My dear friends, oh dear, it sounds awful
to me, but is it all right for
you?
This isn't my normal voice at all.
However, I won't say any more about it,
perhaps I'm saying too much.
Listen friends, each morning this week so far,
I have brought you what might properly be
described as a thoroughgoing Bible study.
For a change, this morning I shall limit
myself to two texts.
Will you kindly turn to the first of
them?
In Paul's epistle to the Romans, chapter 13,
and the last verse in the chapter, that
is verse 14.
Romans chapter 13, verse 14.
But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make not provision for the flesh to
fulfill the lusts or desires thereof.
Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
make not provision for the flesh to fulfill
the lusts thereof.
My subject in this present address is one
of deepest concern to every Christian believer.
That subject is how to live in victory
over the flesh.
Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
make not provision for the flesh to fulfill
the lusts thereof.
Now, of course, it is quite plain that
when Paul writes in this text, make not
provision for the flesh, he is using that
phrase, the flesh, in a recondite or figurative
way to indicate some serious moral proclivity or
predisposition to sin which exists in our human
nature.
For he exhorts us not to fulfill the
lusts of the flesh.
What, then, does Paul mean by the flesh?
Well, now, the Greek word translated as flesh
is sart, in English lettering s-a-r
-t, sart.
That word occurs 91 times in Paul's epistles,
if we include Hebrews as Pauline.
Those 91 occurrences break down as follows.
One, sart is used 37 times of the
physical body.
Two, it is used 25 times of humanity
or that which is human.
Three, it is used 27 times in a
figurative way, meaning an hereditary sin bias in
our human nature.
And finally, he, Paul, uses the word twice
in what I can only call a kind
of borderline way.
Now, of course, dear friends, I cannot here
take you through all those 27 texts where
the phrase, the flesh, is used figuratively of
the hereditary sin bent in our moral nature.
But I can report to you the result
of my own careful scrutiny of all the
27.
By the flesh, Paul means our inborn animal
or physical and selfish urges or propensities.
Not a very happy phrase, but I'll say
it again.
He means our inborn animal and selfish urges
or propensities.
Now, these animal and selfish propensities, which create
in you and me our predisposition to sin,
we have inherited from our human predecessors along
with all the higher and nobler impulses of
our total humanhood.
Listen, dear fellow believers, we must never think
that heredity only brings us bad things.
All the lovely things in our human life
and experience come to us by the same
channel of heredity.
Now, if you look through all those places
where Paul uses that expression, the flesh, figuratively
of this moral evil in our nature, you
may quickly verify for your own self that
in each case you can accurately substitute for
that phrase, the flesh, animal, and selfish propensities.
That is the common denominator which fits them
all.
Now, Mr. Chairman and friends, I submit to
you this morning it is exceedingly important to
grasp that, because it tells us at once
that this innate perversity or hereditary sin-proneness
must not be thought of as a kind
of hard core inside us, or as some
kind of a malignant growth which can be
excised by spiritual surgery, or as a so
-called old nature which can be eradicated, or
as a parasite which can be ripped out
from the fibers of our moral being, or
as a kind of ugly old man who
can be bound and gagged or ejected from
our inner being like a troublesome lodger.
No, no, no.
By the flesh, Paul means a corruption in
our nature which is more accurately comparable to
blight spread throughout a tree, or to a
disseminated sclerosis through the human physical organism, or
to a toxema throughout the bloodstream.
It is not something concentrated inside us which
can be treated separately and locally.
In a word, it is not something which
can in any way be treated in lump
form.
It is an inhering condition coextensive with the
mind itself.
And, thank God, that condition which we have
all hereditarily received, that condition can be remedially
dealt with by the deeper spiritual provisions which
are yours and mine in Christ, that is,
by the inward supernatural therapy of the Holy
Spirit.
Well now, with that clearly in mind, I
invite you to look at the advice given
to us in our text.
Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
make not provision for the flesh to fulfill
the lusts thereof.
You will observe as quickly as I do
that the apostolic counsel here is twofold.
The first part of it is positive, something
we are to do.
