I am reading from the American Standard Version.
The Lord saith unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.
The Lord will send forth the rod of Thy strength out of Zion:
Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.
Thy people offer themselves willingly
In the day of Thy power, in holy array:
Out of the womb of the morning
Thou hast the dew of Thy youth.
The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent:
Thou art a priest for ever
After the order of Melchizedek.
The Lord at Thy right hand
Will strike through kings in the day of His wrath.
He will judge among the nations,
He will fill the places with dead bodies;
He will strike through the head in many countries.
He will drink of the brook in the way:
Therefore will He lift up the head.
Just a word of prayer.
Father, as we come this morning to Thy Word, and to this particular portion of Thy Word, we want to confess, dear Lord, our absolute dependence upon the ministry of Thy Holy Spirit.
We thank Thee, beloved Lord, that whether speaking or hearing, Thou hast made a provision for us in the anointing which is ours in our Head, the Lord Jesus. And, O Father, Thou wouldst have every one of us, young and old, speaker and hearer alike, enter into that anointing, that we might know a portion of it, every one of us.
We ask, Lord, that Thou wilt take Thy Word and make it live to us. Cause Thy Word to dwell in us, Lord. May it be a Word that creates something within us. O Father, human words cannot do that, but Thy Word can.
And therefore, O Lord, we commit ourselves very simply to Thee, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
This 110th Psalm has been very much with me through the months of this year of 1977. And I feel very much a burden from the Lord in my own heart, at any rate, to pass on some of the lessons that are contained within it.
It is, without any question—I think all agree who know their Bibles—one of the greatest of the Messianic psalms found within the 150 psalms of the Psalter. And that this one does refer to the Lord Jesus, does in fact refer to the Messiah, is amply evidenced again and again in the New Testament.
If there are some who cast aspersions upon some of the other Messianic psalms, certainly with this one they must have much greater problem.
If you turn to Matthew 22, from verse 41, we read these words of our Lord Jesus Himself:
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is He?
They say unto Him, The son of David.
He saith unto them, How then doth David in the Spirit call Him Lord, saying,
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand,
Till I put Thine enemies underneath Thy feet?
If David then calleth Him Lord, how is He his son?
And no one was able to answer Him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions.
The Lord Jesus says quite clearly that this is a psalm referring to the Messiah. And He goes even further than some of our modern biblical scholars. He says that David is the author of this psalm, and says that David in the Spirit calls Him Lord.
Then again, if you will turn to Acts 2, in that great message that Peter preached under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, from verse 32, this is what Peter said on the day of Pentecost:
This Jesus did God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses.
Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear.
For David ascended not into the heavens: but he saith himself,
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand,
Till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet.
Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.
Or again, in the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 13, the writer says by the Spirit of God:
But of which of the angels hath He said at any time,
Sit Thou on My right hand,
Till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet?
We have, therefore, more than a little evidence in the New Testament that this psalm is indeed a Messianic psalm, that it refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that it was spoken in the Spirit.
Then again, we have two other little references. You might like to look at them in Hebrews 5:6, quoting this psalm:
Thou art a priest for ever
After the order of Melchizedek.
And then in Hebrews 7:17:
Thou art a priest for ever
After the order of Melchizedek.
And verse 21:
The Lord sware and will not repent Himself,
Thou art a priest for ever.
Well, there is enough evidence for you.
Now, this particular Psalm 110 expresses the most tremendous and vitally important truth concerning Christ and His own. In the time that I have, I should like us to consider five great lessons concerning the Lord Jesus and His own:
Now, those are five tremendous lessons. And without any further ado, because I understand they have put on a much longer tape for me than they do for the speakers, I will go to the matter.
Today, the first lesson: the absolute victory of the ascended, glorified Christ.
Psalm 110:1:
The Lord saith unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.
The end has been secured at the very beginning. We are not fighting a battle, as the redeemed of God, as those that have been saved by the grace of God through the finished work of the Lamb—we are not fighting a battle that is in question.
We are not fighting about beating the air, even if the enemy seems at times as if he has everything his own way, as if somehow the whole world is swamped with evil and with the influence of Satan. Thank God, the end has been completely and absolutely secured right at the start.
And the guarantee of this is that our Lord Jesus Christ has sat down at the right hand of God the Father. Now, that is a most tremendous thing. It is an unchanging, unchangeable fact.
