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Forgiveness - REVIVAL
Communion: Forgiveness
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
The problem is what you and I in our generation think is forgiveness of sins. We don’t see
forgiveness as it really is and like so many things in our world, we’re losing touch with reality
because we’re losing a sense of what truths really are. So all of us probably suffer from a total
misconception of what forgiveness is. Let me give you an example that we’ll all know immediately
and will sympathize with. You have a roommate or you have a husband or a wife or a friend, someone
who lives with you, and one day they just burst out in a show of bad temper and criticize you and
tear you apart. So there’s coolness between you for the next couple of days and they come to you
and say “I’m sorry, forgive me.”
You of course want the relationship to be right and you forgive them. It goes on like that for a
week or two weeks and then once more they burst out in a show of temper and they tear you apart and
they criticize you and there’s coolness between you for the next two days. And they come again and
say “I’m sorry, will you forgive me.” And you say “Yes, I will” because you want the relationship.
It’s a little harder this time because you forgave them last time and it was right from your end but
it didn’t seem to give them any ability to stay right with you. But you still say “I forgive you.”
It goes alright for another two weeks and they burst out again in bad temper and they criticize you
and they tear you apart and there’s coolness for the next two days. Then they come to you and they
say “I’ sorry, will you forgive me?” Well you don’t know what to do; you just don’t know what to
do.
We’ve all been in the same boat; of course we want to forgive them because we want things to be
right between us as they used to be. But we begin to wonder in our minds is this forgiveness? I
forgive him or her but what use is it if our relationship is going to continue going through these
agonizing crises? Isn’t there something inside your heart that says “I want to forgive them, but I
want a relationship. I want a relationship of love. I want a relationship that is continuous. I
want a relationship of peace. I want a good friend here whom I feel I can really trust. It seems to
me that there’s something that needs to be done in their heart that will enable them to walk free
from this bad temper otherwise it doesn’t matter how often I forgive them; our relationship is going
to be like that.”
And gradually you must admit in your own heart you begin to sense that your relationship is going to
sink to a superficial level because bit by bit you’re going to feel in your heart that it doesn’t
matter how often you forgive these people because any minute they could burst out against you again.
And whatever you say, deep down in your heart, even though you want to forgive them and you do
forgive them, deep down in your heart there’s a growing uneasiness. There’s a feeling inside you
that this relationship is not very intimate, it’s not very trustworthy and it’s not very dependable.
And surely, bit by bit you begin to question what you mean by forgiveness. And you begin to say
“Now is this forgiveness? Or if I do keep on forgiving them is it not just indulgence of sin that
I’m involved in? Is it not just encouraging them to think that it doesn’t matter how often they
burst out in temper, it doesn’t matter how often they lose patience with their friend, that’s the
way life should be.“
And is it not true that most of us would start examining whether forgiveness is possible where they
is no change in the other person’s attitude to you—that it’s permanent?
Loved ones, do you not think that’s what runs right throughout our legal system? Do you not think
that’s why we’re all concerned about it? We all rise to the idea of forgiveness, but we feel that
there’s something wrong with the kind of forgiveness that we’ve just outlined because it looks to us
very like indulgence. It looks very like carelessness about morality. Eventually do you not think
that if you carried on that way, if for instance you substituted criticism of you or stealing your
money for bad temper, do you not think you’re beginning to indulge in the same amorality as the
person who has sinned against you?
In other words does there not come a time when you’ve forgiven so often that actually you’re just
teaching people to ignore standards? Certainly you must admit that if you were doing it with a
child, and I know it as an ex-school teacher, there’s no doubt in your mind that you’d be teaching
them to be amoral. You’d be teaching them, “Son, it doesn’t matter how often you lose your temper,
it doesn’t matter how often you criticize, it doesn’t matter how often you steal, I forgive you;
you’re ok.” And I know from my experience the dear kid takes full advantage of that. He just keeps
going one way and probably we’ve all seen homes that have ended up in a mess because of that.
In other words, surely you can only talk about forgiveness in righteousness, is that not true?
Surely you can only talk about forgiveness, which is really the restoration of a relationship, you
can only talk about the restoration of a relationship in righteousness if the other person, sooner
or later, after however many time of forgiving eventually comes to the point where they no longer
lose their temper with you, where they no longer criticize you, where you begin to have a
relationship of love.
And loved ones, that’s really what forgiveness is, even in the Old Testament. You don’t need to
look up this verse, “the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.” And that’s
as far as we, in our generation, read: “The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to
everlasting upon those who fear him and his righteousness to children’s children. To those who keep
his covenant and remember to do his commandments.” In other words, our dear God does not indulge us
in amorality the way we tend to think he does and the way we have presented him to each other as
doing. Our dear God planted in us the same common sense that is part of his own nature.
Forgiveness only makes sense if eventually the husband or the wife or the son or the daughter or the
roommate begins to change in their own hearts and lives and begins to continue a relationship of
love with you.
So in a sense the problem has never been God’s forgiveness, God has always been willing to forgive
us. The problem is that it becomes to us just indulgence of our wrongs or our sins unless we can
change ourselves. And loved ones, that’s what communion is about. You’re right, forgiveness is
preached in Jesus’ name, but it’s preached in Jesus’ name because Jesus is the one that enables us
to change so that forgiveness can be real. And it’s in Jesus that all of us were changed, that’s
why communion is precious.
If you’ve had things in your life that you know are wrong and you’ve continued to ask God to forgive
you them, and he has continued graciously to forgive you them, even though his voice has become
quieter and quieter and you’re having more and more trouble listening to it, yet he still has
graciously has forgiven you. If you’re in that situation and you know his voice is becoming quieter
and more distant because you’re continuing to do the things that you ask him to forgive you for and
if you’re getting yourself into that position as we described between the two friends, if you’re in
that spot,loved ones, God changed you in Jesus.
That’s what communion is about. God changed you in Jesus. He foresaw the kind of life you would
live. Could I just tell you a little thing that should make that much easier for you to believe;
that God foresaw the kind of life you would live. The little IBM personal computer would take 153
days to solve a certain difficult mathematical problem. Cray invented one of his massive Cray
computers that solves that problem in three seconds. If we can do that with our computers is our
mighty God not well able to foresee the kind of life that you would live and provide a remedy for
them? Of course he is. God has an infinite mind and even though he doesn’t make us do what we have
done in our lives, he foresaw that we would do it. And he put you into his son Jesus and destroyed
you there and made you anew and clean and whole and if you believe that, you can be changed this
morning. That’s what communion is. Communion isn’t just about God being willing to forgive us.
Communion is about God changing you and me in Jesus so that we can continue a real, restored
relationship with him forever.
Just one last thing; you may say, “You mean through the influence of his Spirit, and through my
coming to Church, and through my reading the Bible and praying and trying to obey him I can be
changed?” No. No. I mean you have been changed. That’s what this dear Book says. It says Christ
died for all of us; therefore all of us have died in eternity, above time and space. And if anyone
is in Christ, and all of us are in Christ because Christ died for all and all died, if anyone is in
Christ he is a new creation, the old has passed away, the new has already come. You can be that now
because God has already made you it in Jesus. And through your faith in that, the Holy Spirit can
bring that into your life. That’s true, loved ones. You can believe into that this moment.
Let us pray.
Jekyll Or Hyde? - REVIVAL
Jekyll or Hyde?
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
I don’t know how many of you have actually read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
I read it over again this week and those of you who have read it know that Dr. Jekyll, the good
respectable doctor was at times taken over by the murderous lustful Mr. Hyde that was his other
self. Towards the end of the novel, he writes it all down, of course, in a confession and he
describes how the drugs ceased to work, how he was able to call up the worst part of himself, that
Mr. Hyde.
But how the drugs ceased to be able to get rid of that Mr. Hyde and indeed as the years went on,
that Mr. Hyde began to take him over completely. He says this: “All things therefore seem to point
to this: that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self and becoming slowly
incorporated with my second and worse. Between these two, I now felt I had to choose.”
“Between these two I now felt I had to choose.” And so do we because there isn’t one of us who has
even heard of that story, who does not recognize that Stevenson spoke for us because every one of us
knows that there dwells within us a self that our friends do not know and have not seen. We too have
felt at times that we’re losing touch with the better self that our friends see. Stevenson, of
course, even though he was a dear child of God, and you can see that in some of his poetry, he did
not tell the answer that God has given for us.
And here it is at this communion table. This death of Jesus was the death of all our old selves. It
was the death of the human race — that’s the meaning of it. This table sets forth the death of
Jesus Christ of Nazareth in 29 AD. And all of this dear book that we have here, all of this dear
book tells us that when that man died, he was simply setting forth a complete remaking of the race
that had taken place in him even before the foundation of the world. So loved ones, every one of us
here in this room can be free, once and for all and forever, from that Mr. Hyde within us, that’s
true.
Now, loved ones really if you choose not to believe it, that Hyde within you will kill you, it
really will. It will destroy you and as the years pass it will just get more and more subtle in its
manifestations. Loved ones, you cannot live with it, without it taking over your life. You have to
as Jekyll himself said, “You have to come to a place where you choose between the two.” And the
truth this morning is that God is offering you an opportunity to believe what he has said he has
done in his son Jesus. That he has destroyed that old self part of you that manifests itself in
temper and anger and envy and that was destroyed with Jesus and you can believe that this morning
and you can go out of here in the power of that, that’s right.
Don’t sit there and say, “Oh, I don’t know how to make it real.” Believe, believe — that’s what God
has said, simply believe. Believe that it is done away with in Jesus. Believe that when he died that
was destroyed with him and you will see that the power of it in your life will be destroyed and the
Spirit of Jesus will begin to take over, and loved ones that’s it, you know.
Forget all the deep theology and all the labyrinthine twisting of our own minds. That’s the plain
simple Gospel: that you can be free this morning because God has already destroyed that part of you
that is spoiling your life and if you will simply believe that, the power of that reality through
the Spirit of Jesus will begin to manifest itself in you. Just three simple steps. First, if we
confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.
Be real this morning about your sins, just be real, confess. The Greek word “confess” means “raising
your hand and agreeing with God”. “I agree Lord, that is a sin” — that’s it. That’s usually where
the trouble is, where you’re trying to pretend a certain thing is right and it’s not. First of all
confess, repent and believe the Gospel. Second, repent. Change your whole mind — that’s what repent
means. Stop thinking of yourself as living your own life. See that that self has gone and that your
life is now in the hands of the Son of your Maker and he can live again his life in you if you’ll
give him room, that’s it.
Thirdly, “to as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become the sons of God.” Receive
Jesus’ Spirit into yourself by faith this morning and go out and let that Christ Spirit live in you.
The Christ Spirit that actually controls the swallows as they soar in the sky. It’s that Christ
Spirit that makes the breakers roll on the Hawaiian beaches. It’s that Christ Spirit that makes the
snows lie on Everest. It’s that Christ Spirit that makes the daffodils come up in springtime.
Accept that that Christ Spirit is in you now and respond to him, that’s it.
Loved ones, your life can change this morning, really. Now if you want to take part in communion
that’s what you need to do. None of us are members of this church, you don’t need to be a member of
this church, you just need to be real about those things. So, loved ones will you stand and receive
the invitation?
You that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins, and are in love and charity with your
neighbors, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from
henceforth in His Holy ways, draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort, and
make your humble confession unto Almighty God.
Let us be seated as we pray.
We do not presume to come to this Thy Table, most merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness,
but in Thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under
Thy Table. But Thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore,
gracious Lord, so by faith, we will eat the bread and drink the wine, that we will proclaim the
Lord’s death till He come.
Grant us therefore Lord Jesus so to eat this bread and so to drink this wine that you yourself may
come inside us and may possess us and may fill us and energize us. Lord Jesus we want to live that
life above self, freed from ourselves and our own enslavements, and possessed and controlled and
delivered by you.
The Lord Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, took bread; and broke it and said, This is my
body which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of Me. In like manner He took the cup after
supper saying, This is the cup of the New Covenant in My blood, this do, as often as you drink it.
For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup you proclaim the Lord’s death till He come.
Can You Change? - REVIVAL
Can You Change?
John 5:39
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
There is that pathetic verse you remember in the famous poem by Robert Frost of “Two Roads” where he
says, “Both roads that morning equally lay in leaves, no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept to the
first for another day, but knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back”.
It seems that that is Satanic, doesn’t it? I mean it’s true, but it’s Satanic. So many of our lives
drift along in that way. You might almost say, drain away in that way. “Oh, I kept to the first for
another day, but knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back”. And it’s a
shame that not only older people here but some of us who are younger, can get ourselves into that
spot where we say, “Oh I’ve chosen this way and it’s led to that way and it’s led to that way and I
really can’t go back now.” And it’s the same truth that comes through in Auden’s pessimism, “in
headaches and in worry, vaguely life leaks away.”
“In headaches and in worry vaguely life leaks away. And time will have his fancy tomorrow and
today.” Loved ones, that is a Satanic lie. That is Satanic untruth. The meaning of every springtime
is the same. It’s what Hopkins said, “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” When you
see the daffodils come up and the tulips come up, you realize there’s something on this earth that
is eternally renewing and fresh and resurrecting. It’s the same in your life and mine. It’s never
too late to change.
You’ll never go far down along a certain path that you can’t decide today, “I’ll change”, and the
reason is that each one of you is actually part of the Son of the God who made our world. Each one
of you was made by Him. There’s not one of you here this morning that wasn’t made personally by
Jesus. That’s what the best book we have that tells us about what is beyond the world. It says, “all
things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything (or anyone) made that was made.”
(John 1:3) Every one of you was made by Jesus.
Every one of you has something of Jesus within you. The literal translation of John 1:3 in the Greek
is “That, which was made, was previously life in Him, you’ve been made.” You were originally life in
Jesus. You were part of Jesus’ life. You were a spark of his Spirit that has been given your body
and your personality. You are part of Him. And there’s another way you are part of Him. This dear
book says, when He died, you died too, and everything that has been a failure in your life was
destroyed in His death. That’s an eternal, a great eternal event that can be brought down into time
and space at any time by anyone of us here.
Just as lightening fires from one cloud to another and can be brought down to earth by a lightening
rod, so you and I are able to bring down into time and space- into our life – the eternal change
that took place in Christ. You bring it down by simply one thing – faith. The moment anyone of you
says, “I will be done with this, I am determined in God’s name, I am determined I will be done with
this”, at that moment, all the power of that eternal destruction and remaking of you which God
carried out in Jesus comes down into your life.
Do you realize that’s why even non-Christians, people who don’t believe in God, are strangely able
to make mighty changes in their lives? Have you noticed that? I mean there are some people who don’t
believe in God at all, can turn away from hideous situations in their life and can change
completely. You see it is because they too were put into Christ and were changed and the whole
dynamic of that eternal event is released into their lives the moment they determine it.
Now, I agree with you, they don’t give glory to Jesus and in that way they do not come alive in His
Spirit but they are able to make use of the power of that event. So it is for every one of us.
You’re able this very morning to say, “Lord God, I am not going to touch that stuff again. Lord, I
am not going to touch that habit again. Lord I am going to get out of this meaningless,
directionless, purposeless life that I have and I am going to accept what You said in Your word that
I am part of Your son, that you did put me here for a purpose, and now Lord, I am going to find that
purpose and You can use me for yourself.”
Loved ones you can do that, you can do that this morning. Simply because Christ died for all of us
and all of us died. If anyone is in Christ and that means all of us, all of us died. If anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creation and you can be new this day. So I would plead especially with those who
are kind of worn down. You get worn down, don’t you? You get worn down after a while. Either you get
worn down outwardly or you get worn down secretly in your heart, but you get worn down.
You just begin to get to the point where you think “Oh, nothing is going to change very much, I am
just going to drain on the way I am draining and dwindle out at the end”. Elliot said, “Not with a
bang but a whimper”. And that’s the way it’s going to go. Loved ones, get up. Get up! God, our
Father put you into His Son and He destroyed all that hopelessness in you. He destroyed all that
weakness in you and He raised you up in His Son and He made you new and He is able to give you the
power of that event here in your own life but you do have to do one thing. You do have to move
towards that in faith. You have to believe it and you have to make a move with your will towards it.
If you get a car with very good power steering, it is so easy. But the wheels only turn if you put
the pressure of your finger on the spokes of the steering wheel. You do have to do that. But none of
us here are in any doubt about whether it’s our strength that actually turns the wheel. It’s not.
It’s the power steering that turns the wheels. But you do have to put at least your little finger on
the spokes of the steering wheel, that’s what God says to you this morning.
I have made available a power, indeed I have already changed your whole life but I wait and the
whole resources of heaven wait upon you saying, “I want that Lord, I commit myself to that.” So I
would encourage you, especially those of you who have never made any move towards Jesus at all.
Those of you who have listened to this for weeks and months and have never actually taken the stand,
“I am part of Jesus and my God has put me here to do something that only I can do. Lord I believe
that. Lord Jesus I believe You’re in me and I now give myself to You and You can do what You want
with me.” Loved ones, I would suggest that you do it. Open yourself to God.
It might be good to look at the means of grace. Many of us are dissatisfied with our own spiritual
lives. We are vague about God’s voice and can’t get much strength from a sense of His presence. We
find ourselves at odds with other Christian’s views and attitudes and generally miss the joy of our
salvation. Then on the next page the spiritual life has the same symptoms of disease and rules for
health as a physical life.
Removing the symptoms of disease and following the rules of health opens the way for God to revive
us with His spirit. It’s not actually your breathing that keeps you alive. Isn’t it the air? You
could breathe like mad but if you’re breathing coal gas, you could die. It is not the breathing that
does it. It’s the air that you breathe. So, with this, it’s the grace that you receive in.
It’s not actually you coming to a prayer meeting or doing bible study, but it’s the grace that you
receive through that. The way to do this is to use the means of grace, which God has provided in the
body of Christ. Examine yourself and act and then God will answer. Don’t argue or philosophize or
rationalize. Appropriate action enables God’s grace to renew your life and that’s what I suggest
loved ones. Why I did this, was to show you there’s something you can do about it.
Some of you will say, “Well, how do I exercise faith?” Oh well, it’s easy, look at…
– #10 how many mornings in the week did you have a personal half-hour prayer and bible study? That’s
exercising faith.
– #11, did you invite anyone to fellowship lunch at Sunday morning service? In other words, did you
think of anybody else after Sunday morning service?
– #12, did you witness to anyone?
– #13 did you experience any answer to prayer?
– #14 did God speak to you about anything?
– #15 did you send anyone a book or tract, did you make any venture to bring a friend or relative
closer to God?
Well, that’s it loved ones. Faith is action. Those actions themselves are useless. Those don’t do a
thing for you but they express your faith that God has chosen you to be His child and is intent on
using you.
So loved ones, I would encourage you to take the opportunity that this beginning of a new year
offers. Look briefly over your life especially during the quietness during communion when we
distribute the bread and the wine. Just look at your life and see where it is going. Then see, you
can change it today. The power of Heaven waits upon you and waits upon you exercising the little
finger of faith.
Now loved ones, over the years we have always used this first Sunday, just as I have outlined here.
We renew our covenant with God and bring before our own hearts our commitment to the One who has
made us. John Wesley wrote these words and I’d read them just before we make our own covenant.
“Dearly beloved, the Christian life to which we are called, is a life in Christ redeemed from sin by
Him and through Him consecrated to God. Upon this life we have entered, having been admitted into
that new covenant of which our Lord Jesus Christ is mediator and which He sealed with His own blood,
that it might stand forever. On one side, the covenant is God’s promise that He will fulfill in and
through us all that He declared in Jesus Christ, who is the author and perfecter of our faith. His
promise still stands. We are sure for we have known His goodness and proved His grace in our lives
day by day. On the other side, we stand pledged to live no more unto ourselves but to Him who loved
us and gave Himself for us and has called us to serve Him, that the purposes of His coming might be
fulfilled”.
From time to time we renew our vows of consecration especially when we gather at the table of the
Lord. But on this day, we meet expressly as generations of our fathers have met that we may joyfully
and solemnly renew the covenant, which bound them and binds us to God. That is in remembering the
mercies of God and the hope of His calling, examine ourselves by the light of His spirit that we may
see wherein we have failed or fallen short in faith and practice and considering all that this
covenant means, may give ourselves anew to God.
Loved ones, though I’d encourage all of us to stand, I’d ask only those of us who are really serious
about this to take upon our lips these sacred words and this holy covenant. So let us stand
together.
If you intend to give up the ownership of your own life and the governing of your own future and
intend to put it into the hands of Him who really owns it anyway and intend to live the life that is
pleasing to God and that is empowered by Son Jesus, I ask you to join with me then, in repeating
this covenant.
“I am no longer my own but Thine. Put me to what Thy wilt, rank me with whom Thy wilt, put me to
doing, put me to suffering, let me be employed for Thee or laid aside for Thee, exulted for Thee or
brought low for Thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now oh glorious and blessed
God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine and I am thine, so be it and the covenant which I
have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
Let us be seated as we pray.
How will You live your life? - REVIVAL
Decide Today!
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Even for those of us who are young, this is a solemn day because this is the first Sunday of another
year and however young we are, we know we have only so many of these years to spend. So it is a
solemn time and a time when we need to, if we have any intelligence at all, look at our own lives
and see where they’re going, and try to fix in our minds where we want to try to get them to go this
coming year.
Loved ones, if you don’t do that, you will drift. And some of us here find we’re in the tragic
situation that we feel we’ve been drifting for longer than we care to imagine and we feel we’ve been
drifting from one spot to another, from one job to another, not really choosing our way, but almost
just bouncing from one spot to another. Often we have found — those of us who have believed God for
a long time – often mouthing the same old beliefs and the same old clichés but not really being
changed at all by them.
Now, I would ask you, whether you believe in God this morning or whether you don’t believe at all,
would you look at your own life and try to determine in your mind where it is going? Because you
only will have a certain number of years like this past one, and they are precious, and there is no
guarantee that you will see the end of this year — there just isn’t — and you and I both know
that. That’s no “hellfire and damnation preaching”, that’s a fact of life. None of us know whether
we’ll see the end of this present year or not, this is an important time for us. There is that
pathetic verse you remember in the Old Testament, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we
are not yet saved.” So I would ask you, where is your life going and what is happening in your
professional life, your job life, and your vocational life?
And then what is happening in your resolution life? Because it’s one way out of the difficulty to
become cynical about new year resolutions but it really doesn’t solved anything, you’re still left
with a thought that there are countless habits of thinking and habits of behavior that you’re still
fighting and you were fighting them 10 years ago, you were fighting them 15 years ago and as far as
you’re concerned, you can see little improvement in your own life over these past 5 or 10 years.
Now loved ones, it’s vital to look at those facts and not to ignore them and to see that that is not
normal, that’s not normal. It’s normal in a fallen world that has no God — but it is not normal in
a world that has been made by a Father that makes a new sunrise every morning. The norm for people
who live in that kind of a world is that they progress in their lives, their lives become more
ordered. They grow into greater and greater peace and contentment, greater trust, they have less
anxiety than they had before. They are fighting greater battles because God gives them to them, but
they’re able to fight them and win, that’s normal.
If your life is not like that, if your life — I remember it was an 18th century novelist called
Sterne and in one of his books, I think it was “Tristram Shandy”, he did a diagram showing the plot
of the novel and of course it went like that, then like that, then like that and then away back
there and it was a hideous novel to read because it kept flashing back and going back and forward.
Now, if your life is like that, it’s not the way your life was meant to be. Your life was not meant
to be a trail of unfulfilled promises, of failed resolutions, of broken relationships, of
uncertainty about your future and your job life. It’s not meant to be like that. Your God put you
here to do a job and He has a plan for your life and He means your life to go from glory to glory,
that’s it.
So I’d ask you, if your life isn’t going that way, will you seriously examine your life before your
Maker today? And I would say, will you do something about it? You may sit there and say, “Well, why
doesn’t He do something about it?” Well, He has done everything that’s needed, but He does require
you to stand up on two feet like a man or like a woman with some backbone in you and get going the
way He has shown you.
And if you say to me, “Oh well, I don’t know which way to go”, you know fine well, you have a
thousand little signals from your conscience from time to time that give you an idea which way you
should go and you should head out in those directions. Whether regarding your own personal behavior
or regarding your own professional future, you should head out in that direction. It’s only in
action that your faith is seen by God, and it’s only when your faith is seen by Him, that He can
operate to bring your life into order.
So I would ask you loved ones, if you’ve been drifting, or you’ve been sliding from place to place
now for several years, would you stand up this morning inside in your heart and your mind and
decide, “Lord God, You have something for me to do, I want to get my life going in a straight line,”
and loved ones, honestly, believe me, if you even make that kind of move, if you make any kind of a
move towards order in your life, the Creator will begin to work in your life.
But loved ones, we aren’t jellyfish. We aren’t jellyfish, wobbling about like that forever, we
aren’t. The society tries to make us think we are, that we’re the victims of our heredity plus our
environment, but we aren’t. We are able to make our lives go in a way that we believe our Maker
wants us to, that’s why He gave us intellects and minds. And you know fine well that the only way
you can achieve anything in this world is to determine what’s to be done and do it.
So I would ask you, will you think now, each one of you, wherever you are in your Christian faith,
wherever you are in your belief in God, wherever you are in your atheism or your agnosticism —
would you pause for a moment now on this first Sunday of this year and would you in the quiet times
that we’ll have for prayer during this communion service, will you examine your heart and look in
and see has God given you any impressions there that would give you a direction in your life? Has He
given you any hint over the years of which way you should go? Then will you align your will with
that?
Why I pleaded especially for that, is my heart goes out to those of us who have been educated in
recent years because we have been the victims of this kind of brainwashing that you can’t do
anything about it. “You are determined by your father and your mother and your environment” —
you’re not, you’re not. You’re a free person and that’s what we say, here in this country we say,
“We’re free and we can do what we really want to do”, and that’s true, loved ones, that’s true.
I would ask you to think seriously about it. This is what we call in the family here Covenant
Sunday. When we renew our covenant with our God, with our Creator — and we do it in some formal
words that have been used over the years, but most of all, we do it in our heart of hearts. So,
that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to have the short covenant service and then we’re going
to have the communion service. So, I’ll just read the words really that we’ve used so often before
and that thousands of our forefathers have used.
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Is it possible to be certain God Loves you? - REVIVAL
Testimony: Ernest O’Neill
Romans 6:6
by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
17 April 1983, Minneapolis, MN U.S.A.
It’s difficult loved ones for me to go too long without testifying again to what Jesus did in my
life. So I’d like to do that simply.
I was a Methodist minister in Ireland and I sensed that God wanted us to go to London to study, so
my wife and I went there and I really didn’t know what to do next. I was a Christian and knew that
God had forgiven my sins. I knew that from when I was 17, when I went to University. That whole
business of sex and the impossibility of doing anything about the strong drives that I had in that
direction brought home to me the power of sin and the need to at least have it forgiven. So when I
went up to University in Ireland at 17, I got down to what was to Protestants a dreadful thing, the
Stations of the Cross. I began to spend my prayer time thinking about Jesus dying. I tried to get it
through my own thick head that He had actually died and that there was a piece of soil in Palestine
where His Cross had actually been thrust into the ground. Gradually, as I thought about that and my
mind dwelt upon it, I came to the conclusion He had really done that. There was really a man Jesus
who had a beard that you could maybe smell if you were close to it or He had ears like mine and He
had clothes on. And He had actually died on a cross in Palestine and He had died looking right down
the centuries past the Roman soldiers to Ernest O’Neill and saying, “Father, forgive HIM for he
knows not what he does.”
So it came home to me when I was 17 that Jesus had actually died for me, and that because He had
died for me, God was willing to forgive me my sins. So I was born of God when I was 17. From then on
I had a Bible study and a prayer life, not daily but pretty close to daily. Then I sensed God
calling me to the ministry and that’s why I went into the Methodist Ministry. Now after teaching
English literature for a couple of years in Ireland, I went into the Methodist Ministry and then
ended up in the position that I’ve described, where I felt God wanted us to go to London.
We found ourselves in London in the Methodist Church there and then did not know what to do next. My
life, even though it was Christian and I was committed to the ministry, was not what it was meant to
be. I didn’t know what was wrong then, but I knewm this is not a wonderful life. My mother would
often say to me, “Ernest, Christians are supposed to be happy.” I mean, it was just like a sword in
my side because I wasn’t happy. I was worried and anxious and concerned and troubled most of the
time or a lot of the time and very tense, and yet I was a Christian. So I knew that something was
wrong but didn’t know what.
When so it came to whether I’d go back to Ireland or stay in London I at last just said, “Lord, I
don’t know.” I began to seek God, fairly much day after day in London, where should I go? Through
prayer came “America” and that was the last place I wanted to go because America had a lot of money,
a lot of commercialism, it wasn’t the place where you wanted to go if you were really serious about
God, at least as a little Irish minister. And I felt I WAS serious about God.
That was the only answer I got so I went to my neighboring pastor and said did you know anybody in
America? He said he knew the Bishop of Minnesota and he’d arrive in London in the next month. So
eventually I had dinner with the Bishop of Minnesota and ended up here in Minneapolis. That was
about 20 years ago, the same year that Kennedy was assassinated. Then I got into the Methodist
ministry here in America but found the same problem there as I had in Ireland. It was this, and I
can tie it down fairly precisely: a lady could come into my study after I’d preached a sermon and
could say, “Well, I didn’t think this and this and this was good, I thought you could have left that
part out.” Well I sat there in my chair because in seminary we’re given smiling classes and I would
smile because you’re supposed to smile when they tear you apart. But it really didn’t matter if I
was smiling because inside in my heart, I was resentful of her. I had rising up within me the
feeling, “What right has she to talk about my preaching? What does she know about homiletics?”
That was one of the problems. A rising up of resentment and criticism towards other people which I
did not show on the outside but which were inside all the time. And that was inward sin; I didn’t
know about that. I didn’t know the distinction. I knew it was there, but I didn’t know what you
could do about it. That was one of the problems. I didn’t show it on the outside because I had
trained myself, I suppose, to discipline my outward expressions to other people so that they
wouldn’t see what I was really thinking. But I knew what I was thinking. And of course it really
makes a break between you and the person you’re speaking to because they think you’re one thing and
you’re really another. So you don’t feel in communion with them — they may feel they’re in
communion with you– but you know right well they’re just in communion with a just a hypocritical
appearance that you’re putting on. So that was one problem.
Another problem was selfish ambition. I don’t know about the brothers here, but we men are taught
that we must achieve things. We get the idea that we must make a niche for ourselves in the hall of
fame somewhere. I certainly was convinced of that and felt often driven by a selfish ambition to be
somebody important. I wanted to be somebody well known, somebody famous, for people to like me,
people to respect me and to be successful. I wanted to be able to write back and tell my mother what
I’d done in this world or something like that.
So selfish ambition, which often drove you to be very jealous of anybody else who did anything half
reasonably. So even if someone sang a song or somebody else did something well, that wasn’t doing me
any harm at all, yet I was so preoccupied with being center-stage and being the important one that I
would feel jealous of them or envious. I did not even want to sing, I just felt I didn’t want them
to be that well known or well liked or well respected when I wasn’t. And so selfish ambition begot
in me jealousy and envy and of course a lot of pride. And that was the second plain thing that I
knew in my life: pride. It’s so ridiculous now when I look at it, but I remember what it was. It was
pride in my own insight into Christianity and my ability to explain it to other people. That came to
me later one night when the Holy Spirit give me revelation and it came in those very words.
So I had pride and it was a thing that was debilitating because you’d preach a sermon and everybody
would say, “Oh, that really brought God’s Word home to me” but actually you took that to yourself
and said that means it was a good sermon and I did well, and that I had succeeded and I’m very
clever — that I can really see truths about God and am obviously pretty good at communicating it to
other people. So actually it stole the whole of joy and delight of being any use to God at all,
because I was so concerned with pride in what I could do. And of course that’s what brought the
resentment when somebody criticized me. I felt, if only they could see all the good things that I
do, if they could see all the wonderful things I do, they wouldn’t criticize me. There was a great
deal of reaction against any criticism because of that pride.
The third thing was just very plain, it was lust. I don’t know how you all are and eventually I
suppose as life goes on, we get too old or we wear out or something, but it seems to me most of us
men anyway, find we have tremendous problems with unclean thoughts, with fantasy life, not only with
dreams at night, but the terrible things that are the conscious dreams that we have during the day
and the fantasies we have and the playing around with the unclean pictures and unclean movies in
certain situations. It really spoils your relationship with all girls, you know. Well, they actually
are often very open and very straight and don’t have those same feelings about us. Often they are
very appealing in the holiness and the goodness of their feelings towards us, but of course we are
always after the main chance and always with an ulterior motive in the back of our minds. So lust
was a pretty constant problem and spoils all that you try to do, of course, with the opposite sex at
all for Jesus’ sake and much that you try to do in your own marriage because those of you who are
married and still have trouble with lust know that it really spoils marriage too. And it prevents it
being a relaxed and lovely and beautiful experience.
So those were the things that were working inside me as a Methodist minister. I was by that time, I
suppose when we came here, about 29 or 30 years old. I’d been in the ministry about eight or nine
years by then. I went in when I was 21 and yet it was no better, it was still the same. It was this
struggle within and this pretense on the outside. In fact, really there’s no question, there’s no
question what was my favourite verse, but it was the verse in Romans 7:15 that described my almost
daily experience. “I do not understand my own actions for I do not do what I want, but I do the very
thing I hate.”
When I look back on it of course, I really did what I wanted. I mean not actually, it wasn’t exactly
true — that verse in fact describes the situation of a Jew living under the law. In fact, if
anything it describes an absolute non-Christian. In fact, I did do the things I wanted. I pretended
that I wanted more holy things that I read in the Bible and the things that I’m supposed to want,
but actually I did what I wanted because I found inside me that there was an irrational streak that
wanted things that I, as a Christian, was supposed not to want. This irrational drive within me
wanted to jump into bed with some girl. This irrational drive within me wanted everybody to praise
me. This irrational drive within me wanted my satisfaction, wanted everybody else wiped out and me
elevated. So I found that there was a strong drive inside that actually produced a wanting of its
own. So in a deep way I DID do what I wanted. It’s just that in fairness, I suppose there seemed to
be two “I’s”, there seemed to be an “I” that wanted those things and there seemed to be a little
weak “I” that did want something of Jesus. And of course that was the Spirit of Jesus. When I was
born of God, the Spirit of Jesus did graciously come into me.
That’s the situation we’re in when we’re carnal Christians because that’s the state I’m describing.
I was a carnal Christian. I had in fact received the Spirit of Jesus into me. It was Him that drew
me into the Methodist ministry. I mixed it up with a lot of my selfish ambitions and tried to dirty
it and spoil it, but He still kept wanting His Father and it was His Spirit that made me want to
pray at times and to read the Bible or made me want to preach or to help other people to know Jesus.
And it was His Spirit that at times wanted God and it was His Spirit that pointed out to me that
these other things were wrong. Then beside me there seemed to be this Old Man, this Old Self that
wanted all these sinful things — and that was my situation. I saw no way out. I had not heard of
any way in the Methodist Church, I had not read of any way in the literature. I was brought up as a
in fairly liberal Methodist theolog. I had not read anywhere that you could do anything about those
things. Indeed I felt that this was the result of just being human and that throughout your life
your job was to hold those things down. Indeed in my semi-sophisticated way I thought, that is where
discipline comes in, that is where maturity comes in, that is what growing in grace is about. I
always looked forward to growing in grace to the point where I would have victory over these things.
If you had pressed me, I would have to admit that I wasn’t much better now, than I was nine years
previously. In fact, I would say that I was worse, because these things became more subtle in their
expressions. You became cleverer at holding them down. You became cleverer at avoiding them or
evading them in your own conscious mind because they brought such tears to your eyes and such
frustration to your heart. So that was the situation, and that’s a carnal Christian and that’s what
I was. I didn’t know it then.
I was invited to a little Bible school in north Minneapolis to speak because I was the new Irish
minister come to the Methodist Church a few blocks away, and so they invited me to speak at the
little chapel hour. I don’t know why I spoke about it, but the closest that I could see to any kind
of hope was a sermon that they had given us in the 44 standard sermons of John Wesley that we had to
read in seminary. Now, they did not give us the good sermons, but they gave us at least this one
which was closest. It was the one in First John 3:9, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin.”
But Wesley in that one does not go into the details of deliverance from the power of sin or
deliverance from carnality. He just states it pretty clearly, that if you’re born of God you don’t
commit sin. And you can’t get out of it by saying, “oh well that means I don’t on the whole commit
it.” You just don’t commit it because you’re free of it and I shared that at the little chapel hour.
In other words, really what I did was share my best aspirations, I suppose. I realized this was a
Bible school, I was a miserable old liberal theologian that was hardly meant to believe the Bible,
so I’d better share the best that I knew, so I did share that. It was from my heart that I said, I
believe it’s possible some time to come to a place in your life where you can live in this, you can
live “whosoever is born of God does not commit sin”, you can live like that.
Now I had a theological problem obviously in my own understanding because I was born of God, but I
did commit sin and so I couldn’t make sense of it. But at least I shared what I thought. There was a
man sitting at the back with a bald head and he had no clerical collar on, which is ridiculous to
anybody who thinks he’s a minister in Britain — and he came up to me afterwards and introduced
himself, and said to me that he was a pastor of this church. I thought, how can you be a pastor if
you don’t have a collar and tie on? And then the guy started to tell me that he used to be a used
car salesman. And I thought, “Here am I sitting with the degrees and all my training and this guy’s
a used car salesman. Well, the sooner I get off and get on with my work the better.” But he of
course started to talk with me and I saw an honest light in his eyes, I think that’s it. An honest
light, you know. He didn’t know Greek, didn’t know Hebrew, didn’t know all that stuff but he seemed
to be honest, that came through.
So I talked with him a little in the study. He started to tell me a story. He told me that his
church specialized in this very issue that I had touched upon in the chapel hour. Well, I hardly
knew what issue I’d touched upon in the chapel hour, I just had spoken the best I knew. Then he went
on and started to tell how he had been a missionary in Bolivia for years in that church and had
tried to preach this. And yet he had not experienced it at all. Then he began to outline — I didn’t
know what he was talking about — but then he began to outline in detail, he began to describe me.
He was actually describing himself. Then he began to describe me, as he described the state of his
own inner heart. Because most of us, if you’re sitting here and you’re carnal, you recognize
yourself. It’s not me I’m describing, I’m describing you. As he started to describe his own heart
and his own experience of defeat in the Christian ministry and the Christian life, so I began to
realize somebody else has experienced this. That was the first time that I had heard anyone talk
about these things.
I had known them in my own life, but I had never known anybody to talk about them in their lives. I
assume that everybody was either playing a game or was not having the troubles that I was having.
And he described exactly the carnal state of his own Christian heart, the problem with inward sin
that he had over years and years. Then he said, “But then I came to the secret and I found the
deliverance that God had prepared for us.” And He didn’t actually go into much detail. He said, “I
found that there was only one way.” He said, “I discovered that all the things that I had inside —
my lust, my pride, my selfish ambition, the anger, the jealousy, the envy, all the inward sins that
rose up inside me that I could not hold down — I just kept from expressing them outside to other
people — came from self. They all came from self. And then I saw Romans 6:6.”
I knew Romans, but I certainly didn’t know what Romans 6:6 contained. Then he said, “Romans 6:6, you
know, says” — or I think he used King James, ‘our old man was crucified with Christ.’ “Our old man
was crucified with Christ so that we might be delivered from the power of sin.” I had heard of it,
but I had never noticed it before. And he said the Old Man is the Self. I at last realized that my
old self had been crucified with Christ and that the moment I was willing to die to that self — and
that’s what he said and you might not like it and the psychologists might make mincemeat of it —
that’s what he said and it was Gospel to me. He said, “I realized that I had to die to Self. I had
to accept what had happened to me in Jesus. The moment that I would do that, that moment I would be
delivered from the power of sin.”
And so he then described to me how he began to seek God and ask God to show him himself in all the
clear reality that God could see it. And to give him Judgment Day honesty with the inward sin that
was within so that he would not cover up anything or pretend anything wasn’t there, but would be
absolutely honest with God. He said he began to do that. Then he said, “The Holy Spirit began to
show me things.” I knew the Holy Spirit — that was the Third Person of the Trinity — and He was a
kind of force that came upon the work of God — but he seemed to talk about the Holy Spirit like a
person. I never had heard that before. He said, “The Holy Spirit helped me and He began to show me
things within myself that I had never seen myself. He began to reveal to me what I looked like
before God. I began to see how rotten I was and how absolutely ugly I was. I saw myself in ways that
I’d never seen myself before. And I began to be sick and tired and sore. And I began to give up any
hope that I could get rid of such a monster as I appeared beside the pure and Holy Jesus.”
Then he said, “I came eventually to the place, after several weeks of seeking, where I said, ‘Lord,
I’m willing to do anything to be delivered from this.'” He said, “God’s Holy Spirit, in that moment
came in and cleansed my heart. And I was delivered from that power of Self. And I no longer after
that had that agonizing trouble with the lust. I had no longer the rising up of anger inside.” I
still remember him saying it, he said “there was no rising up from within me.” Well I listened to
him — and of course, I don’t know if you’re like me, but if your heart is hungry you know, I was
desperate for anything that would bring deliverance. I don’t know that I even had my skepticism
alive enough to be cynical about it. I just knew that if that’s possible that’s what I want.
Then he give me a book, “Possibilities of Grace” written by an old Methodist Bishop years ago in
America — “Possibilities of Grace”. I went home and looked up the chapter, I think he calls it,
“Holiness” or “Sanctification” and it says, “How to Obtain Holiness”. Oh, that’s what I wanted. I
looked right at that chapter. I started to read how to obtain Holiness. How to be cleansed from sin,
how to be sanctified, how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, how to be baptized with the Holy
Spirit, how to come into a closer walk and into full consecration, it really doesn’t matter you
know. The Baptists talk about it as full consecration, full surrender, the Methodists don’t talk
about it. The old Methodists talked about sanctification, entire sanctification. Pentecostals tend
to talk about Baptism in the Holy Spirit though they don’t always mean an inner work as well as an
outward work, but that’s really what it is. It’s the fullness of the Holy Spirit within you. I began
to read how you should obtain that.
First of all he said, “See yourself as you really are in God’s eyes.” So I started to do that. I
know, you all say, “you poor soul, you’ll drive yourself to distraction through introspection.”
Well, I didn’t know any better and that’s what I did. I looked at myself as plainly as I could. I
looked as plainly as I could at those things within. I didn’t see many of them at the beginning. I
didn’t see the pride I had about my own insight into Christianity and ability to expound it others.
I never suspected that. I just started to look at the bad things inside me and to see what a rat I
was and to look at the things and stop evading them. I wanted to see that they were there and that
was me, Ernest O’Neill. I did not just speak unclean words, I was a man of unclean lips. I WAS this
person, this was me. It wasn’t just little things that I was doing. It wasn’t little traits or
little human tendencies, it was me. This was the real me. I was filled with lust and pride and
filled with selfish ambition. I didn’t get very far, and I came to a position of frustration I must
admit.
It was then that I remembered what this man had said about the Holy Spirit and so for the first time
in my life I began to speak to the Holy Spirit. That is, I treated Him as a real person. I
remembered in the New Testament, Jesus had said He was a counselor. So I reckoned that’s what I
needed, I needed a counselor who would show me deeper, because I’m at a blank wall here, because I
was going as deep as I had got before with my introspection. I began to speak to the Holy Spirit. I
said, “Holy Spirit will you show me myself as God sees me. Show me myself until I’m sick and sore
tired of myself and I’m willing for anything so that I can be delivered. Give me a new conviction of
sin.” Now, loved ones I did that; I can’t apologize for it, you know.
I feel for all you souls who get all tangled up with false condemnation, but I have to testify to
what God did in my heart and how He worked with me. And I had to ask Him to bring me a new
conviction of sin. If you say, “Oh, you poor sick creature” – well, that’s what I was then, and I
knew that I had to see what was wrong in my life the way God saw it. I had to come to the place
where I was willing for whatever deliverance He had for me.
So I asked the Holy Spirit, “Show me Holy Spirit, show me how I look in God’s eyes.” Well, that’s
when insights such as I said to you would occur to me. I would waken up in the morning with certain
words on my lips, which obviously had come from the Holy Spirit and He would have shown me a whole
depth of my life that I’d never seen before. A whole gross monstrosity of Self that no one had ever
known and even I had never known was there. That’s why loved ones, I think it is a supernatural
work. Even in the seeking, even in the conviction of sin, it seems to me it’s a supernatural work,
right at that early stage. It is a revelation of things that you have not seen that only God can see
in you. And I sometimes think that this was maybe even the beginning of my deliverance because it
was kind of separating myself from Self and saying, “Lord, I cannot deliver myself from Self, I need
You to do it.” It was the ceasing to be God in my life — to be my own god and to control my
spiritual experience. It seems it was a going out to God or reaching out to God and saying, “Lord,
You’ll have to even show me what’s wrong in my life.” And so the Holy Spirit did that.
Then this book said that you should see that you can do nothing about that. That that Self of yours
has a grip on your life that you cannot break, and that carnality within you is so subtle, it loves
religion, just loves it. It loves a lot of the things you do in your Christian ministry. It loves a
lot of the good things in life, as long as Satan can hold onto your will, and so you will never
track down that old Self. Of course, that’s the error that I always made before, you know, you
control it, you tame it, you train it by reading the right books, you pray a lot, you have cold
showers, you do all kinds of things to try to control that old Self, but this book said, you can do
nothing about it, this is part of Satan within you. It’s like a spy of Satan’s is inside your heart,
it’s a self that is not under your control, it’s part of Satan’s kingdom. You have to be delivered
from it.
And so I thought about that and prayed about it, and as the Holy Spirit of course continued to bring
out more of the hideousness of my selfish will, I saw, “yeah, I cannot.” I tried, you know, as we
all do, we try to do works worthy of repentance which we always should do, we should always try to
obey. And I tried to obey and tried to get rid of these things and of course the more I tried the
more distraught I became and the more despairing I became, and the more convinced I became that this
is right, I cannot deliver myself from this.
Then of course the third step that this man said was, “See that it has all been done. See that it
has all been done.” And then he got the same verse, Romans 6:6, “See that your old self was
crucified with Christ.” And so I began to think about that verse. And really it didn’t mean too much
to me. I could get it intellectually, and I could look at the Greek word “polios” meaning, “old
man”, I could see that it had been translated “old man” in King James, I could see that “crucified”
was the eros of the Greek verb; it meant it had been done in a moment and was finished with, had
occurred at a moment in time. I saw that is what it meant. I didn’t understand how my old Self could
be crucified in a moment in eternity but I saw that’s what the Greek meant. It meant that it had
been done, it didn’t mean that I had to crucify myself, so I saw the foolishness of old Luther even
and the others trying to beat themselves with chains or kill themselves or crucify themselves. I
saw, yeah, that isn’t it at all, it has been done, I was crucified with Christ.
I saw that and I believed it and it said in Romans 6:11, “Reckon yourself therefore to be dead
indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ my Lord” so I did that. I even knew the
Greek word for “reckon” – it’s “legizo” — “to consider and treat yourself as being really dead
with Jesus.” Well, I did — mentally and intellectually I tried to do that. I tried to believe, “I
am dead, I was crucified, it’s finished” — and I’d get up the next morning and I still had the
anger or the lust or the pride, and there would be no change.
So it went on like that. I had by that time dealt with my outward sin, so I was back in what we’ve
talked about, I was at least back in a justified experience. I was at least back obeying God
outwardly anyway, so I was back in salvation which I had at least — whether you believe you can
throw it away or whether you believe like Nee that you can be alive but live as if you’re dead. It’s
kind of rather a game with words. I was not in the full joy of Jesus anyway. And I got back into the
joy of salvation but I was not making headway on this deliverance from inward sin and the old Self
and so I kept on trying to believe, trying to believe.
And then gradually it dawned upon me what he had hinted at in his book. He said to really reckon
yourself dead with Christ you have to be willing to die with Him. You have to be willing to die with
Him. I would say that was throughout the whole experience the biggest new fact, although the
personality of the Holy Spirit was also fairly new to me. But probably the biggest new fact was that
one. The fact that I had to be willing to die with Jesus, because we’d always been taught in
seminary that Christ died for you so that you wouldn’t have to die. In fact, that’s where we got a
kind of an almost demonic joy thinking, “Oh good — He suffered we don’t have to!” It was kind of a
relief: “Good, I don’t have to die for my sins, He died for me so that’s great, I’m scott free and
can do what I want.” That had always been a pretty important tenet of my creed.
But this was new, the whole thought, “you are to be willing to die with Jesus” and then I began to
realize, well of course God has done the thing in Jesus, but He won’t force me to enter into that.
He will ask me, “Are you willing? I have already done it in my Son. You don’t have to make it real
in you, I will do that but you do have to be willing.” And so that’s were the pilgrimage began.
I began to deal with my own heart and will. Am I willing to die with Jesus? I began to think, now
what does that mean? I began to ask the Holy Spirit, will you show me what it meant? It might have
been different for other people but what was it for Ernest O’Neill? Lord Jesus, what did you bear in
your own heart of me on Calvary, that I need to be willing to let go of and die to. Then the Holy
Spirit began to dig and dig through the layers and layers — and you dealt with the things that were
most obvious, you know: would you be willing not to lose your temper? And you had to ask the Holy
Spirit, “Why, why is that a big deal?” He would show you, well you use your temper to actually hold
people off. You use your temper to get control of situations that you’ve already lost control of.
Now would you be willing not to lose your temper, in other words, would you be willing not to have
control of those situations? And that of course involves all the different situations, your job,
your home, your money, your salary, your future and that means you have to willing to trust God with
those things. So I went through that kind of thing.
It’s the same with the lust you know. What was it like for Jesus? Well, He had no woman, He was not
able to jump into bed with some woman, He never did have intercourse and would you be willing if
necessary never to have intercourse? Would you be willing not to, if that was God’s will? He may not
make it your will because you’re married and it’s normal for that to be the relationship, but would
you be willing if He wanted? Most of all with us men, would you be willing when He wants or when
your wife wants, not just when you want? Would you be willing to die to your right to that?
And that’s what it began to come down to more and more. Not attitudes even, but rights. Would you be
willing to die to this right? When Jesus died on Calvary He was looked upon as a criminal, they
misunderstood Him completely. Would you be willing to die to your right to be understood all the
time? Would you be willing to be misunderstood, and be happy and content? Would you be willing to
die to your right even to have two coats to your back? Would you be willing to die to your right to
a good salary, to die to your right to marriage, to die to your right to a successful future? Would
you be willing really to be with Jesus on the Cross? And more and more I asked Him, “Lord Jesus,
will You let me see what it feels like close to You on that Cross? Would You help me to see what it
means for me, Ernest O’Neill?” And the Holy Spirit would go on and on. It’s different with all of
us, there’s some besetting sin in your life, you know. May not be the obvious one — only the Holy
Spirit can show you — but it’s usually the one that holds all, the key to the thing, and for me it
was one Saturday morning in my parsonage in north Minneapolis I was praying — I spent a lot of time
now praying — and the Holy Spirit said, “Would you be willing to be nothing if it were for Jesus’
glory? Would you be willing to be nothing? Would you be willing to be a zero? Would you be willing
to be a failure?”
Well, that was the very opposite of all that I’d been taught in my education I should be, the very
opposite of the motives that often move those of us who are actors or preachers or public people. It
was the opposite of what was the tenor of my life. “Would you be willing to be nothing for Jesus’
sake? Would you be willing to be a failure? Would you be willing for your mum back in Ireland to
think you’d died, she’d heard so little about you? Would you be willing to be nothing?”
That was it for me, but it’s different with all of us. Maybe when we get to Heaven and I’ll find
that wasn’t it, you know it was just Jesus. “Would you be willing to be with Me, my son, on the
Cross? Would you be willing to be in Me and to be wiped out as far as this world is concerned and to
have a tombstone erected now, with your name on it, indeed not even a tombstone with your name. To
have a tombstone with nothing on it, for you to become public property for Me? Would you be willing
to be nothing and to be an absolute nobody for Me?” And then that was a miracle, and so then I said,
yes.
I spoke in tongues about a year and a half later. I don’t know that tongues are a big deal in the
thing anyway. I think there are many of us that haven’t spoken in tongues — I don’t think that’s an
issue. Certainly I didn’t then, but there was an absolute confidence that the Holy Spirit had come
into my life and filled me and cleansed my heart. I felt the cleanness inside. I felt the cleanness.
There’s a line in a First World War poem that goes — it’s a misinterpretation of course of the
First World War – “like swimmers into cleanness leaping.” Well, that’s what it was. It was like a
swimmer into cleanness leaping. For the first time I had not had this refuse and garbage and dirt
inside my heart. It was the first time I had not had a fountain of strong desire for lust or envy or
pride or anger or jealousy coming up from inside my heart. And so it was just a quietness inside. I
didn’t testify to my wife but I thought that if this is real, my wife will know it. It was just a
quiet sense in the bedroom. In that room a quiet sense that the Holy Spirit had come into my heart
and had cleansed me and filled me with Himself.
I had of course had to see immediate proof of it. I’ve told some of you before about two of the
issues, you know, that one of the most difficult situations and many of you have dealt with them is
divorce within the church. It can be a most unpleasant thing for everybody involved and certainly
for me because I was their minister. Some people are so nasty that you just don’t want to tackle
them. I was in the middle of one of those when a note was passed to me by my secretary. It said,
“Will you call Mrs. So and So? I knew what that was about and normally I would do what I think all
of us carnal Christians do, I’d run my own life, that’s really what we’d do. We just obey God when
it suits us, you know. But we run our own life most of the time and we make things convenient for us
and that’s why our life gets all piled up, do you know that? I never had enough time for things. I
never had time to do everything. My life was always chaotic and panicky because I never had enough
time because I was always lining all the things back there, to do them my way, to do the things
suitably and conveniently because I could divide them up into pleasant things and the unpleasant
things because I was still alive and I was still controlling things. But now it was different.
Ernest O’Neill was crucified with Christ. There was no Self rising up inside. The note came, I left
for the phone and called the lady and got right into the messy situation.
That was the first time I obeyed with instant obedience. It was a great relief to instantly obey.
And you could instantly obey because there was no longer any interest in your Self and in your own
convenience. In fact, your life was a schedule for Him to write. It was no longer a schedule that
you had filled in all days in and these things I want to do and these things I want to achieve and
I’ll try to work you in where I can, Lord. It was now all – that is wiped out, it’s finished. Now
Lord, whatever You want that’s what counts.
Then the next morning I got a letter from a friend of mine who’d been at seminary with me. I’d gone
to seminary with more degrees than anybody else and was ahead of most people. I was always anxious
to get on that old academic success line. Yet God had constantly made me want to find out how does
the Gospel work. So I constantly preached in churches to find that out. Meanwhile some of my own
colleagues had streaked ahead of me and got their doctorates and one of these of course was in
Garrett Institute I think in the University of Chicago and was now a doctor in psychology and he
wrote to me from time to time. Every time he wrote, of course, you can guess what I felt. I felt why
didn’t I get going, why am I not doing that, how jealous I am of him. So the letter came I opened it
and there was no jealousy. It was just a miracle. I knew there was a change in my heart. So that
changed my whole life.
Then everything didn’t go beautifully. Everything then fell, the roof fell in, all the outside
things, as I began to preach that in the Methodist church and they didn’t like it. Everything came
down around my ears. I left the Methodist Church and was without work for nine months. I ended up
teaching at Benilde High School. I remember saying to my wife, “I think I might never preach
again,” but I wasn’t even concerned about it. I was happy, “Lord, whatever You want me to be, I’ll
be. If You want me to preach I’ll preach. If You don’t want me, I won’t.”
So it was a great rest. I would say I entered into the second rest of the people of God. The rest
that God entered into on the Sabbath Day when He ceased from His labors. And it seems to me that’s
what you do when you at last accept your position with Jesus on the Cross: you cease from your
labors. You stop laboring to be God’s child and Jesus Himself takes control and He does it through
the power of the Holy Spirit.
So that changed my life, loved ones, and then from there some of you know some of the progress, but
I had to tell you because a little voice warns me “if I preach not the Gospel.” I had to tell you
this tonight. That’s true and it’s for you, you know. I’m not doing any commercials and it’s just
true. It doesn’t need selling. It’s God will to do the same for you. The Holy Spirit will deliver
you from the power of sin. Now, if you say, “You mean you have power to suppress the anger and the
envy and the jealousy?” No, no, that was the battle I fought when I was a carnal Christian. No,
you’re delivered FROM the envy and the jealousy. The envy and the jealousy do not rise up within
you. You feel Jesus rising up inside you, and it is a deliverance and it is a victory. And of course
it is full Christianity, you know and it’s the full Gospel. Now you have to make a choice. You
can’t just go away, because it is either hell or Heaven. When God began to make this plain to me I
began to see the truth, I knew that it was either Heaven or hell. You have to go on. Those of you
who are born of God, you have to go on. There is no way back. There is no where to go back there.
The bridges are burned. There is no way back.
You remember the old-fashioned evangelical phrase: “You’re spoiled for the world.” You are. You
can’t ever go back to the world. You will always feel that you’re living in an anticlimax life.
You’ll always feel you left the best if you ever go back there. No, it’s only on, you can only go
on. So tonight go on. Go after it with all your heart. Hunger after it with all your heart and God
will bring you. I didn’t have a whole lot of information, but I had a hunger I wanted deliverance
and God’s Holy Spirit met me, as He will you too.
Tonight we could have altar call and I’m sure that many of you would come up here. I would say this
to you, you have to get to the point where you’re determined. After the Benediction everybody gets
up and all that kind of thing. You have to get to the point where you determine that you’ll stay
here and you’ll seek God, if you can’t seek Him at home. Or if you think, “I don’t dare leave here
because, Satan will get me before I get home” then you should go to the prayer room, or go back into
the corner and seek God. If you want help I think there are enough of us here who are in the
fullness of the Holy Spirit; I would ask them to maybe stay around, and they can come over if you
just raise your hand up, they’ll come over and pray with you.
Really what I would urge you to do is either that or to go home and to get down to business with God
and don’t give up until you come through because you must be determined. It has to be, “I will not
let you go until You bless me.” It has to be that kind of attitude. It might take you weeks, might
take you months, but if you want that with all your heart and you keep going, God will answer you
because that’s why Jesus died.
Let us pray.
Dear Father, we thank You for that. We thank you, Lord, that Jesus died to save us from our sins.
Not to save us in our sins, but to save us from our sins. We thank You for that, Lord. We thank You
that His death was effectual because we were actually in Him when He died. That our old self was
crucified with Christ that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to
sin. Lord, we thank You for that. That each one of us and indeed every soul that has ever lived or
will ever live has been crucified with Christ and that has been done –and that it is our great
privilege to bow before our Savior and accept from His dear hand the benefits of His mighty death.
Lord, we thank You for that. We pray for each other, our Father, pray Holy Spirit for each other
that we may get down to business with You, this evening at home or here or wherever we can get hold
of that great pearl of great price that is worth selling all the other pearls together. Lord, we
thank You.
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.
You Can Be Changed - REVIVAL
Revival
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
(With Ted Farcasin sharing at the beginning)
Ted:
We discussed the impact that Evan Roberts had on a small community of believers in Southern Wales
and it essentially was a revival. It transformed the entire nation to some degree, the British Isles
and later on into Europe and it all started at a tiny little chapel. I would assume it’s relatively
tiny anyway, called Mariah Chapel in South Wales. Evan Roberts who was a member of that particular
chapel, went to the pastor one day in October, October 31st as a matter of fact and he said, “I
would like to have a time to go and speak with the youth of the church here and speak to them and
encourage them in the ways of the Lord.”
He said, “Sure, go ahead, do it”, and Roberts got together the youth of the church there and he
spoke to them specifically on four matters. The first matter was simply this, that if we want to
gather together and we want to move toward Christ then let us first of all get rid of any
un-confessed sin. So remove that from you, take it away from you. If there be anything that is
within you, that is a hindrance between you and God, a barrier, remove that from you. That was point
number one.
Point number two was essentially this: we need to be obedient. Obedient to what? Well, obedient to
the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Remember Samuel’s admonishment to the prophet of the Old Testament
that obedience is better than sacrifice. That was the message of Evan Roberts to these folks that
they be obedient to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. When he speaks to you, walk, function, move in
accordance to that and let Him demonstrate whether or not it is His will or not but be conscious of
that, be prompted by that and move in accordance to it. So those are a few things. One, be obedient
to His spirit and put away any un-confessed sin.
The third element that I tried to get across was simply this, to proclaim the goodness of Christ
within you, to make some sense of a proclamation of what Jesus has done. He encourages folks to do
as what Christ has admonished all of us at one time or another, I am sure, you know if you declare
me before your fellow men then I will declare you before my Father which is in heaven. In the King
James Version it says “I would declare you before the angels of God.” I do agree that what he is
getting at is that we can have a proclamation by our life. We can have proclamation by our own ethic
or theology and how we believe. So much is manifested by our personal behavior. But it’s interesting
to note that 93 percent of all people are saved because somebody spoke to them. Somebody spoke words
to them.
Isaiah said, “How shall a man hear unless there is somebody who would preach?”- to your colleague,
to your friend, to yourself. Those are the three primary factors that Evan Roberts spoke to these
young folks about. Consider them in your own mind.
Rev. Ernest O’Neill:
And what came home to me as Ted was sharing was that there was an incredible outpouring of God’s
Holy Spirit during the next few months. That took place about the 30th of October and then he read a
newspaper article which indicated that by December, about three months later, 34,000 people had
partaken in these meetings. And then of course after that, any of you who know about the Welsh
revival know that Evan Roberts would turn up to preach at a church but the church would have been
full from early morning.
People would have closed their businesses to get a seat in the church and there would be hundreds
outside and when he would arrive, he would go up and just open in prayer in Welsh and then sit down
and the service just went on. Prayer and confession of sin and conversions and baptism of the Spirit
and they would still be there 2 o’clock in the morning and at times right up till 6:00 a.m. the next
morning.
So, it was that God moved among them and it came home to me, wouldn’t God move that way among us? I
mean we couldn’t make God bring a worldwide revival but it does seem that where God’s people walk in
light, at least the Holy Spirit moves freely among them and brings Jesus life into existence among
them. Maybe it’s being extreme but could it be that we actually, here even in this room tonight,
have a whole lot of un-confessed sin? Or a lot of doubtful things?
It just came home to me that there are all kinds of things that we need to see happening among us
ourselves. There are healings that we need to see completed. You have loved ones that aren’t in
Jesus. We have a campus that is fairly well untouched by Jesus these days. We believe that Jesus
moves freely among us in power when we fulfill those conditions, indeed when we just walk in light.
So I was wondering does that mean that on the outside, we look like good Christians and we’re a nice
body of people but does it mean that we actually have a whole lot of un-confessed sin among us? Or
maybe we’re involved in all kinds of doubtful things that we’re not really sure of but we’re
carrying them on because we say, well, the Lord hasn’t really convicted us.
Then, when he mentioned the profession of Christ, I wondered do we have it in our heads and are we
all saying day-by-day at work, “Well, we don’t want to put them off Jesus by being too open about
it,” or, “We don’t want to go around knocking on doors like Dan Salem does because that doesn’t come
too naturally to us.” And could it be that we’re all actually living in sin? We don’t think we’re
living in sin because we’re not sleeping around with anybody or we’ve turned away from a lot of the
sins that were in our lives, but we’re actually not doing obedience. We’re not doing obedience, you
know.
In other words, could it be that all of us have all kinds of little feelings about somebody else
here tonight or somebody else who isn’t here and we keep that in our hearts and we just keep it
there? It’s kind of a root of bitterness and it just stays there but that’s what stops us entering
into the revival life in our own lives and the revival life as a group. Don’t you think it must be?
