How we praise Thee that Thou dost fill the cup, that it might overflow. We thank Thee this morning that it is not out of a dry cistern, but it is out of the well of Thyself that we give back to Thee.
We crown Thee. We acknowledge Thee, Lord. We say, “Lord Jesus, be pleased in our midst.” Oh, we thank You. It has been so good to fellowship with You, Lord—just You—this morning. Thank You for Your presence. Thank You for the reality of Your presence. Thank You, Lord, that You deign to be in our midst.
In Jesus’ name, we thank You. Amen. Amen.
Romans 12.
We have been speaking about dedication. The first morning, it was our purpose to define it: What is dedication? By the mercies of God, we present ourselves unto Him.
The next morning, it was dedication enlightened, or dedication according to renewed knowledge. God renews our mind, brings us into newness of understanding, that it will not just be dedication, but it will be an intelligent thing. How many of you have seen folk with a dedication, but, oh, how it lacked clear understanding of what dedication was? They meant well, but not according to knowledge.
Yesterday, it was dedication proved. I think there are many folk who want to present, they want to give, they want the Lord to have something from their life; but it is so easy to get stalled midway. God called Israel, as we said yesterday. He brought them out of bondage, out of Egypt. Who does not want to get free from their bondage? But how long did they wander in the wilderness? It was a proving period.
He wanted to bring them in, and in bringing them in, He wanted them to possess the land. So it was dedication proved yesterday.
This morning, it is my burden—and I pray the Lord to give us His own special help—dedication focused, the way I call it.
It has always interested me that in this twelfth chapter of Romans, which is really the very best picture we have in the New Testament of dedication, after he speaks of presenting our bodies, the renewing of our minds, and the proving of what the will of God is, it is marvelous that he immediately starts talking about the body.
Look at it now. We will start with verse 3.
For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.
For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office:
so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith;
or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, to his teaching;
or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting: he that giveth, let him do it with liberality; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.—Romans 12:3-8
May I say, I believe when our dedication comes into the right perspective and focus that God intends, dedication will be in the body. It will be something of learning a relatedness that we have in the Lord with His people.
It is not just doing anything that seems good—not just picking up a cause or a project or something that seems worthwhile. But God is here, in this picture, I believe, giving us an example of how dedication becomes very focused to the thing that He wants.
You see, first of all, you look at the cross. You remember that the cross has its vertical. This is our relatedness to God. The first aspect of our dedication is, “Lord, I am related to You.”
One thing the Lord is doing today is to show us the crosspiece: how we become related to one another in our dedication. I cannot emphasize it too much this morning, but I believe dedication is a related thing. It is related rightly to God, and that is the way enlightenment comes. God proves, and then it finds its relatedness toward one another.
I just cannot function independently. I dare not function unrelated.
It is a very wonderful thing now that immediately Paul introduces body life: the fact that we are members of one body, and that our relatedness in the body is the way we learn to function.
I believe dedication gets pretty narrowed down. I am not saying that one cannot have individual dedication; this is true. We realize that God brings us in. Most of the religious world today is dedicated in a sense; they know the vertical call. But, oh, God begins to bring the crosspiece in, and we see our relatedness to one another and what this really means.
So I just have to re-emphasize: I wonder if we can really go on very far without seeing that dedication is not an independent thing. It is not just an individual thing. We begin to find our relatedness with one another.
Well, let me go back this morning for a little bit and pick up what we have been getting at. I would like for us to see that, in a sense, when God begins to work, the governing law—the law that governs our related dedication, our functioning in a related way—is that God does everything by the anointing.
The anointing seems to be so very important for us to understand.
Let us go back. Here we were yesterday. We spoke of what it meant to be in Adam. Here is the family tree of Adam. We have all been a part of it.
When we were brought to the cross in the Lord Jesus, in His death, we saw that we were buried down in the tomb. We saw that God resurrected, raised us. We were saying yesterday that it is God’s way of taking us out of the old and planting us—or, so to speak, positioning us—in the new.
When we look now at what God has done in taking us out of the old and planting us into His Son, we get a little glint of what it means to be in Christ.
First of all, we need to see all that has taken place in history from God’s viewpoint. He puts us in the body, as it were. We come forth out of the grave, and when we come out, as it were, out of death, we are planted into Christ. We are made members in Him, in His body.
I think it is very wonderful to remember that in history there is one Calvary, right? But when, by simple faith, I come to the cross and apprehend, and then appropriate, what took place there in history, it becomes very real to me—first of all, in my apprehension.
I say, “Oh, thank You, Lord Jesus. You died. You died for me.” I apprehend it. I understand it. And by simple faith I take, I appropriate. So what is historical becomes very living and personal. It is made real, is it not?
I do not want to push this too far, but I think there will come a day when you find yourself really buried. You will say that God really nailed to the cross all that old Adam was, and because it smelled, so to speak, He said, “I have it covered over.” He puts it in the tomb, and we come to a personal reality of what it means to be buried with Christ.
All that the old life is—thank God for the day it becomes very real: our crucifixion, our burial.
As I said yesterday, and I want to re-emphasize it, thank God for the day that we discover it takes more than the negative. I lived so long on this side. I thought if I could just get people dead, God would get them alive.
