The Pattern For Consecration — Peter Brandon

Revival Begins With Personal Consecration

I want to speak on this subject of revival, not historically, nor nationally, but mainly I want to speak on this subject individually and then locally in our local churches. We were discussing the matter of revival in a village and a small town called Kilbirnie, and there were a large group of young people and we were discussing this matter together and one girl that didn't come from a Christian family said this, revival must start with me, and I looked at her and I could see she was transparent, and revival must begin in our local churches, and that was perfectly true.

You see, public meetings like this are good and helpful, but real revival must break out in our own hearts and in the heart of our own local church. And let's pray that we might see again in Northern Ireland those lovely fires of revival beginning to spread.

Now why have I picked out Northern Ireland? It was in the 1859 revival that was international that broke out here in the north, that affected every part of the world. Then in 1903 there was a national revival in Wales that affected many parts of England and certain parts of the world in Africa.

Then roughly in 1925 God used a man, Billy Nicholson, with great power and many were brought to Christ and there would be people here that will remember perhaps the backwash of that movement. But in our own country we are now in, at least in England, a moral jungle.

If I gave you all the facts and figures you would go home depressed. And there's only one answer. That's not in government, it's not even in religion, it's in individual Christians being truly consecrated to the Lord, and local churches catching fire for God.

Spirit-Filled Homes and Functional Marriages

Now what I want to do is quite simple. First of all I'm going to give you the pattern for real revival and that is in consecration, the pattern. Then tomorrow night I want to speak about the power for consecration, how to really live this Christian life, the power.

Now if we are going to see spirit-filled churches we must have spirit-filled homes. And therefore all of us must be honest enough to get back to what God says in the scripture concerning the building of a New Testament home.

As you all know modern culture is diametrically opposed to the way of Christian living. Now we must learn not to follow modern culture, we must learn to follow the culture of the Kingdom of Heaven. And then we shall become a power for God when our homes are stable and are like a burning light in all the moral darkness that we are seeing today.

Then I want to share with you five great secrets how there can be a functional marriage when the whole of marriage is disintegrating before us. Five great secrets. Now may I say this with great care before God, I had 54 years with a wonderful Christian girl and the last two years of our life were the happiest.

And it was the Lord that brought us together. And let's pray that God will raise up homes like that. Then we must move on to the local church and therefore I want to speak to you on the house of God. Can I reverse that?

The Local Church as God's House

God's house. What constitutes a company of Christians to be termed the house of God? Now I'm sure of this, that's going to be helpful to us all. And then how should a local church that's a house of God function?

And quite frankly I'm going to give you the secret now, it should function as your human body functions. And the most wonderful thing on earth is to be in a body life fellowship. May God make that real to us.

And then we must look at our world and see how scriptural our evangelism is. And once we have consecrated Christians, once we have New Testament homes, and once we have real New Testament churches that has recaptured the presence and the power of God, then we can see the explosion in evangelism.

Now you will never give a live child to a dead mother and therefore every local church must become living, alive, in order to care for newcomers. And may it be in this lovely land of Northern Ireland, God will begin a great movement that will sweep many into the kingdom of God.

The Coming of the Lord and the Church's Hope

And lastly, we're all going home soon. We're living in the last seconds of this age. Very shortly we shall hear the shout, experience the change, and the whole church of God will meet the Lord Jesus in the air.

We are going home soon. And all of us should be saying one to another, Maranatha, the Lord is coming. Now in these last seconds, surely the Spirit is saying, come and may the church join in for the Scripture says the Spirit and the Bride say come.

And now we're going to look for our last two messages on the way back. We've seen the ideal, but how do we achieve it? How do we bring it right down to earth, to the nitty gritty things of life? And we're going to look at that on the last two nights and trust that this might be a blessing.

Now I say this again. I believe there are hundreds of the Lord's people in Northern Ireland who long to see revival. Phone them, chat with them, ask them to come. And on some nights we'll finish the meetings with prayer as we are led by the Spirit of God.

Romans and the Righteousness of God

Going to turn you now to just two verses and that's in Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2. Whilst you're finding the place, let me give you just a little outline on Romans so that we get the setting perfectly.

The key word in Romans is in the 16th verse of the first chapter. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. To the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. It's God's power. The key word in the whole of Romans is righteousness. And that is mentioned 31 times.

Its twin brother is justification and that's mentioned 16 times. Now when it speaks of God's righteousness, it does not mean that God puts a white garment on a dirty body. It basically means, and please note this, the right way in which God makes us right with himself.

And that actually means that all the righteous claims have been met when Jesus Christ died upon the cross. So that through that death, God can remain absolutely just and still completely justify the sinner.

