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  SANCTIFICATION
  by A. Paget Wilkes
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Wilkes' exploration of the doctrine of sanctification as 'righteousness
imparted,' analyzing the constituent elements of human nature—conscience, will,
mind, memory, imagination, affections, and desires—and how Christ works to
sanctify and restore the soul.

  Chapters: 5

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    0. Sanctification
    1. Part 1
    2. Part 2
    3. Part 3
    4. Part 4

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  CHAPTER 0: SANCTIFICATION
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  CHAPTER 1: PART 1
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Revival Classics dot com presents Sanctification by A. Paget Wilkes read by
Patricia Knowles. Sanctification by A. Paget Wilkes. Chapter 1. Sanctification
its necessity.

We are going to consider together that great word found in the New Testament
sanctification or holiness. The authorized version translates the original
indiscriminately by these two words. We shall first consider its necessity, then
its nature, its way and lastly the time of its realization.

There are two great words in the New Testament relative to the state and
position of the believer. Justification and sanctification. Speaking roughly we
may say that justification means being counted righteous and sanctification made
righteous.

When a man is born again God both counts him righteous, forgiving all the past
and makes him righteous giving him a new nature. Hence Paul when writing to the
Christians of his day though many of them were carnal calls them saints or
sanctified ones. Sanctification however may be divided into two parts.

Regeneration or sanctification begun and entire sanctification which is the work
completed and which is the subject we are considering. In this connection it is
interesting to note that John Wesley entitles his great classic on the subject
entire sanctification. Some may inquire why talk so much about this second work
of grace in the heart? Why teach sanctification? And for convenience sake let me
say I shall speak of entire sanctification merely as sanctification to
distinguish it from regeneration.

Why says the inquirer emphasize it so much? Why not speak about the person and
presence of the Lord Jesus himself? Well we shall see the reason as we go on. I
do however hope that all of us believe that a second work of grace in the heart
is necessary. It is blessed to get out of Egypt but shall I say more blessed to
get into the land of Canaan.

I suppose that all Christian workers have found it much easier to lead people
out of Egypt than to get them into the land of promise. It was so in the days of
Moses. Only Joshua and Caleb, two out of that great host ever reached the land
and it was left to the second generation to inherit it.

Oh how hard it is to get all the Egypt or the murmuring and unbelief out of the
hearts of God's children and lead them into the country that flows with the milk
and honey of the word. Let me repeat therefore it is most necessary to preach
the blessing before we talk about the blesser. But it is not the blessing we
want says someone, it is the blesser.

No that is not true. We need both. We need the blessing and the blesser.

Will you turn with me to Revelation chapter 3. Here the Lord diagnosing the
state of the Laodicean church and calling them wretched, miserable, poor, naked
and blind. Finally adds the most blessed promise. Behold I stand at the door and
knock.

If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come into him and will sup
with him and he with me. But I want you to notice that those two do not come
together. In between the description of the lukewarm Christian and the wonderful
promise of an indwelling Christ we have these words.

I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich and
white raiment that thou might be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do
not appear and anoint thine eyes with thyself that thou mayest see. Here is the
blessing. It is not till we have received this that he adds behold I will come
in even the blessed Lord Jesus himself.

I'm going to speak therefore on the sevenfold necessity of being sanctified
holy. The first we will consider is a vision of Christ. Follow after peace with
all men and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord, states
Hebrews 12 verse 14.

Here then is the first reason for this great work to be done in our hearts. The
necessity of having a second work of grace taking away the depravity of our
nature is that without it we cannot see the Lord. Blessed are the pure in heart
said Christ for they shall see God.

Matthew chapter 5 verse 8. The desire of every true Christian is to see the Lord
Jesus. We long for him to be made manifest to our souls. That moreover was his
last great promise that if we keep his two commandments i.e. believing and
loving mentioned in 1 John 3 verse 23 and 24 he would manifest himself to us.

Why is it that he is not real to us? Is it not because we fail in believing and
loving? But why do we thus fail? Surely it is because the unbelief, the carnal
mind, that depravity of heart which weakens and hinders and destroys our faith
and love. When that is removed he says we shall see him because we are enabled
to believe and love with all our hearts. Yes we shall see him in his word.

We shall see him in nature. See him in his people. See him in the sacraments.

Do we? When the heart is pure it shall be so. We shall see the Lord. Hallelujah.

Have you ever studied in the Word of God the subject of seeing the Lord Jesus?
The wise men when they saw the little babe of Bethlehem knew it was the Lord. It
led them to worship, adoration and sacrificial giving. The shepherds too that
came and saw the babe they knew him.

Their vision led to praise and thanksgiving and testimony. The day that Simeon
came into the temple no doubt there were numbers of other babies in their
mother's arms. Mary was just an ordinary peasant woman.

You and I would doubtless have passed her by but Simeon didn't. He saw the Lord
and knew him to be the Savior of the world. Lord now let us thou thy servant
depart in peace he cries for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.

Yes it made him both praise God and pray for a blessing on Joseph and Mary.
Later on Anna came in. She too saw the young child and she too knew it was the
Christ.

At once she begins to give thanks and spread it all abroad. The Samaritan woman
when she saw him after she had received the cleansing water in her soul knew him
to be her Savior. Her natural idea of a Messiah was of course that he would be a
mighty king and national deliverer.

But as soon as her heart was made pure she sees and believes that the lowly
carpenter he that spake unto her was the one. Yes standing beside her looking
into her face and bringing salvation to her soul. This beatific vision made her
a missionary at once.

Oh that this sanctifying baptism in his blood and by his spirit may be ours. So
shall the interior eye of faith be opened and we shall go hence seeing the Lord
testifying to his grace praising his name telling the good tidings abroad and
being made missionaries of the cross indeed. I pass on now to the second reason.

Oneness with Christ. John 18 verses 17 to 21 includes the words sanctify them
through thy truth that they may be one. Here is another of the deepest reasons
for our being sanctified that we may be one with Christ.

In John 15 the Lord had said to his disciples now you are clean and then in the
17th chapter goes on to pray father sanctify them. The two words in the Greek
are quite different from each other. Had I time I could take you through several
different scriptures and show you instances of their difference.

For example in 2 Timothy 2 21 if a man therefore purge himself from these he
shall be a vessel sanctified. The first word is the same as in John 15 while the
second is that used in John 17. Again in 2 Corinthians 7 verse 1 let us cleanse
ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit perfecting holiness.

We find the same distinction. Yes you are clean if you are a Christian at all.
You are one with the vine and yet the Lord prays oh father make them clean and
make them one.

There is therefore a deeper purity and a closer union than some of us know
anything about. In the epistle to the Romans we find the double union with
Christ very clearly set forth. In the sixth chapter the Apostle speaks of a
union with Christ in death burial and resurrection but in the seventh he talks
about a oneness with Christ in marriage bringing forth fruit unto God.

He goes on to explain that there cannot be a oneness with Christ and bringing
forth fruit until the old husband is gone. What a picture of the carnal mind and
the old man is the husband in Romans 7. There can be no divorce, no suppression,
no putting him down in the cellar or up in the attic. He has to die.

