During this year here in the theatre, we've
been talking, if you remember, about justification.
And you know the way you do something
wrong, you lose your temper at home, or
you cut somebody out of a lane of
traffic on the freeway, and immediately you begin
to say to provoke me.
Well, I have the right to do it.
Well, he was just asking for it.
Well, people can't walk all over me.
And you begin to justify yourself, and to
satisfy your conscience that really you were fully
justified in doing what you did.
This is the very opposite of what God
wants us to do.
He wants us immediately we'll lose our temper,
or cut somebody out of a lane of
traffic, to see that we did it because
we don't trust that God is in charge
of our lives.
We feel we have to look out for
ourselves, and we're refusing to let the life
of Jesus minister through us to other people.
And that really God has every right therefore
to destroy us before we destroy him and
his universe.
And then God wants us to see that
he has actually destroyed Jesus instead of us.
And for that reason we are justified in
coming to him and asking him for forgiveness.
And he is justified in not destroying rebels
like us, but in accepting us as children.
And that's real justification as opposed to self
-justification.
Now you remember that we saw that a
remarkable miracle takes place whenever we begin to
admit our sins before God, and accept Jesus'
justification.
And you'll see that thing in Galatians, if
you like to look, Galatians, and chapter 4
it is, and verse 6.
And it's page 1014, page 1014, and Galatians
4 and 6.
So immediately we believe that God has justified
us in Jesus, because he has destroyed Jesus
instead of us, and so he has no
justification for destroying us also.
Then in verse 6, And because you are
sons, God has sent the Spirit of his
Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
So the moment you experience God's justification, that
moment also God sends the Spirit of his
Son into your heart.
And the Spirit of his Son begins to
work another miracle inside you.
Because you believe that Jesus died for you,
God treats you as holy even though you're
not.
But he then sends the Spirit of his
Son into you, who begins to try to
make you holy.
And so there are two great miracles in
the Christian life.
Justification, where God treats you as if you'd
never sinned, because Jesus has died for your
sins, and so they're cast out of God's
memory forever.
And sanctification, where God begins to make you
like himself.
He begins to make you holy.
And sanctus fia, you remember in Latin, is
just to make holy.
And it's that magnificent experience of sanctification that
we're beginning to move into here in the
study of Romans.
Where God sends the Spirit of his Son
into us, and that Spirit begins to make
us more and more like God.
Now it is important, you see, to see
that there are two differences.
In justification, instead of enemies of God, you
become friends.
But you're still sinners and not saints.
In justification, you come into the favor of
God, but you have not yet come into
the image of God.
So it's really a half of the work
is done.
God treats you as holy because of Jesus,
but inside you still are not holy yourself.
And that's what Jesus begins to deal with.
He begins to try to make you holy
through his Spirit.
I think it's important to see, brothers and
sisters, that there is a time lapse between
the two experiences.
God deals with us individually in regard to
sanctification as he dealt with the Israelites.
He gave the Israelites a promise at the
beginning of his dealings with them, but it
was many years afterwards that that promise was
realized.
Now you'll see that if you look at
it in Exodus 6 and verse 8.
Exodus 6 and verse 8.
And our own individual experiences parallel this experience
of the Israelites as a nation.
Exodus 6 and verse 8.
And I will bring you, it's page 50,
and I will bring you into the land
which I swore to give to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob.
I will give it to you for a
possession.
I am the Lord.
And they had 40 years of wandering in
the wilderness, and they still had that promise.
Then they had hundreds of years of fighting
in the land of Canaan itself, and they
still had that promise.
Now do you see there was a great
gap, a great intervening time between God giving
the promise that I'll bring you into Canaan
land and him actually bringing them in.
And all that time, their relationship with God
was maintained by faith, not by sight.
Their tenuous contact with God was maintained by
their faith in His Word.
Now it's the same with many of us
who have experienced justification.
We're on the way to becoming like Jesus.
And all the while we're on the way
to becoming, our contact with God is maintained
by faith and not by sight.
And it's important to see that.
Now some of us don't really move in
that realm, you see.
