I want to assure you that it is a real joy to be back. And to say once again that these years—I cannot believe it has been ten years. I do not think that is right, but anyway, we will let that go for now.
Now that I am on the East Coast much of the last few years, I was thinking as we flew in this afternoon, “Well, why have you not been back for a number of years?” We would start in Norfolk and work all the way up to Jamaica. It has been years since we have been here, and I guess the answer has been that after we moved to Indianapolis, I was traveling most of the time.
Folks would ask me, “Oh, what is happening in Indiana?” And I always said, “Not very much.” It seems like it is the hardest place I have ever gone. In the midst of it, one day the Lord said, “Maybe you would like to stay home and let something happen there.”
And I said, “Lord, it is impossible here. I would rather go other places.” I really went through a battle for two or three years, enjoying traveling other places. Finally, I came to grips with the fact that God was saying, “I moved you to Indianapolis. I want you to stay there and let the Lord work.”
I can say tonight that God has wonderfully moved in our area. Even Billy Graham had tried to have a couple of meetings in Indianapolis, and they were difficult. So you see how difficult it really was.
But we have seen the Lord raise up a number of fellowships throughout the central area. Once a month, about fifty elders come together. I am no longer identified with the fellowship that we started, but we sort of move around. They call me “Pastor at Large.”
It is not easy. I sometimes would rather stay with the group we were with; then you only have one group’s problems, and now I have twelve.
I bring greetings from my wife. She was planning to come until noon yesterday. We were not sure; we thought maybe we would drive through. We had a dear friend visiting us from New Zealand, a woman we had met three years ago in the South Pacific. She flew in from Singapore and was spending the days with us, and we did not know how long she was going to stay.
Of course, you do not get up and leave company, usually. So my wife had to stay home, but she is with you tonight in heart.
But I want to share with you just a word that God has been developing in my own heart, having to do with the impossible.
As the Lord has been speaking in my heart, it is the fact that He seems to delight to take His people into very difficult circumstances in order that He can demonstrate through them the glory of the impossible.
I was invited by Jamie Buckingham about three years ago to go with him to Sinai. He had taken a troop of men about ten the year before, and he wanted me to go on the next trip. So I started studying about Sinai and Israel’s sojourning through the wilderness.
The more I got into it, I came up with one question: “Lord, why would a loving God take His people out of Egypt into the most desperate place—the howling wilderness, sand and rocks—and demonstrate that He loves them in the midst of all of that?”
Maybe you have never thought along that line. I had only seen pictures of it. After I really looked it over and prayed about it, the Lord said, “Do not go,” and I was glad. First of all, it cost $2,500, which I did not think I ought to waste. Then I began to realize that there was not much to see. It was mostly going to develop some character in men who would learn to live together. So I took the easy way out and did not go.
But in the process of it, I began to study God’s taking His people out of Egypt and His desire to bring them into the land He had for them. The question came up: “Lord, why would You take a people into such a difficult situation?”
He seemed to say to me, “If you can understand why I did it to them, you will understand why I take My people through difficult things now.”
Maybe I am in the wrong place tonight. Nobody here has problems, difficulties, wilderness, or situations—I do not know. But I am convinced that there is something God has been trying to say to my own heart for a number of years, and I will share this with you for a little while tonight, trusting that the Lord will enlarge it to our hearts.
If you will, turn with me to 1 Corinthians 10. Here is a portion that justifies our using this as an example.
Moreover, brethren, I would not have you ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud,
and all passed through the sea;
and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
and did all eat the same spiritual meat;
and did all drink the same spiritual drink:
for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them:
and the rock was Christ.
Howbeit with most of them God was not well pleased:
for they were overthrown in the wilderness.Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
Now these things happened unto them by way of example;
and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear:
but God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able;
but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.—1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 11-13
I see two things that come in. Some may need admonition tonight, lest there become carelessness or a little casualness. Others may need the word where God says that He is faithful. The Lord is faithful to take His people through.
I want us to bow for a moment before we go any further and ask that God will have a personal word to our own hearts.
I have said this before, and I need to say it again: one of the most difficult places for me to come and minister is where Brother Kong has shared such a rich ministry. For days, as I have been praying, it seems as though all I can hear is, “What could you ever say to those people?” But I have to reject that and believe that God has a word to our hearts. But you will have to claim it too. Do you understand what I mean?
