As we meet together here in this lovely
evening at Keswick, perhaps it's hard for us
to realize that we live in such tremendously
challenging days.
I believe that there are only three alternatives
that confront this generation.
The first of them, the utter ruin of
western civilization, as we know it.
The second of them, the immediate, or certainly
imminent, return of the Lord Jesus Christ to
take his people home.
The third of them, a mighty Holy Ghost
revival in the church.
While my heart longs to see my Savior
face to face, I cannot escape the personal
conviction that to meet him and have to
give an account of stewardship in the light
of spiritual condition today would make me desperately
ashamed.
I long that even yet in these last
days there may be a mighty outpouring of
God the Holy Spirit, a great in-gathering
of precious souls worthy of our Master's name,
something that would cause his heart to rejoin,
something that would make his church again to
sing with joy.
Over 80 years ago this convention was inaugurated
for the purpose of considering New Testament holiness
of life.
New Testament holiness of life and spiritual revival
are synonymous terms.
You can't have one without the other.
Every one of us in this great concourse
this evening, and all who listen by landline,
may tonight, if they're prepared to face God,
to face him on his terms, they may
stand in a circle and put themselves in
that circle and say, O Lord, for Jesus'
sake, revive everything in this circle.
This must begin with you and with me.
With this in mind, therefore, my dear friend,
I would like to present to you tonight
four verses of scripture for your thinking, which
I trust may in some measure sum up
what has been said and declared through various
means and various servants of God during the
days of this past week.
Ephesians 1-4, chosen in him that we
should be holy, the responsibility of holiness.
Romans 7-24, O wretched man that I
am, who shall deliver me from this body
of death?
The resistance to holiness.
1 Corinthians 1-30, Christ Jesus who is
made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
The reception of holiness.
And Ephesians 5-18, be being filled with
the Spirit.
The realization of holiness.
Let us consider briefly this verse in Ephesians
1-4, chosen in him that we might
be holy.
About a year ago, perhaps a little more
than that now, I was sharing in a
conference in New York with my very dear
friend, and I believe yours also, Stephen Alford.
And may I in passing say that I
do trust that many of you keep our
beloved brother Stephen upon your hearts for prayer,
as he stands in that great metropolis of
the United States, indeed a prophet in a
wilderness.
In sharing this conference together, he spoke to
quite a large group of ministers on holiness
of life.
At the end of the meeting, one of
those ministers came up to him and said,
thank you for your message, but I'm sorry,
that is not my line.
Not my line.
Is Keswick a line?
Is the teaching of this convention a kind
of hobby?
Is it remote from reality?
Is it something that, well, it's an option
if we like it?
I would say to you in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is the
central necessity of our salvation in Jesus Christ
our Lord.
I do not find in the New Testament
that holiness is an option.
Be ye holy, for I am holy, saith
the Lord.
Romans 8, 29, we are predestined to be
conformed to the image of his Son.
Hebrews 12, 14, holiness without which no man
shall see the Lord.
The only and the unalterable evidence of a
true experience of the new birth is a
holy life.
Now for this, each one of us is
responsible before God.
There is a great danger and peril that
we come to conventions and get used to
them.
We enjoy the crowd, we like the singing,
we love meeting people, and we like listening
to sermons and taking them down in note.
But how many of us are apt to
do all this and never take a further
step in faith and in obedience?
We talk about faith, we sing about faith,
we discuss the subject of faith, but we
urgently need to take a step of faith
to make what is theologically true when we
are born again, experimentally true every moment of
our life.
Our churches, by and large, in many areas,
are filled with people who would be equally
shocked to see Christianity practiced as they would
be to see it doubted.
And in many such fellowships, nobody would know
if the Holy Spirit departed.
It wouldn't make any difference.
And in this connection, I believe there are
two extremes in our thinking about this subject,
which are equally dangerous and need to be
avoided.
I will illustrate them by something that took
place in my own life just a little
while ago.
Soon after coming to Edinburgh, the church at
Charlotte Chapel bought for us a lovely new
home.
The home is not new, it's about 60
or 70 years old, and it's made of
strong, rugged, Edinburgh stone.
Stand up, as long as anything will stand
up.
Recognizing that we had been 10 years in
an extremely hot climate, the deacon's court very
generously said, now we think you must keep
warm, so we must put in central heat.
After several months, this major surgery upon quite
an old house was completed.
All the pipes were in, and the radiators
were there, and everything looking very beautiful and
very lovely, such a lovely furnace, and a
great big oil tank.
And the day came for this to be
tested.
So I went to the house to watch
the engineer test it, and no sooner he
started, than the pump broke down.
This of course had to be remedied, and
there was a time, quite a while, when
it was quite chilly in May, when we
had everything except the heat.
