Two of the most tragic words in many
of the lives of those who are sitting
beside you this morning and probably of your
own life, two of the most tragic words
are these.
I can't, I can't, I can't stop being
angry.
I can't stop taking tranquilizers.
I can't stop losing my temper.
I can't stop these lustful, unclean thoughts.
I can't stop being critical.
I can't, I want to, but I can't.
And then many of us who have been
in that position begin to understand a little
about God.
And what has been up to then just
a personal problem of, I can't do what
I know I should do, assumes utterly different
proportions.
Because we begin to realize that if you
know what to do and you don't do
it, that's sin.
That's what James 4 and 27 says.
Whosoever knows what is right to do and
fails to do it, for him it is
sin.
And then the Holy Spirit begins to bear
in upon us and convict us and show
us, look, this isn't just a little personal
difficulty you're having.
This is sin against your Maker.
This is rebellion against your God.
This is the reason why you will spend
eternity in lonely, dark hell of selfishness.
And we begin to realize that the wages
of sin is death.
And it's then that we start to try
other remedies.
And we start trying to go to church,
or we start reading our Bible, or we
start trying to be better people.
And we try to substitute all kinds of
other cures besides the one that God said
is the only cure.
The wages of sin is death.
And we try to substitute other wages.
No, we'll do our best, or we'll try
harder, or we'll try the power of positive
thinking, or we'll try to be better people,
or we'll attend church, or we'll give money
to missions.
And somehow none of those cures take away
the guilt that is lying on our hearts.
And then God's Spirit lights up different words
of Scripture to us.
And we see why we're getting no relief.
We see that by the works of the
law shall no man be justified.
Doesn't matter how hard you try.
Doesn't matter how much you work at it.
By the works of the law shall no
man be justified.
Or that verse you remember in the Old
Testament, all your righteousness, all the things you
think are so good about you, you try
to tot up the good things and weigh
them against the bad things, all your righteousness
is as filthy rags.
And it's then that most of us sink
into despair and helplessness.
And we see this thing is too big
for me.
There is no way in which I can
make things right with God.
There's no way in which I can make
Him accept me.
He has every right to destroy me eternally.
There is no way in which I can
help myself.
And it's in that position of helpless despair
that the Holy Spirit then brings home the
truths of the gospel to us.
God commended His love towards us in that
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us.
And to him that worketh not, but believeth
in him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith
is counted as righteousness.
And we sink in relaxation and peace at
last into the arms of Jesus.
And we see that God has made it
right.
That Jesus has died for us.
And that God accepts us as His own
children.
And we sink in faith into Jesus.
And most of us at that point in
the evangelical atmosphere in which we now live,
most of us at that point enter into
the gospel that was preached by a Jewish
preacher called John the Baptist.
And you remember how it's described.
John the Baptist came preaching a baptism of
repentance for the Old Covenant.
That's before Jesus ever died.
That's the Old Covenant.
But most of us in that situation and
in this evangelical atmosphere enter into, believe it
or not, the Old Covenant.
That's right.
And you know that it's true.
You know that the primary truth that you
grabbed hold of when you became a Christian
was repentance for the forgiveness of my sins.
And that's the Old Covenant.
And if you say to me, no, Pastor,
that's what's preached throughout the churches in America.
No, that isn't the Old Covenant.
Why do you say it's the Old Covenant?
I'll tell you why.
Because you still, six months or two years
after you're born again, you still cry the
original cry of frustration that God has given
you.
That was expressed not by a Christian, but
by a Jew trying to live under the
law and up to the law.
Paul himself.
You still cry out his cry in Romans
7.15. I don't understand my own actions.
Because I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.
And for many of us who are born
of God, that's still the cry of frustration.
The cry of frustration that every Jew cried
under the Old Covenant.
And maybe you say, that's insane.
It's insane.
That's right what you say, but it's insane.
That's where I started.
That's why I first felt guilt, because I
couldn't do what I knew I should do.
That's when I first sought Jesus as my
Savior, because I was unable to deal with
this power of evil within me.
Do you mean I'm back where I started?
Well, actually, you know you're not.
You know you're not back where you started.
