The passage that I read yesterday evening was from the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians, chapter 4, beginning at verse 10.
But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at length ye have revived your thought for me; wherein ye did indeed take thought, but ye lacked opportunity.
Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.
I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in everything and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want.
I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.
Beloved Lord, we want to thank You that, when we come to the ministry of Your Word, You have provided for us special grace and power. You have provided an anointing. It cost You dearly to win that anointing for us.
And we therefore want to come very simply and by faith. We want to stand in that anointing for this time this morning, both for the speaking and for our hearing. We want, Lord, that we shall meet with You, that we shall hear Your voice beyond the human voice, and that we shall know You in our time, in Your Word this morning.
Then, Lord, we shall give You all the praise and glory. By faith, we stand in that anointing for both speaking and hearing. Fill this time with Yourself, Lord. Let all else recede, and we shall give You the praise. We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
I had no idea that the brothers had met together and thought a little about this coming year, and had felt that somehow or other they should consider very much the foundational things to do with the Christian life and with church life.
I only know that when I came here, I had only one thing in my heart. I felt very bad about it, because I felt that a number of other brothers could say exactly what I am saying. It seems rather ridiculous, in one sense, to come a long way to say very simple things that other brothers can say just as well.
But I had this in my heart: secrets of the Christian life—not mysteries; that is something else—but simple keys to the Christian life. Those essential, fundamental things that are the means by which we are brought into experiencing everything that is ours in the Lord Jesus.
The apostle here says that he knows the secret of how to be abased and how to abound. He says that he has learned the secret of how to be content in whatever condition he finds himself. That is no small secret.
In the neurotic, frenetic kind of life that we all live, that is no small secret. And he says the only way is to have discovered that in Christ, in the Messiah, you can be content. You can do everything in the One Who strengthens you.
Last night I talked about three secrets. I talked about one that is hardly ever mentioned anywhere today: repentance. It is absolutely foundational. It is essential.
Most believers hardly think of repentance. They think of it as an old-fashioned King James word that somehow belongs to antiquity. It has very little to do with the latter part of the twentieth century.
Yet, as we saw last night, repentance is foundational—not just for being converted, not just for being saved, but for believers. Eight times the Lord says to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, “Repent, or else I will come and remove your lampstand from its place.”
Repentance is foundational. We live in a society in which, frankly, the victim is victimized. In other words, we make excuses for the aggressor—why he is a criminal, why he assaults people, why he does this, why he does that. There may be something to be said for it, but nobody ever thinks about the victim. Interesting, isn’t it?
This has somehow eaten its way into our whole mentality. Somehow or other, we blame our circumstances, our parents, our wife, our employer, our employees, our job—or even our demon. It is always something responsible for our doing.
We are sweet, naïve, loving, pure, gullible people, and it is always the things around us that finally make us say, “Well, Lord, of course I fell into this because of so-and-so and so-and-so.” Repentance is owning up to our condition and our responsibility for our condition.
The second thing we talked about was living faith: living, practical, working faith—faith that has concrete expression in behaviour and conduct. There is no other faith, by the way, in the Word of God. All other faith is religion.
Real, living faith always has a dynamic expression in any human being, and living faith is the gift of God. Such living faith unites us to the Word of God, to the living Word of God, so that the Word of God becomes flesh and blood in us.
If you look upon Christian doctrine merely as doctrine and theology, if you look upon the Bible as merely objective truth, then of course nothing will ever happen within your life or your family. But living faith unites us to the Lord. That is another secret.
The third secret we talked about last night was sacrificial giving. Whatever you give, you always receive back. If you receive from the Lord and give what you receive from the Lord, you will always have more.
The secret to multiplication and to an overflow. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “All evangelism is in the overflow.” In other words, when lives overflow with the Lord, overflow with the beauty of the Lord, overflow with the grace of God, overflow with the Holy Spirit, others get saved.
It is the overflow that is so powerful. The key to an overflowing life is always very simply to give what you receive. It does not matter whether it is time, energy, or money; it is always the same.
