A few weeks ago we were meditating on
Paul's words recorded in 2 Timothy chapter 3
and verse 5, where he refers to people
having a form of godliness or of religion,
a form of godliness, but denying the power
thereof.
We spent a little time with that, considering
the two sides of religion that the Apostle
Paul refers to there, namely the outward form
and the inner power.
Every religion, every kind of religion, will have
these two aspects, the external, the visible on
the one hand, and then the internal, the
subjective, the invisible.
There is a sense in which every religion
has something akin to a body and a
soul.
Moreover, Christianity also shares with other religions the
tragic possibility that some of its professing devotees,
some of its professing followers, may get a
little mixed up between the externalities, the things
that are visible and obvious, and the things
that are never really seen, but are within
the heart, invisible, in the realm of the
spirit.
There are many people who think of Christianity
only in terms of deeds, of actions.
Now, Christianity necessarily does produce a certain kind
of living, certain activities, certain behavior, but there
is much more to it than that.
Christianity properly so-called first and foremost deals
with a man on the inside, and having
dealt radically with a person on the inside,
in the depth of the heart, the innermost
change of soul goes on to produce an
entirely different mode of behavior.
The one without the other is unacceptable, according
to the New Testament.
And so, if ever you meet a Christian
who is only concerned with observing certain statutes,
certain laws, doing the right things externally, visibly,
before men, and laying little concern, having little
concern for something deeper, something inward, something personal,
then you may be sure that that person
is not walking in the full glare of
New Testament light, to say the least.
Christianity properly so-called requires both form and
force, pattern of living and power to live.
And those who truly represent the Christian faith
in any edge have both of these, not
either or, but both and.
There is a pattern of life that is
emerging for everybody to see, but behind the
pattern of life there is the power of
God in the soul.
And provided the power of God is in
the soul, sooner or later the pattern of
living will emerge.
It takes some time.
God works in a mysterious way his wonders
to perform, and he does not always shout
and tell us and announce that he's on
the scene, as we've seen the snow going
again in recent times, how quickly it's gone.
We've seen three or four feet of snow
going down to I guess about eight inches
by now in our back garden.
There was no one there to herald, we
didn't hear the sound of a trumpet, the
Almighty saying here I'm snow clearing.
But oh the power of it, the unseen
invisible silence of God about his almighty work,
and you and I will see the transformation
proceeding as spring follows winter and new life
comes.
Where we a few weeks ago thought of
nothing but death, form and power.
Now we've considered something about this power as
well as the form.
We indicated that there are perhaps three aspects
to this power in the life of a
Christian.
First of all Christianity involves power over us.
This of course is why so many people
reject the Christian faith, because they realize from
the beginning that if you receive the Christian
faith, if you receive Christ, then you're not
your own master.
And they rightly conceive that, it is true.
You cannot be your own master, your own
boss, if Jesus Christ is your Savior.
You can't do just as you please.
There is a surrender of oneself to one
who is going to save us and change
us and make us fit for God's presence
as well as for life in this world.
But not only is this power power over
us, we come tonight to consider the power
of God as in us, in us.
This is a very wonderful subject, even if
I can't even express a fraction of the
wonder of it.
I think this is one of the most
wonderful facets of the gospel of our Lord
Jesus.
Wherever there is a man or a woman
of God, wherever there is a Christian, you
and I, we must know something about not
the power of God in the universe outside
of us there, but in here.
Christianity is the power of God unto salvation.
In one sense that salvation was finished at
the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, objectively
it was provided.
But as far as its application to us
is concerned, individually, it's an ongoing work of
God.
God is at work in every man and
every woman that bears the name of Jesus.
And that's the subject before us tonight.
Now it's at this point I want to
introduce a short series of readings, very short,
but they're all on this subject, all on
this aspect of things.
And so you will cut this out from
the time of the sermon, won't you?
Now I want to quote, I want to
read a few passages from 2 Corinthians in
the first place, if you'd like to follow
them or listen to me as I read
them, just as you please.
I want to read first of all from
2 Corinthians chapter 9 and verse 8.
And would you please, if you're listening, just
try and think of the concept of God's
power in us.
That's the thing that comes through.
Says Paul to the Corinthians, God is able
to make all grace abound to you, so
that in all things at all times, having
all that you need, you will abound to
every good work.
Move forward in 2 Corinthians to chapter 10
verses 4 and 5.
The weapons we fight with are not the
weapons of the world.
