Mr. Chairman and my dear friends, after that
naughty eloquence, I am comforted to know that
you have enjoyed being inoculated by Sidlow's Bacsteria.
Now, once again I have to inflict this
most objectionable foghorn on you, but at any
rate we've managed to get through.
I think henceforth I shall always think of
the letter TBI as War Baxter's indisposition.
But we've got through the week and now
I'm glad for your sake that this is
my last time of inflicting my trouble-throat
upon you.
Let me say just once again for your
comfort, I'm not in any discomfort by it.
It's not hurting, so don't think if it
sounds hoarse and rough that it's hurting me.
It isn't.
It's just, well, I don't know what it
is.
I'm blessed if I know what started it,
and I'm blessed if I know what to
do for it, and I'm blessed if I
know when it's going to get right.
So we're very blessed indeed, aren't we?
Now, Mr. Chairman, I cannot leave you without
saying, with immediate affection in my heart, I
have counted it an unspeakable pleasure and privilege
to be with you.
And from now henceforth I shall think of
you often.
And as often as I think of you,
I shall translate thinking of you into praying
for you, that the loving kindness of the
Lord may abound in this place and invade
every heart.
My recollections of TBI 1973, from now onwards,
will be like fragrant evergreens in the garden
of my memory.
Didn't that sound nice?
Well now, God bless you, and make his
face to shine upon you, and be gracious
unto you.
Oh, I must mention one other thing.
I have such a pleasant batch of letters
from students.
How kind of you to write, and how
little do I deserve your kind letters.
I have one here in particular from a
student who goes into the Greek structure of
Ephesians chapter 1 verse 17, and at the
end he wonders whether his note has been
trivial.
No, it's just about the most common-sense
thing I could ever have seen.
And if my memory serves me well, the
best word I can speak to you, dear
Mr. Greek scholar, is look up Henry Alford's
Greek commentary on that text.
I won't start commenting on the others, but,
and I can't reply by pen, so, dear
brothers and sisters, it's been grand to meet
you, and we have a dear Savior, and
it's been wonderful to be with you.
Well now, as time will permit, I think
I want to have a heart-to-heart
talk with you this morning about sanctification.
Yes, I do.
Sanctification.
And you will find my text in the
first epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, chapter
5, and the verses 23 and 24.
First Thessalonians 5, verses 23 and 24.
Here they are.
And the very God of peace, or the
God of well-being, sanctify you wholly.
Sanctify you wholly.
And your whole spirit, and soul, and body,
be preserved blameless even to the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
He that calls you to this in so
doing is faithful.
In other words, God is not lifting up
before us some aesthetically beautiful ideal, which nevertheless
is altogether beyond our experience.
No, God is not mocking us by alluring
us to the impossible.
Faithful is he that calleth you to this
sanctification.
Who also will do it, by implication, if
you will let him?
Well now, there it is.
And before I dare to make my first
reverent comment on it, let me deliberately read
it again.
And the very God of peace, or perhaps
we should render it, the God of peace
himself, that's the emphasis in the Greek, the
God of peace himself, sanctify you wholly.
And may your whole spirit, and soul, and
body, be preserved blameless even to the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faithful is he that calleth you, who also
will do it.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if
there is one thing more than another about
which all of us Christian believers should be
continually concerned, it is our inward and outward
holiness of heart and life.
Our true and practical sanctification of character and
conduct.
Other things may have their due and related
importance, but beyond all, peradventure, this is our
priority concern number one.
Before all else, God calls you and me
in Christ to an experience and a life
of real sanctification.
That is more important than what we do,
or what we give, or how we serve.
Before all else, let me reiterate, for it
is basically important, before all else, you and
I are called of God in Christ to
be a holy people.
And we shouldn't be afraid of that word
holy, as though it were some foreign shore.
We should be eagerly fond of it, and
long to live a life of holiness, because
that is the secret of radiant joy.
Well now, this text that I have quoted
is a kind of standard-bearer text, representing
many others in the New Testament, all of
them calling us, exhorting us, admonishing us, alluring
us, inviting us, to the experience of in
-wrought holiness.
So, I think we should look at this
verse with careful particularity.
Now of course, the first word that leaps
from the page and commandeers our minds is
that expressive word sanctify.
What is the meaning of our English word
sanctification?
