Two weeks ago, we had the opportunity to fellowship in the Scriptures around a verse in Matthew 5 concerning the kingdom of God. What we discovered was that, when our Lord Jesus came and began His ministry, there was one overriding burden in His heart. It had already been introduced by His forerunner, John the Baptist.
The message was very simple. It was not complicated or hard to understand: repent, because the kingdom of God is at hand.
Now, I do not know how you brothers and sisters and friends view that, but John the Baptist had perhaps the greatest responsibility any human being has ever had: to be the forerunner of our Lord Jesus. For him to have a burden concerning the kingdom of God, and then for that burden to be followed up by our Lord Jesus Himself, points out to us that this matter of the kingdom is of utmost importance.
I felt this morning that we might begin with a very short review. First of all, what do you think God’s purpose is for man? Why did God ever create us anyhow? We give Him so much trouble—only heartache—and He knows everything. He knew how things were going to turn out. Why did God ever create us?
Let me respond with my own limited understanding. I think we find the answer in Romans 8:29:
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son,
that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
My dear brothers and sisters, do you know what God is after in us individually? And you know He is going to obtain it. He is going to gain it. He intends that you and I would have the character—the perfect character—of His own Son formed in us.
If we are honest with ourselves, we would have to admit with the poet that we have miles to go before we sleep. There is a lot of work still to be done. But God has not given up. No matter how difficult we make it, He is not going to give up. He is going to find a way to reproduce in every one of His children the character of His own Son.
Then we might ask: What was God’s purpose for the family? Certainly, we can say that He wants the reality of His kingdom to be manifested there. With the old covenant people, it was said that they had light in their dwelling. God’s presence was there. With God’s presence in the family unit, light was manifested. The reality of God’s rulership is to be manifested in the family. That is God’s purpose for the family.
What is God’s purpose for the church? The verse that helps me most is Ephesians 1:23:
The church, which is His body,
the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
I wonder whether it would help us from time to time to use a different word when we refer to the church, because the word “church” has come to mean something it really is not. In misusing the word, we reinforce misunderstanding in ourselves. Maybe, for a while, it would be a good discipline to refer to the church as the fullness of Christ.
That is God’s perspective. We have our own, but from God’s perspective there is only one purpose for the church: to contain the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then we might ask: What is God’s purpose for the universe? I think it is answered at the end of that verse:
The church, which is His body,
the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Do you know what the purpose of the universe is? It is to display the fullness—the full beauty—that is revealed in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we go back to Matthew 5, when Jesus sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and began to teach them, and the first words that came out of His mouth were:
Blessed are the poor in spirit:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
So, brothers and sisters, it seems to me that not only at the beginning of our Lord’s ministry, but also when He was setting forth the most important things for us to understand, He began with this matter of the kingdom of God.
Something has happened in this universe that has challenged, if you please, the kingdom of God. I hope you have done enough thinking for it to be clear in your heart that God, in Himself, has the right to rule because He is God. Therefore, the kingdom is His, the rulership is His, and the dominion is His. It does not belong to anybody else.
We should not be surprised that this matter of the kingdom of God was in the forefront of our Lord Jesus’ ministry—not only in His preaching and teaching, but in His miracles. Why did He perform miracles? To display the reality of God’s rulership. What had become a mess, what had become evil, He touched; and by doing so, He displayed what happens when God has His way.
When God is ruling, things are totally different. Remember Paul’s words in Romans 14:17:
For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking,
but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
When we look around—whether at our own lives, our family units, the church, or the part of the universe we can see—we see that things are wrong. People’s lives are in a mess. We continue to make a mess of things. Why? Because the kingdom of God is not a living reality.
This is why our Lord Jesus has come. When we talk about salvation, please allow it to include all that it includes: a full restoration of everything according to God’s will. There will be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. This is the God we are talking about.
We fellowshiped last time about how this matter of the kingdom is to make its way into our lives. Our Lord Jesus gives us, right up front, the one thing necessary. Without this, you cannot know the reality of the kingdom:
Blessed are the poor in spirit:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Theirs is the kingdom of God in reality, not merely as something to be hoped for. Oh, brothers and sisters, a day is coming when our Lord Jesus will return here and set up His kingdom. Eventually, He will be the ruling Sovereign over all things.
