I wonder this morning how many are here for the first service. Would you raise your hand? Oh, you were here in the earlier service. How many have come in since I spoke last? That is what I am trying to find out. I am wanting to lay some background in case—alright, thank you. Many hands.
We have said thus far, in sharing and fellowshipping with you, that we have been led in the last year or two to give some thought to David and the lessons and principles that come out of his life.
I do not think it is just something of a natural desire, but I would like to believe the Lord has been saying to me that, for the days that are ahead, there are some lessons that I need to learn. So we decided that we would ask the Lord what we should share in these days. Perhaps we would consider the life of David and some of the principles that governed God’s working in and through him.
The first evening, focusing our attention, we read in Acts 13. I think, just to make sure that everyone is up to date and caught up with us, if you would bear with us for a moment—in Acts 13, we were reading a little of the background of God working with Israel. We spoke of the uniqueness of the place that David filled in fulfilling his ministry in his generation.
Then we went on yesterday morning to consider the contrast between Saul and David. Let us read in Acts 13, beginning with Verse 21.
And afterward they asked for a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years.
And when He had removed him, He raised up David to be their king.
We were showing yesterday how God removed Saul because he was not a prepared man. He was more the choice of the people, and they had given him position. Out of that position there was opportunity for him to gain experience and to become the thing that he could have been, to be established in his kingdom. But he failed, and God removed him.
Then, by contrast, we spoke of David—how God had been preparing him. In due time, out of what he was in the reality of his inner being, and out of the experiences to which God had brought him, he was finally positioned. He was raised up of the Lord.
I have been trying to say that there is something that has stuck in my heart for years: this little phrase where He says, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after Mine own heart, who shall fulfil all My will.”
That verse has haunted—no, I will not say haunted—but it has surely caught in my heart for years. I suppose that, in the hours of groaning unto the Lord, if we have used any one phrase more than anything else, it has been this: “O God, what does it mean to be a man after Your heart? What is involved?”
We did read from another translation, something that gave us a little larger view. I will just read that phrase from the Berkeley translation which we used that first evening:
“I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man agreeable to My mind, who will carry out My whole program.”
His whole program. We have been saying, as our brother Kong went on to say yesterday afternoon, that we ought to have a sense of moving under the fullness of that which God is really after—not being willing to settle down or settle short of anything less than all that God has planned and purposed.
This morning I want to go one step further, to something that marked the life of David. As you read, I think you become aware that there was a consciousness of destiny in him—that he had been raised up, that he had been laid hold of by the Lord.
But we catch another phrase in Psalm 89 that I want to take this morning as a springboard. Psalm 89 speaks of David, beginning with Verse 19:
Then Thou spakest in vision to Thy holy ones,
And saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty;
I have exalted one chosen out of the people.
I have found David My servant;
With My holy oil have I anointed him.
It is quite comforting to realize, dear heart, that you may be out in a very insignificant place, hidden among the sheepcotes, walking with your heart attuned to the Lord, out of the stream of what we call a lot of religious activity. But God knows where you are. God knows where you are.
They knew where David was. After all the other sons of Jesse had been looked over, finally David was brought in. The Spirit seemed to signify, “This is the one I am choosing.” “I have found David.”
But we go on this morning, not merely with what we were saying yesterday—the sense of God raising up, God laying hold, God calling out—but with this phrase: “With My holy oil have I anointed him.”
I am so hesitant this morning to get into something that I really sense we know only in a very small measure. For that reason, we are speaking beyond our experience. But I guess we know a little of it. Does that give me permission to talk about it?
At least I have a yearning and a hunger for the fullness of it, the reality of it, as we consider some of the statements through the Psalms in which David seems to sense that he was the anointed of the Lord.
I think it is one thing to know that there is an awareness of God’s hand upon you—a call, a raising up—for a unique or distinct thing. It may not be clear what it is. Then there is another sense in which you know that the anointing of the Lord accompanies it, making possible the realization of it.
