I want to read from John 20, beginning
with verse 19, a familiar passage.
Then the same day at evening, being the
first day of the week, when the doors
were shut, and where the disciples were assembled
for care of the Jews, came Jesus, and
stood in the midst, and said unto them,
Peace be unto you.
And when he had so said, he showed
unto them his hands and his side.
Then were the disciples glad when they saw
the Lord.
Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be
unto you.
As my Father sent me, even so send
I you.
And when he had said this, he breathed
it down on them, and saith unto them,
Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto
them, and whosoever sins ye retain, they are
retained.
Reader's Digest had an article some months past
on deep breathing.
Went on to say that we breathe with
only a part of our lungs.
There's plenty of air around us and more
lung space within us than most of us
ever use.
And we ought to make the most of
our resources.
After all, breathing is pretty important.
Everything depends on it.
When you quit breathing, you quit, period.
We are never more than a few breaths,
beloved, from death and eternity.
Just a few breaths.
We read in Genesis 2,7 that God
made man out of the dust and breathed
into him the breath of life, and man
became a living soul.
Man is a God-inspired being in that
sense.
We're not mere matter, we're living souls.
And what makes the difference is the breath
of God.
Then we read in 2 Timothy 3,16
that God breathed again in the Scriptures.
All Scripture is Godly.
Now, there is ordinary human inspiration in great
literature and music, but this book's more than
a book, it's breath.
The breath of God.
I'm not interested in theories of inspiration, this
is God's word.
Not just in spots or wherever it happens
to speak to me, but in its entirety.
Anytime and all the time, all Scripture is
God-breathed.
I believe every bit of it.
I think of that businessman who was called
upon to preside at a religious meeting, and
he was a little out of his element.
And after the Scriptures had been read, he
got a little mixed up with the procedure
of the business meeting, and said, if there
are no corrections or additions, the Scriptures will
stand as read.
Well, I'm in favor of that.
We just read here now that our Lord
breathed on the disciples, and I think this
was prophetic, of Pentecost, the coming of the
Spirit.
Every Christian is God-breathed, for when he's
born again, God breathes into him eternal life,
and he's indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
But here is a breathing of the Holy
Spirit for power.
For service, the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
The Church is God-breathed, a true Church,
a heavenly fellowship, imbued with life from above,
but not all churches are empowered by the
Holy Spirit for service and for testimony.
I've stood before many a Sunday morning congregation,
and felt like that the only text for
that morning ought to be, Can these dry
bones live?
The greatest need of the Church today is
breath.
Dr. Phillips, in the foreword to one of
his translations, says the Church today is so
prosperous that she's fat and out of breath,
and so organized it's brussel-bound.
I like that statement, fat and out of
breath.
That's a pretty good description of the professing
Church today.
Puffing and blowing and reddening the face, exhaling
without inhaling, breathing out without taking in, and
if we quit breathing in, we soon quit
breathing out.
There's a lot going on today.
There has been more going on in the
Church.
But somehow, so much of it doesn't amount
to a great deal.
I heard of a cook down in the
South who decided to go up north and
cook for a very wealthy family, sort of
a tonguey group.
She didn't stay long, came back and said,
Didn't you like it up there?
No, she said there was too much shuffling
of the dishes for the fewness of the
widows.
You ever been in a church where there
was too much shuffling of the dishes?
I have.
We've got a lot of that today.
Once at Northfield, at Mr. Moody's table, Wilbur
Chapman asked F.B. Meyer, Why is my
experience so intermittent, up and down, in and
out?
And F.B. Meyer asked him, Have you
ever tried breathing out three times before you
breathed in once?
And that's all he said.
And Wilbur Chapman began to think that one
over.
And he learned a great lesson.
Then we have artificial respiration.
They mouth to mouth and somebody drowns.
And the Church is using a lot of
it.
Men are trying to blow inspiration into the
Church by pit talks and programs and promotion.
And sometimes they revive the organism temporarily and
resuscitate the corpse momentarily.
But there's no real revival for just blowing
human breath into a corpus.
