If you ask a little child who has
been at Sunday school what the purpose of
life is, every little child will answer, well,
the purpose of life is to live according
to God's will.
That appeals to common sense.
It's just common sense that the creator of
the world who made it and made us
knows how best we will be fulfilled.
So it appeals to common sense to say
that we should live our lives according to
God's will.
It appeals also to the truth revealed in
this book which contains the clearest expression of
our creator that we have in our earth.
Because this book, from the very first chapter
to the very last chapter, urges us to
obey God.
That's right.
From the very first chapter to the very
last chapter you'll find we are urged to
obey God, to live according to His will.
And indeed, that's the mark and the great
privilege of any of us who are born
again.
Any of us who claim to have a
real relationship that is personal with our God
through the experience of the new birth.
Our great privilege is that described in 1
John 3 and 9.
Whosoever, anybody, born of God does not commit
sin.
And of course, sin is explained and defined
clearly in James chapter 4 and 17 where
it says, Anybody who knows what is right
to do and fails to do it, for
him it is sin.
So, outward sin is conscious disobedience to God's
will.
And the great mark and privilege of those
of us who are born of God is
that we do not commit sin.
The Greek word is poio, and the emphasis
is do.
We do not do any act or speak
any word that is disobedient to God's will
and that we know is disobedient to Him.
And so, many of us who are born
of God have experienced that.
When we first met Jesus, we saw that
certain things that we did were wrong.
We stopped swearing.
We stopped having adulterous thoughts.
We stopped being sarcastic.
We stopped boasting.
We stopped drinking.
We stopped gambling.
We stopped certain outward actions that we knew
displeased God.
And many of us who have been born
of God have come to that place.
And so, we have been freed from outward
sin.
However, great numbers of us have been troubled
not so much by outward sin, which we
managed to keep away from for the first
few months or years of our relationship with
God.
But most of us are troubled about the
subject we talked about last Sunday.
We are troubled about inward sin, about stuff
that nobody sees, and indeed, few people know
about but ourselves.
And that, loved ones, is what I'd love
us to talk about together this morning.
Because inward sin is what causes many of
us heartache and defeat.
Many of us, in other words, are really
not unlike good Jews.
Many of us are not very unlike good
humanists.
We outwardly conform to what we know is
true.
That's not surprising, because even the Greek and
Roman philosophers did that.
They expected in themselves outward conformity to known
precepts.
So, many of us who are born of
God are in that position.
Outwardly, we conform our lives to the things
that people expect and that the Bible describes
of children of God.
And in that way, we're like all good
Jews and all good humanists and all pagan
philosophers and all noble pagans.
But many of us are like them in
another way, that we do that at the
expense of an unbelievable inner conflict.
In other words, many of us do what
is right outwardly, but we do it only
because we manage to keep down incredibly monstrous
and savage urges inside us that want to
break out and that are constantly contradicting what
we're doing outwardly.
In other words, many of us have been
in the position where a friend has got
a good job or a friend has been
promoted instead of us, or a friend has
come into a lot of money.
And we've stuck out our hand and we've
said, Congratulations!
And inside in our hearts is rising envy
of their good fortune and jealousy and indeed
a creeping sort of suspicion that really we
ought to have experienced that.
We deserve it as much as they do.
Many of us in job situations have been
in the position where in the midst of
some duty that we've been doing, we've suddenly
had adulterous and unclean thoughts that are so
utterly removed from the outward expression of what
we're doing that we cannot believe it's coming
from us.
And of course, it utterly spoils the particular
interaction that we're having with the person or
the colleague that we're working with at that
moment.
Or in the midst of some philanthropic action
or some religious service where we're wholly taken
up apparently with helping somebody else or with
loving God, we suddenly find within us a
desire for self-glory and prominence and praise
that almost bursts out of us.
And we see that we're actually vying for
attention from people with the very Godhead Himself.
And so that's the realm where many of
us have our troubles.
And it's really the realm of the motive
life.
You can see that.
It's the realm of the motive life.
It isn't normally the realm of the outward
actions or the outward words.
It's the area of motives, the area of
responses and reactions.
It's those responses that come up from within
us when our conscious guard is down.
Of course, what troubles many of us is
the sneaking suspicion that if this stuff seems
to come up so naturally from within us
and seems to come so freely and spontaneously
as a reaction to what people do to
us, which is the real us?