You have forgotten my habit, have you not? When I put my hand like this, I mean it is your turn to respond. Ten years forgotten! Oh, let us pray, shall we?
Father, we are not here just for Bible reading tonight, but we are here for You to sort out a personal word to our hearts. Lord, I refuse any intimidation and claim that somehow the Spirit of the Lord will bring that anointing that makes things very real and very personal to our hearts.
So we thank Thee. We know that You are faithful. God is faithful. We stand on that tonight. You are able to meet our needs and sort out a special word for each heart. We believe You are able to bring admonition to someone who may have been drifting or has been a little casual. Lord, speak to the heart tonight according to each need, and we will be sure to give Thee the praise, the honour, and the glory. We ask it in Jesus’ lovely name. Amen.
One thing that impressed me as I began to get into this study was the fact that, in God’s work of bringing a people out of Egypt and bringing them into the land of Canaan that He had promised them, the years they had been in Egypt—in servitude and bondage for four hundred years—had really played their toll.
But the time came when God, through Moses, led them across the Red Sea. They were out approximately two years, and they came to a place called Kadesh-barnea.
It was a very crucial place, because there they sent spies over into the land to see if it really was what God had promised. Do you know how they came back? The hearts of the people melted with fear.
Now, what I am interested in is this: here they were for two years, during which time God gave them a place to worship. Someone has said—and I think Scripture verifies it—that they went through ten murmurings during those first two years.
Would you believe that God was very patient, almost as though He did not hold those murmurings against them? But once they came to the place called Kadesh-barnea and the choice was made, from that time on they began wandering.
Here is the first real distinction I want you to consider tonight: up to this time, they had been pilgrims, but now they became wanderers.
What is the difference between a pilgrim and a wanderer? We look at the people back there and say, “My, too bad they missed it. Thirty-eight years wandering around in the wilderness as wanderers.”
If I understand the pilgrim quality that was in them as Moses led them out, there was, first of all, a sense of the purpose God had to work out. There was something of a sense of destiny. They enjoyed much of God’s provision during that whole period of time, but there came a point when they just became wanderers.
Then God began to speak to my own heart: “Vern, you know a lot about the Bible. How do you know you are not a wanderer? How can you be sure that you have not lost the keen sense, the awareness, of the destiny—the thing God has really laid hold of you for?”
That began to bring me to this distinction: I believe there is a difference between a goal and a destination.
A destination has primarily to do with a place. I think we would all agree that Israel was interested in getting into the land of Canaan, the land that had been promised to them. It was a wonderful place that had been promised, and they were place-conscious.
But a goal, at least as we are going to use it tonight, has more to do with a purpose. I think it is possible for people to reach a destination and miss a goal.
What do you mean by a goal? Well, we know Romans 8:28 very well:
And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good,
even to them that are called according to His purpose.—Romans 8:28
Now, this shocks people. I will shock you right off the bat: I do not believe that heaven is our goal.
I heard a dear elderly sister get up in a meeting one day and say, “I just have one goal in life, and that is to make heaven my home.” The sad thing was that everybody sort of said, “Amen,” as though that was wonderful. Except that in my own heart there was a growl, and I said, “Oh, dear Lord, she is really coming short.”
Heaven is not our goal. Heaven is a destination.
Somebody says, “Are you going to take heaven away from me too?” No, no, no—cheer up now. Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” I am not taking heaven away. But what is the goal that God really wants to work out?
The very next verse says that those whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son. We often stop short, but the thing God is working out is to bring us into conformity to His lovely Son, the Lord Jesus.
The goal has to do with something that God gets. If He can conform me to the likeness and image of the Lord Jesus, then it brings glory to Him. He says, as He said of His first Son, “This is My beloved Son. I would like many more just like Him.”
But the place has to do with what we get. “Oh, Lord, will it not be wonderful when we get to heaven?” Yes, it will be. But it very quickly reveals the real throb of our heart: “Oh God, what are You getting out of it? What will satisfy Your heart?” Or, “What am I going to get out of it?”