But some people have a way of hanging around the grave. As my brother was saying yesterday afternoon, we get so caught with the reality of a thing, and it is so wonderful. How many of you know we want to camp there?
It is one of the tendencies of all of us. When a thing has been made real to us, we cry, “Hooray, I found it! Eureka, this is it!” And so we stay there, and the Lord has difficulty getting us beyond.
This is why we finally come to see that it is not enough to see that He died for us. We died with Him, and the reality of that burial is something. But we come to see that we live by the life of Another—all the reality of the resurrected Christ, you see.
About this time, it is very wonderful that we begin to realize not only resurrection, but He ascended. He was seated at the right hand of the Father.
What is the proof that Jesus was the Son of God? His resurrection. It was God Who raised Him from the dead, and the fact that He was the Son of God is proved by the resurrection.
What was the proof that this Jesus, Who is the Son of God, has now been seated at the right hand of the throne? What is the proof that He is exalted?
The Holy Spirit has been poured out. Peter says, “This is what you see.” It is the proof. They could not see up into the heavens, but he was saying, “This is the proof that He has been exalted: the Spirit has been poured out.”
Now, the Holy Spirit is poured out, and I believe it is upon the Head, and we see it comes down upon the whole of the body—the Spirit poured out.
I have to be honest with us and help us to be very careful, because there is a lot of confusion at this point. How many Calvaries? How many burials? How many resurrections? How many ascensions? How many exaltations? How many outpourings?
Are you sure? You are determined to miss the parallel. Start all over again. How many crucifixions? I do not need to go on, do I? In history, there is one.
How many times throughout all these years has it been personalized? Many. How many burials? How many times has it been personalized around the world? How many resurrections? How many times has it been? Many. How many ascensions and exaltations and outpourings? One. How many times has it been personalized? Many, you see.
It will help us to keep our Scripture very clear. Now, I have not changed doctrine for twenty years in this. Believe me, we entered in years ago. I have had a deep conviction that people have been prone to call things by the wrong name.
You cannot take their experience away, but what you have to do is get adjusted to the Book. Are you with me?
When somebody says, “Well, I had a baptism,” I say, “He means he has personalized what took place up there.” Are you with me now? There is really only one baptism.
And now that the Spirit has been poured out, really this is the anointing. This is the anointing—a lovely anointing.
I think the anointing is the basis for all our seeing. I have noticed through the years that when the anointing comes to an individual, folk can have heard that Jesus died for years, and then suddenly the anointing pulls back the eyes, and they say, “Oh, thank You, Lord, for dying for me.”
On what basis were they able to see that He was their substitute? It is the anointing.
The anointing reveals. It is the anointing that breaks the yoke. It is the anointing that helps somebody to see.
I have had individuals in meetings for years, and they have heard Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.
—Galatians 2:20
They know it is a verse, and that is all it is. When does it become a reality to them? One day the Holy Spirit pulls back the veil, you see.
I had one of the most lovely examples of this a number of years ago. We were on the West Coast. God broke into a church, and about fifty young married couples were saved. It was just a very sovereign working of the Lord.
In those days, our emphasis was so much on the cross: our look the first time to see His death, our look the second time to see our death with Him.
After about ten years, I had gone back to that particular group many times. But I was invited by this pastor and his church to Spokane, Washington. We were there in meetings for a couple of days.
One morning, in the morning session, the pastor’s wife stood and she said, “Oh, I must tell you. Brother Vern will hardly believe it, but I had a funeral last night.”
Then she told us. She said, “My husband lay in bed and snored away, but, oh, God put a mirror before me. I have heard all of this for ten or twelve years—that I died with Christ. I learned it in Bible school, and I taught it in all our ladies’ groups. But guess what happened? Last night it happened to me.”
I will never forget the tears. She just opened it up. I looked at her as one of the loveliest pastors’ wives I had ever met. Oh, I knew God needed to do more, but there were so many wonderful things.
That night, she said, “I saw everything Dorothy had ever done—the ladies’ missionary society, leading the class, leading the choir, all these things. Oh, I could not stand to look at it.”
What did she see? She saw all that the old life, the old creation represented in Adam. Then, in desperation, she kept saying, “Oh, God, no wonder You could not be pleased.” It was something that had escaped the tomb and was trying to dedicate to God.
We sat there, I suppose thirty or forty people, everyone weeping. She was loved; everyone loved her. She said, “I just went through such misery for about three or four hours, and I wanted to wake my husband.” The Lord said, “This is a private funeral.”
She said, “I wanted to go knock on your room, and I knew that would not be right.” The Lord said, “This is a private funeral.” It is one thing you go through all alone.
After I saw what had happened, I do not take anything for granted in anybody anymore. If it could happen to Dorothy, Lord, it might happen to somebody.
But what is it really? What is it? Now, I am not implying that you have to deal with subjective things in such a way that everybody in the group wonders, “Oh, I do not know if that happened to me.” Are you there? You know what I mean. You are wondering, are you not?
Well, I do not know. But I know what I keep saying: “Lord, if there is something I do not see as clearly as I ought, let the anointing pull back the veil. Let the anointing—let it, let it. Lord, I claim that every bit of what has really taken place, and what I know positionally, Thou wilt make to be very living and real.”
