And it is Your loving face that we desire to see, Lord. Lord, I pray that this would become our occupation in our vocation, that we would have eyes to see You always, Lord. For it is only in Your beauty that we are set free. Lord, it is only as we see You that we find our full protection in this life.
Lord, You are everything. You are our subsistence. You are our forgiveness, our grace, our life, our peace, and You are our armor, Lord.
We come back today, this morning, Lord, and we ask, as we share in Your Word, that You would anoint; that Your Holy Spirit would fill us, Lord; that we might truly hear and truly see, with eyes unveiled and hearts unveiled. Lord Jesus, with hearing ears—you have to give us that, Lord, for we are so dull, including myself. And I just come back to You this morning, asking that You would bless our time, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.
You have to bear with my voice this morning. I think I am having sinus problems this morning.
Anyway, this morning, as we begin, as we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, I was coming in this morning and flipped on the radio. The very first words I heard were, “He is faithful to forgive.” They were singing this song, and I think that is the name of it; I am not sure. But those were the very first words I heard: “He is faithful to forgive.”
And I could not help but think, on the way in, how much I needed that even before I shared His Word this morning. And even more so, brothers and sisters, I was just so impressed that when it comes to this matter of forgiveness, He is always faithful. He never fails in this area of forgiveness.
You think about it: have you ever gone to the Lord Jesus Christ and not received forgiveness when you asked for it? Think what it would be like if we went to our Lord Jesus Christ and He were to say, “Well, Jerry, you brought this same failure to Me at least fifteen or twenty times. Enough is enough. No more forgiveness. No more. You have had your opportunities now.”
I only say that to say that, you know, that is the way we think. We are much like Peter. It is obvious that Peter was a little upset with his brother Andrew because he came to the Lord Jesus and said, “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother if he sins against me? Is seven times enough?”
I think Peter thought seven times was extraordinary—to forgive someone. The Lord said, “No, seventy times seven,” and even more than that.
I just want to emphasize this morning how different—how other—the Lord is from what we are. He is so unique. He is so wonderful. He is always faithful to forgive.
I am not sure we are always faithful to go to Him and ask for forgiveness, nor are we always faithful in receiving the forgiveness that He offers. But He is always willing.
He says:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.
Often, I think maybe we take advantage of that, kind of taking it for granted. But He is committed to forgiveness. He is committed to it. He understands us like no one else can, brothers and sisters, even in our failures, even though He never failed.
He has compassion and mercy. That is the one thing that we have experienced that the Lord has never experienced: failure. However, in His own heart, He has absorbed our failures on Calvary’s cross. He did experience our failure there, and took it to the cross with Him and nailed it there.
That forever our failures could be put under the blood of the Lamb and remembered no more. What a cleansing. What a wonder. Brothers and sisters, this is the mind of Christ.
As I was sharing on this matter of the helmet of salvation, I shared something of how our mind is the main target, or the ground on which the enemy works, because ultimately he is after the decision-maker, and that is our will. That is you. You make the final decision, and the enemy uses our mind to influence the decisions that we make.
And I shared how we have to be careful about not just allowing things to come and go through our minds, because the enemy, it appears, has the ability even to put thoughts into our minds and take events and interpret them for us in the way that he would like for us to see them, rather than the way they really are.
Sometimes he causes something to lock into our minds that fills our souls, wraps us up, and keeps us in bondage, because we have received something from the enemy and it becomes so real to us that it becomes a stronghold in our minds. And we cannot let it go except by the grace and power of God bringing light from above to that situation.
And, brothers and sisters, it takes life—His life. That is the mind of Christ.
We talked about this matter of the helmet of salvation in terms of protection, the authority of God, the headship of Christ being upon us, and staying covered under His authority, whether it is directly from the Lord Jesus Himself or from His delegated authorities that He has on this earth and in His church.
Not that they are not flawed, but He has chosen to have His authority go through other vessels and be manifested that way. His choice.
Today, as I considered it, I was going on to the sword of the Spirit. But as I started preparing for the sword of the Spirit, and the Lord had given me some things, this thought came: “Jerry, you have not touched on the mind of Christ,” which is the most important thing, since we are talking about this helmet of salvation as the protection for our mind.
And the Lord would have us know that it is His mind that we need to consider. It is not our mind, but His. It is not that we become mindless, but that our mind comes into agreement with His mind. And that is a transformation that has to take place.
Because in Philippians 2:5, let me read it. It says:
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men;
and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
Wherefore also God highly exalted Him.