You say, “Brother Vern, you have not changed your theme.” No, it is every chapter in the Bible: What does God get? What do I get?
The goal, then, has to do primarily with what God is getting. I believe that pilgrims have a quality about them that says, “All right, just so Your heart is made glad, just so You are getting something out of my life, then I will be satisfied.”
A destination is all right, but thank God we have something more. I believe Israel primarily centred on just getting into the land.
Let us go back to Exodus 15.
And Miriam answered them,
Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously;
The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.—Exodus 15:21
Here they are now. They have come out of Egypt. Moses has led them across the Red Sea, and they just get across the Red Sea.
So Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea,
and they went out into the wilderness of Shur;
and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water.—Exodus 15:22
Here they are, three days out, and they come through a no-water situation. How many have ever had a no-water situation? That means no job, no money, no friends, nobody understands—a real no-water situation.
The first tendency for folks when they get into that kind of situation is to say, “I must be backslidden. I must have missed God’s will. I must not be where He wants me.” If you do not think that, someone will come along and whisper in your ear, because he is always accusing, saying, “You have really blown it.”
No job. Nobody understands. No water. I think you know what a no-water situation is. How many of you would agree that Israel had not really had time to backslide yet? I mean, they were just three days out.
I think what God is saying to us at this point is that the God who loves and the God who has prepared something for His people is going to bring us into conflicts.
Conflicts come because God is primarily concerned with developing character, bringing us into the place where we will learn to trust and get to know Him. People need to make the distinction between conflicts and consequences.
A consequence comes because of disobeying a law or violating a principle. A consequence comes because I am reaping something I have done. But here is Israel, three days out. I believe it is not a consequence, but a conflict.
I should be honest: I thought I had really arrived at something when I made that little discovery between conflicts and consequences. Then I read at the bottom of my Scofield Bible the very same thing. I thought, “Lord, how did I miss that? I have used this for over thirty years.”
It says:
These bitter waters were in the very path of the Lord’s leading, and stand for the trials of God’s people, which are educative and not punitive.
God was not punishing them. He had brought them out into the schoolroom to train them. It was a conflict—education.
I began to look back and realize how many times I had joined sides with the enemy, or with people, in thinking that what I was going through was something the enemy had brought, or was a consequence. Yet God, in His wonderful mercy and preparation, was bringing me right into the conflict to educate and to teach.
When you look into Scripture, suddenly you begin to realize how many situations we have misinterpreted were really conflicts. Let me give you one. In 1 Samuel, there was a lovely handmaid by the name of Hannah.
Hannah was the favoured wife of Elkanah, her husband. She had an adversary by the name of Peninnah, the other wife, who was very fruitful in giving many sons to Elkanah. Then one little phrase says about Hannah that she was barren. The last phrase says, “But the Lord had shut up her womb.”
Barren, but the Lord had shut up her womb.
I believe that if Hannah had been fruitful like the other wife, she could have gone on at a certain level for quite a while. But God had something very distinctive to work out through Hannah. She is one of seven women in the Bible who are barren.
God uses that barrenness as a way somehow to move in and get something of His purpose. Israel was in decline, and God, knowing it, was secretly working on a man who would be born as the means by which He would bring back Israel’s glory and some restoration.
So He comes down to this little handmaid and brings a conflict into Hannah’s life and closes up her womb. You know what Hannah does? Out of her crying and bitterness, she finally gets around to the place where Hannah says, “Lord, if You just give me a son, I will give him to You.”
I think all the angels say, “Hallelujah. That is what we have been after.” God was wanting someone who was not turned inward and concerned for a son for herself, but a son for God. This is the way Samuel comes on the scene.
So I say that the barrenness of Hannah was a conflict. Agreed? Brought about by whom? By God. “God, You mean You set up conflicts in our lives?” “Yes, I delight to,” He says.
Let me give you another illustration. Here is King David. David has finally succeeded in bringing the ark into Jerusalem.
That day, as the parade goes down Main Street, Jerusalem, the priests are carrying the ark. David is so excited and so elated before the Lord that he throws off his outward garments, his kingly garments, and dances before the Lord.
They say sometimes they would have a buffoon or a clown doing it, but this day it was the king. And do you know who was peeking out the palace window while all the rest of Israel enjoyed the procession? Michal, David’s wife.
