So we bow together.
Lord, we are gathered. We turn our faces to Thee. We pray that there will be Thy own voice speaking to us, not the voice of a man, but Thy voice that uncovers, that unveils, that gets at our deepest need.
We ask Thee now that we might see Him who alone is worthy; for in seeing Him, all our real problems are answered. All the light that we need comes.
We thank Thee in Thy precious name. Amen.
We have been speaking on those things that are really imperative. Now, it sounds like an overstatement, but there are really just a very few things that matter in life. There are many things that are necessary, but very few are imperative.
It is then a real pressing in my spirit, since we have come, that somehow we might press into the simplicity of those few things that are really imperative for going on to the full thought of the Lord.
We said the first evening in our sharing that it is imperative that God give us an enlarged vision and an enlarged inner being, or capacity—the inward reality to live in that vision.
We were saying yesterday that it is very imperative that we learn to recognize the voice of the Lord.
I do not know about you, but I must confess I have been an oversensitive person through the years. And in my oversensitivity, I have been mauled and taken things that folks said as hurt, and I have spent an awful lot of time nursing wounds and feeling sorry for myself.
I look back on how many occasions I have sat under the ministry of someone whom I so dearly loved, and they somehow almost became the voice of God to me. Before they got through with a particular service, I was utterly mauled because I took every word that they said as though the whole thing was the voice of God to me.
It was a long time before somehow the Lord began to break in and say, “This is one of your great needs: to be able to sense and discern what I am really saying to you.”
Well, that is a dangerous thing for me to say to you. In fact, we always come to these imperatives, these things that we are wanting to deal with, and they are always so dangerous that I am prone to back off and say, “Let someone else.”
But we have to handle things at these crucial points, because it is right there that we either go on with God or we have to substitute. It is right there that we either may come into the measure of what God wants, or we really miss.
This thing of becoming sensitive to the voice of the Lord—the voice of the Lord.
Well, we are going on this morning to another imperative, and carry the others along with us as we will. But I want to deal with the imperative of a right standpoint. I could almost say a right standing, but I will not borrow any words. That is what I would like to do.
Wonderful how we come right to this point: the right standing, or coming to a right standpoint.
May I gather you all up this morning? Well, I know by this time in a conference what is going on in some of the arguing of our soul. The tendency right about this point is for us to say, “My, we really have some desperate needs walking around the campus. What we ought to do is be more practical and really get right down to touching some of these needs.”
I know that. But I know that there is God’s way of doing it.
In my earlier days, longing somehow to really get out and touch this brother’s need, and this sister’s need, and this individual’s need, it was so easy—so easy—to become all encumbered with the needs of man and somehow miss God’s way by which He begins to get at our real need, the deeper, the larger need.
The average pastor that I know spends his time running around to a hundred problems that are all the time existing in his congregation because he is being impelled, he is being pulled by all of this, but he is not really getting at the real need.
You see, it is a matter of our standpoint. It is a matter of really coming to grips with that which God Himself is working towards.
How can I illustrate it? A number of times, as we have gone to the West, I have stopped at the great Boulder, or the great Hoover Dam, as they call it.
I have always been amazed that the visitors, the guests who are taken through the tour of this tremendous place—the guides tell us that it is very interesting, the comments that people make as various ones are taken through the tour.
When a farmer comes and he looks at that great body of water that is being held back, out of his own subjectivity, out of his own experience and out of his pair of glasses, he begins to ask questions: “How many acres would this water irrigate?” He sees it through a farmer’s eyes.
When the electrician gets down in the depths where the dynamos are working, his question invariably is, “How many kilowatt-hours does this produce?” He sees it from that standpoint.
When the artist gets there, he wonders where he can set up his easel to paint and get the best perspective of the whole thing. He sees it through an artist’s eye.
And I know when a preacher gets there, he always asks, “How can I use this in my next sermon?” At least, in those days.
But we are merely living out here in our standpoint. We are living out here in our standpoints.
And our problem, if we are not careful, is to come into a conference like this and say, “Oh, how many young people are running around here that need to be saved. Brother, you ought to preach the gospel and give an invitation.”
Yes, there are those who come in. I know you better than you think.
And the proneness—the proneness of our own glasses, the proneness of our approach, of where we stand—is to say, “Oh, how some people need release. They are all locked up in their personality. How they need the release of the Spirit. What we ought to have is a chair up here and invite the needy people to come and be delivered, and lay hands on them, that they might know an impartation of the Spirit of God.”
