Last Sunday, I tried to share a little
of my own life story with you and
you remember the change that took place in
my life was when God began to deal
with the inward problem that I had.
And I thought it would just be good,
maybe, to spend one more Sunday giving you
a chance to decide about yourself.
Because I would tell you plainly that I
think I was a...
there's a line in Gilbert & Sullivan, he's
the very, very model of a model major
general.
Well, I think I was the very, very
model of a model Methodist minister.
And I think outwardly, you know, I looked
pretty good.
And I think even in my own eyes,
I thought I was pretty good because I
had learned what outward expressions verbally and what
outward actions I should avoid in order to
keep up the appearance of being a Christian.
And I think you do learn to control,
don't you?
Even in our society where they say, let
it all hang out.
Yet, as you grow older, you learn to
control your feelings and your thoughts and to
keep them down.
And that's what I did.
That's the kind of life I lived until
I was 30.
And I'll tell you, it was just torture.
It really was.
I took it for granted that that was
the way everybody lived.
I just accepted, that's the way you live.
Outwardly, you're nice, you're kind, you're smiling, you're
friendly.
And inwardly, you keep down all the resentment
and all the jealousy that you feel for
these people who are your friends.
And you just hold it all in.
And you're kind of encouraged to do that,
aren't you?
Because even the books that come out nowadays
on the renewal of the mind or the
control of the feelings, they all kind of
encourage you to feel that's what all of
us are doing.
All of us are on the outside, very
civilized people, very nice people.
But inside, we're monsters.
And what you ought to do with that
monstrosity within you is to work on it.
Just keep working on it.
Keep working on it.
Read a book on how to renew the
mind.
Keep trying to think better thoughts.
Read a book on how to control your
feelings.
Read all the, you know, the endless articles
in Reader's Digest on how to get yourself
to love people.
Well, don't think of their bad points.
Think of the good things.
Always think of the good things.
So you always think of the good things.
And you keep wondering, what do I do
about all the bad things I'm thinking of
as well?
And you turn yourself into all kinds of
contortions, don't you, to try to clean up
the inside.
And I don't know, loved ones, if you're
like me.
Ten, fifteen years after I set out on
that job, I seemed to be worse than
when I started.
It seemed I could not get hold of
these feelings inside me.
I thought I would get hold of the
jealousy, and I would get it under control,
and then I would find the pride springing
up.
And then I'd concentrate on the pride, and
I'd read books on pride, and books on
how to do it yourself, and I'd get
control of the pride, and then the bad
temper would spring up.
And then I'd concentrate on the bad temper,
and I'd go through all those recommendations they
give you how to control yourself.
Don't think of what is annoying you.
Don't think about it.
Think of what is bright, and happy, and
what's good.
And I'd go through all that business, and
I'd get the temper organized, and here the
old jealousy was up again.
And I just kept going round with hands,
hands, hands, trying to keep the lids on
the barrel.
And that's really what it was like, you
know.
It really was.
It was as if the minister was coming
in to visit me, and I thought, boy,
I'd better have everything organized, but I had
this massive Alsatian dog that just bounded round
everywhere, and I mean, I knew he'd be
up licking the minister's face, so I put
him in this big chest, and put the
lid down on him, and I'd bring the
minister in, and I'd sit on the chest,
you know, and pretend everything's okay.
Yet that old dog is up from time
to time, and I'm going up and down,
and saying, oh.
And that's what it was like.
That's what it was like in my life.
You could talk about the subconscious and the
unconscious, and you could tell me to try
harder, but from time to time, that was
the tragedy, from time to time, those feelings
would come out.
And I don't know.
You guys, I mean, you have to be
the same as I was.
You have to be the same.
Sure, you didn't read the magazines, you didn't
go to the X movies, but it was
in your heart all the time.
It was down there.
And every time you saw somebody beautiful, when
you should be thanking God for something beautiful
that he had made, this old lust was
again knocking up against the lid of the
chest and trying to get through.
