This morning we spoke on the first three
verses of the text that I read, and
made it clear that God does everything that
God does for his own glory, for the
great love that he has for his own
name.
And if it were not so, there would
not a man be saved among us.
That if God were to look for motivation
to love or to save from humanity, he
would find no motivation whatsoever.
The only thing a fallen, wicked, adamic humanity
could ever do is motivate a wholly just
God to condemn them all.
But he does them for his glory, his
grace, and his mercy is manifested for that
reason.
That when we speak about God doing everything
for his own name and for the great
love he has for himself and for his
own glory, many people will always object and
say, well, what about love?
You have to understand the most loving thing
God could ever do is take center stage
and do everything he does so that his
glory might be revealed, because the greatest gift
he can give unto a man is a
revelation of himself.
And the greatest act of judgment God can
ever pour out on an individual or a
nation is to hide his glory from them.
We also spoke this morning about holiness, just
for a moment, that holiness is not simply
separating from all that is evil.
There is a real sense in which a
Pharisee can do that and not have one
drop of love in his heart for God.
You have to understand, understand me here, young
men, this is very, very important.
Things like external piety, things like theological knowledge,
things like ability to speak can be all
for self.
They can all be used for self.
And there is great power in these things.
If you know more, you will be asked
to greater conferences.
If you speak with eloquence, people will marvel
at the mention of your name.
And all those things are for self.
They're not for God.
So you can even separate from all that
is wicked and have for yourself a name
that you are holy among men and yet
have a God-hating heart.
Never forget, probably the most terrifying words in
all of Scripture was that the Pharisees desired
the glory of men and God in his
graciousness, his terrifying grace, granted them their reward
in full.
To put it this way, you'll get exactly
what that heart of yours wants.
I hear young men so often and they'll
be crying out, oh God, use me, use
me, God.
I want to be used by you.
And sometimes I'll tap them on the shoulder
like I wish someone had tapped me on
the shoulder and said, young man, why do
you want to be used?
Do you want to be great in Emmanuel's
land?
Do you want accolades?
Do you want reward in heaven?
Why do you want to be used?
Wouldn't it be better to pray, oh God,
use my brother and let me carry his
bags?
I wished I had not prayed so much
to be a good preacher.
I wish I had prayed more to be
like Jesus Christ, for that is the greater
thing.
A donkey and a rock can speak for
God.
A prophet who is false and does not
even know God can be used by God
to proclaim a word for God.
But the goal is to be like Jesus
Christ.
And when we talk about being drawn out
of the nations, as Ezekiel talked about, it
is in order to be drawn unto the
things of God.
A word that old theologians would use was
God besought, just literally just saturated with God,
to desire to do nothing.
Desire not to wage great wars, not a
desire to do great things, but this is
one thing I ask of thee, to behold
your presence.
And the person who has desired that has
desired the greater thing, to know Him, because
everything else can be false and an idol.
Now, I want us to go on.
He says in verse 25, that I will
sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall
be clean.
Now, I want us to know something before
we go any further.
I want us to put special attention on
the first person pronoun I.
And in verse 24, look what he says.
For I will take you from among the
heathen.
I will gather you out of all countries.
I will bring you into your own land.
Look at 25.
Then I will 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 heart of flesh and I
will put my spirit within you and I
will cause you to walk in my statutes.
Is that telling you anything about how salvation
really works?
The reason why there is no falling away
of the truly converted, the reason why every
child of God will make progress in sanctification
and the reason why there is no such
thing as a continuously carnal Christian is because
it is God's work and it is God's
reputation that is riding upon that work.
America birthed one of the most hellish doctrines
that's ever been birthed and it didn't come
from Jehovah Witnesses, it came from Baptists and
it is this, the doctrine of the carnal
Christian.
Can a Christian sin?
Christians do sin.
Can a Christian fall into sin?
Most certainly.
Can a Christian fall into carnality?
Yes.
Can he stay there?
No.
And we see here a work of God.
You should burn with a zeal for the
glory of God, not for men primarily.
And you see things preached that are not
preached correctly, it should make you almost fierce
inside.
Just recently I heard an extremely well-known
author today speaking about someone who had read
one of his books and was marvelously, supposedly,
put back on the path.
A lady who was basically giving herself to
prostitution and heroin addiction and everything else, crack
and everything.
And the reporter asked him, you know, how
did this come about?
And he said, well, now, first of all,
you need to understand that woman was born
again when she was about eight years old.
The fact that she lived 25, 30 years
in absolute immorality has nothing to do with
it.
When she read my book, she just rededicated
her life.
That's pathetic.
That is pathetic.
But that is the course of the day.
I hear preachers stand before men and say,
you're a Christian.
Stop acting like a homosexual.
No.
You're acting all the time.
You're acting out what you are.
And salvation, again, is not simply a human
decision.
It is a supernatural work of God.
And I know that I'm getting close to
the edge here.
But I would dare say that the regenerating
work of the Holy Spirit stands on par
with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead in regards to a manifestation of power.
And there is no doubt that it equals
or supersedes the work of God in creating
the entire universe.
And I believe that is why John, the
gospel of John, starts off with, in the
beginning, because John's writing about a new creation.
And we have so taken that into this
deity who can bring people out of Egypt,
but he cannot bring them into their own
land.
He cannot bring them into greater graves.
He can only save them.
But then he must stand there and wring
his hands back and forth, saying, oh, if
only my people would cooperate.
It has nothing to do with this passage.
