Praise the Lord.
We began yesterday by speaking about dedication, and our concern was: What is dedication? I believe that it is the Lord’s mind for us to continue this morning.
I would like to speak to you on the subject of dedication according to knowledge.
I do not know, but there is something about me that loves a dedicated person. When I see someone who is all out, and there is an intensity about their being—someone who throws themselves wholeheartedly into something—it echoes back, and I say, “That is my sort of person.”
But I have to admit that they are the most difficult ones to get along with. So you are always in a quandary; you have a little bit of a problem.
That is why I think I appreciate all of you this morning, because I sense in each of you, in varying degrees, of course, a real longing for the fullness and to really go on into the things that God wants.
We were saying yesterday that once the Lord has brought us back from our place of rebellion, from our lost and hopeless condition, and through His mercy has redeemed us, He has brought us into a place where we stand in freedom, as it were.
The question is, what is my freedom for?
The tragedy today is that so many people think freedom is from something, and that is only one part of it. I am free from something, but my freedom must always be for something or unto something.
This is why we said yesterday that once we come into this place where He has redeemed us, loosed us, and set us free, we then have the glad, higher choice of presenting ourselves and giving ourselves unto the Lord. This is where dedication comes in.
Maybe I should ask: How many are here this morning who were not here yesterday? Would you raise your hand? One, two, three, four, five, six. All right, thank you. We will just make that background and perhaps not go on with it any further.
One of the difficulties, as we were saying a moment ago, is that in our real longing to be all that God wants us to be, in the zeal and dedication of our hearts, we come into collision. We come into problems with others who are equally as dedicated.
Turn with me to the book of Acts. If you think we have problems today, I would like to have you see a real problem. I am glad I was not there.
Let us turn to Acts 21, beginning with verse 14.
And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done.
And after those days we took up our carriages, and went up to Jerusalem.
There went with us also certain of the disciples of Caesarea, and brought with them one Mnason of Cyprus, an old disciple, with whom we should lodge.
And when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.
And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present.
And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry.
And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law.
Paul, you remember, had been schooled at the feet of Gamaliel. He had been of the strictest Pharisaic sect. When God reached down on the Damascus road and caught this man for Himself, so to speak, Paul was the zenith of zeal and dedication according to the knowledge that he had.
It was quite a thing when God reached down and touched a man who was so schooled and so convinced in his ways. The Lord began to open his mind and give him understanding.
God had been sending him out among the heathen, among the Gentiles, among those outside the law and outside Israel. Paul had come back with a glowing testimony of what God had wrought through him. How wonderful!
Of course, it took a little stretching among these Jewish believers to imagine that God could do all this out there. “Lord, we never thought You could do that any other place but with us—with we who are Jews, and we who are the privileged and elect according to God.”
But God had wrought something in their hearts, and so they glorified the Lord. Who can deny miracles? Who can deny all that had been done?
Yet they had a problem. This fellow whom God was using out there was teaching some rather strange and peculiar things. Here he came back, and the elders and brethren in Jerusalem did not quite know what to do about it all.
What Paul was telling them was wonderful, but he was not fulfilling all of their Mosaic economy. He was not fulfilling all the little interpretations that were so real and precious to them, all that they had been schooled in.
I wonder if you can begin to see a little of the strain, stress, and conflict in it.
Read verse 20 again with me:
And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law.
For years, I do not know how I pictured this, but I somehow felt that everybody in Judaism was in darkness and blindness, representing one group; and those who came to believe in the Messiah, who came to believe in Christ, became another independent group. It was not quite that way.
These believing Jews were still a part of the temple and all the rest of it. You who have come into a new measure of light and insight may wonder what to do and where to go. It is quite a thing when all you have is the temple. You leave this—what do you have? Do you follow? What do you have?
All down through this period there was transition. There was change going on, and it was not easy.
They were believing Jews, but they had come out of a matrix, out of a cradle, and everything about their awareness and consciousness had been molded for hundreds of years.