Eventually this problem was rectified, the pump was
made to work, and the heat went on.
One afternoon, when I was down at Charlotte
Chapel, my wife rang me up on the
phone and said, are you likely to be
coming home soon?
I said, well I hadn't thought of it
just now, but why?
Well she said, we're so hot in here
that we're almost overcome.
Well I couldn't get home very quickly, but
I went home that evening, and all I
could say to you, my dear friend, without
exaggeration, is that tropical Africa would have been
like the Arctic Ocean.
Everybody was perspiring.
The radiators were blistering, my wife and daughter
were going around sighing, and the house was
really preposterously hot.
Well this time the thermostat had failed to
operate.
On the first occasion there was equipment but
no heat.
On the second occasion there was heat but
no control.
And these two opposite extremes are extremely dangerous
when we think of this subject.
It is possible to have all the equipment
but no fire.
It is possible to have all the fire,
but sometimes for a very strange fire, and
it isn't controlled.
There are many Christians today who would take
the position that we have everything that we
can expect from God from the moment of
our conversion.
And if we seek for more than we
have in Christ at the moment of our
new birth, we may very well be led
off into some theological bypass of unspiritual fanaticism.
And become extreme.
Personally all I can say to such is
this, that I have a hungry heart tonight
for all that God has for me.
And if there is something more for me
in the world than that which by his
grace I already have, then I'm going to
press my claim for it.
And I'm going to trust him that as
I press in for his best, he'll keep
me from the counterfeit.
After all, the word of God promises that
he satisfies the longing soul and fills the
hungry with goodness.
Not madness, but goodness.
This is one position I believe to be
avoided at all costs.
It leads to spiritual stagnation.
It leads to carnal infancy of Christian experience
and a failure to grow in the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus.
And though such people would say, I believe
in the Holy Spirit, this is merely the
statement of a creed rather than a transforming
dynamic experience of life.
But then there is the opposite extreme, which
makes extravagant claim to an experience of holiness
completely contradicted by everyday life.
Some years ago, I remember in the south
of England, a young man came up to
me after an evening service at which I'd
been preaching, and he dashed up to me
with his face radiant and almost hugged me
and said, Hallelujah, brother.
Now, I reacted in a peculiar way to
that.
I retreated a yard or two and said,
Hallelujah, and hoped it was all right.
And then he said to me, I want
you to know that two years ago I
was saved, and one year ago I was
sanctified, and now I'm completely free from sin.
And I said, my dear old boy, you've
got further in two years than I've got
in twenty-five.
And if I understand my Bible all right,
you've got further in two years than Paul
got in a lifetime.
So the apostle Paul, soon after his conversion,
said of himself, I am the least of
the apostles.
Later on, I am less than the least
of all the saints.
And later on still, I am the chief
of sinners.
Paradoxical as it may seem, a growth in
New Testament holiness is accompanied by a growth
in the sense of one's utter, complete corruption.
These are two extremes, I believe, therefore, that
we need to avoid.
And yet, nevertheless, the whole book, the Word
of God, the blood of Jesus, an empty
tomb, an ascended Lord, cry out to the
church, be ye holy, for I am holy.
And I long that somehow we might get
not only into our hymn, hymnody, but into
our experience, the words of Charles Wesley, when
he sang, O that in me the sacred
fire might now begin to glow, burn up
the draught of base desire, and make the
mountain flow.
O thou who at Pentecost did fall, do
thou my sins consume.
Holy ghost on thee I call, spirit of
burning, come, that's a man with a longing
heart.
Our responsibility.
Secondly, the resistance to holiness.
O wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me?
There is not one of us who, having
faith, the challenge to holy living, has then
faced the utter inability in the flesh to
achieve what God commands.
Like water, human nature can never rise above
its own level, and that's a long way
short of the glory of God.
And in ourselves, therefore, left to ourselves, we
are hopelessly beaten, and we cannot accomplish that
which this text sets before us.
Some people would teach us that there is
such a thing in life as sinless perfection.
I suggest that this is utterly contrary to
all New Testament principle of what a holy
life really is.
The implication of sinless perfection is that the
Christian will attain to a state of grace
when he is completely free from all sin.
And yet one John 1 8 says, if
we say we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
We sing that lovely chorus, let the beauty
of Jesus be seen in me, all his
wondrous compassion, purity, O thou spirit divine, all
my nature refine.
But he doesn't do that.
If that chorus said, O thou spirit divine,
make all my nature mine, thy nature mine,
I would be happier about it.
For the whole principle of the New Testament
in holy living is the replacement of my
life by the life of Jesus in me.
The Old Testament points us to it when
I read, they that wait upon the Lord
shall exchange their strength.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the
fir tree, instead of the briar there shall
be the myrtle tree, instead of the life
of replacement.