Dear heart, in this hour in which we live, all over the breadth and length of the land, there is so much concern about the ministry of the Holy Spirit—for power, for service, for filling us for a walk, and all that is involved. I do not know your background. I do not know from whence you have come, or the diversity of concern and interest.
But what I want to share this morning grows out of a real concern for hungry people. The more hungry and open we are to know the fullness and ministry of the Spirit of God in our lives, I believe the more we have to understand this matter of the anointing and those peculiar features that govern, coexist with, or are inherent in the anointing.
Perhaps this will give us solid ground to move on. It will give us confidence. It will hold us when we might tend to move off on some tangent, or become eager to get into areas that will lead us into dead ends.
I was saying yesterday—and I think I will have to get the background before us—that man’s way is so different from God’s way. I fear there are lots of folk like Saul who are interested in a position. They feel that if they have a position, a place, or a sphere in which they can really function for God, then they can get something done.
We were saying yesterday that the people gave Saul a position—an unprepared, untried, untested man. They hoped that in this way he would gain experience, come to know how to be king, be established, and lead the people. He had no previous background or experience, and finally, out of it, he could come to be the thing he needed to be.
But this is man’s way: giving position, thrusting into position. So often there is the eagerness, the itch, to be, so that we seek the position ourselves. But you do not do that more than once or twice—at the most.
Then we went on to say that God’s way is His working in our inner being. He starts this pattern of building life within us—something, as our brother Sparks reiterated last night, of the reality of the Lord.
Out of that there comes light.
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
Out of this comes experience that has meaning. We know how the principles of God work and are governed. Finally, then, out of this there comes position. Any position that issues out of what we really are gives God opportunity to function in the work.
We were saying that when Saul came into an hour of crisis, because there had not been previous union, acquaintance, or intimacy with the Lord, he got down to Gilgal. He needed direction. He needed a package of knowledge, but he did not know how to obtain it.
He only knew the outward aspect: you go there, wait for Samuel, and get some understanding or direction for the people as to how they should go.
But by contrast, what God had been doing in David from the very beginning was building within him something of the source itself—a union with the very source. It was not so much a matter of going off to get a package for each occasion. There was the sense that he was in union, in connection with the very source of life itself.
He learned that as a boy in the sheepcote, when he took down the first lion. Then he took on the next lion, Goliath. That was inward preparation.
So we are wanting to make a contrast this morning. I think I see something, and I pray that if there is any straining to make it say something it does not say, my brethren will be very quick to caution or correct. But I think I see something.
You remember we pointed out in passing yesterday that when Samuel went down to anoint Saul, he took a vial of oil. But when he went to anoint David, he took a horn of oil.
We read in another place in the Psalms where he spoke of the horns of the wicked being cut off, but the horns of the righteous being exalted. I think we said, or meant to say, that you get a picture of representation. I believe God is quite meticulous in the things that are representative.
Maybe I read into it, but I believe there is very much care. I questioned for a long time, “Why did he use a vial in one case? Why did he use a horn of oil in another case?”
We went on to say, as I illustrated, that the cow in a herd which has the longest horn seems to have the most authority. You remember? She gets her way into the feed rack. Those horns give her something of extra punch, extra authority.
I used to hear their old grandpa say so often, “We are going to dehorn that cow. She has been boss in the herd long enough.”
Well, there is something about authority. Horns grow. I know you might try to glue some on, but horns are supposed to grow out of life. They are supposed to issue out of life.
That is why I am picturing the fact that in the progress, growth, and development of the prepared man—the man of whom God said, “I will prepare Me a man after My own heart”—there was the growing of the horn, the development, the preparation.
Then, in due time, having raised him and positioned him in the place He wanted, the anointing oil could be forthcoming.
But a vial—you do not grow one. I think in your translation, perhaps in the margin, you can look in places and find that the vial is like a bowl. You do not grow bowls, I do not think. You make them. They are suitable for the occasion, but they do not grow.