It is not something we have imagined. It is not something that we sort of proclaim as an ideal. It is a glorious fact that cannot be changed. Jesus has sat down at the right hand of God the Father.
And of the Lord Jesus, it has been said by the Father:
Sit Thou at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.
Now, wherever we turn in the New Testament, we find this wonderful thing. If you will take your Bibles, in Mark 16:19, we read:
So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.
And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the Word by the signs that followed.
Or again, Peter the apostle, in his first letter, 1 Peter 3:21-22:
Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.
Or the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:24-26:
Then cometh the end, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power.
For He must reign, till He hath put all His enemies under His feet.
The last enemy that shall be abolished is death.
Or again, Hebrews 10:12:
But He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;
Henceforth expecting till His enemies be made the footstool of His feet.
For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also beareth witness to us:
This is the covenant that I will make with them
After those days, saith the Lord:
I will put My laws on their heart,
And upon their mind also will I write them;
And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.
Well now, that is something so tremendous, is it not? We come back to Psalm 110 and verse 1 and take a closer look at it. What does the Father say to the Son that has so thrilled the writers of the New Testament?
He has said this:
Sit Thou at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.
Sit Thou. Christ is seated. He is not fighting. He is not agitated. He is not nervous. He is relaxed. He is seated at the right hand of God the Father. In other words, He has won the battle.
When a man sits down, it is not the normal posture in a time of war. You do not sit when there is a battle on. You do not sit if you think that the end is in question. You might pace up and down, walk around and around, sit one minute and stand the next.
But the Father says to the Son, “Sit down at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.”
And then I want you to know this wonderful word, footstool. Literally, it is a stool for Your feet. And it is a stool for His feet.
Now, in the East, amongst the Arabs and also amongst Oriental Jews, you must never show the soles of your feet. It is the biggest insult you can offer: to sit, as some do on this side of the Atlantic, with their feet up, or with their leg cocked over the other one with the sole showing.
Because to show the sole of your foot is considered the most serious insult that you can offer to another person. And that is why the Scripture says a lot about the soles of our feet. It says, when they do not listen to you, when they will not receive you, shake off the dust from the soles of your feet.
You see, you have to show them. You shake off the dust from your feet and turn your back on them.
It speaks in some places of the enemies of the Lord with His feet being upon them. You remember Joshua said to the other generals, “Put your feet on their necks.”
And that is why here His enemies shall be the stool of His feet: absolutely defeated, absolutely shattered, their power broken. The footstool.
Then I want you to notice another wonderful word:
Sit Thou at My right hand
Until I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet.
“Until I.” So the Father has said to the Son, “Now then, the victory is won. You have won it. Your work is so tremendous, so complete, so absolutely perfect. You are to sit at My right hand until, by that work, through that work, I make all Your enemies Your footstool.”
It is the Father that is doing this wonderful work. One after another, the enemies of the Lord Jesus are being made a footstool of His feet.
Oh, when we look at some of the other psalms, it becomes quite exciting. Psalm 24:7:
Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors:
And the King of glory will come in.
Who is the King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
Yea, lift them up, ye everlasting doors:
And the King of glory will come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts,
He is the King of glory.
Oh, how wonderful. The Lord Jesus, the King of glory, the Lord of hosts, has gone into heaven for us and sat down at the right hand of God the Father.
No wonder it says in another Messianic psalm, Psalm 2:
Why do the nations rage,
And the peoples meditate a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord, and against His Anointed, saying,
Let us break Their bonds asunder,
And cast away Their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh:
The Lord will have them in derision.
Then will He speak unto them in His wrath,
And vex them in His sore displeasure:
Yet I have set My King
Upon My holy hill of Zion.
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said unto Me, Thou art My Son;
This day have I begotten Thee.
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;
Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
Now therefore be wise, O ye kings:
Be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way,
For His wrath will soon be kindled.
Blessed are all they that take refuge in Him.
Here we have, I think, the most wonderful statement of this fact: the Lord Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of God the Father, and the end is absolutely secure.
The purpose of God includes the church built upon that rock, against which the gates of Hades will not prevail. It is absolutely sure.
Jesus said:
Upon this rock I will build My church;
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Because the Head is already at the right hand of God the Father, we have won. We have won.
Dear child of God, if you are depressed, if you have got problems, if you have got circumstances that seem to be so terrible, do not fear. Even if you are a martyr in the name of the Lord, finally you have already won.
