We read from the 8th chapter of the epistle to the Romans, Romans chapter 8, commencing with the first verse. As I mentioned last night, where I deviate from the King James’ Version it will be to the Amplified New Testament. Romans Ch. 8 v. 1 “Therefore there is now no condemnation, no adjudging guilt or wrong for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit, for the law of the Spirit of life, the life of Jesus Christ, the law of our new being, has freed me from the law of sin and of death. For God doing what the law could not do, its power being weakened by the flesh, that is the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit, sending his own son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin. God condemned sin in the flesh, he subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power, over all who accept that sacrifice. So that the righteous and just of the law might be fully met in us who live and move, not in the ways of the flesh, but in the ways of the Spirit, our lives governed not according to the standards or the dictates of the flesh, but controlled by the Holy Spirit, for those who are of the flesh and controlled by its unholy desires, set their minds on and pursue those things which gratify the flesh. But those that are of the Spirit, and controlled by the desires of the Spirit set their minds on and seek those things that gratify the Holy Spirit. Now the mind of the flesh, which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit is death, death that’s comprising all the miseries of sin, both here and here after. But the mind of the Holy Spirit is life and soul peace, both now and forever, that is because the mind of the flesh, with its carnal thoughts and purposes, is hostile to God, for it does not submit itself to God’s law, indeed it cannot, so then those that are living the life of the flesh, catering the appetites of their carnal nature cannot please or satisfy God, or be acceptable to Him. But you are not living the life of the flesh, you are living the life of the Spirit, if so that the Spirit of God really dwells in you, directs and controls you. But if anyone does not possess the Holy Spirit of Christ, He is none of His, he does not belong to Christ, he is not truly a child of God.”
Let’s pick up the theme where we left it last evening which is the opening session of this particular series of meetings. But it may well be that some have joined us tonight for the first time, and may I reiterate what I said last night, and that is my primary concern these nights will be to lead you through the word of God to that appropriation of the truth that reestablished man in his right relationship to God, in such a way that God is able to fulfill his redemptive purpose in the lives of every forgiven sinner. And that doesn’t mean get that sinner from hell to heaven, the redemptive purpose of God is infinitely beyond a change of destination the redemptive purpose of God is a change of destiny. And if your conversion has not changed your destiny and has only changed your destination, heaven instead of hell. Then it means you’re still a baby, spiritually. You’ve never grown up, you’ve been born, but your still on the bottle, you haven’t begun to become spiritually mature. Unfortunately there are all too many truly converted men and women, boys and girls in churches today who have never gotten beyond that initial crisis, which is described as conversion. Because so often the gospel has been preached as though that’s all there were to being saved. All you have to do to be saved is to accept Christ as your Redeemer. And after that you’re saved. And so many of you adopt an attitude, what do you want with me know? I’ve done all I’ve been asked to do, I’ve put my hand up, or I’ve been up to the front, or I’ve stayed at the back, or I’ve signed on the dotted line, I know that my sins are forgiven. I’m converted, and now I’ve been inoculated (Vaccinated) from any further demands that have can be made upon me. I’m converted, I’m saved, I’m a redeemed sinner, I’m on the way to heaven.
-Well isn’t that a pathetic concept to the Christian life!
That may be just a little bit exaggerated, but not much.
What we are really seeking to discover this weekend is what it means to be a Christian. What it really means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. What was the ultimate purpose of God in the cross? A little word of recapitulation (summary) is in order, last night we began to discover the true nature of man, and there was a particular principal we annunciated, which we shall continue to annunciate night by night, here it is:
Man is man by virtue of what God is in man. It is only what God is in man that makes man man. And the moment man loses God, he ceases to be man as God intended man to be, be becomes sub human.
