Glad to be with you.
We may not have realized it, but the Lord’s desire for His people is to have a priestly people—a people who continually offer up to the Lord sacrifices of praise.
Sometimes we get the normal order of things confused. The more I understand the Old Testament, and what God is wanting to bring about today, the more I see that He desires a priesthood of believers offering up to the Lord daily the sacrifices of praise unto Him.
Now, when this comes short—when God’s people are not given to Him, and the Lord is not receiving from them that which is His due—then we have departed from the normal order.
What happens when they go down into this condition? God has to raise up a prophet. The prophet’s burden is to call them back to what? To the normal order: praise and thanksgiving unto God.
The prophet’s preaching is always intended to bring the people back into the normal order of things. The more normal the order becomes, the less room there will be for the prophet.
We have developed a mentality through the years, and it has become a real mess. We do not feel as though we have had a good service unless somebody has preached. That is probably why, isn’t it?
For the last fifteen or twenty years, as we have moved among the Lord’s people, our ministry has often been to bring them into a place of giving unto the Lord that which He is worthy of receiving.
When you have a precious group of people gathered who are more in the normal order of God, teaching is simply there to serve that purpose. I used to wonder why, when Sunday morning came and another crowd gathered, I would feel such a pathetic spirit and begin to cry out, “Lord, what is wrong with me?”
It was because there were those whom God wanted to bring back to the normal order of things.
I would encourage this now: do not confuse the prophetic ministry with the normal order of things. Sometimes, when God does not have His normal order and men are not fulfilling their place, things go down into a condition where He has to use unusual means to bring the people back.
He may even use a woman to get men back into place. I say that with appreciation for the sisters here, because when men do not do what they ought to do, God has, throughout Scripture, used women—Deborah and others—to call them back.
But we must not take God’s emergency measures and make them the normal order. No, that is not the normal order.
Thank God if He is using you when things are below normal. And thank God when He does not need to use you in that way anymore, because hopefully things are well.
This has been growing in my heart for several days: we need to accept that the Lord is bringing into being a people who are truly alive unto Him in the normal order of things.
You can expect times when the Lord’s people gather, sing, worship, and lift their hearts. They become a true priesthood unto the Lord.
We have been finding this in Indianapolis, where the Lord’s people gather and there is less and less preaching. Even though we have been there for the last six or seven weeks, I think I have only shared once.
The Lord is raising up ministries in the midst of the group. He gives a burden and causes ministry to arise. I do not think ministry should come from outside all the time.
In the normal order of the Lord, ministry grows right up in the midst, because the Lord is exercising the hearts of His people. When we become professional, we have to bring somebody in. It is not that we do not enjoy coming, but it is not the normal order.
But tonight I want to take us back, first of all, to Abraham. Let us consider the life of Abraham for a few moments.
I think you will see that Abraham is a lovely picture of what I have just been saying.
God calls this man. He is a representative man in many ways. God calls him out of Ur of the Chaldees, out of the world and all its idolatry, and He calls him unto something: unto the land, the place where He is going to fulfil His purpose through him.
As Abraham leaves and goes out, we read in Genesis 12:6-7:
And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the oak of Moreh.
And the Canaanite was then in the land.
And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land:
and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him.
Beloved, the life of Abraham—his going on and his service for the Lord—begins with this simple little thing: he built an altar.
Now, I do not want to shock you too much, but you search in vain to find one time when Abraham went to church as we think of it. His worship was something different. It was building an altar and giving unto the Lord—not merely going to meetings, but a life being poured out.
You do not find Abraham teaching a sermon, not that I can find. He gives some wonderful statements, but he does not preach sermons as we understand them. We have developed a mentality today that is far away from the real order of things. Abraham built an altar.
Could I say to you tonight that, whether we realize it or not, every one of us has an altar?
There is something upon which our life is being consumed, poured out, and burned up. Something has become our altar.
Tonight, you are giving yourself to something or for something. You have an altar. I delight to see that the very first thing Abram does in his life unto the Lord is to build an altar.
It was the whole burnt offering that he offered. The burnt offering, you remember, speaks of consecration: the giving of one’s whole, total being unto God for what God wants.
Our problem today is that we are so conscious of the sin offering—getting a little peace, a little forgiveness, a little something so that we can feel better, and then going on our own way.
But Abraham, as a representative man, speaks to us. The first thing God really wants is a whole burnt offering.