Well, perhaps I scarcely need say this to
an educated audience, such as we have at
TBI, but our English word sanctification comes from
two Latin words, the Latin adjective sanctus, which
means apart, and the Latin verb facio, which
means I make, or set, or put.
So, sanctus and facio together mean I make,
or put, or set apart.
And if we want to give it a
noun form, we can make a word in
English, sanctification is set-apartness.
Set-apartness.
Now, when the word is used in a
religious connotation, sanctification means set-apartness to some
religious function or service.
And when we use the word in an
exclusively Christian orientation, then sanctification means set-apartness
to our dear Savior, to our Heavenly Father,
to the Holy Spirit, the Heavenly Paraclete.
But whether it's in the Latin, or in
the Greek, or in the English, that is
the first, the simplest, and the center-most
meaning of sanctification.
In itself it means neither less, nor more,
nor anything other than just this, set-apartness
to Christ.
Now, that may be very simple to say,
but it's simply vital to grasp.
You see, there are so many people go
wrong on that very point.
Let me explicate a little.
Sanctification, according to the New Testament, is not
any kind of sinless perfection.
I'm not watering down the meaning, I would
never do that.
We are not called in this present life
to anything in the nature of sinless perfection.
In this present life, we shall never reach
a position of inability to sin.
But thank God, sanctification will give us the
ability not to sin.
There's a difference.
I'm not just hair-splitting.
Sanctification is not some kind of pharisaical, spiritual,
superiority complex with an attitude of, I'm holier
than thou.
Oh no, no, no.
One of the first, if not the very
first, indication of true sanctification is a Christ
-like humility.
And when once you've seen the pierced hands
and feet of the Immaculate Savior, you never
talk about your own holiness again.
No, sanctification is no proud, spiritual superiority complex.
But let's get this clear, too.
Sanctification is not some pet theory of little
groups who are extremists in one way or
another.
Oh my, my, no.
Over and over and over again, the New
Testament calls all Christian believers, the oldest and
the youngest, the wisest and the simplest, it
calls all of us to holiness, this is
one of the mainline emphases of the New
Testament.
Nor, are you listening, students?
Nor is sanctification the monopoly of the spiritually
elite, or of profound Bible teachers, or of
reclusive mystics who do nothing but spend days
in prayer and have a kind of aura
around their brow.
No.
Sanctification is not the monopoly of those spiritual
extremists, and we must never think that.
Look, I come back to this.
In its first and in its root meaning,
sanctification is neither less, nor more, nor anything
other than this set-apartness to Christ.
But now let me make a further comment,
for I want to be as lucid as
I possibly can this morning.
Sanctification, oh this will surprise some of you,
let me put my glasses down.
Sanctification in itself is not the infilling of
the Holy Spirit, the endowment of power from
on high, the joy unspeakable and full of
glory, the peace that path of understanding, the
wisdom that is from above, the life that
is more abundant, the victorious life, the higher
life, the deeper life, the fuller life.
No, no, no.
In itself, if I may repeat, sanctification is
neither less, nor more, nor anything other than
this set-apartness to Christ.
Here's a great building, and a crowd of
people are gathering, and there's just one door
into that building, and that's how they all
come into the meeting.
Is that door the whole building?
Not at all.
One of the first lessons we learned in
the logic class long ago was that none
of the parts is equal to the whole,
and that door being one of the parts
must not be equated with the total building.
Now, is sanctification any one, or altogether, of
those blessings that I have just enumerated?
No, it isn't.
But if sanctification set-apartness to Christ, is
it the door, the crisis, the golden gateway,
the entrance to all those blessings?
Yes, it is.
My, what a croak this is, isn't it?
I mustn't try and shout any more.
Do you get that point?
Sanctification in itself is not to be identified
with those blessings to which it leads.
But sanctification, this set-apartness to Christ, is
the golden gateway to them.
And just one further comment while I'm on
this early part of my theme.
Sanctification is not something which has to be
postponed until we are the other side of
the pearly gate.
Now, some of our largest Protestant denominations today,
I won't mention any one in particular, but
they teach that sanctification is not attainable until
we are in heaven.
Now, as a matter of fact, sanctification isn't
attainable at all.
It isn't something that we attain by self
-effort, it's something that we obtain in Christ.