Does it say anything? It does to me. In this particular way, Saul was anointed to fulfil an occasion. You remember we said yesterday that it was the people who had desired and chosen. God went along with the test: “Go down, Samuel, and anoint him.” And he took a bowl of oil.
He went down to anoint Saul for this specific occasion. I do not think we could say that this little parenthesis of Saul coming in for this forty-year period was in the fullest, highest program of God. It was something of an expediency, something out of necessity.
Well, what I want to say first of all this morning is this: I do believe there are times in the economy of God when there may be an anointing from a bowl—sort of an expediency, an occasion that requires it.
But God’s highest thought, that which is in line with the wholeness of the working of His purpose, is the growth of an olive tree within us, that which springs out of the very course of life itself. Anything less than that is barely a bowl for the occasion. It is of God, but it is not the highest. It is not that which is supreme in His intentions.
The thing that interests me, as I look back into some of David’s statements, is found in Psalm 52. Let us begin to read with Verse 7.
Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength,
But trusted in the abundance of his riches,
And strengthened himself in his wickedness.
But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God:
I trust in the lovingkindness of God for ever and ever.
I will give Thee thanks for ever, because Thou hast done it;
And I will wait on Thy name, for it is good, in the presence of Thy saints.
Go ahead, David, but I do not know what else to say about you. I think you are a man conscious not only of being raised up for the particular thing God wants to do, but there is an awareness of the anointing of the Lord. “I am a green olive tree.”
The first thing I want us to get hold of—and this, to me, is governing in God’s purpose in the anointing—is that God wants to develop within us the olive tree: a green olive tree.
That brings us into the continuousness—the continuousness of the flow, the source of life itself. I am not counting out the blessedness of having the vial for an occasion. How can I say it?
I remember some years ago being in a community down in the South, in a rural school. One afternoon some of the ladies gathered for prayer, and they told me of a young man who had grown up in that community.
From his early days as a boy, he had stuttered and stammered. It was quite difficult to listen to him. Then, at about the age of nineteen, he was really converted.
Out of a real desire to go on with the Lord, he went off to Bible school. He came back the next year to his home community and said he wanted to hold a meeting for the people. He wanted to tell them a little of what God had done.
They looked at him and shook their heads. Under their breath they said, “Well, we think a meeting would be fine,” but they did not see how he could possibly ever get through the first message. He stammered and stuttered. It was so difficult to listen.
But out of honor to his deep concern and interest, they allowed him to rent the local school for a week. The whole community came out that first night, many of them out of curiosity, wondering what this stammering, stuttering young fellow would do.
The ladies told me, with tears coursing down their cheeks—they were still filled with the remembrance of it—that he started, opened the Book, and began to stammer and stutter.
Then he looked up with something of that helplessness, as if to say, “God, I have got my toes in the water now. I have gone this far. I am a fool, but here I am. The rest depends on You.”
They said there was a peculiar, wonderful sense that came over the whole audience and over him. His tongue straightened out, and he spoke as with the voice of an oracle that night. Everyone knew they had heard from God.
The next night it was the same story. He stammered and stuttered, but he looked up with that helplessness: “Lord.” And God answered. They said the meeting went on for several weeks and stirred the community. I could tell there was still some overflow and evidence of it.
Now, strange as it may seem—and I am sure you understand what I am trying to say—the young man in that particular occasion was moving in an anointing. That is something God had wrought.
But you go back and follow him, and you begin to realize that it was a bowl for the occasion. The tree had not yet been developed. You follow me? It is not doing any injustice; it is not belittling. It is simply saying that for this occasion, God had given something sovereignly.
I believe one of the things that has shattered so many lives of Christian workers is that they have gone out in an opening phase or opening time, and God, in a very sovereign way, has given a bowl for that occasion.
But there is something better than the bowl. There is. God wants to work within us the tree, the olive tree—that which issues out of life, grows, and becomes something expressive of life.
Could I say in passing, lest we get caught in some snare: there are servants of the Lord throughout our country today who, in opening phases and different times, may know some anointings. But when we try to reproduce, continue, or obtain the next bowl, God is very sovereign.