The second part of it is negative, something
we are not to do.
The positive part is put on the Lord
Jesus Christ.
The negative part is don't make provision for
the flesh.
So look first at the positive, afterwards at
the negative.
This is the positive, put ye on the
Lord Jesus Christ.
What then did Paul mean when he said
put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ?
Well his first reference, beyond any puradventure, is
to our conversion.
We know that from a parallel reference in
Galatians chapter 3 verse 27, where Paul says,
for as many of you as were baptized
into Christ did thereby put on Christ.
So without any possibility of doubt, the primary
reference here is to our conversion, our regeneration.
At our conversion we did put on the
Lord Jesus Christ.
But I'm sure you will agree with me
in this, there are subsidiary ways in which
we are to put on the Lord Jesus
Christ again and again and again, subsequently to
our conversion.
Probably many of you are like me in
this, that every morning when I wake my
first thought is of my precious, glorious, adorable
Savior, and I commence each day by putting
him on again.
I say to him, Lord Jesus, at the
beginning of this new day I take thee
as my wisdom, as my grace, as my
patience, as my guidance, etc., etc.
You do the same, don't you?
I hope you do.
And then of course we are to put
on the Lord Jesus Christ for every new
exigency of our pilgrim life, for every new
burden to be borne, and every new trial
to be endured, and every new piece of
Christian service to be attempted.
We need to put Jesus on again and
again and again, don't we?
And if you and I are to have
victory over the flesh, that is the first
thing.
We must continually put on the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Now I am human enough and compassionate enough
to be suspecting that some of you, perhaps
some of you younger folks here this morning,
will be inwardly saying, yes, very well, Dr.
Baxter, but I have a problem you haven't
touched.
I think I do what you're telling us
we have to do.
At least I try to do it, but
despite all my putting on of the Lord
Jesus Christ, something seems to go wretchedly wrong.
Can you give me any advice concerning that?
Well, at any rate, you are reminding me
of something which I now will tell you.
It was my privilege to be trained for
the Christian ministry in that famous institution in
London, England, Spurgeon's Theological College.
It was founded, of course, by that incomparable
prince of preachers, the late, famous Charles Adams
Spurgeon.
Now in the four-year course at Spurgeon's
College, every student has to preach either once
or twice a spontaneous, unpremeditated sermon on a
subject, a topic or a text, which is
handed to him on a folded slip of
paper.
And you are to expatiate on the text
or the subject for a minimum of ten
minutes.
And let me tell you, in some of
those unpremeditated perorations, I heard some of the
wildest, weirdest, unforgettable things I ever heard.
But besides having to do that once or
twice, either once or twice, usually twice, every
student has to preach a prepared discourse in
the presence of the principal and the professors
and the Philistines.
I did it twice.
And let me tell you, when you've gone
through that ordeal, you're never afraid of the
Great Tribulation again.
Now I'm thinking of something that took place
when the glorious Charles Adams Spurgeon himself was
alive and was the principal of the college.
One morning, it was sermon class time, and
the preacher was a very self-confident, budding,
young orator who thought he was predestinated to
be the modern Demosthenes.
He really wanted to show off in the
presence of Spurgeon and the faculty.
His subject was the Christian in complete armor.
And of course, you won't need me to
tell you, his passage was Ephesians 6, put
on the armor of God.
Oh, and talk about youthful oratory and eloquence.
You never heard the likes of it.
He had a great old time.
The angels in heaven must have wondered at
his wisdom.
And so graphically did he describe putting on
the armor.
As he put on the different parts, you
could almost hear the metallic clank, clank, clank
of the armor, until at last he got
it all on.
And then he said, and now we have
put on the whole armor of God, and
now where's the devil?
And Spurgeon, cupping his hand to his mouth,
whispered, brother, he's inside the armor.
Has that pleasant little anecdote somehow rung a
bell in your unhappy experience?
And are you saying, oh Mr. Preacher, that's
my problem.
I put on the armor, but when I've
done so, somehow there's something wrong inside the
armor.
Well now, don't you see, that's where the
negative part of this apostolic counsel comes into
play.