On the contrary, says Paul, they are, they
have divine power.
Divine power to demolish strongholds.
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets
itself up against the knowledge of God.
And we take captive every thought to make
it obedient to Christ.
Move again to 2 Corinthians chapter 12 verses
9 and 10.
He said to me, my grace is sufficient
for you, for my power is made perfect
in weakness.
Therefore, says Paul, I will boast all the
more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's
power may rest upon me.
That is why for Christ's sake, I delight
in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions,
in difficulties.
For when I am weak, then I am
strong.
Turn over the pages to Ephesians chapter 1
verses 18 to 20.
I pray also, says Paul, that you may
know his incomparably great power for us who
believe.
That power is like the working of his
mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ, when
he raised him from the dead and seated
him at his right hand in the heavenly
realms.
Turn over the page again to Ephesians chapter
3 verses 16 to 19.
I pray, says the apostle, that out of
his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with
power through his spirit in your inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith.
And I pray that you, being rooted and
established in love, may have power, together with
all the saints, to grasp how wide and
long and high and deep is the love
of Christ, and to know this love that
surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to
the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do
immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
according to his power that is at work
in us.
To him be glory in the church and
in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and
ever.
Next Philippians 4 verses 12 and 13.
I have learned, says Paul, the secret of
being content in any and every situation, whether
well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty
or in want.
I can do everything through him who gives
me strength.
And last but not least, 1 John chapter
4 and verse 4.
You dear children are from God, and have
overcome them, because the one who is in
you, is greater than the one who is
in the world.
Now I think the thread is evident, isn't
it?
In every scripture we have culled and quoted,
you find this one amazing thread, and there
are many many other passages that we could
have quoted, all depicting something of the power
of God in Christ, and then as having
first been embodied in the life of the
Lord Jesus, now manifestly exhibited in the life
of his people.
Now that brings me then, first of all,
to the power of true religion, as it
is exhibited first in the commencement of the
Christian life, and then secondly in the continuance
of the Christian life.
We must say a word about this first.
The power of God, the power of true
religion, the power of the gospel, as it
is exhibited in the commencement of the Christian
life in any individual person, the beginnings of
Christian experience.
Now true religion, albeit engaging the mind, the
conscience, the will, and the heart, is infinitely
more than the sum total of their combined
contribution.
I may think deeply, I may feel deeply,
I may will to do certain things, and
with all my heart, but true religion is
more than all those four things combined.
Wherever you find true religion, according to the
scriptures, God is at work.
The power of God is there.
He started something, and he's continuing it, and
this is the Christian life.
It's something God has begun, it's something God
is continuing, and it is something that one
day God is going to consummate.
And because God is at the beginning of
it, God is at the continuance of it,
we can be sure that it'll be consummated.
If you started it, if I started it,
well I couldn't continue it.
And I couldn't assure anyone that you'll arrive
at what the Bible promises, but if God
began it, and if God is continuing it,
I can assure you, as he assures you
in his word, that you will reach the
end of your journey, because God is in
it.
Now, how does the power of God express
itself at the beginnings of a Christian experience?
Well now, first of all, think of the
power that produces regeneration.
Now that may be a new term to
some people here tonight, I don't know.
Regeneration means bringing to life, quickening something.
Jesus declared that in order to enter the
realm of which he is king, the realm
of salvation, in order to enter the realm
of salvation, it is necessary for a person,
for every person, to be born again.
Now this is a staggering statement really.
If it were to come from someone else,
well we might not take all that in
notice of it.
But it's the Son of God, it's the
one who died on the cross, it's the
one who rose again, it's the one who
ascended and sent forth the Holy Spirit, it's
the Jesus of history.
It is he who said it.
And you see, because he says it, he
must be taken seriously, because of the person
he is.
And he told Nicodemus of old, he says,
I tell you the truth, unless a man
is born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God.
He just doesn't see it, let alone be
inside it.
Now being born again is nothing less than
a spiritual resurrection.
Or if you like, a resurrection of the
spirit of a person.
It's not so much the making of a
new start in life, as having a new
life in order to start anew.
Regeneration is this, it's possessing a new life
and because I have the new life, I'm
starting all anew.
Life is new, I start afresh.
It's not my starting without the new life,
it's the new life having come within me
and because it is here, because it is
mine, I just have to be different.
And the difference emerges not because I will
to be different, but because this life that
I've had makes me different.