And beloved friend, New Testament holiness is not
your human life and mine brought up to
some great high level of development, but it
is the divine life of God brought down
to the lowest level of the uttermost need
of our heart.
My New Testament does not teach sinless perfection,
it teaches sinful corruption.
I must therefore face my own inability in
my own strength to live a holy life.
And understand that the principle of the holy
life is the ability of the indwelling spirit
to meet and replace the inability of the
flesh.
Some time ago, in fact just after the
conference which I was sharing with Stephen Alford,
I was flying back to Chicago.
It was late at night, it was snowing,
the ceiling was low, the visibility was very
little, and planes were very much delayed.
Eventually we were told that this plane was
about to take off, and so we got
on board.
It was packed.
I got into the last seat, I think,
and sat down.
I saw men on the wings scraping off
the ice.
I saw the snow falling heavily and saw
the ceiling was low and the visibility was
very little.
And then I remembered that someone told me
a little way there to ago that the
weight of a Boeing jet was 150,000
pounds, and there was another 150,000 pounds
weight of gasoline in the wing.
300,000 pounds.
A snowy night, low ceiling, little visibility, and
I never put my weight down in the
plane completely anyway.
And I began to think myself, how is
this man going to get this colossal weight
off the ground?
Well obviously he did.
There was a moment when there was a
desperate roar, and if you travel economy class
you know what a roar it is.
And the plane moved along to the edge
of the runway and then moved down the
runway at a fantastic speed until reaching about
180 miles an hour.
The front of the plane went up in
the air and it began to soar up
and up and up until very soon it
was at 40,000 feet among the stars
and it blew a clear sky and no
fog and no snow.
What had happened?
There was a moment in the experience of
that plane because of the operation of a
law within it, that it was enabled to
overcome the downward pull of the law of
gravity.
And the law of aerodynamics lifted that great
weight away above.
Gravity still existed indeed.
If the engines failed to operate then gravity
would take over.
But as that plane lifted itself up from
the ground it was mastered by a new
law.
Do you remember that the apostle Paul said
the law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the
law of sin and death?
A holy life my friend is not by
might nor by power but by my spirit,
saith the Lord.
The responsibility for holiness, be ye holy for
I am holy.
The resistance to holiness, O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from this
body of death?
Our reception of holiness.
1 Corinthians 1 30, the Lord Jesus who
is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and
redemption.
Where we fail to attain by effort, bless
the Lord, we obtain by faith.
And just as we receive the Lord Jesus
Christ by faith for salvation, so we walk
in him and receive him by faith for
our sanctification.
Holiness is not an it, it is not
an experience, nor is it a blessing, it
is a person.
Jesus himself.
The only good thing about a Christian is
Christ.
Never does the New Testament take us away
from Christ as Lord to the Holy Spirit.
It is he, the Holy Spirit, who makes
real the lordship of Christ.
It is not on to Pentecost for the
church but it's back to Calvary.
Jesus said, you remember, at that day ye
shall know that I am in my Father,
ye in me, and I in you.
When the Comforter is come, whom I will
send unto you from the Father, even the
Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father,
he shall testify of me.
So the Lord Jesus has made unto us
righteousness for a guilty past, sanctification for a
triumphant present, and redemption for all the uncertainty
of the future.
If I am to receive this gift therefore
of a holy life, I must abandon my
struggle to live it, and lay my inability
to live a holy life exactly where I
laid my sin, at the feet of Jesus
Christ.
Have you ever done that?
Taken the inability, the complete helplessness to fulfill
this command, and to be holy, and laid
it all at the feet of Jesus Christ
our Lord, to find in him our victory.
Someone has said that great saints are simply
great receivers, men who take their holiness by
faith, and go on taking it by faith.
This is a crisis, a crisis which in
some instances occurs years after conversion, when a
Christian suddenly realizes that the Christian life is
not lived by effort with God's help, it
is lived by faith in Jesus Christ, who
now replaces his power to meet my weakness.
A crisis that's maintained by a constant process,
a step of faith that begins inaugurate a
new attitude to the Christian life.
A moment in which the Holy Spirit flashes
into our mind the truth that the opposite
to everything that we are by nature is
in the person of Jesus, and he is
in us to produce the opposite.
In other words, if you're impatient, you have
his patience.
If you're impure, you have his purity.
If you're bitter in spirit, you have his
grace.
If you're critical in spirit, you have his
love.
If you're worldly in spirit, you have his
glory.
The opposite to everything that I am by
nature is in Christ, and he by his
spirit is in you.
And therefore, in every moment of satanic temptation,
I may look up to him and say,
now Lord, I claim in this situation, I
claim thy grace, thy patience, thy purity, thy
love, thy holiness.