Make not provision for the flesh.
Just about the time that the 19th century
was giving place to the 20th, a party
of medical experts left the port of Liverpool
in Lancashire, England, on an exploration of the
Middle East and certain other places, to investigate
into the cause or causes of malaria.
Now of course, everybody in these days knows
that malaria is caused by the malarial germ
or microbe, but it was never known until
that expedition about the beginning of our 20th
century.
And when those medical men discovered that malaria
is caused by that wicked little wretch, the
malarial microbe, they began to exert all their
knowledge and inquiry to discover what the malarial
germ feeds on.
What is its fructifying environment?
The argument being, if we can separate it
from what it feeds on, if we can
divorce it from its fructifying environment, the nasty
little thing may die.
Now the Apostle Paul was not only a
supernaturally inspired theologian, he was a wonderfully penetrative
psychologist.
And I think he has something of that
in his thought when he says, make not
provision for the flesh.
Don't fight it so much as starve it,
kill it by neglect.
Don't give it food to feed on.
Don't give it a germinating environment.
Ignore it.
Turn away from it.
Starve it to death.
Make not provision for the flesh.
Some years ago, I was holding meetings in
a certain city down in USA, and I
had the privilege of staying with a lawyer
and his wife.
And what a fine man he is.
And what a delightful wife she is.
But I hadn't been in that home for
more than two or three days before I
found that that poor woman was going haggard
with a fearful bondage in her life.
She gave you the impression of carrying around
an invisible ghost, and I could see that
it was making her nervous system fearfully upset.
As we got to know one another a
little better, one morning she confided to me
what her trouble was.
I won't explain to you the nature of
it, but I want to tell you this.
She had been in the grip of that
horrible thing for nigh on 20 years.
And she said to me, oh Dr. Baxter,
I am at my wits end.
I have the most wonderful husband, and he's
so understanding and so patient, but I feel
sorry for him.
It's been, it's been an awful trial for
him through these years of our married life,
and I don't know what to do.
She said, do you know, I prayed and
prayed and prayed about it.
I've spent all nights of prayer praying about
this thing, praying against it.
I pleaded with God.
I've struggled.
I've fought it.
I've thought of every conceivable way of holding
it down.
And you know, I got a concordance, and
I went right through the Bible from Genesis
to Malachi and Matthew to the Apocalypse.
I've looked up and I've studied every reference
in the Bible to this thing, and I've
read every book I could ever find on
it.
And when we've had outstanding ministers here, if
I thought there were men who were knowledgeable
in the deeper things of the Christian life,
I've had consultations with them about it.
And she said, I have friends in the
city here who are joining me in prayer.
Listen friends, are you thinking anything?
Maybe some of you are.
As I listened, I could see the awful
fallacy in her thinking.
And when an opportunity came, I said, my
dear girl, you're committing an awful blunder.
Don't you see, all the time you're praying,
praying, praying, praying about this thing, you're concentrating
the mind on it.
You're giving it an exaggerated prominence in your
mind.
You're giving it food to feed on.
All the time you're studying through the Bible
on it.
All the time you're talking to ministers about
it.
All the time you're fighting and struggling to
overcome it.
The whole bent of your being is concentrated
on it.
You're giving it all it wants to grow
and grow and grow.
Are you following?
Say yes.
Now please don't misunderstand, I would be the
last man ever to come to BBI and
say one word to lessen anybody's praying.
We're all needing to pray more.
But shall I remind you that there was
a time in the life of Moses when
God said to him, speak no more to
me about this thing.
It was time for something other than prayer
or in addition to prayer.
I was sitting in a railway compartment not
so long ago reading a book on psychology.
I was sitting in a railway compartment not
so long ago reading a book on psychology.
And there was a sentence in that book
which just riveted itself in my mind.
It said this, it is psychologically demonstrable that
we gradually grow like that at which we
most continually look.
I'll say that again.
It is psychologically demonstrable that we gradually grow
like that at which we most continually look.
I couldn't help thinking of the hours and
hours and hours and days and weeks and
months in the aggregate that our young people
today sit looking at the wretched stuff, speaking
in general, that comes through the television.