We've got a lot of artificial respiration experts
today in the religious field.
Making a living blowing ordinary human inspiration into
churches that have long since been out of
breath.
And my subject tonight and my question is
this.
Are you out of breath?
Now, you sing here in the Spirit, I
think, but have you ever watched a song
leader trying to get a crowd to sing
when they didn't have a song in their
hearts?
What frustrating business.
What an exercise in futility.
And we're spending a lot of time in
the Church today trying to pull out what
never has been put in.
You know what's down in the well will
come up in the bucket.
And if there's no song in them and
if there's no love for Christ in them
and no love for His Church and no
love for the Lord, you can't get them
to exhale what's never been inhaled.
Now, there are two verbs here in this
passage I read.
He breathed on them and said, Receive, give.
We must breathe into us what He breathes
upon us.
There is the giving and there's the receiving.
There's a word among the many words that
are going around these days in the religious
circles, you know.
We've had quite a lot of them.
Relevance and dialogue and involvement and what have
you.
I'm getting a little tired of some of
them.
Now, one of them is open-endedness.
That's a new term that's going around.
Open toward God for strength and open toward
man for service.
Now, the stream that has no inlet will
soon be exhausted and the stream without outlet
will soon be stagnant.
The church at Jerusalem was a stagnant church
until persecution came and scattered it out in
all directions.
Dr. Phillips says of the early church, they
were open on the Godward side.
I like that.
Dear friend tonight, are you open on the
Godward side?
Your life cannot be open on the manward
side.
There won't be any blessing if you're not
open on the Godward side.
How we miss A.W. Tozer.
Tozer was a prophet.
We've never been oversupplied with prophets.
Since he's gone, I can't think of one.
And Tozer had a way of saying things
that would shock you at first.
He said the notion that the first business
of the church is to spread the gospel
is false.
He said the first business of the church
is to be worthy to spread it.
He said our Lord said go ye, but
he said carry ye first.
I think today we're trying to promote evangelism,
trying to send the crowd out to evangelize,
they're not ready to evangelize.
Trying to send folks out to be missionaries
in their communities, they're not ready.
I'm leaving.
Going out?
Certainly I do.
Many of our people are not ready to
go.
You can have a pep meeting and excite
some laymen and others to rush around over
the community when they don't know what to
say when they get where they want.
I've heard sermons to young people from Isaiah's
call, trying to get young folks to say
here am I.
Send me.
The trouble with a lot of folks today
is they're not ready to say here am
I because they've never first said woe is
me.
Until you've said woe is me and have
seen the Lord and have said I am
undone, man of unclean lips, dwelling in the
midst of a people of unclean lips, you're
not ready to go.
I think a Christian needs to look in
the mirror before he looks out the window.
I've been looking out the window at the
lost world and all its need, but don't
look out the window until you've looked in
the mirror and this is the mirror.
First see yourself in the sight of God
and when you get straightened out with Him,
then look out the window.
Use a salt of the earth, yes, but
salt never did any good in a salt
shaker.
I can't imagine any way that salt would
ever be beneficial in a salt cellar.
It has to be shaken out.
Now we're building million-dollar salt cellars all
over the country, calling them churches, but there's
nothing much good unless you can shake that
cloud out of there.
We are not depositories, beloved, we are dispensers.
I heard of a fellow showing a friend
of his over a brand-new church building
some time ago, and he said, You know,
this place is so insulated you can't hear
a sound from the outside.
I've been in some churches like that.
They never heard the call of a lost
world.
They never heard anything from the outside.
You should congratulate society.
Now in the book of Acts, wonderful things
happen, beloved, but have you ever stopped to
reflect that all these marvelous things that happen
in the book of Acts were just the
outflow and the overflow of the inflow of
the Spirit of God?
Just that.
Now look.
I have used in other connections the illustration
of the old water wheel.
My father used to take me when I
was a boy to an old mill out
in the country that was operated by a
water wheel.
And the stream poured on the big wheel
and it turned and all the smaller wheels
turned and the mill was in operation.
Now suppose the miller would come down some
morning and the wheel wouldn't turn because there
wasn't enough water.