Of course, the sin offering was introduced later with Moses, in order that those who had given themselves to the Lord might maintain fellowship with Him. But first of all, there was the burnt offering. He built an altar.
Then it says that, having built an altar, Abram removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent.
Is it not interesting that most people are tent-conscious first of all? “Where am I going to live? What is my dwelling place?”
Young people, let me say to you tonight: if you get your altar right—if, first of all, you understand the altar and what it really means—your tent will follow. It is automatic.
You dwell with that which has become the primary goal and object of your life.
I have noticed this for a number of years. When I find a young fellow or a young lady in confusion—“Should I go to this school? Should I go to that school?”—the real question is, “Where should I dwell?”
It is true with all of us, though it may be more evident in young people. Allow God to give you the full picture of the altar, of what it really means, and from that there will be a dwelling place that goes right along with it.
Read the lives of those who have really been poured out and given to the Lord. You find that it does not make much difference where they dwell. There is joy in dwelling because the altar has been established and the tent has been pitched accordingly.
So I say tonight, and what I would like us to get hold of is this fact: basically, every individual has an altar.
We must realize that the altar should be given to us by the Lord. If we do not accept the altar that has been given—the altar that the Lord provides—then we will develop our own.
What do I mean by that? I have been speaking for days about the things that are given and the things that are developed. God wants us to see, first of all, that His altar is a given altar. No other altar will meet man.
Likewise, that altar has its own sacrifice, which also is given. He accepts no other altar and no other sacrifice.
You know what I am heading for, do you not? That altar, of course, is the old rugged cross. It is the altar upon which the Lord Jesus Himself became the sacrifice.
The altar with which we must reckon is Christ Himself.
Here is the place where we meet God. But men, in their ambition, zeal, and longing to serve the Lord, often pursue an altar of their own making, their own building, and their own development.
It is here that you see individuals beginning to work for the Lord. The work becomes their all in all. Some project becomes their altar, or some cause becomes important enough that they give themselves to it.
I feel that God keeps saying to me, “Be very straightforward.” This is an hour when people need to be liberated and set free from some of the things to which they have given themselves—things that are a sinkhole for time, dissipate energy, bring tragedy, and waste a whole life.
It is too late to wait five or ten years and come to the end only to find that you have missed the real thing God was after.
Brother, sister, we must be very clear about the altar with which God is working.
When I see in Abraham’s life that he built the altar and pitched his tent, I catch a glimpse of the priority of his life.
This priority is expressed in several places in Scripture. You remember David:
One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in His temple.
“One thing” narrows it down, does it not? How many desires do you have? Can you narrow your desires down to one thing?
David had come to the place where he wanted to be poured out as the man who would fulfil God’s purpose in his generation. His desire was to dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold His beauty, and to inquire of Him.
I see something of priesthood there—a life given unto God.
You read of Mary when she sat at the feet of Jesus. Martha was busy and cumbered with many things. She said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?”
Jesus said that Mary had chosen the one thing that was needful. He established the priority.
What was Mary doing? Was she working for the Lord? Was she getting His dinner ready? No. Mary was occupied with the Lord. She sat at His feet. One thing was needful.
Our reasoning says, “Yes, but what about supper time?” The Lord always has the matter in hand. Do not worry. If He has called you, and you have seen and heard, He will take care of that.
Paul also states his priority clearly:
This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind,
and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Someone says, “Praise the Lord, that is my goal: to make heaven my home.” But that is not what Paul is saying. Eternal life is the gift of God, and that includes heaven. Do not confuse the gift with the prize.
God has laid out before us a prize. Paul presses toward the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. It is a high calling.
He says, “Not as though I have already apprehended; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended.”
Brother, sister, you can settle down and drift along, but you will be sorry. God’s Word is intended to lift us out of our playthings and our playing around, and bring us to the place where we want more of the largest things.
That is the life that has learned worship. That is the life being burned out, as it were, upon the altar—altogether for Him.
Let us go a little further before we leave Genesis 12. Abram moved from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.
I have been interested in the names of those two places. Here is Abram with his tent and his altar, and on one side is Bethel, while on the other side is Ai.
I believe this speaks pointedly of the life that is really poured out on an altar for the Lord.
You know what Bethel means. It means “the house of God.”
While Abraham may not have fully grasped all that it meant, it is significant to us today. The individual whose life is truly poured out unto the Lord for His purpose has one interest: to accomplish the thing that is God’s real interest.