Without this decease there can be no remarriage and no oneness with Jesus Christ
the heavenly bridegroom. There is a striking parable of this in the Old
Testament in the story of Abigail's marriage with King David after the death of
Nabal. Fool was his name and folly his nature.

When Abigail went home and told him how desperate it was we read that his heart
became like a stone within him but it was the Lord who gave him his coup de
grâce. So shall it be with us. If in faith we say the word, take sides with our
heavenly bridegroom and speak the word of condemnation to the Nabal within the
Lord himself will do the rest.

What we are after is not some wonderful blessing that is going to make us
independent of the Lord Jesus but a blessing that will make us one with him. One
in desire. One in will.

One in motive. One in God's desire for the salvation of a lost world. One with
Christ.

That is what we are seeking. If this is not so we shall get very little worth
having. Religion does not consist in ecstasies and emotions and talking in
tongues if I understand it right.

It means that I am brought into oneness with Christ over a lost world and if I
am brought into oneness with Christ it will make a tremendous difference in my
life. I can look out on the world as Christ looks on it and feel as he feels.
Love as he loves and walk as he walked.

You remember Paul prayed that he might know the fellowship of his sufferings. I
do not think that this refers to the past sufferings of Christ. It certainly
does not mean emotional sentiment about the suffering of Christ on the cross.

He is surely thinking about his present sufferings. His bitter disappointment as
he looks at the poor lukewarm languishing church. Oh what disappointment and
sorrow and suffering the Lord Jesus has over his people and we may know
something of that too in fellowship with him.

That is the suffering I want to enter into. May the Lord so sanctify our hearts
that we may all be one with him for union with Jesus demands the cleansing
sanctifying experience of which we are thinking. Let us now consider the third
necessity for sanctification.

Usefulness and power. 2 Timothy 2 verse 21 says if a man purge himself he shall
be a vessel sanctified and meet for the Master's use. It is blessed to see the
Lord blessed to be one with him but there is a further reason that makes
sanctification a necessity.

It is declared to us in that above passage. What a marvelous verse that is.
Those of us who know the awful weakness the failures and the miserable slipshod
makeup that some of us have can never cease to marvel that God can not only make
us a vessel unto honor or that he can sanctify us but that he can make us fit
for his using and ready for every good work.

Here is the reason why we lack power and are so unusable in God's surface. We
are not yet clean within and the Lord knows that if he began to use us we would
get puffed up with pride. As Commissioner Brangle says don't pray Lord use me
but Lord make me usable.

God is using men and women today to the utmost limit of their ability. He will
look after the using if we will only get detached from ourselves so that we can
praise the Lord if someone else is used as much as ourselves. Oh what liberty
that is.

Some of us know the bondage of jealousy and envy that springs up in our hearts
when we hear of some other Christian worker being used more than we are and some
of us know the inward freedom when we do not care who is used if only the Lord
Jesus is glorified. Oh how we have longed for that inward purity that absence of
jealousy pride and every evil work. Till we are free we are not meat for his
use.

That is the reason why we need a clean sanctified heart. God can then take us up
as he pleases. He can put us down as he pleases for he knows that we shan't
grumble or murmur but will still praise him because we are occupied and
satisfied with the Lord Jesus himself rather than with our service for him.

Yes God has got to do a deeper more drastic and more real work in our hearts
than we dreamt of when we were in the land of Egypt. All we thought of then was
that we were in bondage. Thank God we are out of bondage but when we get into
the wilderness we begin to find how much there is of Egypt still in us.

We begin to find out from bitter experience how much there is of this corrupting
evil thing. No we don't want it to be there but there it is all the same
creeping into all we do and say. It is like an unclean fountain pouring out its
evil thoughts all the time.

How can the Lord Jesus take us and use us till he has made us clean and free and
whole. There is yet another reason for our need of sanctification. The power to
love.

1 Peter 1 22 says, seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth see
that you love one another from a pure heart fervently. And 1 Timothy 1 5 says,
the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart. The kingdom of God is
not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.

That is to say it is not the meat and drink of the body but it is the meat and
drink of the soul. We may call righteousness which is faith and love the meat
while peace and joy are the drink of the soul. There are a lot of people who are
spiritual drunkards they want nothing but peace and joy mere emotional
experiences but faith and love are not emotional they are very practical.

Love is not necessarily emotional at all it is solid real and full of good
works. The secret of the ability to love is a pure heart. Love to God and man
pure and unadulterated cannot proceed out of a heart that is still defiled with
bitterness and envy.

Just as you cannot put the new wine of joy into old bottles so you cannot put a
patch of heavenly love onto an old garment. The garments of holiness the raiment
of love unpatched and unspotted have to be put on that the shame of our
nakedness do not appear. Oh that God may give us a yearning desire to have love
out of a pure heart.

Yes you say we like the word love but we don't like the words a clean heart.
Well David did not object to them anyhow did he and I am willing to be in
David's company and cry with him as he did in Psalm 51 verse 10. Create in me a
clean heart oh God.

Oh do be careful about despising God's words for Christ has declared whoever is
ashamed of me and of my words of him will I be ashamed. Love out of a pure heart
can anything be more beautiful. Let us seek in these days with all our mind and
soul and strength and God will purify and fill and cause us to overflow.

The word of God presents us with still another reason why we should be entirely
sanctified and that is preparedness for the Lord's coming. 1 Thessalonians 5
verse 23 the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly unto the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ. I wish you would take your Bible and look into this matter
carefully.

Take such passages as 1 Thessalonians 3, 12 and 13. 1 John 3 verse 3. 2
Thessalonians 1, 10 and 12. Titus 2, 13 and 14 and many more if not all other
passages relative to this theme.

And you will find that holiness of heart and his appearing are never separated.
Oh how ashamed we should be if he came and found in our heart envy and pride and
malice and uncharitableness and belief the fear of man and the shame of the
cross. I do not know how much you want left in your heart.

I do not want any of it left. Ah you say we must have a little sin to keep us
humble. Do you really believe that? Sin never makes us humble for if it did the
devil ought to be the humblest creature on earth.

No no only the grace of God can make and keep men humble. This is a solemn
deeply solemn aspect of the matter. The white robes, the wedding garment,
preparedness for the appearing, the fitness and not merely the right to enter
the marriage supper of the Lamb are surely the holiness of heart wrought out for
us his purchased blessing.

Without it alas we may be left outside to pass through the days of the Great
Tribulation those saved as by fire. Do not be content with the right to enter.
We need the fitness.

Imputed righteousness gives the former but his imparted righteousness Christ as
our sanctification appropriated and put on can alone make us ready for his
appearing and when he does appear we may not be ashamed before him. What is our
sixth reason? The ability to praise in time of reproach. Wherefore Jesus also
that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered without the gate.

Let us go forth unto him bearing his reproach. By him let us offer the sacrifice
of praise. Hebrews 13 verse 12 to 15.