Most of us say, “Well, I can’t give,” and we live in very reduced circumstances. Try it. It is an extraordinary thing that God honours those who honour Him.
It is a question of faith. One is always afraid of this because of the fraudulence in the Christian world, especially concerning money. But I have to say that it is still a principle: what you give, you receive—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. God’s Word is God’s Word.
Remember those three things spoken of last night. Now I want to go on. I do not know how far I shall get this morning, and I will not bother myself too much about it, because these secrets are endless.
Here is another secret of the Christian life: a secret that is a gateway, an entrance, into fullness, safety, security, experience, and growth. It is total Christ-centredness.
So simple. Do you know that all the great secrets of the Lord are profoundly simple? They are so simple that they baffle the twentieth-century mind. We think that these marvellous truths are by nature complex simply because they are so simple.
Repentance is unbelievably simple. Living faith is unbelievably simple. Giving is unbelievably simple. Would you believe that so much of our Christian life is dependent upon something so simple?
Here is another secret: to be centred in the Lord Jesus. Let me give you a few Scriptures. Take Philippians 1:21:
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
I call that Christ-centredness. He did not say, “For to me to live is to know about Christ,” or, “For me to live is to serve Christ.” He said, “For to me to live is Christ.”
This man is totally centred in the person of the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is his foundation. The Lord Jesus is his goal. The Lord Jesus is his life. The Lord Jesus is his salvation. The Lord Jesus is his power. The Lord Jesus is his grace. This man is centred in the Lord Jesus.
And I love this: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” What does that mean? Only more of the Lord Jesus. To live means that the whole of my life is summed up in terms of the Lord Jesus—my relationship to Him, my obedience to Him, my following of Him.
The mother of the Lord Jesus said to the servants at the first miracle the Lord Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee:
Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.
So simple. Whatsoever He says, do it. If you and I learned that at the beginning of our Christian life, believe you me, we would have a real experience of the Lord. We would grow in Him.
To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. It simply means this: my whole life is explained by the Lord Jesus, and when I die, there will be more of Him. That is all.
Take Colossians 1:18:
And He is the head of the body, the church: Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence.
The Lord Jesus is prominent in many Christian lives; He is not pre-eminent in many. Pre-eminence and prominence are two very different things.
I do not know how the Lord Jesus figures in your life. I do not know how He figures in your family. I do not know how He figures in your workaday life or your business. I do not even know how He figures in your relationship to the church. But there is a huge and vast difference between the Lord Jesus being prominent in your life and the Lord Jesus being pre-eminent.
God has constituted our salvation in such a way that we can only experience it through the Lord Jesus and in the Lord Jesus. Do you understand? There is no other way. Salvation is not an “it”; salvation is a Person. Being saved is knowing the Lord Jesus.
The Christian life is the same simple equation. Basically, the Christian life is experiencing the Lord Jesus. He is the life of God. When you begin to see this, it makes such a tremendous difference.
Consider 1 Thessalonians 5:10:
Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.
The same idea, isn’t it? Everywhere you turn, it is the same idea. Turn to Colossians 2:6-7:
As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and builded up in Him, and stablished in your faith.
The Lord Jesus is everything. How did you receive the Lord Jesus? By faith. So walk in Him as you received Him: by faith. You will be rooted in Him and grow up in Him, rooted and built up in your faith in Him.
Think of John’s Gospel and the great “I am” statements: “I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection and the life.”
What did the Lord Jesus mean? We would say, “Well, He should not say these things. He should say, ‘I give the bread of life. I point to the door. I preach the truth. I show the way. I will give resurrection.’” But He did not say that. He said, “I am the bread of life.”
If you do not give the Lord Jesus the place God has given Him, you will blight your Christian life and paralyse your growth. It is as simple as that.
If you do not give the Lord Jesus the place God has given Him in your life, your family, your relationships, your work life, your business life, and your church life, you will blight your Christian life and paralyse your growth.