What do you see, dear friend, in your
life tonight that is contrary to the character
of Christ and therefore contrary to his will
for you?
Are you willing to forsake that?
Then you must go to Jesus now and
receive the opposite virtue to meet that vice
and that sin and praise him for the
victory.
I don't know how I can quite put
this except in rather a clumsy word.
But I want to say to you that
the whole genius of our salvation is that
a child of God is intended to be
an eschatological phenomena.
I simply mean by that a projection from
heaven into time.
A sample before the world of the kind
of life that God intends his family to
live.
A life that cannot be dismissed without, first
of all, people have found the explanation, our
reception of holiness.
Jesus made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and
redemption.
You remember this great hymn that is deeply
rooted in Keswick in the days of Hanley
Mole and Evan Hopkins?
My saviour, thou hast offered rest, O grant
it then to me, the rest of ceasing
from myself to find my all in thee.
In thy strong hand I lay me down,
so shall the work be done.
For who can work so wondrously as the
Almighty One?
My receptivity.
Then, fourthly, the realization of this in life.
Ephesians 5 18.
Be being filled with the Spirit.
A present continuous experience and a present increasing
experience.
For God fills what we are prepared to
empty.
And that which matters in all of our
lives tonight is that you and I should
be living to capacity.
It was the late Dr. Charles Inwood from
a Keswick platform here on one occasion, and
I quote him, said this, there is no
such thing as a once and for all
filling of the Holy Spirit.
It is a continuous appropriation of a continuous
supply from Jesus Christ himself.
It is a moment by moment faith in
a moment by moment filling, and a moment
by moment cleansing.
As I trust him, he fills me.
The moment I begin to believe, that moment
I begin to receive.
And as long as I keep on believing,
praise the Lord, I keep on receiving.
Every step of faith and obedience enlarges my
capacity for more of him.
And every moment of disobedience and unbelief shrinks
my capacity for Christ.
At any moment in your life as a
Christian, in any of our lives, if I
disobey the Lord, though we may never lose
our relationship, you cannot break a relationship, you
can break a friendship, you can break a
connection, but you can't break a relationship.
And at any moment of disobedience, though you
may not break the relationship, you may lose
your fellowship.
A relationship established by a new birth is
eternal, but fellowship depends on obedience and faith.
And at such a time, if a Christian
disobeys God and rejects some command of the
Lord and gets out of the will of
God, though he may continue in Christian work,
he may continue preaching, he may continue witnessing,
he may continue serving on the mission field,
he may continue doing all of these things,
but in point of fact, God has put
that man on the shelf, he's unusable, because
he's disobedient.
And that fellowship is only restored immediately in
response to renewed obedience and repentance.
Some time ago, I was taking a campaign
in the Caird Hall in Dundee.
One day, I went with a friend walking
along the north bank of the River Tay.
We came to the place where there's that
magnificent structure, that railway bridge, crossing that great
wide estuary.
And as we passed it, we noticed that
underneath that bridge, there were large, enormous concrete
pillars, full of slime and dirt and seashells,
sticking up above the muddy bed of the
river.
And this reminded us that there, many years
ago, there had been a tragic disaster.
When a train going over that old bridge,
the bridge had collapsed in a storm and
many people had been drowned.
But there, right where that disaster was, there
is now, as many of you know, that
lovely new bridge.
Several hours later that day, I came back
to that place.
And as I did so, I just happened
to look out to where the bridge was,
and I rubbed my eyes for a moment,
because there was no sign of the concrete
pillars.
No sign of the slime, the mud, the
seaweed, all gone.
All I could see was the new bridge.
For a moment, I began to ask myself,
has somebody come along here with excavators and
rooted them all out?
Well, of course not.
But in the intervening hours, one thing had
happened.
The tide had come in.
When the tide of that ocean fullness swept
into that estuary, all the signs of that
old disaster had been completely removed.
My dear listener, my dear friend, I believe
that it is God's purpose for every one
of us listening to this meeting tonight, that
whatever may have been the tragedy, the failure,
the breakdown, the disaster in your life in
the past, that God should take us back
to that very place, and right on the
scene of the disaster, the tide of his
fullness should come in, and all the marks
of that tragedy be obliterated forever.
For the Lord has come himself into his
temple, and filled us with his grace, and
with his power, and with his spirit.
The responsibility to holiness, be ye holy.
But the cry that has come from our
hearts, Lord, who shall deliver me from this
body of death?
The reception of holiness, the very person of
Jesus.
The reality of it in daily life, be
ye being filled with his spirit.
May the Lord make that real to some
heart here tonight, and may God give you
grace right now to step out of the
self-life into the Christ life, and to
prove Jesus Christ.