Now we are right where we were yesterday. Remember, we used the words promise, prove, and possess. I know that there is such a thing as apprehending the promise of a thing and claiming the reality of the promise. Oh, Lord, that is wonderful. Then we go through the proving of it, by which the Holy Spirit makes it into a reality. We possess the reality of it.
So we say that it is the anointing that has been poured out. The Holy Spirit has been poured out, and He is wanting to make living and real all these aspects, I believe, brothers and sisters.
God is not only trying to get some folk resurrected. There comes a day when He shows them what it is to be related—to be really planted in the body.
If I understand the word baptized in 1 Corinthians, it means that literally we are planted into a living relationship in the body. It is a positional thing primarily. I am positioned. I am put within. I am put within as a member in the body.
Every place I go, I hear people saying, “Oh, praise the Lord, I am suddenly discovering what it is to be in the body.” There is a new awareness today. It is the anointing that gives us a little bit of that enlarged understanding.
The anointing is awakening folk to say, “Mine is not just a private dedication. Mine is not just giving myself and seeing something good and going out to do it. But I begin to function within the body and recognize what this means.”
All this independence has been so evident. Much religious work today is a dissipation of our energy and our strength. There comes a time, I believe, as we keep holding it before the Lord, that the anointing which has been poured out makes real: “Oh, thank You, Lord. You positioned me in the body. You have given this as a place, a function, something in which I am to fulfill. My dedication is to be sharpened and focused. This is what You want—not just doing good.”
I believe this is why we are introduced to gifts. Every spiritual thing that is done is really by a divine enablement that God gives. It is the divine enablement that God gives.
You can cut the lawn for the Lord, trim the trees for the Lord, paint the building for the Lord. You can do all those things, and that is fine. Give them a cup of cold water; the Lord says, “Amen.” But we are talking about building something of spiritual quality—something that is very sharp and focused for the thing that God really wants.
Once again, you see, God governs the focus. He governs our doing, because what is done must be done by what He has given. It is not just doing. He is so restrictive! It must be done by the divine enablement that He has given—not wanting to limit us, but wanting us to come to fulfillment.
You will notice he says in Romans 12:6, “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.” God’s grace in giving—He places within my brother Dan a little rosebud. It is a divine enablement hidden there. For years he may not know it is there.
When did it come? There may be a difference of opinion here, but I believe that while Dan did not know it, the moment he said, “Jesus is Lord,” he got planted; and then, in him, God put a little bud.
One day, as the anointing begins to work, the anointing working within my brother is going to create a sort of burden in his heart. The burden begins to help him discern the need and long to meet that need.
So what does he do? Runs out to get somebody else to do it. Now, do we not usually? We get a burden, and what do we do? “Who will help me?” We run out to find somebody to do it.
I have a dear brother: when people come and say, “I have a burden,” he says, “Praise the Lord. That is God exercising. Do it.”
Can you see how we want the spectacular? But how many of you begin to realize that the spiritual begins to work in a very normal unfolding way?
A bolt of lightning does not come out and say, “This is your burden. Do this.” It is not that way. The more spiritual things get, so often they have their natural—that is the word—their normal unfolding.
It is my burden. I thank God when I see a little rosebud. The anointing is working; God’s burden is coming within. The first thing you know, two petals open up. What happened? Those two petals begin to reach out toward whatever is needed. Then the third one opens, then the fourth one opens. Then somebody squashes it at night, and it goes in for a while.
But God’s way of developing in every life is by the burdens that He places within. Some people have a burden for this, a burden for this, a longing, you see, and it begins to unfold.
When God gives a burden in you, the enablement goes right along with it. This is what the gift is: to see, and the ability within. So this is why the gift begins to develop into a function, or into a ministry.
Now, it talks about gifts here, but it immediately goes to the seven ministries—a complete number here. I think that in the average assembly, and then the church at large, so to speak, here you have these seven things.
Verse 6 speaks of “gifts differing.” One who has a burden to speak has a burden that is discharged as God gives quickening to be able to speak something in an anointed way. I believe there are all levels of prophecy.
One of our confusions today is that we do not see that you have all these levels of prophecy working all the way to the more sure word of prophecy.
Someone gets up as a little baby, and the first words they lisp as a newborn baby are, “Lord Jesus.” It is so wonderful. The Spirit witnesses with his spirit, and he says, “Da-da, Father.” What is doing it? The Spirit.
The testimony of Jesus—the first testimony you gave—if there is any anointing in it, it is the Spirit doing it.
Someone sits in the group, and they are exercised with a burden that certain three or four verses are just the thing that is fitting. Of course, the proportion of their faith is pretty weak. According to the proportion of their faith, they read those verses, and the Spirit quickens them, and everybody is blessed.
Of course, you have to do that with the proportion of faith, do you not? Because something is stirring in your mind all the time, and your reasoning is saying, “Uh-uh, could not be. Could not be. Somebody else will do it.” And so you quench the burden.
The more we learn to be under the control of the anointing of the Spirit of God, God may actually make you so rich in the Word that one day you know those three or four verses without reading them. Are you with me now? So you just speak them forth. It is all right there. You are on safe ground. It is Scripture. Praise the Lord.
This is the way it begins to work: anointed speaking.
When the preacher stands up, people say, “Well, what is it—preaching or prophesying?” You cannot sharply distinguish. There have been times when the anointing on a speaker was very heavy; it had a very heavy prophetic anointing. Most preaching is not that heavy in anointing. But I have seen times when the Lord’s anointing was so very real that it reached a higher level.