I know believers who have been believers for twenty years and have grown only in their heads. There is no growth in them in any other way but up here.
I know Christians who still cannot worship the Lord twenty or thirty years after they have been born again. I know Christians who cannot fight the good fight of faith in prayer. They do not know anything about spiritual warfare. They should be soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they are namby-pamby believers—anaemic, spineless. It is tragic.
The key to it is total Christ-centredness.
This question of the central position that God the Father has given to the Lord Jesus is all-important because it touches the deepest root of the fall of man. Are you listening? It touches rebellion.
Why do we have such a job making the Lord Jesus all? Why do we have such a job making the Lord Jesus Lord? Because of rebellion.
We are saved because of the kind of gospel preached today, which is a decision: “Decide for the Lord Jesus. He will do you good. He will give you a ticket for heaven. Somehow or other, He will get you out of hell. He will change the direction of your life.”
This is not the gospel I see preached in the New Testament. There it is: repent, and you shall receive remission, or forgiveness, of your sins. It is quite a different gospel.
I am not saying the gospel is not preached at all, but it is a pathetically superficial and shallow gospel that is preached today, and it does not touch the root of our problem, which is rebellion.
We are all rebels. We have been born with rebellion in our hearts. I am not talking about the United States and its relationship to the United Kingdom; I am talking about human beings.
We have rebellion within our very nature and character. Some people are very sweet, but their rebellion is there. Touch something precious to them, and out it comes.
They may be very courteous and very sweet—especially you Southerners, very, very sweet in the South—but the rebellion is all there. Out it comes when something precious, important, or significant to you is touched. Rebellion.
When we preach a superficial gospel, what happens is that we get into the kingdom, and God is so gracious that He receives us because of what we get. But there has never been a total, central bowing of the knee to the Lord Jesus.
This is the problem I was talking about with the Word of God last night. Many people want to bend the Word of God to the twentieth century. They want to twist it and make it say something more comfortable for us in our twentieth-century concepts.
It goes back to the same thing: Is Jesus Lord, or is He not Lord? Are we going to obey what He says, or are we going to disobey? Do not gloss it up in other ways.
Why do believers have such a problem? Because within us all is the spirit of rebellion. We have an enormous problem in obeying the Lord. Isn’t it extraordinary, some of the silly little things we have arguments with the Lord over?
I knew a girl who had an enormous problem over her nails. She had stopped going on with the Lord because she had some idea that the Lord was calling upon her to cut her nails, which were unbelievably long, I might add.
Do you really think the Lord is bothered about nails? I will tell you something: I think the Lord was talking to her about her nails because it touched the spirit of rebellion.
I do not have any problem with people using makeup. No problem at all, for me. I do not have to use it, of course, so it does not bother me. I think it is much better to look alive. Some powder here and a little bit there may just help us a little.
But sometimes God speaks to us about something, and it goes to the root of something. It is not what you are putting on your face; it is whether you can obey the Lord. It is a spirit of rebellion.
How amazing it is that sometimes a huge dimension of spiritual experience and growth is dependent on a small act of obedience. You cannot say that the Lord Jesus is everything, that He is the centre and heart of your life, and not obey Him.
God, in His grace, saves you and me and puts up with a tremendous amount of trouble from us. But, oh, would to God we could settle things at the beginning.
That is why I talked about repentance last night. When people have had two or three days of agony over their sin and sinfulness, and finally come fully to salvation in the Lord Jesus, the question of rebellion is settled right at the beginning of their Christian life.
Think of John Newton, that slave trader—the man who actually threw people into the sea to be eaten by sharks and watched them die. When he was saved, he went through agonies before God. Then he became the great preacher that he was.
God has made the Lord Jesus everything, but you cannot experience Him as everything if He is only Saviour and not Lord. The lordship of Jesus is the key to entering into your full salvation.
God saves you, but your growth can be paralysed by this whole question of rebellion in us. It can become a lifelong problem because we have never settled these issues.
