Absolute Surrender
By Andrew Murray
CONTENTS
2.
"The
Fruit Of The Spirit Is Love "
3.
Separated
Unto The Holy Spirit
5.
"Impossible
With Man, Possible With God "
6.
"O
Wretched Man That I Am! "
7.
"Having
Begun In The Spirit "
Absolute Surrender
"And Ben-hadad the king of
Ahab gave what was asked of him by Benhadad - absolute surrender. I want
to use these words: "My lord, 0 king, according to thy saying, I am thine,
and all that I have," as the words of absolute surrender with which every
child of God ought to yield himself to his Father. We have heard it before, but
we need to hear it very definitely-the condition of God's blessing is absolute
surrender of all into His hands. Praise God! If our hearts are willing for that,
there is no end to what God will do for us, and to the blessing God will bestow.
Absolute surrender-let me tell you where I got those words. I used them
myself often, and you have heard them numerous times. But once, in
"Absolute surrender to God is the one thing."
The words struck me as never before. And that man began to tell how, in
the Christian workers with whom he had to deal, he finds that if they are sound
on that point, they are willing to be taught and helped, and they always
improve. Whereas, others who are not sound there very often go back and leave
the work. The condition for obtaining God's full blessing is absolute surrender
to Him.
And now, I desire by God's grace to give to you this message-that your
God in heaven answers the prayers which you have offered for blessing on
yourselves and for blessing on those around you by this one demand: Are you
willing to surrender yourselves absolutely into His hands? What is our answer to
be? God knows there are hundreds of hearts who have said it, and there are
hundreds more who long to say it but hardly dare to do so. And there are hearts
who have said it, but who have yet miserably failed, and who feel themselves
condemned because they did not find the secret of the power to live that life.
May God have a word for all!
Let me say, first of all, that God claims it from us.
GOD EXPECTS YOUR SURRENDER
Yes, it has its foundation in the very nature of God. God cannot do
otherwise. Who is God? He is the Fountain of life, the only Source of existence
and power and goodness. Throughout the universe there is nothing good but what
God works. God has created the sun, the moon, the stars, the flowers, the trees,
and the grass. Are they not all absolutely surrendered to God? Do they not allow
God to work in them just what He pleases? When God clothes the lily with its
beauty, is it not yielded up, surrendered, given over to God as He works in it
its beauty? And God's redeemed children, oh, can you think that God can do His
work if there is only half or a part of them surrendered? God cannot do it. God
is life, love, blessing, power, and infinite beauty, and God delights in
communicating Himself to every child who is prepared to receive Him. But ah!
this one lack of absolute surrender is just the thing that hinders God. And now
He comes, and as God, He claims it.
You know in daily life what absolute surrender is. You know that
everything has to be given up to its special, definite object and service. I
have a pen in my pocket, and that pen is absolutely surrendered to the one work
of writing. That pen must be absolutely surrendered to my hand if I am to write
properly with it. If another holds it partly, I cannot write properly. This coat
is absolutely given up to me to cover my body. This building is entirely given
up to religious services. And now, do you expect that in your immortal being, in
the divine nature that you have received by regeneration, God can work His work,
every day and every hour, unless you are entirely given up to Him? God cannot.
The
God not only claims it, but God will work it Himself.
GOD ACCOMPLISHES YOUR SURRENDER
I am sure there is many a heart that says: "Ah, but that absolute
surrender implies so much!" Someone says: "Oh, I have passed through
so much trial and suffering, and there is so much of the self-life still
remaining. I dare not face entirely giving it up because I know it will cause so
much trouble and agony."
Alas! alas! that God's children have such thoughts of Him, such cruel
thoughts. I come with a message to those who are fearful and anxious. God does
not ask you to give the perfect surrender in your strength, or by the power of
your will; God is willing to work it in you. Do we not read: "it is God
that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure"
(Philippians 2:13)? And that is what we should seek-to go on our faces before
God, until our hearts learn to believe that the everlasting God Himself will
come in to turn out what is wrong. He will conquer what is evil, and work what
is well pleasing in His blessed sight. God Himself will work it in you.
Look at the men in the Old Testament, like Abraham. Do you think it was
by accident that God found that man, the father of the faithful and the friend
of God? Do you think that it was Abraham himself, apart from God, who had such
faith and such obedience and such devotion? You know it is not so. God raised
him up and prepared him as an instrument for His glory.
Did God not say to Pharaoh: "For this cause have I raised thee up,
for to show in thee my power" (Exodus 9:16)?
And if God said that of him, will God not say it far more of every child
of His?
Oh, I want to encourage you, and I want you to cast away every fear. Come
with that feeble desire. If there is the fear which says-"Oh, my desire is
not strong enough. I am not willing for everything that maycome , and I do not
feel bold enough to say I can conquer everything"-l implore you, learn to
know and trust your God now. Say: "My God, I am willing that You should
make me willing." If there is anything holding you back, or any sacrifice
you are afraid of making, come to God now and prove how gracious your God is. Do
not be afraid that He will command from you what He will not bestow.
God comes and offers to work this absolute surrender in you. All these
searchings and hungerings and longings that are in your heart, I tell you, they
are the drawings of the divine magnet, Christ Jesus. He lived a life of absolute
surrender. He has possession of you; He is living in your heart by His Holy
Spirit. You have hindered and hindered Him terribly, but He desires to help you
to get a hold of Him entirely. And He comes and draws you now by His message and
words. Will you not come and trust God to work in you that absolute surrender to
Himself Yes, blessed be God! He can do it, and He will do it.
God not only claims it and works it, but God accepts it when we bring it
to Him.
GOD ACCEPTS YOUR SURRENDER
God works it in the secret of our heart; God urges us by the hidden power
of His Holy Spirit to come and speak it out, and we have to bring and yield to
Him that absolute surrender. But remember, when you come and bring God that
absolute surrender, it may, as far as your feelings or your consciousness go, be
a thing of great imperfection. You may doubt and hesitate and say:
"Is it absolute?"
But, oh, remember there was once a man to whom Christ had said: "If
thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth" (Mark
9:23). And his heart was afraid, and he cried out: "Lord, I believe, help
thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24).
That was a faith that triumphed over Satan, and the evil spirit was cast
out. And if you come and say: "Lord, I yield myself in absolute surrender
to my God," even though you do so with a trembling heart and with the
consciousness: "I do not feel the power. I do not feel the determination. I
do not feel the assurance," it will succeed. Do not be afraid, but
come-just as you are. Even in the midst of your trembling the power of the Holy
Spirit will work.
Have you not yet learned the lesson that the Holy Spirit works with
mighty power, while on the human side everything appears feeble? Look at the
Lord Jesus Christ in
And when you do yield yourself in absolute surrender, let it be with the
faith that God does now accept it. That is the great point, and that is what we
so often miss-that believers should be thus occupied with God in this matter of
surrender. Be occupied with God. We want to get help, every one of us, so that
in our daily life God will be clearer to us, God will have the right place, and
be "all in all." And if we are to have that through life, let us begin
now and look away from ourselves and look up to God. Let each believe- I, a poor
worm on earth and a trembling child of God, full of failure, sin, and fear, bow
here, and no one knows what passes through my heart. I simply say, "Oh God,
I accept Your terms. I have pleaded for blessing on myself and others. I have
accepted Your terms of absolute surrender." While your heart says that in
deep silence, remember there is a God present that takes note of it, and writes
it down in His book. There is a God present who at that very moment takes
possession of you. You may not feel it, you may not realize it, but God takes
possession if you will trust Him. God not only claims it and works it and
accepts it when I bring it, but God maintains it.
GOD MAINTAINS YOUR SURRENDER
That is the great difficulty with many. People say: "I have often
been stirred at a meeting or at a convention, and I have consecrated myself to
God.
But it has passed away. I know it may last for a week or for a month, but
it fades away. After a time it is all gone."
But listen! It is because you do not believe what I am now going to tell
you and remind you of. When God has begun the work of absolute surrender in you,
and when God has accepted your surrender, then God holds Himself bound to care
for it and to keep it.
Will you believe that?
In this matter of surrender, there are: God and 1-1 a worm, God the
everlasting and omnipotent Jehovah. Worm, will you be afraid to trust yourself
to this mighty God now? God is willing. Do you not believe that He can keep you
continually, day by day, and moment by moment?
Moment by moment I'm kept in His love;
Moment by moment I've life from above.
If God allows the sun to shine on you moment by moment, without
intermission, will God not let His life shine on you every moment? And why have
you not experienced it? Because you have not trusted God for it, and you do not
surrender yourself absolutely to God in that trust.
A life of absolute surrender has its difficulties. I do not deny that.
Yes, it has something far more than difficulties: it is a life that with men is
absolutely impossible. But by the grace of God, by the power of God, by the
power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, it is a life to which we are destined,
and a life that is possible for us, praise God! Let us believe that God will
maintain it.
Some of you have read the words of that aged saint who, on his ninetieth
birthday, told of all God's goodness to him- I mean George Muller. What did he
say he believed to be the secret of his happiness and of all the blessing which
God had given him? He said he believed there were two reasons. The one was that
he had been enabled by grace to maintain a good conscience before God day by
day. The other was that he was a lover of God's Word. Ah, yes, a good conscience
is complete obedience to God day by day, and fellowship with God everyday in His
Word and prayer-that is a life of absolute surrender.
Such a life has two sides-on one side, absolute surrender to work what
God wants you to do; on the other side, to let God work what He wants to do.
First, to do what God wants you to do.
Give yourselves up absolutely to the will of God. You know something of
that will; not enough, far from all. But say absolutely to the Lord God:
"By Your grace I desire to do Your will in everything, every moment of
every day." Say: "Lord God, not a word upon my tongue but for Your
glory. Not a movement of my temper but for Your glory. Not an affection of love
or hate in my heart but for Your glory, and according to Your blessed
will."
Someone says: "Do you think that possible?"
I ask, What has God promised you, and what can God do to fill a vessel
absolutely surrendered to Him? Oh, God wants to bless you in a way beyond what
you expect. From the beginning, ear has not heard, neither has the eye seen,
what God has prepared for them that wait for Him (I Corinthians 2:9). God has
prepared unheard-of-things, blessings much more wonderful than you can imagine,
more mighty than you can conceive. They are divine blessings. Oh, say now:
"I give myself absolutely to God, to His will, to do only what God
wants."
It is God who will enable you to carry out the surrender.
And, on the other side, come and say: "I give myself absolutely to
God, to let Him work in me to will and to do of His good pleasure, as He has
promised to do."
Yes, the living God wants to work in His children in a way that we cannot
understand, but that God's Word has revealed. He wants to work in us every
moment of the day. God is willing to maintain our life. Only let our absolute
surrender be one of simple, childlike., and unbounded trust.
GOD BLESSES WHEN YOU SURRENDER
This absolute surrender to God brings wonderful blessings.
What Ahab said to his enemy, King Benhadad-"My lord, 0 king,
according to thy word I am thine, and all that I have"will we not say to
our God and loving Father? If we do say it, God's blessing will come upon us.
God wants us to be separate from the world. We are called to come out from the
world that hates God. Come out for God, and say: "Lord, anything for
You." If you say that with prayer, and speak that into God's ear, He will
accept it, and He will teach you what it means.
I say again, God will bless you. You have been praying for blessing. But
do remember, there must be absolute surrender. At every tea-table you see it.
Why is tea poured into that cup? Because it is empty, and given up for the tea.
But put ink or vinegar or wine into it, and will they pour the tea into the
vessel? And can God fill you, can God bless you if you are not absolutely
surrendered to Him? He cannot. Let us believe God has wonderful blessings for us
if we will but stand up for God and say, be it with a trembling will, yet with a
believing heart:
"O God, I accept Your demands. I am Yours and all that I have.
Absolute surrender is what my soul yields to You by divine grace."
You may not have such strong, clear feelings of surrender as you would
like to have, but humble yourselves in His sight, and acknowledge that you have
grieved the Holy Spirit by your self-will, selfconfidence, and self-effort. Bow
humbly before Him in the confession of that, and ask Him to break the heart and
to bring you into the dust before Him. Then, as you bow before Him, just accept
God's teaching that in your flesh "there dwelleth no good thing"
(Romans 7:18), and that nothing will help you except another life which must
come in. You must deny self once and for all. Denying self must every moment be
the power of your life, and then Christ will come in and take possession of you.
When was Peter delivered? When was the change accomplished? The change
began with Peter weeping, and the Holy Spirit came down and filled his heart.
God the Father loves to give us the power of the Spirit. We have the
Spirit of God dwelling within us. We come to God confessing that, and praising
God for it, and yet confessing how we have grieved the Spirit. And then we bow
our knees to the Father to ask that He would strengthen us with all might by the
Spirit in the inner man, and that He would fill us with His mighty power. And as
the Spirit reveals Christ to us, Christ comes to live in our hearts forever, and
the self-life is cast out.
Let us bow before God in humility, and in that humility confess before
Him the state of the whole Church. No words can tell the sad state of the
We are members of that sickly body. The sickliness of the body will
hinder us and break us down, unless we come to God. We must, in confession,
separate ourselves from partnership with worldliness, with coldness toward each
other. We must give ourselves up to be entirely and wholly for God.
How much Christian work is being done in the spirit of the flesh and in
the power of self! How much work, day by day, in which human energy-our will and
our thoughts about the work-is continually manifested, and in which there is
little waiting upon God and upon the power of the Holy Spirit! Let us make a
confession. But as we confess the state of the Church, and the feebleness and
sinfulness of work for God among us, let us come back to ourselves. Who is there
who truly longs to be delivered from the power of the self-life, who truly
acknowledges that it is the power of self and the flesh, and who is willing to
cast all at the feet of Christ? There is deliverance.
I heard of one who had been an earnest Christian, and who spoke about the
"cruel" thought of separation and death. But you do not think that, do
you? What are we to think of separation and death? This-death was the path to
glory for Christ. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross. The cross was
the birthplace of His everlasting glory. Do you love Christ? Do you long to be
in Christ, and yet not like Him? Let death be to you the most desirable thing on
earthdeath to self, and fellowship with Christ. Separation-do you think it a
hard thing to be called to be entirely free from the world, and by that
separation to be united to God and His love, by separation to become prepared
for living and walking with God every day? Surely one ought to say:
"Anything to bring me to separation, to death, for a life of full
fellowship with God and Christ."
Come and cast this self-life and flesh-life at the feet of Jesus. Then
trust Him. Do not worry yourselves with trying to understand all about it, but
come in the living faith that Christ will come into you with the power of His
death and the power of His life. Then the Holy Spirit will bring the whole
Christ-Christ crucified and risen and living in glory-into your heart.
"THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT IS
LOVE"
I want to look at the fact of a life filled with the Holy Spirit more
from the practical side. I want to show how this life will reveal itself in our
daily walk and conduct.
Under the Old Testament you know the Holy Spirit often came upon men as a
divine Spirit of revelation to reveal the mysteries of God, or for power to do
the work of God. But He did not dwell in them then. Now, many just want the Old
Testament gift of power for work. But, they know very little of the New
Testament gift of the indwelling Spirit, animating and renewing the whole life.
When God gives the Holy Spirit, His great object is the formation of a holy
character. It is a gift of a holy mind and spiritual disposition, and what we
need, above everything else, is to say:
"I must have the Holy Spirit sanctifying my whole inner life if I am
really to live for God's glory. "
You might say that when Christ promised the Spirit to the disciples, He
did so that they might have power to be witnesses. True, but then they received
the Holy Spirit in such heavenly power and reality that He took possession of
their whole being at once and so fitted them as holy men for doing the work with
power as they had to do it. Christ spoke of power to the disciples, but it was
the Spirit filling their whole being that worked the power.
I wish now to dwell upon the passage found in Galatians 5:22:
"The fruit of the Spirit is love."
We read that "Love is the fulfilling of the law"' (Romans 13:
10), and my desire is to speak on love as a fruit of the Spirit with a twofold
object. One is that this word may be a searchlight in our hearts, and give us a
test by which to try all our thoughts about the Holy Spirit and all our
experience of the holy life. Let us try ourselves by this word. Has this been
our daily habit, to seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of
love? "The fruit of the Spirit is love." Has it been our experience
that the more we have of the Holy Spirit, the more loving we become? In claiming
the Holy Spirit, we should make this the first object of our expectation. The
Holy Spirit comes as a Spirit of love.