And those psychologists who tell us that all
this has no effect upon our young folks,
I call them crackpots.
I spoke to two young fellows in meetings
of mine in a northern city in the
USA.
They had stolen large amounts of money.
They'd done very naughty things.
They'd had a great old time with the
money they'd stolen.
Then they were chased by the police and
got down to Mexico.
Later they were arrested and brought home for
trial.
And there they were in my meeting.
And when I got to know them, I
asked them, what made you guys do this?
And one of them at once, speaking for
both of them, said, we saw it on
television.
And if two will say so, there are
a million who, if they don't say so,
just as much take their cue from what
they see.
It is psychologically demonstrable that we gradually grow
like that at which we most continually look.
Do you know, in Geneva, a certain photographic
society took hundreds of photographs, and it was
able to demonstrate that married couples who have
really married because they were deeply in love,
and have lived deeply loving each other for
25, 30 years or more, they become even
physiognomically more like each other than brothers and
sisters of the same family.
We gradually grow like that at which we
most continually look.
That's why I'm so good looking.
And come to think of it, my precious
ethyl isn't so bad either.
Now, I have a feeling there's some friend
here this morning, and you're making just that
blunder.
You've got your mind on that evil thing,
you're praying about it, you're fighting against it,
you're trying to stamp on it, the whole
of your mind is occupied with it, you'll
never get victory that way.
Starve it with neglect, turn your face away
from it.
I know this isn't a five minute cure,
and if you're thinking you can have a
crisis that will settle it all, I'm very
sorry to disillusion you, but it doesn't come
that way.
Now, I'm just as human as you are,
and I have been putting this now into
practice for 40 years, and it works.
Make not provision for the flesh.
Soon after my conversion, I developed a great
fondness for the writings of the early Methodists.
My ethyl and I, both of us, were
brought up Methodist.
It was only a while after that, that
we took a plunge and became Baptists.
But, oh, did you think I was getting
into deep waters then?
But, in my early Christian days, I was
very fond of the writings of the early
Methodists.
And you know, I've read all through the
seven volumes written by John Fletcher of Medley.
And John Fletcher of Medley was the man
of whom John Wesley said, he is the
holiest man in Britain.
And John Wesley wasn't fond of flinging mere
superficial encomiums about.
When he said a thing like that, there
was deep reason for it.
John Fletcher of Medley is the holiest man
in England.
I've been in John Fletcher's study, and they
said he spent so much time in prayer
that the paper on the wall gradually became
discolored with the falling of his breath upon
it.
Well, there's a sentence in John Fletcher's writing
which has lived with me and has meant
more to me than I could ever tell
you, dear young folks.
It's this.
John Fletcher says, live looking at him.
That's all, but how tremendous.
Live looking at him.
You younger men and women, you've got the
problems that belong to full-blooded youth.
And I'm recommending you this.
If you have problems with the flesh, develop
the habit, you can do if you will,
develop the habit of living looking at Jesus.
Don't strain to do it, and don't grumble
at yourself if you keep failing.
Have sympathy with yourself, but keep practicing it.
Live with your mind looking at him, and
I'll tell you why.
Whatever sinful thing you can think of, you
will find in Jesus the exquisitely perfect opposite
of it.
And if there's some nagging, gnawing, evil thing
that's pestering you and dragging you down and
defeating you all the time, keep feasting your
mind upon Jesus.
In him you'll see the opposite of that.
Turn your mind away from that evil, ugly
thing, and keep feeding your mind with him.
And you'll find, as I've found, that the
ugly things will lose their grip and lose
their power, and they'll begin to fall away.
Yes they will.
I see I have a little time left.
I'm determined this morning not to go over
the time.
At least I think I'm determined.
But now at this point, let me turn
you to the second of my two texts.
The epistle of Paul to the Galatians chapter
5 and verse 16.
Galatians chapter 5 verse 16.
Have you got it?
I'll wait.
Galatians 5 verse 16.
Here it is.