Don’t you think that wherever God’s people fulfill the conditions of revival — wherever they
confess their sin and get it out in the open and get rid of it and
agree about that and turn from it — and wherever they turn from things that are doubtful, God sees
them. And wherever they obey God’s spirit, obey in actual action, and wherever they begin to go out
of their way to profess Christ or to talk about Him to somebody else, do you not think that the Holy
Spirit would move among us as He did in that revival?
Loved ones, I know it’s just not sensible to say He wouldn’t. I think we’re a great group. I think
the world of you and we all like each other and I think it’s great. We have a great operation but we
don’t have revival, sure we don’t. We don’t. I mean other churches would look at us and think we’re
in revival and we’ve been in a remarkable state of revival compared with other churches for years
almost since we started, but we all know it isn’t what is talked about in this Welsh revival. It
isn’t that.
There isn’t a deep conviction of sin. I mean you find that with the ones you talk to, don’t you at
work? There’s no deep conviction of sin. Look, there are some of your relatives and there’s no
conviction of sin in them at all, you know there isn’t. There’s not even a vague interest in God and
it seems that conviction of sin comes when we get convicted about our sin and it seems to me that
what we could have, is a kind of a hard packed ice down there.
We’re kind of soft and squashy up here but when we get down here somewhere in maybe most of our
lives, there’s kind of hard packed ice where there is unconfessed sin that we have no intention of
confessing because we don’t want to forsake it. And where we have doubtful things, we’re glad when
we’re not absolutely sure what God thinks of them because we want to hang onto them. All of that is
really a controlled surrender, isn’t it? It’s not wanting to do whatever so that God would move.
I mean it’s not an attitude of, “Lord, I’ll do whatever. Here Lord, cut me open. I’ll do whatever
Father for You to move”. It’s not that. It’s a kind of uptight close attitude ‘I am a child of God’
and that’s all that matters. But it seems loved ones that if we would break open, surely God’s
Spirit would move.
Douglas Crossman, who is the gentleman that sold us the library upstairs, the Scroggie library,
preached in that Mariah chapel maybe 10 years ago and he knew there was one very old man there who
had been in revival and had written a little book about it. He asked the minister, “Is that man
here? Could you introduce me to him?”, and the man had come up, came up to him afterwards and
Douglas Crossman said to him, I forgot the man’s name but he said to him his name, “You, Mr.
so-and-so, you were in the revival”, and the man almost crumpled to the ground.
It was as if the power of God was still there and he almost crumpled to the ground when he had
mentioned it. It seems that that’s what we want to see. We want to see a deep working of God that
will move among our hearts and will enable you when someone comes along 30-40 years hence or
somebody comes to our children and asks about it, that they will sense that. It seems to me that
doesn’t come with trickery or with such stupid tears. It doesn’t come with all that stuff. It
doesn’t come with emotion. We turn from all the tricks of the clever music and all that stuff or the
showy preacher.
We turn from that because it doesn’t come with all that stuff. It seems from what we read that it
comes from honesty in the hearts of men and women like you and me and I think that requires us to
search our hearts and to act so that we say, “Well, we don’t know what everybody else is doing, but
as for me and my house, I will serve the Lord.” I am going to get the things right with You Lord and
I am going to clean out everything that’s doubtful and I am going to turn from it and I am going to
confess any sin both to You Lord and to the person that I sinned against and then Holy Spirit, I am
going to obey You whatever it means and then Lord Jesus, I am going to stop being a clam — a closed
mouth Christian who won’t speak Your name to anybody lest I suffer some of the reproach that You
bore. Lord Jesus, I am going to start talking about You to other people.”
Loved ones, I do think that it would be the same as most other things in your life and mine. I think
action would release a lot of pressure and tension and would resolve a lot of problems and I think
God’s spirit would move among us and I think it wouldn’t be long. It only took three months and
there were 34,000 involved. It wouldn’t be long before men and women would know that some men and
women are dealing with God in honesty.
I don’t know about you but I don’t want to carry on running services to you. Anybody can run
services. What we want to see is God’s Holy Spirit moving among us in power and what we want to see
is thousands going abroad, don’t we? Because we know only God’s Spirit can bring that about, we
can’t bring it about, but it seems to me that’s what we want.
I think that’s why most of us came together here over these past 14 years. I think it has to start
with us loved ones. I start with what I know and then God’s Spirit can take me deeper. So it might
be good to have a prayer time to be free to pray as God guides you in quietness or aloud, and to
simply guide you to just deal with your sins. I’ll deal with those that I know and then the
important thing would be that we begin to walk in this obedience.
We would begin to profess Christ, would begin to obey the Holy Spirit and not do what is convenient
for us or what somebody else thinks. And then that we’d walk in openness with each other. Where
we’ve got used to criticizing, would you stop that? I mean we just start being open and start being
real with each other and you know we’ll have to do it some time. I mean there is nothing Jesus said,
whispered in private rooms that will not be proclaimed upon the house tops. There will come a day
when everything will be manifested you know, then, for our condemnation.
So it really is how we’re coming into cleanness now so we can be saved and delivered and be used by
God or it all being proclaimed then. I think if you found heaviness in your own life or kind of a
deadness or coldness, it’s because of this. So let’s just pray together. Let’s pray.
Dear Father, we don’t want to be just an ice church. Lord we don’t want to be hypocrites. Father we
don’t want to be doing something that other human beings could imitate. Lord, we want to see You
work Your work that can’t be imitated among us. Lord, we really do want that kind of revival, new
life from Your own right hand.
So Lord, if You see sin in our lives or Lord, if You have been pointing out sin to us and we have
argued with You about it and pushed it to the back or Lord if You’ve brought things up to us and we
like to call them doubtful, Lord we see we’ll get nothing from You unless we put away all doubtful
things and are absolutely honest before You — open and clear and clean. Lord we know enough about
our society to know that only such people can be used by God to cut through this gray and lukewarm
society.
Then Lord, if You see that we’re not obeying Your Holy Spirit, anywhere in our lives, will You make
us aware of that or if we’re not professing Christ? If Lord Jesus, there are people in our work that
don’t know we’re Christians because we are so quiet about it, Lord we want to put ourselves outside
ourselves. We want to put ourselves out on the line and separate ourselves from all this
self-defensiveness and self-protectiveness which is just God, just being God, just wanting to keep
ourselves to ourselves and run our own lives our own way. Lord it’s just sin but we’ve just got so
used to it that we think it’s the way we live the Christian life.
Lord we want to begin to be honest with You tonight, confess and turn from these things. Amen.
Give New Life a Chance - REVIVAL
Break Up Your Fallow Ground
Hosea 10:12
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
During Lent we remember Jesus’ suffering which preceded His dying on the Cross for us. Down through
the centuries since Jesus’ death and resurrection, Lent has been a time for self-examination. So
those of us who are Catholic in background remember how Ash Wednesday with the mark of the ashes
signified the sackcloth and ashes in which we examined our lives in preparation for our death with
Jesus on Good Friday and then our glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday.
So Good Friday and Easter Sunday will mean the world to you this year, if you begin to honestly
prepare yourself during this time of Lent. It’s not so much a time when you give things up for Lent.
That’s not the right attitude to Lent. That’s just an excuse that we invented to offer to God
instead of real change in our lives. We shouldn’t in that sense give up things for Lent and then go
back to it after that. We need to see this as a time for rooting out from our lives the things that
God has convicted of us as sin. We need to be real about that, just down to earth and practical.
Repeatedly, when all kinds of buildings are put up in large cities, men are amazed that through the
slightest crack in a piece of concrete slab there will poke a little snowdrop or a little daffodil.
Men are constantly amazed at the “dearest freshness deep down things.” That’s the way the poet,
Gerard Manley Hopkins told it. “There’s a dear freshness deep down things.” There’s a dear life
underneath all the concrete that man can put over the earth. There’s a dear life that surges up and
pokes its head through if it gets half a chance. Men are constantly amazed at the way little flowers
poke their heads up through slabs and slabs of concrete if there’s even a slightest crack. It’s as
if the earth is full of life and just wants to burst forth if men will let it. It’s the same in your
life. It’s the same in your dear heart this morning.
God has put you into His Son Jesus and there is springing up within you a Jesus life. A beauty of
God’s life that will spring up if you’ll give it half a chance. If you’ll just give it half a chance
it’s there surging within you. It will burst out. The fragrance of Jesus will burst out in you along
with hope and joy and delight if you’ll give it half a chance. That’s the truth, that’s what Lent is
about. Get the things out of your life that God has shown you are a substitute and an alternative
for his life. Get them out of your life and His life will spring up within you.
Get the lust out of your life and the beauty of God’s pure love will begin to pour forth on you. Get
the anger out of your life and the beauty of His gentleness and His patience will begin to lift out
through you. I don’t know if you realize it but in spite of all our medical research, most surgery
is cutting away the bad stuff to give the good stuff a chance to grow. There are some exceptions,
but most surgery is cutting away the bad stuff so that the good stuff will grow. In other words, the
only hope of man being healed is the power of healthy life that God has put in every physical body.
That’s the life that He has put in your heart and your spirit.
That’s why He has told us that our primary contribution to Him changing our lives is simply breaking
up old hardened concrete that has settled in any area of our lives. One prophet put it this way, he
said, “Break up your fallow ground so that the Lord can come and rain righteousness upon you.”
Fallow ground is ground that has been trodden over again and again and again and left without
anything growing in it. It’s dead and solid. It’s been stomped on like that, flattened and pressed
down.
All you have to do to get some flowers growing there, to get some crops growing there, is to break
up that fallow ground. That’s what is involved in a time of repentance. Don’t see it as a time of
negativism. It’s a time of positive breaking up fallow ground, fallow areas in your own life where
you’ve become blind and dead and therefore where God’s life has ceased to spring. You break it up
and God will make it spring up.
One dear man that was used in America mightily in this kind of revival experience was Finney. He
just listed some areas of sin that you and I might want to look at this morning. I really think I
should just read them slowly and you should listen to the Holy Spirit and if He speaks to you about
any of these, you should during our time together in prayer put them away from you, and repent of
them. God said if you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to
cleanse you from all unrighteousness. You should just do that. Just agree with God, “This is a sin
in my life, Lord. I am going to repent of it. I am going to put it away now. I know this is what
caused Jesus to go to the Cross. I am going to put it far from me now so that when I take this wine
and this bread, the life of Jesus will spring up within me.” That’s what will happen, loved ones, if
you do that.
Break up your fallow ground and God will take care of bringing forth the fruit.
Here is a listing of some sins of omission: ingratitude, want of love to God, neglect of the Bible,
unbelief, neglect of prayer, neglect of the means of grace, want of love for souls, want of care for
the heathen, neglect of family duties, neglect of social duties, neglect of watchfulness, neglect of
watchfulness over your own life, neglect to watch over your brothers, neglect of self-denial. Those
are sins of omission.
God will through His Spirit, settle your mind on one or two of those. Don’t let them all fall on top
of you. God will deal with you on one or two. So settle those two now at this moment. And determine
to deal with those in the prayer time.
Here is a listing of sins of commission: worldly mindedness, pride, envy, censoriousness, slander,
levity, lying, cheating, hypocrisy, robbing God, bad temper, hindering others from being useful. I
know what I should deal with God about and if you do, I believe that we should just go before God
and be honest about these sins. Confess them to God and repent of them whatever the cost. There will
spring up in your life a new freshness that is of God. There will. Let us pray.
Dear Father, we thank You for Your patience with us over these years and now, as we come to this
holy season of Lent, when we remember the beginning of Your Son’s dark journey to Calvary for us
Father, we would engage ourselves in solemn and holy self-examination so that our Savior Jesus will
not have died in vain for us. As we face You Lord Jesus, we would be honest now about any sins in
our lives. In these sacred moments we would now confess them to You. We would repent and we would
ask You to replace them with the fragrant virtue of Your Holy Spirit. Lord, we would amend our
lives. We would not wait for that moment before death. We would amend our lives now Lord, we would
change our ways this very day, we would prepare ourselves now for burial and not wait till that
moment of panic.
We do not presume to come to this Thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but
in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy
table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore
gracious Lord, so by faith to receive Thy Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, that the bread which we
break may be unto us the communion of His Body, and the cup of blessing which we bless, may be the
communion of His Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in Him, and He in us.
The Lord Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, took bread; and when He had given thanks, He
broke it and said, This is My body, which is given for you: this do in remembrance of Me.
In like manner He took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the New Covenant in My blood: this
do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He come.
Where does revival begin? - REVIVAL
Heart and Soul Revival
2 Timothy 3:5
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
I think most of you know that Campus Church has a missionary outreach arm which we call Christian
Corps, and that’s what that newsletter is that you received with your bulletin. It’s Christian Corps
International. You can see loved ones, the unique purpose it has on the back page there at the top
left hand corner of page 4. It reads, “Christian Corps International is a federation of businesses
committed to personal evangelism through the practical expression of the spirit and principles of
Christ in the secular world.” Our aim in this most opportune era, when Gorbachev and Deng are
interested in opening up their two countries to free enterprise, is to get thousands of us abroad as
businessmen and women who express the Spirit and the principles of Jesus in ways that will begin to
affect the ordinary life of the man on the street who never goes to church. It is a vision that God
has given us that is just right for the time.
I said that many of us are also involved in educational ministries because that’s what Ted and Cathy
have been doing in Beijing. Cathy has been involved with IBM the past year and Ted has been involved
in teaching business management in the University in Beijing. Many of us have a vision for our
worldwide English as a Second Language series at colleges — because at no time have so many people
wanted to learn English. So that’s what Christian Corps is about and I’d encourage any of you who
are feeling that God wants you to be abroad in that way to apply and begin to come to some of our
Christian Corps Institute classes which meet during the week and deal particularly with doing
business in the Spirit of Jesus and according to the principles of Jesus.
As you can guess, several of us in Guadalajara, London and here in Minneapolis are connected
together in a worldwide trading company. Communication is key to us and one of the ways we
communicate with each other is through telex. It’s a kind of ticker tape system of communicating via
high-speed telephone wires. During this past week, I had the responsibility of taking the IBM
computer apart and trying to put a phone modem in it that will connect up with the telephone wires.
Gentry went off and enjoyed himself this week and my job was to solve that problem. I spent hours
and hours trying to do it. I took the computer apart, put the modem in and then you type in the
various signals and I typed in percent Q and I am supposed to get back an answer percent H and
percent 2. But there was nothing on the screen, nothing.
At one point in the week, an expert came along and said, “That modem is dead, it’s dead”, and I
said, “It’s not. It’s alive, I put it in it.” And he said, “Yes, but the computer can’t find it.”
And so for the past week I’ve been typing in percent Q, pulling out memory boards and putting them
in again. At last it’s solved. I’ve got through. But I just thought many of us find ourselves in
that situation with God.
We send all the right signals, we do all the things that people tell us we’re supposed to do, but we
don’t get any response back from God. We’re doing everything we’re supposed to do. We’re saying the
right prayers, we’re reading the right part of the Bible, we’re going to church and we’re sending
the signals but somehow we’re not getting anything back from Him to tell us that He is alive and
that He is responding to us.
Now some of us are in the position that we once did get responses. Some of us have been born of God
in past years or have even been baptized with the Holy Spirit and there was a time when we were
getting responses and when we were having some sense of aliveness in our spirits and we could tell
there is somebody out there. There is someone out there who is feeding back signals to me. But that
ceased some years ago and since then, we have never had any signals back from God to tell us that He
is alive and we have joined another group of people who call themselves Christians (and there are
thousands of them in this dear land of ours).
They are Christians who run their own spiritual experience totally and completely by their own will
power. They have a spiritual experience that they control themselves and actually it wouldn’t make
much difference to them where there was a Holy Spirit or where there wasn’t a Holy Spirit. It
doesn’t make much difference to them whether there is a God or there isn’t a God. They do the things
that they’re supposed to do and they do them very religiously and very faithfully and very
obediently but they have never any sense of God’s Spirit feeding back to them.
They are often very faithful in their duties and responsibilities. But the chief mark of their life
is a lack of the fragrance of the Holy Spirit and a certain coldness and a certain deadness that
pervades all their religious duties, all their church going, all their Bible study, and all their
praying. It lacks the liveliness of the Spirit of God coming back to them. They never really have
any encouragement from God out there. They just keep on doing what they’re doing.
Now in some ways, it’s good for a short time, because it delivers you from introspection and from
being preoccupied with feelings and being concerned with “is God present in my life or is He not.”
So, to a certain extent it’s good not to be always looking in and introspecting to see if God is
feeding back to you. But in some ways after a period of time, it becomes a dead Old Testament kind
of religion.
In other words, it lacks the chief mark of the New Covenant. Here is the chief mark of the New
Covenant loved ones, if you look at it in Acts 2:38, it was stated very plainly by Peter in the
first truly Christian sermon that was ever preached. That is, the first sermon that was preached
after Jesus rose and ascended to the right hand of God and poured out the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:37-38: “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest
of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized
every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins’; (and here’s the
chief mark of the New Covenant) and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.'” (And that they
had no experience of.)
They have no experience of a new dynamic in their lives that gives them an awareness of a whole new
spiritual world that they never knew existed before. They had no sense of the rising of springs of
living water within them, a whole fragrance in their life that seems to come from beyond. They don’t
have that experience. Their religion is primarily a human initiated and human disciplined
experience. It has nothing of the freshness of God’s Spirit. It has nothing of a sense of Him
feeding back to them responses.
Loved ones, the mark of that kind of religion is outlined in the Bible here and it describes so much
of a religion here in our dear nation, it’s in 2 Timothy 3:5. Such people are “holding the form of
religion but denying the power of it.”
It’s the kind of religion that enables a nation like ours to be filled with church going, right
alongside gross immorality and widespread immorality. It’s a religion with a lot of outward form and
a lot of people doing religious things but without the power of God’s Spirit moving mightily. It’s a
religion without a Christ-like love, with a lot of sense of responsibility and duty, a lot of sense
of what God wants from us but little sense of the fragrance and the gentleness of Jesus’ love in a
Spirit rising within.
Brothers and sisters, God has told us what to do if we ever get into that position as a nation or if
we ever get into that position as individuals. If we ever get into the place in our own Christian
experience where we can’t sense God feeding back to us, we can’t sense that his spirit is alive and
within us, and we don’t feel that we’re getting signals back, God has told us what to do. So will
you turn to 2 Chronicles 7:13. The Father describes that state exactly to us in verse 13.
2 Chronicles 7:13, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to
devour the land, or send pestilence among my people,” now that’s the situation. “When I shut up the
heavens so that there is no rain.” That’s when you sense there is no rain coming from God into your
life. When there is no coming of the Spirit of life into you from God. When you’re not sensing that
He’s alive out there. He doesn’t seem to be responding to you when He commands the locust to devour
the land as our land is. I have to tell you this because it hit me so hard.
I don’t know if there are any loved ones who are homosexual here this morning, but you know how I
love you and how my heart goes out to you. But I was sitting, having coffee in a restaurant in a
certain area of this city and I looked up at this little guy who must have been about 13 years old.
He was a newspaper boy. He had sunglasses on and he turned around to me and he had lipstick on. So
when God sends the locust to devour the land — in the disease of aides – it’s not a time for
preaching at each other but rather the time for getting God to come through to us. It’s not a time
for condemning and pointing the finger. And it’s not a time for trying to whitewash the mess that
we’re in. It’s a time for getting God to come through to us.
“Command the locust to devour the land or send pestilence among my people”, and then He gives the
direction to us in our personal lives or our national life.
“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from
their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
And that’s it. If you’re in that state personally and we’re certainly in that state nationally,
that’s what God says. He will bring revival to us. He will begin to get signals of His Holy Spirit
through to us, “If my people who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My
face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and
heal their land.”
In 1902, Wales was as dead as our nation is. It had lots of church going as our nation has. It had
lots of religious activity, but it was dead religious activity. There was not the fragrance of
Jesus’ Spirit alive in the hearts of people. Then some people began to get together in prayer groups
and began to pray for their own individual lives and for their nation, as some had begun to do in
Melbourne, Australia.
In a certain school was a young man called Evan Roberts, a young collier of 26 years of age,
preparing to enter the ministry. For 11 years he had prayed for a revival and for 13 years he had
prayed for the fullness of the Spirit. A word dropped by a deacon in a church meeting 13 years
before caused him to determine to know the Holy Spirit.
The deacon said, “Be faithful. What if the Holy Spirit descended and you were absent?” So, through
all weathers and difficulties, refusing to be tempted by the boys and the boats on the river near
his home, Evan Roberts made his way to prayer meetings and other chapel services year after year. He
came from a typical Welsh home and was the son of godly parents. At 12-years-old, he became his
father’s right hand in the mine and shortly afterwards commenced regular work underground in the
mines. He was never without his Bible, which he studied in the intervals of work. And so the time
went by until one night, in the spring of 1904, God seems to have drawn near to him in a very
special way.
He says that as he prayed by the bedside all night, he was taken up into a great expanse without
space or time, into communion with God. This was obviously a crisis in his spiritual life for up to
then, God had seemed to him a far away God and he was afraid of Him. But after this, the Lord would
awaken him night after night a little after 1:00 O’clock and took him up in divine fellowship for
about four hours. He would sleep until 9 o’clock. Then again he would be wrapped in communion with
God until about noon in the day.
Just about this time, one of the ministers who had been praying in the prayer groups, came to
conduct services in the town where Evan Roberts was attending this training school. He, with some
other young men, went to the service. The service was in a place called Blaenach. He went at 7
O’clock to the service. Roberts was already deeply moved, but he quite broke down when at the house,
the minister led in prayer and used the words, “Bend us, Oh Lord.”
The soul in travail, heard no words but these. “This is what you need,” whispered the Spirit of God.
“Bend me, Oh Lord”, but even yet, the fire did not fall. At the 9 O’clock meeting, the Spirit of God
led one and the other to pray and then Mr. Roberts says, “I fell on my knees with my arms over the
seat in front of me and the tears freely flowed. I cried, ‘Bend me, bend me.'”
Bend us, for we are a self-righteous nation. With all our methods, bend us. Roberts continues, “What
bent me, was God commending His love and I, not seeing anything in it to commend.” The Holy Spirit
had come and melted his whole being by a revelation of the love of God at Calvary. “For God
commended of His own love to us in that Christ died for us.”
The young man returned to the nearby town and prayed God to give him the seal of six others set on
fire by God and the six were given. Then the Holy Spirit bade him return to his own people and speak
to them. But he didn’t obey. He grew more and more troubled and ill at ease. One Sunday in chapel,
he could not fix his mind on the service for always before him as in a vision he saw the schoolroom
in his own village and all the young people and his old companions sitting in rows while he
addressed them. He tells how he shook his head impatiently and sought to drive all this away but God
would give him no rest. Back and back it came as the Holy Spirit whispered clearer and clearer, “Go
and speak to these people.” At long last Even Roberts obeyed God and went to Loughor, his native
place early in November 1904.
He says that he consulted the pastor of his church who told him that he might try and see what he
could do. He would find the ground stony and the task hard. Young people came together and they all
sat before him as he had been shown by God. At first, they did not seem touched, but presently the
Spirit of God began to work and six came out for Christ. Then the Pentecost began. This is what
revival is. Soul after soul came forward and the most extraordinary results followed. The whole
community was shaken. Meetings lasted until 4:00 in the morning and at 6:00 the people would be
awakened by the sounds of the crowds going to the early morning prayer meeting.
The work went on until a local minister said, “The entire population had been transformed into a
praying multitude.” Man and woman, of whom he had despaired, had voluntarily come to Christ. The
lives of hundreds of colliers and tin plate workers were transformed. The men went straight to
Chapel from the mills and the public houses were practically deserted.
On November 10, the first public reference to these remarkable scenes was made in a Wales secular
paper, which from this time to the wonderment of all, devoted columns to the reporting of the work.
They did much in the province of God to spread abroad that which God was doing among His people.
Other secular powers did the same and man marveled at the sovereign power of God to move the secular
press to report the work of God.
“From Rhoulacore”, the Revivalist says, “The young student began to be called, went on to another
town and other places, carried on their crest of a mighty wave of the Spirit which swept like a
cleansing tide along the mining valleys of Glamorganshire.
Everywhere the people thronged in multitudes to hear the Spirit-baptized young student. At Loughor
he spoke, it is said, with impassioned oratory, but once the overflowing stream had broken out, the
Spirit of God appeared to put aside preaching and used the voice of testimony. “He slew hanging Him
on a tree, him did God exult and we are witnesses,” was the burden of the message of the Spirit
possessed souls in the days of Pentecost.
This was the Holy Spirit’s message through his people as he bore co-witness by signs and wonders
wrought among the thronging multitudes. Under the constraint of an unseen power, the chapels were
filled with eager people at all hours of the day and the services took their own course under the
control of the Holy Spirit presiding as the executive power of the Godhead. Prayers, testimonies and
singing broke out in seeming disorder yet acknowledged by all to be the most harmonious order.”
The revivalist would enter during the meetings, sometimes unknown to those present until he arose
with some word to the people. The burden of his message would be “Obey the Holy Spirit” and when one
in the meeting would break out into prayer while he was speaking, he would calmly give place and
show to others, his acknowledgement of the presidency of One greater than he.
At some point perhaps, Mr. Roberts would test the meeting and put to it the four definite steps
necessary to salvation, which he said the Holy Spirit had given him to urge upon the people. These
are the steps. One, the past must be made clear by sin being confessed to God and every wrong to man
put right. If you want a revival in your own life, the past must be made clear by sin being
confessed to God and every wrong to man, put right.
Two, every doubtful thing in the life must be put away. Every doubtful thing in the life must be put
away. Three, there must be prompt and implicit obedience to the Holy Spirit. Four, there must be
public confession of Christ. Publicly testifying in a meeting like the communion service tonight,
where we will have an “open microphone”, testifying openly, confessing Christ in what He is in your
life. Forgiveness of others as an essential to receiving the forgiveness of God was often emphasized
as well as the distinction between the Holy Spirit’s work in conversion and in baptizing the
believer with the Holy Spirit.
In truth, the revivalist was giving the full Gospel as preached at Pentecost and like Peter’s
message had received the co-witness of the Holy Spirit and produced Pentecostal results. “Repent,
change your mind toward God and put away wrong to your neighbor, remission of sins will then be
given you and you shall receive the Holy Spirit if you will obey Him and publicly bear witness to
Christ.” Indescribable scenes took place at the meetings. Sometimes a very torrent of prayer and
then of song would sweep over the audience and hundreds of souls would rise to declare their
surrender to God.
The congregation would burst out in joyous thanksgiving and hymns of gladness. But the revival’s
special burden was always the church. Bend the church. We think we’re so great. We think we’re such
a mighty American church but we’re nothing. We have our beautiful buildings and have beautiful
choirs but the little guy still has lipstick on his lips and we still have our murders and we’re
trying to legislate it out of us.
“Bend the church and save the world” was his cry. “Bend the church and save the world.” The word
‘bend’ in Welsh conveys the meaning of submission to God and the taking away of resistance to His
will. His one aim seemed to be first to get the Christians right with God so that the Spirit might
break out in converting power of the unsaved and Calvary was the power both for sinner and saved.
The revivalists would break down in a heart-anguish sobbing when he touched the thing. “You would
not be cold if you had come here by Calvary”, he would say.
Thanks for Calvary was the burden of many prayers. The hymns rang with Calvary, the one most often
sung was “The Mount of Calvary”, an exultant song of triumph telling of Christ’s victory over death
and hell at the cross. Another hymn sung with melting power was “Here Is Love Vast As The Ocean.”
The people sang without books for these hymns had been in their memories from childhood but now
quickened and used by the Spirit they rang out as never before.
Many of the sweet singers of Wales were drawn by the Spirit of God into his service and often would
be heard a sweet warbling voice like a nightingale’s trill breaking out into a hymn while the people
were bowed in prayer. A singing revival it truly became. Souls were sung to Christ and exulted over
in song when won. The Spirit of gladness and praise filled all hearts as thousands rejoiced in a
newfound assurance of salvation.
The Spirit of God did His own work of convicting and many were the evidences of His power working
through him in testimony. A young man would return his prize medal and diploma because he had gained
it unfairly. A grocer would return money picked up in his shop and kept although knowing the one who
dropped it. Long standing debts were paid, stolen goods returned, prize fighters, gamblers,
publicans and others of the class rarely touched by ordinary means, came to Christ and quickly the
world knew the results.
Magistrates were presented with white gloves in several places because there were no cases to be
tried. Public houses were forsaken, rowdiness was changed to soberness. It was said among the
collieries that the horses could not understand the language of their drivers because they had given
up swearing at them.
Well, you can see, it’s not just good preaching or bad preaching, not just nice singing by Bob or
playing by Carmen, it’s something deeper loved ones. That’s what they need. And if you need it in
your own life the directions are plain. You repent, you bend before God. You clear up the past
completely, you make everything right with all your neighbors, you put everything doubtful out of
your life and you give yourself wholly to God. He remits your sins and gives you the Holy Spirit.
Then you have to obey the Holy Spirit. Do whatever He tells you and confess Christ publicly.
God will begin to feed back to you and this nation and begin to change it. But it starts with us.
The loved ones out there, the homosexuals, don’t even know what they’re missing. What’s the good of
preaching at them? It’s wrong what they are doing, but do they see Christ like fragrant love in us
that attracts them and exposes the coarseness of what they’re experiencing in their desperation as a
shadow of the truth? Bend the church and save the world.
Let’s begin to bend. Let’s begin to seek God for a revival in our own lives and in our church and in
our nation. Let’s pray.
Dear Father, it is more than 80 years since that move and it is more than 30 years from the movement
in the Hebrides in Scotland. Father, we need your mighty touch upon us. Oh Father God, we come
before you to ask you to bend us. Father, we know that no man is an island. We know that the little
guy with the lipstick on is as much our responsibility as that of his father or his mother or the
dear men that are misusing him.
Father, we come before you to acknowledge that they are all my sons, that he is our son also. Lord,
if you see anything in our lives that is preventing you coming again in mighty power of revival
Spirit in our nation, will you reveal that to us now this day so we may bend these mighty wills
before you and that we may clean these consciences and make whatever apologies or restitution we
need to make to people past and present. We will put everything doubtful in our lives away from us
and give ourselves wholly to You so that even Satan will not be able to contradict us when we say we
have surrendered all to God. And You Lord God may do whatever you want with our lives from this day
forward. Amen.
To whom have you given your life? - REVIVAL
Have You Given All For Jesus?
Mark 1:18
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
I have a great sermon which I will deliver next Sunday but God has just made it clear or confirmed
really to me that I should go just with the Holy Spirit. So he just gave me the piece to read a
moment ago and I’d like you to turn to it please and then we’ll just trust him to speak to us, Mark
1:16.
Mark 1:16, “And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon
casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will
make you become fishers of men.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going
on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat
mending their nets. And immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat
with the hired servants, and followed him.” You can see there was a lot of net mending going on
there, everybody that Jesus passed were mending nets. And then the verse that God put in my heart
is the one in verse 18, “And immediately they left their nets and followed him.”
I think it’s obvious to all of us in America that church going is much more popular here than in the
rest of the world. And there are churches everywhere in America. And I think if you look at some of
them on television, you’ll see that some of them are massive and are crowded with people. And it is
very easy in this kind of atmosphere to create a form of following Jesus that is comfortable and
that fits in with our own activities and the plans we have for our own lives. But it may well be a
counterfeit of true following of Christ and yet the great danger of it is that huge numbers of us
are involved in it and the further danger is that we’re involved in saying many true things in the
midst of it. For instance all of us in some way or other read this Book, all of us sing the old
hymns, all of us pray prayers and so it is very easy in such an atmosphere to get used to coming to
church and thinking this is what God wants me to do because it has a great deal of truth in it.
It’s just that the crucial point where that verse cuts across it, it fails.
And you remember that verse runs, “And leaving their nets, immediately they left their nets and
followed him.” It’s very easy in our kind of church going atmosphere not to leave your nets and yet
to try to follow him. And so what a lot of us end up doing is, “I want to follow you but my foot’s
caught in my net and I can’t get it out. Yeah, I really do want to get it out. Oh, I wish I could
get this foot out of this net but I can’t get it out”, so we end up following Jesus with a limp. In
other words, we’re a little like lame duck disciples. We kind of appear to be following him but not
really wholly, not with our whole hearts.
Now the further danger, loved ones, is that we ourselves here this morning could comfort and
encourage each other to do that. It is possible to do that, you know. It is possible to get together
and so enjoy being together and so love each other that we just comfort each other in that
half-following of Christ. I feel it of course especially in these days because – not all of you know
but some of you know — that we have had exciting years in this church over the past two or three
years and you all have been just magnificent. You’ve been just so faithful and really what I should
do is be nice to you. You’ve been so nice to me but that’s not my calling, my calling by God is to
continue to present to all of us, including myself, the full call that God has given us through
Christ.
Loved ones, that call is not simply to run a church. You know I think that we could run a much
better church than we do now. You just kind of switch the preaching a little and you’d enlarge the
choir, and you’d share the little money around and before you’d know it, we’d have a massive church
again. But loved ones, that isn’t what God is calling us to. The Lord Jesus is calling us to leave
our nets and to follow him. Not to comfort each other in a kind of controlled surrender, not to
comfort each other in a kind of pseudo Christianity or a pseudo churchianity, but he is calling us
to leave our nets and follow him. That’s really what I want to bring before you. The Holy Spirit is
good to us, he kind of whomps me with this, maybe every six weeks or so, so you don’t have to face
me battering on you every week. But at times like this, I know the Lord wants me to bring it home to
you clearly again.
Jesus has given his whole life for you, his whole life for you. Jesus has died his death for you.
Now, it is no answer to him even to give a tithe. I mean it’s good to give a tithe, but big deal you
know it’s no answer just to give a tithe. The Lord Jesus, the Son of the God who made you and me,
has given his life for you. He died for you and me. He went to hell for you and me. He took the
worst of your sin unto himself and he allowed his Father to burn it out of existence and to give him
a sense that he was utterly forsaken.
In other words, if Jesus hadn’t died for you there’d come a moment after death when there’d be
absolute darkness and desolation around you. And because of the sin that you have in your life,
because of the selfishness, the uncleanness over the years, the lying or the deception, even if you
are very good now compared with what you were, still some of the selfishness that is in you, if you
had at that moment after death, that all inside you, then there would be such a sense of desolation
and loneliness and outer darkness and coldness that you would absolutely collapse into hell,
hopelessly in despair.
Now, Jesus did that for you. He went through that moment of death with your sin in his own heart and
he bore that terrible moment of God’s forsakenness when he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast
Thou, (of all people, my Father) forsaken me (your only begotten son, the one who is without sin?).”
And the answer was always because God made him to be sin who knew no sin. Now Jesus bore that for
you and me. See, he died for you and me. He gave up his whole life for you and me. Loved ones, you
know you cannot sit there, you cannot sit there and see him trailing down that Calvary road bleeding
to death and then going to hell for you and then quietly and complacently get up from here at the
end of the service and go on and get on with your own life and then come back and give him an hour
and give him a tithe. You know what it means.
It means you owe your whole life to him. You know me too. I’m in the same boat. We owe our whole
life to Jesus. We don’t owe just a little bit of suffering, or a little bit of hardship or a little
bit of popularity or unpopularity or a little bit of unhappiness. We owe everything to Jesus. I mean
I am saying to you I am with you, we have to look to him here and we have to say, “We owe you
everything, there’s nothing we don’t owe you. We owe you our whole lives. Anything less than our
whole lives is bargain hunting.” Anything less than our whole lives is the Daisy sale at Dayton’s,
it’s an attempt to get a good deal. It’s not honesty and of course, you know what the Lord is saying
to you today, “Are you really forsaking your nets?”
Actually, when I look around — because I see some of you and I know the love in your hearts — the
issue actually isn’t not living in Bloomington or not living in Richfield, that’s not the deal. I
think for some of us that is the deal. But the deal, in other words, I am not saying to you all,
“Get up and leave and go to London or get up and leave and go to Germany or go to Africa or go to
India.” I think maybe some of you are being called to do that. But that isn’t the issue. The issue
is “have you given your whole life to Jesus wherever you’re going to live it?” He won’t want us all
to go to Africa or India. He won’t want us all to go out of America. On the other hand he won’t
want us all to stay here. But the issue is, have you given your life to Jesus and said, “Lord,
whatever you want me to do with my life, I will do, I will do. I will not be part of that group of
spectators who clap you as you walk down the Calvary road and give you money each Sunday to thank
you for it. I will not be like that. I will lift up my own cross and I will walk down my Calvary
road to whatever that costs.” And that is what Jesus is saying to us this morning through this
verse, “And immediately they left their nets and followed him.”
Your nets are what you’re caught up in and entangled with, that’s it. Your nets are what are
catching your feet. I mean with the disciples, they were the means of earning their money. With us,
our means of earning our money often becomes the things that entangle us. They become our nets.
We’re caught up in a thousand impossibilities. Well, I have shares in IBM, what would happen to
them? Well, I have a retirement plan. What would happen to that?
Now I ask you, can you ask any good Westerner to give up their retirement plan, can you? I mean, who
would look after me? And then we go on and on and on. If you men and women who have received
education are like me, I was faced with my parents saying, “You have got a good education. You ought
to use it to make good money and make a good living for yourself.” And so we find that our
education becomes a net that entangles us. And of course, we want to rise to that, it appeals to us.
Of course, we have got a good education, but the Lord gave you a good education to do the same with
it as he did with his position with the Father. “He did not count equality with God a thing to be
grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself even onto death,
death on a cross.”
Do you see you can’t live with that Lord and have done less than that? You see that. I mean, let me
just put it to you humanly, you’d feel uncomfortable, you’d feel uncomfortable. I mean you just
wouldn’t feel right in heaven. You just wouldn’t feel right. I mean they’re all — and dear love
them they won’t be — but you know they’re showing their scars, and you’re sitting there with your
clean hands, and not a mark on you. It can’t be. Those of us who believe in the crucified one, we
have to take up our cross and we have to follow in whatever that means.
Of course, my job this morning is not to tell you what that means because I don’t know what it means
for you. I don’t know what it means for you, or for you, or for you, or for you, I don’t, that’s not
my job. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit to tell you that, but he can only tell you it if you have
determined that you will not live a controlled surrendered life but you will give everything to your
Lord Jesus. It will be life for life and the reason for that is that in Christianity, the truth is,
it’s all or nothing. That’s the truth.
It’s really all or nothing. You know you may say to me, “Now Pastor, some people seem to get a good
deal. Some people seem to just live an ordinary life and make all the money they want and just take
care of themselves and they go to church on Sunday and life looks pretty nice.” Loved ones, it’s all
or nothing. If you don’t give all, you end up with nothing. You end up with only a pretence or an
imitation of Christianity. And it may look good on the outside but it has nothing of the certainty
or the confidence that God witnesses within through his Holy Spirit.
It is all or nothing and I encourage you especially in these days to make absolutely sure that you
are giving all. Now why do I say that? Because you know all the stuff about the last days, you know
it. I don’t need to tell you. You know that in the last days, people will have the form of religion
but not the power of it. You know that in the last days, things will become blacker and whiter, they
actually will. Things will become blacker and whiter, it is not chance, whatever explanation you
want to give about AIDS and everybody seems to have their own explanations. It’s obvious from that,
and from the terrorists’ activity, that things are beginning to break apart. They’re beginning to
move apart. Even those of us who say, “Oh, there have always been great communications, oh people
have always, there have always been rumors of wars and wars, oh there have always been earthquakes.”
Even those of us who try to rationalize it all, we have to bow down to the fact that there are an
incredible number of wars now. There are an incredible number of earthquakes now. There is a
tremendous sense of communication so that everybody in the world knows exactly what is happening
everywhere and there is an increasing feeling that we are not able to control it all.
The world does not feel a more secure place now, does it? It doesn’t. You’re able to dial a certain
number and you’ll get the police in a moment, you’ll get a heart attack unit immediately at your
door, but we don’t feel more secure, do we? We feel less secure now than we ever did. We know
exactly what is happening everywhere in the world. We have magnificent missiles that we can send
anywhere to destroy anybody but we don’t feel more secure. The whole world feels more and more shaky
than it ever did.
Loved ones, these are the days when counterfeit religion comes in. These are the days when there
will rise up a Christianity that has an appearance of Christ’s gospel but does not have the
sacrifice and surrender of Christ’s gospel. And I would ask you “where is your life this morning?
Have you surrendered everything to him?” You know what that means. And you know if you’re sitting
there and thinking, “Do you mean give up my car, give up my money?”, it’s usually not those things,
it’s usually not the things. It’s the attitude of your heart. Is Jesus everything to you? Have you
given your whole life to him? If he said “Tomorrow, I want you to go to Africa or I want you to go
to India, or I want you to give up your present way of life. I have something for you to do in the
mountains in Kentucky or in the mountains in the Appalachians”, then would you do that? Would you
obey Jesus? Or are you trying to work the Lord into your plan and your program?
In other words, all of us are in a very real situation this morning. We are all gathered here to
thank a man for giving up His life for us. And now I am suggesting to you that there is only one
real thanks that you can give that is appropriate to such a sacrifice. And wasn’t it one of the old,
I think it was Papious; it was one of the old saints you remember in the early church. And he was
being burned at the stake and he was 86 or 87 and they said, “Have you anything to say?” and he
said, “I have served my master these eighty and six years and after what he has done for me, there
is no sacrifice too great that I could make for him.”
Well, those are the guys that will be in heaven. See? It’s not by being like them that we’ll get
into heaven but I am using that to say to you that there is only one appropriate response to what
you and I see Jesus has done for us. And that is to bow before him and say, “Lord Jesus, I give my
whole life to you. Whatever you want me to do, I will do. You just tell me.” Loved ones, that’s I
think what the Father wanted me to share with you so that we would not be involved, any of us, in
just a kind of nicey-nice religion or a nice little bit of church going but we would be real.
That’s the most important thing. There will come a day when you’re not able to hear anybody speak to
you. There’ll come a day when you’re not with any of us, you’re on your own and then at that moment,
it will be important to know inside in your heart that you didn’t sidestep Jesus but you faced him
straight on and you gave him life for life. It’s really up to you what you want to do, I think it
would be good if you feel that God has spoken to you then that you’d go to the altar during the last
hymn and give your life to him and then go back to your seat. But really, we’ll just sing a hymn
through once and it’s just your opportunity to do it if you want to privately and I would encourage
you to do what God tells you this morning.
I would think it would be good to sing that hymn “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross”, you remember
that verse “Were the whole realm of nature mine, it were a present far too small, love so amazing,
so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all”. It’s number 147 loved ones and let’s stand as we sing
and as we’re singing, if you feel there’s a declaration that you need to make privately to God, you
should just come up and make it at the altar and then return.
Why do we get Angry? - REVIVAL
Traits of the Self Life
Mark 1:18
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
God wants you to feel like Him inside and we’re all so preoccupied with outside and with the way we
appear that we forget that. But the whole purpose of Jesus Christ is that you and I would be like
God on the inside and that’s, loved ones, the whole difference between the New Testament and the Old
Testament and unfortunately here in our society, we have all entered into an Old Testament
experience very readily. Outwardly we are God’s people and outwardly we come to church. We may not
offer our sacrifices but we come to our temples and we look on the outside like godly religious
people.
But we are just Old Testament people. We may not have been circumcised, but many of us are just
Jews. We live under the old covenant. Many of us here this morning believe that our sins are
forgiven. Many of us here can sleep at night because we believe we will go to heaven but our hearts
are not converted and we are not New Testament Christians. We use the term ‘Christian’ in a generic
way. We are Christian in that we’re not Hindu or we’re not Mohammedan or we’re not Buddhist, but we
aren’t really Christian in the sense that Jesus came to make us Christian. He came to make us
Christian by changing our hearts and many of us — we men of course, are the class examples of it,
but you ladies are in the same boat often — but we men, we do things that are outwardly Christian
but our hearts are unchanged and untouched.
We talk about the spirit of God but our hearts are really unaffected by that spirit and we’re moved
by the same things as our brothers in business are moved by. We are moved by the same ambitions, the
same selfishness, often the same greed and often the same defensiveness and certainly the same
jealousy and pride and lust that they are moved by. It’s simply that outwardly we come to church.
Many of us read the Bible; many of us believe the right things. Many of us do believe that God has
forgiven us our sins, but our hearts are really unchanged.
We have odd moments such as perhaps a Mother’s Day, or a Memorial Day or a day when we remember our
dad’s death or some moments when tragedy hits our home or we go to the funeral of someone whom we
care deeply for and then our hearts are a little softened. But on the whole, our hearts remain
untouched and unchanged by God’s spirit and indeed the term ‘spirit’ is strange to us. We regard it
primarily as a kind of an influence or an atmosphere that supposedly we feel at certain times when
Al would sing a song like that or Carmen would sing or someone else would sing or maybe at the end
of a sermon here there’s a certain atmosphere that God seems to bring about among us and we think of
that as God’s spirit but we ourselves are unacquainted with the spirit of God.
Our day-to-day lives are largely uninfluenced by that spirit. Our heart’s movements are what we were
born with as children and they haven’t been changed very much since then. Our hearts really are like
the hearts that are described in this little tract that has been on this table for some Sundays.
“Are you ever conscious of a secret spirit of pride, an exalted feeling in view of your success or
position because of your good training or appearance, because of your natural gifts and abilities?
Are you ever conscious of an important, independent spirit? Are you ever conscious of a love of
human praise, a secret fondness to be noticed, a love of supremacy, and a drawing attention to self
in conversation, a swelling out of self when you have had a free time in speaking or praying? Are
you ever conscious of the stirrings of anger or impatience which, worst of all, you call nervousness
or holy indignation; a touchy sensitive spirit, a disposition to resent or to retaliate when
disapproved of or contradicted, a desire to throw sharp heated flings at another?”
Many of us who call ourselves Christians are conscious of those things but of course, we have
encouraged each other for years to believe that that is the normal Christian life.
If you read the classics written by Plato and Socrates, you would find that that isn’t even a normal
life for heathen philosophers. Even they taught that there should be enough control over our inner
heart attitudes that we would not feel those things. But certainly the God who has said that he
desires truth in the inward part, the God who has said that the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy
and peace and long suffering and gentleness, goodness, the God who has said that strife and jealousy
and pride do not belong to the kingdom of God, he certainly says there is no place for these things
in our hearts, but loved ones, we have got used to these things, you see?
We have got used to these things and these are the things that bring tragedy to our homes, you know
they are. None of us have murdered anybody. Few of us here steal, few of us here probably even
swear, few of us here probably drink to excess. In fact, we are among the noblest of sinners. We’re
moral people, probably most of us here are outwardly very respectable people and yet we know that in
our relationships at home, in our relationships with those who are closest to us, we are monsters.
All domestic strife comes from hearts that are not clean and pure, they do.
Actually even your outward feelings come from that. Why do you resent people? Because they are not
giving you the praise that you think you deserve or because someone else is getting praise that you
don’t think they deserve as much as you do. That’s why you get resentful about people. That’s why we
get all kinds of complexes about people, because they’re not giving us what we believe we ought to
have. Why do you lose your temper? Because of the stirrings of anger, that’s why. You can’t hold the
thing down, it just bursts out, you can’t control it. It’s because your heart is rising up.
That’s the explanation you remember, in Romans 7, “I do not understand my own actions because when I
want to do good, I cannot. The good that I would I cannot do, and the evil I hate is the very thing
I do.” That is, you set your will to do good but there rises up from inside you, something that you
can’t control and that bursts out upon the other person. You know the illustration that we’ve shared
before.
Well, you go home at night, husbands, wives; we’re all in the same boat. We go home at night and we
are determined that this will be a beautiful evening. We are determined that this will be a blessed
evening for our partners. We are going to make them happy tonight and then she cooks the wrong meal
or it’s late or it’s a little burned or he is a little late or he doesn’t say the right thing to us
and there bursts out from our innermost hearts, attitudes and feelings that we didn’t believe
existed within us and the end of the evening is worse than the beginning. It ends up in a disaster
area. It ends up in a full-scale battle. That’s what this is about.
It doesn’t matter how good you are outwardly. If your heart is not changed, if your heart is not
cleansed, you won’t be able to live as you want to live and that was the problem with the Jews. You
understand that Romans 7 is a Jew talking, he’s a loved one from the Hebrews that is saying, “I am
under the law, I cannot do the thing that I want to do. I cannot do it because there is something
inside me that won’t let me”, and loved ones, so many of us are Christian in name only. We really
are Jewish. We live under the old covenant — trying to obey outwardly but unable to do it because
this monstrosity within us keeps rising up.
“Are you ever conscious of self-will, a stubborn un-teachable spirit, an arguing talkative spirit,
harsh sarcastic expressions, an unyielding headstrong disposition, a driving commanding spirit, a
disposition to criticize and pick flaws when set aside and unnoticed, a peevish fretful spirit, a
disposition that loves to be coaxed and humored?”
I don’t know about you men or you ladies, but when the other person feels you don’t understand
them, it’s usually because of this stuff. It’s because our hearts are not tender. The problem is not
in the sarcastic expression, there’s enough problem in that, but the problem is not in the sarcastic
expression. It’s the absolute indifference and cynical, almost hatred for the other person that
produces the sarcastic expression. Your friends, your children, your husbands, your wives — it’s
not the outward word that cuts them — it’s what it says to them about your inward heart, that’s
what cuts them.
No, they’re no sillier than you are, they can interpret outward things but it’s the heart that it
comes from, that’s what’s wrong. That’s why you see at times you can say something that isn’t right,
but it isn’t so cutting because it doesn’t come from your heart. It’s a mistake. It’s something you
didn’t intend to say but it’s the things that come from your heart that cut into another person’s
heart.
For some of us who are at work in business: “Are you ever conscious of a carnal fear? A man-fearing
spirit, a shrinking from reproach and duty, a reasoning around your cross, a shrinking from doing
your whole duty by those of wealth or position, be it your boss or someone else, are you ever
conscious of a fearfulness that someone will offend and drive some prominent person away? Are you
ever conscious of a compromising spirit?”
“Are you ever conscious of a jealous disposition, a secret spirit of envy shut up in your heart, an
unpleasant sensation in view of the great prosperity and success of another, a disposition to speak
of the faults and failings rather than the gifts and virtues of those more talented and appreciated
than yourself? Are you ever conscious of a dishonest, deceitful disposition?”
“The evading and covering of the truth; the covering up of your real faults, leaving a better
impression of yourself than is strictly true, false humility, exaggeration, straining the truth.”
Those are all the things that come from a heart that is not really at peace with God. It’s a heart
that is not really content to receive all it needs from God. It’s a heart that is expecting things
from other people, that’s it.
The real reason why your heart and mine are not filled with the Holy Spirit is because you and I
still look to other people or other things and we expect things from them, we do loved ones. We’re
wearing each other out, we’re expecting things from each other, we sons and daughters are expecting
things from our parents. We parents are expecting things from our children. We husbands are
expecting things from our wives. We wives are expecting things from our husbands. We friends are
expecting things from each other.
We are looking to each other for all kinds of things that we cannot supply each other with and only
God, our Father can supply us with all that we need. And every time we 1ook to each other for these
things, there’s a spirit of dissatisfaction and discontentment that takes hold of us and makes us
demand more. That’s where this heart comes rising up; we demand more from the other person and the
other poor soul is already worn out and already feels that you are demanding too much from them. But
we demand more and more and that’s what fills a home with demand, demand, demand, and no offer,
offer, offer. That’s what fills a home with empty hearts that are desiring love, love, love and
there’s short supply of love. It’s because we’re expecting things from each other and so our hearts
become filled with all kinds of dissatisfactions, all kinds of uncleanness, and all kinds of
resentment against other people.
Loved ones, there is a way to be free from that. Jesus looked down at the disciples from whom I
think you’ll agree he had a right to expect loyalty. He looked down at his mom from whom he probably
had a right to expect understanding of what he was trying to do in his life, especially at that
moment of death. And he looked down at the crowds who had come and gathered around him when he was
healing and had thrown down palm branches in front of him as he came into Jerusalem. And he saw all
of them with blank looks on their faces, maybe worry and anxiety and despair but not primarily about
him but primarily about themselves and what was going to happen afterwards and yet, he died in
absolute peace because he had, once and for all, died to what they could give him.
He had died to expecting anything from them and he had looked up to his Father for everything that
he needed so that — who of us can imagine what it was like in his own dear heart on the Cross? I
mean it’s impossible but it was certainly desolate and lonely and yet he was absolutely content that
his Father was looking upon him and loving him and was going to give him all that he needed.
Loved ones, that’s the place of peace for you and me. And God is able to change your heart so that
your heart becomes like Jesus’ heart but he does ask you to join his son on the cross. Now could I
just point out to you in a very commonsensical, practical way that every one of you has seen anybody
die, know fine well that you, and each one of us here, will come to a time in our lives when it
won’t matter who knows us. It won’t matter how many of us are outside your bedroom, it won’t. It
won’t matter how many nurses are gathered around you and putting all kinds of tubes into you to try
to keep you alive. It won’t matter if your pastor is by your side, it won’t matter if your dearest
mother or your husband is holding your hand. There will come a time loved ones. We need to face this
firmly.
There’ll come a time in your life when you are on your own truly and you actually know it
yourselves. You have seen dads or moms die. You know there comes a moment when it doesn’t matter how
close everybody else seems to you, you are on your own. So do you see what I am saying? There’s
going to come a time when you can look only to God, that actually all of us are limited in what we
can do for you anyway, that if you get anything from any of us during this lifetime, it’s purely
temporarily and actually it ill-fits you for the great moment in your life — which is the moment
when you enter into true life?
In other words, will you not die today and enter into reality? That’s it. Will you not die today to
the world and to your husband and your wife and to your friends and to living in dependence upon
them and living in expectancy of what they can give you and expecting them to give you love and
expecting them to give you care and thoughtfulness. They may do it and they may not but if you die
to that with Jesus, today, then you’re free, free from what they can give you and free from what
they fail to give you. And you’ll find that instead of your heart rising up in resentment, your
heart will experience a strange new spirit, because that’s the amazing truth.
If you will take your place with Jesus, which sooner or later you will have to take, sooner or later
you’re going to face that moment when you’ve got only God. If you will take your place with Jesus
today on the cross and will at last give up looking to people and to others for what God alone can
give you in the way of love and attention and affection and care and protection, God will send the
spirit of his son Jesus into your heart, into your innermost heart and you will experience a new
freshness coming into you.
You’ll sense there is something beautiful inside you that wasn’t there before. You’ll sense a
tenderness in your heart. You’ll sense actually a peace and a contentment and a satisfaction in your
heart but most of all, you’ll sense a love for all of the rest of us. You’ll sense a new love for
your father and your mother, for your friends. You’ll sense something beautiful coming out from
inside you. It’s a miracle. That’s God’s Spirit.
That’s what he gives, that’s what those converts in the lesson that was read for us, did not have.
They had been baptized in John’s baptism, but they had never received the Holy Spirit. Many of us
have been baptized into a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of our sins but we have never
had any experience of the beautiful and fragrant spirit of Jesus coming in and cleansing and filling
our hearts.
Loved ones, that’s what becoming a Christian is. But it does mean that we have to stop depending
upon each other for all this attention and all this affection. We have to stop insisting on the
rights that we have to this person’s friendship or this person’s attention or this person’s love or
this person’s care and it’s amazing when you enter into that death and God sends the spirit of his
son’s heart into your heart, suddenly you discover the love in everybody else, it’s amazing.
Suddenly you’re amazed that people care about you. You’re amazed that people do love you that much
because the little bit that they’re able to love you, seems great to you because you already have
this sense of love from your Father.
I don’t know where you are, you know in all this but I would encourage you to see that today, that
spirit can change your heart if you are willing to die to demanding things from the rest of us. If
you’re willing to look to God as your God instead of looking to all of us, if you will do that, your
Father will give you a great assurance of his love for you and he’ll give you a great sense and
heart feeling of his love for others. Needless to say to the husbands and wives, we know above
everybody else don’t we? We have to have something like this, you have to, otherwise we are
finished, we know it.
Marriage deteriorates badly unless there is this kind of love. It’s divine love, I suppose that’s
all you can call it but unless you have this kind of divine love, you’re tearing each other apart
after four years and you’ve torn each other apart after ten years and you have buried each other
after fifteen years, it just does not work. But the fact is it’s the same with all of life, the only
way it will work, is by us receiving this spirit and allowing our hearts to be changed. Let us pray.
Father, we know our own hearts, we know that we have been outwardly Christian and many people regard
us as Christian except that our hearts aren’t converted and our hearts aren’t born again, our hearts
haven’t received your spirit, our hearts haven’t been filled with your spirit. We find that our
wills are often set towards you but our heart rises up and contradicts our will. Father, we ask you
to look down upon us now, each one of us, and deal with us now individually and reveal to each of us
what dying with Jesus to other people and to other things means for us today.
Show us Father, where our hearts are filled with impurity and resentment because of wrong attitudes
to you, because of looking to people or to things for the things that we ought to trust you alone
for. Father we ask you to give us light this day and then Lord, we come to you now, we know this is
right, we know these things are true that witnesses with us deep down that this is reality. We see
clearly that sooner or later in our life, we will come to this point so Father, we now look to you
and we want to thank you for everything you’ve given us and Father we want to acknowledge you now as
our God, as the supplier of all that we need.
We want to tell you that we believe you that you will supply every need of ours from your riches in
glory in Christ Jesus. We want to tell you Father, that what love you don’t give us, we’re content
to be without, what possessions you withhold from us, we are content to lack, what affection and
attention and approval and praise you decide to give us, we are content to receive. Lord, we give
ourselves now to you and we tell you that you are our God and we will look to you now. And Lord
Jesus, we thank you that you did include us in yourself on Calvary and we accept that position Lord
in you on Calvary, dead to what our mothers think, dead to what our friends think, dead to what all
the people around this cross on which we are, can give us. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you
have taken us into yourself and Savior, we ask you to fill our hearts now with your own spirit, with
your own attitude to things.
Can God be Seen in You by Others? - REVIVAL
Can God be Seen in You by Others?
Romans 7:19
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
There’s a story that you might have heard about five wise men in a certain Indian village, and they
decided they’d try to find out who was the wisest. And so they arranged really a test for them.
They put something in a huge building in the middle of the village, except that this building had no
windows in it; and so it was absolutely dark inside. And then each of these wise men were to go
into this dark building and tell just by touch what was inside the building.
And so all the village gathered, and the first wise man went in through the door, and they closed
the door on him. And he felt forward and felt with his hands a huge flat surface. And he felt a
little to the right and a little to the left and still that flat surface seemed to go on and on, and
he couldn’t find the end of it, as far as he was able to move. And so he came out and he said,
“It’s a wall. There is a wall in that building. There is a huge wall, the ends of which I couldn’t
touch at all.”
And then the second wise man went in and he went into the darkened building and verged a little to
the left and bumped into what seemed to him round like that, a kind of pillar. And he tried to put
his arms around it but it was so thick that he couldn’t get his arms around to the other side. And
so he came out and he said, “It’s a tree. There’s a huge tree in that building, so big that I
couldn’t get my arms around it.”
And then the third wise man went in and he verged over to his left, a little further this time, and
he found this thing hanging down it seemed from the ceiling. And he put his arms around it, and he
could get his arms around it and it seemed like a thick, thick thing. And so he came outside and
said, “It’s a rope. There’s a huge rope in that building that is hanging from the roof.”
And then the fourth wise man went in and he went over vaguely in that direction and he put his hands
up and almost put what seemed like a sharp, sharp point right through his hand. And he felt it and
he was clear what it was and he came out and said, “There is a massive spear in that building. It
is just a big long spear, and it has a point so sharp that it will go through your hand in a
moment.”
And then the fifth wise man went in and he was feeling up in the direction of where the spear was
and then he felt a breeze, and he suddenly felt a kind of wind blowing on him. And he put up his
hand and it seemed like a huge leaf, bigger than any leaf he had ever seen on a tree. And he came
out and said, “The building is full of huge leaves.”
And the wise men gave all that information to the villagers and then the villagers said, “Alright,
we’ll see which of you is right.” They opened the doors and out lumbered the most massive elephant
that you could ever imagine in your life. And one man felt the side of the elephant and said, “It’s
a wall.” And another man felt the leg of the elephant and said, “It’s a tree.” And the other man
felt the tusk of the elephant and said, “It’s a spear.” And the other man felt the trunk of the
elephant and said, “It’s a rope.” And the other man felt the huge ear of the elephant and said,
“It’s a leaf.”
And in a way, I mean, they were all right, in a way. And yet you could imagine the confusion in the
villagers mind as they tried to imagine a wall that has leaves on it, and a spear, and has a rope.
It’s impossible to create a picture that makes any sense, because even though they were all telling
the truth, and telling what they had seen, they made no sense to anyone else, because they were
telling only parts of the whole. They were describing only parts of the whole, and it didn’t make
sense to anyone.
When you say, “It’s probably better to eat fruit and vegetables than to eat meat.” It probably is.
When you say, “It’s probably better not to smoke, or drink too much.” It probably is. When you say
that, “Unselfish capitalism is probably more scriptural than the socialism that we see in our
world,” you’re probably right. Those are all parts of reality. And they’re all parts of the truth
that is God.
But loved ones, it’s interesting, if that’s what your friends hear from you about God, you can see
they’re in a worse shape even than the villagers, who heard about the part of the elephant that was
a wall, or the part of the elephant that was a tree. They really have no touch with reality when
you tell them about those individual parts. And of course, if you major in those individual parts,
if you’re really hot on ‘no smoking or drinking’, or you’re really hot on ‘eating fruit and
vegetables and no meat’, or you’re really hot on ‘capitalism as opposed to socialism’, then, if you
major in those things, you actually don’t only fail to give them a picture of God as he really is,
but you actually give them a contorted picture of God. Because even those are all parts of reality,
they are only parts and they don’t represent reality itself. They don’t really enable a person to
touch the reality of God.
Now actually our song book might not be too bad. I think some of Wesley’s hymns are better than
some of these, but this song book may well touch our contemporary life in a better way than many of
the old traditional hymns. But if that’s what you tell people about what you do on Sunday they’re
hearing only a part of reality and they’re not getting any true picture of God as he really is.
I think our open prayer time is far better than the pastor fiddling away on his own, trying to pray
a prayer for all of you, instead of you praying your own prayers. But, that is only a part of
reality; it’s not God himself. It may be that victory over sin and self, and victory over anger,
and envy, and jealousy through faith in our death with Jesus, is even a vital truth. It’s
absolutely vital. But if that’s what others hear from you about God and about reality, actually
they’re only hearing a part and they’re not seeing the whole.
Indeed, at the risk of tramping on your toes, the virgin birth I think is absolute truth. I think
it is essential. The resurrection of Jesus is absolute truth. This dear book, I think, is God’s
supernaturally inspired revelation of himself. But even those things, however essential they are,
are only parts of reality. They’re only parts of God; they’re not God himself. And to the extent
that you share only those things at work through the week, you’re actually not helping anybody very
much. You’re giving people a part of reality, or a part of truth, and actually it may just be that
part that will put them off God rather than will draw them to God.
And so it can be argued that even our muddling attempts at witnessing can often do harm, and we can
end up discussing doctrines, or principles, or methods of worship, or points of belief, or behavior
patterns, and all we’re doing is distracting people from God himself, to subordinate parts of
worshipping him and subordinate parts of believing in him. And really in some ways it is deceptive,
because it’s very easy for dear friends of ours at work, and dear colleagues at school to get a very
contorted view of what God is like, when they listen to you and me outlining our doctrines,
outlining our beliefs, spouting off about what we believe about this and what we believe about that,
telling them about our church and the way we do things. It can often ‘put them off’ God more than
it leads them to God.