Some of us come under the law again
like the Galatians.
Here's what many of us do.
And we looked at it briefly last day.
Look at Galatians, you know, in chapter 3
and verses 1 through 5.
Galatians 3, 1 through 5.
Many of us come into, fall into this
salvation by works again at this point in
our lives.
It's page 1013.
O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before
whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as
crucified?
Let me ask you only this.
Did you receive the Spirit by works of
the law or by hearing with faith?
Are you so foolish having begun with the
Spirit?
Are you now ending with the flesh?
Did you experience so many things in vain
if it really is in vain?
Does he who supplies the Spirit to you
and works miracles among you do so by
works of the law or by hearing with
faith?
The Galatians had fallen back into salvation by
works.
Many of us do the same thing over
this whole miracle of sanctification.
How do we do it?
Well, turn to Galatians 5 and you'll see
it there.
We know that we're accepted by God only
because of the blood of Jesus.
Romans 5 and 9 were justified by the
blood of Jesus.
But we come to a verse like Galatians
5 and 19.
Now the works of the flesh are plain.
Immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife,
jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness,
carousing and the like.
And you see, we see that we have
some anger still in our lives.
We have some jealousy still in our lives.
We have some envy still there.
We have some impurity still there.
And then we read the next verse which
just destroys us.
I warn you, as I warned you before,
that those who do such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God.
And so we say those things are in
our lives.
So we're not sons of God.
So we have no relationship with God.
So we won't enter the kingdom.
Now dear ones, do you see why we
do that?
Because we ignore two words in that verse.
We ignore the word shall and we ignore
the word inherit.
And do you see that both of those
words indicate that there is an intervening time
between the moment we're justified and the moment
we're sanctified wholly like Jesus.
It's an experience that begins the moment we
first receive Jesus, but it's an experience that
goes on and probably will go on until
we meet him face to face.
And though it's an experience with great crises
in it that are very real and that
really deliver us from the power of sin,
yet there is a real sense in which
it's a process that goes on until we
meet Jesus face to face.
But many of us, you see, come to
this verse and we say, we'll won't inherit
the kingdom.
That means we're not Christians.
Okay, we better get rid of these things.
And we begin to try to root out
envy and jealousy and anger by sheer strong
willpower.
And we're not long in that way before
we've developed our independent wills again.
And of course, it's not long before we're
out of any relationship with Jesus.
And it's all because we forget that the
only reason God accepts us is because of
the blood of his Son.
We change the ground of our justification.
We change it to having a life without
anger or jealousy or envy.
Dear ones, it doesn't matter how saintly we
ever get in this life.
We'll never be more acceptable to God than
we are today because of the blood of
his Son.
And God wants us, as he requested from
the Israelites, he wants us to walk this
intervening time trusting his word, trusting his promise
that the good work that he started in
us, he will complete inside us.
In other words, there is an intervening time
space.
Many of us go further, you know.
We go to, oh, it's Matthew 7 and
16.
Matthew 7 and 16.
And really, what we do is we condemn
ourselves.
We don't give the Holy Spirit any chance
to do it rightly.
We condemn ourselves wrongly with false condemnation.
And we look at a verse like, it's
840, page 840, and Matthew 7 and verse
16.
And Jesus says, you will know them by
their fruits.
We look into our lives, introspection again, one
of the greatest sins really in the Christian
life.
We look into our lives and we see
there's no joy in my heart.
There's no peace in my heart.
So, I'm not a Christian.
You will know Christians by their fruits.
Jesus is saying that you will know false
prophets by the fruits of their ministry.
He's even saying that other people will know
you as a Christian by your fruits.
But he's not saying you will know yourself
to be a Christian by your fruits.
But many of us look inside and we
say, oh, there are no fruits.
So, we aren't converted.
We aren't justified.
We aren't accepted by God.
Loved ones, our justification depends on the blood
of Jesus.
God looks at the blood of Jesus and
sees that blood outpoured for your sins and
mine.
And he says, I'm willing to accept you
because of the blood of my son.