These elders, these leading brothers in Jerusalem, did not see things too clearly yet either. We live way over here on this side of the cross, and with our new glasses we say, “Oh, praise God. We have had all the Pauline interpretation and instruction.” They did not have it yet.
We forget that it took quite some time before the revelation and unfolding that came through Paul were presented. Here was this awful struggle going on.
Let us see what else they said in verse 21:
And they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.
What is it therefore? the multitude must needs come together: for they will hear that thou art come.
I wish you had not come. If you had not come, we would not be in this problem.
I do not know how to explain this this morning, and I do not want to. This is just to paint a little background.
I have to say that the last year has been a wonderful, blessed year of walking with the Lord. But it has been a year of being thrown into stress, difficulty, and conflict as I have never known in my own soul before.
I have determined before God that I must walk in truth and in all the light that I have. I believe that God is doing something for this hour and for this generation—something that we can hardly conceive and hardly grasp. But I believe it is a lot bigger than we realize.
It would be so much easier. I cried out and said, “Lord, just let me go to Richmond, Norfolk, Washington, and places where I sort of fit a little better—where they appreciate me. Lord, let me stay in Indianapolis, even though it has a lot of problems too.”
Yet the Lord keeps opening doors. I sense something of a compelling, thrusting work as He says, “I am doing something a lot bigger than you realize. It is not confined and narrowed down to some who have just little interpretations. I am doing a bigger thing.”
I do not want to overwork that this morning, but I do sense it. Last week we were in Detroit. It was not a big group, but there were a thousand or twelve hundred people gathering, meeting after meeting, and my heart was torn.
You begin to look out over all these various groups that come in, and your heart says, “Lord, how can You ever minister in the midst of it all?” Only God can do it.
But we have to believe that God is going to take hearts that have dedication, and He is going to help us in that dedication to move according to renewed knowledge after the image of the Lord Jesus.
A renewed knowledge. You say, “Do you finally get to the place where you know?” It just shatters every last conception we have had. I do not care which group we come from. God is doing a stretching work. Do you feel the stretch?
I have been asking since yesterday, “Lord, do not let any of us go without getting enlarged.” That starts with me. Really stretch us. Really enlarge us.
We need it. We really need it to be able to receive what God is doing.
Can you see a little of their problem? Paul had been out among the Gentiles, and now he came back to this Jewish group. They were so set, and it was very difficult. I can well understand why God really started from Antioch as the springboard for the New Testament church.
He just could not get something done in an old framework.
Jerusalem began to wane, and Antioch became the new springboard for God sending out into the whole Gentile world.
We need to realize this morning that God allows one thing and uses it as long as He can. But it begins to wane, and while it is waning, another thing is becoming. It is coming into the horizon.
That brings us to Romans 10, beginning with verse 1.
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.
Can you sense the groaning of Paul in this? He looks out at these people in their blindness, their inability to see into Christ.
Some within Israel had come to know the Lord and had come into a living relationship, but the great majority were still in their dedication and zeal.
For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
A zeal, a dedication. Now, there is a difference between dedication and zeal, but I am not sure what it is. I see zeal, and I see dedication. I would like to make one spiritual and the other natural, but you really cannot do that. I am using them much the same.
They have a dedication to God, but not according to knowledge.
We were saying yesterday that once God brings us back and we experience the mercy of the Lord, we come into the crisis of dedication, which is the presenting of ourselves.
It is wonderful for us then to begin to see how God takes us along this new way—this new walk. There is a crisis, a beginning; but He begins to take us along a new way in which there will be the renewing of our minds.
There is the transforming of our understanding and the renewing of our minds, so that there may be an outward transformation of all our ways.
Turn now to 2 Timothy 3. We are going to see a little of what is involved. I believe this will help us.
There is only one safe way. There is only one safe way, and that is for us to realize that God has given us His Word as the safeguard.
One thing I rejoice in is that wherever we go today, there is a renewed sense that we must stay carefully with the Word of God.