Oh, if this were true in the
One of the great causes why God cannot bless His Church is the lack of
love. When the body is divided, there cannot be strength. In the time of their
great religious wars, when
GOD IS LOVE
Now, why is it that the fruit of the Spirit is love? Because God is love
(I John 4:8).
And what does that mean?
It is the very nature and being of God to delight in communicating
Himself. God has no selfishness; God keeps nothing to Himself. God's nature is
to be always giving. You see it, in the sun and the moon and the stars, in every
flower, in every bird in the air, in every fish in the sea. God communicates
life to His creatures. And the angels around His throne, the seraphim and
cherumbim who are flames of firewhere does their glory come from? It comes from
God because He is love, and He imparts to them part of His brightness and His
blessedness. And we, His redeemed children-God delights to pour His love into
us. Why? Because, as I said, God keeps nothing for Himself. From eternity God
had His only begotten Son, and the Father gave Him all things, and nothing that
God had was kept back. "God is love."
One of the old Church fathers said that we cannot better understand the
Trinity than as a revelation of divine lovethe Father, the loving One, the
Fountain of love-the Son, the beloved one, the Reservoir of love, in whom the
love was poured out-and the Spirit, the living love that united both and then
overflowed into this world. The Spirit of Pentecost, the Spirit of the Father,
and the Spirit of the Son is love. And when the Holy Spirit comes to us and to
other men, will He be less a Spirit of love than He is in God? It cannot be; He
cannot change His nature. The Spirit of God is love, and "the fruit of the
Spirit is love."
MANKIND NEEDS LOVE
Why is that so? That was the one great need of mankind, that was the
thing which Christ's redemption came to accomplish: to restore love to this
world.
When man sinned, why was it that he sinned? Selfishness triumphed-he
sought self instead of God. And just look! Adam at once begins to accuse the
woman of having led him astray. Love to God had gone; love to man was lost. Look
again: of the first two children of Adam, the one becomes a murderer of his
brother.
Does that not teach us that sin had robbed the world of love? Ah! what a
proof the history of the world has been of love having been lost! There may have
been beautiful examples of love even among the heathen, but only as a little
remnant of what was lost. One of the worst things sin did for man was to make
him selfish, for selfishness cannot love.
The Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven as the Son of God's love.
"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (John
3:16). God's Son came to show what love is , and He lived a life of love here on
earth in fellowship with His disciples, in compassion over the poor and
miserable, in love even to His enemies. And, He died the death of love. And when
He went back to heaven, whom did He send down? The Spirit of love, to come and
banish selfishness and envy and pride, and bring the love of God into the hearts
of men. "The fruit of the Spirit is love."
And what was the preparation for the promise of the Holy Spirit? You know
that promise as found in the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel. But remember
what precedes in the thirteenth chapter. Before Christ promised the Holy Spirit,
He gave a new commandment, and about that new commandment He said wonderful
things. One thing was: "Even as I have loved you, so love ye one
another." To them His dying love was to be the only law of their conduct
and fellowship with each other. What a message to those fishermen, to those men
full of pride and selfishness! "Learn to love each other," said
Christ, "as I have loved you." And by the grace of God they did it.
When Pentecost came, they were of one heart and one soul. Christ did it for
them.
And now He calls us to live and to walk in love. He demands that though a
man hate you, still you love him. True love cannot be conquered by anything in
heaven or on earth. The more hatred there is, the more love triumphs through it
all and shows its true nature. This is the love that Christ commanded His
disciples to exercise.
What more did He say? "By this shall all men know that ye are my
disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35).
You all know what it is to wear a badge. And Christ said to His disciples
in effect: "I give you a badge, and that badge is love. That is to be your
mark. It is the only thing in heaven or on earth by which men can know me."
Do we not begin to fear that love has fled from the earth? That if we were to
ask the world: "Have you seen us wear the badge of love?." the world
would say: "No, what we have heard of the
LOVE CONQUERS SELFISHNESS
"The fruit of the Spirit is love." Why? Because nothing but
love can expel and conquer our selfishness.
Self is the great curse, whether in its relation to God, or to our
fellow-men in general, or to fellowChristians, thinking of ourselves and seeking
our own. Self is our greatest curse. But, praise God, Christ came to redeem us
from self. We sometimes talk about deliverance from the self-life-and thank God
for every word that can be said about it to help us, But I am afraid some people
think deliverance from the self-life means that now they are no longer going to
have any. trouble in serving God. They forget that deliverance from self-life
means to be a vessel overflowing with love to everybody all the day.
And there you have the reason why many people pray for the power of the
Holy Spirit. They get something, but oh, so little! because they prayed for
power for work, and power for blessing, but they have not prayed for power for
full deliverance from self. That means not only the righteous self in fellowship
with God, but the unloving self in fellowship with men. And there is
deliverance. "The fruit of the Spirit is love." I bring you the
glorious promise of Christ that He is able to fill our hearts with love.
A great many of us try hard at times to love. We try to force ourselves
to love, and I do not say that is wrong; it is better than nothing. But the end
of it is always very sad. "I fail continually," many must confess. And
what is the reason? The reason is simply this-they have never learned to believe
and accept the truth that the Holy Spirit can pour God's love into their heart.
That blessed text has often been limited!-"The love of God is shed abroad
in our hearts" (Romans 5:5). It has often been understood in this sense: It
means the love of God to me. Oh, what a limitation! That is only the beginning.
The love of God is always the love of God in its entirety, in its fullness as an
indwelling power. It is a love of God to me that leaps back to Him in love, and
overflows to my fellow-men in love-God's love to me, and my love to God, and my
love to my fellowmen. The three are one; you cannot separate them.
Do believe that the love of God can be shed abroad in your heart and mind
so that we can love all the day.
"Ah!" you say, "how little I have understood that!"
Why is a lamb always gentle? Because that is its nature. Does it cost the
lamb any trouble to be gentle? No. Why not? It is so beautiful and gentle. Has a
lamb to study to be gentle? No. Why does that come so easy? It is its nature.
And a wolf-why does it cost a wolf no trouble to be cruel, and to put its fangs
into the poor lamb or sheep? Because that is its nature. It does not have to
summon up its courage; the wolf nature is. there.
And how can I learn to love? I cannot learn to love until the Spirit of
God fills my heart with God's love, and I begin to long for God's love in a very
different sense from which I have sought it so selfishly-as a comfort, a joy, a
happiness, and a pleasure to myself. I will not learn it until I realize that
"God is love," and to claim and receive it as an indwelling power for self-sacrifice. I will not love until I begin to see that my glory, my
blessedness, is to be like God and like Christ, in giving up everything in
myself for my fellow-men. May God teach us this! Oh, the divine blessedness of
the love with which the Holy Spirit can fill our hearts! "The fruit of the
Spirit is love."
LOVE IS GOD'S GIFT
Once again I ask, Why must this be so? And my answer is: Without this we
cannot live the daily life of love.
How often, when we speak about the consecrated life, we have to speak
about temper, and people have sometimes said: "You make too much of
temper."
I do not think we can make too much of it. Think for a moment of a clock
and of what its hands mean. The hands tell me what is within the clock, and if I
see that the hands stand still, or that the hands point wrong, or that the clock
is slow or fast, I say that something inside the clock is not working properly.
And temper is just like the revelation that the clock gives of what is within.
Temper is a proof whether the love of Christ is filling the heart or not. How
many there are who find it easier in church, or in prayer meeting, or in work
for the Lord-diligent, earnest work-to be holy and happy than in the daily life
with wife and children. How many find it easier to be holy and happy outside the
home than in it! Where is the love of God? In Christ. God has prepared for us a
wonderful redemption in Christ, and He longs to make something supernatural of
us. Have we learned to long for it, ask for it, and expect it in its fullness?
Then there is the tongue! We sometimes speak of the tongue when we talk
of the better life, and the restful life, but just think what liberty many
Christians give to their tongues. They say:
"I have a right to think what I like."
When they speak about each other, when they speak about their neighbors,
when they speak about other Christians, how often there are sharp remarks! God
keep me from saying anything that would be unloving. God shut my mouth if I am
not to speak in tender love. But what I am saying is a fact. How often sharp
criticism, sharp judgment, hasty opinion, unloving words, secret contempt of
each other, secret condemnation of each other are found among Christians who are
banded together in work! Oh, just as a mother's love covers her children and
delights in them and has the tenderest compassion with their foibles or
failures, so there ought to be in the heart of every believer a motherly love
toward every brother and sister in Christ. Have you aimed at that? Have you
sought it? Have you ever pleaded for it? Jesus Christ said: "As I have
loved you that. ye also love one another" (John 13:34). And He did not put
that among the other commandments, but He said in effect:
"That is a new commandment, the one commandment: Love one another as
I have loved you" (John 13:34).
It is in our daily life and conduct that the fruit of the Spirit is love.
From that comes all the graces and virtues in which love is manifested-joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness-no sharpness or hardness in your
tone, no unkindness or selfishness, meekness before God and man. You see that
all these are the gentler virtues. I have often thought as I read those words in
Colossians, "Put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels
of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering"
(Colossians 3:12), that if we had written this, we should have put in the
foreground the strong virtues, such as zeal, courage, and diligence. But we need
to see how the gentler, the most tender virtues are especially connected with
dependence on the Holy Spirit. These are indeed heavenly graces. They never were
found in the heathen world. Christ was needed to come from heaven to teach us.
Your blessedness is long-suffering, meekness, kindness; your glory is humility
before God. The fruit of the Spirit that He brought from heaven out of the heart
of the crucified Christ, and that He gives in our heart, is first and
foremost-love.
You know what John says: "No man hath seen God at any time. If we
love one another; God dwelleth in us" (I John 4:12). That is, I cannot see
God, but as a compensation I can see my brother, and if I love him, God dwells
in me. Is that really true? That I cannot see God, but I must love my brother,
and God will dwell in me? Loving my brother is the way to real fellowship with
God. You know what John further says in that most solemn test, "If a man
say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not
his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"
(I John 4:20). There is a brother, a most unlovable man. He worries you every
time you meet him. He is of the very opposite disposition to yours. You are a
careful businessman, and you have to associate with him in your business. He is
most untidy, unbusiness-like. You say:
"I cannot love him."
Oh, friend, you have not learned the lesson that Christ wanted to teach
above everything. Let a man be what he will, you are to love him. Love is to be
the fruit of the Spirit all the day and every day. Yes, listen! If you don't
love that unlovable man whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have
not seen? You can deceive yourself with beautiful thoughts about loving God. You
must prove your love to God by your love to your brother; that is the one
standard by which God will judge your love to Him. If the love of God is in your
heart, you will love your brother. The fruit of the Spirit is love.
And what is the reason that God's Holy Spirit cannot come in power? Is it
not possible?
You remember the comparison I used in speaking of the vessel. I can dip a
little water into a small vessel, but if a vessel is to be full, it must be
unbroken. And the children of God, wherever they come together, to whatever
church or mission or society they belong, must love each other intensely, or the
Spirit of God cannot do His work. We talk about grieving the Spirit of God by
worldliness and ritualism and formality and error and indifference. But, I tell
you, the one thing above everything that grieves God's Spirit is this lack of
love. Let every heart search itself, and ask that God may search it.
OUR LOVE SHOWS GOD'S POWER
Why are we taught that "the fruit of the Spirit is love"?
Because the Spirit of God has come to make our daily life an exhibition of
divine power and a revelation of what God can do for His children.
In the second and the fourth chapters of Acts, we read that the disciples
were of one heart and of one soul. During the three years they had walked with
Christ, they never had been in that spirit. All Christ's teaching could not make
them of one heart and one soul. But the Holy Spirit came from heaven and shed
the love of God in their hearts, and they were of one heart and one soul. The
same Holy Spirit that brought the love of heaven into their hearts must fill us,
too. Nothing less will do. Even as Christ did, one might preach love for three
years with the tongue of an angel, but that would not teach any man to love
unless the power of the Holy Spirit should come upon him to bring the love of
heaven into his heart.
Think of the Church at large. What divisions! Think of the different
bodies. Take the question of holiness, take the question of the cleansing blood,
take the question of the baptism of the Spirit-what differences are caused among
dear believers by such questions! That there are differences of opinion does not
trouble me. We do not have the same constitution and temperament and mind. But
how often hate, bitterness, contempt, separation, and unlovingness are caused by
the holiest truths of God's Word! Our doctrines, our creeds, have been more
important than love. We often think we are valiant for the truth, and we forget
God's command to speak the truth in love. And it was so in the time of the
Reformation between the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches. What bitterness there
was in regard to communion, which was meant to be the bond of union among all
believers! And so, through the ages, the very dearest truths of God have become
mountains that have separated us.
If we want to pray in power, and if we want to expect the Holy Spirit to
come down in power, and if we indeed want God to pour out His Spirit, we must
enter into a covenant with God that we will love one another with a heavenly
love.
Are you ready for that? Only that is true love that is large enough to
take in all God's children, the most unloving and unlovable and unworthy and
unbearable and trying. If my vow-absolute surrender to God-was sincere, then it
must mean absolute surrender to the divine love to fill me. I must be a servant
of love to love every child of God around me. "The fruit of the Spirit is
love."
Oh, God did something wonderful when He gave Christ, at His right hand,
the Holy Spirit to come down out of the heart of the Father and His everlasting
love. And how we have degraded the Holy Spirit into a mere power by which we
have to do our work! God forgive us! Oh, that the Holy Spirit might be held in
honor as a power to fill us with the very life and nature of God and of Christ!
CHRISTIAN WORK REQUIRES LOVE
"The fruit of the Spirit is love." I ask once again, Why is it
so? And the answer comes: That is the only power in which Christians really can
do their work. Yes, it is love that we need. We want not only love that is to
bind us to each other, but we want a divine love in our work for the lost around
us. Oh, do we not often undertake a great deal of work-just as men undertake
work of philanthropy-from a natural spirit of compassion for our fellow-men? Do
we not often undertake Christian work because our minister. or friend calls us
to it? And do we not often perform Christian work with a certain zeal but
without having had a baptism of love?
People often ask: "What is the baptism of fire?"
I have answered more than once: "I know no fire like the fire of
God, the fire of everlasting love that consumed the sacrifice on
"Lord, let love from heaven flow down into my heart. I am giving up
my life to pray and live as one who has, given himself up for the everlasting
love to dwell in and fill him."
Ali, yes, if the love of God were in our hearts, what a difference it
would make! There are hundreds of believers who say:
"I work for Christ, and I feel I could work much harder, but I do
not have the gift. I do not know how or where to begin. I do not know what I can
do."
Brother, sister, ask God to baptize you with the Spirit of love, and love
will find its way. Love is a fire that will burn through every difficulty. You
may be a shy, hesitating person, who cannot speak well, but love can burn
through everything. God fills us with love! We need it for our work.
You have read many a touching story of love expressed, and you have said,
How beautiful! I heard one not long ago. A lady had been asked to speak at a
Rescue Home where there were a number of poor women. As she arrived there and
passed by the window with the matron, she saw a wretched woman sitting outside,
and asked:
"Who is that?"
The matron answered: "She has been into the house thirty or forty
times, and she has always gone away again. Nothing can be done with her, she is
so low and hard." But the lady said: "She must come in."
The matron then said: "We have been waiting for you, and the company
is assembled, and you have only an hour for the address."
The lady replied: "No, this is of more importance"; and she
went outside where the woman was sitting and said:
"My sister, what is the matter?"
"I am not your sister," was the reply.
The the lady laid her hand on her, and said: "Yes, I am your sister,
and I love you"; and so she spoke until the heart of the poor woman was
touched.
The conversation lasted some time, and the company was waiting patiently.
Ultimately, the lady brought the woman into the room. There was the poor,
wretched, degraded creature, full of shame. She would not sit on a chair, but
sat down on a stool beside the speaker's seat, and she let her lean against her,
with her arms around the poor woman's neck, while, she spoke to the assembled
people. And that love touched the woman's heart; she had found one who really
loved her, and that love gave access to the love of Jesus.
Praise God! there is love on earth in the hearts of God's children; but
oh, that there were more!
O God, baptize our ministers with a tender love, and our missionaries,
our Bible readers, our workers, and our young men's and young women's
associations. Oh, that God would begin with us now, and baptize us with heavenly
love!