Let this mind be in you that was in Christ. When Paul wrote this, it was to the Philippians, the ones whom he loved so much—the ones he longed for, desired after, and longed to be with.
There were some problems in the Philippian church, though, between Euodia and Syntyche, and he was concerned about this difference of mind that had occurred. He was offering to them God’s way through this. He said, first of all, the love of Christ. He brings out love, the law of love. Do not rest on the law; go to the law of love in this situation.
And eventually he comes to this, and he says, “This is the answer: let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
Now, to me, when he says, “Let this mind be in you,” it is possible to have the mind of Christ. It is possible to know the mind of Christ. And what was this mind?
First of all, it says that He left the glory of heaven. That was His mind. His mind was not to stay where He was, with all the angels worshiping Him and sitting upon the throne of glory, but He was willing to become a servant of God and to come to this earth.
He had to humble Himself. He had to leave this high place that He held, and He was willing to do that for your sake and for my sake. And He was willing to do it because He loved the Father. He had a mind of humility.
He did not come to be the king on earth at that time, even though He was King. But He came to be a servant. That was His mind. He had a servant mind.
Even to the fact that it says He became a bondservant. Now, we know what a bondservant is. A bondservant is one who gives up his rights. In other words, the master comes to his servant and says, “I am going to set you free. You can now go. You have served me well, and now I am letting you go.”
But the servant is so in love with the master that he says, “No, I do not want to go.” And remember the story in the Old Testament: they would take an awl and drive it through the ear. They would pierce the ear of that servant against the doorpost, signifying that he now was a bondservant and that he would give himself for love of his master. He was willing to stay and remain a servant.
Well, our Lord Jesus Christ became the bondservant of God. Out of love, He served His Father. It was not a service of duty, but a service of love—a bondservant.
And in so doing, brothers and sisters, He gave up all of His rights of deity, all of His rights as God. He gave all of those rights up for the sake of coming to save us, coming to lift us out of our bondage. That was the mind of Jesus Christ.
I do not know about you, but we have a very difficult time giving up our rights, do we? You think about it.
When you are not treated correctly at work, and you say, “This is not right,” so you go to your human resources department and say, “Look, you are not treating me properly.” Now, we have a perfectly legitimate right to do that nowadays, and that is okay. I am not saying you should not do that. But the point I am making is this: our Lord Jesus subjected Himself to the will of man.
And He gave up His rights as deity. At any time, He could have left. He showed that when He went up to the mount and His glory began to show forth. He could have left then, but He chose to wait and leave by way of the cross.
That is a humble servant who has given up all of His rights. That is the mind of Christ.
Our Lord Jesus was teachable. Now think of that. He was Son of God, but He was Son of Man. He was born as the Holy Spirit overshadowed the womb of Mary, and He came in human form—incarnation, we call it.
And He grew up as a child, like we do, and He had to learn. I think that is amazing. You would think that He immediately would know everything as soon as He came out of the womb because He was God. But we have to remember, He came as a man, and He had to learn.
And obviously He learned well, because when He was twelve and went to the temple, the scribes and Pharisees around Him were amazed at the questions He was asking.
And at that time, remember when His parents came back and were disturbed because they had been three days on the journey and realized He was not there? I think we have all had experiences with our children, and it was very upsetting.
They went back and said, “What are You doing?” And He said, “You should have realized. I am the Son of the Law now. I am twelve years old. I have to be about My Father’s business.” That was His mind.
What is our mind, brothers and sisters? We have much business on this earth, it seems like. I would think the Lord would say, if you have the mind of Christ preeminently in your heart, you would be saying, “I have to be about My Father’s business.”
It does not matter if you are a homemaker, a carpenter, plumber, engineer, doctor, lawyer, or teacher. It does not matter. If you have the mind of Christ, in everything and in every situation and in every occupation, we would have to say, “I have to be about My Father’s business.” That is the primary thing.
And we know how our Lord subjected Himself. He had subjected Himself to the authority of His parents, and He went back with them. We do not see Him again until He is thirty years old. We know little about His life other than that He grew in favor with men and God. He was growing, but He learned.
In fact, the Word says that He learned obedience. As God, obedience was given to Him. But when He came as a man, He had to obey the Father fully in everything, and He was obedient.
And when the Father spoke through His parents and said, “No, now is not the time for Your public ministry,” He obeyed. God moved through His parents and spoke to Him through them. He was teachable. He was teachable. That is the mind of Christ.
