Open Romans Chapter 12, please.
Well, let’s see: who has joined us today who was not here yesterday or the day before? Anyone? A couple? Thank you. Praise the Lord.
We are speaking about dedication these days. I am sure you can realize that it is too big a theme for one week, or five times. It is too big a theme for a year. It will take us all eternity to really find out what dedication means.
So I am just trying to give us a few little details as we see the important things in this twelfth chapter of Romans. We started out the first day answering the question: What is dedication?
What is dedication? Remember, we said that it is God, through His mercy, Who redeemed us by His own precious blood. He bought us; He bought us out, and He loosed us in order that we might dedicate, or present, ourselves.
So we are just saying that dedication is: present. What else can I do, Lord?
You know, it says in the Scripture that He bought us with precious blood; He bought us with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are His.
“Lord, I really cannot do anything else but give myself, present myself, to You.” So, without going into this, we saw that to present is one thing; then He receives what has been presented.
I would like to get into that, because I think there is a lot involved in the sense that God receives, or accepts, what has been presented. In accepting it, we saw that He applied the blood to our ear, opened our ear, applied the blood to our hands—that which we do—and then to our feet, determining where we go.
Yesterday, we went on to another portion, and we were dealing with the fact that this dedication is not just blindly doing something for God. It just is not, “Let’s get out and work for Jesus.”
Dedication is according to renewed knowledge.
You notice we have put the word renewed there. We started out by saying that Israel had a zeal, a dedication for God, but it was not according to knowledge.
There is a renewed knowledge. The great struggle that is going on today in the religious realm is that people are dedicated according to their own vision of what they think God wants. They are giving God something—their time, their energy; they are burning out for the Lord. But there is the necessity of saying that it is according to renewed knowledge.
This morning we are going on to the third phase of an element involved in dedication. It is this sense that we are to prove the will of God.
Prove the will of God.
You know where we are getting this, do you not? Romans 12:1:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service.
This little word reasonable means intelligent. I like to say that it is a reasonable thing for me to dedicate myself, but that my service likewise is to become an intelligent service.
Oh, I think God has so much trouble with His lovely children. They are so busy doing and so eager to get things accomplished for Him. He says, “But I did not tell you to do that.”
Then we come back with our mess. We come back with the thing that He cannot approve, and we wonder why His blessing is not upon it. He says, “But you did that on your own. You meant well. You meant well.”
So there is a coming into renewed knowledge. We were saying yesterday that as we go on with the Lord according to the teaching, or the Word, we have, we are within guide rails on the highway. But when we get out, there are reproofs that come; there are corrections. All of it is to instruct us that we might come into renewed knowledge.
Then we closed yesterday by saying that one of the most wonderful things in renewed knowledge is to discover that you just cannot present your old self to the Lord and say, “Lord, use me.”
The only thing that can really be presented to God is that which has been through the cross, through the grave, and comes up on the resurrection side. All I can present to Him is that which is on resurrection ground. It is my new life that is presented to Him—not just my old energy, not my old hands, as it were, my own strength, and all that I think I can do for God: the talents, all these things. This is not what God wants.
We summed it up by saying that that which has passed through and is under the blood, He anoints. The oil always comes upon that where the blood has been placed. You see, it is quite a drastic thing when we discover that our presenting, our dedication, is not just according to our understanding. God is very careful about it, and He only anoints that which is really through on resurrection ground.
Well, we will get into that as we go along. You see, this is something we are learning. There is a constant supply, a constant renewing of our mind, that we might come into a real understanding of God’s way.
Now we come to this:
Be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good,
and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
The way we get our renewed knowledge is through the renewing of our mind.
I know it may sound strange, but there is a lovely twofold proving that goes on. He says in Malachi, “Prove Me.” God is speaking. He says, “Prove Me. Try Me. Prove Me.”
And guess who else gets proved when we prove the Lord? Are you with me? Who else gets proved? I tell you, it turns around wondering who is getting proved, does it not? “Prove Me,” He says. “Prove Me. Try Me.” And in the midst of it, we are the ones who are likewise proved.
We begin to prove what is the will of God. Proving—we will see what that involves. Now, we are headed for tomorrow, I think, for this dedication that finds its fulfillment in placing—or we could call it positioning.
God is very careful about the way things get done. How many have ever discovered that? He just does not leave things to the slightest bit of our own imagination.