Now that is fundamental to your understanding of what happened to you when you were born again. If you don’t understand that then you might know that you are born again but you won’t know why or what has happened since you were born again. We discovered that God made man, not just a vegetable, not just an animal. He made man different from both vegetables and animals, he created man with a human spirit. He had a body, like all other created animals and vegetables, he has a soul like all animal forms of life. A capacity to think, a mental capacity. To react, an emotional capacity. To decide, volitional capacity. A mental, emotional and volitional capacity, in other words a motivating mechanism. That’s how he functions, that’s how you function. In the area of your soul, and you will function in the area of your soul whether you’re spiritually alive or spiritually dead. On your way to heaven or hell. You will function in the area of your soul. If somebody gets angry with me or highly excited, it might well be their emotions say to their will “hit him”. Well for some reason if their will were captured by their emotions, that’s precisely what they would do, they’d hit me. Point of fact that is how often murder is committed. In one blinding flash of emotion a bottle flies through the air or a knife is plunged into a man’s back, or the trigger is pulled on a gun, and a man lies dead. Because for some reason a persons will had been captured by his emotions. It may well be because his mind, his counsellor, his calculator, has been rendered inoperative (not working) by drink may be, or drugs, or some other fact. But normally when someone gets angry with me, they don’t stab me in the back, or even throw a bottle at me. Because the calculator has come into operation and although the emotion say to the will “hit him”. The calculator, the mind says “I shouldn’t do that if I were you, he’s bigger than you are, He’ll hit you back, or he’ll ring up the police”. That’s how you and I function, we exercise our will under the influence of our mind and our emotion. Now of course God gave us both mind and emotion, and he gave us will. This is what is described as human personality, if it belongs to a human. Could be dogs personality if it belongs to a dog, dogs have personalities, so do horses, and mules. Very often a dog’s personality is more pleasant that a man’s. Sheep are quite pleasant to live with, but all people aren’t.
Human personality is centered in the area of the soul. Now that is your heart.
And we were discussing last night what your heart was, why Jesus Christ lives in your heart, and I asked you if you really knew what you meant by saying that Christ lives in your heart. It may be a surprise to you to discover as we go on talking together that it’s quite possible to be a regenerate sinner, without Christ even dwelling in your heart. And it may not always be true as a Christian to say that Christ dwells in your heart, because it may not be true, He should do, but he may not. Because your heart is your soul, your human personality. The inner most being is your human spirit. And it is possible that you are regenerate. That the Holy Spirit has come back to live in the human spirit without allowing the Holy Spirit in the human Spirit to so to reinvade the soul, mind, emotion and will so that Jesus Christ has the right permanently to dwell within your heart, your human personality. And the Christian who has the Holy Spirit within the human spirit but does not allow Christ to exercise jurisdiction in the area of his mind, emotion and will is a carnal Christian. He has the Holy Spirit in his human spirit, but doesn’t have Christ in his heart. Now that may confuse you at first, but I trust it won’t later. And I might just put this little word of warning. If some of the things I say to you initially confuse you a little bit, don’t worry, keep coming, and I’ll confuse you some more. And then suddenly, it will click over, and it will all make sense. And I’ll tell you this that once you’ve discovered the true principle of what it means to be a Christian, your Christian life will never be the same again. Some of you are going to make a revolutionary discovery, some of you are going to discover that you have only been paddling in the shallows of your salvation, and it’s going to be a wonderful discovery. So man has a body and a soul, that which makes him ‘tick’, or function. Bu as we discovered last night we having a body and a soul only puts you into animal classification. It is the fact that God has given to you what he has given neither to vegetables or animals that makes you man. The human spirit. That capacity that God built into you that we are told in Zechariah 12:1, to receive what God is, and enjoy what God is, and release what God is in terms or your behavior.
God dwelling by His Holy Spirit within the human spirit imparts to man a quality of life which is eternal, spiritual, divine. But only by virtue of what God is in man does man possess eternal or spiritual or divine nature. He doesn’t have anything spiritual within him apart from what God is in him. And the moment man loses God he loses that quality of life that is eternal, spiritual, divine. But God created man to be inhabited by God, for God, and that is why He gave to man the human spirit.
And we saw that the human spirit is likened unto, in Proverbs 20:27, to a lamp:
…the spirit of a man is the lamp or candle of the Lord…
And a lamp is created with the capacity to receive that which upon which it is totally dependent for the performance of the purpose for which it was made. And the moment a lamp ceases to receive that for which it is capable of receiving it ceases to function. And you could have a thousand lamps hanging from the ceiling here, but if they didn’t receive that for which they created this room would be as dark as the night outside. And the human spirit is that capacity within you that enables you to receive what God is. And it is only what God is, in you that makes you function as man
Now last night I said we were going to talk about the conversion of Adam. You see the word conversion simply means a change of mind, a radical change of mind, change of mind upon which you act. That’s conversion.
A Jew cam be converted to Christianity, without being converted to Christ.
A conservative can be converted to communism, it’s a radical change of mind upon which you act.
In the spiritual realm, it’s a radical change in the moral and spiritual realm (area) upon which you act. When you and I are converted we’re re-converted as a point of fact. It’s ok to call it conversion because that’s the expression the bible uses. But of point in fact when a man, woman, boy or girl is truly converted to God, it is a reconversion. It’s a repudiation by a deliberate moral choice of a deliberate moral choice that was made by the first man when he fell into sin when he (Adam) repudiated God. Adam was converted.