LOVE INSPIRES INTERCESSION
Once again. It is only love that can fit us for the work of intercession.
I have said that love must fit us for our work. Do you know what the
hardest and the most important work is that has to be done for this sinful
world? It is the work of intercession, the work of going to God and taking time
to lay hold of Him.
A man may be an earnest Christian, an earnest minister, and a man may do
good, but alas! how often he has to confess that he knows little of what it is
to tarry with God. May God give us the great gift of an intercessory spirit, a
spirit of prayer and supplication! Let me ask you in the name of Jesus not to
let a day pass without praying for all saints, and for all God's people.
I find there are Christians who think little of that. I find there are
prayer unions where they pray for the members, and not for all believers. I pray
you, take time to pray for the
The state of Christ's Church is indescribably low. Plead for God's people
that He would visit them, plead for each other, plead for all believers who are
trying to work for God. Let love fill your heart. Ask Christ to pour fresh love
into you everyday. Try to grasp, by the Holy Spirit of God: I am separated unto
the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love. God help us to understand
it.
May God grant that we learn day by day to wait more quietly upon Him. We
must not wait upon God only for ourselves, or the power to do so will soon be
lost. But, we must give ourselves up to the ministry and the love of
intercession, and pray more for God's people in general, for God's people around
us, for the Spirit of love in ourselves and in them, and for the work of God we
are connected with. The answer will surely come, and our waiting upon God will
be a source of untold blessing and power. "The fruit of the Spirit is
love."
Have you a lack of love to confess before God? Then make confession and
say before Him, "O Lord, my lack of heart, my lack of love-I confess
it." And then, as you cast that lack at His feet, believe that the blood
cleanses you, that Jesus comes in His mighty, cleansing, saving power to deliver
you, and that He will give His Holy Spirit. "The Fruit of the Spirit is
love."
SEPARATED
UNTO THE HOLY SPIRIT
"Now there were in the church that was at
"And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them,
they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto
In the story of our text, we find some precious thoughts to guide us to
what God would have of us, and what God would do for us. The great lesson of the
verses quoted is this: The Holy Spirit is the director of the work of God upon
the earth. And what we should do if we are to rightly work for God, and if God
is to bless our work, is to see that we stand in a right relationship with the
Holy Spirit. We must see that we give Him the place of honor that belongs to Him
everyday. In all our work and (what is more) in all our Private, inner life, the
Holy Spirit must always have the first place. Let me point out to you some of
the precious thoughts our passage suggests.
First of all, we see that God has His own plans with regard to His
Kingdom. His church at
Our great Commander organizes every campaign, and His generals and
officers do not always know the great plans. They often receive sealed orders,
and they have to wait for Him to reveal their contents. God in heaven has wishes
and a will, in regard to any work that ought to be done, and to the way in which
it has to be done. Blessed is the man who receives God's secrets and works under
Him.
Some years ago, at
"Last year we gathered here to lay the foundation stone, and what
was there then to be seen? Nothing but rubbish and stones and bricks and ruins
of an old building that had been pulled down. There we laid the foundation
stone, and very few knew what the building was that was to rise. No one knew it
perfectly in every detail except one man, the architect. In his mind it was all
clear, and as the contractor and the mason and the carpenter came to do their
work, they took their orders from him. The humblest laborer had to be obedient
to orders. The structure rose, and this beautiful building has been completed.
And just so," he added, "this building that we open today is but
laying the foundation of a work of which only God knows what is to become."
But God has His workers and His plans clearly mapped out. Our position is
to wait so that God may communicate to us as much of His will as is needful.
We simply have to be faithful in obedience, carrying out His orders. God
has a plan for His Church on earth. But alas! we too often make our own plan. We
think that we know what ought to be done. We ask God first to bless our feeble
efforts, instead of absolutely refusing to go unless God goes before us. God has
planned for the work and the extension of His Kingdom. The Holy Spirit has had
that work given in charge to Him, "The work whereunto I have called
them." May God, therefore, help us all to be afraid of touching "the
ark of God" (2 Samuel 6:6), except as we are led by the Holy Spirit.
Then the second thought-God is willing and able to reveal to His servants
what His will is.
Yes, blessed be God, communications still come down from heaven! As we
read here what the Holy Spirit said, so the Spirit will still speak to His
Church and His people. In these latter days, He has often done it. He has come
to individual men, and by His divine teaching He has led them out into fields of
labor that others could not at first understand or approve. He has led them into
ways and methods that did not appeal to the majority. But the Holy Spirit still,
in our time, teaches His people. Thank God, in our foreign missionary societies
and in our home missions, and in a thousand forms of work, the guiding of the
Holy Spirit is known. But (we are all ready, I think, to confess) He is too
little known. We have not learned to wait upon Him enough, and so we should make
a solemn declaration before God: Oh God, we want to wait more for You to show us
Your will.
Do not ask God only for power. Many a Christian has his own plan of
working, but God must send the power. The man works in his own will, and God
must give the grace-the one reason why God often gives so little grace and so
little success. But let us all take our place before God, and say:
"What is done in the will of God, the strength of God will not be
withheld from it. What is done in the will of God must have the mighty blessing
of God."
And so let our first desire be to have the will of God revealed.
If you ask me, Is it any easy thing to get these communications from
heaven, and to understand them? I can give you the answer. It is easy to those
who are in proper fellowship with heaven, and who understand the art of waiting
on God in prayer. How often we ask: How can a person know the will of God? And
people want, when they are in perplexity, to pray very earnestly so that God
would answer them at once. But God can only reveal His will to a heart that is
humble and tender and empty. God can only reveal His will in perplexities and
special difficulties to a heart that has learned to obey and honor Him loyally
in little things and in daily life.
That brings me to the third thought- Note the disposition to which the
Spirit reveals God's will.
What do we read here? There were a number of men ministering to the Lord
and fasting, and the Holy Spirit came and spoke to them. Some people understand
this passage as they would in reference to a missionary committee of our day. We
see there is an open field, and we have had our missions in other fields. We are
going to get on to that field. We have virtually settled that, and we pray about
it. But the position was a very different one in those former days. I doubt
whether any of them thought of Europe (for later on even Paul himself tried to
go back into
"O Lord," they seem to say, "we are Your servants, and in
fasting and prayer we wait upon You. What is Your will for us?"
Was it not the same with Peter? He was on the housetop, fasting and
praying, and little did he think of the vision and the command to go to
It is in hearts entirely surrendered to the Lord Jesus, separating
themselves from the world, and even from ordinary religious exercises, and
giving themselves up in intense prayer to look to their Lord, that the heavenly
will of God will be made manifest.
You know that word fasting occurs a second time (in the third verse):
"They fasted and prayed." When you pray, you love to go into your
closet, accordin g to the command of Jesus, and shut the door. You shut out
business and company and pleasure and anything that can distract, and you want
to be alone with God. But in one way, even the material world follows you there.
You must eat. These men wanted to shut themselves out from the influences of the
material and the visible, and they fasted. What ,they ate was simply enough to
supply the wants of nature. In the intensity of their souls, they thought to
give expression to their letting go of everything on earth in their fasting
before God. Oh, may God give us that intensity of desire-that separation from
everything-because we want to wait upon God, that the Holy Spirit may reveal to
us God's blessed will.
The fourth thought- What is now the will of God as the Holy Spirit
reveals it? It is contained in one phrase: Separation unto the Holy Spirit. That
is the keynote of the message from heaven.
"Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called
them. The work is mine; and I care for it; and I have chosen these men and
called them; and I want you who represent the
Look at this heavenly message in its twofold aspect. The men were to be
set apart to the Holy Spirit, and the Church was to do this separating work. The
Holy Spirit could trust these men to do it in a right spirit. There they were
abiding in fellowship with the heavenly. The Holy Spirit could say to them,
"Do the work of separating these men." And these were the men the Holy
Spirit had prepared, and He could say of them, "Let them be separated unto
me."
Here we come to the very root-the very lifeof the need of Christian
workers. The question is: What is needed so that the power of God would rest on
us more mightily? What is needed so that the blessing of God would be poured out
more abundantly among those poor, wretched people and perishing sinners among
whom we labor? And the answer from heaven is:
"I want men separated unto the Holy Spirit."
What does that imply? You know that there are two spirits on earth.
Christ said, when He spoke about the Holy Spirit: "The world cannot receive
him" (John 14:17). Paul said: "We have received not the spirit of the
world, but the Spirit that is of God" (I Corinthians 2:12). That is the
great want in every worker-the spirit of the world going out, and the Spirit of
God coming in to take possession of the inner life and of the whole being.
I am sure there are workers who often cry to God for the Holy Spirit to
come upon them as a Spirit of power for their work. When they feel that measure
of power, and receive blessing, they thank God for it. But God wants something
more and something higher. God wants us to seek for the Holy Spirit as a Spirit
of power in our own heart and life, to conquer self and cast out sin, and to
work the blessed and beautiful image of Jesus into us.
There is a difference between the power of the Spirit as a gift and the
power of the Spirit for the grace of a holy life. A man may often have a measure
of the power of the Spirit, but if there is not a large measure of the Spirit as
the Spirit of grace and holiness, the defect will be evident in his work. He may
be made the means of conversion, but he never will help people on to a higher
standard of spiritual life. When he passes away, a great deal of his work may
pass away, too. But a man who is separated unto the Holy Spirit is a man who is
given up to say:
"Father, let the Holy Spirit have full dominion over me, in my home,
in my temper, in every word of my tongue, in every thought of my heart, in every
feeling toward my fellow-men. Let the Holy Spirit have entire possession."
Is that what has been the longing and the convenant of your heart with
your God-to be a man or a woman separated and given up unto the Holy Spirit? I
pray you listen to the voice of heaven: "Separate me," said the Holy
Spirit. Yes, separated unto the Holy Spirit. May God grant that the Word may
enter into the very depths of our being to search us, and if we discover that we
have not come out from the world entirely-if God discloses to us that selflife,
self-will, self-exaltation are there-let us humble ourselves before Him.
Man, woman, brother, sister, you are a worker separated unto the Holy
Spirit. Is that true? Has that been your longing desire? Has that been your
surrender? Has that been what you have expected through faith in the power of
our Risen and Almighty Lord Jesus? If not, here is the call of faith, and here
is the key of blessing-separated unto the Holy Spirit. God write the word in our
hearts!
I said the Holy Spirit spoke to that church as a church capable of doing
that work. The Holy Spirit trusted them. God grant that our churches, our
missionary societies, and our workers' unions, that all our directors and
councils and committees may be men and women who are fit for the work of
separating workers unto the Holy Spirit. We can ask God for that, too.
Then comes my fifth thought, and it is this: This holy partnership with
the Holy Spirit in this work becomes a matter of consciousness and of action.
These men, what did they do? They set apart Paul and Barnabas, and then
it is written of the two that they, being sent forth by the Holy Spirit, went
down to Silica. Oh, what fellowship! The Holy Spirit in heaven doing part of the
work, men on earth doing the other part. After the ordination of the men on
earth, it is written in God's inspired Word that they were sent forth by the
Holy Spirit.
And see how this partnership calls to new prayer and fasting. They had
for a certain time been ministering to the Lord and fasting, perhaps days. The
Holy Spirit speaks, and they have to do the work and to enter into partnership,
and at once they come together for more prayer and fasting. That is the spirit
in which they obey the command of their Lord. And that teaches us that it is not
only in the beginning of our Christian work, but all along, that we need to have
our strength in prayer. If there is one thought with regard to the Church of
Christ which at times comes to me with overwhelming sorrow; if there is one
thought in regard to my own life of which I am ashamed; if there is one thought
of which I feel that the Church of Christ has not accepted and not grasped; if
there is one thought which makes me pray to God: "Oh, teach us by Your
grace, new things"-it is the wonderful power that prayer is meant to have
in the Kingdom. We have so little availed ourselves of it.
We have all- read the expression of Christian in Bunyan's great work,
when he found he had the key in his breast that should unlock the dungeon. We
have the key that can unlock the dungeon of atheism for us. The Holy Spirit,
into whose hands God has put the work, has been called "the executive of
the Holy Trinity." The Holy Spirit has not only power, but He has the
Spirit of love. He is brooding over this dark world and every sphere of work in
it, and He is willing to bless. And why is there not more blessing? There can be
only one answer. We have not honored the Holy Spirit as we should have done. Is
there one who can say that that is not true? Is not every thoughtful heart ready
to cry: "God forgive me that I have not honored the Holy Spirit as I should
have done, that I have grieved Him, that I have allowed self, the flesh, and my
own will to work where the Holy Spirit should have been honored! May God forgive
me that I have allowed self, the flesh, and the will to actually have the place
that God wanted the Holy Spirit to have."
Oh, the sin is greater than we know! No wonder that there is so much
feebleness and failure in the
PETER'S REPENTANCE
"And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered
the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt
deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly" (Luke 22:61, 62).
That was the turning point in the life of Peter. Christ had said to him:
"Thou canst not follow me now" (John 13:36). Peter was not in a fit
state to follow Christ, because he had not been brought to an end of himself. He
did not know himself, and he therefore could not follow Christ. But when he went
out and wept bitterly, then came the great change. Christ previously said to
him: "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke 22:32).
Here is the point Where Peter was converted from self to Christ.
I thank God for the story of Peter. I do not know a man in the Bible who
gives us greater comfort. When we look at his character, so full of failures,
and at what Christ made him by the power of the Holy Spirit, there is hope for
every one of us. But remember, before Christ could fill Peter with the Holy
Spirit and make a new man of him, he had to go out and weep bitterly; he had to
be humbled. If we want to understand this, I think there are four points that we
must look at. First, let us look at Peter the devoted disciple of Jesus; next,
at Peter as he lived the life of self; then, at Peter in his repentance; and
last, at what Christ made of Peter by the Holy Spirit.
PETER THE DEVOTED DISCIPLE OF CHRIST
Christ called Peter to forsake his nets and follow Him. Peter did it at
once, and afterward he could rightly say to the Lord:
"We have forsaken all and followed thee" (Matthew 19:27).
Peter was a man of absolute surrender; he gave up all to follow Jesus.
Peter was also a man of ready obedience. You remember Christ said to him,
"Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets." Peter the
fisherman knew there were no fish there, for they had been fishing all night and
had caught nothing; but he said: "At thy word I will let down the net"
(Luke 5:4,5). He submitted to the word of Jesus. Further, he was a man of great
faith. When he saw Christ walking on the sea, he said: "Lord, if it be
thou, bid me come unto thee" (Matthew 14:-28). At the voice of Christ, he
stepped out of the boat and walked on the water.
And Peter was a man of spiritual insight. When Christ asked the
disciples: "Whom say ye that I am?"
Peter was able to answer: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God." And Christ said: "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
heaven" (Matthew 16:15-17). And Christ spoke of him as the rock man, and of
his having the keys of the Kingdom. Peter was a splendid man, a devoted disciple
of Jesus, and if he were living now, everyone would say that he was an advanced
Christian. And yet how much there was wanting in Peter!
PETER LIVING THE LIFE OF SELF
You recollect that just after Christ had said to him: "Flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven,"
Christ began to speak about His sufferings, and Peter dared to say, "Be it
far from thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee." Then Christ had to say:
"Get thee behind me, Satan; for thou savorest not the things that be of
God, but those that be of men" (Matthew 16:22-23).
There was Peter in his self-will, trusting his own wisdom, and actually
forbidding Christ to go and die. Where did that come from? Peter trusted in
himself and his own thoughts about divine things. We see later on, more than
once, that the disciples questioned who should be the greatest among them. Peter
was one of them, and he thought he had a right to the very first place. He
sought his own honor above the others. The life of self was strong in Peter. He
had left his boats and his nets, but not his old self.
When Christ had spoken to him about His sufferings, and said: "Get
thee behind me, Satan," He followed it up by saying: "If any man will
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me"
(Matthew 16:24). No man can follow Him unless he does that. Self must be utterly
denied. What does that mean? When Peter denied Christ, we read that he said
three times: "I know Him not" (Luke 22:57). In other words he said,
"I have nothing to do with Him; He and I are not friends. I deny having any
connection with Him." Christ told Peter that he must deny self. Self must
be ignored, and its every claim rejected. That is the root of true discipleship.