Paul makes that abundantly very clear when he
reminds the Ephesian Christians of the beginning of
their Christian experience, he puts it like this.
Now these are very familiar scriptures to some
of you.
Now you bear with me, we must notice
the wonder of this.
Ephesians 2 5, because of his great love
for us, God who is rich in mercy,
listen, made us alive with Christ, even when
we were dead in sins.
What is regeneration?
What does it mean to be born again?
It means, my friend, to be raised from
the dead.
Not physically now in the first place, because
we may be physically very much alive, but
the spiritual part of us is dead and
there is a quickening that takes place and
as Jesus physically rose from the dead, so
we spiritually come out of our graves and
there is a newness of life that follows.
Paul says substantially the same thing to the
Colossians, reminding them of how they became Christian.
When you were dead in your sins and
in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God
who made you alive.
Colossians 2 11.
Now the implication of the verb employed in
each passage means the giving of life to
the dead.
You see many people who are not Christian
don't realize what's wrong with them, they don't
realize that they're dead.
I didn't and I was very proud of
myself, but I didn't know I was dead,
spiritually dead and I attributed the problems of
my life to this and the other, not
realizing that the problems arose largely because I
was spiritually dead and God was distant or
God appeared dead, not because he was dead,
but because I was dead.
He was not dead to me, but I
was dead to him.
He was there, he was speaking, he was
acting, he was sustaining me, he was giving
me breath to breathe, but I was dead
to all that.
And so were you Christians here tonight, every
one of you, all of us, that's our
condition by nature.
Regeneration is this, you see, it's God breathing
upon us his Holy Spirit and there's a
newborn babe and life comes to the dead.
So if any man is in Christ there
is a new creature or a new creation.
It's bringing life to the dead and that
of course is an act of God, whether
it happens on the spirit of a man
or whether it happens on the body of
a man, it makes no difference.
It's a divine work and so you can't
stop talking about it and it's made you
a new creature.
If it were a superficial experience you could
forget about it and shed it and get
away from it, but not this.
When this has taken place, your life has.
But the thing I'm stressing is this, you
see, I can't do that for you, you
can't do that for yourself, your elders can't
do that for you, your bishop can't do
that for you, your archbishop can't do that
for you, your pope can't do that for
you.
I'm not speaking disrespectfully of anybody, but you
bring the whole host of ecclesiastical leaders, prophets
and priests together and bind them together in
council and get them to breathe upon you
and you're still as dead at the beginning
as you were at the end as you
were at the beginning.
They can't do it, but a breath of
God quickens the dead and there's a new
creature.
Now that's what regeneration is, that's what it
is to be born again.
And you know you're not the man you
were, neither of course are you the man
you will be, because you will develop and
you will grow, but you're not the man
you were, you're not the man you will
be, but you are a new creature.
You see, only God can do that.
If I'm speaking to anyone tonight who has
a sense of need of that and you
know you haven't got it and you need
it, well now the thing to do is
not talk to me or talk to anybody
else, pray to God to breathe his spirit
upon you and give it to you.
That's the right thing to do, because he's
the donor, he's the originator, no one else
can do it.
In the last resort you must seek it
from the divine donor himself.
Now let me hurry from that, the power
of God in regeneration to this, the power
that imparts divine life to human beings.
It's another side or virtually this continuation of
what we've said already.
You know when the Lord Jesus was speaking
to Nicodemus, he said this to him, he
said, flesh gives birth only to flesh, but
the spirit gives birth to spirit.
If you're a father or a mother and
you have a child, you are in a
sense responsible under God by the gifts God
gives.
You are responsible for bringing that new life
into the world, father and mother, under the
blessing of God.
But what you bring into the world is
only from your part, is just flesh.
In order for that little one to experience
regeneration, there must be another person involved.
And you can't do that, you can pray
for it, you can teach the child the
way to seek it, you can exhibit before
the child the glory of it.
But that which is born of the flesh
is only flesh, and he who is born
of the flesh only can only do that.
But that which is born of the spirit,
when the spirit comes and he quickens and
he acts upon us, he imparts life, not
just new life, but divine life.
This is the thing I wanted to stress
here.
Not natural life, titivated a little, but the
very life of God.
One of the old fathers wrote a book
on the life of God in the soul
of man.
If you see it, I'd suggest to you
it's worth selling something to get it, it's
very good.
The life of God in the soul of
man.
You see, what makes a person a Christian
is this, that he is given eternal life.
What is eternal life?
