“GOING ON TO PERFECTION ”

Remarks of Norman P. Grubb

August 2, 1954

 

            I fervently wish that the Holy Spirit had a channel for these meetings through whom He could come even now like a rushing mighty wind, even as our Brother Mr. Bee prayed.  I could wish that I was such a channel here tonight, but we cannot be more than the Spirit gives us at the time.  The Saviour always spoke about ministering within what the Father gave Him.  There was always an element of great rest in the power of His ministry, and none of us can go beyond that, although it is obviously true that often it is because the Spirit can’t give all He would give. 

 

            So I can only give these nights and mornings such as the Spirit gives me, ready at any time for the Spirit to change the direction or move through in some way beyond what I am prepared for.  That’s all I can say.  I think that God is going to make what He is saying to us through Brother Thompson, and what He may say to us in these other meetings, dovetail together, although I think you’ll find what God says through Brother Thompson for most of us will reach down more practically to where we live, and perhaps therefore be of more value to you.  But once again we can only give, each of us, what God gives us. 

 

            We were all moved by the Spirit, this morning, as Mr. Thompson began to face us with various aspects of day to day Christian living, and I’m sure we shall all gather, meeting by meeting, to hear what God the Lord has to say.  The line God gives me is different from that—really I suppose in one sense, at least, in the earlier meetings, more theoretical.  That’s why I say it may not be so profitable.  Perhaps it is because of having been a missionary, one has an intense desire to see precious lives built up in the likeness of Christ in a steadfast walk that pleases God.  Perhaps for that reason I have always had an intense desire to seek and find the secrets of a fully built-up and built-in Christian life, the full, permanent continuous Christian life, thanking God for the great emotional moments but finding that way which is the way—steady progress, “established, strengthened, settled,” as Peter said. 

 

            And I suppose—again we are made differently—but you get some children who by instinct will always take everything to pieces to see how it works; I don’t say they can always put it together again, that’s another matter.  But some of us are made like that and I could never find, never have found, a firm walk for my feet, until I have been perfectly clear about the road which is under me.  I have had to dig and search and I’m still digging and searching—and, praise God, finding, as well as digging and searching—to get right down to rock bottom to the full secret of adequate, complete, Christian living:  Christ-satisfying, God-glorifying, Jesus-filled living, right down to the bottom foundations as far as one is able to see.  Of course there are miles deeper to go, and higher to reach, but up to the level one can see. 

 

            And it’s only as gradually the very foundations of the keys of Christian living have been interpreted to one’s mind and one’s spirit (one’s spirit may devour one’s mind; they must both be furnished) has one learned in any sense to walk the adequate Christian walk.  And then again and again that one has learned to meet every kink in that walk, every little crack in it, where it isn’t adequate or, as we heard this morning, others point out that it isn’t adequate. 

 

            So that’s the line that I’m led to take.  It won’t be just a series of addresses.  Never having been trained, I don’t know how to give addresses.  It will be more or less a continuity, and so those who can come, who feel moved to come regularly, will get more than those who only come once, because I shall just cut off after a certain time, and begin again tomorrow night, where I left off.  That’s all I can do.  You think it’s a joke, but it’s serious. 

 

            And that verse Brother Thompson quoted this morning has been a favorite of mine for years, Psalm 103:7, where by the Spirit the Psalmist differentiates between two types of Christians.  It’s really between the “milk Christian” and the “meat Christian,” the “baby Christians”— the “infant Christians”—and the “mature Christians.”  The Psalmist says, “He made known His ways unto Moses (much fewer Moses’s, only one mentioned), and His acts unto the children of Israel” (plenty of them).  And probably all of us recognize the difference between the ways and the acts.

 

I.  WAYS AND ACTS.

 

            (a) Acts

 

            It’s a very simple thing.  It doesn’t take much faith or intelligence to utilize the acts of a person.  It’s very convenient to do so, but it is very simple.  I can sit in an automobile, and it can take me along to a place.  I may not have the faintest notion how to make one, but I can benefit by the acts of the automobile makers.  I can’t do his work for him. 

 

            That’s what it is to know a person’s acts.  Thus, as infants in Christ, we have continually benefitted by the glorious and gracious acts of our God of all grace, in sending His beloved Son down here.  It needs very little faith, hardly a mere spark, thank God, for us to lean on Calvary.  It takes very little understanding, just that we’ve known that the Precious Blood was shed on our behalf.  We’ve known that that Holy Person bore our sins in His body on the tree, that He was raised again for our justification, that it is by this Man that there is preached unto you forgiveness of sins, and that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Very little faith needed; very little intelligence, thank God.  Some of us wouldn’t be in if it took much. 

 

            But that’s all.  We can just lean on Him—just as you can sit in an automobile—and receive the benefits of these glorious acts; these great eternal acts of all history.  That’s what it is to know His acts.