But Peter did not understand it and could not obey it. And what happened? When
the last night came, Christ said to him:
"Before the cock crow twice thou shalt deny me thrice" (Mark
14:30).
But with self-confidence Peter said: "Though all shall be offended,
yet will not !. I am ready to go with thee, to prison and to death" (Mark
14:29; Luke 22:33).
Peter meant it honestly, and he really intended to do it; but Peter did
not know himself. He did not believe he was as bad as Jesus said he was.
We perhaps think of individual sins that come between us and God. But
what are we to do with that sell'-life which is all unclean-our very nature?
What are we to do with that flesh that is entirely under the power of sin?
Deliverance from that is what we need. Peter knew it not, and therefore it was
in selfconfidence that he went forth and denied his Lord.
Notice how Christ uses that word deny twice. He said to Peter the first
time, "Deny himself" (Matthew 16:24); He said to Peter the second
time, "Thou shalt deny me" (Matthew 26:34). It is either of the two.
There is no other choice for us; we must either deny self or deny Christ. There
are two great powers fighting each otherthe self-nature in the power of sin, and
Christ in the power of God. Either of these must rule within us.
It was self that made the devil. He was an angel of God, but he wanted to
exalt self. He became a devil in hell. Self was the cause of the fall of man.
Eve wanted something for herself, and so our first parents fell into all the
wretchedness of sin. We, their children, have inherited an awful nature of sin.
PETER'S REPENTANCE
Peter denied his Lord three times, and then the Lord looked upon him.
That look of Jesus broke Peter's heart. The terrible sin that he had committed,
the terrible failure that had come, and the depth into which he had fallen
suddenly opened up before him. Then, "Peter went out and wept
bitterly."
Oh! who can tell what that repentance must have been? During the
following hours of that night, and the next day-when he saw Christ crucified and
buried, and the next day, the Sabbath-oh, what hopeless despair and shame he
must have felt!
"My Lord is gone; my hope is gone; and I denied my Lord. After that
life of love, after that blessed fellowship of three years, I denied my Lord.
God have mercy upon me!"
I do not think we can imagine the depth of humiliation Peter sank into
then. But that was the turning point and the change. On the first day of the
week, Christ was seen by Peter, and in the evening He met him with the others.
Later on at the
PETER TRANSFORMED
Now, Peter was prepared for deliverance from self, and that is my last
thought. You know Christ took him with the others to the footstool of the
throne, and told them to wait there. Then, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy
Spirit came, and Peter was a changed man. I do not want you to think only of the
change in Peter, in that boldness, that power, that insight into the Scriptures,
and that blessing with which he preached that day. Thank God for that. But there
was something deeper and better which happened to Peter. His whole nature was
changed. The work that Christ began in Peter when He looked upon him was
perfected when he was filled with the Holy Spirit.
If you want to see that, read the first epistle of Peter. You know
wherein Peter's failings lay. When he said to Christ, in effect: "Thou
never canst suffer; it cannot be"-it showed he did not have a conception of
what it was to pass through death into life. Christ said: "Deny
thyself," and in spite of that he denied his Lord. When Christ warned him:
"Thou shalt deny me" (Matthew 26:34), and he insisted that he never
would, Peter showed how little he understood what there was in himself. But when
I read his epistle and hear him say: "If ye be reproached for the name of
Christ, happy are ye, for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you"
(I Peter 4:14), then I say that it is not the old Peter, but that it is the very
Spirit of Christ breathing and speaking within him.
I read again how he says: "Hereunto were ye called, to suffer,
because Christ also suffered" (I Peter 2:21). 1 understand what a change
had come over Peter. Instead of denying Christ, he found joy and pleasure in
having self denied, crucified, and given up to the death. And therefore, we read
in Acts that when he was called before the Council he could boldly say: "We
ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29), and that he could return
with the other disciples and rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer for
Christ's name.
You remember his self-exaltation; but now he has found out that "the
ornament of a meek and quiet spirit is in the sight of God of great price"
(I Peter 3:4). Again he tells us to be "subject one to another, and be
clothed with humility" (I Peter 5:5).
Dear friend, I implore you, look at Peter utterly changed-the
self-pleasing, the self-trusting, the self-seeking Peter, full of sin,
continually getting into trouble, foolish and impetuous, now filled with the
Spirit and the life of Jesus. Christ had done it for him by the Holy Spirit.
And now, what is the point in my having thus very briefly pointed to the
story of Peter? That story must be the history of every believer who is really
to be made a blessing by God. That story is a prophecy of what everyone can
receive from God in heaven.
Now, let us just glance hurriedly at what these lessons teach us.
The first lesson is this- You may be a very earnest, godly, devoted
believer, in whom the power of the flesh is still very strong.
That is a very solemn truth. Peter, before he denied Christ, had cast out
devils and had healed the sick. Yet, the flesh had power; and, the flesh had
room in him. Oh, beloved, we have to realize that it is because there is so much
of that selflife in us that the power of God cannot work in us as mightily as He
desires that it should work. Do you realize that the great God is longing to
double His blessing, to give tenfold blessing through us? But there is something
hindering Him, and that something is a proof of nothing but the self-life. We
talk about the pride of Peter, and the impetuosity of Peter, and the self
confidence of Peter. It is all rooted in that one word, self Christ had said,
"Deny self," and Peter had never understood, and never obeyed. Every
failing came out of that.
What a solemn thought, and what an urgent plea for us to cry: Oh God, do
show this to us so that none of us may be living the self-life! It has happened
to people who have been Christians for years; it has happened to people who have
perhaps occupied prominent positions-God found them out and taught them to find
out about themselves. They became utterly ashamed and fell broken before God.
Oh, the bitter shame and sorrow and pain and agony that came to them, until at
last they found that therewas deliverance! Peter went out and wept bitterly.
There may be many godly people in whom the power of the flesh still rules.
And then my second lesson is - It is the work of our blessed Lord Jesus
to disclose the power of self.
How was it that Peter-the carnal Peter, selfwilled Peter, Peter with the
strong self-love-ever became a man of Pentecost and the writer of his epistles?
It was because Christ placed him in charge, and Christ watched over him, and
Christ taught and blessed him. The warnings that Christ had given him were part
of the training. Last of all, there came that look of love. In His suffering,
Christ did not for-get him, but turned around and looked upon him, and
"Peter went out and wept bitterly." And the Christ who led Peter to
Pentecost is waiting today to take charge of every heart that is willing to
surrender itself to Him.
Are there not some saying: "Ah! that is the problem with me; it is
always the self-life, selfcomfort, self-consciousness, selfpleasing, and self
will. How am I to get rid of it?"
My answer is: It is Christ Jesus who can rid you of it. No one else but
Christ Jesus can give deliverance from the power of self. And what does He ask
you to do? He asks that you should humble yourself before Him.
IMPOSSIBLE WITH MAN, POSSIBLE
WITH GOD
"And he said, the things which are impossible with men are possible
with God" (Luke 18:27).
Christ had said to the rich young ruler, "Sell all that thou hast
... and come, follow me." The young man went away sorrowful. Christ then
turned to the disciples,: and said: "How hardly shall they that have riches
enter into the
The text contains two thoughts-that in the question of salvation and of
following Christ by a holy life, it is impossible for man to do it. And then
alongside that is the thought-- What is impossible with man is possible with
God.
These two thoughts mark the two great lessons that man has to learn in
the Christian life. It often takes a long time to learn the first lesson-that in
the Christian life man can do nothing, that salvation is impossible to man. And
often a man learns that, and yet he does not learn the second lesson-what has
been impossible to him is possible with God. Blessed is the man who learns both
lessons! The learning of them marks stages in the Christian's life.
MAN CANNOT
The one stage is when a man is trying to do his utmost and fails, when a
man tries to do better and falls again, when a man tries much more and always
fails. And yet, very often he does not even then learn the lesson: With man it
is impossible to serve God and Christ. Peter spent three years in Christ's
school, and he never learned, it is impossible, until he had denied his Lord,
went out, and wept bitterly. Then he learned it.
Just look for a moment at a man who is learning this lesson. At first, he
fights against it. Then, he submits to it, but reluctantly and in despair. At
last, he accepts it A,llllngly and rejoices in it. At the beginning of the
Christian life, the young convert has no conception of this truth. He has been
converted; he has the joy of the Lord in his heart; he begins to run the race
and fight the battle. He is sure he can conquer, for he is earnest and honest,
and God will help him. Yet, somehow, very soon he fails where he did not expect
it, and sin gets the better of him. He is disappointed, but he thinks: "I
was not cautious enough. I did not make my resolutions strong enough." And
again he vows, and again he prays, and yet he fails. He thinks: "Am I not,
a redeemed man? Have I not the life of God within me?" And he thinks again:
"Yes, and I have Christ to help me. I can live the holy life."
At a later period, he comes to another state of mind. He begins to see
such a life is impossible, but he does not accept it. There are multitudes of
Christians who come to this point: "I cannot." They then think that
God never expected them to do what they cannot do. If you tell them that God
does expect it, it is a mystery to them. A good many Christians are living a low
life-a life of failure and of sin-instead of rest and victory, because they
began to say: "I cannot, it is impossible." And yet they do not
understand it fully. So, under the impression, I cannot, they give way to
despair. They will do their best, but they never expect to get on very far.
But God leads His children on to a third stage. A man comes to take, it
is impossible, in its full truth, and yet at the same time says: "I must do
it, and I will do it-it is impossible for man, and yet I must do it." The
renewed will begins to exercise its whole power, and in intense longing and
prayer begins to cry to God: "Lord, what is the meaning of this? How am I
to be freed from the power of sin?"
It is the state of the regenerate man in Romans, chapter seven. There you
will find the Christian man trying his very utmost to live a holy life. God's
law has been revealed to him as reaching down into the very depth of the desires
of the heart. The man can dare to say:
"I delight in the law of God after the inward man. To will what is
good is present with me. My heart loves the law of God, and my will has chosen
that law."
Can a man like that fail, with his heart full of delight in God's law and
with his will determined to do 'What is right? Yes. That is what Romans, chapter
seven teaches us. There is something more needed. Not only must I delight in the
law of God after the inward man and will what God wills, but I need a divine
omnipotence to work it in me. And that is what the apostle Paul teaches in
Philippians 2:13: "It is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do
of his good pleasure."
Note the contrast. In Romans, chapter seven, the regenerate man says:
"To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find
not" (Romans 7:18). But in Philippians, chapter two, you have a man who has
been led on farther. He is a man who understands that when God has worked the
renewed will, God will give the power to accomplish what that will desires. Let
us receive this as the first great lesson in the spiritual life: "It is
impossible for me, my God. Let there be an end of the flesh and all its powers,
an end of self, and let it be my glory to be helpless.
Praise God for the divine teaching that makes us helpless!
When you thought of absolute surrender to God, were you not brought to an
end of yourself? Did you not feel that you could see how you actually could live
as a -nan absolutely surrendered to God every moment of the day-at your table,
in your house, in your business, in the midst of trials and temptations? I pray
you learn the lesson now. If you felt you could not do it, you are on the right
road, if you let yourselves be led. Accept that position, and maintain it before
God: "My heart's desire and delight, 0 God, is absolute surrender, but I
cannot perform it. It is impossible for me to live that life. it is beyond
me." Fall down and learn that when you are utterly helpless, God will come
to work in you not only to will, but also to do.
GOD CAN
Now comes the second lesson. "The things which are impossible with
men are possible with God. "
I said a little while ago that there is many a man who has learned the
lesson, it is impossible with men, and then he gives up in helpless despair. He
lives a wretched Christian life, without joy or strength or victory. And why?
Because he does not humble himself to learn that other lesson: With God all
things are possible.
Your Christian life is to be a continuous proof that God works
impossibilities. Your Christian life is to be a series of impossibilities made
possible and actual by God's almighty power. That is what the Christian needs.
He has an almighty God that he worships, and he must learn to understand that he
does not need a little of God's power. But, he needs-with reverence be it
said-the whole of God's omnipotence to keep him right, and to live like a
Christian.
The whole of Christianity is a work of God's omnipotence. Look at the
birth of Christ Jesus. That was a miracle of divine power, and it was said to
Mary: "With God nothing shall be impossible" (Luke 1:37). It was the
omnipotence of God. Look at Christ's resurrection. We are taught that it was
according to the exceeding greatness of His mighty power that God raised Christ
from the dead.
Every tree must grow on the root from which it springs. An oak tree three
hundred years old grows all the time on the one root from which it had its
beginning. Christianity had its beginning in the omnipotence of God. In every
soul, Christianity must have its continuance in that omnipotence. All the
possibilities of the higher Christian life have their origin in a new
understanding of Christ's power to work all God's will in us.
I want to call on you now to come and worship an almighty God. Have you
learned to do it? Have you learned to deal so closely with an almighty God that
you know omnipotence is working in you? In outward appearance there is often
little sign of it.
The apostle Paul said: "I was with you in weakness and in fear and
in much trembling, and ... my preaching was ... in demonstration of the Spirit
and of power" (I Corinthians 2:3,4). From the human side there was
feebleness; from the divine side there was divine omnipotence. And that is true
of every godly life. If we would only learn that lesson better, and give a
wholehearted, undivided surrender to it, we would learn what blessedness there
is in dwelling every hour and every moment with an almighty God. Have you ever
studied in the Bible the attribute of God's omnipotence? You know that it was
God's omnipotence that created the world, and created light out of darkness, and
created man. But have you studied God's omnipotence in the works of redemption?
Look at Abraham. When God called him to be the father of that people out
of which Christ was to be born, He said to him: "I am the Almighty God,
walk before me and be thou perfect" (Genesis 17: 1)'. And God trained
Abraham to trust Him as the omnipotent One. Whether it was his going out to a
land that he did not know, or his faith as a pilgrim midst the thousands of
Canaanites-his faith said: "This is my land." Whetherit was his faith
in waiting twenty-five years for a son in his old age, against all hope, or
whether it was the raising up of Isaac from the dead on
The cause of the weakness of your Christian life is that you want to work
it out partly, and to let God help you. And that cannot be. You must come to be
utterly helpless, to let God work. He will work gloriously. It is this that we
need if we are indeed to be workers for God. I could go through Scripture and
prove to you how Moses, when he led
Remember what we have said about Peter, his self-confidence, self-power,
self-will, and how he came to deny his Lord. You feel, "Ah! there is the
self-life; there is the fleshlife that rules in me!" And now, have you
believed that there is deliverance from that? Have you believed that Almighty
God is able to reveal Christ in your heart, to let the Holy Spirit rule in you
so that the self-life will not have power or dominion over you? Have you coupled
the two together- and, with tears of penitence and with deep humiliation and
feebleness, cried out: "O God, it is impossible to me; man cannot do it,
but glory to Your name, it is possible with God"? Have you claimed
deliverance? Do it now. Put yourself afresh in absolute surrender into the hands
of a God of infinite love. As infinite as His love is His power to do it.
GOD WORKS IN MAN
But again, we come to the question of absolute surrender, and feel that
that is lacking in the
Some are weary of thinking about sanctification. You pray; you have
longed and cried for it; and yet, it appeared so far off! You are so conscious
of how distant the holiness and humility of Jesus is. Beloved friends, the one
doctrine of sanctification that is scriptural and real and effectual is:
"The things which are impossible with men are possible with God." God
can sanctify men. By His almighty and sanctifying power, God can keep them every
moment. Oh, that we might get a step nearer to our God now! Oh, that the light
of God might shine, and that we might know our God better!
I could go on to speak about the life of Christ in us-living like Christ,
taking Christ as our Savior from sin, and as our life and strength. It is God in
heaven who can reveal that in you. What does that prayer of the apostle Paul
say: "That he would grant you according to riches of his glory, to be
strength- ened with might by his Spirit in the inner man" (Ephesians 3:16)?
Do you not see that it is an omnipotent God working by His omnipotence in the
heart of His believing children, so that Christ can become an indwelling Savior?
You have tried to grasp it, understand it, and to believe it, and it would not
come. It was because you had not been brought to believe that "the things
which are impossible with men are possible with God."
And so I trust that the word spoken about love may have brought many to
see that we must have an inflowing of love in quite a new way. Our heart must be
filled with life from above- from the Fountain of everlasting love-if it is
going to overflow all day. Then it will be just as natural for us to love our
fellow-men as it is natural for the lamb to be gentle and the wolf to be cruel.