It was made abundantly clear by God to Adam, that he functioned as man only by virtue of what God was within him, that he lived, spiritually, only by virtue of the life him, only by virtue of God being in him.
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, in Him was life, this life was the light of men”
And without that life the light goes out!
And as some of us were discussing at midday today, the enjoyment by man of God was to be dependent upon a moral relationship. A moral relationship which God could not compel by virtue of the fact that he created man to love Him, and not to be an impersonal robot, or impersonal cog in a machine, for love cannot be compelled.
And God made it abundantly clear to man that he would enjoy what God was in him only by an attitude of total dependence on God, called faith, which he would exercise in an expression of his love.
And just so long as man loved God he would, he would depend on God. And just so long as he would depend on God, he would enjoy God. And God will exercise his authority through him.
So it is a faith love relationship, freely entered into, and which can be freely broken.
And that is why God not only gave man the capacity to choose but a point at which choice could be exercised, and that is the spiritual significance of the tree in the garden. It was the point at which man capacity to choose could be exercised, in repudiating (rejecting) God, without which moral capacity man could never love God.
And man walked with God in the garden, in the cool of the day. He enjoyed sweet fellowship with God, his maker. His whole human personality willingly placed at the disposal of God who dwelt within his and expressed himself through him. And that is righteousness.
God is the source of absolute righteousness and there is no other source of righteousness, any quality of righteousness that does not originate in God himself is simulated righteousness, is purely an imitation of righteousness. God is the only absolute source of righteousness
Now that’s an important principal to remember, for there is a counter-principal we shall discover to that.
God is the source of absolute righteousness, and righteousness on earth is what God is in terms of human behavior, placed wholly and God’s disposal to be in terms of man, what God is. That’s righteousness. For God interprets what He is in terms of your human character, in the measure your personality: mind, emotion and will is placed unreservedly at His disposal. And when the Holy Spirit is allowed wholly to invade the human soul, monopolise completely mind emotion and will, that is a man filled with the Holy Ghost. And a man filled with the Holy Ghost is a man as God intended man to be. Man in his normality. That is why the fullness of the Holy Spirit is never optional to a Christian, it’s a command.
That’s why the fullness of the Holy Spirit is not an ecstatic experience that you may have at your will, as a sort of luxury, now and again, when it’s not too inconvenient. Or when it doesn’t deny you the privileges of self-government. The fullness of the Holy Ghost is a man as God intended man to be.
And a Christian is not just a forgiven sinner on his way to heaven. A forgiven sinner filled with God, functioning on earth as man was created to function, and that is the purpose of the cross. And there is no other purpose in Calvary, but that man should be restored to his true humanity right now on earth, on their way to heaven. Anything less than that involved in conversion is a parody of the real thing.
I don’t have the right to invite men, women, boys and girls simply to come to Jesus Christ simply for the convenience of having their sins forgiven, to escape from hell and get to heaven. I don’t have the right, because that isn’t the gospel. God commands all men, everywhere, to repent, and be converted. That is to say, to look sin in its face and recognize sin for what sin is and repudiate what sin is. Which is the usurping of God’s authority Sovereign right within the area of human personality. And a man who truly repents and converts towards God, is one who steps out of the independence, into which Adam stepped, back into dependence, from which he stepped. So that true repentance is a maintained attitude of dependence. And the measure of your dependence on God as the Sovereign ruler of your life, is the measure of your repentance toward God. And if you’re living your life in anything other than dependence, you’ve never repented. Not yet. Adam knew this, he knew that his relationship to God was based upon an unrelenting attitude of dependence.
But he attended some holiness meetings, a very famous preacher, his name was Lucifer, he was a very fine speaker. Fair words. He is a minister of righteousness, I don’t know who ordained him. It’s a pretty strong denomination, such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. No marvel, for Satan himself in transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing is his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness whose end shall be according to their works. Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
I always used to imagine as a small boy, that the devil had horns that he had a little curly red tail that sticks out of very tight pants. That he breathed fire and brimstone, you could smell him a mile off. Well it isn’t true. The devil is a very charming individual, very charming indeed.
I beseech you, Paul writes, Romans 16: 17-18:
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.
For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
They are emissaries of the devil himself, who by good words and fair speeches are always willing to deceive the hearts of the simple. And that’s what happened. Lucifer came and he conducted some special meetings. We ought to know a little bit about his background, where he got his theological training, Isaiah 14:12 (Has Lucifer the serpent slipped from your version?)
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
That’s Lucifer, his great ambition was to be like God. And when he conducts his special series of meetings it’s always to offer men the possibility of being God, being Godlike. He determined that he would be Godlike himself and he tells men how to be Godlike too. WITHOUT GOD.