The right way in which God makes us right with himself. Now in Romans 1 to 3, it's this righteousness desperately needed because of sin. At the end of Romans 3, it's God's righteousness provided through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus and through that mystical word, the propitiation, meaning when Christ was on the cross, he endured the whole punishment of sin before God.

And he exhausted it. And when he said finished, the work was done. And through his precious blood, our sins can be eternally put away. In Romans 4, it is righteousness received and there are two personalities in that chapter.

One is David and the other is Abraham and they were both men of faith. Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness. He staggered not at the promises of God through faith, but was strong in faith.

And therefore, receiving this salvation is on the principle and grounds of faith. In Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8, it is righteousness enjoyed, not endured. Enjoyed. In other words, God has declared us righteous and now there's power, especially in Romans 8, for us to live that righteous life.

Romans 9 and 11 are sad chapters and quite frankly, if you look at it carefully, the nation of Israel rejected the righteousness of faith and they were cast partially on one side. In Romans chapter 10, it is righteousness communicated.

How shall they hear without a preacher and how shall they preach except they be sent? How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel. But when you come to Romans 12, 13, 14, and 15, it's righteousness manifested.

He has made you right, declares you to be right, and according to Romans 8, there's no power in the universe that can separate you from the love of God. Forgive me saying it. Hallelujah for that. Now, because he has declared you right, he wants you to live right and it's the practical way of living a righteous life and that's why he begins with consecration.

The Appeal and Nature of Consecration

Now, may I say this in passing? I have never been to a group of Christians who were truly consecrated, irrespective where they are, who were not blessed by God. As simple as that. Every group of Christians who are consecrated according to the teaching of Scripture are always fruitful, never barren.

And that is why I want to take these two verses and sew them in your hearts tonight. And I trust that not only may they be sewn intellectually, but may they be sewn by divine revelation. May God open the eyes of our heart.

Now, the way we're going to look at this verse, again, is quite simple. We're going to look at the urgent appeal for consecration. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. Secondly, I want you to know the nature of this consecration, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable or intelligent service.

Then I want to look at the effects of consecration, and they are very graphic and beautiful. Be not conformed to this world or to this age, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind in view of proving what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

And then right at the end, I want to speak upon the act of faith that brings you into a state of consecration. First of all, the appeal, I beseech. Really, this word will never be understood as far as the Greek word is concerned until we go to hear Paul preaching.

If you went to hear the apostle preaching, as it's recorded in 2 Corinthians 5, you would not hear a man giving you a nice little essay. You would not hear a man giving a discourse. You certainly wouldn't hear a lecture.

When the apostle Paul was preaching, he was conscious that he was an ambassador for Christ. Think of it. In other words, his lips were the lips of his master, the Lord Jesus. Then he gives to us his inward emotions when he was preaching, and he tells us that there were two factors that controlled him.

One was the terror of the Lord, and the other was the compassion of the Lord. He realized because Christ died, then all were spiritually dead, and this filled him with holy awe. Secondly, because the love of God had captured his heart, he said, The love of Christ constrains me.

And that word, constrain, as most of you are aware, is the same word of a person having a malarial fever. And when a person has a malarial fever, every part of the body is caught up in the vortex of the fever.

And this is what he says, The love of Christ has captivated me like a malarial fever. And then he cries out, Because we are ambassadors for Christ, because of Christ's dead, we pray you in God's stead be ye reconciled to God.

What does it mean? God was speaking through him to the unsafe world that they might be reconciled to God. Now you can see the word beseech has a tremendous power attached to it. But now it's not Paul as the preacher, it's Paul as the teacher, and he's going to expound in this chapter that the local church should function as a body.

And what is he saying? The local church will never function as a body until all the bodies of the saints in that local church are laid on the altar. And therefore that is one of the reasons why local churches are not functioning correctly because of this lack of consecration.

Consecration as the Filling of the Hands

Now the word consecration is only found I believe twice or three times in the New Testament. It's an Old Testament word. And the Old Testament word means the filling of the hands. And what does that mean?

When a priest in the Old Testament was consecrated, the hands were filled with the wave breast of a ram and the heave shoulder. And they held it with their corresponding serial offerings. An Aaron would come and take the wave breast and wave it before the Lord.

Then he would come and take the heave shoulder and wave that before the Lord. Then they would go into the holy place and eat especially the heave shoulder with the bread offerings. Now what does this mean?

The heave shoulder of the ram would speak of strength. Got it? The wave breast would speak of affection. And what does it mean now, the filling of the hands? It is the work of the Holy Spirit of God to fill your heart with the strength and the power of the Lord Jesus.