We are moving into days of tremendous turmoil and change. We are on the brink of some of the most cataclysmic changes the world has known in its social structure and international order.
I believe that the only believers who will come through as overcomers are those who make the Lord Jesus everything.
If you give the Lord Jesus the place God has given Him in your life, your family, your business, and your fellowship, it is the best insurance for the present and the future. Did you hear that?
You who are insurance people, please listen. The best insurance you will ever get is not from any insurance firm down here. The best insurance you will ever have for the present and the future is to make the Lord Jesus what God has made Him in your life. Give Him the place God has given Him.
It is very interesting that when the Lord Jesus speaks of His coming again, He uses the word deception again and again and again. The greatest problem in the last phase of world history will be deception.
I am not talking about unsaved people; I am talking about saved people. The Lord Jesus said, “Take heed that no man deceive you.” He speaks of people coming, saying they are this, they are that, they are the other. He says, “Take heed.”
The only way you and I can ever be safe is to make the Lord Jesus, in our lives, what God has made Him. If you do that, you have the best insurance in this world.
I guarantee that you will sail through the last days, and you will experience the Lord as everything He should be to you in the days that lie ahead.
I am always a little afraid to talk about the Lord Jesus as bread, light, life, resurrection, the door, the way, and the truth, because sometimes we lose the personal relationship to the Lord Jesus as a Person.
When the Lord Jesus was asked in Mark 12 what was the greatest commandment of all, He immediately said:
Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one:
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
The second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
The Lord Jesus commended the church at Ephesus for so much, and it was to be commended. Then He said, “I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.”
It is possible to get so immersed in drinking of the Lord Jesus, breathing the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus’ power, and the Lord Jesus’ fullness that we forget He is Someone to be loved.
I do not mean that in a sentimental way. The Lord Jesus said:
If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments.
If we really love the Lord with all our heart, all our strength, and all our might, we shall be very careful to obey the Word of God.
The figure of the bride, of the church as the bride, is quite ridiculous if you do not think of it in terms of love. Why did the Lord not speak of a class of warriors who would finally come to reign with Him? Why the bride?
Unless He is looking for a quality of love, devotion, and commitment that means more to Him than anything else.
Have you ever thought about this?
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.
Or have you ever thought of this?
He loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
What a strange kind of love it would be if Father and Son had gone to such an extent and were not concerned about whether you love Them. Do you understand?
Making the Lord Jesus, and giving Him the place God has given Him, is not simply a question of position. It is a question of love. We have to ask ourselves: Have I left my first love? Where am I in this matter? Has it all become routine? Is it just a question of duties and responsibilities? Do I grit my teeth and go through with it? Or is it a question of love?
Here is a real secret. When the apostle Paul came to this marvellous matter of the church in 1 Corinthians 12 and went on to explain even more in 1 Corinthians 14, in between you have chapter 13:
Love never faileth.
Make love your aim. Remember this.
Here is another secret: taking up your cross. You have heard about it many times, but this is a secret that is essential. It is a secret that introduces you into the fullness of God, resurrection life, and resurrection power: laying down your life.
Take Mark 8:34-35:
And He called unto Him the multitude with His disciples, and said unto them, If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it.
Luke 9:23 says:
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
Luke 14:27 says:
Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple.
These are absolute words.
John 12:24-26 says:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.
He that loveth his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be: if any man serve Me, him will the Father honour.
Taking up your cross—notice, daily. Taking up your own cross. What an interesting thing.
Your cross is not your arthritic hip, your pain in the neck, or your migraine from time to time. Nor is your cross your husband, your wife, your parents, your children, or the job you have to do. It may have something to do with it, but that is not what it means.
When the Lord Jesus said, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross,” what did He mean? We now know that the upright stake was always in position. All those pictures of Jesus carrying a great cross are quite false. He did not carry the whole cross like that.