You cannot lose if you will only obey the Lord and trust Him.
Oh then, how wonderful it is when we come to the book of Revelation and read in Revelation 10. Just when the seventh angel was about to sound, he was stopped. You remember? And the word came: the mystery of God is finished, according to the good tidings which were preached by the apostles and prophets. It is completed.
How wonderful that dear John, in a forced-labour camp on the Isle of Patmos—a place for political prisoners in the Roman Empire, where men were being worked to death, as they used to in the concentration camps—received this revelation.
“Arbeit macht frei”—work will free you. It was the same thing. There is nothing new under the sun. The idea was to put to work those men who were considered the scum and vermin of society, and make them useful to society.
So the apostle John was in a forced-labour camp, a copper mine, on the Isle of Patmos. And it was there, in those circumstances not the least bit conducive to spirituality—not the least bit conducive to seeing visions of God, understanding the purpose of God, or spiritually intelligent Bible study—that God opened the heavens.
There John saw vision after vision after vision after vision. And the most glorious thing of all, he saw the throne of God and of the Lamb. He saw in the midst of the throne of God a little Lamb, as it had been slain, and the whole universe worshipping.
Then, as he looked down through time, he saw the purpose of God: the great battle, the great conflict between good and evil, between light and darkness, between God and Satan, between Christ and the powers of darkness, between the redeemed and the devil-possessed.
And it seemed at times as if Babylon would win again and again and again, and Jerusalem would be destroyed. But in the end, he sees Babylon judged, and coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God, he saw the New Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb.
In other words, God was saying to John, “Do not fear. Even if they take your life, the end is secured.”
The city of God will come, having the glory of God, with the throne of God and of the Lamb in it. No temple there, because God and the Lamb are the temple. And in the light of that city the nations will walk.
Do not fear. The end is already secured.
Now, my dear friends, I think that would be enough to sit down this morning and leave you with. But I think, just for the help of everybody, it might be good to enumerate some of the consequences of the ascension of our Lord Jesus.
What are the glorious consequences of our Lord Jesus sitting down at the right hand of God the Father, of these words of the Father concerning the Son:
Sit Thou at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.
First of all, here is the first great result, consequence, meaning of this: He is seated. There is not one single jot to be added to the work He has completed. There is not a t to be crossed or an i to be dotted.
Every single thing that is required to save a depraved sinner has been accomplished. Every single thing required to turn a sinner into a saint has been completed. Every single thing required to conform you and me to the image of God’s Son has already been won by the blood of the Lamb.
It is done. Dear child of God, you cannot add a single letter to God’s alphabet. You cannot add one single thing to the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is done, and in that finished work lies the whole of your salvation, the whole of your sanctification, the whole of your anointing, and the whole of the completion of the church. It is all within the finished work. Do you begin to see what I mean?
Some people get converted, and then they root around for something more. You know, “Oh, well, I mean, my dear friend, you can pray from this day till the Lord comes, and it will not win you one single thing more.”
We do not pray as a good work. We pray because we belong to Him. Did you know that?
Some people turn prayer and Bible study and fasting and witnessing and assembling together into good works. Then they sort of feel much better for it and say, “Now, Father, You should be very pleased with me. This morning, I spent ten minutes reading Your Word. You should be proud.”
And maybe, since I spent ten minutes reading Your Word, You would like to do a few things for me. You know the kind of mentality: “If I have done this and this and this and this, well then, of course, the Lord must do so and so and so and so.”
I am not for one single moment saying that you should not pray, that you should not read your Bible, that you should not witness, that you should not assemble yourselves together. But there is all the difference in the world between making those things good works to win the favour of God and having them come out of your union with the Lord Jesus.
You will not know more of your salvation simply because you are zealous. You must be zealous. But the reason you will know more of your salvation is because the Lord Jesus has died for you and given you every single thing.
Did you realize that? Eternal life is the free gift of God in Christ Jesus. You can swim in it.
If you only want to go into it up to your ankles, you can. And then you can fast and pray and read your Bible and witness and hope that the water will rise up to your knees.
But, my dear friend, you do not have to. I think you will find that it will be ankle-deep for the rest of your life, and you will become one of those terribly dutiful, weary, colourless, anemic believers.
Your whole life will be just a matter of duty and regulation. And you will wonder how, when suddenly someone gets saved, you see them roaring ahead like Concorde. I had to get that in a Jubilee year.
