Cleansed From Inward Sin – Always

Acts 15:6-21

Sermon transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

A quote “As the heart of the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit” is Acts 15:9 and is of
course when they discovered the Gentiles and verse 6 gives the sequence, Acts 15:6. “The apostles
and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.” And that is the business of the
Gentiles. “And after there had been much debate, Peter rose and said to them, “Brethren, you may
know that in the early days God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the
word of the gospel and believe. And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the
Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their
hearts by faith. Now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the
disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we shall be
saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.

And all the assembly kept silence; and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs
and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James
replied, ‘Brethren, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take
out of them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, as it is written,

‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; I will
rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up, that the rest of men may seek the Lord, and all the
Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who has made these things known from of old.’

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but
should write to them to abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is
strangled and from blood. For from early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach
him for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.’” And of course they agreed with that.

The verse that came home to me again today “And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving
them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us.” And then he describes what the Holy Spirit did. “He
made no distinction between us and them but cleansed their hearts by faith.” Cleansed their hearts
by faith, cleansed their hearts and that was the miracle that was wrought with the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cleansed their hearts of everything that was not him and the Holy
Spirit of course was just the man that had only recently left them. The man that they had seen
crucified on a cross. The one whom they had seen physically several times during the past weeks and
they knew the Lord is the Spirit of course. Of course he was with us, we talked to him, we touched
him and now he is in us. He himself is at God’s right hand but through his spirit he is in us and
he is the one that has done this work in our hearts. That work involved cleansing from the heart
the things that they could not get of themselves.

What came home to me was it was very easy for people like ourselves to know this all by heart
backwards and forwards. It’s very easy for us to slip into a holy spiritless sanctification. It’s
very easy to fall into the life of outward victory that you’ve entered into and the life of inward
victory most times but it’s very easy to slip back on the inner victory which is of course the main
work of the Holy Spirit, cleansing us from inward sin.

It’s very easy to slip back into that and yet keep an outward appearance of actually even a
sanctified life.

Now if you say to me, well how do you tell? What came home to me as the difference when the
fullness of the Holy Spirit occurs, I found a rising up out of my heart of purity. Rather than a
rising up of worry and anxiety and kind of a critical spirit, rather than that I find rising up out
of my heart a joy and a love and a peace and something that lifted me up from inside. A real sense
of a different spirit being in there and making it easy, it was easy to be holy because holiness was
rising up out of your heart. And it was easy to praise God because it was rising up out of your
heart. I think it is very easy to slip back into a self controlled inner life of the mind and
emotions that you keep in line with the best that you know but does not have that rising joy and
love of Jesus bubbling up inside.

You maybe get used to, “Well it can’t always be like that. It has to be translated into ordinary
psychological equipment and the way our minds and emotions work. And that’s part of the warfare
that we have and part of the battle is to exercise the will and we are responsible after all. We
are responsible for exercising the will aren’t we? Yes, yes you are but exercising the will to turn
always to the Holy Spirit and to put yourself in a place where he is flowing into you and flowing up
through you, well yes, yes and sometimes that isn’t exactly happening so I really need to use my
will. I mean I can’t just smile just when the Holy Spirit smiles. No that’s right you can’t and I
can’t just be loving when the Holy Spirit is. No that’s right and I can’t just be patient just
because it’s welling up inside my heart. I have to at times exercise the will. Yes you certainly
have.”

So there is a very tricky area there. We’re perfectly right in saying you do need to use your will
don’t you? Yes you do but whether you’re using your will to realize that only looking up to Jesus
and only living in the faith that you’re in him at the right hand of God, that only that enables you
to stay under the influence and the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s right. You are responsible
for directing your thoughts that way. But still it is the Holy Spirit within you that rises up in
the joy that Jesus has before his Father. And he shares that joy with you and enables you in that
way to transcend even the atmosphere around you and even in conversation with others.

You can’t help it. It’s a bit more like the Salvation Army guy who was beating the drum so hard
that somebody said, “You’ll break it.” And he said, “I’m so happy I could break the bloody drum.”
So it’s a bit like that, there’s a joy of the Holy Spirit within that comes up and it comes up as
love and it comes up as creative love and life going out of us. What I can see is, it’s very easy
to slip into an okay kind of sanctified life and an okay kind of Christian witness but doesn’t have
that shine or that lift from Jesus that is the life and the action of the Holy Spirit himself.

Now I notice it particularly in all our personalities that come from our mums and dads and our
brothers and sisters and our family upbringing because we all have kind of ways of doing things and
saying things that come from them very strongly and they color our life very strongly. It seems
very easy to slip back into those almost habits of behavior that we were brought up with and that
came naturally to us and that we lived for our first twenty, thirty, forty years of our lives. What
the Holy Spirit does of course is he comes in like a new person, like a fresh a breeze and that’s
what hits you.

I couldn’t understand how easy it was to be joyful and filled with peace because it all came up from
inside. I thought this is stupid, I’m asleep or I’m almost asleep, certainly not a soul could see

me. Here I am, I’m smiling away, it seems so stupid but it happened. So that is where I saw the
miracle of sanctification is the Holy Spirit actually coming in and cleansing the heart, cleansing
it by his own flowing through it and keeping it cleansed. That’s I think what my message would be
this morning. Not so much have you ever experienced it but are you experiencing now day by day?
Are you allowing him to cleanse you moment by moment? Are you looking up to him? Is he real to
you? Are you looking to him and saying, “Holy Spirit…..” Is that your experience?