Well, we could do that.
What I am here this morning to say is that, as long as man stands in a certain place trying somehow to interpret and put all things in the proper perspective, his natural reasoning will always leave him with mere parts. He will only see things in their separateness, in their parts.
But God has a way of unifying things. He has a way of bringing us into His own viewpoint to help us see what He is really doing and how He is doing it.
I will go one step further. I think in the United States today there are two general courses of movement.
There is one group that is very alive to the restoration of gifts, the operation of the Spirit. It is often called a charismatic renewal in the historic church. They are very concerned for life flowing among the Lord’s people.
Now, you may be surprised if I say this, but I have far more sympathy for them than you might realize. Because I believe that God is working as much as He can in everybody and in every situation. There is quite an awakening and quite a moving.
There are many people who have never come into any measure of reality, and suddenly they have come through a gateway and entered into some light. I have met them. I know it is so.
And I have brothers who write to me continually. They love me, and they are praying for me. The groan of their heart is, “Oh, Brother Vern, get out where the light is flowing, out where you can find some people who are really eager and hungry and ready to move on with God. Do not stay around with the dried-up fundamentalists, or people with a narrower vision—people who do not know the full tide of the flow that is going on in this day.”
Well, what they do not know is that I was with them and in that long before they got into it.
But there is another trend. There is another moving of God today, and it is that the life that God is pouring forth must have a proper vessel, or vehicle, for its containment and expression. It must have that.
We can talk all we want about life, and its flow, and the measure of it, and I say, thank God for what He is doing. But after a while, those who have been flowing around in the breadth of this river, this flood tide, so to speak, begin to cry out, “Is there not a channel?”
There is such looseness every place. Is there some way in which God has designs and plans for this life not to be lost, but to continually reproduce the proper vessel in which it is to be expressed?
Well, that is why I am here this morning. Because I believe that God has burdened my own heart, and some who in the last three or four years have been gathering here have been sensing that God wants to gather in lives that have been in the life flow, the life measure, but now they are crying out, “Oh God, how is this to find continuity, and how are You going to express it? What kind of a vessel or a vehicle? What kind of a container?”
And that is the burden with which we approach what we are wanting to say this morning. It is a matter of where you stand.
Would you turn to Psalm 73? Psalm 73.
I want to pick up the groaning of a man in Israel who looked out at the desperate condition, the situation of things around him. He knows some things, but there are some things he does not know. He is crying out for some answers in his perplexity.
Before we read this, I want to use a picture that we use so often in explaining this. I say that actually a man can stand in one of three positions, so to speak.
In drawing the outer court of the tabernacle, there is a knowledge that an individual can have as he stands in the outer court and surveys all of the universe, all the created handiwork of God. He can come to know certain things by what we call observation.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament showeth His handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech,
And night unto night showeth knowledge.
It keeps speaking to us of certain things. We see God in His handiwork. We can know many things as we stand out here. This is the place where the one who is speaking in Psalm 73 is standing.
But we are going to press in a little bit further, and we are going to know this what is called the sanctuary within.
Let me say that there is a knowledge pictured by the outer court, but there is a light, there is a knowledge, pictured by this first room called the holy place.
All the light in this outer part came from the sun. It was natural light. This sanctuary was covered over with heavy skins, we remember, and the only light that existed in this first room was the light from the candelabra, the candlestick. It was an illumination—an illumination.
And I like to picture the one who is pressing in and speak of that inside knowledge that we get through illumination. It is much like when the Spirit of God allows the light to shine upon verses, things that you may have known for a long time.
That is, verses you have known, and yet suddenly, by a shaft of illumination, you see into a part you have never seen before. Wonderful! A breath of life—life. It is a knowledge, then, that comes by illumination.
But you press beyond this veil into the innermost room. There was no candlestick there. The only light of that room was the Shekinah glory of God’s own presence. Very wonderful.
This room, if it represents something of the soul and its function, this room we always speak of as the human spirit. So there is a knowledge that comes in this room by revelation. It is an inner knowledge that is imparted directly to our spirit.
Dr. Tozer, again—I quote him—has said in giving us this little outline, “It is back in this room where God happens to you.”
