Acts chapter 1 verse 1.
And when the day of Pentecost was fully
come, they were all with one accord in
one place.
And suddenly there come a sound from heaven,
just a sound from heaven, as of a
rushing mighty wind.
There was no rushing mighty wind, there was
just a sound from heaven.
And it filled all the house where they
were sitteth, that is the sound, and there
appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of
fire, and it sat upon each of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy
Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues,
as the Spirit gave them utterance.
I want to speak this evening to you,
dear friend, on the hindrances to this baptism
with the Spirit of God, or the Spirit
filled, victorious, holy, sanctified, and victorious life.
In Acts chapter 8 and verse 14, when
Philip had gone down here to Samaria, we
read that there was a great revival broke
out, and great numbers were brought to Christ
and were baptized, but that is all as
far as Philip could take them.
And so he sent to Jerusalem, and told
the disciples there about these many converts, and
that they had not yet received the Holy
Ghost.
So Peter and James came down, Peter and
John came down, and who, when they were
come down, prayed for them, that they might
receive the Holy Ghost.
And so we are told, for as yet
the Holy Ghost was fallen upon none of
them, only they were baptized in the name
of the Lord Jesus.
Then laid they their hands on them, and
they received the Holy Ghost.
I have no doubt, dear friends, that in
your life, again and again, there has come
to you the yearning and the longing for
a really a life of holy, satisfied, and
victorious living day by day.
And you have decided again and again that
this would be your blessing and your possession.
And yet in spite of your deciding, and
in spite of your desire, and in spite
of your determination, and in spite of you
making open and openly known to others as
well as to yourself, the failure and defeat
and dissatisfaction and discontent that has been in
your heart and life since ever you've been
saved.
You see, dear friends, if you hadn't that
and lived the way you're now living, I
would question whether you'd ever been born again
or not.
You cannot be born again.
You cannot be born again and not know
it in some degree and some measure and
some constancy.
And you can't be born again, dear friends,
without a coming of a hatred of sin
and a loathing of sin and a longing
for a life of fullness and power and
blessing as it's revealed in the Word of
God.
You couldn't.
Just as sure as you live, when you
accepted Jesus Christ, you became a new creation,
a new creature, and where you instinctively and
naturally began to hate sin and wish to
God you had victory over sin, and where
you were irksome and where you were annoyed
and disgusted at the fact of your defeat
and failure day in and day out.
These are evidences of the new nature.
These are the evidences that you're a new
creature.
If anybody can tell you that they're just
as much fun and just as much feeling
of content in a picture show as they
have in a prayer meeting, they're just revealing
that they're still children of the devil and
never have been born again.
When you're born again, you become a new
creation, a new creature altogether, and old things
pass away and old things become new.
You believe that, dear friend, and you felt
that, and you've struggled on maybe for days
and for weeks and months, aye, and probably
years.
You've struggled on and tried to do your
best to deliver decent respectable Christian life that
you wouldn't be ashamed of and that would
be a blessing to those you know and
those you meet, and yet in spite of
it all, you seem defeated and nothing but
failure resulting of your decision again and again.
You've gone to conventions and you've gone to
holiness meetings and you've gone to conferences and
Catholic conventions and you've really longed and yearned
and cried, aye, and prayed as well as
desired that this blessing might be yours.
You've even put your feet upon the neck
of your own, on your own nervousness and
your own shyness and you've made a public
spectacle of yourself by going down through a
meeting and kneeling down at the altar confessing
your defeat and failure as a Christian and
your yearning for this life of fullness.
And someone has instructed you and someone has
prayed for you and prayed with you and
you've prayed yourself and yet some way or
another.
After it's all over, it hasn't been long
till you're back into the old kind of
up and down defeated life again.
Now there must be a reason for all
this, dear friend.
You couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't get fire
without heat, you couldn't get frost and snow
and ice without cold, and you couldn't make
two and two anything else but four.
These are facts, says the Scots, that that
canny didn't.
And here's facts in your life of the
defeat and failure in spite of your desire,
in spite of your decision, in spite of
your determination, in spite of your praying and
yearning and longing, here you are still living
a life discontented, defeated and although devoted to
your Lord.
There must be a reason for it.
And so dear friend, today I want to
help you lovingly and kindly and yet as
plain as I know how and as personal
as I could possibly make it, I want
to try and help you this evening.