This fulfillment, this real dedication—the fulfilling of it—is in the placing, the positioning, that He has given; and it is in power. But guess where the power comes from?
He says, “No energy of your own, none of your own strength. I am going to position you; I am going to place you. But I am also going to give you all the energy, or the power.”
When we get to the next verses, after the proving of the will of God, we come to Romans 12:3 and following. I do not think we will go into it now. But we discover that, in God’s reckoning, in God’s way, we are placed in a body. We become a member in the body.
As a member in the body, it is there that we function. We find position, we find place, and we find the anointing of the power for all of our dedication.
This thing, before we get through this week, I trust God will help narrow down until we see how lovely dedication is, but how sharpened the focus is.
I am sure God appreciates what we have done to the measure of our understanding. But, oh, the renewed knowledge as He sharpens the dedication. I believe the last ten years have been discovering, in the lives of people and in our own lives, that God keeps sharpening and sharpening the focus until you see how much time you have wasted doing good and helpful things, but not really according to that which He really wants.
So there comes a whole new set of priorities: dedication according to what God is after—the fulfillment, then.
I like the picture sometimes. I did not plan to get into this until tomorrow, but we will start off wrong. Here we are. We were saying yesterday that we are in Adam, and this is the family tree.
In Adam, how does He move us out of Adam and bring us into Christ?
God’s way of taking us out is that here, on the cross, He literally wraps the whole family of Adam—every one of us—and carries us to the cross in His Son.
When God looks down on the cross, what does He see? He sees His lovely Son, the Lord Jesus. But He sees something else. He sees all the wretched family of Adam, wrapped up, as it were, and nailed there in Him.
Is it not interesting that Adam was called the first Adam, but Jesus is called the last Adam? When God says, “I am going to get rid of the whole family—the thoughts and imaginations, the intents of the heart, the evil continually; I cannot get anything good out of it”—He wraps the whole thing up in His Son and nails it to the cross. He buries it in the tomb, and He says, “That is the last of Adam.”
The last Adam.
God looks down and He sees us in His Son. When He was buried in Joseph’s new tomb, we were buried with Him. When He rose from the grave, what happened? We rose in resurrection.
The Scripture actually pictures it: when He ascended, ours was an ascension. But here we are now. When God the Father poured out the Spirit upon His Son, upon the Head, we also get a glimpse that the Holy Spirit’s outpouring comes upon the Head and upon the whole Body.
How do I get from Adam into a position in Christ? How do I move from one family to become a member of the Body of Christ?
Now we look at it from God’s viewpoint for a moment. We see what He sees. Here is an individual who comes in, just in the most simple way, and says, “Lord Jesus, I thank You for dying for me, shedding Your blood.”
The moment an individual comes by faith to look to Calvary, to what Jesus did, in that moment guess what God does? He puts the whole thing to your account, and He says, “There you are: a hand positioned in the Body.”
The tragedy is that God sees it; God recognizes all of this. But the great majority of people only get it by bits and pieces.
For example, the individual who comes to see that Jesus died says, “Thank You, Lord, for dying for me.” How much does he know of all of this? How much does he experience of it in reality?
The reality of it comes according to the measure that he has apprehended and appropriated the precious life. God looks and He sees the whole thing, but all we see is according to the apprehension that we have. By simple faith we say, “Thank You, Lord Jesus, for dying for me.”
That is what our brother was saying last evening. A little bit later on, we discover that our problem is not just that we needed to be redeemed or saved from the things we have done, but that God needs to deal with something in our life that we are.
We begin to cry out, “O wretched man that I am! Lord, I am tired of plucking fruit off the tree all the time. Lord, is there not something else, something better?” He says, “Yes. Just look back to Calvary again.”
Do you not know that when you were born, you were born crucified? But all you knew was that you were born. Are you following me?
When you were there at the cross, you saw Jesus dying for you—that is one thing. But now look back again, and you see that He not only died for you, but He died as you. You died in Him.
Oh, it is a wonderful thing, a wonderful thing, when we look back. I say we take another look at Calvary. There we discover God’s remedy for the old life.
It is a blessed day when you realize that He buried the whole stinking mess in the tomb. I will be very abrupt about it, because that is what it is.
So much of the time, we try to dedicate something of the old as though God could use it. The flesh cannot please God. The old creation cannot do anything for God. It is just impossible.