Well, eternal life is not just a gift
from God that only God can give, it
is the gift of God.
God gives himself.
It is the fruit not only from the
spirit, but of the spirit.
Galatians 5.
What do you mean?
Well, you see, when God gives you eternal
life, he doesn't just kind of give you
a parcel as I would give you this
book, let it represent a Christmas present or
a birthday present, and God gives something that
is not himself.
Not that.
But the wonder of the regeneration of rebirth
and of becoming a Christian is this, God
gives himself to you.
Not in the sense in which you receive
a wife or a husband when you get
married and you receive someone to live alongside
of you.
That would be very wonderful.
But God gives himself in the sense of
giving you the very spirit which is himself,
and he breathes his own spirit into you,
his own nature into you, his own life
into you.
When we speak about the Holy Spirit of
God in the soul of man, men and
women, brothers and sisters, it means this.
God comes into our very bodies to dwell.
It's divinity imparted insofar as that is possible.
Now, please don't misunderstand me.
I'm not saying that when a man is
born again he's become a little God.
He hasn't even become an angel necessarily.
But what I am saying is this, that
the nature of the life that is communicated
to us is the same as the life
of God himself.
It is insofar as the life of God
is communicable, it is God's life given to
a creature.
The measure in which a creature can possess
the life of the Creator is in itself
something to boggle our minds.
But insofar as God can communicate his life
to a creature, that's what regeneration is.
That's what it is to be born again.
We share somehow in his life, and he
lives in us, and we have eternal life.
Now you see, that's only got to be
said for us to realize we can't do
that for ourselves.
You can't beget yourself, can you?
You must be born again.
Crazy!
How can I?
How can I bring myself to birth?
It's the one thing I had nothing to
do with, because my father and mother had
everything to do with it.
I couldn't do anything.
I was passive.
God does that.
It's an act of God.
It's the power of God.
It's the grace of God.
It's the mercy of God.
Brothers and sisters, I think you and I
need to get the concept of this.
I'll tell you one reason we need it.
It's to pray for the salvation of the
lost.
You see, when our friends go out on
the visitation evangelism on a Tuesday evening or
at other times, you know, it's not really
a matter of pitting wit against wit, genius
against genius, man against man, woman against woman.
Get the people who can, who can talk
this.
It's not that at all.
But it is this.
It is going with God so that God
may use us and through us and by
our words and prayers breathe his Holy Spirit
upon the dead and bring the dead from
their graves to newness of life.
It is God who does this.
And if you and I are pinning our
hopes on a preacher or an evangelist or
the visitation people on the Tuesday night, brothers
and sisters, we're up the wrong tree.
It must be God.
And that's why every man and woman in
the church is a part in it.
Only God can do it.
I can't go into a physical cemetery and
call a man from the dead.
Neither can you.
Neither can we do it spiritually.
It must be God.
But now that's not all.
The power of true religion in its commencement
involves a spiritual miracle.
A miracle in the sense that humanly speaking
it is impossible.
How can a drunkard, how can a selfish,
arrogant, self-centered person leave his self-centeredness
and begin to look out and love other
people and want to serve them?
It's just not practicable.
How can people who come to the Lord
Jesus Christ and they're absolute slaves to their
passions, how can you expect them to be
anything else?
Only because they've come to the Lord and
He is able.
It's a miracle.
He does it.
And if He doesn't do it, it doesn't
happen.
But now it doesn't end there.
The power of true religion in the continuance
of that progress.
However great the almighty power whereby fallen man
is regenerated, it's no whit greater than that
by which the newborn soul is nurtured and
enabled to grow, to quote Paul, toward the
stature of the fullness of Christ.
The energy that sustains a regenerate believer in
an unregenerate world, and not only protects him
from evil but perfects him in righteousness, is
not only infinite, it is divine.
And nothing less accounts for the ongoing life
of every Christian man and woman in this
hostile world in which we live.
Now I can of course only refer to
some things very superficially tonight.
And I'm dealing with a subject which is
vast enough to keep us here for the
rest of 1985.
You will appreciate that.
But I'm just going to take two things.
First of all, the power that produces in
us the fruit that God requires.
And I can't say more than one or
two things about that.
God expects fruit in the life of men
and women.
He expects something from you, my friend.
I don't mind where you're sitting tonight.
It doesn't matter who you are.
You may never have been here before.
It doesn't matter.
But I want to tell you tonight, if
you've never heard it before, the Almighty God
expects something from you.