In passing I want you to notice particularly the words sanctify with his own
blood. There is a form of doctrine that is preached nowadays that makes
sanctification the result of the Holy Spirit's indwelling. This of course is
true but not the whole truth.

In Romans 5 verse 9 we read that we are justified by his blood but here we learn
that his blood sanctifies our hearts. The meaning is plain. Before the Holy
Ghost can come and take possession there has to be a cleansing of indwelling sin
from the heart through the effacy of the blood of Jesus.

The body of sin has to be destroyed by the cross. The disease of the soul has to
be healed by his stripes. Here is a reason why so many people who come to
meetings and pray and consecrate themselves asking to receive the Holy Spirit
yet as far as we can see never do receive.

At best they are satisfied with mere notions. There is no reality. They fail to
see that before the Spirit of God can come in and take possession we need to be
sanctified by his blood.

His blood doth make me holy for in it is a sin-destroying power. I merely say
that in passing. The point of the passage before us is that without his
sanctifying grace and power we cannot go into him without the camp bearing his
reproach.

Here is a very real result of sanctification. The ability to bear the reproach
of Christ and not be ashamed. May I ask you when you are traveling in a train
for example are you ashamed of the Lord Jesus? How many Christians I find as I
travel about are ashamed of him.

They have no power to confess him or win others to him. Some of us have suffered
from that false shame haven't we? There are men who naturally have a very strong
character and yet when it comes to witnessing for Christ they are utterly weak.
It takes more than mere strength of natural character to eradicate that fear of
man and the shame of the cross.

Oh isn't it amazing that we should ever be ashamed of Christ. What an awful day
that will be. Perhaps the most awful moment when we look back on all this
so-called fashion of the world and remember that we were ashamed of him in its
presence.

Beloved may we get it all out of us in these days. Do you believe it can be
done? I know it can. Out of the most timid person God can take away the fear and
false shame if they will only let him sanctify them entirely by his blood.

But you won't let him do it unless you are convicted over it, unless you feel
that your witness and worship and testimony have been miserable performances and
cry out oh that God would bring me into a place where I can help someone and be
a blessing. You remember the little boy who was asked why the lions could not
eat Daniel and he replied because he was three parts grit and all the rest solid
backbone. Jesus sanctifies the people by his own blood in order that we might go
without the camp bearing his reproach.

The body of the sin offering was burned outside the camp. It was entirely
consumed after certain parts had been burned upon the altar. The fire speaks to
us of the Holy Ghost and the word body reminds us of St. Paul's striking words
the body of sin, the body of death and the body of the flesh.

Why does the Apostle use these expressions? Surely that he may show us that he
is talking about sin as a totality, an entity, not mere guilt, habit or action,
but an entity to be destroyed and consumed. The blessed result will be that we
shall have power to bear his reproach and by him offer the sacrifice of praise
in the midst of persecution and shame. We can never get real praise and
thanksgiving out of a heart that is not made clean and sanctified by his blood
at least in circumstances of suffering and reproach.

And now lastly we close this chapter with another and perhaps the most important
result and necessity of a sanctified experience, the power to obey. 1 Peter 1.2
says elect according to the full knowledge of God the Father through
sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience. It is not too much to say that the
heart of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is to make us obedient just as the
essence of that sin which ruined the human race was disobedience.

We are not only like lost sheep losing our way, ignorant of the way back, but we
all have gone our own way, a very pleasant way and a very respectable way maybe,
but our own way away from God nevertheless. The purpose of redemption is to
bring us back to the place of perfect obedience. The Lord Jesus himself came to
show us its reasonableness righteousness and blessedness by himself living a
life of unswerving obedience to the will of God the Father.

Are we assured that such a life is impossible without first experiencing an
entire sanctification of our nature, the cleansing of every bit of rebellion,
self-will and self-pleasing. God the Holy Ghost can bring into captivity every
thought to the obedience of Christ so and only so shall we gladly obey and
follow in his steps. Unto obedience.

We know perfectly well the value of these words. We ourselves do not want smart
kind of people as our servants. We want men and women whom we can trust.

They may not be very brilliant but if they are perfectly faithful and obedient
we are satisfied. What a comfort it is to have men and women like that about us
and how disappointing it is to have the exact opposite. Is it otherwise with
God? By no means.

He too does not want brilliant men and women so much as those who will be
sanctified unto obedience. Oh may he make us such. May he take all the
disobedient spirit and self-pleasing out of our hearts at this time.

Some of us know so well our own slipshod nature. We may cover up and conceal it
very cleverly from our friends but we know and God knows all about it. Thanks be
to him that he can alter it and sanctify us spirit soul and body so that we obey
him and be ready for him to use us for his glory.

These then are some of the reasons why we need this great work of sanctification
in our souls. Let us glance at them again as we close. One, we need
sanctification that we may see the Lord.

Till the heart is pure there can be no vision. Sin and fear and unbelief blur
and dim the sight of our soul. Matthew 5 verse 8, Hebrew 12 verse 14.

Two, we need sanctification that we may be one with Christ not only in will but
in desire and affection, mind and motive. Yes in all the powers and affections
of our soul. John 17.

Three, we need it that we may be a vessel meet for his using. Power and
usefulness are dependent on the sanctification of our nature. 2 Timothy 2 verse
21.

Four, we need it that we may love. This cannot be until all evil has been
cleansed from our heart. We cannot love till we are sanctified within.

The pure essence of love can only be poured in and out of a clean vessel. 1
Peter 1 verse 22. Five, we need to be sanctified that we may be ready for him at
his appearing.

That the shame of our nakedness may not appear and that we may be confident
before him when he comes. 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 23. Six, we need it that we
may be enabled to bear his reproach without the camp and offer therein praise
and thanksgiving, rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing and in everything
giving thanks.

Hebrew 13 verses 12 to 15. And finally, we need it that we may be perfectly
obedient to our master. Until all self-will and self-pleasing has been taken out
of our hearts, we cannot follow in his steps.

1 Peter 1 verse 2. May the Holy Ghost make these simple thoughts a blessing to
our souls and stir up our hearts to seek and obtain all that is purchased and
procured for us through the sacrifice of his dear Son. Amen.


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  CHAPTER 2: PART 2
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Chapter 2. Sanctification, its nature. We are now to consider together the
nature of that great experience described in the word of God as sanctification
or the entering into a state of holiness of heart. We may define it as
righteousness imparted, just as justification may be called righteousness
imputed.

Hebrews 12 verse 14. The sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord.
I think it may help us if we glance for a moment at the constituent elements of
our nature.

The activities or I might say faculties of the human soul may be described as
follows. Conscience, will, mind, memory, imagination, affections, and desires.
Though of course it is obvious that in each one of these mental activity is
present.

There can be no exercise of any of these faculties without the activity of the
intellect and yet for practical purpose we can divide our nature in some such
fashion. We are all conscious of these faculties and their activity and we are
all equally conscience if we will but reflect that every one of them has been
distorted, perverted, poisoned, and rendered ineffective by the work of Satan,
the arch enemy of man. But the son of man was manifest to destroy the works of
the devil, sanctify the soul, and bring us back again to a perfect happy
confidence in God.

