Al Whittinghill 02 — Al Whittinghill

Miracles and the Shallow Commitments They Produce

Comes to him in the next chapter and says we know you're from God, no one can do this except they're from God and he had to be born again. But the Lord Jesus had a great drawing power with miracles. I want you to think about our big meetings and how we try to draw men and women in.

And so many of the criteria that we use to try to draw people to where they get close enough to us to where they can make some kind of commitment to the Lord. We'll have miracle crusades and miracles and they came, but Jesus did not commit himself because just a belief and experience of miracles is not deep enough.

It doesn't reach down like the cross. And so you see in John chapter 6, another group of people drawn to the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's right after the feeding of the 5000 in John 6, 26, he says this to the people.

He says, you seek me not because you saw the miracles, but because you hate the loaves and you were filled. I call this not muffins, not like not miracles, but muffins. This is miraculous provision. Oh, come to Jesus.

He'll meet your needs. He'll make you prosperous. He's the need provider. He's the feelings pacifier. He'll meet your needs. Multiply provisions. You see, it's not the miracles. It's not the multiply provisions because Jesus takes them right on down except to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

You have no life within you. And as how fitting of the Spirit of God to make it in John 6, 6, 6, that many of his disciples would follow him no more after they heard what the cross really meant. The covenant relationship, the deep heart to heart communion with the Spirit of God and the risen Lord Jesus.

They left him. So it wasn't miracles. It wasn't multiply provision. Well, what about the third one? Mystical truth. Oh, he's just he's just forgiven a woman. Common adultery is the feast of lights. And they're there.

Mystical Truth and Intellectual Religion

They're so mystified by the mystic truth. They're intrigued by truth. And so they come to him and they say, who are you? Who are you? Tell us who you are. We want to know who you are. And see, they're they're intrigued.

This is mystical truth. There are people who drive 200 kilometers to hear Reverend Downs preach because of mystical truth. And they love things. And that's not I'm not saying that about you guys. And you go of eight hours.

I know to come and be part of this fellowship. But you see, we attack tax things, just intellectualizing and growing in cerebral understanding of Scripture and thinking that's it and all the rest. But after the woman's caught in adultery, the Lord Jesus confronts these people.

It says they're there. And he says to them in John chapter eight. He says it in John chapter eight. He says, listen, if you continue in my word, then you're my disciples. Indeed, and you'll know the truth.

The truth will set you free. What do you mean be set free? We're Abraham's seed. I'm a Baptist. I'm a Methodist. I'm a whatever I am. And he says, if you were Abraham's seed, you'd have the same faith as Abraham.

You're not of Abraham's seed. You're of your father, the devil. You didn't need a dictionary for that. Who are you? See, Jesus had said that to them in verse 28. Jesus says to them, when you have lifted up the son of man, then you will know that I am and that I do nothing of my own self.

Do you know what he's saying? I believe there. He is saying you cannot know God. You cannot know who Jesus is until you see the revelation of what he's revealed himself at Calvary. It takes the cross to know who Jesus Christ is.

You won't learn just from the sermon on the mount. Peter, keep your mouth shut until you realize the truth of the gospel that I didn't come to flesh and glory in my presence. I came that the spirit of the living God come upon your spirit and join himself and it would be Christ in you.

The very assurance of glory. So you see, these people were driven by esoteric kind of new age spiritism, kind of that same thing that's around today. They want mystical truth. You want the miracles? One of the muffins, one of the mystical truth.

Religious Experience Cannot Replace the Cross

And then in John chapter 12, you see on that great feast day, the Lord Jesus coming and the crowd is fired up. They're saying, Hosanna, Hosanna. This is magnificent religious experience. We saw some cathedrals the other day that made me get goosebumps.

I don't know what kind of goosebumps they were, but they weren't necessarily Holy Ghost goosebumps, but they might have been. I didn't take time to check it out, but I can tell you that you can sit and have the sunbeam come through Jesus's face and the stained glass window and hit you on the cheek.

And you can be strangely warm and miss God. It's not it's not magnificent choirs and cathedrals and things that make our senses feel like a mouse is running up and down our back. And we get goosebumps the size of a grape.

That's not it. All the world has gone after him, said the Pharisees, as he came to Jerusalem on the donkey and the ground shook, sizeless as Luke. It's shook. They're raising the heaviest and all the world has gone after him.