Genesis chapter 3
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
That sounds a bit mean doesn’t it? Now that isn’t what God said, God said you MAY eat of all the trees of the garden. And that’s how the devil always twists the word of God.
God said you MAY eat of ALL the trees of the garden, but not that one. Devil came along and said has God said you may NOT eat of all the trees of the garden….very subtle.
And sowed the seed, a sense of injustice, that God was mean and niggardly, that He was holding man in a theocratic tyranny, he was making man servile, made man grovel.
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
You see that tree is the point where we express our love to and our dependence on God, and God says any day we want to cease to love Him or be dependent on Him, all we’ve got to do is eat the fruit of that tree in the garden.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
You will be like God. God knows that the moment you do that, you’ll discover having done it in defiance of what God said to you and what God has said to you is this: You will lose what makes you man.
But if you only have the moral courage to do it then what you will discover is that you will lose God and lose nothing, that you are a man by virtue of what you are of man, and you are not man by virtue of what God is in you making you man. And the moment you repudiate God the moment you have the courage to kick over the traces, you will discover you have been kept in a theocratic tyranny and you will be free, you will step out into a new emancipation, you’ll be master of your own destiny, you’ll carve your own future, you’ll be your own king in your own kingdom. You can be good without the need of having God. You can be morally adult without ever needing to be spiritually alive. That was his message.
Man is man by virtue of what man is apart from God, that he doesn’t need the spiritual content of what God is in man to make man man. That is the basic lie.
The basic truth is this. Man is man by virtue of what God is in man. It is only God in man that makes man man.
The basic lie is this. Man is man by virtue of what man is apart from what God is in man. Lose God, lose nothing.
And you will discover that no matter where you turn in your bible, those are the two opposites. You will discover all down history that these are the two principals that stand in contrary distinction, one to the other. You will discover that this today in our 20th century that our difference between 100% Christianity and 100% dialectic materialism or international God hating Christ rejecting communism.
For as the centuries pass and the sands of time begin to run out we discovered the issue between God and the devil, between right and wrong, between good and evil is being crystalized till as last we shall find it consummated in a person, in the man of sin, who is the final masterpiece of the devil himself, in demonstrating that man can be man apart from God.
And you and I are living in the last days. Where the only reasonable, rational alternative to being 100% Christian, is to be 100% communist. And of your not one you ought to be the other, if you’ve got anything to think. That’s why these days a sloppy half-hearted, sentimental skin deep Christianity is utterly useless. Earns only the contempt of the enemies of the cross of Christ. That’s partly why the communists aren’t slightly, slightly afraid, I tell you this and I know it’s true, they’re not the slightest bit afraid of the average church member of the average church congregation, or the average church denomination. Not the slightest bit, they don’t worry one tiny bit about you, because they know they have beaten you hands down already, because the average church member doesn’t understand what he believes, can’t explain what he believes anyway and doesn’t intend to act upon what he believes.
So why should the communist worry?
Because a communist knows what he believes, believes what he knows and intends even to death to act on what he believes. So why should the communist worry about the Christian church, they laugh at it, and spit. And I’ll tell you what, communists are desperately afraid of 100% Christians. In western Germany they were sending party members to infiltrate vital Christian organisations to attempt subversion in their midst, and they lost so many casualties, they gave it up, and now they keep them home. But there is only one thing a communist is afraid of, and that is a Christian who is 100% Christian on God’s terms. They don’t give a Tutney rat about the rest. Khrushchev (former Soviet Union leader during cold war) will bury them with the rest.
Well, under the subtle teaching of Satan, when the altar call was given, up went Adams hand. He was converted, he went up to the front and chose to be man by virtue of what he was as man apart from what God was in him making him man. He believed, because a man ultimately always behaves what he really believes. What you do is what you believe:
“Whatsoever a man thinketh, that is he”
There is always a philosophy behind human action.
The bible says the just shall live by faith. The just shall LIVE by faith. The just will not only just come to life by faith, that’s the initial regeneration, but the just shall live from the crisis of regeneration into the process of living moment by moment, day by day, the just shall live, as a process, by faith, in an act of unrelenting moment by moment, step by step dependence – that’s the just.
But the unjust die by faith, not only did Adam step critically out of life into death by faith, but he maintained an attitude of death by faith. He died by faith. He believed and acted upon what he believed and died. Devil said lose God, lose nothing, and he believed it, he acted in faith. The only trouble was that the object of his faith was a liar. He believed a liar, and he died by faith. This is the faith of the damned, this is the creed of the lost.