The upright was already in position. What you had to carry was the crossbeam. You took the crossbeam on your shoulders, and you had the sentence of death hanging around your neck. Or, if you were very wealthy, you had a servant who went in front of you with a placard proclaiming what you were sentenced to death for.
When the Lord Jesus said, “Take up your cross,” He was really saying, “Accept the sentence.”
Nobody can crucify himself, can he? You cannot do it. It is impossible. So deep are the instincts of self-preservation that I defy anybody to do it.
People gloss it all up. You do without coffee for a week, without sweets or chocolates for a few days, or people wear hair shirts or tie themselves up on walls. This is all somehow to do with overcoming the flesh. But the real flesh is inside, and that is very difficult to crucify.
When we think of the work of the cross, there are two aspects to that work, and it is all contained in that wonderful word of the Apostle Paul in Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
We have two things here: “I have been crucified with Christ,” and, “He loved me and gave Himself for me.” Here we have the two aspects of the cross in one single statement.
When the Lord Jesus died, He did two things: He died in your place, and He died for you. The marvellous thing is that none of us can be saved except through the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. I think everyone agrees with that.
Most of us come into an experience of what it is to be crucified with Christ later. Yet the two things happened at once, and furthermore, they happened almost two thousand years ago. Is that not something wonderful?
Then God reveals this to you. You have the sentence of death within yourself. When He said, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself,” He literally meant, “Give up all right to yourself.”
You give up your rights to yourself. Take up your cross, and He will do the rest. The world will crucify you. Your friends will crucify you. The church will certainly crucify you at some point.
Once you have seen this thing, the Lord will take care of the rest. But you have to give up all right to yourself. God will not force this upon you.
You cannot be saved without the work of the Lord Jesus in your place on the cross, but you do not have to follow this crucified life. Here is the interesting thing: if you hold on to your life—and the Greek word means your soul-life, or self-life—you lose it.
Hold on to your self-life. Fight for your self-life. Assert your self-life, and you will have a blighted self-life. You will know a curse upon your natural life.
Everything you want, you may get, but it will turn to ashes. You will discover that everything you fought for and wanted to get does not satisfy in the end. It is a wasted life.
You cannot follow the Lord far before you come to His cross. Try to serve the Lord, and within weeks you will face the cross. Then it is a question of whether you will preserve your life or lay down your life.
Do you remember how Moses asked the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree? He cut down the tree, threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.
The name of that place was Marah—bitterness. When they threw the tree in, the water became sweet, life-giving, and thirst-quenching. Learn the lesson. Listen carefully to me.
I know so many believers who are filled with bitterness—bitterness over life, deadly bitterness over broken relationships, bitterness over the way they have been treated, bitterness concerning the church, bitterness concerning the way other believers have treated them. They are eaten up with bitterness.
That water is not thirst-quenching and it is not life-giving. The only way bitterness can ever be overcome is by the cross.
Do you know why you are bitter? Please listen to me; I am not getting at you. The reason you are bitter is because you have a very big ego. Your ego—its dignity—has been trampled on. Your ego has not got what it wanted. You feel devalued. You feel defaced.
Some of you younger people may not know what I am really talking about, but you older ones know all about it. There are very few believers who do not have bitterness in their lives.
The only way bitterness can be dealt with is by laying down your life. If you lay down your life, the bitterness is dealt with.
Do you remember another story in Exodus? When Moses was going to go to Pharaoh, the Lord said to him, “What is that in thine hand?” He said, “It is my rod, Lord.” The Lord said, “Throw it down.”
Moses threw it down, and instantly it became a sand viper, the most poisonous of snakes in that part of the world. Moses knew all about sand vipers. He had been forty years in the desert looking after goats and sheep. He fled from it.
Then the Lord said, “Moses, come back. Take it up by the tail.” The one thing you never do with a sand viper is take it up by the tail. “You want to kill me, Lord? Is that what You are after?”
He took it up by the tail, and it became a rod again. Moses must have had such a shock. He had slept with that rod beside him for nearly forty years. He had walked with it. It had been almost the expression of his whole life.