And I don't know about you, but I
think with many of us, it's just lack
of opportunity, isn't it?
It's just lack of opportunity.
Or we're afraid.
We're scared.
But that's what holds us back.
And, I mean, ladies, I'm sure you have
the same difficulty, but I know how often
the old criticism thing got hold of me.
I felt deep down that I did really
know what was right and what was wrong.
And I knew that I wasn't altogether right
in God.
So, I felt the only way to prove
myself better than everybody else is to prove
that I can see what's wrong with them.
And so, while that criticism riles inside you,
it's ready to spark out at any moment.
And with me, it would spark out.
You just make that caustic comment that would,
in your opinion, put that person right in
his place.
But that, of course, just destroyed the whole
conversation.
It was just so filled with irritability and
anger and resentment, the comment, that you thought
to yourself, everybody must see it.
They all must see it.
And you were kind of relieved that they
didn't appear to notice how sharp your comment
was.
But you knew what it spoke.
It spoke of a massive attitude of criticism
inside you towards that person.
And so, you would try to love people,
and you'd try to be everybody's friend, and
you'd try to be a faithful husband and
a faithful wife.
But really, there was this mess of stuff
inside you that had never been dealt with.
And, loved ones, that was my experience.
And I would dare to say that there
are others in this room this morning who
have the same experience.
There's no question in your mind that you
believe in God.
There's no question in your mind that you
believe that Jesus is the Savior of the
world.
There's maybe even no question in your mind
that you believe He's your Savior, because obviously,
those people did, who were converted by Philip.
Even Simon, the guy who was a magician,
he even believed that Jesus was God's Son.
And they were baptized in Jesus' name.
And I dare say that many of us
here have been either baptized as infants in
Lutheran church, or baptized as adults in Baptist
church.
And we know that God is our Father,
and we know that our sins are forgiven,
and we know we're going to heaven.
But, our lives inside, in our secret hearts,
are a continual offense to God, and are
a continual worry to ourselves.
I'll tell you how I did it.
I don't know how you're doing it.
I rationalized.
I began to rationalize.
I was in disorder in my personal life.
I argued, well, you can't be kind of
a poetic, intuitional, inspirational type, you know, and
be absolutely in order in your own life.
And so, I argued, that's just my personality.
After all, all great artists get irritable from
time to time.
They're so demanding, you know.
They have such a sense of perfection that
they can't avoid it.
It just shows you how great they are.
And so, I rationalized my sin, because that's
what it was, you know.
Alright, I wasn't drinking myself to death every
night.
I wasn't committing adultery with somebody else every
night.
I wasn't doing those things.
But, inwardly, I had those feelings and attitudes
which are called in the New Testament, the
marks or the works of the flesh.
Envy, jealousy, strife, selfishness, resentment.
Those things.
I had those inside.
And those I knew were sin.
As really as Sirhan Sirhan's action was a
sin, as really as Oswald's action was a
sin, those were sin.
It was just nobody else saw them, except
the only person that mattered.
He saw them.
And he saw them night and day, because
they were there continually in me.
And I rationalized them.
I said, well, irritability is the kind of
thing a fella like me can't avoid.
And in this society, who can be absolutely
clean in their thinking?
If you're red-blooded at all, you're bound
to have a few stray thoughts here and
there.
You can't avoid it.
And that's what I did.
I rationalized as much of the sin within
as I possibly could.
I rationalized it and called it infirmities, or
little personality traits, or little inexpediencies.
Now, it always gives me problems.
Because, well, I'll show you.
If you'd look at that Galatians chapter, that
was one of the ones that drove me
crazy.
It would have been all right if God
had stuck with those outward, those big sins.
Anybody can see a murder as a sin,
especially when you're free from it, you're okay.
But this Galatians 5 was miserable.
Verse 19 is really the place to begin.
It's page 1015, loved ones, in that RSV,
Galatians 5 and 19.