His Spirit witnesses to your spirit. God happens to you. There is something of direct impartation, of seeing, understanding, knowledge, directly to your own inner spirit.
It was quoted earlier this morning, and I repeat it again: the songwriter seems to sense that there are so many people in their movement, in their progress, who stand out and see God and all His handiwork by observation. What they know is by natural reasoning.
There are those men who press in, and by the illumination through the Word—the written Word—they come to another knowledge. But I love this phrase. He says, “Beyond the sacred page, I see the Lord.”
A lot of our problem now, a lot of our difficulty today, is the very thing that Jesus was confronted with when the Jewish leaders were coming with their Scriptures. They were trying somehow to make Him fit into what they saw.
There was a great warfare, and He finally told them:
Ye search the Scriptures,
Because ye think that in them ye have eternal life;
And these are they which bear witness of Me;
And ye will not come to Me, that ye may have life.
Getting stalled merely in what we call bits of illumination, merely in the letter of the thing—that is our problem.
Now, my concern is that the great majority of us in our approach are interested in moving back into the more intimate knowing of the Lord Himself, in a spiritual way.
Well, let us see how the psalmist puts it here. Psalm 73:
Surely God is good to Israel,
Even to such as are pure in heart.
But as for me, my feet were almost gone;
My steps had well nigh slipped.
For I was envious at the arrogant,
When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Here is a man who knows he belongs to God’s people. He is separated unto the thing that God is after, as far as he knows, and yet he stands out here in the outer court looking at all of the circumstances and the people who seem to prosper. They are getting along in abundance. Then he looks at his own poor condition, and there is the envy of his heart.
For there are no pangs in their death,
But their strength is firm.
They are not in trouble as other men;
Neither are they plagued like other men.
So it seems. Their pride is as a chain about their neck; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness. They have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression; they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth.
Therefore His people return hither, and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them. That is, they say, “How is it, brother? You love the Lord; why are you going through so much trouble? Does God know what you are going through? Why does not your God step in and solve some of this for you?”
The taunting:
How doth God know?
And is there knowledge in the Most High?
Behold, these who talk thus, they are the ungodly. They live as though there is no God. We said yesterday: they go on the whole of life wrapped up in revolving around themselves, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.
Now he is saying, “Lord, I cannot understand all of this. Why do You not bless Your people more? Why do You not allow us to prosper? Why, why, why?” The natural reasoning.
He says, “There must be something wrong in me,” so he starts to look in.
Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart,
And washed my hands in innocency;
For all the day long have I been plagued,
And chastened every morning.
“Lord, what have I done that this is all happening? What have I done?”
If I had said, I will speak thus;
Behold, I had dealt treacherously with the generation of Thy children.
When I thought how I might know this,
It was too painful for me.
I have been trying to say up to this point that all of our standing out here as individuals, attempting to interpret the world situation, the mess, and the church situation—all our attempt to evaluate it from natural reasoning—will only leave us more convinced with the part that we are going to emphasize.
Is it not interesting how we go through phases and get hold of the thing that we feel is just the answer, just the thing? Great hope rises.
I hate to refer back, but I look through twenty-three or four years now of grabbing hold of formulas that will meet the need of the hour.
And I had, back in those days of growing up, a very godly and patient, understanding father in the faith who kept inviting me back all those years to a conference that he had. I thought I was going to help the people, but he knew every time I came, invited to be a speaker, that I needed the help.
I traveled the country all over, and God saw to it that every time I came to this particular group, somebody would slip up and whisper, “What are you emphasizing this year?”
I could go through the long list of things that I felt were so utterly imperative. I will never forget the patience with which they dealt with me.
One year it was healing. I had, well, been raised up from a deathbed. Who would not get excited about healing? It is all there. If you look closely enough, you can see it in every page.
And really now, if people could just see some more healing, they would be more alive to God and God could get more done. Good reasoning in the outer court.
The next year I came back, I was absolutely convinced everybody needed to get into their ministry. The problem is we do not have a body ministry. The reason they cannot minister is because they do not know what their gift is.
And I had just learned to prophesy and to lay hands on people and indicate their gifts, and encourage them to get into their own ministry. Surely this would bring the body into function. This would bring the thing that God really wants.
Well, before that it had been bringing everybody into the fullness of the filling, the baptism of the Spirit. I could go through all of the emphasis.