When I am brought to such a state that the more a man hates and speaks evil of
me--the more unlikable and unlovable a man isthe more I will love him. When I am
brought to such a state that the more obstacles, hatred, and ingratitude
surround me, the more the power of love can triumph in me. Until I am brought to
see these, I am not saying: "It is impossible with men." But if you
have been led to say: "This message has spoken to me about a love utterly
beyond my power. It is absolutely impossible"-then we can come to God and
say: "It is possible with You."
Some are crying to God for a great revival. I can say that this is the
unceasing prayer of my heart. Oh, if God would only revive His believing people!
I cannot think of the unconverted formalists of the Church or of the infidels
and skeptics or of all the wretched and perishing around me, without my heart
pleading: "My God, revive Your Church and people." It is not for a
lack of reason that thousands of hearts yearn after holiness and consecration.
It is a forerunner of God's power. God works to will and then He works to do.
These yearnings are a witness and a proof that God has worked to will. Oh, let
us in faith believe that the omnipotent God will work to do among His people
more than we can ask. "Unto him," Paul said, "that is able to do
exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,. unto him be glory"
(Ephesians 3:20,21). Let our hearts say that. Glory to God, the omnipotent One,
who can do above what we dare to ask or think!
"The things which are impossible with men are possible with
God." All around you there is a world of sin and sorrow, and Satan is
there. But remember, Christ is on the throne; Christ is stronger; Christ has
conquered; and Christ will conquer. But wait on God. My text casts us down:
"The things which are impossible with men", but it ultimately lifts us
up high-"are possible with God." Get linked to God. Adore and trust
Him as the omnipotent One, not only for your own life, but for all the souls
that are entrusted to you. Never pray without adoring His omnipotence, saying:
"Mighty God, I claim Your almightiness. " And the answer to the prayer
will come. Like Abraham you will become strong in faith, giving glory to God,
because you account Him who has promised able to perform.
"0 WRETCHED MAN THAT I
AM!"
"0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of
this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:24,25).
You know the wonderful location that this text has in the epistle to the
Romans. It stands here at the end of the seventh chapter as the gateway into the
eighth. In the first sixteen verses of the eighth chapter, the name of the Holy
Spirit is found sixteen times. You have there the description and promise of the
life that a child of God can live in the power of the Holy Spirit. This begins
in the second verse: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath
made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2). From that, Paul
goes on to speak of the great privileges of the child of God who is to be led by
the Spirit of God. The gateway into all this is found at the end of chapter
seven: "0 wretched man that I am!" There you have the words of a man
who has come to the end of himself. He has in the previous verses described how
he had struggled and wrestled in his own power to obey the holy law of God, and
had failed. But in answer to his own questions, he now finds the true answer and
cries out: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." From that he
goes on to speak of what that deliverance is that he has found.
I want, from these words, to describe the path by which a man can be led
out of the spirit of bondage into the spirit of liberty. You know how distinctly
it is said: "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear"
(Romans 8:15). We are continually warned that this is the great danger of the
Christian life, to go again into bondage. I want to describe the path by which a
man can get out of bondage into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Rather, I want to describe the man himself.
First, these words are the language of a regenerate man; second, of a
weak man; third, of a wretched man; and fourth, of a man on the border of
complete liberty.
THE REGENERATE MAN
There is much evidence of regeneration from the fourteenth verse of
chapter seven on to the twenty-third verse. "It is no more I that do it,
but sin that dwelleth in me" (Romans 7:17). That is the language of a
regenerate man-a man who knows that his heart and nature have been renewed, and
that sin is now a power in him that is not himself. "I delight in the law
of God after the inward man" (Romans 7:22). That again is the language of a
regenerate man. He dares to say when he does evil: "It is no more I that do
it, but sin that dwelleth me." It is of great importance to understand
this,
In the first two great sections of the epistle, Paul deals with
justification and sanctification. In dealing with justification, he lays the
foundation of the doctrine in the teaching about sin. He does not speak of the
singular sin, but of the plural, sins-the actual transgressions. In the second
part of the fifth chapter, he begins to deal with sin, not as actual
transgression, but as a power. Just imagine what a loss it would have been to us
if we did not have this second half of the seventh chapter of the epistle to the
Romans-if Paul had omitted in his teaching this vital question of the sinfulness
of the believer. We should 'have missed the question we all want answered as to
sin in the believer. What is the answer? The regenerate man is one in whom the
will has been renewed, and who can say: "I delight in the law of God after
the inward man."
THE WEAK MAN
Here is the great mistake made by many Christian people-they think that
when there is a renewed ,will, it is enough. But that is not the case. This
regenerate man tells us: "I will to do what is good, but the power to
perform I find not." How often people tell us that if you set yourself
determinedly, you can perform what you will! But this man was as determined as
any man can be, and yet he made the confession: "To will is present with
me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not" (Romans 7:18).
But, you ask: "How is it God makes a regenerate man utter such a
confession? He being with a right will, with a heart that longs to do good, and
longs to do its very utmost to love God?"
Let us look at this question. What has God given us our will for? Had the
angels who fell, in their own will, the strength to stand? Surely, no. The will
of man is nothing but an empty vessel in which the power of God is to be made
manifest. Man must seek in God all that is to be. You have it in the second
chapter of the epistle to the Philippians, and you have it here also, that God's
work is to work in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Here is a man
who appears to say: "God has not worked to do in me." But we are
taught that God works both to will and to do. How is the apparent contradiction
to be reconciled?
You will find that in this passage (Romans 7:6-25), the name of the Holy
Spirit does not occur once, nor does the name of Christ occur. The man is
wrestling and struggling to fulfill God's law. Instead of the Holy Spirit and of
Christ, the law is mentioned nearly twenty times. In this chapter, it shows a
believer doing his very best to obey the law of God with his regenerate will.
Not only this; but you will find the little words, I, me, my, occur more than
forty times. It is the regenerate I in its weakness seeking to obey the law
without being filled with the Spirit. This is the experience of almost every
saint. After conversion, a man begins to do his best, and he fails. But if we
are brought into the full light, we no longer need to fail. Nor need we fail at
all if we have received the Spirit in His fullness at conversion.
God allows that failure so that the regenerate man should be taught his
own utter inability. It is in the course of this struggle that the sense of our
utter sinfulness comes to us. It is God's way of dealing with us. He allows man
to strive to fulfill the law so that, as he strives and wrestles, he may be
brought to this: "I am a regenerate child of God, but I am utterly helpless
to obey His law." See what strong words are used all through the chapter to
describe this condition: "I am carnal, sold under sin" (Romans 7:14);
"1 see another law in my members bringing me into captivity" (Romans
7:23); and last of all, "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24). This believer who bows here in
deep contrition is utterly unable to obey the law of God.
THE WRETCHED MAN
Not only is the man who makes this confession a regenerate and a weak
man, but he is also a wretched man. He is utterly unhappy and miserable. What is
it that makes him so utterly miserable? It is because God has given him a nature
that loves Himself. He is deeply wretched because he feels he is not obeying his
God. He says, with brokenness of heart: "It is not I that do it, but I am
under the awful power of sin, which is holding me down. It is 1, and yet not 1:
alas! alas! it is myself; so closely am I bound up with it, and so closely is it
intertwined with my very nature." Blessed be God when a man learns to say:
"0 wretched man that I am!" from the depth of his heart. He is on the
way to the eighth chapter of Romans.
There are many who make this confession a pillow for sin. They say that
if Paul had to confess his weakness and helplessness in this way, who are they
that they should try to do better? So the call to holiness is quietly set aside.
Pray God that every one of us would learn to say these words in the very spirit
in which they are written here! When we hear sin spoken of as the abominable
thing that God hates, do not many of us wince before the word? If only all
Christians who go on sinning and sinning would take this verse to heart. If ever
you utter a sharp word say: "0 wretched man that I am!" And every time
you lose your temper, kneel down and under stand that God never meant His child
to remain in this state. If only we would take this word into our daily life,
and say it every time we are touched about our own honor! If only we would take
it into our hearts every time we say sharp things, and every time we sin against
the Lord God, and against the Lord Jesus Christ in His humility and in His
obedience and in His self-sacrifice! Pray God that we could forget everything
else, and cry out: "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?"
Why should you say this whenever you commit sin? Because it is when a man
is brought to this confession that deliverance is at hand. And remember, it was
not only the sense of being weak and taken captive that made him wretched. It
was, above all, the sense of sinning against his God. The law was doing its
work, making sin exceedingly sinful in his sight. The thought of continually
grieving God became utterly unbearable. It was this that brought forth the
piercing cry: "0 wretched man!" As long as we talk and reason about
our inability and our failure, and only try to find out what Romans, chapter
seven, means, it will profit us little. But once every sin gives new intensity
to the sense of wretchedness, and we feel our whole state as one of not only
helplessness, but actual, exceeding sinfulness, we will be pressed not only to
ask: "Who shall deliver us?" but to cry: "I thank God through
Jesus Christ my Lord."
THE ALMOST-DELIVERED MAN
The man has tried to obey the beautiful law of God. He has loved it; he
has wept over his sin; and he has tried to conquer. He has tried to overcome
fault after fault, but every time he has ended in failure. What did he mean by
"the body of this death"? Did he mean, my body when I die? Surely not.
In the eighth chapter, you have the answer to this question in the words:
"If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall
live" (Romans 8:13). That is the body of death from which he is seeking
deliverance.
And now he is on the brink of deliverance! In, the twenty-third
verse of
the seventh chapter, we have the words: "I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of
sin which is in my members." It is a captive that cries: "0 wretched
man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body I of this death?" He is a
man who feels himself bound. But look to the contrast in the second verse of the
eighth chapter: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me
free from the law of sin and death." That is the deliverance through Jesus
Christ our Lord, the liberty to the captive which the Spirit brings. Can you
keep captive any longer a man made free by the "law of the Spirit of life
in Christ Jesus"?
But you say, the regenerate man did not have the Spirit of Jesus when he
spoke in the sixth chapter. Yes, he did not know what the Holy Spirit could do
for him.
God does not work by His Spirit as He works by a blind force in nature.
He leads His people on as reasonable, intelligent beings. Therefore, when He
wants to give us that Holy Spirit whom He has promised, He first brings us to
the end of sel brings us to the conviction that though we have been striving to
obey the law, we have failed. When we have come to the end of that, then He
shows us that in the Holy Spirit we have the power of obedience, the power of
victory, and the power of real holiness. God works to will, and He is ready to
work to do, but many Christians misunderstand this. They think because they have
the will, it is enough, and that now they are able to do. This is not so. The
new will is a permanent gift, an attribute of the new nature. The power to do is
not a permanent gift, but must be received each moment from the Holy Spirit. It
is the man who is conscious of his own weakness as a believer who will learn
that by the Holy Spirit he can live a holy life. This man is on the brink of
that great deliverance; the way has been prepared for the glorious eighth
chapter. I now ask this solemn question: Where are you living? With you, is it,
"0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me? " with now and then a
little experience of the power of the Holy Spirit? Or is it, "I thank God
through Jesus Christ! The law of the Spirit hath set me free from the law of sin
and of death"?
What the Holy Spirit does is to give the victory. "If ye through the
Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (Romans 8:13). It
is the Holy Spirit who does this-the third Person of the Godhead. It is He who,
when the heart is opened wide to receive Him, comes in and reigns there, and
mortifies the deeds of the body, day by day, hour by hour, and moment by moment.
I want to bring this to a point. Remember, dear friend, what we need is
to come to decision and action. There are in Scripture two very different sorts
of Christians. The Bible speaks in Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians about
yielding to the flesh; and that is the life of tens of thousands of believers.
All their lack of joy in the Holy Spirit, and their lack of the liberty He
gives, is just owing to the flesh. The Spirit is within them, but the flesh
rules the life. To be led by the Spirit of God is what they need. If only I
could make every child of His realize what it means that the everlasting God has
given His dear Son, Christ Jesus, to watch over you every day, and that what you
have to do is to trust. If only I could make His children understand that the
work of the Holy Spirit is to enable you every moment to remember Jesus, and to
trust Him! The Spirit has come to keep the link with Him unbroken every moment.
Praise God for the Holy Spirit! We are so accustomed to thinking of the Holy
Spirit as a luxury, for special times, or for special ministers and men. But the
Holy Spirit is necessary for every believer, every moment of the day. Praise God
you have Him, and that He gives you the full experience of the deliverance in
Christ as He makes you free from the power of sin.
Who longs to have the power and the liberty of the Holy Spirit? Oh,
brother, bow before God in one final cry of despair: "0 God, must I go on
sinning this way forever? Who shall deliver me, 0 wretched man that I am! from
the body of this death?"
Are you ready to sink before God in that cry and seek the power of Jesus
to live and work in you? Are you ready to say: "I thank God through Jesus
Christ"?
What good does it do that we go to church or attend conventions, 'that we
study our Bibles and pray, unless our lives are filled with the Holy Spirit?
That is what God wants. Nothing else will enable us to live a life of power and
peace. When a minister or parent is using the catechism, and a question is
asked, an answer is expected. How sad that many Christians are content with the
question put here: "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?" but never give the answer.
Instead of answering, they are silent. Instead of saying: "I thank
God through Jesus Christ our Lord," they are forever repeating the question
without the answer. If you want the path to the full deliverance of Christ, and
the liberty of the Spirit-the glorious liberty of the children of God-take it
through the seventh chapter of Romans. Then say: "I thank God through Jesus
Christ our Lord." Do not be content to remain ever groaning, but say:
"I, a wretched man, thank God, through Jesus Christ. Even though I do not
see it all, I am going to praise God. "
There is deliverance; there is the liberty of the Holy Spirit. The
"HAVING BEGUN IN THE
SPIRIT"
The words from which I wish to address you, you will find in the epistle
to the Galatians, the third chapter, the second and third verses: "This
only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by
the hearing of faith?
Are ye so foolish?" And then comes my text-"Having begun in the
Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?"
When we speak of the quickening or the deepening or the strengthening of
the spiritual life, we are thinking of something that is feeble and wrong and
sinful. It is a great thing to take our place before God with the confession:
"Oh, God, our spiritual life is not what it should be!" May God work
that in your heart, reader.
As we look around at the Church, we see so many indications of
feebleness, failure, sin, and shortcoming. They compel us to ask: Why is it? Is
there any necessity for the
Every believing heart must answer: It is possible.
Then comes the great question: Why is it, how is it to be accounted for,
that God's Church as a whole is so feeble, and that the great majority of
Christians are not living up to their privileges? There must be a reason for it.
Has God not given Christ His Almighty Son to be the Keeper of every believer, to
make Christ an ever-present reality, and to impart and communicate to us all
that we have in Christ? God has given His Son, and God has given His Spirit. How
is it that believers do not live up to their privileges?
In more than one of the epistles, we find a very solemn answer to that
question. There are epistles, such as the first to the Thessalonians, where Paul
writes to the Christians, in effect: "I want you to grow, to abound, to
increase more and more." They were young, and there were things lacking in
their faith. But their state was so far satisfactory, gave him such great joy,
that he writes time after time: "I pray God that you may abound more and
more; I write to you to increase more and more" (I Thessalonians 4: 1,10).
But there are other epistles where he takes a very different tone, especially
the epistle to the Corinthians and to the Galatians, and he tells them in many
different ways what the one reason was that they were .not living as Christians
ought to live. Many were under the power of the flesh. My text is one example.
He reminds them that by the preaching of faith they had received the Holy
Spirit. He had preached Christ to them; they had accepted that Christ and had
received the Holy Spirit in power.
But what happened? Having begun in the Spirit, they tried to perfect the
work that the Spirit had begun in the flesh by their own effort. We find the
same teaching in the epistle to the Corinthians.
Now, we have here a solemn discovery of what the great need is in the
Now, let us try to learn what this word to the Galatians teaches us-some
very simple thoughts. It shows us how (1) the beginning of the Christian life is
receiving the Holy Spirit. It shows us (2) what great danger there is of
forgetting that we are to live know what it is, since that time, to walk in the
power of the Holy Spirit. Let us try to take hold of this great truth: The
beginning of the true Christian life is to receive the Holy Spirit. And the work
of every Christian minister is that which was the work of Paul-to remind his
people that they received the Holy Spirit, and must live according to His
guidance and in His power.