You cannot have people get into life, freedom, liberty, the Spirit, and all that is involved, without there being those who want to go off and say, “Well, I do not need the Word. I have found the Spirit. I have been liberated from any hindrances or old bondages.”
I want us to see this morning why God has given us the Word as a safeguard. I thank God that all the teachers with whom I have been in the last year, every one of them, have had this new cry: “The Word of God must be our safeguard.”
Verse 16 of 2 Timothy 3 says:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
Let me read it for you in the Phillips translation:
All Scripture is inspired by God, and is useful for teaching the faith, and correcting error;
for resetting the direction of a man’s life, and training him in good living.
The Scriptures are the comprehensive equipment of the man of God, and fit him fully for all branches of his work.
That is a pretty loose rendering, but I like some of it.
Let me deal for a little while this morning with these four words. Scripture is profitable for doctrine.
When I think of doctrine, as we move along this highway, I think of the guardrail along the way. Here are the guardrails to keep one from getting off God’s road.
When we know the teaching of Scripture, this is why we need to be saturated in the Word. We need to dwell in the Word. We need to be rich in it.
I know people have taken God’s Word and misinterpreted it. They have become legalistic. They have used and misused it. But that does not mean it is not His Word that I need as a guide in His teaching.
Just because someone misuses it, I must not overreact. Our problem all the way through is that we are like a pendulum. We are over here, and then we swing way over to the other side.
Almost all the time we are prone either to give no place to a thing or to give it the whole place. When God brings the pendulum back, He brings it into what we call its proper place.
One of the most difficult things is to get an individual into a sense of what is God’s place for a thing.
How many of you have gone through an experience where there was a time you gave no place to something, and then suddenly you entered into some reality and could not see anything else? It was the whole place. You could not see anything else.
But in due time, God was able to bring you back to show you its proper place. This is true regarding almost every truth we get hold of and almost every experience people enter into.
There was a day when we really had no place for God’s Word. Of course, it was the Word of God, and we revered it and honored it, but it had no real place.
Then we became hungry. We began to say that the Word of God was the only safeguard, and so we gave it a wrong place. We began to set up doctrinal barriers and hedges all along the way to keep people in our approach and understanding.
We use the guardrails on people most of the time. You know what I am trying to say—seeing them very hard when this is the approach.
As we move along, God has a wonderful way of setting up reproofs. If an individual begins to get off the way and bumps his head on a verse, praise the Lord, that becomes a reproof to him.
The Word of God becomes reproof if I use its teaching in the right way.
What about the individual who does not use the Word as a reproof to stop him? He gets way off and bumps his head on something else down the road. That is retribution.
You sow, and you get a harvest. But the Word of God is intended to be doctrine and reproof.
If I jump over the guardrail and get way beyond, not even heeding, there are other reproofs we will read about. But the Word of God is also correction, to bring me right back once again.
It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction—that a man’s whole life may progressively move along. Not just back and forth all the time, but forward movement.
There is nothing more tragic than to find people who started out with dedication but never get very far because they get stalled with various legal conceptions. They run into reproofs, faint, give up, and do not realize that there must be forward motion all along the way.
Let us look at some of the reproofs we have in Scripture. Proverbs gives us a very interesting picture. Proverbs 1, beginning with verse 22:
How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity?
And the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
Turn you at My reproof:
Behold, I will pour out My spirit unto you,
I will make known My words unto you.
Because I have called, and ye refused;
I have stretched out My hand, and no man regarded;
But ye have set at nought all My counsel,
And would none of My reproof.
Here we are, moving along. We are dedicated. We want to go on to the full thing God is after, and we have the teaching of Scripture.
But one of the problems is that someone says, “One man teaches this and another man teaches that. How do I know which is the guardrail? How do I know I am interpreting the guardrail correctly?”
So we get confused sometimes in our teaching or doctrine. For that reason, people sometimes jump way over and do not accept the reproofs.
Look again at Proverbs 5, beginning with verse 1:
My son, attend unto My wisdom, and bow thine ear to My understanding:
That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on Sheol.
Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them.
Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of My mouth.
Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof.
Let me stop for a moment in these verses and draw your attention to what kind of retribution comes when we fail to accept reproof.
First of all, in Proverbs 5:9, it says:
Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel.
The individual who suffers retribution because he fails to accept the reproofs that come from God’s Word will lose honour and standing. He becomes, in society, one who is utterly cast down and looked upon with disdain.
Sometimes God uses individuals along the way. When they see one going astray, they come with a word of reproof and say, “Do not go that way. I tried it. This is the end.”
Then there are sad circumstances that develop.
Verse 10 says:
Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth.
In other words, if you do not accept reproof, others are going to take all that you have. You have labored and labored, but someone else benefits from it. Your labors are in the house of a stranger.
Here was the prodigal son. He did not listen to the reproof of his father. He went into the far country, and what a tragic thing it was when one day a Jew found himself taking care of pigs. You just cannot imagine that. Of all things!
He refused reproof, and so his labors, his slavery, and his bondage were in the house of a stranger.
I believe I have seen individuals who rejected corrections and reproofs—anything that God used others to bring—and then found themselves in slavery, serving in bondage, when God had called His people to be free people.
It is true of Israel as a whole, as a corporate nation.
Finally, verse 11 says:
And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed.
What else can happen? You sow to the flesh, and the flesh brings corruption and death.
How wonderful, then, that God has given us the guardrails. He has given us His Word. He has built law into things and into nature, and when we disregard them, we receive retribution.
I cannot help but pause for a moment and say that if there is one thing God seems to want me to encourage young people in today, it is that God desires an ordered life in all of us—a God-ordered life.
If He has set the sun and all the planets to move in their order and wonderful precision, I believe He has set in the metabolism of my body that which requires a certain order.
I do not always get to follow it, but I believe that the life that learns discipline, order, and a certain punctuality is going to be blessed.
I get very practical at this point. We have young people with us from time to time at the farm who have great difficulty with any sense of time, order, or arrangement in their lives.
I see them come in at three-thirty in the morning because they have been out to a meeting. Then, when we meet at eight o’clock for fellowship, they have an awful time.
You might do that occasionally in an emergency. We can make room for emergency. But if you do it continually, you are going to be irritable during the day.
You can pray all day long, “Lord, do not let me be irritable,” but your whole body and system are crying out for regularity.
How did I get off on this?
Brothers and sisters, the disciplined life, the ordered life—God’s way—takes us through. I appreciate that emergencies come, but when I see people always living on the edge of emergency, I know there is something really wrong in that life.
Have you ever seen anybody always moving from one emergency to another? The last emergency will be death itself. They have been sowing of a certain kind.
When we really come into dedication to the Lord, there is a discipline that goes along with it. I believe this is why God says, “Early to bed, early to rise”—does He say that? Put it in the margin anyway. It is a good verse. It ought to be there. I am sure I can find something like it.
You get my point, do you not? Or do you?
All the people who receive reproofs get retribution simply because they have failed to accept reproof.
Every time you receive some retribution—when you get sick or something comes out or takes place—God’s way is not simply to run to the healing line again or run to somebody who has a ministry of deliverance.
We are not against those things. What is God’s way? “Lord, what were You saying about taking care of my body? Lord, I am looking for correction. I am sure You have some.”
It is the individual who keeps abusing and disabusing who must be open for correction: “Lord, teach me Thy way. Teach me Thy way.”
This probably does not fit us this morning, but it fits most places where I go, because I wonder if there is the discipline and ordered living there ought to be.
God’s Word is for correction. The prodigal came to himself and said, “What am I doing here when I could be back home with my father?” And he went back.
Instruction is for moving along in a proper way. The difficulty we have all had is that we do not like the guardrails. We do not like this narrow way. We like freedom.
The tendency is true among younger people, and it is true among those coming into life and the Spirit. It is, “Hallelujah, I am free!” Then the tendency is to assume, “I am not under law; I am under grace,” and therefore there are no guardrails.