This I say then, walk in the spirit
and ye shall not fulfill the lust of
the flesh.
Now this text crowns the other, walk in
the spirit and ye shall not fulfill the
lust of the flesh.
Now here we have two things.
First, an exhortation, walk in the spirit.
And two, an assurance that if we do
walk in the spirit, we shall not fulfill
the lusts of the flesh.
That raises two questions.
A, what is it to walk in the
spirit?
And B, how does it release us from
bondage to the flesh?
Very well, look first at the exhortation here.
Walk in the spirit.
I can't help noticing in the Greek that
the noun is in the dative case.
And we would do better to translate it
perhaps, walk by the spirit.
Now a walk is a reiterated first step.
A walk is a continuity of steps.
Therefore to walk by the spirit means to
keep step with the spirit.
That indeed is the very picture here.
It means living step by step, step by
step, step by step with the Holy Spirit.
And it is a captivating picture of the
Christian life.
It means that the Holy Spirit is always
with us, and better still, within us, waiting
and wanting to guide us, not only in
a general indefinite way, but in the step
by step incidentals which together make up our
daily walk.
It is a lovely picture that, isn't it?
Fancy living our Christian life like that.
Step by step, heartbeat by heartbeat, thought by
thought, minute by minute, step by step, with
this indwelling, loving, gracious, persevering, sympathetic, kind,
understanding Holy Spirit.
Walk step by step with the spirit.
Well somebody says, it is a lovely picture,
but how do we do that?
Well I think I can tell you that.
I hope it won't sound complicated.
This walking step by step with the Holy
Spirit means three things.
One, it means of course a continual yieldedness
to him.
And two, that continual yieldedness to him develops
in us a continuous sensitivity to him.
And three, that yieldedness and sensitivity uh, brings
to us, thirdly, a continual guidedness by him.
And listen dear brothers and sisters, the most
wonderful experience this side of heaven is to
live a God guided life.
And not simply guidance for what we think
are the big things of life, but this
guidedness day after day, and minute after minute.
Oh there's a wonderful thrill about this walking
in the Spirit.
You've got those three words haven't you?
There must be that, that glad-hearted, natural,
complete, yieldedness to him.
And uh, if you make, if you and
I make that that uh, surrender to him,
not in an excited way, but thoughtfully and
meaningfully, if we yield ourselves to him, you
will find as I have found, that as
you maintain that yieldedness, there will develop a
sensitivity to him.
And then coming with that sensitivity to the
Holy Spirit, you'll find that he guides you,
all the time.
Amid the busy absorptions of our usual workdays,
we cannot always be directly thinking of the
Holy Spirit, we cannot always be directly conscious
of the Holy Spirit in the upper stratum
of the mind, but we can carry an
unbroken, subconscious awareness of him.
A subconscious of him, which again and again,
when the mind is free from upper absorptions,
a subconsciousness which again and again, instantaneously rises
to the higher level of full consciousness, bringing
inward guidance for each recurring need of it.
Well, that's what it means to walk step
by step with the Spirit.
And finally, look at the assurance.
And ye shall not fulfill the desires of
the flesh.
How does this walking in the Spirit bring
that about?
It does it in two principal ways.
One, in the really yielded believer, it refines
the mind.
It refines the mind in all its native
impulses, and desires, and spontaneous urges.
It refines the mind in its perception of
the ugliness of sin, amid the most alluring,
golden-looking temptation.
Oh, younger men and women here, and you
older folks, don't think I'm forgetting you, because
I am one of you, but I used
to be young, although you might not think
it.
And I can't help thinking about the younger
folks, because I'm so anxious they shall learn
some of this while they are still young.
I want that you get hold of this.
The Holy Spirit can and will refine your
mind.
He will refine it and renew it in
the very thought springs of your mind.
He will renew the very impulses of your
nature.
Now, don't you see, the real secret of
Christian victory isn't just repression, repression, repression, fight,
fight, fight.
It's having a nature that's renewed, so that
spontaneously we love the things that are holy,
and we choose the things that are holy,
and we think the things that are holy.