 

             But you can know His acts and be frightfully variable.  We know that in our Christian living!  The Israelites certainly knew it.  They could benefit by those mighty acts of God through the rod of Moses, the acts of the plagues, the act of the opening of the Red Sea, the act of the manna, and the act of the water out of rock; but, my, they made a howl next time.  They had no conception of what God was after or how it happened.  They knew nothing about that.  They could just go from act to act, with a big howl in between.  That’s our Christian life often. 

 

            (b)  Ways

 

            Moses was different from that.  Now to return to earth again.  It costs something to know a person’s ways.  It costs a few years of hard work to be an automobile maker.  Take a carpenter —you sit on nice benches here and enjoy the acts of the carpenter.  I wonder if we could sit on the benches you tried to make—some of us would get up very quick, or go down a little farther!  We don’t know how to make benches.  It takes maybe 7 years to do these kinds of things expertly—quite a different thing to benefit by the acts of the carpenter from what it is to produce the works of a carpenter. 

 

            When you know the way a thing is made you can reproduce it—that’s the point.  When you know how God does things, you can do the same—that’s the point.  If all we know is the acts of a person, we can receive selfish benefits.  If we know the ways of a person, we can produce unselfish productions of our own for other people.  If I merely know the acts of a carpenter, I can sit down on his bench.  If I know the ways of a carpenter, I can make you a bench.  Big difference. 

 

            That’s the difference between the “milk” and the “meat.”  But, as I say, the second of those two takes long investigations painful mistakes, many times of despair as language learners know (same principle works there) and so on.  But we come out as one who knows how that one does it and therefore can do the same.  If you know how a thing is done, if you wish to, you can reproduce it of course.  So Moses could reproduce the works of God.  Moses’ rods produced the works of God, and God actually called Moses “a god.”  Wonderful, isn’t it, that God so clothed Himself upon a man? 

 

            Of course, that is God’s purpose because sons are in the family.  The ambition of the founder of a store—supposing he is what we would call a chemist or a druggist, or whatever you call him—if he starts a store under the name Timothy, his ambition is that when his lads are grown up around him it will become Timothy & Sons.  They do the father’s job.  That’s what God produces sons for, in infinite grace.  And He actually calls Moses, and not only Moses either, he calls them “gods” and He said, “I will make you a god to Pharaoh and you will be a god to Aaron.”  That was because Moses knew God’s ways, and He said so.  So Moses walked like a god on earth both in the beauty of his character, the power of his words, and the power of his deeds.

 

            Now that’s what I’m seeking these evenings.  I say again, in some ways it won’t be so profitable.  For one thing, it is something you all know about.  This isn’t what we call in England a normal Keswick convention, because a normal Keswick convention or a convention of deepening of spiritual life, would mainly be a whole crowd of grand young people who are perhaps saved and want to know a lot more.  And so the audience is different as Brother Bee pointed out, and a very large majority of us here are those who have proceeded on with God and therefore, as Brother Thompson said this morning, a great deal or most of what we will say will be repetition.  But it’s refreshing.  That’s the point of a convention:  it is fresh sparks of light.  I agree with the quotation from Peter, when he said, “Well although you knew it before I’m going to have one last shot at you.  So when I die you can remember it.”  I like Paul too.  He said, “To repeat the same things for me isn’t grievous and for you it is safe.”  Well I say, it is safe for me too. 

 

            I’m glad the Scripture gives authority for plenty of repetition, and so no sermons can be stale.  You can go on repeating it—the Scripture says so.  I think of that same thought the way that Aquila and Priscilla put it, or it was put concerning them, in Acts 18:26 where it says, “They took Apollos and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.”  I like that.  “Expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.”  We can always go a little farther on that road.  Perhaps I like even more, as suitable to our own need, the words in the end of Hebrews 5, and the beginning of Hebrews 6, where he says, “Come off this elementary business.”  He says, “When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God.”  That won’t do, you’ve got to be teachers, but mind you it’s something to be teachers. 

 

            May I say this—for I shall repeat it later on—it comes somewhat into that same category of acts and ways.  It’s one thing to experience.  It’s another thing to be able to expound your experience and, lead other people into it.  It’s one thing for ourselves to see something even in a small way mentally.  But to get it experientially is very much something!  It’s very much two feet further down, to come from head to heart.  It takes a long time to go those two feet sometimes.  We love to think it’s in the heart when it’s only in the head.  And even then, it takes a much longer time to have such a clarification of knowledge in the spirit, worked out in experience, tested, tried, proven, so we can both expound to others and lead them into what’s been given to us. 

 

            Now that’s what it is to be teachers as God’s Word says in Hebrews 5:12-14.  Now when you ought to be teachers beware lest you have to be taught yourselves again, and beware lest you have to be drinking milk when you ought to be eating meat.  And he says, “Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”  That’s a strange phrase.  It shows how much deeper everything is than we think. 

 

            We’ve said, “Discern between good and evil?  Why?  Surely any child knows that.  Surely any person just regenerated can discern between good and evil.”  But it says that such discernment is the ability of the mature, not the immature. 

