Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow (Psalm 51:7). The mere teaching of Bible doctrine and extensive Bible studies divorced from their application to one’s life is not truth in the biblical sense. It is hard to understand the distinction between the letter of the Word and the spirit of the Word. We can learn the letter of the Word with intellectual knowledge. However, the Word is spirit, and we need to understand the spirit of the Word. We learn to understand the words of Psalm 51 and what is in the heart of a true child of God who has learned to understand what we spoke of this morning when Job said: “Behold, I am vile.” It was such an exclamation of surprise. As I pointed out, all these men of God were truly God-fearing men, but when the Light shined in their hearts, they saw the vileness of their hearts by nature. Then all of a sudden they were in a state of shock. They saw something they had not realized. Psalm 51 is a psalm of David after Nathan the prophet had come to him with the message we find in 2 Samuel 12:7-9: “And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.” This was such a shock to David because he had done it so secretly, and he thought no one knew. It was strictly between him and Joab, who knew that Uriah had been put in the forefront of the battle and killed. David did not realize that his sin was naked and open before God. All of a sudden that light was flicked on, and there he stood, with every thought and every desire and every lust and every crime of his heart now naked before the Lord. It was not until God sent Nathan with the message, “Thou art the man,” that David cried out as Job, “Behold, I am vile.” Keep this in mind as we go through Psalm 51:1-7. Verse 1 says: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” Now his sins stood before his eyes. Until then he could write condemnation on his subordinate who had sinned much less than he had. Continuing in verse 2 he said: “Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Now he saw his sin and how vile he was in the eyes of a Holy God. It is not until this takes place in your life and mine that we really understand what it is to plead for cleansing in the blood of Christ. David now saw how he needed cleansing for his own soul. It is so easy to come under the preaching of the Word, and to hear for someone else. We can hear a sermon and wish that someone else could hear and understand it, but the message needs to come home to us. We read in verse 3: “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” Before Nathan spoke to David, he knew his sin and he knew that God knew it, but now the Holy Spirit brought it home to his heart, and he acknowledged it. He now knew the consequences of that sin and how grievous it was to the Lord. David continued in verse 4: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.” What does he mean, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned”? He sinned against Uriah. He sinned against Bathsheba. He had sinned against his kingdom. He had sinned against the congregation of Israel. David saw the horrible, grievous nature of his sin in the sight of God. You and I have to learn to understand that when we sin, we sin against God. When Nathan came to David, he had no place to hide. If God had told David he was going to die for this, it would have been a just judgment, but now he confesses his sinfulness. All of a sudden, he realized the grievous nature of his sin. He says in verse 5: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” He realized that he was born in sin. He realized that he was conceived in sin. Continuing in verse 6 he says: “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.” This confession of David was the fruit of having the Holy Spirit enlighten his understanding to realize the sinfulness of his sin and that his sin was naked and open before God. Now we come to the words of our text: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Until this happens to us, we will never understand what it is to plead for the purging of our sins, that is, to be cleansed from our sin, to be delivered from the power of our sin. He is saying he wants to be clean from his sin. It is one thing to be clean or be delivered from the penalty of sin. It is another thing to be cleansed from sin itself so that not only the guilt, but the sin itself has been purged away and it no longer has a hold on you. It no longer has power and dominion over you. It no longer reigns over you. That is what he was asking: that he would be delivered from the power and the reign of sin. David wanted to be purged from his sin as well as delivered from the penalty of sin. Notice that throughout this psalm, hell and damnation were not his greatest concerns. He was concerned about the offense he had caused against God and how he had brought reproach against God. He says in verse 16: “Thou desirest not sacrifice or else would I give it thee. Thou delightest not in burnt offerings.” That deals with the penalty of the sin. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart. He understood that the Lord wanted his heart, but his heart had strayed from the Lord. He realized that it was a heart sin that the Lord was displeased with. Now before the words, “Thou art the man,” were applied to David’s heart, he could still order the execution of his subordinate for a much lesser crime. You can see this in the preceding verses in 2 Samuel 12: 5-6: “And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” David passed judgment, but Nathan’s message was that the Lord had said, “Thou shalt not die.” The Lord forgave him. David was not concerned primarily with the consequences of his sin. As we go through Psalm 51, I want you to understand he was not concerned about hell. He was not concerned about the punishment of his sin. He was concerned about being delivered from its pollution, to be cleansed from his sin. The Bible is much more than a book of revealed facts and truth. It is not only a history book. We read in Hebrews 4:12-13: “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” You see the word of God is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. That is what we see in Psalm 51. We see David pouring his heart out before the Lord under the pollution of sin, having to now be cleansed from sin itself. We read in verse 13: “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” Bible truths may be correctly explained without raising any opposition until it is applied to our daily lives. Bible studies are everywhere. Pulpits are everywhere, and the preachers may properly explain the word of God. They may read it verbatim and never encounter any opposition until we are required to apply it to our personal lives. That is when you hit a hornets’ nest. That is when you see opposition. That is when people become defensive. Religion becomes a source or form of entertainment that is unprofitable to the soul. A religion of entertainment is unprofitable to the soul. You see this in Ezekiel 33:31-32: “And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.” The people were coming to be entertained by what Ezekiel was saying, but their hearts were still covetous. When we apply the word of God to our daily lives, it convicts us. That is when the rubber meets the road. That is when religion becomes offensive. You can get yourself into a heap of trouble. People will tolerate a lot of preaching of God’s word as long as it does not have to be applied to their personal lives. The Holy Spirit applies the words “Thou art the man” to the soul, opening our eyes to see that the word of God “is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:12-13). When we have that applied to our hearts, when it becomes personal, when our own sins are pointed out by the finger of God, then we begin to understand the words of our text: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Then we start to understand the desire for cleansing, to be delivered from that sin. Then the sin itself becomes personal. We do not apply it to another person. We desire to be cleansed. When the Holy Spirit opens our spiritual eyes and ears to see and hear spiritually, “Thou art the man,” we begin to truly hunger and thirst for righteousness. We start to understand the work of regeneration, when the desire of the heart is altered. The sin we used to cherish becomes our greatest enemy, and the things of God, which used to be our greatest enemy, become our chief delight. This word purge, as we find in our text, expresses David’s desire to be washed and cleansed from the pollution of his sin by the sprinkling of Christ’s blood. Our text says, “Purge me with hyssop,” because hyssop was to be used for the sprinkling of the blood. In Exodus 12:22 it says: “And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin.” What does he mean by “purge me with hyssop”? He is saying, Lord, bring me under the sprinkling of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, if I can be washed in the blood of the Lamb, I will be whiter than snow. He is saying: Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. That speaks of his walk of life: if the Lord will give him the blood that had been dipped with hyssop to sprinkle the lintel and the side posts of the door, which is his walk of life. This sprinkling with the blood was used also for the cleansing of leprosy. They also used hyssop. When a leper came to be cleansed, he was sprinkled with the blood with hyssop, which was to typify the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, which is the cleansing of sin. The leper had already been cured. We are not talking about justification here. We are talking about sanctification. He had already been delivered from leprosy, but he had to be cleansed from the power of it, from the pollution of it. In Leviticus 14:6-7 it says: “As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field.” This is a type of the sacrifice of Christ. He says “cleanse me with hyssop,” which is the sprinkling of the blood, to cleanse him from sin. We become whiter than snow when all of our sins are washed away by the cleansing power of the blood of Christ. Before the Holy Spirit spoke, “Thou art the man,” into David’s soul, he could still pass condemnation onto his fellowman, but afterward he saw his spiritual leprosy and his need for cleansing as we see in verses 1 and 2: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” David is talking about that cleansing with hyssop, that cleansing power of the blood. Until the Lord speaks to our soul, “Thou art the man,” our soul has no rest until we have been cleansed. A mere formal religion and intellectual religion does not bring a heart’s desire to be cleansed from the power of sin. That does not bring a hatred for sin. That does not make sin become exceedingly sinful. Conscientiousness of our defilement is not automatically accompanied with a desire for cleansing. You can come under the proclamation of the word and actually come to a full realization of your defilement, but that in itself does not cause a desire for cleansing. The desire for cleansing is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is that work of regeneration. It is that new man of the heart. Jesus said in John 3:19-20: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” They realized they were defiled, but they fled from the light that revealed their defilement, like David did until Nathan spoke to him, and the Lord applied it to his soul. Until the Holy Spirit comes in the heart we see condemnation, and we will flee the light. Sure we can see that we are defiled. We can realize that what we are doing is wrong. We can realize that what we are doing is sin. This though does not put it in the light that David saw in Psalm 51. David knew that when he took Bathsheba he was wrong. David knew that when he told Joab to have Uriah slain that he was wrong, but he was hiding it. He was not coming to the light. Those who flee from the light cannot pray the prayer of our text: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” David could not pray the prayer of our text before Nathan spoke to him, “Thou art the man,” because he was hiding his sin. He was not coming to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. He was keeping it secret. The rejoicing of the wicked is in their iniquity, not in hearing the words of God. Those who know their own defilement and those who shun the light rejoice in their iniquity. They do not rejoice as we read in Psalm 51:8: “Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.” David prayed in verses 9 and 10: “Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” Now David saw the corruption of his soul. He saw the corruption of his human nature. He saw the corruption of his sin. He saw the sinfulness of his sin. He knew his sin before this, but he had never been brought to where he cried out for the cleansing of sin. Continuing in verses 11 to 13 he prayed: “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.” What a blessing it is my friends, if someone who has been brought under the power of sin, and the Holy Spirit convicts them to see the sinfulness of sin, if that person finds someone he can speak to who can relate to what he is talking about. Now when someone would come to David and say, I have been taken in such a fault, he could reply: I know the power of sin, and I know the sinfulness of sin, and he could teach that person the Lord’s ways. He could teach him that he needs to flee to that hyssop and have his sins sprinkled with the blood of Christ. David prayed in verse 14: “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.” He understood that he was guilty of the blood of Uriah. It went beyond the blood of Uriah though to the blood of the church because he had been guilty of sinning against the second table of the law of love. He had committed adultery, and that is also having blood on his hands. He justly deserved to be put to death. We read in verse 15: “O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.” There is never a time that a person can sing forth the praises of God like he can when he understands that Christ came to redeem us from all iniquity. David’s reference to hyssop teaches another valuable lesson, that is, his willingness to submit to being cleansed in God’s ordained way. If we rightly understand Psalm 51, we are going to learn a lesson that is powerfully important, and I am going to show you what it is. The preaching of the gospel today is centered on justification and the sacrifice of Christ, but I want to show you what David teaches us in this psalm. David said in verses 16 and 17: “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” This is the lesson that Job did not understand. He was a formal religionist. I want to show you the difference between what Job did and what David is teaching us here. Turn with me to Job 1:4-5: “And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them. And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.” David, though, said that God does not desire sacrifice. What Job was missing was the heart. He never trained his children that their hearts should be right before God. He tried to take care of it all with sacrifices. No repentance was taught. Job did not understand the vileness of his own heart, but David said that the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart. Watch the following verses. This is a tremendous lesson for us to learn. We read in Psalm 51:18-19: “Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.” I want you to see that the sacrifice of righteousness goes ahead of the burnt offerings. The sacrifice of righteousness is the sacrifice of a broken heart and a contrite spirit. That has to come before our pleading the blood of Christ. We cannot come and plead the blood of Christ as Job was doing. His sons were feasting and making merry, and then he would offer a burnt offering for it. The Lord has no delight in it. This was the same thing Saul was doing. He disobeyed the Lord by using the best of the sheep and cattle for a sacrifice to Him. We cannot plead justification under the sacrifice of Jesus Christ until we understand what it is to be cleansed in the heart. We need that hyssop. We need that blood on the two door posts and on the lintel of the door so the destroying angel will pass over because he sees our walk of life. Now we can start pleading the burnt offerings. Satan loves overreaction. On one hand, he wants us to slight the authority of God’s word as Jesus warned against inMatthew 5:19: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” On the other side of this principle, Satan would load us with legalistic commandments that God has no pleasure in as we see in Isaiah 1:12: “When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?” Who has asked you to even come within the walls of my house? Continuing in verses 13 to 15 we read: “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.” These verses confirm that the Lord has absolutely no pleasure in sacrifices when the heart is not right. When the heart is not right these sacrifices are an abomination to Him. That their hands were full of blood showed that they had not repented of their sins. Continuing in verses 16 to 18 we read: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” What was missing? In all this ritual, the people came and offered sacrifices and attended solemn assemblies, but this wearied the Lord. Their hands were full of blood. There was no repentance. David understood what was missing. He realized his hands were full of blood as we see in Psalm 51:16: “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.” David is saying, I understand the filthiness and pollution of my sin, and I do not need to bring a burnt offering. I know it would not be pleasing in your sight. I need to come before you with a humble and contrite heart. That is the sacrifice the Lord will be pleased with. He says in Psalm 51:19: “Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.” After the heart is broken and contrite, then there is a place for the sacrifice. Then we can start talking about pardon. See how abominable it is to only preach the blood of Christ and sacrifices without repentance. Then we come under what the Lord says in Isaiah 1: Away with it. It is an abomination to me. See what we read in Psalm 51:14: “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.” David understood that he had blood on his hands and that he needed to repent and be cleansed by the perfect sacrifice before a sacrifice would be acceptable. He said in verse 15: “O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.” He saw that he needed the Lord to open his mouth before Him, that he would be able to come before the throne to seek for mercy. Continuing in verses 16 and 17 he said: “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” As long as David knew he had blood on his hands, he knew that he could not bring a burnt offering and please the Lord. His heart had to be cleansed, and that cleansing had to start with the hyssop, not with the burnt offering. That is why our text says, “Purge me with hyssop.” He did not say, Purge me with a burnt offering. This repenting spirit, this desire to be cleansed from all sin, this desire to be whiter than snow is what was missing in Isaiah 1:12-15, which talks about all of the sacrifices in which the Lord was not pleased. See what the Lord said in 1:16-18: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” This is what David was praying for. He was praying for a new heart. He said in Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” He was not praying for pardon. He wanted to be cleansed with hyssop. He wanted to be washed from his sin. He wanted to be washed from the pollution of his sin. He wanted that blood washed off of his hands, so he could now bring his sacrifice as we see in verse 19: “Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.” We have to be cleansed before we can seek a pardon. We cannot preach pardon to those who are walking in sin. The Lord Jesus Christ did not come to save His church in their sins. He came to save them from their sins. You will seldom find a darker shade of guilt than David was convicted of. I want you to stop and think of the tremendous lesson we learn in this history of David. God had placed David in the highest position of public trust, yet he had yielded to the worst passions. Do you know what a fiduciary is? He is one in whom there is no tolerance for injustice, because he has been entrusted with others’ money. Think of the position David was placed in. David was the king of Israel, but he had committed murder and adultery. He had killed a man and stolen his wife. What two passions could be worse for a man to yield to—adultery and murder. This Psalm pours out the breathings of a wounded spirit touched with the richest sensibilities of spiritual feelings. Look how he grieved as he pled before the Lord. Both sides of our twofold being are revealed here. It reveals something in us so near to hell, yet it also reveals something so strangely near to God, that humble and contrite spirit. This is such a paradox. David had come so close to hell, yet he was plucked as a brand from the burning. He was pardoned and was now not primarily concerned with being slain for his sins, but he was concerned about the pollution of his sins. The knowledge of his sin humbled David so grievously before the Lord. Beloved, does not this Psalm give a blessed revelation of the spiritual warfare within the regenerate heart, as we see what it is to struggle against the power of sin? In this occasion of David’s fall, we see the germs of the most heinous crimes in the most stately saint. When we examine our own hearts, we see the seeds of sin. As the Lord reveals to us the thoughts and intents of our hearts, we see our human nature that had fallen in paradise. We see the perfect preciousness in Christ as He took on our human nature, without sin, to be our substitute. We read in 1 Kings 15:5: “Because David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.” Think of the grief this brought in his life. When you and I examine our own hearts, can we say: except in only one case did our hearts really stray from the Lord? Solomon’s heart was not right before the Lord. With his heart, he served other gods. David’s heart though turned not aside except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. The Lord forgave him. The greatest lesson we can learn from God allowing His servant David to fall into Satan’s snares is how pleased God is in our unconditional surrender to His will. We read in Psalm 51:16-17: “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” This is a heart that is in total, unconditional surrender to the will of God. Even in the sacrifice of Christ, it was not the pain, the blood, the death with which the Father was so pleased. These satisfied the penalty against sin, but it was Christ’s obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, which was His highest evidence of His complete and unconditional surrender to the will of His Father. Therein was the Father so glorified. You and I must learn to understand what it is to be conformed to the image of Christ. As the Holy Spirit works grace in our hearts, and as we mature in grace, we become unconditionally surrendered to His will. It is our conformity to this image of Christ that is so pleasing to the Father. We see this in Psalm 34:15-16: “The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.” In these two verses we have such a profound proclamation of the gospel. The righteous are those whose hearts are surrendered to the will of God. Continuing in verses 17 and 18 we read: “The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles. The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” Are we talking about salvation? Are we talking about the elements of salvation? Are we talking about the evidence of salvation? Where is our evidence of salvation? Do we truly understand what it is to fear the Lord? Do we understand what it is to have a heart in total surrender to the will of God? Do we understand what it says in Proverbs 8:13: “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate”? The Lord says He is against those who do evil. Those who do evil do so in pride, arrogance and self-promotion. Who are the righteous? We read about them in Philippians 2:1-7. They are those who have the mind of Christ, those who prefer others ahead of themselves, those who have consolation in Christ.