What is it that the Lord wants? A dwelling place for Himself: a corporate habitation made of living stones.
Somebody says, “I have just one goal, and that is to get people saved.” Well, praise the Lord, that is a good goal. But what are you going to do with them then?
God wants living stones, but He does not want just a pile of stones. You can put one stone on the pile, then another, and another, making a great heap. But God is not after a heap.
He wants living stones that are saved, trained, fitted together, and built into a lovely house—a dwelling place for Himself.
Even this early in Genesis, God is fastening the priority before us. In the life of Abraham, his altar, his dedication, and his goal are related to the house of God.
The Lord cannot be satisfied merely with individuals. He wants to build us together as a corporate dwelling place.
This means taking stones, shaping them, fitting them, and working them together until they have their relatedness in the Lord, one to another. They function in coordination. That is Bethel.
Ai stood on the other side as a constant reminder. If the altar is right, God will produce the house of God.
Do you know what Ai means? I am told by those who know Hebrew that Ai means “a heap of ruins.”
Many a life that has served the Lord, many an individual who has sacrificed and given himself, may come down to the twilight hours of life and find that it has become Ai—a heap of ruin.
I stood in the office of a missionary who had returned after many years in Japan. For about twenty-five years in our area of Missouri, he had been well known as a radio preacher. We dearly loved him.
One day I slipped into his office, and he opened his heart to me. He said, “You know, I wish I could go back and recall fifty years of serving the Lord.”
I asked him what he meant. He said, “I have just discovered what Romans 12:1-2 means, where God speaks of the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. I have settled down at the good. I hope I qualify for the good.”
It spoke to my heart. May the Lord help us to see in the life of Abraham that the altar upon which we are being consumed must be related to that which God can truly be pleased with, rather than to something that is merely done but may become Ai.
Every man has an altar. Consider for a little while some of the sacrifices that are produced on altars that men have built for themselves.
Let us read Ecclesiastes 5:1:
Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God,
and be more ready to hear,
than to give the sacrifice of fools:
for they consider not that they do evil.
What is the sacrifice of fools? I feel it is offered at this altar of human development. It may sound strange, but if I were to put it in modern terms, I would say, “Be careful when you go to church.”
You could become stirred by something you hear. You could be moved in the realm of your soul by a message. Out of the impetuosity of the moment, you say, “I am going to do this for God.”
How many of you know what it is to become enthused in a meeting, really stirred up, and say, “I am going to go home and do this”? Then, six hours or a day later, the whole thing has passed, and the willpower is no longer producing it.
This is the impetuous sacrifice of fools. A person says, “I need to do something for the Lord,” and the soul—the emotion, mind, and will—responds. The individual makes what we call the sacrifice of fools.
No wonder the religious world goes through all kinds of enthusiasm. The boiler gets heated up, and everyone is hot for a while, but it hardly lasts until the next Sunday. Then they have to heat the boiler again.
I am not trying merely to be negative, but we have to realize that there is a vast difference between the altars we develop—causes, challenges, projects, and programmes that men use to carve out kingdoms—and the altar of God.
I am not saying that people are not sincere or zealous. But the religious world today is in a terrible condition.
This is why Ecclesiastes says:
Be not rash with thy mouth,
and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God:
for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth:
therefore let thy words be few.When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it;
for He hath no pleasure in fools:
pay that which thou hast vowed.Better is it that thou shouldest not vow,
than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.
The life with which God is dealing does not immediately impose itself in the realm of the soul. It learns how to hear inwardly.
Some years ago, after a morning service out West, several businessmen asked me to have lunch with them. When we had finished eating, one of the brothers next to me said, “Do you believe we should pay vows or fulfil vows when we have made them?”
It was a loaded question, so I said, “Tell me your story.”
He said that a high-powered speaker had come about a year before and claimed he had dreamed that God would help him raise two hundred thousand dollars for a certain project.
The best part of the dream, he said, was that everyone who gave would be blessed tenfold. He told stories of people receiving inheritances after giving. Before the meeting was over, he had received nearly one hundred thousand dollars in pledges.
The dear man sitting next to me, a faithful church leader, asked, “Do you think I should pay the vow? I vowed that I would give a thousand dollars. For six months now, I have been giving twenty, thirty, and sixty dollars at a time.”
I asked, “What do you think?” Around that table sat twenty men, and they all looked rather serious. They said, “We all pledged. We have had a hard time.”