His people are going to cooperate.
As a matter of fact, their cooperation is
the sign that they are his people.
You see, something you need to understand, the
nation of Israel was, by and large, I
hear people thinking everybody in the Old Testament
that was in the nation of Israel was
saved.
It was a nation.
A nation.
Yes, called out.
Yes, God's not through with them.
All these different things.
But you have to understand, we are a
new thing here.
There's no remnant in the church.
The church is the remnant.
Every one of us is taught of God.
Every one of us has been given the
Spirit.
Every one of us knows that our sins
have been forgiven, and our iniquities he'll remember
no more.
There is a real, tremendous work of God,
and God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles
because of pulpits that preach salvation as though
there was no power whatsoever.
And it is wrong.
And it is the reason why we come
under such scoffing.
Sometimes I just want to stand up.
I want to go to NBC, CBS, ABC,
and just say, listen, would you just sit
down with me and a few small church
pastors I know so we could explain to
you what Christianity really is?
Because everything you're putting on this television in
your interviews has nothing to do with the
Christianity we know.
And he says, now listen, he says, then
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and
ye shall be clean.
Now, Baptists, be careful here.
Our Baptist theology many times are speaking about
this with the pastor.
We're reactionary.
You can see that down through our history.
We'll see someone run off over here with
a false doctrine, and instead of holding our
ground just in Scripture, we'll run the other
way so that we're not identified with them.
Many times we're reacting against the Roman Church,
if you can call it that.
Catholicism.
We have this idea of when he's going
to sprinkle clean water on us, and we
shall be clean, that he's just talking about
justification.
He's just talking about our position, and he's
not talking about our lifestyle because we're not
saved by our works, and we go through
all this thing because we do not want
to be identified with people who talk about
a work salvation.
But my friend, when God cleans a person,
He cleans a person.
It is not only that I am justified
before God because of the blood of Christ,
but that same God who saved me and
gave me a right relationship is also going
to work to make me clean.
And he says, I will sprinkle clean water
on you, and you will be clean.
So I'm about being raised as a farm
boy, and the one way you can tell
about a farm boy, at least until he
starts getting old enough to care about how
he smells, is this.
He's got dirt everywhere.
My mom used to say I could grow
potatoes in those ears of yours.
Every crease in your body has dirt because
that's all you do.
You're a dirt farmer.
And I remember coming in one time, about
nine or ten years old, and my mother
said, take a bath.
I said, Mom, I'm not going to take
a bath tonight.
I don't think I need one.
And that was back in those days when
it was legal to kill your children.
But no one ever had to because the
children knew that they would.
And my mom just looked at me and
she said, you will take a bath.
It was over.
There was no argument.
There was nothing.
And when I was 16 and could wrestle
a greased hog better than anybody else in
the county, you will take a bath.
You took a bath.
You just took a bath.
There wasn't any bickering, fighting, even any question
of what was going to go on in
that house.
You'll take a bath.
And yet here we have this deity.
I think one old prophet said one time,
isn't it amazing?
Jesus Christ is the only Lord in the
universe that can't make anyone do anything.
So guarded about this free will, silly notion
that we have.
Friend of mine was preaching.
I don't want to run any rabbits, but
a friend of mine was preaching a while
back and I just loved it.
He's from Texas.
Very straightforward.
He goes, I am so sick and tired
of all you people talking about Jesus Christ
and this door at your heart and the
doorknobs on the inside of your heart.
And you're the only one who would open
the door.
He said, let me tell you that Jesus
owns the door.
If he wants to, he'll kick it down.
And it's the same way with cleansing.
It's the same way with cleaning.
Now, my mother would go in and she'd
say, take a bath.
You took a bath period.
But sometimes you would take a bath where
you just have enough water to smear the
dirt around on your body.
But my mother would come in there and
my mother could, she could haul hay better
than any man.
And this is no exaggeration that my mother's
hands were so calloused that she would put
a washcloth between her hand and your body
just because when we were little babies, just
because her hands were so rough.
And if you went in there and you
did dabbed a little bit of water on
you and you just were just reeking still,
the worst thing that could ever happen to
you is my mother coming around that corner
and looking into that bathtub.
Because my mother would grab a bar of
soap.
And when she got a hold of you
and you came out of there, it looked
like the Shekinah glory coming off of your
skin.
What skin you had left would shine like
the noonday sun.
Because when my mother said, you will be
clean, you will be clean.
Well, I want to tell you something.
God says, for my own sake, my own
reputation, I am going to call forth the
people from the dung heap and I am
going to bring them to glory.
And all along the process, I am going
to zealously and jealously guard after them.
What would you think if I was the
pastor of this church?
What would I do if I was the
pastor of this church and I came home
from a meeting one night really late, about
1230 in the morning, and I come across
some corner of the city here and I
see under a streetlight your 14-year-old
daughter out there with a bunch of young
men.
What am I going to do?
Well, I'm going to stop my car and
if I got a cell phone, I'm going
to call you.
If I don't, I'm going straight to your
house.
And I'm not going to have a problem
with your daughter.
I'm going to have a problem with you,
sir.
I'm going to step you outside and I'm
going to say, you're a derelict father.
And yet I want you to know preachers
all over this nation are making God out
to be a derelict father.
He's got all these children that either he
doesn't really care about or he's not going
to get involved with or he's just not.
Well, he just can't violate their will.
God can violate their will, but here's something
else you need to understand.
If they're a true child of God, he's
changed their will.