Now, the works of the flesh are plain.
Fornication, well, I felt, you know, that's outward
promiscuity, so I wasn't guilty of that.
Impurity, well, yeah, but maybe that was just
a personality trait.
Licentiousness, well, I didn't think I was very
licentious.
Idolatry, no, I mean, I never saw the
devotion to the car or the motorbike as
idolatry.
Sorcery, good, I'm clear of that.
Enmity, enmity.
I mean, you could work yourself up into
a hostility for people.
I don't know about you, if you've ever
had a carnal fit.
Have you ever had a carnal fit?
Really?
Where you just sit at home and you
boil and seethe against that boss who did
that thing to you, or that guy who
did that thing, or that wife, or that
child, and you just boil inside and seethe.
And, you know, it's as if you're right
there and you go through the whole argument
with them, as if they're present.
That kind of a thing.
Enmity, I knew.
Strife, I knew.
Jealousy, I certainly knew.
Whenever you saw somebody who was really better
than you, but you were convinced, of course,
or you couldn't admit that they were better
than you, so you were jealous, and you
convinced yourself that, yeah, yeah, they may be
able to sing, but look at the way
they dress.
And so, it was, so jealousy was just
a continual kind of self-defense thing.
Anger, anger, that was, nope, that was there
all the time, anger.
Selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and
the like.
And, of course, the next sentence, I mean,
was doom to me.
I warn you, as I warned you before,
that those who do such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God.
Well, I just ignored that bit.
I mean, I just ignored that.
I said that Jesus covered that.
I just said Jesus covers, Jesus' blood covers
that, and therefore, that doesn't apply to me.
I was continually concerned because Paul had written
it to a church at Galatia.
But, loved ones, that's the way I live
my life.
And, I don't know what you do with
the things you do, fingersense.
I'll tell you what I did.
I kept confessing, kept confessing.
I confessed, and confessed, and confessed, and confessed.
But, you know what to do when you
do that.
You know what happens.
Eventually, it becomes a game.
You confess it, but it's purely a verbal
exercise.
You're no longer thinking it important to confess
that.
And, I began to see that, that if
every time I'm angry, I'm putting a sword
into the side of my Savior, Jesus, then
what I'm doing is getting used to doing
that.
And, like a surgeon who cuts people's bodies,
but does not feel the pain himself, I'm
getting to the dangerous point where I'm crucifying
my Savior anew, day after day, confessing it,
but not feeling any remorse for it, or
any repentance.
And so, loved ones, that was my life.
I rationalized away the sin that I could,
calling it personality traits, and inexpediences, and justifying
it, even though I saw that in the
Bible it wasn't regarded as anything but sin.
And, the things I did really regard as
sins, I just kept confessing, though the confessing
was becoming more and more meaningless to me.
Loved ones, I think that there are many
of you here this morning who are probably
living like that.
And, I think many of you have got
to the point where you've said, well, that's
the life, that's this Christian life.
And, of course, when you say that, you're
contradicting this whole book, which from beginning to
end talks about having a clean heart, and
loving God with all your heart, and soul,
and strength, and mind, and having your life
filled with love, joy, peace, long-suffering gentleness,
goodness, and Jesus saying, if you're angry with
your brother, you're guilty of the judgment.
If you look onto a woman to lust
in her, you've committed adultery with her in
your heart.
And, the Bible is full of those things.
And so, if you're doing that, you're having
the same experience as I had.
I began to doubt more and more that
God really existed, because I was repeatedly contradicting
the things that he had said were true.
And so, it was beginning to affect my
own intellectual awareness of God.
And, I did what I'm sure you've done.
I read the books.
I read the books incessantly.
It's just, there are more of them now.
Do you realize that?
There are more people trying to get us
to be what God wants us to be
without Jesus.
There are.
There are more books than ever on how
to control your temper, how to influence your
temperament, how to renew your mind.
All kinds of gimmicky little extensions of old
Carnegie's, how to stop worrying and start living.