But those denominations that teach that there cannot
be sanctification until we are on the other
side of the grave, they're wrong, not because
we say they are, but because they plainly
part from Scripture.
Listen to our text.
And the very God of peace sanctify you
wholly, and may your whole spirit and soul
and body be preserved without blame to the
coming of our Lord Jesus.
So that's quite evidently something we are meant
to experience here, isn't it?
Let's get this clear.
Sanctification isn't a beautiful ideal that God set
before us, and which we ought to be
ever everlastingly pursuing.
But just when we think we're getting nearer
to it, it removes itself farther away, and
so we live in lifelong pursuit, but never
experience it until we are in heaven.
Oh no.
No.
Young people, listen to this.
The moment I look up to the dear
Savior and say, Lord Jesus, my King and
Savior, I love thee now so dearly and
so deeply, I cannot bear to think of
anything coming between thee and me.
In the totality of my humanhood, I give
myself to thee for time and forever.
The minute I get there, really, that is
being set apart, and I'm sanctified.
However long drawn out the process may be,
however winding or circuitous it may be, the
moment I get to the place where with
eager, almost desperate abandonment, I give my all
to my adorable King and Savior, that minute
I become truly set apart.
Well now, it's time we moved on in
the text.
The next word that commands our undivided interest
is that word holy.
The very God of peace sanctify you wholly,
and because of that word, we rightly say
that this verse teaches not only sanctification, but
entire sanctification.
Wasn't it the other morning I was pointing
out that the Apostle Paul, besides being a
supernaturally inspired theologian, was a wonderfully penetrative psychologist?
I'm inclined to comment the same again just
now.
In order that you and I may know
precisely what Paul means by sanctified wholly, he
specifies the three distinct parts of our mental
constitution, and of our physical part as well.
He says your whole spirit, the pneuma, and
soul, the pheuchae, and body, the soma.
Pneuma, pheuchae, soma.
So we human beings are not just bipartite,
body and soul.
We are tripartite, body and soul and spirit.
By the body we have world consciousness.
By the mind or soul we have self
-consciousness, and by the pneuma or spirit we
have God consciousness.
Now the most exhaustive animal psychology has never
discovered the fleck of a hint of any
moral awareness or God consciousness in the animals
lower than man.
But wherever you find the foot tracks of
the human race, you find the unmistakable and
ineradicable evidences of this constitutional God consciousness indicative
of the pneuma, the spirit.
I mustn't go into that, it would take
time.
But in the threefold, in the triunity of
our humanhood, spirit and soul or mind and
body, we are to be entirely given up
to Jesus, set apart to him.
Just for a minute or two, let me
transplant your thinking away back to the books
of Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers to the
old Hebrew tabernacle in the wilderness.
May I remind you, if reminder is necessary,
that that old Israelite tabernacle was a threefold
or tripartite structure, consisting of one, the outer
court, and two, the holy place, and three,
the holy of holies.
As for number one, the outer court, it
was a considerably spacious, quite uncovered area, 100
cubits long by 50 cubits wide.
And in as much as the Phoenician and
Israelite measurement of the cubit was approximately um
one foot six and a quarter inches, I
think, that means that in length the outer
court was approximately 150 feet, and in width
it was about 75 feet.
That was the outer court.
Toward the westerly end of the outer court
was a twofold structure called, because it was
covered in, called the sanctuary.
And it was in the sanctuary that the
other two parts of the tabernacle coexisted.
Those two parts were A, the holy place,
and B, the holy of holies.
Now the sanctuary was 30 cubits long by
a consistent 10 cubits wide, and the first
20 cubits were the holy place, and the
remaining 10 cubits were the holy of holies.
That was the old Israelite tabernacle.
Outer court, holy place, holy of holies.
Now one of these days when I get
a little bit of that elusive commodity that
we call leisure, I want to conduct a
protracted inquiry into the similarities between that threefold
Israelite tabernacle and our threefold human constitution.
It seems to me as though it's going
to be a quite fascinating and illuminating study.
Let me just dip into it a tiny
bit this morning.
You see, in that old Israelite tabernacle, the
outer court was the body, and the holy
place was the soul, and the holy of
holies was the pneuma, the spirit.
The outer court gave that tabernacle its contact
with this visible physical world of flesh and
blood.
The holy place was the center of everything
where the principal ministries of the priests were
daily perpetrated.