You know that you have experienced God's gracious
acceptance of you because of Jesus.
You know that you've sensed a relief from
guilt.
You know that you've experienced forgiveness of sins.
Moreover, even though you often resist God's Spirit
in your life, yet you know too that
at times you're able to obey His Spirit.
And you know that there is at times
within you a sense of Jesus' Spirit urging
you to obey God and to love Him
and to want to serve Him.
So you know you're not in the position
you used to be in.
You know you're aware of God in a
way that you weren't before you first gave
your life to Jesus or received His Spirit.
And yet, loved ones, you know fine well
that there is also coming up from deep,
deep down inside you a fountain of filth
and dirt and sarcasm and anger and bad
temper that you are not able to control.
And you know it's as if your spirit
is alive to God and you're regenerate and
your spirit is born again.
It's as if even your conscience is alive
to God and knows what it ought to
do.
It's as if even your will wants to
do it and your conscience tries to constrain
your will to do what you know you
should.
But there's this stream of evil that comes
up from deep, deep down inside you.
A stream that opposes both your conscience and
your will and feeds your will such a
powerful stream of filth that the will finds
itself unable at times to hold it in.
And even when it does hold it in,
it holds it in by dint of powerful
repression and great strain in your own life.
But often it's not able to hold it
in and against your conscience the will has
to let that stream forth.
And you lose your temper or you're sarcastic
with somebody or you tell a lie to
somebody or you're absolutely dishonest to somebody or
you give a wrong impression to somebody else
or you get proud of something you've done
and you know that there's something inside you
that is not Jesus.
And loved ones, the truth is that stuff
comes from your heart.
And your heart is still as unclean as
it was when you were first born of
God.
That's what's wrong.
Your spirit is alive to God, even your
mind and your will and your conscience.
But your heart, the deepest part of you,
the place where you really live, your own
deepest self, is still as unclean as it
was when you first heard of Jesus.
And that's the problem.
The heart needs to be cleansed.
Now how do you get your heart cleansed?
Same way you got your sins forgiven.
Same way.
Same way you got your sins forgiven.
By faith.
That's it.
And that's the way it happened in the
New Testament.
Cornelius, you remember, asked one of the apostles
to come and preach at his house.
The people in that house had never heard
the gospel before.
And the apostle came and preached it.
And as they were listening, the Holy Spirit
came upon them.
And the apostle looking back to that day
said, God gave the Holy Spirit to them
as he did to us and made no
distinction between them and us, but cleansed their
heart by faith.
That's the way it happened in the New
Testament.
People would hear of Jesus and they would
believe and they would give themselves all or
nothing to him.
And the Holy Spirit would cleanse their hearts
by faith.
And they'd walk in a never increasing victory
in their own life until they met Jesus
face to face.
Now if you say, well why did it
not happen that way with me when I
became a Christian?
That didn't happen with me.
I'm in the situation that you're talking about.
I do the very thing I hate and
I can't do the things that I want
and I don't understand my own actions anymore.
Why did that not happen with me?
Well first, because on the whole, the gospel
that you and I listen to here in
our society is an Old Testament gospel.
It's not a New Testament gospel.
On the whole, that's the situation.
People preach at us the same thing as
the Jews listen to, the forgiveness of sins.
And that's on the whole the gospel that
we hear, so you can't enter into it
anything more than you believe.
And so that's one reason.
We were told that Jesus died for us,
so that God could forgive us our sins
and could take away our guilt.
But the power of sin, we had to
deal with ourselves by works of law.
And that's one reason why many of us
are in the situation we're in today.
Another reason is that many of us do
not see how exceedingly sinful and powerful sin
is until the Spirit of Jesus begins to
influence part of our lives.
That's true.
Many of us don't really see how absolutely
intractable a part of sin is until we
can set it against something pure and beautiful
like the Spirit of Jesus.
But the third reason is the most important.
The reason you did not enter into a
clean heart by faith, and the reason you
haven't entered into a clean heart by faith
since, is because you don't want a clean
heart.
That's right.
I mean, you may say, don't want a
clean heart?
That's what I want.