For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me (JOH 17:8).
Receiving Christ’s words is receiving Christ (Christ is the Word.)— just as well as rejecting His words is rejecting Him. See what the Lord said when Saul rejected the Word of the Lord. 1-SA 15:23 says, "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king."
Samuel had told him in verse 19, "Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the LORD, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the LORD?" We see the background to this in verses 13-18, "And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the LORD: I have performed the commandment of the LORD. And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed. Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the LORD hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on. And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed thee king over Israel? And the LORD sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed."
The Lord gave Saul a specific command, but in his human reasoning he amended it to what he thought would be a better way. Verses 1 to 3 say, "Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
Verse 21 says, "But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God in Gilgal." This was in disobedience to His Word. Saul was going to do as king what he thought was proper.
There is a receiving Christ and a receiving of His Word. JOH 20:31 says, "But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." Believing in Christ and receiving life are inseparable.
ACT 10:43 says, "To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins." This means to believe the truthfulness of what He says. We receive the promise as we receive Him.
We must also see how that receiving the Word of Christ is an act of saving faith. ACT 2:41 says, "Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls." Are you a candidate for baptism if you say that you are outside of Christ? Receiving His Word is receiving Christ.
On the other side of this same principle, unbelief is rejecting the Word of God, refusing to be baptized. LUK 7:29-30 says, "And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him." As we step forward to baptism we are initiating ourselves into His service. The Pharisees rejected Christ and refused to be baptized. Unbelief is such a horrible sin.
The Lord is pleased in our obeying His voice, and we have the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to cover our omissions and our violations of the law that we do in our weakness, as we are unable to keep His law perfectly. He is not delighted if we plead the sacrifice of Christ and sin willfully.
Unbelief not only rejects the Word of God, it rejects all the promises of His Word. ACT 13:46 says, "Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." In rejecting the Word of God they have forfeited their salvation.
See what a distinction between those unbelievers and those Gentiles. ACT 11:1 says, "And the apostles and brethren that were in Judaea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God."
See how graciously they received the Word and Christ together. As the Apostle Peter preached the Word unto the household of Cornelius, it was those who heard who received. ACT 10:35-44 says, "Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all:) That word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judaea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree: Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly; Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word." Faith comes by hearing, but the Jews refused to hear.
Saving faith, therefore, may be summed up as a motion in the heart of man, stirred up by the Spirit of God, to receive the whole Word of God. Receiving the Word of God is assenting to the conditions and trusting Him for the fulfillment of the promises contained therein. ACT 3:19 says, "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord." To be converted means to change your attitude, to become a different person. This is conditional for receiving forgiveness. We cannot receive a pardon for sins while continuing in sin.
The Jews remained bitter against the gospel because they did not receive the grace of repentance. If we claim to have the grace of God we must examine ourselves to see if we have repented and become converted. These times of refreshing are the assurance in our soul that the Lord has pardoned our sins. However, if we have rejected His law of the gospel, we have rejected Christ.
Our God has so ordained that we receive the Word by the ministry of those whom He has sent, therefore, we read in 1TH 2:13, "For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe." If I tell you that I preach the Word of God, then you must be able to go into the Word and confirm what I have told you. If that is not possible I have not given you the Word of God, but I have given you the Word of men.
To profit from the ministry we must take our eye off the man and compare the doctrines they teach with the Scriptures, to be assured that God’s Word is truly taught. I do not know of anything more dangerous than to hold someone in reverence because he is a powerful preacher. ACT 17:10-12 says, "And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few." Whatever you hear from the pulpit that you cannot confirm in the Word of God, put it in the trash can.
When we can reject all Pharisaical traditions and commandments of men, we set to our seal that what Christ has said is true. To do this we must reject anything that is not the Word of God. JOH 3:31-33 says, "He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." When we take philosophy and private interpretations we make God a liar, but when we receive His testimony as the word of God, we set to His seal that what He says is true.
We read in PRO 30:5-6, "Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him." If a word trips us up, we must do some studying. We are forbidden to add unto His Word, lest we be found to be a liar, and we are forbidden to take from His Word lest He take our name out of the Book of Life as we see in REV 22:19. It is not a slight thing to amend the Word of God.
It is so important to understand that the whole Word of God must be received. We cannot claim the promises and reject His commandments. 1JO 2:4-6 says, "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." A prominent church movement says that His law has been abolished, that His commandments are no longer in effect. Yet, Christ says that unless we repent, we will likewise perish. This teaching brings contradiction into the Word of God. Receiving His word and receiving Him are inseparable. Christ did not walk in rebellion to the commandments of the Father. If He had violated one commandment He would have spent eternity in hell.
We are not under the law to earn salvation. We are under grace, but grace is the ability to keep the law with gospel obedience, with a heart’s desire to do the will of God.
Hypocrites are willing to receive the Word of promise with joy, but what do we read of them? LK 8:13-15 says, "They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience." This is receiving Christ and His word.
People today want to die the death of the righteous, but live the life of the unrighteous. Balaam longed to die the death of the righteous as we see in NUM 23:10, yet he loved the wages of unrighteousness—forsaking the right way as we read in 2PE 2:15. See the admonition against this doctrine in REV 2:14, "But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication."
Saving faith or believing in Christ is an exercise of the heart. Balaam lacked a change of heart. He had no salvation because he had no repentance. He still coveted the wages of unrighteousness. He did not receive the Word of God as the authority of His life. ACT 8:36-37 says, "And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." The Lord does not want a divided heart. He does not want us to preach the gospel with one side of our face and serve the world with the other. The Lord will not accept those who have a divided heart.
The first table of the law reveals that God looks at the attitude of the heart for acceptable obedience, which must be motivated by love. MAT 22:35-38 says, "Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment."
Our Saviour went on to complete His answer by telling what was His highest command, which would evidence our love for our GOD in MAT 22:39-40, "And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Receiving Christ’s words is to obey them by the obedience of faith with the whole heart. Receiving Christ’s words implies an act of the will. Until we are made willing, that we serve God out of desire, we have not received His word. There must not only be knowledge of His will, but an actual choice and desire to do His will. PSA 112:1 says, "Praise ye the LORD. Blessed is the man that feareth the LORD, that delighteth greatly in his commandments." Our chief joy should be that the Lord is pleased with what we are doing. Nothing has humbled me more than when the Lord spoke to me out of this verse, letting me know that He was pleased with something I had done.
If we see ourselves as sinners before the Lord with the need to be washed, that is sometimes a good place to be, but on the other hand it is quite humbling for the Lord to smile on us, that He has accepted us and is delighted in something we did.
This act of the will is accompanied with a motivation by affection for the will of God. We do not do His will grudgingly. It is something we delight to do. GAL 5:24-25 says, "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." They continue to spring up in our lives, but immediately we must cut them off and flee to Christ that He might deliver us from the power of that temptation. We must do this daily.
All acts of faith are motivated by affection for Christ, which draws us unto the Person of Christ, though we meet with many difficulties. MAT 15:22-28 says, "And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole."
Obstacles become stepping stones to bring us closer to Christ. The woman of Canaan did not claim any worthiness. She did not claim any right or title. All she could pray was, "Lord, help me." Sometimes that is the most powerful prayer we can pray.
It is a consolation to the church of Christ even today to know that the crumbs that may fall from the Master’s table are to be used as food for us even though we feel how unworthy we are.
Those who have received the Word by faith will have Christ regardless of the cost. See what we read of the Apostle Paul in PHI 3:7-9, "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith."
Those who receive the Word with their whole heart, not only acknowledge the truth of it, but they also choose it as their guide with all gladness. PSA 119:10-11 says, "With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee."
Those who walk by the doctrines of Balaam look to Christ to die the death of the righteous, but they look to the world to gratify their affections. They do not receive the authority of the Word that admonishes them in COL 3:1-3, "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."
Hear the venting of Asaph’s affection when his eye of faith was lifted above the things of this life and fixed upon Christ. PSA 73:22-27 says, "So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee."
Receiving the Word of God is the gift of the covenant of grace, which we read of in HEB 8:10-12 says, "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." We have received the Word of God when the covenant of grace is written in our hearts.
Genesis Chapter 1 verses 26-27…
Now let’s move to Chapter 2 into 3:13… then verse 20…
Have you ever thought what it must have been like to be the first and only person on earth?
You know… its one thing for us to feel lonely… but… in Adams case there was no one else… He missed much of what makes us… who we are…
He had no childhood… no parents… [as we know parents]… no family or friends… He had to learn to be human on his own…
Fortunately though… God didn’t let him struggle to long… He didn’t let him struggle to long… before presenting him with an ideal companion and mate… Eve…
At the outset they had a complete… innocent… and open oneness… with out a hint of shame…
Have you ever been in a family gathering when a young child runs through the room unclothed without a hint of shame… the innocence of the child…
Oh how that speaks to us of how it was and could be… [not that we run around naked… but that we are without shame… and transparent before each other…]
Maybe one of Adams first conversions with his delightful companion would have been about garden rules…
We know… that before Eve came along… God had given Adam complete freedom in the garden… with the responsibility to tend and care for it…
But… one tree was off limits… the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… No doubt… Adam told her all about this…
We know very little about Eve… the first woman in the world… yet… she is the mother of us all… She was the final piece in the intricate and amazing puzzle of God’s creation…
Adam… now had another human being to fellowship with… someone with an equal share in God’s image…
Here… was someone alike enough for companionship… yet… now hear this… different enough for relationship…Together they were Greater than they could ever be Alone…
What an incredible truth for us to take in this morning… Together we can become something bigger than we ever can become alone…
Fantastic….
We know how the story goes…
Eve was approached by Satan in the Garden where she and Adam lived… and he questioned her contentment… How did he do this…
He implied… how could you be happy when you’re not allowed to eat from one of the tree’s…
Satan… helped Eve switch her focus… switch her focus from what she could do and what she had…
He moved her focus from all that God had done and given… to the one thing he withheld… sadly… Eve willing accepted Satan’s viewpoint without checking it out with God… or Adam…
Does that sound familiar or what?
How often is our attention drawn from the much which is ours… to the little that isn’t…?
