, Lord.
Don't destroy them and don't make a new
people out of me.
Don't destroy them.
What is the reason why they shall not
be destroyed?
Because the Egyptians, your enemies, will say that
although you were strong enough to bring them
out of the land of Egypt, you were
not great enough, you were not able to
bring them into their own land.
And they will blaspheme your name.
Why does God not only save a man
but keep him saved?
Because this is not about that man.
It's about God's reputation and a demonstration of
His own power.
You see how, I mean, just putting an
emphasis on the glory of God will clear
up so much bad religion.
And another thing we need to realize, and
I would have said this here even if
the pastor hadn't said anything this morning, that
is one of the greatest.
The fact that church discipline is not practiced
in probably 95% of anything that calls
itself a congregation in America today, that the
name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles
because of pastors who would rather have a
big church.
And that's just all.
I don't want to be rude.
I don't want to sound sarcastic.
It is just the truth.
So what do we have?
Well, here he says, whenever I do a
true work of saving, this is what's going
to happen.
Even the unbelieving, heathen, are going to look
at it and recognize I'm God.
Now let's go back to Egypt again.
He told, he said, why are you doing
all these, why are you doing all these
plagues?
That the Egyptians also may know who God
is.
When I deliver my people, Egypt is going
to know.
And I want you to know some Egyptians
came out of there with Israel.
They figured out the frogs aren't God, the
beetles aren't God, the sun's not God, there's
a God and we're going to follow him.
Now let me ask you a question.
Do the heathen and the unbelieving and so
on and so forth in this country look
at what's called Christianity today and say, we
hate it.
We hate it.
And one of the reasons we hate it
is because we cannot deny the supernatural power
of it.
No, they don't do that.
They mock it.
Now don't get into this idea that if
we all lived like Jesus, the country would
be converted.
No, if we all lived like Jesus, we'd
all be in a prison camp somewhere or
crucified.
But there is a real sense that if
the church and what is called church, maybe
I should call it churchianity in America today,
if the forefront was the glory of God
and purity and making his name holy among
the nations, if that was at the forefront
in every pastor's mind, then there would be
a sense that even though the unbelievers would
not understand us nor understand God nor salvation,
there would be something unexplainable that they could
not deny.
But because most of those unbelievers are sitting
in the congregation and the pastor gives his
popish blessing upon them, there's nothing.
There's nothing.
We're so busy saving the world, we don't
even save ourselves.
Like a lot of Christian schools will start
up really, really good and then they start
taking people in that have been kicked out
of high school, been kicked out of every
school in the whole country, bring them into
our school.
You say, well, we need to save them.
No, we need to save our children.
We need to build them up and make
them strong so they can be warriors.
Yes, I am a warrior.
I'm 44 years old.
Throw me in the lion's den.
Protect my son until he's old enough to
fight like his dad.
See, there is not this cutting edge.
There's not this just darkness and light.
And it all comes down to humanism.
All of it can be traced back to
humanism.
Every last bit of it to humanism.
Some of you will go to the mission
field and some of you might go thinking,
I'm going to the mission field because there
are people there dying without Christ and they
want Christ but they don't know Christ.
You're going to go to the mission field
and find out they know more about Christ
than you do and they don't want him.
Men are monsters of iniquity.
They are not victims groping in the darkness
looking for a savior who doesn't want to
be found.
And so you go to the mission field.
Why?
For his glory.
And you go on and he says, verse
24, now we're going to get into a
few things that are so very, very important.
He says, For I will take you from
among the heathen.
I will gather you out of all countries
and I will bring you into your own
land.
Now, the idea, I was, I guess one
could make a pun, I was almost mortified
to come in the church this morning and
find out you were teaching on mortification.
I've never been in a church that did
that.
This is what it's talking about.
I will take you out of that land,
of those nations, of the heathen, and I
will bring you into your own land.
Whenever God does a work of salvation, there
will be a tremendous notice.
You will see it.
It will be evident practically.
It will be evident that there has been
a break with your old country, your old
people, your old ways, your old traditions, but
not just a break because if it stops
right there at the break, it's nothing more
than pharisaical legalism, but a drawing to Immanuel's
land and Immanuel's table and Immanuel's joy.
Now, here's the question.
For years I have been thinking about preaching
and preaching just what is wrong.
Now, I don't have to look any farther
than myself.
What is wrong with my preaching?
And I found a little phrase that has
not cured everything, but has really brought something
of healing.
Every one of you agree with what I've
just said.
You do.
Just like that lost man who said, yeah,
I recognize I'm a sinner.
That's not the question, is it?
The question is, is it an ongoing reality
in your life?
Can you point to the ongoing reality in
your life as a Christian?
Can you see the perfection of God who
began a good work in you, perfecting that
work in you and doing what?
More and more day by day, year by
year, God is working to separate you from
all those things He hates and to draw
you to all the things in which He
delights.
Can you see that work going on in
your life?
Because that's one of the evidences of truly
being Christian, of truly being saved.
You know, the Bible is full.
The old Baptists, the old Puritans, on and
on, back and forth, as far as you
want to go, what do you find?
You find that pastors were genuinely called soul
doctors.
