Father, we thank Thee for the joy of the Lord and the sunshine within our hearts. We thank Thee that we come with expectancy this morning. We believe, Lord, that Thou wilt send out a word to each heart.
I pray that even now, Lord, in this quiet moment, there will be that open response deep within that says, “Oh, Lord, a fresh word from Thyself.” We just believe Thee to do this, Lord.
We thank Thee this morning that Thou knowest each one of us. Sometimes we cannot even put into words the deepest longing. We do not know ourselves, but Thou knowest. We pray this morning, Lord, that Thou wilt be great. Thou speak. Open Thy Word. Give us a clear sense of anointing and Thy direction. We give Thee the praise, for we ask it in Jesus’ lovely name. Amen.
Praise the Lord. Good to see you. Some of you we have not seen since last November, when we were here last. Some of you we meet today for the first time.
Since early this morning, I have been asking, “Lord, what should we share?” There are so many things that are helpful, so many things that are good.
I remember Dr. Tozer saying years ago that if there was anything needed in this hour, it was a prophet. I do not claim to be one, though I would sure like to be.
The thing he said that distinguished a prophet was this: he was not a man who just spoke truth, however good and helpful it might be. He always spoke a word that was relevant to the moment, to the need.
I think we all need that today: a word that is relevant to the need. How many truths are there in the Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, that could bless us, help us, quicken us, and encourage us?
But, you know, a word in season—a word just for the moment—is the thing that our hearts cry for. I believe that we are at junctures in our going on with the Lord where we are sort of treading water, and it is so necessary that God give us a special word.
Lord, having said that, Thou wilt have to do it.
I think maybe we will ask you to turn this morning to the Gospel of John, Chapter 11—a very familiar portion.
You recall that John 11 records the raising of Lazarus from the grave. I believe that Jesus loved to visit a place called Bethany. Bethany was a place where He found rest. A few furlongs out of Jerusalem, He would get away from the busy crowd. There He would find rest apart from all the activity.
I never understood this chapter. It seemed that at a certain point Jesus was almost cruel. He did not act as I thought He should. Of course, He has puzzled me many times in Scripture, and I have had to cry out, “Lord, why is it? Why is it that so often Your action is so different from the way I would have reacted?”
But here is a lesson this morning that I believe will help us move beyond the outward—the externalities of just being religious—to get to what is the real heart, the reality.
As we said last night, Jesus said, when there were things they could not understand:
I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.
If you understand that, it gets to the very core, the very heart, of spiritual reality. You only have to move around in ministry for a while and see all that is going on today, and it would be almost easy to faint if you did not know the heart, the very core, the very center, of spiritual reality.
That is what I am concerned about these days: “Lord, move us out of our forms, our outwardness, into the heart—the very reality of what You want.” Somehow I believe that if we can accomplish that, we will be able to go on to other places God has for us.
Now, the situation this morning is found in John 11:1:
Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.
It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
Therefore his sisters sent unto Him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.
When Jesus heard that, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.
Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He heard that Lazarus was sick, He rushed immediately to Bethany.
Are you reading? Would you not? Somebody is sick. The phone rings: “Hurry, my brother is sick.” And on top of it, Jesus could heal everyone. How much more obligated would you feel? Do you follow me?
I do not know how to say this, but for years I wondered how Jesus could ever lay His head on a pillow and rest. He could solve all the problems. He could heal. “Lord, if I could do that, I would.”
But you see, the Lord does not give that kind of power until people are ready for it. Power and purpose go together.
What is the answer? Well, I have to take you back and cover a little ground, as we did last evening, to get to the very heart of the matter.
I do not believe that we can understand why Jesus moved with the calm and poise that He did unless we realize what I like to call the tyranny of the soul—that which pulls and pulls and pulls.
Now remember, beloved, as we have been saying on other occasions when we have been with you: God has uniquely designed man with an empty room inside. It is our human spirit. He made our spirit for Himself, as a place where He might come and dwell.