And he's made it theirs.
He's made it his.
Now, then I will sprinkle clean water on
you and ye shall be clean.
Now, I want to say one other thing.
In the South, there is so much romanticism,
emotionalism and everything else in the gospel that
you can't even cut your way through.
And so many people have this idea, you
know, I'm just an old chunk of coal,
but I'm going to be a diamond someday.
And they have this idea that they're saved.
They're not changed.
They live their entire life in ungodliness.
But boy, when they jump across Jordan, they're
going to be perfected.
That is not the New Testament teaching on
sanctification.
The New Testament teaching on sanctification is that
the moment he saves you, he is doing
a work of sanctification.
He is working that all the way through,
and he is a tenacious God.
Isn't it amazing that there are some, if
we were to base our interpretation on most
preaching today, we would have to say that
there are some Christians that God is tenaciously
involved in their lives so that if they
do one tiny thing wrong, he comes down
on them and captures them.
And yet there are other believers who can
literally commit every immorality under the sun and
God turns his head.
My friend, that is not New Testament.
But if you're a Christian, God will jealously
and zealously guard over you.
Now, he says this, and I will sprinkle
clean water upon you, and ye shall be
clean.
Now, this next part of this text applies
in so many ways.
It's so beautiful.
It's a warning, yet it's an encouragement.
He says, you shall be clean from all
your filthiness and from all your idols will
I cleanse you.
I have been a Christian for 23 years.
I have been preaching for 22 years.
If I had to take a verse of
scripture out of the Bible and say, this
is a summary of Paul Washer's life, it
would be this.
For the last 23 years, God has been
cleansing me from my filthiness and my idols.
And if I live another 23 years or
another 46 years, if I live to be
a hundred and can stand in a pulpit
and give a testimony, the testimony will be
this.
God has been working all these years to
cleanse me from my filthiness and my idols.
You say, well, Brother Paul, yes, in justification,
the moment I believed I was justified and
I stood before him, not just forgiven, but
clothed in the very righteousness of Christ.
But in sanctification, God has been just working
and working and working to cleanse me from
all my filthiness and all my idols.
And throughout my days, that's what God will
be doing.
Is that a reality in your life?
Can you honestly look at your life and
say that it is marked by this, a
labor-intensive, a work of God, that he
has been working in circumstances, he has been
working in trials, he's been working in blessings.
You can look back through your life and
see that what God has been doing is
sanctifying you, cleansing you from your filthiness and
your idols.
You can say, oh, but he's got so
much farther to go.
We all know that.
That's not the point.
The point is, from where you started to
where you are today, is there just a
long, continuous view of God working in your
life to cleanse you from your filthiness and
your idols.
Oh, my goodness, what a precious revelation that
is.
If you can look back and say, I
cannot escape this God.
This God is constantly, I sometimes will hear
people say, you know, it's unbelievable.
You know, I know one believer, he can
commit immorality and do all sorts of things.
It's not even a problem for him because
I tell one white lie and it's like
God destroys my entire world.
I say, praise God, behold the salvation of
God.
For it is the mark of one being
lost under condemnation and the other one being
saved unto eternal life.
Let me give you a wonderful passage.
Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.
Now, hated there in Hebrew is very important.
You need to really understand the Hebrew to
understand what it means, to understand the context,
to understand what it means.
It means hatred.
And if it meant anything, I suppose they'd
have translated something else.
It means hatred.
In the same way that he loved Jacob
and his love was manifested toward Jacob, his
hatred was manifested toward Esau.
That's all there is to it.
Now, but when you look at Esau, this
is an amazing thing.
Every promise that God ever gave anyone about
that man, God fulfilled.
Not only that, but Esau was in a
sense tremendously blessed by God.
He was so wealthy that when Jacob came
back over into the land, he needed nothing
from him.
God had given everything he promised Abraham.
God had done it all.
God had done a tremendous work.
The providence of God had fallen on favorable
lines for Esau in a sense.
So how is it that God demonstrated hatred
towards Esau and love towards Jacob in this?
Never once in Scripture, never once does God
do a corrective work of discipline in Esau's
life.
God cut the rope and let Esau go.
God let Esau be Esau as long as
he wanted to be.
And then you look over at Jacob, and
as my mom would say, he beat the
living daylights out of that boy every day
of his life.
And that is the difference between the love
of God and the hatred of God.
The greatest manifestation of the love of God
for the believer other than the cross of
Jesus Christ is continuous, enduring, never-give-up
work of sanctification.
And the greatest mark of the judgment of
God upon a person or a nation is
when he cuts the rope and lets him
go.
And so I want you to just look.
That is why I just can't understand people
sometimes.
You know, I preach on these things and
they'll say, oh, you're stepping on my toes.
And I preach on the same thing and
another brother goes, I'm so happy I can't
even see straight.
Because when you understand Scripture and you understand
what God is doing and his goodness and
the work of salvation, you glory in trials.
You glory in difficulties.
You glory in discipline.
I am 43 years old.
When I was 31 years old, 32 years
old, both my hips were replaced.
This has been operated on several times.
My elbow is going to have to be
replaced.
My back is really in trouble.
I'm hurting right now.
I've got this degenerative thing and it just
it hurts.
And if Benny Hinn were to walk in
the door right now and tell me and
for once spoke the truth that he really
had a prophecy from God that God was
going to heal me, I'm not so sure
that I would want him to lay hands
on me.