And in fact, what they need to see is reality as a whole. Reality as a whole; not bits of reality
and parts of reality. You may say, “No Pastor, I mean a part of reality is better than nothing.”
No, really it’s not. A part of reality gives them a false impression of what reality is. What they
need to see is God as he really is.
Now you may say, “Well, I mean, that’s impossible. It’s difficult for you or anybody else, with all
of us concentrating here on a Sunday morning, it’s difficult enough for you to present all of
reality. How are we going to present all of reality? We cannot show them all of God, because of
the inadequate creatures that we are. How can we ever show them God as he really is?” And yet if
they don’t see that, really they won’t be able to respond to God.
Stand back for a minute. Stand back from that building. What is in that building? An elephant,
that’s what’s in that building. Stand back now from God. What is God, or who is God? God is our
Father and he’s our Savior. He’s our Savior because he made us over again in Jesus, and he
recreated us, and enabled us to become new creations in Christ. That’s the only part of God that
you can actually show your friends at work: the part of him that has replaced something selfish, or
something sinful, or something unlike him, in your life. That’s it. That’s it.
You can’t actually show them the part of God that you don’t need. Maybe you are a very honest
person; you probably can’t show them God, through your honesty, because maybe you were brought up by
your mom and dad to be honest, and you are honest. But you have something in your life that you
know is not like God. You have something in your life that ‘they’ know is not like God. When you
allow ‘that’ to be replaced by God’s own nature, when you allow that to be crucified with Christ,
that’s the part of God that you can show them. That’s a glimpse of God, as he really, is that will
come home to them as live.
When they see something in you and they say, “He is a changed man; she is a changed woman. I’ll
tell you what she was like, and here’s what she is like now. And it’s not just that they’re better;
it’s not just that they’re morally good; there’s something beautiful in it; there’s something of God
in it; there’s something of Jesus in it.” When they see that, they’ve seen God.
I read an expert in ‘aesthetics’ — ‘aesthetics’ not ‘ascetics’ but ‘aesthetics’, the study of
beauty. Yates and all the English poets were involved in that. And this writer said, “The only
authentic thing, the only truly authentic thing in a painting, the only really authentic thing in a
painting, of any kind, is that which cannot be expressed any other way.” Now think of it, the only
authentic thing in a painting is that which cannot be expressed through any other art form.
You see in other words, if you can describe in words what there is in a painting, then that’s not
the ‘one’ authentic part of that painting; then it can be expressed in words just as well. If you
can express in sculpture what is expressed in painting then that’s not the authentic part of that
painting. The only authentic part of a painting is that which cannot be expressed in any other way.
Similarly you can apply it to sculpture. The only authentic part of a sculpture is that that cannot
be expressed any other way. I don’t know if – I haven’t done much study of this, but you know that
sculpture appears to your sense of touch. And so it’s the shape, and it’s the smoothness; it’s the
feel of a sculpture that makes it different from a painting. Now if you could reproduce that in a
painting then that is not an authentic part of sculpture. So whatever cannot be expressed in any
other way, that’s the authentic part of the painting. That’s the authentic part of your witness.
The only authentic part of your ‘presentation of reality’ to your friends, and to your colleagues,
and to your relatives, is that part of you which has been destroyed on Calvary in Jesus, and has
been recreated in his image and beauty; that’s the part of you that is authentically God, and that
is your testimony to the reality of God.
2014-11-02 To Here 16:20 p.4
Now loved ones, I sympathize with you if you sit there and say, “What about my brilliant
explanations of theology? What about my insights into politics? What about my understanding of
human nature? What about the way I love them, I just love them to pieces?” No, no it’s all bluff,
it’s all bluff. I sympathize with you, we’d all like it to be those things but all those things do
is testify on the whole to ourselves. The only authentic part of God that others will touch through
your life, the only part of reality that they will touch, is the part of you that you have allowed
Jesus to replace with himself and that part they will recognize as God. That’s it folks.
It’s not all the discussion about doctrines, or beliefs, or views, or ideas. It’s not all the talk
about what is the right way to behave, or what is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do.
It is simply a question of what you have allowed God to redeem in your life. That’s the part of God
that others are seeing through you. That’s it. That and nothing more, that and nothing less.
So if only to cut down all the airways, if only to cut down all the air traffic and all the chaos
that is going out from you as so called witnessing, will you bow before God this morning and ask
him, “Lord God, I’ve done a lot of talking about you, I’ve done a lot of describing my views on
things. I’ve done a lot of advising but I think all I’ve told them is that there may be a tree in
there, or there may be a rope in there, or there may be a wall in there. But Lord, I want them to
begin to touch you. Now what in my life do you want to change so that they can see you through me?”
And loved ones, that’s all we’ve got to give.
I would ask you as we bow our heads before God, would you ask him that? Would you ask him if
there’s something in you that he wants to change so that your children, so that your roommate, so
that your colleagues, so that your friends could touch God? And then ask him to change that in you
this morning.
Let us pray. Dear Father, the discussion of religious views comes so naturally to us we just love
to talk Lord, you know that. Our tongues just go up and down like mad trying to give out all the
great wisdom we have. And then Father we just love to rule over people’s lives, we love to make
them do what we think they should and so Father you know how often we’ve attempted to witness and
ended up telling people what they ought to do. And Lord we see that even though all these things
may be true they are only parts of reality and not reality itself.
And we see Lord that there’s only one way in which our dear friends can see that you are their
redeemer and savior and that is if they see the part of us that has been redeemed by you and has
been changed by you and destroyed by you and replaced by your own nature. So Father we bow before
you now this morning and ask you to give us light about that. Lord, what is it in me that puts
other people off you? What is it in each of us that distracts other people from your nature and
your dear character?
Lord we know that you destroyed that in Jesus on Calvary. Father we say to you take it now, take
the rotten thing from us now. We give it to you Lord, take it and destroy it now this morning in us
and Father replace our impatience with your own patient heart and character. Lord as we are willing
to bear with other people, as we are willing to endure the consequences of their wrong actions, will
you replace our impatience Lord with your patient heart and character? Father, will you replace our
indifference and our casualness with your heart of love? As we are ready Father to begin to give
ourselves to other people, and as we are willing to forget ourselves and to put them first, and to
begin to want the best for them whatever it costs us. Lord will you now replace our casualness and
our indifference to people with your heart of love? Father we ask you now this morning to give us
reality in ourselves so that when others touch us they touch you.
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 ever more. Amen.
Living Beyond the Law - REVIVAL
How to Become a Christian 1
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
… he said, “Look, my Father is the real God but you don’t let him be God in your life and because
you won’t let him be God – he himself has given you up.” And Jesus you know, pointed out that
there was no other alternative really. Once you had a group of people who wanted to be their own
Gods, well it would be like the sun deciding to run in whatever way it wanted throughout the
universe. It only has to make a little move and we’re burned up or we freeze to death. And if you
can image it careering at its own will throughout the universe, it wouldn’t be long before it
shattered the universe completely and that’s why Jesus said, “God had to bring us under condemnation
of death once we decided to live without him and be our own gods.”
And loved ones, you’ve seen some of it, you know, in your own homes you know it. Where you’ve
decided to have your own way, you’ve brought chaos into your home, you have shattered you’re
relationships, you’ve trampled on top of people. Now, do you see that if God let us continue being
our own gods in our own lives we would spread our dirt, and our pollution, and our hatred, and our
misery throughout the universe? We have got as far as the Atlantic Ocean with some of our waste oil
and I think we’ll eventually get as far as space with our garbage. Do you think that if God let it
continue there would be no universe left and Jesus says, “Listen, that’s why you feel alienated
because there’s God my Father, has had to condemn you to death and he’s only allowing you to live
for a little while longer to give you a chance of responding to him.”
And this, you know, is the explanation that we found in Romans there, these first three chapters of
Romans really explain Jesus’ explanation of reality very fully and you have it there in Romans 1:21
where Jesus explains why we feel so alienated and why we feel so lost and lonely. It’s not because
people won’t have anything to do with us or because our parents reject us, or because we have no
sense of significance in society, but it’s because God himself has rejected us.
It’s Romans 1:21, Jesus says this is what we’ve done, “Although they knew God they did not honor him
as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds
were darkened.” And then in Verse 24, “Therefore God gave them up.” And you see in Verse 26 again,
“For this reason God gave them up.” And then in Verse 28 again, “And since they did not see fit to
acknowledge God, God gave them up.” And really it’s this consciousness deep down that we’ve been
given up by God that makes us feel so alienated.
Brothers and sisters, it’s not fear of the mushroom cloud, that’s fearful enough. But it’s not fear
of the mushroom cloud, it’s not even fear of death but it’s the consciousness planted deep down in
us that we know we have run our lives in our own way, and been our own gods, and we’re refusing to
let God be God in his own universe and therefore we’ve been rejected by him and we’re really under
condemnation to destruction, you know.
Now Paul said that in Romans 1:32. He said, men know this. “Though they know God’s decree that
those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.”
And that’s why we feel so alienated, we know that this is going to happen to us. In 2:2, “We know
that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such things.” And really we see that it’s
that consciousness that makes us feel so alienated. No wonder we’re having identity crisis, because
we’re not in the right relationship to the only one who can give us meaning in our universe and
we’re bound to have an identity crisis, we’re bound to be uncertain about where we fit in because
we’ve rejected the person who knows where we fit in.
Now as we read, you know, and studied Jesus’ explanation we began to see that all through this God
was anxious to find a way by which he could bring us back to himself, and he was anxious to find a
way by which he would not have to destroy us, and by which he could suspend the death penalty long
enough to give us a chance to really deal with him again. And you find that running through all
Jesus’ explanations. But do you see that to just take back his death penalty, to just say, “Listen
son, if you want to go right through the universe and destroy all my planets I don’t care. I’ve
changed my mind, I’m not going to destroy you any longer.”
Then not only the Son but every human being in the universe would say, “He doesn’t mean what he
says. We don’t need to take his justice seriously.” And if we can’t take his justice seriously why
should we take his mercy seriously. And do you see that if God simply changed his mind and said,
“Look, murder your way through the whole of the universe if you want, spread your dirt over every
planet if you want I don’t care. I’m willing to forgive you and take you to myself whatever you’re
like.” Do you see if that happened brothers and sisters we would have gone on destroying,
destroying.
But God to be credible at all has to hold to what he said and he said, “Look, I have to destroy any
of you who want to be your own gods.” And yet God has been anxious all through the ages to find
some way of giving us another chance. And you know that Jesus explained to us, “Listen, God has
done this, by exercising his judgment upon me instead of you. So that if you are ever in any doubt
about whether he hates any independence or rebellion against him, you can look at me. Look, I died
in time and space, I died in the heart of God from the foundation of the world, but I died in time
and space in the first century AD. And if you’re in any doubt that God hates sin and hates
rebellion, look, look at what his wrath did to me.” And God was able by that means to suspend the
death penalty on all of us.
And really dear ones, we live in a time of respite today, you see. We really live in a time of
respite when God has suspended the death penalty because Jesus has enabled him to by dying in our
place. And this is you know, the faith that we believe. It’s the faith that Jesus had died in our
place and that God this morning is willing to forgive any of you for your selfishness, and your
lust, and your envy, and our jealousy, and your pride, and your desire to make everybody do what you
want them to do and he’s willing not to destroy you, but to in fact receive you as his own sons and
daughters. And it’s all because Jesus has enabled him to. Jesus has enabled God to remain a just
God and yet forgive us.
Now this morning we’re going to study a question that I think comes up, a very obvious question in
the light of all that. And it’s that question if you’d like to turn to it in Romans 3:31. This is
a big moment for us, we’re finishing one chapter of Romans. We do it once every year and a half.
Romans 3:31, and this is a question I think that is relevant in the light of our faith you see, that
God is willing to forgive us because Jesus has died for us. “Do we then overthrow the law by this
faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” But that’s the question, “Do we then
overthrow the law by this faith?”
There are many Christians that think we do. There are many Christians that say this, “God is
running something like the selective service board, and he acts something like old General Hershey
used to and he’s trying to select from the people in the world the best people who can live in his
universe forever. And he decided,” some Christians say this, “He decided first of all to select
them by law.” And he was a bit like our clever selective service board, they tried first of all you
remember, “We’ll take all the people of a certain age who can’t get to college.” And then you
remember in this highly civilized and sophisticated society that we have, then they saw that with
all our computers a far, far better way for such an intelligent society was to throw all the names
into a hat and pick the first 300 out and they would fight.
Well some people feel that God runs the world something like that. God decides first of all,
“Alright, I’ll give them 10 commandments and everyone who obeys the 10 commandments, I will receive
him into my universe to live with me in infinity and eternity forever and they will help me to
subdue to the rest of universe.” And then some Christians argue, he saw after 1500 years of trying
that it wasn’t working and that nobody could obey the law and so they say then he came in with this
other idea, “Anybody who believes what I have said about my son’s death, I will accept them into my
heaven.” And so many Christians argue, you see, Jesus has changed the whole thing for us. 1God
once tried the law as a filter, now he tries belief in Jesus so now if you have faith in Jesus you
don’t need to bother about the law at all.
Now dear ones, do you see that this is a parody of the whole doctrine of justification by faith.
This is a parody of God’s whole plan, he did not work it that way but do you see that that is the
kind of believing that has resulted in churches filled with people who believe that Jesus’ death
enables them to sin with impunity. You see that? Many of our churches today and the whole attitude
that people have of cynicism towards Christians stems from this fact that many Christians honestly
believe that the law was tried by God, didn’t work and now he’s set I aside and he says, “You can
disobey as much as you want, my Son has died for you. As long you believe that that’s all that
matters, I’ll accept you in.” And many Christians therefore, live lives that are not like Christ at
all and yet they keep pleading you see, “Ah, God looks at the righteousness of Jesus not at my
righteousness.”
In a real way he does do that but not in the way that I’ve outlined and so many people, many
Christians even answer Paul, “Do we then overthrow the law by faith?” Of course, we overthrow it.
It doesn’t matter whether you commit adultery, it doesn’t matter whether you’re greedy, it doesn’t
matter whether you get angry at times, if you believe in Jesus, if you believe that he died for you,
that’s the only thing that God requires. It’s just a new condition now that God has laid down.
Now loved ones, it isn’t so you see, that isn’t the situation at all. God has not set aside the law
like that and then brought belief in Jesus in in its place. Here’s what happened, God wanted a
group of intelligent and spiritual beings who could share with him the fellowship, and the
relationship, and the love that he had with his own son. And so he made us out of love. Now, he
made us with the capacity to be like him. Obviously, you don’t have too much satisfaction in
discussing Sartre with your dog, and it really requires a certain amount of similarity to have any
real fellowship, or relationship with another being and for that reason God made us like himself.
He made us with minds like his own, and emotions, and with will like his own and he gave us a body.
But he didn’t want to make us a captive audience. He didn’t want to make us a group of people who
fellowshipped with him because they could do nothing else, or who were like him because they were
just made like him, and so he made us only with a capacity to be like him. And inside us he put
something like the womb inside a woman. He put inside us a spirit, a womb that was capable of
receiving a real spirit from him inside it. And he then allowed his Son to walk among us, and
that’s the meaning of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden you know, Jesus was God’s only Son and
he had the unique spiritual uncreated life of God running through his whole being. And this life
contains the genes of God’s character and wherever this life comes it takes God’s character.
And then God said, “Now you men and women, you must receive this life by choice from my Son. So my
Son is going to walk among you and I want you to receive this uncreated spiritual life from my Son
into the womb of your own spirit and that Holy Spirit of life that comes from me will enable you to
be born again in my image. But I want you to be able to choose to be born. I don’t want you to feel
you have to be born. I don’t want you to be like me because I made you like me. I make you with
the capacity to be like me and now you’ve to choose to opt into my trinity family.” And that was
God’s plan and it was his plan from the very beginning dear ones. And you know what men in fact as
a whole have done, they decided they didn’t want to take part in anything that would make them as
dependent on life from God as that, and they began to take the physical life he had given them, not
really realizing it would die out after a matter of 70 years, and they decided, “We’ll make do with
this, and we’ll live our own life as we want, and we’ll become like gods without his aid.”
And so God was faced with a group of people, a group of men and women who rejected his plan for them
and he was faced with the fact that they only had physical life and it was going to die out in a
short time. And he was faced with the whole problem of bringing that home to them. And you know
what God did, first of all he gave a set of symptoms of spiritual uncreated life to men to show them
plainly that they didn’t have his own uncreated spiritual life within them. And he said for
instances this, “Look, anyone with uncreated spiritual life inside them, anyone who has that kind of
life from me will put nobody before me in their own lives. They’ll spend no more time, or thought
on objects made of wood or steel than they do on me. They won’t treat me carelessly or lightly,
they won’t take my name in vain. They will set one day in seven apart for me. They will honor and
love their father and mother. They will not do anything to harm another person by word or deed.
They will not have unclean thoughts or actions. They will not deprive others of anything. They will
not covet people’s positions.”
And God said, “Look, if you have this uncreated spiritual life in me then these are the laws that
describe the way this life works so you’ll be able to tell if you have it or not.” And so for 1500
years God allowed us to measure our lives against the law. But do you see dear ones, the law was
never a means of salvation. It was always a means to expose sin and you remember, you find that if
you’d like to look at it in Romans 3:19, “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those
who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held
accountable to God.” That’s the purpose of it all, to stop every mouth and convince everyone that
they have not received the uncreated spiritual life of God.
“For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes
knowledge of sin.” And the whole purpose of the law was so that we see that we had not received
what God wanted us to receive. And then you remember, what he was faced with, he was faced with the
fact that he was committed to destroy any being that existed by his own life. He was committed to
destroy anyone that did not receive his own life in order to protect his own universe. And unless
he did that the whole universe would cry that he was an unjust God that did not keep his promises
and did not keep his threats and wasn’t worth treating as God and that’s why Jesus had to die in our
place, so that we would have no doubt that God would destroy everything that did not have his life
within it. And God took the lifelessness that you have inside you this morning and put it in Jesus
and he destroyed it there in Jesus. And so God is able at this time to give life to any person.
But do you see that the whole purpose of God’s creation is that we would receive his life. And the
whole purpose of faith is not to believe that because Jesus had died God is able to forgive us,
that’s only part of the story, that’s only the belief part of faith. The other part of faith is to
actually receive the life that caused all the trouble in the first place. In other words, it’s no
use, it’s no use believing that God is able to give you the life if you don’t receive the life. And
do you see that once you receive this life into you, and the person of the Holy Spirit, do you
overthrow the law? No, the law is the description of the way this life works and so if you really
exercise faith in Jesus and not only believe he has died so God could forgive you but also actually
receive light through the Holy Spirit from God, then those laws will be true of you.
You will find when the Holy Spirit comes into you, that you will in fact put nobody before God. You
will in fact find in your own life that you’ll spend no more time or thought on objects of wood or
steel than you do on God. You’ll find that you set one day apart in every seven. You’ll find that
you don’t treat God carelessly or lightly. You’ll find that you’ll honor and love your father and
mother. You’ll find that you will not do anything to harm another person. You’ll find that you are
filled with the very life of God himself and that life is described in the laws, and so you’ll find
yourself keeping the laws. And when Paul asks, “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?” If
it’s real faith that not only believes that Jesus died for you but receives the light that he died
so that you could receive. Then you don’t overthrow the law by no means. You establish the law,
you strengthen the law because every one of us who have received the life of God live that law
before people.
Of course you see that that’s the way the world is convicted. The world isn’t convicted by
preachers standing up and thumping the Bible and saying, “You’re a bad world, you’re a sinful
world.” The world is convicted because it sees the law alive in other men and women, it sees Christ
walking among them and it realizes it should be like that and it should receive this life.
Now dear ones, real faith does not overthrow the law. Real faith establishes the law because real
faith is not just believing that Jesus has died for you. John 1:12 describes what real faith is,
“As many as received him, to them gave he the right to become the children of God.” And it’s
receiving, it’s not believing. It’s receiving the Spirit of Jesus into you this morning that
enables you to live forever. It’s receiving the life of Jesus into you that enables you to live the
law in your family, and in your dorms, and in your homes. It’s receiving the Spirit of Jesus into
you that banishes the meaninglessness and the emptiness of your own life because that was God’s
purpose at the very beginning, that you’d receive his life into you not just believe.
Now do you see dear ones, that faith is not taking the place of obedience? Faith in Jesus does not
take the place of the law, but when you exercise real faith, believe all that I’ve shared with you
this morning and then receive Jesus’ Spirit into you, you find yourself keeping the law. That’s
what Jesus meant when he said, “I have come not to abolish the law, I have come to fulfill the law.
For not one jot or tittle will pass for the law until all is accomplished.”
And brothers and sisters, what most of us have found is whenever we receive this super natural
Spirit of Jesus inside us, we find it easy to live above the law. We find it easy to go beyond the
law. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes
and Pharisees, not only to be free from hatred and killing but to be filled with love for your
brother and sister.” Real love, not just soft effeminate or imitation love, but a real honest,
strong, robust love. And we’ve found that when we received the Spirit of Jesus into us, we’ve lived
well above that law.
Do we then overthrow this law by faith? No, by no means. We establish, we strengthen the law. Now
have you come into that experience, you know? See, all of us believe that Jesus died so that God
could forgive us without denying his justice but that isn’t what makes you a child of Gods. What
makes you a child of God is receiving the spirit of life through the Holy Spirit that God originally
planned to give us. And he’s willing to give you that this morning, you know. You could receive
that this morning.
Those of us who have found ourselves living above the law, do it not by will power or by our own
strength or dynamic, but by a miraculous spirit of Christ that God is able to put inside you this
morning. You have a womb, like every one of us, you have a womb inside you called the spirit and
that womb is ready to receive the seed of the Holy Spirit within it so that you, man or woman, can
live the spiritual life that God gave you. So it’s possible this morning, you know.
You may say, “Well, what do I do?” Well, just as we bow our heads all you need to do is to say,
“God I believe that this is the explanation of reality. I believe this does explain why I feel
alienated, and lonely, and insecure. I believe that your Son did die so that you could give me this
life. Now Lord God, I’m going to give you my life now will you give me the Spirit of Jesus? I
don’t know whether you receive it by emotions or by intellect, but will you give it to me? I ask
you now in all honesty for the Spirit of Jesus. And brothers and sisters, God will keep his word
with you as he kept it with us, you know, and you’ll find yourself living above the law really where
God himself is.
I pray you know, that he’ll give you grace, and wisdom, and guidance to do it this morning. I know
a lot of you are sitting there, you know, wondering, “Ah, I wonder what it is all about?” Well
really, all I can say is if you’re honest with God whether you know a whole lot about it or not, if
you’re honest with God this morning he can put the Spirit of his Son inside you and can guide you on
from that, you know. And if you want to talk to any of us afterwards, there are lots of kids here
who experienced this and will share with you either here or in the entrance all, or if you want to
talk during the week just call Ashland or call me and get together. But we have found that this
does much better than the Ouija board, and the spiritualists, and really it is the answer and we’ve
found it so we believe you can find it. Let us pray.
Lord God, we thank you that you have not left us with no guidance. You have not left us with nearly
counterfeits, but you have given us plain clear presentation of yourself and your own plan in your
word and in Jesus your son. Now Lord God, if this is true, we would trust you by the Holy Spirit to
reveal that truth to us and to make it real to us. Lord God, if we’re honestly seeking you we ask
you now to make this real to us and enable us to see that this is more deeply true than it is
intellectually acceptable. And oh Lord God, we would ask you to put the Spirit of your Son Jesus
inside us to take away the emptiness and the loneliness, and the insecurity, and to enable us to be
the people that you intended we should be at the beginning. We trust you to do this for the sake of
your Son Jesus and so that we will please you and we will live the lives that we were made to live.
Amen.
How to Become a Christian - REVIVAL
How to Become a Christian 2
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
I have sensed God saying to me that it’s very easy for us to come here Sunday after Sunday and be
glad for what was sung to us this morning, and be excited you know, that people like Kent have
experienced it and Helen, and we tend to enjoy being in this atmosphere. And yet, God witnessed to
my own spirit that there was a great danger of us being snow bunnies, you know. And a snow bunny
just goes on to the slopes, and looks beautiful but doesn’t ski. And it is very easy to get used to
such a good atmosphere because this is the way God wants us to live, you know. Let’s face it, this
is love and this is the way we’re supposed to live and it would be bad if this were not attractive
or winsome. There’d be something wrong with it if God’s children were not more attractive in many
ways than those who aren’t God’s children.
But do you see brothers and sisters, that it isn’t enough to be snow bunnies? It isn’t enough to
sit there and to watch, and to enjoy because you see that that can bring you into tremendous
condemnation because in a real way we have a greater opportunity here to understand what our Creator
wants us to do than anyone else in the whole world because again and again we see the joy of people
who live in God and we also listen to the explanation of how to enter in. But there is a great
danger that we with our student oriented habits will tend to study, and study, and analyze, and
discuss, and argue, and admire, and then turn it over the other side and discuss that side, and
admire, and look, and talk it over, and question and never really act. And loved ones, do you see
that Jesus was wise when he said to us, “Listen, the first thing I want you to do is not to
understand, and not to think, and not to discuss, and not to question, and not to talk about it, and
look at it, and admire it, but the first thing I want you to do is to repent and believe in the
gospel.”
Now dear ones, it’s good for us to listen to a practical man like Jesus speaking very directly to
people like ourselves who are in danger all the time of being academic and of thinking, and
believing, and not acting. And do you see that the way into all this, the way into the life of God,
the way into making your own life meaningful, the way into getting your own insignificance, the way
into getting some purpose into your own life, but most of all the way into making your own life
worthwhile and fulfilling the purpose for which you were created is to repent and believe in the
gospel. You know? And you may say, “Well, I mean, why should I repent? I have not done anything
very bad. I am not a Manson, I am not a prostitute, I am not an alcoholic, I have not destroyed my
home, I have not wiped out millions of people, I have not destroyed thousands of people with guns,
why should I repent?”
And you know what Jesus said? He said, “Listen, all of you, even though you’re very respectable
people to look at, and even though you’re very good people in many ways, yet all of you have sinned
and you’ve fallen short of the glory of my Father.” And Jesus, who is the only one who can really
give us any justifiable reason for accepting him as God’s son, he said to us, “Look, you’ve all
fallen short of what my Father wanted you to be.” And you know dear ones, many of us opt out of the
experience of Christianity at that point because we tend again, and again to sit back and say, “I
agree with what you say, that all people as a general rule have sinned and I certainly can see it
plainly in those miserable Irish that shoot one another. I can see that those people have sinned.”
Or we say, “You know, I can see that Charles Manson has sinned. I can see that the men who fight in
Vietnam they have sinned because they kill people.” And we often say, “I can see that the mafia
have sinned. I can see that Nixon has sinned. I can see Lee Harvey-Oswald has sinned.” And do you
see we have a great danger of accepting ourselves.
We have a great danger of saying, “I’m with you pastor, you go to it and you bring social action
into the world and put all those people right because all of them have sinned. But, I’m glad that I
have not sinned.” Now dear ones, do you see that many of us opt out of the experience of Jesus at
that point? Because, we’ll agree that everyone has sinned but us, you see. All have sinned except
the Presbyterians. All have sinned except the Baptist. All have sinned except the Catholics. All
have sinned except the Methodist. All have sinned except the people who come to Campus Church. And
dear ones, do you see it isn’t so? Jesus said that all of us have sinned, you know. Every one of
us and you too as you sit there and I know you’re a great person in many ways, I know you can do
many good things, and you have done many good things for people, and you’ve shown much kindness.
But do you see that it’s Jesus who says, not on the basis of empirical observation but on the basis
of his Father who knows all things that you have sinned. And the beginning of your coming together
with God is believing what he says about you, and really it’s a first step you know, to admit that
you have sinned.
That even wonderful, magnificent, faultless you have actually sinned. And you know a lot of us
feel, “Well, in what way sinned?” We can see how those primitive people in Old Testament days how
they sinned. We can see that sin is disobeying God’s will in any way. We see that sin is not doing
what God wants us to, and we can see that he said, “Though shalt have no other Gods before me,” and
we can see how those miserable Jews had all kinds of idols and gods before Gods, and we can see that
they have sinned and they deserve everything God is going to do to them. We can see that.
But do you see dear ones, that we are naïve if we really believe that the Jews set up a god called
Baal made of wood or stone and worshiped that? You know, they weren’t fools. They knew the stone
didn’t move, they knew the stone wasn’t a god. Do you see that it was the meaning of the word Baal
that was their god? That’s why it was called Baal, the word Baal in Hebrew means owner. It means
somebody who gets things. And when they worship Baal, they weren’t worshipping a stone. They’re no
fools, they weren’t so stupid that they thought that was a god. But they lived for getting things.
You see, a god is what you live for. A god is what you’re thinking about most times when somebody
asks you what are you thinking about. That’s your god. A god is what you spend most of your time
and most of your energy in doing. A god is what you dedicate your future to and your life today to.
And you see, for the Jews they were dedicating their lives, many of them, to getting things. They
planned their futures with a view to how much they could get. They planned their careers with a
view to how much money it would bring them. And they lived for getting things.
When they got into tight situations where it was a choice of getting profit for themselves and doing
somebody else some good, they got profit for themselves. And when you live for getting things, when
you live preoccupied with your getting the clothes you want, or you’re getting the position or the
job that you want or you deserve, when you live, you know, for getting the necessary books out of
the library that you need whatever everybody else needs, do you see that is worshipping another God?
That is setting up and getting acquisition as our guard.
You know loved ones, a lot of us tear down the establishment and say that they’re living for what
they can get. But dear ones, we often with our poverty, often with our sparsely furnished rooms, we
are as covetous over the few things we have as they are over the many things. And do you see that
it doesn’t take you to be rich to worship the god of getting? You can be poor and worship that god
far more by coveting and wanting. Loved ones, I ask you, you know, what are your plans for your own
future and your own career, and what are the considerations that govern your plans? And so many of
us talk so high and mighty about serving society and humanity, but deep, deep down in us it’s really
the desire to get things.
You know, we’ll be a social worker because a social worker pays a certain amount and you can live
reasonably and do good. Or, we’d love to be a doctor or a dentist because you’re helping humanity
and you’re getting. Now, do you see that it’s not that you can’t enter into some of those things,
but you must enter into them with an honest motive. In other words, many of us sin because we live
for getting.
Another of the images they worshipped was Ashtoreth, the god of enjoyment. And that was really what
they worshipped, it was enjoyment, it wasn’t a stone idol, it was the god of enjoyment and they just
lived to enjoy themselves at all costs. Now, do you see that that’s what led into the Manson
situation? Do you remember, that girl as she stuck the fork in the old man that she had killed and
then the judge asked her why she did it and she said, “Because, I enjoyed it at that moment. That’s
what I wanted to do at that moment so it was right.”
But do you see loved ones, that when we act from that motive we’re just as great sinners as she is
even though we haven’t killed anybody? When we make people suffer because we want to enjoy, then we
are sinners too and that’s what sin is. You know, it’s worshipping the god of enjoyment at all
costs. And you’re honest people and I ask you just to be honest in your own hearts, how many times,
you know, we have walked over somebody else so we could get what enjoyment we wanted? Brothers and
sisters, you know in our own relationships with each other we have often turned off a friend, we
have often shrugged off a friend because there was a certain girl or a certain fella that we wanted
at all costs to be with. And you know when that god of enjoyment lifts up in your mind everything
goes to the side.
Now do you see that is what Jesus meant? He said, “All of us have sinned,” and we’ve all fallen far
short of God’s glory. And he said, “Listen, my Father cannot let people like that live. It he lets
masses of you live throughout his universe who are living only for your own enjoyment and are living
for what you can get, you’ll destroy his universe. You’ll make it an unfit place for dog, or
animal, or beast, or man. You’ll destroy God’s own plan and his own purpose. Indeed, it’s either
God lives with his idea of goodness or it’s you that live because the two can’t exist side-by-side.”
And that’s why Jesus said, “The wages of sin is death,” you know.
Loved ones, you know it. In our own experience here this morning you can see it. It only takes
some dear one to come in among us this morning who does not love the same things we love, who does
not treasure Jesus’ presence and that dear one can cut the atmosphere like a knife and you can see
it. It only takes some dear one to come in among us who is not in sympathy with Christ and suddenly
our own fellowship can be destroyed. Now, do you see it was the same with God? That the two things
can’t exist side-by-side and that is why Jesus taught us that the wages of sin is death and that’s
why many of us live in a terrible angst, a terrible worry of an impending disaster, because dear
ones we are under condemnation to death many of us. Many of us have never made things right with
God. Many of us have never stopped worshipping other gods and therefore we are actually under
condemnation from the Creator of the universe and that’s what we’re living with.
Loved ones, many of us are not really worried about the mushroom cloud. Many of us are not really
worried about our futures. Many of us are really worried behind all those things about the fact
that deep down our conscious registers that we are sinners and God is going to destroy us at the end
of this world. And that’s why many of us have worry and trouble in our consciences and in our
emotions.
Now you know, it’s no use saying, “Oh well, that’s only the very bad sinners that God condemns to
death.” You see that the heart of sin is living for yourself. It doesn’t matter what degree of
living for yourself is true in your life, it’s living for yourself is sin. You know, sin is the
S-I-N, it is the great I, I want to enjoy myself, I want to get, I want to rule, I want to have my
way whatever anybody else wants. And do you see that that’s why God says that all of us have sinned
and fallen short and death is going to take place in all of us even if we’ve sinned a very little or
a great deal because there aren’t really degrees of sin. There are degrees of vices. There are
degrees of immorality. There are degrees of crimes, but there is no degree of sin you see.
You know, there was a story told and you probably read it before and I’ve shared it with some of you
before about the two men. And one of them, you know, is like ourselves, we are very good
respectable people and we have sinned very, very little. And this young man has kept his body in
good state, and it’s in good physical condition and he’s like us, he’s like us good and noble
sinners. And then there’s a very old man, a very old man who has worn himself out by bad habits,
has drunk his liver into an unhealthy condition, has destroyed his body and he’s about 75 years of
age and he’s standing there. And in front of them is a great gulf, it’s about 50 foot across and
it’s 500 foot cliffs on each side, and a great rocky gorge with pointed jagged rocks underneath.
And the old man says, “Well, I’m going to try and jump that gulf,” and many of us are like that.
Many of us know, “Well, I want to be with God, I want to live for him, I want to be where he is, I
want to get to the other side. I don’t want to have that uncertainty that Hamlet had. I don’t want
to feel that there’s an unknown country on the other side, I want to get over there.” So we’re like
the young man and he wants to jump to the other side, and the old man decides he’ll go first and he
totters back a few steps and he takes a run, and of course he only jumps about four feet and he goes
down to the rocks below and he’s killed. And we tend to say, “You see, well that’s those great
sinners that’s what should happen to them. I can see God has to wipe out Hitler, he can’t have a
Hitler in heaven without destroying heaven. I can see how a Hitler must die, I can see how a
[Mussolini 16:15] must die. I can see how Manson must die. I can see how these people who have
sinned greatly must die.”
And then the young man comes and he is in good physical condition, has looked after himself, has not
sinned much and so he takes a massive leap. He takes a great run and he leaps, and it’s a mighty
leap, it’s 39 feet and it’s a world record, and he falls short. And do you see, that it doesn’t
matter dear ones? It doesn’t matter that it was a world record, it doesn’t matter that you’re so
much better than the person down the road, it doesn’t matter that you’re so much better than you
ever thought you could be? Do you see that God says, “You’ve fallen short. You were made to be
like my Son Jesus. I made you to be like Jesus and that’s why I created you and you’ve fallen short
of that and nobody less than Jesus can continue to live for eternity in my universe without
destroying my universe.” And that’s why dear ones, all of us are under condemnation to death and
that’s where the gospel comes in you know.
I think a lot of us say, “Well, what can we do about it? We can try harder.” Well, do you see
there’s no point in the poor fella trying harder when he hits those rocks. There’s no point trying
harder to be done, there’s a penalty that has come about and it’s been exercised upon him and he has
to face it. There is no trying harder. I came here ’63 and we drive on the left hand side of the
road which is the correct side of the road for any sensible person to drive. And when I came over
here I had to learn to drive on the right hand side and so I tried it my own way for two weeks
[inaudible 18:00]. So I drove on the right hand side of the road, and I was just learning your
signs you know on the street corners, and I was learning to read those signs do not turn left
between four and six o’clock which is obviously a sacred time of some kind.
So, I concentrated on that and I came along at one time between four and six o’clock and I turned
left and one of your gallant police officers came up and asked me what I thought I was doing. And I
explained to him, “Well I turned left.” And he said, “Yeah, but it’s between four and six o’clock,”
and I said, “Ah yeah, I’m sorry I’m just new in the country. I’ve just come here and I’m just
getting to know your signs.” And he said, “Well, that’s good. You better try harder because it
will save you $10 next time.” And I said, “Well, listen officer I haven’t even taken this driving
test here, I’m driving on my British license so would you consider that? I’m going to take the
test, I’m going to learn your laws, and I’ll be careful every time I come to this corner.” And he
said, “Well, that’s good it will save you another $10.” And I could make all kinds of substitute
penalties and could suggest all other answers to the problem, but do you see that either I had to
pay the $10 or somebody had to pay it for me?
Now, do you see that’s our situation loved ones? You know, the psychologists try to psychoanalyze
out of a sense of impending disaster. The psychologists try to persuade us that this guilt comes
because our pet dog rejected us when we were children. We try in all kinds of ways to deal with the
guilt and to psych ourselves out of it. But do you see dear ones, there is no way to deal with the
guilt because it is God’s penalty. God has said, “Listen, if you sin you’re guilty death. That’s
the only way I can remain the just authority in the universe, and you have to die or somebody has to
die for you because I cannot revoke the penalty. If I revoke the penalty you’d laugh at me. You
wouldn’t accept that I was credible as a just God. My mercy would not be possible because I would
have no moral authority.” And do you see that that’s the gospel?
That God has commanded his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for you.
And loved ones, you should have died for every dirty thought that you’ve ever had, you see? But
Jesus took that thought into his own conscience and he allowed God’s wrath to burn up that thought
inside him. See you and I should have died for every time we’ve coveted anything, every time we’ve
tried to do some one down in order to get what we wanted, but Jesus took that into his own
conscience and he died for that.
In other words, Jesus knows everything that you’ve ever had in your heart that has been wrong but he
not only knows it but he knows the pain that came upon him for that. And God has died in Jesus for
you and that’s why you don’t need to die. And there’s no reason for any of us to be under guilt
this morning. There’s no reason for any of us to fear an impending disaster because Jesus has died
and has met that impending disaster for us and we’re free.
Now many of us say, “Well, I understand that intellectually but I tell you I still have worry and
apprehension in my own heart. I’d tell you I still do feel the mushroom cloud, I still am afraid of
death.” Do you see dear ones, that though Jesus has died for us you have to enter into this
yourself personally? In other words, you don’t get it by being a snow bunny, you don’t get it by
being a spectator, and seeing it, and believing it. Satan believed it, the devils in hell believed
that Jesus died for our sins, but do you see that you do not experience reconciliation with God, you
do not receive the Spirit of God’s life into yourself, you do not know freedom from fear until you
personally move into this.
How do you move into it? Jesus made it very plain, he said the first thing you do is you confess
the things that you know are wrong in your life. You stop trying to argue that you’ve never sinned.
The first step is you confess your sins. And brothers and sisters, you know many of us have got
all caught up in this business of confession. We’ve thought that it meant just confessing to a
priest, or confessing out loud. The Greek word for confession means I raise up my hand and I agree
with God that what he says is wrong, is wrong.
Brothers and sisters, if God has continued to say, you know, sexual sin, promiscuity, masturbation,
envy, jealousy, anger, greed, if he has continued to say to your heart, “Look, these things are
wrong,” then confession is saying, “I’m not going to argue any longer God. I confess that is a sin,
I agree it’s wrong. I’m not going to try to justify myself any further.” And you see it’s the
first step, and honest confession dear ones of the things that you’re arguing with God about.
You see, many of you say, “Oh but why couldn’t I experience God the way some of those other people
have?” Do you see it’s because you won’t deal with God about the things he’s been pointing out to
you for years. You’re still trying to prove that it’s right for you to do it. Brothers, I did it
in my own life in personal things. I tried to prove that I was in a certain set of circumstances
which justified this, or I was the certain kind of personality that needed this kind of outlet or
fulfillment. Do you see that confession is agreeing with God that these things are wrong? That’s
the first break in the whole game you know. Many of us are under constant strain and stress because
we won’t make that first break. We won’t start agreeing with God that those things are wrong.
The second step is just repentance, you know. Jesus said, “Listen, unless you repent every one of
you will perish.” And the second step is just an honest repentance, and repentance is not only
saying to God, “I’m sorry for causing your son to die for my sins.” It’s not only crying over the
mess you’ve made of your life, it’s not only being sorry for the people you’ve hurt, but it’s really
stopping sinning. You know? I think a lot of us enter into pseudo experiences of Christ because we
come up at a grey meeting, or some other kind of meeting, or we pray through in our rooms, or we
deal with God in our minds and we confess all the things and we say we’re sorry and we feel a real
sorrow in our hearts, but we don’t stop doing the sins and repentance is you stop doing those
things.
You don’t do them any longer. You just stop doing them. And I think a number of us, you know,
probably need to realize it and I think I’ve shared this with you before so it’s not really new to
all of you at all, but it’s possible you know for Kent who sang this morning, it’s possible for him
to say to me, “Now pastor, this is a picture. This is a picture of my girlfriend,” and I don’t know
if you have a girlfriend, “This is a picture of my girlfriend and me and it’s very precious to us
both and we’d like you to have it but we’d like you to take care of it.” And I take it from him and
I say, “Oh, yeah thanks kid,” but I’ve torn it. And I say, “Kent, I’m really sorry I’ve torn that.
I really am sorry. Kent, I’m really sorry I’m tearing up this picture because I really respect what
you say and I really don’t want to tear it up and I tell you I’m really, really sorry and I’m
repenting.”
Well loved ones, you know, but do you see that’s what we do? We say, “Lord God, I know my
uncleanness, I know my dirty thoughts crucified your son. I know my greed was a spear in his side,
but Lord, I’m really sorry, I’m really sorry.” And loved ones, God recognizes not what we say but
what we do and that’s why repentance needs to be something definite and real. Many of us have
entered into pseudo emotional experiences of Jesus because we have not had done with our sins. We
haven’t stopped doing them, not for a minute. We’ve asked Jesus to come in on top of them all and
you see, he won’t do it.
The last step is really just receiving him. If you are honest in your confession and your
repentance God will put the Spirit of his Son Jesus into your life and that’s what has enabled many
of us to be changed people, because there’s a super natural spirit of Jesus that has all the
goodness of Jesus inside him. And he transmits all that to us miraculously. And that’s why, you
know, at times we think of ourselves as new creations because we’re different people entirely
because we’ve received the Spirit of Jesus inside us.
Now if you don’t honestly confess, and honestly repent then what you enter into is an emotional
osmosis, or an intellectual assent or appropriation of truth and intellectual concept. And many of
use, you see, are in that position. We have given assent to these things, but we know in our own
lives we aren’t really Christians because we haven’t been honest in our confession and repentance.
Well dear ones, that is really the way to become a Christian, you know, and if you’re really
concerned about it then I do ask you to just deal with God this morning. I’d rather not spend time
because we are a little over time, and I’d rather not spend time having a long prayer time here this
morning, but I would ask you if you know you should make a definite step with Jesus, then as we sing
that last hymn you can go round and we can pray in there on the stage afterwards. I think that’s
the best place, it’s the only place we have where we can pray. But if you want to take a definite
step and you’ve fiddled along for years and you’ve never taken a definite stand of faith, then you
should do it you know.
Now it’s not vital to come forward, no you can do it in your seat, you can do it at home when you go
home, but it is a definite step that you take, you see. And so I ask you to consider it, you know,
as we sing the last hymn and it does demand just those three steps and God will put the Spirit of
his Son into your life. You will become a different person.
A New Start - REVIVAL
A New Start – 1975
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
I think we all thank God for the gifts that he’s given to the whole body, but Colleen really has a
gift that Jesus has given her of writing songs, you know, and it’s just a blessing and I think you
feel the same. And I think we should trust Jesus to multiply that creative life among us. And he
respects us really, to produce a creativity that will bring to the world life. So, we need to trust
Jesus for that, for all of us, whatever our particular abilities are. Loved ones, trust Jesus to do
something new through you, you know, really do.
Many of us have come here Sunday-after-Sunday now for some years and probably most of us here
believe there is a God. And perhaps most of us believe that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God.
What I would like to do this morning, very simply, is to tell you what Jesus’ ideas are about your
life so that you may know what he thinks you should do. And then I would ask you just to do it at
the end of the service, really. So that’s it.
First of all, Jesus says you aren’t going to last long. You just aren’t made to last long. There
are millions of cells dying in your body during this present minute and there’ll be millions more
dying the next minute. So in a real sense, most of us here are at least at that stage in our lives
where there are more millions of cells dying than are being renewed, so in a real way loved ones,
all of us here in this auditorium, probably maybe the youngest might be what 15, 16, 17? All of us
in this auditorium are really dying me and women in that sense, you know.
The physical and mental life that we have will certainly not last much longer than at least our
grandparents, 70 or 80 years. And Jesus says that to us this morning. That which is born of the
flesh is flesh. The physical and the mental life that you have is just not going to last very long
and so in a real way your days are numbered. And secondly Jesus says you won’t believe that. You
won’t believe that. That’s the way he put it to some people who refused to believe him. He said,
“They will not believe. They don’t want to believe and therefore they will not believe.” He says,
you think you were made for more than that, for better things than that. You think you were made to
do more than to go out like a light after 70 years here on earth.” And he says, “That’s why you
keep trying to parlay the attributes of physical and mental life you have into the qualities of
infinity that you would like to have, because there’s something inside you that keeps saying, ‘All
this surely was not created just to end like that after 70 years in nothingness.’” And so you keep
trying to avoid the limitations of the created life that you have, and you keep trying to escape
from the bonds of this earthbound existence at catching at some of the equalities of infinity. And
you will not believe that what you’ve got at the moment is not going to take you beyond this finite
world.
So really what you do is you feel you were made for stability and safety, and security. And isn’t
that true? There’s something inside all of us that makes us feel we were made for stability, we
ought to have stability. That’s why we’re so much in trouble at a time of depression or at a time
of war, we feel we were made for a secure, stable, safe life. And so what most of us are doing is
trying to use the cleverness, and the shrewdness of our minds to ensure that kind of life, and to
catch at that stability that is only possible in infinity. So we educate in order to survive, and
we get the education that will help us to survive, because that’s our first battle. Then we trade
in the degree for the best kind of financial reward we can get, and so we continue to live our
finite lives trying to produce the security and stability that we again, and again feel isn’t
possible.
So we keep trading up the cars, and trading up the houses with the thought in the back of our minds
that we can probably never trade them into absolute certainty but at least we should keep trying, we
should keep using the old mind to try and make ourselves secure and stable. And so we use our mind
at work to try to edge ourselves into a position of security in relationship to our colleagues or in
relationship to our rivals. And we keep trying to improve our investments to the point where we
somehow will get that security or stability. And we keep trying to build as cast iron life
insurance and medical insurance package as we possibly can. And yet all the time a fella like
Howard Hughes haunts us because there we see a fella that has built up more than we could possibly
ever hope to build up and yet he keeps himself in seclusion so that he can avoid the possibility of
any kind of disease or bacteria that would kill him.
And so we sense in the midst of all this using our minds to try and ensure the security, and
stability of infinite life, we still kind of feel like we can’t get it. And we kind of sense that
we were made for the serene peace and yet the overwhelming interest that you would be able to have,
in we always think of it as some fancy island which would be a combination of Walden Pond and the
Arabian Knights. And we kind of think, “Yeah, somewhere in this life we’re supposed to experience
not only complete serenity and peace because that in itself will be boring, but it’s supposed to be
combined with a tremendous exhilaration and excitement that would keep our lives continually
satisfying.” And we kind of feel yeah, we were made for that, and so of course we try to produce it
and we try to use every experience, and every relationship we possibly can to produce this
combination of serene peace and overwhelming excitement. And yet somehow, however many people we
use and however many circumstances we try to manipulate for our own purposes we find that we don’t
have that serene peace, or that overwhelming excitement.
In fact, in some ways we find that we’re utterly frustrated about those things. And again, and
again we experience not serene peace and overwhelming excitement but even times like Thanksgiving
day when we find ourselves with the dear ones that we want to be with most, we find often that there
comes a sense of loneliness or a sense of desolation, a sense of not all that conviviality and
excitement of that relationship you felt you should have throughout your life. And it’s the same
loved ones you know with really what Milton used to talk about. Milton used to say, “I am born for
some great purpose,” and I don’t know that there’s any of us here however ambitionless we are that
hasn’t felt at some time, “Yeah, we were born for something special. We were put here for some
special purpose. We weren’t put here just to have our name on a gravestone. We weren’t put here
just to pass like a ship in the night through this world and nobody noticed that we were ever here.
We weren’t put here just to be a number, we were put here to be significant in some way. Somebody,
some way, somewhere, somehow must know we’re here, must see that we’re achieving something. We’re
not just one of a mass of billions and billions of people.”
And so you know we work ourselves to death trying to will ourselves into some position of importance
and so we throw our weight around in the office, and we throw our weight around at home, and we
throw our weight around in school hoping that somehow we’ll will ourselves into a place where people
can’t just ignore us, they have to recognize us and appreciate us.” And yet at the end of the day
we’re just startled by the few people that remember Jack Benney, and he died just this past year.
And if it weren’t for the commission that keeps on bringing up the morbid business of how he died,
really how many think of John F. Kennedy? And we’re amazed at how the Picassos and the Roosevelt’s,
and the Jack Benney’s of this world can pass off the face of the earth and it’s amazing how few
people think of them afterwards.
And loved ones, Jesus says to us, “That’s because what is born of the flesh is flesh,” and what
you’re trying to do is take the finite, limited attributes of your created physical and mental life
and you’re trying to produce all the liberty of eternity, all the freedom of an infinite life even
though all that you’ve got is a limited finite life. A physical and mental life that can never
imitate anything but that life. And so Jesus says, “Really, you can never be anything different
from what you are because the life that you possess is what ties you down to that and all that
you’re becoming with all your efforts is a little monster because you’re trying to bring everything
and everybody to the place where you somehow can experience the infinite happiness, and serenity,
and peace, and exhilaration, the tremendous since of significance, the great sense of security and
stability, that you could only experience if you had an infinite life inside you. And you’re really
using everybody to try and create this and so you’re becoming a massive, hedonistic, manipulating,
domineering, ruling monster and that’s really what you’ve become.
An egotistical monster that is trying to manipulate all this created life around you so that somehow
you will experience some of the qualities of an infinite life and Jesus says it cannot be and yet he
really does bring us good news loved ones because he says those yearnings that you have inside you
for serenity and peace, for exhilaration and excitement, those yearnings that you have inside you to
have some eternal significance, those yearnings you have inside you to have at last a security, and
a stability that you don’t have to continually fight for. Those yearnings that you have to be
something other than a little wild animal in the forest looking around to see who’s going to attack
him next. Those yearnings that you have were put in you by your Creator because he actually made
you for that kind of life. But this is not it.
And loved ones, Jesus is just so strong in that. He just emphasizes repeatedly, “No, this life that
you have at the present time is not that life.” And he says, “The life that you’re trying to use is
that physical life there.” And at times when you try to manipulate your time by chemicals, or you
try to manipulate your emotions by stimulations, at times you even use a mental life in there. But
Jesus says, “There is within you another part that is deeper,” and it’s the part that will satisfy
all those yearnings, and it’s the part that is made for infinity.” But he says really to us, with
almost all of you, it’s absolutely dead. That part of you is dead. And until that part comes
alive, you’re going to experience continual frustration trying to do on this level and this level
what alone can be done in here by this infinite part of you.
And he says that part of you can only come alive if the maker who made you brings it to life through
the power of his own spirit life. Through the power of his own infinite eternal life that runs
through his own being. Only he can bring this part alive. That’s why Jesus said those words.
You’ve all been born once. You’ve all been born of the flesh and you got from your mum and dad
physical and a mental life. But you have to be born anew. You have to be born all over again. The
maker of the world never meant you to make do with that life. He intends you to be born again. And
that’s why Jesus said to that teacher Nicodemus, “Look, you have to be born anew all over again.”
You have to start all over again. You have to be born from above. And the only way you will be
born from above inside in your spirit is by God’s Holy Spirit coming in and regenerating, activating
your own spirit and making it alive.
Then when that happens, that spirit of life from your maker will begin to work out through every
part of your personality and it will impart to your mind here, a right perspective and a sense of
where you fit into God’s plan for developing the world. That spirit will pour out through your
emotions and will impart to you all the excitement, and the serenity, and the peace of an infinite
intercourse and friendship with the eternal being behind the universe, and will be utterly
satisfying to your emotions. The Holy Spirit will pour out through your will and will begin to
direct you as to what you should do in this life so that at last you’ll have a real sense of
significance because you can see where you fit into the Maker’s plan.
And loved ones, that was his plan, that you would allow his Spirit to bring you alive in your spirit
and then his lights would begin to pour out through you to the rest of the world. And the one great
obstacle to that is that this physical and mental personality of yours has become utterly unfitted
for that. This physical and mental personality has become a domineering, manipulating, egotistical,
self-gratifying, self-deifying monster. And all it does and all its been able to do for years is to
take in from the world, to take in from the world trying to create a sense of eternity within by
sponging from other people on the outside. And of course, while that personality remains like that
God dare not give you such an infinite power as the Holy Spirit.
This Holy Spirit is the person he used to make the ocean and the mountains. It’s this Holy Spirit
that holds all the protons and neutrons together here in our universe. It’s this Holy Spirit that
makes the whole universe work at this present time. It’s this Holy Spirit that keeps the pressure
right here on the surface of the earth so that we don’t cave in and we don’t blow up. It’s this
Holy Spirit that keeps the sun in the right position. God dare not give the power of that infinite
Holy Spirit to you with a personality that would use it only to gratify and deify itself, and to
dominate the rest of the universe.
And so loved ones, unless that personality of yours with all its selfishness, and all its
self-deification can be destroyed, God cannot give you the Holy Spirit. And yet, that’s what you
and I most need. We need this infinite spirit of life. It doesn’t matter how many drugs we take,
it doesn’t matter how much alcohol we take, it doesn’t matter how much money we amass in the bank
account, it doesn’t matter how fast a car we get, it doesn’t matter if we go on vacation every other
week, it doesn’t matter what we do, we are never going to satisfy the infinite yearnings that have
been planted inside of us. Loved ones, you’re demanding too much from your husband. You’re
demanding too much from your wife. You’re demanding too much from your employees or your employer,
they cannot produce in you these things that only the infinite spirit of God can produce and that
can only come into you if that personality is destroyed and that’s what happened in Jesus on
Calvary.
That’s what it means when the Bible says, “You’re old self, your whole personality was crucified
with Christ.” All that mess with all its domineering selfishness was destroyed in Jesus on Calvary
in a supra spacial supra temporal miracle. And the fact is because God is eternal and could destroy
you 1900 years ago even though you’re alive today, because he is infinite he is able to do this
today. That’s really what it means you see.
Maybe you’d look loved ones, at just some of the things that happened on Calvary. It’s Psalms
22:16. Psalm 22:16, this is one of those Psalms you know, that in an amazing prophetic way tell
what Jesus was saying in his own heart on the cross, “Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of
evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet—I can count all my bones—they stare and
gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots.” “They have
pierced my hands and feet.”
Loved ones, your hands have been used so often to gratify yourself that God could not entrust the
Holy Spirit to such hands. Your hands have been used so often to get your own way that those hands
cannot be used by this Spirit of God that is used only to express love and to give. That’s why your
hands were miraculously destroyed in Jesus. Loved ones, that’s the only reason God is able to even
consider giving you the Holy Spirit because your hands were pierced in Jesus’ hands. Those feet of
yours that have so often gone to the wrong place, those feet that have so often been used to get
what you wanted for you. Those feet could not be used by the Spirit of God.
That’s why when Jesus died you died. That’s why the Bible says, “We judge that if he died for all
then all died.” Your feet were destroyed in Jesus on Calvary. That’s what it means loved ones,
when the Bible says, “God made him to be sin who knew no sin.” God actually put all your
independence, and all your desire for self into Jesus and destroyed it there. And because of that,
he’s able to give the Holy Spirit to anyone who will receive that Holy Spirit. And so loved ones,
that’s really it.
God offers you, this morning, the Spirit of his own infinite life and if you want it you have to do
two things: you have to accept by faith the destruction of that inturned personality of yours, that
personality that has cared for itself for so long, that personality that wants its own way whatever
it costs anybody else, you need to accept the death of that old personality with Jesus; and you have
to be willing for that.
In other words, you have to stop living for yourself. You have to stop turning in on yourself. You
have to stop referring every event, and every situation, and every job opportunity, and everything
anybody asks you to do to yourself and whether it’s going to benefit you, whether it’s going to make
you happy, you have to once and for all say, “I’m finished with that. It’ll leave me nowhere
anyway, but above all God it’s against your will for me. So today I’m accepting that you destroyed
that inturned personality of mine on Jesus on Calvary and I accept that and I’m willing for that.”
Loved ones, you have to turn from self. You have to take self off the throne of your own life and
you have to give yourself to God and say, “Lord God, I’ve lived for myself these years and it’s a
mess. I’m prepared now to live for the purpose for which you made me, for you.” And secondly, you
have to receive the Holy Spirit by faith. You have to say, “Lord, you promised that you’d give the
Holy Spirit to those who ask. Jesus said that, ‘How much more will your heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to them who asked.’ Lord you promised that. I receive you Holy Spirit to be all that I
need in my present life, all that my Father wants me to have.” Loved ones, that’s it, that’s what
Jesus said and that’s what it is to be born of God if you do that, or to be born again.
It’s a lesser thing to call it becoming a Christian. Really, that’s our name for it these days.
Jesus would have said, “It’s entering into reality. It’s coming free at last. It’s being liberated
from yourself. It’s at last entering into all the aspirations that my Father planted inside your
heart. So loved ones, really it’s up to you, you know. I would ask you from my own experience, I
would ask you not to wait for some emotional experience, really. I didn’t have it. My wife didn’t
have it. Many of us here hadn’t a great emotional experience, if you understand what I’ve explained
to you about Jesus’ ideas for your life, then you should just take the step now.
Just in a minute or two I’ll say let us pray and you should just take the step. But you can see
what it means, it means turning from living for yourself and it means depending on this Holy Spirit
to produce in you the kind of life that your Maker wants you to have. And of course, anybody it
doesn’t matter whether you’re a skeptic or not, anybody here knows the one that knows how to run the
factory is the one that made the factory. It’s just common sense that the God who made you knows
the kind of life that will be fulfilling for you.
So loved ones you’ve got what I said now, if you’re not what people call a Christian, that name can
mean a lot of things but, if you’re not what people call a Christian but the big thing is you know.
You know because some of you have talked with me and you know where you are, if you haven’t taken
this step I say you should take it this morning. If you say to me, “Well pastor, why take a
definite step?” Loved ones, God answers only faith. Really.
I tried to get into it by osmosis, I tried to drift into it. You can’t. You have to take a
definite step, truly, truly. I think – I don’t know quite why it is, with me I think the old mind
was so much king that I think God wanted me to declare I’m going out on a limb here, it’s a
reasonable limb, but I’m going out on a limb expecting somebody else to do something. I felt so
much it was all in my own control in the past. Lord, as an expression of my trust in you I’m going
to trust you to do this thing I don’t even know what it is. I don’t even know if I’ll feel any
different. I don’t know what it is, but I know these things that you’ve spoken about this morning
are what I know in my life and I need and I’m going to take the step.
So loved ones, I’d really encourage you just to take a step today, this morning. I’ll help you in
the prayer if that’s of any use, but really if you’re real with God this morning yourself that’s all
you need it doesn’t matter what words you use. Let us pray.
Lord God, some of us here hardly know how to talk to you, or how to express this, but all of us
Lord, know what your son has said and it does ring in our own hearts because our own lives have not
been very satisfying, and we have tried to somehow wind these attributes that we have here on earth,
wind them up to the nth degree to try and produce some kind of satisfaction, or sense of infinity.
But Lord, we know that it has not worked. And Lord God, what your son Jesus has said makes sense to
us, that we were made for something other than our names to be put on a gravestone. We were made
for something other than few to remember us for a few years.
And Lord God, we want to get into the main stream of the plan that you have for our lives. So Lord,
we bring before you now our own selfish life. Lord, we bring before you all the things that we have
done to try and get satisfaction. We bring before you Lord, all the people that we have used. We
bring before you all the circumstances that we’ve tried to manipulate for our own good. Lord, we
see how we are like frightened little foxes in the forest, always on the lookout, always filled with
flight or fright. Lord God, we bring this selfish egotistical hedonistic life before you and Lord,
we don’t know how you bring about its death but we believe that Jesus did rise from the dead and we
believe that what he says did happen, that we were somehow in the infinity of eternity, crucified
with him.
Now Lord, we accept that and we’re willing to be made real now in us today. Lord, we ask you now to
make this real in us, to make real in us this death to self once and for all so that we’re finished
with this living for ourselves, so that it is as if we’re no longer alive. We’ve no longer
ourselves to look after. Lord, we want to let this self and all its parasitism be buried in the
tomb with Jesus, and Lord we want that stoned rolled over it today for good. Lord, we trust you
now, we know that you will roll that stone over if we will let you. So Lord, we confess to you all
the sin that fills our life. One-by-one we name them to you and we tell you that we’re finished
with them, we’re turning from that kind of existence. With or without the Holy Spirit Lord, we’re
determined to get finished with this kind of life that we’re living.
Lord, we’re putting the bank account into your hands, all these other things that we’ve held onto
and tried to multiply into some kind of goldmine, we’re putting it all into your hands Lord. We’re
letting this old self die. And now Father, you have promised that you’ll give the Holy Spirit to
them that ask. Father, it’s your life that we need so we ask you now for the Holy Spirit. Holy
Spirit, will you come in now and make us alive inside? There’s been a great hole in the center of
our lives that has been emptied for years, will you come in and make it alive?
We don’t even need to know that it’s alive Holy Spirit, we don’t even demand that we be conscious of
it, we are willing to trust you. Will you energize our spirits and make us alive with God’s life?
And will you live out through us God’s love, and God’s direction, and God’s rule? Holy Spirit, we
would take a step now and thank you for coming in. Thank you that you are faithful and that
tomorrow and Monday morning we can bank on you for direction as to what we should do at each moment.
We thank you.
Is Jesus God’s Son? - REVIVAL
The Word Became Flesh
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
One of the situation comedies on television this season that has not bombed yet, but is just on the
edge is Sanford & Son , you know it, Sanford & Son. And the two littlest guys several weeks ago were
talking to the neighbor who was kind of a traditional God fearing red blooded American. And the
little guys of course, were very skeptical about the existence of God. And this poor neighbor was
doing his best to give all the best answers, and at last of course, the little guy said, “Okay,
okay, if he exists what does he look like?” And the neighbor kind of thought for a while and he
said, “Well, he’s very old and he has a long white beard, dressed in a long white gown.” And they
kind of sensed that this was an opportunity to get some inside information and they therefore went
on and said, “What kind of car does he drive?” And the poor old neighbor thinks for a while and
says, “Well, I don’t know but if I was him I’d drive a white Lincoln Continental.”
And you know, when we are driven into thinking, “I wonder what God is really like?” You do find
your mind turning into that kind of thinking, don’t you? And yet, you know it’s silly, but you kind
of think a wee bit in those terms. And down through the centuries that’s what has happened loved
ones. Man has varied from one extreme of God as a kind of old, indulgent, nodding, distant, man
looking down from them from a great distance, varied from that kind of picture of God to the other
kind of cruel, tyrannical, unforgiving being that is pictured in the Hindu God Shiva. And down
through history man has varied from one in extreme to the other in trying to picture God.