What was it? It was a man’s private ambition. Men had made sacrifices, and I am sorry, but I am sure that is what it was.
People have been merchandised at the hands of religious experts. It happens all the time.
Brother, sister, people will use us for their own ends and make merchandise of God’s people. This is one reason why the religious world is in the condition it is today.
There is another sacrifice: the sacrifice of the wicked.
The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.
What is it? It is the sacrifice of those who have an ulterior motive behind what they do. It is not really for God. They are giving in order that they might get something. The heart is mixed in its motive.
A sacrifice that pleases God comes from a heart that gives to Him, for Him, and for nothing else.
I believe God is very careful about this. Years ago, when we were on the West Coast, we were involved in building projects and youth work. We had a lovely youth centre and were trying to do something for the Lord’s people.
During our annual financial drive, one of the businessmen came in excited one night. He said, “I have a real pledge—twenty-five thousand dollars—from the brewery company.”
Within five minutes, we had a division straight down the middle of the board.
One man said, “God could not bless this. We cannot receive something from the wicked,” and he quoted the verse:
The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.
Another man said, “I would take money from the devil if he gave it.” That is human reasoning. The end justifies any means.
But I thank God for one man in the group. I was a young fellow and did not know much in those days, but I never got over it when he stood and said, “Men, God will provide. We do not have to go out like this.”
That settled the hearts of all of us.
If we are working for the Lord with our projects, ambitions, and little kingdoms, we will be prone to use such means. But God has proved to my heart again and again that His work, done in His way, never lacks His supply.
There is another sacrifice: the sacrifice of the blind.
You remember when Samuel spoke to Saul and commanded him to destroy Amalek and all that they had. Saul went down with the army, but they spared the best of the sheep and the oxen, keeping what was good in their own eyes.
When Samuel came, Saul testified, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” He had a great testimony of victory over the Amalekites.
But every testimony has an undertone. Samuel had spiritual sensitivity, and he said:
What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears,
and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?
It is quite a thing to come before a man of God like Samuel, who does not simply listen to your words but listens for the undertone.
How often our words are polished, and our testimonies are well presented. We announce victory, but the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the oxen cry out loudly.
Saul said, “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.”
There is much of that going on today in the lives of people. We are ready to get rid of bad things, bad habits, bad flesh, and all the rest. But somehow we want to spare the best.
I look back now and see how merciful and wonderful the Lord was when He put a mirror before a proud young man. For the first time, I began to see the work of the cross.
It happened one Monday morning when I went to my office. In the middle of the desk was a church bulletin containing an article by A. W. Tozer, “The Old Cross and the New.”
As busy as I was that morning, I began to read it. I became irritated, because everything he said unveiled something about my own heart. I thought, “They put this in just for me.”
God had brought it to a proud young fellow. I read it, laid it aside, read it again a few hours later, and could not get away from it.
This is the strange, radiant working of the cross. Once it starts, you are caught. You cannot get loose. That is the beginning of the end.
The flesh profits nothing. Everything in the natural life has been condemned to death. You cannot take reputation, influence, or natural ability and offer it to God as though it were a sacrifice.
We often say, “What an influence that person has for God.” But that is exactly what it is—human influence. God alone draws men by the way of the Lord Jesus.
The real work of the Holy Spirit deals with the human spirit. As long as men have their own conception of working and serving the Lord, they offer the sacrifice of the blind.
Saul thought he could spare the best, take it down, and give it to the Lord, because he had never seen what a sacrifice truly was.
David, by contrast, understood sacrifice. When he came to Araunah’s threshing floor to make an offering unto the Lord, Araunah offered to give him the oxen and the wood.
But David said:
Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God
of that which doth cost me nothing.
What is a sacrifice? David had been schooled. As he said in Psalm 51:
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:
a broken and a contrite heart, O God,
Thou wilt not despise.
A sacrifice is first of all an inward reality. Then it manifests itself outwardly in the life.
If I merely do something outwardly, I could take an animal from the Amalekites or steal my neighbour’s ox and give it to the Lord. But that is not sacrifice. It is merely outward activity.
Samuel finally said:
Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to hearken than the fat of rams.
The religious world is filled with outward service, sacrifice, and activity—people giving time and energy—while God is trying to get hold of the inner man and say, “Listen.”
God wants the obedience of the heart. That has been too often missing.
There is one last sacrifice: the sacrifice unto the net.