But now we can know it in our own lives, our homes, our families, and the church. We can see it displayed in some ways even in this world, which is hopelessly antagonistic to God and His kingdom.
Our Lord Jesus makes it clear that poverty of spirit is an absolute necessity. It is not optional. When I went to boot camp in the Navy, they categorized the classes as a must one, a must two, a must three, and so on. Brothers and sisters, poverty of spirit is a must one if we are going to know the kingdom of God.
To whatever degree poverty of spirit is ours in experience, to that same degree we can experience the reality of God’s rulership—His kingdom—in our lives and in other places. The Lord Jesus points out that this is something we need to give ourselves to in understanding and experience.
We ended last time in Philippians 2. This morning, I would like us to begin a few verses earlier, in Philippians 1, beginning with verse 27.
Paul is sitting in a prison cell, writing to dear brothers and sisters whom he loved very much. The Holy Spirit had used him to bring the church into being in Philippi in a very unusual way: through a prison setting. The Philippian jailer came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, along with his household, and this was the beginning of the church.
As you read Philippians, you find that Paul had a wonderful relationship with these dear brothers and sisters. Seemingly, of all the churches to whom he ministered, they were especially concerned about him. While he was in prison, they sent a gift to him through Epaphroditus. Now he is writing back to them, addressing issues, particularly some disunity and disharmony among two sisters, Euodia and Syntyche.
Paul is seeking to help them live in oneness of heart and mind, to be unified, so that the life of the Lord Jesus Christ might be beautifully and wonderfully displayed in their corporate life together.
Notice what he says in Philippians 1:27–30:
Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ:
that, whether I come and see you or be absent,
I may hear of your state,
that ye stand fast in one spirit,
with one soul striving for the faith of the gospel;
and in nothing affrighted by the adversaries:
which is for them an evident token of perdition,
but of your salvation, and that from God;
because to you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ,
not only to believe on Him,
but also to suffer in His behalf:
having the same conflict which ye saw in me,
and now hear to be in me.
Then Paul continues in Philippians 2:1–13:
If there is therefore any exhortation in Christ,
if any consolation of love,
if any fellowship of the Spirit,
if any tender mercies and compassions,
make full my joy,
that ye be of the same mind,
having the same love,
being of one accord, of one mind;
doing nothing through faction or through vainglory,
but in lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself;
not looking each of you to his own things,
but each of you also to the things of others.Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
who, existing in the form of God,
counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a servant,
being made in the likeness of men;
and being found in fashion as a man,
He humbled Himself,
becoming obedient even unto death,
yea, the death of the cross.Wherefore also God highly exalted Him,
and gave unto Him the name which is above every name;
that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth,
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.So then, my beloved,
even as ye have always obeyed,
not as in my presence only,
but now much more in my absence,
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
for it is God who worketh in you
both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.
Let us ask the Lord to help us.
Lord, we want to bless You that You have sought us out and made us Your own. We thank You that You gave us the opportunity and privilege this morning to come and be with You and Your people at Your table. We rejoice that the Holy Spirit has helped us express something of our heart’s love to You through our time of worship at Your table.
Now, Lord, we thank You that You have so richly blessed us. One way You have richly blessed us is by giving us a copy of Your written Word. We stand today humbled before Your Word, asking that You would send Your Holy Spirit to enable us to see the truth that is here.
So, Lord, we ask You simply: take Your written Word, take the spoken word, and make it Your Word to each of our hearts. We ask it in Your name. Amen.
We find that poverty of spirit is the door that opens and enables us to experience the reality of God’s rulership—His kingdom—in our lives. We might say that our poverty before God permits Him to impart to us His riches.
My brothers and sisters and friends, I hope that at some point in your Christian life you have stopped long enough in your busy schedule to think seriously about what God has done for us in His Son. He has taken all the riches of heaven and put them in Him, and then given Him to us as an absolutely free gift.
There is nothing more that He can give. He has given the absolute best He has, and He has given all that He has. It is available to anyone. He so loved that whosoever—it is available. Bottom line, when you look at it legitimately, there are no excuses. There are no accusations we can make toward God.