I think therefore it may be helpful to consider what is done in the various
faculties of our nature, taking them one by one and finally investigate the
cause and root of all the trouble. But above all I want you to be convinced that
God desires to purify all these faculties and powers so that everything within
shall bless his holy name and there be nothing remaining that cannot say amen
and hallelujah to his gracious will. Do we believe it possible or is it too good
to be true? Surely not with such a God as our God and such a Savior as the Lord
Jesus Christ.

First of all then there is the conscience. Hebrews 9 verse 14 says, How much
more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve
the living God? When as a sinner we seek and find pardon of our sins, the clamor
of our awakened conscience is forever stilled. The blood of Jesus silences its
fierce and implacable accusations.

Its sting is extracted. Its voice is silenced. But there is a still greater
change.

The conscience is renewed. Some of the most unregenerate men and women have been
most conscientious. But when the grace of God reaches the heart, the conscience
is both enlightened and renewed.

Our text, however, speaks of a yet deeper experience. Purify from dead works to
wait on the worker, even the living God, not merely freed from past sin and
guilt, nor from mistaken and misguided zeal, but from doing things in our own
strength and urge to wait on the one who works for us. The conscience is
cleansed and purified.

And it is the blood of Jesus that does the work. The allusion in our text is to
the sprinkling of water containing the ashes of the red heifer upon the priests
who had been engaged in burying the bodies of the dead slain by the plague,
instead of waiting in prayer and praise and worship in the holy place. So shall
it be with our conscience when we apprehend the blessed cleansing of the blood
of Jesus in all its fullness.

We shall wait on God who waits to work for us. Now, the will. Galatians 2 verse
20 says, I am crucified with Christ.

The will is the citadel of my soul. We may call it the ego, the very self of
man. Till this is captured, till this is surrendered, there is nothing.

When we are born again of his spirit, it is then that through God's free grace,
the will is transformed. The ego is crucified with Christ. The self-will, the
rebellion, the disobedience are removed.

There is, in other words, a real surrender to the claims of God. In a way that,
I suppose, we shall never understand. This is accomplished through the sacrifice
of Calvary.

I am crucified with Christ, says the apostle. Through his death and sufferings
is dealt the death blow to my self-will and rebellion. Here is sanctification
begun, a glorious beginning when the citadel falls.

This is, I know, wrought in us by the Holy Ghost, but it is only possible
because he who knew no sin was made sin for us. And yet, though the citadel may
have fallen, sanctification is certainly not complete. Many suppose that the
surrender of the will is all.

Alas, we soon discover our mistake. When the devil did his work, he made a
thorough job of it. Every part of our nature was twisted, perverted, poisoned,
and vitiated by his serpent virus.

But praise be to God, he can effect a perfect cure and thoroughly undo all that
the devil has wrought within. Strictly speaking, our conscience and will are the
two great spheres of our nature in which God's regenerating grace operates. Our
conscience is purified, Hebrews 9.14, and our will is crucified, Galatians 2,
verse 20.

But entire sanctification covers wider and deeper grounds than these. Number
three, the desires. Galatians 5, verse 24.

They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. I
have spoken of ground deeper than the conscience and the will. I refer, of
course, to the desires of the heart.

In the Greek and Hebrew originals of the scripture, there are some 16 words used
to express the noun, and about 26 the verb desire. Sanctification reaches these
deep places of the soul. Most of us are all too conscious of the truth of
Wesley's line, my will seemed fixed, yet wide my passions rove.

Conscious that lower and deeper down than our wills, there are hankering desires
so strong that they bring again into captivity the will that has been set free.
Let us look well to our hearts. What are our real desires? Desire nothing but
God, said John Wesley.

Do we? Are there no hankering desires for worldly things, ease, comfort and
pleasure? As the Lord draws nigh to ask, what shall I do for thee? We say, Lord,
give us the plenitude of thy spirit. But do we find in our hearts desires for
other things stronger, far than the petitions of our lips? 1 Peter 1.13 says,
set your hope or desire perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at
the revelation of Jesus Christ. Are our desires thus fixed? The word of God
speaks a good deal of this permanent fixing.

Here it tells of our desires being fixed. The psalmist cries, my heart, or my
affection, is fixed. The prophet Isaiah talks of our mind or imagination being
stayed or fixed on God.

And yet before this fixing and establishing of our desires wholly Godward can be
secured, the Holy Spirit uses a stronger word, crucifixion. They that are
Christ's have crucified the desires. Here is the nature of true sanctification.

There has to be a cleansing of dross from the desires of our soul. Our
conscience can be cleansed from dead works, Hebrews 9 verse 14. Our will can be
crucified with Christ, Galatians 2 verse 20.

And our worldly and carnal desires too can be nailed to the cross, Galatians 5
verse 24. And number four, the affections. In Deuteronomy 30 verse 6 it says,
the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart to love the Lord thy God with all
thine heart and with all thy soul.

There is one command, the greatest in the word, more beautiful than all others.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and soul and
strength. There is a promise too more comforting and precious, the one I have
just quoted.

The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart to love. Why is that command so
beautiful? Is it not, thou shalt serve or worship or obey in the first place,
but thou shalt love. We can't conceive of anyone giving such a command unless he
first loved the one to whom he gave it.

No man asks the love of a woman unless he first loves her. So too of God. He
could not bid us love him with all our heart if he had not first loved us.

Why is consecration and devotion to God so difficult with some of us? Surely it
is because we are not in love with him. Let us imagine the case of a young man
who has to go to his place of work some 10 or 12 miles distance every evening.
He has to go in all sorts of weather, wet or fine, hot or cold, storm or
sunshine.

Oh, how he grumbles and murmurs as he has to toil along in a blizzard or a gale
of wind. Let him, however, fall in love. The woman he loves residing at the end
of his journey.

How easy is his road now. How delightful his daily travel bringing him to the
one he loves. There is no complaining now.

Hardship is now no hardship at all. So may it be when our hearts are circumcised
to love the Lord with all our strength. I ask you to notice the word
circumcised.

Saint Paul, in applying it to our sanctification in Colossians 2, verse 11, uses
another word for circumcised, never found anywhere outside the New Testament. A
very strong word, a quote, putting away from and out of, unquote. Us, the whole
body of the flesh, the whole body as opposed to the part taken away in physical
circumcision.

Yes, it is a blessed taking away from and out of us all that deflects our love
and mars our wholehearted devotion to the Lord that we love and feign would
follow. The imagination every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually. Genesis 6, verse 5. The subject of the imagination in the
scriptures is very wide and deeply interesting.

The prophet Jeremiah speaks much of, quote, walking after the imagination of our
hearts. And in every case, he uses it in contradistinction to the law or the
voice and the word of God. The imagination is followed and trusted and obeyed
rather than God's word, etc.

There are three distinct words in the Old Testament, all translated imagination.
The first means formation. The second means device.

And the third means stubbornness. It is the last that Jeremiah uniformly
employs. We may say that imagination, the faculty that is always forming and
giving shape to things that do not exist, is the stronghold of unbelief.