I want to be rid of this stream
of filth that comes from inside me.
I want to be able to look a
friend in the eyes and think all the
way through loving thoughts about them, not have
those kind of critical thoughts inside me that
I don't let them see.
I want to be able to look my
wife or my husband or my children in
the eyes and them to see outwardly all
that is inside me.
I want to be real.
I want to be rid of this.
I want to be rid of this unclean
heart, all this sarcasm that spews up from
inside me, this envy and jealousy that makes
me feel a creep.
I want to be rid of it.
I want the stream of Jesus' pure and
gentle sentiments coming up from inside my heart.
That's what I want more than anything in
the world.
Well, loved ones, you want it.
That's true.
You want it in the sense that you
desire it.
For all kinds of motives, you desire it.
But you're not willing to face the consequences
and implications of having a clean heart.
That's true.
That's what it was with me and that's
what it is with all of us who
haven't a clean heart.
God gives us readily, is more anxious to
give it to us than we are to
receive it.
But we cannot receive it because we're not
willing to face the implications and consequences of
having a clean heart like Jesus.
Look at it like this.
You remember last Sunday, I said to you,
we at times notice somebody of whom we
say, he has a very generous heart.
You remember that?
And if you ever say to that person,
he has a very generous heart, you know,
you see that he hasn't the attitude of
possessiveness that you have about your possessions and
your property.
He just seems to be free and gives
it away whenever anybody needs it.
And you see he's different and you maybe
say to him sometime, boy, you have a
generous heart and you know that the person
will look and say, no, no, I haven't.
And you know why he says that.
He's virtually unconscious of his generosity and he's
unconscious of it because he either has an
endless supply of possessions and property and so
he doesn't miss what he gives away or
he has an absolute confidence that he'll always
have what he needs.
In other words, his heart has a different
attitude to his resources for life than your
heart has.
Your heart kind of gets them and feels
it has to hold on to them to
ensure that you have them tomorrow and the
next year.
He has just a different attitude to the
resources for his life than you have.
That's why your heart is unclean.
It has a different attitude about the resources
for life that you need.
You still look to money and you still
look to a good house and to nice
clothes for feeling safe and secure.
Your heart really looks to those things.
Your heart still looks to people's opinions of
you for your sense of self-worth or
your sense of self-esteem or value.
You still look to favorable circumstances, nice looking
friends, fast boats, fast cars for happiness.
Now, Jesus' heart doesn't look to any of
those things.
He looks to God.
That's why your heart's unclean.
That's why you're kind of only half converted.
You want to obey God, but you want
to depend on the world and not on
God.
You want to depend on the world of
people and things and circumstances for all that
you need, not God.
And so your heart sends up pride when
somebody cuts you down.
Do you see that?
Somebody cuts you down in front of other
people.
Your heart sends up pride.
Why?
Because your heart looks to those people's opinions
for your self-image.
That's why your heart sends up anxiety and
worry when you lose your job.
Because your heart, your own inner being, your
own inner self, the real you, doesn't look
to God for its security.
It actually looks to its job and to
the company and to the economy of the
nation.
So you're kind of half converted.
Your nature is still that of a child
of Satan, because your heart looks to those
things and those things draw your whole being
out.
So your mind is running that way.
You hit the checkbook, the bank balance is
wrong, the mind connects right up with the
heart that depends utterly on the bank book
and depends utterly on your ability to have
money and sends up anxiety.
So your heart now has rearranged your whole
nature.
Really not rearranged it, it always had control
of it.
And your nature, your mind and emotions and
the way they work in your body and
your will, it's still the nature of a
child of wrath.
It's still actually an unchanged nature.
That's the incredible thing.
Part of why God says he does not
deal with us according to our sins or
reward us according to our iniquities.
Because if he did, none of us would
ever find them.
And you may sit there and say, oh
brother, look, that isn't true.
I mean, I do have the nature of
Christ, don't I?
Stop that silliness, loved ones.
You can't have two natures.
Nature is the deepest part of what you
are.
It's what you really are.
That's what we mean by your nature.
It's what you really are.
You can't really be deep down two things.
You can really only be one thing and
at times another.