We can sometimes get that… ‘I have to have it’ feeling… in many ways Eve was typical of us all… Our desires like Eves can easily be manipulated… if we’re not careful…
Can you see this…
Truly… we need to keep God in our decision making processes… His word… this book is our guidebook to life’s choices and decisions…
Our relationship with God… Jesus… and the Holy Spirit should always be the contentment of our lives… God’s word… it should always be there with us… so that we learn the lessons of Life…
OK then… let me give us some life lessons from Adam and Eve…
In Genesis 1 verse 26-27 we read…[Read Genesis 1:26-27….]
Lesson 1: As Adam and Eves Descendants we all in some way reflect the Image of our God.
Please… take hold of this truth… God loves us… he loves us so much that he made us in his image… his likeness… so that we would and could reflect his image to others…
That which was spoilt in the garden and damaged by sin… God put right in his Son Jesus… he brought all mankind back to himself… in that the gave his son Jesus to pay the penalty of sin…
That disease which was damaging Gods likeness and image in us…
In what ways are we made in God’s image?
I suggest to us this morning that we display Gods image in our creativity… our reasoning… our speech and our determination…
It is our entire self that reflects God… We can never be God… but… we can be like him… we can… reflect his likeness in and through our lives…
God showed himself to us in his Son… Each of us this morning are becoming like his Son… we are becoming more Christ like…
We can and do reflect God and Jesus in us through our Character… Our Love for God and others…
Our Patience… Forgiveness… Kindness… our Faithfulness… our Humility… our Generosity… Can you see this…
You’ve heard people say no doubt … Oh he/she are such a Godly man woman…
Notice… God made Man and Woman in his image…
Neither man nor Woman is made more in his image than the other… From the beginning… the bible places man and woman at the pinnacle of Gods creation…
Hear this Today… God wants to reflect his image and likeness in you… he does that as you and I become more like his Son… Jesus…
Lesson 2: Sin Spreads
Satan here… tried to make Eve think that sin is good… pleasant… and desirable… and I suppose knowledge of good and evil seemed harmless enough to her… but… its root was disobedience…
In our lives also… we can often choose wrong things… choose wrong things because we become convinced that they are good… pleasant… desirable…
Pleasant and attractive sins are hardest to avoid… they don’t always look ugly…
But… God’s word tells us to prepare ourselves… we can’t always prevent temptation… but hear this… we can always find an escape…I Corinthians 10:13 says…
We have to use God’s word… God’s people to help us stand…
Notice what Eve did… She Looked… She Took… She Ate… then She Gave… She Passed it on…
One of the realities of Sin is this… it Spreads… Eve involved someone else in her wrongdoing…
I put it to us… that can so easily be the case for us… by involving someone else… we relieve our own guilt…
Sin when left unchecked spreads… The bible clearly shows that to us…
The worst step we can take is to eliminate the guilty feeling without eliminating the cause…
It would be a bit like taking a pain killer for your rotten tooth with out taking the rotten tooth out… if we don’t remove the tooth… the pain comes back… but it comes back worse than before…
Left uncheck sin will spread… Adam and Eve show us this lesson…
Lesson 3: We cannot Hide from God
Read Genesis 3:9-10…
Hear… we have the first recorded game of Hide and Seek!!!
But… seriously how true it can be of us… when things happen… we think we can hide it from God…
But… our God is an omnipresent God… he is with us wherever we are… whatever we are doing…
Our God loves us unconditionally…
But… Our natural fear leads us to think that when we mess up… we don’t deserve his Love… let me say… Gods love isn’t dependent on us… and what we do… because if it where we’d all fail…
It’s about Jesus… [don’t try and hide in the garden]… bring it all to Jesus… He is our Saviour… he is the one who shed his blood for our sin and wrongdoing…
Understand this… God loves us regardless of our faults… There is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less…
Adam and Eve show us this lesson… We can’t hide from God…
Oh and by the way… he doesn’t want you to either…
And finally for this morning…
Lesson 4: When Confronted don’t Blame Others
Read Genesis 3:11-13….
Notice… in both cases… their answers involved someone else… they both tried to deflect their fault to someone else…
Ever done that… No… Me… never…
How easy it is to excuse our wrongs by blaming someone else… or blaming a circumstance…
I’ll let you into a secret… God knows the truth anyway…
Another life lesson we can learn this morning is the need for us to stand up and face the consequences of our own actions…
Mum… it was him… no it wasn’t... it was you… he made me do it… no I didn’t... you made me do it…
In closing… Adam and Eve represent so much to us as we seek to learn from their experiences…
This morning we’ve only looked at a few…
1: We are made in Gods Image and Likeness… faults and all…
God through the presence of Jesus in our lives is helping us to become… Never forget we reflect the very presence of God through our lives… Jesus said…we are the light and salt…
2: Sin Spreads
Adam and Eve show us that from one act of disobedience the rest of the world was infected…
3: We can’t Hide from God
Never try and hide in the Garden of Life… meet with the Father instead…
4: When Confronted don’t blame others
Without doubt Jesus took it on the chin… Stephen when facing the stones of hatred… said simply this Father Do not hold this sin against them…
He didn’t try to deflect the reasons for his actions towards any other…
We serve a wonderful God who loves us muchly… more than we can ever think or imagine… his word presents to us People… Characters… Situations… Commands that are there to propel us into a life of fullness and joy…
Hear me today… Don’t allow the suggestions and the trickery of the serpent to get you out of joy and peace… because the joy of the Lord is our strength…
I close with the word of the Apostle Paul… 2 Cor 10:3-5
For though we live in the world… we do not wage war as the world does… The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world… On the contrary… they have divine power to demolish strongholds… we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God… and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ…
If nothing else this morning… realise this… Adam and Eve show us that disobedience to the word of God is not the way…
Listening to arguments against Gods word is not the way… allowing suggestions and thoughts to exalt themselves above God is not the way…
Our biggest life lesson from the story of Adam and Eve is simply this… Obedience will keep you in the Garden…
Summary: The expression "man of God" is one of the Bible's highest praises accorded to mortal man. Every believing man or woman can find a pattern for God-pleasing living in the biblical man of God. 1 Samuel 2:27 Now a man of God came to Eli and said to him, “This is what the Lord says...” •• (1) The man of God hears from God (“...this is what the Lord says”). He is spiritually sensitive and discerning. •• (2) The man of God, when He has heard from God, speaks without fear, even to prominent people (here, to Eli the priest). 1 Samuel 9:6But the servant replied, “Look, in this town there is a man of God; he is highly respected, and everything he says comes true. Let’s go there now. Perhaps he will tell us what way to take.” •• (3) The man of God should live his life in such a decent and honorable way that he is “highly respected”. •• (4) He should have a track record of reliability and accuracy in the things of the Lord (“...everything he says comes true.”). 1 Kings 13:1-5By the word of the Lord a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. He cried out against the altar by the word of the LORD: “O altar, altar! This is what the LORD says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who now make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.’ “ That same day the man of God gave a sign: “This is the sign the LORD has declared: The altar will be split apart and the ashes on it will be poured out.” When King Jeroboam heard what the man of God cried out against the altar at Bethel, he stretched out his hand from the altar and said, “Seize him!” But the hand he stretched out toward the man shriveled up, so that he could not pull it back. Also, the altar was split apart and its ashes poured out according to the sign given by the man of God by the word of the LORD. •• (5) A man of God is precisely guided“by the word of the Lord”. He acts on God’s directions, not his own agenda. •• (6) He does not hold back a negative word from God, even (as here) in the presence of the king. •• (7) Men of God may have remarkable “signs” accompanying their ministries. 2 Kings 4:8-10 ...(9) She said to her husband, “I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God. Let’s make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp for him. Then he can stay there whenever he comes to us.” •• (8) The man of God is recognized by others as a holy person, a good example of the godly life. •• (9) He is someone whose presence people covet. Over my past 41 years as a born-again Christian, I have greatly enjoyed the fellowship and positive influence on my life of true men of God. 2 Kings 5:14So [leprous Naaman] went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. •• (10) Men of God may have remarkable manifestations of the supernatural power of God including healings, in their ministries. 2 Kings 6:5-7 ...“Oh, my lord,” he cried out, “it was borrowed!” The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it there, and made the iron float.... •• (11) The man of God may be used in miracles. •• (12) He will undoubtedly be a man of great faith in God. 1 Timothy 6:9-12a...(10) the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.... (11) But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. •• (13) Men of God refuse to let the love of money affect their life and ministry. •• (14) The man of God actively pursues that which is godly, including: • Righteousness • Godliness • Faith • Love • Endurance • Gentleness •• (15) He is a fighter for the faith. 2 Timothy 3:16-17All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. •• (16) The man of God is a man of God’s word.
The Rivers of Godby Pastor Jim Feeney, Ph.D.
Summary: Feeling spiritually dry? in a personal desert place? God is ready and willing to pour out streams, springs, and rivers of life-giving spiritual water on your parched soul.
Deuteronomy 8:7For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land — a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills.
•• This is God’s intention for His people --
• to bring us into a good land
• to bring us to streams and pools of water
• to bring us to flowing springs
• to refresh us from the rivers of God
Psalm 78:15-17He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas; [16] he brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers. [17] But they continued to sin against him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High.
Psalm 78:19-22They spoke against God, saying, Can God spread a table in the desert? [20] When he struck the rock, water gushed out, and streams flowed abundantly. But can he also give us food? Can he supply meat for his people?” [21] When the Lord heard them, he was very angry; his fire broke out against Jacob, and his wrath rose against Israel, [22] for they did not believe in God or trust in his deliverance.
•• Here we see God bringing His people towards the promised land --
• In the desert He gave them abundant water. It can be the same for your desert, if you’ll by faith seek and receive God’s living waters.
• In the desert He brought His people “streams out of a rocky crag”. If your life seems “rocky”, God is ready and willing to bring His streams of blessing into it.
• In their helplessness and need, God “made water flow down like rivers”. In your times of need, the refreshing, life-giving rivers of God’s blessing are available to you.
•• But watch the warnings here, too --
• They sinned and rebelled against God in the midst of His provision of rivers of water.
• They spoke against God, essentially and ungratefully saying, “Can’t God do more?”
• In their rebellion and disbelief, they “did not...trust in [God’s] deliverance.”
•• The lesson to us is: Don’t overlook and underappeciate the present rivers of God in our lives, the present blessings of God, His present provision in our rocky places.
Isaiah 44:2-4This is what the Lord says — he who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you: Do not be afraid, O Jacob, my servant, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. [3] For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. [4] They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.
•• God gave them natural water. More importantly, for them and us, He poured out on them Spirit-ual water. He poured out His Spirit and His blessing on His people. And God is the same today. He is ever ready to pour out His Spirit on you. •• Where? On dry, thirsty ground. Thirst for the living waters of God's Spirit. • The result? God’s blessing. Isaiah 41:17-18 The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. [18] I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs. •• Search for this water ... God will answer! • Are your heights barren? Search for God’s living water, and He’ll make His rivers flow into your barrenness. • Are your valleys parched? Seek after God’s water, and He’ll cause springs to burst forth in your parched land. • Is your devotional life dry? Search for God’s water, and He’ll turn your personal spiritual desert into refreshing springs and pools. Isaiah 43:18-21Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. [19] See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. [20] The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, [21] the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise. •• Don’t dwell on the past. God likes to do new things in the lives of His people. Look ahead! •• In the desert wasteland, God will “give drink to [His] people”. • You say, “Well, it’s been awfully dry.” Remember, God says, “I am doing a new thing.... Don’t dwell on the past.” Get ready for God’s “new thing” in your life. Look for His water in your desert and His reviving streams flowing into your wasteland. Jeremiah 17:7-8 But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. [8] He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. •• Trust God. Have faith and confidence in Him. • You’ll be like a tree rooted by His rivers of water. • You’ll have no fears of the heat. • Not only will you survive times of drought, you will stay green and continue to bear fruit. John 7:37-39aOn the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. [38] Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” [39] By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. •• You don’t need to travel to find the rivers of God. They are within everyone who will: (1) Thirst for them... (2) Believe in Jesus... (3) Come to Him... (4) and drink deeply of the Holy Spirit offered by Jesus. And that Holy Spirit, whom Jesus likened to “streams of living water,” will change your life.