We imagine that God is hard and austere, that his way is difficult, his will
unbearable. We imagine trouble that never comes, difficulties that never appear.
This is all the work of unbelief.

Unbelief says it can't be done. It's too good to be true. Unbelief whispers that
sin is too strong, the giant's too great, the circumstance is too difficult, and
the price too costly.

Unbelief paints upon the imagination fearful specters of failure and
disappointment and all sorts of trouble. Oh, that diseased imagination permeated
and saturated with the poison of unbelief. Can it be healed and made pure? Can
it be filled with praising, believing, loving, rejoicing thoughts of God? Hear
what the psalmist said as he saw the people lovingly giving their all to God.

Oh, Lord God, keep this forever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart
of thy people and prepare their heart unto thee. 1 Chronicles 29 verse 18. Yes,
the heart will never be established or fixed till the imagination is cleansed
and that too stayed upon God as the prophet Isaiah declares.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind, and it's the imagination in the
original, is stayed upon thee. Oh, beware of forming a God of your own, one made
after your own likeness, the outcome of your diseased imagination, saturated as
it is with the poison of unbelief. Yes, God can sanctify even our imaginations
and cast out all unbelief so that we shall walk not according to the imagination
of our own evil hearts, but according to his law, his voice, and his word.

Number six, the mind. Renewed in the spirit of your mind, it says in Ephesians 4
verse 23. In speaking of the mind, I shall only refer to it in the sense of the
thoughts of the heart.

Some people seem to think that God cannot deal with our thoughts, and yet in
Proverbs 23 7, as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. So a thought, you reap
an act. So an act, and you reap a habit.

So a habit, you reap a character. So a character, and you reap a destiny. Truly,
the thinkings of our heart are the most important of all.

I am well aware that desire, imagination, and will are all elemental in the
construction of our thoughts. But for the sake of plain people, I think we may
consider the cleansing of the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of his
Holy Spirit as a separate theme. There are, quote, thoughts of evil, unquote,
passing through our minds.

They come in a moment and are gone as quickly, leaving no stain, no sense of
guilt, no sting, or aftermath of pain. Of these I am not speaking, but there
are, quote, evil thoughts, unquote, arising from the heart that mar and scar,
blister and burn, that whirl us along in captivity and hold us there. These are
they which fix and make our character.

Is there no balm in Gilead for these wounds? Is there no remedy, no deliverance,
no inward cleansing of the source from whence they spring? Must censorious,
bitter, complaining thoughts, not to mention others more polluted, always arise?
Verily, nay, the blood of Jesus Christ does avail, not only to pardon, but to
cleanse and remove the evil, making us pure at the source and fountainhead of
our being, or as the scripture declares, renewed in the spirit of our mind.
Surely this touches the cause and source of all the trouble, not the mind, but
its innermost spirit. He can bring into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ.

2 Corinthians 10 verse 5. Now number seven, the memory. I stir up your pure
minds by way of remembrance. 2 Peter 3 verse 1. Perhaps there is no part of our
nature that reveals the evil effects of the fall of man more than our diseased
memory.

Why is it that we find it so easy to remember the evil and forget the good? For
this there must be some reason. God's plaint through the prophet Jeremiah was
ever, they have forgotten me, days without number. Moses in the closing charge
to the Israelites reiterated again and again, remember, remember, and lest thou
forget, lest thou forget was his constant warning.

Remember the bond service in Egypt. Remember the sin in the wilderness. Remember
the judgment of Pharaoh, he says.

Remember that God is the giver. Remember the hindering amulek. Remember the
Sabbath.

Saint Pete repeated it also more than once, that he wrote to put them in
remembrance, though they knew it already and were established in the truth. Oh,
how treacherous and fickle and foolish is the memory even of the saint. There
are only three things that can change and heal and keep it fresh.

One, the word of God. These things have I told you that you may remember. John
16 verse 4. And two, the spirit, the Holy Ghost shall bring all things to your
remembrance.

John 14 verse 26. And three, the blood of Jesus. This do in remembrance of me.

Luke 22 verse 19. How can we remember unless we read and meditate on his word?
How can we remember unless his blessed spirit be the divine remembrancer? Come
thou everlasting spirit, bring to every thankful mind all the Saviour's dying
merit, all his suffering for mankind. Come thou witness of his dying, come
remembrancer divine.

Let us feel thy power applying Christ to every soul and mind. How shall he keep
us in remembrance unless the blood has first been applied to cleanse and heal
the water of the word, the spirit and the blood? These three bear witness and
keep the memory pure, fresh and true. Such, dear friends, is a sevenfold work of
sanctification.

Our conscience purified from dead works and renewed, our will transferred,
transfigured, I crucified with Christ, our affection circumcised, our desires
nailed to the cross, our mind renewed in the spirit, our imagination stayed or
fixed on God, and our memory healed. And now, before we close, I want to look a
little deeper to find out the cause of all the trouble. Whence comes the
perversion, distortion, defilement and disease of these faculties of the soul?
The story of the fall directs our minds to Satan, the great archenemy of man.

Here is the primary cause. But is there no secondary one with which we can deal?
There is. As we read our Bible daily, we cannot have failed to notice something
which appears everywhere in its pages again and again as the reason of our
disasters.

That something has many names or designations. Here are some of them, though
there are many more. The old man, the old leaven, the carnal mind, indwelling
sin, the evil heart of unbelief, the body of sin.

Had I time, I could take each of these and show you that these designations, so
carefully chosen of the Holy Ghost, give us different aspects of our evil
nature, inherited from our first parents. The cause, however, is but one,
depravity of nature imparted by Satan to the human race. Here I have only time
to speak of three, the carnal mind, the sin that dwelleth within, and the evil
heart of unbelief.

So, the carnal mind. The special mark of this designation is idolatry, or
perhaps we may say hostility and enmity towards God. That aspect of depravity
that says no to God's command.

Something within us that says, I won't obey when he orders. As Christians, of
course, we would never utter the words with our lips, but often in our hearts
these sentiments are obtained. Yes, I will go nine-tenths of the way, but here
on one point I will not obey God.

Alas, we have all felt its power, this rebellious spirit, this carnal mind,
which is enmity to God. Thank God he can deal with his own enemies. He has gifts
for the rebellious also.

He can take away even this spirit of idolatry, for such it is. It is not our
business to destroy this tenacious foe. We have but to acknowledge and humbly
confess the awful fact of its presence before him, and he will cast it out.

The sin that dwelleth in me. The special mark of this designation is impotence.
In Romans 7 verse 19, the evil which I would not, that I do.

Here it is not I won't, but I can't. I can't keep sweet. I can't keep control of
my temper, my passions, my disordered desires.

I can't love and suffer and obey. I can't cast out this critical, censorious
spirit or stop the murmuring, complaining thoughts of my heart. I've tried a
thousand times but can't.

Yes, the sin that dwelleth within, this natural depravity, is the paralyzing
thing that makes us cry every time. The evil that I would not, that I do, and
the good I would, that I do not. Now the evil heart of unbelief.