Michal was not with the crowd, not a part of the great jubilation. That night, when David gets home, he has had a wonderful day, just excited before the Lord. Only married men would understand this, I guess.
He gets home after a wonderful day, walks in, and the first words his wife says are, “My, the king was all glorious today, dancing in front of all Israel without his kingly robes.” What a mocking accusation.
For years I did not understand that, because I did not realize there were two sides to our ministering to the Lord. There is the side in which we stand as kings, put on the royal robes, and represent Him. The key word is for: we are representing God; we have something for Him.
Then one day I saw the other side that God uses to balance our lives, where we become as a little child. We lay aside all the royal robes and become unto Him as a servant.
I said, “Lord, I feel called to the for. Give me the robes. I like to represent You.” Sometime later, become unto You. God said, “I am going to so balance your life that there will not only be the representing for Me, but there will be the ministering unto Me.”
That brought a great liberation in my life. Some of you would never believe it, but I was able to dance like David even. Shocking, is it not? Well, praise the Lord. God works the balance.
Anyway, that day when Michal met David as he came in, she made an awful accusation. You know what the next line says?
And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.
—2 Samuel 6:23
I want to ask you a question. Hannah’s barrenness was a conflict. Michal’s barrenness was what? A consequence. I believe that.
Somebody says, “Brother Vern, I do not know whether I have conflicts or consequences. I do not know which it is.” You want the good news? You can get the same lesson out of both.
You do not really have to know right now. You can just say, “Lord, consequence or conflict, get out of it the education for me that I need.” Are you there? People get so stalled: “I do not know whether it is conflict or consequence.” Well, do not worry. Get the lesson.
If there is barrenness, it could be a violating of a principle or breaking a law. It could be a conflict. God may be saying, “I am trying to squeeze you into a new level where I can get some real fruitfulness out of your life.”
After I found this, I was visiting with a pastor—a very godly man, much used of the Lord in his area, really a soul winner. He came so puzzled and said, “Brother Vern, I do not know what has happened, but the last two or three years it seems like my life has just become barren. Instead of being able to win souls, I am just in a drought period.”
I probed a little, asking if the Spirit of God was dealing or speaking anything especially. Finally, I said, “Do you know the difference between a conflict and a consequence?” I explained it, and I said, “I believe this is a conflict.”
“If God left you on this level, you would just continue on. But God is trying to crowd you into a new place where you can get a new fruitfulness out of your life. Maybe the Lord has shut up your womb, like Hannah.”
Notice in Exodus 15. It says there was no water.
And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter:
therefore the name of it was called Marah.
And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?—Exodus 15:23-24
This is one of those first murmurings. Here they are, just a couple or three days out. I have wondered many times why they did not call a group together and have a prayer meeting and say, “Lord, we are just excited. We have seen how You got us out of Egypt and how You got us across the Red Sea. We are beginning to learn Your ways. We are just wondering now what You are going to do. We can hardly wait.”
That is what we do, is it not? “Lord, a new opportunity, another classroom, another opportunity to learn of You.”
Ten murmurings—ten murmurings. They could have been ten opportunities to get to know Him.
My burden is simply this tonight: the God who brought this people out into that terrible howling waste—sand, blowing, just nothing—brought them there as a place to help them learn to know Him. It seems to me God says, “I delight to reveal My glory in impossible things.”
That is dangerous, because you have to be sure that you are not in a consequence but in a conflict that God is taking you through. But in the midst of the impossible, you begin to say, “Lord, no water. Here is this conflict. My heart is open. How can Your glory be demonstrated in the midst of the impossible?”
I began to face that in Indiana when the Lord said, “Just stay home for a while. Do not run all over the country. There are people here who need the Lord.” But I said, “Lord, this is impossible. This has been a burned-over area. I could give You all ten reasons why it was impossible.”
Furthermore, we had a group of older brothers in the fellowship who had been brakes. You know what a brake is? Something that says, “No, it will not work. We tried it. It will not work.” I was the steering wheel, always trying to give some vision, and all I had was brakes.
I began to cry, “Lord, there are other places that are ready. They have a motor out there. Some young people are ready to go. They need a steering wheel—no brakes in that place.”