They do in three hours what the others take seven hours to do—that is, from London to New York or whatever.
And you say to yourself, “How come this young believer, this young whippersnapper who has just got saved, roars ahead of me? I am only ankle-deep; he is already in up to his eyes. There is something wrong with heaven. Something wrong with the way God handles us. It is not right.”
Ah, well, of course, we think, “Just wait. Perhaps he will collapse. He has gone in too fast.” But he never collapses. He goes on like a comet.
The fact is, maybe he knows that he has not got a claim on God except through Jesus Christ. And therefore, he begins to swim in the fullness of his salvation. He begins to experience the provision God has made for him because he knows he has not got a claim on God. He is only a sinner saved by the grace of God.
And someone else who thinks that their prayer and their Bible reading, their witnessing, and all the rest of it is somehow winning God’s favour—that God ought to do them a few favours now—they are still paddling ankle-deep.
Dear child of God, Jesus is seated. And the glorious meaning of this enthronement of the Lord Jesus is that you and I have a finished work. Through that finished work, every single thing in our salvation has been given to us freely: to experience, to appropriate, to enter into, to know the full meaning of.
It is all ours in Him. Oh, to enter in.
A second blessing? Friends, there are millions of blessings, thousands upon thousands of them, too many to contain at one time. Oh, to enter in.
And then, of course, there is this whole matter of sanctification, of really being conformed to the image of God’s Son.
Are your circumstances impossible? Have you inherited a family background that you feel is just the end? You always say, “Oh, I wish I was so-and-so. They have not got the circumstances I have. They were not born into the difficulties I have got.”
But, my dear friend, God knew you before you were born. He knows all about your circumstances, and in some strange ways they are ordered of God.
Because God has made a supply of grace available to you exactly commensurate with your circumstances. So do not moan about the circumstances. Discover the grace.
And then God will turn what is so terrible in your life into something that becomes a focal point of radiant glory. You would never have had it any other way.
Whatever it is that has been such a difficulty to you, that you feel stands between you and being conformed to the image of God’s Son, let me tell you: there is grace already provided for you through the finished work of the Lamb.
You do not have to win it. It is yours. You have to enter into it by faith. Discover it. Experience it. Overcome the circumstance, the problem, and let that become the point of glory in your life.
Maybe you feel you need something for service. But let me tell you something. If God wants you to be an apostle, or a prophet, or an evangelist, or a pastor, or whatever else—maybe just a help, I do not know; thank God for every help there is—whatever God has called you to, in whatever way you should serve the Lord, let me tell you this.
All the power for your service, all the equipment for your service, has already been provided through the finished work of the Lamb. God never calls a man to any job, never ever calls him to a ministry, that He does not provide for with both the power and the grace.
Seated. Hallelujah.
And then there is something else. We long to see the house of God recovered and built up, to have the topstone come into its place.
Well, dear friend, every single thing required to see the recovery of the church, to see the completion of its building, to make it ready for the coming of the Messiah—every single thing required has been obtained through the finished work of the Lamb.
Are we up against tremendous problems locally? Are we up against tremendous problems nationally? Let us not fear. God has already provided for us.
What a thrill it was to me just recently, on the BBC—for those of you who are ignorant, the British Broadcasting Corporation—to hear a news commentator and journalist, Michael Bourdaux, who has in the last few months visited Russia, give a programme for one half-hour called The Snowdrops After the Winter.
And what was it? It was an investigation into those who call themselves Christians in the Soviet Union. And what is their estimate of their number?
The estimate that all six denominations in the Soviet Union make conservatively of the number of believers in the Soviet Union is sixty million—sixty million believers.
He said, of course, that wherever he went, wherever he went into places where there were meetings, it was not the old and grey-haired; it was young people.
So tremendous is this, that the Soviet authorities, last Easter, put on Western films that they normally call depraved, running all night through Easter Saturday night. Why?
Why did they open the cinemas in Kiev, in Leningrad, in Moscow, and so on, and have these what they called depraved Western films from the States showing all through the night? Why? Because they were so afraid of the young people going to the great midnight services. That is why.
And that is the best evidence that something is happening in the Soviet Union.
In other words, when the Lord Jesus said, “I will build My church,” through His finished work He has provided all that is required for the completion of that work. Let the Antichrist come. Let the whole world be flooded with evil. Let the enemy seem to take everything.
