"BE YE CLEAN"
I Kings 18:42
The time has come; it is here; it is upon us, when God needs a man, a peculiar man -- not peculiar because of his own peculiarities or eccentricities, but peculiar because he is peculiarly wholly Cod's, He is a man, every inch a man; he stands as a man; he walks as a man; he thinks as a man; he acts as a man; he has manly principles; he has convictions born of certainty; he has will power, grit, grace and courage; he has backbone, yea, a column of steel; he has a head that towers above little things, he is too big to live low; he is a man through whom God will be honored. God has been looking for such a man; God has been hunting for such a man, and God has found this man in the person of Elijah, He is bold, fearless, and courageous.
God can send awful conviction upon an entire community through this prophet, and get all the glory, God can crowd the altar with crying penitents, and get all the glory, God can give Hell's artillery crushing defeats, break into the enemy's lines, spiking his artillery, giving great revivals, and get all the glory, God can answer prayer, and through this humble servant of His, give gracious outpourings of His Spirit until hundreds will be saved and sanctified, and God be exalted, and man abased.
This is a clean man, a holy man. He preaches the truth regardless of where the chips fall and hit; he uncovers sin in high places as well as low; he hews to the line. He would as quickly thrust his index finger in the face of King Ahab as not, crying, "Your corrupt life has brought this apostasy, this fall away, and caused multiplied hundreds, who once had a bright experience, to backslide." He would thrust fiery darts of burning truth through the black-hearted Jezebel, crying, "Repent, confess, or burn forever in a devil's Hell." He shows no one any quarter; seemingly cares nothing for popularity and public applause; never dreams of looking in the paper for a report concerning his meeting, nor watches to see if the paper put his cut on the first page.
This man is dead to the world, the flesh, and the devil. He is clean, first, in his business life. If a man isn't clean and straight with his fellows, he hasn't a clear wire to Heaven, he could never pray through. For Jones to have cheated Smith out of twenty-five dollars in a trade, or to owe Smith an honest debt of fifty dollars, and fail to make matters right, rushing to the altar, jumping up and professing, would have but little effect upon Mr. Smith; it would be like sleet upon a metal roof; it would drive Smith farther away, and everlastingly block Jones' way of being the channel through which God could reach his neighbor Smith.
I Kings 18:42
The time has come; it is here; it is upon us, when God needs a man, a peculiar man -- not peculiar because of his own peculiarities or eccentricities, but peculiar because he is peculiarly wholly Cod's, He is a man, every inch a man; he stands as a man; he walks as a man; he thinks as a man; he acts as a man; he has manly principles; he has convictions born of certainty; he has will power, grit, grace and courage; he has backbone, yea, a column of steel; he has a head that towers above little things, he is too big to live low; he is a man through whom God will be honored. God has been looking for such a man; God has been hunting for such a man, and God has found this man in the person of Elijah, He is bold, fearless, and courageous.
God can send awful conviction upon an entire community through this prophet, and get all the glory, God can crowd the altar with crying penitents, and get all the glory, God can give Hell's artillery crushing defeats, break into the enemy's lines, spiking his artillery, giving great revivals, and get all the glory, God can answer prayer, and through this humble servant of His, give gracious outpourings of His Spirit until hundreds will be saved and sanctified, and God be exalted, and man abased.
This is a clean man, a holy man. He preaches the truth regardless of where the chips fall and hit; he uncovers sin in high places as well as low; he hews to the line. He would as quickly thrust his index finger in the face of King Ahab as not, crying, "Your corrupt life has brought this apostasy, this fall away, and caused multiplied hundreds, who once had a bright experience, to backslide." He would thrust fiery darts of burning truth through the black-hearted Jezebel, crying, "Repent, confess, or burn forever in a devil's Hell." He shows no one any quarter; seemingly cares nothing for popularity and public applause; never dreams of looking in the paper for a report concerning his meeting, nor watches to see if the paper put his cut on the first page.
This man is dead to the world, the flesh, and the devil. He is clean, first, in his business life. If a man isn't clean and straight with his fellows, he hasn't a clear wire to Heaven, he could never pray through. For Jones to have cheated Smith out of twenty-five dollars in a trade, or to owe Smith an honest debt of fifty dollars, and fail to make matters right, rushing to the altar, jumping up and professing, would have but little effect upon Mr. Smith; it would be like sleet upon a metal roof; it would drive Smith farther away, and everlastingly block Jones' way of being the channel through which God could reach his neighbor Smith.
If we are not straight with our fellows, how can we expect to be straight with our God? -- for God has said, "When thou bringest thy gift to the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, first -- not second, but first; not later, but now -- go and be reconciled to thy brother." Your wire is down, forever down, until you make wrong right, crooked straight, black white.