I do not know why I keep insisting, but it seems that this innermost room, made for Himself, can never find its fullness, satisfaction, or completeness until it finds it in the Lord Himself. We are made for God.
Our spirit, the within, has been so designed that it can touch reality. It can fellowship with God. I believe that in the beginning, when God created man in the garden, man’s spirit was like an open door. There was an openness toward God.
God communed, fellowshipped, and talked with Adam in the beginning. Adam’s spirit—this heart we are referring to—was like an open door through which contact was made.
You have seen a little child in innocence: no restriction, no inhibitions. I am often embarrassed sitting in a home when a little two-year-old girl runs in and says, “Do you know what Mommy just did?” I say, “No, do not tell me, sweetheart.” You are apt to hear almost anything.
What is it? It is the innocence, the openness, of a little child.
One day, when Adam and Eve sinned and turned to their own way—after they took of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—this openness changed. There was an awareness that they had sinned, a consciousness that something had come in.
This open way of innocence and openness changed, and conscience developed with knowledge. With knowledge, conscience came in. There was a knowing that they had done wrong and were somehow no longer open to God.
This is why they began to clothe themselves in fig leaves: drawing back. It is a movement from innocence to conscience, as we speak of it in Scripture.
So, our spirit was initially as it was with Adam: open, honest. But now there is a door, which means there is a door closed.
God designed man not only to have openness, but also the capacity for fellowship. Scripture says that God is Spirit, and our fellowship and worship of Him are to be by our spirit: touching the Lord, contacting Him, fellowshipping with Him through the spirit—the capacity within.
Not only is there the function for fellowship, but there is also within man the power of intuition: to know things directly.
God designed this in man: openness, capacity to touch, to fellowship, to worship spiritually, and then to know things in a direct way. We need more and more to understand the functioning of our spirit if we are to understand the difference between outward things and spiritual reality.
When Adam sinned—and it is true for the whole human race now—the way by which God begins to restore and make fellowship possible is, first of all, that the blood is applied to our conscience.
The consciousness of sin keeps man from boldness and access to God. It is only by the precious blood that once again we can have boldness to come before Him. Oh, how thankful we are for the precious blood which gives boldness.
Jesus said in Revelation 3:20:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
This fellowship is possible only because man, through repentance, opens the door. When we are born again by the Spirit of God, repentance opens the door. We invite the Lord to come in, and He sets up, as it were, a table of fellowship in our spirit.
Then this intuition, this capacity to know things that has become almost dead, is quickened. I believe He lights the lamp of our intuition, and thus we are able to discern. God is able to reveal.
Proverbs says that the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. Man’s inner lamp is pretty dull, if there is any light at all, until we are born of the Spirit—quickened in our spirit. Then God lights the lamp, and suddenly we come to know spiritual things.
Why is it that when someone gets up from their knees, having just trusted the Lord Jesus, and you say, “What has happened?” they say, “Well, I am saved.” “How do you know?” “I know because I know because I know.”
What is it? It is not something your mind can figure out. It is your knower. What is your knower? It is this quickening.
His Spirit beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God.
So we say that in our spirit now the conscience is clean, we come into fellowship, and our intuition—the lamp, so to speak—is lit. What precious privilege we have in knowing this spiritual birth.
This is what it means to be born again—born from above. His Spirit joins my spirit. That is spiritual birth.
Now the tragedy is this: the great majority of people have never made much distinction between their spirit and their soul. The soul of man includes the mind, the emotions, and the will.
When God designed man in the garden, I believe the tree of life, representing God’s own uncreated life, was to be for his spirit. But what tree did man take from? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I used to think it was merely the tree of good and evil, but it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In partaking of that tree, man developed his soul: his mind, his will, and his emotion.
And what happened to the spirit? That room which should have received the life of God became largely dead, dark, empty, and shrivelled up.
Dr. Barnhouse used to say that it was like a three-story building, and the top story fell into the second. So, as far as most people are concerned, it is just a two-story building: body and something inner.