I am saying this morning because I know the arguing of the soul. And I know, after four years of gathering from various backgrounds and places, the proneness with which we come and say, “What this conference means—what these people really need.”
Well, let us see.
And then I got into a whole period of church truth: the right construction by which God would bring the church into its proper function. Needed this, needed this, needed this, needed this.
It is amazing how, when you are standing in all of this natural outward observation—and I call it the part—it is amazing how you can argue with your brother.
You ever hear two men? Well, you would have to be in Indianapolis to appreciate this. But it is quite something when the 500 season comes. You know, that is the race city. It is quite something to hear men argue about spark plugs.
I tell you, they can get so heated about whether it is this spark plug or that spark plug. Others will argue whether it is this kind of gas or that kind of gas. And the Firestone and the Goodyear people have had a feud for at least forty years.
Now, we laugh at them. But we get right into the midst of our internal observations and say, “You baptize this way: face forward, backwards, downwards, upwards, three times, this name, that name.” Those things are all very important.
But I begin to ask, when we get right down to it, what do all of these little incidentals amount to?
Sometimes they seem so important, and whole groups will hive off and gather around a particular emphasis, whatever it is.
But there comes a time when God begins to overwhelm me with the purpose of the car—the purpose of the thing. Those who are so power-conscious, so mechanic-conscious, somehow God takes the man and begins to give him a little larger picture of what He is really working toward.
And I am amazed. I have been thrilled and amazed through the years to find brothers who were so strong in the illumination, or the little bit of insight they had had, suddenly laying aside, as we stand out here, these little things; and we begin to see from the inside what God is really after.
Then things begin to take on new perspectives. We started by saying there is the necessity—imperative necessity—of a right standpoint.
He says, verse 16:
When I thought how I might know this,
It was too painful for me;
Until I went into the sanctuary of God,
And considered their latter end.
I do not know, but brothers, sisters, I believe that as long as we are talking and interpreting parts, and as it were looking out here, and we even get hold of fragments of illumination, they become emphases, things that we gather out, things that seem so important.
But God is more interested in bringing us into the light of Himself—to a real union with His own life.
And it is here, from the inside, that we begin to look out and see the unity of things.
I do believe that as long as a man is standing out here, he will say that as individuals we have a spirit, a soul, and a body. Why? Because he sees the functioning of the body. He stands out here and sees some functioning of the soul. We say from this approach, “Man has a spirit, a soul, and a body.”
But you move in spirit to stand where the Lord looks out, and there is something of a unifying. You do not say man has a spirit, a soul, and a body. You say man is spirit, soul, and body. There is something of a unity that comes when you see from this viewpoint, this standpoint.
Now, that is important.
There is such diversity, such proneness, standing as it were in our own life or what little shafts of light have come. We see parts and we deal with parts.
But brothers, sisters, I cannot get away from the fact that once we have really come to know Him, and God happens to you in the way I am trying to express it this morning, you see how the spirit has to have the soul for its vehicle of expression. And you see how the spirit and the soul have to have a body.
There is something very different about it. It is a matter of where we stand.
You see the unity of it, the unifying of a family. I stand out here and I can get over-impressed merely observing. I can get over-impressed with the light, the inner aspect of things, and its knowledge to me. I see the need.
But there comes a time when somehow God makes real this standpoint where, in His knowledge, with Him, I begin to see the unity of things—the unifying factor.
Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then understood I therein.
Now, maybe we can say this: when I stand in life, in its full flow, its full measure, and I know that the Spirit of God is sharing certain things to my inner spirit—if I have just that, I have no adequate way for the soul to find its proper function.
I know our soul has been independent, acting apart from the spirit. And our problem is to so degrade it as to almost get rid of our soul, as though it were not necessary.
No. God made us spirit, soul, and body, to function in a proper way. And our soul must come into its proper dependency, its proper function.
Just as surely as we stand out here, as it were, and see the importance of life, the value of life, and the function of life, we see parts. We see something wonderful.
But, oh, there is something still more wonderful about standing in the standpoint that one has in and with the Lord, in union with Him, in which you see that life begets light.
In Him was life;
And the life was the light of men.
But it is a unifying light. It is a light that has in it different qualities than just parts of illumination, as I am standing out putting verses together.
There is something quite wonderful about the Lord’s unveiling of a portion as from the inside out.
Let me see if we can take two words. I hesitate to bring out the Greek, but years ago I ran into these two words that began to make a very wonderful distinction for me.