Then second, he is clean in his social life. Here is where we need wisdom, divine wisdom, for all too well we know that the social life needs some salt, a little leaven, much light, It has become corrupted; it is almost a stench in the nostrils of God. For one to turn aside and look in upon the social life, it will almost turn him blind, it will almost stagger his manhood. Things have changed in the last fifty years, they are going today at a rapid pace, toward the Niagara of wreck and ruin, For God to answer prayer through us, and use us, we must be clean in every department of our social life; clean in our domestic life. Domestic ties are too sacred, and marriage too divine, to be played with. It would have been a God's blessing if the divorce docket had never been instituted, never heard of. The marriage altar is becoming horribly prostituted, perverted to bad usage. Today it is not what it was half a century ago. How can a man or woman be God's and think more of anyone else than of his own wife? of anyone else than her own husband? A man must live right every day, if God sends in-wrought prayer into his heart. Many a life has been blasted, many a character wrecked, many a virtuous person dragged into the awful slough of lust, because of unfaithfulness in the domestic life. Trickery here spells damnation later on; trickery here may send one to a suicide's grave; trickery here may cause someone to thrust his or her bony fingers in your face at the Judgment, screaming, "You damned me;" trickery here turns the hair gray, makes furrows on the face burns the eyes with scalding tears, saps the soul, and places one in the dark valley of despondency.
We cannot overlook the thought life. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." If a man's thoughts are corrupt, the man's life is always corrupt. The thinker is a dynamo that furnishes electric currents of life; if the thinker is wrong, the whole man is wrong, for, "as a man thinketh, so is he." We backslide first in our head; that is, the wrong kind of thoughts stalk about in the halls of memory; the wrong kind of paintings are thrown upon the mental canvas. A young lady screamed at the altar to the pastor's wife, "My God! my thoughts are as black as Hell; they are lustful thoughts; can God deliver?" For me to be wrong in my thought life, blocks my prayer life; the fountain must be pure, clean, if the water flowing therefrom is healthy and wholesome; the glasses must be clean or the vision will be obstructed.
For me to be endued with Holy Ghost power, for God to entrust a burden to my heart for His work or workers, bespeaks the fact that I must be clean, wholly given up, head, heart and body, to God. A little watching just here will help us. We cannot keep the birds from flying over our heads, but we can keep the birds from building nests in our hair, laying eggs, and hatching out a brood. You cannot keep thoughts from running through the mind, but never be guilty of asking them to stay overnight, to take dinner with you, or to pay you another visit sometime in the future, for, "as a man thinketh, so is he."
God can, and will, purify our thinker until our thoughts will be heavenly, and we will leave a heavenly influence, We are the cleaner, the stronger, by having clean thoughts. For one to pray
clear through, to live in real, vital, close, sweet communion with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, means that one must be clean in his thought life. Just here is where a great many good souls go down, go down hard. They entertain thoughts, and seemingly enjoy such things, that rob God of His glory, dishonor man, and belittle one's own dignity.
But Elijah was a clean man from every viewpoint; hence Cod had an unobstructed channel through which to send that great rain upon the parched, burning earth, which quickened the vegetation, sprinkled bright wild flowers through the forest, ladened the atmosphere with fragrant odors, turned a choir of birds loose in the forest, placing a carpet of green upon Mother Earth, and making all nature smile, Had this prophet been anything less than a clean man, the rain could not have come.
A young man once said to the writer: "I have almost been driven to the asylum by hellish thoughts; they have kept me awake all night; they have about wrecked my nerves, and undermined my health. What am I to do?" We said to him "Fly to God, who was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. Bad thoughts are the works of the devil, therefore Jesus Christ died to destroy these hellish thoughts. Fall upon your face and cry mightily day and night until the fire falls and consumes these awful enemies." Such evil thoughts are injurious to a good, strong mind; they are injurious to a good, strong, healthy, robust body; they are injurious to a sweet, vital, rich experience of know-so, heart-felt, old-time, sin-killing, devil-driving, clear-cut, sky-blue, present salvation from all sin, If He has freed one, He can free two; if He has delivered some, He will deliver all; if He is no respecter of persons, as Elijah was clean there is a possibility of us being clean, and as God wrought mightily through this humble channel, He is desirous of working tremendously through us.