Now, that's why Paul gives this presentation of
sanctification in Romans, you remember.
And we read it just last day, the
verse we studied last day.
Romans 5 and verses 1 and 2.
It's page 980.
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Through him, we have obtained access to this
grace in which we stand.
And we rejoice in our hope of sharing
the glory of God.
Now, that's the attitude of a Christian who
is walking as God wants him to walk.
You're justified by the blood of Jesus and
you're rejoicing in the hope of sharing the
glory of God.
You're not beating yourself over the head trying
to make yourself a saint.
You're not exercising your willpower trying to get
rid of the anger and the jealousy and
the envy because you see that the love,
joy, peace are fruits of the Spirit.
They're things that the Spirit brings about in
you if you let them.
They aren't things that you can bring about
yourself.
And the right attitude of a Christian walking
on into sanctification is that stated in Romans
5 and 2.
We rejoice in our hope of sharing the
glory of God.
And we thank God for every time he
shows us something in us that has to
change.
Now, that's what God begins to do.
God begins to work upon us to do
two things.
To strengthen our faith in our justification.
And secondly, to destroy our old independent selfish
wills.
Now, brothers and sisters, that's what the Holy
Spirit begins to do in us after we've
become Christians.
He works to strengthen our justifying faith and
he works to destroy that independent selfish will.
And all the experiences that we come into
are planned with that purpose in mind.
All we can do today, you know, for
a few minutes is to talk about how
God strengthens justifying faith.
And next day when we deal with the
next verse, we'll try to deal with how
he destroys our selfish independent wills.
But do you see that the first thing
before God begins to work on us to
make us like himself, he has to strengthen
our faith in his justification of us.
In other words, he must make sure that
we are in no doubt that he accepts
us as his children.
Because he's going to take us through some
hard things.
And we'll often want to look up and
say, Father, you don't really love me because
of this hard thing.
So, the first thing God has to do
is to really assure us that we are
his children.
Now, to do that, loved ones, the first
thing he deals with is our weak faith
in the effectual nature of Jesus' blood.
And it is weak.
And you'll see that in a moment.
That's the first thing God begins to work
on.
And that's the explanation of this next verse.
And maybe we should read the verse and
then I'll show you how it applies.
In verse 3.
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering produces endurance.
So, the reason God allows us to come
into afflictions is to strengthen our justifying faith,
so that he can begin to work on
those independent wills without making us doubt our
salvation.
Now, do you see that?
Now, what is he to do first of
all?
Well, first of all, he has to deal
with the perversion of faith that Satan works
in us immediately after we become converted.
We believe that God accepts us for Jesus'
sake.
And Satan gets in and begins to pervert
that faith.
How does he do it?
Well, you know, when you turn your whole
life over to Jesus, one of the great
changes that comes about is that your life
begins to take on order and pattern at
last.
Your life was chaotic before.
You didn't know where it was going.
It was meaningless and purposeless.
Now, it seems, as you surrender everything to
the Father, your life begins to take on
pattern and order.
You begin to know where your future is
going.
You begin to see order in your home
life.
You begin to see some kind of plan
in your career.
And somehow, things begin to fall into place.
Now, that change comes, of course, because we've
at last taken our hands off the wheel
of our lives, and we've really given God
the chance to direct them.
But do you see, it isn't long before
we change the ground of our justification.
We change it from our belief in the
blood of Jesus to the way things are
working out in our life.
And it's not long before, in testimonies and
in prayer meetings and in fellowships, we're busy
sharing about the preciousness of Jesus, about the
beauty of the death of Jesus.
No.
We're sharing about the great things the Lord
has done in my life this week.
And we're sharing the great, the way the
Lord turned that out just beautifully, going across
the road, and it's just changed.
And we share how God does things in
our lives.
And at the beginning, it's good, loved ones.
But do you see that if you go
on sharing that kind of thing, you're going
to more and more take part in infantile
kind of fellowship.
Because it's not long before you yourself and
your friends become preoccupied with the way things
are turning out right in your life.
This becomes the mark of a child of
God.