 

            There are such subtleties in the discernment between good and evil that it is only the mature, who by reason of use by exercise and experience, are able to discern.  That is linked up in the previous chapter where it refers to, “For the Word of God is quick, and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit . . . .”  Hebrews 4:12.  That’s such a fine point.  It almost implies that the Word of God can hardly get there.  It even divides there between soul and spirit.  That’s very subtle. 

 

            I suppose there is not one of us who hasn’t got miles more to learn about that.  We mistake soul for spirit many and many a time.  “What’s the Mind of God and what’s my mind?  When is the moment to speak?  When is the moment not to speak?  When do I know the plan?  When do I not know the plan?  What can I believe?  What can’t I believe?  What is meekness?  What is firmness?”  Oh, a multitude of things arise when you have to discern between soul and spirit.  There are deep things.  Then he goes on to say in Hebrews 6:1-2, “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, [o]f the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”  Leave these elementary principles of the Christian life behind.

 

            He says, “Let us go on unto perfection.”  So there again is what we are seeking to do, perhaps through these series of meetings, “going on unto perfection”—of reexamining the road for ourselves if we’ve gone some way along it, and perhaps going some steps further. 

 

            Now I would say that the basis of one’s heart and mind investigations through the years, through maybe nearly thirty years, has been brought up continually against tremendous statements of God’s Word, and the recognition of what one certainly hasn’t got really in experience.  What am I to do about it?  They are obvious once again. 

 

            1.  Pure Heart

 

            One, for instance, which has bothered me for years until God fairly recently gave me a real light on it, was the pure heart.  I saw how the Scripture spoke of the effect of the Holy Ghost, coming on the first Gentiles with purity of heart by faith, Acts 15:8-9.  When the Holy Ghost came on Cornelius and those assembled in his household, it says that the evidence by which He came was interesting.  First of all, he said the evidence was by tongues; but, later on, when he commented on it to the Church at Jerusalem, he said that the evidence was a “heart purified by faith”—a pure heart; and you can add to that many Scriptures of the same type.  Brother Thompson touched on those texts this morning, “loving one another with a pure heart fervently.” 

 

            “Now the end of the commandment,” in I Timothy 1:5, “Charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.”  You can get nine, ten, twenty such simple presentations of the fact of a pure heart. 

 

            Now honestly, for years I found that the word that seemed to be much more fitting was Jeremiah 17:19:  “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked:  who can know it?”  It has taken me a long time to realize that that is not an evangelical expression.  We have no business to use it.  I have no business to use it in the gospel, no business to use it, yet we many times use it because we haven’t understood in our minds (and then it has got down into the experience of our spirit) what a pure heart is and how we can have it.  That’s taken me years of investigation.  Not merely mental investigation.  I’ve understood the teachings concerning a pure heart for a long time but I wouldn’t take them until they were real to me.  I wouldn’t take them.  I said I’m not going to be hypercritical and talk about a pure heart until I’ve seen what it is and until I can say by God’s grace it is a fact—a fact in poor me. 

 

            An unmixed heart—unmixed—a thing which is pure has no dirt in it.  A pure heart therefore is one that loves the Lord its God with all its heart and mind and strength and its neighbour as itself.  That’s a pure heart.  Now that struck me for a long time.  I felt I must get down to the bottom of it, not just accept other people’s doctrine.  I mean I should find out what is the meaning of it.

 

            2.  Perfection

 

            Perfection is a word which has bothered me for a long time.  I’ve never been satisfied with that horrible presentation even on our Deeper Life platform, of opposition to perfection.  And I’ve said “Something’s wrong here.”  And yet if you mention the words “sinless perfection” on the platform, you’re finished.  Out you go as a heretic.  But if you say, “Dear brethren let’s be as sinfully imperfect as you like,” they say, “Come on brother, you’re for us; give us 20 sermons on that one.”  It’s a fact!  I was in a country a year ago where they told me that when one man got up and preached something that smelt a little of sinless perfection, immediately they put a brother up the next evening to give a sermon which smelt strongly of sinful imperfection.  It’s a fact. 

 

            It’s a tragedy, brothers and sisters.  This Book isn’t a Book of sinful imperfection; it’s a Book of sinless perfection.  I’ve been struck again and again and again that that word “perfection” is thrown at us in the Bible by every writer.  Jesus—“Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  We fundamentalists are wonderful people.  We must say we believe the Bible so when we get up against something we don’t like, we walk around it and find another translation for it.  Beautiful!  Perfect modernism in fundamentalists.  We are beautiful modernists —we always get around anything we don’t like.  “Sell that ye may have.”  Oh, that means spiritually, it doesn’t mean physically.  Oh, lovely:  so that you only have to go to one of the five and twenty new translations to get something better to get out of an awkward corner.  And one of them is perfection.  Call it maturity and get out of it that way.  You can grow into maturity, you see. 

 

            So be you mature as God —I wouldn’t like to call God mature.  Mature doesn’t suit Him very well.  “Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  “Let us therefore cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God,” II Cor. 7:1. 