This is why, if our dedication is to become very real and meaningful, we must look back to the cross again. There we see that God’s place for the old Adam life, and all that it is, is in the tomb.
But thank God, there is a rising from the grave. We have been crucified and buried together; we rise together in Him. I believe that some people have suddenly got beyond the negative aspects of things to see that they begin to live by His life.
I think you can go on for a long time before that really begins to lay hold of you. I did for years emphasize nothing but two aspects of Calvary: Jesus died for me, and I died with Him. But I did not get out of the grave. God saw me out, but I did not.
I do not know how to say this. You can be so involved and so wrapped up in the negative aspect of what God has done that you pound your fist and say, “I am going to keep dead. I am going to live a crucified life.”
One day we begin to see that we not only have all the negative work dealt with, but now we come to see that we live by His life. That is a whole new apprehension.
Praise God, I am nothing but a failure. Hallelujah! The day I discovered I could not live it.
I shock people every now and then. They come up and say, “Brother, I am just not going to try. I am going to quit. It is impossible. I cannot live the Christian life.” You know what I say? “Hallelujah! What a blessed discovery!”
They say, “What are you talking about?” I say, “That is the day when God can show you that you are living by the life of the Son of God.”
Oh, I cannot emphasize it too much this morning. I am convinced that in our deeper-life and Bible conferences, there are throngs of people who have never come to the living appropriation of Jesus Christ as their life. They doctrinally know it, but they do not know it in experience. They do not know it in reality. They do not know it in its livingness.
So praise the Lord the day you get out of the grave. Now remember, God sees it all done, finished. Here we are, resurrected—not only resurrected, but to walk around in newness of life.
I think He just takes a sort of shortcut right over and says, “Folk, you be a good toe down here. I am going to position you; I am going to place you.”
I see folk all the time who have gone on in the enjoyment of the life of the Lord and the privilege of being partakers of His life. Then they suddenly discover that this life has some very restrictive aspects to it. Uh-oh. It is not just life to use.
This life of the Son of God works only in a certain way. I cannot use this life just for myself. This life begins to bring me into the relatedness of one another, of others.
While God from the beginning saw the whole thing that happened, again I get another bit and I say, “Praise the Lord. I see now why I enjoy being with the company of the Lord’s people: because I am a part of a Body.”
I am a part of a Body. This is why He says in 1 Corinthians 12:13 that by one Spirit we are baptized, or planted, into the Body of Christ.
I get a position, a place. I am planted in the Body of Christ. But that is not all. What is the next phrase?
Planted into the Body of Christ, baptized into the Body—and what? Made to drink one Spirit.
We are getting way ahead for tomorrow, but anyway, it is a wonderful thing when we begin to discover that here we are: a member, a part in the Body. Our dedication, and fulfilling the thing that God really wants, is the realization that we are a member—a hand, leg, ear, an eye—and thus a member in the Body of Christ.
But along with it, we have been made to drink of one Spirit.
And the power by which God works is a twofold power. There is the inward: made to drink. And there is the outward.
God has not only put, as it were, the supply of the Spirit within, but when the promise of the Father came, the Holy Spirit came down as an anointing upon this whole Body. The Holy Spirit has been poured out.
The tragedy of tragedies is that people somehow have thought that it takes an awful long time to get through to the appropriation of all these things that God has made real and complete.
Would I shock you if I said that what I see happening more and more is this? I do not think it is a full apprehension of it all, but I believe that God is doing some rather quick work today.
He is showing us that an individual who is rightly instructed, as the Holy Spirit brings illumination, can come through with some full understanding and very quickly begin to be planted in the Body, know the anointing of the Lord, and drink from God’s own life.
“Lord, I thought that used to take ten years—or twenty.” Like one dear pastor said, “Well, if this could all happen—I mean, if God, if you can come to awareness that you are a member in the Body and the anointing is there—you can all do that in one Sunday. What would you tell them from then on?”
Can I say to you this morning, brothers and sisters, we have spent so long getting to the gate where we could begin. We have been fumbling the fundamentals so long.
Now it is time: let us not lay again all these foundational things, but let us go on.
This is pretty big stretching for me, because I have enjoyed taking people, at least every six months, through anew. I am not saying that you can understand it all or that you apprehend the fullness of it. I am not saying that.
But I am saying that all of this is very elementary. Did you hear me? This is the ABCs.