Is the real us the calm, civilized, self
-controlled exterior that everybody sees?
Or is the real us this savage lion
inside that seems to want to paw and
beat everybody down in order that it should
be prominent and preeminent?
And that's what troubles us, I think, isn't
it?
The Mr. Hyde used to break out just
a little and spoil the Dr. Jekyll civilized
exterior.
But it seems the longer we've gone on
with God or the longer we've gone on
coming to religious services, the more that Mr.
Hyde seems to be breaking out and the
stronger he seems to be becoming.
And that's what concerns us.
We're troubled because we see resentment coming up
inside us more than it seemed to when
we were younger.
And we see jealousy occupying more of our
internal thinking than it used to.
And we see irritability spoiling our relationship with
more people because that's what's happening.
The inward sin isn't staying in now.
It's beginning to break out at times.
And we can't keep it down.
At the beginning, it was kind of schizophrenia.
And we just thought, Oh, well, there's part
of me who wants to do that.
There's part of me who wants to do
that.
But now it seems to be sheer hypocrisy.
And more and more, the people that we
live with, they see our irritability.
They see our impatience.
However much we try to hold it down,
more and more, the people at work are
realizing the kind of people we are deep
down as we lose our temper or as
we get angry over something.
And more and more, we can only witness
far from home and far from work where
nobody really knows us.
And loved ones, there are thousands of us
who live that kind of defeated, carnal life.
And many of us have come to that
place where we've just used the words of
that old hymn, Where is the blessedness I
knew when first I saw the Lord?
Where is that soul-refreshing view of Jesus
and His Word?
And you begin to wonder, is this all
there is?
Of course, we've taken various methods of trying
to live with it.
Some of us try to justify it.
And so there are great numbers of we're
just silly people.
That's all.
We're just ostriches.
A great number of silly ostriches who try
to justify sinning Christianity.
Dear help us, all the dear, happy, sensible,
non-Christians outside, they don't dream of justifying
sinning Christianity.
They have no doubt in their minds that
Christians are supposed to be people like Jesus.
But there are huge numbers of us inside
Christendom who try to justify sinning Christianity.
And we try to say, Oh, well, you
remember Jesus.
I mean, He really lost His temper in
the temple there, you know.
Well, that's just what I do, you know.
I just lose my temper a few times.
And we try to compare His unselfish, controlled
expression of God's wrath against hypocrisy in the
temple.
We try to compare that with our selfish,
uncontrolled bursts of temper which we let out
when somebody is not opposing God but somebody
is opposing us.
So thousands of us try to justify sinning
Christianity.
And we say, Oh, that's what it's about.
And whosoever is born of God does not
commit sin.
Oh, well, the Greek probably means something else.
And so we try to justify ourselves sinning
and being disobedient.
There are others of us who try to
rationalize our sins.
And we say, Oh, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, all artistic types.
They are fairly highly strung, you know.
I'm kind of artistic.
I'm fairly highly strung.
I lose my temper at any moment, you
know.
But possibly of great evil, possibly of great
good, you know.
So it's just my temperament.
And so we try to rationalize this stuff
and make it not traits of the self
-life but traits of our artistic temperament.
A loved one says, Is this all that's
possible?
Is this what God has called us to?
To try to force a rebellious heart to
obey precepts that do not come naturally to
it.
To try to constantly get a rebellious heart
by sheer willpower to obey certain things that
it's utterly opposed to.
My loved ones, the whole Bible says that's
not true.
Right from the days of Jeremiah, God said,
Look, I'm going to make a new covenant
with you.
Not like the covenant that I made with
your fathers.
I'm going to make a new covenant with
you and I'm going to write my laws
not on tablets of stone.
I'm going to write my laws on your
hearts so that you'll have no need for
anyone to tell you do this or do
that.
But you'll all do it naturally from within.
In other words, God said, I will do
a work in you that will make it
more natural for you to obey than to
sin.
I think that's what concerns many of us.
We feel it's become more natural to elude
our temper than to keep it.
It's become more natural to criticize than to
love.
It's become more natural to be sarcastic than
to praise.
And what God promised us back in the
time of Jeremiah was that He would write
His laws on our inward hearts.
In other words, our hearts would want to
do what was right.
It's not natural to be angry.
It's carnal to be angry.
It's natural to be kind.
It's not natural to hate.
It's carnal to hate.
It's natural to love.