How foolish he would be to strive and
strain to try to make the wheel go
round.
How foolish to call in the neighbors and
strive and strain to make the wheel go
round.
But I can tell you where he could
use some energy.
He could go up the creek, clear it
out, get the channel clean, remove the debris,
the dead logs, the leaves, and then the
water would flow.
The wheel would turn and the mill would
operate and he'd be in business again.
I don't know of anything that Christians need
to do today quite so much in all
our churches as to take a trip up
the creek in our personal living and in
our church life.
Everywhere I go I see educational directors and
music leaders and pastors and Sunday school superintendents
sweating and coughing and blowing red in the
face trying to make the wheels go round.
They won't go round that way.
And we won't have anything to show for
all our neighbors.
I'm having the hardest time in this world
trying to get church members to agree to
go up the creek and clear the channel.
They'll do everything else in this world but
do that.
They'll put on all kinds of drives and
campaigns but to go up the creek, no.
To get right with God and right with
people, no.
We want a revival without that.
You never have a revival without that.
And it's just as simple as getting right
with God as Dr. Torrey used to have
in his placards for his great evangelistic campaigns.
Just those words, get right with God.
Anybody can understand that.
And the corollary to that is to get
right with people.
What is there up the creek that needs
to be cleared out in your own life?
Is it the sin of omission, something you
ought to do but you won't do?
Is it the sin of omission, something you
ought not to do that you are doing?
Is it the sin of the disposition?
Is it a doubtful thing in your life?
What is it that clogs the channel?
You know what the song says, we cannot
be channels of blessing if our lives are
not free from known sins.
Beloved, we need to go up the creek.
Now if I may change horses in the
middle of the stream here, and change the
figure from air to water.
Our Lord said in John 7, 37, 39,
He spoke of the spirit, Any man thirst,
let him come unto me and drink.
This spoke he of the spirit, which they
that believe on him should receive.
For the spirit was not yet given, because
Jesus was not yet glorified.
Now you have the giving and the receiving
again.
Openness toward God, let him drink.
Openness toward men, from within him shall flow
rivers of water.
There it is again.
That's the Christian life in its fullest experience.
Have you read The New Life of Mr.
Moody by Pollock, the man who wrote the
biography of Billy Graham?
I've read many biographies of Moody, but I
got more out of this one than any
of the others.
And as you know, when Mr. Moody was
a young Christian, he was a dynamo of
energy.
If he was built like an ox, he
could wire out a dozen men.
Sometimes they'd pray that the Lord would either
tie Moody down or give him an extra
dose of strength, because nobody could keep up
with him.
There were two old ladies in the congregation
who kept praying that he'd be filled with
the spirit, and one day he came into
that blessed experience, and then he said this.
And I'd never read this before.
He said, Up until then I was carrying
buckets of water.
Now I have a river that carries me.
Oh, isn't that just about what's the matter
with most of us today, aren't we?
Running around with buckets of water always, refilling,
refilling, running out, refilling.
Beloved, we need to get out on the
river that carries us.
I believe the Church must get out into
the world.
I didn't have to read Bonhoeffer to find
that out.
I've known that ever since our Lord said,
As thou hast sent me into the world,
even so have I sent you into the
world.
Well, I read in John 17 where I
belong with regard to this world.
I don't see why folks have such a
time trying to figure that out.
Jesus said in John 17 that we've been
saved out of this world.
We're still in the world, that is, physically.
We have to live here.
But we're not of the world, but we've
been saved out of the world to go
right back into the world and win other
people out of the world, and that's the
only business we have in this world.
Now that's ridiculous.
But we're trying to send folks out before
they're ready to go, and that comes back
to our deep breathing exercises again.
We're trying to get churches and Christians to
breathe out before they breathe in.
Now, never mind all the books on how.
Dr. Tozer said he started taking deep breathing
exercises one time.
He said, I'd have had a chest like
a bell, but I made the mistake of
buying a book on how to do it.
So he got some mixed up on the
book and quit.
Never did develop himself.