The holy of holies gave that tabernacle its
capacity for, and when the Shekinah came to
blaze inside it, its communion with Jehovah the
God of Israel.
Have you got it?
The outer court, contact with the physical world.
The holy place, the center of the priestly
ministry.
And the holy of holies, communion by the
Shekinah with God.
Now so it is in our threefold tabernacle.
The outer court, the body, makes you and
me part and parcel of the ongoing human
life of this earth.
It makes us social animals.
It gives us our contact with this present
visible material physical world.
The soul is the holy place, the center
of everything, where there continually operates, one, intellect
or reason, and two, volition or free will,
and three, emotion or feeling.
And three, the pneuma or the spirit, that
strange wonderful attribute of the mind or the
soul, makes you and me capax dei, to
use the old latin expression, capable of God.
And in those who are born again of
the holy spirit, and they're true christian believers,
there's not only the capacity for God, there's
actual living communion with God.
Let me have a look at you.
Are you following?
Say yes.
Right.
Now the more you look into this correspondence
between our threefold constitution and that triple tabernacle
of long ago, the more fascinating it becomes.
I mustn't spend too long on it, but
let me remind you of something else.
I can't help noticing that when God gave
the specifications for that tabernacle to Moses, he
indicated that the materials and adornments for the
holy place, and the holy of holies, were
to be much superior to the materials and
adornments prescribed for the outer court.
Or to put it the other way around,
the materials, etc., of the outer court were
noticeably inferior to those of the holy place,
and the holy of holies.
And as it was then in that tabernacle,
so it is now in your tabernacle and
mine.
The body, wonderful as it is, is the
least important part of us.
As the old theologians used to say, man
has a body, man is a soul.
Now the body is the least important part.
I agree at once you wouldn't think so
from the run of modern commercial advertisements, or
from the usual kind of newspaper or magazine
articles.
If you take your criteria from those sources,
oh my my my word, there's everything from
the from the crown of your head to
the sole of your feet.
I agree at once you wouldn't think so
from the run of modern commercial advertisements, or
from the usual kind of newspaper or magazine
articles.
If you take your criteria from those sources,
oh my my my word, there's everything from
the from the crown of your head to
the sole of your feet.
Everything from your eyelashes to your toenails.
Everything you can think of for the body,
the body, the body.
The whole emphasis is upon the body, the
body, the body.
Until if you're not careful, you could get
swept off your feet into thinking that human
beings are little more than glorified animals.
No, the body is the least important part
of us.
Mind you Mr. Chairman and friends, I would
be the last man ever to come to
this honored platform and speak one derogatory word
about the human body.
Shall I quickly refresh your minds with a
reminder that Christianity has always put honor and
sacredness and dignity upon the mortal body.
Why two thousand years ago when Christianity first
came into human history, all the well-known
religions were shot through with the Gnostic idea
that matter is the source of evil.
And therefore in the case of mankind, the
source of all the evils that plague and
scourge mankind come from the mortal body, the
material part, the flesh.
We've got used to it, but two thousand
years ago when Christianity first said it, it
was like a bombshell.
The word, the infinite wisdom, the architect of
the universe, the word became flesh and dwelt
among us.
It was staggering.
But Christianity didn't stop even there.
It went on to say that in the
blood-redeemed, spirit-born members of the true
ecclesia, Christian believers, even the mortal body becomes
the temple of the Holy Spirit of God.
Yes, beloved fellow believers, Christianity has always put
honor and dignity upon the body.
And in line with that, I think that
we Christian believers should be careful how we
treat the body.
Don't you?
I think we should be careful what we
eat and what we drink.
I'm neither a finicky gourmet nor a panicky
food fad.
I have a rare good appetite, and I
like to eat an all-round diet and
to avail myself of the full cuisine that
nature supplies.
And in our home, my precious Ethel has
never had any problem feeding the brute.
But even so, I'm always careful what I
eat, and she's always careful what she buys.
You can call me a crank if you
like, but I look in on the packages
to see what's in.
And in these days when we are eating
more and more packaged and chemically preserved foods,
and when we're having to buy commercially devitalized
foods, you're not a crank if you take
care.
See how well I am, except for me
voice.
Yes, I think we should be careful what
we eat and what we drink.
And not only for our own comfort and
convenience, but for the Lord's sake.