Man has always had the sense to know that there must be somebody as personable as himself to have
created the universe with all the order ad design that is in it. But when it came to picturing what
that God was like, he’s varied from making the God too transcendent, that is somebody that was too
distant, too separated, too much apart from us to somebody who was too imminent, too much part of
us, too much in the middle of us. In other words, at times man has pictured God in the way the
neighbor did picture him, an old gentlemen living in heaven, looking at us from a great distance,
and not absolutely sure what’s happening to us.
But at other times man has tried to worship even nature itself as the bringer of rain, and the
bringer of crops, and the bringer of heat, and light, even worshipped nature in the form of
conscience as the bringer of morals, and the one who decides what is the difference between right
and wrong. But whatever way we have pictured him there has always been great mystery about it. All
of our ideas have been shrouded in uncertainty. One religious leader would say this, another
philosopher would say that, one dad would explain it this way to his son, another mum would explain
it this way. One myth would describe God this way, another myth would describe him another way, and
it all has been shrouded with mystery and uncertainty so that countless millions of us have gone
into death not really sure what the person would be like that we’d face on the other side.
Now loved ones, 1981 years ago all that mystery disappeared. 1981 years ago the Son of the Maker of
the world, the Son of our God came into our earth as a human being and suddenly all the mystery was
cleared away. Suddenly all the questions, “What would God do if he was in this situation,” were
answered. Suddenly, all the vague philosophical concepts to explain the existence of the one true
God were wiped away and settled. Suddenly all the opinions, all the vague generalizations
disappeared in the body of a little baby in Bethlehem. Suddenly no man or no woman had to be in
doubt about the kind of person they would meet, and the kind of person they would have to give
account to at the end of their lives. Suddenly all the questions were settled about what our God
was like, 1981 years ago when God became one of us and we saw in absolute detail the way he would
talk to certain people, the way he would walk, the way he would act, the way he thought. That’s
really the heart of Christmas. That’s the meaning of it.
That now we know what God is like. Now none of us need be in any doubt what the person who made us
is really like. I think a lot of us respond at that point by saying, “Well, how can you be sure?”
We admit Confucius was a great philosopher, we admit Mohammad was a great religious teacher, we’ll
admit that Buddha was a great leader, but we’ve never called them God. Now why do you think it’s
reasonable to call Jesus God? To regard Jesus as the special unique only begotten Son of our
Creator in a way that we are not his sons? Why is it reasonable to call Jesus God, or to believe
that obscure pheasant who was born in Bethlehem, and spent all of his life in such a very small area
of the world’s surface, and talked to so few people, why should we believe that that obscure little
pheasant who was a carpenter was really the Son of the Maker of the universe?
Well loved ones, there are all kinds of reasons. He really did talk like God. If you think of it,
you know, he really did talk like God. When he was 12 year old, and his parents found that he was
no longer with him on the way home from Jerusalem, they went back to the city and they found him in
the temple, and they asked him what he was doing, and he said, “Didn’t you know I’d be about my
Father’s business?” Now his Father’s business was carpentry, but he was discussing theological
issues with the doctors in the temple. And Mary did not strangely immediately say, “You’re a fool.”
But she just pondered those things in her heart, because obviously this little boy was sufficiently
different from other little guys to make her sense there was something different about him besides
what she had observed at the birth. And it went on like that.
He didn’t teach like the Pharisees, “Well I think this, Josepheus taught this, Moses taught this,
but I think that.” He taught with authority. He taught with a sense, “This is the way it is.” So
he talked with the kind of authority that you would expect the maker of the universe to have. Oh,
there are other things, you know, if you’d like to look at them. Look at Matthew 16 loved ones,
because that’s something that makes this man very different from all others. If you just open up
that chapter I’ll explain it to you before we look at the verse. It’s Matthew 16, every other
philosopher or religious teacher sets his teaching up here, says, “Don’t look at me look at the
teaching.”
I think every one of us, we do it ourselves, don’t we? We say, “Look, don’t look at me I’m not the
important thing. It’s the truth that’s important.” That’s the way every human being act. Now,
this man pointed out that his teaching is not the important thing, it’s him that’s important. I
mean, that is hideous. Either he is an absolute megalomaniac, or this is really true. But, he did
treat himself differently loved ones, to the way ordinary human beings treat themselves as
authorities.
Now, you have it in Matthew 16:15, “He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’” And he
pressed on that, you see. Another person would have said, “Ah, it doesn’t matter who I am it’s the
teaching that’s important.” But he said, “Who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter replied, ‘You are
the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona!
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.’” He obviously
talked, you know, as if the Creator of the universe was his special Father and he obviously
encouraged other people to feel that way about him, and he put himself above his teaching. And you
know, he claimed attributes for himself that only God has. He claimed attributes of eternity for
himself that only God has. He talked about seeing himself as seeing God. He said, “If you’ve seen
me you’ve seen my Father.” He said, “If you’ve received me you’ve received my Father.”
Now loved ones, this obscure pheasant was born in Bethlehem 1981 years ago, claimed that he was the
Son of the Creator of the universe and he talked as if he were. Now that’s the first reason I think
why you have to consider the possibility that he was. Because I think the next step is that many of
us say, “Well, the psych wards are full of such people.” The psych wards are full of people who are
making all kinds of claims like that and the world has been full of gurus down through the centuries
who have tried to draw everybody’s attention to them so there’s nothing different about that.
That’s why loved ones, I think you have to examine the claims and you have to determine, “Alright,
was this man a liar? Did he know that he was not divine? Did he know that he was not the only
begotten Son of the Maker of the universe, but he deliberately deceived all of us in order to lend
authority to his teaching?” You have to decide, you know, is that it? Was he a con man who lied to
the whole world about himself?
Now, do you see the logical difficulty you get into? Do you see the irrational approach you get
into if you believe that? There is not one philosopher in the world who does not say that this
Jesus was not the greatest ethical teacher in the world. There’s not one person. Huxley – British
cynic that he is, he admitted, “Yes, this was the greatest ethical teacher in the world.” Mohammad,
other great teachers will say, “Yes, Jesus is the greatest ethical teacher in the world.”
Loved ones, how can he be the greatest ethical teacher in the world if on the central point of his
teaching his own identity he lied? You cannot respect his ethical teaching at all points and then
say, “Yeah, but he lied about the central most important point that he taught us.” You cannot do
it. It’s an illogical impossibility. You either have to say, “If he lied about that then all the
rest is untrue and does not work in this life,” or you have to say, “All the rest is higher than any
other man who ever taught us.” And therefore, we have to believe if he had such wisdom as that, as
produced that kind of ethical teaching, then he must be honest on the central point of his teaching
his own identity as the Son of the Maker of the universe.
In other words, it’s very hard to believe that he is a liar. Was he a lunatic? Was he a
megalomaniac? Was he another Hitler, or another Moon with that unification church? Was he another
man who wanted to make himself better than everybody else? Was he in fact, insane? And it’s really
hard to believe it, isn’t it? His life is a pattern of sanity. His life has none of the
abnormality or imbalance that schizophrenics would have, or that megalomaniacs would have. In fact,
C. S. Lewis you remember, points out that no one has been able to explain how a megalomaniac could
produce teaching that is so sublime, and so true, and so profound.
His life just isn’t that of a lunatics. And really loved ones, if he is not a lunatic, and he is
not a liar, you really have very little left. You have to determine is this man really the Son of
God? He is really what he says he is? I think some people will say, “Oh, well he’s a legend.” But
for a legend to have developed you need time. Some people will say, “Ah yeah, what we have in the
New Testament is not really Jesus as he existed. That’s Jesus touched up with a lot of
exaggerations that his leaders added in order to lend authority to their position.” But loved ones,
for a legend to develop you need time. Time for all the people to die who were alive during that
man’s lifetime. Otherwise, if you begin to write exaggerations about him they just begin to
contradict those exaggerations and say, “It’s not true. We were alive then.”
Now of course, the time was not available. There is not a great gap of time between the time that
Jesus lived and the first writings we have about him. Galatians was written in 48 AD. That’s 18
years after Jesus died. There must have been many eyewitnesses alive who knew Jesus who read these
accounts of his life and could simply say they’re true or they’re untrue. Loved ones, really all
you’re left with is that this man really was the Son of the Maker of the universe, that that’s
really who he was. And you know, even his claims, and his talk, you can get away with claims or
talk even though we examine them this way analytically. But what you can’t get away from is his
acts. He really did have power over nature, and over sickness, and disease.
He fed 5,000 people with a few loaves and fishes. He stilled a raging storm. He made water into
wine. He raised the widow’s son. He raised the centurion’s daughter. He raised Lazarus from the
dead. He obviously had the kind of powers over the world that you would expect the one who had made
the world to have. So, his power of sickness, and over nature and disease is consistent with his
claims that he is in fact, the one by whom all these things were made. It certainly dealt with the
things around us as if he had made them. And then you know, if you examine his own character, there
is just no life that has been lived like his.
Ah, somebody puts it this way, a man called Muggeridge tries to summarize it and points out that
there has been no human being who has ever been as perfect as this man Jesus. He just is above
everybody. Mohammad’s life was torn with acts of vengeance, and fights, and strife. Old Confucius
admitted that he had many faults. This man Jesus actually stood in front of a group of people and
said, “Which of you convicts me of sin?” And nobody pointed sin out in his life, nobody said
anything.
The great saints, and sages, and mystics will all admit that the deeper we have gone the more
conscious we are of our own sin, the more conscious we are of moral failure. Loved ones, he had no
sense of moral failure. But not only that but the people that lived closest to him agreed with
that. People like Peter and John said, “Listen, there is no sin in him.” Even the centurion who
was his enemy who crucified him said, “This surely was the Son of God.” Even Pontus Pilate whose
job was to find out something wrong in order to get rid of him said, “Behold I find no fault in this
man.”
So loved ones, his own life and his claims to sinlessness were backed up and reinforced by other
people. And here is the way Muggeridge has described it. “His zeal never degenerated into passion
nor his consistency into obstinacy, nor his benevolence into weakness, nor his tenderness into
sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and unsocialability or undue
familiarity. His self-denial from moroseness. His temperance was free from austerity. He combined
childlike innocence with manly strength absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the
welfare of man. Tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin commanding
dignity with winning humility. Fearless courage with wise caution. Unyielding firmness with sweet
gentleness.” It’s the kind of human character you would try to imagine if you were trying to create
a perfect being, and that’s what this man Jesus, this obscure pheasant who was born in Bethlehem was
like.
Finally, maybe the most powerful thing is of course that many through controlled breathing while
apparently being buried alive have claimed to come alive again after being dead. There have been
many con men who have done that kind of thing. There are gurus and mystics in India today who can
give an appearance of having been dead and having come to life. Their fame of course never gets far
beyond the boundaries of their own village and if it ever comes to light in the world as a whole,
their claims are very quickly exposed by just a little bit of analysis and a little bit of
confirmation from eye witnesses.
But loved ones, this man continually repeated that he would be crucified and that on the third day
he would rise from the dead, and he did it. And there is no historic incident that is so reliably
documented as this resurrection of this man Jesus. No historical incident has been so analyzed from
a literary, and historical, and legal point of view as has his resurrection from the dead. No two
facts have been so often questioned and so often subjected to detailed criticism, and discussion,
and debate as have the twin facts of the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances. And after all
that, over 1900 years the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is still the most solid historical
incident that we have available to us from first 500 years, 1000 years of our era.
Loved ones, it doesn’t matter what way you turn on that one, you cannot get any other answer except
the resurrection is a far easier explanation of the whole event then all the explanations we can
suggest or substitute for it. You try to go that swoon theory, it falls to the ground. It’s
ridiculous to believe that he could have swooned and then could have come alive so tremendously and
powerfully alive after bleeding in a dang cold tomb for several nights, and then come so alive that
he convinced his followers and 500 people at one time that he was more alive than he had ever been
before. And was able not only to come alive but to appear in different places at great distances
from one another.
It’s just foolishness when you start arguing the Romans stole the body. If they stole the body all
they had to do was produce it to kill the Christian witness once and for all. If the disciples
stole the body then you had to have them dying for something they knew to be a lie which is an
ethical impossibility. People will die for what they think is true but they will not die for what
they know to be a lie. They will not lead their children into crucifixion for what they know to be
a lie. It doesn’t matter which way you go loved ones, you have to accept finally that the only
explanation of the resurrection is the resurrection. You can’t argue they went to the wrong tomb,
how did they all keep going to the wrong tomb day, after day, after day.
You go to the resurrection appearances and you try to apply the psychological laws of hallucinations
to them and it doesn’t work. A hallucination must be subjective. He was seen by about 500 brethren
at one time and by groups of people in the upper room. Hallucinations have to be seen by people who
want to see them. On the road to Emmaus you remember, the two men said, “And we thought that this
was he who should have redeemed Israel.” They had given up hope of him coming alive again. They
had no hope of him coming alive. They felt that bit doesn’t come true. Hallucinations have to
appear over a long, long period of time. His appearances took place over 40 days and then they
disappeared completely. You just cannot explain away the appearances on the ground of
hallucinations. The psychological laws are not similar.
Loved ones, it doesn’t matter how you go on this little pheasant who was born in Bethlehem 1981
years ago, you’re driven to the conclusion that this was really our God come here in a human body
and that if we want to know what our God is like you just look at this man Jesus and he is God. And
loved ones, that’s it really. The final proof of the existence of God is this little baby that was
born 1981 years ago in Bethlehem and that’s really what it means that the word became flesh, and
that’s how we come to believe in God. And the amazing thing is that your friends and relatives, and
your colleagues at work, and my colleagues and friends will only come to believe that there is a God
if the word again becomes flesh in your life. That’s it.
Unless God sends the Spirit of his Son into your heart so that your life reflects the beauty of this
life, your friends and colleagues are hearing words, words, words, and talk they know is cheap and
they listen to it day in and day out. Loved ones, unless the word becomes flesh in you all you give
to your friends and your relatives is talk. And of course, what God wants this Christmas is for his
Son to be born in you in a fuller way. There isn’t one of us loved ones, there isn’t one of us here
who does not need Jesus more alive in us this coming year than he was last year. You cannot live on
the degree to which he was alive in you last year this next year. God requires that you allow his
Son to be fully formed in you in a fuller and more complete way. The only way it can happen is if
the Holy Spirit conceives this Jesus in you as he conceived him in Mary. And if you say to me,
“Well, what do we do?” Loved ones, there’s just one condition, you say what Mary said, “Be it unto
me according to thy word.”
You say to God this morning, “Lord God, I do want my relatives, I do want my friends, I do want my
colleagues to have the same opportunity of seeing that there is a God like you as I have had. So
Lord, look at my life, will you change it as you want and I’m willing for you to change it, and I’m
willing to change it myself as you want so that Jesus can be born in me.” Now loved ones, look the
problem is they see you. That’s it. They see you and me with all our inconsistencies, and all our
bluff, and all our hypocrisy, and all our dishonesty, they see us and they hear us talking this big
talk about God and how we’re Christians, and how we believe in God and love ones, they are no more
fools than we are.
They just say, “Haw-hum,” and they’re polite to you, you know they’re nice to you and you’re their
friend and they don’t want to break up a friendship so they’re polite to you. but loved ones, they
will not believe until they see your life like Jesus’ life. And the only way that will take place
is if you say to him, “Be it unto me Lord, according to your word. Whatever you want to do with my
life Lord, here it is do it. However you want to change it, you want me to stop being dishonest in
business Lord, that’s it I’ve finished with that. Jesus come in and be your own honest self in my
business life. You want me to stop being dishonest and lying at school in order to establish my
reputation? Lord, I’m finished with it. You come in and be your own honest pure self so that they
can see God. You want me to stop sidestepping on income tax? Alright Lord, I’ll stop it. You come
in and be your own honest self.”
Loved ones, the world is dying for a side of Jesus and each one of us here in this auditorium is
able to give them that side. But it does mean that you have to be willing for Jesus to come in and
be himself in you and let him change your life. I really just pray – I really – well, the words
aren’t strong enough you know. I cannot tell you how strongly I pray and wish that you would let
Jesus be formed in you. Really. And just let your life be run and ruled by God the way he wants so
that Jesus could appear in you. That’s what the miserable old word needs, you know. Let’s pray.
Dear Father, we know this in our hearts but Lord, somehow Satan or somebody has deceived us into
thinking that well, we can never be a carrier of Jesus. So Lord, many of us have settled for less,
settled for doing our best. Lord, we recognize that doing our best has given us an escape, we’ve
been able just to do as much as we wanted, but Lord, we see that it’s just a hypocritical mess and
our friends, and our colleagues at work and at school have failed to believe in God because they
can’t believe in us because they know our Father, that if we really believed that Jesus was you we
would let him live in our lives and take over our lives. We’d change our ways.
Father, we would ask you as we come to the end of this year to show us what it means for us to say,
“Be it unto me according to your word.” And Lord, we would ask that during this Christmas week you
would show us what it means or us to have Jesus born in us. Lord, we want our friends, and our
colleagues, and our relatives to be able to see him clearly, no longer shrouded with our miserable
halfhearted lives but see him clear, and clean, and pure, and plain. So Lord Jesus, we want to deal
with you this week and we want to ask you on Christmas morning to be born in us and Lord, we are
willing on that day to let all the miserable coating of dishonesty, and lying, and hypocrisy, and
selfishness fall away from us so that you can be seen as you really are in all your beauty. And a
word may become flesh in our lives for your Glory. Amen.
Sinning-Our Need for Redemption - REVIVAL
Is Jesus Your Personal Savior?
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
The most important thing we can do for each other this morning is to help each other to get into
heaven. Really, that’s it. Everything else we do for each other is kind of temporary but the most
important thing is that you yourself would get to heaven and so I’d like to spend the half hour
trying to help you get to heaven. You might say, “Well, that’s silly the way you describe God it’s
pretty obvious that he’s loving and he wants us all to get to heaven, and we’re all going to go to
heaven. It seems to me that there’s no reason why any of us would go anywhere else. I mean, it’s
pretty obvious that that old hellfire and brimstone stuff is old fashion religion of yesteryear and
so we’re all going to go to heaven anyway so really you have no great problem this morning.”
Well loved ones, there is a problem because the most perfect purist man that ever lived, the one who
has given us the most detailed information about our Creator that we human beings possess, he said
some things that just blow away that lovey dovey universalist idea that we’re all going to end up in
heaven any way, whatever we do in this life. And it’s very important for us to see that.
The dear man who gave us the best information that we have about the beyond because he, in fact,
went into the beyond and came back and told us, “It’s what I say. It’s all that I told you about my
Father.” He made it very plain that there is a place other than heaven and it’s important for us to
see it, you know, just to be honest and intellectually consistent this morning.
So, would you look at Matthew 5:22? Matthew 5:22, they’re words of course of Jesus because he is
the man that I mentioned. Matthew 5:22, “But I say to you that every one who is angry with his
brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and
whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.” And I know we have a tendency to
say, “But that was Jesus speaking to the Jews, you know, accommodating himself to the ideas that
were then prevalent among them, but he himself always spoke of love and kindness and he did not
normally use that kind of language.
Well loved ones, look at what Mark reported in his ninth chapter. Just if you flick over a few
pages to Mark 9:43 Mark 9:43, “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you
to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot
causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be
thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter
the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.”
Now, I don’t know if you’re like me but it was popular in our seminary to say, “Well, hell you know,
it’s the word Johanna, it really means a garbage dumb of some kind, and really it kind of means a
kind of purgatory maybe at the worst, you know. A place where you’ll go and you’ll be purged of the
sin that’s in you and then it will come to an end and then we’ll all end up in heaven. And some of
us go through our purgatory here on earth and some of us have to go through it then.” Well brothers
and sisters, it’s just hard you know. Greek scholar, Hebrew scholar, it doesn’t matter what you
are, you can’t get around those words in Mark 9:48. Mark 9:48, “Where their worm does not die, and
the fire is not quenched.” Hell, “Where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
Actually, we did our best, we modern scholars to get rid of that because you could look at the
footnote N at the bottom of the RSV, and do you see it’s the third footnote down there N, “Verses 44
and 46 which are identical with Verse 48 are omitted by the best ancient authorities.” So actually,
King James Version still has 44 and 46, but we got rid of two of them, but you couldn’t get rid of
48 because 44 and 46 are exactly the same as 48, “Where their worm does not die, and the fire is not
quenched.”
So brothers and sisters, you know, let’s keep away from the old general philosophizing, “Well, that
isn’t my God, you know. That isn’t a God I know.” Forget it, the God you know is the God that’s
presented here. There’s nowhere else to get a God except from the Bible and from Jesus. And the
fact is, that our dear Savior who showed such love to the woman caught in adultery said, “Listen,
it’s better to cut your hands off than to have two hands to go into hell where the worm does not die
and the fire is not quenched.” And loved ones, we need to see that, you know.
We need to see that hell is not really something that God has created, it’s something that we have
created. And this may all sound very strange to us modernists, but do you know that the
existentialists John Paul Sartre, one of the most modern thinkers that we have had, he says exactly
the same thing. Would you believe it? From his virtually agnostic atheistic position he says
exactly the same thing. He says that there is a hell that goes on forever, and ever. You know the
existentialists philosophy that Sartre espoused. He said, “What you do day-by-day declares what you
are.” He put it this way, he said, “You authentic yourself by your experience.”
In other words, every time you say a word, every time you do an act, you declare who you are.
Moreover, you become more what you are. So every time you do something the existentialists say you
become more what you really are. And of course Sartre said that the more you do those things and
the more you say those things, the more you become a character out of whom there is no exit. And so
he wrote a play which he called no exit where he described what he thought eternity was going to be.
And he put in one room, those of you who know the play will remember it, he put in one room a
lesbian, a card, and a murderer. And they talked for a while and wondered where the torturers were
and laughed and joked and then as they began to bicker, and argue, and criticize one another, and
tease one another, and joke with one another, and kept on and on, and began to fornicate, and began
to criticizes, they gradually realized that they were each other’s torturers. And then they looked
up at the electric light bulb, one light bulb in the room and they suddenly realized that it would
never go off. It would never go out. And they were stuck in that room with these other two people
forever and there was no relief. They would continue being what they had become in this life.
There’s an almost nightmarish lines in it you know, the man says, he’s speaking to the person who
brought them here, “He says, your eyelids, we move ours up and down, blinking we call it. It’s like
a small black shutter that clicks down and makes a break. Everything goes black, one’s eyes are
moistened. You can’t imagine how restful refreshing it is 4,000 little rests per hour, 4,000 little
respites, just think. So that’s the idea and to live without eyelids. “Don’t act a fool, you know
what I mean, no eyelids no sleep. It follows doesn’t it? I shall never sleep again. But then how
shall I endure my own company? Try to understand, you see, I’m fond of teasing, it’s a second
nature with me and I’m used to teasing myself, plaguing myself if you prefer. I don’t tease nicely
but I can’t go on doing that without a break. Down there I had my nights, I slept, I always had
good nights by way of compensation I suppose, and happy little dreams. There was a green field,
just an ordinary field, I used to stroll in it. Is it daytime now?” “Can’t you see the lights are
on?” “Ah yes, I’ve got it it’s your daytime. And outside?” “Outside?” “Damn it you know what I
mean beyond that wall there’s a passage, and at the end of the passage there’s more rooms, more
passages and stairs.” “And what lays beyond them?” “That’s all.”
But it is interesting isn’t it that an agnostic existentialist would actually present the same
picture of hell as something that goes on forever, and ever as Jesus has presented to us in this
book. And loved ones, that’s it hell is not something created by some terrible cruel God. Hell is
simply a dear Father giving us free will and allowing us to choose what we want, and giving us even
breath, and heartbeat, and blood circulation, and food to eat, and continuing to reign his reign
upon us and give us the sunshine even as we exercise our free wills to curse him, and to oppose him,
and to destroy him. And hell is a dear Father giving us the free will to continue to choose this,
to decide that, until we gradually become the kind of character and person we want to become. And
then, at that point the Bible says, “Then comes the judgment. Death and after that the judgment.”
Then God does take it as his right to separate those of us who have lived for ourselves and not for
him throughout our lives from those of us who have chosen to live for him and not for ourselves.
Only at that point does God separate the one from the other. But we determine what we are
day-by-day. And so it’s happening with us, you know, here. It’s happening with you. Every day
you’re making decisions, decision-by-decision, choice-by-choice, word-by-word, thought-by-thought,
act-by-act, you’re becoming a certain kind of person out of whom there is no exit. And you will
live with that person forever, and ever, and ever. And you may say, “Well, it’s unthinkable. It’s
nightmarish. But I know human nature well enough to realize that we’re a self-deceiving crew ad I
may think I’m alright and yet I may be doing the very thing you say. I may becoming a monster and I
don’t realize it because we are a self-deceiving group and how do I know? How can I know which way
I am going?”
Well loved ones, Jesus did give us the right story on that. He did tell us, he told us what way we
were going, and he explained it to his disciples and Paul who was one of his disciples or his
apostles you remember, wrote it in a letter to people at Rome and he said this, “All of us, every
one of us, all of us, have sinned. Every one of us so stop philosophizing, stop rationalizing, stop
wondering whether you’re going the right way or not. At this point in such a relativistic business
as judging where you are in regard to God, what you need is an object of judgment of some kind.”
And Jesus said that. Every one of us here in this room have sinned.
Not every one of us are criminals. Many of us haven’t committed any crimes. Not every one of us
are immoral. Many of us are not immoral. Not every one of us have filled our lives with vices.
Many of us have few vices, no crimes, very few immoralities. But what Jesus is saying is every one
of us have sinned. That is in the normal sense of the word sinned. James 4:17 says, “Whosoever
knows what is right to do and fails to do it for him it is sin.” That is sin. And Jesus says every
one of us in this room has known what was right to do at some point in our lives and has not done
it. And you see the first time you or I ever did that we were setting ourselves up against God.
See, I know the way you think, you think the way I think. I think, “Wait a minute, one little
thing, doing one little thing wrong, that’s not bad. Why if I do one little thing that I know is
wrong, that’s not a biggie. All of us are like that, we’re all in the same boat. We all do lots of
things that are wrong.” But do you see that’s the blindness of sin? These three dear people ended
up in this room with the electric light bulb in it and they couldn’t understand why they got there.
They’d never done anything wrong they thought. And that’s the subtlety of sin, it is a blinding
thing loved ones.
It makes us feel, “It’s no big thing to do once what you know is wrong. It’s no big thing.” But
that sin comes in and it blinds you, and it prevents you from seeing that when you choose that one
little thing that you knew God didn’t want you to do, you actually elevated your will above his.
You did loved ones, you know. There’s no way around that. I mean you and I can play it down and
make it a small thing, but you know that’s what we did. We actually said, “My will is more
important to me at this time than the will of the maker of the whole universe.” We elevated our
judgment above his. We did. I mean, actually isn’t it true to say we said we are going to be God
in this situation. We’re going to decide this is right for us. And at that moment, a whole vast
ocean of greyness and mist came between you and your God. That’s it.
You husbands and wives, or you know mums and dads, or sons and daughter, you know how at home you
suddenly discover after weeks, and months, that you don’t even know the other person, you know that?
You know how it starts off with a little niggle things and you just get a little distant, a little
more distant, a little more distant, and whether it’s your dad, or your mum, or your husband, or
your wife, or your son, or your daughter, suddenly you get down the line about six months or a year
and you realize, “I’m miles from this person. I don’t even know the way they think. I don’t know
the way they think. I don’t even feel what they are feeling.” And the other person is saying to
you, “But you don’t understand me. You don’t know what I am thinking. You don’t feel the way I
feel.” And suddenly you realize, “Yeah, that’s right I don’t. Yeah, we are we’re miles apart. I
don’t know what’s happened but we are.”
Now that’s what it is loved ones. That’s the little sin, the little doing something wrong, that
begins the huge separation that begins to open between you and God. That’s why Jesus said through
Paul, “The wages of sin is death,” you see. Not kind of something, you do something and the great
God clunks you and kills you. Not that. But as you disagree with him, as you do what you think
again, and again, little decision by little decision, little choice by little choice, gradually
death comes about and great separation opens up between you and your God until you no longer feel
with his heart. You no longer sense the pain that you’re inflicting on him by your running your own
life whatever way you want.
Until you get more and more insensitive to him to the point where you can no longer sense his
presence in your life at all and that’s the beginning of hell. That’s the beginning of hell in your
life. And whether it’s Sartre or whether it’s Jesus Christ, what you are is what you will be. You
will continue to be that forever, and ever, and ever. So loved ones, it applies, you know, if you
have an unclean mind you’ll live in that garbage for the rest of eternity. If you have a resentful
heart that resents people, and criticizes people, you’ll live in that for the rest of eternity.
You’ll live in that. If you are one who is always looking out for yourself, whatever it costs
anybody else, that’s what you will be for the rest of eternity. And so will all the other people
around you be doing the same thing.
Now that’s our situation, you see. The worse thing about sins are not the sins, the outward acts,
and the words, and the thoughts, the worse thing about the sins is the sin inside. That’s the
plague. That’s the plague. That emptiness in your heart, that feeling I can’t quite get through to
God, I can’t quite know where he is, I can’t sense what he wants. That’s the plague, that’s the
tragedy. The sins, you can sometimes stop them, you can sometimes avoid them but the sin is the
personality that you are becoming day-by-day that cannot change.
Now the gospel is that God took your personality as it is with all those unchangeable traits of
yours and asked his Son to take it through the experience of hell and the destruction of hell. And
when he came out the other side, because of his own righteousness, God asked him to recreate you
fresh and new. And that’s what was done and that’s the only way to be changed, and that’s the only
way to heaven. And it’s all meaningless to you if you have never thanked Jesus for that. He is
your personal Savior, in that you contributed something to the pain and agony of hell in his heart
that none of the rest of us did.
Some of that agony that he bore was for you, wasn’t for me, wasn’t for any the rest of us in the
room. There’s something of his death that you contributed pain to that none of the rest of us did.
There’s a piece of his sin that you bore that he didn’t bear for any of the rest of us. He is your
personal Savior but it’s meaningless and you’ll be untouched by it, and you’ll go to hell unless you
thank him personally for what he has done for you. That’s it.
Unless you go to him this morning and say, “Jesus, I have things in my life that will take me into
hell in this life and hell hereafter. Lord, thank you that you bore these things for me. I confess
them, I want rid of them Lord.” And you confess those sins whatever they are. And then you turn to
him and well, I needn’t tell you, what do you tell you don’t need instruction you either believe
this, if you believe it you know what to do. You know there’s only one thing you can say to him,
“Jesus that’s what I would have had to go through except I wouldn’t have come out the other side.
I’d be living forever in a hell burning against myself, and selfishness, and resentment. Lord
Jesus, thank you. I turn from this mess. I turn from it this day and I turn to you and Jesus, I
ask you to come in and now live your life again inside me.”
That’s how you make him your personal Savior, you see. Because the moment you acknowledge that he
has done what he has done then there’s a bridge built between you and he begins to be able to get
through to you, and you begin to receive words from beyond, and messages from your God. And you
begin slowly to build again a sensitive relationship between you and your dear Creator that was his
intention for you from the beginning.
So I’d just ask you, is Jesus your personal Savior? Is Jesus your personal Savior? Have you
acknowledged him personally? He already knows you intimately because he has born every one of your
sins in his own heart and born the pain for them. Have you acknowledged him. Have you made a
friendship with Jesus? That’s what it means loved ones, to be a Christian. It’s a personal
relationship with Jesus who has born the unbearable for you. Let us pray.
Dear Jesus, we would thank you for going to hell for us. And Jesus, we see it goes beyond us here
if we don’t thank you and confess to you the things that we know you died for in our lives. Savior,
we’d confess them to you personally and we’d repent of them personally to you. Jesus, we’re sorry
that we caused your death. We’re sorry that the dirt, and the monstrosity that we have created
within ourselves brought about your agony and pain. Jesus, we apologize and we repent. And Jesus
Christ, we ask you now to acknowledge us as we acknowledge you and Jesus, will you take over our
lives now?
Give us your spirit, and enable us now to live free from this personality that we have been forming
down through the years. Jesus, we believe that it was changed, we believe that you destroyed it in
yourself, and Savior, we ask you now to come into our hearts and to take over our lives, and to live
your life in us from this day forward so that we may live no longer for ourselves, but for you and
for our dear Father in heaven. And oh Lord God, we ask you to save us from the hell that we have
created and that we have made necessary by all of our self deification.
Savior, we thank you, thank you, thank you that there is heaven and thank you that we can be there
today with you and we can live there forever. Thank you Lord. 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 ever more. Amen.
Knowing God and Sinning - REVIVAL
Helps and Hindrances to the Spirit’s Witness
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Loved ones, would you turn in the Bible to Revelation 3:20? Most of us know these words they’ve
been repeated often since we were children to us. Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and
knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he
with me.” And most of us know that verse from at least Billy Graham evangelistic crusades and
probably most of us from hearing it at some of evangelistic service in our home church.
We all know that it’s the verse that’s quoted to indicate that God is willing to come into your
heart, and to take over your life, and to give you a sense of his favor and his love in your own
personal heart. And you probably, like me, have felt, “That’s what I need. That’s what I need.
Religion, I believe in it, I believe in Christianity, I believe in the sense of going to church, and
I believe in this Bible, but it isn’t real to me inside. It isn’t warm and real in my own heart,
and I don’t know how to get it real.” And maybe you’ve often come up Evangelistic Crusades or
Evangelistic services and you’ve repeated those words even to yourself, “Lord I know that you’re
saying to me, ‘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 eat with him, and him with me.’” And then you have gone through all kinds
of contortions, to try to open the door of your heart.
And I don’t know what you’ve gone through, but I know I myself went through all kinds of, what I
thought were mystical experiences. And I tried to imagine in my own mind, “The Lord Jesus, is here
in this room, he’s at this altar rail, he’s in this room were I’m speaking him and he’s right here
and he’s willing to come into my heart and all I have to do is ask him.” And I tried to imagine him
coming into my heart, and I was unable. Or, you tried singing the verses of the hymn, because you
thought, “If I can get the atmosphere of that meeting that I was at where I felt God stirring me, if
I can recapture that feeling that I had then I’ll know the warmth of God in my heart.” And yet it
has never come real for you. It has never really taken place.
And you may have actually come to this body for years and yet still it isn’t real to you. And I
would appeal to two groups of you actually, one of you who might be very intellectual and might have
to work out everything in the mind. And you might be in the position where saying, “It’s just not
for me, that kind of closeness that other people talk about. I happen to be more cold blooded than
other people. I’m just coldly intellectual, I think things through so I can expect the reality of
Jesus in my life that other people have, who aren’t quit as intellectual.”
Indeed, if you’re like some of us you might think actually it’s rather embarrassing to have anything
to emotional or warm inside and you might have decided, “I am an intellectual Christian. That’s
what I am. No, I don’t feel God particularly close to me, I don’t feel very great warmth of his
presence in my life, I don’t feel he is personally showing his favor to me, but I believe all of the
things that this book says, and I believe that he is not against me.” And you might be in that
position of many of us who are intellectuals, where we feel, “Well what we have is enough.
Admittedly it doesn’t seem to be exactly what other people have, who are real with God but it seems
to be enough.”
I speak also to those of you who are emotional, and you think to yourself, “Well, if I can only get
an emotional experience of Jesus in my heart that’s what I need.” And so you go from church, to
church, to church, to atmosphere, to atmosphere, trying to get that emotional experience that will
convince you that God is in your heart, that the Savior has come in to take over your life, and to
dwell there.
Brothers and sisters, none of that is right. None of that is right. None of those things are
right. That’s not where Jesus coming into your heart is at, at all. It has nothing to do with that
stuff, it has nothing to do with your emotionalism, nothing to do with your intellectualism. It has
nothing to do with mystical experience, it’s nothing to do with kind of a momentary experience, it
isn’t loved ones. It’s on a far more down to earth level than that, and the reality that loved ones
feel of Jesus in there heart, does not come from an emotional experience, or from an intellectual
experience, or from a mystical experience, it comes from a spiritual experience. And a spiritual
experience is real and down to earth, and plan, and simple. And it’s the one that the dear old Jew,
old [Wayne Swartz 5:50], he’s a dear fella, you’d love him, you know, it was so enjoyable meeting
him in Mexico. He’s a New Yorker, and just a happy old New York Jew, and just so outgoing, and so
happy, and so wears his heart on his sleeve. And he is the dearest guy, and I hope he’ll come up
someday and spend some time with us here.
It where Wayne Schwartz’s experience is, that’s it. That’s it. My wife is very different from
Wayne Schwartz, and yet she came through the same experience. I’m very different from Wayne
Schwartz, I came through the same experience. Anybody who comes to the point where they’re asking
Jesus in their heart, finally finds out that the reason they can’t experience the witness of the
spirit, and it’s the witness of the spirit that counts, it’s not emotionalism that counts, it’s not
intellectualism that counts, it’s the witness of the spirit, the reason they don’t experience the
witness of the spirit, that Jesus has come in, is because Jesus hasn’t come in, because there’s
something in there heart that won’t let him in. And that something is very plan, loved ones.
Now I’d just ask you to look at it in that newsletter it’s on page four and old Wayne puts it so
plainly and so straight that I couldn’t put it any better, and I don’t think any of us could. It’s
page four, it’s on the right hand column, about half way up the right hand column on page four, you
see where he says, “So Jews could and should believe in Jesus”, that page. “So Jews could and
should believe in Jesus. The only thing I needed to see then was another Jewish Christian, to
really see that everything was true. I was then convicted as far I could be. One night it finally
happened, I met a girl from the states who was Jewish, as I was, and she taught me about how 11
years ago she gave her life to Jesus. That was all I needed. That night, I asked the Lord to come
into my life. I’m not exactly sure what I thought would happen, but I knew that nothing did
happen.” And that’s what’s happened with a lot of us.
“I’m not sure what would happen but I knew that nothing did happen. I was sleeping at about five or
six AM and heard a voice telling me that if I would stop sinning I would have what I wanted.”
That’s it. “If I would stop sinning I would have what I wanted. It was so loud, so clear that it
woke me up.” Finally it became clear as to why nothing happened that first time I invited him in,
I was still planning on sinning.” Wayne used to cruise the beaches and pick up the girls, so he was
trying to continue the old life and yet ask Jesus in.
“It happened the first time I invited him in I was still planning on sinning. You can’t fool God so
what I was going to do was sin. What I wanted was Jesus. Before I had repented but not with a
heart ready to leave sin behind and God knew it. Very shortly after I made my decision to leave sin
behind and I prayed once again and this time boom, I received the Lord with the Spirit and all his
benefits and fruits: joy; peace; patience; love; and everything else that goes with it, Galatians
5:22. For the first time in my life I had real peace. Praise the Lord, I was now a reborn Christian
Jew. This happened on June 12, 1982 and now three years later I’m still amazed at the storehouse of
blessings and promises I’ve inherited, along with how many people are in need of Jesus to free
them.”
That’s it loved ones. That’s it. It’s not complex at all, it isn’t. It’s not a complicated thing
at all. If you’ve asked Jesus to come into your heart and nothing has happened, it’s only for one
reason. It’s not because you’re not emotional enough, it’s not because you’re not intellectual
enough, it’s not because you’re not mystical enough. It’s because you still plan on sinning. That
is it. God has convicted your heart about something that you should stop doing or something that
you should start doing and you are planning on going on doing what he has forbidden, or you’re
planning on going on doing what he has told you not to do. That’s it, you know.
I know it sounds hideous and I was offended by the whole thing. I felt I was a kind of intellectual
sophisticate in the university and I could not believe that God would be so ridiculous as to tie his
presence in my life to something as practical and down to earth as stopping being impatient with my
mother, or stopping being irritable, or stopping swearing. But God is. God is disgustingly down to
earth. God simply says to you, “Your sins made my Son’s death necessary. Your sins killed my Son.
I cannot give you my Son in your heart if you are still involved in putting names in his hands and a
spear in his side. That you have to stop. You cannot please the blood of Jesus and shed the blood
of Jesus at the same time.” That’s it loved ones.
In other words, you see what you’re doing you’re involved in a spiritual impossibility. It’s a
spiritual impossibility. You can’t ask the Savior from sin to come into your life and you continue
to practice sin. That’s it. So if you want Jesus in your heart, and you want God to be real in
your life, stop the sins that God has told you are in your life. That’s it. That’s it really. I
mean, you must have been – that hits anybody, it’s so simple and plain and the dear guy puts it in
such an unsophisticated way. He says, “I’m not sure what I thought would happen but I know nothing
did happen.”
He was a Jew, he knew nothing about all the stuff we had been brought up with for years, but he did
what we said he should do and nothing happened. God is faithful. God is faithful. God won’t let
anyone be deceived. And then God spoke to him and told him he had to stop sinning and when he
stopped sinning – he only had to plan to stop sinning. He only had to determine not to sin and the
whole thing became real in a moment. That’s it.
You know, he didn’t – Wayne Swartz hasn’t been at any evangelistic campaigns, he doesn’t know
anything about all the stuff we go through. He just knows that God is faithful, if you stop sinning
Jesus really does come into your heart. If you don’t stop sinning, you can ask him into your heart
but you don’t experience anything real, you just experience an emotional thing, or a reaffirmation
of your life.
Now brothers and sisters, I’d just make no apology for sharing that again. I mean, it doesn’t seem
to matter how long we are on the journey it always gets back to that. It doesn’t matter how long we
are or how saintly we all think we are, it gets back to the matter of stop sinning, and immediately
boom there comes a presence of God into your life that you could not believe. And it’s the same
with the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes in and fills you when you get rid of
the things that God has shown you are there.
So brothers and sisters I’d encourage you on this Father’s day, this first Sunday on campus in ’85,
if you have tried it before and it’s been kind of disappointing, or you’ve tried it before and it
doesn’t seem to have worked, would you examine your own life and I’d ask you is there any sin there
that you’re planning on continuing? And I’m saying to you will you stop it now? Will you just plan
not ever more to sin that sin. And if you’ll be real with your God he’ll be real with you.
Now, sooner or later you’ll have to be real with him. Sooner or later you will meet him and he will
expose those sins to you and to the whole world but then there will be no forgiveness possible. So,
you have to do it sooner or later. It’s just now you can do it to salvation. Then you will do it
to eternal damnation. So loved ones, will you do it now, will you stop it now whatever it is? Or,
whatever it is he’s been asking you to start, will you start it now? Will you correct the thing
now, will you change your life to align it with God’s will for you and he will immediately give the
witness of your spirit in his heart and you’re spirit and you’ll know God is there. You’ll know
he’s there. You will, you’ll know he’s there.
You know, it’s not organized at all I didn’t know I was going to say these things I thought I was
going to preach to you an ordinary sermon and so there’s no communion and there’s no place for you
to kneel. You should come, you should do whatever needs to be done. You should come up and you
should kneel here, you can kneel here you know, and you should make your commitment to God. You
should. If you have tried before and it hasn’t worked and you see now the very sin that you know
you’ve to forsake, or you see the very thing that you’ve to do, you should come up now and just
repent of it to God and then just go back to your seat and trust him for the witness of the Spirit
which he will give to you just when he decides is best for you. But we should do it, you know.
Let’s just bow in prayer and we can just keep singing that Search me – Oh God…. and then we’ll sing
it maybe four or five times and then we’ll just close.
Give us the Bad News First! - REVIVAL
The Simple Gospel
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
For about five years we’ve been studying God’s explanation of reality in Romans and we really do it
in great detail because we do about a verse, and sometimes just half a verse every Sunday. And as
with all large jobs like that, that are being covered in such detail, it’s good at times to kind of
stand back and look at it from a distance. And you know, when you’re painting the old house it’s
good to stand back and just see how it all looks, and to see the thing again in perspective. And so
loved ones, every three, four months, just as Jesus guides me I feel it’s important for us to stand
back and just break for a while from the detailed study and look at the whole truth just once. And
just look at the plain simple gospel from a distance.
It’s good I think, for those of us who are Christians because it just enables us to see the wood and
not look at all the trees. And it enables us to realize again why we have any relationship with the
Creator of the universe at all. And it’s good for those of you who are not Christians yet, or who
don’t have a real alive relationship with God because it enables you to know what to do. So that’s
what I’d just like to do this morning, just preach a simple gospel. And you all know the verses, I
just want to comment on them and let Jesus make them real to us.
The first step in the gospel is bad news. Gospel is two Anglo-Saxon words god and spell and that’s
where they got the title of that musical Godspell. It means good news. But the first part of the
gospel is bad news. Unless you, as you sit there, are willing to identify yourself with the bad
news you’ll never enter into any relationship with God. Now loved ones, the bad news is this, it’s
Romans 3:23, all of us here in this auditorium, all of us have sinned. It’s just so easy for you to
sit there, and me to stand here and say, “Yeah, that’s right. That is right for that. Oh, I hope
there’s somebody here this morning that needs to hear that. I just hope there is. That girl beside
me, she looks as if she needs to hear it.” And then if we’re over 50, “That guy there with all that
hair in front of me, he looks as if he needs to hear it.” And isn’t it – loved ones, it is wild but
we are just the worse at that, aren’t we? And you know, even as we’re all laughing, we’re kind of
tending to do it ourselves too inside.
But all of us have sinned, and I think we keep getting into the mess because we think it means, all
are guilty of vices. That is a society concept, a vice. You know, gambling is vice. I’m sure
it’s almost also a sin but it’s primarily a vice. Even drunkenness, it’s regarded in our society as
a vice. Certainly, it’s a sin too. But we tend to sit here this morning and say, “Well all those
who have committed vices, they have sinned.” We can see that but it’s not that. Sin is a narrower
term in a sense and a broader term in another sense than vice. It does not mean a vice. Some of us
tend to say, “Well, Patty Hearst, or the guy who shot his mum and dad, and his sister in Anoka,
anybody who commits a crime they have committed sins. They have sinned.”
Loved ones, it’s not a crime. A crime is a legal concept, sin is a deeper thing than crime, it’s a
deeper thing than vice. And God says, as a matter of fact and truth all of us here have sinned.
All of us. He doesn’t need to prove it, he just says, “That’s a fact. I know it is. All of you
have sinned.”
What is sin? Sin is transgression of the law. Sin is disobeying God’s law. So all of us have
disobeyed his law in some way. That’s it. All of us have either committed adultery, or we have
hated someone with a murderous hate, or we have committed adultery in our hearts by lusting after
someone without expressing it in outward act. All of us have stolen, “Thou shall not steal,” if we
haven’t stolen money, or if we haven’t stolen something from someone, we’ve stolen someone’s
reputation by criticizing them and tearing them part. All of us have sinned in some way. We have
disobeyed God’s law in some way.
Now loved ones, here’s an important verse in scripture that I think you need to look at. It’s James
2:10, because a lot of us have a tendency to say, “Well, yeah I’ve sinned but not nearly as much as
other people.” Or, “I haven’t sinned as great a sin as somebody else,” and this kind of puts it
very straight, you know. James 2:10, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has
become guilty of all of it.” “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty
of all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ said also, ‘Do not kill.’ If you do not
commit adultery but do kill, you have become a transgressor of the law.” So whoever keeps the whole
law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it and that’s what God means when he says
we’ve all sinned.
We’ve all sinned as badly as Adolph Hitler. We’ve all sinned as badly as Mao Tse Tung. We’ve all
sinned as badly as the fellow that shot the Kennedys. We’ve all sinned as badly as someone who has
just murdered someone in New York City today. We have all sinned as badly as that, because loved
ones, once you sin one little sin, one little thought of envy against someone, that’s as bad as if
you’d done everything. And the reason is that sin is not so much something that you do as an
attitude that lies behind the action.
You commit adultery because you really don’t trust that the Father has everything for you that you
need and will give it to you when you need it, or you’re not willing to believe that. You steal
because you’re not willing to trust that the Father who made you is actually going to provide all
that you need in this life. So the attitude behind sinning is one of, “I’ll make it on my own.
I’ll do it my own way, I’ll do it without his aid, and I don’t need his help, and I don’t need his
life.” So loved ones, sin is most of all a declaration of independence against the dear person who
made us and that’s the heart of sin. All of us have sinned in that way.
Now loved ones, once we did that certain things followed. First of all, we felt a real sense of
being on our own in the world. We realized that we’re on our own. We had a real sense of not
knowing where we were going in the world, a real sense of purposelessness because we couldn’t figure
out who put us here or why we were put here because we’d rejected anything from him. And, we had a
tremendous sense of desolation and loneliness. And all this came because the Creator withheld from
us at that moment all that he wanted to give us: the life of his Holy Spirit; his own love; his own
favor; his own friendship; his own kindly reassurance; his own recognition of us; and his own
guidance of us in our lives, he withheld all of that and that’s why we have such a sense of
desolation.
Moreover, God at that moment determined that he would have to destroy us and the reason for that was
that once we started to live on our own we became absolute perversions of what he intended us to be.
He intended us to be loving, kind, relaxed, trusting people who received all they needed from him
and therefore could give everything that everybody else needed to them. But instead of that, we
became very needy people, very empty people. People who hadn’t enough of anything. We became
parasites who wanted to live off everybody else, who wanted to get all we needed from everybody
else. We turned into self dependent monsters, world dependent monsters, people dependent monsters.
We turned into people who would destroy his universe and at that moment he determined that he had to
destroy us. And loved ones, that’s what that Bible verse means, “The wages of sin is death.”
We keep thinking that we haven’t done too much harm to ourselves, and so we keep thinking, “Okay, so
we sinned a little, so we’ve lived a little independent of God. Alright, we can get back to him.
We can just determine now to get back to him and start trusting him.” But loved ones, you’re not
facing the fact that your personality has become permanently damaged. Instead of a personality that
would give love to others, it’s become a carnal personality that demands love from each other.
Loved ones, I’d ask you yourselves, is it not true? Do you yourself not feel again, and again, “I
wish people would love me more. I wish my wife would love me more. I wish my children would love
me more. I wish my friend would love me more.” Everybody needs love, aren’t we all crying that?
And loved ones, that’s proof positive that we have been permanently damaged in our personalities.
If you say to me, “Ah, you mean we weren’t meant to?” No, we weren’t. We were meant to be people
who did not constantly need to grab love from other people, who did not constantly need to worry
about whether the money was coming in next week or not, who did not need to worry about whether
somebody was giving us recognition or acknowledgment. No, we were meant to be free people but we
have become permanently damaged because we have rejected our Creator, and rejected the life of his
Holy Spirit and his Holy Spirit does the same for us as blood does for a brain, it keeps it
operating perfectly.
But stop the blood flowing to the brain and the person, that’s the whole discussion with Karen
Quinlin, stop the blood flowing to the brain for too long and the brain sustains permanent damage
and the only answer is some kind of transplant, some kind of complete change. You have to send the
thing back and get it completely renovated. Now loved ones, that’s what they wages of sin is death.
God knows that we have sustained permanent damage in our personalities and those personalities have
to be destroyed and recreated again. That’s another reason why he says, “The wages of sin is
death.” Not just to protect his heaven, not just to protect the rest of us from each other, but
because that’s the only way to change the permanently damaged and perverted personality that all of
us now have because we’ve sinned.
Now loved ones, that I think is the problem with many of us. It was certainly my problem. I
listened to Billy Graham and all the other fellas preaching the gospel but I could not get that bit
that something else had to be done outside me. I thought, “Okay, I now see what I have done wrong
now let me start moving back towards God. Let me will myself to obey him.” I did not realize that
the problem is by rejecting the Holy Spirit, by not having the Holy Spirit flow through us for so
many years, our personalities have become inturned, selfish, perverted, seeking significance,
security, happiness, from everybody else but God so that even our emotions are strained and are
upturned. Even our mind works in perverted ways, you know it yourself.
Two people can be talking in an office and they’re not talking about you at all, but your whole mind
can work out, “They’re talking about me. They’re talking about me.” And the mind continually finds
itself going off in wrong directions. Loved ones, all of us here this morning have a thousand
examples of minds, and emotions that are perverted, of bodies that have become habituated to wrong
actions for so long that we cannot do anything with them it seems. Now loved ones, that’s why the
wages of sin is death.
I was trying to put some sheetrock up on the ceiling of a room that we just built, and decided to
put Styrofoam for extra insulation in, and you use a stapling gun to put Styrofoam on the two by
fours. And I got the old staple gun out and every fourth time I triggered it I got a staple, you
know. And as the day went on, every 25th time I triggered it, and I decided obviously the thing is
wrong and so I looked up the instruction, but I am a born fiddler. Yeah, I love to fix things. My
wife says, “Yeah, you really fix them good.” So I started to take the thing apart, you know, and
those brothers who know a staple gun know what I was into. So I took the thing apart. Three weeks
later it was still lying on the desk, apart. I should have obeyed the guarantee, you know, that
said, “Send it back. Send it back and we’ll repair it.” But, I decided I’d fix it myself.
Loved ones, I think that’s what a lot of us are doing. I think a lot of us think we can fix it
ourselves. The wages of sin is not death, it can’t be death, there’s no need for it to be death.
The wages of sin is going to church, go to church, go to church and we’ll kind of overcome the sin,
and we’ll heap in a lot of goodness and a lot of nice thoughts, and somehow the sin will get drowned
in all the good thoughts that come. Or some of us say, “The wages of sin – bible study, bible
study. I’ll study the bible, that’ll make me right with God. I’ll study the bible.” Or some of us
say, “The wages of sin is new resolutions. I’m going to resolve more. I’m going to exercise my
will more. That’s the wages of sin, that’s what sin is due.”
Loved ones, sin is due death. That’s the only thing that will deal with sin. That’s the only thing
that will deal with our poor old broken perverted personalities. The wages of sin is death. And
really, if you’d just grasp that loved ones, it would give you such deliverance. If you’d just see
that something has to be done to your personality that you cannot do yourself. And each time you
tamper with it and tinker with it you just make it worse because the problem is independence,
self-deliverance, self-righteousness, that’s the problem and every time you try to fix that you’re
fixing it with self effort, self will, self-trying so you’re not fixing it you’re just compounding
the whole mess. So the more you try to save yourself the more of a mess you become and the more
self-righteous you are. And the truth is the wages of sin is death, you know.
That’s it. Let’s just accept that the wages of sin is death. And then the gospel is that God has
commanded his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. God has put all
of us in Jesus and destroyed us there. That’s a cosmic truth. God has taken our perverted,
selfish, inturned personalities that we can do nothing with, with all our books, and all our
psychology, and he has destroyed that in Jesus, and he is able to recreate a new personality through
the power of his Holy Spirit. Now that’s what the gospel is loved ones.
That what you need most is to be destroyed but instead of God sending another flood to destroy all
of us, he sent a supra spacial, supra temporal flood in Calvary on the cross and he destroyed your
miserable perverted personality in Jesus. That’s what it means in Hebrews when it says, “Jesus
tasted death for every man.” Instead of you and I being actually destroyed by another flood such as
that in Noah’s time, God has put us into Jesus and destroyed us there.
Loved ones, the truth of the gospel is God has done everything that is needed to make you and me
right with him. He has done everything that is needed, you don’t need to try and do things
yourselves. You don’t need to try to beat yourselves into being the kind of person God wants you to
be. You’d never do it because you’re working on a personality that can never be patched into
rightness. You don’t need patching, you don’t need a little bit of repair work, you need to be
smashed completely by the maker and recreated again. You need to be sent back to the manufacturer.
You don’t need a little tampering, or a little tinkering, or a little fixing. You need complete
renewal and loved ones, that’s what God has done in Jesus on Calvary.
That’s the beginning of the gospel. Now, how do you enter into it? Well John 1:12 goes like this,
“To as many as received him,” Jesus, “To them gave him the right to become the children of God.”
That’s how you become a Christian. That’s how that complete renovation is made real in your life,
you receive Jesus. Not accept Jesus, not accept Jesus. Oh, I could accept Carter as president but
I don’t think I could accept Harris as president. Accept, you know, accept the intellectual
concept, no. No. It means receive Jesus. It means if this dear person is prepared to suffer the
death of his own brain so that I can have his mind transplanted into mine, then it is not just a
matter of, “Well, I’ll accept that. Yeah, yeah.” It’s not.
It’s a throwing your arms around him and saying, “Thank you. Lord, thank you. Lord, I want to
receive all of you into myself. I want to take you complete. I want my life to be yours. If
you’ve done this for me, Lord Jesus, here I want everything.” It’s that receiving loved ones, it’s
not accepting, it’s not a proud intellectual acceptance of the concept that Jesus has died for you
therefore God will forgive your sins. No, it’s a whole human real red blooded receiving of this
dear Jesus because he has allowed his emotions to be destroyed and he has given them up so that they
could be transplanted into you. He has allowed his whole being to be destroyed so that you could
receive his whole being into yourselves.
So it’s as too many who have received Jesus, to them gave he the right to become children of God and
that’s how you become a Christian. If you’re sitting here this morning and you’re not sure, that’s
how loved ones. You look to this Jesus and you say, “Lord Jesus, if you died for me like that, to
allow me to be utterly destroyed and recreated then Lord, here I give my life to you. What do you
want to change in me? Do you see anything you want to change? Lord, I grasp you, I receive you
into myself. I turn from everything that is my own way and my own desires. I turn from the way I
want to live this life. Lord, it’s as good as dead anyway. Lord Jesus, I give it to you.”
Now loved ones, I’d have to be honest with you this morning and tell you that it is true that those
of us who do not receive the son of the Creator as the Creator intended him to be received, we will
die eternally. That is right, you just can’t get around it, you know. It’s right through all of
Jesus’ words, those of us who don’t receive Jesus in that way, we will die forever.
Sartre I suppose, expressed it the best way, you know, those three people you remember, one was a
homosexual and the other one was a constant burning critic, and the three of them were in a room
with one electric light bulb, and you remember about half way through the play they suddenly
realized, “This is hell. This is forever. We are going to be tearing each other apart, and
criticizing each other, and burning against each other forever.” And you remember, they tried to
get the light out, tried to put the electric light out and they couldn’t get it out. And they tried
to get out of the room and there was no exit from the room. And Sartre, you remember, called the
play No Exit because loved ones, there will be no exit from hell, and there is a hell, you know.
However sophisticated we try to be, we had better just be honest and see that there is a hell and it
is not a crude physical experience, it is a burning against each other forever. A continual
destroying of each other with our selfishness. And loved ones, there is that simply because the
Father has to preserve a place where people who want to live like him can live like him. And you
know in our present society is it pretty obvious in order to do that you have to keep others out.
And so there will be a place where God is not. There will be a place where people burn against each
other forever. But loved ones, the gospel is that God has destroyed us in Jesus already and that if
we are willing to believe that and receive this Jesus into our own lives, then we will live forever
with our Father.
So loved ones, if you haven’t ever entered into that I would say just take the step now. I’d pray
maybe for just about a minute, and you should just take the step yourself. And if you see it all,
and you say, “Well pastor yeah, I see it all and I’ve seen it for many weeks but I’ve never taken a
step.” Loved ones, you do have to take a step. This Jesus took a vital step for you – you owe it
to him to take a step towards him. So you do need to take the step. You do need to speak to him
and say, “Lord Jesus, I believe that that has happened for me and as far as I’m concerned I give you
my life to make it real here in this present time.”
So loved ones, I’d encourage you to take the step if you haven’t. And those of us who are children
of God, let’s see that wonder of it, that God has done it all and God has done what we ourselves
could never do and will never be able to do. And that’s the relief and the peace, you know. Let us
pray.
Lord Jesus, those of us who have never received you as our Savior would now look to you this
morning. And Lord Jesus, we thank you for dying and we have hardly ever realized what we could do
in response to this but Lord, we know that an intellectual accent to it is not appropriate. Lord,
we see that if you gave your whole life for us, we have nothing that we can do but give our whole
lives to you now. And thank you Lord Jesus, thank you Lord, that you allowed us to be destroyed in
you. And Lord, we now want that new personality.
Lord Jesus, we want to go back to our maker now and be destroyed and completely recreated, and born
all over again. So Lord Jesus, will you come down here now into our lives and will you make all
that real in us Lord Jesus. Lord, we ask you now to come in and we know that your words are that
you stand at the door and knock and that if any man hear your voice and open the door you will come
in and will supp with him and he with you.
Lord Jesus, we believe you that if we invite you to take over our lives you will do it. So Lord
Jesus, we would do that now, ask you to come in Savior, those of us even who know you will rejoice
to ask you to come in again more fully than before and fill us with yourself Lord. Wherever you see
anything in us that needs to go to that dear cross Lord Jesus, will you point that out and we’ll let
it go gladly and Lord, will you recreate us in your image and make us like yourself. Lord Jesus, we
receive you now as our Savior, and as our Lord and we give you the right to live in our lives
whatever kind of life you want to live Lord, even if it’s Calvary all over again, we want to go your
way because of the sacrifice you have made for us.
We thank you Lord. Thank you.
A Complete Birth - REVIVAL
A Complete Birth
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
During the past few weeks we’ve been talking about what a real Christian is, what it means to be a
child of God, what it means to be born of the Spirit and we’ve tried to distinguish between that
kind of a person and a normally moral person who abides by Benjamin Franklin’s list of moral
principles. And we said that a Christian is more than that and a Christian is more than just a
virtuous person who has the four classic cardinal virtues in his life. And we’ve said that a
Christian is just more than a church attender, even a church attender who believes God’s word.
We’ve pointed out even the demons believe God’s word and that it is possible to accept the Christian
world view of life and yet still not be a Christian. And then you remember, we said that it doesn’t
mean that if you perform miracles you’re a Christian, and it doesn’t mean if you have many gifts
spiritually that you’re a Christian.
We’ve said that a Christian is something different from all those things. And you remember, we tied
it down with that Verse in John 1:12, that a Christian was not one who believed but one who
received, and it says, you know, “To as many as received him to them gave he the right to become
children of God.” And the Christian is not one who believes, who feels sorry and believes, but a
Christian is one who repents and receives the Spirit of Jesus into him.
Then you remember, we talked a little bit about how you distinguish a real Christian from those
other people. How you distinguish a real Christian from a moral person. How you distinguish a real
Christian from a virtuous person. How you distinguish a real Christian from somebody that just has
an experience of many spiritual revelations and gifts. And you remember, we went back to that hard
verse that determined who were Christians in the first century and maybe you should look at it, it’s
just a short verse. And maybe you should make sure that it’s in your Bible as well as mine and it’s
1 John 3:9 and in the first century they had no question who the Christians were.
The plagues hit them you remember, in the time of Maximinus Daza and the Christians were the ones
who stayed behind to lift up their dead despite the danger to their own lives. The whole heathen
world saw that the Christians were the people who lived like Christians and it’s 1 John 3:9, “No one
born of God commits sin.” And that’s how you know a Christian, a Christian doesn’t sin. That’s it.
You know a Christian because a Christian doesn’t sin and you know that we tried to distinguish
between this and sinless perfection.
A lot of people say, “Oh, that sinless perfection. That means that a Christian never makes a
mistake.” No, a mistake is not sin. Sin is what you remember, James 4:17 says sin is, sin is
knowing what is right to do and failing to do it. For that person that is sin. And so sin is not
just making mistakes. Many people say, “Ah yes, a Christian is one who never makes mistakes, never
unintentionally deviates from absolute light, never does anything wrong whether he knows it or not,
never has excessive emotion at times, never falls back through weariness of the body.”
Now loved ones, do you see that we cannot be perfect in those ways. We have imperfect minds, we
have unbalanced emotions, we have weakened bodies, we are bound to make mistakes. We are bound to
offend people without really intending to offend them. We are bound, at times, to do things that
God in his infinite wisdom would not do if he were in our place. But do you see that that is not
sin, that is a sense of our own creaturliness, that there is a great deal of God’s perfection to
enter into that he has not revealed to us yet.