So we are saying that if God is developing and has placed a gift within, what makes the gift operate? The anointing.
The anointing. I want us to see that the anointing governs. The anointing governs. The anointing governs.
Here we are—hand, foot, eye, various parts within the body—and God seems to keep the whole of this under His control simply by the anointing.
I feel very honestly, we travel throughout many places these days, and when people get the idea of body life, their first concept is, “Praise the Lord, this is my opportunity.”
So many places where I get into what they call body life, it is anarchy. Every man is doing that which is right in his own eyes. Preachers sat him down so long, now he has got a chance—or whatever it is, you see.
I have to remind us that we are members in the body, but all these members are under the control of the Head. So you say there is real headship, there is real leadership; but it is by what? The anointing. It is by the anointing.
It is the anointing that governs, the anointing that gives unveiling to see, the anointing that gives the registration within our spirit that this is what needs to be done.
All the gifts that are working—whether it is faith, word of wisdom, knowledge, discernment, whatever it is—it is the Spirit working within. We need to have the deep sense within of how to cooperate. Oh, it is a blessed thing.
When God planted us into the body, He gave us position. Really, planting is positioning. But if I move only from position—“Praise the Lord, I am a hand”—then I miss the matter of the anointing.
The little word “ministry” in Romans 12:7, “Let us give ourselves to our ministry,” is an unfortunate translation. It really is diakonia: serving, the deaconate. It is serving, you see.
How many of you, through the years, have seen someone in a very hidden but very wonderful way grow up and have the ability to serve? Brother, sister—they do it out of a great sense of the need they see, and it develops: the serving ministry.
A hand learns to serve out of burden and out of anointing.
Then it says teaching: “He that teacheth, to his teaching.” If God begins to develop within you the ability to distinguish things that differ, you see that the problem with most folk is that they generalize. All teaching just boils down to distinguishing things that differ.
My little boy—remember, when he was growing up, we would go along the highway. Everything that had four legs in the pasture was a horse.
People read the Bible that way. They read the word sanctification, and it has four legs, so it is all alike. How many of you came to the place where you saw one day that there was a sanctification in Christ—set apart in Him—that was very different from possessing your vessel in sanctification, your sanctified walk?
One of the great difficulties in immaturity in the body is that most folk make a generalization. One word seems to cover everything. But the teacher has the burden to say, “Oh, you must see that there is a difference between my being sanctified in Christ the moment I am saved, and learning to walk after the Spirit.”
When you learn to wait on your teaching, and this gift of discerning and the word come to distinguish between positional sanctification and the walk of sanctification, you are waiting for new ways to explain things that will bring people out of confusion.
How many of you get that burden? Well, we all have it in a general way, do we not? But when the burden gets intense and you start to cry out, “Lord, this thing cannot go on,” the more intense it gets, you keep waiting and waiting and looking and longing before the Lord for a way to help distinguish and make things more clear.
Everybody is apt to teach, but not everybody is prepared to teach. It is according to the burden and waiting—the burden in waiting.
You learn to wait before the Lord on how to serve. You can do it from position. Somebody says, “If they would just appoint people to open the windows when it gets hot, and appoint people to meet folk at the door.” I believe it is necessary to have positions.
But how many of you know that you can put somebody in a position and they really do not function very well? They get so wrapped up in the meeting they go to sleep with everybody else, and the windows need to be opened.
So the brother who learns to wait in his serving is always very sensitive to the needs of all the people. “People are nodding; I had better get the windows open. Somebody new has come into the meeting, and just in case nobody else sufficiently shows them love, I had better do it.”
What is it? Out of burden. You say, “Oh, you are doing things too naturally. I want to be more spiritual.”
Can I let you in on something this morning? God keeps saying to me week after week after week, “Vern, I want you to get more practical.”
I say, “What did You say, Lord?” But when you get practical, you step on toes. You get so close. But spirituality finally gets its sharpness of dedication in practicality—real practicality.
So here we are. It is by the anointing. It is by the anointing.
If I move only out of position, then I have a smug business. I say, “Well, praise the Lord, Brother Dan has been selected to open the door, and Brother Pete is going to open the windows when the time comes.” It is a good thing to do all that, but they will not fulfill their position as they ought unless they have the anointing.
I must not only have position, but the position must also be governed by the sense of anointing.
Let us take an illustration from the Old Testament. Turn to 2 Chronicles 20.
Here is a very desperate emergency that has come up. The Moabites and the Ammonites are coming in as a great horde, and they are about to swallow up the Lord’s people. What an hour of emergency.
In verse 3 we read that Jehoshaphat—who is he? He is the king, is he not?—feared, and set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
Here is one who is king and moving from position. He is in leadership; God ordained it. In this particular case, we see what he does. He sets himself, proclaims a fast, and they all gather themselves together to ask help of the Lord. Even out of all the cities of Judah, they came to seek the Lord.
Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and prayed:
O Lord, the God of our fathers, art not Thou God in heaven? and rulest not Thou over all the kingdoms of the nations? and in Thy hand is power and might, so that none is able to withstand Thee.
Didst not Thou, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before Thy people Israel, and give it to the seed of Abraham Thy friend for ever?