You'll not turn away and feel angry and
disgusted because I'm speaking to you as if
there was nobody else and I'm revealing to
you facts that you know although they may
have been hidden to your mind and heart
within your heart.
You'll not be annoyed.
If a young boy comes with a telegram
to you and it's bringing bad news, you
don't begin to kick the messenger, do you?
And if I'm bringing to you, it's not
bad news I'm bringing, but it'll be bad
news in the sense that these things have
been there and hindering your fullness and blessing
and maybe it does annoy you to hear
about it and to think about it.
Dear friend, don't let it be that way.
May you be humbled and broken before the
Word of God and may you really confess
your need and to reveal in the letter
what God reveals that hinders, accept it, renounce
it and have done with it and come
into a life of fullness and satisfaction that'll
be a joy to your own heart, a
pleasure to God, pleasing God as you walk
along and a means of blessing in your
day and generation.
Now you'll find, dear friends, that if you're
still in that life of defeat and failure
in spite of all your willingness and all
your effort to try and live a different
kind of life, you'll find that it's caused
many a time and first of all by
an unwillingness on your part to have done
with all known, known sin.
Now let me repeat that to you again,
an unwillingness to have done with all known
sin, known sin.
You can't have done what you've done with
all sin that you don't know anything about,
but known sin.
You'll find that whenever those who are seeking
fullness of blessing and longing for a life
of holiness and victory, you'll find that there
is something there in the heart and life
that they're unwilling to renounce and to have
done with.
It's just like a big Goliath in the
midst of the children of Israel and then
you go out there again and again and
again and again, you've come to this point
of determination and desire and that thing has
faced you and you've failed to go through
with it.
Not willing to have done with it.
I don't know what your Goliath may be,
I don't know the nature of it, but
dear friends, there's something in there that is
hindering you.
You're unwilling to let that one particular thing
go.
It may be a besetting sin, it may
be a kind of an idol of something
that you you roll under your tongue or
something that brings pleasure and delight to you
or something that brings profit to you in
your life, but there it is and you
know that that thing is in there, a
known thing and it has been there every
time you've come to the altar and have
faced this thing, that thing has come up
and you've never turned your back on it.
The Lord says in his word, if I
regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will
not hear me.
Now many years the Lord said, if we
commit iniquity, he'll never hear it.
No, he'd never hear it at all.
But when it's regard for iniquity in the
heart, it isn't that you have any willingness
or delight in it, but you regard you
may be frightened of it.
You say, well, now I've tried in vain
and I've only made a mess.
I've tried to give it up, I've tried
to do the right, I've tried to get
the wrong rated and you've just failed every
time.
And there's an inward regard there caused by
fear that you'd make a mess of it.
You've tried in vain and you made a
mess of it.
You've tried again and again and you've made
a mess of it.
And so you say, well, there is that
thing.
I'm willing to give up everything and I've
done with everything.
But this one thing, this besetting sin that
there is in my heart in life, it
doesn't seem possible.
So particular, personal, private sin in the heart
and life.
Some filthiness and sexual thing in the life
that is caused like a bloody flux in
your Christian testimony.
And in spite of all that you want
and you desire, that thing remains and you're
not willing to take sides with God against
it.
Well, dear friend, until the crack of doom,
your prayer will never be heard.
You'll never get out of your bondage, failure
and fear until that thing is settled between
you and God.
And that you'll take sides with God in
that thing, whatever shape or form it may
be and say, by the grace and power
of God, I renounce it and have done
with it forever from this moment.
Until you get there, dear friend, you'll never
get towards the life of fullness and victory.
How can you expect God to answer your
cry and bring you into deliverance and victory
while you have a secret sympathetic alliance with
the very enemy of God?
You've entered into a secret alliance with that
thing.
You make a continual allowance for the thing.
Whenever it crops up, you say, all right,
I'm defeated.
I've tried.
I couldn't give it up.
I've tried, but I couldn't do it.
And the thing is cropped in there and
you've entered into a secret alliance with that
thing and you make continual allowance of it.
You'll never get anywhere, dear friend.
Is there any sin that Jesus Christ has
not died to atone for?
Is there any temptation that has overcome Jesus
Christ and that he's not able to give
you any victory over?
Is there any sin in your heart and
life and mind that we know of that
Jesus Christ couldn't break the power of and
set us free from?
My, it's a terrible thing.
Why entering into an alliance with this thing
and making allowance for it?