It's not natural to be selfish.
It's carnal to be selfish.
It's natural to be unselfish.
That's right, loved ones.
It really is.
What God has done for us in Jesus
makes it natural for us to obey Him.
And that's what Ezekiel said.
Ezekiel said, God is going to take away
your heart of stone.
And He's going to give you a new
heart, a soft heart.
And He's going to put a new spirit
within you.
And He's going to take away from you
this evil spirit.
And that's the whole purpose of the New
Covenant, loved ones.
I don't know if you've ever wondered what's
the difference between the Old Testament and the
New Testament.
What's the difference between the Old Covenant and
the New Covenant?
Well, it's not just Jesus.
It's that the Old Covenant could simply offer
forgiveness.
The New Covenant offers a deliverance from sin.
That's what Jesus did on Calvary.
That's what happened.
That's what Romans 6 and 6 means.
Our old self was crucified with Christ so
that the body of sin might be destroyed
and we might no longer be enslaved to
sin.
It's a change inside in our hearts.
That's what Peter said, do you remember?
In Acts 15 and 9, God made no
distinction between the Gentiles and us, but He
gave them the Holy Spirit and He cleansed
their hearts by faith.
Loved ones, it is possible to have your
heart cleansed.
It is, honestly.
And indeed, it is not only possible, but
it is the whole purpose of Jesus coming
to earth.
And it is the whole purpose of the
coming of the Holy Spirit.
That's why they call Him a Holy Spirit.
You see, not to make Him spooky and
make us afraid of Him, but to make
us realize this is a dear Holy Spirit.
He makes you, and not holy in the
sense of different and far out, but holy
in the sense of like Jesus.
Kind, loving, pure, understanding, gentle, tender.
The Holy Spirit has come to this earth
to make us like that.
Now, He can do that in you.
He can do that in you.
There are thousands of us who will testify
to the fact that years after we were
born of God, we became aware of a
need for a deeper work in our hearts,
and we began to seek it.
Now, I'd like simply to tell you how
to do it, and then it's really up
to you what you do.
The first step is to acknowledge the Holy
Spirit in your life.
That's the first thing.
Now, the reason for that, loved ones, is
that you, with all your introspection, and me
with all my self-examination, cannot get to
the heart of our evil being.
We can't.
Now, you've tried it.
And you go as deep as doesn't matter,
and so do I.
In the process, anyway, we all get depressed,
and we all get discouraged.
Now, the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, is a
counselor.
He knows you.
In other words, why you're surprised by the
anger that pops up inside you, why you're
surprised about the irritability and the bad temper,
is you don't know yourself.
You don't.
You don't know yourself.
And you know, at least in this span
of life, you should at least get to
know yourself.
And the only way you'll get to know
yourself is if you have this dear counselor
beginning to reveal yourself to you.
And honestly, you need him.
Because you don't want to look at certain
things.
You don't.
You're in the grip of a selfish heart.
And you don't want to look at certain
things inside yourself.
You don't.
You know those of us who have even
tried counseling and tried to the analyst's office.
Well, there are certain things we don't want
to see.
Only the Holy Spirit can take you to
the depth of your heart.
But loved ones, if you're not prepared to
see that depth, God can never save you
from it.
Do you see that?
He cannot save you by default, loved ones.
He will not put you on an operating
table and put you to sleep and do
the operation without you knowing.
He won't.
You have to know what you are.
And the first step is to acknowledge the
Holy Spirit as your counselor.
I'm not going to argue about whether you
pray to Him or not.
I talk to Him.
But I think He's the Spirit of Jesus.
I think He's a dear person of the
Trinity.
I don't exalt the Holy Spirit.
But He always glorifies Jesus.
That's what Jesus said.
The Holy Spirit will not bear witness to
Himself.
He'll always bear witness to me.
So you're safe in the hands of the
Holy Spirit.
So the first thing is believe that the
Holy Spirit is a person in your life
and ask Him, Holy Spirit, will you begin
to counsel me about this?
And will you begin to take me down
to the depths of my inner self so
that I at last know myself?
Now, loved ones, it will take a long
time because do you know what you've done?
We've all done the same thing.
We've come to a time when we knew
we should do something.
We didn't do it.
We quietly disobeyed God.
That piece of ice bedded down in our
hearts.
That resistance to God's will hardened inside our
hearts.
A few weeks later, we came to another
little thing.