He is very sovereign, especially in this matter we call the anointing. He will be satisfied, and I do not think we should be satisfied, with anything less than the olive tree growing up within us—the anointing that abides.
Men have called it different things through the years. Have you ever read the book Practicing the Presence of God? I think that is another term for it: that continuous sense of moving, always with an awareness of the Lord’s direction.
One of the things we are trying to say this morning is that I think it is possible for many children of the Lord to settle for fillings and anointings—to be anointed. But I think there is something more than an anointing for an occasion: the anointing.
You always feel it—that is, you always sense it. It is a continuous thing that abides. It is there all the time. It ought to be. You do not move in and out of it so much. There may be measures and degrees, but I wonder whether this is what David meant when he said, “I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.”
He says in Psalm 92:10, “I am anointed with fresh oil.” Fresh oil—the freshness that comes from a tree out of which there is life, life itself.
So we are saying, first of all, that if there is any difference between a vial and a horn in representation, one speaks of that which has continuousness, abiding effect, and continuous flow out of the life of the thing itself.
I think there is another feature that governs in the anointing which we must get hold of. Go back with me to the day when Jacob and Esau were still in the home of their father Isaac.
You recall how the mother was conniving to get her favorite son blessed, how the whole thing backfired, and finally Jacob was blessed. There was great antagonism between Jacob and Esau, and Jacob had to flee from home.
Here he is on the first night, moving away from home, out on his own. I think we do well to remember that up to this time he had known the God of Abraham and Isaac.
But all that he knew of God, really, was the overflow which touched him from another tree, another olive tree. He was enjoying some of the fruit and the extending of the blessings, but it was still the God of Abraham and Isaac.
It is a blessed hour when you get chased out of home, get out there on that first night all alone, and suddenly say, “Oh, my, I have to know God for myself. I have to know Him in an intimate way for myself.”
Father’s God and grandfather’s God are not sufficient. I believe it was on that night, when Jacob laid his head down and the ladder was extended, that in that dark hour God began something of what I like to call the continuity of purpose.
Jacob came into the wonderful realization that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I know when that happened to me. Thank God for parents who guided and directed, for their prayers and their concern. But it is quite a thing not merely to speak of the God of my father. It is quite a thing to come into an awareness that you have entered into a peculiar relationship with Him.
It is my concern that these days—and it has already been echoed by everyone else—that we do not go home with merely some of the food, the overflow that has come from other lives, because of lives that have walked with God.
We get hold of an apple here—a revelation, an illumination. We tuck another apple away in our basket. I say it—I do not know how else to put it—but I hope none of us goes home with a basket of apples when we can go home with a tree. There is a difference.
If all I have is a basket of apples, when I get into an hour of crisis and the fruit—the apple, the illumination of that moment—was quite wonderful, then I go back and say, “Let me see, what page in the book was that?” I have a principle, but it is pretty hard, pretty cold, pretty stiff. It is not something workable and working. I have an apple.
But God’s desire is that we come to know the growth and development of the tree itself within. This can only be real in our lives when there is openness, honesty, and something that cries out with a conscience that has been cleared. The door to our inner spirit is open.
We are saying, “O God, I thank You for every past apple, every blessing, all that You have given. But God, I do not want to live by the overflow of others. I want to know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
This is what is wrong in our churches today. We live by the overflow of others, the fruit that has come in others. But God is raising up in this day—and I tell you, my heart rejoices—people who are coming to be more than spectators and apple pickers.
They are lives that have come into something of the fullness of knowing that they have an anointing to teach them. There is One within them. There is a tree within.
I used to be quite alarmed—this is an awful confession to make—in my earlier years when I would be ministering in a conference and at least eight or ten people would come up after the service and say, “Oh, bless the Lord, God showed me that several years ago.”
I began to realize that I was not sharing much of anything new with anybody. I thought I had a private little something, you know, that I was giving them something they had not seen.