And I think we should be careful what
we wear.
I think we Christians should be clean in
body, and in our clothes.
And I think we should be hygienic in
our habits.
And I think we should be tidy in
our way of behaving.
I think our Christianity should show in the
way we walk down the street.
One of my problems has been to show
it in the way I drive the car.
But I think that to the last detail
our Christianity should manifest itself.
Now, I'm not against certain hairstyles for men,
but when I see fellas with an effeminate
kind of hairstyle, and with a bedraggled mop
that looks unclean, or like some superannuated scrubbing
brush, I maintain that is not for a
Christian.
And when they start telling me that our
Lord had long hair, I can only say
that's part right and part wrong.
Our Lord kept to the usual fashion of
the time, which was to have the hair
falling just roughly to the shoulder, and then
neatly turned up a little.
He never had a scraggy sort of mop
like many of the fellas that they go
about wearing.
And I'm just, yes I'm going to say
it.
I know you'll never want me to come
back, but I'm going to say it.
I'm quite sure that our women and young
ladies and girls should not be such dupes
of unbecoming fashion that they wear unduly
figure-pronouncing attire and skirts that are too
short.
Friends, I am against the miniskirt.
Now, oh, that's the minimum I could say.
And listen girls, I'm against the miniskirt for
your sake.
I'll tell you what I found during the
past 18 years of non-stop peregrinating up
and down the North American continent.
Women and young ladies today, they have more
equalities with men.
Of course they've all, in my judgment, they've
always been basically equal.
I don't know what all this talk about
women's lib really means.
Christianity has always made woman, man's equal and
friend.
Always.
But woman today has privileges and equalities that
she's never had before.
She's man's equal now in the political realm,
the commercial realm, the social realm, in every
realm.
But there's one thing that modern woman is
losing that knocks the good out of all
those, and it's this.
You'll have to forgive me if I'm blunt.
I notice that more and more women and
young women are losing the respect of the
male.
More and more I find men are inclined
to look upon women in a mere fleshly
way.
I also maintain that no nation ever rises
above the level of its womanhood and its
motherhood.
And I hate to see the way that
the esteem for woman is declining in the
estimate of the male.
I maintain that no man ever really loves
a woman that he doesn't respect.
And I would say to all you young
women, there's a kind of way of dressing
which will cause the eyes of young men
to look you over.
And there's another kind of dressing that will
cause young men to respect you.
And if I were a young woman, the
only kind of husband I would want would
be one who respected me.
Don't you feel the same?
Oh, you mustn't be angry, young women.
It may cost you something to be a
bit out of fashion, but I'll tell you
this.
You'll find many a young man will say
to you, you know, I'm really glad you
dress like that.
If I were a young man again, I
know I would, and I'm not an old
fogey.
I'm just as human as every other person
here this morning, except for this sauce.
I have to keep bringing that in.
Where were we now?
Yes, well, I say that we Christians should
be careful what we eat and drink and
what we do and what we wear.
I can't help saying again and again down
in the USA, in Santa Barbara where I
live, I go on to the beach in
the summer, and again and again I can
only find myself wishing that a good many
of the women had a few more hangings
for the outer court.
That was almost the bare truth.
However, without going any more along those lines,
I come back to this.
However important the body is, it is the
least important.
The fabric of this material part, in comparison
with that indefinable substance that we call the
mind, the soul, the spirit.
Oh, I remember when I was in my
early teens, the leading astronomical scientist in Britain
wrote a series of articles in one of
our leading daily papers.
And at that time, they were making a
great deal about the immeasurable immensities of the
physical universe and the littleness of man.
And all the time he was poking sarcasm
at little man, and his last article ended
with the words, astronomically speaking, what is man?
And you know, a Sussex farmer wrote a
little note, which the newspaper published, and said,
Dear Mr. Scientist, may I humbly remind you
that astronomically speaking, man is the astronomer.
Yes, the biggest of the stars is blind.
It can be seen, but it can't see.
It can be known, but it can't think.
It can be weighed and measured and analyzed,
but it can't know and reason.
One human soul is more wonderful than all
the flaming material wonders of the Milky Way.
That's the part of you and me that
matters.
And I say, young folks, and older folks
too, get it ingrained into your thinking.
God never made you and me just for
this 70 or 80 years on this planet.