So a sin is not a matter of absolute perfection. A Christian is perfectly obedient, he is not
perfect. He is not free from mistakes or ignorance. He is not free from bodily weakness or
emotional excesses, but he is perfectly obedient and that’s that great difference you see. There’s
no such thing as sinless perfection taught in the Bible, but there is perfect obedience taught.
Now, what do we mean? Well, James 4:17 if you’d like to look at it because it is an important verse
for clear understanding about our position as children of God. James 4:17, “Whoever knows what is
right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” And sin is knowing that God wants you to do
something and not doing it. It’s refusing to obey the light that God has given you.
Now do you see brothers and sisters, that many of us here do things that the other would not do and
there’s no harm in that if God has not given you light on that subject yet. Some of us have already
learned that even to talk too loud at times pushes ourselves forward instead of Jesus. Some of us
have not realized that yet. God only asks you to act up to what he has revealed to you. In other
words, if you say, “Ah but brother, then is sin relative?” No it’s not. Sin is disobedience to
God’s will revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. But sin is what the Holy Spirit reveals to you as
sin in light of the 10 Commandments, the moral law of the Sophists, the Sermon on the Mount,
Christ’s own life, the Beatitudes, and the Epistles of Paul. In the light of those commandments
that are given to us by God, in the light of the Holy Spirit’s revelation of those commandments to
us, we are expected to be obedient you see.
Now, you can see that that is not a fearful walk. All you have to do be responsible to is to what
God shows you at that time and so it’s a conscience deliberate disobedience to God’s will. That is
what sin is. Now, some of us say, “Oh well then a Christian never sins, is that it? In that sense,
in that limited sense, a Christian never sins?” Loved ones, Jesus I think would answer, “Hardly
ever.” Hardly ever. A Christian hardly ever sins. It seems that is the spirit of the Bible you
know.
If you look at 1 John 2:1, that spirit I believe is shown in beautiful balance to us. It’s 1 John
2:1, “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin.” Now, that is the
position of a Christian, his normal everyday life is one of not sinning. He ought to walk free of
sin. He ought to walk in such a way that sin is alien to him and unnatural to him. Now, do you see
the second half of the verse, “But if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father.”
Now loved ones, do you see that many of us live on the second half of that verse? We live on the
basis, “Yeah, I’ve sinned today again but I have an advocate with the Father.” Well loved ones, do
you see that isn’t the spirit of the statement of scripture? The spirit of the statement of
scripture is, “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin.” That’s the
normal everyday life of a Christian, he doesn’t sin. If in an emergency situation you fall into
sin, it is an emergency and you need to cleave to Jesus, and get back to God, and make a total
surrender again of your life to him. In other words, it’ an emergency situation.
No, you don’t lose your salvation by one sin. You don’t walk in fear. You don’t walk fearful, “Ah,
a Christian doesn’t sin. I’m not going to sin.” No, you walk in joyful love. You say, “Father, I
thank you that you have given me the spirit of your Son and I am able to walk in open obedience to
you. I thank you for that and I thank you Father, that if I ever do sin Jesus is my advocate and I
cleave to him in love. But I thank you that you will enable me to walk above sin.” Now dear ones,
do you see that’s the spirit of scripture? The spirit of scripture is not that a Christian sins
habitually you see, or even that a Christian sins once a month. The spirit of scripture is a
Christina doesn’t sin, if he does sin the advocate is there but the normal state is that he doesn’t
sin.
Now, can you see the importance of getting to that point? Bertrand Russell could walk in a fair
degree of obedience, you see? Socrates, you read the life of Socrates, read the story of his death,
you know, what a glorious death that was and he knew nothing of Christ. Do you see brothers and
sisters, that many dear ones can live fairly virtuous moral lives, and many dear ones can live to a
great degree under the commandments of God, but the only person who can live obedient to God
perfectly, above sin, is one who has received the Spirit of Jesus into himself.
Now that’s the importance of seeing the level on which God wants us to walk, because any Tom, Dick,
or Harry with a fair degree of will power can walk in a certain degree of obedience. But do you see
that God’s word to us is, “If Christ is not Lord of all he is not Lord at all.” I teach English
literature during the week, no not for my sins, but I teach during the week and if I said to the
class, “Okay now, I want you to obey me,” and one little fella said, “Well sir, I’ll obey you most
times but when I want to do what I want to do I won’t obey you.” Well, I am not master of that
class, not in any sense. If he says to me, “I’ll obey you when it suits me but the times I don’t
want to obey you, there will just be odd times, there’ll just be few and far between, then I won’t
obey you I’ll do what I want then.” Then do you see dear ones, I’m in no sense master of the class?
Now, do you see that it’s the same way with Jesus? If we say to him, “Lord, I’ll obey you on most
occasions. On most occasions I’ll walk in obedience to you, but when it comes up against my own
preferences I will not obey you.” Do you see it’s a mockery to call Jesus Lord? You can call him
counselor, or servant, or helper, or even Savior, but he is not Lord of your life unless it is
absolute obedience to him.
Now, it’s at this point that many Christians have problems because many dear brothers and sisters
have really received the Spirit of Jesus into their own lives, and they are walking in victory over
sin. But there are certain times in their lives when they find another spirit manifesting itself
within them. For instance, some of them come into their room some night, and they had all the books
set out on the desk, and the roommate has just swept them all to one side and she’s at her work.
Or, you left everything organized in the room, you come back and the roommate has a whole lot of
people in the room and it’s chaos. And you know that well, the Bible itself says – you might like
to look at it just to make sure, Ephesians 4:25.
Ephesians 4:25, and this person is aware that this is necessary. Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry but do
not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” And the Christian is very aware that that kind
of anger in the sense of being angry is a controlled unselfish reaction against wrong for God’s sake
such as Jesus manifested in the temple. But that other anger, “Do not let the sun go down on your
anger,” is an uncontrolled selfish anger and that Christian knows, “Yes, I haven’t to be angry.” So
she is about to bite caustically at her roommate and she controls herself and says, “Ah, thank
goodness I didn’t say it.”
But inside there was that strong desire to cut that person apart and criticize her for throwing your
books aside. And inside in other words, there’s that feeling of discontent, and a wee bit of
feeling of guilt. You feel, “Well, I avoided outward anger but boy I felt the thing rising up
inside.” Or, you come to a place you know, where you’ve missed an assignment at school, or you’ve
missed a commitment to meet someone and you meet them the next day and you know – well, you look at
Ephesians 4:25 there, “Therefore, putting away falsehood, let every one speak the truth with his
neighbor, for we are members one of another.” And you come to the professor and you say, “Well
listen, I didn’t do it. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.” Or, you make the apology to the person and you
suffer the damage to your reputation. But underneath you find this almost irresistible desire to
lie your way out of the difficulty. There’s this tremendous desire inside to rationalize your way
into believing, “Well, it’s right for me to tell a little white lie in this situation.”
Now dear ones, many brothers and sisters who have received the Spirit of Jesus into themselves have
become aware that at the moment of obedience there has been another spirit within them that has made
it at times almost impossible to obey and they have obeyed only at the payment, and the cost of an
immense struggle inside. And many brothers and sisters walk continually in that struggle. Many of
them believe that’s the fight of faith, that every time you come to a time when you have to obey God
you find that it seems natural for a bit but then it seems unnatural to obey it and there seems
something natural inside that wants to rebel and put yourself first and have your own way.
Now dear ones, do you see that that’s the thing that was referred to by Paul in Romans 7:21. You
might like to look at it, and really it shouldn’t be but many children of God experience that in
these days. Romans 7:21, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at
hand.” And you want to do what’s right but evil lies right there. Brothers, you know it in the
other sphere that is bound to cause us trouble in this day when were so unbalanced about the
subject, Leviticus 20:10 there. Leviticus 20:10, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his
neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” And brothers, you know how
often we’ve come up to that point and we know that is sin and we hold back from it because we know
our salvation goes immediately.
But yet underneath there is that strong tendency to want to commit adultery in your heart. And you
remember, that Jesus tied it down to that? He said, “Listen, of old time in Leviticus he said, ‘If
you commit adultery you are guilty of the judgment,’ but I say unto you if you look unto a woman to
lust after her in your heart you have already committed adultery.’” Now brothers and sisters, many
of us who have honestly received the Spirit of Jesus find that within us there is a strong inward
desire to disobey God. It seems to be based in our attitudes, in our motives, in our reactions. It
seems to be based in our desires. Outwardly we manage to keep up an appearance of children of God
and we manage not to commit outward sin, but inwardly there seems to be a desire tending and falling
it seems into sin as far as Jesus’ definition is concerned.
Now loved ones, do you see that that’s what’s referred to in Galatians 5:17? So obviously, the
Father knew that many would enter into such a partial surrender that they would experience this kind
of thing. Galatians 5:17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of
the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing
what you would.” And many of us you see, would testify to that. We would say, “That’s right
pastor, we agree with you about obedience but boy it is really hard at times. There is such a
strong desire in us to disobey God.”
Now brothers and sisters, do you see the tragedy is that this takes a further step in many of our
lives? You remember, Hebrews 12:1 where the writer is asking us you remember, to give everything to
God and there’s a phrase there that means a lot to many of us because of our personal experiences.
Hebrews 12:1, “Therefore , since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay
aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that
is set before us.” Now the phrase or the clause, “Sin which clings so closely,” is I think in the
King James’ Version, “The sin that so easily besets us.”
Now brothers and sisters, the tragedy is that this desire inside us often fixes on some besetting
sin and many of us walk in that situation. We walk in obedience in every area but in this
particular area and this seems we call it our besetting sin. And every time we come into this
situation we fall again, and again, and again. Now do you see that that in itself is not the cause
of loss of salvation because Jesus will forgive you until 70 times seven? The blood of Jesus will
cleanse you from all sin in so far as you walk in the light. Walking in the light is coming up to a
sin, seeing that you’re falling into it, saying to the Father, “Father, I hate sin, I detest it, it
is alien to me I am going to fight against it until you give me victory. I’m opposing it, I’m
resisting it and I treat this as a major emergency in my life and I come before you now and ask you
to forgive me.”
Every time brothers and sisters you can do that the Father can forgive you. Do you see the real
danger is that you come into a position of hardening of heart in that area? That’s the tragedy,
that you come into a place where you cease to fall down in repentance at his feet and you become as
detached from the pain you’re causing Jesus as a surgeon is detached from the pain he appears to be
causing the person he’s operating on. Now that’s where the real danger comes in. That is where
you’re beginning to verge into hardness of heart, into resistance against God’s will.
In other words, as long as you can walk with a soft penitent heart, the Father will continually
forgive you. He will never refuse to forgive a person who truly repents. But do you see that with
these besetting sins the tragedy is we come to a place where we get so beaten down, and so
demoralized, and so fed up that we begin to rationalize it and we say, “That is just a personality
trait with us. We are particularly artistic people and so we do happen to have difficulty with our
emotions.” Now that’s where we cease to be in fellowship with the Father.
Now dear ones, do you see that many of us walk in that kind of life? We walk in outward victory but
inwardly there’s the strong desire to disobey God and at times this bursts out in repeating
besetting sins. I think it’s important to see that the personal experience of a Christian does not
finish on that defeatist verse in Romans 7. Now, would you look at that defeatist verse first? You
can probably quote it off by heart.
Romans 7:14-19, “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not
understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I
do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin
which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can
will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want
is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells
within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I
delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the
law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man
that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Brothers and sisters, the chapter does not end there. Now, please see that the chapter doesn’t end
there and the Christian life is not that life of defeat. The chapter ends in 25, “Thanks be to God
through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my
flesh I serve the law of sin.” But thanks be to God that there is deliverance and, “There is
therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” and then further down Verse 5,
“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who
live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” Dear ones, there is
deliverance from that. There’s victory over that situation.
Now why does the situation exist at all? Well, do you see that in the book of Romans there’s a
distinction between sin and sins? There’s a clear distinction. If you read the first four and a
half chapters of the book of Romans you find the emphasis is continually on sins. Now, there’s a
verse I could point you to, I think it’s Romans 3:25. Romans 3:25, those first four and a half
chapters deal with sins, that’s the plural word sins. Romans 3:25, “Whom,” Christ Jesus, “Whom God
put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s
righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” Now sins are
acts, and thoughts, and words. That’s what the Bible means by sins, acts, and thoughts, and words
that are deliberately disobedient to God’s will for you. Now do you see the second three and a half
chapters of the book of Romans talks not about sins, it talks about sin in the singular. It talks
about sin.
Now, you look in Romans 7:20 for instance and you’ll see the change. Romans 7:20, “Now if I do what
I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin,” in the singular, “Which dwells within me.”
Now sin is the attitude that produces sins. Sin is the inward attitude that makes you want to
disobey, that makes it hard for you to obey. It’s the attitude of your whole self inside that wants
to remain God in your life. You want to keep having your own way. Yes, you want a ticket into
heaven, and you want the sins forgiven, and you want the blood of Jesus shed for your sins, but
inward sin so many of us want to hold onto and we retain that inward nature.
Now brothers and sisters, that’s what the New Testament means by sin. It is that desire that Eve
had, you remember, Satan said, “Surely, when you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you
shall be as God.” Now it’s that desire inside us to be God over our own life. Loved ones, I say
this is sympathy for the ACT test and the SAT test, but it’s that attitude that dominates our
attitude to our futures so often. We see, “Yes, I’m capable of this. I’m mechanically minded, I
should be an engineer.” Or, “I like poetry, I like literature I should be an artist.” And we
decide what we’re going to do with our future. That is sin.
An attitude whereby you decide what you’re going to do with your life, and that is inward sin. It
expresses itself you know, in wanting your own way. You have an argument at home, it’s not really
because your way is the best way at all. No, her way is as good a way, your mum’s way is as good a
way, your dad’s way is as good a way, but you want your way and they want their way, and that’s sin.
You see? It’s just a aspiration, it’s just a desire to do what you want to do, whatever God wants
you to do. Now loved ones, if that remains unchanged there can be no victory in your life.
Now that’s the thing that’s described in Romans 8:7 and put very plainly, you know, by Paul. Romans
8:7, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law,
indeed it cannot.” And you see again, and again many of us have found this. We’ve wanted to do
what was right but there’s something inside us that seems to want to do what is wrong. Now loved
ones, unless God can do something for that you are destined to walk in continual defeat, and strain,
and misery all your Christian life. And therefore, every profession of joy, and peace, and
continual love is just hypocritical. And you know that many of us have come to that place, we know
that we’re just blatant hypocrites. Inside we’re different from what we are on the outside.
Now what has God done? Well, let’s see what he’s done for our sins, Romans 3:25. Romans 3:25,
“Whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s
righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he has passed over former sins; it was to prove at
the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.”
God said, “Anyone who sins I will destroy.” In order to avoid destroying us and remain a just God,
someone had to be destroyed in our place. Jesus was that someone. Jesus shed his blood and died
for us so that God could retain his justice and yet show mercy to us. Allow us to live and yet
retain his own sense of Justice. In a real sense, Jesus died for God. Can you see that? In a real
sense, Jesus shed his blood for the sake of his Father so that his Father would be free to forgive
us for our sins.
Now, do you see that the reason we say, “Jesus died for us,” is not really because his blood enabled
his Father to forgive us, but for another reason? Look at it in Romans 6:3-4, “Do you not know that
all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried
therefore 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.” God knew that he had not only to forgive us our
sins, he knew that he had to deal radically with that attitude within us of rebellion that produces
the sins. And what did he do? He put us all into Jesus and crucified us. That’s right dear ones,
and it’s in that sense that Jesus really died for us.
It doesn’t say, “Jesus died instead of us.” It doesn’t say, “Jesus died so that we wouldn’t have to
die.” It says, “Jesus died for us so that we could die with him by faith and allow God to destroy
and render inoperative that desire to be our own God, that desire to have our own way, that great
self that rises up and wants to do what it wants to do.” Now dear ones, do you see that God has
done something with that? And if you say, “Well, brother if he has done something with it, why is
it so alive inside me?”
Well brothers and sisters, God had borne your sins in Jesus on Calvary but you had no freedom from
the guilt of those sins until you were willing to do two things: let go of the sin; and have faith
that those sins had been born. Now it’s the same with that old self inside you. That old self was
destroyed 1900 years ago, your funeral took place in Jesus 1900 years ago, but you can experience no
freedom from that until you are willing to die to self in your own life and until you’re willing to
believe that all that has been crucified with Christ. And that’s it loved ones, and that’s what we
call the sanctification side of becoming a Christian.
The justification side is where God is justified in forgiving us our sins because Jesus has paid the
death penalty for us and where we are justified in coming before God because our sins have been paid
for. The sanctification side is where we realize that we have been crucified with Christ, that we
have no rights to our own lives, we have no rights to do what we want with this life, we are dead
and buried with him and now only the Holy Spirit has the right to rule our lives and we are willing
to be crucified with him, and we believe that the Holy Spirit is in our lives and telling us what to
do.
Now loved ones, unless you experience a complete birth and a complete death, you cannot be in the
position of a normal Christian whosoever is born off God does not commit sin. And wouldn’t it be
true to say that as we sense the Holy Spirit speaking to us this morning, most of us probably here
this morning are in that second position? You’re dear brothers and sisters and you have received
Jesus as your Savior, but do you see that God has crucified you with Christ and what you are doing
is refusing to be crucified. There are many things inside you that you want to hold onto. The big
thing is yourself, you love yourself more than you love Jesus because you’ve never really accepted
that you were crucified with him.
Now brothers and sisters, if you say, “Well, brother it witnesses with my spirit and it seems to be
true, but how do I enter in? Do I crucify myself?” No. Dear ones, you have been crucified. God
states clearly, “Listen, all of you who belong to Christ Jesus have been crucified with him. Do not
go back and question my word, I know what happened 2000 years ago. I was there in Christ
reconciling the world until I fell. I know I destroyed that miserable thing inside you that wants
its own way. I know I destroyed that attitude in Jesus. When he bent his great will over to me he
bent your will over to me. I know that has been done, you don’t need to crucify yourselves. Will
you believe you’ve been crucified with my son? Will you begin to accept that you have no rights to
your own life? You don’t have the right to tell the wife what to do. You don’t have the right to
decide what your own future is going to be. You don’t have the right to get irritable with people
or have people do the things you want to do. You have been crucified with Christ, you don’t exist
any longer, you’ve given your body, and mind over to the Holy Spirit and now you’re going to
experience the resurrection that Christ experienced when the Holy Spirit comes into you and fills
your life completely and begins to live in you freely the life of obedience.”
Now that’s it dear ones. It’s just those two things, you see. Faith, that you have been crucified
with Christ. Romans 6:6, “Our old self was crucified.” Satan comes down and says, “You’re
irritable this morning, you weren’t crucified.” You say Satan, “I’m not believing my feelings, I’m
believing God’s word. I was crucified I’m not arguing with that.” And then you look to the Holy
Spirit and you say, “Holy Spirit, will you reveal to me where I’m not really willing to enter into
all the benefits of my death with Christ? Where I’m wanting to live this old death life instead of
resurrection life? Will you reveal to me where my self is still ruling in my life, where I have not
allowed the victory that God wrought in Christ to extend to me?” And the Holy Spirit will begin to
give you light, you see and then all it is, is instance obedience. So it’s faith that you were
crucified with Christ and it’s faith in the Holy Spirit to rule your life today.
Brothers and sisters, it changed my life. Seven years ago it changed my life and I had been a
Methodist minister for eight or nine miserable years with hypocrisy, and outward appearance of
obedience and inward rebellion. Loved ones, this is the full experience that God wants us to enter
into. Now, if you sit there and say, “Ah now brother, are you talking about a second work of
grace?” No, we’re not talking about a second work of grace or a 54th work of grace, we’re talking
about what a full experience of becoming a child of God is and it means that you’re born of the
Spirit and you allow that old attitude to die with Jesus. And the victory is not in repressing or
suppressing that attitude by will power, but in allowing God to deal with it in Christ by the power
of the Holy Spirit.
That’s why there’s no strain in the Christian life. There is no strain dear ones, and there is no
defeat. There is constant victory and constant peace and love, and you can see it’s only when we’re
living above sin in that way that the Holy Spirit is able to use us at all. Up till then we’re so
preoccupied with our own defeats that we have no time to be used by him. So dear ones, as God
guides I’ll share further about this. I think if you want help yourselves I’ve tried to write a
little book Free to Live, a little booklet. There are lots of books out in the bookcase and the
bookshop is full of books on how to enter into this victory. Not only a complete birth but a
complete death and then resurrection life.
Dear ones, I think we should just close in prayer without the hymn, it’s close to time. Let us
pray. Holy Spirit, we ask you to vindicate your truth to us through your word. As we read Romans
6, Holy Spirit, will you reveal to us that this is an experience into which we ourselves can enter?
That we can leave self at last behind nailed on that cross and be freed from ourselves, and become
lost in Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit. We thank you that such an experience is possible and
we trust you to lead us into it that there may grow up a new generation of Christians who will walk
as they talk, and who love as they say they love, and who obey as they say they ought to obey. And,
we trust you Father, to being that about among us here in this place.
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 ever more. Amen.
Death Faced without Fear - REVIVAL
A Complete Death
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Consider the 2nd century believers in Jesus who displayed that belief, during the plague in the most
brilliant light, for the Christians were the only people, who in the midst of so much and so great
tribulation proved by deeds their sympathy and love of their kind. Some busied themselves
day-after-day with the care and burial of dead bodies. They were without number and nobody else
bothered about them. Others gathered together into one place all who were tortured by hunger and
supplied them with food. When this became known, people glorified the God of the Christians and
confessed that they alone were the truly pious and God fearing people because they gave proof of it
by their deeds. And brothers and sisters, right throughout the centuries that is always the way
that others have recognized Christians and it’s the way you see, that the New Testament emphasized.
You might like to look at one of those verses, they’re right through the New Testament and Old
Testament, but one very clear one is there in Matthew 7:16-20. And it states this truth of the
importance of Christian’s lives as a witness to unbelievers. Matthew 7:16, and Jesus is speaking
and he’s talking about false prophets you see, people who say they are God’s servants but aren’t
really, they’re dressed in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. And then in 16, “You
will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every
sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil
fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”
A Christian can’t behave in an non-Christian way. A non-Christian can’t behave in a Christian way.
“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know
them by their fruits.” And you remember, we shared last Sunday that it doesn’t mean that you just
exhibit the four classical virtues of temperance, and courage, and wisdom. It doesn’t mean that you
just exhibit the virtues that Benjamin Franklin ( one of the American founding fathers) listed:
integrity; industry; and loyalty. But it means that your life is filled with the beauty of Jesus’
own life and the fruits of his life are present in your life and by your fruits people know that
you’re a Christian.
And you know that the verse that it’s very hard to get rid of in the New Testament that we studied
last Sunday, puts this in very stark terms and it’s that verse, and you probably want to look at it
to make sure such a heretical verse actually got into the New Testament. And it’s 1 John 3:9 and it
is a verse that really sticks in our throats. 1 John 3:9, and you would like to feel that it’s a
verse that John wrote in a moment of sleep, or in a moment when he was falling from grace, except
that he keeps on writing it right throughout this letter. 1 John 3:9, “No one born of God commits
sin; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.” And you
recognize a Christian because a Christian doesn’t sin. That’s it, a Christian doesn’t sin, that’s
how you know a Christian.
Now loved ones, you know that Satan has got in with us on this verse and that’s why I dare to spend
one more Sunday on it, because Satan has persuaded us all that that is heretical. That it’s in the
Bible, but it’s a bit of the Bible that ought really to be examined, we don’t think that it’s
absolutely true because we say, “Listen, I’ve been a Christian for years and I’ve found it
impossible not to sin. So, I set up myself with my 60 years of life against this Bible that has
existed for well, 1900 years,” anyway the New Testament. And so it’s very hard.
And brothers and sisters, do you see I sympathize with you with all my heart but do you see that we
need to see what God believes and what God wants for us? Especially, in these days when so many
look down on what is called the Christian church, we must try to see if there’s some reason for this
and I believe we will find it in this verse. There are two extremes that Christians take towards
this verse. One extreme is to over interpret it. One extreme is to proclaim an unscriptural
perfection that is not God’s will in this life. That’s one extreme and some people do that. Some
people take that verse and they proclaim an unscriptural perfection. A perfection of mind,
emotions, and body, a perfection for mistakes from ignorance, from any unintentional deviation from
absolute right that is just impossible with God’s help or without God’s help. And many proclaim an
unscriptural perfection that just drives us into the ground. On the other hand, many others under
interpret the verse and they proclaim such an unscriptural mediocre definition of sin that even a
good humanist could live up to it, or a half surrendered Christian could live up to it, or a half
born Christian.
Now dear ones, it’s important that we keep away from either of those, what Francis Schaffer ( Swiss
theologian) would call the cliffs. You see, Christian truth lies down the middle and if you go far
too over far to the left you fall off that cliff into unscriptural perfection and if you go far too
far over to the right you fall off that cliff into a mediocre unscriptural standard that is too low.
Now, we need to trust the Holy Spirit to keep us in the middle of the path so that we don’t fall
off either cliff because if you call off either cliff it not only has intellectual difficulties and
problems for you, but it also has spiritual problems.
Now you see how important it is not to have too mediocre a standard. The reason for that is that we
have for years had such a mediocre standard for Christians, that Christians have been largely
speaking undistinguishable from other people. And so in order to distinguish themselves they have
invented cardinal sins, that they by their upbringing, never had anything to do with anyway. And so
many Christians are so undistinguishable from people who aren’t Christians that they invent the
sins. “Well, I don’t like the theater too much anyway, so it’s a sin to go to the theater and if I
go to the theater I’m not a Christian. But I’m glad to say I don’t go to the theater so I’m a
Christian. And, don’t drink. And I don’t drink anyway but it’s obviously a sin to drink and I
don’t drink so I’m glad I’m a child of God. And, don’t smoke. And I’m glad I don’t smoke so I’m
obviously a child of God. And don’t drink, and don’t dance, and don’t smoke, and don’t go to the
theater.” And dear ones, you know that many of us have invented lots of other cardinal artificial
sins in order to try to prove to ourselves that we are Christians because our lives has been
undistinguishable from others by virtue of the fact that we have not lived as Christians.
Now the other thing is true, that one of the reasons we have so much evangelistic activity in the
nation and so little revival, is that we have had a low mediocre standard of the Christian life.
You remember, the promise that God gave us for the revival, “If my people who are called by my name
will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will
forgive their sin and heal their land… ( 2 Chronicles 7:14) Now dear ones, we have great
evangelistic activity in our nation but it is incredible that we have no deep revival. In other
words, the courts are as full as they ever were, the jails are too full. The mental wards in our
hospitals are overflowing. There has been no deep seated revival of ethical life and of emotional
life in our nation, because really, we have proclaimed an unscriptural mediocre standard of the
Christian life and we have slid around the whole business of sin.
Dear ones, it doesn’t matter which movement of God’s Spirit in our world’s history that you go to,
it has always come from a new realization of what sin was. Really, it has always come from a new
realization of sin. Now, would you just share with me a little this morning? Let’s just look at it
once again and trust the Holy Spirit to clarify it in all our minds. Let’s take the group that say
that sin is anything that is not absolute perfection. That’s these people who say, “What that verse
means is anyone who is not absolutely perfect as God is perfect, that person sins.” Or, “Anyone who
deviates from absolute right at all, whether he knows it or not, that person is sinning.”
Now do you see that that means every one of us who makes a mistake has sinned. Every one of us who
makes an honest mistake has sinned according to that definition. Let’s imagine that you’re in a
group and I’m in that room with you and you don’t know that I’m from Ireland. And the conversation
is going on and you make some sarcastic crack about those mad men in Ireland who are shooting each
other. And you don’t mean to hurt me and you don’t mean to insult the place I come from, you didn’t
know. You haven’t the perfect mind, you don’t know everything. You didn’t know that I was from
that country and you didn’t intend to cause me any hurt or criticize me in any way. Now, do you see
that that’s a simple mistake and that’s not sin?
Or say you, as an honest Christian tries to witness to someone on the University campus, and you end
up putting them off Christianity, you end up causing an offense in them. Now, you did it with a
pure intention and a pure heart and it resulted because you had not a perfect mind in saying
something that put them off. Now, do you see that that’s a mistake loved ones? That’s not a sin
and God does not hold us guilty for mistakes. Do you see also that if you held to the fact that sin
was anything that was not absolute perfection, our emotions are unbalanced on many occasions, we do
not have the perfect emotions of God. A times at a funeral we will indulge in excessive grief.
Yes, we will grieve because of ourselves rather than for the sake of the dear one or another. At
times we will indulge in excessive grief. Now, when our emotions are unbalanced the Father does not
regard that as a sin.
It’s the same with our bodies. At times our bodies are set by weakness, and sickness, or colds and
it prevents us doing what God would want us to do. That is not a sin. You see, God does not hold
any lack of perfection in our minds, or our emotions, or our bodies as sins. He just does not.
Dear ones, he defines sin very clearly for us and you remember, it’s in that verse James 4:17, and
it has nothing to do with those mistakes, or ignorance, or involuntary unintentional deviations from
absolute right. James 4:17 states plainly that sin is something that you do and you know you’re
doing it, and you know that it’s rebellion against God at that moment you do it. James 4:17,
“Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” That is sin. Sin is
conscious deliberate disobedience to God’s will (to God’s will as you know it).
Now loved ones, it’s not enough for you to say, “Oh, I know that is wrong and that person is doing
it so he must be committing sin.” No. That brother or sister may not have had that revealed to him
in the way that you have. They are responsible to God for their obedience, you’re responsible for
yours. You can never guarantee that everyone has had the light that you have had. But sin then is
any disobedience to God’s will as it’s revealed in the 10 Commandments, in the moral law of
Sophists, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Beatitudes ( Matthew 5-8) , and in Christ’s own life,
and in Paul’s Epistles.
Sin is any refusal to enter into obedience to God’s will as it is revealed there. So, for instance,
let’s look at just one or two of them. If you look at Exodus 20:12-17. Exodus 20:12, “Honor your
father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you.”
So, if you deliberately dishonor your father and mother, and you know it at that time, that’s a sin.
“You shall not kill,” and Jesus’s elaboration of that, “If you’re angry with your brother you’re
guilty of the judgment.” If you are angry, you know you’re angry, you persist in your anger, then
that’s a sin. The Father is gracious to you before you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit when anger
rises up in your heart, as long as you resist it the Father recognizes that. Now after baptism with
the Holy Spirit it is possible even to get rid of that rising up of anger, but before that Jesus’
blood applies to your heart as long as you resist what is rising up.
Brothers, it applies the same way you remember, to that next one in 14, “You shall not commit
adultery.” And Jesus said, “But I say unto you if you look unto a woman to lust after her in your
heart, you are guilty of adultery.” It applies to that. Before the baptism of the Holy Spirit
you’ll find your heart rising up and answering Satan’s temptation. As long as you resist that
rising up, and you deliberately turn from it, God regards you as not sinning. Now after the baptism
of the Holy Spirit it is possible to be delivered even from that rising up. But do you see that God
is gracious to us? He asks us to deal with what we know is wrong at that time and to resist it and
stand against it.
Now so it goes on, “You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.” Now, if you do those they’re sins. And so it goes on
you see, right through if you look at Leviticus 19:15-18 you’ll find that God states clearly there
what is his will for us. Some of us think, you know, these things are wonderful discoveries of the
social activist. Really, they were given by God 2500 years ago to a people. Leviticus 19:15-18,
“You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great,
but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. You shall not go up and down as a slanderer
among your people, and you shall not stand forth against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you
bear sin because of it. You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your
own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”
Now, if you deliberately disobey that and you know you’re disobeying it, there comes a shadow into
your heart. That’s why when you have a grudge against someone, or you hold a resentment against
someone, there’s a shadow comes into your heart you see. God is faithful. We may not believe that
he rejects us but he witnesses his rejection at that moment and his condemnation by a shadow in our
heart, a sense of guilt. A shadow comes between ourselves and another person in that relationship.
But sin is something knowing.
Now dear ones, some of us say, “Oh no pastor, sin is sin whether you know it or not.” No loved
ones, sin is only a knowing, conscious, deliberate disobedience to God. Now you have that taught
clearly for us in Leviticus 5. Leviticus 5:3-6, and these are concerned here with the laws of
hygiene that God gave but they do indicate his attitude to conscious sin. Leviticus 5:3, “Or if he
touches human uncleanness, of whatever sort the uncleanness may be with which one becomes unclean,
and it is hidden from him, when he comes to know it he shall be guilty.”
So, in other words, there comes times when you do something, you don’t know it’s wrong at that time,
but later on it comes to your heart, “That was wrong.” Then it’s up to us to turn immediately to
Jesus and say, “Father, I didn’t know that was wrong at that time. Will you forgive me? I confess
it now.” But you see, you aren’t guilty until you know it. “Or if any one utters with his lips a
rash oath to do evil or to do good, any sort of rash oath that men swear, and it is hidden from him,
when he comes to know it he shall in any of these be guilty.” But you can see yourselves, that God
does not regard us as guilty unless we know we’ve disobeyed him. In other words, sin is a conscious
deliberate disobedience to God.
Now, some brothers and sisters say, “Alright pastor, then I can see that sin is not ignorance, it is
not an unintentional or involuntary deviation from an absolute right. It is not a mistake. I can
see it isn’t any of those things, it’s something a conscious disobedience to God. Okay, now is it
true that if you sin then God immediately rejects you, shows you that you aren’t his child and you
have to start all over again?” No, loved ones.
If you do sin, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous. Otherwise you see,
you’d lapse into legalism and we’d all be walking in fear. See, if I was walking along and
wondering, “Boy, if I sin once I’m finished. If I sin once I’m finished.” Then soon I’m walking in
fear all the time. I’m wondering, “Where is sin? Where is sin?” No loved ones, you see children
of God do not walk that way. Children of God walk in conscious joy and in absolute confidence that
as Christians it is unnatural, it is alien to our nature to sin, it is something that we do not do,
it is something that we don’t want to do. If we ever do it we thank God that we have an advocate
with the Father and the proof of our childlikeness is the penitent heart. Immediately we make a
quick adjustment, we go to the Father and we say, “Lord, we have sinned. We confess it to you, we
trust you to forgive us.”
In other words, even after you’ve tied sin down to deliberate disobedience, do you see that we walk
not in constant fear of sinning, we walk confident and joyful, and knowing all the time that if we
do, in an emergency sin, then we have an advocate with the Father. Now loved ones, it’s important
maybe to define emergency. Emergency is not just when we come into emergency situations, God is
able to keep us peaceful and calm in those situations, and free from panic. But do you see that sin
is an emergency? If you sin, that’s an emergency situation for a Christian. It’s something that is
not natural for the Christian to do. It’s alien to him. He’s come into something that is against
his whole nature and that is an emergency situation and he ought to treat it as such.
Now, let me show you the verse where God teaches that plainly. It’s that verse 1 John 2. 1 John
2:1 A and B, and many of us live on the basis of B and you should live on the basis of A and B. 1
John 2:1 A and B, that’s both parts of the verse, “My little children, I am writing this to you so
that you may not sin,” that’s why I’m writing it to you, “But if any one does sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” In other words, it’s like me saying to you,
“Look, when you’re driving that oil light should never light. It’s not a natural thing for that red
light to be on when you’re driving, it’s an unnatural thing. So, if that red light ever does go on
it doesn’t mean you’re engine is ruined, but stop. Stop the car and get oil in it.”
Now, do you see that it is madness to live on the basis of the emergency? It’s madness to say, “Oh
well, he said the engine wasn’t ruined if the light when on. Well, I’ll drive for 20 or 30 miles
and when I have time I’ll put oil in the car.” You can see that it’s an emergency when we sin and
we ought to treat it as such. Now, that’s what that verse means, that many of us have difficulty
interpreting about mortal sin, you remember. Would you look at it in 1 John 5:17-18 and I’m sure
you’ve had the difficulty that I’ve often had with it. 1 John 5:17, “All wrongdoing is sin, but
there is sin which is not mortal.”
In other words, you see, there is an emergency situation that arises at times in a Christian’s life
when he sins, but as long as the whole bent of his life is against it, as long as his whole nature
rejects that and treats it as an emergency, then that is not a mortal sin. But if a sin – if a
Christian is walking in a sin weekly, or monthly, or periodically over the year, then do you see
that he’s beginning to walk into a sin that will bring death? In other words, the attitude of a
Christian is, “Once I’ve received Jesus I’ve stopped sinning, and I have no intention of sinning
from now on, and sin is something that I reject and resist as unnatural to me.” And this is the
attitude dear ones, of a Christian.
That’s why brothers and sisters, I know you do it in a moment of extravagance, but do you see that
we should not say that Jesus’ blood covers all pass sins and all future sins. That’s madness you
know. That’s like saying to the Lord Jesus, “Lord Jesus, I know you will take the thrust of my
sword into you at this moment, and I know you’re borne it and now I’ve stopped, you’ve forgiven
them, but I know you’re going to continue to take every thrust that I put into your body from this
day forward.” Now that is not right, you see. A Christian has no intention of sinning when he
receives Jesus. As far as he’s concerned he is finished with sin and if he ever does sin it’s an
emergency situation. Otherwise you see, he’s involved in mortal sin, or sin which brings death by
willing repetitive volition.
Now, could we look just for a moment or two at the other extreme, the other attitude? Some people
you see, take that ridiculous over exaggeration that sin is anything that is not absolute
perfection, and that obviously is not what sin is. Some go to the other extreme and they say,
“You’re dead right, sin is something that we can’t avoid, because after all let’s face it I know
we’re children of God and all that, but we’re only human. We’re only human beings, and we cannot
avoid sin. So, sin I something that occurs from time-to-time in the Christian’s life and the only
difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that the non-Christian’s guilt gets him down
because he can’t do anything with it, it demoralizes him whereas we Christians, we can sin with
impunity. We can sin and Jesus’ blood covers our sins, we get rid of the guilt.” In other words,
we can sin without any guilt.
Now dear ones, do you see that that’s terrible? That is heresy and yet you know that many of us
have come close to that, we’ve said sin is the normal part of a Christian’s life. Some of us have
pleaded you see, 1 John 1:10, maybe you want to check it. 1 John 1:10, and some of us take that
verse, “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” And some
people say, “Now there, if you’re a Christian and you say you’re happy you don’t sin, you’re a
liar.” Now, do you see that it says, “If we say we have not sinned,” and John is obviously talking
about fellowship between life in darkness and he’s talking about our previous pre- new birth
experience. If we, when we were pagans, we said we didn’t sin in those days, then we make God a
liar. All of us have sinned.
Now, some of us of course say, “Oh, but doesn’t Paul say, ‘I’m the greatest of sinners,’ doesn’t
that prove that even he sinned?” No dear ones, you remember, Paul among other thing says, “The
imitators of me, even as I am of Christ,” in Philippians he says, “Let’s as many of us therefore as
be perfect.” In other words, he believes that you can enter into a perfect obedience, not a
perfection of mind, or emotions, where you never make mistakes but a perfect obedience and we know
that one of the marks of great saints is that the closer they get to Jesus the more they feel their
own ugliness. And this is what Paul was saying, “I’m the greatest of sinners. Not only was I the
greatest of sinners when I persecuted the church of God, but Lord Jesus, as I see your beauty, I
feel more and more my own ugliness.” But Paul wasn’t saying, you see, “Oh I continue to sin night
and day.”
Now, many of us say, “Oh well, 1 John 3:9 does not mean what the RSV ( Revised Standard Bible) says
it means.” In other words, it doesn’t really mean does not sin. It really means what the Amplified
Version ( A V – Bible) says it means. And the Amplified Version, you remember, says, “Anybody born
of God does not habitually sin.” Now loved ones, let me read from Christianity Today first of all,
and let me share with you I am not a Greek scholar and I can read the New Testament in Greek and let
me share with you that the Amplified Version is not a translation, you see.
If you notice, the Amplified Version is based on a linguistic principle that is actually invalid.
That linguistic principle is that you pile synonym, upon synonym, upon synonym to get to the real
meaning of the original. That is not linguistically valid. Now, this fellow, who wrote in
Christianity Today say this, “The Amplified Version is a blessing at times,” you see I’m not saying
don’t stop reading the Amplified Version but don’t decide doctrine and truth on the basis of the
Amplified Version because it is like Kenneth Taylor’s work, it is not a translation – it’s a
paraphrase.”
They say this, “The student should be aware that the Amplified Bible,” ( this is in 1965), “Which is
based on an erroneous linguistic foundation,” in parenthesis, “The incorporation of synonyms and
alternative renderings into the text in order to bring out the full sense of the original and
Kenneth Taylor’s ‘Living Bible’ series, completed 1970, are not among the better English
translations.” Well, dear ones, I don’t say it – just because they say it – but I know that it
does not fairly treat the original or translate the original.
Now some of you may say, “Oh, but isn’t the original the imperfect tense?” The imperfect tense,
doesn’t it mean the same as for instance in Latin,” any of you who know Latin, ‘amabam’ would be I
was loving in Latin and I was loving can mean I was accustomed to love, or I used to love. And some
dear ones say, “Ah, this is the imperfect tense here, it means I was accustomed to sinning.” Any
one born of God is not accustomed to sin. He is not used to it, he does not do it habitually. But
dear ones, the tense is not the imperfect.
Now brothers and sisters, I share with you in love again, it is not the imperfect tense, it is
present tense, it is the ordinary present tense and it just means what it says. A ‘teetotaler’
doesn’t drink, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t drink habitually it means he doesn’t drink. A Christian
doesn’t sin, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t sin habitually, he doesn’t sin.
Now some dear ones say, “Ah but brother, doesn’t habitually translate the sense of the passage more.
I mean, you yourself have said that if we do sin in an emergency we have an advocate with the
Father. Now, are you not saying habitually?” Well loved ones, I think semantically habitually in
the English language does not mean that. For instance, if you say to me, “I sleep in one morning,”
and you say to me, “Do you sleep in habitually?” Well, I answer you, “No, no I don’t do it
habitually I just do it from time-to-time.” Now, that’s normally what habitually means, isn’t it?
Now, do you see that isn’t the sense of that verse? The sense of the verse is that there’s absence
of sin in the Christian’s life. A Christian doesn’t sin. The purpose of the Greek is to exclude
sin from the Christian’s life, not to limit the extent of the Christian’s sin. Not to say, “Well, a
Christian, I mean, he doesn’t sin every day but he sins maybe weekly, or two weekly, or three
weekly, or monthly.” Now loved ones, it doesn’t mean habitually it just means the Christian doesn’t
sin and oh brothers and sisters, if we will rise to God’s standards for us, we’ll find more than
sufficient grace in his Holy Spirit, to enable us to live in that standard.
Do you see, any humanist – Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Socrates, could live up to the low
mediocre standard that many of us have interpreted God as wishing for our lives? Do you see that
only a person who has received the Spirit of Jesus into himself can live at the level that God
describes in the Bible, and that’s the need for the new birth loved ones. If you’re having trouble
with sin in your life, what you need is to allow God to send the Spirit of his Son into your life
and that alone will enable you to live above sin, and to live in perfect obedience to God. Not to
live above mistakes, not to live fearful of ever falling, but to live above sin in your own life.
Some of us say, you know, “But ah brother, that is a ridiculous standard. It is beyond human
ability. It drives man to despair.” Praise God it does just that. Yes, it does. It does. Dear
ones, if you can ever come to the Bible and say, “Well, that describes me I don’t need Jesus.” Then
you’re in trouble. You see, you’re not reading it right. The whole purpose of God’s law is to
drive us to the end of ourselves, to drive us to that place where Paul described in Romans 7:18, “I
know that no good thing dwells in me. I know I cannot live this way by myself.” That is the
purpose of God’s love, to drive us into the depths of despair until there is only one thing to do,
that is to receive the spirit of this person Jesus into our lives.
Now loved ones, that is what the new birth is and what we need is a complete birth. We need a
complete birth. We need not a believing in Christ, and a feeling sorry. That’s what many of us do,
we feel sorry for our sins and we believe. We haven’t to do that, we have to repent and receive,
not feel sorry and believe, but repent and receive. Stop doing the sins and receive the Spirit of
Jesus. So brothers and sisters, if you’re in that position, you know, where you’re really having
trouble do you see that it could be that you have not had a complete birth? You have not really
dealt in honest repentance with the sins that were in your life, turned from them, and asked Jesus
to come in. And so what you’ve entered into is an emotional osmosis of Christianity and not a real
regeneration.
You’ve entered into a moral reaffirmation plus a set of doctrines and principles instead of a real
repentance and an actual regeneration. Now it is God’s will for us to experience a complete rebirth
and next Sunday I’ll share with you a complete death because it is that sin that rises up that needs
to be dealt with and can only be dealt with by complete death. But oh I urge you to experience a
complete birth as a Christian and find yourself walking in this way without resistance and without
criticism.
Can I share one last thing? If you’re heart reacts against this truth, that’s an indication a wee
bit of the state of your heart you see. A child of God, when he hears God’s truth responds to it
even though he isn’t living to it. He says, “Ah, but I want that. I want that.” But the person’s
who heart is not right reacts against it and wants to tear Isaiah out of the Bible, 1 John out of
the Bible! But a child of God says, “Father, if that’s your will I want to be that and I want to be
a lot more as well,” and you know that, that’s the spirit of your own heart if you loved your father
and your mother, it’s the spirit of the child of God really.
Well I pray the Father, you know, that’ll he’ll keep us from error and from misunderstanding and
that he’ll bring you into a complete rebirth that makes supernatural living possible. Let us pray.
Father, we thank you for the peace and quietness of this morning time together. And we thank you
our Father, for your word that it does not bow to our human weakness, but it raises us into
supernatural strength. Father, we thank you for that. We thank you above all that you are a loving
Father, ever stooping down to lift us up. That you are more anxious to forgive us that we are even
to repent. And oh Father, that you will at the end of the day forgive us until 70 times seven as
long as our hearts are penitent and soft enough to repent. And so Father, we would trust you to
keep us well clear of sin, enable us to see it as alien and unnatural, as the reason for the
atonement, as the reason for all that you have done in this earth, and Father enable us to hate it
as much as you do, and to love purity and obedience as much as Jesus does.
Now Father, we trust you to give us a good day, each one of us. We trust you to guide us this day
and to make us a blessing to each other in our homes and our dormitories. 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 ever more. Amen.
Life Giving Life - REVIVAL
The Purpose for Living
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Dear Father, in the name of Jesus, we plead the over powering influence of thy Holy Spirit tonight.
Lord Jesus, we know you are able to overcome the physical discomfort, we know you are able to so
preoccupy us with yourself that we will be unaware of any discomfort and we trust you therefore to
so pour your Spirit out among us that we will be so bent on seeing you that we will have time for
nothing else, least of all ourselves. We ask this in your precious name, amen.
Perhaps dear ones, it seems to some of us that there has never been so much bewilderment about the
purpose of life. You know, with King’s death, and Kennedy’s death, and with the riots, I think more
and more people are saying, “What is it all in aid of anyway? What’s the meaning of life now?
There doesn’t seem any.” And yet people in all generations have felt this way. It was about 50
years ago a professor of Latin at Cambridge University wrote a poem expressing this kind of
bewilderment. He said, “Yonder see the morning blink, the sun is up and up must I to wash, and
dress, and eat, and drink, and look at things, and talk, and think, and work, and God knows why.”
And the tragedy is dear ones that many times Christians are as bewildered about the purpose of life
as those who are not in Jesus.
What would you say is the purpose of life? I think a lot of us tend to talk about it in the same
way as this professor did when he wrote the last stanza of the poem. He said, “Oh often have I
washed and dressed and what’s to show for all my pain? Let me lie abed and rest 10,000 times I’ve
done my best and alls to do again.” And so often when you ask people today what the purpose of life
is, they talk about it in terms of 10,000 times I’ve done my best. They talk about it in terms of
oh well to be the best that you can be, to live the best life that you’re able, and to live the good
life. To leave the world a better place than you found it. And so often dear ones, Christians talk
in the same terms of the good life as opposed to the bad life.
Now, do you see tonight that when we talk about good and bad like that, we’re eating of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil of which we were forbidden to eat? But so often we talk about it in
terms of living the good life in Christ even, and the moment we mention good and bad we’re
immediately taking part in the very act that the devil tempted us to at the very beginning. Or,
perhaps some Christians say, “Well, the purpose of life is to save souls.” But dear ones, you see
that means that God must have made us just so that he could save us? Now surely God did not cast us
into a sea that was stormy and wild just in order to have the privilege of lifting us out of it.
And yet so often you and I tend to talk in terms of saving souls as the purpose of life.
The controversy that the devil has with God is not between good and bad. Do you know that? The
controversy that the devil has with God is not between good and bad, it’s between life and death.
The devil is not too concerned if you think you are good, and the devil is not too concerned if you
try to be good as long as it’s death, as long as it’s the life of death. But he is concerned if we
ever enter into the life that God prepared for us.
Now would you turn those thoughts over in your mind as we go back to the original question, what is
the purpose of life? First of all dear ones, it wasn’t because God needed our company. You see
that? It wasn’t because God needed our company that he made us because, you remember, in John 1:1
it says, “In the beginning was the word,” that’s Jesus, “And the word was with God.” So God and
Jesus had their own company. And you remember, I think it’s in Genesis 1:2 we read that the Spirit
brooded upon the face of the waters and so obviously, God the Father, and God the Son, and God the
Holy Spirit had each other’s company so they did not need to make us for the sake of our company.
You remember too, I think it’s in Genesis 1:26 the Bible says, “Let us make man in our own image.”
Not, “Let me make man in my own image.” So again obviously, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit were speaking.
You know it was a little like a husband and a wife, when they love each other and share a great love
between them, they feel a need to create other dear ones who will share that love. And God created
us to share the love that his trinity family already enjoyed. That’s why he made us at the very
beginning so that we would share the love that he and the Son, and the Holy Spirit already rejoiced
in among them. And so it was out of the sheer generosity of his love that he made us at all. And
oh dear ones, it’s so bad when some of us say, “You know, I didn’t ask to be born.” God wanted us
born so that we could share the joy and the love that he had with the Son and with the Holy Spirit.
He didn’t make us then just to save us, but to share his love.
I think it’s necessary to see then that God wanted dear ones who were like himself. That’s why you
see, the Bible says, “He made us in his own image.” He made us a trinity. He made us, you
remember, all the words occur in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, he made us with a spirit. He made us with a
spirit that could rule, and he made us with a soul that could express that rule through our mind,
and emotions, and our wills, and he made us with a body that could reveal this spirit to other dear
ones of the same type. Just as he himself was a trinity, he made us body, soul, and spirit in the
same kind of trinity. He made us too, you remember, in the very image of Jesus.
You remember way at the beginning it says, I think it’s Romans 8:29 says, God predestined us at the
very beginning before there was ever a fall, before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was
ever there, God predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son Jesus. And this was so that
we would fit well into the family of the trinity.
Another way in which he made us in his image was to give us a free will like his own. He didn’t
want robots who belonged to the family because they could not refuse, but he wanted dear ones who
would opt into the family. He wanted dear ones who would willingly choose to become part of the
family. This was his purpose in creating us at the very beginning. You may say, “Well, what was
the choice?” Well, the choice at the very beginning was twofold. You remember, it says in the
Bible that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.
God made our bodies of the dust of the earth and he breathed into our nostrils the breath of life
and we became living souls. That was created life. See, the Bible says, “Let us make man in our
own image.” Not, “Let us beget him,” but, “Let us make him in our own image.” And so God gave us
created life and then it was his desire that his Son Jesus, whom you remember from John 3:16, you
remember the words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only manufactured son.” No, “That
he gave his only created son?” No, “That he gave his only begotten son,” and it was his will that
Jesus should come and walk among us, and live among us, and that we with our created life, would
receive from him his begotten life and would therefore be able to be adopted into the family of the
trinity.
I think there was another choice in that too. You remember there was a choice there. Jesus is
signified by the tree of life and I think you remember, in Genesis 2, obviously a choice is implied
in Verse 9, and Verse 16-17. Verse 9 if you’d like to look at it, “And out of the ground the Lord
God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also
in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” so that there would be
an option required to opt into the family. And then in Verse 16-17, “And the Lord God commanded the
man, saying, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’”
In other words, there was a choice otherwise God wouldn’t have told us that. And the choice was to
begin to receive the begotten life of God from his Son Jesus as he walked among us. There was
another part of the choice too it was his desire that when this spirit of God’s begotten life would
come into our life it would begin to pervade our souls, and our bodies. You see your soul and your
body started off neutral. They started off neutral. Your mind is a neutral thing, really. Your
emotions are neutral. Your will is neutral and it was God’s will that we would receive this
begotten life into ourselves and then allow it to pervade our souls, and eventually our bodies and
this was his plan so that we ourselves would become a trinity in which the spirit was present
everywhere.
One of the early fathers said, “Wherever one person of the trinity is present the other two persons
are present as well,” and that was God’s will for us. That wherever a soul was there would be the
fullness of God’s begotten life in his spirit. Wherever a body was there would be the fullness of
his begotten life in the body. You see that when Jesus was transfigured on the mount, when you saw
the spirit life breaking out through his physical life. It was God’s will that the body, and the
soul, and the spirit would all be pervaded with the begotten life of God.
This then dear ones, was his will for us and really as long as we abided by God’s decisions, and
God’s judgment about life, we were able to receive through our spirits, all that we needed from the
tree of life. So, you had – we’re not feeling very energetic. You receive from the tree of life
you receive from the begotten Jesus energy. Your mind was blunt and wearied you received from the
begotten tree of life the acuteness and the sharpness of Jesus. Even had we cut our hands we would
go and we would take of the leaves of the tree of life and the hands would be healed by the begotten
life of Jesus that flowed through the tree of life to us. And as long as we abided by God’s
judgments, and as long as we took his word on what we should do in life, that tree of life was
continually available to us and that tree of life would pour the spirit into us, and our souls would
receive our approval from God, and we would walk with a sense of approval on our conscience knowing
that we were approved by God. And that was the way we were meant to walk, not needing approval from
any man, but receiving the approval from God in our own conscience and our bodies then were meant to
express the life of God throughout the world.
You can see this when you think of that verse you remember, Genesis 1:28, where God explains the
process by which our spirits, souls, and bodies would become one together in his begotten life. He
gave each of those parts of our personality a function. He said, “Be fruitful and multiple.” It
was his desire that our bodies would pass on his created life and would beget others in his own
image, and that we would multiply. It was his desire that our souls, our minds, and our wills and
emotions would express in deductive detail, in deductive detail all the life that the Spirit gave to
us so that we would fill the whole earth with the glory of God. It was his desire that our spirits
would be ruled by God’s Spirit and that Jesus’ begotten life would flow through us so that he
through us was able to subdue the whole world.
You remember Genesis 1:28 says, “Your job is to subdue the world.” Well, it was meant to be Jesus
subduing the world through us in his begotten life so that glory, and pleasure, and satisfaction
came to God. That was the plan dear ones. That was God’s glorious plan for us and we were to find
our full fulfillment in the exercise of that begotten life that we receive from Jesus.
Well what happened? Once God gave us free wills man always had the prerogative that God had given
him, to choose to live his own life independent of God. Not accepting God’s advice, not accepting
God’s provisions because you see, he had created life and you remember Satan had already exercised
this authority, and this prerogative. He had already rebelled against God and decided to live his
life on his own terms independent of God and it was Satan that was allowed by God to tempt us to do
the same thing.
You may say, “Terrible, terrible,” but you see, God wanted us free. God wanted us members of his
family because we wanted to be and so you remember, in Job we read how God allowed Satan to approach
Job and tempt him. So, God allowed Satan to come into that world of ours and you remember how Satan
set about it. You find it in Genesis 3:1. He said, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any other
wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat of
any tree of the garden?””
Satan is a deceiver and the father of lies and the first suggestion he made to man was, “Do you
really think this is the only way to live? Do you really? Do you think this is the only way to
live? Hath God said, ‘You can eat of every tree of the garden?’ You have the right to eat of any
tree of the garden surely now you’re in it.’” And then you remember the second thing that Satan
tried to deceive Eve on in Verse 4, “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die. You’re
alive now.’” He didn’t tell her that this was only created life. He didn’t tell her that she would
need operations, and bandages, and that you would need armies of policemen to protect her in this
created life. But he said, “You shall not surely die you’ve got created life.”
And dear ones, a great deal of Satan’s power over us through the years has been the suggestion that
this created life is what God intended us to have. So many dear ones are burdened under that. They
think, “Well, this is the life that God planned us to have.” It’s the second best. And you
remember lastly, he deceived Eve about the advantages of this independent life. He said in Verse 5,
“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. Isn’t
that the very purpose that God sent you here for, to become like him? To be conformed to his own
image? Surely, you will be like God knowing the difference between good and evil.”
You remember, that whenever man decided to accept Satan’s lies and deception, whenever he decided to
try and live on his own without trusting God, whenever he once got the idea into his mind, “Lighten
up, this is life. This created life is good enough.” Once he did that every part of his
personality became perverted. The Bible describes the kind of perversion that spread throughout his
whole life, and dear ones, some of us tonight will recognize this in ourselves. And I want you to
say if you recognize it not, “I’m bad,” because then you’re eating of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil. Not, “I am bad,” but, “I need the begotten life of Jesus. I need the begotten life of
Jesus tonight.” Not, “I need a reformation.” Not, “I need more determination,” but, “I need the
begotten life of Jesus.”
Well here are some of the things that happened, that perverted man’s whole personality when he began
to live this death life. It’s all in Genesis 3:6, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for
food,” and our bodies began to desire enjoyment for its own sake. The death life, the created life
was so unsatisfactory that our bodies tried to enjoy things for their own sake and so dear ones, the
world is filled with dear people who are trying to enjoy themselves, enjoy themselves as much as
they possibly can trying futilely and vainly to make this created life look like the begotten life
of Jesus. And so you get many of us running around really trying to work up excitement to make this
life as exciting as the begotten life.
You know there’s a great desire for excitement. We buy fast cars, we buy fast motor launches today
to go as fast as we can to try and get some life into life and it’s all this desire to try to make
the created life what the begotten life was really meant to be because there’s something inside each
one of us dear ones, that yearns for begotten life. Do you know that? Even if you’ve never been in
church for years, there’s something in you that wants this begotten life, there’s something that is
bigger than what we’re experiencing at the present time.
So, the body began to enjoy itself for its own sake. And then you see the second part in Verse 6,
“And that it was a delight to the eyes,” and the soul which was made to give out the life of the
spirit to the whole world and to fill it, and to replenish it, the soul turned back in on itself and
instead of replenishing it wanted to get, get, get, get and it didn’t matter how many charge
accounts it had in Dayton’s, it couldn’t get enough. And dear ones, you know that. You keep trying
to transform the created life into the begotten life by allowing this perverted function to take
place in your soul, and you try to get, and you try to get, and get, and you can’t get enough and
you never will get enough because that’s not the way the soul was meant to work.
And the spirit is talked of in the last part of Verse 6, “And that the tree was to be desired to
make one wise,” and our spirits became perverted too. They were meant to be ruled by God. They
were meant to receive from him his own life. The spirit instead began to rule over itself and over
others. Our spirits dear ones, were meant to be ruled by the Father but our spirits became
perverted and began to rule themselves and so we’re all concerned over the future because that’s our
job, we have to take care of that precious future because God no longer can because he doesn’t rule
us, and so our spirits have great yearnings to make the future what we want it to be.
Our spirits have not the rule of God’s Spirit in them and so they want to rule not only our lives
but the husband’s as well, and not just to discipline the children but to get them to do it exactly
as we want them to do it. And when somebody begins to act in a way that we don’t agree with we
burst out in temper because our spirit wants to rule over them. It’s perverted it was made to be
ruled by God. It was made so that God’s life would flow through it and rule others and the spirit
instead of feeding on the Spirit of God and the tree of life, has to start feeding on itself.
So dear ones, really drugs and alcohol are part of the way that we supply the exhilaration that
would normally come from the begotten life of Jesus. Do you know that that the begotten life of
Jesus provides exhilaration and excitement? This is why Paul said, “Don’t be drunk with wine
because that’s one way of doing it, but be filled with the Spirit and there’s no hangover and it’s a
better way.” You see? And it is true dear ones, when the spirit feeds on the tree of life that is
in Jesus, when the spirit feeds on the begotten life that is in Christ then the spirit doesn’t need
that false exhilaration. The body doesn’t need the kind of enjoyment that it gets from its own
action but it receives the enjoyment of the spirit through it.
The soul doesn’t need to be constantly seeking after men’s approval. Dear ones, that’s why we go
for status, do you see it? You know, we want them to know that we’re actually doing quite well and
so we buy not a Volkswagen, and a radio, and a TV set but we’re like the Jones’ next door and we buy
the big car, and we want status, and we want approval because the soul lacks the approval of God.
Lacks the sweet favor of God upon it and so it’s constantly trying to gain approval from others.
That’s why we’re always trying to prove to everybody else that we have really quite good abilities,
you know, we’re quite good at our job. And that’s why when somebody catches us out on the job we’re
really very anxious to prove to them that well, we can explain this, we can explain it because we
want to justify ourselves in their eyes, and justify ourselves in everybody’s eyes because we have
failed to be justified in the eyes of the only one who counts. And so dear ones, our spirits, and
our souls, and our bodies entered into this death life and that’s what I’m anxious for you to see.
It’s not that you’re bad, do you see that? It’s not that you don’t know how to manage your
emotions. It’s not that you don’t know how to manage your domestic life and you have to try harder.
It’s not that you’re not doing a good job at work. It’s dear ones, that you’re living the death
life, you’re believing the lie of the devil who has persuaded you that this created life is the
begotten life of God.
Well, what did God do? Dear ones, he is the author of truth and honesty. Where Satan is the author
of lies God is the author of truth and honesty and he had to keep his word. In Genesis 3:3 he said,
“Listen, if you eat of that tree you will die.” And in order to hold the world together in justice
God had to exert that death penalty upon us and so you remember, in Genesis 3:24 he withdrew the
tree of life from us by driving us out of the Garden of Eden lest we might eat of that tree and live
forever. And if we’d live forever with the perversions we had already in our personality we would
have created many hells and would have become many Satans and God had to withdraw from us the
eternal life that was his plan for us. And he could do nothing else, he had stated so often the
righteous live forever and the sinful will die and he had to keep his promise and there was no way
out.
Indeed, he could never replace that tree of life until you and I were all utterly persuaded that he
detested sin and that it always brought death. And you remember the precious way he did that? The
one who was to be the father of the new race, the one who was to walk among us in peace and harmony
and bestow upon us his own begotten life in love, he was the one that God allowed to listen to his
commandments about the tree of life and about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and to
abide by those commandments so that he himself did not incur the penalty of death. And yet that
dear one tasted death for all of us.
That dear one who was to come here in peace among us came here to the agony of the death that we
deserved to die. Until one man died plainly for all of us to see we would really never have
believed that God detested sin. We always have said, you know, “Well he’s changed his mind. He’s
just replaced the tree of life for us because he decided it won’t work.” And God had to show us
that above all he was just and it was because he loved us so much that there was anything like wrath
because he didn’t want us to endure created life all our lives. And so he allowed this dear one who
was originally to come and give us begotten life to come and die that death for us.
When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” he was experiencing the pangs of
hell and outer darkness that the created life will always experience. You see dear ones the created
life will not last. The created life only has the appearance of life. It has a temporary
appearance for 70 years and then at the end of that there’s a second death and outer darkness. And
Jesus faced that outer darkness and that second death. He endured even the pangs of hell so that
God could replace the tree of life. And how did he replace the tree of life? Well, because Jesus
obeyed God perfectly, when the devil tempted Jesus to enjoy himself by eating the bread, Jesus
refused continually through his life. When the devil tempted Jesus in his soul to get the kingdoms
of this world, Jesus throughout his lifetime obeyed God, when the devil tempted Jesus to rule over
in his spirit the very laws of gravity and the very laws of God, Jesus refused to use his spirit in
that way and throughout his life he walked perfectly before God. And so the Bible says, “The
righteous deserve to live,” and so he deserved to live by his own obedience and he himself possesses
begotten life.