When God in the Old Testament gave them the law as a method of divine dealing, there was grace even during the period of law. Do you realize that?
God was gracious even when it was called the period of law and His method of divine dealing was according to law.
How many of you realize today that even under grace, during what we call this period in which God’s divine method of dealing is grace, there is law?
Our tendency is to assume that once we get on this new way, there are no guardrails. No. It is a method of divine dealing. There has always been grace, and there has always been law.
I like to think of law as God expressing Himself out of His own nature—what He is in His own being.
When men want to follow, to please, and to walk according to that which is in God’s own nature and heart, there is no problem. “Lord, I want to please Your heart. I want to walk and be one with You in nature.”
But when men do not want that, He says, “I will take what is on My heart and put it on signposts along the way: thirty-five miles an hour; slow down at the curve; stop at the red light; intersection.”
These things are really God taking what is in His heart and putting it outwardly. That is all the Ten Commandments were, basically. God took what was in His heart and, with His finger, engraved, “Thou shalt have no other gods.” He engraved it on stone.
Paul says that the law, or the guardrails, is for the lawless—those who do not basically want what is for their good and help.
But God’s real way is to take that which is outward and write the law on my heart.
Blessed is the life when it is not just an outward sign along the way that keeps me from hitting the rails, but when God has written it so deeply within my heart that the longing and desire are there.
I remember my dear friend Bill Cady. Some of you have read his book, My Glory’s Discovery.
I remember Bill telling how, after he had gone through a very crisis experience, for years he would come up to a sign that said, “Children Playing—Slow.” He never paid much attention. He saw the sign, and sometimes he slowed down and sometimes he did not.
Then one afternoon someone came knocking at his door and said, “Brother, we think you ought to come over a few blocks down the road. We think maybe your boy has been hurt.”
He hastened over, walked to the side of the road, and pulled back the white sheet. It was his oldest son, hit by a truck.
I will never forget, as long as I live, hearing Bill, tears coursing down his cheeks, say, “The speed signs along the road are not important. They are not necessary to me anymore. God has written on my heart. I see children playing. I do not need signs.”
Do you see what He does? He writes the thing on the heart.
This is what the Lord is doing. When we begin in this new way of dedication, for help and guidance God has given His Word. He puts teaching and guardrails in place.
But more and more, what is He doing? He is taking that which is external, that which is out here, and writing it upon our hearts until the longing is, “Lord, I want to know what it is to be led by Your Spirit.”
I meet individuals now and then who say, “Praise the Lord, I am not under law; I am under grace,” and they assume that means no guardrails and no teaching. “I am just free to enjoy.”
I heard a brother say the other day that when he found the liberty he had in Christ and saw how many guardrails men had built, and how many things he had misinterpreted, he ran off into the pasture and had a real good time for a while, enjoying his so-called liberty.
Then one day the Lord came and said, “Son, come here. Come here. Come here.”
The brother said, “Lord, I am free.”
“Oh yes,” the Lord said, “you are free.”
The Lord brought him back and said, “I have had these guardrails removed. They are gone. Now I want you to walk this white line down the middle.”
No guardrails. “I just want you to walk this white line.”
You would be surprised if I told you who that brother was. You know his testimony; you have probably heard him. It is a very blessed thing.
But, Lord, this is freedom in the Spirit.
The Lord takes away all the bridle of law and puts a new bridle in our hearts. This is why it says, “If ye be led of the Spirit.”
Let me put it in my own translation: If you are led of the Spirit, it is like walking the white line down the middle. You do not need any guardrail.
That is dangerous—or is it dangerous? Are you following? What is He doing? He is putting the “want to” in. He is creating the desire within.
I suppose you have all faced this. You are trying to bring your son or daughter, at a certain age, to a place of responsibility and develop within them a sense of fellowship with you.
You start by saying, “Well, Johnny, tonight you come in when you know it will please Daddy. Come in about the time you think we want you to be here.”
I know what Johnny says: “But Daddy, tell me, please. Ten o’clock or ten-thirty?”