And, the tragedy is, many of them do
kind of ameliorate the situation.
That's right.
They ameliorate it so that you don't have
a group of Christians now who have outwardly
stainless lives and inwardly have temperaments that are
boiling and seething.
No.
You have many, many Christians now that have
outward lives that are pretty reasonable and look
pretty good.
And, inside their temperament, there's a kind of
lid on it.
It's a lid.
It's really repression and suppression.
Repression is an unconscious suppression.
It's a repression and a suppression and a
kind of disciplining of themselves.
But, they have to keep on reading the
books.
They have to keep on having plenty of
fellowship.
They have to keep on doing things that
make them feel good inside.
And, so, they have an appearance of victory
within, except that you'll notice they always rebel
against any implication that we should be perfect,
even as our heavenly Father is perfect.
That's right.
They'll always do that.
They'll go with you up to a point
on this business of, yeah, we should have
victory over anger and jealousy, until they come
to the point where you quote Jesus' words,
be ye perfect even as your Father in
heaven is perfect, which is perfect in love,
of course, Jesus elaborates.
And, that they don't like because that means
that you should always want the best for
other people.
It doesn't matter who they are.
It doesn't matter if it's the boss that's
just fired you.
It doesn't matter if it's your friend who
has just criticized you behind your back.
It doesn't matter if it's somebody else who
has been unfaithful to you.
You should always think the best of them
and want the best.
From where?
Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, from the bottom of your heart, from
the bottom of your heart.
And, many loved ones who are Christians today
know that they don't do that.
They know that the only way they can
live in victory is that jealousy springs up
and there they go into the old sparring
match with jealousy.
And, they get out the right book and
they read how they now think you're just
an ordinary person.
You're the same as everybody else.
You're no better than anybody else.
There's no reason for you to be jealous.
Now, renew your feelings of jealousy.
Change them.
Replace them with good feelings.
Want the best.
And, they go through all those exercises.
And, they know that, that they haven't real
victory.
They haven't really a clean heart.
They have a heart that's kind of dirty.
But, each time the dirt comes up, they
slam it down and they fight it.
Loved ones, that's not God's victory.
That isn't God's victory.
And, you know, I know some of you,
when you hear me saying this, you think,
oh, don't lay that on me.
I'm coming under conviction.
Don't, don't, don't make me sad.
I'm making you sad so that you'll get
glad.
And, hoping that you won't get mad in
between.
Loved ones, I'm telling you straight, that's the
counterfeit.
That's it.
Now, don't sit there and say, oh, I'm
doing my best.
I'm doing my best.
And, you're beating me down.
And, I'm still doing my best.
Loved ones, I'm telling you, you're doing your
best with human efforts.
You're receiving forgiveness of sins by faith.
But, you're not receiving a cleansed heart by
faith.
I'm not laying more on you.
I'm saying to you that when Jesus died
on Calvary, He took your heart with Him.
And, He destroyed it.
That's it.
And, that is to be received by faith
into your life just the same way as
you receive forgiveness of sins.
But, you keep on hearing me saying that
and say, yeah, yeah, well, it's a nice
metaphorical statement that my old self was crucified
with Christ.
Yeah, I see how my heart was kind
of crucified with Jesus and destroyed.
No, I have to make that real in
my life.
No, you haven't.
That is a miracle that is worked by
the Holy Spirit in you in a mighty
work of grace.
You don't read books to get control of
the jealousy.
You don't read books to clean up your
mind.
You go to the Holy Spirit who is
inside you, who has enabled you to be
born of God.
And, you say, Holy Spirit, you said you'd
lead me into all truth.
That's what Jesus said about you.
Now, will you go through the depths of
my heart, that heart of darkness, and will
you show me what I appear in God's
eyes?
And, will you take me down underneath the
subconscious, into my mode of life, and the
place where my reactions and my responses dwell,
the place where I have not surrendered to
God?
