Hebrews 3:12–14: Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God. Notice the language: falling away from the living God; an evil, unbelieving heart. And note this: But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today” (that “today” does not mean just that certain day, but the present time in which God is dealing with you), lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
There is a deceitfulness in sin. It is related to an unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. When sin overtakes you, there is a hardening of your heart; an unbelief possesses your heart, and you are not able to enter into what God has for you. Sin comes into your life through unbelief.
For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end. This is not some great doctrine of assurance; it is speaking about being a partaker of Christ if you hold fast your assurance firm until the end. It is by perseverance that you win, by hanging on to that which God is doing and saying in your life. This becomes more important to you than anything else.
Charles D. Finney authored a book called Systematic Theology, in which be emphasized the perseverance of the saints. His doctrine was rather mixed up, but unlike most theologians, he knew the Lord and he walked with Him. Although he followed what we might call an oversimplified form of eternal security or Calvinism, he was also one of the strongest preachers to stir people into the realization of sin. He believed that God predestinated you, but he emphasized that the one factor which guarantees God’s predestination is your persevering in God. Finney preached and exhorted people until they found the Lord and were converted by the thousands. He was very verbose, but his teaching was similar to the teaching we have today in this walk. He dealt with the deceitfulness of sin and the hardness of heart, with unbelief and the things that rob people of everything God has for them, even as our text describes.
I remember reading an introduction to one of his books in which he said, “I have listened to the urging of many friends to set down in permanent form the teachings and messages with which God has so blessed me. But I have been reluctant to give them, for I know that tomorrow will see greater light, and Christians in the days to come will be walking in much greater revelation than we have now, because the path of the just shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
The truths that we see in the Word cannot be expressed as doctrines. I do not believe it is possible for us to lay out doctrines that define exactly where the initiative of man and his faith lie and where the sovereignty of God lies. I do know there are forces in operation at the present time that are beyond human understanding. God has turned something loose in the earth. I do not know how to measure it, and I do not have the answer to the question, “How much of this is the sovereign move of God’s Spirit to bring forth His will in the earth?” I do not know if my unfaithfulness would set the Kingdom of God back, or if there is another man ready to step into my place. I do not know how necessary I am to God, how much depends on His sovereignty and how much depends on the faith and perseverance of those whom He has chosen. Is His endowment something complicated? Is He giving us a box filled with the parts of a jigsaw puzzle, and saying, “Here, I have given you the picture; now you must labor and pray to be able to put all the pieces together correctly”? How much of it is by revelation and how much by God saying to you, “Here is the beginning of revelation. I will inspire you and help you, but seek it out yourself. Walk in it. Do the best you can.”
Young people are constantly faced with the fact that God gives them a great deal, but they do not know how to appIy it, what to do with it, how to get it moving. We hear that it is all being rained upon us in the latter rain, but that latter rain comes to teach us to grow and to develop. We do not know how much depends upon God and how much depends on us. We cannot draw a definite line and say, “It is all right. God will take care of everything; all we need to do is relax and rest in the Lord,” for even when we talk about the Sabbath rest we are reminded that the Word says, “Labor to enter into His rest.”
The sovereignty of God is very important. In the timing of the Lord, we are walking in truths that I know we could not have walked in twenty-five years ago. The same Scriptures, the same promises in the Word of God had a different bearing and a different level of fulfillment than they have today. I know also that these same prophecies and promises of God will have still a different aspect in another year. In the sovereignty of God, He starts unveiling truths in His Word, opening the door to us and saying, “Now is the accepted time. Today is the day.” We know that today is the day and we start walking in it.
Some do not. That brings us to man’s part—the initiative of his faith. People are believing God today, but other generations believed God too, yet they did not walk in what we are walking in now. You cannot blame them and say they were inferior saints. Some of those people had a deep faith in God; some of them walked in sacrifice that we probably will never be able to match; some of them were spiritual giants of faith.