            James—I may speak a little later about James?  James is a friend of mine.  He wasn’t of Luther’s, but he is of mine.  He is a holy man, James.  Oh, he’s a holy man.  He knew a great deal more of holiness perhaps than some of his critics.  He is full of perfection, “perfect patience,” “perfect law of liberty,” which we are to continue in, “perfect man with a bridled tongue.”  That’s three.  “Perfect faith” is another.  He’s the only man that mentions perfect faith in the Bible.  “Perfect patience” in James 1:4; “perfect law of liberty” in James 1:25—which we are to continue in; “perfect faith” in James 2:22; and “the perfect man with the bridled tongue” in James 3:2.  And James is supposed to be a kind of hollow superficial gentleman.  I wish I was as superficial as he was, that’s all, and could talk that language because I live it. 

 

            John is beyond me; I don’t know what we are to do with John.  Put him out, I guess.  John corners, completely corners us, because he four times over says we are now to be exactly as Jesus is.  What are we to make of that?  Not much sinful imperfection about that one is there?  It says in the first chapter twice over I John 1:7, “we are to walk in the light as He is in the light,” that is absolute light.”  In the second chapter, “Whosoever says he abides in Him ought himself so to walk even as he walked,” exactly as Jesus walked on earth.  That’s I John 2:6.  I John 3:7 says, “He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as He is righteous,” and it says also, “whosoever hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as He is pure.”  I John 3:3. 

 

            Righteous as He is righteous; pure as He is pure; in the light as He is in the light; walking as He walks.  And the fourth one is beyond all—it is linked with perfect love.  That’s where John comes to perfection.  He says in I John 4:17, “Herein is our love made perfect;” not, “ought to be,” or “might be,” but “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.”  And he goes on to the statement I’m getting at (the end of that verse), “because as He is”—not even as He was on earth, but as He is now, that Perfect One, seated in all His glory at the right hand of the Majesty on high—“As he is so are we.”  What do you think of that one? 

 

            Now I may be sure of this, brothers and sisters, and I think you will all agree with me, the Holy Ghost would never let a writer be a hypocrite.  That is to say, He would never let a writer of the New Testament write what he didn’t experience, for that would be mere hypocrisy.  If He allowed John to exhort us to be what John wasn’t, John would be a hypocrite.  Why should I listen to him? 

 

            John could not have written this if he did not live it.  I think that is reasonable common sense or the whole Book is hypocrisy.  And I think I have a fair argument, or fair statement, when I say every one of these men wrote these things because they lived them, and therefore the Spirit of God could say it through them.  “As He is, so are we in this world.”  So I’ve had to find and God has given me some rays of light which I will pass on to you later, on how a human being can face up to that—and a human being can face up to it.  Yes—and can walk in it.  (That will be the last time I preach here, I expect, saying that!) 

 

            Well, I’ve got to face it.  If this is in God’s Word, I’ve got to face it.  If this Book rings perfection at me, I’ve to find out what perfection means and how to be it.  I’d better.  “Be ye therefore perfect.”  Jesus said it, and some of our neat fundamentalists put that into the millennium and say, “Oh the Sermon on the Mount is not for this world at all.”  That’s another way out.  We live it in the next thousand years, not down here.  I prefer to live it here!  Because the Sermon on the Mount is very simple:  it is Jesus.  Where does Jesus live?  He lives it out in us, of course, that’s all.  It couldn’t be simpler.  “Be ye holy for I am holy;” “As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy.”  That’s Peter’s word on perfection.  I Peter 1:15, “As He which hath called you is holy so be ye” the same level of holiness.  “Be ye holy for I am holy;”  My!  They are heights, aren’t they?  But there they are, bang, bang, bang, in the Word of God. 

 

            Now those are the kinds of things which bothered me for some years but, thank God, you come out of the tunnel.  There is another one you go into later on, but you come out of that one again.  You go on going through forever, perhaps, but it is good to through a tunnel and come to the bright sunlight at the other end.  Praise the Lord there is bright sunlight as well as dark tunnels.  Thank God we don’t live in dark tunnels; we live in the sunlight with an occasional dive into a tunnel and out again at the other end.

 

            3.  Rest

 

            “Rest” hasn’t bothered me in recent years quite so much because God did show me the secret of that after years of desperation.  But I saw as many of us here have seen a standard of rest in Hebrews which was not my early missionary experience.  There again we wonderful fundamentalists wangle out of it and you get fundamentalists who turn Hebrews 3 and 4 into heaven.  “Oh,” they say,” “there remained therefore a rest to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9) “means when we get to heaven.”  Nonsense!  Nonsense!  Be a fundamentalist and believe the Word of God now.  Take what it says now.  How can you say that when it says in Hebrews 4:3, “For we which have believed do enter into rest.”  Not shall!  Do enter into rest! 

 

            Praise God, it is true too, as many of us here know, I trust.  Hebrews 4:9, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.”  Well, you might get out of it and say, “Oh yes, there you are.  That verse is going to be in heaven.”  Well, don’t read verse 10 then:  “For he that is entered into his rest hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His.”  It does not say, “shall enter into His rest,” but, “is entered in;” “has entered in!” 