“Well, just come in when you think it will please me.”
He does not want that responsibility. You know what he wants? He wants a guardrail. Then he can get in twenty-nine minutes after ten and still please you.
This is the whole thing. You can go back into God’s dealings with Israel. When He brought them out and was going to bring them in, the whole focus of His heart was, “I want you to walk with Me. I want you to please Me.”
The bondage is just pleasing your Lord. The love-slavery is just pleasing You.
What did they say? “Lord, give us some laws. Give us a guardrail. Give us something here.”
Then you see, it reveals the double-mindedness. We really want to please the Lord, but we still want to stay out until twenty minutes after ten. We still want to enjoy all we can for ourselves and still please Him.
In the way of dedication, God is crowding us sooner or later to the place where the Holy Spirit begins to perform and effect within us this real longing to please the Lord and fulfill all His desires and delights.
The law out here, the guardrails, only become necessary when we start to please ourselves.
As we begin the life of dedication, our conflict comes first of all inwardly, as to whether we are knowing what it is to please the Lord and be led by His Spirit—whether God becomes the inward strength, written in our hearts—or whether we want an outward system.
There comes a day when the new way becomes a living way.
How many of you, after you got saved and started the way of dedication to the Lord, found it was a new way? I mean, it was very new. But it had to become a living life.
The Scripture speaks of it as a new and living way. The livingness of it is when we turn from merely a legal approach and begin to realize the blessedness of God, by His Spirit, putting His own bridle within.
The livingness of it—the joy of it.
I get into a dangerous point here because every now and then I see people who begin to discover the new liberty that is ours in the Lord. They take some trips, get some reproof, receive a little retribution, and come back saying, “Lord, I thought that would satisfy, but it does not. I thought this could make me happy, but it is not.”
“Put the bridle on, Lord. Let me love the bridle of the Spirit, that I will learn what it is to be led by the Spirit. Write the law deep within my heart.”
Has it become a living way?
God is bringing us more and more into the livingness of this, and while He does, it requires great patience with others as they are learning.
You cannot impose what you have seen. You wait for others to come into the reality they have seen.
I think part of the problem back in Acts, as they moved from the old Mosaic economy into the church dispensation as we know it, was that they wanted to impose the old rite of circumcision, keeping all the rituals, traditions, and things of that kind.
Can you imagine the conflict in Paul’s heart when he had seen that all these things were fulfilled in Christ, and he was bringing the Gentiles into a whole new living way?
I have said, “Oh, Lord, how do You bring people out of all the tradition represented here? How do You bring them into the new and living way—the reality of it?”
It takes time. In the midst of it, there is conflict.
Our proneness is always to hive around the little group that agrees with us. The most difficult thing is to keep all God’s people together while we are working on one another.
Do not let us hive off into our little interpretation, our little experience, or our little blessing. Let us see that in the midst of it all, God is working in us and through us to help one another.
That is my time element. I want to get on to the real emphasis this morning, and I do not have it, do I? We will have to wait until tomorrow.
Let me say one more thing this morning.
One of the problems in our dedication—and I need to change our picture now—is that we need to recognize that when God redeems us, He takes us out of Adam.
Here we were in an old family, in all that creation represents as we are created. He takes us out of Adam. He nails us to the cross in the Person of the Lord Jesus, buries us in the tomb, and when He rises from the tomb, we rise in Him. When He ascends, we ascend in Him.
The picture we need to see is that dedication means only that which has come up onto resurrection ground can be presented to God.
Too much of the time, we have thought we could dedicate to God something of the old life, the old man, and our old abilities.
There is a song we sing that always makes me cringe: “Take my life, and let it be.” Then it goes through all the things we are going to give to the Lord. I am sure the author meant well, but I want to say, “Lord, do not take it.”
Then He says, “Son, I will not. I could not. It would be contrary to everything I do.”
You cannot really give anything of what you are in old Adam. None of this can be dedicated to God. The only thing God can do with it is nail it to the cross and put it down in the tomb.
