Part 4

Chapter 4. Sanctification. It's time. Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Hebrews 3, verses 7 and 8. We have come to the last and perhaps the most important of our studies. We have seen the necessity, the nature and the way of God's sanctifying grace and we seek to know when it can be ours. Wilt thou be made clean? When shall it once be? When can we enter the land of rest from inbred sin and receive the abiding comforter within our hearts? To this question there is but one answer. Now. For whether we enter it next week, next month or next year, by the time that we get there it will be now. Then why not today, at this hour? We make this reply simply because the sole condition on our part is faith. If then it is by faith and not by consecration, and faith much less by consecration alone, it must be now. In this connection I want to quote from John Wesley, the great servant of God and also from John Fletcher, the vicar of Maidley, whom John Wesley believed to be the saintliest man since the days of the Apostle John. Look for it, said he, that is Mr. Wesley, every day, every hour, every moment. Why not this hour, this moment? Certainly you may look for it now if you believe it is by faith and by this token you may surely know whether you seek it by faith or works. If by works you want something to be done first, before you will believe, you think, I must first obey, or to do thus and thus, then you are seeking it by works unto this day. If you seek it by faith you will accept it as you are. If as you are, accept it now. Accept it by faith, accept it as you are, accept it now. The words of John Fletcher of Maidley are even more emphatic. Fight the good fight of faith, break through all temptations, dejections, wandering worldly thoughts, all unprofitable companions and the backwardness of an unbelieving heart and a carnal mind. Struggle till you touch Jesus and feel healing, comforting virtue proceeding from him. And when you know clearly the way to him, repeat and touch till you find he lives in you by the powerful operation of his Holy Spirit. You must also remember that it is your privilege to go to him by such a faith now and every succeeding moment, and that you are to bring him nothing but a tired, distracted, tossed, hardened heart just such as one as you have now. Here lies the grand mistake of many miserable but precious souls. They are afraid to believe lest it should be presumption, because they have not yet comfort, peace, joy, love, etc., not considering that this is to expect the fruit before the tree is planted. Beware then of expecting any grace previous to believing. When, however, we say that faith is the sole condition of receiving this glorious experience, we need to add that we do not mean by faith a cheap and easy believism. Faith is a mighty living force wrought in us by the Holy Ghost, whereby we are enabled to lay hold upon Christ as our sanctification and full redemption. It will help us, therefore, in this, our closing Bible reading, to see the conditions under which a living effective faith can operate, the groundwork of our believing into full salvation. So one, an earnest desire. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, Matthew 5, verse 6, and what things soever you desire when you pray, believe that you receive, Mark 11, verse 24. Surely I am not mistaken if I say that in the hearts of many a great desire has been awakened for an uttermost and complete salvation. We have been getting a vision of fullness of life and liberty and joy in Christ that has caused us to seek with all our hearts. The Lord Jesus, in speaking of the gift of the Holy Ghost, in Luke 11, verse 13, preludes that promise with a parable of a little hungry boy, not asking for aeroplanes or bicycles or cricket bats, but for bread and butter, the very necessities of life. Our children coming home late for dinner, very hungry and tired, don't fold their arms and say, if it's your will, Mother, to give us our dinner, we should like to have it, but if not, then it's all right. No, oh dear, no, they ask and make a noise till they get it. Are we like that spiritually? Are we hungry and thirsty? Is our soul fainting within us for a life of love and joy and peace and power? Do we ask and seek and desire and long for a full and joyous, exuberant salvation in Christ, free from a censorious, critical, hard and unforgiving spirit, delivered from discontent and a murmuring, complaining disposition, freedom from all sin and not merely our uncomfortable and unpleasant iniquities, from all self-pleasing and waywardness of soul? Then faith can begin to operate here and now, if such is our deep desire. 