Dirty joke told in the office.
We snigger so that we'll be thought like
the rest.
We know we disobeyed Him.
We know we sidestepped the issue.
That beds down in our hearts.
Another piece of ice hardens.
Now, loved ones, you have layers and layers
of that stuff.
Of past resistances to God's will that have
built up a hard, hard heart.
And it's from that mess that all this
stuff comes.
So it takes a while.
And you'll often think you've got to the
bottom of your heart and the Holy Spirit
will show you the next day.
No, there's something more.
So the first step is acknowledge the Holy
Spirit as your counselor.
Second step is see how sinful that old
self of yours is.
Really.
Here's the way the Bible talks about it.
The Bible says in Romans 8 and 7,
the mind of the flesh is enmity against
God.
It is not subject to God's law.
Neither indeed can it be.
Now, loved ones, you need to see that.
Stop this business.
I don't know if you know, but in
many countries, when loved ones find out they
have a sickness, they don't go back to
the hospital.
Because they're afraid.
They're afraid.
Usually, especially if it's an incurable sickness, they
just pretend it isn't there.
Now, do you see, you and I haven't
that excuse.
We have been crucified with Christ.
Our forgiveness is assured because of God's attitude
to us.
We don't need to hide this evil self.
We don't need to defend it and think
that unless we prove that we haven't this
inside us, we won't get into heaven.
We will get into heaven because of what
God has done for us in Jesus and
what God has done to us in Jesus.
And I urge you, this disease, the antidote
for it is a present in Jesus' death.
So, look at self and see the sinfulness
of self.
Here's the mistake we make.
We see a little bit of impatience.
A person doesn't get into the car fast
enough.
We say, hurry up, get in.
Just a little bit of impatience.
So we're dumb.
We bluff ourselves.
We say, ha ha, just a little bit
of impatience.
Must pray about that a little sometime.
Or they deserve that.
But we say, just a little impatience.
And we don't realize that it's like an
iceberg.
And do you know what you see of
an iceberg?
You see a tenth of the iceberg above
the water.
And then if you go down underneath, you
find the iceberg goes out like that.
And that's what it is with your impatience.
That's what it is with your irritability or
your bad temper.
You and I need to see that that
old self wants to be God.
That's why it gets impatient.
I know exactly the number of seconds it
should take you to close that car door.
That's really.
I know exactly the number of minutes it
should take you to get ready for us
to go out shopping.
I know it.
I have it built in in my heart
deep down.
I am God.
I know the way these things should happen.
But we think, oh no, just a little
impatience.
It's not loved ones.
Underneath that little iceberg tip, there is a
self that wants to be God and that
is determined to have its own way and
determined to stand up for its own rights.
And it's that carnal heart that spews up
those raging tempers.
You must admit you are amazed at times,
aren't you, how strong they are?
I mean, we are amazed.
We almost think, oh, it's an evil spirit
or something in me.
It can't be me.
But loved ones, it is you.
And the second step is to see the
sinfulness of that old self and see that
there is no possibility of improving it or
taming it or training it or auto-suggesting
to it that it ought to be a
better self.
There is only one thing to do and
that's the remedy that God brought on Calvary.
He destroyed that self.
But loved ones, you need to see how
sinful that self is.
And I know, I know we are all
fighting this healthy-minded stuff.
I know that.
I know we are all having whispers given
to us.
Oh, you are really good.
You are really good.
You are really bad.
But you can be good.
You can be good.
And God has done a work in Jesus
that will make you good.
But first of all, you have to see
how bad you are.
And don't be afraid of that.
Don't pretend.
Don't think that it's something you can get
rid of by a little auto-suggestion.
It isn't, loved ones.
See the sinfulness of self.
See that it is enmity against God, that
it is not subject to God's law and
indeed it cannot be whatever you do with
it.
That's the second step.
The third step is to see that our
old self was crucified with Christ.
To see that you actually have been crucified
with Jesus.
That all that internal personality that depends on
people and therefore gets irritable with them when
they don't give you what you want, all
that internal self that depends on things for
its security and therefore gets worried when the
things aren't there, all that internal self that
depends on other people's opinion and other people's
fellowship and friendship for its enjoyment and gets
mad when it doesn't get the enjoyment it
wants, that that has been crucified with Christ.
That that's a fact.
And don't get caught in this business, oh,
but it's not my experience.