Because this thing has been used of God
more than anything could have ever been used
of God to cleanse me from at least
some of this filthiness and some of these
idols.
Oh, what a perverted type of Christianity there
is in America.
To the wind with health and wealth.
I want godliness.
I want to be like that old, old
preacher who was B.B. Caldwell or one
of those men just stood there right before
he died and he just goes, I hate
sin.
I hate sin.
I want to grow in sanctification to the
point I can say with that old man
that I can say with God, I hate
sin and I love righteousness.
And I really love it, that I desire
it, that I feed upon it, that is
something I want to hold with everything else.
And I mean that.
I mean, there comes a time when you
just got to cut all the frivolous stuff
out and say, this is what God saved
me for.
Saved me for this.
No matter what it costs, He saved me
for this.
And we'd be like Him.
Set that as your goal.
You say, well, brother Paul, how does health,
wealth and all these, let me just share
with you, clear it up for you really
quick.
Here's how it all works.
You just put it all in the context
of God's great purpose for you, and that
is conformity to the image of Christ.
And if through health, God can conform you
in a greater way to Christ and get
greater glory for himself, he'll grant you health.
And if through grinding your body into powder,
God can make you more like Christ and
get more glory for himself, he'll do it.
Same way with wealth, same way with anything.
It is all in the context of this
great purpose in the plan of God, and
that is to make every one of his
children like his son, who will not be
ashamed to call them brothers.
So he says, I'll sprinkle clean water on
you and you will be clean.
He says, from all your filthiness and from
all your idols now, I will cleanse you.
And here's the promise in this, especially for
the young men here.
There are some sins that a moment you
are converted, they're gone.
I'll give you an example.
I was a drinker.
I had the foulest mouth you've ever heard
in your life.
The moment I was saved, it was gone.
It was gone.
But prior to being saved also, I was
one of the most vicious liars you could
have ever imagined.
I could lie so well that if my
friends would have me go lie for them,
one of them said one time, he says,
Paul, you know, you are frightening.
He goes, I was sitting in that office.
You were lying.
I knew you were lying and I was
believing you.
And when I was saved, that didn't leave.
Didn't.
Oh, I couldn't get away with it anymore.
But it didn't leave.
Not immediately.
It was a thing that God, just like
just like in the promised land, he took
them out gradually.
He takes some out immediately, some out gradually.
Now, what's the point?
The point is this.
There is a difference between being sinless.
No one is sinless, but there are certain
areas of our life where we walk in
victory and other areas where we do not
walk in victory.
And we call that besetting sin.
Now, some believers, some believers, you've got a
certain sin in your life, maybe that you
just sit there and you've basically done like
Pavlov's dog.
You've just given up.
Well, this is just going to be something
I'm going to have to deal with all
my life.
This is just one area that just doesn't
seem like it's going to change.
That is a lie straight out of the
pit of hell.
Why?
Look at this promise.
He says, from all your filthiness and from
all your idols, will I cleanse you?
How should you be praying?
You've got a sin in your life.
You just can't seem to get victory over
it.
Pray this promise.
Lord, cleanse me from all my filthiness.
Cleanse me from all my idols.
Do whatever it takes, but hold on, because
that is a very dangerous prayer.
The one prayer I never would have prayed
if I knew what it would have cost
to pray was this, Lord, make me like
Jesus.
But God withholds wisdom from young men so
that they will pray that prayer, because if
they knew what they were praying, they would
not have the courage to ask for it.
I'll never forget when I was in Peru,
and it was before my operation on my
hips, and I'd come into the city of
Lima.
I was hurting so bad.
My last trip up into the mountains, I
literally grabbed to hold the horn on the
mule and let him just drag me up
the mountain.
And I was hurting so bad, and I
got into this pity party, and I was
laying on this couch there in the city
of Lima, and I came out on this
platform, this kind of the top of a
house.
You can walk on houses up there or
down there, and I walked out, and I
said, Oh God, why?
Why am I hurting so bad?
Why do you, you know, I need to
go up in the mountains.
I need to go down the rivers.
I need to do this.
Why, why, why?
And no, God did not speak to me,
at least not in an audible voice, but
I began to see all the times in
college, all the times in seminary, it just
started coming to mind when I was down
on my knees with other friends or alone
saying, Oh God, make me like Jesus.
And it was basically, why am I doing
this?
Son, this is the very thing you asked
me for.
Now, I can relent if you choose not
this thing.
I'll give you an open door.
Just run through it, son.
Never touch you again.
But if you'll submit to my hand, I'll
do a work with you.
Yes, when I found you, you were the
worst.
I'll do a work with you for that
very reason, to get glory for myself.
Now, what do you choose?
So many people want to escape trials, escape
hardship, and what they are, is they are
escaping conformity to Jesus Christ.
There are two Russians that I heard speak,
and they were talking about they had been
in America for several months, and they were
just, they explained how terrified they were in
America, of living here in America, how dangerous
it was for their Christianity.
And I spoke to one of them, I
said, I just don't understand.
You know, you, as young boys, witnessed the
KGB coming into your church, knocking the door
down, grabbing your pastor, and cutting his tongue
out of his head.
How can you tell me it's dangerous to
live here?
He said, there's no Jacuzzis in Russia.
There's no nice houses in Russia.
There's no air conditioning in Russia.
There aren't strip malls in Russia.
There's no, there's nothing to distract you.
He goes, here is the danger.
You talk to a missionary living in a
tent on the Amazon River, and ask him
if it's difficult to serve Jesus.