And the truth is, you're basically a child
of wrath that depends on the world of
people and things and circumstances.
And from time to time, because of the
gracious influence of Jesus Spirit upon you, you
want what he wants.
You're really like the disciples.
You remember Jesus said to them, the Holy
Spirit is with you.
That's the situation with us.
The Holy Spirit is with you.
And then Jesus said, you remember, he will
be in you.
And we're not at that place.
We're not at the place where the Holy
Spirit is a permanent abiding residence within us.
He is just a visitor.
He is the one who said, Behold, I
stand at the door and knock.
If any man hear my voice and open
the door, I will come in to him.
And we've reached that stage.
He's come in.
He's our guest.
We sit him down.
We say, Oh, we'll obey you now.
Now we don't obey you.
Now leave the room, please.
We want to do this.
Oh, come in again now.
We want to obey you.
Oh no, leave the room.
I want to do this.
He's our guest.
But we haven't reached the second stage.
I will sit with him and he with
me.
I will become the host and he will
sit with me.
The Holy Spirit is not the host, the
abiding ruler and master of our hearts and
lives.
He is a guest.
Now, if you say, How do I change?
How do I get changed?
What do I do?
Enter into the new covenant.
Enter fully into the new covenant.
That's it.
What's the new covenant?
Well, you remember John the Baptist pointed that
out.
He said, I am preaching a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of your sins.
But the one who comes after me will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
That's it.
That's the new covenant.
The new covenant is not the forgiveness of
sins.
The new covenant is the baptism with the
Holy Spirit that changes your nature, that does
what the law was not able to do
for the Jews over thousands of years.
The Holy Spirit changes your nature.
And if you say to me, Oh, what
do you mean baptized in the Holy Spirit?
The Greek word has the meaning of immersed
in it.
And don't sit, you know, and say, Oh,
well, you mean water immersion.
It doesn't matter about water immersion or not,
but it's immersion.
It means being immersed in the Holy Spirit,
being washed inside and out by the Holy
Spirit, being saturated by the Holy Spirit, being
permanently surrounded by the Holy Spirit and supported
by the Holy Spirit like water, as if
you were swimming in the Holy Spirit, utterly
dependent on the Holy Spirit.
That's what it means to be baptized with
the Holy Spirit, looking to him alone for
all your real needs, your heart utterly dependent
on him and you knowing your heart is
dependent on him.
That's what entering into the new covenant is
about.
If you say, you know, well, well, what
is it?
How do you get baptized with the Holy
Spirit?
Well, Paul explained it to those who would
come for baptism at the side of the
river in the first century.
He would gather them around and he would
say, Now, do you not know that all
of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?
We were buried there for with him by
baptism into death so that as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of
the Father, we too might walk in newness
of life.
In other words, being baptized into Jesus is
seeing that all of us are baptized with
the Holy Spirit.
What happened to Jesus and Calvary happened to
us.
That Jesus did not die just for the
forgiveness of our sins.
He did not just die to bear the
punishment for our sins.
In fact, you have all died with Christ.
And our old self was crucified with Christ.
And you all died to the elemental spirits
of the universe that have enslaved you for
so long.
Those chains and fetters of greed and anger
and desire for position and desire for approval,
those all were broken and shattered on Calvary
in your life, in Jesus, because you were
in Christ when he died.
Your nature was changed in Jesus on Calvary.
That is what the gospel is.
It is in that sense that Jesus died
for us.
Not that God took it out on his
son like some madman who could not discern
who was the real evil person.
Not that God took it out on his
son, but he put us in his son.
And his son bore the pain that would
otherwise have destroyed us utterly.
And yet at the same time, God with
his wrath burned out that old nature of
yours.
And when he raised Jesus from the dead,
he raised you up a new creation.
Now, how do you enter into that?
Believe it.
That is it.
Believe that.
Reckon yourself to be dead indeed unto sin,
that is, to getting anything from the world
of people and things and circumstances, to getting
anything good or bad from them.
Die to that.
Reckon yourself dead indeed unto sin.
That is what sin is.
It is not just crime.
It is not just immorality.