How could we expect that God would hear?
How could we expect any deliverance from it
when we're into a secret sympathy and alliance
with this accursed thing?
You may have been inherited a kind of
a violent temper and you say, here it
is and I've tried again and certainly you
have, but it doesn't mean that Jesus Christ
can't control that temper.
There's nothing wrong with a temper.
It's the uncontrolling of it and you, he
knows right well and you know that you
can't control it, but you're not willing to
let him get a chance of it.
If you take your sides with it and
say, I'm defeated, failure in the face of
it, but I believe Jesus Christ can conquer
it in my life and I now have
done with it and I take sides with
Christ against it.
Until you get there, dear friends, you'll never
get anywhere else and you'll never know anything
else but a life of defeat and failure
day in and day out.
You could never get God to take sides
with you against your sin.
You never can.
God never forgives sin.
A holy God couldn't forgive sin.
God hates sin.
God abhors sin.
God punishes sin and God says he'll blood
it out and bury it in hell with
the devil and these angels for all eternity.
Why, if God could have any time of
ever forgiven sin, it was when Jesus Christ
on the cross was made sin.
He wasn't a sinner, but he was made
sin.
He was made sin and when God saw
sin on his dear son, he turned his
back on him and left him, cursed him
and Jesus died crying out, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?
And do you imagine, dear friends, that you
could get God to forgive sin and to
make an allowance for it in your life
and enter into you with a sympathy about
the matter?
God abhors, God hates sin and if you
take your sides with God against it and
have done with it altogether, glory to God,
you're not far from the blessing and so
you'll find that many are kept out of
this blessing.
They've prayed and they've been desiring it, they've
decided for it, they've made confession of it
and yet nothing has come of it simply
because there was an unwillingness for some one
particular sin.
There may be five thousand others, but one
particular sin, if you could drop the sun
out of the solar system, everything would collapse
and if that one particular thing, dear friend,
that you know, that one personal particular thing,
if you're willing to have done with that
and get that thing settled, glory to God,
everything, every other sin will be settled too.
Well, I can imagine you saying, all right,
Lord, I take sides with thee against every
known sin.
I make no allowance for anything along that
line.
I enter into no secret sympathy or allowance
for it.
Lord, I take sides with thee and claim
thy victory over.
That's the first step and until you get
there, dear friend, you'll never get any further.
But I've seen people get the sin question
settled and get to the place where they
really have taken sides with God against sin,
this sin that they know of.
And yet, why have they not entered into
this victory?
Another hindrance is this, there is a reservation
in our surrender to the Lord.
You remember Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter
five, Acts chapter five, you remember how Ananias
and Sapphira, they came before Peter and those
in the church and a certain man named
Ananias and Sapphira with his wife sold the
possession.
Now, that wasn't wrong.
They had a right to the possession, they
had a right to sell it.
But here's where the thing is wrong.
They promised God that they'd make a covenant
with God and give this to him, evidently,
and kept that part of the price, his
wife also being privy in it, and brought
a certain part and laid it at the
apostle's feet.
You see, it was just a part instead
of all.
And Peter said to Ananias, why has Satan
filled thine heart to lie to the Holy
Ghost and keep back part of the price?
And friend, you'll generally find that when we're
seeking this fullness of blessing, and we get
done honestly and fully as far as we
know how with this sin question settled that
between you and God.
Now there comes this matter of surrender.
The Lord demands a complete unconditional surrender.
There's no terms of any kind or condition
of any kind allowed.
It's got to be a complete and non
-conditional surrender.
You remember during the last war there that
we allies got in with our enemies and
the one slogan of all the battles and
the slogan of all the days of that
war, a non-conditional surrender.
Well, that's just exactly, dear friend, what the
Lord demands.
You see, you're not your own anyhow.
When you accepted Christ, you were bought with
a price, the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
And if he hasn't possession of all he
purchased, you're robbing God.
You're robbing God.
You're playing the game of Ananias and Sapphira.
You've kept back, you've given something, but you've
kept back part of the price.
You've given a good many things up, and
you've given yourself in a certain way up,
and you've given other things up, but you
haven't kept the whole surrender.
You haven't made the entire surrender.
You've kept back part of the price.
And friend, as you get to the altar,
you know when you get there what it
is that keeps you back in that attitude
of surrender.
When thou comest to the altar, and there
remember that thy brother hath ought against thee,
first be reconciled to thy brother, and then
come, and then come, and offer thy gift.