And you'll be answerable for that when you
meet Him.
He's expecting something.
In His people, He is expecting a special
kind of fruit.
In all the regenerate, there is fruit that
He's expecting.
Now He's not like Pharaoh, the king of
Egypt, who expected the Israelites to produce bricks
without giving them straw.
When God expects us to make bricks, He
gives us the straw.
When He expects us to produce something, He
gives us the raw material.
He gives us the ability.
He gives us the capacity.
And He's done that in the regeneration, basically.
And He will continue to give all that
we need as we go on through life,
depending upon Him and drawing from Him.
This is really the life of faith.
A life of faith is a life of
dependence upon God and drawing from God.
And it means both.
Not one or the other, but both hands.
Depending upon God in all the circumstances of
life and of death and drawing from Him.
Looking to Him, drawing from Him.
And as we do so, we find that
we can say when I'm weak, then I'm
strong.
Now, let me just deal with this for
a moment.
First of all, the power that produces the
fruit that God requires.
Jesus said, it's by their fruits you will
recognize them.
That is false teachers.
Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or
figs from thistles?
Likewise, and now here is the general principle.
Every good tree bears good fruit, but a
bad tree bears bad fruit.
Again, you did not choose me, He says,
but I chose you to go and bear
fruit.
Fruit that will last.
And listen to this.
Contrasting the kind of fruit that is born
by our natural, unregenerate natures and the fruit
of the Spirit when He comes into us.
Listen to Paul.
The acts of a sinful nature in us
are obvious.
Sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord,
jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions,
and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like.
I warn you, he says, as I did
before, that those who live live like this
will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Now, but the fruit of the Spirit, the
Holy Spirit, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Against such things there is no law.
You can't go wrong in this way, says
the Apostle Paul.
You can't transgress when you're cultivating the fruit
of the Spirit.
You can do as much and as much
and as much as you desire.
You'll never do too much.
You'll never go too far.
There's no law against these.
Now, what have we got here?
The production of the kind of fruit which
God requires in his people is very difficult.
In fact, it is naturally impossible, and that
for at least two reasons.
In the first place, it is naturally impossible
because of the nature of the soil and
of the atmosphere in which we are expected
to produce this fruit.
To borrow from the language of our Lord
Jesus Christ, in the parable of the sower,
the seed, and the soil, the soil of
life in this world, the soil of our
human society, is like a rock.
It's hard.
It's like trying to sow seed on a
very rocky place, and this is what it's
like to preach the gospel of the kingdom
in this world.
It's like trying to sow on a rock,
and what do you expect?
You can't have a garden on a rock.
Seed doesn't penetrate the rock, you see.
And then not only that, he says, where
there is a little bit of a layer
of earth, or where there is good earth
apparently, in that apparently good earth, reasonably good
earth, as it appears to you, there are
thorns, and there are thistles growing, and their
roots have become entangled with the soil, so
that if any of the seed falls into
that kind of soil and begins to grow,
the thistles and the thorns will choke the
good seed.
It just can't grow in it.
Now that's Jesus' way of describing the society
in which we are to bring forth fruit.
It's impossible.
Either it's too rock, or the things that
grow and thrive in this world will choke
the spiritual life in us.
It's impossible to bring forth the fruit of
the Spirit in this world, humanly speaking.
Or, in the words of Paul, the natural
produce of the soul is altogether contrary to
the produce of the Spirit.
They're contrary one to the other, they're contrary,
they're altogether different, and they just don't go
on together.
Naturally, we produce what Paul speaks of as
the works of the flesh, to which we've
already referred.
But moreover, the climate is sometimes so excessively
hot, to refer back again to Jesus' parable,
the climate is so excessively hot that when
apparently we are beginning to bear spiritual fruit
that is acceptable to God, it gets so
hot that the little fruitling that is appearing,
it withers and it dies.
Over and above that, however, there is the
unique nature of the fruit itself.
The fruit that God expects of us as
people is of such an order, of such
a nature, that humanly speaking, it is impossible
to produce it in this world.
The fruit which God requires is utterly divine
in nature.
God requires us to produce fruit which really
can only be produced within the deity, in
heaven, the fruit of the Spirit.
It's only God produces it, and it'll only
emerge in its fullness, in its perfection, where
God is.
It belongs to God, it's a quality of
the Godhead and the life of the Godhead.
How can you produce that in a world
like this?
And it's very complex.
As Paul gives it to us here, it's
ninefold.