Listen, any Jesus that the world goes after is another Jesus. It's not the world's gospel. Any Jesus that the world goes after. And so you see, the only person that appreciates the cross is a sinner. And so you see, this is where the Greeks had come and said, we would see Jesus.

We would see Jesus. This great king. We want to make him king. And they came and told Jesus. And then Jesus gave those words, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die. It will remain alone.

But if it dies, it will bring forth much fruit. Do you think I should say, save me from this hour? This is the, this is the hour, the hour that was spoken of the father's business. This is his whole point in coming.

To seek him to save the lost, to give his life a ransom permitted, that he might, by the grace of God, taste death for every man. It was his plan. It was his, before the foundation of the world, the mind and the purpose of God, that the Lamb would come in the world and would after be created.

And angels would murmur, and devils would tremble, and men should follow their face. And what he's done and who he is. Go tell him that. And then Jesus hid himself. He wasn't trying to just become king on man's terms.

He wasn't just trying to get a crowd on earth's methodologies. He hid himself in John 12 from the crowd. It was the last the crowd ever saw him. He turned to his disciples and gave him, gave them his last words, you might say.

Preaching the Cross as the Power of Revival

You see, the church is a magnet. How do we draw? By preaching the Lord Jesus Christ, let him crucify. And it's got to be not just your first message, but your ongoing message. And you can say the truth about it, about revival.

That you examine closely the ministries of those who've been used by God in awakening or revival. And you will find a glorious common thread, a foundation of it all. You'll find like a divine breath running right through all of them.

And it can be as wide as starting back with Tartullian and going to Aquinas, or Jerome, or Ambrose, or John Knox, as we saw. You can go to Finney, you can go to Weston, you can go to Whitfield, you can go to any preacher that God uses to make any change at all.

And you will find that it's not so much whether they're Calvin, or Arminian, or Baptist, or Methodist. They preach the cross. That's the common thread. And there'll be no revival hint around or tiptoe around the cross.

And God sweeps through. It won't last long if it's not word based on the word of the cross. It'll blow over like a pond, like a wind over the wall out here. Just, it'll be gone. It's got to be word planted down deep in the cross, you see.

And you examine the movements of the spirit that have changed continents, and changed Scotland. And you'll find that when the revival of it was because the message of the cross stopped being preached, and people began to feel prosperous or something else.

The great driving power of revival has always been, and it will always be, the word of the cross. And I wanted to ask Mary about it in the comment, because I've heard many tapes, and it would get me thought of this, but you see, out of the great revivals, oh, that's where the great hymns about the cross that we love and adore came.

Not as much, more so today, but not as many since the great movements of God. The grandest theme about the greatest work of the most glorious person securing the greatest results is the cross, preaching the cross.

And it's central to God's plan for the ages. God's matchless, eternal plan of the cross. So, you see, the world wants Jesus, as he said to them on the cross, come down from the cross. Come down from the cross!

We want the Sermon on the Mount. We want the miracle worker. We want the bread provider. We want the sublime religious leader. We want the great ceremonial head, the great celebration Jesus. But, you see, the Jesus that saves is Christ, and him crucified.

The Cross Must Become Personal

Now, I'm going to get down where we live. Because, you see, that's the first part. It's bigger than that. It's bigger than that. I need to have not just a revelation of the cross to me, I need to have a revelation of the cross in me.

It needs to become personal. It needs to be branded. It needs to become cosmically radiated to my very bones, you see. Perhaps you've been a Christian for some time now. You love the Lord. You know your sins are forgiven.

You study your Bible. You do your best to read and pray. And you're sincere. You seek to obey. But you could say something like this. Deep down inside, it's as if you seem to know you don't yet have that victory, that glorious flow of God's Spirit, that you know he died to give you.

The Word promises perfect peace. But that's not my experience. And what is wrong in my experience? I do not understand this. So you struggle on. And you're positive. You're trying to be friendly. It's like whistling in the dark.

You come to church and you can see people praise the Lord. They're trying to praise their way into a feeling of having more peace or something. And despite all the wonderful teachings, and all the dedication, the times I've gone and spent time dedicating myself, and serious planning, there's a lack of power in my life.

Anybody else ever felt like that? Is it just me? Oh, how many times. Struggling on. You see, the deep and secret longing in most Christians' hearts is how to have that victory. It's not a growth. It's a gift.