2. Conviction Present your bodies, which is your reasonable service. Romans 12, verse 1 and 2 Here, I believe, is the second condition of an effective faith, the recognition of the reasonableness of God's claims. I am not speaking here of consecration itself, but of a recognition of its reasonableness. Do we believe that what God asks of us, a wholehearted devotion to himself, a true and loyal love to him, is right, reasonable and the best thing for us? To do his will is the safest, sweetest and surest thing on earth. Have you ever noticed those wonderful words of the Lord Jesus? Whosoever shall do the will of my Father, the same is my brother and sister and mother. What, the mother of the Son of God? Well, he has said it. We should never have dared to utter such things, but they came from his lips. I leave these wonderful utterances for your own further meditation. I have not time to follow them out. He that does God's will, the same is Christ's brother. She that lives in the perfect will of our Father in heaven is the very mother or sister of the Saviour of the world. So to do the will of God must indeed be good and perfect and well-pleasing. Let this be our objective. Don't, however, get confused over it. Consecration of our all to God is not one of the conditions for receiving the Holy Ghost. If it were, it would be by works, for consecration is another name for good works. Consecration is rather the result of the blessing than a cause or condition of receiving it. Because we cannot yield all in happy, loving obedience to our Father in heaven. We need a blessing. It is the entire sanctification of the heart that makes it possible for us to render a perfect concentration of all our being's ransomed powers to the Lord. But we must have this as an objective. We must see that if the blessing we get does not lead to this, we are following mere will-o'-the-wisps. God must convict us of the sin and unreasonableness of living for ourselves in any part of our life. Hunger and thirst, the deep desires of the soul, are followed or accompanied by a painful conviction that there is much within us that does not bless His Holy Name, and give a glansome yes to all His reasonable demands for a holy, consecrated life. Let us look the matter in the face, shut our ears to all the whisperings of unbelief, and dare to believe in the reasonableness of God's holy claims. 3. Enlightenment Psalm 43, verse 3 says, Send out thy light and thy truth, let them lead me. I am perfectly well aware that self-desperate souls do sometimes enter into the most blessed experience of God's grace without much definite enlightenment of their spiritual understanding, because God is so gracious to our poor, ignorant and stupid minds, and yet it makes the way much easier if we are enlightened. Faith can operate with greater certainty. So many earnest ones are floundering about because they are not only ignorant of the devil's devices and the way of their own deceived heart and nature, but also of God's way of deliverance. There are souls in different stages of development, needing different presentations of truth, but I have a peculiar sympathy with those earnest and holy consecrated souls who, though devoted to God, are yet experiencing constant defeat and discouragement in their hearts and lives. It is to them I wish to speak just at this point. Everywhere I go I meet with such. I believe a little enlightenment will greatly forward the effective operation of faith. Conversion and the new birth deal largely with the conscience and the will of the unregenerate. The ego, or I, is crucified with Christ. The will is changed and made one with His. Sanctification, on the other hand, deals with that which is not I, but sin that dwelleth in me. The poison still lurking in our desires, affections, memory, mind and imagination, frequently bringing our regenerate and transfigured will again into bondage. Not I, but sin. No more I than the watch I carry so close to my body is part of that body. No more I than the bacilli of the poor leper's blood is part of him. No, just as they were an abnormal intrusion into his system, so it is with the sin that dwelleth within. The I won't, the I can't, the I don't believe, that awful trinity of evil, are like leprous bacilli poisoning our whole nature. If I am a truly surrendered soul and a real follower of Christ, the trouble is not in my will. Hence, consecration and decisions of my will to correct and purify are of no avail. We need a power from without, something outside ourselves. That power is Jesus' blood. And faith, and faith alone, is the faculty that can apprehend, appropriate and apply it to our struggling, defeated souls. Ah yes, if the trouble is in ourselves, how can we be free? But thank God, his word reveals to us that it is not I, but something detached from myself that has fastened itself upon me. It was grafted in with the hands other than mine. The devil put it there. And the Son of God came down to destroy the works of the devil. Oh, let us cease from all struggling