Now, when I’m talking about overcoming sin, I’m not talking about sinless perfection, but there is a difference between being a broken, confessing Christian who has victory over besetting sins and then some Christian who’s just drowning in besetting sins. He promises you, believer, that He is going to work in your life and cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. And let’s just stop here because I know what some of you are thinking.
Yep, when I step over into glory, it’s all going to get done. If it’s not getting done here, it won’t get done there, because you’re not going there. We relegate everything to the consummation. We need to be very, very careful. Yes, yes, the day He comes back or the day we go to Him, yes, no more warfare against the flesh. No more warfare. No more failure. No more fightings.
Yes, but that is not to say that there will not be progress. Progress. Go higher up and further in. More like Him. More like Him. More like Him. Striving to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. No one.
Someone asked me one time, “Brother Paul, if you could sum up your life,” a young Christian asked me this, “what would you use as a Bible verse?”
And I said, “This. Ezekiel 36:25: I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. When I look back on my life of 24 years of limping behind Christ, if I had to use one passage that described His work in me, was breaking me into a million pieces by His providence and working to cleanse me.
I’ll never forget one time. I used to suffer from chronic pain. I’ve had both hips replaced. My wrist has been replaced. They’re going to replace my elbow here. I’ve got more metal in me than a Tonka truck. My arthritis was horrible, and, I remember, I was in Peru and I just came back from the mountains and it was rainy and dreary. And it felt like I was rusted up. And I walked out on this old rooftop of this house in Lima, and it was just a horrid day and I was hurting so bad and I was weeping.
I had just come back into town and a church that we had planted, the Charismatics came in and destroyed it, because in Peru the Baptists evangelize the lost and the Charismatics evangelize the Baptists. The church had been split and destroyed, and I came back and I’m sitting there and just, “God, why? Why?” Typical pity party. “I hurt so bad. The wolves have destroyed everything. Why?” And I didn’t hear a voice and nothing really was impressed upon my heart, but I began to just remember all the times in college and all the times in seminary that me and the other young guys would pass the night praying, something we had no idea what we were saying. “Lord, at any cost, make me like Jesus.”
And it was like the Lord saying, “I’m answering all your prayers. I’m cleansing you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. You want to be mine, right?”
Young men, I tell you. Pray that prayer but know this. You have no idea what you’re praying, and if you did know what you were praying, you wouldn’t have the courage to pray it. It is about being conformed to the image of Christ, so self-denial isn’t for self-denial’s sake. Self-denial is following Christ and desiring to be like Christ, having this attitude in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
And He goes on and He said, guys, this is what it’s all about, verse 26. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. This is why a radically depraved, God-hating sinner at one moment can hear the Gospel and then in the next moment be ready to abandon everything, even selfpreservation, to follow Jesus Christ.
There’s a brother here, Brother Brett, who has a young man in his church, Justin, whom I took to Peru with me one time. The young man was voted most likely to take a life in high school. It was just totally, I mean, criminally insane, this guy. He made a battle ax. He hired a tool and die maker to make a battle ax for him. I mean, he wasn’t right. And he hated God, he gated Christians, he hated everything, and he said that, one night, he’s going down a gravel road in an old beat-up truck, he’s hanging halfway out the window with his fist clenched at God, screaming at God, blaspheming God, cursing God, and daring God to come down and fight him. He said the next thing he knew, the next conscious thought he had, the truck was off the side of the road. He was down in the floorboard with his hands lifted up to Heaven, worshiping God with such love in his heart that he thought he was going to explode.
Yes, it is not a human decision merely. It is a human decision, but only because there is an eternal decision and a working out of that eternal decree through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Look what he says here, and this is what people have to understand. We have a statue here––I don’t care if it’s 20 feet tall––of the strongest man in the world, and it’s here and it’s made of stone. I can walk up to that statue, I can poke it, I can pick it, I can kick it, I can punch it, I can do absolutely everything, and what’s that statue going to do? Absolutely nothing? Why? It’s inanimate. It cannot respond to stimuli at all.
You take a man here, the strongest man in St. Louis, I can grab him in certain places and twist hard enough to make him scream like a wildcat. Why? Flesh can respond to stimuli. Men cannot and will not respond to divine stimuli, so how on earth can we call men to a radical selfdenial and a following of Jesus Christ? Because we believe that one tiny man with an open Bible proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ that God, through that, will regenerate that man’s heart and cause him to come forth from the grave. That’s why. That’s why.
I am so astounded. Do you realize this was the doctrine, as I’ve said, of the awakening. This is what Whitfield preached. This is what Edwards preached. This is what Rowlands preached. Howell Harris….this is what they preached. Supernatural. It cannot be manipulated. It cannot drawn out. It is supernatural. As Calvinists, we ought to be the most supernatural believing people on the face of the earth.