In the Greek New Testament, the English word word is translated from two different Greek words. The one is the word logos. We know that quite well.
In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was God.
It is used throughout Scripture continually to picture God’s general Word, that which He is expressing in a more general, objective way.
Then I began to read other portions, and I found that you get into some difficulty if you do not recognize that there is another word that is much more subjective. This word is, in the Greek, rhema.
Wherever it is used, it gives you the picture of that which is spoken more specifically and personally to the individual.
I would read John 15:7, for example:
If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you,
Ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
And I would think, “Oh, it is hopeless. I will never be able to ask what I want, because the whole of the Word has to abide in me.” But He did not use the word logos there.
It is not just a general accumulation of all the Word of God as such. The word there is, “If ye abide in Me, and My rhema abide in you.” It is a very personal word to you.
We said yesterday, I believe it was, of this dear sister who had been in the accident with us. There she lay in casts, with seventeen fractures. A very precious brother and sister walked into her hospital room and read some verses to her about healing, and then commanded her in the name of the Lord to get up and walk.
I did not at that time know the difference between what we call the Word, the logos, which is God’s general Word, and that which is His rhema, which is His specific word to you.
But I only knew, as I said, God had somehow before spoken to me, saying, “There are many things that are My truths, that are My words, but they only become personally alive when I speak them to you.”
How many of you know John 3:16? For years:
For God so loved the world,
That He gave His only begotten Son,
That whosoever believeth on Him
Should not perish, but have eternal life.
That was logos. That was a general word. You knew it. You quoted it. “Whosoever.” One day something happened. The Holy Spirit took that which was very objective, right out here, and began to make it very personal.
You can turn to John for a moment. We will just look at a couple of other places where, in near proximity, we have the very same thing. Turn to John 17.
Verse 17:
Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth.
“Thy logos is truth.” Oh, how I have appreciated that through the years.
But I know I went through a period when I thought, if I could just get the Bible read to people, if I could just crown them with all the truth, that somehow they would get sanctified. They would be cleansed by the washing of water with the Word.
Only to discover that there are a lot of people who have known the logos, but there has been no sanctifying effect. Why? Why?
He says in verse 8:
For the words which Thou gavest Me I have given unto them;
And they received them.
This word here is rhema, which Thou gavest Me. There is something very wonderful about the Lord speaking the rhema, as it were, to your own spirit.
The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.
Not merely the logos that I speak to you—the rhema that I speak to you. They are spirit, and they are life.
Well, we have a problem on our hands at this point. We are at one of those imperatives again, where it is so important that we realize that all this Book is the Word of God. I am no near-orthodox man. All this Book is the Word of God, not just that which speaks to me.
Now, that is the difference. It is all the what? The logos. But when the Spirit of God quickens it and makes it livingly, personally real, then it becomes a spoken, subjective thing to me.
Now, you think we have had a real bumper crop throughout the whole of our fundamental world today of people who take the logos and use it like an axe over people’s heads, and try to get the logos to sanctify, as it were, try to get the logos to heal somebody, try to use the logos like an axe to lay the axe to the root of the tree.
And when the objective aspect of it does not accomplish it, then we have to add some elbow grease to it—some of the flesh, some of our own striving, some of our own activity—to help the Lord get the job done. No.
And the liberal world looks on and says, “Oh my, these Bible lovers, these bibliolaters, these people who only know the objective knowledge of the thing.” They only stand in the outer court and try to use it in that way.
I do not wonder they are reacting. I do not wonder that they are reacting to those folks who have tried to use the letter, the logos as such, as an axe to accomplish its work.
But God, in the midst of it, is, I believe, raising up those who see at this important point the imperative—the need to distinguish between, not react, not throw away the letter, not throw away anything, just make sure that it is used rightly.
This is our problem. All the reaction that goes on. You see that every fellowship and every assembly, we are always in the stage of reacting and overreacting—mostly overreacting.
We get into something, and for the present we have arrived. Our hope is fulfilled. It is something very wonderful. And then you meet somebody six months later—something has happened. There is a peculiar reaction.
God had a very wonderful way of verifying. I say that when you stand out here, it looks like you can make things almost different because you have got them in layers, or you have got them entire.
