Welcome to From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith and powerful sermons for modern preachers
too.
This week we have Hans Wadwalgal asking the
question, are you a living epistle?
We begin again to commend ourselves or need
we as some others, epistles of commendations to
you or letters of commendations from you.
Ye are our epistle written in our hearts,
known and read of all men for as
much as ye are manifestly declared to be
the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written
not with ink but with the spirit of
the living God, not in tables of stone
but in fleshly tables of the heart.
And such trust have we through Christ to
God, were it not that we are sufficient
of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves,
but our sufficiency is of God, who also
hath made us able ministers of the new
covenant, not of the letter, but of the
spirit, for the letter killeth, but the spirit
giveth life.
But if the ministration of death, written and
engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the
children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the
face of Moses, for the glory of his
countenance, how shall not the ministration of the
spirit be rather glorious?
Now the Lord is that spirit, and where
the spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty.
But we all, with open face, beholding as
in a glass the glory of the Lord,
are changed into the same image from glory
to glory, even as by the spirit of
the Lord.
I came into the meeting tonight and saw
the heaven rolling away and the glory of
God descending, and was reminded of the words
of Jesus, where he said, Were two of
you or three are gathered in my name,
there am I in the midst, I thought.
Well, the Lord Jesus really has a plan
with every meeting, or he wouldn't bother to
come around, would he?
You think so?
But you know, it's been a source of
unceasing wonderment to me how that he always
manages to come.
Praise the Lord.
Sometimes people don't pay very much attention to
him, but he always manages to come, and
he always manages to manifest himself.
He must have a real purpose in it.
He must have a real plan.
And wouldn't it be interesting to find out
just what God's plan is?
Why, sure, when I come to meeting, I
come to meet my Lord.
And if the Lord has a plan, well,
what is my plan?
What did I come for to this meeting?
Did I come because I was compelled to
come?
Or because it was the right thing?
Or because I wanted to meet somebody?
Or did I come to meet the Lord
and to have him take hold and carry
out his own plan?
Beloved, the day will come when everything will
depend on that.
Everything will depend on whether the Lord is
at his way.
We are vessels, even vessels unto honor or
vessels unto dishonor.
I saw a man make a vessel in
the rookery in Cincinnati.
He took the clay, and he kneaded it
like my mother used to knead the dough
when she baked bread.
But he kneaded it very, very well, and
then he took it and, wha!
I wish I was a potter then.
And he had a rock there, a flat
rock.
And he had a muscle, believe me, on
that poor clay.
It just flattened out like this.
And then he kneaded it again and kneaded
it again and then again.
Whaa!
It just delighted me somehow.
But he took it up, and then he
kneaded again.
And he kept that up for a while,
and then he put it on a wheel,
had a wheel there and started spinning that
thing around.
And then he put his hand into that
clay, and he began to mold it.
My, that was beautiful.
He just drew it up like this, and
he made a nice vase or a vase.
Culture people say vase.
And I thought, my, isn't that a beautiful
vase?
I thought, now it's all finished.
It's beautifully shaped.
But he wasn't satisfied.
He took a knife and he slashed it
right through the middle.
And then he measured the walls of that
vase, and he found they weren't equal, they
weren't just right.
And so the whole process started all over
again.
Now, he had a plan, you He, he
just didn't.
He was just clay in the potter's hand.
And isn't that what God says, ye are
the clay, I am the potter.
And his plan is to make a vessel
out of you and out of me, thank
God.
And that vessel, and you know when this
fellow got through with the vase, I thought
he was through with it.
He said, oh no, now the process begins.
Now that vase is going to be put
into the oven, a burning, fiery furnace.
And there's no door to that furnace.
It's going to be masoned into the furnace
so that he can't get out, even if
he tried.
There's no way out.
He's got to stay in that fire for
38 hours, if I'm not mistaken, until it's
baked through and then it's a vase that
is fit for a king.
And indeed, the rookery in Cincinnati, you know,
sends out its wonderful crockery into all parts
of the world.
It has a world reputation.
But my God has an eternal reputation.
Hallelujah.
We are not all going to be in
Brooklyn forever.
The bums have moved to the West Coast
and we're going to move up.
Well, it's important for us to get hold
of it.
Praise God.
He saved us and called us with a
holy calling.