This is just a little preparation for a
great destiny.
Why?
I read an article not long ago in
which one of our leading British astronomers today
says that they can now photograph 20 million
light years away.
And they can do it because they photograph
by sound waves instead of light waves.
That sounds comical, doesn't it?
But think of it, 20 million light years
away, and light travels at 180, what is
it?
Go on, go on, somebody tell me.
186,300 miles a second, that's it.
186,300 miles, multiply that by 60, and
that's the way light travels in a minute.
Multiply that by another 60 and it won't
fit in this room.
And that's the distance light goes in an
hour.
Multiply that by 24, and there isn't room
for it between here and Calgary.
That's the distance that light travels in just
a day.
Multiply that by 365 and a quarter, and
now you can't fit it between the Atlantic
and the Pacific.
That's the distance light travels in just one
year.
Now multiply that by 20 million.
And the scientists went on to say the
only reason we can photograph 20 million light
years away is because we're photographing 20 million
light years ago.
It's taken 20 million light years for the
race to reach our camera.
And then people say, do you think we'll
find it uninteresting living for eternity in a
universe like this?
Oh, God has made you and me for
a destiny that sweeps through millions of years.
Well now with all that in mind, don't
you see how important it is that here
we should know the experience of true sanctification.
Sanctify you wholly.
I see my time once again has gone.
You see, I get on more slowly with
this throat trouble than if I were normal.
I would have been finished half an hour
ago if I'd...
I won't go any more into the matter
of the tabernacle.
I'm tempted to do, because it is full
of interest.
I'll just touch on this.
You see, they could take the outer court
down and wrap it all up for travel
without in any way affecting the sanctuary with
the holy place and the holy of holies
and through to the parallel.
So it is with our tabernacle.
You can take down this mortal body.
It can be disintegrated in the grave or
by other means without affecting the continuity in
any way of the basic human consciousness, the
human ego.
I mustn't go into that, but don't you
think it's all very interesting?
I do.
Well, I'll close my Bible to let you
know I'm soon going to finish.
Mind you, I can open it again.
No, Mr. Chairman and friends, look, this is
what I'm really driving at, and let me
have both your ears, please.
There came a time when all the materials
and adornments and furniture and appurtenances
of that tabernacle were all subscribed, were all
made, completed, constructed, and finalized.
And there it stood, outer court, holy place,
holy of holies, but it wasn't in service.
Why?
Because it hadn't become sanctified.
It had not been completely set apart.
But there came a day of August convocation
when in solemn ceremony that threefold tabernacle became
wholly set apart to Jehovah.
There was the venerable Moses leading the proceedings.
He was assisted by Aaron, the first high
priest of Israel, in his robes of priestly
splendor and beauty, and he was further assisted
by the subsidiary priests of the Aaronic household
in their white garb.
And all around the tabernacle were the groups
of the Levites at their separate posts of
service.
And beyond them there were the thousands of
Israel families.
Remember, over one and a half million people
came out of Egypt in the exodus, and
they all gathered round for that great occasion,
the setting apart of that tabernacle.
And that threefold tabernacle became entirely set apart.
And when that happened, something happened inside the
tabernacle that the gathered thousands outside couldn't see.
But when that something had happened inside that
they couldn't see, something happened outside that they
all could see, and it brought them at
once to their knees in worship.
The thing that happened inside which they couldn't
see was this, that beyond the sacred veil
into the holy place, just above the golden
throne, the cherub-guarded mercy seat, there suddenly
appeared a light, a glow, a luminous radiance,
a flashing, flaming, opalescent fire.
The Hebrew word for it was the Shekinah,
meaning God is in it.
Now, the crowd outside couldn't see that happen
inside the holy of holies, but it happened.
And when that happened inside, this is what
happened outside.
As the people watched, they saw rising somehow
from inside the holy of holies, and slowly
spreading over the sanctuary, and then covering the
whole of the outer court, they saw a
kind of silvery glory light, and it covered
the whole tabernacle with a heavenly radiance and
shine.
And the people saw it, and at once
they fell on their faces and worshipped the
God of Israel.
Oh dear, it's time I stopped, isn't it?
It's protesting.
Another two minutes and I'll be through, just
stick it to your voice.
Now, don't you see friends, that's where the
parallel completes itself.