Don't look at the experience of this case.
Look at the fact.
There's a time to look at your inner
self, but then there's a time to look
at the fact that your old self was
crucified with Christ and to hold on to
that fact.
And that has happened whatever you feel like
or whatever you've experienced.
You, the Bible says, were crucified with Christ.
If Christ died for all, then all died.
Colossians says, you are dead with Christ.
We have been crucified with Jesus and there
is a resurrected you that is new and
clean and pure and perfect.
See that.
And the fourth and last step is consecration.
Are you willing for whatever the Holy Spirit
asks you to do in your life?
That's it.
Are you willing, if the Holy Spirit asks
you to be crucified with Jesus, are you
willing for that?
If the Holy Spirit asks you to have
the only friends in your life jeer at
you and jibe at you or turn away
in disappointment as happened with Jesus, are you
ready for that?
If the Holy Spirit asks you to have
only one friend and that one friend was
God only and no other friends that you
could depend on, would you be willing for
that?
If the Holy Spirit asks you to be
a failure, as Jesus appeared to be a
failure to everybody, if the Holy Spirit asked
you to be a failure in your life,
in your career, in your profession, forget about
arguing whether He would or not.
Obviously, He is kind and He wants the
best for you, but would you be willing
to do whatever the Holy Spirit asks you
to do in this life?
Now, loved ones, when at last you come
to the ground of your heart and you
say, I would, you'll have no trouble with
believing for the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
Faith will spring up in your heart to
receive the Holy Spirit in to cleanse your
heart by faith and to fill you with
the fruit of the Spirit with love and
joy and peace.
But that can only happen in a person
who is willing to be Jesus.
That's it.
The Holy Spirit will only come in and
cleanse your heart if you are willing to
face the things that Jesus faced.
You can see how it works out.
You can see so many instances.
You get irritable because you want that thing
finished to give to the boss.
What if you were willing for the boss
to think you are useless, full?
You can see how the Holy Spirit then
could bear in you patience with the loved
one who had to give you the paper.
But the Holy Spirit cannot do that.
He cannot express the beauty and the love
of Jesus through you unless you are willing
to face the same consequences as He Himself
faced.
And that's the secret, loved ones.
Are you willing to consecrate yourself fully to
Jesus for His glory only and to die
with Him to all that people and things
can give you?
And when that moment comes, you'll know it.
Many of you have said, how will I
know?
How will I know I've come to the
place where He can cleanse my heart?
How will I know where I've come to
the place where I can be baptized with
the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit will witness it.
You'll know.
A dozen times I thought I was there.
The Holy Spirit is good.
The next day there was something in my
life that showed me very plainly I wasn't
there.
But the Holy Spirit will witness when you
come to the ground of your heart and
when you've totted up all that you're worth
and you've given it to God for whatever
He wants.
Loved ones, the Holy Spirit then will cleanse
your heart and your heart will become a
delight to you.
It'll be a garden of spices and of
fragrant smells.
It'll be a place of beauty and of
love.
It'll be a heart that you are glad
to look at.
And it'll take away all fear of responding
the wrong way to somebody or reacting the
wrong way.
And suddenly you'll be a child of God
because you feel like a child of God.
And you'll smile outwardly because you're smiling inwardly.
And you'll love because you're loving right from
the inside right out the whole way.
That's God's plan.
Now, you know, that's the way we're meant
to live.
That's the way we're meant to live.
And that's what the Holy Spirit can do
for you.
And I should say, you know, to the
loved ones on television that He can do
that for you too.
Let's pray.
Dear Father, I would pray that You would
help my brothers and sisters who want to
come to the grace of a clean heart
whatever the cost.
I pray, Father, that You will enable them
to begin this pilgrimage this very day with
You, dear Holy Spirit, as their guide.
And that You will lead them on through
to the place where they are prepared to
side with You against self.
And then where they see step by step
the things that they are to be willing
for in their life if You are going
to give them this great grace.
So, Holy Spirit, I trust You to make
saints among us in these days.
Men and women who will be consistent the
whole way through.
So that if we cut each other open
at any place we'd see exactly the same
beauty and the same love the whole way
through.
Father, we know that that's what heaven will
be like.
And we know that's what You want for
us here on earth and for our loved
ones.
We give ourselves to You, Holy Spirit, for
this definite work of grace for Jesus' glory.
And 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.
Amen.