And I pull out this, and I say, “Well, on page 32 of the manual of good husbands, it says I’m supposed….” She will feed me that book page by page. She doesn’t want that. She wants my heart. When we talk about self-denial, I have never met a missionary, never in my life, worth his salt that’s given up almost everything that even thought about it. Never even thought about it. If you were to start talking to them about it, they get uncomfortable and try to change the subject because they can’t think of anything they’ve given up. Why? They’re so mesmerized by God. This is not about giving up stuff. It’s about looking at Him and following Him.
Now, I want us to go on. He says in verse 25: And I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. Look at that. Now, let me just stop here. This is not something that is some sort of an evangelical second blessing upon spiritual Christians. This is upon everyone called by His name, everyone born in Zion, every child of God. This will be a reality in their life at least to some noticeable degree or they are not a child of God.
Let me stop here. I’m going to get mad now. I am so sick and tired of hearing people say….and everything that’s been said here so far, I agree with. I just want you to understand the context. I want you to understand this. I am so tired of people saying, “There’s just as much immorality in the church as there is outside of the church. There’s just as much divorce in the church as outside of the church. There’s just as much homosexuality and lying and hating and everything else in the church as outside the church. That is a damnable lie. The church of Jesus Christ in the United States of America, although she is not perfect, she is broken, and she is humble, she is following her Master. The problem is many of you guys don’t even know what the church is. This is not like Israel, where there was this nation state called forth and then this small group, this small remnant of regenerated people. You forget we’re Baptists. It’s a regenerate church. It’s a converted church. I heard a speaker, well known at least. I don’t agree with his form of apologetics, but he stood up a big apologist, and he stood up and goes, “We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to do something because 75 percent of the Christian youth in America do not believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is important.”
And I said, “Sir, if they don’t believe the resurrection’s important, they’re not Christian.” It’s like the deacon that gets up in the middle of some big carnal warfare in the church and says, “We’re Christians. We shouldn’t be hating one another.” If you’re hating one another, you’re not Christians.
You see, we’ve got this idea we just label everybody Christian and then, from then on, it’s not about salvation, just the kind of rewards you get. That’s not true. That’s why you look at people and they’ll interpret the parable of Jesus about the two builders and the two foundations, rock and stone. I hear preachers say, “Now, if you’re a Christian and you’re building upon the rock and the storms of life come, you’ll have a stable, good life because your life will be built upon the rock. Well, if you’re a Christian and you’re not building your life upon the rock, then when the storms of life come, it’s going to be hard for you.” That’s not what that teaches. What that teaches is this.
If you’re hearing His Word and obeying and building your life upon the rock, then when the storms of God’s judgment come in the consummation of all things, you will stand. And if you are hearing His Word and not obeying it and building your life upon the rock, you will be damned. It’s the same thing about all the calls to self-denial from Jesus Christ in the Gospels. We think that He’s saying, okay, you become a Christian and then some of you are going to surrender to these calls. No, that’s not what He’s saying. He says, If any man come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.
Now the thing we have to understand is that self-denial and that cross and that following Him takes up many, many manifestations. In some people’s lives it is greatly manifested what they are doing. They may die as martyrs or serve on the mission field and not return to their own country for 40 years, like Amy Carmichael. For some of us living in this culture, it’s more difficult to determine just how our self-denial works itself out in the cross that we bear, but it will be nonetheless real, you see.
And He says here, look at this. He says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I was raised on a farm and one thing I notice about farm boys is that they’ve got dirt in every crevice of their body. And I would come in and just be covered in dirt everywhere, playing out on the farm all day. My mother would say, “Go take a bath.” One day, I was about nine and I decided I had reached some sort of manhood or autonomy or something. I lost my mind is what really happened. She said, “Go take a bath.”
And I said, “I don’t think I will.” And that was back when it was legal to kill children. She just looked at me and she said, “You will take a bath.” I took a bath. Isn’t it amazing that my mother is more sovereign than God.
He’s the only God who’s Lord of Glory who can’t tell anybody to do anything, or He can tell them, but if they don’t obey, He can’t do anything about that. This impotent God who has no power. My mother would say, “Take a bath,” and I would go in there and I’d put a little water on me and get a white towel and the towel would just be black from mud and I would come out with mud dripping off the side of my face, and then my mom would come in there. My mom could haul hay better than any man. She had calluses on her hands. My mom would take to scrubbing me, and when I came out of that bathtub, it was like the Shekinah glory of God coming forth from my body. Because my mother said, “You will be clean.”
And look what God is saying, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. Why? “Because this is not about you getting glory from being able to work out your own sanctification. It’s about me getting glory by being able to change you and conform you to the image of my dear Son.”
And then He goes on. And I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Do you see what a promise that is? You know, all of us have holes in our armor and all of us, when we were saved, many sins seemed to just fall on the wayside and we never seemed to have to deal much with them again. And then some seem to be so rooted and we struggle with them until now. And then sometimes true believers begin to believe, well, this is just something I’m never going to overcome.