It's not just one simple fruit, it's ninefold.
There are nine several aspects to it.
It's the one fruit with nine characteristics.
Thinking of the antipathy of our contemporary society
and civilization to this kind of fruit, I'm
reminded of a document which allegedly came into
the hands of the field director of the
American Security Council in the 60s.
Some of you may have read about it.
It was entitled Revolution by Stealth, and it
listed the objectives of atheistic communism in our
western world, objectives that were to be achieved
by peaceful means without lifting a hand or
firing a gun.
And some of them were as follows, I
quote, one, break down cultural standards of morality
by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, in
magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
Two, eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling
them censorship.
That's a bad word.
And, quote, a violation of free speech and
of free press, unquote.
Three, discredit the family as an institution.
Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
Four, gain control of key positions on radio,
television, and motion pictures.
Five, present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as, quote,
normal, unquote.
Again, quote, natural and healthy, unquote.
And that's the world in which we live.
That's the secular, humanistic world in which we
live.
This is the kind of philosophy that is
really abroad in our society tonight.
Nothing is really wrong, you see, provided you
don't hurt anybody, and nobody is hurt.
And yet, my friends, the miracle of which
I'm speaking is happening.
God is producing righteousness and holiness and love
and the fruit of the Spirit in the
lives of men and women in all kinds
of pagan societies.
That's the marvel of it.
Such is the power of God that this
is going on.
You know, I hesitate to give you this
illustration, but I will do it.
I was visiting my native heath and my
native county not all that long ago.
Oh yes, it is a few years ago.
Yes, it is.
And I was being shown some of the
modernization in farming by a great friend of
mine.
And they had a farm, a dairy farm,
boasting, I don't quite remember, was it a
few over 200 or a few under, under
or over, milking cows.
And he was very proud of it.
200 milking cows.
That means there were many more than 200
around there, but they were not, they were
not being milked at the time.
And I remember one of the things that
struck me as he was going through this.
It was, he was telling me that he
took me into what he called the, the
milking parlor.
Now in my day, I was a cowshed.
But you know, in the meantime, the cowshed
had vanished and it was a milking parlor.
And these 200 cows came into the milking
parlor at milking time.
I'm not going to try to describe to
you some of the things that happened when
the cows got into their parlor.
But they left behind them an awful lot
of mess and an awful stench.
And then he told me how they cleaned
up.
And I have never seen a place look
so spic and span.
You could almost, when they had done their
cleaning job, you could almost eat your breakfast
on the floor.
The offal and the dung was taken nearly
a mile away.
He didn't know what it was about.
But you know what got me?
There was a lot of dirty slush that
went down a drain.
And a little time later, I was taking
a walk to a spot that I loved
as a boy.
I used to catch little fish there, even
tadpoles.
It's a beautiful little stream.
I don't know whether it's right to call
it a river or not.
It was a lovely quiet spot.
And lo and behold, I saw this awful
dirty slush that had gone into this crater
in the cows parlor.
I saw that it had come underground somewhere
down into the river stream.
And all the smell of the cowshed and
whatnot had got into the stream and putrefied
it.
And I saw a spectacle I shall never
see before.
When I was about to turn my back
upon the ugly spectacle and its smell, I
suddenly saw it.
There was a kind of island in the
middle of the river, small of course, miniature
little island, just as you, you know, Spadina
goes down and it goes around this place
that used to be Knox College.
The road divides there.
Well, now the stream divided like that.
And in the middle, there was a clump
of trees, a number of trees, and then
some rocks or stones, and a lot of
this slush had got gathered among it.
All the dirt and all the smell was
there.
And the spectacle that faced me was the
most beautiful crowd of water lilies that I've
ever seen in my life.
Talk about whiteness, talk about white, talk about
beauty.
Out of the awful stench, out of the
muck, out of the mire in that most
incongruous situation that had been transformed over the
years, here they were as if they were
greeting a long-lost friend, and they could
never be more beautiful.
And I thought, thank you, Lord.
It's true.
Some of your whitest lilies grow on dunghills.
From ancient Corinth and Rome and Ephesus to
modern Toronto and New York and London and
Edinburgh and Glasgow and any other city, God
brings forth beauty and character and the fruit
of the Spirit in the most inhospitable environment.
I ask you, how is it possible?
I'll tell you.
It's the power of God.
You don't hear Him, and we stupidly conclude
that He's not at work, because there's no
noise.
But God is at work.