 

            No!  No!  Praise God I know many of us agree there, it is a present-tense rest.  But that bothered me more than it does now because I hadn’t a resting life.  I didn’t rest in my works.  Brothers and sisters, I am absolutely sure of this as a missionary secretary:  I don’t want to be unkind, but I think 75% of those who come home from the mission field don’t come home with genuinely physical reasons.  I don’t think so.  Deep down there has been spiritual turmoil which has not been resolved.  Deep down you’ll find it.  I don’t want to be uncharitable.  There are real physical sicknesses too, but a great many are not that and they are to be traced back to the fact that we have not entered into that rest because, “he that is entered into rest has ceased from works.” 

 

            Not “ceased from working,” because somebody else comes and does the work inside you and He’s a much harder worker and that is God Himself.  God is a Person of never-ending working unto never-ending resting.  The two are combined in Him; they are one.  God has an unending centre of absolute rest, and out of that unending centre come unending works.  The two have married there.  Works which come from restlessness end in a breakdown if not in the asylum.  Works which come from rest go on and on and on.  You never get tired.  That’s a fact!  There’s a life in this relationship where you do not get tired as you used to get tired!  I know it.  What Paul said is perfectly true, “Yes, I am daily dying but the life of God is manifest in this mortal flesh which is daily dying, and then life works in others.” 

 

            But he says first of all, in the midst of daily dying there is a living.  That’s exactly what puzzled Moses.  How was it that that fire burned up the bush and yet the bush wasn’t consumed?  Praise God, that is exactly what happens.  A renewed bush out of which there are renewed burnings, a dying body in which there is renewed life.  And I only humbly say that it is well over twenty years now since I entered into this rest, but I have had to learn plenty since! 

 

            Oh, and then God had to take me through deeper ways after that.  He took me a deeper way about 1932-33.  I came out there; I have had tides of physical life since.  I wish I could get tired.  I’d get more excuse for resting, but it won’t work that way.  And you can’t rest; there is the Divine surge in you.  There is!  It is when the works come out of rest, because they are not your works.  You’ve ceased from your own works!  There isn’t a self element in the works. 

 

            That is what bothered me in my early Christian days:  self-consciousness was a terror to me.  (I believe self-consciousness came out and still comes out in a measure, really out from secret ambition and pride.)  I wanted to be something and to be thought of as something.  That put self-consciousness in me.  I couldn’t pray freely because I was always feeling that if I prayed it wouldn’t be good enough.  I must wait until I can pray better.  Always I, I, I, I, I.  And yet I loved my Lord.  I was consecrated to Him to the limit I knew. 

 

            I had been used for souls at home, but oh how I was bound on the mission field.  I didn’t love the African.  I couldn’t pray without self-consciousness.  I had only preached decently when I was hidden away with the Africans and there was no one else to hear.  And so on . . . .  Bound! 

 

            Of course the other form it took was criticism of others.  Oh, I was mighty good at that one.  I hadn’t got this rest.  I still get assaults by self-consciousness, but I know the secret now.  I know how to handle the business when he (the devil) comes.  That is what happens when you know the way.  Again I refer back to the example of the carpenter.  A carpenter who becomes expert can easily make things.  He can make them and not make them.  He can just sit down and make nothing.  But it is nothing for him to make a chair and a table.  It is in his very nature now.  Now when you’ve learned the secrets of God it is your very nature to handle the devil.  You put him out whenever you like.  You’ll never do anything else.  You’ll handle him, not him handle you.  But you can be lazy and not do it. 

 

            The same as with Moses.  Before he knew the secret, Pharaoh handled Moses.  But when Moses knew the secret, Moses handled Pharaoh!  So even when we do know the secret, we can be lazy in it, certainly; but you know how!  I know enough of what it is to be caught in self-consciousness in a prayer meeting, but I know what to do about it.  I know the secret, and it is my own jolly fault if I don’t put it into practice.  (Sorry I’m English!  Oh, my!) 

 

            The Lord gave me a wonderful text when I entered in by God’s grace into the first stages of understanding here.  He gave it to me when I had to take up new responsibility in this mission from the time our founder died.  I was very young for that kind of work then and I remember how the Lord gave me a word as plain as could be.  It has been with me ever since, a kind of thermometer.  He gave that word on rest in the famous passage of Jesus in Matthew 11:28:  “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” that is the first of the two rests.  That rest is a rest, of course, of sins forgiven.  Then He goes on, “Take my yoke upon you,” that means get into service with me.  Pull the yoke of the Gospel with me; “and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.”  That is the key!  We’ll go into that later on.  There’s the key!  “For I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”  Now we are getting somewhere. 