You look at the created world, all these things, and it looks like one thing. You can look at the written Word, and from your little partial illumination it looks like something else. Then you can look full into His face, the living Word, and He looks a little different, and you get all free and separate. They have something of a partial aspect to them.
But when you stand with Him at the right standpoint, there is no discrepancy, nor is there any separateness. You see that the living Word has its perfect shadow in the written Word, and likewise in all that He has created.
Where do we stand? Where do we stay?
It is quite wonderful when the Lord begins to speak and you get hold of something in an inward way. “Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord. Yes, I know something.”
And then you begin to wait for God’s verification of it in the outward, or in the Word, you see.
Most of the time, most of the time, we are approaching from the outside going in. We get some illumination, and then we come in and get to know something more directly in spirit.
But I think that God delights to happen to us, and then there is verification—not only in the realm of my soul, but also in the outward. I need it.
This thrilled me the other day when I was reading over in Hebrews. If you turn to the sixth chapter for a moment.
Verse 13:
For when God made promise to Abraham, since He could swear by none greater, He sware by Himself, saying,
Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.
And thus, having patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
For men swear by the greater: and in every dispute of theirs the oath is final for confirmation.
Wherein God, being minded to show more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of His counsel, interposed with an oath;
That by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us:
Which we have as an anchor of the soul.
I have heard men for years speak of the anchor of the soul, but it never meant anything to me until last week. The anchor of the soul.
We have been wanting to say this morning, first of all, that we too often try to feed our soul. Our soul does not need any more food as such. We speak of soul food—perish the thought. It is our spirit that needs the food. It is the inner spirit that needs the food.
And when there has been the imparted thing, the feeding, that which God has shared to your spirit—very wonderful—what does your soul need?
It does not need food. What does it need? Well, I just read it. What does it mean? Your soul needs an anchor. Your soul needs an anchor.
You may get a drag on your hands. I am not talking about that now. If you are approaching from the outside, you get hold of some doctrine or verses as such, and it will be a drag. That is not what I am talking about.
But I think from the inside we can say that when the Spirit of God has the privilege of taking and renewing all of this and putting it in its proper perspective, as I see from the inside, it becomes a glorious anchor.
An awful lot of folk who have entered the new charismatic approach today, who have gone on to the place where God happens, have begun to see some things—but they are without an anchor.
I thank God for something of the caution we have sensed through the years. We have shared it with you before. Maybe we are overcautious, but there are many things that you sense and know in spirit.
But I do not believe in sharing them until you can share them through the page. The only safe way.
Otherwise, the abundance of revelations, the abundance of this and that—you will have ships all over this country without an anchor, without any guideline, without any direction.
And I can look back and see certain things, why the timing was not there. The Lord’s way is from the inside out. You know Him, and the more you know Him in an intimate way of fellowship, the more you will know why.
You really know what to say. But all our partiality is only to try, as it were, from the outside to approach in, and we get a glimmer, we get a glimmer, we get a glimmer.
And we only see Him in a partiality, only see a side of His nature.
Now, pick up where we were yesterday a little bit. I went through a phase in my life when I was totally reacting against the modern evangelistic approach and all the shallow conversions—getting decisions, having people come to Christ. “We harvest at least a hundred a night. Real decisions.”
Because I was, you know, very anxious for God. The only difficulty was, after a while I came through a real reaction stage, and I began to say that we had not been holding out to them the Person and the claims of God on life.
“You want peace? Come to the blessing machine. He will give you peace. You want to go to heaven? Look, you can escape. Come to Jesus.”
Then I reacted. And from my glimmer of light out here, I saw He was Lord Jesus—sovereign Jesus.
And I insisted that if anybody was going to meet Him, they must meet Him on His high, exalted throne as Lord.
I do not know if you catch what I am trying to say. The presentation was Lord Jesus. Now, He is that. He is that.
And I went through a long period of trying to remedy our awful condition in shallow evangelism by an overemphasis and a reaction: “You will only meet Him as Lord.”
But there was a restraining within. I did not know why. Something just began to gradually say, “Now, be careful. You are pushing it too far. You are making a little system out of the truth.”
It was not until I read in What Shall This Man Do?, where Brother M. talks about Jesus as the Friend of sinners.
What I had unwittingly been doing was to say that Jesus came all the way down to the very bottom rung of the ladder to meet men, because we could not climb up to meet Him. So He would meet us at the bottom rung.