But we know the difference because our spirit has been quickened and made alive. His Spirit witnesses with our spirit. That which is born of the Spirit comes to have a spiritual being within.
When God comes to join our spirit, we are made something other—something totally different from what we were by creation. First Corinthians says that man became a living soul. The soul was the dominant functioning part of Adam.
So many people, even in fundamental circles today, think that what man needs is forgiveness—just to be brought back to God. He needs forgiveness through the blood and reconciliation, but he needs something else. He needs spiritual life. He needs God’s Spirit joining his own spirit.
The first Adam was made a living soul. The last Adam, the Lord Jesus, came as a quickening Spirit. When His Spirit joins my spirit, a new creation—a new species—develops.
Instead of my soul being the dominant part, His Spirit joining my spirit means the spirit is to become the leading part. It is to bring the whole of the soul into submission to our spirit. I believe this is absolutely fundamental if we are going to know spiritual reality.
The tragedy in the religious world today is that people have developed their minds with doctrine and understanding about the Bible. Sometimes they feel very keenly in their emotions and clench their fists, saying, “I am going to be more spiritual.”
They try to contact God by their soul. I did it for years, holding Youth for Christ meetings up and down the West Coast with thousands of people. Then one day, by God’s wonderful grace, He broke in.
Oh, what a change it brought to realize that spiritual reality is not something of the soul; it is of our spirit. It changed the whole outlook in ministry.
Oh, I believe, brothers and sisters, that if God’s people could somehow be awakened to see how much of their time, life, ministry, and energies are by the powers of the soul! The soul can be so religious. It can get so activated for God.
There are many meetings that just stoke the boiler. You know what I mean. You get all enthused. They stoke the boiler and get everybody enthused. How long does it last?
Maybe until next Sunday, but usually hardly until Wednesday night. Then they stoke up the boilers and get people enthused again. What is it? Their minds, their emotions, and their will saying, “I will do this.”
One dear man told me, “We have committees for everything, including a committee to keep the committees enthused.”
The answer is this: once the Holy Spirit begins to activate and bring our spirit alive, God’s way is to supply to our spirit day by day that which gives quickening. Paul says, having received this sufficiency, we do not faint.
I know what it is like to faint if I have to live merely by the power of the soul. How many of you know what it is like to look through a page or chapter in your Bible and say, “I know that. I have read that too. Nothing new there”?
You go from page to page. What is it? You are depending for spiritual quickening simply in the realm of the mind—the soul.
Oh, how blessed and wonderful when the Lord takes a portion you think you know pretty well and suddenly shines some light upon it. Something new, something very fresh! This is the way of the Lord working in our spirit.
If we do not have this supply continually, we faint.
Having said all of that, maybe we are ready to go to John 11 and see what is really involved. When Jesus gets word that Lazarus is sick, He says:
This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.
Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus. When He heard, therefore, that Lazarus was sick, what did He do?
He abode two days still in the same place where He was.
“Lord, why do You not rush to Lazarus?” You know why? I would like to call this lesson this morning The Tyranny of the Soul.
The tyranny of the soul manifests itself in different ways. First, there is what we call the tyranny of the urgent. How many of you know what urgency is? “Hurry now. Hurry, hurry.” Urgency on every hand.
Jesus knew, because He was attuned to the Father in spirit, that the Father was going to work something out for greater glory in this. He could fully grasp all their feelings, but urgency did not dominate Him.
I know a little of what it is like to walk into my office, and everything around me jumps out with urgency: an unfinished book, a dozen letters that need answering, projects crying out, “Hurry, hurry, hurry. Get me done quickly.”
The tyranny of the soul can rule and dominate. I copied down some months ago a statement from a man with some discernment. He said, “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.”
Urgent things—things that press—keep crowding out the important. “Someday I am going to read that good book. Someday I am going to really study my Bible.” But in the meantime, the phone rings, the neighbours come, and all the urgency presses in.