He has deserved alone of all of us this begotten life. And dear ones, the message is that he is
able to give it to you. That he really is able to give it to you. That this Jesus now has never
died. That he’s alive tonight and he’s able to give you the begotten life of God. Are you living
that created life and pretending that it is begotten life? Are you? You know is your body
constantly seeking its own enjoyment, whatever the cost is to anyone else? “I must be satisfied and
I know what I need and I know what I want.” Is your body always anxious for its own enjoyment, and
its own comfort, and its own convenience?
Do you see what I’m saying? It’s not you’re bad. Do you see that? It’s not that you’re bad it’s
that you lack the precious begotten life that God is able to give you. And I’m saying to you, turn
from that old death life that you think is life. You have no control over your body. You cannot
change it, only God can pour into it his begotten life. What about your soul? Is your soul always
trying to justify itself? You know, are you always trying to prove your Christian righteousness?
Are you always in discussions about the victorious life trying to say, “Well yeah, but man has
weaknesses you know and I suppose this is my weakness.” Are you always trying to get round the
message of the pure life? Are you always trying to persuade others that you’re actually better than
you really are? Are you always trying to justify yourself or seek other men’s approval?
Dear ones, I know tonight that there are men and women here that are burdened under this desire for
status. I just know that there are some of you here that are burdened under this desire for status.
You laugh at keeping up with the Joneses but you know that that’s the reason why you keep buying
new carpets, and new furniture, and why you keep getting the other jobs, because it’s all this
desire for men’s approval because you lack the approval that comes upon God with the begotten life
of Jesus.
Is your spirit filled with the desire to rule over others? Do you always want your own way? Is
your spirit always anxious to have its own way and to make everybody do what it wants? Is there
some dissatisfaction still in your own spirit? Is there some feeling in you that surely there’s
more to it than this? Well dear ones, there is. When the begotten life of Jesus comes into you,
the whole life begins to work right. Do you know that? It all begins to work right.
You receive resources through the spirit. You receive resources from God through the Holy Spirit.
You receive a sense of restfulness in your spirit and contentment and this begins to pervade your
mind, and your will, and your emotions so that they are integrated and they begin to express this
life of Jesus through them and you’re conscious is at last ready to depend on the blood of Jesus and
to say to the Father, “I present the blood of Jesus to you and I know you’re pleased with that. I
know my life is miserable but I trust you to look at the blood of Jesus,” and the conscience rests
in the approval that God gives you when you do that. And the body at last becomes the servant of
your life and not the master and begins to be used by the Holy Spirit, and by your soul instead of
using them.
In other words, your whole life turns the right way up, or the apostles turned it the upside down
because at the moment our lives are upside down if we’re experiencing only that old created life.
Well, how do you receive Jesus’ begotten life? Turn from the death life. That’s it. You must turn
from the death life. You must acknowledge that what you’re living is the death life and dear ones,
this applies not only to those of us who aren’t Christians tonight but to many of us who are half
Christians, if there’s such a thing. To many of us who have not gone all the way with God.
Turn from that death life. Say to God tonight, “Father I know that there’s some of the death life
in me. Some of those qualities that were present in the Garden of Eden are present in me. Some of
those characteristics that the Spirit has described tonight, I have them in my life.” Now it’s the
death life dear ones. I can work on that for two or three hours and it’ll never get up and walk
away because it’s inanimate. And you can sit it there and leave it there for a million years and
some little animals they walk away with it, but it itself will never walk away.
In other words, you cannot get life out of something that is dead. Now, if you’re experiencing the
death life with all your eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with all your attempt
to put cosmetics on this dead corpse and make it look as if it’s alive, you cannot produce life.
You cannot produce life because life is received from the one who has life and that is Jesus. In
other words, you need to turn from the death life. You need to admit, “This is the death life that
I have,” and whatever way it expresses itself in you, you have to resolve tonight to turn from that.
If it’s your body, if it wants constant enjoyment and that’s all it seeks either in food, or in
sexual pleasure, or in satisfaction, or in comfort, or in convenience then you must say, “Tonight
Father I’ll turn from that. I’ll turn from that death life in my body.” If your soul is constantly
seeking after other people’s approval and trying to justify itself then you must turn from that and
you must say, “Father, if they look upon me as a complete failure I don’t care. I’m turning from
that desire to justify myself. I’m turning from that desire to get possessions and to try to prove
I’m worth something with the amount of money that I’ve earned, or by the job that I hold down.” You
need to turn from that death life.
If it’s your spirit and it wants to dominate your home, and you’re a dictator in your home and you
want everything to go your way, and you cannot abide anybody else having their way, then you need to
turn from that tonight and say, “Father, that’s the death life in me. I need the begotten life of
Jesus tonight to fill me there in that place and make me alive.” And then you need to turn to
Jesus. He that hath the Son hath life.
If you have Jesus tonight dear ones, you have God’s begotten life inside you and you know it. And
similarly if you’re pretending that the old created life is the begotten life you know that too.
Dear ones, Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive tonight and is willing, because this is why he was sent,
he is willing to give you this begotten life. Well I pray that if the Spirit has spoken to you, you
will come and receive that life. It’s important dear ones, to come only if God’s Spirit has spoken,
you see. But you know if he has spoken. You know if you’re pretending that this old death life is
begotten life or not and if that’s the case will you just come tonight and receive from Jesus what
he is able to give you.
God Sweeps Away all Obstacles - REVIVAL
The Holy Spirit Destroys the Works of the Devil
Exodus 2:10-15
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. The reason the Son of God
appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Let us pray. Dear Father, we trust you to explain
this clearly to each one of our hearts in such a way that we will submit to the victory of Jesus and
of the dear Holy Spirit, and that we will become sons of God in spirit and in truth. We ask this
for Jesus’ glory this morning. Amen.
You remember, we said that the reason the Son of God appears was to destroy the works of the devil.
In other words dear ones, the Son of God appeared to takeaway sins. I think a lot of us feel he
came maybe to save us in the midst of our sins, but we saw that even at the very point of conversion
Jesus comes to take away our sins. So a man or a woman is burdened with an angry word that he
speaks in his life and in his home, and God’s Spirit comes down and shows that those are the same
angry words that destroyed the Son of God on the cross of Calvary. Or, a man begins to sense that
there is dishonesty and deception in his business and he sees that that same deception of Jacob was
what made it necessary for Jesus to die on the cross. Had there been no deception in the world
Jesus would never had to die. So that in a real sense his deception kills the Son of God.
He sees the sarcasm, and the cynicism in his language in his own home, and he sees that that same
sarcasm, cynicism, and jibes was what helped to destroy the Son of God as the priest looked at him
and said, “Save yourself and come down from the cross.” And even a dear one at the very moment of
conversion sees that the sins that fill his life or her life have destroyed the Son of God. And so
they see that if they are to be related to the Father again in forgiveness, and that is what real
forgiveness is, the Father says, “Come and I will treat you as you were with me before the fall.”
And before the Father is able to relate you to himself like that, the dear one sees that he must
turn from those sins.
So he must turn from the sarcasm, he must turn from the deception, he must turn from the anger and
in that way Jesus saves them even at the point of conversion from his sins, from his outward acts
and words that disobey God. So dear ones, it’s impossible to have the assurance, the witness of the
Spirit in your heart that you are a child of God while you still continue acts and words that
destroy Jesus. It’s just impossible. The Father cannot have you in his own heart. He cannot show
you his favor. You cannot expect the Father to be pleased with those who continue to hurt his Son.
So even at conversion dear ones, it is necessary to turn from the acts and words that destroyed the
Son of God. And of course, God comes down in grace and forgives you, and you have a sense of
freedom from guilt in your conscious because you know that from now on the blood of Jesus can be
offered for your sins. Do you see that you cannot offer blood that you spill yourselves? Do you
see that?
You can’t thrust the sword of your angry word into the side of the Lord Jesus and take the blood
that comes out and offer it to God and say, “Be pleased with that Father, do not look at my sinful
life.” You can’t dear ones. The only time the blood can be offered to Jesus on your behalf in
place of your death is when you stop spilling his blood. And so it’s necessary, even at the point
of conversion to have an experience of Jesus destroying the works of the devil in your life, in your
outward life. And you remember how we went on to say that soon after that you began to sense that
all sin was not gone.
You began to sense that – well, to take the example of the dear one with the new dress, she came
home and she said, “Look at the new dress I bought,” and you know what the bank account is like and
you hold back the word, you don’t say, “Love, that was stupid. That was stupid you know the state
of the account. You know we couldn’t afford it.” You hold back that but within you there rises up
the desire to say that and you feel, “Does she know what she’s doing? Has she no sense? Has she no
sense or responsibility?”
Dear ones that is sin. Now, that is sin. There’s no point in saying, “Ah brother, no you’re
mistaken it’s only sin when it comes out,” or, “It’s only sin when it begins to get a grip.” Dear
ones, if there’s a rising within that’s sin and the glory of the gospel is that through the
cleansing power of the Holy Spirit you’re able to be free from the rising. Ah dear ones, I would
that I could say that to you more plainly, but do you see even when the dear one says, “Look at the
dress and you rise up within and you want to tell her,” that is sin because salvation at its lowest
is salvation from sin and salvation at its highest is salvation from the inclination to sin. Even
the bent to be unchristlike, God can save you from that and so it’s not long we said, until the Holy
Spirit begins to convict a Christian of that.
It’s not because of the inward sin that is in his heart, because it eventually breaks out into open
sin and he starts this long train of confessions and repentances day, after day, after day. So soon
he begins to realize that this sin has to go too and there he sees that it’s not a question of
forgiving it, it’s a case of destroying it. And the Bible of course says that sin, or our old self,
or our old man, or that desire for our own way and our own rights that was crucified with Jesus.
And there comes a blessed time in a Christian’s life when he begins to see that sin within him that
anger, and irritability, and anger, and jealousy. That desire to have his own way. That desire to
rule over other people’s life as enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God neither
indeed can it be and he cries out, “The good that I would I cannot do and the evil I do not want is
what I do.” And then he sees that that self was crucified with Jesus and that the Holy Spirit is
asking him, “Are you ready to be crucified with Jesus yourself? Are you ready to die to self from
this day forward and live only to what Jesus wants in your heart?”
And there comes a great day when it’s like a dear one whose lungs have given up and they’re put on
the artificial lung machine, and they give up their own lungs and they’re utterly dependent on the
artificial machine. And if it stops they stop living. If it doesn’t give them resources they have
no resources to live by and the dear one changes the source of his motivation and he turns from that
old self and he puts it on the cross once and for all. Allows the Holy Spirit to make that
crucifixion real in his heart and then he begins to live on the basis of the Holy Spirit and he
begins to depend desperately, and trust and obey the Holy Spirit like an artificial lung machine
that he cannot do without. And the dear one begins to walk in victory within.
And then you remember, we said yesterday that the Holy Spirit gives then power for service and he
gives gifts. So you can see in a way that the Holy Spirit sanctifies you first in your outward life
in the body in the acts and words, secondly, in the spirit inside in your spirit where you want to
rule over your own life and over others and thirdly, he sanctifies you in your soul by supplying the
resources that your soul once supplied. He supplies them by the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Now dear ones, after you’ve entered into conversion, the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit, and the
baptizing work of the Holy Spirit you’re ready to begin the deeper life. Now, do you see that? The
deeper life doesn’t begin until then. While you’re still struggling with sin dear one, while you’re
still fighting that battle within you’re not ready to begin the deeper life. The deeper life begins
after a dear one has died to self, been cleansed by the Holy Spirit and been baptized with the Holy
Spirit with the gifts of the Spirit. Then the dear one is ready to begin the deeper life and so
really in a way the conference begins when we have entered into that.
So in a sense dear ones, if you have not experienced those steps well all of what we’re going to say
is so much mental wisdom to you, you see, because you cannot enter into it until you’re at that
point. Now dear ones, I council you to pray about that today so that you will seek to come to that
point.
I’d like to just in the next three sessions, if possible, to deal with three aspects of the deeper
life. First of all, the ministry, the Christian’s ministry in the spirit and then this evening, the
Christian’s witness in the spirit, and then tomorrow morning the Christian’s fellowship in the
spirit. And I think it is a very different kind of life and an exciting one. The one that God
originally meant us to engage in, in the Garden of Eden. You remember, he said, “I want you now to
allow my Holy Spirit from the tree of life, to pervade your mind, and your intellect, and your body,
and to fill you completely, and to express himself through you freely.” Well, that’s the life we’re
engaged on when we move into the deeper life, to allow the Holy Spirit to integrate all of us.
Now, would you like then dear ones, with the ministry and the spirit in mind, to look at Romans 1:9,
and it’s only part of Verse 9. There’s so much in it I don’t think we could deal with it all but we
can deal with that middle piece. Romans 1:9 and I’m sorry I just have the RSV here but I think
you’ll be able to find the same clause in the King James. Romans 1:9, “For God is my witness, whom
I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my
prayers.”
Now dear ones, there’s too much and really all we can take is, “Whom I serve with my spirit.” “Whom
I serve with my spirit.” What is the ministry of the Christian? Well the ministry of the Christian
is to serve God with his Spirit. I think it’s necessary first of all to see that the ministry of
the Christian is not to do God’s work. The ministry of the Christian is not to do God’s work.
Now, you cannot do God’s work. Only God can do God’s work. Your ministry depends on God’s work but
it is not to do God’s work. Now you see the distinction? You may say to me, “Now pastor, that’s
only a matter of speaking? It’s only a manner of speaking we have when we say, ‘We’re doing God’s
work.’” But dear ones, so often it tends to be a manner of thinking also, you see. Our Christian
ministry depends on God’s work but does not consist of doing God’s work. Only God can do his work.
Now you can see this more clearly if you look at what God’s work is and Brother Elmer has been
telling that to you plainly. John 16:8-11, this is God’s work and this is why no Christian ministry
consists of doing God’s work, though all Christian ministries depend on God’s work. John 16:8-11,
here is God’s work and this is specifically his work not ours, “And when he comes,” (when the Holy
Spirit comes) “he will convince the world of sin and righteousness and of judgment: of sin, because
they do not believe in me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no
more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” That is God’s work, to convict the
world of sin of righteousness, and of judgment.
Now, if you ever go in to minister as a Christian and no work of God has taken place in the dear
one’s heart, you waste your time and deify yourself. So it’s vital dear ones, you see for a work to
take place in a person’s heart before you actually speak to them. I remember that dear old white
haired man that I told you of with the hole in the wall you remember, and the Holy Spirit making the
hole if you jumped. He said, “You know you can do no witnessing unless a work of God has already
taken place in the dear one’s heart.” And that’s true you see, right from before conversion, unless
God has awakened them in some sense there’s no point in you saying anything.
So that’s why the Christian’s ministry depends on the work of God. But where the Christian goes in
without a work of God taking place then all the attention is drawn to the Christian. So you know
dear ones, there are many churches where all the attention is drawn to the building, or the
preacher, or the choir, or the great preaching, or the power of the place. And that happens when
the work of God is not central. But when the work of God is central and the Christian’s ministry
depends on that, then this happens as it happened in Romans 1:8 if you look there.
They don’t thank God for the preacher, or for the choir, or the beautiful building, or for the many
good people in the church but in Verse 8, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of
you.” Why? “Because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.” In other words, where God’s work
is taking place among people and the Christian’s ministry depends on that. The people’s faith is
talked about. They’re expectancy for God to do mighty things and their trust that he will do mighty
things. Those are the things that other people talk about. They talk about the people’s faith
because faith of course is the gift of God and is not stirred up by great preaching, but is the gift
that God gives to the people who are willing to submit to him.
So where God’s work is really taking place and the Christian’s ministry depends on that, then
people’s faith is talked about. But where there is no work of God and Christian’s are trying to
minister without a work of God, the people begin to talk about the preacher, or the great church, or
the great choir, or all the wealth they have, or the possessions they have. So there is a real
difference dear ones, one work will not last and the other work will last forever. You can see
that’s true in 1 Corinthians 3:12-13.
1 Corinthians 3:12-13, there are two very definite kinds of work that are done under the ministry of
Christians so-called. 1 Corinthians 3:12-13, “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold,
silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble – each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will
disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each
one has done.” And you can see that Christians can minister in two ways, you see without the work
of God and trying to do the work of God, or with the work of God and depending on the work of God.
And the one does not last and will be temporary, and the other lasts forever. And we want to build
with precious stones not wood, hay, or stubble. So it’s important even with our sons and our
daughters not to go in and do our own works in their hearts you see, but to be sure that God has
done a work before we speak and then the work remains.
Dear ones, the second thing I think we should look at in the ministry of the Christian is there in
Romans 1:9. First of all, the ministry of a Christian depends on God’s work but is not God’s work
and then in Verse 9 that we read, “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel
of his Son.” A Christian in his ministry serves God, he does not serve men. A Christian in his
ministry does not serve men, he serves God.
Now we have a danger in these days of saying, “Well again, that’s only a manner of speaking brother.
We mean we’re serving God I mean, if you give a glass of water in my name you give it to the Lord
Jesus.” But dear ones, the tendency seems to be in these days that we emphasis that we’re serving
man and God fades from the picture. And the Bible puts it very bluntly that a Christian’s job in
his ministry is to serve God and God must be foremost.
Now you can see another verse where that is present in Ephesians 6:7. Ephesians 6:7, this emphasis
is present again, “Rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men.” “Rendering
service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men.” So we are called to serve God and not
serve men. Do you see that there is a great danger that many of us who have had our sins forgiven
and have been cleansed from inward sin, and have been baptized with the Holy Spirit will move out
into self again in our ministry? Can you see that?
That many of us are tempted by the devil after we have had our sins forgiven and been cleansed from
inward sin and self and been baptized with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There’s a great danger
that in our ministry we will move back into self. And if we’re conscious first of serving men dear
ones, that’s what happens. So there are many churches today, and you know it, which are bent on
serving men and then end up men pleasers. The preachers end up men pleasers because they have to
please the men that they’re serving. And they become preoccupied with the affect their preaching is
having on the men that they’re preaching to. Or, they become preoccupied with the amelioration of
social evils, and they say, “Our job is to serve men,” and I think it’s Fromke says, you know, “The
liberals have a tendency to say what can be done by men to improve the world.”
And there’s a tendency in many of us to go that way. We say, “Well right enough we should be doing
something about the Negro problem. We should be doing something about the race issue. We should be
doing something about the gun law.” And suddenly we begin to change over to serving men and to
trying to ameliorate a society that God has promised us is going to be destroyed. And so many dear
ones in their Christian ministry are led into frustration and futility because they begin to serve
men, and they begin to try to renew this world that only God can renew instead of turning to God and
serving him through the saving of individual souls and the leading them into the sanctifying power
of the Holy Spirit and into the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Instead of that, they begin to
concentrate on serving society.
Now dear ones, the Bible says, “We are called to serve God and not to serve men.” Now you may say,
and this is just the third part of what I would like to say this morning, “How do you know how you
should serve God? And, how do you serve God? How can you serve God?” Well, you find the statement
of how we serve God in 1 Corinthians 3, and maybe you would like to turn to it since it will be
basic to what God can say to us this morning.
1 Corinthians 3:5-9, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as
the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who
plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who
waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are fellow
workers of God; you are God’s field, God’s building.”
I don’t know how the King James translates that dear ones. Can someone read the King James Version?
I think it’s that word “with” that the sister read, the Greek is really “theou” which means of
God. And the Bible emphasis is that not are we so much fellow workers with God, you know, equals
walking along and Father you do a bit and I’ll do a bit, but we are fellow workers of God. We work
together as fellow workers that belong to God.
God does his work and then he calls in workers to work together for him. So not so much you see, we
are fellow workers with God but we are fellow works of God. God does his work and then we are
called to work together on the basis of the work that he has done already. So it’s like a surgeon
who is doing a heart transplant, he’s the one that does the heart transplant and he renews the dear
heart in the person and he has nurses and other doctors and assistants around him. And as he does
the work he requires assistants and each one must know what God wants them to do so he needs forceps
at this time, so he needs a needle at this time, so he needs tissues at this time. And he calls
from each one what he needs.
Now it’s in that sense that we are fellow workers of God. So God sees a dear one who is struggling
under bondage of sin and he convicts that person of his sin and that dear one needs someone to
explain to him what conviction is. And God calls one of his fellow workers and tells them, “Will
you explain to him what conviction of sin is?” And you maybe meet that dear one and explain it.
Then that dear one needs to go on from the forgiveness of sins to sanctification and God calls
another of his fellow workers and says, “Would you go and reveal the message of inward victory to
that dear one?” And maybe it’s you that are called this time. And so God is the great surgeon and
he does the work and we are fellow workers of God. We do what he tells us.
You can see how vital it is to know when God tells you what to do. It’s vital dear ones to know
what God tells you he wants you to do and when he wants you to do it. Now, how do you know that?
Well let’s look to the verse of scripture that shows us. And you see it just over the page from
that 1 Corinthians 3, it’s 1 Corinthians 2:11b and then Verse 9b-10. 1 Corinthians 2, how do you as
a fellow worker, how do you as one who is to minister as minster of Christ, how do you know when you
ought to minister and what you ought to minister? 1 Corinthians 2:11b, “So also no one comprehends
the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” In other words it’s the Spirit of God that’s the
only one that knows.
Now look at Verse 9b-10, 10 especially, “God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit
searches everything, even the depths of God.” Now, you know what God is thinking because God’s
Spirit knows what God is thinking and is able to tell you. Now it’s important dear ones to see that
this is part of the ministry in the Spirit, that your ministry is determined, and commanded, and
directed by God’s Spirit. Now you may say, “Why all this mystic stuff? Why not just use your own
mind that God has given you, and your feelings, and your good common sense, and do what you think
ought to be done for God’s cause to forward the world?”
Well dear ones, let’s look at Moses who did that and let’s look at Exodus 2:10-15, and he did just
what some of us think of suggesting and what I’m afraid many of us do in our Christian ministry.
Exodus 2:10-15, he used his own native wit. He was committed to God and he wanted to do what God
wanted but he decided to work it out for himself. Exodus 2:10-15, “And the child grew, and she
brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son; and she named him Moses, for she said,
‘Because I drew him out of the water.’ One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his
people,” the Israelites, “And looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one
of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in
the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together; and he said
to the man that did the wrong, ‘Why do you strike your fellow?’ He answered, ‘Who made you a prince
and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid,
and thought, ‘Surely the thing is known.’ When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But
Moses fled from Pharaoh, and stayed in the land of Midian; and he sat down by a well.”
And there is old Moses using his own native judgment and his own native abilities, and you see what
a glorious success he made of the task. He fled and ended up sitting down by a well. Now dear
ones, if you carry out your Christian ministry on the basis of your own native wit and common sense,
you will end up fleeing from the situation and sitting down by a well and being of no use to God.
Now, look at Moses when God’s own Spirit directed him. Exodus 3:1, “Now Moses was keeping the flock
of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian; and he led his flock to the west side of the
wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.” And then in Verse 7, “Then the LORD said, “I
have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their
taskmasters; I know their sufferings.” The Spirit of God spoke to Moses and told him. Then in
Verse 10, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel
out of Egypt? But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of
Israel out of Egypt?’” And his own native wit rose again, “He said, ‘But I will be with you; and
this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of
Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain.”
And then in Verse 20 you see the achievements of God continuing through Moses, “So I will stretch
out my hand and smite Egypt with all the wonders which I will do in it; and then he will let you
go.” And so the message goes on into 30 and 31 of the next chapter where eventually the people are
freed. And God’s mission is accomplished through God’s Spirit telling the co-worker of God what he
ought to do.
In other words dear ones, there’s a difference between your ministry being directed by God’s Spirit
who alone knows God’s thoughts and your ministry being directed by your own soulish powers. You
see, just as there is a clear distinction between God’s Spirit and our spirit, you remember, we
talked about the Garden of Eden and the tree of light through which God was going to pour the spirit
of the begotten life into our spirits so that it would pervade all of our lives, our minds, and
emotions.
Now as there is a difference between God’s Spirit and our spirit, Romans 8:16, “The Spirit of God
witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.” There’s a distinction between them. So
there is a distinction dear ones between the spirit and the soul that we have. You see, there is a
distinction between our spirit and our souls. Now, you may question that and you may want to look
at it more carefully so would you like to turn just to some of these passages?
First of all the most obvious one is 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and most of you perhaps know it by heart
and don’t need to turn to it. 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you
wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ.” Now many of us read that and say, “Well that just means your body, you know, and all
the spiritual part of you.” Now dear ones the word of God is precious and was inspired by the maker
of the world so that the right words were given to us to convey the right meaning.
Now when the Bible makes the distinction between body, and soul, and spirit that distinction is
there because we are loose in our use of language it does not mean that God is loose in the use of
language. And God says “Body, soul, and spirit,” because he means that there is a distinction not
only between body and soul but there is a distinction between soul and spirit.
In fact, you’ll see by the next reference that we take that it is vital for a Christian in his
ministry not only to know that there is a distinction between soul and spirit but actually to allow
his soul and his spirit to be distinguished in his own life. It is essential for him to be able to
see the difference in his own life and to know when he is listening to his spirit and when he is
listening to his soul. Now you can see that in Hebrews 4 dear ones. Hebrews 4:12-13, “For the word
of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and
spirit.” “Piercing to the division of soul and spirit.”
In other words, not only can you know that you have a soul and you have a spirit but the word of God
is able, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the revelation of God’s word to distinguish for
you between your soul and your spirit. And the Bible calls us to serve God with our spirits. Now,
do you see the importance of it dear ones? We are called to serve God with our spirits not with our
souls. And many of us are having failure in our own Christian ministry because we’re trying to
serve God with the power of our own souls. And you know again, and again the Bible emphasizes this,
worship with your spirit, pray with your spirit, serve with your spirit. The Bible emphasizes that
we must pray, and worship, and serve with our spirits not with our souls.
Now you may say, “Well, what are our souls? What does our soul consist of?” Well, would you just
be patient then and we’ll follow just a few references through and see it from the scripture and
then we can apply it to our own hearts. 2 Peter 2:7-8, first of all our soul consists of these
things. 2 Peter 2:7-8, “And if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness
of the wicked (for by what that righteous man saw and heard as he lived among them, he was vexed in
his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds).”
Now he was distressed, he was vexed. You feel distressed and vexed when your emotions feel
distressed and vexed. But the New Testament there says, “He was vexed in his righteous soul.” Now
the soul consists first of all of our emotions. That’s one of the parts of the soul and that’s one
of the things that we’re not called to serve God with first and foremost, with our emotions.
Now at times we do serve God with our emotions, you see. At times we go up to this old dear one and
we think, “If we can only get over to them the joy of life in Jesus, then they’ll want him for
themselves.” And so we pray it up, and we work it up, and we feel really joyful and we hit that
deck with a smile on our faces, and with the emotions bursting out and we say, “Life in Jesus is
great.” And the emotions pour out to them and we minister with our souls and we minister death dear
ones.
You minister death. You do not minister the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus has a precious
joy that no one can imitate but we turn on this human joy for the best motives. I know dear ones,
for the best motives but it is not of Jesus. It is not of the Spirit of Jesus, it is the emotions
of our soul. And so often we witness in the strength of our soul. You see, that was the very
temptation in the Garden of Eden. You remember we said it was not choose good and avoid evil but it
was choose the knowledge of good and evil. It was a rising up of the soul in the Garden of Eden.
You remember we said that all our functions were perverted of every part of our personality by the
fall. Our bodies instead of giving out people in the image of God began to enjoy themselves and
concentrate on their own enjoyment. You remember we said that our spirits that were meant to rule
over the world and God through them to rule over the world began to rule over themselves and rule
over other people. And then the soul, which was meant to receive directions from the spirit, it
began to work itself, it began to operate itself. It began to substitute its power for the
resources from the tree of life.
Dear ones, when you pour out your own emotions to someone to whom you’re supposed to witness and
those emotions do not come from the Spirit of Jesus, because of course the Spirit of Jesus can use
your emotions, I don’t mean you go without emotion, but there’s an emotion that is soulish and
there’s an emotion that comes because the Spirit of Jesus has provoked it. Now one gives life and
the other gives death. One can be used by God, the other draws attention to self and they say,
“What a happy person that fellow is.” Well, what good does that do? That’s of no good to God.
So the emotions dear ones are one part of the soul. Now Psalms 119, this will seem strange to you,
I just never realized there was a Psalm with 167 verses in it but Psalms 119 has more than that.
Psalms 119:167, and this is dear ones, another part of our souls. Psalms 119:167, “My soul keeps
thy testimonies; I love them exceedingly.” “My soul keeps thy testimonies,” it means commandments
and it’s your will obviously that keeps commandments.
Part of the soul is the will. The soul consists of your emotions and your will. And the Bible
calls us to serve God with our spirits not primarily with our wills. The Holy Spirit will use your
wills. He will guide your wills. You need to allow the Spirit to use your wills but you yourself
must not use your will. So there comes a moment when God asks you to do some work for him and you
don’t feel like it at all and you say, “Well, I’ll do it,” and your will determines to do it and you
go in that spirit and you go and you minister to the dear one but you do not minister the Spirit of
Jesus, you minister your strong will to them. And many of us, when dear ones come to us and say, “I
cannot, I cannot keep the commandments. I cannot do it. I don’t know what’s wrong, there’s
something within me that rises up.” We minister the power of the will to them and say, “You must
will it. You must will it.”
Now you must will obedience over outward acts and words but you know that you cannot will down the
risings up within a converted man or woman. That’s something that only the Holy Spirit can deal
with. And so we are not called to minister by our wills or in our wills, but through our spirits to
minister with our spirits. Well dear ones, another part of the soul is found in different parts of
the Bible but I think that maybe we have only time to look at the mind and you can see it there in
Deuteronomy 11:18.
Deuteronomy 11:18, “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul;
and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.”
“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul.” Now if you lay up
words for an examination you obviously lay them up in your memory and that’s part of your mind. And
the soul consists of the emotions, and the will, and the mind. So do you see that the soul consists
of the mind, the emotions, and the will? I believe also there’s reason for saying it consists of
the conscience but the vital things in the ministry of a Christian are the mind, the emotions, and
the will. And dear ones, God calls us not to minister with our minds but to allow the Holy Spirit
to use our minds.
Now I think Philip could have ministered with his mind. God came down to him and said, “Will you go
to the desert road that leads to Gaza?” Philip, if had been ministering with his mind would have
said, “Thinks, the desert road that leads to Gaza? A desert road has no one on it. No Father,
because there’s a revival going on here and I’m needed here to lead other dear ones into conversion.
No, I will not go to the desert road that leads to Gaza because my mind tells me that’s a desert
road.” Now often if we minister in the power of our minds, we will go astray in our own Christian
ministries because that’s ministering with the soulish powers.
Now dear ones, we cannot, we cannot do any work for God by ministering with our minds. So often in
an argument we minister with our minds. We’re determined that they’ll see the doctrine as we see it
and we’re determined they’ll understand the infinite minds definition of sin just as we understand
it. Dear ones, that isn’t the vital thing at all but that they see the beauty of Jesus and they see
that sin is any falling short of that beauty. But many of us minister in the power of our minds and
not in the power of the spirit. We do not serve God with our spirits we serve him with our minds.
So I did this, you know, at my first church in Minneapolis I decided, “What they need to do is read
the Bible so I’ll get Bible study groups going.” And right enough we did it and I had a good Bible
study book, and I duplicated sheets, and I had six groups going, and there were 10 or 12 people in
each group and that was magnificent. In a Methodist church any way, it was magnificent. And there
were 70 of us meeting every week for an hour. And I led every group so that I led six groups a week
just to make sure that they saw the word of God as it really was.
And I had thought this whole thing up with this great clever thing here. And then it went for six
months and six months passed by and I looked around for the fruit and there was no fruit. They all
knew the Bible and they were enjoying the groups and, “Reverend O’Neill we really think the groups
are good.” But there was no life pouring through the groups because this mind had thought the idea
up and I had organized them as I would organize an army. And dear ones, if you serve God with your
mind like that instead of with your spirit there will be no fruit.
The Christian’s ministry depends on serving God with the spirit. Now, you say why? Well, God wants
this to be the situation in your life, the spirit receives directions from his Spirit. Then the
spirit wears the soul. You see, wears the soul as I wear this coat. The spirit wears the soul and
expresses the directions that God has given it through the mind, and emotions, and the will of the
soul and then the soul wears the body and the soul expresses what it has received from the spirit
out through the body. And the will of God is that the life that he gives to your spirit should come
out untinged and untainted through your body. And that’s why the body, the soul, and the spirit
must not only be completely sanctified but they must work in that order dear ones.
If it works from the soul then it is not of God, it is of the soul. It is still of the old
independence of men. And you know, you’ll often see a person who has claimed to be sanctified and
claimed to be baptized with the Spirit and that dear one pours forth their soul and all you meet is
their soul and the power of their soul and you do not meet the Spirit of Jesus and you know that.
There’s something that grinds inside you and you know that’s soulish power pouring out.
Now dear ones, that is not God’s will. You can see this is also why psychology has little place,
psychiatric counseling as little place in the life of a Christian because the spirit is the one
that’s wrong or right. The soul only expresses what is in the spirit. Now psychology is “psuche”
and “logos” it’s the knowledge of the “psuche”, or the mind, or the soul. And when psychologists
work with you they work on that second level and they’re working all the time with symptoms.
So you deal with the dear one who is neurotic at home and you decide, “The only way I can do it is
give her electric shock treatment.” And you try and shock a soul. I don’t know what you’re trying
to do you’re just trying to shock it. You know it shouldn’t be as it is, you know, you try to shock
it out of the syndrome that it’s in, in that moment. But you see dear ones who are Christians know
that the soul is only expressing what the spirit has felt and it’s at the spirit level that the
problem is. And that’s why it’s so precious that the best psychiatrist of all is the Bible which is
the word of God which can divide even the soul from the spirit and can reveal to us the intentions
of our hearts. So it’s vital to see the distinction.
Dear ones, we could go on for days on this, it’s so precious. Could I just point out one more thing
to you, that it’s vital for us, you see, to begin to deal at the level of our spirits in our own
lives. If you deal at the level of the soul, and many churches do, many churches try to educate the
soul. Many churches who even believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, are all the time trying to
educate the soul. Well, it’s like me taking my car and driving it back and forward between Bethany
and my home. Driving it back and forward two or three times and then saying, “Okay, you can go on
your own.”
That’s what you’re doing when you’re dealing with the soul you see, because the soul’s driver is the
spirit. And however often you run the soul back and forward over that line it won’t get used to it
because the soul itself is strictly speaking neutral, strictly speaking neutral. And if it is
predisposed one way it’s predisposed because the spirit is predisposed this way. You can see that
that’s why the Bible is so wise, isn’t it, when Isaiah cries, “I am a man of uncleanness.” Not, “I
spoke with my lips unclean words,” not, “My mind thought unclean words,” but, “They all did what
they did because the spirit was unclean.” And so it’s the spirit that guides the soul and the soul
guides the body.
A Christian needs to receive his directions directly from the spirit. Now many of us have gone
astray because we’ve come into all the experience of the spirit and we have not lived by the spirit.
We have not ministered in the spirit we’ve looked at the books, the psychology books, and we’ve
read all the other books. And I’m sure it’s good to read them, but it’s good to realize that your
direction day-by-day moment-by-moment must come from your spirit.
Now last of all dear ones, and there isn’t really much time to talk about it but God wants to show
you the distinction between your soul and your spirit. So again and again dear ones who are about
to enter into the deeper life find they’re meeting defeat
Black and White versus Grey Spirituality - REVIVAL
Controlled Surrender
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
For those of you who are here maybe for the first time and have been put off by previous experiences
of an emotional and irrational presentation of Christianity because really we don’t present the
intellectual basis this morning for the Christianity that we believe in and I can only point you to
the house of Dunamis and the bookshop in the House of Dunamis we have maybe a library of 50
cassettes which deal with the intellectual basis of Christianity and we in past Sundays have talked
about this. I point you to the Fish bookshop which has a good selection of Christian books on those
subjects, and point you to the seminars, and just ask you to be patient and realize that we’re
following out a study that we have been considering together for several months, and so you in a way
come in in the middle of it.
It’s not because we don’t deal with the intellectual basis but we believe we need to get beyond that
also. We, since Christmas have been talking about what the real Christian is. We’ve done that
because people have so many varied concepts of what a Christian is. Some of them think that we’re a
Christian nation because we put, “In God we trust,” on our coins. And so a lot of people say, “Oh,
that’s what you mean by being a Christian.” And a lot of people say, “Oh well a Christian man is a
very moral man or a very virtuous man,” or, “A Christian person is a church goer or someone who
believes the truths of Christianity.”
Now dear ones, it’s because of those varied concepts that we have been talking about what a real
Christian is on these Sundays. You remember, we said that a real Christian was one who had
experienced the two effects of Christ’s death. He had experienced a spiritual birth whereby God’s
Holy Spirit came into his spirit and brought new life and sensitivity to God into him and that came
through real repentance. And the second effect of Jesus’ death is a real spiritual death to that
old self life caused by the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in displacing that self and made
possible by the fact that we were really crucified with Christ 1900 years ago.
Now both of those probably sound wild to anybody who has never considered Christianity seriously
before, but what it really means is first a miraculous implanting of a God centered set of
motivations and sensitivities inside us. And secondly, a miraculous displacing of the old
self-centered set of sensitivities and motivations within us. And a real Christian is one how has
experienced both of those – a spiritual birth and a real spiritual death to self.
Now is it possible for a person to enter into just one of those? Yes, last Sunday we talked, you
remember, about a person who is half alive spiritually. A person who has allowed the Holy Spirit to
make the new birth real in them so that they want to do God’s will, and they want to do things that
please Jesus, but the self inside them and the miserable self-centered desires that they have,
prevent them from obeying God’s will. That’s a person who is half alive spiritually. A person who
has entered into the new birth but has not entered into a real experience of their death to self
with Christ and so they are in a sense like the man described, you remember, in Romans 7:19. And we
did look at it before but if you want to check it there are a couple of references there in Romans
that it would be good to look at. And Romans 7:19, describes the state of a person who is half
alive spiritually.
Romans 7:19, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” “For I do
not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” And many people have entered into
half a Christian experience and are in that position. They know what they ought to do but they have
not the power to do it and they live constantly defeated experiences failing to do what they know
they should do. Now really, their position is much like a Jew. You could say almost that they are
living under the old covenant. They’re living under the old covenant which enabled people to have
their sins forgiven but did not give them power to live in obedience.
They’re living a bit like the person, you remember, that Paul describes there in 7:24, he says,
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And some people would say
that isn’t a defeated Christian talking, that’s Paul talking as a Jew under the law, “Wretched man
that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” What was a body of death? Well, you
remember, they had several methods of execution in the first century, one was crucifixion. Another
was putting a stake right through the heart of the person. Another was taking the victim that the
criminal had murdered and hanging that victim’s dead body around the criminal and making that
criminal walk for months and months with that dead body decomposing around him and the stench
constantly destroying any freshness of the air, and eventually overcoming the man.
Now, that is what Paul means, “Who shall deliver me from this body of death, this dead body hanging
around me that prevents me living the full life that I could live if it wasn’t there, and it’s
continually hindering me when I get into situations that require extra effort?” Now loved ones, you
see, that’s what many of us find ourselves in. We find that there’s a kind of body of death that
hangs around us and we want to love the person, we want to love them wholly and completely but there
is within us a self-righteous desire to judge them and that body of death hangs around us. And we
want to love the person but that self-righteous desire to judge them comes up and we say, “No, we
can’t love them because they’re like this.”
Many of us want to have a pure relationship with our dear ones. We want to have a pure love
relationship but there is a self-pleasing lustful desire to satisfy ourselves that is constantly
creeping up inside and this old body of death seems to swing around us at times when we want to have
a pure experience with the dear one. Now, that’s what it means to be half alive.
There are many of us who really want to live for God totally and we really do want to follow Jesus
and make any sacrifice that is necessary but inside us there is this self glorifying desire that
wants to live our lives for our own sakes and for our own benefits. Now that’s the body of death
dear ones. It’s not this flesh body, there’s nothing evil about the body itself. It’s the body of
death, the body of sin inside us that is constantly trying to pull us back into self. Now that’s
what a half alive Christian is, you see.
Now what you need to decide this morning is where you stand in regard to that, really. The first
time the gospel was ever preached was the day of Pentecost and both these experiences, a real birth
and a real death, are implied in the instruction that is given to those converts or to those
non-Christians before they were converted. Maybe you’d look at it, it’s Acts 2:38, and you remember
it was the first time that any man ever presented in the world that God was willing to accept men as
his own children because of Jesus and was able to restore his image in their own lives. And then
you remember, some people came up to Peter and they said, “In the light of this what shall we do?”
And Acts 2:38, Peter answered like this, “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one
of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift
of the Holy Spirit.’”
And there were three steps dear ones. The first step was repent, and you had to stop doing the
things that were wrong, and ask Jesus’ Spirit to come into your life. And that’s the first step in
becoming a Christian. And then you see you had to be baptized in the name of Jesus. And you know,
they were wiser than us, they didn’t spend hours arguing about whether they ought to go right under
the water, or whether it was enough to sprinkle, or whether it was enough to pour on, and all that.
They really got to the basis of what baptism was. And you remember how Paul explained it in Romans
he explained what baptism was before the people ever went under the water in Romans 6:3-4, you
remember. And this was the second necessary step, you see, to be a totally alive Christian.
Romans 6:3, “Do you not know,” and you see probably Paul would do this, the dear ones would be
waiting there on the side of the river or the lake and he would explain to them, “Now, I’m going to
explain to you what baptism means,” and bless our hearts we think, “Well, if we haven’t been
baptized in the right way, this won’t take place in us.” Dear ones, it will. You’re only baptized
again if Jesus tells you to be baptized.
Do you see how silly we are brothers and sisters? We love to see the visible things, you know. If
somebody tells us by being baptized upside down you can be converted, you know, we’ll go for that.
Now loved ones, do you see, and I share this with you because I’m willing to baptize anyone
believers baptism that believes Jesus is really guiding them. But do you see there’s a difference
between that and the fad of being baptized because you think it’s an easy way into the death of
Christ? There is no easy way. You’re baptized into what you are already. Do you see that?
The New Testament always baptizes you into something that you’re in already. The baptism does not
cause the thing. The baptism is an outward sacramental proclamation that the thing has taken place.
Now, that does not mean that we should not follow the New Testament directions as clearly as
possible we should do that, but we should steer away from any faddish preoccupation with second
baptisms. If Jesus guides you to a second baptism then that’s good but be sure that it’s that. Be
sure that it’s not going for some visible mechanical thing that you think will create the experience
because it won’t.
But probably you see, as the dear ones came to the lake or river Paul explained to them, “Do you not
know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were
buried therefore 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.” Now many of us do not walk in newness
of life because we have never been identified with Christ in his death and his resurrection. And
you see, even on the first day that the gospel was ever preached it was shared that that was
necessary.
You repented, you were born of the spirit and then you were baptized into the death of Jesus. You
were identified with him in his death and resurrection. Loved ones, sharing with you the
application of it to physical lust, you are baptized into Jesus’ lack of having a woman and you
agree with the Holy Spirit, “I agree Holy Spirit, I am willing only to experience what you want me
to experience in that area of my life. I am willing to be baptized into Jesus completely. If he
had no wife, if he had no girlfriend, if he had no woman I am willing for that. If you want to give
me a wife, a girlfriend, then I am willing for that.” But do you see that it is an identification
with Jesus in every aspect of his life, in every way in which he died to self you are willing to die
to self. And then as you’re baptized into that the Holy Spirit is completely filling your life and
taking your life over and that is the full Christian experience.
Now you may say, “Well, pastor is it possible for people to enter into half an experience?” Well
dear ones, let’s look to Acts 8 and see it there. In Acts 8:4-6, “Now those who were scattered went
about preaching the word. Philip went down to a city of Samaria, and proclaimed to them the
Christ.” Now you see in Verse 6, “And the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by
Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did.” Now that means they heard his word
there in Samaria. Now they took another step in Verse 12-13, “But when they believed Philip,” they
not only heard it but they believed him, “As he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the
name of Jesus Christ”.
So they knew what they were believing, they were believing the name of Jesus. “They were baptized,
both men and women.” So these people really became Christians, they were really born of the Spirit.
“Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs
and great miracles performed, he was amazed.” So there was in every sense a new birth experience in
the city there in Samaria.
Now, do you see how the story goes on in Verse 14, “Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that
Samaria had received the word of God,” you would think they would have immediately said, “Send them
out, give them the four laws and send them out and get them out witnessing, and get them out serving
God, and get them out playing the organ in church and have them sing in church, and have them run
Sunday school classes,” and all that kind of thing. Now do you see that immediately they heard what
had happened in Samaria, Peter and John new that only half an experience had taken place?
Presumably Philip had told them some of what he had done and do you see what they had did in Verse
14? They sent to them their two best men, Peter and John, “Who came down and prayed for them that
they might receive the Holy Spirit; for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the
Holy Spirit.”
Now it is important dear ones, to see that when you’re baptized in the name of Jesus what often
takes place is a new birth experience. You’re born of the Spirit, you receive the Spirit, but you
are not filled with the Spirit and you need to go into the full experience of Christ’s death. Now
if you say to me, “Do you not think pastor that some people experience both the New Testament
times?” Maybe they did dear ones, I’m sure they experienced it almost the next day. I’m sure there
was no difficulty in them realizing what a full surrender was in those days.
I’ve shared with you before, I’m sure they heard the word one day and then Peter or Paul would
explain to them what baptism into Christ the next day, they would realize that Peter and Paul were
as good as dead men, and that baptism for them meant dying to any future that they might have.
Dying to their own wishes, dying to their own concerns, and they were baptized and filled with the
Holy Spirit. But brothers and sisters you know it’s different today. We are born of the Spirit,
then we look around and instead of seeing examples everywhere of men sacrificing their financial
accounts, sacrificing their bank balances, sacrificing their plans for marriage, their homes, their
two car garages, sacrificing everything for Jesus, instead of that we see many dear ones who are
children of God but they are living lives of controlled surrender. And so we ourselves, you see, we
wander into that controlled surrender and that’s why many of us have little experience of the
filling with the Holy Spirit.
Now it would be good, because I see some older brothers and sisters among us in these mornings, it
would be good to say, dear ones, I’m not saying that we all ought to become missionaries, or we all
ought to leave the States, but we ought to be full time servants for Jesus. Do you see what I mean?
Not full time paid servants, but living for Him first and foremost, everything else subordinate.
And when we begin to get a new group of Christians entering into both parts of Christ’s death then
we’ll begin to have less defeated Christians around us, and we’ll have less people entering into
half an experience.
So I think it is important to see it dear ones. Now you may say, “Oh but brother how could you
enter into half an experience?” Well, I’ll show you why. There’s a principle explained in Matthew
9 if you’d look at it, and I think it will help you to see why many people do enter into only half
of what Christ as done for them on the cross. Matthew 9 and it’s the story of a healing you
remember, Matthew 9:27-30, “And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying
aloud, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David.’ When he entered the house, the blind men came to him; and
Jesus said to them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to him, ‘Yes, Lord.’
Then he touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’ And their eyes
were opened.”
Now do you see the principle is according to your faith be it done unto you, or be it unto you
according to your faith? Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit can only do in you what you believe
him to do. If you believe the Holy Spirit to take your sins and lay them on Jesus, and to bring to
you the witness of God’s Spirit that you’re forgiven and that you’re a child of God, if you believe
the Holy Spirit to come into the door of your heart, and dwell in your life, he will do that. But
he cannot do more than you believe him to do. If you do not believe that you were crucified with
Christ and are willing to be crucified with Christ, and believe the Holy Spirit to fill every part
of that miserable inward self that has envy, and jealous, and pride, and anger in it, then the Holy
Spirit cannot do it.
The Holy Spirit you see can apply to you all that God has done for you in Christ, but only if you
have faith that he will do it. And you can see therefore among many of us, it’s a sheer lack of
light. In our generation we have preached a soft gospel haven’t we? We’ve preached if you come to
God he will forgive you your sins and it doesn’t matter what you do. You can keep on doing what you
want but God will continually forgive you.
Now you see that isn’t the gospel in the New Testament. The New Testament gospel is you are
crucified with Christ. God isn’t just going to have a heaven full of people that he has to forgive,
and forgive, and forgive again. He wants a heaven full of people who have allowed that miserable
old rebellious self to be destroyed with Jesus on Calvary so that it is heaven. So that it is
heaven. And many of us you see have not heard that or have not shared it.
Now there is another reason for us not entering it. Faith is belief plus obedience. Now, if you
enter into an experience of forgiveness of sins without belief that Christ bore your sins, then you
enter into legalism. That’s why many conservative churches really have vied into legalism because
their children and their brothers and sisters have not entered into a real belief that their sins
were born by Jesus.
Now, if you enter into the forgiveness of sins without any real obedience then you’ll enter into a
life of doubts and many people you see, enter into an experience of forgiveness without any real
obedience following, and before they know it they’re beginning to doubt everything. They doubt
whether there’s a God, they doubt whether Jesus ever lived, they doubt everything that they ever
knew before.
Now it’s same with the experience of crucifixion with Christ. If you try to enter into an
experience of crucifixion with Christ without believing that you were crucified with Christ 1900
years ago, then you enter into suppression, a life of suppression where you try to suppress
something that has not been dealt with by God. And it’s the same if you enter into an experience of
deliverance from sin or crucifixion with Christ without any real obedience. Then you enter into a
life of auto suggestion where you keep saying, “I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.” But you’re not
really dead, you’re alive and kicking and every time anybody criticizes you, you know it that great
self rises up and reacts against them.
So do you see that in order to enter into the two great works that Christ achieves for us on the
cross you need to enter into both by a complete faith. That is, a complete belief and complete
obedience. Now how does this in fact work in our lives? Well, at the beginning of our Christian
life Jesus comes to the front door of our house and knocks. And the porch there is a guilty
conscious and Jesus explains to us, “Look, I was crucified for your sins. My Father has nothing
against you, you should have died for your sins but I’ve died for them. My Father doesn’t hate you,
my Father doesn’t dislike you. He has withdrawn his wrath from you. I tell you, you just look up
and believe that my Father’s face is smiling upon you and receive me into your spirit.”
Now that’s the experience of conversion and the Spirit of Jesus comes into us at conversion and then
he begins to look around at the rest of our house, and he begins to look into the bedroom, and he
begins to point out, “Now listen, there’s laziness in your life.” And the old self inside you rises
up and says, “Yeah, but I have a right to lay in it if I want to. I have a right to laze around if
I want to, it’s my life.” The Holy Spirit says, “No, I have come into your life, it is my life.
Now are you willing to die to your right to be lazy?” And then he deals with other things in the
bedroom of our house. He comes to self-indulgence and he says, “Now listen, you think you have the
right to indulge yourself whenever you want but you are not your own, you were bought with a price.
This body doesn’t belong to you it belongs to me. Now, will you let me take it over?” And the Holy
Spirit deals with us in that regard.
Or he deals with us so often in the bedroom of our lives. Really that’s where worry resides. At
night we worry and worry over what has happened during the day and what will happen the next day and
the Holy Spirit says, “Now listen, if you don’t hand that over to me you’re beginning to control
your life yourself. You worry because you think things aren’t going to turn out the way you want
them to. Now, will you die to your right to control things?” And the Holy Spirit goes through the
rooms of our house and he cleans them out. And he comes to the study and he deals there with the
pride and he says, “Now listen; you have pride in your grades. Now your grades were granted to you
by my grace and my power. They’re my grades they’re not yours.” And he begins to deal with us on
pride. Or, he begins to deal with us on envy.
He says, “Now, why do you think you have a right to be envious of someone else? You have been
crucified with Christ. You are nothing as far as Jesus is concerned, but the Father thinks the
world of you so why be envious of other people?” And the Holy Spirit dear ones, begins to go around
the other rooms of our house. Comes into the family room there where we get touchy with the family
and we’re touchy because they don’t seem to understand all the things we understand and the Holy
Spirit says, “You’re setting yourself up as God. Because they don’t understand things the way you
do, you think they’re wrong.”
And he deals with our impatience and says, “You think you know the perfect time to get things done?
Maybe their time is the perfect time. Impatience is a sign that you want everybody to do things the
way you want them to do it.” And you see the Holy Spirit moves through all the rooms of our house.
And he moves into the chapel there into the prayer room and he deals with the deadness and the
coldness that we experience in there and he shows us, “Listen, you’re in charge of your own
spiritual life. You have it under control you don’t feel I’m in control of it at all.” And the
Holy Spirit begins, you see, to search through all of the rooms of our house.
Now if we at any point resist him, that’s what, causes deadness in the Christian life. That’s what
calls a sense of defeat. If in any room of our life we resist him, that’s what causes the deadness.
If we respond to him and say, “Yes Holy Spirit, clean up that room, clean up that room, clean up
that room.” Then eventually he takes us to the very back of the house. There there is a closet
where we put all the stuff that we cleared out of the other rooms into and that closet is full to
the ceiling of all the dirt, and all of the things that the Holy Spirit said we should move out of
all the other areas of our lives.
Now dear ones, in that closet there exists three attitudes. One is I have really the right to this
house whatever he thinks. I’ll withdraw the bits of it that he tells me to when it’s convenient for
me, but I’m going to keep all this stuff back here and I’ll move it back in whenever I want. Now,
it’s that right to self loved ones that the Holy Spirit eventually begins to deal with. The second
thing is that desire for our own way and back there in that closet we want our own way, we don’t
actually want him to fill the whole house. We want to fill the whole house ourselves, that’s why
we’re keeping all the stuff back here. We feel we have the right to have our own way in regard to
our future, our finances, and okay we go along with him as long as it suits us.
But when we want to we’ll pull it out of his hands. And the third attitude is the desire to assert
ourselves, and defend ourselves. And you see we feel we have the right to assert ourselves over
this house because this is our life. Now, when the Holy Spirit gets to that closet we’ve come to
the question of whether we’re willing to die with Christ or in fact, to live a half alive
self-controlled half surrendered life and that’s the closet that you need to deal with dear ones.
And the Holy Spirit asks you “Are you willing to die to your right to yourself? Are you willing to
die to your right to have your own way? Are you willing to die to the right to assert yourself and
defend yourself?”
Dear ones, when you come to that place, you burn all your bridges behind you and you say, “Holy
Spirit I am willing.” And he knows whether you’re really willing or not and as a result of that he
fills you with himself and you enter into the fully surrendered victorious Christian life. Now
brothers and sisters, that’s a real moment, you can bluff all kinds of people that you’re willing to
die to that self, but the Holy Spirit knows if you’re willing.
Now if you say to me, “What happens if I’m not willing?” Well loved ones, I suppose you are a child
of God and you live that up and down Christian life in and out of defeat, in and out of victory. I
suppose you remain a child of God as long as you’re able to repent of your sins, but it’s not the
Father’s will for you. The Father’s will is that you enter into both parts of the cross of Christ
and you enter in by belief and obedience to the Holy Spirit.
Now brothers and sisters, it’s vital to come into that before you can know any ministry of the Holy
Spirit. So will you begin to pray about that, and think about it, and I’ll gladly talk with you or
pray with you at any time, or if you want to stay behind today and pray you should do it. But
really the way is to deal with the Holy Spirit. Let him into the rooms of your life until he takes
you back to the closet and then deal openly and honestly with him about that. I pray that God will
give you the grace to come into a full Christian experience. Now let us pray.
Holy Spirit, we know that only you can bring us there because this involves parts of our life over
which we exercise unconscious control. So Holy Spirit we need your light, and we need your
revelation to see where we need to come into a full experience of Christ’s death, and to be
identified with him in his death and then in his resurrection. So Holy Spirit, we commit ourselves
to you now and ask you whatever the cost, to come into every room in our life and to deal with that
closet at the back, to deal with that old self, and to bring us into the resurrection victory life
that is waiting for us.
We trust you to do that Holy Spirit, that Jesus may be glorified in us and not ourselves, that we
may live not unto ourselves but unto Jesus. Amen.
Half Alive - REVIVAL
Half Alive
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Imagine this that you see that your roommate while you were out has been in and has been looking for
some things of their own and they have just mowed through all your stuff and it’s chaotic. And so,
the old anger gets up and you move and you say, “Who do you think you are? You think you can just
throw everybody’s stuff all over the place whenever you want to?” And then the old cold war settles
in and you hold it like that for a day, or if you’re two girls for two days. That’s just the Irish
girls, I’m sure. And then you begin to make it up and eventually you ask forgiveness and the thing
comes out alright.
Now in that situation, even those of us with very hardened consciences, are very conscious that
there are two factors involved. One, we do have a real sense of guilt because we’ve lost our
temper. You know, our consciences are programmed by the same spirit that prompted Jesus to say, “If
you’re angry with your brother, you’re guilty of the judgment.” And so our consciences, because
they’re programmed by that spirit, our consciences witness guilt and we feel somehow, “Yeah, yeah, I
know it was wrong.” We might feel it’s wrong for different reasons according to how much light
we’ve had about God, but we do feel, “Yeah, there’s some guilt. We shouldn’t have done it.” And
yet we’re conscious of another attitude inside us and that’s the attitude that feels, “Well yeah,
but I had a right to do it. I mean, he or she shouldn’t have treated my stuff that way. I have a
right to defend my own possessions.”
Now do you see dear ones, that those two factors are present every time we disobey the Father in
some way in our lives? There’s that wee bit of feeling of guilt and there’s also that feeling that
seems deeper than the guilt that says, “Yeah, but I mean I had a right to do it.” And there’s that
bit of us that wants to justify what we did. Now, how does the ordinary man in the street deal with
that? Well, usually he looks at the guilt and he rationalizes it, and he attributes it to some
Victorian inhibition that has been passed on by his parents. And he just rejects the whole idea of
death following upon anger. He rejects the authority of Jesus, he says, “No, it doesn’t matter if
you’re angry, you’re not guilty of the judgment.” He just rationalizes away the whole idea of
guilt. And how does he deal with the inside feeling, the sense of self-assertion? Well, usually he
looks at it and he says, “Well, I’m a human being. Every human being has a right to defend his own
possessions. No, I’m right to feel that way. I ought to stand up for myself and look out for
myself, and if I don’t who will?” And that’s normally the way the man in the street deals with an
active disobedience.
Now, how does a person who comes to believe in Jesus deal with that act? Well, he sees that Jesus
is God’s son. He sees that what Jesus says about the anger is true and that if you’re angry with
your brother you’re guilty of the judgment. And he sees, “Yes, that is anger. That’s a sin. I am
guilty of the judgment. I deserve to be condemned for that sin of anger.” And then he looks at
Jesus and he sees what it says there in Romans 5:8 that God commended his love towards us in that
while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And he sees that Jesus died for that sin of anger,
and he sees that there’s no reason under heaven why God cannot forgive him for that. And so he
repents and turns from his anger and says, “By your grace Lord, I’ll never get angry again. I’ll
never lose my temper again. Now Jesus, I’ll receive your spirit into my life to rule it.”
Now how does he deal with the second feeling inside him, the attitude inside that makes him feel
that he had a right to get angry, and a right to defend himself and assert himself? He looks again
to Jesus on the cross and he sees that that man did not defend himself, and he sees that that person
did not call down millions of angels to wreak havoc among the Roman army. He sees that that man
Jesus had the power to assert all his rights, and defend all his rights, and to get his own way in a
flash of a second and he sees that this man Jesus died to his rights. He did not assert himself.
He did not defend himself. He went into a tomb and lost consciousness and was willing for God to
bring him back to life when he chose and the Christian sees that he was baptized into that death and
that he has no right to those precious possessions, and he has not right to keep them all in order,
and he has no right to keep them away from other people interfering. That he has no rights and that
he was crucified with Christ on Calvary and that the Holy Spirit alone has the right to defend his
possessions, or his clothes, or preserve his future. And he sees that Romans 6:6 is true, that our
old self was crucified with Christ.
Now dear ones, those are the two vital factors in the crisis experience that brings us into this new
life in God. First of all, a realization that Jesus has died for our sins so that God can forgive
us; and secondly, a realization that we have died with Christ so that the Holy Spirit could free us
from that power of sin. Now do you see it’s those two parts of the Christian experience that lead
us into a life that can be described by 1 John 3:9, “Anybody born of God does not commit sin.”
Now if you’ve entered into only one part of what Christ has done for you on the cross, then you’re
going to have constant trouble with that old statement, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit
sin.” Because you’re going to find this rising up within you, this attitude within you, this old
nature that is still there. You remember that verse states, “Anybody born of God does not commit
sin. Indeed, he cannot sin because God’s nature abides in him.”
Now many of us have entered into an experience of the forgiveness of our sins but that old nature of
children of wrath is still what operates in our life. In other words, we walk asking God to forgive
us our sins for the sake of Jesus’ death but inside we have a nature and an attitude that wants to
have its own way, that wants to be independent of God, that wants to rebel against God.
Now brothers and sisters, unless you come into a total Christian experience you’re going to have
constant trouble with this whole business of just ordinary sin, and losing your temper, and getting
irritable, and getting selfish. Now do you see what I’m saying? It’s not an extra experience you
need. It’s a full experience of all that God has done for us in Christ on the cross.
Now is this written into scripture? Yes, these two parts of the work that God needs to do in us is
written into scripture again, and again, and again. First of all, it’s written into the promises so
maybe you’d like to look at one of the promises that plainly show it. It’s 1 John 1:9. 1 John 1:9,
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins.” That’s the first
part. God forgives us our sins because we believe that Jesus died for them. The second part, “And
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
In other words, God will not only forgive us but he will cleanse out the rebellion. He will not
only get rid of the guilt but he’ll get rid of the rebellion inside us. But God will do it. You
see the problem with most of us, we allow him to do the first part but we decide we’ll grit our
teeth and we’ll do the second part by the power of positive thinking. And we come into just a
defeated Christian life.
Now do you see that God has done it all? Somebody this week said to me, and that person will excuse
me using it because I think it’s helpful and is true of most of our experiences, “I find inside
myself at times a resistance to God’s will. I want to do it. You know, there’s a part of me that
wants to do what he wants me to do but there’s a bit inside me that I cannot change.” Now that’s
the bit that God dealt with on the cross in Christ. And the secret is you believe that on to the
cross. You don’t destroy it by will power or by the power of positive thinking; you believe it on
to the cross. And the reason you’re not experiencing complete victory is that you haven’t entered
into all that God has done for you on that cross.
Now you get the promise again you see, not only the promises, but you get the statement in
relationship to Christ’s death if you’d like to look there, because, Christ’s death is really the
only event that enables us to enter into this at all. If God has not done this on the cross dear
ones, then the Holy Spirit cannot do it in us you see. If God has not borne our sins in Jesus on
the cross, then the Holy Spirit cannot give us a forgiveness of sins. If God has not borne that old
rebellious will on the cross in Jesus and destroyed it there, then the Holy Spirit cannot give us
victory over it. So it depends on what God has done in Christ.
But you find that he has done this in Christ 2 Corinthians 5:14. 2 Corinthians 5:14, and it’s again
this truth that God has not only dealt with our sins in forgiving them but he has dealt with our sin
in rendering it inoperative in our lives. 2 Corinthians 5:14, “For the love of Christ controls us,
because we are convinced that one has died for all.” Jesus has died for our sins to enable God to
forgive us. “Therefore all have died.” But we have died with Christ and do you see it’s the second
part that we with our tendency to sell a soft gospel have missed? Because everybody wants
forgiveness but it’s a different story, do you want to be delivered from that old self will that
keeps asserting itself? And you can see that the only way to enter into a total Christian
experience is to come into that realization that we’ve died with Christ.