But there is something worse, far worse, even than I can't or the I won't. Its
reigning power can be defined. I don't believe it can be any different.

Here is the root of the whole trouble, as I have already pointed out. All other
sin can be detected by a holy ghost reveals it to us. We can never feel unbelief
to be sin, the sin of the world, the one most orphaned, damning sin.

It causes terrible pain. To have no confidence in a husband or wife or parent is
the most cruel thing on earth. It ties the hands of those who want to help us.

If we don't believe that our would-be benefactor has true disinterested motives,
he may try to help us as much as he will, but he can't. Not that he won't, but
he can't, because we won't let him. Let us apply all this to our relationship
with God.

Can we not begin to see that worse than any evil under the sun is an evil heart
of unbelief towards a God of love? I want you, however, to notice that this
unbelief is not necessarily in our wills, if we are true Christians. It lies
lower than the sphere of the will. It is the poison that vitiates our whole
nature, our mind, memory, imagination, and can only be dislodged and cleansed by
the mighty power of God.

Here then is the cause of all the disorder and distortion in our God-given
faculties, this trinity of evil, disobedience, impotence, and unbelief, three
names or designations of that inward bias implanted by the devil, that carnal
and depraved nature inherited from our first parents. Can God's sanctifying
grace radically deal with so grave a problem and so mighty a force? Can he make
us free and clean and whole? Can he sanctify every part of our nature? In reply
to this question, may I turn you to that wonderful Old Testament story as told
in 1 Kings 20. It is hardly necessary to point out that King Ben-Hadadad,
mentioned there, was a hereditary foe of God's people, surely a striking type of
our inherited evil, a veritable barabbas, merciless and unrelenting, demanding
and seizing all in his power, as the opening verses of that chapter describe.

You can no more satisfy or appease the carnal mind than quench Vesuvius. You
will notice as you read the story the conflict and the victories, two of them,
but God's intention was more than victory. He has made us more than conquerors
through Christ.

After his second defeat, Ben-Hadadad escaped and fled to Ephek, where we read in
the marginal versions he hid himself in a chamber within a chamber. What a
picture of the elusive power of indwelling sin! Feeling a little secure, he
comes forth to plead for his life. Oh, how humble he appears and consecrated!
All the cities I took, says he, shall be given back to you, and you can even
make streets in my capital, Damascus.

Yes, the old man can be both humble and consecrated, if only his life is spared.
We know the rest of the story. Ahab spares him, makes a covenant with him and
sends him home.

He does not, however, hesitate to murder one of his loyal subjects, Naboth, as
is told in the next chapter, though sparing his deadliest foe. In the following
chapter we read of Ben-Hadadad once more in the saddle and at war, giving
instructions to his guards, quote, to fight with none save the king of Israel,
the very man who had spared his life. That is true of the carnal mind every
time.

It can never change its enmity. It can no more be altered or changed than
Ben-Hadad. Later on we read of Elisha healing the Syrian commander of leprosy
and sending home, clothed and fed, the army which came to take him prisoner.

But Ben-Hadadad still remained the same old, ungrateful, unrelating enemy to God
and his people. So it is with the carnal mind. Oh, in what solemn fashion does
the Spirit of God give us warning? A prophet of the Lord goes to the king
covered with his own blood, for no mere word of warning, however solemn, would
suffice.

But his wounds shall speak, his blood and suffering shall bring conviction. The
man appointed of God to utter destruction, says the prophet, has escaped.
Therefore thy life shall go for his life.

And so indeed it came to pass. Shall we not see in this type the Christ of
Calvary? God has appointed to utter destruction the man of sin within our
hearts. Shall fear or unbelief spare him? Nay, let us cry with one accord,
Crucify him, crucify him, away with him.

Let none of Ahab's spirit lurk within our breasts. Only believe. Let us consent
to the curse and we shall see Jesus lifted up as a servant and made a curse for
us.

Then let us bow in faith and worship, praising him till we find in blessed
experience that all the evil is cast out, our hearts purified, and that
everything within us does bless his holy name. Amen.


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  CHAPTER 3: PART 3
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Chapter 3. Sanctification, its way. And the very God of peace sanctify you
wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 23.

We are now to consider together the way that God takes in purifying the heart.
Hitherto we have thought of the necessity and nature of this great experience.
May his spirit direct our hearts into another of its blessed secrets.

I remember hearing our brother, Mr. George Grubb, once say that God answers
man's query, how, with a gift. And so most assuredly he does. How can a man be
born again, said Nicodemus? How can you get the living water seeing the well is
deep? How can we eat thy flesh and drink thy blood? How wilt thou manifest
thyself to us and not unto the world? How are the dead raised up? To each and
all of these queries, the Lord replies, it is the gift of God.

He so loved that he gave. I will give you living water. I will give my flesh and
blood for the life of the world.

I will give you another comforter. Thou fool, God giveth it a body. And so it is
with the experience that we are considering.

It is a gift and a gift is a gift. Oh, let us get hold of this blessed fact.
Repentance, faith and consecration are all man's part.

But sanctification is a gift, something that God does in and for us. Every time
he says it, God giveth. May he pour some of this blessed balm into some tired,
defeated hearts.

How then are we made pure within? How can the imagination, the mind, the memory,
the desires and affections, conscience and will be made perfectly whole so that
all that is within me shall bless his holy name? This is what we are to
consider. First of all, God himself does it by love. The God of peace himself
sanctify you wholly.

Faithful is he that calleth thee. 1 Thessalonians 5, 23 and 24. This is our
first declaration.

It is God that does the work, the God of peace. Not, be it incidentally noted,
the God of power or love, but of rest. The God who giveth rest himself
sanctifies us.

It is nothing that we do or struggle into. It is not a mental position which we
adopt and then hold on to. It is a real thing, a practical emancipation from
inward evil which God gives to the soul.

Will you notice with me the three words in verse 24? Faithful, calleth and do.
Faithful is he who calleth thee who will do it. God's faithfulness, God's love
and God's power are all taxed to the utmost in accomplishing this great work.

Here, for the moment, I want to emphasize the second of these words, calleth,
the indication of his love. God commandeth men everywhere to repent, but here he
calls. When John Wesley was asked when one should preach the doctrine of entire
sanctification, he replied, never until men are hungry and seeking for it.

And when we do, let it always be by drawing rather than by driving. Yes, he
calls us, woos us, allures us, invites us to enter the land of rest from inbred
sin. I am always suspicious of the modern method of trying to screw people up
into a state of consecration.

The Lord Jesus in dealing with men and women always approached them in such a
way that of their own accord they confess their sin and need. His treatment of
the woman of Samaria is a beautiful instance of this gracious method. He gave
her an opportunity to run away from him.

It was so, too, as he dealt with the woman taken in adultery, John VIII, how
easy it would have been for her to slink away when all eyes were directed to the
runaway Pharisees. But faith in his tenderness and grace held her fast till his
pardoning, sanctifying grace had done its work. He draws you now, he calls you,
poor, defeated, discouraged soul.