You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And then it is the work of the Holy Spirit to fill you with the love of the Lord Jesus. And therefore the filling of the hands simply means this, that God wants to form the Lord Jesus in your body through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And that basically is the meaning of the word consecration. Now I want you to know the word to present your bodies a living sacrifice. Now this is interesting. I have actually heard Christians, and I believe that they were very sincere, saying, I think that is extravagant.

We don't want to be fanatical Christians. But may I share this with you? The Muslim world is fanatical. Look at their suicidal bombers. Sometimes they allow me to go and give the gospel in football matches.

And I want to say this, football in some parts of England is no longer a sport. It's a religion. And they're just caught up with it. They will travel in any part of the world to be there. And would you believe it, even in the realm of cricket, there's the barmy army that will go everywhere to watch them and pay all expenses.

Totally sold out. Take for instance a brilliant pianist. He's at it from morning to night. Why? He wants to reach the top. And here we are being exhorted by the Apostle Paul to present ourselves a living sacrifice.

But there's a paradox. How can you link living with sacrifice? Can I repeat it? How can you link living with sacrifice? The Lord Jesus put it beautifully. He said, he that loves his life shall lose it.

And he that loses his life shall keep it unto life eternal. Beloved, I wouldn't shout this. I would speak to my own soul as to yours. We live in a materialistic world. We're learning to think now materialistically.

And it's so easy for us to miss consecration. May it be that there will be even tonight in our own private rooms at home an extravagance of consecration when young and old will yield themselves afresh to the Lord.

Think what the Lord has done for us. And that is why he uses, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. What does that mean? He's thinking of all the blessings that has come to us through the mercies of God.

The Mercies of God and Union With Christ

The complete and the absolute forgiveness of all sin through the blood. Think of that. Secondly, because Christ has died and we shall see this, every single believer is linked with the Lord Jesus in his death.

And substitutionally, we have all died. We have been baptized into his death. That's what our baptism means. And because he has been raised from the dead, the same spirit that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead dwells in us.

Therefore, every believer has experienced the resurrection. Think of that. Not only are our sins forgiven, not only are we now linked with the Lord Jesus in death, burial and resurrection, but every single believer has received into his body the Holy Spirit.

And when that spirit comes into us, we are then children of God, so that we can say without an embarrassment, Abba, Father, we're linked eternally with God. And what does that mean? We leave the Adamic family, which is the sinning family, because we have been linked with the Lord Jesus in death.

The only way in which you can leave a family is by death. But we leave the Adamic family through the substitutional death of Christ, and we are finished with it. How do you get into a family? You get into a family by birth.

And when the Holy Spirit came right into us, we were put in the family of Christ. And therefore, because we are put in the family of Christ, we are the children of God. Think of that, and we can say, Abba, Father.

Now my children are all in me and in my dear wife, but when they go to heaven, they won't be in me or in my wife, but they will still be in Christ. You see, that union that we have in Christ is eternal.

The physical union is not eternal. It's related to her. And because we have been made children of God, the apostle explodes this truth upon our minds. We become joint heirs with Christ, and that means we shall reign with him.

Now with our royal family, and we thank God for them up to a point, we should pray for them constantly, especially for our queen. But the moment they die, they're no longer royals. No longer royals. But the moment a Christian dies, because he has been cleansed through the blood of Christ, and because he has been sealed with the Holy Spirit, he becomes a royal child of God, and he's going to reign with Christ forever.

Think of it. Reigning with Christ. Royal blood in you. Eternally. And a royal seed. And when the Lord builds the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwells righteousness, we shall reign eternally with him.

These are the mercies of God. If you could float out of your body, and I wish you could sometimes, and you could see what you were going to be in millions upon millions of years' time, and you saw yourself reigning with Christ, and you came back to this body, the things of this world would be that much.

It's all because of the mercies of God. And because of these untold blessings that have been lavished upon us, then he's sharing with us that we should give ourselves as a living sacrifice to him. But then the principle behind that sacrifice, or perhaps I should say more correctly, the motive behind that sacrifice is love.

Love, Faith, and the Christian's Consecration

You see, we don't serve the Lord in the oldness of the letter. That's the legal way. We serve him in the newness of the Spirit. And what way is that? Number one, it's the Spirit's way because he gives us the power to do it.

It's faith's way, and that's the practice. Complete trust in the Lord. And then the motive is love's way. I give myself, not because of a legal command, not as though the Lord was saying from signing, I all get on the altar.