It's not long before you've declined into an
Old Testament faith, where you begin to say
you're right with God because things are going
right with you.
You know the kind of joke that many
people, whether they're Christians or not, make.
Oh, why does it go with you?
Oh, because I live right.
And that creeps into our Christian life.
And we begin to sense, yeah, we're right
with the Father, all right, because things are
turning right beautifully.
And then do you see what God does?
He knows that that is weak faith.
He knows that it's virtually no faith at
all.
It brings little glory to Jesus, and it
doesn't draw us closer into Jesus.
It draws us more and more into ourselves,
and more and more into preoccupation with the
way our own lives are going.
And so God allows afflictions to come into
our experience.
And you see what many of us do?
Like the little kid, you know, ah!
We cry out.
We don't rejoice in the sufferings.
We don't see what the Father's trying to
do.
We start shaking.
We start saying, oh, what's wrong?
Things aren't going right.
They were going right before.
We do exactly what Satan wants us to
do.
We begin to doubt if we're in a
right relationship with God.
If you're a farmer, the crops fail.
If you're an insurance man, you stop selling
insurance.
If you're a teacher, the classes start swinging
on the lights.
If you're a housewife, the children start being
impossible, and the house begins to bear down
upon you.
Now, loved ones, do you see that that's
why God allows us to come into afflictions?
So that at last, He'll break us from
that dependence on things going right being the
mark of a Christian.
And that's why old Paul says, we rejoice
in our sufferings.
Why?
Knowing that this will produce endurance.
Endurance is a Greek word, and it means
a strong, brave courage that goes on and
on even if the roof falls in.
And you see that God's desire is to
strengthen our faith in Jesus' blood, and in
the fact that God has accepted us as
His children because of Jesus' death, whatever it
looks like to other people.
And that's why He allows afflictions to come
upon us.
So, loved ones, really, truly, unless you're very,
very young in the Christian life, and God
therefore has to treat you just very gently,
unless you're very, very young in the Christian
life, you're bound to have come into some
afflictions and sufferings.
Now, what you need to do, you see,
is to look up to the Father and
say, Father, why has this come?
Why are you allowing this to come?
What is it in my attitude to you
that is not right?
And really examine yourself.
Do I really believe that I'm accepted by
God because of Jesus' death?
Or am I beginning to believe I'm accepted
by God because of the way things are
going?
Because do you see the danger?
Satan can make things go right too.
He's the prince of this world.
And that's why God wants to take us
from under that perversion of faith, that walking
by sight instead of by faith.
Now, that's one of the ways God strengthens
justifying faith, by taking away that walking by
sight instead of by faith through allowing us
to come into afflictions.
That's what old Paul means when he says,
you see, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing
that suffering produces homony, who produces that brave
courage that keeps going whatever things look like.
It strengthens justifying faith.
Isn't it true?
In every difficulty, you've been closer to Jesus
than ever before.
Isn't that right?
Isn't it right?
It's prosperity that is difficult, isn't it?
You need to be mature to take prosperity.
Remember old John Wesley, who was used by
God in the 18th century.
He said, at the beginning of my life,
they used to drive cattle among his congregations,
you know.
They used to stone him and imprison him.
And he said, at the beginning of my
life, they stoned me, they imprisoned me, they
insulted me, they ignored me.
And my time with God was safe.
Now, they laud me, they praise me, they
talk about me, they write books about me.
And my soul has never been in such
great danger from Satan.
And you see that the afflictions are the
good times, brothers and sisters.
God uses the sufferings to bring us into
that place where we believe we're accepted by
him because of Jesus alone and his blood.
What is the other kind of affliction he
uses?
Well, many of us experience a great relief
when we receive Jesus into our own lives.
It's just a tremendous deliverance, you know, when
the guilt lifts off your conscience and you
begin to sense, I'm accepted by God.
And all the worry goes and all the
concern about what your future is going to
be and how you're going to be after
death comes.
And you just have a great peace and
great joy.
Now, the tragedy is that many of us
begin to lean on that joy and that
peace.
And so, you can tell infant fellowships by
their attitude to joy and peace.