He tells you that it is he himself who does the work, the very God of peace
himself. One of the most wonderful themes in the word of God is his message
through the prophet Jeremiah. Turn, will you, to the opening chapter of that
prophecy.

It is conceivable, he says, that a man who has put away his wife for
unfaithfulness and sin will ever take her back again. Why, the very land would
be polluted. But yet he cries, I will receive you, if only you will return.

That's verse 13 of chapter 3. Only acknowledge your iniquity. That is the sole
condition. His plaint was, they have forgotten me days without number.

The reason why we can't get deliverance and victory is that we will not return
with all our hearts, just as we are, sin and all to him. Like the prodigal of
old, with our rags upon us, he bids us come and then he himself will sanctify us
wholly. This is the first secret of inheriting the blessing.

How hard it is to believe this wonderful thing. So poisoned have been our hearts
that we find it almost impossible appropriately to believe that God blesses so.
May all the poison of distrust, suspicion and unbelief be extracted from us and
heavenly holy faith infused within our wounded, weakened souls.

Sanctification its way, number two, by chastening. He chasteneth us for our
profit that we might be partakers of his holiness. Hebrews 12 verse 10.

In this 12th chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, we get another secret. If
you will read it carefully, you will notice the word endurance translated in
verse 1 as patience, but in verses 2, 3 and 7 as endurance. The Lord Jesus, we
are there told, endured two things, the cross and the contradiction of sinners.

The writer uses this as a warning and a model for us. His argument is this. If
Christ, the sinless one, could endure the gainsaying and rebuke of sinners, how
much more should we, the sinful, endure patiently the chastening and rebuke of a
loving heavenly Father? There can be no sanctifying grace without this.

Are we prepared for his convicting, chastening word? Can we take rebuke and
reproof through his people, other Christians, without getting offended? Without
conviction for holiness, we can get nowhere. Not only is it necessary for our
own holiness, but it is a priceless asset in our service. Unless we ourselves
have been convicted of sin, we can never produce conviction in others.

We may preach like angels, but it will only be tinkling cymbals and sounding
brass. God must chasten us if we would be partakers of his holiness. The word
here is aionis.

That, in verse 14, is a little different. The former speaks of a state, the
latter of a process bringing us into that state. How extraordinarily exact is
the word of God! I cannot imagine how a deep student of Scripture can be other
than a believer in verbal inspiration.

The very words, nouns, verbs and adjectives are all used with such precision and
exactitude of meaning. When the Spirit of Truth first visits our hearts, he
reproves and rebukes and makes us miserable. No one ever got miserable over his
sins apart from the Holy Ghost.

Praise God for all the misery and conviction. Remember it is his chastening
hand, and there can be no living faith apart from conviction. It can only
operate in a heart broken up and convicted of the Holy Ghost.

Has he been putting the plough through the fallow ground, breaking up the
hardness and self-righteousness in your heart? Have you had a vision of your
lovelessness and joylessness? It is the chastening hand of the loving God who
has called you. Don't be afraid of it. Don't run away from it.

Welcome it. Bow down before his presence. He wants you to be a partaker of his
holiness.

Remember Jesus Christ enduring the rebuke and gainsaying of sinners. He invites
you, draws you, allures you, and in tenderness chastens you, that you may be
sanctified in truth. You will never get the blessing by understanding the
doctrine, or by study, or by knowing all about its philosophy.

You can't get in head first. Bow, oh bow before his chastening, convicting hand.
So shall you enter in.

Hallelujah. Number 3. By the Promises 2 Corinthians 7 verse 1. Having therefore
these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness, perfecting
holiness in the fear of God. And 2 Peter 1.4. That by his exceeding great and
precious promises you might be partakers of the divine nature.

The divine nature, what is it? God is a spirit. God is light. God is love.

God is a consuming fire. That is the fourfold definition of God's nature, as
given us in the New Testament. God is a spirit.

His nature is spiritual. When we partake of it, we too shall become spiritual.
Understanding spiritual, eternal, and heavenly things, it will take the
carnality out of us.

God is light. That is to say, bringing sweet and clear assurance to our souls.
It will take the darkness out of us.

God is love. We shall be partakers of this also. It will take the malice from
us.

God is a consuming fire. It will destroy all the dross of selfishness and sin.
And all this is for us through the promises.

These are what convey to us the blessing. I have never heard of any soul
entering the blessed state of sanctification other than through the promises of
God. We need to get alone and read and re-read, affirm and reaffirm, plead and
plead again the great and precious promises before the Lord.

Last night, wrote a young man to William Carvozo, as I was pleading the promises
of God for entire sanctification, I suddenly found faith springing up in my
heart and I was enabled to believe the work was done. This is the only way to
wrest the devil's weapons from us. The written word alone avails.

The Lord Jesus in the wilderness used it thus. The words he quoted from the book
of Deuteronomy were all selected from the story of his people in the wilderness.
He himself in the desert puts himself back with his people in that same position
and meets the enemy with words of victory where they had met defeat.

Study the context of the words he quoted and compare them with the temptations
of the Lord Jesus if you wish to get out of the wilderness into the promised
land of Canaan's rest. God sanctifies through his promises. Through them he
draws, encourages and sets his seal.

God lovingly calls, he lovingly chastens and convicts and now he lovingly offers
to us his exceeding great and precious promises. To the call and to the
conviction he adds the encouragement of a promised blessing. Lay hold, lay hold
with all your might that the thing is promised.

Number four, by the blood of Jesus. Jesus that he might sanctify the people with
his own blood. Hebrews 13 verse 12.

We now come to the heart of the whole matter, the meritorious cause of the great
transaction. In Romans 5 verse 9 we read that we are justified by his blood. But
here we are told of deeper things, sanctified by blood.

So many miss the blessing because they never see the cross of Christ as the
means of their sanctification. That he died for their sins they know well enough
but that he died to put away sin is hidden from their eyes. They have seen him
as the Lamb of God who died in their stead on behalf of their transgressions but
they have never beheld him lifted up as a serpent, made a curse on their behalf
to take away their sin and cleanse all the old serpent virus from their nature.

St. Paul speaks of the cross, St. John tells of the blood, St. Peter seeks to
show us of the stripes and sufferings of the Saviour to make us free and clean
and whole. The mystery we may never understand that faith believes and
appropriates all that his death has secured for our sanctification. Never have I
felt my need of the blood of Jesus, said that great man John Smith of the early
Methodists, more than I do today and never have I made such use of it.

What use are we really making of it at this very hour? Ten years ago perhaps we
were saved through the merits of the blood of Jesus but today at this moment
what is it to us in its practical working? In St. John chapter 6 we read of four
blessings secured for those that eat his flesh and drink his blood, the gift of
eternal life, here is feeding on him as the Passover lamb, an indwelling Christ,
here is a partaking of his sacrifice as the peace offering, the power to serve,
here is feeding upon the sin offering on others behalf and a future and
everlasting salvation, eating of Christ as the trespass offering. Oh let us
learn this lesson well, the Holy Ghost can never enter to abide with us except
on one ground, the sacrifice of the slain lamb. No tears or prayers, no
repentance or vows of consecration, no works of obedience will ever avail to
ensure his indwelling.