It's got to be a non-conditional surrender.
What was it cropped up whenever you made
it, whenever you got to the altar?
And when you got through and got to
the place where you all sinned, questioned, or
settled, what was the next thing that faced
you?
Something on your part that you're unwilling to
have done with.
Some grudge or bitterness that you had in
your heart towards some other believer.
Some act of restitution that you'd got to
make.
Some bad debt away back yonder many years
back that you had never made, never made.
When you left the old town away back
there, you left the debt behind.
And you've never, you've never, never made that
thing right.
And now as you come before the altar,
that thing springs up to your mind, right
before you.
And there's where the surrender begins.
There's where the fighting begins.
There's where the struggle takes place.
That's what old Jacob had yonder, at Jabbok.
All night he wrestled with, he wrestled with
the angel.
Why?
Because he had to make restitution to his
brother of whom he had robbed and wronged
long as there thirty years before.
And friend, as you get to the altar
tonight, what is it that crops up?
When thou comest to the altar, am there
remembered.
What are you remembering in there?
Some debt that's got to be paid.
Has your grocer been paid?
Has your butcher been paid?
Has your tailor been paid?
Has your doctor been paid?
Let me ask you, have you paid God?
You remember you made a vow to God
to give you a tithing, that you'd give
one-tenth of your two shillings out of
every pound.
You'd lay that on the altar and let
that belong to God.
Everything belongs to God.
But you made a covenant with God, and
God made a covenant with you regarding the
tithing, regarding the tenth, regarding two shillings out
of the pound.
And it went on for a time, and
then you began to prosper, and the tithes
began to look big, and Satan entered your
heart, and you began to rob God.
And now as you come to the altar,
now as you come to the altar, it
crops up to your memory.
Until that thing is settled, dear friend, your
surrender will never be entire and complete.
I remember in a country we were in,
talking along this line one Sunday afternoon in
a large audience.
A big businessman there had been a Christian
and was a Christian, but living a life
of defeat and prison.
And whenever he got on Monday to his
office, he said to his secretary, I want
you to turn up the books and find
out when I stopped tithing, when I stopped
giving God two shillings to the pound as
I covenanted.
And whenever they found out for certain years,
and he made out the check for the
whole bunch and got it settled, then he
got the surrender question settled.
Will a man rob God?
Yes, says God, you've robbed me with tithes
as well as offerings.
And bring me all the tithes, every bit
of it, bring it all, go right back
to where you robbed God, bring all the
tithes into the storehouse, and prove me, says
God, give me a chance, and see whether
I'll not baptize and fill and flood you
with the Holy Ghost.
Maybe it is that there's something that's happened
between you and one of your relatives.
Some of them has wronged you, wronged you
of your estate, wronged you that was of
yours in your, in the will of your
parents, and you felt a bitterness towards them.
You felt a root of bitterness cropping up
in you.
I'm not making light to the wrong they've
done, but what's hurt you is that you've
allowed bitterness to come in, like a root
there within your heart.
And friend, when thou comest to the altar
and there, remember that thy brother, that's got
to be settled there between you and that
brother, somewhere or another, sometime or another.
There has got to be, there's got to
be that reconciliation made.
There's got to be that restitution made.
You've got to get these things settled as
you come before the Lord.
You hear some say, well, all you've got
to do is receive by faith.
That's all right, but dear friend, you've got
to put the wrongs right, you've got to
make them right, if you're going to know
this life, if you're going to know this
act of full surrender.
And then I've seen them get the sin
question settled, and the surrender question settled, and
still not, not through.
You'll find that it's disobedience to life that
has come.
The Lord has revealed something in the heart
and life that's got to be rectified and
remedied.
And you see, you've kicked against it, you've
rebelled against it, you've sworn that you'd never
have to, would never do it, or wouldn't
make it.
Well, you'll never get any farther, dear friends.
That thing's got to be settled, whatever it
is.
You've got to make it right with God,
and you've got to be right with your
fellow man, if you're going to know this
life of fullness of blessing.
And then again, others are kept from this
blessing by impurity of motives.
You remember old Simon the sorcerer, he said,
give me this blessing, so that I may
do just exactly as the apostles have done.
And you may want it for the sake
of notoriety, or the sake of success in
your ambition, or the sake of this, that,
or the other.
And while that impurity is there, you'll never
get any further in it.