Then I began to realize, and thank God, “Well, thank You, Lord. You are building these trees in everybody. You are building these trees in everybody.”
The anointing speaks of the freshness of something you think is very wonderful and true. I see it so often in the meetings. It is the work and ministry of the anointing, the teaching of the Spirit of God, to keep so many of these things at the periphery of our consciousness.
Then at certain moments they break through, and you can see the light bulbs go on all over the audience. People say, “Yes, I knew that.” Yet it is sort of a corporate thing, you think?
God does not let us enter into our own private ways as much as we think. It is wonderful to see how pastors have gone away to the mountains to dig out messages and get private things, only to find that there may be an apple or two here and there, but so often it is in the midst of what is needed for all the people that something of the corporate unfolding and unveiling comes.
God does not just feed you; He is ministering to the group of lives. But let us go back. This is the feature I want us to get hold of now: there is something in the governing feature of the anointing that shuts us up to this thing we call continuity of purpose.
Here is Abraham. Here is Isaac. Here is Jacob. Joseph. Moses. Joshua. And right on. This statement has been coming to me so often these last couple of years: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.” You see the connectedness, the relatedness.
Saul could stand over here and say, “I have the Spirit of the Lord. I have an anointing.” But he did not have the continuity of background. He was removed. There was nothing that followed up.
Let us not confuse that which is occasional and expedient with that which is in God’s continuing purpose. It is wonderful that God is concerned for the needs of people. You read about Saul, when he was anointed, that he was needed to deliver the people at that occasion out of the hand of the Philistines.
But I believe there is a further, higher governing feature. This thing we call the olive tree, which works within—the life-giving sense of direction—will relate us to that which is past, and it will keep us related to that which is in life.
It is one of the first things to which I have become sensitive. When I hear of men, movements, or groups, I ask, “Are they isolated? How are they related?”
Maybe I am wrong, but I cannot help saying, “What is the relatedness?” God is so much bigger than we think, and His total program is so much larger. What is the relatedness? How does it fit in?
So He became the God of Jacob, as well as Abraham and Isaac. It is the continuity that is involved.
Then there is another feature that I think we have to get hold of: the anointing, the tree that comes to full blossom and growth, will never be inseparable from authority. They are like strands of the same rope.
We were saying yesterday that it is quite something to give a man a position. Young lady, it is quite something to give your husband the position of head in your home. Quite something.
I do not know, but it seems to me that in order for anointing to come to its fullness and sharpness in the intention of God, it honors and recognizes what we call lines of authority.
One of the first things we sat down to do this last year, when I went to the school to help for the year, was to settle this question. I had known the brother who was to be the administrator for several years. I said, “Well, we must settle one thing now, because God is a God of order.”
“We will have to understand the stream and channel of authority so that we do not get some governmental bypass and get all fouled up.”
It was simple, and it became very manifest in our working. He was the administrator, responsible to the board of directors. The board set policies and principles and gave them to him. He passed them on to me. I passed them on to the teachers. The teachers passed them on to the children, to the students.
Now, it is quite a thing when people do not know proper order. Have you ever been in the army? Well, you get stuck with it. This is a natural principle, but it also functions, and it is a real problem today in lots of groups.
I have gone into schools, churches, and places where there was complete confusion simply because people had not understood certain things.
So we agreed that he, as administrator, was not going to go to the teachers and bypass me in the chain of authority. He would not go directly to the teachers. I would not go directly to the students as such, bypassing the teachers. Nor, in moments of grumbling and complaining, would I go directly to the board.
Oh, we get involved and touch the ground. We had a wonderful and beautiful year because it comes and it works. It works.
Let me illustrate. Here is a secretary who came to me not so long ago. She said, “I work in an office where there is complete confusion and bedlam.”
She said, “In the morning my supervisor lays out the plans for the day, gets us all organized, and tells me the things I am to do. About half an hour later, the boss comes in from his office and puts a whole bunch of things before me. He says, ‘Type this out. I want it right away. It has priority.’”