The fact of the matter is, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Seated. All has been given to us in Christ and is to be received by faith.
Well, there is the first thing, of course, the first consequence. It covers many of the others, but I will enumerate a few others just for simplicity. Here is the second.
When it says the Lord Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of God the Father, it means the purpose of God is realized—fulfilled.
What does it say in Ephesians 3:11?
According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In other words, the purpose of God from eternity to eternity, to have a redeemed people in union with Himself, has already been accomplished in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is done.
As far as we are concerned, we are in the doing of it. We are in the period of its realization. But is it not wonderful? Realized, realized.
Whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Glory. Oh, I find it is a wonderful purpose of God fulfilled.
I have already mentioned the little Lamb in the midst of the throne of God. He had in His hand a book sealed with seven seals. Now, not everyone perhaps can understand this, but in ancient Jewish practice a will or testament was always bound with seven seals.
Do you understand? And what it really speaks of is the fact that here is the will of God, if you like, the purpose of God, the testament of God, God’s desire for the whole universe. And no one could break the seal, for there was no one worthy.
But then came a little Lamb, as it had been slain. And He took the will of God, and He broke one after another of the seals, all seven of them. Then the whole of the earth, the redeemed ones, and the angels—myriads upon myriads—worshipped God and the Lamb.
It was a glorious picture of the purpose of God, withheld from fallen mankind, taken by the new Man, the Lord Jesus, and realized. And then a whole great company of people coming into the good of it.
Well, one could speak for hours on this subject, but you all know—most of you, I think, are acquainted with your Bibles—you know that there was a veil in the tabernacle, and a veil in the temple.
And you will remember that that great veil, which was seven palms thick according to the Talmud, divided the holy place from the holiest place of all, the most holy, which was a symbol of the alienation of fallen man from God, the impossibility of fallen man bridging the gulf between earth and heaven.
And on that veil were cherubim. You will remember that in the Garden of Eden it was cherubim that guarded the way to the tree of life. They stopped fallen man with the flame of a sword.
But when we come to Revelation 4 and 5, we have the most wonderful thing: the cherubim have become ushers. Instead of standing against man, they have become ushers to a redeemed creation. From every tribe and tongue and kindred and nation, they come streaming into the purpose of God.
Why? Because when the Lord Jesus died, in the very moment He said, “It is finished,” the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
I have always wished that I had been one of the priests on duty that day. Oh, my! Going around polishing the glass, or seeing—of course, what happened was this: the purpose of God had been realized in one Man, Jesus.
That is why He is seated. God said, “It is done. You can relax. You have obtained all that is required for My purpose. You have realized it. You shall sit until I make every one of Your enemies the footstool of Your feet.”
And the last enemy that will go under Your feet is death itself. Thank God for that.
Well then, there is a third thing. Are you ready? The promise of the Father has been obtained and given.
Well, we have got that, of course, in Acts 2. We read it, did we not? Verse 33:
Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear.
The promise of the Father obtained and given.
What did our Lord Jesus say? He said Himself on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles—you remember that great day, the eighth day of the feast—when for seven days Levites bore in great pitchers full of water, and they poured the water in the court of the women in the old temple in Jerusalem.
Then on the eighth day, they came in with empty pitchers. They went through the movement, but there was no water flowing, because they were speaking of the great promise of the latter rain, when the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon all flesh.
But on the eighth day they came in with empty pitchers, and poured them out with nothing in them, a symbolic illustration that as yet it was unfulfilled.
It was on that day, the great day of the feast, that Jesus stood up and said:
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.
He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
This spake He of the Spirit, which had not yet been given, because He was not yet glorified.
I cannot understand Christians afraid of the Holy Spirit. Of course, there are extremes and excesses and counterfeits and all the rest of it, but so there is in everything else.
After all, more people die of food poisoning than anything else. I do not want to put you off the food here, but I am just telling you.
You do not stop eating because of counterfeit food. I am amazed when I go round some of these grocery stores: artificial this, artificial that, artificial the other; reconstituted this, reconstituted that, reconstituted the other; instant this and instant that and instant the other.
But you do not say, “Oh dear, dear, tell them I cannot touch this, I cannot touch that. No, no, no. I am getting so afraid of eating, I have stopped altogether for the last month.” No, of course not. You still eat.