In other words, that God will deal not only with the outward disobedience but with that inward
attitude of disobedience. That God will not only forgive us for our acts, and thoughts, and words,
but by the power of the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ death he is able to deal with that inward motive, and
reaction, and attitude, and intention.
Dear ones, what gives you the trouble? It’s not because you murder people every day. No, you get
angry with people every day. With most of us it’s not that we’re doing many acts, and thoughts, and
words that are wrong but we have feelings inside us that are tearing us apart. We call them our
hang ups and they’re really the things that prevent us walking inside as we walk outside. They’re
those things that make us feel we’re hypocrites. We walk outwardly as a Christian but inwardly
we’re not a Christian.
We come into one of those famous tea groups and we’re supposed to love the person. Everybody is
saying, “Well love everybody else,” so we all say we love each other but really inside no, there
isn’t that flow of love. And it’s that inside thing that with many of us needs to be dealt with.
Now the promise is in the Holy Spirit too because the cross you see is what makes it possible, the
Holy Spirit is what makes it real in us. Many of you are saying, “Well alright pastor, but how?
How does this come about?”
Well you remember, Mary asked this, you remember God gave her a promise, “You are going to conceive
and you will bear a son.” She said, “How will this be?” The answer to every how in the Bible is
the Holy Spirit, “The Holy Spirit will conceive and will bear a son in your womb.” It’s the same
with this, how do you enter into what God has done for you in Christ in the cross, the Holy Spirit
brings you into it and his double work is found there John 3:6. The work first of all of the new
birth. John 3:6 and you remember when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and again it is concern with
the forgiveness of sins.
John 3:6, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit.” And the Holy Spirit first of all regenerates us. When we come to God and ask him to
forgive us our sins he regenerates us and then the other work that he does is Acts 15:9. Acts 15:9,
and it’s you remember, what Peter said about the day of Pentecost as he looked back to that day when
they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. Acts 15:9, and here he points to one of the works of the
baptism of the Holy Spirit. Acts 15:9, “And he made no distinction between us and them, but
cleansed their hearts by faith.” In other words, you see, written right through scripture into the
message of the cross, into the truth of the Holy Spirit are these two works that need to be done in
our hearts.
Now, could we deal with some of Satan’s objections? The first one is this 1 John 3:9, “Anyone born
of God does not commit sin.” Sin is knowing disobedience to God’s law. Now, I’ve entered into an
experience of forgiveness of sins but I haven’t entered into a crucifixion with Christ so I get
angry. I know it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong to be angry, I’ve made resolutions again and again not
to be angry, I still get angry. Now surely I’m doing something that I know to be wrong, surely that
means I’m not a child of God.
Now do you see the spirit of 1 John 3:9 is this, sin is alien to the Christian life. It is
unnatural to the Christian life. If you ever do sin, we have an advocate with the Father but it is
an emergency. But it’s alien to the Christian life. But the promise of God is if we walk in the
light as he is in the light, the blood of Jesus continues to cleanse you from all sin. In other
words brothers and sisters, if you’re walking in every desire to walk free of anger, if every time
anger comes you treat it as an emergency situation and you get before the Father with a penitent
heart and you say, “Lord, I know I shouldn’t be angry, I know it’s a sin. I ask you to receive me
again to yourself and to give me the Spirit of Jesus.” Then, if you’re walking in that light the
blood of Jesus will continue to cleanse you from all sin.
In other words, that’s the way you walk when you’re walking between two worlds, between the world of
forgiveness of sins and the world of victory over sin. You don’t come to this place where you say,
you see, “Oh, well I’m not really a Christian. If I’m not filled with the Spirit I’m not really a
Christian.” Loved ones, you’re born of the Spirit. You have a desire to love Jesus. You have a
desire to obey God. That is walking in the light.
It’s when you cease to walk in the light that you begin to come into the danger of hardening your
heart you see. It’s when you begin to treat anger as a normal part of your life. It’s when you
begin to believe the psychologist that anger is a healthy expression of any normal individual. It’s
when you begin to rationalize sin that you begin to sink back into a hardened heart. But do you see
the Father is gracious to us? Loved ones, the Father is not up there ready to whack us down every
time we fall. The Father will forgive us until 70 times seven as long as we have penitent and soft
hearts.
Now that’s the way to answer Satan’s objection you see, because I know some of you are concerned
about that. “Well pastor, what happens before we enter into victory? What happens while we’re
walking in some defeat?” The Father is gracious to us. He says, “If you walk in the light, if
you’re walking after me with all of your heart, if you’re doing your best to follow me and obey me,
then the blood of my Son will be available to cleanse you from all sin. But, I want you to hunger
after the full victory that I have provided for you on the cross.”
In other words dear ones, we don’t want to be a body of people who walk in fear you see. We want to
be a body of people walking out after Jesus in full joy and in as much obedience as we are able and
yearning after that full victory that is possible, and that’s full deliverance and hungering after
righteousness and goodness. Now that’s the way to, I think, to deal with that.
I’d love to ask you if you’ve any questions but will you ask me afterwards if you have any questions
in how to walk between two worlds? The Father judges us by our response to the light not at all by
our perfect walk. At the end of the day we’re justified not by our perfect walk but by the blood of
Jesus. But nevertheless we need to see that we want to enter into all.
Now the other objection is this, “I received it all when I was born of the spirit. I entered into
both works when I was converted.” Then praise God. Great, that’s great. There’s no argument. If
you’ve entered into a victory over anger, and selfishness, and envy when you are born of the spirit,
that’s great. That was probably very close to what the New Testament experience was. Probably if
you read the story on the day of Pentecost they believed in Jesus and were born of the Spirit on
that day they were preached to and then the next day they were baptized in the water and Peter said
to them, “Do you know if you’re baptized into Christ Jesus you’re baptized into his death.” And so
they went under that water in full consecration, in full death to self and they came up and were
filled and baptized with the Holy Spirit. Probably that was the New Testament experience.
Nevertheless, even in the New Testament you can find that some were born of the Spirit and not
filled with the Spirit. Some knew forgiveness of sins and did not know victory over sin.
Some other dear ones say, “I received it when I was baptized. I had an experience of tongues and I
received it all then.” Or, “If don’t have victory over anger and envy does it mean I wasn’t
baptized with the Spirit?” Well dear ones, do you see that some of us enter into a baptism with the
Holy Spirit in relationship to the gifts: tongues; healing; miracles; and discernment of spirits.”
But do you see that many of us at that time did not have light on the victory that God had worked
for us in the cross? And you see that the Holy Spirit can only lead you into what you have faith
for. Be it unto you according to your faith.
So unless you believe for that, the Holy Spirit is not able to bring you into it. Now say you have
experienced the baptism with the Spirit and some experience of tongues or of gifts of the Spirit,
and yet you get angry at home, you get envious, you get jealous, and you lose your temper. Then you
ought to say to the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit I’m not casting away my confidence. I thank you that
you baptized me with yourself but I thank you that you can reveal to me the victory that I have on
the cross of Christ and I trust you to lead me into that. I trust you not only to anoint me with
power, but to cleanse my heart from these things.”
And dear ones, this I believe is the way we should walk in relation to the objections that Satan
levels at this. I think another thing Satan tries to do is he tries to get us introspect. And it
isn’t long before you have a group of people who are saying, “Yeah, I’m looking in, I’m looking in
to see where I’m not crucified with Christ.” And they have long sessions of self-analysis where
they go in introspection deep, deep down, they think, and they go as deep as doesn’t matter, because
that’s the only depth you can go with your mind. But they use introspection and they’re
introspecting day, after day.
Now loved ones that is not the Father’s promise. Jesus promised us, “Listen, the Holy Spirit when
he comes will lead you into all truth.” Now it’s his job to lead you into all truth. Now what you
do as a child of God is you walk in knowing forgiveness of sins saying, “Holy Spirit lead me into
all truth about myself. If you see anything in me that is not in that place on the cross, then Holy
Spirit will you reveal it to me?” But brothers and sisters do not introspect. It’s a sin to
introspect because introspection is an independent activity of our own mighty minds. And our own
mighty minds can see only as deep as our own minds, they cannot see into our spirits. Only the Holy
Spirit can reveal these things so don’t let’s all become introspective. Let’s walk in the
forgiveness of our sins saying, “Holy Spirit, will you lead me into all that Christ has done for me
on the cross and show me if there’s some way in which I need to come more into that death.” So
don’t introspect.
I think a lot of us go into suppression. A lot of us go into suppression, we say, “Yeah, I was
crucified with Christ. I was crucified with Christ. I was crucified with Christ, now I’m going to
hold this self down inside me.” And we walk in suppression and repression. Now dear ones, the
answer is you believe that you were crucified with Christ and you obey the Holy Spirit and he makes
real in you the victory. You don’t make real the victory. You believe that you were crucified with
Christ and you obey and submit to the Holy Spirit and he makes real the victory in you. And that’s
the way you walk in this.
Some of you may say, “Well how do I enter in?” Well first of all never question that you were
crucified with Christ. A lot of us say, “Pastor if you saw me this morning trying to get into these
new shoes, and I lost my patience and I got utterly irritable and threw them into the corner, you
would know I wasn’t crucified with Christ.” Then I would say to you brother you are disobeying and
contradicting God’s word. His word says you were crucified with Christ. And you better believe his
word rather than believe your feelings.
Now brothers and sisters you start with faith that the fact has already taken place, that all of us
have been crucified with Christ, that all our futures ended 1900 years ago in Jesus. You accept
that, you start by setting your faith on that and you never question that. You believe God’s word
that our old self was crucified with Christ. You believe that all who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions. You believe that. You start at that level, never go below
that level.
Satan would love you to go below it and say, “Yeah, you ought to crucify yourself.” No, you can’t
crucify yourself. Old Luther tried it, you know, beating his body. You can’t do it. It’s been
done already. You were crucified with Jesus. All that is evil in you was destroyed in Jesus on
Calvary. Then look to the Holy Spirit and trust him to make that real in your life. Just say,
“Holy Spirit, I trust you to lead me into all of this victory.” But dear ones, that is the way,
faith in your death with Christ on the cross and present faith in the Holy Spirit and the Holy
Spirit will then lead us beautifully into this.
But loved ones, if you try to do it yourselves soon we’ll all have to go and do basket work in the
psyche wards, really. Because it’ll drive you crazy, you’ll just go wild trying to introspect, and
suppress, and repress. And don’t start looking at each other and saying, “Oh, am I walking in
victory?” No, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job to bring you into victory. And at the end of the day
we’re justified before the Father not because of our victory but because of the blood of Jesus.
At the end of the day all the glorious saints will go before him and say, “Father, I ask you to
accept me because of the blood of Jesus not because I’ve lived this kind of victorious life, or this
kind of defeated life but because of the blood of Jesus.” Well dear ones, do you see that the whole
experience is there for us and it’s something that we should begin to move into as the Holy Spirit
guides us.
On Sunday evenings we try to deal a little more with this subject so if you find that God’s Spirit
is making you yearn for more victory in your life then you should probably consider coming to those.
And the bookshop has lots of books on this very subject and so you should go there and God can lead
you into it yourself. But really it is for you. It is true that not only did Jesus die for us, but
we died with Jesus. All our miserable selves were crucified there and we don’t need to try to
suppress them or destroy them ourselves it’s been done already. Let us pray.
Holy Spirit, we would commit ourselves into your control. We cannot bring this about ourselves but
we believe you are able to bring it about. So Holy Spirit, we as a body of brothers and sisters
will never again question God’s word that our old selves were crucified with Christ. That when
Jesus died we died. And we trust you Holy Spirit to work out all the implications of that in our
lives by revelation and make it real in our lives by experience. We trust you to bring us into this
place so that we can live as we preach and so that the world may begin to see Jesus walking again in
our bodies, and our minds, and our emotions, and our spirits. For his glory, amen.
Belief is Action - REVIVAL
The Real Christian
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Do you realize that you don’t need to be able to make yourself holy but you need to be able, and be
prepared to set yourself apart from the outward acts and words in your life that are disobedient to
God’s will. Then God regenerates you by his Spirit and fills your life with acts and words that are
pleasing to him. He does that miraculously, lifts you in the rocket of His own Holy Spirit.
Similarly when you are a Christian, you don’t need to then go in and start cleansing the motives and
the attitudes that you have within, but you need to be ready, as God gives you light to set yourself
apart from jealousy, apart from pride, apart from anything when God reveals these things in your
heart. And then he, by his Holy Spirit, will cleanse you and fill you with the fruit of the spirit,
love, joy, peace. But we emphasized, you remember, that there were two sides of saintliness, the
human side where we were ready to set ourselves apart from these things and the divine side where
God was able to fill us miraculously with the beauty of Jesus.
We added I think last Sunday to the third part mentioned in that the God of peace himself sanctify
you holy and keep you blameless in body, soul, and spirit. We had dealt with the body, the outward
actions and words. We had dealt with the spirit, the inward attitudes and motives. And we have now
come to the soul or the mind and we said, you remember, that it is vital for a saint to have his
mind renewed. This is the area of our personality that deals with our service to God and it’s
essential dear ones, for us to be renewed in our minds.
Our minds were the first part of our personality to be perverted by Satan and they are usually the
last to be renewed by the Spirit of God. Now you can find that in Genesis 3:4 for instance, when
Satan persuaded the woman to think something other than God had said to her. In other words, he
perverted her mind in Genesis 3:4, “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die.’” And
then goes on in Verse 5 to blind a man with his own lies, “For God knows that when you eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil.”
So it is essential dear ones, is that the image of God is to be reformed in each one of us that our
minds should be renewed. It’s essential for our minds to be renewed if we’re ever to perform the
service for which God created us. We remember he created us and he said, “Be fruitful, and
multiple, and subdue the earth.” And if we’re to subdue the earth in the way God wants to and not
the way we’re doing in Vietnam, if we’re to subdue the earth in the way God plans us to subdue it
then we need to have our minds renewed. We need to be renewed in our minds and begin to see the way
God works.
You see, so often many of us allow our outward lives to be cleansed, we become Christians. And we
go a step further and we see that there are attitudes within us that never show themselves on the
surface and we allow the Holy Spirit to come and cleanse those attitudes too. But our mind keeps on
going in the same old rut. It keeps thinking the same way as it always did. It keeps appreciating
the same set of values as it always did. And so instead of going on with God, and being used by
God, we become crippled Christians who try to do God’s work in the way that we used to do the work
of the devil. Now the mind has to be renewed as well as the heart, and the life. And I think you
have to realize if we’re going to be any use to God that has to happen.
I think too many of us, you see, have been renewed in our hearts, and renewed in our lives and we
want to do God’s work but we start trying to do it with the old methods that we used before to do
our own work, or to do the devil’s work. Now, I think some of you realize that many churches do
teach that you should have your mind renewed. Indeed, most churches today are concerned with the
renewing of people’s minds. But they talk about the renewing of the mind in two ways that are
unbiblical.
First of all, they talk about the renewing of the mind without ever mentioning the renewal of the
life or the renewal of the heart. So you know most churches today produce ethical homilies, don’t
they? I mean, most of us here in these robes are preaching, “Be good. Be good love your neighbor.
Be good in your home. Be good in your job,” and we’re just moralizing continually. So many
churches today are concerned with the renewal of the mind but then teach as if the heart does not
need to be renewed. They teach it as if we’re all Christians already and there’s nothing to do but
just show people beauty and they go for it.
Well dear ones, you know your own hearts, our own hearts do not love the truth when we see it and so
though many churches are concerned with the renewal of the mind in these days, it’s unbiblical
because they do not talk about the need for the renewal of fellowship with God first and then the
renewal of the heart. In other words, it’s what Goldwater said, and I’m sure he said many foolish
things, but he did say some wise things, and you remember he said, is that sufficiently Irish and
straddling both side so the fence, you remember Goldwater said, “You cannot legislate heart.” And
that’s right, you can pass legislation for civil rights but you can’t legislate people’s hearts.
Now you can see dear ones, there’s no point in talking about the renewal of the mind unless the
heart has been changed by God’s Spirit. This is another reason why I try to avoid all these topical
event series, what I think of Vietnam, and what I think of the civil rights movements. That’s not
what you want to know. We need our hearts changed so that we can obey what we already know is
right. So it’s wise I think to see that there is a difference between talking about the renewal of
the mind without the renewal of the heart and life, and talking about the renewal of the mind as a
consequence step after the life and the heart has been renewed.
I think similarly on the other side many Christians fail to go onto a renewal of the mind at all. I
think some Christians renew the mind in the way some of the churches do. We’ll renew our minds in
the best thoughts that our philosophers have given to us. We’ll renew our mind by thinking over
again the power of positive thinking. We’ll renew our minds in the kind of auto suggestion and
psychological persuasion that we should act this way.
Now the renewal of the mind that is talked about in the Bible is different from than that. The
renewal of the mind that the Bible talks about does not advise you to attend the discussion groups,
to read more books, to seek more knowledge, to find better methods. The Bible says, “You renew your
mind by having that mind in you which was in Christ Jesus.” So you see you don’t renew the mind in
the Biblical sense by receiving more knowledge, or studying the problem of crimes in our streets.
You renew the mind in the biblical sense by allowing the Holy Spirit to show you the ways in which
your mind is not like the mind of Jesus. To show you things that you treasure that the mind of
Jesus does not treasure. And then by filling you with the very scale and set of values that Jesus
himself had.
It’s another miraculous implanting of the mind of Jesus in you. You see, we are renewed in our life
by having Jesus’ life given to us. We are renewed in our heart by having Jesus’ heart displace our
hearts. We are renewed in our mind by having Jesus’ mind displace our minds. But unless we go into
this renewal of the mind we’ll fall back into being conformed to the image of this world instead of
being transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Can I give just one more instance to try to clench it? Many of us become Christians, and then we
graduate with our good professions. We do not have the mind renewed as far as what we ought to do
as far as our own comfort so we automatically accept the values of the world as far as the number of
cars we have, the kind of carpet we have, the kind of TV set we have, the lake cottage that we have.
And before we know it because we haven’t allowed our minds to be renewed in the image of Jesus,
we’ve fallen out of the spiritual life that we once experienced. That’s why it’s essential to go on
to the renewal of the mind.
Now dear ones, would you just look with me at the mind of Jesus and will you turn then to
Philippians 2:5-11. Philippians 2:5-11, this was the mind of Jesus and let’s look there at just
verse 8 first of all, this is the mind of Jesus, “And being found in human form he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” And then the very last verse, verse 11
there, “And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Now the mind of Jesus was one that was anxious to humble him and have him wiped out if necessary for
the glory of God. That was the mind of Jesus. Would you look at Verse 9, “Therefore God has highly
exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.” In other words, the exaltation
of Jesus was done by God not by Jesus himself. Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be
grasped. He did not count equality with God a thing to be held onto. Now we are the opposite.
From the very first moment when Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we have been
trying to show that we are equal with God.
We’ve been trying to grasp enough knowledge to ourselves so that we could be equal with God. And
we’ve constantly been overdeveloped in our minds. You know that dear ones, your mind is full of
half a dozen different things. It’s full of knowledge. You have more knowledge in your mind and I
have more knowledge in my mind than people 50 years ago. Then people 100 years ago even dreamed
there was. We have plenty of knowledge, but all our knowledge only makes us more and more scheming
and contriving to succeed without God.
We’re constantly trying to hold on to all that we’ve got and to contrive in such a way that we will
eventually be exalted. Now, dear ones, the mind of Jesus is the very opposite. He has more
knowledge in one corner of his mind than all of us have. He has more knowledge in his mind than the
whole universe of philosophers will ever have. And yet he was prepared not to clench that equality
with God a thing to be grasped but was ready to empty himself of all that so that he might be
exalted by God.
In other words, to have our minds renewed in the image of Jesus, is to stop grasping all these
things for ourselves. To stop contriving and scheming how we are going to help the world and help
ourselves at the same time. To stop trying to manage our own careers for our own benefit and for
God’s glory. To stop that kind of attitude and to really allow the mind of Jesus to be implanted in
us where we’re willing to give up all that we have if necessary that he might be exalted. Where
we’re willing to empty ourselves of all the stuff that we think gives us power and we’re ready to be
humble and to become nothing for His sake.
Now dear ones, I think the best way to tell it to you is by repeating part of the story anyway of
one man who did this. And I’d pray that even in these last five minutes God will make it real to
your heart. At the turn of the century there was a man called C.T Studd. He was one of the
privileged among the English nobility at that time. His father was very wealthy; he himself and his
brothers went to Cambridge. This is book dear ones and I don’t think there are many left at the
bookstall but if you do want it and put your name back there we’ll order it for you.
Here are some of the comments, C.T.Studd returned to captain Cambridge in his last year 1883. His
Cambridge career has been described as one long blade of cricketing glory. In his last year he
topped both batting and bowling averages. Indeed, through the previous past century of university
cricket, only four bat men had had a better batting average and only four a better bowling. A truly
amazing record of all around brilliancy and one which ranks him as one of the greatest all-around
players that the game has produced.
He also won the Cambridge single racket match and represented Cambridge against Oxford. He was
beaten by Sir Henry Slesser. He took his degree and came down from Cambridge in 1884. Then an
event took place in his life that made him stop and think. But as he rose to prominence in the
cricket world, and especially while touring with test team in Australia there were two old ladies
that set themselves to pray that you would be brought back to God.
The answer came suddenly his brother to who he was especially attached was thought to be dying.
C.T. Studd was constantly at his bedside and while sitting there watching as he hovered between life
and death these thoughts came welling up in his mind. Now what is all the popularity of the world
worth to George? What is all the fame and flattery worth? What is it worth to possess all the
riches in the world when a man comes face-to-face with eternity? And a voice seemed to answer
vanity of vanity, all is vanity. All those things he said have become as nothing to my brother. He
only cared about the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ and God taught me the same message.
In his love and goodness he restored my brother to health and as soon as I could get away I went to
hear Moody. Moody was in England at that time. There the Lord met me again and restored to me the
joy of salvation. Then later on he began to realize, as many of us have, that our life was not
fully given to God. And by three days afterwards a great friend of mine came back to town and asked
me to go to a Bible meeting with him. I went and after we had read the bible for some time and
spoken about it among ourselves he said, “I you heard of the extraordinary blessing Mrs. So & So has
received?”
No. Well you know she had been an earnest Christian worker nearly her whole life and she has had a
good deal of sorrow and trouble which naturally influenced and weighed upon her. But lately somehow
God has given her such a blessing that it does not affect her at all. Nothing in fact seems to
trouble her. She lives a life of perfect peace. Her life is like one of heaven on earth. We began
at once he says looking into the Bible to see if God had promised such a blessing as this and it was
not long before we found that God had promised it to believers, a peace which passes all
understanding and a joy that is unspeakable.
We then began to examine ourselves earnestly and we found that we had not got there but we wanted
the best thing that God could give us so we knelt down and asked him to give us this blessing. Then
we separated. I was very much in earnest about it so when I went up to my old room I again asked
God to give me this peace and joy. That very day I met with the book The Christian Secret of a
Happy Life, that green one at the back of the bookstore and you can read it there and some other
books on this subject dear ones.
In it was stated that this blessing is exactly what God gives to everyone who is ready and willing
to receive it. And I found the reason I had not received it was just this, that I had not made room
for it. And I found as I sat there alone thinking that I had been keeping back from God what
belonged to him and I found that I had been bought with the price of the precious Lord Jesus and
that I had kept back myself from him and had not fully yielded. As soon as I found this out I went
down on my knees and gave myself up to God.
I found the next step was to have simple childlike faith to believe that what I had committed to God
he was willing to take and keep. It was not very long before God led me to go to China. I never
thought of going out of the country before. I had felt that England was big enough for me but now
my mind seemed constantly to run in the direction of the Lord’s work abroad. Well, the people
gathered around him and said you’re mad. He and another group of men had toured the universities of
Oxford and Cambridge and told about what God had done in their hearts and lives and the students of
the universities in Britain were rising up and coming to God.
And all his friends gathered around him and said, “No, you’ll waste yourself in China. You’re mad.
You can be used here.” Many said that he was making a huge mistake to go and bury himself in the
interior of China. They pointed out that the influence which he would have the young men of
England. The devil must have used a very similar argument to Moses but C.T. Studd prayed and said
that he would go to China. What happened?
Well he began to humble himself as a servant. May the 26th he wrote this letter to his brother who
was at Eton which is one of public schools in England. We were overrun with rats, during the night
they would take away our socks, nibbling off our legging tapes, taking away our blotting paper and
putting them at the bottom of the boat in their nest. They caused us a good deal of annoyance so we
thought of setting traps for them but we decided not to do so but simply to ask the Lord to rid us
of the grievance. Since that time we’ve had no further trouble with them.
I do not say don’t play games, or cricket, and so forth but I’m saying enjoy them giving thanks to
Jesus for them. Only take care that games or your career do not become an idol to you as they did
to me. What good would it do to anybody in the next world to be even the best player that ever has
been and then think of the difference between that and winning souls for Jesus. Or if you have
never tasted the joy of winning one soul for Jesus, go and ask our Father to enable you to do so.
And then you’ll know what real true joy is.
He inherited his fortune from his father, $300,000. One day when I was reading the harmony of the
gospel I came to where Christ talked with the rich young man, then God seemed to bring back to me
all the vows I had made. Three days later the post, which only came every half month, brought
letters from the solicitor and the banker to tell me what I had inherited. Then God made me just
ordinarily honest and told me what to do. Then I learned why I had been sent to Chunking and it was
to draw up papers granting the power of attorney and for that I had to have the signature of one of
the majesty’s officers.
I went to the council but when he saw the paper he said, “I won’t sign it.” Finally he said he
would give me two weeks to think it over and then if I still wished to do it he would sign it. At
the end of the two weeks I took it back and he signed and off the stuff went. God has promised to
give hundredfold for everything we give to him. A hundredfold is a wonderful percentage, it’s
10,000% so as far as he could judge his inheritance was 30,000 pounds. That’s about $100,000. What
happened?
When he died 850 missionaries were on the field. There were missionaries in the Belgium Congo, in
Senegal, in Portuguese Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Canary Islands, and Latin America, and India,
and Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, and 20 other countries. Now dear ones, when you are ready to stop
pleasing all your talents and all your abilities and are ready to see that the mind of Jesus is a
mind that is ready to give up all that you think you have so that God can exalt you by his own
power, you’ll find that coming true in your own life. You know, you’re going to work what are you
going to get? Okay, some of us here make it. Do we ever make $20,000 a year? Well at the most some
of us will. We’ll make $30,000 maybe at the most. Some of us will struggle and strangle ourselves
in business and make $50,000 a year and die of a heart attack at 55.
But dear ones, what’s the point of it? What is the point of it? Can you tell me? So that you can
have three little images of yourself who can go through the same regiment? Do you see it’s
meaningless dear ones? If you really begin to sit back you see that the success that we think we
have is not success at all. You see, the truth is this, God cannot use your abilities to extend his
own kingdom because you would take the glory for yourself.
Now would you stop working out how to split up the five loaves and two fishes so that you can give a
little of each to 5,000. Would you stop doing that? Would you stop looking at the walls that
surround the crime city of Jericho, that is in all our streets in America, would you stop looking at
those walls and plan how you’re going to get dynamite and explosive charges into those walls.
In other words, would you stop trying to find out how you’re going to use your own meager abilities
to affect the life of this nation? Would you stop doing that? Would you stop trying to work out
how you’re going to sell the precious ointments of your talents and abilities and how much money
you’re going to be able to give to God to help the poor. And instead of that, would you come with
your five loaves and your two fishes and would you give them to Jesus. And say “Lord, I don’t know
what you’re going to do with me but here do it.” And if you can feed 5,000 will you feed them and
would you come to the walls of Jericho and do whatever God tells you?
If he tells you to leave college, leave college. If he tells you to walk around the walls seven
times, do it. And God himself will bring the bible to this nation and the world, but he’ll do it
through your obedience not through all our clever gifts and abilities. Would you come with that
precious ointment and would you waste it on Jesus? Would you waste it on Jesus? Would you lay it
at his feet, really? Not, “Lord use me,” but, “Lord, here it is you can take it all and keep it all
if you want.” And if you do that he’ll provide money to dress the poor. But do you see dear ones
there are 2,000 million souls who do not know Jesus. There are 2,000 million souls. One has died
since I said that and another one has gone now into eternal darkness, and another has now died since
I said that last sentence. Another one has now died not know that God was ready to forgive them.
And another has died without any knowledge of the life of freedom that Jesus is able to give. And
another has now died, and another and a thousand more will have passed into the eternal darkness by
the time you get home today.
Dear ones, you can do nothing with your loaves and fishes. Do you see that? You can’t get them
distributed fast enough. What God wants us to do is have the mind of Jesus. See that we of
ourselves can do nothing and lay all these things at the feet of Jesus and say, “Lord, will you do
with me whatever you want?”
Maybe it will mean like Studd, going and putting on Chinese clothes and giving away all your money.
Maybe it will mean giving up all your plans for lovely houses. But whatever it means, God will be
able to do something with your life. That’s what it means to have your mind renewed in the image of
Jesus and you see that’s where the rock is because we all want salvation, and we all want admission
into heaven, but it’s hard to change the life to that extent.
Well, I ask you dear ones, will you begin to allow the mind of Jesus to renew your mind and see that
truth then is to be known by God and true riches is to receive the grace of God in your life. And
that what the world calls poverty is riches in God’s eyes. Someone has put it this way, “Will you
give away what you cannot keep so that you can receive what you cannot lose?” Would you do that?
Let us pray.
Oh mighty God, will you interpret this to each one of us individually and wherever we need to lay
some of our talents at your feet and admit that they are not talents at all, where we need to lay at
your feet some of these great abilities we think we have, will you point that out to us? That we
may not be confirmed to the image of this world, that we may be transformed by the renewing of our
lives. We ask this in Jesus name amen.
Invaluable Pearl - REVIVAL
Luke-Warmness
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Loved ones, I spent the whole afternoon working on the Sermon about the mind for tonight, but I know
I shouldn’t preach it. I know Jesus knows what he wants to say, so loved ones, turn to Revelation
3, and I am so sure of this loved ones, that I don’t care whether it benefits anyone or not, I have
to get it out of my heart because I’m so sure God wants me to say this.
Revelation 3:14-22, “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the
faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation. I know your works: you are neither cold
nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,
I will spew you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not
knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy
from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the
shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes that you may see. Those whom
I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if
any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down
with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the
churches.’” And I think that last verse means that not everybody here is to receive this, but some
of you here are to receive this and you who have ears are to listen to it.
Now loved ones, one of the things that came home to me so clearly during the past few Sundays when I
tried to make the first step of the new birth so clear to loved ones who are not Christians is
absolutely simple; you’re either a Christian or you’re not a Christian. Loved ones, it is so clear
and with my miserable little mind, I’ve tried all kinds of ways of ministering it gently and softly
and diplomatically and strategically to all kinds of people, but loved ones, the more you get into
this dear word, the more you see you’re either a Christian or you’re not a Christian. You’re either
born of God or you’re born of the devil and it’s either one or the other.
And one of the things that Jesus said to me as I was coming in the car, I said to him, “But Lord, a
lot of the brothers and sisters have problems.” He said, “Did I spend much of my time talking with
people about their problems?” And I said to him, “Well Lord, you did talk to the woman who was
married to several different men and the disciples asked who she would be married to and you dealt
with some issues like that.” And Jesus said, “Yeah, but you notice those were just problems, they
were little intellectual questions, they didn’t refer to a person’s failure to live the abundant
life, or a person’s failure to be living in complete joy and fellowship with me day-by-day.” And
then I saw it loved ones, because I had to say to him, “You’re right Lord, when many of my brothers
and sisters come to me they say, ‘I’ve got this problem,’ they mean they have a problem with their
anger, or they have a problem with their prayer life, or they have a problem with their Bible study
life, or they have a problem with their business life.”
And Jesus said to me, “Yes, you see, there aren’t any problems that keep people from me, there is
only rebellion and resistance that keep people from me. People may call the rebellion all kinds of
things, they may say, ‘I’m going alright with Jesus but I have a problem with this.’” But Jesus
said, “You be very clear in your own mind; if a person is not living in joy with an open heaven
above them and with a great sense of my fellowship in their lives, and a sense of my pleasure in
them then it is not a problem they have difficulty with, its rebellion or resistance against me.”
And then loved ones, I saw other verses that made it so clear that you’re either a Christian or
you’re not a Christian.
And it’s amazing how much conversation you can get into in a ride from home to here, but when the
Holy Spirit is moving, you can cover a lot of ground and that’s what Jesus did. I said, “But Lord,
some loved ones have difficulty giving up some things and some of them kind of are holding onto some
things. They’re trying to grab you with one hand and hold onto these things with the other.” And
he of course pointed me to these parables.
Matthew 13:44, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and
covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” And I saw that
that’s right; the guy gives up everything to get the field that has the precious treasure in it.
And then verse 45, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who,
on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” And Jesus said,
“Many of the loved ones, even in the body here have pearls and they’re treasuring those pearls more
than me and they will not sell those pearls. They’re trying to make out that it’s some kind of big
problem to them, but it’s just that they will not let go of those pearls.”
And then loved ones, it came to me so clearly this morning when I was sharing that there are two
ways to live life here on earth. You can live by what we’re getting from each other, by the
approval you know that you would give to me if you laugh at my jokes, or the recognition that you
give to me by not criticizing me, or the approval you’d get from each other. You can live by that
or you can live by the things that we get, we possess. The little jackets that we have, the coats,
the new shoes that we have, the car that we have, or you can live for the experience. And you know,
it is so stupid if you think of it, the strawberry ice cream that you might get tonight, or you just
multiply it a wee bit more, the girl you might go out with next week, or the guy you might marry, or
the vacation that you might go on. You can live for those little excitements, for the little
happinesses that you can get from people, or the security you can get from things, or the
significance you can get from other people, or you can live by what God your Father gives you and
actually, it’s either or.
In order to be born into his relationship, you have to die to all those other relationships. And it
came so clear to me this morning when Jesus gave me this phrase; that some of you are sipping
poison. Some of you are sipping poison. That’s why you get upset if somebody criticizes you. You
who are in Fish, that’s why you get upset when somebody is a little harsh. Sure, they’re not right
for being a little harsh with you, but you get upset because you are still living off their approval
and their recognition, and you’re not willing to die with Jesus to man’s approval. All these big
problems that we’re talking about having just resolve into simple unwillingness to die with Jesus to
getting from everybody here and everything here the significance, and the security, and happiness we
want.
Many of you are not really Christians, truly. God stated it clearly to me and I’m not going to
fiddle around it; many of you are believers. You believe all this that I say, I know you do, I’ve
talked with some of you, and I know you believe it. Some of you can outline this better than I can.
You know it, you believe it with all your hearts but do you see you keep thinking that you’re a
Christian even though you haven’t done it. And you’ll come and say to me, “But Pastor I have done
it in some ways. In some ways I’ve entered into Jesus’ death, it’s just I’m having a little trouble
with this.” Well loved ones, do you see the fact that you’re conscious of it and are still
tolerating it shows that you’re not willing to sell all the pearls that you have.
Now, if you say to me, “But Pastor, aren’t there some ways in which some of us depend on the outside
world and not on God and we don’t know it yet?” Sure there are, and me too. We don’t know it yet
and we’re doing the thing in ignorance, God doesn’t hold us responsible for that at this moment.
That’s not what brings us spiritual death. That’s not what prevents us being crucified with Christ.
What prevents us being crucified with Christ are the things we know about. The things you know
that annoy you when people cut you down, or put you down. That’s it loved ones. The little things
you’re living for in this body; the little things that you’re trying to get for yourself from it.
The little things you’re still trying to get from even tonight, because some of you are still
thinking, “Well, what little excitement might I get tonight? Maybe we’ll do something after the
service which will somehow make the evening worthwhile.” Loved ones, do you see it’s not that God
wants you never to enjoy those things, but it’s that you get your main kick from those things. If
you don’t get that you get disappointed, or you think it’s been a bad evening. In other words,
you’re not prepared to get your full kick from just God your Father and from his love for you and
from your kneeling down and praying to him. You’re not prepared to live for that alone. In other
words, you’re not prepared to die to those other things.
Loved ones, I know that many of you are not real living Christians because you’re still sipping
poison. You are. You still live for – maybe it’s me, poor creature that I am, maybe it’s living
for a little approval that I’ll give you, or a kind word that I’d say to you, or that somebody here
will say to you, but above all it’s that nobody will criticize you, that nobody will be hard on you,
that nobody will be harsh to you. And even in Fish many of you are looking for something for
yourself in the thing. That’s why it’s hard at times, that’s why serving in the restaurant is hard
because you’re still looking for something for yourself; you’re not prepared to die to getting
anything more from this world and dying with Jesus to anything that anybody could give you. The
first step in becoming a Christian is “metanoia”, its repentance, it’s turning from the world and
it’s turning to God alone.
Now the weakness is that that phrase has been destroyed for many of us who were brought up in
fundamentalist churches because we think turning from the world is putting way behind us all the
“don’ts”; you don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t go to the theatre, don’t have anything to do with
non-Christians. Now loved ones, I don’t mean that, I mean the world in the real sense. It’s
turning from getting from the world the happiness and the significance and the sense of security
that the rest of the human race gets from the world. Dying to that is the first essential to being
born of God. There will be no new creation unless that old creation is dead.
Now here’s the truth; Jesus is saying to each one of you tonight, “I have allowed you to die in me
and it was not easy, and it was not painless. And when I died to what everybody thought of me, when
I died to getting anything more from this world, I allowed you to die with me. Are you going to
reject what I have done for you?” Now loved ones, that’s it, that’s what Jesus says tonight to you.
And you may plead with me and say, “But brother that’s a radical kind of Christianity that says I’m
no longer to look to people for my sense of worth, and my sense of value. You mean, I’m not to be
annoyed when somebody cuts me down, or somebody is harsh to me?” That’s right. That’s what dying
with Jesus means and when you continue to say, “But that’s a further stage in the Christian life.
That’s a stage of saintliness that I’ll come into later on.” I say Jesus says, “That’s why I died
for you. I died so that you could be clear of those things. Won’t you enter in?”
And loved ones, I think too many of us are saying, “I want to sip more poison. I want to have
Jesus’ approval but I want my peers’ approval, after all it’s only human. Loved ones, don’t you see
that all you’re doing is confusing the issue? You’re talking about problems when there is no
problem. You’re trying to confuse the issue and say, “But isn’t it just human to be disappointed
when a vacation doesn’t come off the way it’s meant to be?” Loved ones, it’s carnal, that’s what it
is, it’s not human, it’s carnal. It’s just because the greater part of the human race reacts that
way that we call it human but it’s not truly human. Truly human are those who get their joy from
the one who stands behind the vacation and behind the flowers and behind the beaches that you would
experience. True humans see behind all that stuff and see the dear one who gives all that to them
and true humanity is receiving from God all that you need. Loved ones, that’s the first step in
being a Christian; repenting.
I think some of you have just not repented, I really do. I think some of you have repented of
little things you’re doing wrong, little things you’re saying wrong, and you keep on repenting day
after day after day. But it’s not repentance in the sense of “metanoia.” It’s not “I’m going this
way and I change and I turn around and I go the other way.” It’s not that. It’s just “I’m going
this way and I go a little bit more slowly this way” with regret in my heart all the time, “I’m
sorry Lord, I’m sorry.” But you’re still going that way and the proof of it is that you continually
are having problems. You’re continually having problems with “This one said this to me,” or, “My
roommate says this to me,” or, “I have trouble with this one or that one.”
Ah loved ones, I’ll tell you one thing that helps me to know that this is right, what I’m preaching
tonight; every time I say it my own spirit responds and says, “Yes, that’s the way it was for me.
That’s the way it was.” It was a whole immersion in Jesus. It is a full death to what the world
and what others can give you. It’s a total death to what others think of you. And then loved ones,
I have to say to you I don’t care if you all think this is the rottenest sermon that I have ever
preached. I don’t care if you think I’m miserable. I don’t care what anybody thinks, I really
don’t because that was part of what I died to with Jesus and I have to say to you that it is a
complete work. You either go into it or you don’t.
Now loved ones, don’t you see there are other things that all of us here are ignorant of and God
understands that. But once you become aware of them then he expects you to enter into Jesus on
them. But the problem is with the things that you know about. Now, you know them, you know when you
get hurt, you know when you get offended because somebody criticizes you. You know when you feel
put down, and reproved, and rebuked and you have a wee bout of self-pity. Now loved ones, you can’t
be in that dear one who died on the cross and still be having that kind of self-pity. You’re either
baptized into Jesus’ death or you’re not and if you’re not, if the old creation is not wiped out how
can you get a new creation? And you know how you get it: you have a kind of syncretism in your
life, a kind of “both/and” kind of experience. Those of you who have troubles, you know that’s the
problem, you have a wee bit of God’s Spirit that somehow comes from all the other people you know,
but you have this other thing rising up inside you and the battle is on. Now that’s not God’s will
for us. God’s will is a complete death and then a complete new birth.
Now, can I just share a wee bit on that, which God showed me so plainly? Loved ones, there are
other good verses. John 12:24-26, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into
the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life
loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If any one serves
me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the
Father will honor him.” And Jesus says “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Now loved ones, you have to die to begin to bear fruit in Jesus and some of you have fruitless lives
because you haven’t died to all those things. Now, I speak just as directly to you sisters and
brothers who aren’t married; some of you are keeping yourselves out of a full new birth because
you’re hankering too much after getting the man or the woman that you think you ought to have. Now
loved ones, you’re either going to die to what you get or don’t get from a husband or wife, or
you’re going to live in eternity in hell. Now that’s right, because those of us who are husbands
and wives know fine well that you can’t live off each other anyway, so you’re being led by the nose
by Satan if you’re thinking, “If I only had a wife. If I only had a husband, I’d be okay and I’d be
whole and complete.”
Loved ones, you’re striving after a pearl that you should be cashing in for the pearl of great price
and you love the creature more than the Creator. Unless you’re willing to die you’ll bear no fruit.
Jesus makes it very plain and I think some of you in this regard have been like Lot’s wife in its
Genesis 19:24-26. “Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out
of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities,
and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of
salt.”
I think some of you started off right, but you’ve started to look back to some of the things that
you took an attitude of death to and some of you are hankering after just a little pleasure, just a
little excitement, just a little satisfaction, just a little thrill, just a little approval from
other people, just a little more money, just a little more security, and you looked back and you’ve
become a pillar of salt. And the only way to allow God to melt you is to come again into a death to
those things. Loved ones, you have to die to the security and the significance and the happiness
that you get from other people. You have to.
You know the older ones of us here would say just from a commonsensical angle that it’s unreliable.
You can never rely, finally, on those people to keep giving you significance. You can never finally
rely on the job to keep giving you security. They’re soap bubbles. But do you see, we don’t always
love the truth when we see it and even though that’s the truth, you still want those things rather
than God, and loved ones, you’re just spiting in God’s face. Now, you better be clear on that,
you’re just spitting in God’s face and saying, “You are not enough for me I must have these other
things.” And I’d press you on that; why would you otherwise get upset if somebody is hard with you,
or criticizes you, or rebukes you? If you don’t actually care what they think of you, why would you
get upset? And the truth is that too many of us here are still dependent on other people for our
significance, our security, and our happiness.
Now loved ones, before going onto the second part I’d like to point you to Romans 6:8 because the
Bible is so clear — it’s only after we mess it all up with rationalization that it becomes complex,
but the Bible gives forth a clear sound all the time and the wayfaring man will be able to find his
way. Of course, it has to be a wayfaring man; it has to be a man that is faring, that is going on
his way. It’s us creatures that stop and sit down that get in trouble with it. Romans 6:8, “But if
we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.” And if you haven’t died
with him you won’t live with him. That’s it.
Now in the new birth, God can only bring his Spirit into you if you’ve turned away from everything
else. God will not give you his most precious gift unless you turn away from all other substitutes
and so it’s just foolishness; I don’t see how you think you’re going to persuade God to do that.
How you think you’re going to hold onto all these substitutes that you have and he is going to give
you his most precious gift? It just doesn’t make sense, nobody else would do it, so how you think
the mighty God is going to allow himself to be bluffed like that, I don’t know. God will not give
you his most precious gift unless you turn from all others. You will not live unless you die.
Unless you die to what other people give you, you won’t come alive to God. Now that’s why many of
you have no reality in your own spiritual life. That’s why the prayer life is miserable, because
you’re still trying to get from others some of what you should get from God alone.
Now, what is the new birth? You remember this morning I shared with you that I think a lot of us
get into all kinds of little juggling contortions in our own minds and you remember how I mentioned
that verse about the promise of the word of God, how much more will the heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to them who ask, and we kneel down and say, “You made a promise Lord, now won’t you make
that promise real to me? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.” And we try and persuade ourselves.
Now loved ones, let’s not be stupid any longer. What God is calling us to is a relationship with
him. Now, a relationship is a personal encounter with a person. It involves conversation and
sharing with each other. That’s what the new birth is, it’s coming alive to God and that’s
something that happens day-by-day. In other words, God gives you more and more of his Spirit as you
enter into companionship with him. Any of us here who are husbands and wives know that we could
have entered into that agreement at the altar but if we didn’t live with each other and grow closer
to each other, we wouldn’t even call that a marriage. Indeed, the law doesn’t. The law says if you
don’t consummate what is done at the altar it is no marriage. So it doesn’t matter what kind of big
ceremony you’ve had, it doesn’t matter what kind of decision you’ve made at an altar at a church;
you’re not born of God unless you’re day-by-day in a living relationship with him; in other words,
unless you’re walking in prayerful communion with him and receiving from his word more information
about him. Now loved ones I think that’s the second step and I think many of you have given up that
step long ago.
I think many of you have no Bible study or the prayer life that we’re talking about. I think a lot
of you are still on the old thing that you’re good when I preach about it but then after two or
three weeks of enthusiastic application it goes to pieces and then it’s the old business of trying
to remember when you last read a chapter. Now loved ones, it doesn’t matter what you say about your
being a Christian. Jesus showed me this clearly, “Would you stop listening to them as if you’re some
dumb kind of idiot? If they’re not walking in day-by-day communion with me and Bible study, how can
they say they have my Spirit flowing through them when the only way to receive my Spirit is by
talking with me and getting to know me.” And loved ones, I saw it suddenly, “Yes Lord, that is
true. They can say they believe it all, they can say they believe everything in this Bible, but if
they’re not receiving your Spirit from you day-by-day then not only can others tell that but Lord,
it’s obvious that they are no longer living in your Spirit. They’re just playing theological games
if they start planning on eternal security because if they were truly born of God, if they were
truly alive Lord, they would love you. They have either committed apostasy and have turned on you
completely or they have never known you and therefore are not in a relationship with you. But if
they really know you, they’ll be carrying on a day-to-day relationship with you.”
And loved ones, God showed me that so plainly; that the new birth is a living with God day-by-day.
And of course the truth is this loved ones; why do you not pray — because you don’t need to pray.
Why do you not need to pray –because you’re really getting your strength from other people and
other situations, and other things. That’s it, and you should stop all the fiddling around. Why
you don’t pray is because you don’t need to pray, and you don’t need to pray because you have never
really died to getting security, significance, and happiness from other people.
Loved ones, when you die to all that, when you put that behind you, you grab at God in prayer. You
grab at him. You can’t do without him and that’s what enables you then to go into the world of men
and women and to give love rather to be always draining it from others. That’s what enables us to
come to a service like tonight filled with God rather than dying for another drink from him. Now
loved ones, Jesus just showed me that’s what I’ve to share.
There is only one other verse and its 2 Timothy 3:4-5 and I thank God for giving me the words
because I knew that even if I just read these verses that’s what I should do. God is talking about
the last times and then he describes the people who will be alive in the last days. Verses 4-5,
“Treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding
the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people.” And I think that’s what some
of us are who have turned back, we are actually just downright lovers of pleasure. I think some of
us actually belong to this body because we just like pleasure and we like the enjoyment of having
nice people as friends. God obviously knew what he wanted to say to us and much is wrong with
saying “We’ve got used to Campus Church and it’s quite a nice place — we’re not moving on with God
and we think we’re not moving back.” Actually, we’re dead, we’re nowhere near them, but we like the
situation and we maybe enjoy all the business things, and all that, and it’s an alive place, and
it’s nice to be around, but actually we just love pleasure, we’re just pleasure lovers. It’s just
we’re dumb because we’re satisfied with less exciting pleasures it seems to me. I mean, I wouldn’t
want to be around a church if I didn’t know God. If that’s all the excitement you’re going to get
— dear help you. But I think that for some of us that’s the stage we’re at. We love that, it’s a
pleasure that kind of keeps us jumping along, but we’re just lovers of pleasure.
We have the form of religion but we deny the power of it, so we can repeat all the words, all the
verses of scripture, we know it all, but we deny the power of it and we deny it in the most potent
way we possibly could; by lacking the power of it in our own lives. So we make nonsense of the idea
that Jesus is a power in your life because we have no power in our lives, and actually of course
we’re doing more harm to God than any good because we’re going around in our businesses and our
schools claiming to be Christians but we don’t have the power of Christ in our lives. So we’re
actually doing harm because we’re giving a false picture of what a Christian is.
Now loved ones, I suppose that’s heavy stuff, but Jesus, I know, wanted to say that and I don’t care
if you take it or not. I know he wanted to say it and now there’s no mystery so just don’t go away
and cry and say you have another problem. You have no problem; it’s plain what you should do — you
should die to what you’re living off of instead of God. You should. Whatever it is; a vague hope
that you’ll get a better job, or a vague hope that you’ll get the right husband, or a vague hope
that you’ll somehow arrange your social circle a little more enjoyably. Something there that you’re
living off, something that you’re not prepared to do without, you have to die to that and then
tomorrow morning you have to work out what half an hour is before your normal rising time, and you
have to get up and get the Bible out and start reading it and start seeking God and start allowing
his Spirit to come through your life.
Now loved ones, I think God has made us a body that prefers to be straight with each other, so I
think you know what to do and I think you should just do it. Don’t go through a whole lot of
contortions, just do that and come alive in God and begin to live as he meant you to do, and be a
Christian, because it’s a black and white thing. You either are a Christian or you’re not a
Christian. Really. Shall we pray?
Lord, I pray for the loved ones who have the ears to hear this and who needed to hear this. And
Lord, I remember your words that there are people who hear your word but do not do it. They are
like men who build their house upon sand and when the storms of life come, and when the final storm
comes on judgment day, the house will be swept away. And then there are those who hear and who do
what your word tells them, and they are like people who build their house and their life on a rock.
Lord, I pray now for the loved ones who need to act this very evening. I ask you now to make it
absolutely clear to them what is the secret idol in their hearts that they have to die to, what
approval of men, what recognition of their peers, what security they’re trying to get out of,
something that they’re not willing to give up if you should ask them to give it up, what little
happinesses and excitements they’re living for thinking that something is more exciting than you.
Lord, I pray that you will enable them to see that and simply die to it this evening and accept what
you have done for them. And then I pray that tomorrow morning you will see your children proving
that they’re born of you by talking with their Father and receiving life from you, Lord, as people
who cannot do without you.
Father, we would die if we did without food for our physical bodies as long as some of us have done
without food for our spiritual bodies. Thank you for making it plain to us that we must be dead by
now and that it’s time to come alive and look to you who all the time says, “Though your sins be as
scarlet they shall be as white as snow and though they be like crimson they shall be like wool.
Come let us reason together, serve the Lord.” Lord, thank you that your arms are always open and
that you ask us to come to you tonight and make things right once and for all this night and be what
we claim to be, children of God.
I ask this Lord Jesus, in your name and for your glory. 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 forever more.
Amen.
Living Saints - REVIVAL
Called to be Saints 1
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Dear ones, for the next three sessions that I have to speak, I would like to talk about what is a
saint and I think it can be divided very clearly up into three parts, according to the three parts
of our own personality. So perhaps you’d bring your Bibles with you at each session and really do
some hard work. I’ll be using the Revised Standard Version, and every time we come to those Bible
words, I’ll defend it with the Greek and Hebrew.
Really dear ones, I think it is very trustworthy and I think you know the story of the dear old
saint, I’m sure brother (Ted) Hegre knows his name, who went to the committee and brought up the
issues where they had mistranslated “sanctify” and “consecrate.” And you know now the story of how
they accepted his suggestions, and they incorporated them in the book. And so I believe this
version is reliable, where I’m going to quote it today anyway. So that will be the one difference,
but you’ll be able to follow it in your King James. So will you use your Bibles please?
Some people say and especially the dear ones that I work with during school time, “A saint is one
who is dead and by whom miracles have since been performed.” And I think it’s important to get rid
of that by referring to Romans 15:25, and to look there at Paul’s and therefore God’s opinion that a
saint was one who was very much alive whether actual miracles were being performed or not. Romans
15:25, “At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem with aid for the saints.” And we take it that
even Paul could not bring aid to those who were with God in heaven, so the saints were obviously
pretty much present.
In other words dear ones, it’s inadequate to accept what tends to be the Catholic emphasis on
saintliness, though not the only emphasis as we realize when we meet some dear Catholics who are in
Jesus and shinning with his light, but there tends to be an ecclesiastical emphasis on the fact that
the saint is one who is dead and by whom miracles have been performed. Well this is not the Bible
view of the saint. Some people feel that a saint is one who is holy in Christ. And they say, “It
doesn’t matter if I commit adultery, to God that is not a sin because I am in Christ and I cannot
sin.” That tends to be an emphasis, in some branches perhaps, of Calvinism, the idea that we are
holy in Christ whatever our lives are like.
Now I don’t think the Bible accepts that as a fit or adequate view of a saint. You can see that in
James 2:17, which I think explodes that idea of a saint as one who is simply holy in Christ,
whatever his life is like. In James 2:17, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” So
you can, for all you want, believe that God looks upon you as holy in Jesus but that is only so if
the life of Jesus is taking over and expressing itself through your life. In other words we are
called not only to be holy in Christ with his imputed righteousness, but we are called to be holy in
our own lives with his communicated righteousness and communicated holiness.
I think some people also today; especially in our liberal churches, perhaps feel saintliness is
doing good deeds. Saintliness is having a Christian influence in the social sphere; it is social
and political activism. It is reformation of life. And dear ones, we must note that at least the
liberals have seen beyond the point that some of us have reached. Many of us in the fundamentalist
camp have failed to see that Christianity must produce some results in the life, and at least the
liberals see this; they see it must produce some results in the life otherwise it isn’t real.
Now on the other hand they have gone to the other extreme and they have said, “If you have results
that’s enough. If you’re marching to Selma in Alabama that proves that you’re a saint and you’re
producing Christian influence in your outward life.” Now I think the Bible emphasizes that that
kind of action is not enough. In other words saintliness is not just being Christian in your acts
and your words. I think there are many dear ones who are brought up in Christian homes and are
Christian, it seems, in their acts and words, and yet they themselves have never dealt with Jesus
personally.
I think you find this emphasis by Jesus in Matthew 7:22. and I will wait dear ones, for you to find
the place because I suppose the teacher always feels the eye gate and ear gate is better, and it is
precious to look at God’s own word ourselves. Matthew 7:22-23 is where Jesus talks about social and
political activists “On that day many will say to me ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name,
and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to
them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.” I think Jesus implies that social and
political activism without the motivating love of Jesus and the constraining love of the crucified
Lord behind it is not in itself saintliness. I think some of us need to allow God to examine us on
that in our own church and see that it’s not just the outward life conforming to the vague outline
of the Christian life that make us saints.
There is just one last thing I’d like to deal with; the other side of the coin, those of us who are
saying, “Ah, well saintliness is abstaining from all the things that saints are not supposed to do.”
So saintliness is not dancing — I’m not saying saintliness is dancing, but they’re saying
saintliness is a not dancing, not smoking, not going to the theatre – so saintliness is six
don’ts,(or five don’ts, depending on what denomination you’re in,) and these don’ts you have got
used to avoiding, so it’s not too much of a burden. So we tend to placard these as sins and say,
“Saintliness is avoiding these sins.”
Well dear ones saintliness is more than that as Paul pointed out in Colossians 2:20-22. Saintliness
is more than just abstaining from the things that saints are not supposed to do and though I know we
must give guidance to our young people, I do feel we need God’s Spirit to really show us where
legalism begins and where saintliness ends. Colossians 2:20-22, “If with Christ you died to the
elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do
you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ (referring to things which
all perish as they are used), according to human precepts and doctrines? These have indeed an
appearance of wisdom in promoting rigor of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body, but
they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh.” And so though Jesus may lead you to
stop many of these things or all of them, yet you stop them because of Jesus’ love within you, and
you don’t stop them and regard yourself a saint just because you’ve successfully abstained from
them.
In other words, I don’t think saintliness is any of these things, dear ones. Saintliness is not
enthusiastical saintliness that proclaims that a saint is one who has died and miracles are
performed by him. Saintliness is not just an outward impression of saintliness. Saintliness is not
just being holy in Christ with his imputed righteousness. Saintliness is not just abstaining from
all the don’ts that Christians have listed. Then what is saintliness? I think it’s most important
to see that saintliness begins even with the converted man. Saintliness in the New Testament does
not refer to those old mature Christians who have reached that place where they know him who is from
the beginning.
Saintliness does not only refer to those who have been sanctified or filled with the Spirit. Again,
and again the New Testament refers to ordinary Christians as saints. And this morning dear ones,
I’d like to try to talk about that first step, if you like to call it, in being a saint. An
ordinary Christian, a converted man or women, one who has been just justified last night, one who
has only been born of God this morning is called in the New Testament — a saint. And he is called
to be a saint and you can see it in Romans 1:7. Paul addresses his letter in Romans 1:7, “To all
God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.”
Dear ones, you all are called to be saints. Now don’t you sit there and say, “Ah, but I haven’t
been sanctified. Ah, but I am just born of the Spirit last night. Ah, I have not been filled with
the Spirit. I have not been cleansed with the Spirit. I have not been baptized with the Spirit, so
you can’t expect me to be a saint.” God calls you to be a saint. God calls you to be a saint in
your converted life.
Would you look with me at the two factors in saintliness and I think you can see it best perhaps in
Leviticus 20:7. I think I’m right in saying that King James says in verse 7, “Sanctify.”? Is that
right? Verse 7 in the Revised Standard Version reads, “Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be
holy; for I am the Lord your God.” And the Hebrew verb in verse 7 is the same as the Hebrew verb in
verse 8. You see verse 8 reads, “Keep my statutes, and do them; I am the Lord who sanctify you.”
The Hebrew verb is the same. You know Hebrew has no vowels, it is only consonants, and the Hebrew
word for holy is q?dosim. And so you take the S and the D and well, it’s like a K at the end, and
you put different vowels in there to make different parts of the verb. Now the part of the verb
that is used in verse 7 is the reflexive part, and it really means make yourselves holy. Holy means
to separate yourself or to be separate and the verb there means make yourselves holy in the sense of
making yourselves separate.
And then where it’s translated “sanctify” in verse 8, it’s a different part of the verb and it means
for God himself will cause you to be holy. So verse 7 says separate yourselves, make yourselves
holy in the sense of make yourselves separate from and then in verse 8 the Hebrew means for God
himself will make you holy, will separate you to. So there are two parts in being a saint; the
first part is in verse 7 where the Hebrew means sanctify yourself and that means make yourself
separate. You’re a prostitute; make yourself separate from your prostitution. You’re sarcastic
with your dear ones at home; make yourself separate from your sarcasm — that’s verse 7, it’s the
human part in sanctification.
But dear ones, if you do that alone, then you are left with humanism or you’re left with a strong
morality and you’re left with those burdened Christians who are defeated in the back of their eyes
because they say, “Yeah, I’m a Christian. It’s a hard way, but I’m a Christian.” And they have to
grip themselves to be victorious Christians even in the converted life because they have done
nothing but separate themselves with their own strong will power from the things that they know to
be wrong in their life. But they have not experienced the second part, by which God himself touches
you and separates you to himself and pours into you his own life.
So do you see dear ones, that there are the two vital parts in being a saint, even at the converted
stage. There’s a sense in which you have to separate yourself from the things that are wrong in
your life, you have to be holy, you have to make yourselves holy and there’s a sense in which then
God comes in and separates you to himself. Only he can do the second part. If you don’t experience
the second part then the first part leaves you with a burdened, defeated Christianity, even at the
converted stage.
I think many of us come to that; many of us come to the place where we’re born of the will of flesh,
or of the will of the man. Jesus said in John 1:13, “Who are born not of the will of flesh, nor of
the will of man.” I think many of us think we’re born when we’re only born of the will of man. We
know that we’re not converted, we know we ought to get converted and we decide conversion is simply
separating yourself from the things that are wrong in your life. It’s not. It’s separating
yourself from those things, and then laying yourself before God so that he can regenerate you with
his Holy Spirit and separate you to himself with his own Spirit.
Now I think it’s important to see that the two sides of being a saint are there and you can see them
even more clearly if you look at Numbers 6:3. “He shall separate himself from wine and strong
drink; he shall drink no vinegar made from wine or strong drink, and shall not drink any juice of
grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried.” “He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink,” and
that’s the human side in being a saint. At any stage of the Christian life, we need to separate
ourselves from the things that God has revealed to us as wrong in our lives. And then the divine
side is there in verse 2, “Say to the people of Israel, When either a man or women makes a special
vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the Lord.” In other words, we can separate
ourselves from the things that are wrong in our life, but only the Lord, by the power of his Spirit,
can separate us to himself. So there are the two sides.
Now it’s in that sense dear ones, that you as a converted man or women are called to be a saint.
You’re called to be a saint in those two senses, even if you’re just converted. I think it’s
pointed out by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:17. He points out that even the new Christian is changed.
Even the new Christian is different, after he is born of God. 2 Corinthians 5:17, does it say
“Therefore, if anyone is sanctified, if anyone is filled with his spirit, if anyone is baptized”,
no, no. “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold,
the new has come.”
So even if you are just converted that means you’re different, there’s a sense in which you’re a
saint. In what sense are you a saint? Well John Wesley lays the emphasis in the converted life on
saintliness in the outward life, first of all. And that’s why I’m taking the three stages in 1
Thessalonians 5:23 where the Bible says, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may
your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
In other words, a person is a saint first, at the level of the body, at the level of this outward
life; everyone who is born of God is called to be a saint. He is called to separate himself from
the things that God has revealed are wrong in his outward life.
So Wesley says, “Whosoever is born of God,” not, “Whosoever is filled the spirit,” not, “Whosoever
is sanctified,” not, “Whosoever is baptized with the Holy Spirit,” not, “Whosoever has been on the
Christian life for forty years,” not, “Whosoever has received the second blessing,” but, “Whosoever
is born of God.” 1 John 3:9 says, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin.” And Wesley says,
“What do we mean by sin? We accept the common meaning of the term; any disobedience to God’s
revealed written law, either in act or in word.” And every Christian is called to be a saint in his
outward acts and words.
Dear ones, the message of the death to self and the cross we’ll deal with, as God gives us grace,
tomorrow, and that deals with inner things. But outwardly, every Christian is called to be a saint.
He is called to be a saint in his acts and words. Now, you may wonder about this so I’d ask you to
turn to 1 John 3:9, because I think a lot of us live in another favorite verse in John instead of 1
John 3:9, so let’s look at that one before we deal with the emergency verse. I think a lot of us
live on the emergency verse. 1 John 3:9, in the Revised Standard Version says, “No one born of God
commits sin; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God. By this
it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not
do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother.” He says in verse 4 of that same
chapter, “Every one who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he
appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who
sins has either seen him or known him.” And then dear ones, as if he knew what you were thinking,
or he knew what I used to try to think in verse 7, “Little children, let no one deceive you. He who
does right is righteous, as he is righteous. He who commits sin is of the devil; for the devil has
sinned from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the
devil.” The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. In other words,
every one of us who is born of God this morning is called to be free from committing sin in act or
word in our lives.