Are we still teachable? No matter if you are forty or fifty years in the Lord, are we still teachable? Let me say it another way: are the things that we have heard real in our lives? We have heard so much through the years. How much of it has become reality in our lives?
Or how much of it have we just stored away in this unreliable brain of ours—and getting more unreliable, by the way? Maybe that is a good thing sometimes; it causes us to go to Christ.
Well, He was teachable. That was the kind of mind our Lord had. His mind was not just to hold things in theory, to speak wonderful messages like we find in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
Brothers and sisters, He was poor in spirit—not in the sense of being poor that He did not have much spirit. He was full of Spirit, but it simply meant that He was humble, teachable.
In other words, whatever He said was a result of who He was. Now, we have learned a lot of things, but we are not necessarily what we have learned. But He was always teachable.
And His righteousness was practical. Let me say it that way. He had a practical life. I mean, He was a righteous man. He lived a righteous life. That was His life.
You know, brothers and sisters, we as Christians want to be righteous—not only to receive this golden robe of righteousness, but we know that the bride eventually will be presented with the golden robe and then this linen robe of needlework, which it says is the righteousness of the saints. It is a righteousness that has been worked out in our lives.
And I want to say this: righteousness does not come by following the law, or doing what you think is right or wrong. Now, we are given this robe of righteousness when we accept Jesus Christ, and the Father can look upon us. When He looks down, we are covered in this robe of righteousness, so He sees Christ, and we can be accepted by the Father.
But there is another righteousness, a practical righteousness, that we need to come into. This is the mind of Christ. We have a practical righteousness, and it is a needlework, a fine one. In other words, it is something that is worked out in your life.
Now, righteousness does not come by looking through this Bible and figuring out what the Lord would have as an acceptable way of living, and then living that way. Righteousness is a fruit of the life of Christ in you.
If you are living by the life of Christ in you, righteousness is a natural fruit of it. It is not something you have to struggle with. Do you see the difference? Well, it is a world of difference. It is the difference between what the Pharisees were practicing and what we as Christians are called to.
We are called to a righteous life as well, but that practical righteousness has to come from the life of Christ within. That is the mind of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus was single-minded toward God—single-minded. Not double-minded, but single-minded. He had one mind.
Oh, brothers and sisters, we get captured with this double mind so much. We are all guilty of it, are we not? Double-minded. And the Word says that a double-minded person is unstable. I feel pretty unstable at that.
In other words, we have a mind for the Lord, but we also have a mind for ourselves and what we want. And that becomes a real struggle in our lives, and it really weakens our spiritual life. But the Lord was always single-minded.
Not My will, but Thine, be done.
He did not live for Himself, but He lived for God. That was His mind. Brothers and sisters, the more I looked into this mind of Christ, the more foreign this mind seemed to me. It did seem to be quite a bit other, as Brother Sparks would say.
He did not act out of His own power as deity while He was on the earth. Now, some of us might think, “Yeah, He was able to perform these miracles; He was God.” But He did not act out of His own power that He had as deity. All that power came through the Holy Spirit that was in Him and upon Him, and as He prayed to the Father. He lived as a man.
As God, He could do anything. As God, He could create something out of nothing. I love that. I am really so thankful that there is a God. And I am so thankful that, even though we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, He has made a way for us through His Son Jesus Christ, offering Himself as a sacrifice on the cross, dying for our sins, taking our place there on Calvary.
Taking our sins to the cross, that we might be set free from them and become His bondservants.
Now, brothers and sisters, we know that when we accept the Lord Jesus Christ, He does that to us. We accept the Lord and He says, “All right, I have set you free. Your sins have been forgiven. You were a slave to Satan. You were a slave to My enemy, and you did not even know it.”
“But you were chained to his ways. You were chained to his mind and his thoughts, because they were always self, self, self, self. And I have set you free now. I have put you into the kingdom of life and taken you out of the kingdom of darkness. And I am setting you free. I make no demand on you.”
This is the mind. Oh, brothers and sisters, the law of love. He wants us to be bondservants.
Our Lord Jesus—let me say this very simply, and I hope we catch the difference—the Lord is not interested in servants. He is interested in bondservants. There is a world of difference.
We can serve the Lord, do good things, even Christian things, and in our hearts it is either something we do because it is self-satisfying—because serving the Lord can be very satisfying to self—or it can be out of duty. And the fundamental basis is not love.
Now, brothers and sisters, none of us can judge that. Only the Holy Spirit can in our lives. He knows. But He wants us all to become bondservants, because that is the mind of Christ. That is who He is, and that is the mind to be in us.