And when God is at work, you and
I can expect anything of this high and
lofty character, the power that produces the fruit
that God requires.
I'm concluding, and I'm only going to refer
to what I, what else I have to
say.
Can I take out just one of these
ninefold fruits of the Spirit and ask you
to think about it, in order to say
what a remarkable thing it is.
One of the ninefold fruits of the Spirit
is self-control.
Self-control.
God has power that He gives us to
control oneself in order to fulfill His purposes.
And there is only one who can give
us control of ourselves in order to do
and be what God requires of us, and
that's God Himself.
That's why the New Testament is full of
this.
You read it, read it in Peter.
I have some quotations here, at least four
coming from the first epistle of Peter and
another very major quotation from his second epistle,
others from Paul.
Everybody has to be self-controlled according to
Paul in Titus and Timothy.
Old men, old women, young men, young women,
elders, deacons, everybody has to be self-controlled
if they're to grow in grace and in
the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.
How can you and I be self-controlled?
The difficulty of the exercises is incredible.
Think of the external provocations that tend to
indiscipline.
Somebody loves you or hates you, and it
doesn't matter which, you know.
Some people go to pieces morally when someone
tells them, I love you, and all the
guards are down.
And things happen which bring shame and trouble,
just because someone has professed love, and they've
gone suddenly out of control.
But sometimes somebody says, I hate you.
Same thing happens, right out of control.
Temper, words, actions, deeds, you know what happens?
Right out of control.
Everything's wrong.
The bulls come in charging into the kitchen.
We're so easily out of control.
Pleasure and pain, success or failure, friend or
foe, can excite us to intemperance in word
and emotion and action.
And then think of the internal propensities that
there are here to keep under control.
The thoughts.
There is a word in the book of
Proverbs and the Hebrews.
The Hebrew translation can very well be translated
in this way.
It can be translated in another way too.
But this is a legitimate way, as in
the King James.
As a man thinketh in his heart, so
he is.
What am I?
Oh, you say, you're the senior minister of
Knox.
We respect you and so forth.
Well, I trust I'm worthy of that.
But, my friends, you don't know what I
am.
I am what I'm thinking in here.
It's only God and myself knows what's going
on in here.
And it's true about you.
You're not what you appear from the suits
you wear, nor the faces and smiles that
you bear.
Neither am I.
You are what you think.
Your thoughts determine you.
Your thoughts, your innermost thoughts, both forecast and
cast your character.
Think of the affections.
Thinking is the activity of the mind in
relation to ideas or facts.
Such thoughts do not necessarily imply either the
attraction or repulsion which we may experience by
the facts about which we think.
The affections are responsible for that.
They are aroused by what we think, and
are aroused in terms of pleasure or pain.
Our affections feel for us, and they give
evident expression to the way we think.
Our affections come to life, and we react,
you see, to what we're thinking about.
Paul summoned the Colossians to set their hearts,
their affections, not on the things here on
earth, but on the things above, where Christ
is seated.
Get your affections, get your thoughts high enough,
he says, and see that they go as
high as the place where your Savior lives
and reigns.
That's the place for your thoughts and your
heart.
Think of your moods.
How easily they got out of control.
Even a great man like Elijah.
You remember Elijah on Mount Carmel?
Even a man like Elijah, under a tree
crying to the Lord, Lord, he says, I'm
alone in this world.
There's nobody with me.
Take away my life.
I want to die.
A man of God, a prophet with a
death wish coming over his lips.
Dear Elijah.
Oh, well, God was gracious.
He knew what he needed, and he gave
him a very good sleep, and a meal,
and one or two other things, and a
little bit of counsel, and dear old Elijah
was revived again.
But you see, his moods became such that
he really wanted to die.
You like that?
Self-control.
Thoughts, emotions, moods, passions, desires, passions.
Ah, I don't need to go any further.
Nevertheless, the Lord expects this of his people,
that we should be controlled.
Self-control is the fruit of the Spirit.
In other words, the Holy Spirit of God
in us gives us the capacity to keep
these things under control.
We can't do it.
It's devastating to tell me in my own
native human nature, look, this is expected of
you.
No, no, but God says, I give you
my Holy Spirit.
I've given you my word.
I give you the fellowship of the saints,
and I give you liberty to come to
my throne every day for anything you need.
Now, he says, get on with the job,
and I'm expecting it of you.
I'm drawing to a close.
Thank you for your listening.
It's not, it's not without reason.
