Editor's note: This sermon was preached by Pastor Hans Waldvogel at the Ridgewood Pentecostal Church, Brooklyn, NY in January 1958.  Now, exactly 50 years later, the truth and importance of the message has not diminished.  

 

 

 

 

 

The meeting this morning reminded me of meetings many years ago before I ever came to Brooklyn when the Lord had awakened my heart to the reality of Jesus and he worked in me a hunger and a will to do His will.  It was very much like going to school and learning how to do the problems.  When you go to school, you get an armful of books.  Every book tells you how to attain to a particular knowledge of science, and the teacher gives you homework to do.  I used to spend four hours doing my algebra lesson, until I learned to pay attention to the teacher.  I still had to spend time over it, but not as much.  Yet I had to do homework. 

 

When I came to God, I found out that I had to do homework.  And how he took notice of my homework!  God really watched.  God watches.  The Bible says that God desires so much to show Himself mighty that His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth.  And many times His eyes rested upon me in the meetings or out of the meetings, and, oh, it was so marvelously sublime to find that God was talking notice of my eagerness to find Him.  I was doing homework, and I didn’t know how, but I had a very good teacher – the Holy Ghost. 

 

And this morning I would like to pass this on to those among us who hunger and thirst after righteousness.  I know that a person can come to these meetings and get very little out of them.  You can be in Pentecost many years, you can know a lot and get very little out of it, unless you do homework. 

 

We quoted the text awhile ago that tells us that God works in us to will and to do.  Well, then, what is there for me to do?  Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.  God works to will.  God gives me a conviction.  What am I doing with that?  I remember one time the Lord really convicted me over a certain matter in my life.  I looked round about me and saw that others were very careless about that very particular thing.  It isn’t something that men call sin, but it certainly would have kept me out of the ministry.  It would have kept me from being a vessel unto the Lord.  God knew that, and He convicted me.  And I went on being convicted for a long time.  Did you ever do that?  I felt bad, and every time I heard a sermon about holiness without which no man can see the Lord, I said like this (clenching my fists), “Grrr, I’ve got to get right about that thing.  I’m going to have the victory.”  I prayed, but you know, it wasn’t until I got down to the business that the Lord delivered me and gave me the victory. 

 

You’ve got to do homework.  The great sin today is procrastination.  Oh, I’ve seen so many young people who have a wonderful call of God, but they never make the grade.  They weren’t serious enough.  It wasn’t a life-and-death matter with them.  And until it becomes a matter of life and death, they are not going to be serious enough. 

 

I must be about my Father’s business for my Lord will come and demand of me what I have done with my moments and with my hours, with my days and with my weeks and the grace of God and with the power of the Holy Ghost.  When I got into the ministry, I said, “God, my boss in my shop demanded from me eight hours of diligent labor and I am going to be as faithful to You as to my earthly boss.  I am going to put in at least as much time in prayer, in Bible study, in serving God as I had put in in my shop.”  And wouldn’t I be a poor piker if I fooled the Lord Who pays me so well, Who offers me a crown of life?  Wouldn’t I be a traitor to the cause of Christ if I loafed away my time and my opportunities, and if God gives me a job to feed His lambs, and instead, I feed myself and take care of myself and see to it that I, myself, have a comfortable life first of all? O God, have mercy upon my poor soul if I don’t live twenty-four hours a day for the kingdom of heaven. 

 

What do you do about your pride?  What do you do about this demon that possesses you, that curses you, that comes like a chameleon and changes its color with the necessity and with the conditions?  Oh, you can sit upon the platform and be chuckful of luciferian pride and curse the kingdom of God and curse the Church of God.  Beloved, today the kingdom of God is suffering because there are not vessels unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use.  Vessels like Paul, who said, “I die daily, I bear in my body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in my mortal flesh.”  If you will spend a half an hour a day, honestly calling on God, “O God, deliver me from this pride of mine,” at the end of a week something will happen to you.  God will take notice of you in a meeting if He doesn’t take notice of anybody else.  God will move heaven and earth to get to you.  He is waiting to show His power to them whose hearts are perfect toward Him, as He did when He saw Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego purposing in their hearts, at the very risk of their liberty and of their lives, not to defile themselves with the things with which the others defiled themselves.  And there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of prisoners that said, “What difference does it make?”