We are so totally helpless. We are so totally unable in our condition that He would meet us at the bottom rung.
But I had Lord Jesus at the bottom rung, I thought, only to my amazement to find that I had a couple of invisible, hidden rungs that I was making people climb up to meet Him before they could really meet Him.
I was adding in my vocabulary what was fine, and it was quite a wonderful day when I realized that no man puts away his own selfishness without some help. He does not even repent without some help. He does not even reject sin without some help.
I thought I had Him at the bottom rung, but I saw the Friend of sinners—the Friend of sinners—getting right down to a man in his hopeless, helpless condition.
And there speaking and saying, “You do not want Me. You do not like Me. You are not interested in Me.” But He puts His arm around us and says, “I love you anyway,” and begins to break down all those misconceptions and those things that have kept us literally afraid of Him as Lord.
You see, as long as we are approaching out here, we get hold of facets of the Lord. So my voice in those days was always the voice of a sovereign: “You are going to meet Him in this way.”
That was representing the sovereign, I thought. And I was in total reaction against the liberal who is love and compassion and a soft, mushy sort of thing, you know.
He wants to bring us into an acquaintance with Himself whereby we do not have just a facet, just a sliver of a verse illumined to us, but see Him in His very character and nature.
But, oh, I tell you, God happens to you in a way, in an intimacy, in which you begin to see all of Him better, and then He begins to give a whole new insight from the inside out.
I do not know—anybody getting what I am trying to say? You will have to move inside, I guess. That is just the difference. It is a matter of viewpoint.
I can look back for ten years at brothers and sisters who have been so strong in certain emphases that were so utterly imperative and important to them.
But I know that there comes a time when the Lord takes us into the sanctuary, that which He Himself begins to put the light from a different standpoint on.
Now, you have been waiting for this, but I have to say it. Brother, sister, if we say, “Well, all you are emphasizing is the vessel by which God is getting the purpose done, by which He is accomplishing what He wants,” forgiven.
But I believe when you follow through the course from Genesis to Revelation, you find that while there have been many, many times when God was working in a broad area, yet to sit with Him at the right standpoint is to see the thread line where His greatest concern is—that thing which He considers to be a present crucial issue at that moment, in that hour.
And I believe there has always been something of that which was a present issue, a present truth, the present thing that God was wanting to sharpen before men.
I have a hope that has come to my soul. I hope that is not from the outside; I hope it is from the inside out.
If I lose that hope, I have got to go home or pack up my bag and quit, because I am without hope—hope that has come as an anchor to my soul.
What is it? What is it that is anchor? What is it that is anchored?
Maybe I am wrong in saying it, but I think our very gathering here, from the first year, has been a people who have had a hope—a larger hope.
Somebody says, “The hope of being saved?” No. “The hope of being set apart, or sanctified?” No. “The hope of being filled with the Spirit?” No. The hope—what are we hoping for?
We are without a rudder. We are without anything to hold us if there is not something of hope. What are you hoping in?
All right, I have to close, but I will say this. My hope—the thing that gives, as I believe I sit with the Lord, that which He delights in and that which He is going to work out—it is an anchor this morning.
The hope is that while God has witnessed—here are two things, he says, that are immutable. Phillips puts it this way: “So that by two utterly immutable things, the Word of God and the oath of God.”
Well, I do not want to superimpose what we are saying, but I believe that God has witnessed in my own spirit right here in the area where life crosses, and there is all that He has made, the words that He has spoken, the rhema that is coming: “I am going to have a people, a remnant in whom I am to be glorified.”
I am going to have a living expression. I am going to have a people who can demonstrate that, in spite of all that we are as people, He is able to bring it into family life.
It seems like that is an oath that the Lord has whispered. And the anchor of it is: I will go on to it, that in His Word out here I have had some confirmation, some verification.
If I do not have that, I might as well pack up the season, because there is nothing here for us. No point. That is the average. We do not have any hope. There is no point in this gathering.
I am fully aware that you come from a family life where there have been some impossibilities. To look in on the situation causes you to say, “It cannot be. There is no hope. No hope. No hope.”
I do believe that God is trying to get all of this to the place where our trying, our mechanical ways, our doing and our bringing about, our starting things—all of this—will come to an end and just wither. And out of it there will be a burst of that which is truly a light from beyond.
I have a hope. I have an anchor.
I do not know when, and I do not even know how anymore. I did for a while.