He came to serve and to give Himself, a living sacrifice. That is the mind of Christ: bondservant, a living sacrifice for others.
Even in this letter to the Philippians, Paul appealed. He said, “Think on the things of others instead of yourself.” That was one of his exhortations concerning the problems they were having. He said, “You need to have your mind on others and serving others rather than yourself.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, what a mind. Our Lord Jesus is just marvelous, and we seem to be so different.
Well, our Lord Jesus’ earthly vocation was that of a carpenter—a carpenter, a builder. And surely He must have been the finest of carpenters.
I think some of us here who are around construction today realize that the quality of work and the skills are not there as they were in the days of Christ and hundreds of years ago, when they paid such meticulous attention to every detail. Today, we have to get it up fast, make it look reasonably well, and get on with the next project because we have to make more money.
Well, in those days, they would not turn out a piece of work unless it satisfied them. I wonder about our Lord’s skills as a carpenter. How marvelous must have been His workmanship.
That was His earthly vocation, brothers and sisters, but that was not what He was called to, was it? From the age of probably twelve until thirty, He served as a carpenter—seemingly a waste of a Master’s time. But the Lord was doing something in His life.
So that when He did serve, it would be in the full power and strength of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Lord Jesus Himself had to be prepared for this ministry. He had to be prepared for His calling.
What was His real vocation, brothers and sisters? He was the Lamb of God from the foundation of the earth, right? He was called to be the Lamb of God. And He went through this preparation period on earth in order that He might fulfill His calling to be the Lamb of God.
The Lamb offered in sacrifice for man’s sin—for your sins, for my sins. There is no other way of salvation except Christ become the Lamb of God. If He had failed in His calling, if He decided being a carpenter was enough—yes, He was interested in His Father’s business, but this carpentry was pretty self-fulfilling.
I mean, the beauty of something that you can do with your hands, and to please others. Brothers and sisters, what if the Lord Jesus had missed His calling? And I say that with the blood of the Lamb on my tongue, because I know that He could not. But where would that have left us?
Now, where do we leave Christ? Our mind, unfortunately, is not quite His. We think, “Well, we have this earthly vocation,” and often our earthly vocations get in the way of our heavenly vocation.
Our Lord Jesus was called to be the Lamb of God, and that was what He was preparing for all of His life—to be the Lamb of God. But, brothers and sisters, this was not His full calling.
We know in Ephesians 1:22-23 that He is the Head of the church. He is the Head of the body, the assembly. He is called to be the Head of the body, brothers and sisters—not just a fictitious, universal, imaginary body, but a real body.
The church is to be the body of Christ. It is a living organism. And I know we have heard this thousands of times through the years, but we should never forget that the church is not just a group of individual Christians put together in a room that do some things together, go to meetings together, and pray together.
It is a body, a living body. What I do affects you, and what you do affects me, and it affects the Head always. It is a living thing. The body of Jesus Christ is not an organization of men; it is an organism, a spiritual organism, very alive.
That is why we heard our brother say that when Paul was on the Damascus road, the Lord said, “It is hard for thee to kick against the goads, is it not, Paul?” He said, “You have touched Me because you have touched My things. You touched My body, Paul. You are persecuting My body, and I feel it. The Head feels it, and it is real to Me.”
“Paul, every Christian you threw in jail, you threw Me in jail. Everyone you persecuted, you persecuted Me.” It is real. He is the Head of the body. That is His calling: to be the Head of the body.
Brothers and sisters, it says in Ephesians 2:22 that we are built together for a habitation of God. We know that the Lord Jesus Christ is all the materials of the temple, right? We learned that at this conference. The Lord Jesus Christ is the architect, He is the builder, and He is the materials.
He is everything to the house of God, and it is to be a habitation for God. Peter says we are living stones, built together as a spiritual house.
May I say this? If I go to my driveway and pull out all those cobblestones that my son and I worked so diligently for a month to put in place, and if I pull them out and put them in a pile somewhere, is that a habitation? Is that a house? No. It is stone, but it is just a pile of stones.
Brothers and sisters, Christianity cannot afford to be a pile of stones. We have to be built together, one stone upon another, built and cemented together by the love of Jesus Christ.
Now, there was no cement in the temple, and I would say that it is the love of Christ that holds the stones together.
He was called—and remember His passion for the house. Our brother shared on the passion of David for the house of God. Look at our Lord. He says:
Zeal for Thy house shall eat Me up.