“Whose head is he? Well, he is the boss. Two hours later my supervisor comes to get her work, but I have spent all the time on the boss’s work. I am always in the midst of the fire. Who am I really working for? You see the confusion?”
I do believe there is something quite wonderful when God begins to function and the Lord begins to set out proper order. I believe the full function of life and anointing requires that we understand something of the chain of authority and all that is involved in its function.
May I say to you, dear wife, this morning—how can I couch it so that you will not think me hard? I believe there are lots of precious wives who are eager, balanced, and hungry to move on with the Lord. But it is so easy to get out of order.
I do not doubt that, for an occasion, when you move over to such-and-such a home and there is a desperate need, God may give you a bowl of oil. But if the tree is going to grow and function as it ought, it will be because we have come to sense proper submission in the line in which authority functions and works.
I know it is not easy. But I have known for some years that the reason heaven closes, darkness comes, and confusion comes is because I kind of like to be a freelancer.
I have often wanted to say, “Well, Lord, it is so wonderful. I have direct access—the real priesthood of believers.” And I do have direct access. But so often He has had to slip in and remind me, “Son, I gave you a Moses.”
“But I do not like Moses. Moses needs some adjusting too.” I know your husband needs some adjusting. You do not need to tell me. My administrator needed it all year long.
One day I had four sixth-graders slip into my office with their complaint about a certain teacher. I do not know how they got in; my secretary had always screened people, but she must have been gone for a minute.
There they sat down with their list of complaints. I took one look and said, “I am sorry. I do not know how you got in here, but I cannot receive you. I have not heard the teacher, and I will not do it now. I am sorry. Do not tell me. Goodbye.”
You think that is strange? They went out mumbling and groaning, and I did not know what it was.
About fifteen minutes later, I was walking down the hall, and here was another whole contingent of young people—some group that really loved the Lord. They caught me in the hall and said, “We want you to know, Mr. Franco, we do not agree with the other group at all. We stand with our teacher.”
I thought, “Well, I guess it is time that I go to the teacher and find out.” You see?
Well, I may be losing you. I just want to impress upon us one thing: if God has made anything real to my own heart, it is that the olive tree only grows, and only bears fruit as a continuous thing, when I know what it is to stay first of all in the sense of continuity of purpose.
That which is primary with God right now does not mean that there will not be bowls and things out here. It does not mean that there is not anointing for all. But God is quite jealous for that which is specific and primary, those things that are central to His heart. He is moving along the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and so on.
This is why I can say now—and I think it will have meaning—when I am under authority, I have authority.
I learned years ago that when I would go to my teachers complaining and grumbling, saying, “Well, the board did this,” they caught the spirit that I was at odds with the board. Then, days later, I wondered why they felt they could grumble against what I was doing.
When I am under authority, I have authority. I think you get this in the picture of the centurion.
You remember how Jesus was approached concerning the servant who needed healing. The implication was, “Lord, You do not need to come. All You have to do is speak the word of authority.”
The centurion gives us this lovely little principle:
For I also am a man under authority, having under myself soldiers:
And I say to this one, Go, and he goeth;
And to another, Come, and he cometh;
And to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.
He is in the stream. He is merely backing up that which has already been settled. That is all a policeman does when he stands out here with a badge. Where did he get his authority? It is invested. It has its reservoir, its source, back at police headquarters. Police headquarters goes back to government. The state government goes back further. You see? It is in the line; it is in the stream.
I remember several years ago, when we were at Highland Lake in New York State at a Bible conference, that one morning after the session a pastor and his wife met us in the pathway and asked if we could sit down and counsel a little.
We went up to the room. She sat down, and her first words were, “I am in darkness. I am in difficulty, and I do not know what is wrong.”
She proceeded to tell me how there was a mountain looming before her. She could not pray around it or pray through it. She could not get anywhere because that thing stood there to taunt and haunt her all the time.
She said, “I am just not a very good example among the ladies in the church. When we go to prayer meeting, there is no faith. I am at a stalemate. I am dead. I have nothing to share. I do not know what is wrong.”