If those Galatians who received the Holy Spirit in power were tempted to
go astray by that terrible danger of perfecting in the flesh what had been begun
in the Spirit, how much more danger do those Christians run who hardly ever know
that they have received the Holy Spirit. How much more danger is there for those
who, if they know it as a matter of belief, hardly ever think of the gift of the
Holy Spirit, and hardly ever praise God for it!
NEGLECTING THE HOLY SPIRIT
But now look, in the second place, at the great danger.
You may all know what shunting is on a railway. A locomotive with its
train may be traveling in a certain direction, and the points at some place may
not be properly opened or closed, and unobservingly it is shunted off to the
right or to the left. And if that takes place, for instance, on a dark night,
the train goes in the wrong direction, and the people might never know it until
they have gone some distance.
And just so, God gives Christians the Holy Spirit with this
intention-that every day, all their life, should be lived in the power of the
Spirit. A man cannot live one hour of a godly life unless by the power of the
Holy Spirit. He may live a proper, consistent life, as people call it, an
irreproachable life, a life of virtue and diligent service. But to live a life
acceptable to God, in the enjoyment of God's salvation and God's love, to live
and walk in the power of the new life-he cannot do it unless he is guided by the
Holy Spirit every day and every hour.
But now listen to the danger. The Galatians received the Holy Spirit, but
what was begun by the Spirit they tried to perfect in the flesh. How? They fell
back again under Judaizing teachers who told them they must be circumcised. They
began to seek their religion in external observances. And so Paul uses that
expression about those teachers who had them circumcised so "that they may
glorify in your flesh" (Galatians 6:13).
You sometimes hear the expression used, religious flesh. What is meant by
that? It is simply an expression made to give utterance to these thoughts: My
human nature and my human will and my human effort can be very active in
religion. After being converted, and after receiving the Holy Spirit, I may
begin in my own strength to try to serve God.
I may be very diligent and doing a great deal, and yet all the time it is
more the work of human flesh than of God's Spirit. What a solemn thought, that
man can, without noticing, be shunted off from the line of the Holy Spirit onto
the line of the flesh.
How solemn it is that man can be most diligent and make great sacrifices,
and yet it is all in the power of the human will! Ah, the great question for us
to ask of God in self-examination is that we may be shown whether our Christian
life is lived more in the power of the flesh than in the power of the Holy
Spirit. A man may be a preacher, he may work most diligently in his ministry, a
man may be a Christian worker, and others may say of him that he makes great
sacrifices, and yet you can feel there is something lacking. You feel that he is
not a spiritual man; there is no spirituality about his life. How many
Christians there are about whom no one would ever think of saying: "What a
spiritual man he is!" Ah! there is the weakness of the
Now, the flesh may manifest itself in many ways. It may be manifested in
fleshly wisdom. My mind may be most active about Christianity. I may preach or
write or think or meditate, and delight in being occupied with things in God's
Book and in God's Kingdom. Yet, the power of the Holy Spirit may be markedly
absent. I fear that if you take the preaching throughout the Church of Christ
and ask why there is so little converting power in the preaching of the Word,
why there is so much work and often so little result for eternity, why the Word
has so little power to build up believers in holiness and in consecration-the
answer will be: It is the absence of the power of the Holy Spirit. And why is
this? There can be no other reason except that the flesh and human energy have
taken the place that the Holy Spirit ought to have. That was true of the
Galatians; it was true of the Corinthians. You know Paul said to them: "I
could not speak unto you as unto spiritual men, but as unto carnal" (1
Corinthians 3:1). And you know how often in the course of his epistle he had to
reprove and condemn them for strife and for divisions.
LACKING THE FRUIT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
A third thought: What are the proofs or indications that a church like
the Galatians, or a Christian, is serving God in the power of the flesh-is
perfecting in the flesh what was begun in the Spirit? The answer is very easy.
Religious self effort always ends in sinful flesh. What was the state of those
Galatians? They were striving to be justified by the works of the law. And yet
they were quarreling and in danger of devouring one another. Count the number of
expressions that the apostle uses to indicate their want of love. You will find
more than twelve-envy, jealousy, bitterness, strife, and all sorts of others.
Read in the fourth and fifth chapters what he says about that. You see how they
tried to serve God in their own-.strength, and they failed utterly. All this
religious effort resulted in failure. The power of sin and the sinful flesh got
the better of them. Their whole condition was one of the saddest that could be
thought of.
This comes to us with unspeakable solemnity.
There is a complaint everywhere in the Christian Church of the lack of a
high standard of integrity and godliness, even among the professing members of
Christian churches. I remember a sermon which I heard preached on commercial
morality. But let us not speak only of the commercial morality or immorality;
let us go into the homes of Christians. Think of the life to which God has
called His children, and which He enables them to live by the Holy Spirit. Think
of how much there is of unlovingness, temper, sharpness, and bitterness. Think
how often there is strife among the members of churches, and how much there is
of envy, jealousy, sensitiveness, and pride. Then we are compelled to say:
"Where are marks of the presence of the Spirit of the Lamb of God?"
Wanting, sadly wanting!
Many people speak of these things as though they were the natural result
of our feebleness and cannot be helped. Many people speak of these things as
sins, yet have given up the hope of conquering them. Many people speak of these
things in the church around them, and do not see the least prospect of ever
having the things changed. There is no prospect until there is a radical change,
until the
Do not let us think, because the blessed Reformation restored the great
doctrine of justification by faith, that the power of the Holy Spirit was then
fully restored. If it is our belief that God is going to have mercy on His
Church in these last ages, it will be because the doctrine and the truth about
the Holy Spirit will not only be studied, but sought after with a whole heart.
It is not only because that truth will be sought after, but because ministers
and congregations will be found bowing before God in deep abasement with one
cry: "We have grieved God's Spirit. We have tried to be Christian churches
with as little as possible of God's Spirit. We have not sought to be churches
filled with the Holy Spirit."
All the feebleness in the Church is owing to the refusal of the Church to
obey its God. And why is that so? I know your answer. You say: "We are too
feeble and too helpless, and we vow to obey, but somehow we fail." Ah yes,
you fail because you do not accept the strength of God. God alone can work out
His will in you. You cannot work out God's will, but His Holy Spirit can. Until
the Church and the believers grasp this, and cease trying by human effort to do
God's will, and wait upon the Holy Spirit to come with all His omnipotent and
enabling power, the Church will never be what God wants her to be. It will never
be what God is willing to make of her.
YIELDING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT
I come now to my last thought, that question: What is the way to
restoration?
Beloved friend, the answer is simple and easy. If that train has been
shunted off, there is nothing for it to do but to come back to the point at
which it was led away. The Galatians had no other way in returning but to come
back to where they had gone wrong. They had to come back from all religious
effort in their own strength, and from seeking anything by their own work, and
to yield themselves humbly to the Holy Spirit. There is no other way for us as
individuals.
Is there any brother or sister whose heart is conscious: "My life
knows little of the power of the Holy Spirit"? I come to you with God's
message that you can have no conception of what your life would be in the power
of the Holy Spirit. It is too high, too blessed, and too wonderful. But I bring
you the message that just as truly as the everlasting Son of God came to this
world and did His wonderful works, that just as truly as on Calvary He died and
brought about your redemption by His precious blood, so can the Holy Spirit come
into your heart. With His divine power, He may sanctify you and enable you to do
God's blessed will, and fill your heart with joy and strength. But, we have
forgotten; we have grieved; we have dishonored the Holy Spirit; and, He has not
been able to do His work. But I bring you the message: The Father in heaven
loves to fill His children with His Holy Spirit. God longs to give each one
individually, separately, the power of the Holy Spirit for daily life. The
command comes to us individually, unitedly. God wants us as His children to
arise and place our sins before Him, and to call on Him for mercy. Oh, are you
so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you perfecting in the flesh that
which was begun in the Spirit? Let us bow in shame, and confess before God how
our fleshly religion, our self-effort and self-confidence, have been the cause
of every failure.
I have often been asked by young Christians: "Why is it that I fail
so? I did so solemnly vow with my whole heart, and did desire to serve God. Why
have I failed?" To such I always give this answer: "My dear friend,
you are trying to do in your own strength what Christ alone can do in you."
And when they tell me: "I am sure I knew Christ alone could do it; I was
not trusting in myself," my answer is: "You were trusting in yourself,
or you could not have failed. If you had trusted Christ, He could not
fail." Oh, this perfecting in the flesh what was begun in the Spirit runs
far deeper through us than we know. Let us ask God to show us that it is only
when we are brought to utter shame and emptiness that we will be prepared to
receive the blessing that comes from on high.
And so I come with these two questions. Are you living, beloved
brother-minister-I ask it of every minister of the Gospel-under the power of the
Holy Spirit? Are you living as an anointed, Spirit-filled man in your ministry
and your life before God? Oh friends, our place is an awful one. We have to show
people what God will do for us, not in our words and teaching, but in our life.
God help us to do it!
I ask it of every member of Christ's Church and of every believer: Are
you living a life under the power of the Holy Spirit day by day? Or are you
attempting to live without that? Remember, you cannot. Are you consecrated,
given up to the Spirit to work in you and to live in you? Oh, come and confess
every failure of temper, every failure of tongue however small. Confess every
failure owing to the absence of the Holy Spirit and the presence of the power of
self. Are you consecrated, are you given up to the Holy Spirit?
If your answer is no, then I come with a second question-Are you willing
to be consecrated? Are you willing to give yourself up to the power of the Holy
Spirit? You well know that the human side of consecration will not help you. I
may consecrate myself a hundred times with all the intensity of my being, and
that will not help me. What will help me is this-that God from heaven accepts
and seals the consecration.
And now are you willing to give yourselves up to the Holy Spirit? You can
do it now. A great deal may still be dark and dim, and beyond what we
understand. You may feel nothing; but come. God alone can work the change. God
alone, who gave us the Holy Spirit, can restore the Holy Spirit in power into
our life. God alone can "strengthen us with might by his Spirit in the
inner man" (Ephesians 3:16). And to every waiting heart that will make the
sacrifice, and give up everything, and give time to cry and pray to God, the
answer will come. The blessing is not far off. Our God delights in helping us.
He will enable us to perfect, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, what was
begun in the Spirit.
KEPT BY THE POWER OF GOD
The words from which I speak, you will find in 1 Peter, chapter one,
verse five. The third, fourth, and fifth verses are: "Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which ...hath begotten us again unto a
lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance
incorruptible . . . reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation." The words of my text are: "Kept by the
power of God through faith."
There we have two wonderful, blessed truths about the way a believer is
kept unto salvation. One truth is, Kept by the power of God; and the other truth
is, Kept through faith. We should look at the two sides-at God's side and His
almighty power, offered to us to be our Keeper every moment of the day; and at
the human side, we have nothing to do but in faith to let God do His keeping
work. We are begotten again to an inheritance kept in heaven for us. We are kept
here on earth by the power of God.
We see there is a double keeping-the inheritance kept for me in heaven,
and I on earth kept for the inheritance there. Now, as to the first part of this
-keeping, there is no doubt and no question. God keeps the inheritance in heaven
very wonderfully and perfectly, and it is waiting there safely. And the same God
keeps me for the inheritance. That is what I want to understand. It is very
foolish for a father to take great trouble to have an inheritance for his
children, and to keep it for them, if he does not keep them for it. Think of a
man spending all of his time and making every sacrifice to amass money, and as
he gets his tens of thousands, you ask him why it is that he sacrifices himself
so. His answer is: "I want to leave my children a large inheritance, and I
am keeping it for them." If you were then to hear that that man takes no
trouble to educate his children, that he, allows them to run around the street
wild, and to go in paths of sin and ignorance and folly, what would you think of
him? Would you not say: "Poor man! he is keeping an inheritance for his
children, but he is not keeping or preparing his children for the
inheritance!" And there are so many Christians who think: "My God is
keeping the inheritance for me." But they cannot believe: "My God is
keeping me for that inheritance." The same power, the same love, the same
God doing the double work.
Now, I want to speak about a work God does upon us, keeping us for the
inheritance. I have already said that we have two very simple truths: the one,
the divine side-we are kept by the power of God; the other, the human side-we
are kept through faith.
KEPT BY THE POWER OF GOD
Look at the divine side: Christians are kept by the power of God. 1)
Keeping Includes All. Think, first of all, that this keeping is all inclusive.
What is kept? You are kept. How much of you? The whole being. Does God
keep one part of you and not another? No. Some people have an idea that this is
a sort of vague, general keeping, and that God will keep them in such a way that
when they die they will get to heaven. But they do not apply that word kept to
everything in their being and nature. And yet that is what God wants.
Here I have a watch. Suppose that this watch had been borrowed from a
friend, and he said to me: "When you go to
"Have I not kept it? There is the watch."
"But I did not want you to keep it in that general way, so that you
should bring me back only the shell of the watch, or the remains. I expected you
to keep every part of it." And so God does not want to keep us in this
general way, so that at the last, somehow or other, we will be saved as by fire,
and just get into heaven. But the keeping power and the love of God applies to
every part of our being.
There are some people who think God will keep them in spiritual things,
but not in temporal things. This latter, they say, lies outside of His realm.
Now, God sends you to work in the world, but He did not say: "I must now
leave you to go and earn your own money, and to get your livelihood for
yourself." He knows you are not able to keep yourself. But God says:
"My child, there is no work you are to do, and no business in which you are
engaged, and not a cent which you are to spend, but I, your Father, will take
that up into my keeping." God not only cares for the spiritual, but for the
temporal, also. The greater part of the life of many people must be spent,
sometimes eight or nine or ten hours a day, amid the temptations and
distractions of business. But God will care for you there. The keeping of God
includes all.
There are other people who think: "Ah! in time of trial God keeps
me. But in times of prosperity I do not need. His keeping; then I forget Him and
let Him go." Others, again, think the very opposite. They think: "In
time of prosperity, when things are smooth and quiet, I am able to cling to God.
But when heavy trials come, somehow or other my will rebels, and God does not
keep me then."
Now, I bring you the message that in prosperity as in adversity, in the
sunshine as in the dark, your God is ready to keep you all the time. Then again,
there are others who think of this keeping thus: "God will keep me from
doing very great wickedness, but there are small sins I cannot expect God to
keep me from. There is the sin of temper. I cannot expect God to conquer
that."
When you hear of some man who has been tempted and gone astray or fallen
into drunkenness or murder, you thank God for His keeping power. "I might
have done the same as that man," you say, "if God had not kept
me." And you believe He kept you from drunkenness and murder. And why do
you not believe that God can keep you from outbreaks of temper? You thought that
this was of less importance. You did not remember that the great commandment of
the New Testament is-"Love one another as I have loved you" (John
13:34). And when your temper and hasty judgment and sharp words came out, you
sinned against the highest law-the law of God's love. And yet you say: "God
will not, God cannot"-no, you will not say, God cannot; but you say,
"God does not keep me from that." You perhaps say: "He can; but
there is something in me that cannot attain to it, and which God does not take
away."
I want to ask you, Can believers live a holier life than is generally
lived? Can believers experience the keeping power of God all day, to keep them
from sin? Can believers be kept in fellowship with God? And I bring you a
message from the Word of God, in these words: Kept by the power of God. There is
no qualifying clause to them. The meaning is, that if you will entrust yourself
entirely and absolutely to the omnipotence of God, He will delight in keeping
you.
Some people think that they can never reach the point that every word of
their mouth would be to the glory of God. But it is what God wants of them; it
is what God expects of them. God is willing to set a watch at the door of their
mouth. If God will do that, can He not keep their tongue and their lips? He can.
That is what God is going to do for those who trust Him. God's keeping is
all-inclusive. Let everyone who longs to live a holy life think about all their
needs, their weaknesses, their shortcomings, and their sins, and say
deliberately: "Is there any sin that my God cannot keep me from?" And
the heart will have to answer: "No, God can keep me from every sin."
2) Keeping Requires Power. Second, if you want to understand this
keeping, remember that it is not only an all-inclusive keeping, but it is an
almighty keeping.
I want to get that truth burned into my soul. I want to worship God until
my whole heart is filled with the thought of His omnipotence. God is almighty,
and the Almighty God offers Himself to work in my heart-to do the work of
keeping me. I want to get linked .with omnipotence, or rather, linked to the
omnipotent One--the living God-and to have my place in the hollow of His hand.