By giving His Son, God has made Himself fully available to all of us. All the riches, all the fullness of the Godhead, are now available to you and me as those living here on this planet.
What hinders us? What prevents us? Just the opposite of poverty of spirit: pride of spirit, arrogance, self-confidence, and thinking we can do it ourselves.
It is helpful for me to ask how we got this way. How did we get into such a position that we do not enter readily and fully into the riches that are ours in the Lord Jesus Christ? What is operating in us? Brothers and sisters, it is operating in every one of us without exception.
We are simply children of Adam. We are of Adam’s race. When Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a spirit of independence, arrogance, self-confidence, and self-centeredness entered in.
Prior to eating of the tree, Adam and Eve were naked, but they were not aware that they were naked. As soon as they ate of the tree, they became very aware—conscious of themselves, centered upon themselves. You and I, simply by being born into the human race, have been born with that same nature.
It is hostile toward God. It does not want God’s will, and according to Romans 8, it cannot do the will of God. That independent self-sufficiency in us keeps us from knowing the reality of the riches of living in the kingdom of God.
What we have to learn is to humble ourselves before God and be willing to acknowledge that we are nothing. Actually, when you look at it, we are worse than nothing. We are sinners. We have not merely failed to do something; we have knowingly and willingly violated His will.
We deserve His wrath and judgment. Yet He has been merciful and has provided a way. He has withheld His wrath, and instead of giving judgment, He has given riches. He has given us a great salvation.
It is only as we enter into the experience of being poor in spirit that we are able to receive what God has already provided for us. I mentioned last time that one translation renders Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the humble,” and then has a footnote explaining humility as poverty of pride.
Think about it. This is our problem: we are rich in pride. Therefore, it deprives us of experiencing the riches that are ours in Christ. When we are willing to become absolutely poor in pride, we are in a condition where God can come and become our very life, and we can live a life of total dependence upon Him.
This is a difficult thing, at least for me. In John 15, the Lord Jesus says:
I am the vine, ye are the branches:
apart from Me ye can do nothing.
Are you convinced? Are you convinced that what our Lord Jesus says is true—that without Him you can do nothing? It is only as we find ourselves in a place of absolute dependence upon God and what He has provided that we can know life as He initially designed it and intends for us to live it.
If we are going to know the kingdom, we must deal radically with our pride. In Matthew 11:12, the Lord Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force. With whom are they violent? With themselves. We are the only thing standing in the way of entering into the riches that are ours in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The way we enter into God’s kingdom is through being poor in spirit—being paupers, having nothing of ourselves, and being totally dependent. God designed us, created us, and redeemed us to live a totally dependent life, dependent upon Him.
If your experience is like mine, I find myself thinking and acting as though I am supposed to do the best I can do, and then, when I get into trouble, turn to the Lord. Is that the way you approach things? Brothers and sisters, this is faulty thinking. If we could start out in the place where we usually end up, things would come out much better.
All of us could, to one degree or another, admit that being humble before God is a good thing. But Paul brings in another dimension of humility—of being poor in pride and poor in spirit—not merely in our relationship with God, but in our relationship with each other.
The problem Paul was seeking to help them with was a lack of oneness. Problems were beginning to come into their corporate life. Out of his deep burden for them, he calls them his beloved, his joy, and his crown. They were very special to him.
When he comes to Philippians 1:27, he encourages them to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel. Now, where I want to go this morning is to the place where you and I can be humble before one another.
What is the gospel according to what Paul is talking about? Are we merely to conduct ourselves according to the way we have been forgiven of our sins? For many of God’s people, that is all the gospel is. But, my brothers and sisters, this is a complete gospel.
It is a gospel centered in a person. It is not a teaching, a doctrine, or a philosophy. It is a person. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, whenever we want to understand this gospel, we have to look at Him. We can look at teaching, but we must look at Him.
This gospel that Paul is talking about is something God has accomplished in the Lord Jesus Christ to ultimately restore the whole universe. It includes our restoration, the restoration of family life, and the restoration of corporate life so that the fullness of Christ can be experienced.