In the midst of it, God began to speak to my heart and said, “I want you to dare to believe that I can do something even in Indianapolis and central Indiana.” I know the Lord put it in my heart. I began to claim, “Give me twelve young couples.”
The older people were in—well, I will not say that—but they were difficult. “Lord, give me twelve young couples who are mouldable and enthusiastic, and let them be the motors.” I began to claim it and then forgot about it.
He asked me to stay home for one year and not travel at all. In eighteen months, I suddenly realized I had had six weddings among those young people, and He brought some others in. It utterly changed the whole character and outlook.
Now, you understand, we older brothers were really the stable part of it, but I saw what God could do through young people who were alive and reckless for the Lord.
It began to be the change of a whole new thing. I came to realize that God was asking just one thing: that we begin to accept that the impossible was the way He always delighted to reveal His glory.
How many of you know an impossible thing tonight? Really, something difficult, something impossible around you? God is saying, “I am in it. I am there. I may not have manoeuvred it, but I can surely use you in it. I can work some glory out of this until everybody will have to say, ‘It surely was not Vern; it was the Lord.’”
That is the way of the Lord: the glory of the impossible.
How could God take a people out and bring them to the land through that awful schoolroom where they were for two years? You remember their question: “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?”
I do not know how many people there were. Some folks say two million. A friend of mine says the Hebrew is confused there and it was probably a couple hundred thousand. But I can accept the fact that it was still a miracle to feed two hundred thousand people in that howling waste.
First, He gave them water. Then He gave them manna. God says this is all written for your encouragement, as an example. Cheer up—I have a wilderness for you, and you, and you.
The glory of the impossible being revealed.
Verse 25 says:
And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree,
and he cast it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet.—Exodus 15:25
I believe God hides a principle here, and it is this: “I want you to know at the very outset that all through your journey, all along the way, there is going to be one governing principle. If you do not learn this, everything will be bitter. But if you learn this, you can turn everything into sweetness.”
How many would like to know that principle? You have heard it. It is a tree cut off from its source, a tree that was put in. It is the principle of the cross.
God is saying, “All along your pathway into fruitfulness and reaching the goal, the instrument I am going to use is to somehow always bring you up into My viewpoint so you can see what I am doing in it.”
As you look at this situation and the cross is working to cut you loose from your plans, your own getting, and your own gaining, you will see how I can turn everything into sweetness.
The tree is the cross, which became sweet to Christ as the expression of the Father’s will. When our Marah is so taken, we cast the tree into the waters, and guess what? They become sweet.
I do not believe there is one thing we can go through but that we can begin to look at it and say, “Lord, what are You doing? What is this conflict?” He says, “It is a means by which I am going to work out some character, strength, and conformity in your life.”
More than that, He will cause you to be poured out in blessing to somebody else. You say, “Lord, I have been praying that You would use me—a little differently—but I have been praying.” Are you there?
You mean that this is the first principle we learn? Bitter water becomes sweet.
I am going to take you ahead, because we need to learn this in Exodus 17.
And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, by their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord, and encamped in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people to drink.
—Exodus 17:1
Another no-water situation. Can you not just see Moses saying, “No problem, folks. Principle A: any time there is no water, you just cut off a tree. This works.”
Except that God, this time, has a way higher than our ways.
Wherefore the people strove with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink.
And Moses said unto them, Why strive ye with me? wherefore do ye tempt the Lord?
And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said,
Wherefore hast thou brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?
And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people?
They are almost ready to stone me.—Exodus 17:2-4
The Lord says, “Moses, remember that rod of authority that you used to part the Red Sea? I want you to go up and strike the rock, and water will come out.”
Incidentally, He says, “Moses, this is Principle B. Principle A, you use a tree. Principle B, you use the authority of the rod.”
Would you like to know something? They came to another no-water situation quite a while later. This time Moses inquired, “Lord, what will we do?” You know what Moses did? He listened, but he did not hear.
God was saying this time, “Moses, it is Principle C. Principle A: you put a tree in. Principle B: you take the rod of authority. Principle C: Moses, this time I want you to speak to the rock.”