Oh, that the Holy Ghost might make it
real to us, that we're called with a
holy calling, that God has a mighty plan
and he likens this plan to the work
that Moses did in Old Testament times when
he gave the people the law.
And the law made nothing perfect.
He says the gospel was preached to them
as well as unto us, but it didn't
do them any good because it wasn't mixed
with faith.
What the law could not do, it cannot
do today.
God had to find a better way to
make a vessel unto honor, sanctified and made
for the master's use.
And nothing blesses a minister of the Holy
Ghost Church more than to see God moving
and molding lives and changing life.
But nothing blesses the heart of Jesus Christ
more than to look into a meeting like
this and to see men responding to the
Spirit of God.
Our sister said a while ago, we need
meetings like these.
We do more than we know.
We need Holy Ghost meetings.
We need meetings where the Spirit of God
can speak to us.
But more than that, we need meetings where
we can hear what the Spirit says unto
the churches, where our hearts are circumcised and
worked upon by the Holy Ghost.
That's what I need.
I need it every day.
When I read that scripture text where it
says the word of God is quick and
powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword.
You know how many people are tired of
it?
They've told me so.
They've told me that to my face.
We don't like to hear this message all
the time.
One man came to me this meeting.
He says, you ain't got no faith.
If you had faith, you wouldn't always talk
about humility.
That's how people talk.
Another one said a woman, a lady or
a would-be lady said, I don't want
to hear about coming down all the time.
I want to be somebody.
Beloved, you will be somebody.
A vessel unto dishonor, but oh God Almighty
has a wonderful plan and I'm not going
to please Him until I become clay in
His molding hands, in His masterful hands.
That's what God provides because the law made
nothing perfect.
The Lord amended perfection, didn't it?
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart.
Oh, what perfection God demands in my heart.
He wants my whole attention for Himself.
He wants my very body for Himself.
He wants my soul and my spirit.
The God of peace sanctify you wholly and
I pray God your whole spirit and soul
and body be preserved blameless unto the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Beloved, we need Holy Ghost meetings.
We need meetings where Jesus Christ walks in
the midst and where He speaks His word
and where He says, I know your works.
I counsel thee to buy of me gold
fried in the fire.
You're wretched and miserable, poor and blind and
naked.
I don't mind someone to come and tell
me that.
Missionary told us how one day man came
to his door.
It was in Arabia and the fellow had
never had a bath in all his life.
And so the missionary wanted to take him
into his house for a few days, but
he offered him a bath first of all.
This man was so indignant.
He was so insulted.
He said, well, who do you think I
am?
You think I'm so dirty that I need
a bath?
Beloved, that's the way saints are.
When God Almighty offers them a bath in
His own blood, when He lets His own
veins flow blood, blood, holy blood.
When He says without the shedding of blood
is no remission.
If we hide our sins, we shall not
prosper.
But if we confess our sins, how many
people hide their sins?
They're never cleansed.
They're never purified.
They're never changed.
God says we're changed into His image, His
image, His image.
David says, I shall be satisfied when I
awake with my likeness.
Has God Almighty been able to implant into
your heart this desire to be like Jesus?
Has He implanted in your heart a conviction?
Has He been able to show you that
all flesh is grass and all the goodliness
thereof?
Why am I so proud?
Why am I so proud and become insulted
when somebody offers me a bath?
Or when the Holy Ghost shows me my
true condition?
Why is it that I'm ashamed to confess
my sin or to have somebody tell me
my faults?
Why?
It's because they don't want to get rid
of them.
Or maybe I haven't seen the beauty of
the Son of God.
Oh beloved, what the law could not do,
God was bound to do somehow.
God is bound to have a people that
are clean.
He's going to have a people that are
like Jesus is holy.
Beloved, that's a wonderful call, and God made
that call before He made the world.
And when He said to Noah, that's a
strange thing, after He had destroyed the humanity
and destroyed the Son of God and the
giant and the cultured people, the whole generation,
He says, the end of all flesh has
come before me.
Why?
Because it has destroyed and wrecked and defiled
its way before me.
And because the heart and the imagination of
the human heart is only evil continually, and
people will not be instructed by my Spirit
anymore, the end of all flesh has come
before me.
And when He had saved Noah and his
family, He said, now be fruitful and replenish
I read that in one of the old
-time Lutheran translations.
He says, God knew that out of the
great multitude of people that would be born
after the flood, only a trickle would care
for God.