And remember, He went in and turned over the tables of the money changers because they had defiled the temple with buying and selling and the way they were doing. He was extremely concerned about this matter of the house of God, a habitation of God among men.
Brothers and sisters, this is not merely a heavenly thing. Of course, there is the pattern in heaven, and there is that heavenly temple, but the Lord Jesus wants a place on this earth that He can call His house, that He can be comfortable in, that is His, and that the living stones are built together.
Let me say it another way. I may have used this example before. But if I go to the junkyard, and I come to your house, and I throw a tire in the yard, an engine in the yard, a couple of windows in the yard, and a transmission; and then I take the body and throw it over there—some of us have cars like that—is that a car?
It is all the parts, but it is not a car because it has not been put together. Brothers and sisters, I fear so much Christianity today is a junkyard, just parts everywhere, but not a car.
I hope that makes the point. But He was called, brothers and sisters, to build the house of God—to be the architect, the builder, and, like I said, all the materials. He has supplied for the house of God.
And what is the material? Christ in you, Christ in me. The biggest job the Lord has is getting all the flesh out of the way so He can get to Christ in you and me. But it is the Christ in you and me that builds the house. That was His calling.
When you come to this last chapter in Ephesians, chapter 6, and we have been sharing on the armor of God, He is called to be the Captain of the host.
Brothers and sisters, we have a tremendous adversary. But He is Captain of the host. That is His calling: to be Captain of the host of the Lord’s army, to bring everything into subjection.
Our Lord Jesus, on the cross of Calvary, stripped the principalities and powers of darkness. He, as the Captain of the host, through Calvary, has taken the power of the enemy from him.
But today, our calling is to be the army of God, to be with Him, to let Him be the Captain of the host, that we can rise up and bring everything into submission to the Lord.
He has won the victory, but that victory has to be applied in every situation that is opposed to Christ. Let me put it that way. That is what the army of God does.
It takes these situations of darkness and binds them up, that the light of God might come in, or He may loose the captives. He is called to be there, brothers and sisters.
And in Ephesians 4:1, it says for us to walk worthy of our vocation. Well, if the mind of Christ is to be the Lamb of God, to be the Head of the assembly, to build a house, and to be the Captain of the host, what is our vocation?
Well, certainly none of us are the Lamb of God. He stands alone in that, does He not? But, brothers and sisters, we are called to be a living sacrifice. We are called to be a living sacrifice.
That is in Romans 12:1: a living sacrifice to the Lord. In other words, “Lord, I am Yours. You do with me as You choose. Lord, I will not kick against the goads. Lord, whatever You want is what I want.” Boy, what a mind. That is the mind of Christ.
We are called to be the body. Each one of us is a member, and that is our calling. He is called to be the Head; we are called to be a member of that body, a living, active, vibrant member. And to do it with zeal, because it says:
Zeal for Thy house shall eat Me up.
Brothers and sisters, we are called to be a soldier. You remember Paul said to Timothy, “Be a good soldier.” So we are called to be warriors, in this sense of bringing victory into every situation. That is our vocation.
We are exhorted to walk worthy of our calling, of our vocation. Our real vocation is to be about the Father’s business. And what is the Father’s business?
When you look at the big picture, you have to see that we have to be a living sacrifice, or we will never enter into our calling to be a real, active part of the body of Christ, the house of God, or a soldier in His army.
And here is what is so much on my heart concerning the mind of Christ and His calling, brothers and sisters: are these things—the body of Christ, the house of God, the army of God—things that we merely know about?
We say, “Yeah, I am a part of the body.” I mean, today the revelation of the fact of the body of Christ has hit the whole world, and it is almost a common thing for us. The same with the house of God being a habitation for God. It is so common.
But, brothers and sisters, Christ was called to these things, and we are called to the same, regardless of what we do or what our individual gift is. Our overall calling, about being about the Father’s business, is these things.
See if I can say it another way. It is one thing to know, “Yeah, okay, I am in the body,” to know, “Yeah, I know about being a soldier,” or, “Yeah, I know about the house of God. I know these things.”
But do you know that you are called to these things? Brothers and sisters, there is a world of difference, night and day, between knowing about these things and having the call of God upon your life concerning these things.
I think anybody who has sensed the call of the Lord in their life will know there is a tremendous difference between knowing about something and being called to it.
We are called-out ones. We are called, brothers and sisters. We are called to be these things. That is our calling. It is not an insignificant thing.