Well, that's the first way that walking in
the Spirit releases us from bondage to the
flesh.
It refines, and renews, and chastens, and uplifts
the mind.
And the second way is, when we are
really walking step by step with the Spirit,
and the Holy Spirit has unobstructed opportunity within
us, in every sudden emergency, the Holy Spirit
infuses an explosive power.
Oh, haven't I proved that again and again.
When you're really walking in the Spirit, and
temptation comes, with sudden temptation there's that sudden
infusion of an expulsive power against sin.
The Holy Spirit will never fight your battles
for you, or else he could never develop
the character that he wants to do.
The Holy Spirit will never be a substitute
for your own will, but the Holy Spirit
comes to empower that will of yours.
He comes to refine that nature of yours,
and the happy byproduct of that is that
there's a new power to conquer temptation.
I suppose the classic Old Testament illustration of
that is Joseph.
You know how Joseph was continually subjected to
a very delicate, delicate kind of temptation by
a beautiful woman, and eventually it came to
a head, and suddenly Joseph found himself in
the presence of powerful temptation.
Joseph was a man.
He was a young man.
He was a handsome young man, and
this is how he conquered.
He said, how can I do this thing
and sin against God?
No.
Now I connect that with what John says.
He says, he that is begotten of God
cannot sin because his seed remaineth in him.
The new birth, the new life.
And John doesn't mean that we Christians can't
sin because now there's the mental and the
physical impossibility of sinning.
He means that it becomes morally, morally intolerable.
Now that's how it was with Joseph.
However attracted he might have been physically, it
was morally intolerable.
And when you and I are walking in
the Spirit, he makes compromise with sin morally
intolerable.
We hate sin, and he gives us the
power to reject it.
Well, so far as I know, I'm about
through.
Let me have a look, see what I
haven't told you.
What I am anxious to get over this
morning is that this is victory not by
self-repression or by any surgical removal of
a suppositionary old nature inside us, but a
renewal unto holiness of what you and I
basically are.
And the big truth I want you to
get hold of is that you and I
may be so inwardly renewed and refined that
all the higher within us has continually the
upper hand over all the lower.
Now a closing word.
Probably there may be some in our company
asking, how do I actually enter this experience?
In reply, let me say it is not
something which can happen all at once.
When Columbus discovered America, he could not possess
it all at once.
But he could, and did, enter it by
a single act.
Or coming back to the wording of our
text, we cannot walk this walk with the
Spirit all at once.
But we can at once take the first
step into it.
And what is that first step?
It is our soul fully yielding to him
that our will becomes one with his.
You know we sometimes think that our will
is to be lost in his.
But many expressions in our hymns are not
exactly scriptural.
The Holy Spirit doesn't want you and me
to lose our will in his.
He wants that our will shall voluntarily become
one with his.
The Lord never comes to destroy our will.
He comes to strengthen our will.
He only comes to destroy self-will.
That's a very different thing.
But your will and mine are to become
one with his, and that's what happens when
we really give ourselves to him.
That's where the blessing begins.
And then that decisive crisis develops into a
progress of continued yielding, and continued sanctification, and
continued victory.
And from that point onwards, this is the
secret of living on the high victory level.
One, as you remain continually yielded to the
Holy Spirit, believe that he continually fills you.
Two, trust him in his own way to
make that filling real within your consciousness.
Three, put on the Lord Jesus afresh each
day, and for each new vicissitude, as your
all-sufficiency.
Four, keep developing the habit of looking away
from the flesh, and living with your inner
vision turned on him.
Five, and finally, through regular seasons of daily
secret prayer, keep sensitive each hour to the
Spirit's guidance.
Oh, Mr. Chairman and friends, as we all
know, it's much simpler than it sounds when
you try to explain it.
Really, it is very simple.
And I'm hoping that some of us may
learn, or perhaps some of us are needing
to learn afresh, these precious truths.
Walk step by step with the Spirit, and
ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the
flesh.
Oh, friends, we have a dear Savior, don't
we?
We do, and we all want to be
our best for him.
And I believe this is the secret, this
is the way.
Shall we pray?