The Hebrew word is different. The first time, when he struck the rock, it is a picture of Christ crucified. But the Hebrew in this instance is a picture of a lifted-up rock, which is Christ risen and ascended, and we speak to Him.
But you know the story. Moses listened, but he did not hear. He went out and took the rod and used Principle B. Had it been me, I would have struck the people, I think, after all those years of wandering with them.
God wanted him to speak to the rock, but he struck the rock. Do you know what God began to show me in this? I guess those who teach may be guilty of it, or victims of it, more often. It is so easy for us to get hold of a principle of truth and say, “Lord, now I know what to do.”
Principle A, Principle B, Principle C. Do you know why God keeps taking us on? His ways are above our ways.
Do you know what the secret of it all is? There is one little phrase we need to read back in Exodus 15:26:
If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God,
and wilt do that which is right in His eyes,
and wilt give ear to His commandments,
and keep all His statutes,
I will put none of the diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians:
for I am the Lord that healeth thee.—Exodus 15:26
Suddenly I knew what the Lord was saying. My proneness has always been to have a principle for every situation. God said, “You have missed it all. I am just trying to teach you that today you learn to hear My voice again.”
Suddenly, I realized why He says, “Today, if ye shall hear His voice.” I made that general, but I think He means today. Today, people, hear His voice.
Anybody guilty besides me of saying, “No water? Praise the Lord, I will just cut a tree off. It worked last time”? The only trouble is, it does not work then. So you say, “Well, Principle B worked. Let me try that.” You are somehow depending on principles.
I never dreamed I would say that. God is trying to bring us to the place where we are dependent on Him. But if I am knowledge-centred, then I am not Him-centred.
Somebody says, “What is the point of learning principles?” I am afraid I lost you now. Are you trying hard? Lord, make it a revelation to the heart.
There is nothing wrong with wisdom—nothing much. God is trying to develop in us a sensitivity to hearing. He may go back and say, “Use A,” or “B,” or “C,” but He wants the right to have our ear continually.
That is problem number one in most of God’s people who are well taught. “Praise the Lord, I have a verse. I know what to do. I have a principle.”
God is always taking us on. You do not remember this, but I remember when I was in the first grade and I learned to add. Two and two is four. I came home and said, “Mother, I know how to add.” I felt I had arrived.
Do you know what that sneaky teacher did in a couple of weeks? She introduced a fraction. I said, “I am not going to learn. It is enough to add.”
My mother persuaded me and said, “Now, son, there are a couple other things you will be learning too, so you just want to get acquainted with subtraction.” I settled in and mastered it. Then guess what she did? Multiplication, then division, and long division.
All of life has been something like that ever since. That is right.
God, who delights to take His children on, is saying, “There are new lessons.” But the whole secret of it is to bring you to know Me.
I had missed the key in Exodus 19. Here they are, two months out, at the beginning of the third month.
In the third month after the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt,
the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai.
For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the wilderness of Sinai,
and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mount.—Exodus 19:1-2
Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying:
Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel:
Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians,
and how I bare you on eagles’ wings,
and brought you unto Myself.—Exodus 19:3-4
Just checking to see if you have the right version. Well, He brought them out to bring them in, did He not? Now listen carefully. He brought them out of Egypt to bring them into the land, but first of all He had to bring them unto Himself.
He brought them out to bring them in, but the way He was planning to do it was to bring them unto Himself. “I brought you unto Myself.”
This may be difficult to understand, but I think you can get to the place where you say, “Lord, if I just get acquainted with You—if You really bring me unto Yourself—I am not even interested in heaven.”
Come on now. Do you know why? Heaven is our place, but heaven is Him. It is not the place; You brought me unto Yourself. You have occupied me with Yourself.
The whole course—every no-water situation, every no-food situation—is to bring them into an acquaintance with Himself.
I can just see people going out of here tonight saying, “Praise the Lord, I found the key. Lord, would You bring some more conflicts quickly so I can learn Principle H and Q and W and X and get to know You better?” You are going to pray that way, are you not?
“Lord, hurry it up. I just want to come really unto You, be utterly occupied with You. You completely satisfy my heart. I can live in a howling wilderness with You and be perfectly content.”
Do you believe that? Well, I do, but do not try me.