No, he'll tell you when he lands in
Miami, is when the difficulty starts.
That's when the clouds start filling into your
mind.
When you sit down beside that young man,
who's not any smarter than you, but he's
making $250,000 a year, and he's got
the respect of everyone on the plane, they
think you're an absolute fool.
You sit down beside him and watch your
vision get cloudy.
Oh, my dear friends, the things that we
maybe love about this country, God hates.
Oh boy, you can't get a meal like
this in Burma.
Oh, I tell you what, I've been overseas.
I hear people say, America's like a place
paved with gold compared to overseas.
Well, it could be that very pavement of
gold that's keeping us from being like Christ.
I think they asked J.I. Packer one
time, they said, who's the greatest preacher alive?
J.I. Packer said, you don't know him.
His point was this, he's over in some
squall somewhere overseas, preaching to three people, and
more like Jesus Christ than we could ever
imagine.
So here's the thing, do you want to
be cleansed from your filthiness and your idols?
Then ask it of God.
But oh, don't think, my friend, he's going
to send a video to your house on
10 steps on how to grow in sanctification.
No, he's going to visit you, but it
will be hard.
It will be hard.
Is he really most precious to you?
I now understand Abraham and Isaac and that
sacrifice that was called to be given up
on that mountain.
If I lost my two boys that I
love so much, if I lost them, would
I be able to get down on my
knees, raise my hands to heaven and worship
God?
Would I be able to acknowledge that it
was his sovereignty that ordained the loss?
And then kiss his hand.
Is God the most precious?
And is his working in my life the
most precious?
Or are there idols?
Or are there I?
Let's go on.
He says now, and this is a wonderful
text, and I, verse 26, 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
heart of flesh.
Now, there are two things that I will
probably spend the rest of my life preaching
on.
People ask me about the book of Revelation.
I know absolutely nothing about it.
I'm about right at the same level with
everybody who thinks they do know something about
it.
If I could have a pulpit that would
take in this entire nation, everyone were to
listen to me.
First of all, I would preach on the
cross of Christ above all things, but it
would be this.
Not that we are saved from our sins
because a Roman whip fell on the back
of the Messiah, but we are saved from
our sins because the Messiah bore sin, became
a curse, and his own father crushed him
under his wrath.
The real cross.
And secondly, secondly, I would teach on this
passage that regeneration is a supernatural work of
God, whereby the very heart of a man
is transformed.
Now, I want us to look at a
few things here.
He says a heart of stone and a
heart of flesh.
Usually, especially in the New Testament when we
come to this idea of flesh, it is
always in the negative, always in the negative.
But here, don't take it so.
What is he speaking about?
If I had a statue of stone here,
of the mightiest man in this county, statue
of stone, I could walk up to that
statue of stone, I could prod it, I
could kick it, I could pinch it, I
could cut it, I could stab it, I
could do any manner of things to that
statue of stone, and how would it respond?
Not at all.
It's stone.
It's inanimate.
It can not respond.
It is not a living thing.
It doesn't matter what I do, it will
not respond to divine stimuli, any type of
stimuli.
Now, imagine I had the biggest man on
the face of the earth here, and I
caught him under the tender part of his
arm with two fingers like this, and I
pinched with all my might.
It doesn't matter how strong, how tough that
man is, I'm going to get some response
out of him.
Why?
He's flesh.
He's alive.
And what is God saying?
Your unregenerate, sinful man, the man who does
not believe in Jesus, the average man in
the pew on Sunday morning, does not know
Christ.
His heart is a heart of stone.
It can not respond to anything.
And it's going to take a lot more
than some soupy story about his grandmother in
heaven wanting him to be there also.
It's going to take something more than that
to make that man a child of God.
It is going to take a supernatural work
of God's Spirit.
Whereby that heart of stone is taken out,
and a heart of flesh, a heart that
can respond to divine stimuli is put in
its place.
That, my friend, is what it means to
become, if any man be in Christ, he
is a new creation, a new creature.
That is why preaching is pitiful.
That when you're standing there preaching, you have
no armament.
You have nothing in your pockets.
You have no tool, no device, no trick.
You have nothing that can change a man's
heart from stone to flesh except the promise
of the Holy Spirit blessing biblical preaching.
And that the power of God for salvation
is revealed in the message.
Martin Lloyd-Jones one time, I don't have
the, I remember reading the story, I can't
remember it all, but he was on the
platform and was to speak second with a
man who had been converted, who was a
mighty intellect.
He'd been a mighty man in the academic
world and everything else, and now he'd been
converted, and he was going to speak, so
he gets up and he speaks, and he
says, We need to reach academics who are
lost with other academics.
We need to get the men in the
university that are Christians, we need to get
them together because they are the best men
that God can use to reach other men
like them.
And his whole sermon was based on that.
When he finished Martin Lloyd-Jones, classical Martin
Lloyd-Jones, he gets up and he goes,
I appreciate everything the brother says, but he's
wrong on every point.
He said, Wesley could speak as eloquent and
as well as any man.
He was high bred, went to the best
university, and he preached to coal miners, street
urchins, and God did a mighty work.
Dwight L.
Moody, that American, he doesn't even speak English
well for an American.
God brought him over here and used him
to save aristocrats and people of brilliance.
God will not use the likely instrument.
God will use the unlikely one to get
glory for himself.
See, if you're not pitiful, you can't preach.
That's all there is to it.
Mighty men, mighty men, show me one, I've
never found one.