In the course of her talking, she finally said, “I know so many of the principles God has made real, that every time there is a mountain or a hindrance, it is because something is not quite properly related.” She said, “I know that,” and then she illustrated it from 2 Corinthians 10.
She said, “Three years ago we had a teenage daughter who was very rebellious. She began to come home from school with imaginations. We were all fogies; we did not understand her. We were off on some narrow, peculiar way. We had no communication, no contact with her.”
“One day, as I was reading, the Lord seemed to show me that I was wanting to bring her under an authority, expecting something of her that I was not giving to Him. You see the principle? I could not expect something there that I was not giving here.”
Then she read this verse to me, 2 Corinthians 10:6:
And being in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall be made full.
She said, “The Lord came to show me that I could not bring under authority, could not bring this thing into captivity, until there was an openness this way.”
I will never forget that moment. Light seemed to flood, and she said, “Oh!”
She said, “Our daughter came home after I came into a new alignment this way. It was just two or three days later that our daughter came home, fell before us, and said, ‘I have been wrong.’ She broke in real repentance, and she has been different ever since.”
The wife looked at me, and I will never forget it. She said, “Oh, you know, I believe that principle still works. That is what is wrong this time too.” I had not said a word yet.
I had not said a word. I want you to get hold of it. Here are all these imaginations:
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,
And bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
And being in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall be made full.
I do not know how to say it, but it seems that here is a government, an area in which there is a certain right. The enemy can sit back and laugh and say, “You cannot take that captive. I hold that ground—a legal right. You cannot bring it under authority because you are not under authority.”
Well, the dear wife turned to her husband. I tuned out then; they got something straightened out. They did. Pretty soon she smiled and looked back and said, “Thank You, Lord. I know You will avenge this disobedience. I believe You will take care of it.”
Three days later she came and said, “God is working. The thing that had been standing all these weeks as a mountain—” But I must go on. I had not said a word yet. I had just been sitting.
Pretty soon the dear pastor, tears coursing down his face, looked at me and said, “You know, I believe this is my problem too. I have been in this church now two years, hammering away at the people, trying to bring them under authority, trying to get them to accept my message of separation and holy living, but they will not respond. They sit there dull and dead.”
He said, “The reason I cannot bring them under is that God wants something here.” He turned and knelt by his chair, opened his heart, and said, “Lord, I come under.”
I had not said a word yet, but it was my turn now. The Lord began to speak to my own heart.
I had been in that conference about four days, and I found myself murmuring and complaining: “Lord, here I am. I traveled fifteen hundred miles to get here, and after they get through with an hour and twenty minutes of music in the first part of the evening service, then they turn it over for a twenty-minute postscript.”
“Everybody has been out water skiing and motor boating, utterly consumed and wrapped up in all the things they need for their recreation. Everybody is asleep by the time I get to speak.” If you do not think I was murmuring to the Lord—and complaining to nobody outwardly, but inwardly about the director and all that was involved.
You know what the Lord seemed to say to me? “Son, this is the same problem. The principle is the same. Do you not know that it does not take a whole hour and a half to give a message? If I speak, I can do it in thirty seconds.”
I am trying to be fair. You see what I mean? I looked up, bowed at my own chair, and all I could say was, “Lord, I quit my murmuring and complaining about this. If You will anoint, I will give You thanks for the privilege of having five minutes, no matter if it is at the end of a three-hour program, just to be alive to You.”
“You will avenge all disobedience. You will take care of it. That is not my problem out here, really. If the legal issues are taken care of, the anointing will begin to work.”
I met the Lord, and I had to be very honest. We left that strange counseling meeting. I had not said a word except to the Lord, but God began to work.
That night when we began to speak, I knew the sharpness of the message was there. The director got up and said, “We have been just playing along here for several days now. It is time to get down to business.”
He said, “From now on, we will cut this and cut this. All the young people who are out taking care of the grounds, sweeping halls and rugs, and doing all the rest—all of that is rescinded for a week. I want you all here in the morning.” And God began to move in.