“I had no idea there was a poisonous snake in this rod.” Only when he laid it down did it suddenly reveal itself.
He that loseth his life for My sake—you only find out the poison, the serpent, that is in your self-life when you have laid it down. Then suddenly you see its real nature.
Then the Lord says, “Take it up.” This was the very rod Moses lifted over the Red Sea when it parted. This was the rod he lifted over the rock when water came out. This was the rod he went into Pharaoh with and worked miracle after miracle.
Isn’t it amazing? There was a sand viper in that rod, and he never knew. Dear child of God, all of us have poison in our self-life. Given the right circumstances, that poison will kill others or kill you. It will be a curse in your life.
But if you lay it down, you suddenly see what it is, and then, by the grace of God, you can take up that rod and God can use it.
A crucified life. I could go on and on with this, but you can see that here is a secret. It is another secret into fullness.
To know resurrection, we have to know His death. If we are to know fullness, we have to know what it is to have a life laid down.
This is not a little bee in the bonnet that certain brothers in this fellowship have. It is essential, foundational truth. It is a secret.
I have now lived long enough to see some of the young brothers who began with me in Egypt go off the rails. I have seen some of them go into the most extraordinary things. In every single case where there has been fulfilment, it is because a life was laid down. Where there has been deviation, it is because a self-life was preserved.
Do not dress your self-life up in beautiful Christian terms. It will kill you. Let the Lord deal with it. There can be no Christian life with a vibrant self-life.
Once the Lord has got hold of you in fullness, you will have such joy and much laughter—and, if I may put it this way, that is shocking for some. There is nothing like the fun of a life laid down.
Everyone says, “Oh, it is so dreadful. You have to be all broken and crumpled and dark and glad.” Of course there is a side to it that is like that, but I do not find a life laid down to be like that.
I think it is a spirit of glory that rests upon you. The joy of the Lord becomes your strength. There is laughter in your mouth as you return to Zion.
The Lord does not do this because He loves to see His children miserable—lying in pieces all over the place, trampled on, mangled, unhappy, miserable, afflicted. My dear friends, what the Lord wants for you is His fullness.
What the Lord wants for you is an overflowing life. What the Lord wants for you is resurrection power and grace. What the Lord wants for you is fruitfulness. He wants you to be filled with His joy and, in the end, full of His glory.
I must finish, because I think I am going on too long. I will give you one more thing: humility.
Humility—the rarest of all commodities. Some people look so humble and are not humble at all. It is a façade. You can project the whole image of humility, but it is not genuine.
Let me give you a few Scriptures. Luke 14:11:
For every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Think of that. Here is a promise: if you exalt yourself, you will fall flat; and if you humble yourself, God will lift you up.
Luke 18:14 says:
Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Matthew 23:12 says:
And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted.
James 4:6-10 says:
God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.
Be subject therefore unto God; but resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.
Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall exalt you.
Finally, 1 Peter 5:5-6:
Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility, to serve one another: for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.
Isn’t it interesting? We are always told to humble ourselves. If God says in His Word, “Humble yourselves,” then obviously He means it. But we always wait for the Lord to humble us.
The question of humility is an extraordinary thing. I remember years ago a man who was a very big noise in a certain large Christian organisation. He had an enormous argument with the president of the organisation. He was one of the chief executive officers, and he wrote to me.
He ended his letter with these extraordinary words: “You know that I am one of the most humble men on the face of this earth.”
We all knew that this man’s problem was pride. He believed he was humble.
I knew another fellow who was aspiring to be something in the Lord’s work. He said something to me, and I said, “You know, so-and-so, that is a very proud statement to make.” “Oh,” he said, “maybe. But, you know, I am twenty times more humble now than I was last year.”
It is an extraordinary thing with human beings. We have no idea about ourselves. Humility is something so incredible.
In Isaiah 66:1-2, the Lord says:
Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool: what manner of house will ye build unto Me? and what place shall be My rest?