 

            That is the second rest.  Now you find rest unto your souls in the activities.  You cease from your own works as God did from His.  Matthew 11:30.  And then He adds this bit which came to me, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  Now that of course is one of these many paradoxes.  A yoke is difficult to pull and a burden  is heavy to carry; but Jesus said, “Yes, you have got a yoke to pull for me and you have a burden to carry for me, but there is an element in it which makes the yoke easy and the burden light.”  And He said to me, “Now watch whenever now in your future ministry you do not find your yoke easy or your burden light, you’ve missed the way.  You’re off beam.  Get back on it.”  My, that has been a word to me ever since.  Whenever I find my yoke not easy or my burden not light or my yoke difficult or my burden heavy, I am off beam, I have missed the secret.  I had better get back quickly and if you’ve found the secret you’ll know how to get back to it.  If you have found the way you will know how to go on walking on it.  You’ve just slipped off. 

            That’s been a great blessing to me and praise God there is an intensity in this life.  I do believe “there is a greater need of solemnity.”  I say again, brothers and sisters, I sense a certain lightness in our missionary ministry which I don’t think was in the older generation.  Now I know we older people always say, “Oh, for the good old days.”  Well, I have yet to meet a few C. T. Studds and a few Barclay Buxtons and a few Paget Wilkes and a few of that type.  I’ve got to meet them.  I think there is a certain lightness, whether it is our numbers . . . . 

 

            I don’t think there is that intensity that I was brought up under.  I was brought up under C. T. Studd for 10 years.  I think there is a need for greater intensity.  There is joy in this life, but there is something more.  But the mystery and the paradox and the glory of the Gospel is that the very intensities of God have life in them.  The intensities of the devil or self-effort have death in them.  That’s how we break down.  When we are made tense by self-effort or intense by the devil, down we crash in due course.  When you are intense by God there is life in God’s intensities.  So there is  a yoke and there is a burden, but there is a quality of Divine life in it, so we can’t be too intense, we can’t be too desperate.  I am not a quarter of what I ought to be, but insofar as I am or insofar as any of you are, there is life in it.  That’s this thing. 

 

            And that’s what the Spirit said to me twenty four years ago now and it has never left me.  It is true today.  In the midst of the intensity, in the midst of the burden, in the midst of the purpose, in the midst of the determination there is a lilt, a spring time because all of my fresh springs are in Him.  “Thou hast the dew of thy youth!”  We get pretty ancient looking on the outside, but, praise God, we remain kids inside in the Spirit.  I always tell them at home, “You don’t have to go to a dance hall when you have a permanent dance inside.”  Praise the Lord!  I used to have a grand old uncle, Uncle George Grubb.  Some of you old saints, especially the English, will know him, the great evangelist.  He used to meet you in the morning, a great big fellow with the joy of the Lord, and would say, “Have you got a bounce in your soul this morning?”  That’s a good one!  Our souls should be like a rubber ball.  When the devil hits them down, they should bounce up higher again.  Praise the Lord!  That’s the Holy Ghost. 

 

            So you always have these paradoxes, the mingling of the tears and all that is involved in the plodding of the missionary ministry and the determination of the missionary ministry—with a lilt, and a song, and the shout of a King in our mouth!

 

            4.  Continuation

 

            Now to know those things continually is the problem, that is the point.  I don’t believe that missionaries should need conferences.  I say that flatly.  Conferences are lovely for fellowship.  But you shouldn’t need them.  Mr. Studd was an old terror, I admit, but he had one or two bees in his bonnet.  One bee in his bonnet was concerning the wonderful Keswick Convention in England where  about 5,000 people gather.  It is the father of the Keswick Conventions all around the world, but they always put one thing on that irritated him.  They’d get about 300 missionaries up there, tired missionaries from mission fields, and they would usually put on some dear minister who had never smelled the mission field himself to give a refreshing sermon to these 300 missionaries to comfort them.  “Comfort missionaries?” Mr. Studd said, “If you don’t go back so hot that you’ll burn the place up, don’t you go back at all!  You don’t go home to get hotted up! You go back home to get them hotted up!”

 

            And they used to try to get old Studd home from the Mission Field.  He said, “God sent me out here.  When God tells me to go home I’ll go home.  Well, he’s gone home up that way instead.  But he said this, “Look here, I will come home on one condition.  I’ll come home from Central Africa to England for two days if you will hire the Albert Hall and let me get the leaders of the church of Christ there, and I’d give them something for two days, and I’d go back to Africa again.”  Praise the Lord! 

 

            That’s why I told you that we had a training.  But do you see what he was after?  He said you carry your comfort in your soul.  Indeed you do.  The Conference Speaker lives in here (tapping on chest).  Praise His Blessed Name.  And He comes out through here (the mouth).  There is something wrong with us if we need refreshment.  I say it again, that is one of the lessons the Holy Ghost taught me some time ago. 