I bought a book, the life teaching of Smith Wigglesworth, a man of tremendous faith. The dead were raised and other astounding things happened under his ministry. Yet with all of that, his biography, Smith Wigglesworth, Apostle of Faith, points out that he often said,
“I know that after my death the great outpouring of the Spirit will come. The Spirit has shown me many times that it is coming, but I will not see it.
Three times I have had visions in which the Lord showed me what is going to come to pass, but I know that I will never walk in it.” Charles Price was another man of God who did not live to see the great outpouring of the Spirit that he had foreseen. These men were not inferior to us; it is just that there is a certain time when you are able to say, “It is today.” And in a special way, it is today right now.
I cannot tell you how much of this is the sovereignty of God and how much of it is the anointing upon your own hearts which says, “Yes, I will arise and walk forth in the fullness of the Lord.” I do not know where the one begins and the other ends. I do not think it is important for us to be able to define it, but it is important to know that God has sovereignly opened the door for all of us to move in. Hebrews warns us, “Beware lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, and you come short of this.”
Hebrews 3:16–19: For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they should not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
Maybe we never could have opened the door to a walk in the spirit. It took the sovereignty of God to open it, but we can close the door on ourselves through our unbelief. We can believe and start pressing in. Our young people can make progress that generations before them wanted to make, but could not. They can start growing in the Lord and doing the will of the Lord. They can make progress that people in my generation struggled for many years to make. I do not believe it was because of unbelief in our hearts that we had to tarry for years to receive the Holy Spirit; nor was it because we were that far off from the teaching. There just was not that much of God in the earth yet.
Now we have come to the day of the double portion which Joel prophesied for the end time, when God starts pouring out His blessing: “My people shall never be ashamed” (Joel 2:26, 27). They will never be ashamed! They will not have to apologize for the fact that there is not enough of God in a situation.
I am not a man of unbelief. I am a man of faith. I believe God has turned loose more of Himself in this feast than ever before. Sovereignly He is saying, “Now you can walk in more. Now the gospel of the Kingdom can be taken to all the world. Now it can be done, and it won’t be difficult.”
For centuries missionaries have been working, and yet, instead of moving ahead, the missionary program is going backwards. The percentage of heathen in the world today is higher than that of Christians. We are not making progress on the missionary scene, in spite of the fact that God is turning loose more of Himself in the earth.
I see some of the young people move into things in a few months that it took me many years to get into. It is not that I didn’t seek God. From the days of my childhood I sought the Lord with an agony—praying, believing, seeking after Him. I lived for nothing else than to pursue after the Lord and absorb His Word. I do not mean to be glorifying myself; I am just telling you that with less effort and less faith some of you have moved into things in six months that it took me twenty years to move into.
The door is open to you. Sovereignly God has opened a new day, a new level. It is open to you! You can walk in something from God that past generations have not walked in. After a lifetime of reading the Word, I have come to the place for the first time where I can be quite sympathetic with the problems of the men in the Scriptures. I believe that many of the churches described in the New Testament were inferior to some of the churches presently coming up—inferior in their walk and in their testimony. I think many churches today measure up to, and in some aspects are superior to, the level of the Corinthian church with all of its gifts. In dedication, many of our young people would be just as willing to lay down their lives as were those in the early Church.
The whole cycle of the Church continues. We have passed through the Dark Ages and the falling away, and now we are in the days of restoration. The New Testament Church went down, but now it is coming back up. It may not yet be quite up to the New Testament level, but in many cases it is. (I think this is relative, depending on the church.) But we do see that the cycle is coming up. We must believe that to whatever extent the church had slumped and gone down, to that same extent it will be restored and go up, beyond the point where it started.
God is in the process of turning loose a day in which men can walk with God, can do exploits and the greater works. They will move into greater works, not because they are spiritually or mentally or physically superior to the men of other generations, but because God has opened the door. The only variable factor that determines whether or not they will enter in is the hardness of their hearts, the deceitfulness of sin, whether or not they dare to believe God and enter in wholeheartedly. If they do enter in with all their hearts, even as men of other generations have, they will be able to move into things that prophets and kings desired to see. This is the day that is set before you!