For all these things hath My hand made, and so all these things came to be, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My word.
Isaiah 57:15 says:
For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, Whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.
Humility is a key. You can go to a theological seminary and spend five years there. You can go to a Bible school and spend three years there. You can take one of these postal courses on the Bible. I am not against any of this study; please understand me.
You can go to all these things and still get nowhere unless you have humility. God never reveals His real heart to the proud.
You know why? Listen: two or three times it comes in Scripture—God resists the proud. If you have pride in your heart and an arrogant spirit, God will resist you.
You can go to Bible college and have God resisting you the whole way through. It is simply the Word of God; it says it. But where there is a humble spirit, God will look. God will reveal something.
What does it mean to humble ourselves, unless it means that we begin to look realistically at ourselves? Think. Think about it.
I will finish with this because it is linked to humility. Here is another wonderful word in Scripture. It is not the same as humility, but it is linked to humility: meekness.
I do not know why, but meekness in Christian circles has always been thought of as someone who is wishy-washy, someone who does not have any strong opinion, someone whom you can push around. “Oh, he is very meek. You can push him and do anything.” What is biblical meekness?
It says of Moses in the book of Numbers that he was the meekest man on earth. Well, I am not sure that he measures up to the normal idea of meekness.
This was a man who was a great military hero in the Libyan and Ethiopian campaigns of Pharaoh, highly decorated. He actually killed an Egyptian when he saw him ill-treating one of the Hebrew slaves. He does not sound exactly meek, does he?
Yes, he spent forty years in the desert; that is perfectly right. But he was an extraordinary leader. He does not measure up to the normal idea of meekness.
The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 11:
Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.
What does it mean? That you can push the Lord Jesus around? I do not think so.
It is very interesting that in Hebrew there are two roots connected with this word, and both are spelled the same way. Nobody knows which root is the one we should take. One means “to be depressed,” and from this we get the whole idea of brokenness and weakness. The other means “to pay attention,” to give your eye to something.
Personally, I think that the root meaning “to pay attention” is the key to meekness. It means you are teachable. You are not so full of your own ideas and concepts that you cannot be taught. You are teachable.
Isn’t that interesting? A meek person is a person who can be taught. Forty years in the desert, and Moses came out a man taught by God—meek.
Are you teachable? Some people cannot be taught. They believe they know it all.
There used to be a very unfortunate hymn. It was a lovely hymn, actually, but it had this little verse: “Since I’ve told you this before, and now I know it all.” That little verse ruined it for me.
I have been a believer long enough to meet many Christians who know it all. They cannot be taught. I do not mean by me. They cannot learn from circumstances. The Lord cannot teach them through others. Somehow or other, they are unteachable. This is the opposite of meekness.
But humility and meekness are secrets to spiritual life, spiritual experience, and spiritual growth.
May the Lord take these few secrets we have talked about and write them on your heart. I have only taken six in these two times, but if you were to take heed of these six, I can tell you one thing: your life will be changed.
These are real secrets. They are keys to a tremendous number of things. May the Lord use these truths in a living way in our hearts and lives.
If you are proud, remember: God is resisting you. Why do you not humble yourself before the Lord? Really go down for the first time. Begin to see yourself as you really are, and then maybe you will start to learn of Him.
Let us pray.
Lord, make this real to every one of us. Deliver us from condemnation of the wrong kind arising from anything that has been said. But, Lord, bring real conviction to our hearts, that we may know within ourselves these secrets to Your fullness and to spiritual growth.
Lord, we want to be changed into Your likeness. We do not want to be people who merely grow in knowledge but are, in some way, paralysed and stunted in growth. Lord, we do not want that.
We want, in these days, in the last days of this world, to be those who grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord; those who are being changed into His likeness; and those who are filled with the spirit of glory and grace.
O Lord, we pray that You will open our eyes, that we may see our Lord Jesus in an altogether new way. We ask it in His name. Amen.