 

            I never let the devil tell me I am dry.  How can I be dry in soul when I keep a permanent well of water inside—the Spirit springing up unto everlasting life?  I never let the devil tell me I’m hungry and need spiritual nourishment.  I have permanent loaves and permanent water inside me —the Bread of Life and the Water of Life.  Jesus!  And all that I have to do is to eat and drink spiritually.  You eat and drink spiritually by recognition.  That’s all.  The recognition of faith is the eating and drinking spiritually.  I just recognize Jesus and there I am, of course, fresh in a second!  I will talk about that a little later on, but I never allow these things.  It is an insult to God when He is living in me that I could moan and groan that I am cold , dry . . . .  Not for a second, unless there is sin!  If there is sin we’ll have to deal with that. 

 

            Even sin, by the grace of God, can be dealt with in a second too.  When there is repentance  and faith, the Blood once shed for sin cleanses.  Praise His Name!  But, as I say, these things are matters of searching and distress for me much more in my younger days, although I suppose most of us are sensitive.  I wonder how many million people have told me they are sensitive.  You are always the most sensitive person in the world.  Every person I meet is the most sensitive person in the world.  Two things I always meet—every country is the hardest and every person is the most sensitive.  But I am sensitive, too, so I am one of you.  And because I am sensitive, I get that self-consciousness.  Ah yes, but I know how to deal with it now.  That is the difference.  I don’t let it disturb my rest.  If it does I put it out again. 

 

            I used to be bound by it and didn’t know how to get free from it, but the Lord has broken those bands with His holy rest of Hebrews 3.  But I had to find out about it and then I had to find how to continue in it!  As I say, what I’m after is the continued life; not just the occasionally-revived life, but the continued life because that is what missionaries must have and must reproduce in the children whom God gives us.  So it may come by the precious bursts of a revival, but unless we have learned the law of continuity we have not got much. 

 

            I am waiting and watching and hoping now that in the Congo they will learn the law of continuity.  There is a law.  So that this thing doesn’t just peter out again and die down.  I was in a tragic area of Assam.  It is something like the condition of India today.  Assam is up in the northeastern corner of India where the great Welsh revival had its repetition in the early 1900's among various tribes there.  I was only among one of those tribes and they commented that hundreds and thousands professed to be Christians but modernism had got in and, as far as I can judge—of course  I speak superficially—most of the missionaries are not Gospel preachers today.  One man there is. They don’t like him too well because he is just what they call a “common miner” and hasn’t the education of the others.  But he’s got something in his heart that they haven’t. 

 

            My, we need that warning.  I say it again, it’s not going to be education that is going to evangelize the world, and don’t be deceived here in Japan.  Don’t accept the argument that they are educated here and so we need more educated missionaries.  No!  We need more Holy Ghost missionaries! 

 

            And up there in Assam, the one man who has got the Holy Ghost is a common miner.  He is a Welshman.  They don’t think too much of him because he isn’t seminary trained but they allow him to come down to the central church once a year to preach.  And I happened to be in the central city on this Sunday, and after we had had our own little service I was able to go to theirs.  Oh that man sweated!  The perspiration was running down his face, but, do you know what he told that congregation of educated Indians?  They were some of the highest educated Indians there are in India now—all nominal Christians once in the revival.  He said, “I’ve just been spending a week here in this Bible Teaching conference, a kind of Deeper Life conference for missionaries, and for the Indians too.  Very nice,” he said, but, looking at them, he said, “What’s the use of giving you deeper life teaching when you haven’t got any life at all?”  And all these missionaries sitting there!  “My,” I said, “Praise God for a man that had the courage to do it!” 

 

            But you know it is tragic, tragic—there is a revival lost, reviva1that burned in that area 50 years ago.  Where is it today?  They don’t even preach the Blood today except for that dear man and he had to do it with sweat rolling down his cheeks because of the feeling he had with their whole missionary body against him.  That’s the condition of the world in some places.  Maybe that is too  much a generalization, but it is something like that, because I know that from the facts.  That’s what I mean.  It isn’t enough to have a temporary revival.  We have to learn how the life can be continued. 

            5.  The Dominion of Sin

 

            These areas of sins are what have bothered me.  All this talk about victory over sin, in some measure yes, but in certain details not.  Now God has faced me and chased me with that for years! I had to find the way, the secret of continuing in this in every detail and be prepared for anybody to  come along and say, “Brother, you were in the flesh there and not in the Spirit.” 

 

            We must be prepared to face other areas that we don’t see yet for we are all plenty blind.  Indeed, I was tackled in a letter from one of our Indian missionaries a few days ago concerning a fault in my own life.  I didn’t like it too well at first—we never do.  But I came to see, “Yes, brother, you’ve got something there.  I’ve got something to learn from the Spirit there, another area.”  Now there it is!  I am going to search into that.  So I must go on doing it.  But I have had to find that standard. 

 

            Now where is the secret by which every known sin in my life can be tackled and dealt with so that one can walk honestly and, in that sense, “sin shall not have dominion over you?”  That was another problem I had.