When Jesus really, really, really gets you and
me, there's something happens inside.
For the first time, we begin to know
what Romans 5.5 means.
The love of God is shed abroad in
our hearts, speaking of copiousness, is shed abroad
in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
He's the heavenly Shekinah.
Our Lord said of John the Baptist, he
was a burning and the shining light.
The burning was inward, the shining was outward.
And if there's no inward burning, there's no
outward shining.
Now we all want to shine outwardly for
Jesus, but many of us forget that there's
no outward shine before the inward burn.
Every now and again we have a crisis,
and oh, we have a great time, and
for a little while afterwards, oh, such a
blaze, but it's a bamboo blaze.
Soon over, we've got to learn the secret
of this inward Shekinah, this being filled with
the dear Spirit from heaven.
Then we shine.
I think I'll close with a story.
It's a true story.
Oh, I am sorry about this, it's miserable
to listen to.
Please say no.
I'll close with this story.
When I was, let me think now, yes,
when I was 29 years old, my precious
Ethel and I went to begin our ministry
in Sunderland, County Durham, on the east coast
of England.
Anybody here from County Durham?
No.
We went to a great church, Bethesda Free
Church.
Bethesda means house of healing, but you know
it had had such great Bible teachers all
around that area, it was known from John
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress as the House of the
Interpreter.
What a lovely name for a church, the
House of the Interpreter, and they'd had such
great Bible teachers, I was afraid to go,
as it was with Nebuchadnezzar when he saw
the handwriting on the wall, my niece smote
one against another.
But we went, and you know we hadn't
been there very long before we began to
hear the most wonderful reminiscences about a former
deacon.
He must have been a lovely man.
I always had a quarrel with heaven that
he was taken to live up there before
we went to live in Sunderland, but the
memory of him was evergreen.
I remember they would tell us that if
a group of them were chatting together, if
this dear brother joined them, somehow at once
the level of thought and conversation rose.
They said it was almost impossible to think
or to say a mean thing about somebody
else if that dear brother was there.
And I remember one elderly lady saying it
was almost a luxury to be ill in
order to have a visit from this deacon.
He must have been a therapic fellow.
And last but not least, I was told
again and again that his influence in the
office bearers' meetings was benign.
Now there were 12 elders and 26 deacons
and the pastor, making 39 of us.
I used to call the upper room where
we met the lion's den, and we met
there once a month.
And of course they were the lions, and
by implication I was little Daniel.
The only difference was, in my case, the
Lord never shut the lion's mouth.
Well now, I was told that again and
again, if some troublesome matter was on the
discussion, and the patience of the brethren was
frayed, and tempers were a little bit raucous,
and anything might be said that shouldn't, this
dear brother would get up and he would
say, Mr. Chairman, do you think at this
point in the meeting we might have a
little word of prayer?
And before the chairman could say yes or
no, he would go wandering up into the
heavenly places in Christ, and the brethren would
have to bow in prayer, and he would
lead them into the green pastures, and beside
the still waters, and into the sequestered places
of communion in the heavenlies.
Oh, they'd have a great excursion, and they'd
wander up there with him, and he'd have
a lovely time of communion, and eventually he'd
come down again.
Meanwhile all the brethren were coming under conviction
for their naughtiness.
You could hear them, but at last he
would come down, and he would say, Amen,
blessed Lord, how lovely is our fellowship, and
the brethren would look up, and the office
bearers meeting would become like a convention for
the deepening of the spiritual life.
I wonder, did you ever hear the name
of him?
His name was William D.
Longstaff.
Did you ever hear of him?
You did.
His hymn is in your hymn book.
Take time to be holy.
Speak oft with thy Lord.
He not only wrote the hymn, he lived
the life, and what we are preaching this
morning is not just wishful theory, it's magnificent
reality.
And young people, let my last word be
this.
Sanctification is not some mysterious, complicated thing, and
consecration to Jesus isn't some complicated, problematical thing.
All you need is to be head over
heels in love with Jesus, and unemotionally, with
your reason unclouded, deliberately give him everything, give
him everything, and believe that he's taken you,
and then simple-heartedly trust him, and you'll
know what it is to be sanctified, and
to be filled with the Spirit.
Mr. Chairman, Amen, and if I don't look
at the chairman when I leave the mic,
it's because I'm afraid of the look he's
going to give me.