I used to think that when someone had something of the anointing and the Spirit of God came within, they really measured up to a high mark and had arrived. Then the Lord said, “They have arrived at the gate.”
It is not because they are spiritual; it is to help them become spiritual.
Just because someone may have the anointing of the Lord come upon them, and they burst forth in a heavenly language, praying unto the Lord—why, Lord, that is wonderful—they have not arrived at anything but the gate.
Our problem as fundamentalists is that we look at some folk whom we thought had arrived at some great spiritual experience. Then we see all their babyhood elements and all these things come out, and we say, “Lord, that is a disappointment. They have not arrived much, really.”
Lord, how am I getting off on all this so far? Well, we had a young fellow. I was in a conference some months ago.
The Lord brought him into the meeting. It was in a hotel ballroom. He slipped in after the service. He walked up and said, “My, all these people seem to love the Lord. They are so joyous. What is this all about? I have never been in anything like it before.”
The leader turned to him and said, “Well, we are just the people of the Lord who have come to discover that we are one Body in the Lord, and we love Him. Do you know the Lord?”
“No,” he said, “but I sure would like to.”
So, in a few minutes, after just a vivid instruction, they led him to the Lord. He bowed his head and said, “O God, I knew there was something. I just give my life to You. I trust Jesus.”
I was not there; I had gone up to my room. Three or four stayed around. He came into such a realization of knowing the Lord Jesus that you could see the difference in his countenance, they said.
Five minutes later, the brother said, “Would you like to have the fullness of the Spirit in your life and have God’s anointing come upon you, so that you can be a real witness and really know how to walk a dedicated life?”
He said, “I want all there is.”
So, ten minutes after he had been saved, the brothers laid hands on him. The Holy Spirit so sweetly came upon him. Without any instruction or anything, he just began to magnify the Lord in another language.
I have been seeing this happen so often in the last few months that I began to say, “Lord, what are You trying to get through to me about?”
He just seemed to say, “We have gotten things so separated so long: one thing here, five years later another thing here, ten years later another thing here.” The Lord says, “No. I will give you fifteen minutes.”
I am trying to stretch this this morning. I have had some real stretching.
I am not saying that that dear fellow knew all that really was involved when Jesus died and he died in Him. He will discover that, but the Lord will take him back for another look.
Someday he will discover, maybe in a new way, what it is to live by the life of the Lord. You look back and say, “Oh, that is what resurrection means. I am living by His life.”
If you knew how this cuts across some of the things I taught through the years, you would shout “Hallelujah” about now.
I am convinced God is doing something in our hour that is beyond our explaining. What I am trying to say is basically this: God sees us complete in Christ.
When is that? The moment a little baby lifts up to the father and says, “Dada.” God sees it.
That is right. Complete in Whom? You have all said that, but you did not believe it, because we think we have to take some time and work.
I am not saying that this whole total thing of dedication is all worked out just in fifteen minutes. But I will tell you, there is a reason why we have fumbled along with fundamental things so long: we have not brought people on to the fuller thing that God is after.
Well, the first half hour is gone; we have not started. But anyway, do you see this morning that there is an inward—a drinking, made to drink of one Spirit?
This is God’s qualifying of the inward life: character developing within us, the inward strength.
But when the Spirit is outpoured, it is something of God positioning. Tomorrow we are going to see that position and anointing go together.
We are going to see how the inward strengthening, the inward might that God gives as the Spirit of God fills and controls the life, works with Him. But all of dedication comes to its fulfillment as the individual gets into position and learns the power that God has made available.
There are two lovely words for power or authority. One is exousia—it is the outward thing—and the other is dunamis, which is the inward.
Well, you know where we are headed, but let us get back today. See if we cannot labor and make it a little harder to get into it, huh?
Complete in Christ. Well, let us take three different aspects in which the proving comes about. First of all, there is the promise that He gives. Second, there is the proving. Thirdly, there is the entering into possession—the possessing.
I do believe that as we begin to come into some renewed knowledge, and our longing is more and more to know a real dedication unto the Lord, we get hold of the blessedness of some of the promises that God has made.
Would it not be wonderful if, just in giving us the promise, we could automatically possess?
I am afraid far too many folk have got the promise and the possessing mixed up. As one of my friends says, he sings it so often, “Every promise in the Book is mine.”
But how about the reality of the promise really being wrought out—really possessing the reality of it?
Take a couple of examples. Look at the life of Abram for a moment. We will not spend much time.