Let us turn to Habakkuk 1:16:
Therefore they sacrifice unto their net,
and burn incense unto their drag;
because by them their portion is fat,
and their meat plenteous.
Who are these? They are those who have been working for the Lord and finally come to the place where the very instrument they use for the Lord becomes so wonderful to them that they begin to sacrifice to the tool.
Here is the net. There is nothing wrong with the net. But if the net gets too important, the first thing you know, you begin to glory in it, fall down before it, and worship it.
Do not look merely at someone else’s net. Let us see our own. What is the net? It is whatever we have come to trust as the means of doing the Lord’s work.
Pretty soon we begin to burn incense and sacrifice unto it, because this tool has become more important than God.
Many a dear man of God has desired a lovely building, a fine printing press, or a great organisation for the work of the Lord. Finally, he has had his eyes opened to see that he is sacrificing unto it.
God wants us to hold very loosely any tool that we have. The organisation, the building, the plan, and even an individual ministry may become more important than the Lord.
Then we begin to burn incense to the ministry itself. God gives the tool, yes, but the tool must never become the altar.
I was sitting on the West Coast a couple of years ago with a group of young people in a hippie commune. They loved the Lord.
After a meeting, they invited me to their place. About twenty of them sat in a circle, and I asked each one, “Tell me your history. Tell me your background. How did you get here?” We went around the circle, and it was a lovely time.
Then we prayed. I will never forget it. One fellow prayed in a sweet and loving way, “Help our brother to know how to lay down his own ministry.” They all agreed.
You serve the Lord until, pretty soon, you begin to worship the service itself, sacrifice unto it, and burn incense to it.
Many men who have walked with the Lord came to a place of decision: would they live unto the Lord, or unto the thing they had built?
Sometimes the cross has to deal with all that is false. There is an awful lot of this today. I see the ruin when men look down upon a whole lifetime of work and discover it was not built according to Christ.
It is not that God will fail to reward a cup of cold water given in His name. But do we want merely a reward, or do we want the ultimate thing—the real thing that God is after?
This is the burden of my heart. Let us take a look at what it means when you meet Him at His altar.
What does it mean when you discover that He is the sacrifice—the only One who could ever really be acceptable unto God?
It is true that when Jesus died, we died with Him. When He was buried, we were buried with Him. When He was raised, we were raised with Him. We are identified with the Lord on this side of the cross.
The living sacrifice that you present is not something of the old life. Everything on the other side of the cross has been condemned to death.
The only thing that can ever be given unto the Lord as a living sacrifice is that which has passed through the cross and stands on resurrection ground.
It is on this basis that Romans 12:1 says:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service.
I am identified with the Lord. In Him, the offering is made. My offering is nothing apart from Him. I am identified with Him and am a part of Him.
When we catch a glimpse of the real altar, the offering that He has made, and our identification with Him, we get away from sacrifices that men devise to please the Lord. The first thing we find is the sacrifice of praise.
You would almost think, from the way some people go at things, that God is really hard up for help. He could call a million angels to do His work with far less difficulty and fewer problems.
But He is working out a principle and a way by which He may exhibit and reveal Himself. It is really God who is doing the work in us and through us.
While we are occupied with the work, God is occupied with us. We may think we are doing something for Him, but He is using it as a platform to reveal Himself and work in the lives of His people, that He might work through them.
All the preoccupation with the work itself is quite insignificant compared with the reality of the Lord being expressed as true life.
That is what touches people. That is what brings them to God.
How can I get through to the neighbours of a certain brother? How can I really reveal the Lord and speak to hearts? Sometimes God creates the platform through difficult circumstances.
Here is a person in affliction, perhaps in the fire. In the midst of it, God allows the life He is working in that person to offer praise and thanksgiving unto the Lord. Someone who looks on has to say, “I would gripe and complain if I were in that situation.”
But the reality of sacrifice touches them. In the midst of questions and circumstances, the Lord Himself is revealing and exhibiting Himself.
By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually,
that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.
The sacrifice of praise is offered in the midst of what we go through, when the will is right.
Remember Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail. There they were in the middle of the night, in the inner prison, with their feet fast in the stocks.
The Scripture says that they prayed and sang praises unto God.
Do you suppose Paul was saying to Silas, “Now we have to give a testimony to the jailer in the morning. What about the fellow in the next cell?” No, I do not think so.
I believe they were simply alive unto the Lord. They were fulfilling priesthood in that dark place—singing and thanking the Lord in the midst of their circumstances.