There is a salvation that this gospel speaks of. The writer of Hebrews calls it “so great a salvation”—not merely a great salvation, but so great a salvation. Why? Because it encompasses everything.
God is going to take us where He finds us and accomplish what was in His heart originally. His intention for you and me is to be conformed to the image of His Son. This is part of the gospel. It is the gospel of transformation.
He is not going to leave you where you are. He will take us in whatever condition He finds us and transform us from glory to glory to glory until, finally, the character of His Son is formed in us.
The same thing is true in our corporate life. Whatever our situation may be, there is good news: a provision has been made. Whether it is in our individual life, our family, or our life together as God’s people, when we enter difficulties and fail, what does it prove? It proves that we have gone somewhere other than to the Lord Himself for our solutions.
Rather than being humble and dependent upon Him, we have gone somewhere else. If you read your Bible carefully, you will find that this has been the history of God’s people from almost day one. It does not have to be that way, but that is usually the way it turns out. We go somewhere else, and He has to bring us back.
But it is a gospel that tells us about the wonderful work God has done in the Lord Jesus Christ, so that He is able to take the worst people and the worst situations, restore them, and bring them back to what He wants them to be.
What is required? Micah 6:8 has been haunting me for a few months:
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly,
and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
That is all He requires. I do not find it easy to stay in that place of poverty. Even after God richly blesses me, somehow I get the erroneous idea that I brought this on myself, that I produced it through my own good efforts.
In Deuteronomy 8, God had to deal with His people about this very thing: He blessed them, and then they thought the blessings came from themselves. Some of us in this room have been so blessed by God that it is beyond our ability to enumerate those blessings.
What a royal revelation—what a wonderful exposing of His heart to us—He has given. Some people would give all they have to receive some of the teaching that you and I have had the opportunity to hear. He has blessed us, but what happens? We get proud of our blessing.
Then a hardness, self-centeredness, and confidence in ourselves begin to settle in. The moment they do, they block the reality of the kingdom.
This gospel Paul is talking about, and encouraging us to live according to, is a gospel by which God wants to transform us to be like His Son. He wants the church to be a place where the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ is evidenced: the fullness of His love, mercy, grace, patience, and ability to forgive.
He wants it all to be displayed in a full way—not merely something acceptable, but in fullness. How can that be possible? I think the key Paul gives the Philippians is the key he would give us:
Have this mind in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus.
Do you understand that the Christ in me has no difficulty relating to the Christ in you? Then why do we have difficulty relating to one another? Because something other than Christ has gotten in.
This issue of humility is not merely before the Lord, though we must have that. We have to learn, my brothers and sisters, to be humble—to be poverty-stricken in our spirits—in relationship to our brothers and sisters.
We get proud of all kinds of things, sometimes the most foolish things. But I think the most insidious of all pride is spiritual pride, because it comes under the cloak of being godly. It blinds us and does something to our hearts that we need to be willing to examine.
It makes us become people we hoped we would never become again, and do things we are ashamed of doing. It is because we have religious pride. There is a real danger, my brothers and sisters, in getting old in the Lord.
We do not really get old in the Lord beyond a certain point. From that point on, we may get old in ourselves. We fossilize; we crystallize. We learn how to do spiritual things. It all looks good and sounds good to many people, but if it is not reality, it is the result of thinking we are somebody when we are not.
Our Lord Jesus did not write His letter to the church at Laodicea only for Laodicea; it was written for us too. What was their overriding problem? “We have need of nothing.”
They had rich teaching and rich experiences with the Lord, but they themselves became the substitute. They became proud of their own experiences. Their pride caused them to shut the door, and the Lord Jesus was outside, knocking to get in.
Paul is laying before his beloved the way they can overcome their situation. Their way is to have the same attitude operating in them that was operating in our Lord Jesus from beginning to end.
Paul gives them a picture to help them perceive what he means by humility of mind. He says they should not consider themselves number one, but should consider others more important than themselves. Honestly, brothers and sisters, does that come naturally to you? Outside of Christ, no, it does not.
We are born with a nature that causes us to look at ourselves as number one. But into this nature God has done something wonderful: He has put a new life and a new nature. Paul is trying to focus their hearts on this new life and nature so that the life of the Lord Jesus Christ can enter the assembly and overcome the situation they face.