And, will you expose that to me until
I am so sick of it that I
am willing to accept the only remedy that
ever solves the problem?
That's it.
Now, you have to want to.
I agree.
You have to want to.
The Holy Spirit will not do what you
don't want Him to do.
So, you have to want to.
So, you have to see, first of all,
that you are a dirty sinner and rebel
against God in your heart.
And, you have to stop rationalizing the old
sins and pretending that those things are not
sin.
You have to want to be clean.
That's why God's Word said, if you seek
me with all your heart, you'll surely find
me.
Loved ones, our Father is not hiding from
us.
He's looking for you harder than you're looking
for Him.
You just have to want to be clean
with all your heart.
Start with the Holy Spirit.
Start asking Him that.
Secondly, see what God says about that self
of yours.
Romans 8 and 7 says, the mind of
the flesh is enmity against God.
It is not subject to God's law, neither
indeed cannot be.
Just see that.
Stop that play-acting.
Oh, yeah, I have a wee bit of
trouble with sex.
I have a wee bit of trouble with
anger.
I have a wee bit of trouble with
jealousy.
Stop that silliness.
God's Word is plain.
The only reason there's sin inside any one
of us is because our heart is rebellious
against God.
It is not subject to God's law.
Indeed, it cannot be.
And see that it cannot be.
See that your heart that you have developed
over the years of your life cannot be
subject to God.
That's why you have such problems.
That's why you think you have it fixed
and then it bounces up again.
It cannot be.
All you're doing is ameliorating the situation.
You're not curing it.
You're not cleansing it.
You're not shooting the Alsatian dog.
You're holding a lid on top of it
and sitting on it, hoping to hold it
down.
Your heart, your selfish heart, wants only one
thing, you.
That's right.
That's why we're in such trouble.
We say all these wonderful things, I want
to serve the Lord.
Oh, I love the Lord with all my
heart.
Oh, hallelujah.
Inside, there's a whole level of life that
says, I love me with all my heart.
I want me exalted.
Hallelujah for me.
I praise me.
That's it.
And you see, while you're pretending that that
doesn't exist and that these sins are just
things that you have to work through, you're
on Satan's side.
You're protecting that thing.
You alone can protect it.
You alone can hand that heart over to
Jesus.
Only you.
Nobody else can.
He won't take it from you.
See that that mind of the flesh is
enmity against God.
And then you remember the thing that brought
me such hope.
When I read in that Romans 6 and
6, our old self was crucified with Christ.
It was like water to a thirsty soul
in the desert.
I suddenly realized, you mean in some cosmic
miracle, God was able to foresee the kind
of heart I would develop inside, and he
actually put that into a son and destroyed
it in Jesus.
And suddenly I saw, you mean this can
come in a moment to me.
This can come in a moment.
If it's being done in Jesus, I can
receive it by faith in a moment.
You mean I don't have to go through
years and years of struggling and fighting and
defeat.
And suddenly I realized, yeah, that's right.
That Jesus bore our sins, but he bore
our old self.
Loved ones, you have no idea how clean
you can be.
That's right.
You have no idea how clean you can
be.
You don't.
You keep on thinking, well, if I cleaned
myself up, I could be quite clean.
But you have no idea how clean you
could be.
And you have no idea what it is
to be clean, to smell clean.
You have no idea how good it is
to be clean, clean, clean with God's cleanness.
And that's what Calvary, that that dear old
heart of yours that keeps sniping at your
friends and that gives you such trouble with
unclean thoughts and with anger and pride and
jealousy and with resentment.
That heart was put into Jesus and was
destroyed.
And as he rose from the dead, you
rose with him.
And there's a clean heart that Jesus can
impart to you through the fullness of the
Holy Spirit.
And that's the step that I saw.
If that happened on Calvary, was I willing
to reckon myself dead indeed unto sin and
alive to God in Christ Jesus.
And that's the heart of it.