That which comes forth from the grave onto resurrection ground, that alone can be presented unto God.
On resurrection ground, now, I present to Him.
It is a strange thing how all of this literally is put in the tomb, and God counts it out.
Every now and then you hear someone say, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if so-and-so became a Christian? He could be such an influence for God.”
It sounds good, does it not? But what are we really saying?
Probably without realizing it, we are hoping that because of his position, what he has been in the world, his stature, or his standing, some of this is going to be used for the Lord.
It is just influence. That is all it is.
The Holy Spirit must draw. The Holy Spirit is the One who does something of spiritual reality. God leaves all that influence down in the tomb—or all that we would try to use for Him. He leaves it in the tomb.
It is very interesting that the only thing He ever anoints is what has come through on resurrection ground.
Remember, yesterday we were saying that when the priest applied the blood to the ear, to the thumb, and to the big toe, it was God’s way of saying, “Here is something that has been through death.”
The blood shed and poured out speaks negatively of all that is put aside. But the blood applied and sprinkled always refers to life—the life that is in the blood.
This life that has been shed is now life that is being applied. It is God’s own life, so to speak.
We must realize that the blood which separates me unto God from the old life and unto God brings me into resurrection.
Then the priest was to take a log of oil in a container held in his left hand, pour some of it into his right hand, and the oil was to be placed over the blood.
The oil was to be placed over the blood. What does that say? The only thing God anoints, the only thing He really uses, is that which has been through death.
That which has been set apart unto God, redeemed and separated by blood, He anoints. He anoints that which comes onto resurrection ground.
The oil speaks of the Holy Spirit. It is the anointing that comes once the individual comes through unto resurrection.
I remember back during the war, just after the war, when many servicemen were returning, fellows would come to me often and say, “I was a pilot in the service. I believe I want to dedicate myself to God to be a pilot for the missionaries.”
“Do you know of any place that would accept my experience? Where can I go? I want to be a pilot.”
I thank God that even in those days we saw a little bit. I would sit down with the brother and say, “Look, you do not dedicate a talent to God.”
Listen carefully: You do not dedicate some ability you have to the Lord.
If you do, something has squeezed through the tomb and gotten up here.
God’s way is to take individuals who themselves are dedicated to Him.
I would sit down with these pilots and say, “I thank God for your desire to help the missionaries, but I do not believe God is interested in that.”
They would look so surprised. “Don’t you think God needs pilots?”
No. God wants individuals who are His.
You see the frustration that comes. I could show you any number of people who dedicated their piloting to the Lord, then got into a place where they could not pilot. What did they do? They had given something of their talent for the Lord.
Something had slipped through the cross that they thought God could anoint. God does not anoint that sort of thing.
Do you see what I am trying to say?
Someone says, “I have a lovely voice, and I would like to dedicate my voice to the Lord.”
You see why I moved in the way I did. We all have some talent we want to give to God. “Lord, surely You can use my talent. I thank You for a lovely voice.”
God does not accept it on that basis. You do not come to dedicate something, some talent, or some ability for Him. It does not work that way.
Our dedication is unto Him.
At the cross and in the tomb, God has a lovely reduction place. He brings everything to zero. We all start from scratch. We all start from nothing.
I love this because it is hope for everybody. Lord, I do not know what you got from your grandmother or grandfather, the Mayflower, or someplace else. I do not know what your background is. But we all start from the same place: total zero.
Out of the grave, it is no longer I, but Jesus Christ.
This ought to encourage you, beloved. Really.
When He takes us through and we come out, He applies the oil. He anoints that which has come through death into life.
It could be that you can sing, but it is a totally different thing. You do not care. It is not a matter of saying, “Well, Lord, anytime You are ready.”
I had one of the loveliest examples of this a number of years ago. We were in a terrible accident in Washington.
The lady sitting in the front seat almost lost her life. She was a very godly lady. I had heard her sing on a few occasions.
She did it very rarely, but when she sang, I never saw anyone in the group who did not sit there with a sense of God’s glory and the anointing of the Lord.