You read the Psalms, and you think of the wonderful thoughts in many of the
expressions that David uses. For instance, when he speaks about being our God,
our Fortress, our Refuge, our strong Tower, our Strength, and our Salvation.
David had wonderful views of how the everlasting God is Himself the hiding place
of the believing soul. David had a beautiful understanding of how God takes the
believer and keeps him in the very hollow of His hand-in the secret of His
pavilion-under the shadow of His wings, under His very feathers. And there David
lived. And we, who are the children of Pentecost, who have known Christ, His
blood, and the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, why is it that we know so
little of what it is to walk step by step with the Almighty God as our Keeper?
Have you ever thought that, in every action of grace in your heart, you
have the whole omnipotence of God engaged to bless you? When I come to a man and
he gives me a gift of money; I get it and go away with it. He has given me
something of his. The rest he keeps for himself. But that is not the way with
the power of God. God can part with nothing of His own power, and therefore I
can experience the power and goodness of God only so far as I am in contact and
fellowship with Him. And when I come into contact and fellowship with Him, I
come into contact and fellowship with the whole omnipotence of God. I have the
omnipotence of God to help me every day.
A son has, perhaps, a very rich father, and as the former is about to
commence business the father says: "You can have as much money as you want
for your undertaking." All the father has is at the disposal of the son.
And that is the way with God, your Almighty God. You can hardly take it in; you
feel like such a little worm. His omnipotence is needed to keep a little worm!
Yes, His omnipotence is needed to keep every little worm that lives in the dust,
and also to keep the universe. Therefore, His omnipotence is much more needed in
keeping your soul and mine from the power of sin.
Oh, if you want to grow in grace, do learn to begin here. In all your
judgings and meditations and thoughts and deeds and questions and studies and
prayers, learn to be kept by your Almighty God. What is the Almighty God not
going to do for the child that trusts Him? The Bible says: "Above all that
we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20). It is omnipotence you must learn to know
and trust. Then you will live as a Christian ought to live. How little we have
learned to study God, and to understand that a godly life is a life full of God.
It is a life that loves God and waits on Him, trusts Him, and allows Him to
bless it! We cannot do the will of God except by the power of God. God gives us
the first experience of His power to prepare us to long for more, and to come
and claim all that He can do. God helps us to trust Him every day.
3) Keeping Is Continuous
Another thought. This keeping is not only all inclusive and omnipotent,
but also continuous and unbroken.
People sometimes say: "For a week or a month God has kept me very
wonderfully. I have lived in the light of His countenance, and I can say what
joy I have had in fellowship with Him. He has blessed me in my work for others.
He has given me souls, and at times I felt as if I were carried heavenward on
eagle wings. But it did not continue. It was too good; it could not last."
And some say: "It was necessary that I should fall to keep me humble."
And others say: "I know it was my own fault; but somehow you cannot always
live up in the heights." Oh, beloved, why is it? Can there be any reason
why the keeping of God should not be continuous and unbroken? Just think. All
life is in unbroken continuity. If my life were stopped for half an hour, I
would be dead, and my life gone. Life is a continuous thing, and the life of God
is the life of His Church. The life of God is His almighty power working in us.
And God comes to us as the Almighty One, and without any condition He offers to
be my Keeper. His keeping means that day by day, moment by moment, God is going
to keep us.
If I were to ask you the question: "Do you think God is able to keep
you one day from actual transgression?" you would answer: "I not only
know He is able to do it, but I think He has done it. There have been days in
which He has kept my heart in His holy presence. There have also been days when,
though I have always had a sinful nature within me, He has kept me from
conscious, actual transgression."
Now, if He can do that for an hour or a day, why not for two days? Oh!
let us make God's omnipotence as revealed in His Word the measure of our
expectations. Has God not said in His Word: "I, the Lord, do keep it, and
will water it every moment" (Isaiah 27:3)? What can that mean? Does
"every moment" mean every moment? Did God promise of that vineyard or
red wine that every moment He would water it so that the heat of the sun and the
scorching wind might never dry it up? Yes. In
Will our God, in His tenderhearted love toward us, not keep us every
moment when He has promised to do so? Oh! if we once got hold of the thought:
Our whole spiritual life is to be God's doing-"It is God which worketh in
you both to will and to do of his pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). Once we get
faith to expect that from God, God will do all for us.
The keeping is to be continuous. Every morning, God will meet you as you
wake. It is not a question: If I forget to wake in the morning with the thought
of Him, what will come of it? If you trust your waking to God, God will meet you
in the mornings as you wake with His divine sunshine and life. He will give you
the consciousness that through the day you have got God to continually take
charge of you with His almighty power. And God will meet you the next day and
every day. Never mind if, in the practice of fellowship, failure sometimes
comes. If you maintain your position-and say: "Lord, I am going to expect
You to do Your utmost, and I am going to trust You day by day to keep me
absolutely," your faith will grow stronger and stronger. You will know the
keeping power of God in unbrokenness.
KEPT THROUGH FAITH
And now the other side-Believing. "Kept by the power of God through
faith." How must we look at this faith?
4) Faith Implies Helplessness
Let me say, first of all, that this faith means utter inability and
helplessness before God.
At the bottom of all faith there is a feeling of helplessness. If I have
a bit of business to transact, perhaps to buy a house, the lawyer must do the
work of getting the transfer of the property in my name. He must make all the
arrangements. I cannot do that work, and, in trusting that agent, I confess I
cannot do it. And so faith always means helplessness. In many cases it means: I
can do it with a great deal of trouble, but another can do it better. But in
most cases it is utter helplessness: another must do it for me. And that is the
secret of the spiritual life. A man must learn to say: "I give up
everything. I have tried and longed and thought and prayed, but failure has
come. God has blessed me and helped me, but still, in the long run, there has
been so much sin and sadness." What a change comes when a man is thus
broken down into utter helplessness and self despair, and says, "I can do
nothing!"
Remember Paul. He was living a blessed life, and he had been taken up
into the third heaven. Then the thorn in the flesh came, "a messenger of
Satan to buffet me" (2 Corinthians 12:7). And what happened? Paul could not
understand it, and three times he prayed to the Lord to take it away. But the
Lord said, in effect: "No, it is possible that you might exalt yourself.
Therefore, I have sent you this trial to keep you weak and humble." And
Paul then learned a lesson that he never forgot-to rejoice in his infirmities.
He said that the weaker he was the better it was for him. For when he was weak,
he was strong in his Lord Christ.
Do you want to enter what people call "the higher life"? Then
go a step lower down. I remember Dr. Boardman telling how once he was invited by
a gentleman to go to a factory where they made fine shot. I believe the workmen
did so by pouring down molten lead from a great height. This gentleman wanted to
take Dr. Boardman up to the top of the tower to see how the work was done. The
doctor came to the tower, he entered by the door, and began going upstairs. But
when he had gone a few steps, the gentleman called out: "That is the wrong
way. You must come down this way. That stair is locked up." The gentleman
took him downstairs a good many steps, and there an elevator was ready to take
him to the top. He said: "I have learned a lesson that going down is often
the best way to get up."
Ah, yes, God will have to bring us down very low. A sense of emptiness
and despair and nothingness will have to come upon us. It is when we sink down
in utter helplessness that the everlasting God will reveal Himself in His power.
Then our hearts will learn to trust God alone.
What is it that keeps us from trusting Him perfectly?
Many say: "I believe what you say, but there is one difficulty. If
my trust were perfect and always abiding, all would come right, for I know God
will honor trust. But how am I to get that trust?"
My answer is: "By the death of self. The great hindrance to trust is
self-effort. So long as you have got your own wisdom and thoughts and strength,
You cannot fully trust God. But when God breaks you down, when everything begins
to grow dim before your eyes and you see that you understand nothing, then God
is coming near. If you will bow down in nothingness and wait on God, He will
become all."
As long as we are something, God cannot be all. His omnipotence cannot do
its full work. That is the beginning of faith-utter despair of self, a ceasing
from man and everything on earth and finding our hope in God alone.
5) Faith Is Rest
And then, next, we must understand that faith is rest.
In the beginning of the faith-life, faith is struggling. But as long as
faith is struggling, faith has not attained its strength. But when faith in its
struggling gets to the end of itself, and throws itself upon God and rests on
Him, then joy and victory come.
Perhaps I can make it plainer if I tell the story of how the Keswick
Convention began. Canon Battersby was an evangelical clergyman of the Church of
England for more than twenty years. He was a man of deep and tender godliness,
but he did not have the consciousness of rest and victory over sin. He was often
deeply saddened by the thought of stumbling and failure and sin. When he heard
about the possibility of victory, he felt it was desirable, but it was as if he
could not attain it. On one occasion, he heard an address on "Rest and
Faith" from the story of the nobleman who came from
It is a great thing when a man comes to rest on God's almighty power for
every moment of his life. It is also great when he does so in the midst of
temptations to temper and haste and anger and unlovingness and pride and sin. It
is a great thing in the face of these to enter into a covenant with the
omnipotent Jehovah--not on account of anything that any man says, or of anything
that my heart feels-but on the strength of the Word of God: "Kept by the
power of God through faith."
Oh, let us say to God that we are going to prove Him to the very utmost.
Let us say: We ask You for nothing more than You can give, but we want nothing
less. Let us say: My God, let my life be a proof of what the omnipotent God can
do. Let these be the two dispositions of our souls every day-deep helplessness,
and simple, childlike rest.
6) Faith Needs Fellowship
That brings me to just one more thought in regard to faith. Faith implies
fellowship with God.
Many people want to take the Word and believe that, but do not think it
is so necessary to fellowship with God. Ah, no! you cannot separate God from His
Word. No goodness or power can be received separate from God. If you want to get
into this life of godliness, you must take time for fellowship with God. People
sometimes tell me: "My life is one of such scurry and bustle that I have no
time for fellowship with God." A dear missionary said to me: "People
do not know how we missionaries are tempted. I get up at five o'clock in the
morning, and there are the natives waiting for their orders for work. Then, I
have to go to the school and spend hours there. Then, there is other work, and
sixteen hours rush along. I hardly get time to be alone with God."
Ah! there is the need. I pray you, remember two things. I have not told
you to trust the omnipotence of God as a thing, and I have not told you to trust
the Word of God as a written book. I have told you to go to the God of
ornnipotence andthe God of the Word. Deal with God as that nobleman dealt with
the living Christ. Why was he able to believe the word that Christ spoke to him?
Because in the very eyes and tone and voice of Jesus, the Son of God, he saw and
heard something which made him feel that he could trust Him. And that is what
Christ can do for you and me. Do not try to stir and arouse faith from within.
How often I have tried to do that, and made a fool of myself! You cannot stir up
faith from the depths of your heart. Leave your heart, and look into the face of
Christ. Listen to what He tells you about how He will keep you. Look up into the
face of your loving Father, and take time every day with Him. Begin a new life
with the deep emptiness and poverty of a man who has got nothing, and who wants
to get everything from Him-with the deep restfulness of a man who rests on the
living God, the omnipotent Jehovah. Try God, and prove Him if He will not open
the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing that there will not be room to
receive it.
I close by asking if you are willing to fully experience the heavenly
keeping for the heavenly inheritance? Robert Murray M'Cheyne says, somewhere:
"Oh, God, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made." And if
that prayer is in your heart, come now, and let us enter into a covenant with
the everlasting and omnipotent Jehovah afresh. In great helplessness, but in
great restfulness, let us place ourselves in His hands. And then, as we enter
into our covenant, let us have the one prayer--that we may fully believe that
the everlasting God is going to be our companion. Let us believe that He will
hold our hand every moment of the day. He is our Keeper, watching over us
without a moment's interval. He is our Father, delighting to reveal Himself in
our souls always. He has the power to let the sunshine of His love be with us
all day. Do not be afraid that because you have your business you cannot have
God with you always. Learn the lesson that the natural sun shines on you all
day, and you enjoy its light. Wherever you are you have got the sun; God makes
certain that it shines on you. And God will make certain that His own divine
light shines on you, and that you will abide in that light, if you will only
trust Him for it. Let us trust God to do that with a great and entire trust.
Here is the omnipotence of God, and here is faith reaching out to the measure of
that omnipotence. We can say: "All that that omnipotence can do, I am going
to trust my God for." Are not the two sides of this heavenly life
wonderful? God's omnipotence covers me, and my will in its littleness rests in
that omnipotence, and rejoices in it!
Moment by moment, I'm kept in His love;
Moment by moment, I've life from above;
Looking to Jesus, the glory doth shine;
Moment by moment, Oh, Lord, I am thine!
"YE ARE THE BRANCHES"
AN ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN WORKERS
Everything depends on our being right in Christ. If I want good apples, I
must have a good apple tree. If I care for the health of the apple tree, the
apple tree will give me good apples. And it is just so with our Christian life
and work. If our life with Christ is right, all will come out right. Instruction
and suggestion and help and training in the different departments of the work
may be needed; all that has value. But in the long run, the greatest essential
is to have the full life in Christ-in other words, to have Christ in us, working
through us. I know how much there is to disturb us, or to cause anxious
questionings. But the Master has such a blessing for every one of us and such
perfect peace and rest. He has such joy and strength if we can only come into,
and be kept in, the right attitude toward Him.
I will take my text from the parable of the Vine and the Branches, in
John, chapter fifteen, verse five: "I am the vine, ye are the
branches." Especially these words: "Ye are the branches."
What a simple thing it is to be a branch, the branch of a tree, or the
branch of a vine! The branch grows out of the vine, or out of the tree, and
there it lives and grows and, in due time, bears fruit. It has no responsibility
except to receive sap and nourishment from the root and stem. And if only we
knew, by the Holy Spirit, about our relationship to Jesus Christ, our work would
be changed into the brightest and most heavenly thing on earth. Instead of there
ever being soul-weariness or exhaustion, our work would be like a new
experience, linking us to Jesus as nothing else can. For, is it not true that
often our work comes between us and Jesus? What folly! The very work that He has
to do in me, and 1 for Him, I take up in such a way that it separates me from
Christ. Many a laborer in the vineyard has complained that he has too much work,
and not enough time for close communion with Jesus. He complains that his usual
work weakens his inclination for prayer, and that his many conversations with
men darken the spiritual life. Sad thought, that the bearing of fruit should
separate the branch from the vine! That must be because we have looked on our
work as something other than the branch bearing fruit. May God deliver us from
every false .thought about the Christian life.
Now, just a few thoughts about this blessed branch-life.
ABSOLUTE DEPENDENCE
In the first place, it is a life of absolute dependence. The branch has
nothing; it just depends on the vine for everything. Absolute dependence is one
of the most solemn and precious of thoughts. A great German theologian wrote two
large volumes some years ago to show that the whole of Calvin's theology is
summed up in that one principle of absolute dependence upon God; and he was
right. Another great writer has said that absolute, unalterable dependence upon
God alone is the essence of the religion of angels. It should also be that of
men. God is everything to the angels, and He is willing to be everything to the
Christian. If I can learn to depend on God every moment of the day, everything
will come right. You will receive the higher life if you depend absolutely on
God.
Now, here we find it with the vine and the branches. Every vine you ever
see, or every bunch of grapes that come to your table, let it remind you that
the branch is absolutely dependent on the vine. The vine has to do the work, and
the branch enjoys the fruit of it.
What has the vine to do? It has to do a great work. It has to send its
roots out into the soil and hunt under the ground-the roots often extend a long
way out-for nourishment, and to drink in the moisture. Put certain elements of
manure in certain directions, and the vine sends its roots there. Then, its
roots or stems turn the moisture and manure into that special sap which makes
the fruit that is borne. The vine does the work, and the branch has just to
receive the sap from the vine. The sap is then changed into grapes. I have been
told that at
Is that literally true of my Lord Jesus? Must I understand that when I
have to work, when I have to preach a sermon or address a Bible class or go out
and visit the poor, neglected ones, that all the responsibility of the work is
on Christ? That is exactly what Christ wants you to understand. Christ desires
that in all your work the very foundation should be the simple, blessed
consciousness: Christ must care for all. And how does He fulfill the trust of
that dependence? He does it by sending down the Holy Spirit-not now and then
only as a special gift. But remember, the relationship between the vine and the
branches is such that hourly, daily, unceasingly, the living connection is
maintained. The sap does not flow for a time, and then stop, and then flow
again. Instead, moment to moment, the sap flows from the vine to the branches.