You choose what you eat, and you are careful, perhaps, about what you eat. So it must be with the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
God forbid that because there are a few counterfeits, I should never know the anointing and fullness of the Holy Spirit. Then I should never know the gift and equipment of the Holy Spirit.
My goodness, I would find that the most extraordinary thing in the whole world. I would be frightened to death if someone came to me and said, because I needed an appendix operation—if you understand that; you do say appendix here, do you not?—“I need my appendix out. I do not, but if I did.”
And someone came to me and said, “I am a doctor. Here are my qualifications. I am a surgeon.” I say, “Oh, very good.” And then he comes to me with a hammer and a saw.
And I will say to him, “Excuse me, excuse me, what are you going to do?”
“I am going to take it out.”
“No, no, no, please.”
“Yes, I have to put you out. And the saw, that is to cut you open.”
“Oh, no. Please.”
“But, my dear friend,” he says, “I have got my qualifications. You want to need them again?”
Now listen: I would not be so bothered about qualifications. I do not know if you have got the right equipment.
This is like some people trying to preach who do not know the anointing. It is like people trying to do service for God who have no idea of the fullness and power of the Holy Spirit.
You may have the qualification because you are born again. You may even have the qualification because you are called. But, my dear friend, you do need the equipment.
You need the right equipment for the right job, and God can give you the right equipment for the right job. You do not use a saw on an operation—well, not that kind of saw anyway.
And you do not use a hammer when you are painting the house. You have a paintbrush. And when you want to put a few nails in, you need a hammer.
Now, the wonderful thing about the gifts of the Holy Spirit is that they cover every single emergency, contingency, and need. And the wonderful thing is, they are all available.
I do not understand when people go overboard about these, as if that is everything. My dear friend, the everything is to know Christ and to know union with Christ. That is the other word. But then we need to have the equipment, the equipment to do the job.
Well, all I am telling you is this: it is all yours because the Lord Jesus has obtained the promise of the Father and poured forth this which ye see and hear.
You can spend from now to the day you die trying to pay for that promise, but you will never do it—not if you pray all day and all night. The only thing you may end up with is a counterfeit experience.
You can fast, you can show zeal, you can go to the ends of the earth to serve the Lord, but still you will find the heavens like brass.
The only way you can know the anointing is, first, you must be prepared by the Lord Himself; and second, you must understand that it has been obtained by the Lord Jesus Himself on the basis of His finished work.
Upon that basis, God anoints a man or a woman. Upon that basis and that basis alone, God gives the power and fullness of the Holy Spirit. God gives the gifts.
People sometimes come to me and say, “I do not want the gifts. I want Jesus.” And such a statement makes me want to cry.
Because I see gifts as gifts of Jesus. “Oh, Jesus, You mean You want to be poor? You do not want to express Him as fully as you could?”
Well, enough said. The fact of the matter is that all the necessary gifts and equipment have been obtained in the anointing which is ours through the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let me go on. Here is the fourth thing: captivity has been led captive. Ephesians 4:8:
Wherefore He saith, When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive,
And gave gifts unto men.
Captivity led captive. So this is the meaning and consequence of the Lord Jesus seated at the right hand of God the Father: that He has ascended on high and broken every kind of bondage imaginable on the human scene.
Now, we have to face the fact that many of us, even though we are redeemed, are bound. We are bound by inhibition, bound by fear, bound by various things.
And you know, we long to come free. Sometimes we are afraid even to come out into the open and say that we are bound. We feel it is not right. We say, “I am a Christian. I am a believer.”
But you know there are times when the enemy does bind us. And there are other times when we have been bound all along and have never known it, until we touch the Lord more deeply. Then suddenly we are aware that we have got a bondage, you know, which we have lived with up to that time. You understand?
And then we want to get rid of it. Then how do we get rid of it? My dear friend, you can run all over the United States for deliverance ministries. Go to this place, go to that place; run here, run there; go to this meeting, go to that meeting.
Let this man lay his hands on you, let that man lay his hands on you, then another one lay your hands on you; get slapped on the back, well, pickled on the boat.
But you will never be free until you see that the guarantee of your freedom is the defeated foe. It is the Lord Jesus Who has broken every form of captivity and bondage known to man. He has broken it.
And you can enter in once you see with the eye of faith that the Lord Jesus, through His finished work, has led captivity captive. You can stand into what is yours in Him.