Why you and I have trouble with sin
is because we really don't love God and
because we really don't want to live for
him.
That's it.
Because I remember back there in Belfast, I
remember shortly after I gave my life to
Jesus, I remember it occurring to me, what
would it be like to live your whole
life only for Jesus?
Thinking only of him, determined only to please
him.
And I remember I then thought, I almost
remember the night I thought it.
I thought, but what about the other guys?
We're all heading for university and we're heading
for our careers and nobody else who has
given their life to Jesus has done that.
They're all getting on with their own lives.
They're taking care of their own plans for
their careers and they're doing a bit of
work for God on the side.
And I remember determining that's what I would
do too.
Loved ones, that's why.
That's why we have trouble with sin.
Because though we give something to God, we
give most to ourselves.
And we're really living for ourselves and not
for God alone.
And that's the heart of it.
To have your heart cleansed by faith, to
have the old self inside you finally resurrected
in Jesus, clean anew, to be baptized with
the Holy Spirit, you have to be willing
to live your life for the purpose for
which it was created, for your God, for
your creator, for his pleasure, not for your
own.
That's it.
And when we sin, we sin just because
we care for our own pleasure more than
we care for God's.
So I'd put it to you, you know.
Would you stop first of all defending yourself?
Would you stop defending the defeated Christian life?
Because it's a blasphemy.
It's nothing to do with Christianity.
It's a counterfeit.
And then would you decide in your own
heart, do you really want to live a
clean life?
Do you really want to be clean inside,
whether anybody sees inside or not?
Do you really want to be clean inside
so that you feel clean and you love
people because you feel love?
Do you want to live that life where
there are no shades of gray, where you're
not constantly justifying yourself and feeling a little
tinge of resentment or anger?
Would you like to live in the light?
Oh, loved ones, you'll live longer for one
thing.
Less strain, less worry, less anxiety.
You'll live longer, but you'll live a fuller
life.
You'll be free to be what you are
and not have to keep watching for yourself.
Do you want that?
Well, loved ones, to be baptized with the
Holy Spirit, as those dear people were under
Peter and John, you have to decide, are
you willing to live for Jesus only, for
him alone?
Are you willing to live your life for
God and for him only?
Are you?
If you are, he'll fill you with the
Holy Spirit and he'll cleanse your heart by
faith and he will do a job that
no other book writer or preacher, no other
psychologist or counselor can come anywhere near doing.
Loved ones, it is for you, it is.
I know I shouldn't ask for questions, but
boy, I'd love to ask for questions, but
loved ones, will you be real?
Be real.
Anything else isn't worth the name of Christianity.
It isn't.
I'll go on saying that even as I
go down.
Honestly, it isn't.
It isn't.
Only real Christianity is worth going for and
you remember what I think it was Chambers
said, if this is all there is to
Christianity, then I don't want it.
And oh, that's the way I felt before
Jesus dealt with me in the Holy Spirit.
If this is all there is, this struggling
against these feelings inside, then it's not worth
it.
Loved ones, it isn't, because that isn't Christianity.
Christianity is not only receiving the forgiveness of
sins by faith, but receiving a clean heart
by faith.
And the same conditions are fulfilled.
Confess what your need is.
Turn honestly from self and give yourself wholly
to God and he will cleanse your heart.
Let us pray.
Dear Father, you alone can do this in
each one of our lives and you are
dependent upon our hunger and our willingness.
But Lord, I would pray that you would
convince us all this morning through the plain
words of Scripture that sin is rebellion against
you and in any form it is wrong
and can never be defended.
And Lord, that for us it is either
hell or heaven.
It is either sin or obedience.
It is either dependence on the world or
dependence on God.
And oh Father, I pray that you will
keep after each one of us because you
love us so much until we are ready
to see that the only way to victory
is through the cross and through the mighty
miracle which you did in Jesus.
Lord, we pray this for each one of
us this day.
That each one of us will deal with
you this day on these issues of a
clean heart.
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.