Only a small company would listen to what
the Spirit said to the churches, but He
knew that some would, and He foresaw them
before the foundation of the world.
He knew your name.
He wrote it in the book.
And before the foundation of the world, He
chose those whom He foreknew.
He says, then He also did predestinate to
be conformed to the image of His Son
that He might have be the firstborn among
many brethren.
Oh, beloved, we're not called to waste our
time in the works of the flesh and
to waste our time after a while in
remorse, in eternal remorse.
God has called us with an holy calling,
and He that has called us and appointed
us is God, who also hath filled us
with the Holy Ghost.
You remember that story the Greeks tell of
Pegasus, of a horse that could fly, wonderful
animal, eyes that spat fire, a mouth out
of which came smoke, and he had wings,
and he was destined to fly over the
clouds.
And he belonged to a young student, and
this student had a wonderful time riding on
back of Pegasus.
But one day this poor student got so
poor he had to pawn his clothes, he
had to pawn everything, and finally had to
pawn his horse.
And he pawned him off to a farmer,
and the farmer didn't want him, but he
gave him just a few dollars for this
horse.
He said, what good is a horse with
wings?
So he took a pair of shears and
he clipped the wings.
And then he hitched the horse to a
plow with a cow.
What are you hitched together with?
Poor Pegasus.
He was pulling the plow, and the farmer
hit him.
And poor Pegasus wasn't accustomed to work like
that, and the cow kept pushing him with
his horn.
And it was an awful team.
Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
Listen, you'll get no place if you are.
Our fellowship was with the Father, and with
his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Beloved, this is serious business.
And one day this student made some money,
made a few dollars, and first thing he
did was to look up this farmer.
And this horse's wings had grown again.
And he saw the poor horse sweating there,
and the cow mooing, and it was a
horrible sight.
And so he went to the farmer and
he said, how much do you want for
that horse?
Oh, he says, you can have him for
nothing.
He says, I'm disgusted with it.
He just, well, you know, the world knows
us not, because it knew him not.
We're made for heaven, not for this earth
thing.
He has saved us.
It made us a peculiar people, praise the
Lord.
And so he unhitched the horse, and as
soon as the horse felt the Master's touch,
a quiver went through his body.
His eyes began to spit fire.
His mouth opened, and the farmer stood back.
And this young student swung himself on the
back of Pegasus, and the farmer stood there
with open mouth.
He said, oh, we shall not all sleep,
but we shall all eat.
Glory, glory to God.
Will you pardon me?
I see so many hitched together, not with
a cow, but with a mule, or with
a donkey, or any old thing, and you
don't belong there.
Glory to God.
Now let's see, where was I?
Whom he did foreknow, them he also did
predestinate to be conformed.
And while the law was not able to
do it, God had to find a way,
and that way is Jesus Christ.
Jesus alone, and he who walks in the
midst of the seven golden candlesticks, he is
not interested in the backsliders.
He is not interested in those that are
half-hearted.
He says, I'll move that candlestick out of
your place, except you repent.
He wants perfection.
The Apostle Paul said, the Spirit of God
works in me mightily.
For what?
To present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
And God, who is tremendously patient with us,
there comes a time when he says, Ephraim
is turned to his idols.
Leave him alone.
But where are we tonight?
Are we being changed?
He talks here about the Spirit of God
being Lord.
Oh, that's it, beloved.
Only where the Spirit is Lord, the devil
is not Lord anymore.
That's why he says there's liberty.
Where the Spirit is Lord, the lordship of
the flesh has sinned.
If we live in the flesh, we shall
die.
Oh, how many are dead today.
They live in the flesh, and the works
of the flesh are manifest, which are these,
and then he names them all, adultery, fornication,
unclean, evil concupiscence, covetousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variance, emulation, wrath, strife, sedition, heresy, murder, drunkenness,
revelings, and such like, of which I've told
you often that they which do such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of God, but
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace.
How holy is the fruit of the Spirit,
where the Spirit is Lord.
That's the difference.
What does it say?
We don't need letters of commendation from you
or to you.
Ye are our epistle, written not with ink,
but with the Spirit of the living God.
That's number one.
What do you do with the Word of
God?
When Moses got the tables of the law
from God, he talks about the ministration of
death, which was engraven upon stones.
Moses had to stay there forty days and
forty nights while God wrote those words upon
the tables of stone.
What a job!
Forty days, forty nights.