He can only enter our hearts as an abiding guest in response to faith in the
blood of Jesus. We are sanctified and made clean by his blood not by our tears.
We are crucified with him through his cross and not by our own suffering or
mortification.

Our poor diseased nature is made whole by his stripes not by any efforts or vows
of consecration on our own. Let us look again upon his cross where he the
spotless one was made sin. If all the imaginations of all men were rolled into
one could they ever fathom the mystery or understand what it meant for the
spotless son of God who had never experienced a sinful thought, an angry temper,
a jealous feeling, a lustful desire, who no more knew from experience what
sinfulness was than you or I know what the angelic state may be.

Could they ever imagine I say what it meant for him to have the unfathomable
ocean of the world's sin turgid with all the unthinkable unprintable filthiness
of hell surge over his spotless soul. No we cannot understand but we can believe
that he is able to sanctify us with his blood. When this lays hold of us and we
do believe and venture on the atoning sanctifying blood of Jesus what confidence
is ours.

Faith rests no more upon feeling, no more upon silogism, no more upon mere
truths or even the promises of God alone. It finds a rock beneath its feet the
great historic fact of his sacrificial atoning death and can cry the cleansing
stream I see I see I plunge and oh it cleanseth me oh praise the Lord it
cleanseth me it cleanseth me yes cleanseth me. When you know and feel that you
are made holy by his blood there will be an end of pride.

The theory that the Holy Spirit enters our hearts and keeps us from yielding to
sin is wholly inadequate. Before this takes place there has to be a definite
instantaneous and radical adjustment of our soul a purifying of the secret
springs of our being from that tendency of evil inherited from Adam. Then can he
enter to keep us from falling moment by moment and from yielding to temptations
of the tempter now increased and intensified a hundredfold though thank God they
are from without instead of from within.

This sin-destroying sanctifying experience is affected by his death the blood
shedding of the Son of God upon the cross and apprehended by the living faith of
a humbled soul and its blessed effects maintained moment by moment as we walk in
the light. Number five sanctification by the Spirit. 1 Peter 1 2 by the Spirit
all that we have said is true God the Father by his calling chastening promising
love does the work.

The Lord Jesus by his death and blood shedding procured provided and forever
secured the boon divine and yet without the agency of the Holy Ghost may we say
it in all reverence all this would have been in vain. It is expedient said the
Saviour that I go away for if I go not away the comforter will not come unto you
but if I depart I will send him unto you. John 16 verse 7 blessed indeed for us
that it should be so if the Saviour had remained on earth how few of us would
have seen him every train and ship and caravan would have been crowded with
pilgrims the world over to see Jesus how few comparatively of the poor would
ever have got a glimpse of his face but the comforter has come that all may see
the Lord it is he that takes the things of Christ and shows them to us.

Do you say you cannot understand you cannot grasp the meaning how can the blood
of Jesus shed two thousand years ago cleanse my heart how can my selfish nature
be crucified with a Christ nailed to the cross so long ago how can my diseased
memory mind and will be made whole by the lacerated body of Christ at Calvary to
your how dear soul the Lord replies I will send the comforter and he shall teach
you all these things it is he who applies the blood listen to these exquisite
lines of Charles Wesley written over 150 years ago come thou everlasting spirit
bring to every thankful mind all the Saviour's dying merit all his sufferings
for mankind true recorder of his passion now the living faith in part now reveal
his great salvation unto every faithful heart come thou witness of his dying
come remembrance our divine let us feel thy power applying Christ to every soul
and mine what exquisite designation of his office true recorder of his passion
witness of his dying remembrance our divine yes we are all dependent on him what
need there is to wait upon him alone in our rooms beware of the greatest of all
dangers seeking to enter through the operation of our own understandings or the
struggles of our own wills or by both some try one way some the other and some
both they are all equally futile only the Holy Ghost can show us the way and
only the Holy Ghost can bring us in if the Lord Jesus had to offer himself
through the eternal spirit how much more are we dependent upon his constraining
compelling enlightening enabling power as we wait then upon God pleading the
promises knowing our own impotence idolatry and infidelity let us remember he is
there to help us to believe and bring every thought unto captivity to the
obedience of Christ number six sanctification by the word mark 1 42 as soon as
he had spoken immediately the leprosy departed from him and john 15 verse 3 now
you are clean through the word which i have spoken our meditation is drawing to
a close but there is one very important consideration in the subject before us
we have seen that God gives us and uses his promises to affect the
sanctification of our hearts we can only really believe God the finished work of
Christ and the operating presence of the Holy Ghost through the written word
there is always the intermediary of blessing by hiding a definite promise of God
in our hearts appropriating it using it against the attack of the devil and
through it believing God by this means and this alone we are able to reach our
desired end the sanctification of our soul and yet after we have done this
stepped out on the promise burned our bridges behind us God has still a further
work to do through his word by it he seals his own work the scriptures provide
us with repeated instances of his working thus take the cleansing of Isaiah the
prophet there we see that after the live coal had touched his lips and he had
felt the burning cleansing flame the seraphim spake again lo this has touched
thy lips and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged in the story of the
afflicted woman described in mark 5 we read that she felt in her body that she
was healed of all that plague the lord stayed her steps and lest in the coming
days by trusting to mere experience she should cast away her confidence he gives
her a word of sealing to her soul thy faith he says has made the whole not by
prayer decision consecration earnestness or zeal but by simply believing thou
art restored oh how she must have hid that word in her heart just one other
example the story from which i have selected my text told us in mark 1 40 and 41
the poor leper had sought the lord in despair and yet in faith self-desperate he
had believed the savior was moved with compassion stretched forth his hand and
touched him neither the touch nor the compassion affected the cure but as soon
as he had spoken the work was done so believe the promises just as you are you
need no special one for yourself they are all yea and amen in christ jesus come
boldly wait humbly believe simply take freely but when you have and are resting
in the faithfulness of him who has called chastened promised and led you by the
holy ghost to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanliness then wait still upon
him in quietness and expectancy till he seals what he has done with a word from
his lips but wait believing that he has done it just five little sentences that
have been made a blessing to many and may help you also what i give god takes
what he takes he cleanses what he cleanses he fills what he fills he seals and
what he seals he uses may your faith not your understanding lead you up these
easy steps slowly surely may you go test each one as you take it they will bear
all your weight lean hard walk firmly say excelsior as you rise keep praising
only believe so shall the work be done the god of peace himself he calls you
today he gives you promises today his loving hand has been chastening you giving
you a bad time today well look up and thank him when you do you will find the
sun coming out and with the tears and the sunshine you will get the rainbow the
way god blesses you is in just the simple steps i have tried to indicate may
every one of us enter into the land of promise the land that flows with milk and
honey the land that is the gift of god the land of plenty and a land that you
enter into without effort of your own it is all yours that wonderful land of
promise in christ jesus


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  CHAPTER 4: PART 4
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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.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/sanctification-a-paget-wilkes/
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