…
For we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon Thee.—2 Chronicles 20:6-7, 12
I love the leadership here. I love Jehoshaphat acknowledging, “We have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon Thee.”
It is a desperate emergency, is it not? They all stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children.
What does God do? It is very interesting. I would have assumed that because such a godly king, such a leader, was before the Lord, the Lord would take the next step and give to Jehoshaphat the direction as to what they were to do.
But what does He do? Position can go so far sometimes.
Then it says, in the midst of the congregation, the Spirit came upon a little Levite by the name of Jahaziel. He was of the family of Asaph. He was one of those who, I suppose, had his position for singing as a minister before the Lord.
Where does the anointing come? Where does it fall? Who is governing this whole situation?
Listen to what Jahaziel said:
Then upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite, of the sons of Asaph, came the Spirit of the Lord in the midst of the assembly;
and he said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat: thus saith the Lord unto you, Fear not ye, neither be dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s.—2 Chronicles 20:14-15
Praise the Lord. Why did the Spirit not come unto Jehoshaphat? Who can tell me? Why did the Spirit come upon Jahaziel? I do not have the answer; I am asking you.
All right, I think that is very well said. His position went so far. He turned them to the Lord in the crisis situation. His words are pretty good: “Our eyes are upon the Lord.” But it goes so far.
I am trying to say to us that God has a way of governing by the anointing. In our fellowships and in our groups, there is a place for the leaders, the Jehoshaphats, to point the people. There is a place. But always there is the governing element: heaven reigns, God rules, the anointing comes.
I have pondered this many times: Why did He come upon Jahaziel? Was Jahaziel a little more sensitive? Was he sitting there saying, “Oh, Lord, I will be the vessel. What do You want?” We do not know.
But I believe Jahaziel, when God delegated to him—remember where we were the first morning?—received what had been delegated, and he stood to represent the voice and to speak for Him.
As we learn to keep our ears turned to the Lord, not all have the same burden or the same sensitivity, because God has given differently. But those who have this must learn to function according to the gift that becomes a function, a place where I minister, where my dedication unto the Lord is for the needs of His people.
I have been waiting for months, actually several years, as to how to bring people more and more to this. If we have any longing to teach, it is to wait for a way somehow to express to folk that when they have that inner urge, that registration, that sense of burden—whatever it is—they should dare to follow it.
Dare to follow it according to the proportion of the measure of whatever you see. Do not run around and try to find somebody who will help you; you will get cut off.
It is good to counsel. It is good to fellowship. You might find somebody else who has a similar burden. But even then, if there is not the same awareness in the Lord, this is one of those places where the developing of the burden and the anointing within begins to bring one forward.
“A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men” (Proverbs 18:16). Eventually it will blossom. It will blossom from a little rosebud into a full-blown flower.
I have to say this. I am not just impelled by the Spirit, but I believe the Lord wants me to encourage you, brothers and sisters. If the anointing governs, if the anointing pulls back the eyes, if the anointing brings burden, and if the anointing breaks yokes, more of God’s children need to claim a personalizing of what this anointing really means in their life.
You are very precious folk, and I have known some of you for seven or eight years. But I have met some folk who come into anointing who are way ahead of you, though they have not been on the way so long.
It is the anointing, folks. You know I love you; I would not speak that way otherwise. It is the anointing. It is the anointing.
I am afraid of getting into rigid position and saying, “Well, we will position so-and-so to be a responsible brother or an elder,” and so-and-so to be a responsible brother and elder. He has the position.
Jehoshaphats and elders and brothers are needed. But if they who have been, as it were, given position by anointing do not recognize and know the anointing that makes them function, you are worse off. You are worse off.
I wrote down something yesterday, and I prayed I would forget it. Let me see if I can find what I wrote. I am keenly convinced that when God plants us in, He gives positions. Then the anointing awakens us to the position we have.
But just because I have a position, or God made me a hand, or God made me an eye, does not mean that I can move out from position.
What I wanted to say was this: The anointing gives position, but the anointing actuates me in the position.
You see that? It actuates me. You can have a position and sit down sound asleep in the meeting. “I am holding the fort. Holding the fort.” It is a positional thing—planted into, given. But when we know the way of living this, and we know the way of the anointing of the Lord, we are always open and sensitive to how to bring the meeting, keep the meeting, keep everything functioning in life by the Lord, not merely by positions.
Jahaziel said to the group, “Be not afraid, nor dismayed, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.” What does he do? He does not give them the whole blueprint for how they are going to win the battle the next day.
The anointing delivers us into moment-by-moment dependence. We always think that if we had the anointing, it would give us a vision of how to do it without God. God gives direction, but He says simply this:
To-morrow go ye down against them: behold, they come up by the ascent of Ziz; and ye shall find them at the end of the valley, before the wilderness of Jeruel.
Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem; fear not, nor be dismayed: to-morrow go out against them; for the Lord is with you.—2 Chronicles 20:16-17
I suppose if Jehoshaphat had been any other kind of king, he would have said, “Who is this young upstart? I am the elder. I am the one positioned. I am the king.”
I will tell you, leadership really has to be wrought on by God. Leadership is wonderful, but leadership has to know and sense God’s position and the anointing. He knew it was a word from the Lord.