There's got to be that the Spirit of
God would crucify self and glorify Christ.
And until that's so, you'll never get any
further.
But I've seen them even getting that further.
Settling the sin question.
Settling this surrender question.
Settling this reconciliation question, business.
And restitution.
And getting the motive settled, where God alone
was to be glorified and Christ pre-eminently
in the heart and life.
And yet they failed.
Why?
Because they were ignorant, they were ignorant of
God's life of faith, and God's giving by
faith.
They wanted some tongues, they wanted to spasm
up their back bone.
They wanted some kind of a glorified fit,
they wanted some kind of a strange transcendental
experience.
They wanted some feeling, some kind of a
vision or another.
Friend, you've got to take it by faith
and leave to God what the feeling will
be, and what the experience will be, and
what the nature of that will be, and
when that will be.
But you've got to come by simple faith.
I take the promised Holy Ghost, the power
of Pentecost, to fill me now to the
uttermost.
I take, He undertakes, and glory to God
as He does.
Blessing will be yours, and you'll know the
joy and fullness of it day in and
day out.
Search me, O God, my actions try, and
let my life appear as seen by thine
all searching eye, to mine my ways make
clear.
Search all my sense and all my heart,
who only can make known, and let the
deep and hidden part to me be fully
known.
Throw light into the darkened cells where passion
reigns within, quicken my conscience till it feels
the loathsomeness of sin.
Search all my thoughts, the secret motives that
control, the chambers where polluted things hold empire
over my soul.
Search till thy fiery glance has cast its
holy light through all, and I by grace
am brought at last before thy face to
fall.
Thus prostrate I shall learn of thee what
now I feebly prove, that God alone in
Christ can be unutterable love.
O friend, don't be frightened to come to
the Lord.
He's not a policeman.
He's not here with a club in His
hand.
He doesn't come to tease and torment.
He doesn't bring these things up that we
might be annoyed and disturbed.
No, He wants to get us right, right
from the very heart out, past, present, and
future, so that we may walk with God,
as Enoch walked with God, in the light
as he is in the light, and the
blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleansing us
from all sin.
I remember whenever I was seeking this blessing,
dear friends, I got awful fear, frightened of
God.
Things began to crop up.
Things of a past that needed to be
rectified and put right began to crop up,
and my, my, what fear filled my heart,
and how I was accepting the lies of
the devil, when he was saying, God's a
monster, God's a tyrant, God's a harsh master,
seeking where He has not sown, and then
gathering where He has not strawed, and I
had this hard, hard feeling in the mind
for a time in my heart.
I thought that God was teasing and tormenting
me about these things.
I went to an old Christian, an older
Christian that might have known better.
You want to watch who you go to
when you come about these things, and I
said, brother, I'm in trouble.
I want a life that's holy, the Lord's,
and sanctified, and baptized, and filled by the
Holy Ghost, and I said, in spite of
my prayers and desires, it doesn't seem, doesn't,
anything seem to happen.
I said, would you tell me what, and
I said, the, the things begin to crop
up in the part life that I can't,
that I, that I can't get away with,
and it comes away back, it happened away
back years and years ago.
Oh, he says, Nicholson, he says, why that's
the devil tormenting, tormenting a, a, a, a
sensitive conscience.
Man do you know that suited me for
a time, but it didn't give me any
peace.
When I got down before the throne and
before the Lord, that thing cropped up again,
until at last, with confession, and restitution, and
making amends, I got right with them, and
then right with God.
Now, dear friend, whatever it is that's coming
in, if it's something, sin that you're indulging
in, if it's a lack of full surrender
on your part, because of your fear of
letting everything go.
If it's something there that's got to be
rectified, God has put his finger on something
that you know is wrong.
Or is it that the wrong motives are
cropped in there?
You want to be brave and open and
Bible student and a great preacher and a
great soul winner.
Something or another wrong might land.
Or maybe it's just that you're not willing
to take in simple faith the gift that
Jesus Christ offers.
God's gift to the world was the unspeakable
gift of Christ.
And Christ's gift to you, the church, is
the Holy Spirit.
And you're not willing to take.
Oh, dear friend, just now as you are,
lay everything aside.
Get right with God about everything from beginning
to end.
And right now, Lord, I take the promised
Holy Ghost.
I take the power of Pentecost to fill
me now to uttermost.
I take, he undertakes.
And glory to God, he will.