Now dear ones, I think many of us are playing fast and loose with God’s statement here. I think many
of us are living in that emergency verse in 1 John 2 and it’s surrounded by all the Bibles
commitment and commission to us to avoid sin, but still we pick out that emergency verse. 1 John 2:1
goes, “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin.” Paul is saying
“That’s the very purpose I have in writing this letter to you, so that you may not sin.” And then
the emergency verse and you notice only half of a verse and its right next door to the one where he
says he doesn’t want us to sin, but it runs, “but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
Now if I say to you, “If the red light goes on in your car you better stop and fill it up with oil,”
then you don’t drive day-after-day with the red light on — you don’t drive in a state of emergency.
Now I am not expert enough to tie everything together, but I do know that we’re not meant to live
in that emergency state, and I think many dear ones who claim to be born of God are living on that
verse, “But if anyone does sin, we have advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Dear
ones you cannot be born of God and continue to live on that emergency verse day-after-day.
John Wesley and some of the old holiness preachers would go further and would say you can’t afford
to sin even once, and one is almost driven to that. There’s the verse in James 2:10 that says, “For
whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” There’s a real
sense in which a man who is born of God cannot afford to sin once. I preached this in a church
recently and a dear brother came up and said, “You don’t mean you lose your state of grace if you
sin once,” and I didn’t want to disagree doctrinally, but at least he agreed that maybe you lose
your fellowship with God. Well alright; you lose your fellowship. But dear ones, I don’t know that
the Bible allows us to sin even once and remain in God’s favor, you see.
The Bible says, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin.” Some of us say, “Oh it means does
not commit sin habitually. It means we change, we don’t commit sin habitually.” Well you’re up
against a logical problem, aren’t you, what is habitual sin? Is it once a week, twice a week, three
times a week, once a month, twice a month? It’s a mathematical problem and it seems, not God’s way
of dealing with us, doesn’t it? It doesn’t seem God’s way. It seems the Greek makes no distinction
between committing sin habitually, or committing it once, it just uses the straight present tense,
“Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin.” And dear ones, we who are born of God are called to
victory over sin in our acts and our words.
Now, you may say, “Well what’s the basis of all this?” It’s the same basis as this little
illustration: there are many homes where tension is produced by the mother and by the children and
the father, perhaps, bears all of that tension. He comes home at night tired from work, and there’s
this battle going on in the home, and there’s this emotional strain, and it works on him and
produces strain in him and eventually produces hypertension, and eventually the children and the
mother have to watch him dying with the results of their life and the kind of tension they have
produced in the home. Eventually they’re with him as he dies in pain of hypertension. And they go
back to the home, and if they’ve seen the father die, it’s very hard for them to go back to the same
things that produced that death.
Now dear ones, every sin that you and I ever committed produced the death of our Lord Jesus. And
this is why once we come to a knowledge of that, once we know we are born of God and realize that
Jesus has died for every sin we have committed, do you see that you have to be very ruthless, you
have to be very like the Roman soldiers to continue to sin knowingly — to continue to sin in such a
way, that you’re crucifying Jesus afresh in your life, and yet that’s what’s really happening. And
this is really the inner theory if you like, by which we should feel a constraint of love in our
hearts to avoid any sin in act or word in the converted life — any sin at all.
Whosoever is born of God, does not crucify the Son of God afresh and every time we sin in our
outward lives it’s another nail into his hands and it’s another sword into his side. This is why
anyone that is born of God does not commit sin, does not knowingly disobey God. It is important to
see that it’s the knowing, it’s conscious. You remember there’s a verse in James 4:17 that’s says,
“Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” I think that’s a clear
definition of sin: if you know what is right to do and you don’t do it that’s sin. Now anyone who
knows they are putting a nail into Jesus hands, and does it, they cannot love him, and they cannot
have him as their Savior.
I think a great many of us feel that God has changed the condition of entrance into his kingdom. I
think a lot of us feel God used to say, “You must obey all my commandments, and if you obey them all
I will be your God and you will be my people.” And we think “Now, thank goodness that old covenant
has passed and we’re on to the new covenant, and it’s easier because God is saying, “You simply have
to believe in my son Jesus, and trust him as your Savior, and you’ll be my child.” But do you see
dear ones that the very reason Jesus had to die was because God refused to change his antagonism to
sin?
It was because God refused to withdraw his hostility to sin that Jesus had to die. That’s why Jesus
died; because God would not change his mind. God would not say, “Now you don’t have to obey.”
Otherwise Jesus need not have died, God could simply have said, “Well you disobeyed, but I forget
you’re disobedience, I want you as my children anyway. So I’ve changed the covenant and you don’t
need to obey me now.” It was because he could not do that, that he said, “No. You have disobeyed
and you must die, or someone must die for that disobedience. I cannot accept disobedience because
it would make hell of my heaven, and it would destroy what I want for your lives.” And for that
very reason Jesus died.
So dear ones, God has not changed his covenant, he has provided a dear Savior to die for the sins
that we have committed. But for the sins that are in our life at present and that we’re prepared to
continue to commit, there is no hope until we really and truly abandon those sins, and turn from
them completely. In other words, there is no place dear ones, for a Christian night-after-night
going back to God with the same sins saying, “Father I confess this sin to you. I ask Jesus to pour
his blood across that sin and cover it.” After you’ve done that twenty times, five times, three
times, twice, how long does it take you to become as immune to the pain of the Savior as a surgeon
becomes to his patient? How long can you come with this continual list of confessions?
This is why the Bible teaches, “Whosoever is born of God, does not commit sin.” You’re taught to
separate yourself from all known acts and words that are wrong in your life, and until you do that,
the blood of Jesus does not apply to you. You can say it does, but it doesn’t apply to you, and
this is why many of us who say we’re born of God are really defeated Christians carrying a moral
burden on our shoulders, but we have not the life of Jesus within us. And it’s only the life of
Jesus within you that makes it a joy to obey God’s law, and makes you able to obey him in act and
word. Do you see again that the problem is the same as it was last night? If you have not victory
over the acts and words in your life that you know are sinful, then don’t say, “I have to try
harder,” but say, “I have to be born of God.”
Dear ones break the devils hold over you. Break Satan’s hold over you in pride. I know in my
spirit that there are dear ones here who are looked upon by everybody else as Christians. Outwardly
and when they’re on their guard they are Christians, but there are acts and words in their lives
that they know they have not victory over. And yet Satan has a hold on them and says, “Listen
you’re supposed to born of God, everybody thinks you’re born of God, of course you’re born of God.”
Dear ones, if you have not victory over some act or word in your life that is sinful, you’re not
born of God. Take the Bibles word; no one born of God commits sin. And then see that what you need
is to be humble enough to seek the new birth again.
Dear ones, even if you are forty years on the road, because the Bible says, “Not whosoever has been
of born of God,” not, “Whosoever was born of God forty years ago,” but, “Whosoever is born of God
today.” Wesley says, “As long as we breathe in the Spirit of God, and breathe it out to him in
prayer, a man cannot sin.” So if you have some act or word in your life that is sinful and you have
not victory over it, the need is the new birth.
Jacob, you remember, was a deceiver. Jacob deceived to further his own future. You remember how he
did it. He created a wrong impression of himself to get his own advantage, for his own advantage.
He made a different impression of himself than was strictly true, and in that way he sinned. Now,
God could not forgive him until Jacob died. And of course if Jacob had had to die, then he would
never have gone through hell successfully because he had no obedience of his own to raise him from
the dead and so he’d have been lost eternally. So for Jacob, God allowed Jesus to die, but Jacob
still had to obey God. Jesus’ death covered the sin that Jacob had been guilty of, but now Jacob
had to turn and obey God. He had to turn from his deception, and turn from this desire to make a
better impression of himself than was strictly true, and turn from this desire to trample on other
people’s rights to get what he wanted. He had to turn from those things before God’s Holy Spirit
could come into him and bring about the new birth of Jesus’ life in him.
But he had to turn from those things, and so it is with us. Do you lie? Do you? I mean just white
lies, because none of us tell black lies, but just white lies? Do you subtly created a slightly
better impression of yourself then is really true by something you say? Or, when you get into an
awkward spot and you know it’s going to be embarrassing and uncomfortable for everybody concerned,
and you know the other person is going to be really unduly concerned about your state of grace, do
you get around this just by a slight bit of deceptiveness? Well that’s sin, that’s telling a lie.
And if you tell a lie, dear ones, that’s a commitment of sin in word, and that means you’re not born
of God.
And you see the hold Satan has on many of us because he’ll say “Don’t admit it, don’t admit it and
you’re alright.” So you continue to live the death life pretending that you’re enjoying the
begotten life and yet knowing that you have the symptoms of the death life in your acts and words.
Well you see you’re outside where God can’t do any good for you. Do you see that the essential
thing that God needs is honesty? The essential thing that he needs for us to do is be honest. If
you’ll only admit that you’re sinning. You remember that the Greek word for “confess” is to raise
your hand and agree with God, “I agree with you Father that this is a sin.” But Satan has a hold of
many born again Christians today who say they are born again because they will not admit that that’s
a sin, because they feel, “If I admit that’s a sin it means I’m not born of God.” And dear ones,
they’re in an impossible grip of Satan and the way to break it is to at last admit, “That is a sin.
It’s an outward act or word that is sin and I know that one who is born of God does not commit sin.”
Judas was in the same situation. He was greedy for money at all costs and he was prepared to do
anything for money. And the only way God could ever forgive Judas was if Judas died for that sin or
if someone died for that sin for him. But Judas himself, to be reborn, had to turn from the sin and
he did not do it. So many of us find ourselves in the same position as Judas; we believe it all,
but we do not turn from the sin. We will not admit it’s a sin; we keep trying to justify ourselves
and prove that it isn’t disobedience. And so God’s Spirit cannot come in and sanctify us by making
us holy in the sense of regeneration through the Spirit. And so it is all along the line.
Dear ones, here’s a sin: I come down to breakfast in the morning and he’s sitting on the other side
of the table and I say, “There’s your breakfast.” And that’s an angry, irritable act, do you see?
That’s an angry, irritable act and Jesus in us does not do that kind of thing. Jesus does not do
that whatever the provocation, and immediately we’ve done that we’ve committed sin and we’ve
begotten the life of the Devil inside us. And we need to treat that not just as, “Lord, help me to
overcome my irritability.” Ah dear ones, God doesn’t help us to overcome a disease like that. God
wants to rip the disease right out and he wants us to admit that’s a sin.
She’s late, you’ve given her all the time in the world to get ready but she’s late. And you go out
the door and sit in the car and at last she comes out and you fling the car door open and say, “Get
in.” That’s an angry word and an angry act, you see. You see the way Satan has lied to us. Satan
has lied to us and said, “Ah well an odd act or words, you can’t avoid it.” But dear ones, a good
tree produces good fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit. And those things are acts and
words that are wrong and that are sinful. A Christian, even a born again Christian, has victory
over sinful acts or words.
You remember the people that passed by Jesus on the cross, shouted up to him, “Save yourself, come
down from the cross and save yourself.” And even at that sacred moment, they threw out sarcasm and
cynicism at him. Now dear ones, a born again Christian is not sarcastic. Do you see that? We’re
called to be children, aren’t we. We’re called to be children. None of us will enter the kingdom
of heaven unless we become a little child and a little child has great trouble being sarcastic, it’s
really very difficult. Children can do many other things, but it’s very hard for them to be
sarcastic. Maybe they’re too dumb to be sarcastic, isn’t that good? And when a born again
Christian is sarcastic he is breaking God’s word. He is speaking a word that lacks love. He is
speaking a word that depends on deception, on double meaning. He is speaking a word that depends on
the double think that the devil has brought into the world. Whenever a Christian speaks a sarcastic
word, he is committing a sin.
Now dear ones, if you’re sarcastic you’re not born of God. Now I’m not telling you I don’t know
whether you’re born of God or not, but I say to you that on the basis of the Bible, a Christian, a
born again Christian is one who does not commit sin in acts or words and if you’re sarcastic Jesus’
life is not in you. And I’m saying to you, “You’ve got a disease, would you get healed.” I’m not
saying to you, “Would you be as good as me?” Do you see that? I’m not saying to you, “Would you be
as good as all the rest of us think we are?” I’m not saying that. I’m saying, honestly dear ones,
if you have the symptom in you, you have a disease in you, you have the created life of God that
Satan has deceived you into thinking is the begotten life of God. And will you this morning, admit
finally that that is a sin, and that you’re not born of God, or you have been born of God and you
are no longer born of God and you need to receive Jesus in a new way into yourself?
Oh dear ones the great out pouring of God’s Spirit, if we would be honest, about the acts and words
in our lives today, you see, just the acts and words, don’t let’s go any deeper this morning, but
would you just allow the Holy Spirit to examine the acts and words in your life. And dear ones, in
a sense your only defense against Satan’s deception in these days is your own readiness to be
honest, and the result in graciousness of God in giving you his Spirit for the new birth. Well, are
you a saint, in the sense that you have victory over your outward acts and words? Are you a saint
like that? You’re called to be a saint. That’s something God can see today. God can see your acts
and he can see your words.
I wish I could take each one of you individually and with you talk over my own life and your life.
But dear ones I pray that you’ll do it this morning, and break Satan’s hold, if he has a hold on
you, and be really honest and open and humble. Jesus is more humble than you, and he will welcome
you with open arms. Are you born of God? Are you a saint? Let us pray.
Saints Set Apart - REVIVAL
Called to be Saints 2
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
Now one word we didn’t mention is the Greek word “hagios”. And it comes out in that English word
hagiography which would be, I suppose, the study of the saint’s lives. And “hagios” mean just holy.
And that’s the same word that we mean when we use the word ‘saint’, only ours comes from that Latin
word “sanctus”. And that gives us “sanctify”. And you remember, “holy” brings out, in a way, the
human and divine factors in being a saint. Just as the word sanctify brings them out. You
remember, in the phrase, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” That means first of all to set
it apart ‘from’ ordinary use. So the preposition ‘from’ is the important one there. Set the
Sabbath day apart ‘from’ ordinary use. And then, “Remember, the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” means
to set it apart ‘to’ God for his use. And ‘to’ is the important preposition there.
So even that word “hagios” brings out that there is a human and divine factor in being a saint. At
whatever stage in the Christian life you’re called to be a saint, there is both the human and divine
factor. You remember in the Old Testament they set the sacrifice ‘on the altar’, but that was only
part of it, that was the human side. They set the sacrifice on the altar, and then the fire of
God’s Spirit burned up that sacrifice and made it holy. So you can see that there’s a sense in
which we make ourselves holy, we set ourselves apart from certain things that are wrong in our
lives, but there’s a real sense in which God is the one who alone can make us holy.
And we saw that, you remember, in the word ‘sanctify’ in Leviticus 20. And you might not want to
bother, but I’d just remind you of Leviticus 20:7-8 where the human and the divine side is really
talked about. In Leviticus 20:7, it says, “Consecrate yourselves therefore,” and that is the human
part. “Con” is Latin and “Secro” is a Latin verb, “to separate.” And ‘consecrate’ means to
separate yourselves ‘from’ the things that are wrong in your life. And then in Leviticus 20:8,
“Keep my statutes, and do them; I am the LORD who sanctify you.” “I am the one alone who can make
you holy. But you yourselves are responsible for separating yourselves, or being willing to be
separated from the things that are unholy in your own life.”
In practical terms then, we talked about a new born Christian as being one who believed that Jesus,
who lived in the first century AD, was really the Son of God, the Son of the Maker of the world. A
new born Christian believes that in his head first of all. Then he believes that the Creator
allowed this Son of his to experience physical and spiritual death so that he himself could maintain
his own just declaration that he would punish sin wherever he found it, and yet was able to forgive
us sinners. A Christian believes therefore, that God allowed his own Son to die in our place for
our sins, and that God is able to forgive us for that ‘if’ we really believe.
And it’s strange dear ones, that you can’t get away from this combination of belief and action.
Even in the very words that the Bible uses, “believe” is ‘be’ in Anglo-Saxton, and “Liefan”. And it
means to ‘be in accordance with’. So if a Christian really believes that Jesus has died as a result
of his sins, then he must be in accordance with that. And he must himself, stop thrusting the sword
into Christ’s side any longer. He must stop putting nails into Christ’s hands any longer.
And dear ones, whatever words you look at in the New Testament it always holds this idea of “being
in accordance with what you believe.” And it’s not just a head belief, you see, but it’s a life
action. “I believe that this is hurting the Son of God, therefore I stop it.” “Pistis”, the Greek
word for faith, is the same, it falls over into obedience. It really topples over into the meaning
of obedience.
The very word that we use in the New Testament for ‘faith’ has obedience running right through it.
In other words, if you trust him, you obey him. If I believe you’re going to roll back the Red Sea,
I put my feet into it. If I believe that my sarcasm has killed you, Lord Jesus, I stop the sarcasm.
Otherwise, I prove that I don’t believe. If I believe that the deception of Jacob and the
deception and lying in my life has crucified you, then I turn from the lies. There’s no point in
saying, “Alright, Blondini [Charles Blondin, 1824 – 1897) was a French tightrope walker and
acrobat]. Alright, you can take me across the rope over the Niagara Falls in a wheelbarrow; you can
take any man over it. But I don’t think I’ll try it just now. I don’t trust you to get me across
right now.’” If you believe then you act.
Dear ones, if we would only do that we would experience God’s power in making us saints. If you
have not entered into the new birth it is because you have not been willing to turn from those
things. A dear one, after the service yesterday said, “Well now you do seem to imply that we really
do produce this result in ourselves.” Now dear ones, here’s the fact, we turn from the lies; Jesus
fills our mouth with truth. We turn from the sarcasm; Jesus fills our mouth with words of love. We
turn from the unkindness; Jesus through the Spirit, fills us with kindness.
You see, even if we’re a new born Christian we turn from the things that are wrong and God fills us
with the positive godliness. So, we are responsible for turning from those things. Maybe I follow
Nee [Watchman Nee, 1903 – 1972), a Chinese church leader and Christian teacher] too much but Nee
says, “Can a sinner turn from his sins? Of course he can, and he’s responsible to do it.” And dear
ones, I think we are. We can put it in lots of terms, “be willing to turn from them.” But one way
or another we must be at least as determined as the ‘moral rearmament’ people are. We must be at
least as determined as them and say, “We’ll turn from these things. We know you have to fill us
with your positive goodness, but we will turn from these things.” And when we do, God is able to
work in us.
Now you remember, we suggested along the lines of the verse in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that there were,
as it were, three ways in which a Christian is called to be a saint. And you remember 1
Thessalonians 5:23 says, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you.” “Sanctify you; make you
wholly.” And preserve your body, your soul, and your spirit blameless until the coming of the Lord
Jesus.” And I think in a real way dear ones, though I’m sure ever analogy is a little inadequate, I
think in a real way God wants to make us saints in our bodies, in our souls, and in our spirits.
He wants to set us apart wholly, in our bodies, from the uses of this world. That’s what happens
when you become a Christian. When you’re a new born Christian your outward acts and words become
wholly set apart to God, because you’re prepared to set apart yourself from the acts and words that
are disobedient to his commands, and he himself is prepared to fill you with acts and words that are
obedient and pleasing to his will. So in a real way, at the level of the body, at the level of the
outward acts and words, a Christian becomes a saint.
Now could we look at what I think is the second factor involved? And the second factor that God
soon begins to touch in our Christian lives is the spirit. And it is his desire that the spirit
should be sanctified wholly. You remember, that old Peter was a real Christian. You remember that,
and you can follow it out in your own mind if you just think of the things he did and said. You
remember, he was the one who said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” So Peter
believed that Jesus was God’s Son.
Now Peter also believed that Jesus, eventually — it took him a long time, but he eventually came to
the realization that Jesus meant what he said when he said, “I am come to give my life a ransom for
many.” And Peter believed that Jesus was going to die for the sins of mankind and for himself. You
remember he, therefore, had set himself apart from his material possessions. He believed what Jesus
said about those and he set himself apart from the material possessions, and from the outward sins
of profane language and from thoughtless impulsive language. He set himself apart from those
outward acts and words that were disobedient to God.
And you remember, God had owned him as one of his own. He had given him power to cast out demons,
and he had owned him by the personal love that Jesus gave to him. And yet dear ones, although
outwardly Peter was a Christian, yet inwardly there rankled in his heart a personal rebellion
against God. There rankled deep down within Peter a personal rebellion against God which finally
broke out and laid waste, even the victory that existed in his outward Christian life, in a
courtyard in about 29 AD. Now Peter was a Christian, but there was this rebellion within him which
eventually broke out.
Dear ones, some would say, “Well, can you remain a Christian without going on to the fullness of the
Spirit; without allowing God to make your spirit holy?” I don’t think you can. I don’t think you
can hold the stuff down long enough. I don’t think you can hold anger down long enough, dear ones.
If there is some rebellion rankling there, I think that has to be dealt with. Otherwise it
eventually breaks out in open sin, and you lose even your justification. You lose even your
salvation state.
Now Peter was in this kind of position, and I think many Christians are like him. Many of us are
outwardly Christians, but inwardly we feel a periodic desire to return to our old ways. We feel a
propensity for sinning. We feel an inclination at times to disobey God. Now dear ones, here is the
glorious message. One of the old holiness preachers said it, “Salvation at its lowest is salvation
from sin. Salvation at its highest is salvation from the inclination to sin.”
Now dear ones, that’s why you can be a victorious Christian, not because you’re holding all this
stuff down better than everybody else, or because you’ve a stronger will than everybody else, but
because the Holy Spirit has dealt with all that stuff. In other words, God can save us from even
this propensity to sin. Yes, we need to continue to be under the Holy Spirit. We need to continue
to be trusting him. There is no place for that self assurance that says, “I cannot sin.” But
“there is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God,” where you can be cleansed from even that
inclination to sin.
Now you can see it if you look at Peter. Like Peter, many of us find it easy to follow Jesus at the
beginning. It’s such a message of life to us that we desire to go out after him, and we’re anxious
to obey his words as Peter was. But gradually like Peter, we sense a little inner resistance,
growing inside us, to God’s will, or to the way Jesus is leading us, just a little inner desire to
control our surrender to God. We look around at everybody else and we say, “Well, they aren’t
surrendering everything. They’re getting on with their lives and their jobs. Well why don’t I?
Why should I go into this full surrender? Why should I lay myself flat out to be walked over?”
And there grows within many Christians a little of this inner resistance to God’s will, a slight
desire just to control our own surrender to his will, and especially, when we see that the way he’s
leading us is going to lead us to defeat in the world’s eyes; to failure in the word’s eyes; to
failure in our careers, our professional lives, our financial success, or our family lives: apparent
failure. And we tend to stop back at that moment and hesitate. And then eventually like old Peter,
God allows us to come into some pressure situation. And you know that when an orange is squeezed
what is in it comes out, or when you squeeze a sponge that is damp, the water that is in it comes
out. And God allows us to come into some pressure situation which calls for an immediate response,
or an unpremeditated reaction, and before we know it what is in there of inner resistance to God’s
will, what is in there of our assertion of ourselves, comes out in some angry word or some irritable
conversation.
And God, lest we begin to think this is just a temporary slip, God deals with us like Peter: he
allows us to repeat this outward rebellion a second time, and a third time until the cock crows, and
then a fourth time, and then a fifth time until, like Peter we say, “I do not know the man.” And
then we cry like Paul, “The good that I would I do not do and the evil that I do not want, that’s
the very thing I do. Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” And it’s the testimony of Paul
in Romans, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” It is possible to be delivered from
that inner rebellion against God, dear ones. It is possible to be delivered through the power of
the Holy Spirit.
God wants us to be holy in our spirits. He doesn’t want you only to look good on the outside, and
to look happy, but to ‘be’ happy on the inside. He doesn’t want you only to look patient, he wants
you to feel patient. He doesn’t want a surging rebellion inside your heart, because that is half
victory and half defeat. And, as with Peter, you can have the complete victory.
You remember, it came with him: the wee girl standing in the courtyard? He wouldn’t even confess to
her that he was one of the disciples. And yet, would you like to look at Acts 2:23, at the change
that was wrought in him? You probably know it already and have heard it often. Peter, who was
afraid for his own sake and for his own reputation to confess that he was one of the followers of
Jesus to the little maid in the courtyard, this Peter got up in front of the people who had murdered
Jesus, and he said, “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of
God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”
And the change that had been wrought in Peter was described later on in Acts 15:9 by him when he
said, “On that day, the Holy Spirit cleansed our hearts by faith.” And it is God’s will for us this
morning that we should have our spirits cleansed by the Holy Spirit. Not only that we should be
holy in outward life, but we should be holy in heart. Not only that we should be holy in our acts
and our words, but that we should be holy in our attitudes, and our motives, and our inclinations,
and our desires, so that there should be pure, clear water of life, flowing right from the very part
of our heart, from the very ground of our heart. And it is God’s plan that we should all experience
that. And dear ones we need to go onto it if we’re going to remain even saints.
I think the first task for us to do is to allow the Holy Spirit to show us what is down there. And
it might help just to look at what was in Peter’s heart in the courtyard. And you, allow the Holy
Spirit to reveal to you, dear ones, and to reveal to me, if any of this is in our hearts. And it
might be good just to note it down and check it over for yourself in prayer.
First of all, I think you can see there was a resistance to God’s will in Peter’s heart. There was
something within him that rose up to question God’s wisdom when he saw Jesus refusing to defend
himself. He just sensed a resistance to the apparent will of God in this situation. There was just
that slight feeling within him, that slight desire to do what Eve did in the Garden of Eden, to
question, “Hath God said you shall not eat of all the trees of the garden?” Just a little
resistance to God’s will.
Dear ones, that’s the way it often starts. The vacation comes and you feel, “Well, a little
vacation from all that Bible study would not do too much harm, and a little cutting down of the
prayer time would not affect my relationship with God too much.” Just a slight resistance to God’s
will. And that’s part of the expression of this old self-centered spirit.
You can see too, in Peter, that there was independence within, because he certainly had some
independent thought in his mind when he reckoned that there was perhaps a better way for Jesus to
bring in the kingdom than this. This was what he was rebelling against. He could not stand the
thought of Jesus going in there, allowing himself to be arrested, and allowing himself to be
crucified. Obviously because he thought there was an alternative way.
And dear ones, in many Christians in these days, there is this feeling within them, “Surely God
could do it some other way in my life.” And we want to plane away our cross; we want to just cut it
down a little. “Surely Jesus just doesn’t want us to go this way.’ And we feel, “There must be some
other way by which we could achieve the same thing for God.” There’s just a slight independence
within us of God.
You can see in Peter too there was a desire to save himself. There was. Obviously, he was not
anxious to confess to this little maid that he was one of the disciples. And again, and again in
our Christian lives I think many of us have felt this desire, a slight desire to just save
ourselves, to ease up a little, not to pour out ourselves completely and fully, but to save
ourselves. Even dear ones, don’t you think we have a desire to save ourselves for the next meeting?
We have a desire to save ourselves for the next meeting either as preachers or as people. We have
a desire not to give everything out. Dear ones, you find when you give everything out then he fills
it all up again. But we have this desire to save ourselves a little, just to pull back. Someone
comes to us for personal conversation and we feel, “Well we have all that ahead of us this evening.”
Even in personal witness, don’t we feel this? “We have all this work to do and we must save
ourselves for it.” That’s the old self saying, “You must save yourself. You must take the
responsibility on yourself to provide energy for the future.” Dear ones, this was part of Peter’s
trouble. This was part of the rebellion of the Spirit against God.
You can see also that he was concerned with the reputation and the status. He really was concerned
with what the people in that courtyard thought of him. He didn’t want them to think that he was one
of the followers, the stupid followers of this Galilean who was giving himself up without a fight.
He was concerned about his reputation and his status.
Are you? It seems that we’re so bound up in this. Are you, dear ones? Are you still concerned
with what people think of you? Do you see that even if you’re trying to keep up a Christian witness
though you don’t feel like a Christian within, that’s exactly the grip that the devil has on you?
It’s because you want to keep up that reputation with your dear ones. And Satan twists us around in
this. He says, “Ah but it’s for the best reason. You don’t want them to lose their faith just
because you confess your present state.”
But you see, it’s when we’re honest that God is able to work in their hearts. So, I’d just ask you,
“Are you concerned still with your own reputation and your status among people? Are you?” If you
are dear ones, it shows that the old self is still very much alive, that your spirit is still not
sanctified wholly by God.
And do you see again, what I’m saying is not that you’re bad because of that, not that you’re bad,
but because, if you don’t allow God to deal with that, it will still break out in open sin, and
you’ll lose even your salvation? And so it’s vital to let him deal with that.
You see, all these things show like an iceberg, one tenth above the surface of the water and below
is nine tenths of brittle, solid ice. And that’s what God has to thaw through his Holy Spirit.
It’s not just this little pinnacle up here. We’re looking at the little pinnacles, but underneath
every one of these attitudes is a whole self that is antagonistic to God, and really doesn’t want
what he wants, even though we think it does.
You can see in Peter that there was a concern with his future. He really felt that he had to
provide for the future. If this man was going down to the cross, well, he had still his life to
live. And there was a concern in him for his future. And I think this is another mark of the old
self life, when we’re still concerned about the future.
Young men and women, I destroyed anything that God would be able to do in me during the early years
of my ministry, because I was so anxious for the future to go a certain way. Really! And you know,
it’s very tricky wanting to be like John Wesley, isn’t it? You’re never sure whether it’s really to
have the ‘purity’ of John Wesley or whether it’s to have the ‘success’ of John Wesley. And I think
we need to be very careful at this stage in our lives what our attitude to the future is. Have we
really handed it into God’s hands, or are we saying, “We put it in your hands Father, as long as it
turns out this way, and as long as it turns out in a satisfactory way that makes full use of all my
‘great talents’.”? And I think when we put that condition on it, we’re really still concerned with
the future. I think that’s a mark of the old self, when we’re still concerned with the future. And
that is something that God can cleanse from us.
I think you can see from Peter that he felt a concern that his own rights had to be defended and
insisted on. I mean, he had to just stand up for himself. Jesus was prepared to be trampled over,
he was certainly not. And he felt he had to defend his own rights and to stand up for himself, “No,
I’m not one of those men. No, you can’t treat me as you treat him.”
And I think there’s a strong feeling in many of us that we’re not prepared to be baptized into
Jesus’ death. We’re not prepared to go down an ignominious Calvary road like him. We’re not
prepared to be treated as if we were nothing, as if we were the refuse under men’s feet. We’re not
prepared — you know how we say it, “We’re not prepared to be a door mat.” Well dear ones, it’s
strange, but when you’re ready to ‘be’ a door mat for God, then he stands up in his own dignity
inside you, and people see his dignity and not your false self-assertiveness.
Well, Peter had a feeling that he ought to defend his own rights. And you can see of course, that
he had his own way of doing things. He already showed that when he slashed the ear off the servant,
you remember. Peter had his own way of doing things. And so often Christians feel a desire to do
things they’re own way. We can always think of a better way to do it than God can. In other words,
inside Peter there was this desire to assert himself and defend himself.
Now this was Peter, the converted Christian, the saint at the level of the acts and words, but
whenever he came into a pressure situation, what was inside in his spirit came out in the acts and
words. And he denied his Lord. And it is the same with us, dear ones.
Now what does the Bible say? Well the Bible says that all these tendencies of ours come from the
‘old self’. That’s the thing deep down within us, the ‘real us’. And the ‘old self’ is the one
that wants to assert itself and defend itself. The ‘old self’ is the spirit that produces envy, and
jealousy, and anger. The ‘old self’ is what wants to be praised by other people, and feels let down
when we don’t receive the credit that’s due to us.
The ‘old self’ is the thing that wants to exhibit its cleverness, or wants to exhibit how well it
can pray or how well it can preach. And the Bible says that the ‘old self’, that self-concern —
it’s not the metaphysical self, dear ones. It’s not that God wants to whip out your personality,
but it’s that self-centeredness. It’s that self-regard. It’s that self-concern. It’s that
self-love. It’s that desire to refer everything that happens around us to ourselves and how it
affects ‘me’. It’s that ‘old self’ that is the trouble. And really, you can’t train it up. It
needs to be sanctified. It needs really to be sanctified.
And the conditions for allowing God to sanctify it are the same as in the new birth. You must
separate yourself from the ‘old self’, and you must allow God to crucify it on the cross of Jesus.
So there are two sides of it you see. You need to come to a place where you’re ‘really’ willing to
‘die to self’, where you’re ‘really’ willing to die to your own rights, to die to your concern for
the future, to die for your concern for your reputation and your status, to die to your desire to
have your own way, to die to your desire even to question God’s will, to die to your desire to be
angry, to die to your desire to assert your own dignity and your own self-assertiveness and to
defend yourself. You need to be ready to die to those things.
Now you cannot die to them yourself. But you need to be willing to separate yourself from them.
And then you need to come to the place where you see that it is true in Romans 6:6, that Jesus did
not only bear your sins to the cross, but he bore ‘you’ to the cross. And he bore that ‘old self’
and nailed it there. And just as your sins can be removed from your life in the outward life, so
this sin, this independence within, can be cleansed from your spirit by the Holy Spirit.
See, the Holy Spirit is able to take of the things of Jesus and give them to us. Now whatever Jesus
has wrought on the cross, we are able to experience in our lives. Now Jesus had your old self
crucified with him on the cross, so you’re able to experience that by the working of God’s Holy
Spirit in you.
But the two sides are necessary. You have to be willing to be separated from self and to bear the
results of that. And then you have to look to God and trust him through the Holy Spirit to crucify
that old self on the cross, and to fill the vacuum left by that with his Holy Spirit. And his Holy
Spirit desires only to love him with all its hearts, and soul, and strength, and mind. And that
Holy Spirit is able to be yours.
Well dear ones, have you experienced saintliness at that level? Or do you still know what anger is?
Do you still know what envy is? Do you still know what a niggling jealousy is? Do you still know
what irritability is in the home, though you hold it down? Do you still know what proud ambition
is, though you keep it covered up with your surface modesty? Do you still know what these things
are in your heart? If you do, God wants you to be holy in there as well. He wants you to be set
apart utterly from yourself and from self’s desires and be set apart, holy to him.
Dear ones, God is able to do this for you. He is able to do this, really. He is able to do this in
your heart and your life. He is able to do it in your spirit. The conditions are the same: Are you
willing to die to self? Are you willing to set yourself apart? And are you willing to allow him to
fill you with his Holy Spirit, which will produce holy desires in you? Well I pray that during
these days you’ll enter into this great victory inside.
I think this is the second way in which we’re asked to be holy, and asked to be saints in our
spirits. Amen.
Saints Walk in The Light - REVIVAL
Called to be Saints 3
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
We’ve been talking about what is meant “to be a saint.” And you remember we took that from the
verse in Romans 1:7 where Paul looks at all the members of the church and he addresses his letter
to them and says, “To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.” And so we’ve been
saying that you’re called to be a saint. We then took that verse, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where it
mentions that God will sanctify you holy and preserve you blameless in soul, spirit, and body until
the coming of the Lord Jesus and we said that a person was called to be a saint in those three parts
of his life.
Someone mentioned to me this morning that really, all those three parts become one in the Spirit.
But we are called upon to be holy in each one of those parts of our personalities. You remember
that you are holy by two factors in your life. First of all, you’re holy by what God does. 1
Thessalonians 5:23 says, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly.” That’s God making you
holy, that’s God filling you with his own holiness. And then there’s that sense in Leviticus 20:7
where you consecrate yourselves. There’s a human way in which we make ourselves holy by setting
ourselves apart.
We turned to a verse like 1 John 1:5-6 and applied this to the body; we’re called to be holy in
body. That is, in the outward acts of the body and in the outward words of the lips of the body,
we’re called to be holy. 1 John 1:5-6, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to
you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him
while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth.” And so we said that it
is necessary for us to separate ourselves from all darkness in our outward acts and words.
And I don’t want to bore you with it, but I do think we’ve become so used to the thing that it’s
worth saying it again. We need to separate ourselves from darkness in the sarcastic words we speak,
in the lying words we speak. We need to separate ourselves from the angry and irritable actions
that are done and performed to hurt other dear ones. We need to separate ourselves from those
things and that’s what it means when you come to be converted; you must separate yourselves from the
outward things that God shows you are wrong in your life. And then the second part is true, that
God himself will do something and it’s in 1 John 1:7-9, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in
the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all
sin.”
When does the blood of Jesus cleanse us from all sin — when we walk in the light as he is in the
light. That is, when we have done with these things then the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all
sins. In other words, God cannot make us holy by the application of his own son’s blood until we
ourselves have separated ourselves from the things that make us unholy. So you have to get rid of
lies before God can fill you with truth. You have to get rid of unkindness before God can fill you
with loving words. And I think it’s necessary to see the human and divine even at the level of
conversion, and you see it says, “IF we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us.” But if we confess our sins, if we admit that these things are our sins, “He is faithful
and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
And we said therefore that at the level of conversion a man separates himself from the acts and
words that God shows him are wrong, and he walks in the light that God has given him and because of
that the blood of Jesus cleanses him from all the condemnation that he’s built on his conscience.
Do you see you aren’t cleansed from the sense of guilt by turning from the sin? Do you see that?
Because that leads you into real problems if you ever fall into a sin, then you can’t plead the
blood of Jesus, you can only plead your own ability to turn from it. So you aren’t cleansed because
you turn, you turn and then the blood of Jesus is offered to God on your behalf and it’s the blood,
its God being pleased with the blood that enables him to forgive you and to make you holy in your
acts and words.
You see, that’s different dear ones. You turn from the things but it isn’t the strength of your
turning, otherwise you’re still in the same position as a moral rearmament person because your
righteousness depends on your turning from those things. But the truth is if you don’t turn from
them the blood will not be presented to God on your behalf. But it’s the blood that stands on your
behalf. So when Satan attacks you and charges you with falling, then you turn from the falling and
say, “Satan, it’s not even my turning from the falling that equips me before my Father, but the
blood pleases my Father. My Father looks at the blood and he says, ‘I’ll accept you because of the
blood, the outpoured life of my son Jesus.’” And that’s how you answer the accuser of the brethren.
You don’t argue with him. You don’t say, “Well, you’re right I did do that.” But you turn
immediately from it.
I don’t want to press this too far, but that’s why I don’t see any reason for arguing if you’re in
fellowship or out of fellowship. Stop arguing. You’re giving the devil a chance when you start
trying to justify yourself and prove you’re still in grace. Don’t bother about the technical terms,
they’re given to our finite minds by the infinite God to try and give us some truth about himself,
but we can’t argue on the basis of intellect. So we turn from those things whether I say it’s a sin
or whether God says it’s a sin, we get rid of it. We turn from it and we say, “The blood is
presented to you Father.”
Don’t argue with Satan, you see, otherwise you end up getting into a position where even the blood
cannot deliver you. So dear ones, I think that what we believe makes us a saint at the level of
conversion. That’s where the power comes to overcome the acts and words that are wrong in the
future in our converted lives.
We went further than that yesterday. We said that many of us have walked in this kind of victory in
our outward acts and words, but we’ve often felt we’d love to tell that fellow where to get off.
We’ve held back on it, we have never spoken the words, but we felt a great desire to speak the words
and at times it was very difficult to restrain ourselves from speaking them. We did not speak in
angry words, but we felt the anger rising up within and we felt a strong inclination to sin. We
were in the same position as Paul described in Galatians 5:17 where we found that even as converted
men and women who have victory over our outward acts and words, yet it was still true, as Paul says
in verse 17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are
against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would.”
And it is necessary to say that the flesh is not “soma” and “sarx” in that context stands for the
strong independent spirit of the man, not just the sexual appetites, you see.
I think we’re so preoccupied with that subject because of the prince of this world, that we tend to
again, and again, interpret “flesh” as some sexual sin. “Sarx” in the New Testament stands for the
strong independent spirit of the man that wants to be as religious as he can without giving up his
complete independence. The Bible says that even in a converted man he feels the desires of the
flesh fighting against the spirit. So, I want to be patient with someone but the anger rises up
within, or I want to be kind with someone but the irritability is there. I want to love God with
all my heart, and soul, and strength and mind, but the love is not pouring out of that fountain
within. It’s a love of self that is aborting that. Somebody says something to me and I want to
love them, and I want to return good for evil, and I want to turn the other cheek but I feel
something rising up within me that does not seem to be of myself; it is of the flesh.
It is of the old self. It is of that old attitude to God of rebellion that we have come to have
inside us even though we’re victorious outwardly. And you see what that produces in Galatians 5:19,
“Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity,” impurity in your thoughts and I think
many of us have had this. It came home to me in a new way in the Old Testament where it says, “Be
not a lifter upper of the eyes.” And I think the young men will know what I mean, that there is
that tendency to lift up the eyes, and there’s an impurity in the heart. You may even stop the eyes
lifting but there is that desire in the heart, there is that impurity in the heart and that’s a work
of the flesh. That means that you’re not saintly at the level of your spirit and God has called us
to be.
You can see it goes on “licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger,
selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.” Now the devil
wants you to look at idolatry, and immorality, and sorcery and he wants you to avoid looking at
strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, party spirit, dissention, and envy. I think we need to face
envy and jealousy and those things and see that if you’re like that those are the things that you
need to be prepared to turn from. That does not make you sanctified.
A lot of people come up to the altar and say, “Father, I’m ready to die to self.” And then they
say, “Thank you for sanctifying me.” You have sanctified yourself up to that moment. That is, you
have set yourself apart from those things. You’ve said, “Father, I know where anger got me at home,
it got me my own way. Now Father, I’m prepared to do without my own way. Father, I know anger
prevented me being used as a doormat at work. I know I rose up and stood on my dignity and opposed
them and asserted myself. Now Father, I’m ready to be used as a doormat for you.”
Now, being ready to die to self is just the human side in sanctification. The divine side is where
God through the Holy Spirit applies the cross to you and actually cleanses out the old self by the
Holy Spirit. He displaces the old self spirit with the Holy Spirit and that’s the divine side in
sanctification. Then when you’re ready to set yourself apart from anger and its consequences he
fills you with these Galatians 5:22, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.”
In other words, when you come to that blessed place, God pours his love into your heart. Now, you
can take love for instance, and you can see that you love your dear ones with a human love. You
love them either, if it’s your wife, with an “eros” love, or you might love your brothers or sisters
with a “philia” love in Greek. And for both of those, “philia”, as Philadelphia and love of the
brothers, it’s the love that you might have for someone who is interested in the same things as you.
It’s the love of a man for a man, a real friendship and interest because you like this person and
he talks about the same things as you, you have something in common. It’s still a slightly selfish
love. Even “eros”, though perhaps in a real marriage it’s a little less selfish, yet it’s still you
love the dear one because you need her and because she provides something that you need and it’s
still basically a selfish love because when she stops producing what you need then that love tends
to die down.
Now, when you set yourself aside from those two loves which are both human love, then the Holy
Spirit fills you with the divine love, which is “agape,” which loves for nothing, loves for no
reason, just loves because it’s pouring out of your heart because it’s put there by the Holy Spirit
who sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God. So you can see there’s a real sense in which even
in sanctification you have to set yourself apart from the good things in your life, the things that
you think are good. You have to set yourself apart and say, “There is no good thing in me Father.”
And then when you’re ready for that, then the Holy Spirit is ready to come in and fill you with the
things of God within so that you’re safe from the inclination to sin. And as long as you trust and
obey the Holy Spirit you can walk in that inner victory without falling as long as you breathe the
Holy Spirit in and breathe him back up to God in praise and obedience.
Now, we have come up to that point, and we have seen therefore that in the Christian life there are
two vital stages. There is the stage described in John 3:3 and this will nail it home to our hearts
plainly once more. John 3:3, there is that stage in the Christian life, “Jesus answered him,
‘Truly, truly, I say to you unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’” At
conversion you’re born by the Holy Spirit coming in and making you part of the family of God.
There’s a real new birth, a birth of the begotten life of God in your spirit. But there’s another
spirit warring with that begotten life; there’s the spirit of the old self. So the second stage is
described in Romans 6:3-4.
So first of all there’s the birth when you’re converted, and then, sanctification. There is this,
in many ways, a more real experience for many dear ones. Romans 6:3-4, “Do you not know that all of
us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore
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.” And so in the Christian life at the level of the
body, the outward acts and words, there’s a coming to life where God gives you victory over those.
Then there’s a real sense in which there’s a coming to the death of self where through the influence
of the cross upon you, God gives you victory over even the inclination to sin. He cleanses the
attitudes and the motives of your heart.
Now, I think you can see it plainly because the Bible makes it plain. So it’s not enough to sing up
here (on stage) because you’ve given your life to Jesus, but you must sing up here for his glory,
not for your own glory. So you can see that those are two effects of Christ’s death. The blood of
Jesus is to be presented to God so that we feel no more guilt upon our conscience for our sins
within us. But the cross of Christ is to be applied to our own hearts and spirits so that we are
freed from the power of sin, in the singular, within. There is a clear distinction dear ones and God
calls us to be holy in our bodies, in our outward acts and words, and in our spirits in our
attitudes, and motives, and inclinations.
And God takes it further. Thank God that he asks us to go further. Let’s look at the third part of
us that needs to be sanctified by God and that needs to be made holy. The third step in saintliness
and it really concerns the positive side of saintliness. Some people think you mustn’t preach the
gospel like that because if you’re saved from sins, and you’re saved from the inclination of sin,
what have you left? What have you left to do? And they say, “We must batter against this old
cancer within us day, after day because that’s the fight of faith and if you take that away, if the
disease could ever be cleansed by the Holy Spirit then what have we left to do?”
And of course that is all concerned with the negative side. That is taking away the image of the
old Adam. But there is all the growing into the fullness of the stature of Christ that takes place
after that. And there’ll be no growth in health until cancer is removed. So many of us are
spending all our time getting rid of sins and sin, and have no time to walk on into the fullness of
the stature of Christ. So as there was decay into sinfulness, so there was a development in the
Christ-likeness and this third stage refers to this side.
You can see it in Hebrews 12:1-2. There the emphasis is that there is no positive moving forward
until you have laid aside what is negative in your life, you have laid aside the sins and the sin.
In Hebrew 12:1-2, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also
lay aside every weight,” every one of the sins and acts and words and sin itself, the desire to be
independent of God and have our own way which clings so closely. And then when we have laid aside
all those, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the
pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
In other words, you can only move forward when you have entered into both the experience of the
blood of Jesus for your sins and the cross of Christ for your old self, only then are we able to
move into the fullness of the stature of Jesus. How do we do it? You remember; the body
sanctified, the spirit sanctified, and then the soul sanctified. And we’ll pursue this tomorrow in
more detail, the soul consists of among other things, the mind. Now it does consist of other things
besides the mind, but it does consist of the mind and the moving into the fullness of the stature of
Christ refers, for one thing, to the sanctification of our own minds.
In other words, our minds have to be renewed in the image of Jesus. Even when we’ve had the outward
acts and words dealt with, even when we’ve had the inward sin dealt with, our minds need to be
renewed in the image of Jesus. Now do be patient with me and listen to God’s Spirit as he explains
this to us, because many dear ones have failed at this point. They are sanctified and petrified and
they are sealed, and dressed, and ready to go to heaven. They’re waiting for the day when he will
come and take them to him and there is no glorious moving on, and there is no yearning for the
fullness of Jesus, because they do not see that their minds have not yet been renewed in his image;
their mind is still in the old image of Adam. So they have all this power within them to do mighty
things for God, but their minds have not been renewed, their minds are running in the old ruts that
they once were in.
We need to have our minds renewed and you can see the Bible makes this distinction if you look at
Colossians 2:20 where we see the emphasis on the death at the level of the spirit, the death of the
old self, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if
you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations.” So there it’s the death and
it’s emphasized again in the next chapter in 3:3, “For you have died, and your life is hid with
Christ in God.”
But do you see that it doesn’t stop there? It goes on in verse 5, and this is where many of us
fail, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” Not kill it, not strangle it, but put it to
the death that God has already wrought in you through the Holy Spirit. It’s not a struggling
against immorality, it’s not that old struggle against immorality that you had at the converted
stage, but it’s a yielding to the death that God has already wrought in the old self. It’s a
yielding to that death of immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is
idolatry. And then see the positive side of the renewing of the mind in verse 12, “Put on then, as
God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience,
forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the
Lord has forgiven you, so you almost must forgive.”
In other words, the Bible doesn’t say, “Your old self has died, so then you’re set. You’re ready
for a victorious growing in Jesus.” No, the Bible says then your mind has to start being renewed in
the image that God wants you to enter into. So he says these are some of the things your mind has
to start looking to. It has to start looking to a development in compassion, not just that old
‘hail fellow well met’ kind of love or concern such as “We’re glad to see you brother,” but your
mind must begin to see the kind of tender, kindly compassion that Jesus wants you to have in it. In
other words, your mind must begin to grasp a whole new set of values.
Dear ones, it’s no use us entering into the virtues the Greek’s praised, do you see that? The
Greek’s believed in the good life and they praised virtue and temperance and honesty and integrity.
But we are not called to enter into the highest virtues that the pagan philosophers have set before
us. We’re called to realize the tender Christlike virtues that he wants to form in us and that
means our mind has to start being renewed in those virtues. There’s no point in us taking the
Carnegie course “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” and say, “Now Lord Jesus, you’ve brought
this death in us so that these virtues will become real in us.” Those are no use, nor are the
virtues of Socrates or of Plato, nor are the virtues of the power of positive thinking, but the
virtues are virtues that Jesus will reveal to you in your mind that you particularly need. That’s
one sense in which we need to have our minds renewed.
Would you like to look more carefully at several verses that emphasize the renewing of the mind?
Colossians 3:2-3, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For
you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” But as Brother Murdock said, then your
mind has to begin to be used. Now, I’m with you, the liberals preach the renewal of the mind
without the renewal of the heart and I agree that most of our churches today are filled with
ethical homilies. We’re all trying to renew each other’s minds, aren’t we?
We’re all saying love each other, and be kind to each other, and you must be like Jesus. Now I
agree with you that there’s no point in renewing a dear one’s mind unless their own heart has been
renewed, and their own spirit has been renewed. Until that happens they won’t be able to follow
after the renewing of the mind. So renewing of the mind is of no use unless the heart has been
renewed, unless God has planted in you a new heart. But after he has, through the death of self,
then you have to renew your mind. You have to start setting your mind on things that are above not
on things that are on earth.
You have to start saying, “Holy Spirit, what is the image of Jesus that you want me to enter into
particularly in my life? Show me what you want me to enter into of Jesus.” Now a lot of us get
lazy in this, we don’t bother with it. We say we’ll read all the books and we’ll learn what they
say we’ve got to enter into. Now, I think you should read the books but then you should ask the
Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, what is the next step in the beauty of Jesus that you want me to enter
into?” And when the mind grasps it, then the spirit can begin to realize it in our hearts, and in
our lives, and in our bodies. But the mind has to be renewed.
This is emphasized again in Romans 8:5-6; that it’s not enough to have the hearts cleansed and that
we end up in a sanctified and petrified state if we only have the heart cleansed. Romans 8:5-6,
“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who
live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the
flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” And then in Romans 12:2, “Do
not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove
what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” “Do not be conformed to this
world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
Now many dear ones have experienced a real cleansing of the heart through the Holy Spirit but they
have not begun to allow themselves to be transformed by the renewal of their minds. They have
continued to look after the things that everyone else was looking after in this world and they have
gone back to their jobs, and they have begun to seek the same things that their friends at work
seek. They have never allowed their mind to be renewed, which is a radical renewal, dear ones; the
mind of Jesus is utterly different from the mind of this world and we need to live in that mind of
Jesus.
You see that in Philippians 2:5 and this is really how we have our mind renewed. Philippians 2:5,
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,” or, “Have this mind in you which
you have in Christ Jesus.” In other words, we’re called to receive through the Holy Spirit the mind
of Christ. When the Holy Spirit cleanses your heart you’ve only started and you say, “Holy Spirit,
the Bible says you will take of the things of Jesus and impart them to us. Impart to me
miraculously today the mind of Jesus so that I can know what he wants me to enter into.”
We must not then be conformed to the mind of this world and what does that mean? Let’s look at the
mind of this world. Among some people it runs this way, you’ve got a good education, you’re sort of
middle class, and you’ve had a high school education and you’re graduated, and you could even go to
college if you want. You’re certainly a lot better off than your parents were who went through the
depression so the mind of this world says; “Now you want to capitalize on this. You start off at a
higher level than your parents so you ought to rise much higher than them. Now that certainly means
you ought to have a better house than they have, and you certainly ought to be better off as far as
life insurance goes. And you certainly ought to be able to send your children to a good school, and
to provide money for their education which your parents couldn’t do for you.”
And the mind of this world says, “You ought to capitalize on the advantages that you have.” So the
mind of this world speaks to those of us even in Bethany (Fellowship) and it says, “Now, look at
what God has done in this place. Look at the work we have in Brazil. This is pretty good, all we
need to do is to hold this work and maybe extend it slightly. But we ought to capitalize on the
advantages we have and we ought to really in a sense, lean on those advantages and depend on them.
And there’s no reason why Bethany should not evolve gradually into a mighty mission field, we just
keep working on what we’ve got.”
In other words, the mind of the flesh is always thinking in terms of what we, with our human
ability, can do with what we’ve been given. Now, will you look at the mind of Christ on that in
Philippians 2:5, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he
was in the form of God,” though he had a good education, though he was born in a middle class
background, though he was born into Bethany Fellowship with all its advantages, “Though he was in
the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking
the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”
And that is Jesus’ mind; though he had all things in the universe, he threw them all away and did
not try to gain advantage for himself through those things, but he humbled himself and became
nothing and said, “God, if you want to exalt me, you exalt me.” Ah dear ones, would you stop saying
“I have this talent and that talent.” Would you stop saying “We have this advantage and that
advantage and now all we have to do is work on that?” It’s useless, those things are no use. Those
things God cannot use. He wants us to have the mind of Jesus, to be prepared to cast away all that
mind of the world that says you want to capitalize on what you’ve got.
Dear ones, the world is dying because so many of us are sitting in our homes and having our minds
conformed to the image of this world. We’re giving money to the missions and you know we’re doing
better than everybody else, except we’re doing far below what Jesus himself did. Our mind is being
conformed to the members of our church, or our mind is being conformed by the devil to the image of
the liberal churches. We’re looking at everybody else and saying, “Look what they give and look
what we give. We give so much more.” Jesus wants us to receive his mind, ready to give everything,
ready to begin to live on only the essentials.
John Wesley lived on 28 pounds the first year. He got 56 pounds the second year so he still lived
on 28 pounds. Then the third year he got 120 pounds and he still lived on 28 pounds. And then
eventually 1,000 pounds came in through his book publishing and he still lived on 28 pounds and died
with four silver spoons and felt he shouldn’t have died with those four.
Do you see that the mind of Christ is different from the mind of this world and it’s acquired after
we’ve allowed the spirit and the body to be sanctified and made holy? It requires us to walk on and
constantly every day ask the Holy Spirit to give us the mind of Jesus in everything, including in
Bethany Fellowship. Dear ones, if Bethany – and I love you, you’re great, and I think God is rarely
doing any other work in any other place like this, but if we keep going at the speed we’re going,
still millions and millions will go to hell.
In other words, we need a mighty miracle by God and that miracle only comes when dear ones are
renewed in the mind of Christ. Here is the mind of Christ, and I ask you to be patient as I read it
and I’ll try to read it as expressively as an English teacher is supposed to read. You know the
story far better than I do. C. T. Studd returned to captain Cambridge cricket in his last year,
1883. “Once again he was reckoned the leading all-around player in England. The cricketing annual
saying, ‘Mr. C. T. Studd for the second year in succession must be accorded the premier position as
all around cricketer and some years have elapsed since the post has been filled by a player so
excellent in all the three departments of the game. His batting especially has been at the highest
class.’”
And then (Norman) Grubb goes on and says, “His Cambridge career has been described as one long blaze
of cricketing glory. In his last year he topped both batting and bowling averages. Indeed through
the previous half century of university cricket only four batsmen had had a better batting average
and only four a better bowler, a truly amazing record of all around brilliancy. He also won the
Cambridge single rackets match and represented Cambridge against Oxford. He was beaten by Leslie.
He took his BA degree and came down from Cambridge in 1884.”
He was not only born middleclass, but really top class in England, and had all that an Englishman
born into that class was given. And then the next step, “But as he rose to prominence in the
cricket world and especially while serving with the test team in Australia there were two old ladies
who set themselves to pray that he would be brought back to God. The answer came suddenly; his
brother to whom he was especially attached was thought to be dying. CT was constantly at his
bedside and while sitting there watching while he hovered between life and death these thoughts came
welling up in his mind, ‘Now what is all the popularity of the world worth to George? What is all
the fame and flattery worth? What is it worth to possess all the riches of the world when a man
comes face-to-face with eternity?’ And a voice came to answer, ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’
All those things he said, had become as nothing to my brother. He only cared about the Bible and
the Lord Jesus Christ and God taught me the same lesson. In his love and goodness he restored my
brother to health and as soon as I could get away I went to hear Mr. Moody. There the Lord met me
again and restored to me the joy of salvation. Still further and what was better than all, he set
me to work for him and I began to try and persuade my friends to read the gospel and to speak to
them individually about their souls. I cannot tell you what joy it gave me to bring the first soul
to the Lord Jesus Christ. I have tasted almost all the pleasures that this world can give. I do
not suppose there is one that I have not experienced but I can tell you that those pleasures were as
nothing compared to the joy that the saving of that one soul gave me.” And C.T. Studd entered into
the sanctification of his body, he was converted and then through God’s grace he went further.
He learned of a woman who had had great sorrow and pain in her life and suddenly something happened
to transform her so that she was filled with joy even through the most tragic circumstances in her
family. And C. T. Studd heard about it and he began to seek this same blessing.
He said, “We began looking at the Bible to see if God had promised such a blessing as this.” And
then he said, “As soon as I found out that the price of the precious blood of the Lord Jesus was my
complete sanctification even in my spirit, as soon as I found this out I went down on my knees and
gave myself up to God and the words of the consecration hymn ‘Take my life and let it be consecrated
Lord to thee.’
I found the next step was to have simple childlike faith to believe what I had committed to God he
was also willing to take and keep and knew I had committed in my soul to His keeping and he was able
to keep that. How much more was he able to keep me and what belonged to me in this world? I
realized my life was to be one of simple childlike faith and that my part was to trust, not to do.
I was to trust in him and he would work in me to do his good pleasure. From that time my life has
been different and he has given me that peace, that passive understanding and the joy which is
unspeakable. It was not very long before God led me to go to China.”
He said he had never thought of the missions there, he had never thought of even leaving England and
immediately he began to think of this, the battle for the world to conform his mind to their image
began. In other words, after he had entered into the holiness of heart experience he began to find
that struggle that all of us feel in allowing our minds to be conformed to the image of Jesus
instead of to be conformed to the image of this world.
“I had never thought of going out of the country before and I had felt that England was big enough
for me. But now my mind seemed constantly to run in the direction of the Lord’s work abroad. Then
came the big test, and his whole family started to point out to him what good he could do here in
England. And they began to tell him, “If you would go through the Universities, if you would go
around England all your life with your influence as a cricketer, with your influence as a scholar,
you could be a mighty witness for Jesus here in England. You could capitalize on the natural
advantages that God has given you.”
And it’s strange, but God will not let us do that, will he? He will not let us capitalize on those
natural abilities. It’s only when we have really cast those before him and died to those and say,
“Father, I don’t care if you ever use them they’re of the flesh,” that God is able really to renew
our minds. And of course, he prayed and he found that God was telling him that he was to go to
China. He said, “Many said he was making a huge mistake to go and bury himself in the interior of
China. They pointed out the influence he would have with the young men of England, but he himself
knew that he must go to China.”
And then he began to humble himself and to follow out what this mind of Christ told him to do and he
took the form of a servant. You can see it in these words, “May 26th he wrote to his brother at
Eaton, ‘We were overrun with rats who during the night would take away our socks, nibbling off our
legging tapes, taking away our blotting paper and putting them at the bottom of the boat in their
nest.” Who –this cricketer — this BA from Cambridge? “They caused us a good deal of annoyance
so we thought of setting traps for them but we decided not to do so but simply to ask the Lord to
rid us of the grievance. Since that time we have had no further trouble. I do not say don’t play
games or cricket,” he says to his brother, “By all means play and enjoy them, giving thanks to Jesus
for them. Only take care that games do not become an idol to you as they did to me. What good will
it do anybody in the next world to have been even the best player there ever has been? And then
think of that and winning souls for Jesus.”
And then came the great moment when he looked at his fortune which was $29,000 pounds. He inherited
a fortune of $29,000 pounds, that’s about $90,000. One would be tempted to say, “Those are natural
resources which God has given me which need to be used for my missionary work here in China.” And
do you see how different is the mind of Christ? That’s why dear ones I ask you: call out to the
Holy Spirit to reveal it to you and to renew you in it, because then he began signing away all of
his $29,000 pounds until he was left in China with his one suit of Chinese clothes and nothing.
What did God do with this man who allowed his mind to be renewed according to God’s values? Well it
says in the back of the book, “The total staff of fields at this time of the Worldwide
Evangelization Crusade, the total number of fields and home based numbers is 850. There is work in
Africa, the Canary Islands, Portuguese Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Cashmere, Venezuela, Uruguay,
Pakistan and so on, twentyfive other countries.” He would have trouble getting to all those
countries himself with his natural resources.
That’s why God wants you to be renewed in your mind about your natural resources. Dear ones, there
are three thousand million in the world and two thousand million have not heard of Jesus. This
morning at one o’clock I committed my mother into Jesus’ hands and at three o’clock in Ireland she
died. Now, she was ready to die and so that’s why I smile, and that’s why I have joy in my heart.
But dear ones, since she died at three o’clock this morning, almost a 100,000 souls have died and
another 300,000 that were not ready to face Jesus and that do not know him.
Now, if you’re going to depend on your natural resources to get to them, you have no chance. If
you’re going to come up to God and say, “My loaves and fishes, I’ll start breaking them up and I’ll
distribute them to these 200,000 that are dying every day.” Dear ones, they’ll all be dead before
you get the crumbs to them. The abilities of your intellect are not enough. The ability of you
even to give money is not enough. But we’re called to give all we have — to get rid of it — so
that God can begin to produce those magnificent resources. So if you’ll take those loaves and
fishes you have and give them to him, then he makes them enough for the 200,000. The problem with
this is not so much that we’re not allowing our mind to be renewed in the distribution of resources,
but that we’re not allowing our mind to be renewed in the image of Jesus to see that those natural
resources are no good and we need to give them all to God and then trust him to make mighty power
available in our own hearts and lives.
So there’s no point you singers or we preachers going to God and saying, “Here, here is my great
gift. Here is my great ability, you use this.” The devil will use it to exalt you. You need to
give it and say, “It’s nothing. It’s able to achieve no spiritual good, will you take it now?” So
dear ones, would you stop using that precious ointment that you have saying, “Father, if I use these
gifts I have to take up a good career and earn plenty of money, then I’ll sell the ointment and I’ll
give the money for your work.”
The money won’t do that for the 200,000 that are dying each day. But would you waste the ointment
on Jesus? Would you go to Jesus and say this morning, “Lord Jesus, I’m ready to waste myself on
you. I’m ready to say all that I have and all that I would ever happen to be, you can have and you
can use to make me a failure, or you can use to bring many souls into your kingdom.” But dear ones,
is your mind renewed in that image, in the image of Jesus?
I pray that you’ll begin to think in these terms. Allow your mind to be renewed and stop looking at
your natural abilities and think God can use those. They aren’t enough for him to use. But if you
give them to him he’ll perform a miracle through you. Let us pray.