It was their job to go to a
person who had made a profession of faith,
maybe even a sound profession at the beginning,
who began to step off the path, begin
to go wayward.
Not to go, as pastors do today, going
and saying, look, you're a Christian, you need
to act like one.
But going to that person and saying, look,
you made the good profession of faith.
You seem to walk in the light, but
you have strayed from that path.
You can have no assurance right now that
you've been born again.
And you need to make your calling and
your election sure.
You need to repent of your sins and
return to the path.
It's not that you have lost the salvation
that you once gained.
It's that you're now showing you never had
a salvation to begin with.
You would be amazed, young people, amazed at
how many good Christian things can be done
in the flesh externally and how deceptive the
heart can be.
Just call my wife and ask her.
My wife was converted last year.
After serving on the mission field, eating things
that would make a goat puke, going down
rivers with me, grabbing ahold of anacondas, preaching
the gospel, everything you can imagine, she was
converted.
It is amazing how religious we can be
and still lost.
How finely dressed and even the most theologically...
has been working in your life.
You might be somewhat under construction.
You might be somewhat a mess.
But there is an inescapable reality that God
is working in your life to separate you
from the things that He hates and to
draw you unto the things He loves.
And you can't even escape it even when
your flesh wants to.
He's before you.
He's behind you.
He's above you, below you, beside you, encircles
you.
You're captive.
He's got you.
And He's going to make you exactly what
He wants you to be.
Now, something that's very, very important.
And because I preach in so many different
settings, I mean, everything from, you would think,
old English Puritan churches to wild charismatic...
I'll go anywhere.
They'll let me have a pulpit, folks.
I won't let them come to mine, but
I'll go to theirs.
But I'll talk to the more charismatic among
us and I'll say, you know, you talk
a lot about drawing nigh unto God, drawing
near to God, approaching the throne of God
and all these things, but you have forgotten
that in order to draw near to the
throne of God, you've got to separate yourself
from the world.
Like my little boy when he was learning
to walk and he'd stand up and grab
ahold of a chair and I'd say, Ian,
come!
But I was always out of reach.
And he'd have to make his first really
moral decision.
I want Dad, but in order to get
Dad, I've got to let go of the
chair.
It's the same way.
You want to draw near unto the throne
of God?
Then separate yourself from the things that are
not found by the throne of God.
But at the same time, I meet a
lot of people more in our circles who
talk a great deal about separating, but their
separation is an end to itself.
I separate because I'm separated.
And I rejoice in my separation.
Then it's possible you're a lost Pharisee.
Because separation from the world is not the
goal.
Separation from the world is a means in
order to reach the goal which is separation
unto God.
Separation unto God.
Separation unto Him.
Most people that I've seen that have been
involved in somewhat of separation and speak much
of separation are by and large very unhappy
people.
Very unhappy people.
Why?
Because they've only...
I mean, just to separate unto nothingness is
no good.
Here I sit all alone in my room
painted white.
Man, I'm bored.
But it's separation from and separation unto Him.
Now notice I said Him.
Not principles, not wisdoms, not ways of life.
Separation unto Him.
Because my dear friend, if anything is your
goal other than Him, it's idolatry.
It is idolatry.
I desire in my life to be God
besought.
One of the things that I love about
the more Celtic, Irish, the old stuff, is
before Christianity came into them, they were involved
in heavy paganism.
And they worshipped trees, and they worshipped creeks,
and they worshipped everything you could possibly worship
except the God who made all that stuff.
But here's the thing.
When they were born again, here's what happened.
They saw God in everything.
We almost see God in nothing but a
building with pews in it.
How do you know if you're walking with
God?
When you come across a mud hole in
the middle of the creek, and it has
tadpoles swimming in it, and you don't know
how they got there, and you fall down
on your knees and worship God, then you're
walking with God.
When everything is a reality.
Everything is a reality of Him.
Absolutely everything.
A little boy said, Dad, who painted your
tie?
Because I always ask him, who painted the
sky?
He said, who painted your tie?
I didn't say men.
I said men that God empowered and taught
to paint my tie.
Because even if they were unbelieving pagans, they
only did this by the power of God.
You see, everything, everything.
My goodness, if you're a Christian, there's no
such thing as secular in your life.
The pots and pans of your house are
holy.
Everything you do, you do unto God, whether
you eat or drink or any other thing,
it is for the glory of God.
And if it is not for His glory,
it's sin, my friend.
It is sin.
I always use this illustration when I'm speaking
to university people, because they always talk about
the good atheist.
You know, someone will always come up to
me or stand up in the middle of
the auditorium and say, well, what about the
good atheist?
I say, oh, I have no problem with
him.
He's going to heaven.
And all the conservative Christians just get really
spooky when I say that till I explain
myself.
I said, oh, he's going to heaven.
By the way, before you sit down, what's
his name?
What's his name?
The good atheist guy.
I mean, I've been hearing about him at
every university I've been speaking at, and I've
never met this guy, nor does anyone have
his name, nor his address.
I mean, I would use telephone number.
No, that's precisely my point.
It's a figment of your own imagination.
First of all, a good atheist doesn't exist,
doesn't exist at all.