You see, I lay myself in on the altar because he loved me unto death. It's love's way. If you love me, keep my command. Now let's face up to the problems and difficulties. Over and over again I've heard young and old saying, well, Brother Peter, we went to a consecration meeting and it was very powerful and they asked us to come forward and we came forward.

And I yielded my life to the Lord then, but it only lasted about six weeks. One dear sister said to me, and I know she was perfectly sincere, she said, I've consecrated my life to the Lord at these meetings about five times, but I'm still defeated.

So what's happened? Now my dear friends, we shall never understand what consecration means until we understand what conflict means. Now can I spell this out clearly? The moment you become a Christian, God cleanses you from sin through the precious blood and that never has to be repeated.

Number two, you are so clean before God through the cleansing that he puts the Holy Spirit within you and your body becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost. And immediately your body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost, you will discover a conflict, a battle, as though two people live inside you.

One is called flesh and the other is called spirit. Now that conflict will go on with you all the days of your life. So we're not going to talk about the cessation of the conflict. What we're going to talk about now is victory in the conflict.

The Conflict Between Flesh and Spirit

Now why do we go through this conflict? One person said to me, very intelligently, why doesn't the Lord remove the flesh life from us so that we can have perpetual victory? God always tests. How many trees does he put in the garden?

Two. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Testing. Why did the Lord say to Abraham, offer up now Isaac as a sacrifice or a burnt offering? What was he doing? Testing. Testing.

As we shall see in a few moments, that ugly flesh life that's within you has already been judged by the Lord Jesus, yet to be judged by you. And he leaves that there to test whether we'll obey the dictates of the flesh or the loving overtures of the Spirit.

And there's a battle. I have it every day. And I think most Christians do. And we have to learn not to obey the flesh, the Spirit. But you say, what is the flesh? The flesh is the seed plot of all iniquity.

The flesh is the powerhouse of all sin. The flesh is the activity of all moral uncleanness. Now, if you could take your flesh life out and see it, it would be like a mighty Everest of iniquity. None of us understand the deep gravity of evil that's in the flesh life.

It's appalling. Now, immediately you become a Christian, you will be aware of a conflict. And the moment you are aware of a conflict, this is the good news, it's a proof that you're saved. Before you were saved, you never had a conflict.

Well, you only had one nature, that was the flesh nature. But now you are saved, you have these two natures, flesh and spirit, and it's a proof that you've been born again. One young man came to me who I led to the Lord there in Hamilton and I hadn't seen him for two years and he came to me and he said, you know Peter, for the first seven months of my Christian life I was walking on air.

But then he said something happened and the old habits have come back. He says, I don't think I'm saved. I said, tell me more. He said, I look at the television and I look at awful things on it now, do you?

I looked at a little bit of pornographic literature, did you? Dear me. I even used a bad word. I said, do you hate those things? And do you know what he did? He never said a word. He just took his fist and showed me the white of his knuckles.

And he did this. I hate them, hate them, he said. Oh, I said, hallelujah, you're saved. What do you mean? I said, there's two natures there. Now that's it. You see, he discovered this evil power within him.

Secondly, we have this conflict so that we might see the total depravity of our flesh nature. If you could take it out and pull it to pieces and thank God you can't do that, every single part of your flesh nature would be permeated with evil far more than you understand.

It's evil. It's corrupt. The reason why, the third reason we have this conflict is to show to us that that flesh nature is totally incurable. The apostle tried to change it. He struggled with it, probably in Arabia, until he screamed out, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?

He could say, in me that's in my flesh there dwells no good thing. In fact, I want to go further. God can't change that flesh nature. He's condemned it. He doesn't try to improve it. It's totally incurable.

Fourthly, you go through this conflict, now please note this, this is so vital, so that you might learn to hate the living sight of the flesh. Now can I say this clearly? If you stroke your besetting sins so that they purr like a cat, you'll never get victory.

All of us have besetting sins, all of us. And when we commit those besetting sins, we become miserable. But we must look at those besetting sins, and our besetting sins are all different. My besetting sins perhaps may not be your besetting sins, and your besetting sins may not be my besetting sins, but we must all learn to positively hate them.

And that's why the apostle uses the word hate. And those of you who follow typology through the Old Testament will know that Saul lost his kingship because he refused to slay the Amalekite, and Agag, the king of the Amalekite.

And then lastly, we go through that conflict so that we might have a strong, insatiable desire for victory. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me? Can I ask a question? Have you been in the presence of God recently and fallen across your bed, and you've said with tears, Lord, I've done it again, and you're heartbroken?

Well, I have. And do you know the victory? The victory is to lay hold on what God made.