One day, when God brought Abram out of Chaldea, He gave him the promise. He said, “I am going to make a father of you. You will have a family that will number the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore.”
Oh, how Abraham was thrilled with the promise that God had made. How long did it take before he came into the possessing of it?
It was a long period of proving, was it not? The promise had been made. Abraham tried to help God. All this long period—the proving.
Finally, through Isaac, he comes to possess a son. Just about the time that you think a family is going to come from Isaac, He says to Abram, “Now I want you to give Isaac to Me.”
Is this a proving? Is this a proving?
“Lord, how are You going to fulfill Your promise? Just kill him?” “Prove Me.” Who gets proved? Did you hear me now? “Prove Me,” God says.
There is this simple obedience. He says, “Sacrifice Isaac.” “Lord, do not worry about My part. Just prove Me.” “What do I do?” “Go ahead; kill Isaac.” “But how are You going to do it?”
He brings it right to the brink, as it were. “Prove Me.” Of course, in the proving of Him, we get proved.
We have a better example of it in the history of God’s people, Israel. Turn to Deuteronomy Chapter 6.
Verse 1:
Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments,
which the Lord your God commanded to teach you,
that ye might do them in the land
whither ye go to possess it.
He is giving them a promise. The promise is that He is going to give them a land to possess.
He says, “I have brought you out”—and put it to what? “Bring you in.”
He brought you out of bondage, brought you out of slavery, out of Egypt, as it were. You present; you give yourself to Me. I will bring you in. I will bring you in.
Read on with me:
That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God,
to keep all His statutes and His commandments,
which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son,
all the days of thy life;
and that thy days may be prolonged.Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it;
that it may be well with thee,
and that ye may increase mightily,
as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee,
in the land that floweth with milk and honey.
So, in the process now of the promise and bringing them into possession, why can God not just immediately let you possess a thing? What really is involved?
God says, “I am going to give you this,” and then immediately He gives it. I believe it is a law in human nature that you cannot give certain things to individuals without hurting them, except they be prepared.
The heart must be proved. I think we get that in the next verse.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thine heart,
and with all thy soul,
and with all thy might.
The proving that takes place right in here is the taking of a new heart and making it wholehearted before the Lord. How many of you know that when you were redeemed, He gave you a new heart?
But there is a vast difference between a new heart and a wholeheartedness.
Oh, the fickleness of a heart that has never been proved. It has never really been through the testing. You can stand and look over and say, “Praise the Lord, that is what I want. Lord, I want to go. I want all that You have.”
I believe that in the midst of this, God’s desire was not so much just to give them a land. The land is incidental. He was wanting, in the land, to give them Himself.
They got into the land. What did they do after another generation got in and took and possessed the land, so to speak? They used the land for themselves, for their own enjoyment.
God had not been able to really prove their hearts. The land was so good that, over a period of 490 years, they failed to let it lie idle for seventy sabbaths. Every seventh year was a Sabbath unto the Lord.
Oh, the land was so good. It was so wonderful. And they used it for whom? All themselves, without any carefulness. They were in the proving, you see, in that sense.
So the Lord allowed the Babylonians to sweep in and take them into captivity. How long were they carried away before Cyrus the king finally allowed them to come back? Seventy years.
Keep your finger in Deuteronomy, but turn over for a moment to Jeremiah Chapter 29.
Verse 10:
Thus saith the Lord,
That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon
I will visit you,
and perform My good word toward you,
in causing you to return to this place.
God is going to bring them into the place—the place that He wanted them, where they could reach fulfillment.
Verse 11:
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord,
thoughts of peace, and not of evil,
to give you an expected end.Then shall ye call upon Me,
and ye shall go and pray unto Me,
and I will hearken unto you.And ye shall seek Me, and find Me,
when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.
Oh, the proving work is to develop a whole heart within us.
Can I just gently say something to you this morning? I know the mentality of a lot of good fundamental people is, “Well, praise the Lord, I want everything that He wants from me. If He wants to give it, I am willing to take it.”
That sounds so spiritual. I have got news for you. You know where you are sitting? You know where you are stalled? Right here: “Thank You, Lord, for the promise.”
There is something that God requires about the wholeheartedness within our life. “Lord, my dedication unto You, my dedication for the full thing that You want, is that my face is set.”
I learn to live in my will.