Every time, you sensed she had chosen that which God was releasing through her spirit.
One day I heard her give her testimony. She said that she had been in opera. Then she had been saved and met the Lord.
In the best of her wisdom and judgment, she decided that she would use her voice for the Lord. She moved from church to church and place to place, singing for the Lord.
Then one day the Lord spoke to her in a new way and said, “No more.”
For four years, she could not sing a word. She could not sing a word.
This natural talent, this that she had had, God was laying aside.
I heard her say, with tears coursing down her cheeks, “As far as I was concerned, I would never sing again at all. How I love to sing.”
How many of you can see how easy it is for us to siphon off our satisfaction from a talent or ability we have? God wants our satisfaction to come only from Him.
I think I know a little of what this means, because I believe people can love to preach for God.
Men can develop natural ability in school and all that goes with it, and siphon off from it even the satisfaction of teaching or preaching.
God has to devastate and take every last thing that we have, put it in the tomb—that is, put it in its place in death.
When He gets through and brings life onto resurrection ground, on the new side, He anoints that which is of the loveliness of the Lord in us, and that alone.
Do you see what we are trying to say this morning? Our dedication has to be according to knowledge.
People mean well. I look at hearts that want to do something for God. They want to be busy. They want to burn out for the Lord.
All these terms and phrases are so good, but we have to realize that you are not simply redeemed and then give God the whole mess—all you can do.
God says, “No, you need to look back again at Calvary. I want you to see the way by which dedication really works. I take you through the cross, bury you in the tomb, and then you stand in a whole new position, on a whole new basis, on resurrection ground.”
That which has been through the blood, He applies the oil to and anoints.
Do not be surprised if the ability you have used for the Lord—something you could do well—suddenly begins to wane and goes into death.
God is transferring us from our natural energy.
Oswald Chambers says, “First the natural has to go before the spiritual can come into its right place.”
We have all had a natural dedication about us, some more than others. It is a “get up and go,” “let’s get something done for God” dedication. He has to bring it to death.
But His dedication in our lives is according to renewed knowledge. Renewed knowledge.
God brings us, after the reproofs and as He instructs us along the way, finally to see that all He anoints is what has come through death into life.
So we pray.
Lord, I guess we have all been guilty of wanting to give unto Thee something of the natural. We had some knowledge. We thought we could use our knowledge to teach and help others. But it was natural accumulation.
Lord, You cannot take that knowledge and really anoint it. You have to take it down through death. Only that which You bring in resurrection can have the livingness, the reality, that will lift and help others.
We have all had our talents. We still have them. So many things we really want to do for Thee. Lord, we naturally siphon off satisfaction from our doing of it.
But, oh, we thank You this morning, Lord, that more and more You are taking us into a whole new realm of understanding: that all our delight and all our satisfaction is to be in Thee.
Every other fountain dries up. Everything else becomes like a cistern, until, Lord, we find in Thee the delight of our hearts. Thou art the One who satisfies.
Our giving and dedication unto Thee comes into such a change. We have been so zealous for our interpretation. We have been so zealous for the accumulation of our natural understanding to share it with others.
I thank You that today, more than ever, You are causing Your people to realize, oh Lord, that it is the anointing that comes from above that quickens things into life. Everything else is empty.
What I have been able to say this morning, Lord, I claim Thou wilt do it.
Forgive us when we try to give You something You want to die—some ability, some talent, some reservoir that we have stored up. You want us, not it.
Lord, we will be sure to give You the praise for Your work. We will be sure, as best we know how to say, “Lord, take our zeal. Take our dedication.”
We do not want it to diminish, but we want it to be rightly directed.
Oh, do not let anyone go away discouraged this morning, but encouraged to believe that our dedication can have real point and focus. It can have new meaning, and it can be something for Thee once it is divested of all our energy, of all that represents our own strength.
Oh, we thank You, Lord. Our anticipations are in Thee.
In Jesus’ name, we ask it with thanksgiving. Amen.