Don't buy too many books on how to
do all these things.
We wear ourselves out figuring out how many
steps to take.
Some have four, five, six, seven steps.
Lay the books all aside.
Come to Jesus like a little child, in
simplicity.
I think of the fable about the mother
bear who was trying to teach her cubs
how to walk, and one of them said,
Which foot shall I put forward first?
The old mother bear said, Shut up and
walk.
So, don't read too many books.
Just as physically we draw such short breaths.
I think readers digest this right.
I'm sure there's something to that.
I know I'm guilty.
We get along with just gasps, most of
us.
We sort of gasp our way along.
I never use most of our lungs, only
a portion.
And just so do we Christians draw little
gasps of divine power instead of the deep,
regular inhaling of the breath of God.
A lot of diseases in the church today.
One brother this afternoon mentioned sleep and sickness.
Well, we are considerably afflicted with that in
the church today.
Then there's pernicious anemia.
A lot of souls are suffering from that.
Then we've got infantile paralysis.
Babies, you know, like the ones at Corinth
that wouldn't grow up.
A hundred and fifty and two hundred pound
babies.
Keep the preacher busy running around with a
milk bottle.
And they should have been on leave.
And then when they have a new preacher,
change pastors, a new man comes, they say,
I don't like him, he changed my formula.
Babies.
But beloved, with what we are considering tonight,
let me remind you of another disease in
the church.
Spiritual emphysema and asthma.
I've been in more asthmatic churches, wheezing their
way along.
And that's because we're living but gasps.
I go from church to church and I
see these dear people, red in the face,
puffing and blowing out of breath.
No regular, orderly, devotional life.
No moment by moment appropriation of the living
Christ for every need of body and mind
and spirit.
No constant looking unto Jesus for everything.
I encounter them everywhere.
And it's so simple, if only we could
get into the secret of it.
Some years ago I spelled out faith, f
-a-i-t-h, into a little acrostic.
I read of it in the forum.
For all I take him.
And I find myself saying again and again,
for all he is, I take him.
For all my need, I trust him.
And for all his blessings, I thank him.
And that spells out f-a-i-t
-h, you know, every time.
It helps me along.
These little things sometimes come in helpful.
We've made it complicated, beloved.
This secret's been hidden from the wise and
prudent and revealed unto them.
It did me a lot of good to
learn some years ago that there'll always be
enough of everything that I need to do
all that God wants me to do, as
long as God wants me to do it.
Now, are you worrying about things?
Isn't that true?
If I'm in God's will to do what
God wants me to do, then I'm not
supposed to be doing anything else as long
as God wants me to do it.
When are we going to come to the
simplicity of this thing?
I read of a dear old lady who
was told, now the doctors have done all
they can for you, and you're just going
to have to trust the Lord.
And she said, has it come to that?
Well, it always comes to that, and since
it always comes to that, why don't we
start out with that?
You're going to get around to it, isn't
you?
It always comes to how things stand between
us and God.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy rode down a street in
Dallas, and it looked like to this world
that he had it made wealth, education, attractive
wife and children, president of the United States,
power, and what looked like a promising future.
And then a rifle cracked, and all that
mattered was how things stood between John Fitzgerald
Kennedy and God.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
and all that might or will there give,
a waiter like the inevitable hour, the paths
of glory lead me to the good.
All that mattered then was how things stood
between him and God.
And it's all that will matter with any
of us.
When are we going to learn this precious,
simple truth?
And sometimes it's the humblest people who learn
it.
You know, beloved, there isn't so much to
learn as there is to unlearn.
We know too much.
Sometimes we've read too many books and heard
too many preachers.
Mrs. Woodrow Wilson said that on her wedding
day, the second wife of the president, she
said, On the wedding day, my old negro
cook said, Goodbye, take Jesus for your doctor
and your friend.
And Mrs. Wilson said, I have thought that
if I could take him with as simple
and childlike faith as that fine old negro
woman did, the new life with its broader
opportunities could have been more enriched for myself
and more useful to others.