This is not just the Old Testament. This is what it is all about. God takes His people into situations through difficult things. The glory comes out of the impossible.
He says:
Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant,
then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all peoples: for all the earth is Mine:
and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.—Exodus 19:5-6
God wanted to bring a people out and put them on display, as it were, and say, “This is what I can do through a people who are occupied with Me, alive unto Me, and who find Me as their supply and source.”
At this point, I believe we need to make a distinction between provision and blessing.
I had this distinction for quite a while and was afraid to share it until I read Watchman Nee’s book Twelve Baskets Full, and then I knew it was truth. I had verification.
There are many people who have their needs met. God provides, and they say, “Is it not wonderful? God is meeting my need. Look what He is providing. I must be where He wants me.”
Oh? Did God provide for Israel all the way through the wilderness? How about the manna? How about the rock that followed them? How about the cloud that protected them in the daytime and turned into a street light at night?
Provision. Were they in the centre of God’s will? So do not say that provision is proof. Provision is no proof that you are exactly where God wants you. The only thing it proves is that God loves. That is all it proves.
God is faithful, sometimes in spite of us. He provides. But I hear people all the time saying, “Oh, God is providing. They have answers to prayer, and the manna comes.” Something in my heart says, “Well, I am glad they are thankful, but that is no evidence that they know what blessing is.”
I believe blessing is something utterly different. You follow Abraham, and blessing seems always to have to do with God working through us unto fullness for the realizing of His purpose.
Provision primarily centres in whom? Me. But blessing always centres in God’s flow through, that there can be adequate overflow because there is an alignment unto purpose.
You get that in two places. Jesus was feeding the crowds that had gathered. There was nothing to eat, and they gathered the little boy’s loaves and fishes. He blessed the loaves and fishes and fed five thousand.
The Scripture says there were twelve baskets left over. Something about blessing is that what God gives never is just for me or ends with me; it has flow-through. There is always adequate left over.
Of course, I am in on the enjoyment, but there is always that which is left over. Five thousand fed, twelve baskets left over. Then, a chapter later, He is feeding four thousand, and there are seven baskets left over.
When I read that, the Lord said, “This is the way of blessing: there is always adequate left over, because it is for others.” Are you following?
Oh, God, do not let us settle as wanderers, getting consequences, just trying to get to a place with mere provision. Give us the sense that we have been laid hold of by God to be channels of blessing, not merely objects of blessing.
Now, I am well aware, as you are, that there is a great prosperity emphasis going around the country today. It is abused and misinterpreted.
The strangest thing is that there is an element of truth in the fact that when God really lays hold of a life and wants to use it in blessing, God is not stingy. How much flow-through does He want?
The only safeguard is this: God says, “You are not the object; you are the channel.” Oh, how much He dispensed through Abraham, through Job, and through others.
Lord, make us world-blessers. Do not let our little narrow horizon centre in on, “I know how to be prosperous and enjoy all the provisions of the Lord.” God has called us to be channels—world-blessers.
I do not know, but my horizon has been enlarged in the last year or so. God has been saying, “You are not expecting enough. There is much more that I want to do.”
We centre in this little phrase, and I leave it with you tonight. God is saying that this people are a treasure unto Him above all people: “Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.”
I think in the midst of this, we come either to prove the Lord or to provoke Him.
“Prove Me,” saith the Lord. “Prove Me. Allow Me to bring you into the full measure of what I long to do through a life that has come to understand something of the purpose, the goal, and what I am really doing.”
There is a difference between proving the Lord and tempting the Lord. Somebody says, “How do I know whether I am tempting the Lord or really stepping out and proving God’s faithfulness?” We will not go into that tonight. Just leave it there.
But let me say this: it seems to me that the difference essentially is that when we begin to ask beyond that which God is concerned to give, the spirit becomes, “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Can God?” You know your spirit. You sense your spirit in it.
Or there is the sense that comes when we begin to say, “Lord, I have already discovered something of Your faithfulness, and I choose to be an opportunity for You to prove Yourself. I prove You; You prove me. Allow me to go through so that You can have an opportunity in the impossible to demonstrate Your glory.”