This was what was on the mind of Christ. And, brothers and sisters, may His mind be ours.
Our Lord Jesus was very discerning, but He was not judgmental—discerning, but not judgmental. Spiritual discernment, brothers and sisters, is given for ministry and for service. It is not intended for us to become judges and judgmental.
And we do that. The more we see, the more faults we see in one another, the more judgmental we tend to become. But our Lord said, “I came not to judge the world, but to save it.” He is the Judge.
Oh yes, we will have to make judgments about things, brothers and sisters. But there is quite a large gap between making judgments and becoming judgmental. And we become judgmental because fundamentally inside, we are legalistic.
The more we know, the more problems and issues we know about one another, the more judgmental we become. But our Lord said, “Look, even if you can discern these things, the purpose of discernment is for spiritual ministry and spiritual service, not to destroy one another.”
Oh, if we had the mind of Christ. Brothers and sisters, I cannot get it out this morning. May the Lord give me words for this burden.
But our Lord, when He was misunderstood, was always very patient and merciful, was He not? Remember the disciples. They were going off to have the table, the Last Supper, as we call it, and they were arguing about who was the greatest, who was going to be number one when the Lord came into His throne.
Now, you know, I thought about this, and I am sure Peter—you do not hear Peter saying much, do you? Because I think Peter thought he was the one. I mean, he was the leader. He was the leader of that group of disciples. He was the natural leader, and probably he thought, “Well, I have got it.”
But James and John were a little more concerned. They were not quite as sure. So they even went to their mother and said, “Mom, you have got to help us out here. We want to sit on the right and left hand of the Lord when He comes into power, and maybe you can have some influence on Him.”
And I think she was His aunt. Anyway, she approached Him, and He said, “Are they able to drink the cup that I drink, to take the baptism that I will have?” And of course James and John said, “Well, certainly, we can do that.”
The Lord did not rebuke them. He said, “Surely you must drink the cup and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with. But to give that place of authority is not Mine.”
Brothers and sisters, what did our Lord do? I think it is so interesting. After the supper, He took a towel and wrapped it around Himself and began to wash the disciples’ feet. This is the mind of Christ. This is the mind of Christ.
Oh, brothers and sisters, the disciples were into this power thing, position thing. Our Lord was so patient and merciful. I am sure it hurt the Lord’s heart. Surely, after all the time they had spent with Him, they could see that that was not His mind, that that was not His way. But they did not.
So He does this very practical object lesson. He takes the towel, and He says, “You need to do this to one another. This is what you need to be doing. You do not need to be thinking about what position you will have or the power you will have. You need to be servant of all.”
If you want a high place, you have to be servant of all. In fact, you will not even be thinking about having a high place. You will just be serving all. And He washes their feet and says, “This is what you need to be doing.”
Well, this was the humility of our Lord. This is the mind of a bondservant.
And I wonder, you know, Peter was tested, James and John were tested, and all these disciples were tested. We know Peter failed even before Calvary. He failed in that he denied our Lord Jesus three times. He was concerned about himself more than the Lord at that point.
He failed in being a servant. He failed the test. We know that James and most of the other disciples at Calvary were not there. They had scattered.
Were they there to serve the Lord in His hour of grief, in the most tragic hour on this earth? No. They were not there. They could not wash anyone’s feet. They were so discouraged. They were not there. They failed the test.
But I thought about John. You know, John was there. I think John learned that object lesson that day. He learned the lesson. He was at the Lord’s feet at Calvary’s cross.
That is where we need to be, brothers and sisters: at the Lord’s feet, at Calvary. That is where we really find the power of God.
The word of the cross is the power of God. Oh, there is a song we sing: “There is no greater honor than to kneel at Your throne.” Oh, brothers and sisters, there is no greater honor than to kneel before our Lord Jesus Christ, before Calvary, letting Calvary do its work in our lives.
I think John maybe learned that object lesson that day. We know that John became the living sacrifice because he lived, I think, into his early nineties and served the Lord. Even on the Isle of Patmos, we have this great revelation that was given in the book of Revelation.
When our Lord Jesus was rejected, misunderstood, and put on Calvary’s cross, did He respond in like manner? That is typically our mind. No, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, how do you feel when you are rejected? Do you feel like going to the Father and saying, “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing. They have rejected me. All I wanted to do was show my love and my concern, but for some reason I did not meet their expectation, and they have rejected me”?
Brothers and sisters, one of the greatest tactics of the enemy is our expectations. You know, the Jews expected Him to come and overthrow the Roman government and to take kingship and authority at that point. That was their expectation.