I want to give a message sometime on what it means to live in the will. I am convinced that the great majority of God’s children live in the fickleness of their feelings.
One day I feel up, and the next day my feelings are something else. How many have you discovered the fickleness of your feelings?
You can go to a meeting, and you can get all stirred up, and it is fine. You say, “I will serve the Lord.” You will act while you are there. But three hours later, you are away from the climate and away from everything, and the fickleness of your feelings has come in.
Your will is a plaything of your feelings.
I know what I am trying to say. I come to hate my feelings—to hate the fickleness of them.
I think there are others who live in their reasonings all the time. When they are in the bright light of a good meeting, they see things clearly and say, “Praise the Lord, I will do that.”
But how many of you know that three hours later, when you get out from the light where it is so bright, you just try reasoning, reasoning, reasoning? You know what I mean? Then your will becomes subject to your reasoning.
“Well, maybe it is kind of foolish to be so wholehearted. Maybe God does not want all that, really.” Once again, my will gets taken captive by my reasoning.
Oh, I pray. I do not want to get into this now, but anyway, I pray, “Lord, help us to know what it is to set our will.”
Now, the will does not perform. Paul says, “To will is present with me.” Thank the Lord, You do the performing. But for me, the will is present.
I think it is good. I hope we can all affirm it this morning and say, “Lord, I will be proved. I will have my heart, my wholeheartedness, brought into real proving.”
I want today to tell You, “Listen to me when I am strong, not when I am weak. Listen this morning: I will that You shall prove and work around the roots of my heart until it is a heart that is proved.”
I set my faith. “I will, dear Lord, that the proving shall bring about the possessing. You brought me out to bring me in.”
But you will never get in with a dilatory, “Well, I am willing if the Lord is.” You will never get there.
I press toward the mark for the prize
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
It is a press. Everything will move in to hinder and oppose, and it is this proving area right here.
The promise—so many of God’s children think they have the possession because they have the promise. As Brother Sparks used to say, “We have the knowledge, but we do not live in the good of the reality of what we know.”
Well, back to Deuteronomy again, Chapter 6.
Verse 15:
For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you;
lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee,
and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God.
Now let us stop for a little bit and ask the question: if God has made a promise, and we are proving what is the will—the good, the perfect thing that God loves—how do we slip away from proving to tempting?
What is the difference between proving and tempting? He said here that they tempted. What is the difference?
Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God,
as ye tempted Him in Massah.Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God,
and His testimonies, and His statutes,
which He hath commanded thee.And thou shalt do that which is right and good
in the sight of the Lord:
that it may be well with thee,
and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land
which the Lord sware unto thy fathers.
All right, just be open a little bit. When does my proving God—He says, “Prove Me, prove Me”—when does it slip over into tempting God?
I need help. Will you help me? Have you considered it? He wants us to prove, but when does it become a tempting of God?
When we arrange the circumstances? I think you are all pointing in the right direction, and I think some of the statements have been very close.
I found a brother’s definition of tempting God, and I share it with you. I am not wholly satisfied, but it is the best I have found. We are learning, you understand, and trying to improve all the time.
I think you might consider this: tempting God is asking a sign from God that is greater than He is pleased or willing to give.
Tempting God is requiring or demanding a sign from God greater than He is pleased or willing to give.
He says, “Here ye tempted Me.” Well, turn to Psalm 78 for a moment.
Can you see I am not wanting to just get some knowledge? We need the practicality of getting hold of this, that it can be a working principle.
Can I illustrate? You cannot be a dedicated person but what you see need all around you. You say, “Lord, with all this desperate need and the blindness and the whole world system crowding in, Lord, You want somebody who will dare to believe, dare to take, and dare to stand for You.”
Sometimes, as I have started to get into my reasoning, I say, “Lord, this just seems to me that You want somebody who will not limit You, but who will be able to take and claim—whose dedication will be more all-out than poor little me. I think You want to expand.”
I get almost to the place where I want to pull some great thing out of the sky—some real evidence for God’s glory. You understand?
Well, in Psalm 78, verse 41:
Yea, they turned back and tempted God,
and limited the Holy One of Israel.
They limited Him. They tempted Him. Read verse 18 now—well, let us go back to verse 17.