Let me mention the seven steps downward our Lord Jesus took. We might call them the seven steps to poverty. The world has many books about twelve easy steps to success, but Paul points us to the steps Jesus took to reach the goal of poverty of spirit.
First, although He existed in the form of God, He did not hold on to His position as God. He surrendered His position. Was He right? Was He in the right position? Yes—He is God. Yet the first step He took was to surrender His position.
When we have disagreements with our brothers and sisters, is not the most difficult thing to surrender our position? “I have this place. I should have your respect.” But He surrendered His position.
Second, He emptied Himself. There has been much controversy over the years about what it meant for the Lord Jesus to empty Himself. He could not empty Himself of being God; that is impossible. What did He empty Himself of? His rights to be God.
Here is the way I would put it: He became a nobody. Even though He was God, He became a nobody. He emptied Himself of all His rights as God.
Third, He gave Himself to become a bondservant. To whom? To His Father, to do His Father’s will no matter what. In the Gospel of John, we hear our Lord Jesus repeatedly saying that it is His meat to do the will of Him who sent Him.
This is the declaration of a bondservant who loves His Master, has given up all His own rights, and whose heart burden is only to do that which is pleasing to His Master.
Fourth, with this bondservant heart, He became a man. To me, the greatest mystery in the universe is this: how could God become man? When human beings try to solve that issue with their minds, they come up with some form of heresy.
Church history shows that whenever people have tried to explain how God and man could be one Person, they have always come up with some form of heresy. Either He was not God or He was not man. The human mind cannot allow Him to be both simultaneously. But the fact is that He was, He is, and He still is: God and man.
His humanity does not in any way affect His divinity, and His divinity does not override or hinder His humanity. He was the Creator, and yet He became a creature, taking on creaturely limitations: limited to a human body, walking around on this planet and functioning as a human being. Yet He was God.
Fifth, as a man, He humbled Himself. He was a perfect man and should have had the respect of all men. He should have been elevated to the highest place in humanity. Yet He took another step down and humbled Himself. He became poor in spirit.
Sixth, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient. Hebrews tells us that, though He was a Son, He learned obedience by the things that He suffered. He did not escape anything. Our Lord Jesus had to learn how to obey in the situations of His everyday life. He obeyed His heavenly Father.
To what point did He obey? He obeyed to the point of death—even the death of the cross.
I wish I had better language and a fuller understanding of what was accomplished when God the Son, the Creator, died on the cross at the hands of men. Paul says that the same attitude we see operating in Him needs to be operating in us.
Not one of us has come close to being in the position He was in. Do you know where we started? We started as sinners. As I said last time, the only thing you and I can brag about is our sin. If we are going to be proud of something, we will be proud of our sin.
Why are we so unwilling to go lower and to go as low as our Lord Jesus has demonstrated for us? I have been reading Oswald Chambers’ Studies on the Sermon on the Mount. He says that the reason the Lord Jesus spoke the words of the Sermon on the Mount was to fully frustrate us.
The Sermon on the Mount brings us to the place where we throw up our hands. Some say it is not for now but for when the kingdom comes, because it is impossible. If you take seriously what our Lord Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, you have to say, “There is no way this can be accomplished.”
What is He trying to do? He is trying to get us fully frustrated with our own human efforts and self-efforts, so that we will surrender and come to a place of poverty of spirit. We admit, “I cannot do it,” and we learn to stay there.
The Lord is so merciful. He arranges opportunities for every one of His children, without exception, to learn poverty. He does it perfectly, at the right time and under the right circumstances.
Somehow we enter into it for a little while, but I am amazed at how quickly we move away from it. He reduces us to a place of dependency, and once we get through the difficulty, we say, “Just watch me. Off from here.” It is an endless process of God having to deal with us again and again concerning the independence inside us.
But praise God, brothers and sisters: if you have been born from above, if you have been born again, if Christ has come to live in your heart, then you have a new nature and a new life. The humility Paul calls these Philippian believers to enter was not natural in themselves. They could find it in only one place.
Why do you think he says, “If there is therefore any exhortation in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions”? Where do you find this? The only place you can find this kind of humility is in Christ Himself.