 

Procrastination!  Laziness!  Loafing!  But how different when you measure your days.  My days are so short. They flee away like a shadow.  Tomorrow I stand before the King.  Every day I thank God for every day.  I’m thankful for every moment that is yet at my disposal, for every hour.  I need it.  Oh, how I need the time of grace that God gives me!  Something is slipping through your hands that is worth infinitely more than all the pearls and all the diamonds and rubies and emeralds that are found in all the world.  It’s time.  Time to redeem for eternity!  Time to deal with God, to draw nigh to God and have Him draw nigh to you.  Time to drink the water that Jesus gives you. 

 

O beloved, it will pay you throughout all eternity to redeem the time now, and to take honestly an hour a day calling on the Lord with all that is within you.  “Evening and morning and at noon will I pray and cry aloud and He shall hear my voice.”  You have to let God hear your voice.  You have to let God know that you mean business.  He said to Jeremiah when he was in the dungeon, “Call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things such as thou knowest not.”  God wants you to call on Him.  Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.  Why should God bestow upon me the righteousness and holiness of Jesus Christ if I defile it again and make it worse than it was before?  What will happen to me if I crucify the Son of God afresh, who shed His blood and said, “Drink ye all of it.”  No, beloved, there is only one thing to do: work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.  Fear and trembling!  It isn’t a slavish fear, but a diligent paying attention, hearkening, hearkening, HEARKENING.  “If thou liftest up thy voice and criest for her as for hid treasure, and if thou seekest for her as silver, then shalt thou know the fear of the Lord.”  A knowledge of God shall be given to thee, for out of the mouth of the Lord cometh wisdom.  Homework, homework, homework, diligent homework. 

 

What do you do when you go to high school, university or college?  You do homework or you will flunk.  But who does homework in view of the coming of the Lord?  Who is going to stand in the evil day, and having done all, stand?  Beloved, God sets before us three hundred and sixty-five days in which He proposes to work in us until we are perfected.  He will not fail.  He will not fail.  Jesus says, “Go into your closet and shut the door.  Your Father is there.”  My Father Who sees in secret will deal with me as with a son.  He will make me partake of His holiness.  Brethren, what are we going to be like when Jesus comes?  What kind of a body are we going to have?  I’m glad we don’t know because it would kill us, just the contemplation of it.  We are going to be like Jesus.  Our bodies are not going to be made of dust like this body.  We’re going to be like Jesus.  We’re going to judge angels.  That’s what God is working on.  God is working in you to will and to do.  

 

Am I doing homework?  Am I taking my books home and getting busy and allowing nobody to interfere with me, shutting the door?  If you don’t shut the door, the whole world will come after you, — if you don’t make your heart a sanctuary, if it isn’t a life-and-death matter with you.  Does He look upon you?  Does He know you?  Does He know when to meet you?  Does He know when you come to meet with Him?  Does God Almighty know when you draw nigh to Him?  Does your prayer touch Him?  Does it draw power from His sanctuary?  What is your prayer?  Is it powerful?  Does it touch God?  Does it move the wonderful curtains of heaven apart until the angelic choir is quieted and God is bowing and listening to your cry?  Evening and morning and noon I will pray and cry unto Thee, my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation. 

 

I verily believe that this year is far more important than we realize.  Last year was a tremendous year in the kingdom of God.  I know that the people in the world and backslidden Christians don’t notice it at all.  They’re eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and don’t realize that that day comes like a thief in the night.  When he comes, something is going to happen that has been foretold for millenniums.  But we ought to wake up, for we are children of the day.  Doesn’t the Holy Ghost work in you a vehement cry, a passionate longing to meet your God, so that you deny the world and your flesh and the devil? 

 

The King hath brought me into His chambers.  Isn’t it high time that the King acknowledge you, that the King put His seal upon you?  He says to the angels, “Wait a minute.  Hold back the winds, I’m not through yet.  There’s another one who can’t perish.  I gave My life for Him.  He must be with Me on My throne.  Wait a minute.” They are raring to go — those horses of the Apocalypse, white and red and black and pale.  Jesus says, “Wait a minute.  I’m still working to present every man perfect.”

 

It will never be unless God does it.  Oh, such a King, such a Champion, He is come to fight the battles of the Lord.  He has come to prepare the bride for that great day when she shall be presented to the Lord, spotless.  Jesus is here this morning with an eager heart, striving.  If you don’t want to go this way, you can join some dead church and they’ll receive you with open arms.  But if you want Jesus Christ there is only one way.  Jesus alone is the way.  He is the truth and He is the life. 