By, John Piper
Romans 12:1-2
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. As I have thought and prayed about these verses, it seems to me that there are two more very large issues we should deal with before moving on to verse 3. I would like to give a week to each of them. “The Will of God” One, which I hope to deal with next week, is the meaning of the term “the will of God.” Verse 2 says that we are to discern what is “the will of God.” It’s a very common phrase and I think that sometimes, when we use it, we may not know what we are talking about. That is not spiritually healthy. If you get into the habit of using religious language without knowing what you mean by it, you will increasingly become an empty shell. And many alien affections move into empty religious minds which have language but little or wrong content. The term “the will of God” has at least two and possibly three biblical meanings. First, there is the sovereign will of God, that always comes to pass without fail. Second, there is the revealed will of God in the Bible—do not steal, do not lie, do not kill, do not covet—and this will of God often does not come to pass. And third, there is the path of wisdom and spontaneous godliness—wisdom where we consciously apply the word of God with our renewed minds to complex moral circumstances, and spontaneous godliness where we live most of our lives without conscious reflection on the hundreds of things we say and do all day. Next week we need to sort this out and ask what Paul is referring to in Romans 12:2. Transformation by the Renewal of Your Mind But today I want to focus on the phrase in Romans 12:2, “by the renewal of your mind.”Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” We are perfectly useless as Christ-exalting Christians if all we do is conform to the world around us. And the key to not wasting our lives with this kind of success and prosperity, Paul says, it being transformed. “Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed.” That word is used one time in all the gospels, namely, about Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration (the mountain of “transformation”—same word, metemorphõthë): “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matthew 17:2-Mark 9:2). The Transformation Is Not Just External I point this out for one reason: to make the point that the nonconformity to the world does not primarily mean the external avoidance of worldly behaviors. That’s included. But you can avoid all kinds of worldly behaviors and not be transformed. “His face shown like the sun, and his clothes became white as light”! Something like that happens to us spiritually and morally. Mentally, first on the inside, and then, later at the resurrection on the outside. So Jesus says of us, at the resurrection: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). Transformation is not switching from the to-do list of the flesh to the to-do list of the law. When Paul replaces the list—the works—of the flesh, he does not replace it with the works of the law, but the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19-22). The Christian alternative to immoral behaviors is not a new list of moral behaviors. It is the triumphant power and transformation of the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ—our Savior, our Lord, our Treasure. “[God] has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). So transformation is a profound, blood-bought, Spirit-wrought change from the inside out. The Freedom of Being Enslaved to Christ This is why the Christian life—though it is utterly submitted (Romans 8:7; 10:3), even enslaved (Romans 6:18, 22), to the revealed will of God—is described in the New Testament as radically free. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”(2 Corinthians 3:17). “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). You are free in Christ, because when you do from the inside what you love to do, you are free, if what you love to do is what you ought to do. And that’s what transformation means: when you are transformed in Christ you love to do what you ought to do. That’s freedom. An Essential Means of Transformation: The Renewal of Your Mind And in Romans 12:2 Paul now focuses on one essential means of transformation—“the renewal of your mind.” “Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Oh, how crucial this is! - If you long to break loose from conformity to the world,
- if you long to be transformed and new from the inside out,
- if you long to be free from mere duty-driven Christianity and do what you love to do because what you love to do is what you ought to do,
- if you long to offer up your body as a living sacrifice so that your whole life becomes a spiritual act of worship and displays the worth of Christ above the worth of the world,
then give yourself with all your might to pursuing this-- the renewal of your mind. Because the Bible says, this is the key to transformation. “Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” What’s wrong with the human mind? Why does our mind need renewing? And what does this renewal look like? And how can we pursue and enjoy this renewal? The Problem with Our Minds There are many who think that the only problem with the human mind is that it doesn’t have access to all the knowledge it needs. So education becomes the great instrument of redemption—personal and social. If people just got more education they would not use their minds to invent elaborate scams, and sophisticated terrorist plots, and complex schemes for embezzling, and fast-talking, mentally nimble radio rudeness. If people just got more education! The Bible has a far more profound analysis of the problem. In Ephesians 4:23 Paul uses a striking phrase to parallel Romans 12:2. He says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” Now what in the world is that? “The spirit of your mind.” It means at least this: the human mind is not a sophisticated computer managing data, which it then faithfully presents to the heart for appropriate emotional responses. The mind has a “spirit.” In other words, our mind has what we call a “mindset.” It doesn’t just have a view, it has a viewpoint. It doesn’t just have the power to perceive and detect; it also has a posture, a demeanor, a bearing, an attitude, a bent. “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” The problem with our minds is not merely that we are finite, and don’t have all the information. The problem is that our minds are fallen. They have a spirit, a bent, a mindset that is hostile to the absolute supremacy of God. Our minds are bent on not seeing God as infinitely more worthy of praise than we are, or the things we make or achieve. This is what we saw last week in Romans 1:28, “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind.” This is who we are by nature. We do not want to see God as worthy of knowing well and treasuring above all things. You know this is true about yourself because of how little effort you expend to know him, and because of how much effort it takes to make your mind spend any time getting to know God better. The Bible says we have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (Rom. 1:23). And the image in the mirror is the mortal image we worship most. The Relationship Between Verses 1 and 2 That’s what’s wrong with our minds. This illumines the relationship between verses 1 and 2 of Romans 12. Verse 1 says that we should present our bodies—that is, our whole active life—as a living sacrifice which is our spiritual service of worship. So the aim of all life is worship. That is, we are to use our bodies—our whole lives—to display the worth of God and all that he is for us in Christ. Now it makes perfect sense when verse 2 says that, in order for that to happen, our minds must be renewed. Why? Because our minds are not by nature God-worshipping minds. They are by nature self-worshipping minds. That is the spirit of our minds. Two Other Biblical Diagnoses of the Problem Now before I turn to the remedy and how we find the renewal of mind God demands, consider two other biblical diagnoses of the problem. Consider the way Peter describes our mind-problem in 1 Peter 1:13-14, “Prepar[e]. . . your minds for action. . . . Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.” There is an ignorance of God—a willful suppression of the truth of God (Romans 1:18)—that makes us slaves to many passions and desires that would lose their power if we knew God as we ought (cf. 1 Thess. 4:5). “The passions of your former ignorance.” Paul calls these passions, “desires of deceit” (Eph. 4:22). They are life-ruining, worship-destroying desires, and they get their life and their power from the deceit of our minds. There is a kind of knowledge of God—a renewal of mind—that transforms us because it liberates us from the deceit and the power of alien passions. The other biblical diagnosis is in Ephesians 4:17-18, “You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” Paul takes us deeper than Peter here. He penetrates beneath the “futile mind” and the “darkened understanding” and the willful “ignorance” and says that it is all rooted in “the hardness of their heart.” Here is the deepest disease, infecting everything else. Our mental suppression of liberating truth is rooted in our hardness of heart. Our hard hearts will not submit to the supremacy of Christ, and therefore our blind minds cannot see the supremacy of Christ (cf. John 7:17). The Holy Spirit Renews the Mind Which brings us finally to the remedy and how we obey Romans 12:2, “Be transformed in the renewal of your mind.” First, before we can do anything, a double action of the Holy Spirit is required. And then we join him in these two actions. The reason I say the Holy Spirit is required is because this word “renewal” in Romans 12:2 is only used one other place in all the Greek Bible, namely, Titus 3:5 where Paul says this: “[God] saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” There’s the word “renewal” which we’ve seen is so necessary. And it is renewal “of the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit renews the mind. It is first and decisively his work. We are radically dependent on him. Our efforts follow his initiatives and enablings. The Double Work of the Holy Spirit Now what is the double work that he must do to renew our minds so that all of life becomes worship? 2 Corinthians 3:18 sets the stage for the answer: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” What does the Spirit do to “transform” us into the image of the God-exalting Son of God? He enables us to “behold the glory of the Lord.” This is how the mind is renewed—by steadfastly gazing at the glories of Christ for what they really are. But to enable us to do that, the Spirit must do a double work. He must work in two directions: from the outside in and from the inside out. He must work from the outside in by exposing the mind to Christ-exalting truth. That is, he must lead us to hear the gospel, to read the Bible, to study Christ-exalting writings of great, spiritual men, and to meditate on the perfections of Christ. This is exactly what our great enemy does not want us to do according to 2 Corinthians 4:4, “The god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Because to see that for what it really is, Paul says, will renew the mind and transform the life and produce unending worship. And the Spirit must work from the inside out, breaking the hard heart that blinds and corrupts the mind. The Spirit must work from the outside in, through Christ-exalting truth, and from the inside out, through truth-embracing humility. If he only worked from the outside in, by presenting Christ-exalting truth to our minds but not breaking the hard heart and making humble, then the truth would be despised and rejected. And if he only humbled the hard heart, but put no Christ-exalting truth before the mind, there would be no Christ to embrace and no worship would happen. What Then Shall We Do? What then do we do in obedience to Romans 12:2, “Be transformed in the renewal of your mind”? We join the Holy Spirit in his precious and all-important work. We pursue Christ-exalting truth and we pray for truth-embracing humility. Listen to rich expositions of the “gospel of the glory of Christ.” Read your Bible from cover to cover always in search of the revelation of the glory of Christ. Read and ponder the Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting writings of great, spiritual men and women. And form the habit of meditating on the perfections of Christ. And in it all pray, pray, pray that the Holy Spirit will renew your mind, that you may desire and approve the will of God, so that all of life will become worship to the glory of Christ. May the mind of Christ, my Savior, Live in me from day to day, By His love and power controlling All I do and say. May the Word of God dwell richly In my heart from hour to hour, So that all may see I triumph Only through His power. May the peace of God my Father Rule my life in everything, That I may be calm to comfort Sick and sorrowing. May the love of Jesus fill me As the waters fill the sea; Him exalting, self abasing, This is victory. May I run the race before me, Strong and brave to face the foe, Looking only unto Jesus As I onward go. May His beauty rest upon me, As I seek the lost to win, And may they forget the channel, Seeing only Him. May the Mind of Christ, My Savior Kate Wilkenson
The Attitude of Jesus toward Women and the Family
by Rudolf Schnackenburg
The foundation of holy and happy marriage and family life is reverence for the dignity of women. What was Jesus' attitude to women? He did not undertake to make changes in their legal status, which in the Old Testament and Judaism was far from being one of equality of rights, but his actual behaviour bears witness to high esteem, serious evaluation of their religious aspirations, and delicate tact, rarely encountered in later Judaism. There is also his love, as their saviour,. for sinners and prostitutes (Luke 7:36-50; John 7:53- 8,11; Matt. 21:31f.), which was totally incomprehensible from the point of view of the Pharisees. But when it seemed necessary to him for his work as Messias, Jesus even overstepped the bounds of Jewish custom and outlook in his dealings with women. He spoke to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well, though to do so was considered unseemly for a man and especially for a rabbi (John 4:27). He allowed himself to be touched by the woman with an issue of blood, though that made him ritually unclean (Mark 5:27-34 par.). For the sake of a poor, bent woman "whom Satan hath bound these eighteen years" he broke the Sabbath in order to free this "daughter of Abraham" (a title of honour not often recorded) from the evil besetting her (Luke 13:10-17). He performed a strikingly large number of miracles of healing for women (in addition to the above, Simon Peter's mother-in-law, Mark 1:29-31 par.; Jairus' daughter, Mark 5:21 to 43 par.; the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman, Mark 7:24-30 par.; Mary of Magdala, Luke 8:2). The sorrow of the widow of Naim moved him to sympathy (Luke 7:13); he did not refuse the request of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:28 f.). He praised and called attention to the great spirit of sacrifice of the widow who threw her mite into the temple treasury (Mark 12:41-44 par.). He defended the act that Mary of Bethania performed for love, anointing his head and his feet (Mark 14:3-8 par.; John 12: 1-8). He allowed women among his following and accepted the help they gave (Luke 8:2f.), visited the family at Bethania, and wished both sisters to listen to what he had to say (Luke 10:38). On the way of the Cross he instructed the grieving women (Luke 23:27-31). Even his conversation with the Samaritan woman shows him primarily (at least in the mind of the evangelist), not as a master of spiritual direction but as a preacher of revelation. St John's account is directly concerned not with the woman's moral conversion but rather with her faith and Jesus gladly allows this woman to help him to make the fields ripe for harvest in Samaria also (vv. 28 ff.). The conversation with Martha (John 11:20-27) is another act of lofty self-revelation on the part of the Johannine Christ The same evangelist tells of the appearance of the Risen Lord to Mary Magdalene, who becomes his messenger, the first to bring to his brethren the news of the ascent to the Father (20: 11-18). The only conclusion to be drawn from all this is that Jesus did not differentiate in his preaching between men and women; women were to hear the word of God, experience messianic salvation and participate in the future kingdom of God in complete equality with men. Then, after the general resurrection, sexual differences will become meaningless, for marriage and giving in marriage will come to an end (Mark 12:25 par.). The religious equality of rights recognized by Jesus for women and given expression by him in practice, this equality of dignity in the sight of God, was bound in the long run to exert a deeper influence and be more conducive to the raising of the dignity of women than any particular social reforms could have done.
Above all, by his attitude, Jesus saved women from being thought of as merely sexual beings, honouring them as human beings, persons, children of God.
Of great significance for the status of women and for marriage and family life was Jesus' decree that according to the will of God originally marriage was indissoluble, and was now obligatorily so again. Already in the Sermon on the Mount there are sharp words against adultery (even that simply committed in the heart by desire), and also against all divorce. But he also took up a definite position on this question in a discussion recorded by Mark 10:2-12 and Matthew 19:3-9.
Jesus brought two earlier scriptural passages (Gen. 1:27; 2:24) into the field against the Mosaic dispensation allowing a bill of divorce to be made out and the woman sent away (Deut. 24: 1). From them he argued that the primordial will of God at the beginning of creation intended the indissolubility of marriage. Moses' "commandment" was given only because of the "hardness of heart" of the Jews, and now the order established at the creation is once again to prevail, so Jesus announces in God's name, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
By the reference back to the texts in Genesis, woman is assigned equality of dignity with man. "Male and female he created them"; "And they shall be two in one flesh." The husband leaves the community of his family in which he has lived hitherto ("leaves father and mother") and forms with his wife a new community. The two become so completely one that they can never again be separated; such is the conclusion Jesus draws from the Scriptural text, the proof follows precisely from this oneness of husband and wife.