And just so, my Lord Jesus wants me to take that blessed position as a worker.
Morning by morning and day by day and hour by hour and step by step-in every
work-I have to go out to abide before Him in the simple, utter helplessness of
one who knows nothing. I must be as one who is nothing, and can do nothing. Oh,
beloved workers, study that word nothing. You sometimes sing: "Oh, to be
nothing, nothing"; but have you really studied that word and prayed every
day and worshipped God in the light of it? Do you know the blessedness of that
word nothing?
If I am something, then God is not everything; but when I become nothing,
God can become all. The everlasting God in Christ can reveal Himself fully. That
is the higher life. We need to become nothing. Someone has well said that the
seraphim and cherubim are flames of fire because they know they are nothing, and
they allow God to put His fullness and His glory and brightness into them. Oh,
become nothing in deep reality, and, as a worker, study only one thing-to become
poorer and lower and more helpless, that Christ may work all in you.
Workers, here is your first lesson: learn to be nothing, learn to be
helpless. The man who has got something is not absolutely dependent. But the man
who has got nothing is absolutely dependent. Absolute dependence on God is the
secret of all power in work. The branch has nothing but what it gets from the
vine. You and I can have nothing but what we get from Jesus.
DEEP RESTFULNESS
But second, the life of the branch is not only a life of entire
dependence, but also of deep restfulness.
That little branch, if it could think, feel, and speak, and if we could
say: "Come, branch of the vine, I want to learn from you how I can be a
true branch of the living Vine," what would it answer? The little branch
would whisper: "Man, I hear that you are wise, and I know that you can do a
great many wonderful things. I know you have much strength and wisdom given to
you, but I have one lesson for you. With all your hurry and effort in Christ's
work, you never prosper. The first thing you need is to come and rest in your
Lord Jesus. That is what I do. Since I grew out of that vine, I have spent years
and years, and all I have done is just to rest in the vine. When the time of
spring came I had no anxious thought or care. The vine began to pour its sap
into me, and to give the bud and leaf. And when summer came, I had no care; and
in the great heat, I trusted the vine to bring moisture to keep me fresh. And in
the time of harvest, when the owner came to pluck the grapes, I had no care. If
there was anything in the grapes not good, the owner never blamed the branch;
the blame was always on the vine. And if you would be a true branch of Christ,
the living Vine, just rest on Him. Let Christ bear the responsibility."
You say: "Won't that make me slothful?"
I tell you it will not. No one who learns to rest on the living Christ
can become slothful. The closer your contact with Christ, the more the Spirit of
His zeal and love will be borne in upon you. But, oh, begin to work in the midst
of your entire dependence by adding to that deep restfulness. A man sometimes
tries and tries to be dependent on Christ, but he worries himself about this
absolute dependence. He tries and he cannot get it. But let him sink down into
entire restfulness every day.
In Thy strong hand I lay me down.
So shall the work be done;
For who can work so wondrously
As the Almighty One?
Workers, take your place every day at the feet of Jesus, in the blessed
peace and rest that come from the knowledge- I have no care, my cares are His! I
have no fear, He cares for all my fears.
Come, children of God, and understand that it is the Lord Jesus who wants
to work through you. You complain of the lack of fervent love. It will come from
Jesus. He will give the divine love in your heart with which you can love
people. That is the meaning of the assurance: "The love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 5:5); and of that other
word: "The love of Christ constraineth us" (2 Corinthians 5:14).
Christ can give you a fountain of love so that you cannot help loving the most
wretched and the most ungrateful, or those who have wearied you. Rest in Christ,
who can give wisdom and strength. You do not know how that restfulness will
often prove to be the very best part of your message. You plead with people and
you argue, and they get the idea: "There is a man arguing and striving with
me." But if you will let the deep rest of God come over you-the rest in
Christ Jesus, the peace and the rest and holiness of heaven-that restfulness
will bring a blessing to the heart, even more than the words you speak.
MUCH FRUITFULNESS
But third, the branch teaches a lesson of much fruitfulness.
The Lord Jesus Christ repeated the word fruit often in that parable. He
spoke, first, of fruit, and then of more fruit, and then of much fruit. Yes, you
are ordained not only to bear fruit, but to bear much fruit. "Herein is my
Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit" (John 15:8). In the first place,
Christ said: "I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Husbandman"
(John 15:1). God will watch over the connection between Christ and the branches.
It is in the power of God through Christ that we are to bear fruit.
Oh, Christians, you know this world is perishing for lack of workers. And
it lacks more than workers. Many workers are saying, some more earnestly than
others: "We need not only more workers, but we need our workers to have a
new power a different life-so that we workers would be able to bring more
blessing." Children of God, I appeal to you. You know what trouble you
take, say, in a case of sickness. You have a beloved friend apparently in danger
of death, and nothing can refresh that friend so much as a few grapes. But, they
are out of season. Still, what trouble you will take to get the grapes that are
to be the nourishment of this dying friend! And, there are people around who
never go to church, and so many who go to church, but do not know Christ. And
yet, the heavenly grapes-the grapes of the heavenly Vine-are not to be had at
any price except as the child of God bears them out of his inner life in
fellowship with Christ. Except the children of God are filled with the sap of
the heavenly Vine, except they are filled with the Holy Spirit and the love of
Jesus, they cannot bear much of the real heavenly grape. We all confess there is
a great deal of work, a great deal of preaching, teaching, and visiting, a great
deal of machinery, and a great deal of earnest effort of every kind. But, there
is not much manifestation of the power of God in it.
What is wanting? The close connection between the worker and the heavenly
Vine is lacking. Christ, the heavenly Vine, has blessings that He could pour on
tens of thousands who are perishing. Christ, the heavenly Vine, has power to
provide the heavenly grapes. But "Ye are the branches," and you cannot
bear heavenly fruit unless you are in close connection with Jesus Christ.
Do not confuse work and fruit. There may be a good deal of work for
Christ that is not the fruit of the heavenly Vine. Do not seek for work only.
Oh! study this question of fruit-bearing. It means the very life, power, spirit,
and love within the heart of the Son of God. It means the heavenly Vine Himself
coming into your hearts and mine.
You know there are different sorts of grapes, each with a different name.
Every vine provides exactly that peculiar aroma and juice which gives the grape
its particular flavor and taste. Just so, there is in the heart of Christ Jesus
a life, a love, a Spirit, a blessing, and a power for men, that are entirely
heavenly and divine, and that will come down into our hearts. Stand in close
connection with the heavenly Vine and say: "Lord Jesus, nothing less than
the sap that flows through You, nothing less than the Spirit of Your divine life
is what we ask. Lord Jesus, I pray, let Your Spirit flow through me in all my
work for You." I tell you again that the sap of the heavenly Vine is
nothing but the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the life of the heavenly Vine.
What you must get from Christ is nothing less than a strong inflow of the Holy
Spirit. You need it exceedingly, and you want nothing more than that. Remember
that. Do not expect Christ to give a bit of strength here, and a bit of blessing
yonder, and a bit of help over there. As the vine does its work in giving its
own peculiar sap to the branch, so expect Christ to give His own Holy Spirit
into your heart. Then you will bear much fruit. Perhaps you have only begun to
bear fruit, and are listening to the word of Christ in the parable, "more
fruit," "much fruit." Remember, that in order for you to bear
more fruit, you just require more of Jesus in your life and heart.
We ministers of the Gospel, how we are in danger of getting into a
condition of work, work, work! And we pray over it, but the freshness, buoyancy,
and joy of the heavenly life are not always present. Let us seek to understand
that the life of the branch is a life of much fruit, because it is a life rooted
in Christ, the living, heavenly Vine.
CLOSE COMMUNION
And fourth, the life of the branch is a life of close communion.
Let us again ask: What has the branch to do? You know that precious,
inexhaustible word that Christ used-Abide. Your life is to be an abiding life.
And how is the abiding to be? It is to be just like the branch in the vine,
abiding every minute of the day. The branches are in close communion, in
unbroken communion, with the vine, from January to December. And can I not live
every day-it is to me an almost terrible thing that we should ask the
question-in abiding communion with the heavenly Vine?
You say: "But I am so occupied with other things."
You may have ten hours' hard work daily, during which your brain has to
be occupied with temporal things. God orders it so. But the abiding work is the
work of the heart, not of the brain. It is the work of the heart clinging to and
resting in Jesus, a work in which the Holy Spirit links us to Christ Jesus. Oh,
do believe that deeper down than the brain, deep down in the inner life, you can
abide in Christ, so that every moment you are free, the consciousness will come:
"Blessed Jesus, I am still in You." If you will learn for a time to
put aside other work and to get into this abiding contract with the heavenly
Vine, you will find that fruit will come. What is the application to our life of
this abiding communion? What does it mean? It means close fellowship with Christ
in secret prayer. I am sure there are Christians who do long for the higher
life, and who sometimes have received a great blessing. I am sure there are
those who have at times found a great inflow of heavenly joy and a great outflow
of heavenly gladness. Yet, after a time, it has passed away. They have not
understood that close, personal communion with Christ is an absolute necessity
for daily life. Take time to be alone with Christ. Nothing in heaven or earth
can free you from the necessity for that, if you are to be happy and holy
Christians.
Oh! how many Christians look on it as a burden and a tax, a duty and a
difficulty, to often be alone with God! That is the great hindrance to our
Christian life everywhere. We need more quiet fellowship with God. I tell you in
the name of the heavenly Vine that you cannot be healthy branches-branches into
which the heavenly sap can flow-unless you take plenty of time for communion
with God. If you are not willing to sacrifice time to get alone with Him, and to
give Him time everyday to work in you, and to keep up the link of connection
between you and Himself, He cannot give you that blessing of His unbroken
fellowship. Jesus Christ asks you to live in close communion with Him. Let every
heart say: "O Christ, it is this I long for. It is this I choose." And
He will gladly give it to you.
ABSOLUTE SURRENDER
And then finally, the life of the branch is a life of absolute surrender.
These words, absolute surrender, are great and solemn. I believe we do
not fully understand their meaning. But yet the little branch preaches it.
"Have you anything to do, little branch, besides bearing grapes?"
"No, nothing."
"Are you fit for nothing?"
Fit for nothing! The Bible says that a bit of vine cannot even be used as
a pen. It is fit for nothing but to be burned. "And now, what do you
understand, little branch, about your relationship to the vine?" "My
relationship is just this: I am utterly given up to the vine, and the vine can
give me as much or as little sap as it chooses. Here I am, at its disposal, and
the vine can do with me what it likes."
Oh, friends, we need this absolute surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The more I speak, the more I feel that this is one of the most difficult points
to make clear. It is also one of the most important and needful points to
explain what this absolute surrender is. It is often an easy thing for a man or
a number of men to come out and offer themselves up God for entire consecration,
saying: "Lord, it is my desire to give myself up entirely to You."
That is of great value, and often brings very rich blessing. But the one
question I ought to study quietly is: What is meant by absolute surrender?
It means that, as literally as Christ was given up entirely to God, I am
given up entirely to Christ. Is that too strong? Some think so. Some think that
can never be. They cannot believe that just as entirely and absolutely as Christ
gave up His life to do nothing but seek the Father's pleasure, and depend on the
Father absolutely and entirely, I am to do nothing but to seek the pleasure of
Christ. But that is actually true. Christ Jesus came to breathe His own Spirit
into us. He came to help us find our very highest happiness in living entirely
for God, just as He did. Oh, beloved brethren, if that is the case, then I ought
to say: "Yes, as true as it is of that little branch of the vine, by God's
grace, I would have it to be true of me. I would live day by day that Christ may
be able to do with me what He will."
Ah! here comes the terrible mistake that lies at the bottom of so much of
our own Christianity. A man thinks: "I have my business and family duties,
and my responsibilities as a citizen. All this I cannot change. And now
alongside all this, I am to take Christianity and the service of God as
something that will keep me from sin. God help me to perform my duties
properly!"
This is not right. When Christ came, He bought the sinner with His blood.
If-there was a slave market here and I were to buy a slave, I would take that
slave away to my own house from his old surroundings. He would live at my house
as my personal property, and I could order him about all day. And if he were a
faithful slave, he would live as having no will and no interests of his own. His
one care would be to promote the well-being and honor of his master. And in like
manner I, who have been bought with the blood of Christ, have been bought to
live every day with the one thought-How can I please my Master? Oh, we find the
Christian life so difficult because we seek God's blessing while we live in our
own will. We desire to live the Christian life according to our own liking. We
make our own plans and choose our own work. Then, we ask the Lord Jesus to come
in and make sure that sin will not conquer us too much, and that we will not go
too far wrong. We ask Him to come in and give us so much of His blessing. But
our relationship to Jesus ought to be such that we are entirely at His disposal.
Every day we are to come to Him humbly and straightforwardly and say:
"Lord, is there anything in me that is not according to Your will, that has
not been ordered by You, or that is not entirely given up to You?"
Oh, if we could wait patiently, I tell you what the result would be. A
relationship between us and Christ would spring up. It would be so close and so
tender that afterward we would be amazed at how we formerly could have lived
with the idea: "I am surrendered to Christ." We would feel how distant
our fellowship with Him had previously been. We would understand that He can,
and does indeed, come and take actual possession of us, and give us unbroken
fellowship all day. The branch calls us to absolute surrender.
Now I do not speak so much about the giving up of sins. There are people
who need that, people who have got violent tempers, bad habits, and actual sins
which they from time to time commit, and which they have never given up into the
very bosom of the Lamb of God. I pray you, if you are branches of the living
Vine, do not keep one sin back. I know there are a great many difficulties about
this question of holiness. I know that all do not think exactly the same with
regard to it. To me, that would be a matter of comparative indifference if I
could see that all are honestly longing to be free from every sin. But I am
afraid that unconsciously there are often compromises in hearts, with the idea
that we cannot be without sin. There are those who think that we must sin a
little every day; we cannot help it. Oh, that people would actually cry to God:
"Lord, do keep me from sin!" Give yourself utterly to Jesus, and ask
Him to do His very utmost for you in keeping you from sin.
There is a great deal in our work, in our church, and in our surroundings
that we found in the world when we were born into it. It has grown all around us
and we think that it is all right, that it cannot be changed. We do not come to
the Lord Jesus and ask Him about it. Oh! I advise you, Christians, bring
everything into relationship with Jesus, and say: "Lord, everything in my
life has to be in most complete harmony with my position as a branch of You, the
blessed Vine."
Let your surrender to Christ be absolute. I do not understand that word
surrender fully. It gets new meanings every now and then. It enlarges immensely
from time to time. But I advise you to speak it out: "Absolute surrender to
You, Oh Christ, is what I have chosen." And Christ will show you what is
not according to His mind, and lead you on to deeper and higher blessedness.
In conclusion, let me gather up all in one sentence. Christ Jesus said:
"I am the Vine, ye are the branches." In other words: "I, the
living One who have so completely given Myself to you, am the Vine. It is
impossible to trust Me too much. I am the Almighty Worker, full of a divine life
and power."
You are the branches of the Lord Jesus Christ. If there is in your heart
the consciousness that you are not a strong, healthy, fruit-bearing branch-not
closely linked with Jesus, not living in Him as you should be-then listen to Him
say: "I am the Vine; I will receive you. I will draw you to Myself; I will
bless you. I will strengthen you; I will fill you with My Spirit. I, the Vine,
have taken you to be My branches. I have given Myself utterly to you; children,
give yourselves utterly to Me. I have surrendered Myself as God absolutely to
you. I became man and died for you that I might be entirely yours. Come and
surrender yourselves entirely to be Mine."
What shall our answer be? Oh, let it be prayer from the depths of our
heart, that the living Christ may take each one of us and link us closely to
Himself. Let our prayer be that He, the living Vine, will so link each of us to
Himself that we will go away with our hearts singing: "He is my Vine, and I
am His branch-I want nothing more-now that I have the everlasting Vine." Then, when you get alone with Him, worship and adore Him; praise and
trust Him; love Him and wait for His love. "You are my Vine, and I am Your
branch. It is enough; my soul is satisfied."
Glory to His blessed name!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew
Murray (1828-1917) was an amazingly prolific Christian author. He lived and
ministered as both a pastor and a writer from the towns and villages of
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Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. Jude 1:24-25
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