The disciples were frankly expecting the same thing. They were, and they wanted to be number one and number two in the kingdom. That was their expectation.
And when the Lord went to the cross instead of the throne, brothers and sisters, they were so disappointed that the Jews and the Roman government crucified Christ, and the disciples scattered. The reason they did was because the Lord did not meet their expectations.
Oh, I want us to be so careful when it comes to this matter of our minds, brothers and sisters. Plead the blood over everything you expect, because often the Lord gives us what we need and not what we expect.
I heard a story, a great illustration of this. This came to my heart. This couple had been married for a long time and got along real well together. Well, this particular morning, they get up, and she is just grouchy right off the bat.
“Get your slippers off the floor and put them in the closet.” So, being a husband who had lived a long time with his wife, he understood he had better get the slippers up and put them in the closet. So he does that.
And all morning it goes like that. They sit at the breakfast table, and she says, “Well, where is the paper?” He says, “Well, I had not gotten the paper.” “Well, go get the paper.” And he goes and gets the paper and starts reading it. “Well, I did not want the paper for you; I wanted it for me.” Just giving him a hard time all day.
Well, it comes lunchtime, and there is a scream from the kitchen: “Get in here, Bill, right now!” And he comes into the kitchen. His wife, in her frustration, had opened a big bag of potato chips, and when it popped open, they went all over the floor.
Of course, she was expecting him to come in and help her gather these potato chips. He looks at her, and he looks at the potato chips, and he goes over and just starts jumping up and down in the potato chips, smashing them all over the floor.
And then he starts laughing, and he is just jumping up and down on the potato chips. His wife is, of course, at first angry. “What in the world is this man doing? He is crazy. I want him to help me pick these up, and he is smashing them into my kitchen floor.”
And finally, he is laughing so much that she starts laughing. She joins him, jumping up and down in the potato chips.
Well, she did not get what she expected, but she got what she needed, which was an attitude change. She just needed a change in attitude that day, but she was expecting to get help cleaning the potato chips up.
Well, silly little story, but maybe it illustrates the point, brothers and sisters. Our expectations, in the hand of the enemy, can be a dangerous thing. It turns us against the Lord sometimes.
We think we need something. The Lord Jesus always gives us what we need. He never thought what we think we need and what we really need are two different things so often.
Well, when our Lord Jesus Christ was rejected, He said, “Forgive them.” That was the mind of Christ. Brother and sister, He did something on Calvary’s cross that only He could do for us, for you and me. Instead of rejecting us, He forgave.
You see, He did not have a mind to reject, did He? But He was rejected. This is so true. Think of Paul. This is real, brothers and sisters.
In 2 Corinthians, they were giving Paul a very difficult time, challenging his ministry, challenging his authority in the Corinthian church, challenging everything. And his response is this:
I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls; if I love you more abundantly, am I loved the less?
That is the mind of Christ. Brothers and sisters, when we are rejected, does that narrow our heart? Does that make us bitter? Or does it expand our heart? Does love expand our heart and encompass that one? That is the mind of Christ.
“Oh, you may love me less, but I will love you more.” That is hard, is it not? It is because it is the love of Christ, not our love. Our love cannot do that. But this is the mind of Christ.
Well, how are we going to bring all this about, brothers and sisters? How is it that our mind becomes the mind of Christ? This will not take but a few minutes, if you will let me close.
In Romans 12:1-2, a couple of ministries ago, I spoke about this matter of consecration, of presenting yourself a living sacrifice. That is absolutely necessary.
Let me read it:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies, or your whole being, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
But the first step is consecration, and I have spoken on that before. The first step is always consecration, and we need to do that daily: present ourselves a living sacrifice. Then the Lord can begin to do this transformation, this renewing of our minds.
And once again, remember the story I mentioned a little while ago with James and John. He says, “You are going to have to drink the cup. You will have to be baptized with My baptism.” Now, what does that mean? The cup is the Lord’s will.
Brothers and sisters, we have to drink that cup. Sometimes the Lord’s will for your life is bitter, and we have to drink the cup of bitterness.
But never forget, He was willing to drink the ultimate cup of bitterness, to become sin for us. That was a bitter time. And He had to face the bitterness of being separated from His Father. What a cup of darkness, brothers and sisters—something, honestly, there is no way for us to fathom.