The Internal Struggle And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the LORD (Genesis 25:21-22). As we meditate on the words of our text, I want to point out the first prayer was that of Isaac. What was the source of that prayer? I want you understand that the wife is a type of the church, and what was wrong was that she was barren. This is what we all are by nature spiritually. In a spiritual sense we are barren. Isaac entreated the Lord, and his wife Rebekah conceived. A new conception took place, which leads to the new birth. In a typical sense, in a type of the new birth that takes place in the soul, the barrenness was removed, and life was conceived. The children struggled in her. When the Holy Spirit breathes new life into our souls, there becomes a struggle, and I will tell you why this is. That old nature does not leave, and a new nature is born within. Now, we have exactly what we read here: “and the children struggled together within her,” and we get into that spiritual struggle, that spiritual warfare, and there is a blessed thing about this spiritual struggle. She went to the Lord, and now we want to see the beauty of what the Lord told her. We read in verse 23: “And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” I want you to understand the blessedness of what we just read. The elder shall serve the younger. That old man of sin, which is still in our hearts and still struggles for the mastery, will serve the younger, which is the new man of the heart. We never get rid of that old nature, that old man of sin, and it is a constant warfare throughout our entire spiritual journey in this life, but the elder will serve the younger. There are two classes of people in us. Two classes of people are conceived in us as we understand the new birth. I want to take you with me to Galatians 5:17, where we read about this same struggle: “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” Do you see the two natures, the two classes of people? You have a desire to be perfect. We have a desire to serve the Lord with perfection, but we are not able to. On the other hand, the evil that we want to do we are not able to do either. Cannot in the original means “God forbid.” In other words, the Lord forbids us. He comes with His restraining grace, and He forbids us from doing the things we want to do. These two natures are two people. These are two natures, two types of people who now dwell within us. This is what we learn from the birth of Jacob and Esau: the elder shall serve the younger. Now, I want you to see how the spirit of that old nature is a spirit of self-exaltation. This is a continual battle for the children of God. Proverbs 8:13 says: “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.” That is the fear of God. That is the new nature, but the old nature is the nature of self-exaltation, and there is a constant, ongoing battle between that Jacob and that Esau throughout our entire lives. We read in 2 Thessalonians 2:4: “Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” That is what was born in Genesis 3, when old Satan told Eve: You shall be as God. That is that old nature. That is what we are by nature. We want to know what is good and evil. We want to decide what is right and what is wrong. We do not want to come under authority. We do not want to submit to the Word of God. Now I want you to see how this spirit of self-exaltation goes forth in Satan’s gospel because it is a humanistic gospel. That old nature is a nature of self-exaltation. We read in Malachi 1:1-3: “The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob. And I hated Esau.” They could not understand why the Lord loved them. They felt His chastening hand. They felt that spiritual struggle in the soul, and they were unable to see that the Lord loved them. The Lord gave an example of how He loved His people We see here: how can the Lord love me? The Lord sees my wretchedness. He sees my pride. He sees all of these things within me that I struggle against day after day. Then I have to cry out and say, How can the Lord love me? The Lord says though: I see two people in you. I do not only see that fallen nature and that wretched attitude of yours, but I also see that longing desire of the new man. I also see Jacob in there. I love Jacob, but I hate Esau. The Lord is saying that He hates that old fallen nature, but He sees also that new man of the heart. He sees that contrast, that warfare that He placed there. The Lord can love Jacob because He can separate between Jacob and Esau. He can separate between that old nature that is always trying to exalt self, and that new man of the heart, which is after Christ, which is after godliness, that new man of the heart, which is Christ formed in you. FOR OUR FIRST POINT, let’s consider what God reveals that He hates in the character and in the strain of Esau. God says He hates Esau, in other words, I hate that which is of the old nature. I hate that old man of sin. FOR OUR SECOND POINT, let’s consider what God reveals that He loves in the character and in the strain of Jacob, in other words, in that new man of the heart. Esau is a type of that old nature. He is a type of the harlot church. He is a type of that which is laid waste spiritually, that which is spiritually barren. Rebekah was barren, and that is what brought Isaac before the Lord to entreat Him for the barrenness. I want you to see this in Malachi 1:3: “And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.” There is nothing of the old nature, about old Esau, that will ever gain the Lord’s blessing. Everything about that old nature is going to be crucified. It is going to be cut down because it has that self-exalting tendency. It is pride. It is just the opposite of godly fear. That is why the Lord says He hates it, and He has laid it waste and made it desolate. Any time we are left over to our old nature, we find that our hearts are barren because the Lord hates it. The Lord loves that which is of the new creation within the soul. We read in verse 4: “Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.” How often in our own human strength, when the Lord starts bringing us down, and He starts bringing us into the valley of humiliation, that that old nature has a tendency to strive in our own strength. We are going to build in our own strength, and we are going to do all these things in our own strength. That old Esau is still in there, but when the Lord works grace in our hearts, we are going to find that he is going to serve the younger. He is going to serve the new man of the heart. In other words, he is not going to have the mastery. The old expression goes: When the going gets a little tough, we just gear down. We just go into a lower gear, put on more strength, and we keep going. The reason the Lord puts that burden on us, though, is to get us to stop walking in our own strength. He wants us to start walking in the strength of the Lord. He wants that new man to be in the mastery. He wants the old man to serve the new. The elder shall serve the younger. Is this not true as we see in our own hearts, and as we see that spiritual warfare going on? As long as we are striving in our own strength, we can have a financial difficulty, and we can have all these things come upon us, and our solution is to work longer hours or work a little harder. For some reason, the harder I work, the behinder I get because the Lord says you are going to build these desolate places in your own strength, but He is going to tear them down. This is because He wants us to build in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our building must not be in our own strength. This is why we see the Lord tearing down while we are building. Hosea 5:14 tells it so beautifully. “For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall rescue him.” He does this because everything of the flesh must be removed. That old Esau has to be crucified. It is the border of wickedness. It is the border of working in our own human strength, and the Lord will tear down. God says the Esau nature shall forever experience His indignation. The Lord hates Esau. He hates that humanism. The Lord has indignation against that old nature, and it will never gain the mastery. When the Lord begins the word of grace in the soul, it is a constant warfare, and old Esau is always striving for the mastery. The Lord says though that He will break them down. God will bring that old nature into desolation no matter what we build. No matter how we try to build in our own strength it always comes to nothing. Now we see that when we come to the right place as Jacob did—I will not let you go unless you bless me—we are now no longer going forward in our own strength. Then the Lord will bless us. How do we identify this Esau in our own hearts? Esau was to inherit the birthright. By nature, our old man is going to want to inherit the birthright. Esau becomes a type throughout the entire Bible. Esau’s birthright made him an heir to every blessing—temporal and spiritual—but he forfeited it. He threw it away. He despised it. Adam in the creation was to inherit all eternal blessings, but he despised them. That old Adam, that first Adam, sold our souls. This has spiritual significance with Esau, who sold his birthright for one serving of pottage. The Esau within us builds but not upon God. Ever since the fall that old man of sin wants to build on his own strength. I want you to see this in Hebrews 12:16-17: “Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” Esau sold his birthright, and this is what you and I have done in Adam. Does this tell us that Esau was unable to repent? No, he wanted Isaac to repent of the blessing he had pronounced on Jacob. He wanted Isaac to reverse the blessing he had pronounced on Jacob. He wanted to ignore the fact that he had sold his birthright. In their old nature they seek repentance, and they have much remorse over the consequences of sin, but never any remorse over sin. Esau was seeking repentance on the part of Isaac, and that is our old nature. We want repentance on the part of God. We want God to repent of the evil He said He would do to us for our sin, but we do not have remorse over our sin. Esau is a type of the person who comes under the call of the gospel, but he uses the things of God to satisfy the lusts of his own flesh. That is what you and I will do by nature. By nature we want to come where God says in Malachi 1:4: “They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness,” that is of lawlessness. We see in the gospel today: I want salvation. I want to accept Christ. I want to be saved, but I do not want to repent. I do not want to show any remorse over my past sin. That is old Esau, and that old Esau is within the heart of every one of us. Esau’s broad-road approach to serve God with a selfish motive is for temporal blessings. That is where we are naturally. Christ’s church does not receive temporal blessings from the Lord when she is walking in God’s favor, but this world is not her resting place. As we walk in the favor of God, we will receive the blessings that are temporally needed to supply us with the needs of this life, but the Lord is not going to give us to build a big empire in this life. The Lord Jesus Christ has to be our inheritance. Esau will try to manipulate God for gain. Have you ever noticed that in your heart? That wretched Esau who is in us would manipulate God for gain rather than out of a motive of love. We see in John 6:26-27: “Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.” Do you understand what they were doing? They were seeking the Lord, but they sought Him for profit, not out of a motive of love, not out of a motive of wanting to have God’s fellowship. Satan likes to play tricks in our hearts. That old man of sin, that old Esau, is still in here struggling and fighting. The spirit lusts against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit. The new man says, I want to seek the Lord, and the old man will join right in and say, Fine, but the motive is to get something in your hip pocket, rather than out of love. That old struggle goes on in the heart. The Esau within us is not motivated by a desire to serve the Lord out of love, but out of pride and lust. The Lord speaks of Esau in Obadiah 1:3: “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?” Christ is that rock and this is saying that the pride of your heart will deceive you to believe that your are dwelling in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the crucified Saviour, but it is out of pride, not a motive of love. That self-exalting always tries to gain the mastery within our hearts. The motive of the old Esau is always there to try to get something for the flesh. This is the constant struggle of spiritual warfare. Verse 4 says: “Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD.” That old pride that was born in paradise is an ongoing struggle for a child of God. The children of God always have to fight against that old Esau. The Lord said to Moses in Exodus 33:21-22: “And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by.” The Lord told Moses He would put him in the cleft of the rock. I want you to see the difference. Esau says, I will climb up and I will dwell in the cleft of the rock, but with Moses, the Lord put him there. It is the work of the Lord. It is what the Lord has done for us. The Lord searches the hearts and tries the reins. We read in Obadiah 1:6: “How are the things of Esau searched out! how are his hidden things sought up!” The Lord does not allow us to go on in the pride of our hearts. He searches it out. How does He do this? While we are going on in pride, the Lord puts His thumb on us. He puts a weight on us, and He brings us down. He brings us into the valley of humiliation to where we have to start crying out to the Lord. He has seen the pride of our hearts, and He brings us down in humility. The true church has suffered much at the hand of Esau. If you and I understand the spiritual warfare spoken of in Galatians 5:17, we you know what it is to suffer much at the hand of Esau, because it is a constant warfare. We read in Luke 23:4-5: “Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man. And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.” The scribes and the Pharisees were strangers to the true work of grace. When the Lord Jesus Christ was preaching the true work of grace, they became so furious, stirred up out of jealousy, and they crucified Him. God told Edom (that is, Esau) in Obadiah 1:10: “For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.” When the Lord gives us that victory over pride, that old nature of our heart, he will be cut off. The elder will serve the younger. That old man of sin will serve the new man. As soon as you become the light of the world, walking in the ways of the cross, you become a reproof to every Esau. Among God’s own people, Esau is still fighting and has not yet been cut off. If you start showing by your walk of life that you are now serving the Lord out of a motive of love, and that the old man is serving the younger, you will find that even many of God’s dear children will turn against you. In them Esau still has not been fully slain. Does this mean that we now start writing bitter things against them and start saying that they are not children of God? Oh, be careful. The Lord says: I have loved Jacob. I have not beheld iniquity in Jacob. It was not because Jacob was better. It was because Jacob had that new man of the heart, and the Lord had worked grace in his soul. We read in Luke 6:22: “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.” When men do this to you, do you now have the right to start passing judgment and say, Well, they put me out, so they are the guilty ones? No, the Lord often uses His own dear people to give you the sorest trials. The sorest trial that ever came upon the Lord Jesus Christ must have been when He saw Peter, His own beloved apostle, cursing and swearing and denying that he ever knew Him. Can you imagine how the powers of hell came against our Lord and Saviour to tell Him: That is the one you are dying for, and he is cursing and blaspheming your name? Why do you want to die for a man like that? Did Christ condemn Peter? No, He turned and gave him a look of love. You and I have to be so careful not to pass judgment against another man. I do not care if we think he is a believer or not. The Lord knows, and we must commit it into the hands of the One who judges righteously. I want you to see how a walk of humility is a reproof of Esau’s pride. I have had some of God’s very dear children reprove me by far the sharpest. Why? For revealing their sins. How? By the fact that I would not join them. The minute I told a woman over the phone that I would not talk business with her on Sunday, she replied: Just a minute, do not forget that I am a Christian! The most grievous reproof they get is by the fact that you are not willing to join their sin. Sometimes it is Christians who are the most offended. We see in John 6:26-27: “Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.” What is our motive for serving the Lord? Is it because we stand to gain, not necessarily temporal things, but are we serving the Lord to earn heaven? Is it for our profit? Old Esau loves those because it is a selfish motive. If I am serving the Lord to go to heaven, the Lord is not pleased with me. The Lord wants me to serve Him because I love Him, and I desire to be with Him, and to serve Him because it is His pleasure. He wants me to serve Him because that is His holy will. This is why I serve the Lord. If all I am doing is serving the Lord because it is profitable for me, it is not pleasing to the Lord. FOR OUR SECOND POINT, let’s consider what God reveals that He loves in the character and in the strain of Jacob, in other words, in that new man of the heart. As we examine our hearts, we have to look for what the Lord hates, but on the other side of that same principle, He also teaches what the Lord loves within our hearts. When He has worked the work of regeneration and has worked in us the new man, then there are also things in us He loves. The Lord caused Jacob to walk in the way of brokenness. A broken and a contrite spirit the Lord will never despise. That is what He loves within us, when we see the power of sin, and we see the power of Esau within us, and it gives us a humble and a contrite heart before the Lord. It brings us into a brokenness, and He likes to see this every step of our lives, that every decision we make, and every step we take, is with a heart broken in His will. I want you to see this in Genesis 32:31-32: “And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew that shrank.”