and attempting by our willpower. Let us only believe that the blood of Jesus Christ does cleanse us from all sin. If only we will walk in the light, humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God. Does someone object and say, if it is not I, where does the responsibility come in? God does not hold us responsible for having our evil nature. We did not choose it to be there. But he does hold us responsible for retaining it, when he has provided a perfect way for his death and burial. Only pride, sloth and unbelief hinder that death sentence being carried out. May God make us earnest to seek and believe for a perfect deliverance of this sin from within. For this and this only is the condemnation that we believe not. I am equally aware that what I have been saying is to some almost unintelligible. The truth is hidden from their eyes. May I say they are not ready for it. Before God can deal with the evil within, or they by faith claim and trust him for the purifying operation of the blood of Jesus, there has to be a practical repentance. There is, in short, real trouble in an unsurrendered will. God cannot deal with the inward evil till we have dealt with the outward in true repentance. It may seem hardly necessary to dwell upon this aspect of things, and yet I am persuaded that not a few who are seeking an inward cleansing and a baptism of the Holy Ghost are unable to exercise the faith that receives because of unrepented sin. Yes, a plain, simple, practical repentance is what God requires. That letter has to be written, that cheque dispatched. The one who has wronged you forgiven. The hidden sin confessed to the party concerned. This is how the Spirit is convicting and directing some. You, maybe, are trying to understand the theory of sanctification and the doctrine of a higher life. The Lord just now wants you to attend to the practical things of the lower one. You will never get enlightened as to inbred sin and its destruction through the cross of Christ until by grace you have obeyed his voice. I say by his grace because if you will only seek him, he has gifts for the rebellious also. He will give you grace and power to repent and be reconciled to your brother if only you will seek his face. But after we have obeyed, let us beware lest we think we have got the blessing of which we speak. There is always a sense of rest following upon repentance and obedience. But it is a great danger to suppose that this is all. Nay, rather let us go on to perfection which the God of all grace has promised to work in us after that we have suffered a little while from the testing and trial of our faith. As I look back on my own life, how vividly do those times of repentance stand out in my mind. I should not be writing this if God had not gifts for the rebellious also and given me grace to straighten out and make amends for evil done in my life. Now number five, humility. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. 1 Peter 5 verse 6 If I had to state in the simplest form the conditions for receiving heart cleansing from the hand of the risen, exalted Jesus Christ, I should say one, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and two, only believe. Humility and faith. This I know contradicts a good deal of modern teaching that makes consecration or surrender the main element in securing the promised gift of sanctification. God's wonderful promises were not given to earnest, devoted, consecrated souls but to poor, miserable backsliders. If you knew the gift of God, said the Lord Jesus to the Samaritan woman, not if you knew how wicked you are or what a hell is waiting for you or how mighty a sin is, no, nor if you had consecrated yourself to me I would have given the gift, no, no such thing. He never said to the poor leper seeking cleansing, if you give yourself to me, body, soul and spirit, I will cleanse you of your leprosy. He never said to his timid, frightened disciples behind closed doors after his resurrection, if you will make a full and complete surrender, I will give you the Holy Ghost. No indeed, for it is all of grace, all a free gift, all of him. The consecration follows out of a grateful heart for what he has done and given. As I have moved about the country, I have met many, very many, who have long been struggling to inherit the blessing through absolute surrender and wholehearted consecration. In utter despair and weariness of spirit, they have come to me confessing that they were nothing bettered but rather growing worse. What a joy it has been to proclaim the way of faith and show them that, instead of consecration, the Lord is asking of them a humble, lowly confession of sin and bidding them to tell him of the I won't, the I can't, and the I don't believe that they find in their heart. How often I have seen when with tears and lowliness of spirit they have