It is the whole power of life that
operates independent of God.
It is the world of things and people
and events.
Die to that.
Reject that.
And look to God as you did when
you were in Jesus.
And say into thy hands, I commit my
spirit.
I receive what you wish to give me
in this life.
And what you do not wish to give
me, I do not want.
I depend on you utterly, Father.
And now I turn away from this world
of people and things and circumstances for anything
that I need.
And I look to you.
And then, loved ones, God will fill you
with his Holy Spirit and cleanse your heart
by faith.
And you simply put off the old nature
because it has already been crucified.
So you are actually doing something that has
already been done in the spiritual realm.
You simply stop doing and stop thinking and
stop feeling the things that have burdened you
for years.
And if you say to me, Brother, if
I have difficulty putting off the old nature,
what do I do?
Loved ones, the problem is always impartial or
a partial surrender.
A controlled surrender.
An incomplete consecration.
An incomplete commitment.
That is always the problem.
Just go to the Holy Spirit and ask
him to reveal to you what you are
still depending on the world of people and
things and circumstances for instead of God.
He will show you that.
Yours may be the situation like the dear
souls in Los Angeles fifty years ago.
You may have to seek God in this
prayer room.
You may have to seek him for hours.
You may have to weep before him.
But the Holy Spirit will show you because
that is the only reason he is here
on earth.
To reveal to you the things that you
have in Jesus.
And the most precious thing that you have
in Jesus is a clean heart that the
Holy Spirit is able to give you.
And so, when you come to the very
bottom of your heart at last, there will
be a witness of the Holy Spirit that
you are looking only to him for all
that you need.
And you will have that witness in yourself
and your faith will rise up and your
heart will be cleansed by faith.
And you will be a different person inside.
Out as well, but inside.
And so that you understand fully, there will
no longer be evil rising up from inside.
That's right.
It may seem miraculous to you and it
is.
It may seem incredible to you.
But loved ones, there will be no evil
rising up from inside.
You remember I said once before, that's why
I say, after you've got a clean heart,
it's just your own fault if you sin.
It means you're choosing to.
You're choice.
A clean heart produces the very sentiments of
Jesus, the very fragrance of his own heart
within you.
And it's easy to be a Christian because
you are one inside and you feel like
one.
I would say to you that you should
get down to dealing with God.
And I would do it whatever way you
think is best for you.
The prayer room is open right through the
week during the business hours.
There are always some of us here.
As revival comes, I believe that it will
be open all the time, night and day.
But it's open through the business hours, through
Monday, through Friday.
And it's open all day today.
And then, loved ones, this building, you can
take yourself anywhere, in any of the rooms,
and just get alone with God and get
down to business with him.
And find out why he is not able
to baptize you with the Holy Spirit this
very minute.
And he will deal with you and he
will show you.
Now, take time.
Take time to be holy.
You know, it takes time.
It takes time because you've been listening to
everybody else for years.
And so it takes a while to get
on the same wavelength as God's Spirit.
But if I were you, I'd do that.
Or go home and do it.
But sooner or later, loved ones, sooner or
later, you'll have to settle this.
Sooner or later, you have to settle it.
I mean, there'll never be a convenient time.
There'll never be a time that's better than
now.
There won't often be times that it's as
clearly presented to you as now.
So you'll have to do it sooner or
later.
Or live a life of constant defeat that
can easily end up, if you get tired
of the confessing and the repenting over the
years, can easily end up in hell, despite
what God has already done in your life.
So, loved ones, it'll never be easy, you
know.
It'll never be easy to take time from
going out this afternoon or going out tomorrow.
It'll never be easy.
It'll take you to give yourself to God
and to at least give Him time.
Because there will be a day, you know,
very real.
There'll be a day when each one of
us will have to face it.
We'll have to face the unclean heart.
But on that day, the judgment day, everybody
in the world will see it.
And we will see that then we cannot
change it.
So, I would encourage you then, encourage your
dear hearts to get down to business with
God, loved ones, and to come through to
the new covenant and into real Christianity, you
know.
And let's leave this Jewish covenant, this old
covenant behind, and let's go on to what
God has given us in Jesus.