And when he came out of that cloud,
his face shone.
Something had happened to him.
I was so happy this morning coming to
church with our children.
They were singing all along the way.
When they got tired singing English, they started
singing German hymns.
They put some of us older ones to
shame.
They claimed, we can't talk German anymore.
Your German is sauerkraut.
And these twins, they want to sing German.
They do.
They sing like the Germans themselves.
But they sang a song that I didn't
know.
They said, when Jesus came into my heart,
something happened to me.
Do you know that song?
Do you have that testimony?
Something happens to you when Jesus comes in.
Something happens.
What does, what happens?
Why he takes over.
Where sin abounded.
And we all know that sin abounded.
Oh, how it binds our souls.
How flesh bound us.
How pride binds us.
You know, our greatest enemy is the pride
of our heart that will not let us
bow and submit to the Spirit of God
and let him be Lord and Master of
our lives.
And God, in his great mercy, comes and
calls us to repentance and offers us a
new born.
Offers us Jesus.
When, when Brother Lardong traveled through Switzerland with
me, I took him to my hometown.
And he said, where's that little house of
the chimney sweeper?
I showed it to him.
Everybody knows about that house because it was
a dilapidated affair.
From top to bottom, all the windows were
broken.
Everything was dirty and filthy.
This chimney sweep was drinking all the time,
drinking away all his money, so he had
no money left.
But one day, he died.
He was found choked to death in the
ditch.
And somebody else bought his house.
And then we children were surprised to see
workmen come.
And they started to clean up that place.
They fixed the foundation.
They fixed that whole house from top to
bottom.
And they made it so pretty.
It looked like a dollhouse.
Fresh paint, everything freshly made.
It was just like a new house because
a new boss had moved in.
When Jesus comes in, something happens.
Ye are our epistle.
Everybody will know.
You don't have to do a lot of
talking.
Everybody around about you, people who work with
you in the shop, boys and girls in
school, your neighbors, how quickly they'll know the
difference.
They know that a new boss has moved
in.
Who is that boss?
Why, it's the Spirit of the living God
and where the Spirit is Lord.
And where his law is received.
And beloved, when he is Lord, why he
says, Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and
do not the things which I say?
How we treasure the Bible.
This New Testament, he says, Ye are the
epistle of Christ, written by the Spirit of
the living God, known and read of all
men.
That's the new covenant God made with his
people.
He says, Not as I did in Egypt
or when I brought them out of Egypt
and wrote my law upon tables of stone.
But he says, I'm going to give them
a new heart and put my Spirit within
them and write my law into their hearts.
Beloved, how is it tonight?
Has God Almighty taken over in my life?
If he has, it must have been because
I've made him Lord.
If I make him Lord, I'm not going
to be a hypocrite and say, Lord, Lord,
and then do what my flesh wants me
to do.
Or my evil nature, my pride, my conceit,
the works of the flesh are eliminated.
Christ has come in.
Jesus is on the throne.
Hallelujah.
Oh, how glad we ought to be for
this ministration of the Spirit.
Praise the Lord.
Ye are not in the flesh, but in
the Spirit.
If so be that the Spirit of Christ
dwell in you.
That's it.
And here's number one.
The Spirit is Lord.
His Word is law.
In his Word does he meditate day and
night.
Beloved, there's a tremendous lack of that kind
of Bible study.
Do you know that?
A fearful lack.
I spoke recently of a minister I met.
I've traveled halfway around the world, and he's
an eloquent man.
He's a man that could really preach, but
he can't live.
Can't get along with his wife.
His children are a disgrace.
He does things that you wouldn't expect from
a man of the world.
Why does he do that?
The Spirit is not Lord.
He has not bowed to Jesus Christ.
He has said, called him Lord, Lord, but
when it comes to his own will, he
says, I'm going to have my own way.
There's a power within him that rules his
mind, his thoughts, his feelings.
Isn't that what brought on the flood upon
the world of the ungodly?
Exactly.
If we live in the flesh, we shall
die.
Listen, ye are the epistle of Christ, written
by the Spirit of the living God.
I must give him time over this Bible,
and as I do, as I eat this
bread that comes down from heaven, Jesus Christ
gives me his life.
He says, the Spirit will receive from me
and show it unto you.
Here's the New Testament, written not with ink,
but with the Holy Ghost upon fleshly tables
of the heart, and ye are the epistle
of Christ.