gone down to the bottom and brought to Christ none of their goodness or earnest desire, but only the sin, the fear, the unbelief and the unwillingness, rebellion and every evil thing within, confessed it all to him and then triumphantly stood upon the promise that if they have done their part, he has done his. How often I say, have I seen fullness of assurance and joy well up in the soul and overflowing sweetness and light to all around. But yet in other cases I have noticed that it has been far harder to come thus to the Lord in humble and broken confession than in consecration. They love to give and offer and present their all to God, but alas, the proud unbroken spirit will never let them seek for the blessing as a poor leper, a blind beggar or a helpless paralytic and so they have gone empty away. Yes, the repentance of believers, as John Wesley called it long ago, is sine qua non for the effective operation of a living faith. Let no inability to surrender all, let no failure to consecrate ever keep you from Christ. Come as you are, tell him all about it, the idolatry, the impotence, the unbelief, and then only believe. So shall this triple stronghold of the Jebusite, that Jebus, J-E-B-U-S, which just exactly beats us saints, J-E-B-U-S, just exactly beats us saints, be utterly captured and destroyed by him whose name is called Jesus, the one, the only one, who just exactly saves us sinners, J-E-S-U-S, Jesus, just exactly saves us sinners, yes, and sanctifies as well. I have a number of letters in my hand received from saints who have thus entered into rest. I will read but one. I am so happy I hardly know how to thank you. For a week after I asked, I went on believing God had cleansed my heart, though I did not feel any different. But on Monday, when I was on my way home, I suddenly knew I was cleansed and I began running along the road and singing aloud, and I have been singing ever since. It is so wonderful, I cannot praise God enough, yet so simple that I wonder I have never asked him to do it before. I am amazed at the difference it makes to me. Two things have happened to me in the last two days, which a little time ago would have made me angry. Now I don't want to be angry. I don't even have to fight the angry feelings. And the worldliness has gone too. There is a dance going on in the room below me, and two weeks ago my feet would have been itching to dance. Now, instead of envying the people, I begin to feel sorry for them. But best of all is the wonderful joy and peace within. I am as sure the Lord is with me as if I felt my hand in his. These last days have been heaven on earth to me. I can never praise him enough. I feel like the old man who was so amazed at the love of Jesus in dying for him that he said, When I get to heaven, I will never let him hear the end of it. It is wonderful to find the Bible a new book, and prayer a delight it never was before, and to be able to tell people of all the wonderful things God has done for me. Not only that the Lord Jesus is wonderful, but the wonderful things he has done. There is salvation as well as a saviour, and listen to this sentence, and be alternately shouting and singing praises, or silent with amazement at his greatness of his love and fullness of his salvation. I would rather get letters like that than cheques of a thousand pounds. 6. Faith Purifying their hearts by faith. Acts 15 verse 9 That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Galatians 3.14 Purifying their hearts by faith. When shall we be made clean? When will it be? As soon soever as with deep desire, convicted of our need, and impotence, enlightened as to the cause and seat of the evil, truly repentant, and with genuine abasement, we can only believe. Then and there the blessing is ours. The Lord Jesus never said only believe to a Pharisee in his self-righteousness and formalism, never to a Sadducee in his rationalism and so-called wisdom. He said it and says it still to the needy, penitent seeker at his feet. Fletcher of Maidley said, When I stand in unbelief, I am like a drop of muddy water dried up in the sun of temptation. But when I do believe and close in with Christ, I am like that same drop of water on the boundless ocean of life, light, liberty, power, and love. Yes, you say, I know whom to believe, but what and how is my difficulty? Well, first the how of faith. We believe God through his promise and his word. Don't let us try any other way. Rest in the written word. Take hold of some definite, explicit statement of the Lord. They are bound throughout the precious volume. Thus saith the Lord. The Lord hath spoken. Don't grieve the spirit by putting the statement down to Paul or Peter or John. The apostles were not the authors of these exceeding great and precious promises. They are the very words of God himself. That is how to believe him. But