 

            6.  Peace and Joy

 

            Peace and joy of the abundant kind are others.  I often used to hear it said, “Well, of course in times of the movings of the Spirit when we are in the presence of God we can get flood tides of joy and peace, but you can’t expect the normal daily life to be the same.”  Yes it can be!!  The normal daily life can have this ecstatic basis to it.  There is a permanent fulness of joy and peace, peace like a river, joy unspeakable and full of glory.  I don’t think I know the meaning of that word yet.  “Unspeakable” is beyond me yet.  Joy unspeakable, and full of glory, and Peter said that that is in trial.  He used that verse in I Peter 1:6-7, when he spoke about being in heaviness through manifold temptations!  Well, one time, until I saw how those verses went on, I thought I had an excuse, for it said, “Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations!”  Oh splendid, I can grouse and be burdened!  Oh, no!  He goes on to say, “that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory”(in the trials).”  “Oh,” I thought, “my crack has disappeared.  I can’t get through that one.  Count it all joy!”  That caught me out on occasions. 

 

            I have been challenged by that, “Lord, give me 1% of grouse.  Give me a chance.”  One hundred percent joy when the devil treads on my toes, and he does it through my neighbor too?  That is a pretty thick one isn’t it?  But I had to face it.  All joy now. 

 

            Now those are the kind of things that challenged me for years.  How can you do that?  Yes, thank God the secret is to be found and then put into practice. 

 

            7.  Power

 

            Power is another.  We talked quite a bit about power, but again I stress, brothers and sisters, I cannot and have not been able to get away from the fact for years that the incoming of the Spirit in God’s Word is not only linked with the fruit of character, the blessed fruit of the Spirit, but with fruitfulness in service.  I don’t think that you can put John 15 down as fruitfulness of character.  Christ speaks about your fruit that will remain and He ordains you to go and bring forth fruit.  I don’t think anybody will say that refers to the fruit of the Spirit which automatically comes through the abiding life.  Praise God, He just produces those . . . love, joy, peace, and so on. 

 

            I think that everyone will agree that John 15 refers to fruit in service, fruit in ministry.  And of course there is not only that passage.  Acts 1:8 is one of the outstanding proofs that the Holy Spirit came to make witnesses with power, and there were some quotations that we used last night that go along the same line.  What I am getting at is this—we are facing it all the time.  There is a Divine indwelling, there is a connection between this poor self and the One Who is in it Who produces fruit.  I’ve got to find that fulness of power.  I won’t stress that any more because we have talked on that line.  Only I am sure many of us escape it.  I’ve never been satisfied with this business, “Oh well, I’ll plough and somebody else will reap after 20 years.”  I know there are problems.  Perhaps I have faced them more than some of you because I have been in some of those countries.  I know their problems in India.  I was placed right up there with our missionaries who are utterly faithful, just as faithful as any missionaries we have in fruitful Africa or anywhere else.  They’re up against hard stone walls, but still I mustn’t give in nor must they give in.  The Holy Spirit is the Person Who is come to break down those walls.  He has come to manifest the victory that One wrought out on Calvary and bring it into life.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t let myself off by saying, “I’ll sow and somebody else will reap in the next generation. 

 

            I prefer the outlook of Jesus when He dealt with an impossible woman who was an adulteress and everything else, the woman of Samaria, and found in her a fruitful harvest field.  When those disciples came back to speak to Him, He said, “Lift up your eyes.  You say it is four months till harvest.  I say that harvest is here, right there if you lift up your eyes and see it . . . by faith.” It is there!  Reap it!  Reap it now!  That evidently was the emphasis of His message there, wasn’t it?  Maybe you will not all agree with me there, but I say God has put that into me all the years of my life.  It isn’t enough just to scatter the seed.  The Holy Ghost does more than that and there is more  implied in Him being the Power for service within me as well as the Producer of holiness. 

 

            Well, those are just some preliminary outlines of the search which has engaged my attention and, again I say to the glory of God, it isn’t only a searching; there is a finding, even though there is more searching after that.  If it was mere searching, one wouldn’t be here.  Thank God this is a Book of receiving as well as seeking, as we all know.  I think we might put the general outline under what we see in I John 2:12-14.  I shall be following up on that a bit.  I don’t think there is an outline quite like it anywhere else in the New Testament, or in the whole Bible for that matter.

 

II.  THREE PHASES OF EXPERIENCE.

 

            I John clearly depicts to us three distinct phases in Christian experience—the Christian life and growth into which we all have to pass.  I think it is quite remarkable.  It kind of breaks in like no other part that I know of in the New Testament.  And even John does not refer to it again; he just breaks in on this point.  It is queer.  The Holy Spirit just revealed it to him like that. 

 

            And so he says in I John 2:12-14, “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake.  I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.  I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning.  I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.” 

 

            I have written unto you fathers because you have known Him Which is from the beginning.  I have written unto you young men because ye are strong and the Word of God abideth in you and ye have overcome the wicked one.  Now you see how he writes about three distinct phases of growth which fit exactly to natural growth. Little children (infancy), young men (adolescence), fathers (adulthood).  So he pictures the Christian life—infancy, adolescence, and adulthood—in three distinct phases, in fact, with characteristics distinct to each of them, so that we can follow what he means.  I just want to stress one or two points.