 

Oh, to do some homework!  That’s what makes Pentecostal meetings.  Ministers sometimes think that just by yelling they can bring the power of God upon a meeting.  Listen, if you don’t live with God, it will be a farce.  The praise is different when it rises from a heart that is sanctified and that is intent on worshipping God and where the fire of the Holy Ghost burns.  I’d like to be like Paderewski, one of the greatest pianists in the world.  When he was eighty years old, he was still giving concerts, still the peer among pianists.  A man like that ought to be able to take it easy, yet he was still practicing eight hours a day, just runs, up and down, up and down.  Why?  Because he had to appear before the public, and to him it was a life-and-death matter.  At that time he made the statement, “As soon as I discover that my piano playing does not improve” — a man eighty years old — “I’ll stop playing in public.” I, as a minister, ought to say, “As soon as I discover that my preaching doesn’t improve in the power of God, I ought to quit preaching and get alone with God and say, ‘What’s the matter with me?’”

 

The great bulk of Christians, even in Pentecost, are just fooling themselves.  We don’t believe the Bible.  Oh, when you believe the Bible you realize that Jesus Christ is putting the name of the Father upon your forehead, putting the life of the Son of God into your bones.  He’s taking His very blood that flows from His very being and cleansing you from every defilement of the flesh and of the spirit.  O beloved, if we saw ourselves as God sees us! 

 

Why does it take so much drilling, drilling, DRILLING?  Like a dentist who drills and drills and asks, “Does it hurt?” and then drills some more.  Why does it take all that?  Because we have departed so far from God.  Why have we departed?  Because we are too comfortably placed.  The prosperity of fools shall slay them.  They that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh.  They can’t help it.  But you and I can help it.  If we live in the flesh, we shall die.  That’s where death comes from.  That’s why we’re a body that is already half-dead. 

 

Beloved, do some homework.  Do homework!  Take your books.  Study humility.  Study love.  Study First Corinthians thirteen, study it with fear and trembling.  Look at yourself as in a mirror.  Say, “My God, if I haven’t this love, even my tongues are a tinkling cymbal, and I’m just fooling myself.  But Jesus Christ, you have offered to come and live out your life within me.”  You will find that if you do homework and you pray like that, God will come to you.  Pray about faith.  Do homework.  Cry to God evening and morning and at noon.  Be sure that the best time of every day is given to this act of calling on God. 

 

It is a good thing to call on Him aloud until you have come into His sanctuary and the Lord has quieted you.  But as long as you have a rattly mind, it’s a good thing to get alone with God and cry aloud to Him.  Get alone someplace — down in the basement, or in the attic, or find some empty barn or a garage, and if it’s cold, walk up and down.  Say, “God, You promised me Your holiness.  O God, I’m so conceited.  My Father, I still get mad.  I’m still sensitive.  I still have my dumps.  God, this has got to stop.  You promised, my God, beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for the spirit of heaviness.  O God, I pray Thee, give me love, give me Your love.  God, I’m not going to give up until I’ve got the victory.”

 

You may find out that God empties you.  You may discover that your flesh seems to increase.  It seems to get worse instead of better. 

 

God has a wonderful salvation for us all: it is Jesus Christ.  The question is only, whether we want it.  But oh, to do homework!  To really get to God!  To really mean business!  To redeem the time because the days are evil! 

 

We have a year before us.  What are we going to do with this year?  Is God going to have it?  What a year it will be if Jesus can requisition my attention.  Maybe I’ll have to do some real crucifying of the flesh.  Maybe I’ll have to take myself by the neck and say, “Here, hold on.  This is going to stop, having my own way.  It shall be Christ from henceforth.” 

  

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At the conclusion of this sermon, there was a season of prayer, praise, and worship which included the singing of “Hold the Fort.”  Later Pastor Waldvogel sang the chorus:

 

            Oh, I have an invitation

            I can take my friends along —

            There’s only one condition:

            You must know redemption’s song,

So you’d better put your wedding garments on,

            For you cannot do it there —

            The wedding bells are soon to ring

            You have no time to spare. 

 

Then a message in tongues and interpretation was given in which the Holy Spirit said:

 

The wedding bells are soon to ring and it is up to you to make your choice.  You can meet Me as a Judge, a stern Judge, that will bring into judgment every thought and every act of your life, but you can also prepare yourself as a bride adorned for her husband and meet Me as the Lover of your soul.  And if you want to meet Me like that in that day, then you’ll have to meet Me like that today.  Come, give Me your heart, child of mine.  No matter how defiled it may be, I will wash it and make it whiter than the snow.  Bring your garment to Me, and I will exchange it and give you My own garment of My righteousness.  Bring your weakness, and let me be your strength.  Bring yourself and let Me be you, and all will be glorious.