He halted upon his thigh because in his wrestling with the Lord, the Lord had put His finger upon him, and he had found that his own strength had failed. We are all by nature as Esau as a result of our fall in Adam. We are looking to build. Malachi 1:4 says: “Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.” There is the mercy of God. As we in our old nature begin to build in our own strength, the wonder of grace and the mercy of God is that He does break that down. Jacob by nature was no better than Esau. We see this in Genesis 27:36: “And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing.” The name Jacob means “deceiver” and “supplanter” and “trickster.” After God touched the hallow of Jacob’s thigh, He asked Jacob in Genesis 32:27: “And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.” When Jacob replied, he was confessing before the Lord, My name is supplanter, deceiver, trickster, liar. In other words, My name is sinner. He was not able to build on anything in himself. He had to come as a sinner before God. He had to come and confess that he was nothing but a sinner. That is the working of grace. He is confessing that God could justly condemn him to hell. The Lord tears us down to bring us to brokenness, a broken heart and a contrite spirit. The word thigh is taken from the Hebrew word, Yarek (yaw-rake'), which means to be soft—the thigh (from its fleshly softness). The thigh is the softest part of the flesh. Our text says God “touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew that shrank.” Jacob was left alone with God after he had sent all he had over the brook. I want you to understand the difference between Jacob and Esau. Now Jacob is not building anything in his own strength as his strength was now gone. We read in Genesis 32:22-24: “And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.” Jacob had to let loose of everything in this life. If we love father or mother, or husband or wife, or children more than God, we are not worthy of Him. Jacob demonstrates this. He had to put everything across on the other side of the brook, so it was now just Jacob and God. God takes us alone and wrestles with us to reveal the distinction between the Esau church of self-sufficiency, and the Jacobs who halt upon their thigh. That Esau in us has to be slain. It has to be cut off. The Lord brings that distinction now. We now halt on every step we take. When the Lord caused Jacob’s sinew to shrink, he had to bring one foot up and stop, and then bring the other foot forward. This is teaching us that in a spiritual sense we are not sufficient of ourselves to be able to walk in our own strength. We take every step and come to a stop, and have to again step forward with the other foot. We must get the right foot forward, and that is the leading of the Lord. When everything is sent over the brook Jabbok, Christ alone is all that matters anymore. We must get to the point where we put aside everything—my wife and my children and my cattle and my property—and now it gets to be a personal matter between Christ and me. Now that old man of sin is crucified. Now it comes to the point where Christ is all in all. When Christ says in Luke 14:26: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple,” that word hate means love them less. We must love Christ above our husbands and our wives. We must love Christ above all other things in this life. We have to be able to lay it all aside. Then we understand what Jacob said in Genesis 32:26: “And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” Now the wrestling was between him and the Lord. This is not only Old Testament religion, the same was true in the time of Jesus as we see in Matthew 15:24: “But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This woman of Canaan came to Him and wanted Him to heal her daughter, but He put her away, giving her no hope, no encouragement. Verse 25 says: “Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.” She did not back off. It was a wrestling match between her and the Lord. It was a matter of old Esau being cut off. Continuing in verse 26 we read: “But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” After Jesus touched her thigh, after all of her strength had come to an end, then we read in Matthew 15:27: “And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” She had to confess that she was as a dog. Jacob had to confess, I am Jacob. As old Esau gets slain, and as Jacob begins to halt upon his thigh, as that new man of the heart begins to function before the Lord, then we have to come before Him as humble and contrite sinners. Jesus replied in verse 28: “Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.” As Jacob wrestled, God touched the hollow of his thigh. We read in Genesis 32:25: “And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.” God wrestles with His dear children to exhaust all of their own strength. He wrestles with us in prayer because everything of Esau, everything of our old flesh, has to be broken down. A wrestler’s strength is not in his arms, not in his chest or shoulders, it is in his thighs. When the Lord shrank the sinew of Jacob’s thigh it meant he was no longer wrestling in his own strength. Now he comes to wrestle in faith, the faith of Jesus Christ. No person can be a wrestler without strong thighs. When “Jacob's thigh was out of joint,” he was at the end of himself. He had no strength in the flesh. This is the difference between Esau and Jacob. Esau was strong in himself, but Jacob’s strength was broken. This is where God’s love for Jacob was revealed. We read in Malachi 1:2-3: “I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.” The love God had for Jacob was revealed at Penuel when He touched the hollow of his thigh. It was revealed when He slew old Esau. If you and I know what it is for the Lord to work His grace in our hearts, and to slay that old nature, and to bring us to the point where we understand what it is to walk in the strength of the Lord and not in our human strength, that is where we see His love. God left Esau over to wrestle in his own strength. That is our old nature. We read in verse 4: “Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down.” The Lord says, Go ahead and build, but I will tear it down. When that new man of the heart has gained the mastery, and when that old Esau has come to serve the younger, then we will understand the words of the psalmist in Psalm 127:1: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” Now we start living by trusting in the Lord. When every true Jacob finds his thigh out of joint, he learns Jacob’s language in Genesis 32:26: “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” Now we come before the Lord as needy creatures, and as needy, hungry souls, and we seek the help of the Lord. God tries our faith as He did Jacob and the woman of Canaan. We read what Jacob said in Genesis 32:26: “And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh.” Jesus said to the Canaanite woman in Matthew15:24-26: “But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” The Lord makes as though He will remove Himself and leave us desolate to reveal what is in our hearts. This woman would not let go until she was blessed as we read in verse 27: “And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” He is going to bring us to where we confess with our mouths and from our hearts that we have no strength without Him. The woman would not let go until she was blessed. Jacob would not let go until he was blessed. This lesson is not a one-time experience. Genesis 32:31 says: “And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.” The lesson Jacob learned at Penuel he remembered every step he took for the rest of his life. When you and I have been brought into the schools of Christ, and when that old Esau has been slain, and as we start walking as before the Lord, we are going to remember every step we take. That weakness in that thigh is manifest every step we take. We are no longer able to build in our own strength. We are unable to walk in our own strength. We cannot take one step without being reminded how He touched the hollow of our thigh. Jacob’s strength in himself was never regained. He was broken, and halted upon that thigh every step he took the rest of his life. That is the work of grace in the heart. The elder shall never again gain the mastery. Jacob’s religion was the Apostle Paul’s religion. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10: “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.” That is the gospel. How did the Lord touch the hollow of the Apostle Paul’s thigh? He gave him a thorn in the flesh and a messenger of Satan to buffet him, lest he should become exalted, lest he should be raised up in pride, lest old Esau should get the mastery. That is why he had to walk as Jacob walked, halting upon his thigh. Jacob could take pleasure in the fact that he was unable to walk in his own strength. Jacob, when he learns to walk with that brokenness, learns to understand that in his weakness is his strength. Now he sees that he is walking in the strength of the Lord. Romans 5:6 says: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” When you and I understand that we are without strength, we see our strength in Christ. Broken human strength is needed to become strong. Before you and I have been broken, old Esau has the mastery, but as the Lord casts him down, Jacob understands what it is to walk in the strength of the Lord. Luke 1:49-51 says: “For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” See where the difference is. See what He does to that Esau. Those who fear Him are those who hate evil, those who hate pride that keeps rising up in their own hearts. Therefore Paul admonishes to be strong in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We may be strong. We may be stronger than any man on the face of the earth, but not in our own strength. We are going to be strong in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We read in 2 Timothy 2:1: “Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” That is where our strength lies. That is where all strength lies in the work of grace. When I am weak, then I am strong. I rejoice in infirmities because I understand that is the way of grace. I understand that is the way of the work of the cross, taking up our crosses daily and following our Saviour in the way of the cross. It is the way of crucifying the old man of sin.
Are we willing to drink His cup?By Leonard Ravenhill Luke chapter12, verses 49 and 50. I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! I've been going to meetings for over seventy years all over the world-Pentecostal conferences, Methodist conferences, all kinds of conferences. I heard the baptism of the Holy Spirit preached, I think, fifty different ways. In seventy years, I've never heard anybody preach on this text where Jesus, speaking of Himself says: "I have a baptism..." Charles Wesley gave us that lovely children's hymn. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Look upon the little child. Some people never get past "gentle Jesus." But Jesus is associated with fire. The next time He comes, says 2 Thes. 1:7, He's coming with flaming angels-thousands of them! Here He is saying to these disciples, "I am come to send fire on the earth..." Again, the symbol of the church is fire. I was preaching last Sunday night in a big church with a big cross for Jesus and one for the thieves. I reminded them: "The cross is no symbol of Christianity. The symbol of Christianity is the tongue of fire that sat on the head of each of them." Our God is a consuming fire. Wesley has a wonderful hymn on this. He says, See how a great a flame aspires, kindled by a spark of grace. Jesus love the nations fires; sets the kingdoms all ablaze. To bring fire on earth He came, kindled in some hearts it is. Oh that all might catch the flame; all partake the glorious bliss. When He first the work began, small and feeble was its flame. Now the word doeth swiftly run; now it wins its widening way. More and more it spreads and grows, ever mighty to prevail. Sin's strongholds it now o'throws and shakes the trembling gates of hell. Sons of God, your Savior praise; He the door hath opened wide. He hath given the word of grace; Jesus' word is glorified. Saw you not the cloud arise, little as a human hand? Now it spreads along the skies, hangs o'er all the thirsty land. You see the idea: a spark begins and gradually it blossoms to go out through the whole world. Wesley wrote that in 1776, I think, and prophetically. More and more it spreads and grows, ever mighty to prevail. Usually with the expansion of a thing there is a weakening, but when the Church truly expands, there is a strengthening. God never planned any failures for us. ...how am I straitened till it be accomplished! Now I want to bear this out from the gospel according to Matthew 20:17-22. And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again. google_protectAndRun("ads_core.google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad); Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask... She asked a big thing. In the other gospels it says that they asked it-John and his brother asked. Here it says his mother asked. I guess there was a collusion in this. They had agreed together. They believed that Jesus was going to have a kingdom. They wanted to sit on the right hand and the left hand when He came into His kingdom. But notice they came worshipping Him. Yet in their worship there was begging. It wasn't pure. They had an ulterior motive. They were trying to bargain with Him. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? (v 22) Now, in Luke 12:49 He said, "I am come to send fire on the earth." What hindered Him from giving them the fire at that moment? A baptism. A baptism of sorrow. A baptism of anguish. A baptism that we call Gethsemane. You see, there is no place in the whole wide world where you can put the Upper Room before the Cross. The Cross comes before the Upper Room, but we try to turn that around. Very often we're asking people to tarry in the Upper Room who have never knelt at the Cross. They get a false experience and it evaporates. We shun the Cross. "I have a baptism to be baptized with. But I want you to receive a fire that will change that degraded will of yours. It will endue you with power. It will give you energy. It will give you life." He says, "I want to do that, but I am straitened. I wish it could be accomplished, but it cannot be done yet." There are people who think that God is only around to help us. We have a great utility God, they think. You pray, and He does this! You pray, and He does that! You pray, and He sends you money. You pray, and He gets you out of a jam. He's not somebody you worship in speechless adoration, but He's a utility God! And some on TV are exploiting that to the maximum. Let's go back to Matthew 20. What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able. (v 21,22) So, He took them at their word. "I want my sons to enter thy kingdom, sitting on thy right hand and on thy left." There is only one way to enter the kingdom: through death. You know not what ye ask. Are ye able...? Yea, we can drink the cup. All right, lady- I wonder if she was living when her son was brutally put to death? And James, the brother of John, was killed with the sword. (Acts 12:2) It was Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great, a terrible butcher. A man who could be linked up with Pharaoh that liquidated all the Israeli babies in Egypt-an ancient Hitler. Jeremiah had more conflict than any other prophet of old. Immediately when he was raised up he was in conflict. He was in conflict when he was dying. What was the secret of his power? It is very obvious; he states it: "Thy fire burned within my heart. While I mused the fire burned." Do you know that forty one times he mentions fire? They put him in a pit, but it didn't burn the fire out of him. There is a hymn with a verse that says: Waters cannot quench it, floods can never drown Substance cannot buy it, love's a priceless crown. Oh, the wondrous story, mystery divine I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine. The fire is unquenchable. The fire of hell is unquenchable. The fire of the Holy Ghost is unquenchable. I know there is a lot of opposition against the second blessing. I challenge you to find a man that has made history in God's kingdom who somewhere didn't have a second crisis after he was born again in the Spirit of God. One of the Quakers said he found something in him that wouldn't keep peace. He wanted to get rid of the thing in him that was always troubling him. William Booth said, "I found that I ebbed and flowed until one day the Holy Ghost came in his fullness." Then he wrote that marvelous battle hymn that today's church doesn't know. The Salvation Army was a penniless organization that went into seventy countries in ninety years. Not seventy cities, but seventy countries! Men and women left their castles in England. Professors left their professions. Why? Because they could see that fire as clearly as Israel could see that pillar of fire at night. The Holy Ghost was there! And old William had them going down the streets at night marching and singing: Thou Christ, the burning cleansing flame, send the fire! Thy blood-bought gift today we claim, send the fire! Look down and see this waiting host Give us the promised Holy Ghost We want another Pentecost. I'm not sure we want it. We need it! You see, the thing between where you are now and this baptism of fire is a "cup." Jesus said to her, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? He'd been baptized in the Jordan, but He wasn't talking about that. The man who introduced Him to the world said, "I baptize you with water." That baptism was external. When He comes He will do something internal. He'll baptize you-the literal Greek says-"with Holy Ghost fire", not "with the Holy Ghost and with fire." You can't separate them. God is a consuming fire. He shall baptize you with Holy Ghost fire. But you see, there is something between here and there. The Church never had more equipment that she has now, but she Never had less power! Never less anointing. Never less of the miraculous. Never less from the omnipotent God. As I've said before, When did you last tip toe out of church Sunday morning breathless, awed by the awesomeness of God's majesty? God's glory? God's omnipotence? "Ye know not what ye ask." I wonder how often God says that to us. As I've said many times, and I say privately in my prayers, I don't want to get to the judgment seat with maybe trillions of eyes looking on me, seeing me come up for trial and have God say to me in that day, "Son, I had many things to tell you, but you couldn't bear them." When are we going to get serious about being serious about revival? Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? What's the cup? Skip to chapter 26 of Matthew. Here's the baptism for you. And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. (Matt 26:39-42) What was the cup? Well, I'll tell you one ingredient it had: It had betrayal in it. The men who had sworn allegiance to Him, when it came to a crisis, quit. Can He drink of the cup? What's in the cup? I believe in that cup there was Internal suffering, Mental suffering, and Spiritual suffering. Do you want to drink the cup? I am straightened, He says. I cannot do anything now. There is a baptism through which I have to go. The Holy Ghost cannot come down until I go up. I cannot go up until I have done the will of the Father. And so He goes through the agony of Gethsemane. He goes through the lonesomeness. He drank of that cup. I say it was internal because in Isaiah 53:11 it says He travailed. Isn't that internal? Deserted by others in the darkest hour, not only by men, but by God. Can you drink of that cup? Do you want to travail? You see, what people are seeking today is a painless Pentecost. There isn't such a thing. What happened immediately after Pentecost? They prospered-yes? No! -- They went to jail! It wan't prosperity; it was prison, pain, privation, and persecution. Jesus goes on to say in Matt 6:19, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. There are a lot of wealthy Christians that will get to heaven bankrupt. And there are a lot of Christians who are almost bankrupt, living in poverty, who will be super-millionaires when they get into eternity. We read elsewhere that if you're going to follow the Lord, it means division in the family. Your father and mother will hate you. Jesus came to the place where his brothers said, "He's insane." People say, "I want to be like Jesus." Well, I doubt it. Do you want to get kicked out of your family because you love God? Do you want to be so true to God that a Thomas comes and doubts you? That a Judas sells you? Do you really want to be like Jesus? Well then, why don't you practice it? Why don't you have forty days and forty nights of fasting? Forget all the paperwork. We make such rash vows when the temperature is running high in a meeting. I say, the pain was internal. He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. (Isa 53:11) I'm sure it was not only internal, it was also mental pain. I'm sure it was bodily pain. It says in Isaiah 50:6, "I gave my back to the smiters." We don't do that. We fight back. We don't like somebody to carve us up, scorn us, ridicule us, humiliate us, misrepresent us. He got the whole works! Yet He never muttered once. When it came to the agony of the cross it says that men shot out the lip. "If God's Your Father, then let Him deliver You." I say again, the perennial challenge to a Christian, is "Come down from the cross and save yourself." You made a decision in a missionary meeting: "I'm going to give more money to missions." Then something came up and you backed off. "I'm going to spend more time with God." You didn't do it. Before Elijah called down the fire, he rebuilt the old altar. We don't want to go back to old altars, to old vows, to old commitments. We always try to make new things. God knows they'll be brought down in a few weeks! Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting. It's being tried, found difficult, and rejected! It's too tough. There's no part-time service. "Leave all and follow me." I was going down the street in Oldham, which is nine miles outside of Manchester. I was in my early twenties. I pastored the largest church in town; in fact, the largest Holiness church in England. I was going down the street one day. As I passed a house, the lady opened the door, "Hi! You're the pastor at the Tabernacle. I often come to your church. I sit on the back seat. I'm very poor. I can't give anything in the offering, but I want to do something for you. Would you come into my house and drink a cup of tea?" Well, usually, of course, I want tea, so I said, "Yes." I went in, and boy! did that house smell. I got in there and she had finger nails clogged up with dirt. The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes. There was a plate with some old bacon covered with mold. That fuzzy horrid looking stuff. She reached into the kitchen sink to a stack of cups and picked one. You know, the tea had dried on the outside. Oh, mercy on us! It looked as though it had about a hundred bugs at the bottom: dried, dirty, rotten old tea leaves. In fact, some were moldy. "Well, now" she said, "I'm going to get you a cup of tea." I said, "All right." She poured the tea into the cup. It was as black as my shoes, and I don't like black tea. "Do you take cream?" "Yes." "Well, I have none." "Do you take sugar?" "Yes." "I have none." With that dirty hand shaking, I saw the black stuff that was supposed to be tea, cold as ice. I hesitated. I felt like tipping it up. But I knew I was on trial. She held the cup up, "Drink it!" As she handed me that cup of dirty tea, my mind went 2000 miles away to a place called Gethsemane, 2000 years back. The Father gave a cup of all the dregs of impurity and wickedness. He didn't give it to Gabriel. He didn't give it to Michael the Archangel. He gave it to his Son! This is what He's come to do. He's come to consume iniquity. He's going to do it in the Garden of Gethsemane-by Himself, when everybody has betrayed Him, when His nerves are down, and He can hear the enemy coming! He's thinking of all the years He's demonstrated His power, shown that He was the Son of God. He's walked on the water. He's raised the dead. He's cleansed the leper. He's healed insane people. And they didn't believe on Him! So what's the difference today? Do we believe on Him? Remember that there wasn't one of the twelve disciples that had a Bible. Not even the Apostle Paul had one. Don't boast too much about your Bible knowledge. It's going to face us at the Judgment Seat. I don't have a big library, but I have a few nice books. I wonder sometimes, will these books rise up in judgment against me? I say with all my heart, we're looking for a painless Pentecost. We want to invest a dime and get a million dollars back. Can you drink of the cup? "We are able," and so they drank, and were crucified. Today it is considered sadistic if you even say that people have to take up their cross. "Don't tell young people about the cross-they'll be discouraged." Are you suggesting that Jesus wasn't smart? "If you're going to be my disciple, kiss the world goodbye." You see, when people are born again these days, they don't get separated from the world. Most likely their pastor is the most worldly guy around! But if you're going to get what He wants to give, if you're going to get the true baptism of the Spirit, you have to drink of that cup. They said, "We are able." And He said, "You shall drink indeed of that cup, and be baptized of the baptism that I am baptized with, but to sit on my right hand and my left is not mine to give. The Father is going to do that." Verse 24 says that when the other ten disciples were around listening they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. Now He rubs their noses in the dust. "You're looking to sit on My right hand and My left in My Kingdom." He could have said, "Are you prepared to go through Hell to get there?"...You can't show me a revival in history that hasn't been born of travail, pain, loneliness, and dark weary nights. In Scotland, nine miles out of Glasgow, there's a great big house, a national memorial to David Livingstone. In it there is a model that shows the room where he died, where for years and years he prayed. It's like some of those houses in India that are made of bamboo and leaves woven in. And there he is, kneeling over a bed, if you can call it that-two bamboo rods with some leaves on it-and a candle flickering there. They said every night he would kneel at that bed and you would hear him crying with his hands raised, "God, when will the wound of this world's sin be healed?" He fought the Portuguese slave traders. He did many, many marvelous things. Why? Because he had a Gethsemane of his own. His precious wife died and he buried her in the jungle. And the baby she bore died. He buried the child at the side of its mother. Another child he had died-he buried that one. But the grief didn't change his zeal for God. It added fuel to the fire. "The devil's trying to rob me. The devil's trying to hinder me." And he worked with greater zeal. He prayed more than ever he had prayed. They said that night after night his voice would echo through the forest, "Oh God, when will the wound of this world's sin be healed?" Dear God! all our pastors are concerned about is adding one or two members! Or getting another bus to bring the people in! I say again, there can be no revival without travail. "...I want my son to sit on thy right hand..." Well, here's His answer. And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant (Matt 20:24-27) Well, that's a switch, isn't it? They wanted to sit on his right hand. He said, "The way into My kingdom is: If you want to go up, you must go down. If you exalt yourself, I'll abase you. Be abased, and I will exalt you. Save you life, you'll lose it. Lose you life, you'll save it." It's reverse logic. Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto,but to minister, and to give his life... (verse 28) Not to give His theology; not to declare, "I have a mandate from the Father to instruct you." He gave them all He had. He gave them the Sermon on the Mount. He gave them evidence that He had dominion over sin, death, disease, and devils, and everything. And yet, they were unbelieving! "I'm straightened. I'm tied up. I can't do anything yet." That's what He said in Luke 12. "I have no release. I have a baptism to be baptized with. Before that word of John that startled you when he said, "When he comes, he'll baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire...", but he didn't do that. Not immediately. He said, "I have to go through the Father's will. The Father's will is Gethsemane. The Father's will is the Cross. The Father's will is that I go down into the depths, lead captivity captive, and give gifts unto men." As I said, there are two great reasons we don't have revival. We're content to live without it, It's too costly. We don't want God to disrupt our status quo. The Christian life can only be lived one way, and that's God's way. And God's way is that I leave all and follow Him. God's way is that, in that hour when I think I am going to have joy or something, suddenly that cup turns into a cup of bitterness. When I think I've "arrived" at something, the Lord shutters that. We think, "If I had the privileges of Mrs. So-and-so, I'd be a real saint." And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (vs 27-28) I was reading a couple of pages in the Marechales life yesterday. I like to turn to that book. She was the oldest daughter of the founder of the Salvation Army. Even when she was 85 years of age she could preach up a storm. "One night," she said, "I went to Brussels. I went to a large mansion loaded with antiques and costly things. It was beautiful. It was owned by a Christian. I noticed a sweet girl there, at about 9 o'clock each morning she would come out of the servant's quarters radiant. I said to her one day, 'My dearie, I want to ask you a question. I've noticed the last few mornings while having my breakfast, after coming out of your servant's quarters, you are so radiant!' She replied, 'I begin at 5 o'clock in the morning.' '5 o'clock?! To what time?' 'Well, breakfast is at 8. Usually I have the last fire going by about half past 7.' 'How do you do it?' 'I just kneel in front of it. I sweep all the ashes on one side. I put them in a bucket. I get some paper and some kindling wood.' (And boy, getting coal to catch fire is a job!) 'I go in that room and get that fire going. I go in the next, I go to the next. I go back and the first one's gone out, so I do it over again. But eventually I get to breakfast a minute or two before 8 o'clock. I've lit my 12 fires.' 'Don't you get impatient?' 'No.' 'Well, you say the fires have gone out?' 'Yes, they often go out.' 'Well, do you get up early for devotions?' 'No,' she said, 'Not very early.' 'Well, how do you maintain you spiritual life?' She said, 'Every time I light a fire, I say, Jesus, while I'm kindling this fire, kindle a fire in me!' Kindle a fire of Your love afresh in me this morning! Kindle a fire of Your devotion in me! Here's this precious little girl talking to one of the most powerful women in the world. A women who, at 21 years of age, went to Paris and turned the city upside-down preaching to all the prostitutes. The queen of the underworld was there. Men came from the Sorbone, the greatest intellectuals with their long beards and their pipes, and listened to her. And yet the Marechale said that young lady taught me more than most sermons I'd ever heard. She had to light the fire, get bellows, blow the things up and try to get them going. She said, "At every fire place, I never missed one morning saying, 'Lord as I'm kindling this fire, kindle Your fire in me.'" The fire of love for Your will. The fire of love. The fire of joy. The fire of peace. The fire of compassion. If this fire came back to the Church, we'd turn America upside-down in six months. Ours is all theology. We get a starving man and give him a cookbook. Does it help him? He looks in the cookbook and sees there a dish with potatoes, beef, etc. What do you do? You tantalize him! You say, "Oh, I hope one day you can come to our place We're going to have this dish, this beef, this turkey, and something else." And yet the poor man is ravenously hungry! We give him a picture, but we don't give him the goods! At the average church on Sunday morning, they give you the menu, but they never give you the meal. They give an outline of theology: 'This is our precious doctrine." So, most people will be reciting doctrine in Hell. As I've said before, if you say "where two or three are gathered in His name...," if the living Christ is in your meeting, how in God's name can you have a dead service?! It's totally impossible? I remember talking once in Carnegie Hall with Miss Kuhlman. We were talking about the Church, as it is, and various other things. She said, "I talked with some young students the other day. They said, 'We go to a certain church. We have a wonderful pastor, and a marvelous choir, and he's a great teacher, but nothing ever happens. We come to see your meeting and there's a power of God there.' I was in meetings there where billows of power went over the place! All kinds of miracles were done. 'What does the pastor say?' He says, 'Well, of course, where two or three are gathered, He's in the midst...' Do you know what I said to them? 