Your community needs a great rain, It would not hurt your church to have a copious shower. Why not besiege Heaven with all your ransomed powers, with all your God-given artillery? Why not keep at it until the thunder peals, the lightning flashes, the clouds rise, and the rain falls? Why not keep at it until the fire falls, the bullocks are eaten up, and the kindlings, all the stones, and the twelve barrels of water are licked up? Why not keep at it until Red Seas open, Jordans give us a dry path, and the towering walls of Jericho bow submissively at our feet? Why not keep at it until the manna falls, quails drop at our tent door, and the stream of water, a great Mississippi, flows through our life? Why not keep at it until lions' mouths are locked, fiery furnaces are quenched, Pentecost is ushered in, and the rushing, mighty wind fills your church and community? Why not keep at it until the Philippian jail takes the Quaker shakes, shakes her doors and shutters from the hinges, the bands and stocks and chains and balls fall from our wrists and ankles, a great light illuminates, and men rush to Christ, crying, "What must I do to be saved?"? Why not keep at it until the whole community knows that we are in the battle? Why not keep at it until God throws a telescope from Heaven to the Isle of Patmos? Why not keep at it until God says, "It is enough; come up higher," and then sends twenty-four horses of fire, harnessed in a harness of fire, pulling a chariot of fire, and we take our seat by the side of Gabriel and Michael, and drive the fiery steeds off through worlds of fire, and God will say, "Lift up the gates, ye everlasting doors, and let the kings of glory come in"? Then we shall lay down the cross, take up the crown, play a harp of gold, and sit down on the banks of Sweet Deliverance with our loved ones gone on before. Then, in the presence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and Heaven's host, we will rejoice, and say, "Holy! holy! holy! Thou didst bless us, and we kept at it, kept at it, kept at it, until this good hour. Amen!"
But Elijah was a clean man from every viewpoint; hence Cod had an unobstructed channel through which to send that great rain upon the parched, burning earth, which quickened the vegetation, sprinkled bright wild flowers through the forest, ladened the atmosphere with fragrant odors, turned a choir of birds loose in the forest, placing a carpet of green upon Mother Earth, and making all nature smile, Had this prophet been anything less than a clean man, the rain could not have come.
A young man once said to the writer: "I have almost been driven to the asylum by hellish thoughts; they have kept me awake all night; they have about wrecked my nerves, and undermined my health. What am I to do?" We said to him "Fly to God, who was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. Bad thoughts are the works of the devil, therefore Jesus Christ died to destroy these hellish thoughts. Fall upon your face and cry mightily day and night until the fire falls and consumes these awful enemies." Such evil thoughts are injurious to a good, strong mind; they are injurious to a good, strong, healthy, robust body; they are injurious to a sweet, vital, rich experience of know-so, heart-felt, old-time, sin-killing, devil-driving, clear-cut, sky-blue, present salvation from all sin, If He has freed one, He can free two; if He has delivered some, He will deliver all; if He is no respecter of persons, as Elijah was clean there is a possibility of us being clean, and as God wrought mightily through this humble channel, He is desirous of working tremendously through us.
Your community needs a great rain, It would not hurt your church to have a copious shower. Why not besiege Heaven with all your ransomed powers, with all your God-given artillery? Why not keep at it until the thunder peals, the lightning flashes, the clouds rise, and the rain falls? Why not keep at it until the fire falls, the bullocks are eaten up, and the kindlings, all the stones, and the twelve barrels of water are licked up? Why not keep at it until Red Seas open, Jordans give us a dry path, and the towering walls of Jericho bow submissively at our feet? Why not keep at it until the manna falls, quails drop at our tent door, and the stream of water, a great Mississippi, flows through our life? Why not keep at it until lions' mouths are locked, fiery furnaces are quenched, Pentecost is ushered in, and the rushing, mighty wind fills your church and community? Why not keep at it until the Philippian jail takes the Quaker shakes, shakes her doors and shutters from the hinges, the bands and stocks and chains and balls fall from our wrists and ankles, a great light illuminates, and men rush to Christ, crying, "What must I do to be saved?"? Why not keep at it until the whole community knows that we are in the battle? Why not keep at it until God throws a telescope from Heaven to the Isle of Patmos? Why not keep at it until God says, "It is enough; come up higher," and then sends twenty-four horses of fire, harnessed in a harness of fire, pulling a chariot of fire, and we take our seat by the side of Gabriel and Michael, and drive the fiery steeds off through worlds of fire, and God will say, "Lift up the gates, ye everlasting doors, and let the kings of glory come in"? Then we shall lay down the cross, take up the crown, play a harp of gold, and sit down on the banks of Sweet Deliverance with our loved ones gone on before. Then, in the presence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and Heaven's host, we will rejoice, and say, "Holy! holy! holy! Thou didst bless us, and we kept at it, kept at it, kept at it, until this good hour. Amen!"
When thou bringest thy gift to the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, first -- not second, but first; not later, but now -- go and be reconciled to thy brother." Your wire is down, forever down, until you make wrong right, crooked straight, black white.
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