It's a gift. And it's not later. It's now. It's not partial. It's total. It's not mine. It's His. He's playing. It's not found. It's given. It's from Him. Maybe you've been a Christian a long time. And when you remember when you were saved, you were so praised the Lord at the cross, at the cross.

I received my sign. Amen. April 2nd, 1972. And now, I am happy every day. That's what we can say. But soon you see, you discover, that there's something more that seems to be wrong with me than just what I've done wrong.

There seems to be an enemy, as Duncan Campbell said, an enemy of God, the Son of my soul. An enemy down in here, that seems to be against everything but God. And despite all the sincerity, you see, it's not my victory.

It's eluded me. The Holy Spirit will point our eyes back to the cross and say, the cross is not just revealed to you, but the cross must be revealed in you. You see, the blood does not deal with the flesh.

The blood deals with my crimes, my sins, what I've done, what I will do. The blood of Jesus keeps on cleansing us from all of our sins. But you see, it is the cross that is Satan's, that deals with Satan's workshop.

Dying to Self Rather Than Managing Sin

Let's suppose that I, in our laundry room in our house, there's a spigot there, there's a little nozzle there that you turn on and water comes out into a bucket. And one day, I noticed that the floor has water all over it.

And I said, oh no, I'm going to be a good husband. I'm going to get a towel, wipe it up, take care to get it nice and dry. And I said, my wife is going to really be excited that I've finally done something.

And so I come back in a couple of hours and there's that water again. Oh, what's wrong? And so I said, well, I must need better equipment. So I go to the store and I buy a brand new mop and a brand new bucket and I do a better job than I did before.

Just in time my wife comes home, there's the water there again. So I'm really serious now. I go get a book on mopping. It's a Minnie's Mopping Manual. And I read it. In fact, I even memorize passages in it.

And I learn the content. And if you don't do it that way, then you'll miss something. And so I put every bit of my energy and effort from what I've got. It's not just in the book. I've got it memorized and I'm doing it the right way.

Soon, I found out the water's back there again. So I get serious. I get on the telly and I call the professionals. I bring them in and they come in and they pay big bucks. Soon I find it's still there.

Finally, my wife gets home the next day. So she said, why don't you just go buy another washer? And it's so simple. Just get a washer and put it in there and it stops the cause. You see, so many Christians are busy mopping up sins.

And they've forgotten that the scriptures say in Romans 8, by the Spirit of God, you demortify yourself. And you find out that the spider web wasn't really your problem entirely. It's the spider behind it.

I used to clean up the spider web almost every other day until one day I got tired of it and I waited with the ring handle by the hole. And the spider came out. No more spider web because the spider was squooshed.

Do you have that word here? I don't know. We need to deal with the source of the problem and not own the problem. I'm with who I am because who I am affects what I do. So Jesus said that which is flesh is flesh.

I like to write it over every church door. Prophets, nothing. See, my choice as a Christian is not between just good and bad. That's the world's choice. Morality and all that. My choice as a Christian is between flesh and spirit.

And I've got to learn to discern the difference between soul and spirit and flesh. And I've got to learn to walk in that. I've got to learn that the natural strength of my life must be broken in order for me to be a real channel of revival and to let the Holy Spirit have control.

You see, the Bible calls my flesh the outer man. All I was born with before Jesus invaded my humanity and brought his spirit, his very character, deep in my own spirit. You see, I've got to be broken.

Like John the Baptist said, I must decrease. He must increase. And when Isaiah saw the Lord, the first thing when he saw glorious, he knew who the Lord really was. And that ever since has been what God wants to do when you see him, to undo the eye.

He wants to undo the eye and make it be so that there's no more eye but Christ. And that Christ lives in me. But you see, this is an ongoing love choice for the Christian day by day. This is why Jesus said, take up your cross in Luke 9 every day.

In other gospels he didn't say daily, but in Luke he said daily. He added that part. It's a spiritual law. The outer man must be broken. My outer man. Your outer man must be broken in order to release the inner life that he has planted there when you had a revelation of the cross to you.

He planted his spirit in you and sealed you. But he wants Christ to be formed in you. But in most of the church in our day, there's no room in the inn. He's crowded out. He's moved out. He's breathed out, you see.

Brokenness and the Release of the Spirit

But when God's saint is unbroken, then his life cannot flow and shine out. There's no brokenness. If the person is not broken, we're left doing with what? Comes common sense. Logic. You hear people say, well I just don't see how this could ever happen.