We human beings may learn some lessons. We become tired of getting embarrassed by our pride, and we learn a few things about human humility—our own brand of humility, false humility. But there is only one place where we can find the real thing, and that is in our Lord Jesus Himself.
God has been so merciful to us. We will appreciate the fullness of His mercy only when we get beyond all of this and look back to see what a wonderful thing God has done. Do you know where you were headed before God intervened in your life?
I have some idea where I was going, and I do not even like to think about it. To have a destiny with no sense of purpose or meaning—can you imagine being thrust into eternity with meaninglessness? God has wonderfully and mercifully come into our lives and delivered us from that. That is His salvation.
Now He not only delivers us; He wants to fill our lives with the fullness displayed in the person of His Son. But there is a price to be paid: humility.
What about our relationships with each other? How can the church be the fullness of Him who fills all in all? The principle is the same. Paul says in Philippians 2:3:
Doing nothing through faction or through vainglory,
but in lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself.
Selfishness and empty conceit are natural to us. We have to deal radically with that side of things. Sometimes we think that because we have been in the Lord for years, we should not have to be so radical. Oh, brothers and sisters, flesh is still flesh.
Good flesh, bad flesh, indifferent flesh—it is still flesh and has nothing to do with the Lord. If I bring in flesh, it produces negative results. If you bring in flesh, it produces negative results. It makes no difference.
Selfishness is holding on to my position, my ideas, my understanding, my knowledge, and my experiences—holding on selfishly like a bulldog and not willing to let go.
Then there is empty conceit. The only thing we can be proud of is our sin. How can we be conceited, brothers and sisters? There is no real basis for our conceit. What can we glorify in? What can we brag about?
Sometimes, even in giving testimonies, we glorify in how great a sinner we were. We beef up our testimonies because we want people to think we were bigger sinners than we really were. Pride is something else, brothers and sisters. It takes funny twists.
Paul tells these believers, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with poverty of spirit in your mind, being a nobody, regard one another as more important than yourself.”
Would you agree that this takes being radical? That is being violent. Think with me for a moment. Do not say it out loud: who is the most difficult brother or sister you have to deal with? Not outside of yourself.
Take that person. In your estimation, honestly—do not play religious games or use false humility—do you believe that person is more important than you are? Is that what the Word of God says?
Where can you find the humility that enables you to do that? Only in one place: in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It has been perfectly displayed through His coming, living, and dying.
Because He is not only a crucified Savior but a resurrected Savior, that same Christ has come to live inside of me. The Christ in me can enable me to be humble enough to consider my brothers and sisters more important than myself and to consider their interests more important than my own personal interests.
When you read the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters, you find the phrase “one another” again and again. Brothers and sisters, we have been brought together with one another.
There are certainly times when we would have chosen not to be brought together with particular brothers and sisters. Would you agree? But God has put us together. We are with each other, and we are required to learn how to live with one another.
He did not take all the same kind of people with the same intellectual capacities, financial situations, or personalities. He put them all together and said:
This is My commandment,
that ye love one another,
even as I have loved you.
As far as I know, He has not taken that commandment back. He has not canceled it. It is still in operation today.
I am trying to be absolutely honest with you this morning. I do not find it easy to fulfill that commandment. Some of you are hard to love. I know you do not have that problem with me, but I have that problem with you.
I do not find it easy to love you because your personality is different. You do things that irritate the daylights out of me. I wish you would do things differently. Then something begins to settle in my heart, and you are no longer up here; you are down here, and I become your judge rather than your servant.
Paul says that our Lord Jesus became a bondservant. So I have a question for us this morning: whose servant are you? We would all like to say, as the writers of the New Testament did, that we are bondservants of the Lord Jesus Christ. But whose bondservant did our Lord Jesus become?
When He washed the disciples’ feet in John 13, He became the servant of those twelve men. One of them, He knew, would betray Him. Another was so self-centered and self-confident that he did not think the Lord needed to wash his feet. Yet the Lord went on and washed them anyway.
We are required to conduct ourselves according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We must learn how to be humble and poor in spirit in our relationship with each other. This is the gospel. It is not merely a gospel of forgiveness or grace; it is a gospel in which we learn to love one another as He has loved us.