And they sinned yet more against Him
by provoking the most High in the wilderness.And they tempted God in their heart
by asking meat for their lust.Yea, they spake against God; they said,
Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?Behold, He smote the rock,
that the waters gushed out,
and the streams overflowed;
can He give bread also?
can He provide flesh for His people?Therefore the Lord heard this, and was wroth:
so a fire was kindled against Jacob,
and anger also came up against Israel;
because they believed not in God,
and trusted not in His salvation.
Requiring a sign from God that is greater than He is willing or pleased to give.
Well, maybe that does not wholly satisfy us yet. “Lord, what is a sign that is greater?” Here is poor Gideon. You remember Gideon and the fleeces? “Lord, how can I know that You are going to be with me? Lord, let the fleece be wet and all around be dry.”
I wonder if you can see in this that after Gideon got the answer to it, he still had to believe God. Oh, that is the problem with signs, because you wonder if you interpreted it right. You still have to believe.
So what did he do? “Lord, it could have happened that way.” How many have ever been through that? “It just could have happened.” So he reverses it: “Make the fleece wet and dry all around. Lord, You cannot funnel all the rain down, You know.”
And what happened? I think God must have been pleased. This is a good sign. I do not know that it is the proper way, but at least I do not think he was tempting God.
I think the root of all of this is the spirit with which you approach the Lord.
I think God will be very patient with our reasoning to a point. “Lord, I do not really know if You are sending me out against all this mighty number.”
I think I can sense that there are times when questioning is legitimate. Is that the right word? “Lord, You know there is more at stake than just me.”
I have thought so many times, “Lord, I would go out—no problem—but here are all these hundreds of others. If I get killed, that is all right; but what about the thousands of others that are involved? What about Your name and Your glory?”
I think this kind of a calm, “Come, let us reason together, saith the Lord,” is legitimate. You follow what I am trying to say?
It does not seem like Gideon’s was too great a sign. “Lord, let the fleece be dry; let it be wet.” But after it was all over with, he still had to believe.
It seems to me, in finality, that the spirit in which you approach the Lord is either a murmuring and complaining spirit, or something else. God is very severe toward a rebellious sort of spirit.
He will be very patient as long as it is a questioning: “Lord, I just want to be sure I heard You right.” I do not think we are tempting at that point.
“I know God caused the water to come out of that rock,” they said, “but can God look at this wilderness? Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Who does He think He is?” Can you see the spirit of it?
Oh, watch your spirit. Be careful about your spirit.
I believe God is not only trying to reveal, in the transforming work of the soul, and bring our mind into renewed knowledge, but God, in the proving of our heart, gets right down to the very innermost proving of our spirit—the hidden man within the heart.
How many of you have been really pressed into a place where everything was going wrong? You have preached and told everybody else how to do and what to do and all the rest. Then He brings you right to the brink.
Of course, you know better doctrinally than to ever put it into words, but your spirit begins to—am I the only one?
I have never voiced it, but my spirit within has gotten so close sometimes to saying, “Lord, I do not know about this.”
Then quickly recognize it. I think this is the awe, the reverence, with which our spirit has to say, as Ezekiel said, “Lord, Thou knowest. I do not know.”
Lucifer’s heart was lifted up, his spirit full of pride. It is right at this point that there is a rashness that comes out of a moment where the spirit is wrong. It is not just something of our reasoning, but our spirit is wrong.
Then there is the brashness with which one speaks, asking something greater as a sign than God is willing to give.
It said there in Deuteronomy, you remember, “As they did at Massah.” Turn back to Exodus 17 for a moment.
Now, you recall that God has led the people out of Egypt. They have crossed through by the miraculous holding back of the Red Sea.
Here they come to the very first place they pitch their tents. Verse 1:
And all the congregation of the children of Israel
journeyed from the wilderness of Sin,
after their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord,
and pitched in Rephidim.
I want to ask you a question: at this point, were they there in the will of God? Had God led them to Rephidim? Were they there according to His will? Yes, they were.
He had gotten them through. “Lord, You got us here.” Well then, the next statement seems strange, does it not?
And there was no water for the people to drink.
Why would the Lord lead them into a place where there was no water?
We started out with a mentality that said, “You come to know the Lord and everything is going to be all right from then on.” Let me say, that is true. But I need a renewing of my knowledge, right?
Yes, they were in God’s will, the very center of it. How can I be in the center of God’s will and come to a no-water situation?
“Lord, this cannot be You.” At the first opportunity, the enemy says, “Ha! A future of this God’s will—because you surely would not have a no-water situation: no job, no money, no friends, nobody understands. Somewhere I must have missed Your will.”