This is where the sacrifice of praise is revealed. They did not feel like it. The circumstances were not pleasant. But the sacrifice was real.
How often we try to put pressure on people. The Lord says, “No, no. I will take the pressure on in My own way. You simply be what I have made you to be.”
In the midst of their praise, the Lord sent an earthquake. The prison was shaken, the doors opened, and the jailer came in.
God knows how to precipitate the circumstances.
That night, out of the sacrifice of praise, life came forth.
You cannot do this by gritting your teeth and pounding your fist, saying, “I am going to be joyful. I am going to praise.” You will never do it until you know the supply of the Lord through your union with Him.
In His death, burial, and resurrection, He is my supply. The only living sacrifice is mine as I am joined to Him in resurrection.
Otherwise, you will grumble, murmur, and complain. But the reservoir from which we live is the joy of the Lord. Otherwise, it becomes an empty well.
We are in church, and we can praise. But what about tomorrow?
There is the sacrifice of thanksgiving: the living sacrifice unto the Lord.
Beloved, God is interested in our lives becoming the means by which He reveals Himself.
He is the only One who is really worth it, and He does it as we find the right altar and become identified with the living sacrifice Himself.
It is in this way that God brings forth fragrance out of a life that is burned out and poured out.
There is such a difference between seeing that I have been working and realising that it is Christ who is doing the work in me and through me. In the midst of it, there is sacrifice through which He works.
Every now and then, we are caught by the reality of an individual whose life is poured out. In the midst of it, there is a sweet fragrance unto the Lord.
Was it some man’s building, some man’s activity, or some man’s great work for God that touched you? No. It was the reality of a life laid hold of by God.
I have marvelled many times at that day when Stephen stood being stoned, while Saul stood by consenting unto his death.
Saul of Tarsus thought he was right. He was working for God. He was zealous. He was trying to get rid of what he considered a destructive sect.
But he was caught by something: Stephen, a living sacrifice unto the Lord, in the midst of that awful hour of death.
There was a thankfulness, a praise, and a joy in Stephen’s heart. He said:
Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.
The preaching of the cross is not merely a vocal declaration of words. The word of the cross is the expression of the cross in a life.
For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness;
but unto us which are being saved it is the power of God.
That day, when Stephen was poured out as a sacrifice unto God, God got hold of Saul of Tarsus. He never got away from it.
Beloved, this is the reality of a life that allows God to do the work. The fragrance follows, and the glory is revealed to others.
My heart cries for that kind of reality: that the cross might do its perfect work in a life—nothing for self, but all for God and the Lord.
Now, we do not want to develop a martyr complex. We can become occupied with our own suffering in a wrong way. But what are we saying tonight? God draws when He is calling from a life.
Today, stand with the Lord in the working of the cross. Let Him cut us loose from mere activity and religious doing. It is not that we will do less; rather, what we do will come from a wholly different source. It will be of the Spirit and have a different quality.
When God really gets a life, we do not become passive or indifferent. Rather, we learn to be available and let the Lord do the work.
I hope you have caught it tonight. The highest calling that a life can have is to become a priesthood, offering unto the Lord the sacrifices that please Him.
Abraham’s life, our life, and the life to which we are called—the normal order of things—is a life that is continually giving unto the Lord.
In and through that life, God is pleased and satisfied.
Lord, I thank You for my brothers and my sisters tonight.
Thank You, Lord, that I sense in each one a longing for reality.
Oh, Lord, at times something we thought we could use for You has proved to be the sacrifice of fools. At other times, it has been the sacrifice of the wicked. Sometimes we have been blind, thinking that we could take something condemned to death by the cross and give it to God.
Oh, thank You, Lord, that it is You who work within. It is Your working through us.
We thank You that we do not turn in upon the work to which You have called us. But while we work, we want to be careful that we do not let the end cause us to do things that do not glorify You.
Sometimes we can become so eager to build the church that we allow things to take place that are not for Your glory.
Our ends may become first, but the real end is Your life—Your law of life expressed through us.
Do not let us see anything as worthwhile if what we produce does not bring glory to You. We pray, dear Lord, that You will hold us in check.
I thank You for speaking to my own heart again tonight.
Oh, Lord, the longing of us all, we pray individually, is that You would make our lives sacrifices that really please You.
Maybe two or three others, before we dismiss, would simply pray and commit your heart unto the Lord. It may be an expression for someone else. We will wait a little while.