It's not without wisdom.
Before our Lord Jesus Christ ascended, following the
completion of his work on the cross and
in the resurrection, he told his disciples, I
said, you tarry in Jerusalem until you be
endued with from on high.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit
has come upon you, and you will be
witnesses to me wherever you are, in Jerusalem,
in Judea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost
parts of the earth.
Now, please notice, please notice, just a few
weeks previously, these men have been witnesses against
Jesus.
You say, I never heard that before.
Well, I hope you've read the New Testament.
Then you will have read it, even if
you didn't hear it.
Peter witnessed against him three times, verbally, and
says, I don't know the man.
The rest of the disciples didn't do that,
but they ran away from him, and when
you run away from somebody who you have
previously acknowledged to be son of God, Messiah,
when you run away from him, you tacitly
say he's not worthy to cling to him
in dangerous times.
Isn't that a denial of him?
Whether for fear or whatever the reason was,
I can't go into the details at the
moment, but they ran away from him, and
they virtually said, he's not worthy, that we
should die for him.
They witnessed against him, but Jesus said that
by the coming of the Holy Spirit, they
would receive and experience such power as would
transform them, and thereafter, he says, you will
be witnesses unto me, not just for me.
Now, it's much easier to witness for Jesus
than to be a witness to him.
You see, to be a witness for him,
I can say the truth that I know
about him, but to be a witness to
him means this, that the mode of my
life and living, the mode of my life
and living, gives credibility to the claims of
the Lord Jesus, and in the light of
the kind of life that I'm now living,
men can honestly believe that he is the
Son of God, the Messiah that was promised,
the prophet, the priest, and the king, because
of the change he's made in me, and
to be witnesses unto him means nothing less
than that.
And nothing less than that lay behind the
emergence of the Jerusalem church, a church in
the very citadel where his chiefest enemies were,
those who crucified him, guarded by the Romans
in Jerusalem, in Jerusalem, where Jesus was slaughtered
on the tree in Jerusalem, the first church
emerged.
How on earth was that possible?
Oh, my friend, for one reason, the gospel
is the power of God unto salvation to
everyone that believeth.
God was able to persuade the men that
nailed him to the tree, or sent him
there, or witnessed against him, that he was
indeed the Son of God, the only Savior
of men, and under that persuasion of God,
they turned around, they were born again, and
the church came into being.
That's the story of the church down the
century.
Jerusalem, Samaria, Judea, to the uttermost parts of
the earth, to the Roman Empire, down the
centuries, into Europe, from Asia, right down to
the American continent.
How has it happened?
Oh, my friends, it's the ongoing power of
God.
There's no explanation other than that.
And every Christian man and woman here tonight
is the product of the power of God,
and if you don't know it, I beg
of you, I beg of you for your
soul's salvation, cry to him tonight.
Don't be satisfied with a mere form of
religion, whether it's Protestant or Catholic or what,
whether it's this or that, don't be satisfied
with a shell.
Get the power, get the power.
There is power, there is power in the
Christ who died and rose again and lives
forevermore, and in the Spirit whom he sent
his other self, his alter ego, to take
charge of the lost, to transform them and
shepherd them home, to follow Mr. McLeod's language
this morning, to be the good shepherd and
to lead us through the wilderness until at
last we come into the everlasting fold from
which there will be no more going out.
Is he your Savior?
Are you experiencing the power of God?
I trust and pray that you are.
If you're not, don't be satisfied with anything
less.
Don't be satisfied with mere form.
Plead, cry, labor, do anything before God to
seek the power of it, for that's what
the Christian faith properly so called is.
It's God coming to live, not just among
us, but in us.
Let us pray.
God our Father, we are such feeble exponents
of your gospel.
No voice, no tongue, no pair of lips
can ever conceivably possibly communicate all the glories
and the wonders of your grace, and we
so well understand the sentiments of your servant
Wesley of old when he cried for a
thousand tongues wherewith to sing your immortal praise.
But we the more depend upon you by
the Holy Spirit, therefore, to apply to our
lives the truth which is yours, so that
an evening service such as this, though the
church is not packed, though all our members
are not here for one reason or another,
though there are not many visitors among us
maybe, however many, however few we may be,
blessed be your name, you are still the
God of power and the God of grace,
and out of this you can cause great
things to come.
Oh God of power, hear us now, save
us to the uttermost through Jesus Christ and
by your Holy Spirit.
We ask it in the Savior's name.
Amen.