Many infant prayer meetings will be all concerned
with how we all feel, you know.
Boy, I didn't feel good in that prayer
meeting.
That means they didn't feel joy or they
didn't feel peace.
Or if a meeting is sort of singing
and uplifting and joyful, they'll say, boy, that
was a really good meeting, good service.
And so, bit by bit, people begin to
depend on the peace of God's presence rather
than God's presence.
They begin to depend more on the feeling
of joy than they do on the absolute
assurance that God really loves them.
They begin to want to feel God's love
more than believe in God's love.
Now, brothers and sisters, do you see that
that is a perilous situation?
That is a weak faith in Jesus' death
for your sins.
It isn't long before Satan can begin to
produce the same kind of joy.
In fact, you can get it with drugs.
You can get it with alcohol.
So, it isn't long before Satan begins to
make your circumstances right and you seem to
have that, still have that joy, and yet
underneath your faith has crumbled.
Now, this is why God allows us to
come into affliction in our emotional lives.
What does He do?
After we've been walking a while with Him,
He withdraws peace.
He withdraws joy.
And oh, so many of us, you know,
are like the little kid.
Oh, you hurt me.
And we want it back.
We want it back.
And so many of us say, we're not
right with God.
That's why we haven't got joy and peace.
We're not right with God.
Loved ones, do you see that we're right
with God because we believe that He has
accepted us through the blood of Jesus that
has been presented to the Father?
It's naked faith.
And that's why old Paul says, we rejoice
in Satan.
When he withdraws peace and joy, when he
withdraws the love from our hearts, when we
begin to have to exercise our wills to
show these in our lives, then that is
God bringing us into sufferings because we know
that suffering will produce endurance.
And that endurance is that word homony, you
know.
And it means something that stays under the
load.
It means an attitude that stays under the
load, remaining under the load of affliction without
faltering or complaint and going right on no
matter what the load may become.
Now, that's the meaning of that word.
And you see, that's the kind of faith
that God produces in us as we learn
to do without the feelings of joy and
of peace.
Now, brothers and sisters, that's one of the
reasons why Paul says we rejoice in our
sufferings.
We rejoice when God allows our circumstances to
become really hairy.
We rejoice when God withdraws those great feelings
of joy and peace because what happens inside
is we sink back into the beginning of
the whole miracle, our faith in Jesus' blood
presented before the Father.
Oh, I remember old Bunyan, you know, John
Bunyan, who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress.
He was being hounded from town to town.
And they were at last determining to imprison
him for life.
And he said, whatever comes, I will leap
into eternity by blind faith, come heaven, come
hell.
Now, that's it.
I will leap into eternity by blind faith
in Jesus.
Whether heaven comes after that or hell comes
after that, I will believe Jesus, whatever.
Now, loved ones, God is out to strengthen
that faith.
Why?
Because, you'll see next Sunday, He's going to
bring us into some hard things to deal
with that old independent selfish will of ours.
And as we come into those hard things,
there will be a great temptation, you know,
to wonder, am I still justified?
Am I still justified?
That's why God strengthens that faith in Jesus
in Romans 5 and 9.
We are justified by the blood of His
Son.
So, I really pray that if any of
you today are, you know, teetering like that,
that you will see what God is doing
in you.
And that you will allow Him to strengthen
that faith and be prepared to go by
naked faith.
Not by sight, that is, not by circumstances
and not by feeling, but by naked faith
in Jesus.
And that's the place of peace and rest.
And it's a place where God can begin
to work on us and begin to sanctify
us by His Spirit.
Do you know, John, it's so long that
from I've listened to you with your being
down south that I can't make out what
you're saying.
Yeah, yeah.
John, you heard him probably even better than
I did, that he says that how really
do you distinguish between the Spirit and the
soul?
And how can you be sure that you're
walking right if you've heard nothing recently from
your Spirit?
And it seems, brothers and sisters, that the
basic verse, you know, for assurance in the
Bible is Romans 8 and 16.
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit
that we are the children of God.