Bring them all together, bring my favorite preachers,
the Spurgeons, bring them all together, Alexander McLaren,
give me Whitfield.
Dust every one of them.
There's a mighty God, but there are no
mighty men.
There's a great God, but there are no
great men.
And I'll not have it any other way.
I like it like that.
Because there's hope for someone like me, if
greatness is not required.
Oh, what a thing here.
But now, I want us to look at
something about the different varieties of preaching you
will get today.
There are some who believe, you would imagine
that that curtain was closed and that Jesus
Christ was standing behind it.
There are some who believe in their preaching,
their theology, that all you have to do
is pull back the curtain and show Jesus
to the congregation, and when they see Jesus,
well, they're going to love Him.
That's the way some people preach.
Just got to show the world Jesus, and
the world will love Him.
There's a problem.
That would work in a congregation, possibly, where
everyone had eyes and could see.
But if you pull back the curtain to
show everyone what's standing behind it, and the
entire congregation is blind, it's not going to
do much good, is it?
Now, there are some preachers who say, that's
just the point.
It's not only revealing Jesus, but the Holy
Spirit has to come and give sight to
the blind.
That's true, but that's not far enough.
Because if God only gave us sight, we
would hate what we see.
Because our hearts are deceitfully wicked.
Our hearts hate holiness.
Our hearts hate righteousness and true love and
true beauty.
Our hearts hate everything that God is prior
to being regenerated.
And so if the only thing that happens
is God giving sight to the blind, with
that sight they'll curse Him all the more.
The more they see of Him, the more
they'll hate Him.
So it is not just that the curtain
has to be pulled back and sight has
to be given to the blind, but that
heart has to be taken out and a
new heart has to be put in its
place.
You see, one of the things, if you
are going to study philosophy at all, one
of the most important things, in my opinion,
to study is the idea of ontology.
The Greek word ontos, being.
The idea of being.
And what I mean by that is this.
And Jesus teaches this in Matthew chapter 7
better than all the philosophy books that exist
in the world.
And it is this.
A bad tree cannot produce good fruit.
The character of the thing will determine its
action, its response.
Men are born with an unholy, unrighteous heart.
Therefore they are going to hate anything and
anyone that is righteous and holy.
And the only way a man is ever
going to love God is if God comes
and gives him a heart that is like
God's.
Again, we throw ourselves back on this.
The weakness of all this.
Apart from the Spirit of God.
Now, one other thing about this passage that
is so very, very important.
Spurgeon, I read him one time, he had
this illustration.
And maybe just because I was a farm
boy, I actually thought of it before I
read it.
But if you just imagine for a moment,
if you had a plate of the finest
food from the finest restaurant in Atlanta, here.
And you had the biggest bucket of slop
you've ever seen in your life, filth, here.
And you had a pig in the very
back of this church, and you let that
pig go.
I can tell you exactly where that pig
is going to go.
He's not going to go here to this
fine, exquisite meal.
That pig is going to come here to
this filth.
He's going to stick his head in it.
He's going to relish it.
He's going to devour it.
He's going to love it.
And no one can blame him.
Why?
That's what pigs do.
He's a pig.
It's what he is.
He has no shame in that.
Nothing.
But if in one moment, I had the
power to transform that pig into a man,
what would happen?
The first thing that would happen, he would
throw his head out of that bucket.
Because the very thing he loved, he would
now hate.
Not only that, but there is a real
sense in which a man cannot physically digest
what a pig can eat.
It would be an impossibility.
He would start vomiting up the very things
that he was once gobbling down.
And when he turned around, he would be
ashamed.
I just described your conversion.
I don't care what country club you belong
to.
I don't care about any of all that.
What social standing you have.
I just described your conversion.
If you have been converted, you have been
converted that way.
And if you say, well, I never.
You have never.
I just described the conversion of a man,
of a nine-year-old girl in Sunday
school.
If you're going to believe this depravity thing,
you got to carry it on out.
And my friend, no one can do that
but God.
Can these bones live?
Oh, young preacher, every time you get in
the pulpit, it ought to be ringing in
your ears.
Son, can these bones live?
And the prophetic answer, which says, not by
my power, O Lord, thou knowest.
You know.
What am I?
So when he says, I will put my
spirit within you.
Cause you to walk in my statutes.
I will put my spirit within you.
My goodness.
The same Holy Spirit who hovered over creation.
I don't know, but I just hope God
lets me see creation.
You know, I don't know how he would
do it.
It wouldn't be any problem for him.
I know it's a past event, but I
would sure love to see the glory of
God manifested in that.
That very first day.
Isn't it amazing that this same spirit who
hovered over creation, brought it into being, is
the very same spirit that has been placed,
that dwells within the believer.
And you're going to tell me there's not
going to be a change.
And more than that, because the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead is a greater
act of God than creation itself.
Are you going to tell me that the
resurrection of Jesus Christ by the power of
the Holy Spirit.
And that that same spirit can come and
dwell within a believer and he not be
changed.
I use an illustration and I use it
all the time.
If you hear me preach very much, you'll
hear this illustration.
Just one day I was trying to think
about how does this work?
I want you to think for a moment
that I'm, you know, I show up 20
minutes late to preach.
The pastor's kind of mad.
Everyone's kind of mad.
Like, well, you know, don't you count it
a privilege to preach here?
What's your problem?
And I walk in, I've got my shoes
and hair, everything just like I am now.
And I say, now, hold on, pastor.
Don't be angry with me.