But sometimes we too have to drink a bitter cup. It is the Lord’s will, and we have to be willing to say, “Yes, Lord, I am willing to drink that cup.” Sometimes the cup is so sweet, and we enjoy it, and we should.
But, brothers and sisters, we should drink it as from the Lord—the cup. Sometimes we want to do something, and the Lord says no. Sometimes we do not want to do something, and the Lord says, “Yes, you need to.”
It is the cross, brothers and sisters. It is the cross. That is the baptism. Being baptized, or the baptism, is the cross. And the cross comes into effect when your will crosses with the will of God for your life. His will—that is what matters.
It is the baptism. It is the taking up of the cross. Are you willing for the cross in your life?
Let me say this: thank God, there is another little Scripture that helps us so much. He says that the Lord works in you both to will and to do.
So when we find ourselves struggling with the will of God, brothers and sisters, we need to say, “Lord, I cannot do that right now, but I am willing to be willing. You work out the willing as well as the doing in my life.”
Give up on yourself, but just do not stay there. Often, we say, “I cannot do it,” and that is the end of it, and we do not go anywhere. Oh, we need to turn back to the Lord and say, “Lord, I am not even willing at this point. Lord, I am willing to be willing, and You can do it. You work into me willing to do, and I will do it.”
But I am afraid so often, once we find out we are not willing, that is where we stop. That is not taking up the cross, brothers and sisters, because the cross not only crucifies the flesh, but it releases the life of the Lord in you.
If you really want the life of the Lord released in you, you have to go the way of the cross.
Well, lastly, pure in heart. That is out of Matthew 5. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” or they what? “They shall see God.”
And what does it say in 2 Corinthians 3:18? Beholding His face, we are transformed from glory to glory. Brothers and sisters, that is the way our mind is transformed: by beholding Christ. And it says that the pure in heart can behold Him.
Now, what does it mean to be pure in heart? It means to be single-minded, single toward the Lord.
And the greatest illustration we have, I think, is this matter of Mary and Martha. When the Lord Jesus came to their house, Martha was busy serving the Lord. She loved the Lord, and she was serving Him so diligently, and was getting upset because Mary was sitting there just looking at the Lord, listening to the Lord, taking in all that the Lord had to say, and just being enamored with the Lord.
And Martha was upset a little bit because her sister was not helping her serve the Lord. Brothers and sisters, we have to get the order of business straight in our lives. We cannot serve the Lord unless we are sitting before the Lord first.
Brothers and sisters, we have to be single-minded. Martha at that point was double-minded. Oh yes, she wanted to serve the Lord; she wanted to know the Lord. But she was so busy about so many things.
And the Lord even says, “Martha, you are busy about so many things, but Mary has chosen the good thing.” Is that a description of our lives? I mean, Martha loved the Lord, and she wanted to do this for the Lord, wanted to have the best meal for Him, and expected her sister to help her.
Oh, I want to say this: her sister realized what the important thing was at that point in life. The Master was there. The Master was in their midst, and she had to behold the Master.
It is in beholding Him that our mind is transformed, seeing the face of Christ. And the pure in heart do. It means to be single-minded toward the Lord. Mary was single-minded.
She was not thrown. Sure, they needed to feed the Lord, and that would have been done. But the Lord wanted them first to fellowship with Him—fellowship with Him, single-minded.
Well, brothers and sisters, the mind of Christ. I hope this morning, as we come to the end of this, we will see how much other the mind of Christ is. But may it not be something that disappoints us. May it be something that helps us to bring light to our heart: “Lord, this is possible.”
You would not have put it in the Book if it was not possible to have a renewed mind, if it was not possible to be transformed by beholding Your face.
Lord, I want to consecrate my life to You. Lord, I want to be willing. Whatever Your will is, I want to be willing to do it, Lord. I want to be single-minded toward You.
I can have all these other occupations, but Lord, I want to enter fully into my calling in Jesus Christ. I want to be a part of the body of Christ. I want to be a part of the house of God. I want to be an active member of the army of God, Lord.
I do not want to miss my real vocation in Jesus Christ. I might have many things to do, but there is only one thing on my heart and mind.
Lord, we come to You today. Lord, we are always taken back when we get a glimpse of You, of Your mind, Lord.
Lord, it is this precious, merciful God, full of grace and mercy, that has touched our hearts. Lord, in Your grace, do a renewing of our minds. Lord, do it because, Lord Jesus, we seem to be so occupied with so many things.
Oh Lord, may we return to those simple days when You were the center of our lives. We were fully occupied with You and with our calling in Jesus Christ. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.