So he goes on to say that the important thing rarely has to be done today, or even this week. The urgent tasks are the ones that yell for instant action. They seem, at the moment, important and irresistible, so they devour our energy.
Urgency pressing: the tyranny of the soul. I do not think I need to labour this anymore. We are acquainted with it, are we not?
Yet the loveliness of our lesson is this: even though Jesus had a soul very sensitive to everything around Him, He did not walk with the soul ruling over Him. His spirit was attuned. He abode two days where He was.
You cannot do that when someone you love is sick unless your spirit is attuned and you know that God has something else. Are you following?
I believe that most of God’s children get into an awful mire all the time because they have not learned the secret of reality with the Lord. “Lord, I am to be occupied with You, shut up with You.” There is no other way.
Urgency only gets worse. We are always saying, “Somehow I will learn to get on top of it. Things will get better.” How many of you have found, over the last five years, that it has gotten any different?
It only gets worse, because the soul gets more possessive and more sticky. You have to have God’s way out. It has to be the Lord.
Then, in John 11:7, Jesus says:
Let us go into Judaea again.
His disciples say unto Him:
Master, the Jews of late sought to stone Thee; and goest Thou thither again?
Here is another tyranny: the tyranny of fear. His friends are saying, “Lord, do You not remember? Last time You were there, they tried to stone You.”
If you live in the soul life and it is dominating, fear grips you. But Jesus did not allow it. Outward circumstances were not dominating Him.
There is another tyranny of the soul besides urgency and fear: the tyranny of affections. We have already seen it:
He whom Thou lovest is sick.
Oh, how our emotional ties to people—to loved ones—can govern us. I remember when our little boy was about two. We were shopping, and he saw a toy gun on the shelf. He looked at me and said, “Daddy, buy me that gun.”
I said, “Son, you have enough.” He walked away pouting and feeling hurt. About a minute later he came back, looked up, and said, “Daddy, if you really loved me, you would buy that gun for me.”
You know what I mean by the tyranny of affections. The tyranny of those you love. “He whom Thou lovest is sick.”
Could I say to you this morning: in our relationships with others, we have to know the cross that reaches in and cuts us loose from all these affections and ties. If we do not, affection will dominate and pull at us until we are victims all the time.
When I begin to really love and know people after the flesh, it is very easy to let the sword go down. “Lord, I do not want to hurt so-and-so. After all, they are just growing. They are just a baby.” You do not want to allow the sword to touch and cut.
The servant of the Lord wields a two-edged sword. I will never let it cut that way unless I know the cutting this way. The very place I spare myself, I must spare you.
You will discover this with your children. Our boy grew up, and I knew there were things he had to go through to become a man for God. There are no shortcuts. He has to go through it.
But I know the suffering of it. We like to spare; we will spare if we can. Yet the sword has two edges: it cuts this way as well as that way. It has to be the work of the cross dealing with our soul life.
Thank God when He begins to do some cutting work in your life, that you might have a ministry—a spiritual, releasing ministry—to others.
So we have these tyrannies of the soul: urgency, fear, and affections. You never know how deep the cross will go into a life until it gets into some of these relationships with one another.
Thank God, He has a gentle knife, but it cuts. I am so glad to be in His hands. He is the Surgeon. It hurts, but it is necessary. It is the operation we have to know and experience if God is going to bring us into continuing spiritual reality.
I look back and say, “Thank You, Lord, for every operation.” Things are removed where necessary. Thank You, Lord, for the spiritual reality that comes by the operation and the working.
It is grievous while we are going through it, but afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised thereby. Thank God.
I never understood for a long time why Jesus, in John 11:9, breaks in with something that seems not to fit the context. It was like He was talking about one thing and suddenly turned to something else.
Jesus answered:
Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.
In other words, when you walk in the normal course of the day, you have the sun—outward light—that keeps you from stumbling. Thank God for outward light. It fulfils its place and purpose.