You don't know the story.
And he says, well, what's the story?
And I said, well, I was out there
on the highway and had a flat tire.
And I was changing the tire and the
lug nut came out of my hand.
It rolled out into the middle of the
highway.
And I wasn't thinking.
I just ran out there to the middle
of the highway.
And I got down, I picked up the
lug nut.
And when I stood up, there was a
logging truck weighing about 30 tons going about
75 miles an hour.
And it was like five feet in front
of me.
And it ran me over.
And that's why I'm late.
He would sit there and go, you're a
liar.
No, it happened.
You're either, Paul, you're either a liar or
you're out of your mind.
What's wrong, pastor?
He calls the deacons in.
I plead with all the deacons, the other
elders.
What's wrong?
What do you mean you don't believe me?
Why wouldn't you believe me?
And you would constantly be saying this.
It is impossible to have an encounter with
a logging truck weighing 30 tons going 75
miles an hour and not be changed.
And why is it possible for most people
to profess faith in Christ and not be
changed?
Has your God become smaller than some puny
mechanism built to carry trees?
And that's why I hate much of the
preaching I hear.
I hate it because it defiles, it lowers
the glory and the power of God.
Why should you walk with Christ?
Why should you?
To go to heaven?
You know what that is?
Humanism.
As one preacher said, you're no different than
two men sitting at a cafe discussing how
they're going to rob a bank and get
something for free.
You walk for Christ just because you're going
to heaven?
It's all about you.
I tell people this.
People who don't have assurance, listen to me.
This is what you need to do.
You need to repent of your sins whether
you go to hell or not, because He's
worthy.
You need to believe in Him whether you
go to hell or not, because He's worthy.
And you need to follow Him all the
days of your life whether you go to
hell or not, because He's worthy.
And people adopt an attitude like that, they
get assurance pretty quick.
Why?
Why do we do all this?
For His glory.
There's no other reason to stay in business,
church.
You just become a little prostitute.
There's no other reason to stay in business
except for His glory.
His glory.
Just for Him.
He says, I'll put my spirit within you,
and I will cause you to walk in
my statutes.
That means make.
I'll make you do it.
I will make you do it.
I'll make you.
Now, how does He make you?
Well, I do not like...
Now, this might get me in trouble.
I do not like the terminology so much,
irresistible grace.
Because it means that, it communicates this idea
that I don't want to follow Jesus.
I don't want to worship Him.
I don't want to believe in Him.
But I am forced to do it.
What you're talking about there, folks, is regeneration.
That's all.
That God changes a man's heart and gives
him a heart.
That if God gives you a heart that's
a new creation, recreated in holiness and righteousness.
If you have a heart created in holiness
and righteousness, the moment you look on the
Holy and Righteous One, you'll love Him.
And He makes by transforming us.
You see, that's the difference between Christianity and
religion.
We have a trouble where I live with
coyotes.
Now we have big trouble with mountain lions.
Seem to be killing a lot of goat
herds and things like that.
But you take a coyote.
You take a coyote.
You take a mountain lion.
Capture it.
Put it in a cage.
You've solved your problem.
But you haven't solved his.
He's still a coyote.
He's just a coyote in a cage.
And you let him out of that cage.
He's going to go back to doing the
very same thing.
Why?
Because that's what he is.
Christianity is not a religion of, I know
it's the right thing and I ought to
do it.
Right.
The most frightening thing for a pastor, in
my opinion, is to go out on visitation
and visit some wayward church member who hasn't
been to church for a year.
And that man receives the pastor in the
house.
And when the pastor says, you need to
get back in the church, you need to
get back fellowshipping with the saints.
When that man puts his head down and
says, you're right pastor, I just need to
do the right thing.
It's almost like he's saying, I've got to
take this horrible medicine I hate in order
to be saved.
It's like me going home next Friday, walking
up the door and my wife comes to
the door and I just grab her and
give her a big hug and a big
kiss.
And she says, well, what's all that about?
I pull out the manual for Good Husband.
I turn to page 35 and I say,
what says right here?
That's what I should be doing.
She's going to feed me that book.
She doesn't want a man who kisses her
because he wants to do the right thing.
She wants to be kissed because he wants
to kiss her.
It's the same way.
I hear all these people.
Yeah, I know I need to do this
and I need to do that.
And I said, well, just go home.
If that's all it is to you, it's
self-serving to start off with.
You don't love him.
You don't care about him.
You're just doing the right thing so that
you don't go to hell.
You know, you can catch a field on
fire and snakes will run out of it,
but they're still snakes.
What do you mean?
One of the things that if I were
to do a Ph.D. and I was
going to do it a while back and
I was standing in the middle of this
big seminary and it's like God looked at
me and says, what are you doing here,
son?
Get out of here.
Go back and preach.
But if I was going to do a
Ph.D., it would probably be on the
beauty of God because it is one of
the areas that has just been totally ignored.
Folks, this is not about what I'm doing.
Doing the right thing.
This has nothing to do with doing the
right thing.
This has to do with being captivated by
the most beautiful, the most glorious.
It's like my favorite artist is French Impressionist
Monet and he painted the water lilies.
That's like me finally getting to see the
water lilies and all its magnificence and you
walking up to me with a stick man
and saying, look, leave me alone, boy.
Look at my stick man.
I'm going to go cry.
Leave me alone.
One of the things that I love in
studying the attributes of God is the doctrine
of, maybe I made this up, but I
call it the doctrine of condescension.