Or is your experience, “Well, you know that was the first flush you know.” And that’s how it begins
but sooner or later it has to work its way down into your ordinary personality and your ordinary
personality becomes a sanctified personality.” I don’t know that it ever does. I think you never
become more than a container of the Holy Spirit. I suspect that there is no life in this arm and in
this elbow and there is no life this mind except a natural life. But the uncreated life of Jesus
flows only when his love and life flows through us and it seems to me that’s a moment by moment
experience and a life of dependency upon him that brings a humility in you, not only a humility but
an ability to stand away from yourself and see yourself as somebody other than you, while you
yourself live in Jesus.

It seems that when the Holy Spirit is alive and flowing inside you, you are carried along with him
and all you are doing is you are actually just a person that turns the faucet on or off. We in
England we call it tap but turn the tap of the faucet on or off that’s really what you do. The life
and the power and the water comes from the Holy Spirit. It is living water and I think it’s that
that touches people. I think it’s that that achieves God’s work. It’s that that enables us to be
as we say a witness. It’s really the Holy Spirit himself witnessing directly to the person just via
us.

It does seem to be to get back to our own situation, it seems possible so dangerously possible to
live, I hesitate to say it, independent of the Holy Spirit but along side. That’s a distinction you
remember we made in interpreting the New Testament, Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit is with you and
will be in you.” It seems easy to slip back into “He is with me and I do consult him” but he’s not
in me, he’s not possessing me. So they talk about being filled with the Holy Spirit or possessed by
the Holy Spirit as opposed to the Holy Spirit dealing with you or maybe even being in you from time
to time. This is a constant flow and it does seem to me that the heart of it is God gave the Holy
Spirit to them as he did to us and cleansed their hearts by faith.

It seems to me that is the issue, is your heart still clean? Is your heart still clean which
virtually means is your heart experiencing the Holy Spirit flowing through it? Is your heart still
experiencing the Holy Spirit flowing through it? Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth
speaketh and is it out of the fullness of the Holy Spirit of Jesus within you that your power to
live day by day comes? I think that’s what makes it more interesting to be with a Christian. I
mean we are reasonably interesting people but I don’t know that we are so interesting that we can
really occupy each other for eternity.

It seems to me often what makes it interesting for two Christians being together is the interaction
of the Holy Spirit of Jesus from one to the other. It’s something that makes the whole conversation
interesting or fills it with life. It’s not just an exchange of opinions or an exchange of views or
information that we are passing to one another, there is you might almost say an electricity, an
electricity in the air. The Holy Spirit brings life, that’s the great work that he does. He brings
life into you or into whatever situation you are in.

So the heart of it I think is “give the Holy Spirit to them as he did to us and cleansed their
hearts by faith” and I think often we think of a dirty heart as just sexually dirty or dishonestly
dirty or some obvious dirt. But of course the work of the Holy Spirit is not just a cleansing from
evil or cleansing from negative things but the work of the Holy Spirit is to fill your heart with
himself. He displaces the other things, he cleanses it certainly but he doesn’t just drive them out
he displaces them with himself. In other words he doesn’t just eliminate a critical spirit or a
jealous spirit or an envious spirit or a proud spirit, he displaces it with his own sweet spirit so
that it makes that verse possible that Christ is the aroma to God, a fragrance of death to death and
a fragrance of life to life.

There’s a fragrance in the spirit of Jesus in a person that brings a beauty that is more than just
whether you believe the Bible or whether you believe dishonesty is wrong or whether you believe envy
is right. It’s a fragrance of life, a beauty of life, a graciousness in the voice, a graciousness
in the attitude, a giving out graces not only the ability to do things but a generosity, a
magnanimity, a freedom, a liberty, a feeling that the other person is giving you their whole selves.
The Holy Spirit brings about that kind of transparency and it’s something more than just ethical
goodness. It is a beauty and the Bible does it best, “it’s a savor of life to life and death to
death.” It’s a fragrance of life to life and a fragrance of death to death. I think that’s what a
person in the shop or over the phone senses or doesn’t sense. I think they are very interested in
what you think of the Republicans and the Democrats or what you think of Obama or what you think of
abortion or what you think of murder or what you think of ISIL. I think they are interested in all
those things. What they desperately need is life, lightness and joy of life at the right hand of
God.

It seems to me that comes only when the Holy Spirit is able to cleanse the heart from all of self
and to keep it cleansed. I suppose that is what I saw maybe a little more clearly early this
morning that it is possible for the heart to become preoccupied with things other than the joyful
presence of the Holy Spirit. It is possible for the heart; it’s possible for the cares of this
world to wear it down. It’s possible for the weights and the burdens of everyday life to preoccupy
the heart so that the heart is no longer a light and joyful source of life but it rather just sits
there and it’s really not the heart often that speaks, it’s the personality that we’ve formed over
the years from first our parents and then from our friends, from our schools and then from our past
experiences in life with people. Then that produces often a personality that has a lot of the world
in it and carries a lot of weights and some of them are nice. If you were very close to a comedian
as your school friend well a bit of that would rub off on you. If you got to know somebody who was
extremely good at mathematics and science well then a bit of that rubs off on you and gradually
layer upon layer comes and you build up a personality that is a combination of all the people you’ve
met and of the experiences you’ve come into and that’s normally the personality that people meet
unless the Holy Spirit of Christ breaks through, pours through you and then they touch a new life.
They touch kind of an interesting life, oh it seems to have a lift to it, and I don’t know what it
is but boy they seem I don’t know, different.

That’s the life of the Holy Spirit and that’s him when he has free way in your heart. So I would
say in the prayer time this morning seek him for, “Tell me Holy Spirit, how am I doing? Am I
ignoring you? Am I in some way lying to myself about my spontaneous obedience to you? Or am I
okay?” He is the Holy Spirit of truth and he will answer us. Let us pray.