Now, here was a wife of a president
of the United States who somehow couldn't get
into the simple lesson that an old negro
cook had learned a long time ago.
And after all, the Bible says that there
are four categories of people from which there
just won't be a lot of people saved.
It said not many rich people.
That doesn't mean God's got anything against rich
folks, but rich folks have a lot of
trouble getting saved because it's pretty hard for
them to become poor in spirit and realize
they're nothing.
The rich young ruler was a fine chap,
but away he went on his crutches.
And then Paul said, Not many wives.
How many of the super-intellectuals do you
know that are deep, devoted servants of the
Lord?
There are a few, thank the Lord.
It doesn't say not any.
Lady Huntington said she got to heaven on
an M.
It didn't say not any, not many.
She said that letter M was what led
her through.
Not many mighty.
How many men in power and position?
I don't know how many senators.
I don't know how many presidents of the
United States have been deep, devoted Christians.
I can't get much information along that line
on most of them.
Not many noble, the blue bloods, the aristocrats.
How many of them make it?
God hasn't got anything against these people, but
it's awfully hard to come in that little
wicked gate of Matthew 18.3, except you
be converted and become as little children.
Those two C's, conversion and childlikeness.
It's pretty hard to get in that door
somehow.
It's too simple for us.
It's difficult, it seems, to be converted and
becomes a little child, and then after we
enter in, it's pretty hard to enter into
the deeper secrets of just trusting Jesus for
everything.
I wonder what would happen if somebody would
just start out and really trust Jesus for
everything.
Quit talking about it and do it.
I'm getting to the place where my favorite
song is Trusting Jesus, that is all.
Now, that's one of the simplest things.
Anybody could have written it, I think, and
yet, no.
Because it's a more profound song than you
imagine.
I find myself trying to sing it in
my cracked voice again and again because that's
the whole thing.
Trusting Jesus.
But somehow a Mrs. Wilson may miss it
while the old cook finds it.
A millionaire may miss it while the gardener
finds it.
A college PhD may miss it while the
janitor finds it.
A United States president may miss it while
some country justice of the peace finds it.
A socialite Mrs. Van Snoodle with blue blood
in her veins may miss it while the
maid finds it.
The Lord hasn't got anything against those people,
but you've got to humble yourself and come
as a little child.
The folks who got the blessing from Jesus,
most of them just ordinary folks.
Rich young Rudolph was quite a classic character,
but he missed it that there was old
Bartimaeus and Zacchaeus and that poor sick woman
who'd spent all her money and was worse
and somehow got through the crowd and touched
him.
They got the blessing.
I'm afraid we know too much.
Our Lord has made it simple enough.
I remember when I went to Charleston back
in the 30s, I was exercised about the
need in my own life of the filling
of the Spirit.
I'd read a lot of books, which, like
I said, confused more than they clarified.
And there was a godly old saint there
who gave me a book, The Deeper Experiences
of Famous Christians.
It did me more good than any book
of its kind I've ever read.
Took it to my room.
Couldn't go to sleep till I had read
the book, and then I couldn't go to
sleep because I had read the book.
And I found myself sitting down at that
old church with the light turned on and
folded over myself sometimes, saying, Lord, what's this
all about?
I said, whatever I need in whatever is
true to the book, I want.
I thought I was safe on that.
But I didn't have any vision, didn't hear
any voices.
I guess I'm not made up that way,
and I'm glad that I'm not, because if
I'd had some great, blazing experience on top
of a mountain, I'd be running around telling
everybody they had to climb a mountain and
have a blazing experience.
If they didn't have it, then they'd be
worse off than ever before.
The Lord has never been pleased to send
me a special delivery letter about these things.
But I have thanked God I got through
to the place where, just as I took
Jesus as my Savior by simple faith, so
I received the Holy Spirit for a gracious
infilling.
And that's what he wants us to do,
believe me.
But Reader's Digest goes on to say that
if you're going to practice the deep breathing
exercise, first get all the old foul air
out of your lungs.
It goes on to say you'll be surprised
how long you can keep on exhaling.
And that's true.
You think that you are through exhaling, but
you still keep on.