But here's a point that I always make
with him.
I said, imagine an atheist in Georgia has
a man who hates him in Chicago.
But the man in Georgia who's an atheist
finds out his enemy in Chicago is dying.
And there's only this one type of tree
in Georgia that if you boil it down,
you can get a broth out of it,
and it'll save his life.
But the thing costs like a hundred thousand
dollars.
So the atheist, he sells everything he has,
and he buys the tree, boils down the
broth, and then he walks all the way
to Chicago, uphill both ways in a snowstorm
on his knees in broken glass.
And he gets there to Chicago, and he
gives the bowl to the man, and the
man drinks it.
His enemy drinks it, and the man is
saved.
I say, is that a good thing or
is that sin?
And everyone says, well, that's a good moral
thing.
I said, no, it is sin.
And they say, how can it be sin?
I say, because sin is not sin because
of what it does to men, but the
relationship it has with God.
He did not do that for the glory
of God.
He did it for his own glory.
He's an idolater.
As a matter of fact, if he did
do anything positive, it was by the common
grace that was given him.
And the work that he did was not
in his own power, but in God's power,
and he's taking credit for what God did.
But let's take that back to ourselves.
You know what the Chinese Christians, this Chinese
Christian, after he visited America, he said, I'm
amazed what you American Christians can do without
God.
Think about that.
But you see, everything, I mean, if God
is calling us to fast and to pray,
we do it unto his glory.
If God releases us from a fast and
we sit down and he puts before us
a feast of food, every goblet should be
picked up for his glory, rejoicing in him.
If we're out witnessing or going door to
door, this or that, it's for his glory.
My goodness, if we're hunting in a deer
stand in the middle of October with a
beautiful frost on the ground, it is to
look at every sparkle of sunlight off of
that frost and worship God.
Everything, everything, everything for his glory.
And that's something that needs to be asked
of you, of a reality.
Is your life live for the glory of
God?
And is it a reality in your life
that you can see God working in you
in a way that is inescapable, that there
is a real sense in which he has
hemmed you in and you don't have a
problem with that?
As a matter of fact, the greatest sorrow
in your heart would be if he ever
opened the door and allowed you to run
outside the pen.
Is this a reality?
There have been throughout history divine visitations of
the Holy Spirit reviving men and promoting godliness
among them very, very quickly.
And we hope for those times.
But I have seen that those times seem
to be more frequent among men who have
already done what Scripture commanded them to do
with regard to separating from the world and
drawing near unto God.
If he grants you something like this precious
word, if he grants you something like the
ever present Holy Spirit in the life of
every believer, if he grants you the precious
promises that are here that could bring you
into godliness and yet you do not esteem
them as precious, avail yourself of what he
has already given.
Why should he give more?
Are we wanting revival just to deliver ourselves
or are we wanting glory?
Are we wanting glory for God?
That is the question.
Now, I'm going to say one last thing
and it's this.
Understand the way I preach.
I am not here to fire up your
flesh for a week like a football coach
who gets everybody really psyched up, but if
he doesn't keep it psyched up, it all
dies down.
I am here that if God grants a
move of his Spirit, absolutely wonderful, but my
job here is not to promote that.
It's not to push for it.
It's not to try to manipulate it.
It is to lay down foundational truths of
Scripture so that maybe 20 years down the
road, these truths are still in your heart,
still leading you towards godliness.
You see, it is amazing what you can
do with manipulating psychologically people.
It is absolutely amazing, but I hate that.
I absolutely hate it.
Oftentimes when I've preached and there's been a
move of God, I've told people, go home.
Go home.
The best thing you could do is go
home.
Someone told Spurgeon one time, well, I believe
in striking while the iron's hot, and Spurgeon
said, well, if God's the one who's heated
it up, I doubt it's going to cool
off quickly.
If it's the work of God, it'll continue.
Now, church, let me share this.
Some of you have been praying for revival.
Well, you know what?
The true test of whether it was from
God is not that revival happened this week.
The true test is that after this week,
you keep praying for revival because either it
was not from him from the start, all
you're praying, or secondly, you've become discouraged because
he did not grant you revival when you
asked for it, and now you're doubting God.
You keep crying out to God.
There has never, that I know of, any
case in all the history of Christianity where
people continued crying out to God and he
did not do something, but there are an
unspeakable number of cases where men cried out
for a time and gave up.
There's not a maverick molecule in the universe.
God is sovereign over all things, and yet
ye have not because ye ask not.
Someone told me to put that together one
time.
I said, no, you misunderstood me.
I'm not a philosopher.
I'm a theologian.
Philosophers put them together.
Theologians just speak them forth.
Now let's pray.
Father, I come before you in the name
of your Son, and I pray.
Father, hear the cries of your people.
Lord, you know our frame.
You know that we do not last long,
Lord, without water, and one cloudy day can
make us forget, Lord, 10,000 days of
sunshine.
You know, Lord, we are weak.
Grant us grace, Lord, to continue on in
this thing and to ask.
Oh, Lord, teach us to open our mouths
wide.
Oh, God, help us, Lord, and we shall
be helped.
In Jesus' name, amen.