The doctrine of condescension.
That it is an act of condescending grace
and mercy for God to take His eyes
off of Himself to look at any other
thing because He is so glorious.
And so beautiful.
I don't want my sons doing the right
thing all the way to hell.
I want them to be captivated by a
vision, a heavenly vision.
Christ.
And now I'm going to just stop here,
but I want to say one thing.
It's very important to parents.
You know, you have things like Harry Potter
and those books and such.
People always ask me about them and I
don't agree with them at all, but I
want to tell you something.
They don't make me half as mad as
our type of Christianity.
And I'll tell you why.
You have these children, and this goes in
with my sermon.
It actually does.
You've got these children and they're looking at
Harry Potter.
The wonder, the marvel, the miraculous of all
those books, as demonic as it is, there
are those elements there.
The marveling, the adventure, the miraculous, all these
things in there that just mesmerize our children.
And what do we give them?
Sunday morning church in a pew.
Now, why wouldn't they be drawn to something
like this?
I want them to see life, life, not
just a bunch of rule keeping people who
hate what they do, but do it out
of the name of self-preservation.
We ought to be so full of joy.
We ought to be so different.
We ought to be marvelous.
We ought to do Edwards and others, other
theologians.
I mean, big thunderstorm come up, lightning storm,
dangerous.
Dude's just wandering around in the middle of
it, worshiping God.
That is Christianity.
That.
Came to give you life.
Came to give you glory.
And all that is coming to give you
me.
What do you think we'll be doing in
heaven?
Think about that.
You know, anything on this earth, no matter
how glorious, how beautiful, is going to be
boring after a while.
Well, let me submit to you something.
The same thing goes for heaven.
There's only so long you can swing on
gates of pearl and it just gets boring.
Streets of gold.
I mean, it's pavement.
I mean, how is it that you say,
well, time does it?
Let's just forget about that for a moment.
That's too big of a thing to get
into right now.
Let's just think about this.
What is it?
Someone asked me one time, a student.
They said, when I get to heaven, will
I know everything?
I said, no, you'll know a lot, but
you won't know everything.
And they said, well, why won't I know
everything?
Because you'll still be a finite creature.
Just like every angel, every cherubim, every seraphim,
you will be a finite creature.
What will we be doing in heaven?
Chasing down the glory of God.
Because He is infinite.
His beauty is infinite.
His excellency is infinite.
All of that.
And thus we'll be chasing down.
And every day, if you can say such
a thing, we'll be new.
It'll be like you walk into heaven.
And the first revelation you have of God,
if you were not supernaturally strengthened by the
power of God, His beauty would drive you
mad.
But you will be strengthened to behold a
revelation that you never seen even possible.
And you will be strengthened.
You will fall down in such ecstasy and
joy and worship that if you were not
supernaturally strengthened, you'd explode.
And then you go to bed and you
get up in the morning.
And what do you see the next morning?
A revelation that is so much greater than
the revelation you had the day before that
it seems as though you never knew Him.
And you are going to fall down with
such joy and ecstasy and worship that if
you were not supernaturally strengthened much more than
the day before, you would explode.
And you'll march through all the days of
eternity, never coming to know the end of
Him.
Don't talk to me about these silly little
I-ought-to-do things.
I think that's why David was so pleasing
to God.
He didn't get a whole lot of ought
-to-do things right if you look at
him carefully.
I just...
This is not Scripture.
This is not coming down from the mount.
But I just imagine sometimes David walked in
front of that tabernacle going, Okay, I go
into that holy of holies, I'm dead.
It's worth it.
If I can just run past those priests,
jump through that curtain, I'm dead in a
second, but if in that one fraction of
a second I see His glory, it's worth
it.
And then Moses...
I mean, young man, you are not going
to have a bigger ministry than Moses, okay?
I hate to deflate you, but probably not.
Moses had this tremendous ministry.
I have to be careful here because when
we get over into the church at Corinth,
Paul says that we do have a greater
ministry, but just by way of illustration.
He's the greatest redemptive figure in the entire
Old Testament, the type of the Messiah, everything
else that is to come.
And when he had accomplished his task, he
was empty.
He was empty.
And I can prove it.
He said, Lord, show me your glory.
This is not enough.
Ministry is not enough.
It's not enough.
And if it is enough, you're just lost.
It's not enough.
And he was a Jew.
He knew what he was saying.
He said, show me your glory.
He knew he was going to die.
I've got to see you.
I've got to see you because nothing else
is enough.
I say that this is not time for
men with narrow spirits and tiny hearts.
If what you've got is enough, you've got
a problem.
I learned this from an old teacher one
time about the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
And it's this.
You talk about fill me with the Holy
Spirit and then fill me some more with
the Holy Spirit.
Well, how can he do that?
Well, it's like blowing air into a balloon.
You blow a little air into a balloon,
that balloon expands only with the amount of
air it has in it.
You blow more air into it, it expands
and can hold more air.
Just this continues.
You need to be praying, God, enlarge my
heart.
Enlarge that cavity that the Spirit fills.
Enlarge me, Lord, that a greater filling and
a greater filling and a greater filling of
You.
And if you're content, you need to especially
pray that.
Lord, I am content.
That does not mean, Lord, that I have
all of You that can be had.
It means that that little place in me
is just tiny and narrow and drawn.
Bust my heart wide open and then fill
every area of it.
And then bust it open again and fill
every area of it.
And bust it open again until I'm consumed
by the Old God.
God bless you.