Sometimes it needs the ministry of other brothers. Sometimes it does need the prayer of the church. It means those wonderful words sometimes to be said over you: “You are free in the name of the Lord.”
That is the ratification of something. But unless you have seen it, you will never be free. It will come back to you like one of those dreadful sorts of weeds.
We have a weed called horseradish. Now, I suppose you all know what horseradish is. Do you eat it with your beef? I do not know. Do you have horseradish sauce?
Well, horseradish is a dreadful thing—not to eat, but if you have got it in your garden. Because if you go out and pull it up, what is left in the ground multiplies ten times.
If you do not get up the whole root, but leave as much as that in the ground, it will become another plant, and a much stronger one. It is a dreadful weed.
And some people’s captivity is just like that. They suddenly go to a meeting and say, “Oh, it was wonderful.” They rush around, they pull up all the leaves, and then they go and say, “Oh, it was wonderful. I am so different.”
Three months’ time, they have found ten times as much. It has all come up again.
No, dear friend. What you need is to see that the Lord Jesus has broken that captivity.
Well, here are—let me just say a few more things quickly. Our fifth thing is the absolute invincibility of Christ.
There is nothing He cannot do, no obstacle He cannot overcome, no problem He cannot solve, no difficulty He cannot unravel, no advance He cannot make. He has won. He is seated at the right hand of God the Father today.
How wonderful. So that means if He wants to make an advance here in Richmond, He can do it. If there are obstacles in front of the church of God, He can overcome them. If there are hindrances, He can use them or remove them.
There is nothing He cannot do. His victory is absolute. Praise God. He is seated.
No, He does not suddenly get up and say, “What are they doing in Richmond? What are they doing here in Raleigh? What are they doing in New York? What are they doing in Richmond, England—the original?” No, dear. Oh dear, no! He has won.
He is invincible. He is beyond the power of Satan to touch. That is why Satan touches you and me: he cannot touch the Head.
I remember some years ago—I may have told you some of this rather dreadful story, but I will tell you again—one of our brothers, who was an alcoholic, got gloriously saved. He was no poet before he was saved; then he got saved and delivered.
He is a very original brother, and every now and again around the Lord’s table he comes with the most extraordinary word of exhortation or comment.
One day he came and said that the children had been watching television. He had gone into the room, and suddenly they flashed back to this big National horse race.
He said, “I became quite excited as I watched them giving a little clip of the finish, because the whole place was in an uproar. Two horses came by side by side, nearly at the line, but they could not see which one won. And they had to have a photo finish.”
Then came out the verdict: “Such-and-such a horse has won by a head.”
And then he said, “Brothers and sisters, it has been a great blessing to me, because I suddenly realized that when the head has gone over the line, the rest of the body has won.”
No, you see, that is exactly what happens with the Lord Jesus. The Head has gone over the line, and the rest of the body has won. Praise the Lord. We are in the good of the Head. He is invincible.
Now Satan cannot touch the Head, but he can touch us. He cannot hinder the Head, but he can hinder us. That is what we are going to talk about in another one of these times.
And all I am saying now, you see, there are other things I would like to have talked about as consequences: intercession which avails. You see, our Lord Jesus does stand at times, but it is to intervene.
And what does He intercede for? On the basis of His finished work. Every time we are going to fail, He points to His finished work and says, “Father, remember.”
How wonderful. He ever lives to make intercession for us. He has gone into heaven now to appear before the face of God for us.
Oh, dear children of God, what guarantees we have. What glorious provision we have.
Satan’s days are numbered, and he knows it. That is another consequence. When Jesus sat down, it must have been like a sword went through the being of Satan.
If only He stood to fight, if only He had gone on fighting. But He sat down, and Satan knows his time is up. He knows he has only a certain period of time.
He is so proud that he believes he can still win. Now, you all know the pigheadedness of pride. People say to me, “Satan knows that he is finished. Why does he not give up?”
Not with pride. Pride is the most pigheaded, blind thing in the whole world. Satan believes that he might yet win the day. But we know he cannot.
And so finally, let me just say this. Jesus, seated at the right hand of God the Father, is the guarantee that in the end the whole earth will be filled with Him.
And we have this wonderful little word in a parenthesis in Ephesians 4:9:
Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth?
He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
He has ascended far above the heavens that He might fill all things. What a prospect.
The Lord saith unto my Lord,
Sit Thou at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies
Thy footstool.