you inquire, on what exactly is my faith to rest in the matter of so great an experience as entire sanctification? The hand of faith must have some explicit thing to grasp and lay hold upon. Yes, thank God, it must and has. The blood of the Lamb, the cross of Calvary, the wounds and stripes of Jesus. They made their robes white in the blood of the Lamb. Then why not you? The old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed. Then why not yours? Healed by his stripes. Then what hinders you? The only reason that the Holy Ghost can bring an indwelling Christ into your heart is the blood of the Lamb. Look upon it thus as you seek his incoming. The blood of Jesus is the price paid for the boon divine. That price is ample, yea, more than enough. Then why not in faith bring it with all boldness and claim the purchase of his blood? No tears, no consecrations, no vows, no fastings, no earnest endeavour, no struggles or good intentions will bring the Comforter to your soul. He responds to one thing and one thing only, a bold, unswerving, unflinching faith in the sacrifice of Calvary. Dare to believe that all you have confessed before is nailed to the cross. Or, if you prefer it, that the blood does just now make your heart clean. Or, if the Spirit has led you thus, that this very moment the efficy of his stripes and open wounds does make you sound as well as safe. And like the woman of old, you too shall be made perfectly whole of the plague of your heart. Faith must rest somewhere. When the assaults of the devil and the storms of unbelief sweep over your soul, there is but one foundation that will stand the strain. Faith even in God's truth. Mere generalities about his love and promise will avail us not. Seeking to believe in his abiding presence, because we are consecrated or engaged in earnest endeavour, mere feeling or philosophising, none of these things will enable us to withstand the onslaughts of the devil. I am crucified with Christ, therefore he lives in me. My union with him rests upon his death. He has cleansed me by his blood, therefore he abides within. Here is faith's solid, mighty resting place. Will you not look up in the face of God and say, Here I am, Lord, I have confessed all my impotence, my idolatry, my infidelity to thee. I have told thee I cannot follow thee. I see all sorts of difficulties cropping up. I see scorn and criticism awaiting me. I am so utterly impotent. I cannot do anything, and I confess it all to thee. But thou hast promised to give the Holy Ghost to those that ask, to rebels also, if only they hunger and thirst after thee. Lord, my only plea is the blood of Jesus. He may keep you waiting a little time, but he will come. He has never yet denied the humble soul, never. If he has not come to you yet, there is only one of two reasons. Either you have not humbled yourself under the mighty hand of God, or you are not believing. The trying of your faith worketh patience, it says in James 1 verse 3. We cannot repeat it too often. The blessing of which we are speaking of is by faith, and faith alone, that all the glory may be God's. And yet, before closing, I want to speak of one more thing, the testing of faith. May I ask you, when you get alone, to read over very carefully 1 Peter 5 verses 6 to 11. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, casting all your anxiety upon him, the devil whom resist steadfast in the faith. These are three simple conditions on our part. And then we read, The God of all grace, after that you have suffered a little while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. Take note of the words printed in capitals. If the little seed freshly sown could speak, it would say beneath the cold dark clods of earth, suffering a little while. It is not otherwise with the seed of faith. That's Luke 17 verse 5. When you have definitely trusted and seem in utter darkness, say, a little while, and he shall come. Begin to praise by faith. Stop praying, for there is a time when prayer is positive sin, because it is nothing more than the expression of unbelief. Praise should and must take place. Praise to God and testimony to men of what you believe that God has done in your soul. When the testing of your faith has done its work, the Holy Ghost will make real all that you have trusted him for. The Lord says to us once more, Only believe. If you will obey him and do what he bids, you will soon say to all around, Faith triumphant, faith triumphant, knowing not defeat or fear. And in your own soul you will know that the very God of peace himself does sanctify you wholly, spirit, soul and body, and preserve you blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus. And you will praise him throughout eternity that he who has called you has been faithful and has done it forever, even for you, sanctification for your soul. Amen and Amen.