'Well, if He's in the midst, and you believe that He's the same yesterday, today, and forever, why doesn't He do in the midst 'here' what He did in the midst 'there'?" We try and bail God out! The pastor has been to a seminary (or as I say, a cemetery). Our pulpits are full of dead men preaching dead sermons to dead people. But there's going to come an awakening. God Almighty doesn't care if He sends America bankruptcy. He doesn't care if we have to stand in bread lines. He doesn't care if our automobiles rust because we have no gasoline. That could happen very easily. But again, you see, it is so "expensive." We have to more than believe in the Lord. We have to believe on the Lord. We have to more than have a blessing just because we feel better, we feel inflated, or we maybe get a gift or something. You know, I've found that when someone gets a gift of the Spirit, they're more proud after they get the gift than they were before. They're proud of the gift! The indwelling of the Holy Ghost, to me, is the most majestic thing this side of eternity. The Holy Ghost produces holy people. Holy people live holy lives, producing holy fathers and mothers So here's a question. Answer it for yourself. Do you want to drink the cup that He drank of? Between here and there is a Gethsemane, a cross. There was a young man in 1904, in a town called Newcastle-Emlyn, Wales. He had about 35 people in the meeting. He put his big hands up and prayed "Bend us, Lord, and then break us." Bend us. Bend the Church. Break the Church. One night in a crowded meeting, with more than 1200 people, suddenly God came upon him. The writer puts it very beautifully, I think, though terribly. That great preacher who had been captivating crowds and turning cities on fire had a public Gethsemane. He suddenly crumbled to the ground, as though somebody had squashed him downwards. It wasn't a spectacle. It wasn't a demonstration. It was a personal visitation of the Holy Ghost. He writhed. He groaned. He travailed. Some men at the front said, "Let's go help him." And somebody else said, "Don't put a finger on him." When he got up his face was transformed as though he needed a veil over it. From there he moved into a new sphere of power, a new sphere of authority. We're not going to gather people together and cause them to repent. Only God can do that. Read again Joel 2 today. We quote it so often "He's going to pour out his Spirit on all flesh..." But wait a minute! The price is tremendous: Lay all night between the altar and the doorpost. I'd love to see a couple dozen preachers who would get together and lay between the altar and the doorpost, two nights a week, for the next three weeks, with the Holy Ghost coming upon them. Not "speaking in tongues" in the sense that so many people think, but speaking with a tongue we've never heard: speaking of travailing. What you've got in Romans 8 is beyond language. It cannot be uttered. It's God the Holy Ghost groaning through us. It groaned in Jesus so that He travailed. Are you going to suggest that He didn't groan? Of course, He groaned at Gethsemane. I believe that Jesus, right now, is groaning in heaven. If He's the same yesterday, today, and forever, don't you think he groans over the Church as it is today? Poor, misbegotten thing that it is? Powerless, lifeless, without authority? Most of our people can't keep victory themselves, never mind cast out devils. We can't pull down strongholds. But I'm convinced that it is going to come. There's going to be a great turnaround. It won't be inside the denominations, as far as I'm concerned. Oh it's nice to read Hebrews 13:12, "Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify...," that is, "purify, edify, release, transform." That He might do that, "he suffered without the gate." But the next verse says, "Let us go with him outside the camp." Let's be cut off from everything that is organized, manmade, and supervised. People say, "Ravenhill is a radical. You shouldn't take any note of him. You know, he has no covering." Well, I didn't know that. Poor me! I've been going around the world for the last fifty years without a covering! I didn't know! But the Lord knew I had it, so He kept me. Who was John the Baptist's covering? People knew when John the Baptist came. He did no signs, no wonders, no miracles. But when he spoke, the words were like fire. They burned in the hearts of the people. If a thing doesn't burn in me, why, in God's name, should it burn in you?! I wouldn't listen to a preacher who didn't kindle something in my heart. You see, I backed away from that rotten cup that woman had. Then forcibly she said, "Drink it." At that moment I remembered a man in a garden saying, "Father, this is the most degrading thing in the history of the world. If it's possible, please..." The Lord let Him do it. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. When it pleases the Lord to bruise you, what do you do? Ring for help? Phone for somebody? Call the church? Or do you get alone with Him Who alone is able to heal? With Him Who alone has the balm of Gilead? You see, God isn't training Boy Scouts. He's training soldiers! No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. (2 Tim 2:4) There's a smart advertisement that you see on television and other places. You see these smart boys, these cadets: "We're looking for a few choice men." Come and be one of the specials. That's exactly what God does. "I have chosen you and ordained you," so you don't need any other ordination. Out of the twelve He chooses three: Peter, James, and John. People say that you shouldn't be selective. God is selective. He always was. He always will be. Out of the three he chose one. God has a process of elimination. He doesn't ask you to drink a cup a week or a month after you're saved, but you gradually move into that area where you realize that this is what He's after. He's after me going to the cross! And not just to go to it, but to get on it! "Oh, I'm glad He died for me." Have you died for Him? Isn't that a fair exchange? I remember when I was little boy that they announced that an American was coming. He had just written a hymn that was, I think, one of the sweetest hymns ever written, and he played it for us that night. Out of the ivory palaces and into a world of woe Only his great eternal love made my Savior go. Out of the ivory...angels bowed down, and seraphim bowed...and men spit on Him He had all the glory of heaven, but He had no where to sleep at night... It would take eternity to unveil to us what it meant for Jesus to come. He drank: A cup of separation from His Father, A cup of separation from the glory in eternity, A cup of separation from the worship because it says in Hebrew that angels are commissioned to worship Him; men didn't worship Him-they spit on Him! He laid it all aside joyfully. He took up a cross to be battered and bloodied. I love that hymn, My Faith Looks Up to Thee. It was written in the old North Church in Boston Common. (I preached there once, and I had them sing that hymn.) The second stanza says: May thy rich grace impart Strength to my fainting heart, My zeal inspire; As thou hast died for me, So may my love to thee, Pure, warm, and changeless be, A living fire! Suppose God were as fickle in His attitude to you as you were to Him? What would happen? The little servant girl says, "I'm on my knees two and a half hours every morning. Every time I strike that match, I say, 'Lord, as I kindle this fire, kindle Your fire in my heart, the fire of Your Spirit, oh God!' I've been here for years. I must have lit hundreds and hundreds of fires." She wasn't at the table serving meals with all the celebrities. She's up at the crack of dawn. She's carrying a heavy bucket of coal. She's cleaning up the dirt. It's a ritual most people wouldn't have. But she's turned it into a sacrament! She's turned the tables on the devil! When he says, "Well, you could be praying. You could do more than that." She says, "I would bow there some days. I would just worship. I would see the flames go up and think of the sacrifice that has been made. No, don't pity me. I've got a wonderful job! They pay me to have my devotions! They pay me to sustain my prayer life!" I wish we had a lot more people like that. Look out. He might bring you up this week and ask you drink of the cup "Can you share my baptism?" "My baptism is a baptism of sorrow; a baptism of desertion, a baptism of pain, a baptism of loneliness, a baptism of darkness." It's all combined. Well, can you drink it? Or do we try to make some excuses? All He's asking for is obedience. Obedience is the key to everything. This is serious business. Time is running out fast for all of us. The greatest revival that swept America wasn't staged. It wasn't advertised. It wasn't financially backed. It didn't have broken down film stars and ex-footballers. It was in the ordinary course of a meeting, when Jonathan Edwards preached his sermon, "Sinners in the hands of an angry God." There was nobody advertised. There was nobody projected. Jesus says, "How can you receive blessing of God when you receive honor one of another?" "He resisteth the proud and saveth such as are contrite and of a broken spirit." There are many who say, "Come down from the cross and save yourself." If you see somebody else saving his neck, and you follow him, you will lose your blessing. You will lose your reward. You will lose your power. Nobody stood by Jesus. Maybe nobody will stand by you. It's a lonely life, but it's a glorious life. Copyright (C) 1996 by Leonard Ravenhill
Are you aware…that when we were born, we were given life…and this life, according to the Bible, is like a race. Listen to what the Apostle Paul had to say as he neared the end of his life.
Paul compared life with that of a race. Also, the writer of Hebrews said…
How is life like a race?
a. Life like a race has a challenging course (life has its ups and downs).
b. Life like a race has a judge or judges. Jesus is our judge.
c. Life like a race has a finish line (In the end, we will spend eternity either in heaven or hell).
You and I as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are created by God to win this Christian race…to be winners in the Lord…to one day stand in eternity robed in righteousness, wearing a crown of glory, and blessed with eternal honors and rewards.
TODAY, I AM GOING TO SHARE SOME PRINCIPLES ON HOW TO WIN THE CHRISTIAN RACE.
BEFORE I PROVIDE THESE PRINCIPLES, I NEED TO CLARIFY A FEW THINGS.
I. FROM THE WORLD'S PERSPECTIVE, WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A WINNER?
From the world's perspective, winning is based upon…
a. Intelligence - The smarter you are the more respect you receive.
b. Wealth – The more money you have the happier you will be.
From the world's perspective, winning is based upon intelligence, and wealth.
FROM GOD'S PERSPECTIVE, WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A WINNER?
From God's perspective, winning is not based upon speed (swift), strength (strong), intelligence (wise), and wealth.
From God's perspective, winning is based upon our effort to please God. We win when we do the best we can to please God.
You see…the world views people as successful if they are the best...number one…head of the class. But God is more concerned with us doing our best to honor Him.
If we want to win the Christian race…and become spiritual champions, then we must do our best for God.
ILLUSTRATION:
Britain's Derek Redmond had dreamed all his life of winning a gold medal in the 400-meter race, and his dream was in sight as he ran in the semifinals at Barcelona Olympics of 1992.
He was running the race of his life and was nearing the finish line when all of a sudden he felt a sharp pain go up the back of his leg. He fell face first onto the track with a torn right hamstring.
As the doctors were approaching, Redmond fought to his feet and began hopping to the finish line.
When he reached the stretch, a large man in a T-shirt came out of the stands, brushed aside a security guard and ran to Redmond, embracing him. It was Jim Redmond, Derek's father. "You don't have to do this," he told his weeping son. "Yes, I do," said Derek. "Well, then," said Jim, "we're going to finish this together."
And they did. Fighting off security men, the son's head sometimes buried in his father's shoulder, they stayed in Derek's lane all the way to the end, as the crowd rose and clapped and wept.
Derek didn't walk away with the gold medal, but he was a winner because he did His best.
My friends, from God's perspective, winning is not based upon being number one…We win when we do our best to please God.
NOW, I AM GOING TO SHARE SOME PRINCIPLES ON HOW TO WIN THE CHRISTIAN RACE.
FIRST, TO WIN THE CHRISTIAN RACE, WE MUST RUN WITH CONFIDENCE (SELF-WORTH).
We will never become a champion until we see ourselves as a champion. As Christians, we are champions and winners in the Lord. We are WORTH a lot to God.
Listen…the Bible tells us how important we are.
We are children of God.
We are related to the creator of the World. We belong to a royal family.
Unfortunately, though, some people walk around looking and acting like failures. They live defeated lives because they do not value themselves. They believe they have to many flaws and imperfections for God to love them.
ILLUSTRATION:
Have you ever noticed the pockmarks, or dimples, covering the surface of a golf ball? They make the ball look imperfect. So, what's their purpose?
An aeronautical engineer who designs golf balls says that a perfectly smooth ball would travel only 130 yards off the tee. But the same ball with the right kind of dimples will fly twice that far. These apparent "flaws" minimize the ball's air resistance and allow it to travel much further.
Most of us can quickly name the physical characteristics we wish we had been born without. It's difficult to imagine that these "imperfections" are there for a purpose and are part of God's master design. Yet, when the psalmist wrote of God's creative marvel in the womb, he said to the Lord, "You formed my inward parts (Psalm 139:13) and "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed (vs. 14). Then he said, "I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (v. 14).
If we could accept our "flaws" and "imperfections" as part of God's master plan for us, what a difference it would make in our outlook on life.
The "dimples" we dislike may enable us to bring the greatest glory to our wise and loving Creator, who knows how to get the best out of our lives. What I am trying to say is this…To win the Christian race, we must run with confidence (self worth)…we must value ourselves…understand that we are special to God…we are worth a lot to Him…because we are His children.
Sure, we all have some "flaws" and "imperfections", however, we cannot let these things get us down, for we are valuable to God.
When we start valuing ourselves the way God values us… then we will be on fire for the Lord. We will live passionate spiritual lives and will be on our way to winning the Christian race.
SECOND, TO WIN THE CHRISTIAN RACE, WE MUST RUN WITH THE RIGHT MOTIVATION.
Why do we want to be a Christian? Why should we live our lives for God and follow His will?
These are all excellent reasons to want to live our lives for God.
However, one of the greatest motivating factors for living our lives for the Lord is the GRACE OF GOD.
The apostle Paul was motivated to live his life for God and work hard in serving Jesus Christ because of the GRACE OF GOD. To Paul, the greatest thing in all the world was the grace of God, the fact that God loved him so much…that God forgave his terrible sins…that God allowed him to follow and serve His son…that God allowed him to proclaim the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
All that Paul was and all that Paul did was by the grace, the undeserved favor of God. As he himself declared: "by the grace of God I am what I am."
A big motivating factor that should inspire us to live good Christian lives…to run the Christian race… is the grace of God.
What is the grace of God?
Simply…the Bible says that "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 3:23). When we sin, we deserve death (because sin is an offense against God and must be punished). However, God had a plan to help us be forgiven of our sins. God, mercifully sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross to take away our sins. Paul says, "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).
Because of our sins, we deserve spiritual death. However, Jesus died in our place so that we may live forever. Jesus gave His life to give us life.
ILLUSTRATION:
On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off from the Detroit airport, killing 155 people.
One survived: a four-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, named Cecelia.
News accounts say when rescuers found Cecelia they did not believe she had been on the plane. Investigators first assumed Cecelia had been a passenger in one of the cars on the highway onto which the airliner crashed. But when the passenger register for the flight was checked, there was Cecelia's name.
Cecelia survived because, even as the plane was falling, Cecelia's mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecelia, and then would not let her go.
Nothing could separate that child from her parent's love—neither tragedy nor disaster, neither the fall nor the flames that followed, neither height nor depth, neither life nor death.
Such is the love of our Savior for us. He left heaven, lowered himself to us, and covered us with the sacrifice of His own body to save us.
Why should we live our lives for God and follow His will? We should live our lives for God because He loved us so much that He sent His Son to die on the cross to save us from our sins! The grace…the undeserved love that He shows us should motivate us to run the Christian race with all of our hearts!
THIRD, TO WIN THE CHRISTIAN RACE, WE MUST TURN SETBACKS INTO COMEBACKS.
ILLUSTRATION:
In 1996, Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer. Doctors gave him only a 50% chance of survival since the cancer had spread to his brain and lungs.
But after four rounds of chemotherapy and two operations, Armstrong turned his setback into a comeback.
Only three years after being diagnosed with life-threatening cancer, Lance Armstrong won one of sports' most grueling cycling events--the Tour de France.
In our lives, we will experience setbacks…some setbacks may be emotional and some may be physical and some may be spiritual. When they come, we shouldn't become angry and bitter, instead, we must turn our setbacks into comebacks.
The Christian life is by far the best life to live, however, it is not a problem-free life. Troubles that arise. However, we can triumph over our problems…we can turn setbacks into comebacks just like Lance Armstrong did.
Why do we experience trials and tribulations? We experience trials and tribulations in order to grow and mature in our faith.
Our suffering develops perseverance; and perseverance will build maturity and maturity will produce character. So suffering is designed to make us better people.
How should we handle difficult times? How can we rebound from setbacks?
Pray and believe that God is with us.
Choose to be joyful.
Never give up.
CONCLUSION:
Brethren, to win the Christian race, we must run with confidence, run with the right motivation, and turn setbacks into comebacks. If we do these three things, we are on our way to winning the Christian race.
If you are not a Christian, you are not even in the race. You have no hope to stand in the victory circle to receive your crown of life. So I would like to encourage you to give your life to the Lord today, by believing in Jesus, turn away from your sins, confessing your faith in Jesus and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.
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