It says he bowed his head to the ground, and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell before the Lord, worshiping the Lord. The Levites, the children of the Kohathites and of the Korahites, stood up to praise the Lord God of Israel with a very loud voice.
What are they going to do? Well, we do not know. It is delivered into dependence.
The next day, when they go out, he puts the choir out in the very front line. Take volunteers for the choir! Imagine the cliff of Ziz. When you come out there, you are going to look over into all the lowlands in the valley. He puts the choir right out in front, the army back here.
That is deliverance into dependence upon the Lord. “But Lord, what are You going to do?” “Put the choir in front. Wait and see. You shall not need to fight. Just stand still and see the Lord work.”
They rose early in the morning and went forth into the wilderness of Tekoa. As they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said:
Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem: believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.
—2 Chronicles 20:20
And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, that they should praise in holy array, as they went out before the army, and say:
Give thanks unto the Lord; for His lovingkindness endureth for ever.
—2 Chronicles 20:21
Now it shifts back to Jehoshaphat. I hear Jahaziel saying, “All I had to say was, ‘Stand fast. You shall not need to fight.’ Now the Spirit of the Lord is giving the direction to Jehoshaphat.”
The choir stands out singing praises to the Lord. When they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments.
I have done a lot of imagining at this point. Can you not see this silly choir—this lovely choir—standing right out on the cliff edge, praising the Lord? What wonderful targets they are. Good thing they did not have rifles in those days.
But it did not make any difference, because God was in it all. Standing right out on the cliff, praising the Lord, delivered into dependence: “Lord, I do not know what You are going to do, but Your word says praise. Hallelujah.”
I expect the Moabites and the Ammonites began to argue. “Careful now, this is a trick. We have heard about these people before. They always have something up their sleeve.” They began to argue among themselves, and the argument got so intense that they devoured one another. They ended up that day by finishing off one another.
God’s people were standing up there. I do not think they even yet knew what was taking place, just praising the Lord. Finally, they went down and picked up all the spoil. It was so great that it took three days.
The anointing governs. God keeps ruling. I thank God for body ministry. I thank God that He has awakened us to the fact that the elders go so far; Jahaziel comes in and goes so far; then it comes back, and Jehoshaphat gets a word from the Lord. The whole choir has their place. But it is all governed by what? The anointing.
How far can we go? Go further than God gives us an eye or ear to hear and to see. The anointing governs.
Take one more picture. Go over to the New Testament, the book of Acts, chapter 13.
Here is a well-known portion, beginning with verse 1. There were at the church at Antioch certain prophets and teachers, including Barnabas, and it names them all.
Verse 2 says, “As they ministered to the Lord.” I do believe that if God has any one way of making real to us that the Holy Spirit has been poured out, ours now is by the Spirit that has been given, that we minister back to the Lord. Ours is primarily a ministry unto Him.
I do not know that this was the whole church. Apparently it was the leading ministries there, the prophets and the teachers. They were ministering to the Lord.
Once again, you sense something of the anointing that begins to work. In ministering to the Lord, the Holy Spirit says:
And as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.
Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.
So they, being sent forth by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia.—Acts 13:2-4
So they were sent forth by the what? The Holy Spirit.
The anointing governs. In the midst of the group that day, the Spirit spoke. I do not know how it came about, but I believe one of them, by the anointing of the Spirit, sensed in prophecy, “Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work.”
I have to say to us this morning, beloved, that the more we are alive to the need for the anointing of the Lord, the more we realize that it is God Who governs body life.
The attempt to put chairs in a circle and call it a New Testament church or New Testament functioning—I have been in them. We started this back in 1947 in Missouri. But I have to tell you, it is the deadest thing I know without the anointing. I would rather be in most denominational churches I know; at least they flap their wings a little bit.
You know what I mean. I have to say it honestly. We wondered why folk hear, “Oh, there is a special meeting. The Lord is calling out a group of people. We hear it is something,” and so they come in and join the circle. But they stay one week or two weeks, and you never see them again.
What is it that is necessary? There must be a measure of life.
You can put the chairs in a circle, throw the songbook away, get rid of the preachers and everything else, and say, “This is body life. This is body ministry.” It does not mean a thing. I have seen it all over the country. We have experienced some of it.
What is it that we have to have? The anointing that governs.
It is not that leadership is wrong. It is not that folk in position are wrong. It is that those who are positioned—whatever it is—have to know how to be sensitive to the anointing. The anointing governs.
That brings us to this closing thought. If my dedication gets sharpened and focused, and God says that I can come to the fulfillment of this dedication in the midst of the body, in the place that God has ordained, then I begin to realize that I need to have body life.
What do I do? “Lord, I have endured this as long as I can. I know I must, but I cannot stand the death. I cannot stand the lack of livingness,” or whatever it is.
I am stretching it this morning if I can. Beloved, we have got to see that God’s body is a little bit bigger than we thought. First of all, it does not mean that the body just represents the people that meet at Third Street and Fourth Corner where so-and-so lives. It is a little bit bigger than that.
I do not care how much truth they have, how much more clearly they may see, and how much more they may stand for.
The enemy has trained all his targets on the people who are dedicated to bring something for God. He is out to thwart and hinder, disrupt and destroy. I know why: because if they are of God, God is going to bring something into fullness, and he trains every target there.