And every unconverted man, woman or child who is not yet born again subscribes to the creed of the damned.
If you’re not yet converted, if you’ve not yet been to Christ and claimed Him as your Redeemer, been cleansed in His precious blood and restored to your true relationship with God. If you’ve never repudiated the Adamic lie and stepped back out of death into life, as he once stepped out of life into death, then you subscribe to his beliefs, And you will die by faith. You always act what you believe. For years now in America they have been teaching boys and girls in America that boys and girls in America don’t commit crime. Juveniles don’t do anything wrong. They are just a little over expressive. That’s a fact, they’ve been teaching them that for years. Juveniles just don’t do anything wrong, they deviate. They just deviate from the moral center, that’s all. And if they deviate this way you just push them back a bit, and when they deviate that way, you just push them back a bit. But you mustn’t be too rough, otherwise they’ll get warped. What they need is getting spanked!
That’s why in California 45% of all of the age of 15 and 16 have been in the hands of the police. I was speaking the Mayor’s parlor in the city of Los Angeles, where I’ve had the privilege of speaking on many occasions to some of the civic authorities. And the deputy Sheriff in charge of Juvenile delinquency, in the city of Los Angeles, the city of 4 million people, invited me to speak to a committee of young people appointed from every strata of the Juvenile population with immediate direct access to the high civic authorities in an attempt to combat Juvenile delinquency. He drove me through the city and I had the privilege of speaking to these youngsters: 2 Jews, 2 Protestants, 2 Catholics, 2 of this and 2 of the other. On the way he told me the nature of the problem. He said in the city of LA every single 24 hours at least 1000 school boys and girls are arrested by the police and every 24 hours at least 400 of those 1000 are retained in custody charged with every crime namable up to murder.
Why?
Because they have been taught for years that boys and girls don’t commit crimes, and so they don’t believe they can.
Like a small boy of 10 years murdered a girl of 9 years. He says it’s alright I can’t go to jail because I’m not 21. Just before I left California a little while ago a small boy of 15 years shot his mother and his father dead, had every reason to. They wouldn’t let him drive the family car. Well any parents that don’t let their boy drive the family car deserve to be shot, that’s all there is to it. That’s just a slight deviation from moral center, that’s a little over expressiveness. And of course you ought to give him another mum and dad to shoot, after all if you don’t give him the ability to express himself, he’ll grow up warped in personality, he won’t be a balanced citizen. Nonsense!
This is as old as the devil himself. That man can be morally adult without the need of being spiritually alive. That he has it within himself, if the devil gets you to believe that, he’s got you right underneath his thumb. Just where he wants you, and this is the adulterated nonsense that so often is preach even in the name of Christianity. And all that man needs is an idea and the moral spark within him will be fanned into a flame. In the day the day that Adam was converted he repudiated his love for and his love toward and repudiated his dependence on God. And he lost God and he lost everything. And he became totally destitute of that divine content that alone enables man to be man. God withdrew the Holy Spirit from the human spirit, and his understanding was darkened through the ignorance that was in him, because of the blindness of his heart, being alienated from the life of God. And that is what is described in the bible as “the natural man”, the animal man, the subhuman, the abnormal, YOU my friend if you’re not yet converted. And if you want to know, if you’re not yet converted, why the world stands upon the threshold of bloody devastating nuclear annihilation, it’s because of folk like you, who insist on remaining subhuman, and you’ve only got yourself to blame. When the newspapers are blown through the empty streets of Adelaide where all signs of life have ceased to be.
The government reported while I was in New Zealand that it would take 6 nuclear bombs to obliterate all forms of life in New Zealand, just 6. Amazing thing is that those 6 bombs and many more are already in the hands of men, capable of using them. Those of us who live in the British Isles have been warned that we have 4 minutes to live when war is declared. For there will be only 4 minutes warning. America’s lucky, they’ve got 14 minutes to live.
It’s doubtful whether the bombs will drop on Australia. It’s the atomic fallout, it will take a day or two, perhaps a weeks or two before the cloud rolls over Australia leaving total and absolute death in its wake. Because you see Adam was converted, he believed the devils lie:
Man is man by virtue of what man is apart from what God is in man. He can be like God.
And the result is this, that the human personality that God gave him: his mind; emotions and will. Wonderfully, highly developed, for a man who is designed by God for God to be a spiritual and a moral being, this his (God’s) genius today is at the disposal of a subhuman. So that he (man) does not have either the spiritual or the moral capacity to use the child of his own genius. All he can do is destroy himself. Because Adam was converted. He believed a lie.
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