And you remember, our spirit's witness is the
witness of our own human spirit that we
have experienced of those.
Galatians 5 and 22, I think it is,
the fruit of the Spirit is love and
joy and peace.
And we don't look in and say, you
know, do we really feel love?
Because probably you'll never feel that you feel
enough love.
But it's that other people see Jesus in
our life and that lets us know that
our own spirit is witnessing.
The witness of God's Spirit with a capital
S is that we have a sure trust
and confidence that Jesus has died for us.
A trust and confidence within.
And it's that witness of our spirit, John,
that assures us that we are children of
God.
It's not the witness of our feelings that
we feel joy or we feel peace.
But it's the witness that other people are
seeing Jesus in us because they see the
fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
And it's the witness within, a sure trust
and confidence that we have that Jesus has
died for us.
A belief in Him.
So that's really how we walk in regard
to our own assurance.
And the only one that we should allow
to spoil that assurance is the Holy Spirit
Himself.
And the only way He will spoil it
is when He convicts us of a definite
sin.
A definite particular sin.
And then we can deal with that definite
particular sin.
The Holy Spirit never brings a vague sense
of guilt upon us.
He always says, that is wrong.
And we deal with that.
So if you have not the Holy Spirit
dealing with you in a particular way and
you're sensing a definite hold back in a
certain part of your life, then you walk
according to that.
Now you know how to discern between your
soul and your spirit.
The vital thing is you don't try to
do it yourself.
Because it's your soul, your mind looking in
and trying to distinguish what is your spirit
and what is your mind.
All your mind can see when it looks
in is your mind.
So it comes up with the irrevocable answer
and the answer that will repeat again and
again.
You're walking by your mind.
So you can't distinguish between your soul and
your spirit by looking in with your mind.
You remember it's Hebrews 4 and 12 and
you have the two answers.
Breaking experiences, you remember, that Paul talks about.
Christianal but not perplexed.
Breaking experiences and revelation.
You remember the Holy Spirit says that the
Bible divides between the soul and the spirit,
revealing the intentions of the heart.
And it's the Holy Spirit that distinguishes between
your spirit and your soul.
And what really, the way it really works
is, oh I see, I'm not doing too
well.
The way it really works is that you're
doing something and suddenly the Holy Spirit just
hits you and says, now there's a little
emotionalism in there, isn't there?
And you look up to him and say,
Holy Spirit, yes, I can't get rid of
it.
I give it over to you.
Will you discipline me in this regard?
And he'll break more breaking experiences until gradually
he brings your emotions under his control.
That's what normally happens.
But again, loved ones, I don't want to
sound as if I'm advertising, you know, I
get 10 cents on every cassette.
No, I don't.
But would you remember the cassettes in the
library?
Because they are really fairly complete and lengthy
treatments of the subject.
And often sitting there listening, God can speak
to you, you know, in a way that
he cannot in a group.
And dear ones, I think we really need
to pray.
Holy Spirit, we remember what you taught us
when we first began our studies in the
evenings.
You taught us that we could not bring
these things about by ourselves.
And Holy Spirit, we would not try to
do that.
We would receive from you the warning that
you have given us about the emotions.
And we would trust you, Holy Spirit, in
your own unique way, to bring our emotions
under your control.
So that when we clap, it is because
you are clapping.
When we sing, it is because you are
singing.
When we pray, it is because you are
praying.
And when the body does something, it is
because you, Holy Spirit, have prompted us to
do it because Jesus has told you.
So Holy Spirit, we would give ourselves to
you now tonight, telling you that whatever it
costs you to bring our emotions and our
minds and our wills under your control, we
want you to bring that about in our
lives.
However breaking it may seem, however abandoned we
may seem at times, we give you the
right, Holy Spirit, to bring us into a
daily bearing of the cross so that our
souls become submissive and efficient servants of our
spirits.
And so that the Holy Spirit of Jesus
flows out freely from us to others, and
the world sees Jesus and not our personalities.
We ask this for his glory and in
his name.
Now the grace of our Lord Jesus and
the love of God and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit be with each one of
us now and evermore.