This is what is happening all over the country. Folk are crying out for things. But, Lord, all I can say this morning is that we have to be delivered into the dependence of the fact that it is the anointing we need to learn to recognize, be open to, and honor in the midst.
Look back again. You have been through Calvary. You have been buried. You have been resurrected. You may even know you are seated with Christ in heavenly places as a positional thing. You may know about the body.
But it is upon this body that He pours out the anointing. It is there that the blessing is. It is there that God gives His working and His approval.
Turn with me to Psalm 133.
You know, of course, that what we are referring to here is this outpouring, the promise of the Father, the anointing of the Head—the Lord Jesus—that which falls down over the whole garment of Aaron, pictured in the Old Testament. It had something of its reality in history that day when the Holy Spirit was poured out.
That is a once-for-all thing so far as history and God’s viewpoint are concerned. But now there is the personal entering into it and all that it means, making it a very personalized thing.
Someone says, “Have you received the baptism?” One person who knows his doctrine says, “Praise God, the moment I trusted Jesus, I was baptized into the body. I got it all at once.” You ever meet anybody like that? They are right, are they not? From a historical, positional standpoint, you can spend all your time arguing with them to no end. It is two sides of a coin again.
Then you meet another whole group who do not know much about the position. All they know about is their own little personal baptism, which probably ought to be called an anointing.
The teachers whom God is raising up are beginning to use that term because they are finding that it is far more spiritually appropriate. I have been amazed in the last two or three months to see things coming out in magazines about the anointing. It would be far better.
But if somebody wants to talk about his own little baptism, praise the Lord, do not argue. We are wanting somehow to get through to us the fact that the important thing is not just the historical aspect of it, but to know the reality of this anointing.
I have been amazed to see some folk whom God has brought into unveiling. The eyes have been opened, and prejudices and some of this have been broken. They have entered into the reality of an anointing, and shackles—things—begin to fall away.
God will give you as much as He can, as much reality as He can. But He will not impose against any prejudices we keep. He says, “Okay, I will go as far as I can.” How wonderful.
He does not allow our prejudices to stop Him; sometimes He will be overwhelming. We do not understand, but He goes as far with us as He can. But, oh, one day the anointing will break the yoke—the prejudices and the bondages.
I plead with us this morning: if I see in a new way what this represents, God is doing a far bigger thing, a far bigger thing than we have realized.
Our problem has been to say, “Well, we have got to meet over at such-and-such a place, because surely that is where the place is, or that is where the body is.” I am not so sure.
You want to see what I believe? Well, here we are: Psalm 133.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brethren to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
That ran down upon the beard,
Even Aaron’s beard;
That came down upon the skirt of his garments;
Like the dew of Hermon,
That cometh down upon the mountains of Zion:
For there the Lord commanded the blessing,
Even life for evermore.—Psalm 133:1-3
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Not merely brethren who meet at Third Street and Fourth Corner because they have got the truth and have taken something—not necessarily.
What is the reality of it? For brethren to dwell together in unity of Spirit. It is wonderful. We have been here three or four days, and we have had no problems. Yes, Lord. The Lord’s blessing and the Lord’s working have been present. Thank God.
It is like the precious ointment upon the head, which ran down upon the beard—even Aaron’s beard—which went down to the skirts of his garments. As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore.
There He commanded the blessing. There where people are what? Not just congregated, but dwelling. There the Lord commanded the blessing.
Oh, God had a hard time with me. You can get so strong in your conceptions, and you get invited over to such-and-such a place where you see the Spirit of the Lord bringing some people to dwell together, and He commands the blessing.
You say, “Lord, You cannot do it. That is not right. They do not believe right. They are not clear. They do not understand. Lord, You cannot do it.”
But He does. He does.
I have had to say, “Lord, You are God. You are God.” I back up and I say, “Lord, that is even more than other places I see. You cannot do it.”
There He commands the blessing.
I believe God is in the shaking business today. The shaking that is going on is shaking things we did not expect would get shaken. We thought He was going to shake everybody else, but not us—not our little conception, not our little interpretation.
God is going to reconstitute. He is going to build something of His own doing and His own working. Lord, I do not know what it is, but I long to keep in tune with You.
I am aware of certain things. Let me say in closing now: go back to Deuteronomy a little bit. We pick up where we were yesterday. What is the place?
Some of you were not here, but I will try to bring you up. Remember, we were saying in Deuteronomy 6, He brought them out. What was the promise? “I will bring you in.” He brought them out to bring them in, but not only to bring them in, but to possess.
Let us take Deuteronomy 8. We will start there.
All the commandment which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers.
And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or not.
And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.—Deuteronomy 8:1-3
Here is the promise of which we were speaking yesterday. Here is Egypt, and as they come out, the promise is that He will take them in to possess. But they went through a place that we called the proving, did we not? What was this proving ground? It was the wilderness.
How long do you have to be proved?
I have read different folk. Some say they could have gone straight across in forty days. I like the number forty, because that is the number of testing things: forty days. They could have gone through.
I would like to believe that God has forty-day testing. But you know what happened. They came up to Kadesh-barnea, they looked over, they listened to the report of those who came back, and they wandered around. Instead of forty days, it was forty years.