Let me close with this. It seems that this people who came out into the wilderness were there these first two years, and the principle God was working on there was this: He gave them a dwelling in which He would meet with them.
The tabernacle was a dwelling for them—a place where sinful people could meet the Lord and find access into His presence. He was building a dwelling for them.
But after God takes them along and brings them into the fuller thing that we are going to see, He is working toward building a people for His dwelling.
Let me see if I can make that clear. Here they met at the tabernacle. They came as a priestly people unto Him, and the emphasis was that He was building a dwelling for them.
Now we are going to see that He is building a people for His dwelling—living stones that He is fitting together, that there might be the dwelling of God in our midst.
I question whether we can really move on into the fuller thing that God is after until we suddenly realize that we are not just individual stones.
The most difficult thing these years has been for me to discover that God is building His people into relationships, and how much I really need one of my brothers on each of my blind sides.
The corporate aspect. I have been such an individualist through the years: “Lord, use me. Make me spiritual. Let me be a blessing.” Then the whole thing begins to change character, and He says, “I am not interested in just a bunch of little individual stones. I want a dwelling in which I can express Myself corporately.”
Well, I do not have messages. We just sort of start and stop, and I feel this is maybe enough for tonight. Can I ask you a question? Is it possible?
Is it possible that with all the grace God has given in bringing someone out of Egypt—which represents the world—there was first the Passover? God, by blood, used redemption that night of Passover to separate them.
Then there was separation from the world through the Red Sea, as their old world passed away and they came onto new ground. Someone says, “I know I have experienced the blood of the Lord Jesus. I know in my baptism my whole world was left behind, and I have come onto new ground.”
But it is through this whole period right here that God is working another separation. This time it is from our fleshly appetites and all that keeps us from really having a single eye.
It is becoming a pilgrim quality: “Lord, let all these things that take place in my life—difficulty, the impossible—be opportunities, conflicts that bring about Your goal and Your purpose, that I might be the blessing. Let me prove You.”
Let me learn that I have come out, but the primary thing is to come unto Yourself.
I know you have heard this a hundred times. If you have an ear, you were listening, because I know it has been said around here. But I just want to underline it anew.
Do not be too sure. Those, He said, who left—we read it back in 1 Corinthians.
Howbeit with most of them God was not well pleased:
for they were overthrown in the wilderness.—1 Corinthians 10:5
The strangest thing is that they drank of the rock. They enjoyed the spiritual meat, but He was not pleased.
Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
Now these things happened unto them by way of example;
and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.—1 Corinthians 10:6, 11-12
I need to hasten. I do not think the subject is salvation here. I do not think it is a matter of heaven. I think it is a matter of falling from the full purpose—the full thing that God has.
I am really sure of that, because surely out of the million God took out, He could save more than Joshua and Caleb. The emphasis here is not a matter of salvation, but a people pressing on to the full thing that God wants.
So He says, let it be an admonition:
There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear:
but God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able;
but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.—1 Corinthians 10:13
Take the words home: God is faithful. Lord, I am glad You are more interested in this than I am. You are going to pull me through, and I can stand the pull. You have more at stake than I do. How many believe that God is faithful?
In the midst of it all, He has this lovely schoolroom.
Father, tonight, I cannot speak the word to any spirit, but I pray that You will encourage Your people that You are faithful. You are really faithful to maintain that pilgrim quality about us—people who are just sojourners here.
This world is not our home. We have our eyes on the city. We have our eyes on Yourself. We have our eyes on something else that is far better.
In the midst of it, we are believing, Lord, that You will not let our spirits fall into murmuring or complaining as we go through any situation, but that You will develop in us a new thankfulness in the midst of everything, a new rejoicing.
We are in Your schoolroom with Moses, learning the privilege of being occupied with You. Lord, I pray that You will help our ears to learn to hear today again.
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation,
Like as in the day of the trial in the wilderness.—Psalm 95:7-8
Not one of us tonight is going through without some no-water situations. But, oh, we rejoice in the midst of it that You have a tree. Like the Lord Jesus, we begin to interpret everything by what You get—what is working out for Your glory.
And, of course, how it will bring even in us a conformity. Make it real to our hearts tonight. We will be sure to give You the praise, the honour, and the glory. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.