Yes, I do know how. God is going to bring some people. We are going to start from the inside where life is—yes, life—seeing things in God’s perspective.
And I am just as concerned this morning that we get hold of this now: life not only has in it the life measure, but life has in it, as well as release, a very restricting containment. There are some laws about life.
Do you ever walk up to a cherry tree and say, “What happened to you, cherry tree?” “I am sorry, three things. Well, you see, I decided to have a little more release, and so I am giving forth prunes and oranges instead of cherries. After all, I believe in release, and I know my liberty, and I have just discovered my release.”
We have all got a great lesson before us. And you know what it is? The people who get released—gloriously released—into what I call the bigger box suddenly begin to discover that the very life that has glorious release also has some restricting laws about it.
And we do not like this. But the cherry tree will only bring forth after its kind—only cherries. It might get pruned, but there are laws.
There is such looseness.
Family life has some laws about it. Dad says, “You are going to be in at nine o’clock.” “Man, who are you? After all, I am twenty-one. Why do I have to do that?”
“Just simply because, as long as you are going to stay in my household, you are going to be in at nine.” “You are arbitrary.” But he is teaching.
Well, I started a subject that I cannot finish. No, we will, maybe.
What are you trying to say? Our problem is we are all settling the church, the world, and everybody’s problem right out here by natural observation.
Some people get a little more spiritual, and they get into the sacred page. They get a shaft of illumination. Then we all gather in Sunday school class, or gather in our sharing meetings, to share our bit of illumination. We come into great collision of the soul.
“It is so, but I have got a verse for it. God showed it to me.” What you saw is right, but it is just a part, just a smidgen. It does not fit.
It is quite a thing to get into some of our more free prayer meetings these days. Everybody comes in with his own burden, and you have twelve people praying in twelve directions. There is no sense of oneness. There is no sense of direction.
Oh, I tell you, I tell you, we are a million miles from, in the average place, really understanding the release that is restricted by the Spirit Himself. But we do not want that.
And is it not interesting that all over this country for ten years there have been little groups hiving off in homes? People say, “Oh, bless the Lord, something wonderful is coming. Life getting in another little pool, another little puddle, another little puddle.”
And the statistics reveal that ninety-eight percent of them never last over three months. Why?
Too much freedom. You say, “But that is what I got out for.” Well, God has an answer.
Then I went into the sanctuary. In order to get in that last veil, I had to leave everything out here. Oh, life alone! And I just met Him, fell in love with Him—my doctrines, my experience, and all the rest.
And anything that was good, I did not lose, because from the inside it all gets put in the proper perspective. You do not lose doctrine; just get it lined up. You do not even lose a good experience, whatever it was. You just call it something else. I mean, you just get it lined up.
Brother, sister, I have got a hope this morning. Do not take it away from me. You cannot, because the Holy Spirit is witness, and I believe there is some confirmation. Do you have any hope?
Lord, forgive us when, like the psalmist, we stood trying to reason out, trying to understand things with our natural observation, or even trying to piece together the little parts of illumination.
Oh, dear Lord, it is good for us to really draw nigh to Thee, and even lay aside our bits of illumination, just sit at Thy feet. I do not know what Thou art wanting to say to us these days.
But say it. Say it with an oath. Say it with a confidence to our inner spirit, that some of us can go back to our individual family lives with a confidence.
If You want us to hold steady, You want us to hold still. You want us to hear Your voice.
For Thou hast the words of eternal life;
And whither shall we go?
We have been spoiled—utterly spoiled.
And I pray for my brothers and sisters, some who have sensed for years things are wrong out here. We come together, and we come to this reunion of various families.
Oh, I pray, dear Lord, that Thou wilt give every one of us the inner sense of what it really means to press in just to know Thee.
We have heard this morning: to really know Me, to really know Me, to really know Me, is to see things in the whole life of a new creation, the new humanity, the new thing that Thou art doing.
We have tried to do it by ourselves, and out of the rubbish heap and out of all the decays, we come almost to be people without hope.
But from the inside, the soul has an anchor, and we find that we have a boat.
Go with us through the afternoon hour. Continue, dear Lord, to hold us in check, that we might know the release that we need, but also that we might know the government of Thy Spirit over us.
We thank Thee that Thou art doing it. In Jesus’ name, we ask with thanksgiving. Amen.