Beloved Jesus is coming soon.
We all feel it somehow, we all realize
it, but how will I appear before him?
Am I a commendation for my Lord?
Is he able to lead me in triumph
everywhere?
Who always leadeth us in triumph?
Can Jesus Christ put you any place and
depend upon you to live for him, to
shine for him?
Can he put you into a difficult place
where it's awfully hard to get along with
people and depend upon you to still live
a life of love and joy and peace?
It will not be, beloved, unless the Spirit
is Lord.
Oh, how many times God puts us into
very difficult places in order to show us
that we're not rich in God, that we
have not become vessels unto honor, that Jesus
Christ is not Lord.
There's somebody else, Lord, and you can see
it on your face.
There's the mark of the beast.
The Bible says his name shall be in
their foreheads.
Oh, when the name of Jehovah has been
placed upon your foreheads, he does it.
It's because he has written his law upon
your heart.
Oh, think of how precious, how wonderfully precious
our hearts are.
God, taking these hearts and making them his
kingdom, they're more precious to him than the
hearts of angels.
He make us his angels' spirits and his
ministers a flame of fire.
But you and I are called to live
with Jesus Christ, to be united to the
Father and to the Son.
These things are hard to talk about.
It's almost too sacred, almost sacrilegious to speak
about.
It shouldn't be.
It ought to be our bread and our
water tonight.
It ought to be our life, our sustenance
tonight.
It ought to stir our hearts to diligence,
to make our calling and election sure.
But we don't do that unless we give
God a chance to write this word upon
our hearts.
It's a New Testament.
He that was rich became poor, that by
his poverty we might be rich.
How is it in my life tonight?
I ought to ask myself.
Love, joy, peace.
Do you find it difficult?
He gives us two methods here, or two
wonderful holy things.
First of all, to meditate in the Word
until we become a living epistle, and then
beholding the glory of God, as in a
glass, the glory of the Lord.
We've been beholding his glory tonight, haven't you?
We sit here in his presence, the sunlight
of his face, while with adoring wonder, adoring
wonder.
How many times I've seen faces transformed in
a meeting like this.
Again and again.
And I can see that people are looking
into the face of Jesus.
Beloved, if we'd spend more time doing that,
we'd be more conscious of being transformed.
Transformed.
What kind of changes does God make?
Why he changes us in his image.
It's unbelievable, unspeakable, but it's true nevertheless.
Oh, that's the thing I must experience.
And beloved, nothing will make my Christian life
interesting but following Jesus.
That's why to so many people the Christian
life is not interesting.
They're not being changed.
They live for nothing.
They don't know what they're living for.
Beloved, only the Spirit of God can make
these things real to us.
And only as we follow in his way,
waiting upon the Lord, the righteous who delight
is in the law of the Lord.
That's the beginning of the Christian life when
the Holy Ghost gives you the Spirit of
wisdom and revelation, and you begin to eat
this Word.
How different it is today.
How very different.
Now, it's my daily food.
I eat upon it.
I feast upon it.
The righteous delight greatly in the law of
the Lord, and he meditates there day and
night, and he's like a tree.
He draws life, life out of this Word.
Oh, it's not just intellectual understanding, but it
feeds my soul.
It communicates to me the very divine nature
of the Son of God.
I am changed.
I am transformed into the same image.
What will it be when we see him?
Beloved, it won't be so very, very long
until the pearly gates will unfold.
Huh.
Glory to God.
You know, when you just think of it,
just think of that vast throng, that vast
throng that no man can number, all the
faces shining like the sun in the kingdom
of their Father, shouting hallelujah unto him that
loved us and washed us from our sins.
And you know, death and sorrow and suffering
and sin and flesh and world and Brooklyn
is all behind you.
And here's the new Jerusalem.
Here's the Father and the Son and the
Holy Ghost.
Beloved, we're on the way.
We're in his hand.
He is shaping us tonight, changing us, seeking
to get into our hearts and into our
mentality, seeking to gain our attention, to open
our ear for the thing the Spirit says
unto the churches.
And when he has gained our attention, oh,
that word will enter into our heart like
the seed of the kingdom and it will
sprout and it'll bring forth that word unto
God's end.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
and Classic Sermon series.
This week you heard Hans Wadvogel with his
message, Are You a Living Epistle?
Tune in next week to hear Milton Green
talk about the flesh and the power of
darkness on From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.