But then He introduces something else:
But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.
“Lord, why did You switch the theme so drastically?” Suddenly He is talking about outer light and inner light. What does it mean?
I am not sure, but it has been a satisfying answer to me. It seems as though the Lord is saying that the soul walks by its outer light, but the individual who knows the Lord has an inner light.
Once we begin to transfer from walking by our soul to walking by the inner light God gives, we go through what has been called by saints down through the years the night of the soul.
What is it? In our early days, as we go on in Christian experience, much of it is dependence upon the soul. But suddenly God shifts gears within us. Instead of walking by the light that is external, He brings us into a walk by the light of our spirit attuned to His.
This is why we are called children of light. What light is this? Somebody says, “It is all the light I get in my mind.” I know people who can quote practically the whole Bible, but as far as I am concerned, they are still stumbling.
I am not speaking discouragingly of God’s Word, not at all. Thank God for those rich in the Word. But thank God for those who know the light that comes to our spirit, to be children of light.
During the dark days in England, when the nation might have experienced what the French Revolution brought to France, they say England escaped much of that awfulness because of George Fox and the work that spread through the nobility.
Do you know what George Fox called the experience his people had? He called it the inner light. Today we speak of it as the new birth, new life, and other terms; but there was a real quickening of inner light that came.
I believe what Jesus was saying could not be understood unless they came to know and experience that which comes to a child of God: the inner life.
You walk by the sun, by outward light, and you do not stumble. But if a man walks in the dark, he stumbles because there is no light in him.
I received a good illustration of this the other day. I was at the airport in Seattle, preparing for a trip back to Minneapolis. Suddenly there was a blinking of lights. The person beside me nudged me and said, “We are transferring from outward energy to an internal source.”
I said, “Thank You, Lord.” That is the blinking, that dark night for a moment. This is what really happens when a life, for years, has been walking by external light.
The plane was plugged into the airport. But suddenly it had to be released if it was going to take off. All the generators had to switch to operating by internal power.
I sat there and thought, “Lord, this is why people do not take off. They cannot take off. They are still plugged into external energy.”
If God could bring us to see the supply, the resource, that we have by His Spirit to our spirit! I am speaking of that supply which God gives to our spirit.
In John 11:11, Jesus says:
Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.
The disciples thought He was speaking of ordinary sleep, so Jesus said plainly:
Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.
Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples:
Let us also go, that we may die with Him.
He is feeling pretty strong in the soul now—I mean sympathies.
When Jesus came, Lazarus had been in the grave four days. Martha went out to meet Him, but Mary sat still in the house. Martha said:
Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
But I know, that even now, whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.
Jesus said unto her:
Thy brother shall rise again.
I want you to notice that Martha was well taught—thoroughly orthodox. She knew all the teachings. She knew there was a last resurrection. She was a good fundamentalist, and I say that kindly. She knew her Bible.
Martha said:
I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
“I know that, Lord. I can give You chapter and verse.” But Jesus said:
I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?
There is a little controversy going on. “Yes, Lord, I believe he shall rise in the resurrection at the last day. Hallelujah! I believe the Bible.”
But Jesus asks, “Believest thou this?” What is the “this”? It brings it into the now. Who is standing before her as the resurrection and the life?
There is a tyranny of closed conceptions that is very difficult to deal with. I have to be careful here, because thank God for all that we have been taught. Thank God for all the conceptions we have. We must have them.
But is it not a tragedy when a life says, “I believe that,” and always presses it off into the future? He who is life Himself stands right there and confronts us now with the openness, honesty, and immediacy of fellowship.
How many times has the Lord confronted you with the nowness—the immediacy—of something, and you have said, “Someday, yes, Lord. Someday I am really going to have victory. Someday, Lord. Someday.”
Someday. Mañana, as they say in the South. No, you will not.
Oh, but an hour is coming—and it could be this morning right here—for someone who has always lived in the future, or way in the past. There is such a proneness to do this.