We're left doing what we think and walking after our own understanding and the flesh. And the Bible calls this carnality. Carnality is not just going out and committing adultery and all these things. Carnality is doing it your way.

Doing it my way. Walking in the power of the flesh. And so this tug of war is described in Galatians 5 where it says, the flesh wrests against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. So then naturally they're contrary to one another and you can't do what comes naturally.

A little later it says, but those who are Christ's have said yes to the verdict of the cross. They have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof. I would submit to you that this message needs to be preached in our churches.

That we need to realize that it wasn't just Jesus who died on that cross. That I was crucified with Christ and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faithfulness not just of me doing it for him but his life producing in me by the faith of the Son of God the very person and character of the Lord Jesus.

Can you understand my accent? You're looking at me really funny. I hope you're looking at me funny for the right funny business. You can quench the Holy Spirit of God. You can hinder revival. You can stop God from moving.

Choosing the Verdict of Calvary

And it's called hardening the heart. And we're cautioned about it in the New Testament in many places. But today if you choose to listen to his voice don't go on hardening your heart like they did. I mean his own people they had a pillar of fire by day and cloud by night but they still hardened their heart.

They were eating miracle meals every day. There's a choosing to be lucid. And that's in the morning when you get up and you say Lord I choose this day to lay down my own life and I choose to let you be just make me a suit of clothes.

Here's your money Lord. Have a nice day. And you say Lord take away is yours by creation and by purchase of blood and by my willing choice now. You see you've got to say yes to the verdict of Calvary.

And here's the truth of the Scripture. Dead men are the only candidates for resurrection life. Who else would ever have resurrection life but dead men? I mean that's why Hebrews 9 .16 says a covenant is in working power after men are dead.

Otherwise it's of no power at all while the one who's in the covenant is still living. People say I just don't know why I don't have victory. Because you will never have victory. He didn't come to improve your own life.

He came to give you new life. No longer I. But Christ. He don't want just a new leaf. He wants a new life. It's not your life mended. It's your life ended. And Christ coming forth. And see people say well that's not what I understood.

That's why you need the revelation of the cross in you. Not only to you. Of the person that's only seen the cross revealed to them. And they're grateful. Hallelujah. But there is misery in a life that tries to please God with sincerity but yet without the power of the no longer I but Christ operating in the life.

You see. As long. Listen to this. As I hold on to my own self. My own ideas. There'll be no room for it. With explainable Christianity. This is why they walk by the church and yawn. This is why they aren't interested in the things that we say are important or sentimental.

You see. We're gonna have church as usual and the earth and the world will just look at the church and say who wants that? But when they see the power of God. When the big I in sin. S-I-N is crossed out.

You have a zero. And that's the S-O-N. That's room for the son. I like it. There's an I in live. L-I-V-E. Cross it out. Put a zero. And you have the love of God that has finally the place to be a channel through me.

I've gotta come to the place where I realize that my life cannot be improved by independent life. Dear friends. Have we come to that place here? Is revival a way to get more of our needs met and crescendo of power?

Is that it? I don't think this group is like that. This is a unique group here. This is a, we're privileged to be together with an unusual group of people here. But this message here. I wanted to preach this in Atlanta.

But the Lord wouldn't let me do it. And He didn't tell me until the day before. And it really made me mad honestly because I really had prayed and was ready for it. And then He had to do some things in my own heart.

And then to come here and I tried to pull back and pull back to something that went, I don't know these people. You know, we have to. If not literally physically which may be the case. Who knows in these days ahead.

Paul's Example of Daily Death

There's gotta be a day to die. Paul said I die daily. I can tell daily. Paul knew about the cross. I mean he knew the cross. Unbelievable. He says he was frequent times in prison. Often in deaths. Five times he received 39 lashes.

Save one, 40 save one. Three times he was beaten with rods. Once he was stoned and left in Lystra on the garbage heap. And the church stood around and prayed and he got up. And he says thank you very much.

And he went back into Lystra and preached there again. And Lois and Eunice were so captivated by the evident power of the cross they said take Timothy with you. Take Timothy with you. We want him to be around you.

You see at night and the day to be a cork in the Mediterranean holding on to a boar or something you see. And when he got to the end it's not all the care of the churches and all the pain and the eyesight problems if that's what it was.

Weariness, painfulness, hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness. All these perils and the care of all the churches. Not just your one church brother. He says and he got to the end of his life he says life affliction.