No. He is just taking you into the first chapter. What is it? “I want to prove to you that you will get through this wilderness, and it will be by Me as the supply.”
We are getting on to what we need to get into tomorrow. The whole of our dedication is not seeing what needs to be done, rolling up our sleeves, and saying, “Get out of the way, here I come.”
What God’s end is to be must be done by His means.
So the first blessed part of the proving is no water in the will of God. Do not accept the enemy’s curve at this moment. He will do it every time.
Yes, you imagine that just because a difficulty comes, you must have missed the will of God.
Verse 2:
Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said,
Give us water that we may drink.And Moses said unto them,
Why chide 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 is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt,
to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?
I think I see a wrong spirit in it, do you not? “Lord, You brought us out to what? Kill us?” They had not really understood the claiming of the promise: He brought us out to bring us in. Their spirit was wrong.
Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, “What shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone me.”
And the Lord said unto Moses,
Go on before the people,
and take with thee of the elders of Israel;
and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river,
take in thine hand, and go.Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb;
and thou shalt smite the rock,
and there shall come water out of it,
that the people may drink.And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah,
because of the chiding of the children of Israel,
and because they tempted the Lord, saying,
Is the Lord among us, or not?
My watch has run away again, but we will go on.
Would you ask the Lord this morning, if nothing else, would you ask Him this morning how to make real to you that He wants us to prove Him?
He wants us to step out. He wants us, as it were, to take a promise.
How many of you know you can play it safe? You can play it safe. You can stay right back here and say, “If I do not have any promises, I have no proving. If the Lord is willing, I will take one.”
It is a lot easier to play it safe. Yet I am not sure it is easier, because you sit and stew with everybody else who is going on. You try to explain their foolishness so you can justify yourself.
This does not sound like the burden I used to know, but I am just getting so fed up and so weary of folk settling down on the sidelines and criticizing everybody.
I just get more like Peter all the time. I am saying, “Dear Lord, get some folk out of the boat. Did I hear You say, ‘Come,’ Lord?”
You can play the cautious eleven who sit in the boat, but Peter says, “Lord, bid me come unto Thee.” And he walks on the water.
Who had something to talk about that day? The cautious eleven. “My, was that not something, what Peter did? He almost went down.”
But I can hear Peter saying, “Oh, how wonderful to understand the provision and the undergirding, and hear the Lord say, ‘Come.’”
Well, do not let me try to push anybody out, dear Lord. I push people out of the boat; they drown. I cannot swim either.
But I am reckoned on You, Lord. I am reckoned on You. You said, “Come,” and here I come. Lord, prove my heart.
I cannot get this across, but I prayed this morning that somehow God will break through to us and get our ear, and we will hear Him say, “Come, Peter. Come, Peter.”
“You have been living cautiously long. I am precautionary, you know, of a certain kind. But God wants to enlarge, and God wants to prove our heart and give an opportunity for us not only to have a promise box, but a heart that has been proved and prepared by God.”
Then He might bring some people into what the land represented, where God could fulfill through Israel what He wanted.
Guess what is going to happen when He gets you into His Body? You are in, but you are rightly related. You know the functioning and the placing and all that is involved.
Oh, I get excited. Lord, it is getting better.
Father, we thank You this morning. We want a dedication that is really stretched, and we want, dear Lord, the renewed knowledge.
We have all run out to work. We have run out with zeal. We wanted to serve. But, oh, thank You, Lord, that there is a renewing of our mind that will bring us into the real proving of You, that we could come through in the end and say, “The Lord was our Rock.”
We learned what it was to live by the drink, the flow that came. We learned that He could set a table in the wilderness. The manna fell every day.
Oh, I claim this morning that You will teach us. It is such a very sensitive thing, Lord. Only You can teach us when we get beyond the proving of You to the tempting.
Make it real for my brothers and sisters. But, oh, I thank You, Lord, there is something of the call of the Spirit. You put the press within our hearts.
We have been in passivity. We have been sitting on the sidelines long enough, and our heart reaches out and we say, “Draw me, and I will run after Thee. Call me, Lord, and I will step out of my little boat.”
Thank You, Lord. I believe You to do it this morning, that our dedication might come into the fulfillment, the thing that You really desire.
Thank You, Lord. We believe You to do this in each of our hearts, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Amen.