Now, I do not want to overpush or overstress the principle and get it out of bounds, but I am shut up to this fact this morning: when we are under authority, and we know what it is to come into this kind of atonement, then we can bring some of the things out here under authority.
They begin to come under—not in the way we expect all the time—but God begins to deal with them. The shortest route then is not this way, but this way: “Lord, You avenge. God, this will be.”
Finally, if there is any governing feature in the operating and working of the anointing, it is this matter of real teachableness.
You see, I bring this at this stage because there is such a freelance spirit in the day in which we live. Oh, how many times I hear 1 John 2:20 quoted: “You have an anointing. You have a teacher. You have the unction within, and you need not that any man teach you. Oh, bless the Lord.”
But while that is very wonderful, I believe it only grows out of what I have already been saying. There is the wonderful teaching ministry of the anointing. You know what it is like: in a moment, something that has been a real puzzle suddenly opens. The Teacher is there.
But all this independence is so manifest in our hour. I am trying somehow to safeguard and caution us against the fact that God is bringing together people who know how to function in the sense of the anointing working in a very corporate way.
All our dependence—I look back, and I do not believe there is one thing that God shared with just me. It has been built on the totality of all the people who have touched His life through the years. You see the continuity that is involved?
Sometimes I thought I had something utterly new. I really thought it had just come as quite a thing. Only to have the Lord bring me back and say, “You remember this, this, this, this—this whole background that I have been building?”
“Well, that caused this little flower to blossom, but it had to have a stem.” There is nothing so private, nothing so isolated.
I believe that if there is anything that has hindered my own sense of anointing—that is, the olive tree really growing—it has been some conceptions I have held through the years which were not adjustable. They were pretty concrete things, and God shattered them in His own way.
That which is good, whole, and factual—things you know the Holy Spirit has added to the tree—still must submit to pruning. I believe, as I move among some of you, there is an awful lot of large pruning: concepts, traditions, and things that were taught us.
They have just been doctrines. They have just been mental things. They are not really the outgrowth of the olive tree within.
O Lord, give us teachableness. It is a real feature in this matter of the olive tree growing up within.
Lord, this morning, take whatever has any value or any worth and make it livingly real.
Help us to see, in all our anxiety to know power, to know grace, service, and ministry—in all the anxiety in this generation to have the fullness of the Spirit, the gifts, and all that is operating, that we might be effectual and fruitful for You—help us to realize, dear Lord, that there are some governing features in it, so necessary.
We cannot escape this. To bypass, overlook, or miss these things is to bring sure arrest, to bring tangents.
Let no one this morning be discouraged, but, O God, let it be a means of encouragement. We speak not to dampen the Spirit, the hunger, or the thirst, but, O God, to bring things into real alignment and adjustment.
We thank You, Lord, that You are raising up olive trees, fruitful trees, lives in which there is overflow and others can know that anointing. But it is something that grows out of life.
Lord, wherein in our earlier days we may have experienced something of the bowl, the vial, and for that occasion there was a very sovereign sharing or giving—and there may be some like we have, who wondered why that did not continue, and it was just for the occasion, something of an expediency because of the needs of the people in that moment.
O God, we are so glad that You are opening eyes. You are bringing Your people to say, “That which is better.” Let none of us this morning be content with a new bowl or vial. O God, let us cry out, if we stand some days, that there will be the growing up of the olive tree.
We long to be green olive trees, and in that there will be freshness. Lord, we know what it is like. So many others have experienced that continuousness of flow, that sense that we are in the main stream of what You are doing, under His anointing.
Then You gave the sling—sharp, cutting, effective. “Sharper than any two-edged sword” is the Word of God.
O, let us this morning catch this—not mere principle, not merely an apple for our basket—but, O God, shut us up until there will be one trunk. It is that kind of honesty that makes possible the growing of the tree itself.
For it all, we will give You the praise, the honor, and the glory. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.