My time is gone, but let me give you a few verses I would encourage you to meditate on.
First, Romans 12:10:
In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another;
in honor preferring one another.
We need to do everything for which we find the grace of God, to make sure we put our brothers and sisters in positions of honor above ourselves. Prefer them. This is the opposite of being selfish.
It means being concerned about them, their well-being, and what is happening in their lives. It means desiring that they find their place of functioning among God’s people. The result will be a greater fullness of Christ entering in.
As our brother Jim shared last week, the result of functioning as priests is to bring the King in, in fullness. We can prefer one another.
Do you know how difficult it is for some brothers and sisters to find a place to function among us? Because of timidity, their attitude about themselves, or whatever has formed their thinking, it is almost impossible for some to open their mouths in a meeting, vocalize their worship and praise, or even pray.
If we see those who are seeking to make such breakthroughs, and they do make a breakthrough but have not done it as perfectly as we think they should, we need to go to them and encourage them. We need to find a way to bring them on in, even if it means that we become a nobody.
Romans 15:7 says:
Wherefore receive ye one another,
even as Christ also received you,
to the glory of God.
I remember a dear sister whose husband abandoned her and her two children years ago. It was beyond my ability to describe what she was going through. She was part of a fellowship of God’s people, and she said to me, “Ernie, when I go there, I feel like I am not accepted because I have not fully overcome yet.”
You know what I am trying to say. Unconsciously, we develop standards for the kind of people we want in the fellowship. Says who?
We are told to accept one another as God in Christ has accepted us. Did He say to you, “Before I can accept you, you have to do this, this, and this, and meet this standard; then I will consider accepting you”?
I remember, when I became a believer, sharing with my father, who was not a Christian. I can hear his words as clearly as though it were today, though it was more than forty years ago. He said, “Ernie, when I think I can get my life good enough, then I will give myself to the Lord.”
We have the idea that we have to be acceptable. Listen: we are acceptable in Christ. We need to be very careful that we do not communicate unacceptableness to anybody who is among the Lord’s people. If He has accepted them, who are we to do otherwise?
To accept one another means that I must humble myself and become poor in spirit. I must become a nobody, so that I can embrace someone who is more important than I am.
Romans 12:16 says:
Be of the same mind one toward another.
Set not your mind on high things,
but condescend to things that are lowly.
Be not wise in your own conceits.
If we have been received and accepted by the Lord, we cannot have favorites in an exclusive sense. The Lord has favorites, but guess what? We are all His favorites.
Do you have favorite brothers and sisters? All your brothers and sisters ought to be favorites. I am not so blind as to think that, as we are brought together, certain relationships will not develop that we do not have with everybody else. But they should not become favorites in a way that excludes others. All our brothers and sisters ought to be favorites.
First Corinthians 12:25 says:
That there should be no schism in the body;
but that the members should have the same care one for another.
My observation is that there is no way you and I can go through life without picking up scars along the way. Those scars result from difficult situations God’s people are called upon to go through.
There are brothers and sisters going through things that, right now, they think are totally impossible to endure. Why do you think the Lord puts us together? So that we can go through together. So that we can care for one another.
I understand somewhat why we hesitate to get involved in people’s lives. When someone is in an impossible situation, we feel overwhelmed. What are we going to say? What can we do? People are at their wits’ end, and sometimes that causes us to pull back.
But our Lord Jesus is a good Shepherd, and He wants all His sheep to be taken care of. One way He does this is by giving each of us responsibility to care for the others He brings into our lives: to be concerned about them, love them, pray for them, and encourage them.
Ephesians 5:21 says:
Subjecting yourselves one to another
in the fear of Christ.
We like to hail our freedom: “I am free.” Yet here we are told that, as members of the body of Christ, we are to submit to one another—to have respect for one another and for the Christ in one another, and to learn how to receive from one another.
This does not mean that others tell us what to do with our lives. But there should be an understanding between us that you have access into my life. If you see me going somewhere or doing something detrimental to the body of Christ, you have a right to come and call my attention to it.