“Someday the children will all be raised, and I will have more time. Someday things will be better. Someday I am going to have real victory.” No, you will not.
I believe God can press us into the experiencing of the now—right now with God. He does not divide it into past, present, and future. He looks down the road, and it is now.
The Lord keeps shutting me up to say: “Here, this morning, right now, enter into the reality of that experience—victory, or whatever is involved. The life supply is available.” When? Right now.
Think of the man who had lain at the pool of Bethesda all those years. Every time the angel came down and troubled the water, the first one who got in was healed, but somebody always got in ahead of him.
Then Jesus stood before him, and the man told the same story: “Somebody always gets there before I do.” He was waiting for the time and someone to help him, and he did not realize Who was standing there.
Oh, Lord, we have heard that the angel is going to come and trouble the water. If we could just get in! And here He stands, right before us.
While our soul is always living in time, our spirit this morning can partake right now of the reality God wants to make real.
Here are closed conceptions. I have to say to my friends: it was the Pharisees, the thoroughgoing fundamentalists of that day, who could not somehow fit Jesus into the way things were all figured out. They nailed Him to a cross.
I have to say it kindly: they are doing it again. Our closed conceptions say, “We know exactly how He is going to do it. We know exactly what it is going to be like.”
I get afraid when I see a whole pile of books and a whole lot of men who have it all figured out, saying, “This is it.” I would like to believe they had the answer, but I do not think many are going to be that bold about His ways. His ways are different.
The tyranny of the soul brings all the struggle lives go through when God is trying to readjust some conceptions, enlarge them, and bring us into the experience of reality right now.
Why? Because I can participate in Him and in the life supply right now.
You know the rest of the story. Martha says:
Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.
Then she went away and called Mary her sister secretly, saying:
The Master is come, and calleth for thee.
As soon as Mary heard it, she rose quickly and came to Him. When she came where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying:
Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
I might have expected it of Martha, but Mary said the same. Mary was the one who had sat at the feet of the Lord Jesus, occupied with Him. Yet the humanity of both of them is very evident. Their brother had passed on.
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. They said, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept.
I like this, because I am not implying this morning that when God begins to enlarge and quicken us more in our spirit, and our soul is brought into submission to our spirit, we no longer have a soul.
We have a soul, but it is not operating independently. For most people, the spirit is so dead and shrivelled up that the soul is the dominating part of life.
It is proper for our spirit to express itself through the soul. It is the only way it can. Jesus groaned in His spirit, and then it says Jesus wept.
I have been through times when I thought, “Oh, if God had just not given me a soul, I would be all right. If I could just be all spirit.” Oh, no. You cannot take spirit, soul, and body apart that easily. They are far more interrelated than we realize.
Your spirit uses the soul to express itself, and spirit and soul use the body. Thank God, we are one in that sense.
Jesus groaned in spirit, but He wept. Some people think there should not be any weeping. You do not become less human. It is not that your humanity is changed; it is brought into line.
There may be more weeping, but it will not merely be self-pity. It will not be the soul independently doing it. It will be from another source: bowels of mercies, the Spirit, compassion. It will express itself.
When we come to know life in the Spirit, there will be more joy—joy in the Spirit—and a release through our soul. There are times when you must speak to your soul and say, “Rejoice in the Lord. Why are you disquieted? Hope thou in God.”
Speak to your own soul: “Soul, quit dragging your feet now.” If we do not have this, we are going to have deadness on our hands.
There is a time and place for my spirit to be released through a soul, but thank God it is not something that starts with the soul. It is by the Spirit that it is released.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha said:
Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.
Jesus said unto her:
Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
Then they took away the stone. Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father.” Oh, I love this. Can you see that all the way through, His spirit has been moving in touch with the Father?
This is the spiritual reality God has to bring us to: where we do nothing merely out from ourselves, but from the supply, touch, and contact He has with our spirit.