Pray that you may be able to keep your health and strength. Watch these days because the next three or four years will be the greatest period of time in the history of God’s dealings upon His people. People will walk into things from God that you would not believe possible. Even now it would tax your faith to believe what God is going to do if the Lord tarries. We will see this progressively increasing during the next three or four years.
There are times when we feel that we are laboring but not getting any place. We shall break through! It is up to us. We can do it! For the first time in the history of the world, the Church is not really stalemated or shackled by the circumstances round about it. This is the first time we have enough from God that we can rise above our circumstances. We have before us a level that we do not even understand. God has now opened the door to a walk with the Lord where you will not be shackled. You can rise above the pressure of finances and other needs. Something has been turned loose by God, sovereignly. But this does not guarantee that it will happen. It means that the door is open, and if we labor and struggle in the Lord to enter into the rest that He has prepared, if we determine not to miss this day that He is opening up to our hearts, if in our faith we persevere, we will come into it in the name of the Lord.
God has sovereignly turned something loose; however, our perseverance, the entering in by faith on our part, will determine whether or not we are going to walk in almost unbelievable things. And if we do not enter in—if we are not allowed to or not able to—it will be because of our unbelief.
Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; (notice especially this next sentence) but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. Hebrews 4:1–2.
When two chemicals are mixed together, several things can happen. There might be an explosion or the formation of an entirely new substance. A similar principle is involved in this Scripture. When the Word goes forth, it must be united with faith in those who hear it, or nothing will happen. The word that was preached did not profit the people because it was not united with their faith. But when the Word comes, as it is coming in this message, and you believe it, when that Word and your faith are mingled together in your heart, at that moment you become a potential miracle, waiting for someone to light a fuse and create an explosion. The Word united with faith in those who hear—that is all it takes.
There is a solemnity with which we approach this truth. Do you believe that the Lord has turned loose a new day? Do you believe that from the foundation of the world God planned to turn something loose .
Every message the Lord gives leads from one step to another, and the Word will work something in your life. This was a sovereign moving of God to open up a new day and a new level to us.
The gospel of the Kingdom is going to reach the world. I think the door is beginning to open—God said it is going to be open.
Dedicated people will go forth to do unbelievable signs and wonders. Many of them may lay their lives down for the Lord. Efforts to see this happen before resulted in struggle. But God has turned loose more of Himself in the earth. He is giving more grace. At this point, it is possible for us to walk in so much of God that if we set our hearts in faith, refusing to walk in unbelief, if there is no evil heart of unbelief or deceitfulness of sin entering in, if we persevere to walk honestly, humbly, and openly before the Lord, we are going to move through that door in the name of the Lord.
This message has come with a different anointing—one of declaration. Services where God intends to bring forth miracle faith come without emotional overtones. They consist of declarations from the Lord, and the believing heart gets hold of them and cries out, “Lord, I believe!”
God is giving us a Word. He is saying, “The door is open.” And your heart will have to respond, “Yes, and I shall walk through it. I shall be what You are calling me to be. I shall walk in that with all my heart—with everything that is within me.” God directed this service, saying, “This is the hour. Sovereignly I am opening up a new level, a new hour in this walk.”
Do you believe you can walk in it? Do you believe that things which have hindered until now are going to go, that you can rise above them? This does not mean that the problems are any less; it means that the anointing and what God is giving of Himself is greater! What He has given in the promises and the Word have worked in the past, but not in the measure they are going to work now. Because it is a new level, there is a new depth to them.
I commit this word to your heart. What are you going to do with it? Will it be united with faith in your heart? It will not benefit you if it is not. If the Word is not united with faith in those who hear it, not one thing will happen in their lives. They may exclaim, “Oh, you should hear the wonderful sermons we hear,” but it will mean nothing. The day of sermons is giving way to the day when God gives a Word that is united in you with faith, until it becomes a living part of you, causing you to start walking in the miracle and the wonder of it, from that moment on!