I want to go to Christ. You know what? I bet the devil took a day off from Paul to be here. He said I'm glad he's gone. Jesus I love you. He was glad that Paul took it. You see and the early church got a hold of this.

So by the time the 318 came around the council of Nicaea they weren't trying to avoid the cross. The council of Nicaea in 325 there were 318 delegates there and only 12 of them were whole. Limp or something because of their testimony to the gospel.

Rebuilding the Altar for Holy Fire

Waiting for us to rebuild the altar. I think he's waiting for us to when Elijah came to Carmel the first thing he did was to repair the altar. There was a divided congregation there was 10 tribes and the tribes were divided.

He took 12 stones and repaired the altar according to the order of Leviticus and he set it up and he said all the people come here and he repaired the altar. You will find it's always the altar that God establishes and you can have an altar with no fire on it.

Listen the fire has to come from heaven. Leviticus 9 it's never to go out. When the Lord catches the church on fire you won't have to advertise. They'll come to watch you burn. They won't come. It's my whole life I've got to give up.

Surrendering the Whole Life, Not Merely Bad Habits

You see it's not just bad things. It's not just smoking and drinking and all the things that the campaign against. That's maybe the bad parts I see and the world knows this needs to be changed. It is the bad parts but it's not just the bad parts it's my whole life.

It's the good part. You say well Al what about the good part? I say what good part? Because that's the part that we tend to trust instead of Jesus. Jesus can keep me living leaning on my own understanding prisoner of the visible earth oriented pleasure seeker, self, lover feeling, follower.

You say well where do I come in Al? Where do you go out? Because we've been in. I'm not saying that he debases or humiliates. He in a mysterious way like the whole sovereignty free will thing we've been arguing about for centuries.

He puts that awesome spirit of God somehow into his spirit deep in a sanctified personality and it is mystery of mysteries. No longer I. Not only in the words you say not only in the deeds confessed but in the most unconscious.

Was it the word you said the cross you preached? No, for me. Look in your eye just now. I saw his presence when you. The world says this is foolishness and I tell you the flesh hates this. If you preach this you're going to offend people but not to preach this to offend the Holy Spirit of God.

It hates this truth because I go all night. Self-preservation. We've been told that if we learn just enough stuff we'll be accepted we'll make good greatness. If we can play rugby just the right way they'll accept us.

If we say yes or no at the right time and do just exactly what we need to do then if we hold things together then we'll be accepted. And so all our lives perhaps we've been hurt some. We've been hurt and we're seeking to spare ourselves just like Peter did.

We want to spare ourselves but you see this is the thing and it's normal it's natural so if you're doing it you don't need to think you're unique you see. So it seems so contrary to what I've been doing my whole life preserving myself and looking out for for just not trying to be dissolved to have no credential except for grace and to come to the feet of the foot of the cross and fling down myself life saying thou art utterly unclean there's no hope for you.

And the pain that is part of the process of doing that. When I spare myself or flee from the things that make for real refining fire moments of God then I end up what I do is just like Peter and I end up denying the Lord because in every life there is a Christian there's a throne and there is a cross and if Jesus is on the throne then I must be on the cross I must take my place there.

But if Jesus if I'm on the throne then I put Him on that cross again and I find myself like Peter ending up denying Him. Turn to Philippians chapter 3 will you? Philippians chapter 3. Are you tired yet?

I'm trying to measure trying to measure I don't want to wear you out. That's not true. If you turn to Philippians 3 let me say the Old Testament pointed to the cross. Everything before the cross pointed to it.

Everything since it points back to it. Every prophet wrote of Him the glories of His suffering that He would go through. Jesus opened the Scriptures in Luke 24 and showed all the things in the tabernacle and the temple and in the priesthood and the offerings all of it pointing toward His glorious altar and the whole all knowing plan of God because of that precious shedding of blood the Word of the cross.

Oh I'm coming in the volume of the book it is written of me I'm coming to do Thy will Thy law is within my heart Oh God Oh the heart of the covenant walking among us the Word made flesh and there when He came what did He say?

Five times in the book of Matthew He said listen it's the cross it's the cross and if you're going to be sinners I will sin and if you're going to walk with me you're going to have to take up your cross and whoever doesn't cannot cannot cannot be my disciple.

So He came to lay down His life that's why He came that truth might be manifested not only sin atoned but truth about God the truth about sin the truth about man the truth about the devil all in Calvary as we heard.