This is not something extra-special—the deeper life or the super-spiritual life. This is to be the normal life of God’s children: the normal spiritual life.
I am absolutely convinced, beloved, that God keeps shutting me up on this. We have been speaking about it long enough. It is time to live with our spirit more and more alive and attuned, and expect God to make it more and more real.
I got up the other afternoon needing a walk after being penned up in the hotel with meetings. I walked down the street fellowshipping with the Lord and singing unto Him. It seemed the Lord said, “I am going to bring somebody along.”
I said, “Oh, Lord, are You going to bring someone along?” Your spirit keeps saying it. As I walked back, I saw a young fellow sitting on a retaining wall some distance away. He had a red book by his side, and something in my spirit went out: “Here he is.”
I am timid. You might not believe it, but I have been very backward and reserved for years. I said, “Lord, You open the door. Open the door.”
Just as I got near him, I noticed it was a red Bible. That would have made it easy to say, “Praise the Lord, that is a good Book.” I was about to, when he looked over and said, “Say, could you tell me what time it is?”
I had passed fifty people on the street, and not one had asked me that before. But he did. I walked over and said, “Say, I like the Book you have there. Do you know the One it is talking about?”
He said, “Yes, sir, I do.” We had a good time. That was it.
I do not know, brothers and sisters, but I would like to encourage you to believe God more and more, to have your spirit attuned, to walk with Him, and to expect God.
Expectancy takes you out of the humdrum, the monotony of life. God delights to do it. He has put within us our radio system, but for most people the antenna is in and they have gone dead.
What is it? It is right here. If we do not have that inner light, we have to walk by outward light.
I was tempted to go on to Chapter 12, but it is twelve o’clock. We will leave it with this this morning.
Let me press this home to you. Do you see what I am trying to say? Spiritual reality is the thing people are crying for.
How many of you have gone to a service, gone to church, and received some doctrine? Your emotions were lifted up. You walked out saying, “I will do it.” You can do all of that by the power of the soul and not be particularly spiritual at all.
Sometimes you can go into a meeting, and your mind cannot get hold of much, but your spirit is fed. You fellowship. You go out and say, “What did I learn?” Probably nothing. But your spirit has been fed.
I have heard many brothers and sisters say how much more wonderful the Lord’s Table is every Sunday morning when we gather.
At the beginning, everybody tries to feel their way into worship. They try to think their way into conceptions. Sometimes they even will themselves into experiencing all that Jesus means.
No wonder the Lord’s Table—the remembrance—does not mean much. But once you come to touch spiritual reality and your spirit begins openly to go out toward the Lord in fellowship with Him, what a difference it makes.
Brothers and sisters, we have to know the difference between that which is of our soul and that which is of our spirit, or we will be continually confused in the realm of spiritual reality.
Believe me, the soul can build up some pretty spiritual atmospheres. You can get in a meeting where everything is so reverent and quiet that you would think it was spiritual. Not necessarily.
It is not in the outward atmosphere. Some souls do not feel that they can worship unless there are stained-glass windows, an organ, and quietness. It has nothing to do with it.
Whether you are in a cage or wherever you are, if your spirit is alive and sensitive and has come to know reality, that is the difference.
We have to press through to know what it is to know the Lord more and more, to fellowship with Him. Reality is by the Spirit.
I have read this before, but I want to take you to Psalm 42 and show you what so many people go through.
Psalm 42 says:
As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
So panteth my soul after Thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:
When shall I come and appear before God?
Our soul—the whole of it—longs for reality too. It longs for God. My mind, my emotion, my will: the whole of my soul, like the little deer, pants for God, for the living God.
Then comes the emotion:
My tears have been my meat day and night,
While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
It seems that when I get quite fervent in emotion, I ought to get closer to the Lord. But even in the midst of tears, the question comes back: “Where is God in all this?”
Many people get an emotional release and think it is spiritual. I have had to deal with people at altars who get a little release in their emotions and think it is spiritual. Not necessarily.