That must be done before you inhale properly.
A lot of Christians have never really gotten
rid of the sin in their lives and
put away even the not ready to receive
the Holy Spirit.
It's one thing to ask God to take
away our sins.
It's another thing to be willing to put
them away.
And then you want to get out of
the places where there's foul air.
Some people hang around in these spots and
wonder why they don't know anything about the
deep breathing exercises of the children of God.
I heard of a young couple that had
been dancing in a nightclub in the foul,
faded air.
And they came up on the street long
in the early hours of the morning into
the morning breeze.
One of them said, What's that I smell?
And the other said, That's fresh air.
I think a lot of young people need
to get out of the basement of evil
thoughts.
And the things they look at on television,
and the books they read, and the company
they keep, get out to where the air
is better.
And then breathe, and then receive, and drink
deeply.
I was in the mountains of Virginia last
year in summertime, lovely mountains like these.
When I arrived at the motel, I looked
around and could see no way to walk.
Of course, motels are made for motorists, not
for pedestrians.
But I finally discovered a little obscure path
that led up the side of the hill,
and I took up that path and I
found a patch of woods, and I went
across and climbed a hill and came out
on a view that practically took my breath.
I got up every morning at 5.30
for the rest of the week to climb
that hill and have a little session with
the Lord.
I found myself saying morning after morning, Lord,
as I breathe in this wonderful air, by
simple faith, I would draw in the breath
of the Spirit for the needs of this
day.
F.B. Meyer did it in 1887 at
the first Keswick conference he ever attended.
He didn't bother about this, and some of
the people at the conference were greatly concerned.
Some of them had been praying long hours
and hadn't gotten through.
He said, I climbed a little hill one
evening, and I said, Lord, I'm too tired
to think or to feel or to pray
intensely.
I'm too worn out to agonize.
He said, A voice seemed to say, As
you took me for forgiveness, so take the
Holy Spirit.
According to your faith, be it unto you.
And F.B. Meyer said, Lord, as I
breathe this whiff of air, so I breathe
thy Holy Spirit by faith.
He came back down from that hill.
He hadn't had to procure you thinking.
He hadn't seen his vision.
He hadn't heard the voice, but he had
settled with God, and the rest of his
life proved it.
I covet this for every person in this
place tonight.
I'm not talking about a set of mental
gymnastics.
I'm not talking about auto-suggestion.
I'm not talking about any trick of the
subconscious or any subjective, worked-up experience God
provides.
But the same Savior who saved you, if
you're a child of God tonight, then in
simple faith he took you, is willing and
is breathing upon you if you will receive
what he brings by simple appropriating faith, the
appropriation of the living Christ for every need,
the appropriation of the Holy Spirit for testimony
and for service.
There's nothing fanciful about it.
It's as simple as that if you mean
business.
There's a song that carries out and continues
the thought, Breathe on me breath of God,
fill me with life anew, that I may
love what thou dost love and do what
thou wouldst do.
Now, let's look at that, beloved.
You're asking God to breathe upon you and
fill you with new life.
What for?
So I can run around and brag about
it?
No.
That I may love what you love and
do what you do.
You see, there's a practical purpose to this
thing.
And have you noticed the unkills and the
kills in the next two verses?
Breathe on me breath of God until my
heart is pure, until with thee I will
one will to do what you need to
do.
Breathe on me breath of God till I
am wholly thine, till all this earthly part
of me glows with thy fire divine.
There's a practical purpose here.
We don't want subjective experiences to make us
feel superior.
There are various things going around today that
disturb the church and divide the church a
great deal, because some people have some of
these experiences and then they become a select
group.
And if you haven't had that, you're not
one of the ends, and you've maybe never
even been saved, and it's causing untold confusion.
Well, there's no confusion caused by this sort
of thing when you understand it, because it's
that Jesus Christ might be glorified.
The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to
glorify Jesus.
He never calls attention to himself in this
book.
He magnifies the Lord Jesus Christ.
And a true spiritual Christian brags on Jesus,
not on himself, but glorifies the Lord.