How long? How long? One of my friends keeps saying, “They looked over, they failed to dare to go, and he says, ‘Take another lap around the mountain. Take another lap, Vern. They are not ready to go in. Take another lap.’”
It is a strange thing, this thing of God proving the heart and bringing a life to the place.
I used to hire some teachers back in school. I would have someone come and say, “Well, I have had fifteen years of experience.” After a while I got pretty pointed with folk, and I would say, “I hope that is true. I wonder if you might have had one year’s experience fifteen times.”
You know what I mean? I am afraid that is true. Most people just make another lap—the same thing all over again—ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. Another lap: forty years, forty times, and it could have all been learned in forty days.
Read on. He led them in the wilderness to humble them and prove them, to know what was in their heart. You go on into the ninth chapter, and He talks about going in to possess. Finally, we get over to Deuteronomy 12.
I believe this thing of the proving of hearts, all of this that is going on when we look back at Calvary and God begins to work, finally comes to the point where we say it is in Christ. Christ here represents all of Canaan, the land.
It is in the land. It is when I come to say that I am in Christ—I am positioned in Him. He brought them in. Now there is the possessing and making real of all this involved in the land and in Christ.
Notice Deuteronomy 12:
These are the statutes and the ordinances which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the Lord, the God of thy fathers, hath given thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth.
…
Ye shall not do so unto the Lord your God.
But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put His name there, even unto His habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come.—Deuteronomy 12:1, 4-5
Now read verse 8:
Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.
—Deuteronomy 12:8
You come into the land; you cannot just say, “Oh, goody, this is wonderful. I will take this.” One says, “This is my mountain.” Another says, “I like this river. I am going to plow this for God.” Another says, “I am dedicated to this city.”
How many of you have ever seen people in their dedication say, “Oh, there is so much to do. Where will I start?” They roll up their sleeves and away they go. This is the typical sort of dedication, because the need constitutes the burden and all that they see.
Once we are in Christ, we come into a very restricting kind of dedication. Once they get into the land, once I am positioned in the body, I find my place.
In functioning, I do not come in and lead the whole service, sing five songs, pray five prayers, conduct the whole thing, while all the people sit back and say, “Amen.” You follow what I am trying to say?
Here is the principle that governs: “Every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.” You have not yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God gives you.
But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the Lord your God causeth you to inherit, and He giveth you rest from all your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety;
then it shall come to pass that to the place which the Lord your God shall choose, to cause His name to dwell there, thither shall ye bring all that I command you.—Deuteronomy 12:10-11
He is getting this into Christ. He is finding us that we are in Canaan, and all of this represents—so many people thought Canaan was getting to heaven. Of course, we know now that Canaan does not speak of heaven. I hope they do not have battle and war in heaven like they did in Canaan.
They have moved into the land. They are beginning to possess. We have moved into Christ, positioned there. But now we get a glimpse of all that this dedication means when it is sharpened.
Take verse 13:
Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt-offerings in every place that thou seest:
but in the place which the Lord shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt-offerings.—Deuteronomy 12:13-14
What is the burnt offering? The burnt offering is the offering of dedication.
Tomorrow we get into this whole principle of our dedication. What is the burnt offering? From the beginning, it was the giving of my whole self and burning up for God.
So He says, “Now, do not dedicate. Do not offer your burnt offerings just in every place, but in the place which the Lord shall choose.”
I am covering too much, and I know you are reading all that is involved. I am just trying for the Lord to give us a little spiritual picture.
How much our dedication needs to be rightly defined. What is it? “According to Your mercy, Lord, You open my ear. You apply the blood.”
But over the blood there was always the oil that was applied. It is one thing to have a redeemed ear; it is another thing to have an anointed ear. It is one thing to have redeemed hands; it is another thing to have the gift that works within develop into an anointing and an anointed going.
We have such a big subject. You just have to see the Lord’s thread all the way through: enlightened dedication, proved dedication, focused dedication.
I have been caught for some years with this, folk: you just cannot give yourselves to everything. Strangers devour and dissipate our strength. The enemy knows how to do all of this.
But when our dedication gets focused, we say, “Oh, God, You placed me in the body. Do You want me to function in the body, to learn that it is by the spiritual enablement that You give?”
Lord, here is a need. The burden begins to grow. You develop an ability to show mercy. Some of you dear sisters, God is burdening you in showing mercy. Each time He quickens it to you in a new way and you see something happening, it brings a new cheerfulness in showing mercy.
God burdens a brother to begin to rule, to help bring things into order. Some men would never see it in a thousand years. But some men cannot go into any situation without something within saying, “Oh, God, there is a need for order. Things have to be done right.”
What is it? The burden of the Lord. Follow it. Let God blossom. Let the anointing come upon the little bud, and let it blossom.
Some of you get a burden for someone, and you see that they are headed a little bit the wrong way and taking some wrong steps. The burden of the Lord comes, and you feel you just must go and speak to them, and you exhort them by the Lord.
“Brother, I have been that way. I have been that way. I just want to share a word of counsel.” You learn to exhort by the anointing. It is the burden that works within. It is a normal, natural outflow, but it is anointing as we learn to walk with the Lord.
The anointing governs. The anointing works.
Oh, to get a whole group—where does it come? It will come personally when I am one with the Lord, in union with Him. But wherever He can get a few people together in unity, He says, “It is safe there.”