We need to learn how to submit. If we are a nobody in our minds and thinking, there should be no problem submitting to others. When is there a problem? When we think we are somebody and will not listen to a nobody. “Who are they that I should submit to them?”
Galatians 5:13 speaks about serving one another in love. Serving, brothers and sisters, means bondservice: giving up our rights, being concerned about the well-being of others, and being there to serve.
Our Lord Jesus said:
The Son of man came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister,
and to give His life a ransom for many.
This is the kind of life we discover in our Lord Jesus.
Colossians 3:16 speaks of teaching and admonishing one another. Let me conclude by suggesting that we learn to be admonished by one another.
Why do we need to be admonished? Because, my brothers and sisters, we do not all live perfect lives. None of us lives a perfect life. No matter who we are, at some point in our life together with God’s people, we are going to blow it. We may blow it big time.
What attitude do you take toward your brothers and sisters? Do they have freedom to come to you and admonish you when they see you doing something detrimental to the life of the fellowship? Are you open? Are you accessible? Can they come into your life and sit down in fellowship with you?
Some of us are thin-skinned. You know what I mean: we get our feelings hurt so easily. Why? We are focused on ourselves.
To be admonished, to be corrected—oh, brothers and sisters. I wish I remembered the name of a brother I once read about. He received much criticism, and it seemed that all the brothers and sisters were criticizing him. So he went to the Lord.
The Lord said, “That is the best thing that can happen to you. It is good for you to be criticized and corrected by your brothers and sisters.” Do you know what he began doing? He carried a pocketful of coins, and whenever somebody criticized him, he gave that person a coin.
What a different approach. Rather than punching them back, we receive correction in humility. If you are a nobody—if you humble yourself to the point of death—there is nothing to respond with except acceptance of the concern and love of our brothers and sisters.
The source of this kind of humility, as we have mentioned, is only in our Lord Jesus. This past week I started reading the book of Revelation again, and I discovered that the Lamb is on the throne.
The Lord Jesus is referred to as the Lamb twenty-nine times in Revelation. Many interesting things happen in connection with the Lamb: He takes the scroll; there is the wrath of the Lamb; there is following the Lamb; the Lamb is a Shepherd; and there is the marriage of the Lamb.
I want to say that all of this has to do with a lamb nature. In Philippians 2, Paul says that God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Why did God do that? Because of His lamb nature. Do you know why He is seated in the position He is in now? Because of His lamb nature.
As a lamb, He was led to the slaughter. Can you think of a more defenseless, less threatening creature than a lamb? The word refers to a pet lamb, not merely a lamb. Are you ever afraid of a pet lamb biting you, running into you, or hurting you? No.
When the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 5, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” He might have said, “Blessed are those who have a lamb nature, because theirs is the kingdom of God.”
Do you know why our Lord Jesus is seated on the throne? It is because of His lamb nature. The elder says, “Stop weeping. The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath overcome.” But when John looked to see the Lion, what did he see? He saw a Lamb.
I want you to check me out on this, but I think God is determined to have people who are going to reign with His Son who have a lamb nature.
Where does all of this get worked out? Much of it gets worked out right here—in our relationships with each other and in our homes. What hinders us from becoming servants to the members of our family? What keeps us from becoming servants to our brothers and sisters here? What keeps us from serving all the people God brings into our lives?
Us keeps us. Me doth hinder me. You do not hinder me; I hinder me. But we see in our Lord Jesus, my brothers and sisters, that it can work—but only one way: through fellowship with that lamb nature God has put in us.
In our relationships with each other, may we be as gentle and humble as lambs.
Our Lord Jesus says in Matthew 11:28–30:
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
Are you tired of trying to be humble? Are you weary? Are you ready to give it up? The Lord says that if you are in that state, come to Him, and you will find rest.
We have a place we can go. I admit to you that I have blown it. I have not been humble or poor in spirit. I ask for your forgiveness if you have been on the receiving end of my pride, arrogance, self-righteousness, or whatever else goes along with it. Please forgive me.
If you need to talk with me, please come to me. Pray for me. We need to pray for one another.
May this lamb nature—this nature that is in our Lord Jesus—be formed in every one of us. May the Lord be merciful and help us.