The psalmist says:
When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me:
For I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy day.
My soul is longing for something, and it says, “I think I will go to church. It is Sunday. I will go.” Why? Because I might get lifted up. I might get some overflow from someone else.
This is what most people get in church: a lift. Their soul gets some help from the overflow. Their emotions and feelings are lifted.
But then he comes back and says:
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
And why art thou disquieted in me?
Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him
For the help of His countenance.
Help is wonderful. When you go to a service or meeting where there is joy and life, your soul gets some help because of the overflow from someone else—perhaps help that comes from the Lord.
But then, in Psalm 42:7, he says:
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterfalls.
What is the deep? It is the spirit, is it not? Our spirit has been made so that it calls to the deep within God, and I believe the deep within God calls back to our spirit.
The spirit of man is like a big, empty room made for God. You can put things within it, but they roll around and never satisfy. Only God, by His Spirit, can satisfy the deep within our spirit.
I like the translation that says, “Deep calleth unto deep at the call of the fountainhead.” What is the fountainhead of all things? God does the first calling. His Spirit calls for a place to dwell.
Then Psalm 42:11 says:
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
And why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him,
Who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
What is the difference between verse 5 and verse 11? In verse 5, there is help from His countenance—something coming from outside. In verse 11, He is the health of my countenance.
I think the difference is this: the soul gets its help from the overflow—from God, from others, from something external. But health is when my own spirit has come to know the continuous supply, and from within He begins to change the countenance so that I may be some help to others.
Can I use an illustration? My wife does not like it, so I guess I can use it here.
I believe most people live with a milkman. Every day the milkman comes and brings some milk. Thank God for the milkman; they get help.
But is there something better than having a milkman? Having your own cow.
I have been trying to give an account of that for thirty years. Now you have the answer: your own cow.
Oh, how many people live by the help and overflow of somebody else’s milkman all the time. They go to the meeting with their little bucket: “Praise the Lord, I got some help today. I hope it lasts until Wednesday, and then I can go back and get some more help.”
See what I am trying to say? I believe God develops within us His own supply. That is a crude way to put it, but it is the supply of the Spirit to our own spirit that brings health.
I do not want to be misunderstood, but I think I can tell the difference in lives when people discover the living supply of the Lord in their own spirit.
It is wonderful to run off with your little milk bucket to get help. But what God is wanting to do is bring us into the supply of the Spirit to our spirit.
Then we are not half so ready to run. Guess what might happen? You might have some people coming to you to get some help.
This is what God needs to do. Why? We have found Him as the supply—the health of our countenance—that others might have help.
Let us pray, shall we?
Lord, we do not want more knowledge this morning. We do not want merely some illumination for our minds. We want—we long—that Thou wilt bring Thy people into the experiencing of reality with Thee.
Lord, I pray, oh, I do pray, that for every brother and sister here Thou wilt bring us, Lord Jesus, to the inwardness, first of all, of honesty and openness with Thee.
So many of Your children do not know fellowship daily—the livingness of the supply with Thee. The reason is, Lord, that in some place a door, a thin veil, something has come in, and they are not open.
We claim, Lord Jesus, that honesty this morning. I do not know what You would put Your finger on or what You would touch, but dear Lord, if You have been taking us out of all our doings and activity, and out of all the soul’s attempts to find satisfaction in things, thank You for the drought You have brought.
Thank You for crowding us to Yourself. Thank You for bringing us to the place where it is just so simple this morning: You want honesty. You want openness. You want transparency.
I believe You to do it, Lord. Do not let us squirm away from the thing You would touch, the thing You would point out that keeps coming back whenever we really come close to Thee. Oh, let it be dealt with.
Thank You for Your blood that cleanses. Thank You, Lord, for the obedience that purifies the soul. Thank You, Lord.
If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Make it real, we pray. Lord, deal with each heart, each one, according to that thing. We will give You the praise, the honour, and the glory. We ask it in Jesus’ lovely name. Amen.