Well, good evening again. I surely did enjoy the day in meeting with some of you and chatting with many of you. It is a real blessing, isn’t it, to touch one another’s lives and just to see Christ in so many brothers? Beautiful.
I guess I’m not very sensitive to really knowing when to move, and I took it by the silence that we were finished. If there’s anybody else that wants to sing, say something, or share Scripture, I don’t want to cut in on anything. I just—okay, we’re ready. Okay. I apologize, indeed. Well, it makes me nervous.
There is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable. I will never tire of saying that, because our natural hearts take for granted the one thing that is indispensable over and over again. We need to be constantly reminded.
As David said in Psalm 119:19, we are strangers on the earth; we are pilgrims on the earth. “Hide not Thy commandments from me.” We do not know the way to go. We need the Lord, and only God can take this Book and show us.
And I know—I can sense it in your heart—you want to see Him. I want to see Him. Let us bow again. Let us ask the Lord to guide us.
Our Father, we do thank You so much again for Your Word. Lord, we know that You have not promised to bless the word that goes out of the mouth of Your human instrument, but You promise to bless the Word that goes forth out of Your mouth.
And so we would ask You to speak. We pray that there might be that double conversation going on, and that behind the scenes You might be teaching our hearts and revealing Christ to us. We wait for You, and we thank You. In Jesus’ matchless name, amen.
Second Corinthians 4:5 says:
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord,
and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
In a sense, that verse is the ultimate in Christian living: when the Lord Jesus is reigning as undisputed Lord of our lives, and when our lives are being poured out in bondservice for His world. That is what we desire, and that is what God desires to work in us.
We will not take a lot of time to review these thoughts. The Apostle Paul had such a passion, such a desire, and God created in him a bondservant’s heart. I suggested that the Apostle Paul becomes God’s illustration of such a heart. The process by which God created that in Paul is exactly the process by which God does that for us.
Second Corinthians is the book where Paul puts his heart on paper. By the Holy Spirit, Paul just poured out his inner man, and he laid out the process by which God created that in him. If we are to know such a life, then we need to see this process.
Now, we have been looking at these things. I am giving three principles, but really, when we are all done, you will see that there are actually four principles. They are all one. They all blend together. We just analyze them and cut them apart for the sake of discussion; but when we are all done, we have got to put them back in the Bible where they belong and keep it as one whole.
For the sake of discussion, number one: if Paul is going to know Christ as Lord and himself as a bondservant, then God must take Paul beyond Paul—over the line, over the threshold, and into the all-sufficiency of the Lord Jesus.
What is true of the model is true of all those who would follow the model. Now, in many ways, we say the same thing. It depends on where you are from, what group you are with, and your background. Some people would call that total surrender. Some would call it the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Some would call it death to self—co-crucifixion. It does not really matter what you call it if you understand what God is saying.
God, along the way, must take us beyond our limits, beyond ourselves, where we do not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. That was the first principle.
I would suggest again, I would remind you again, that this is not a goal. This is a starting point. Satan loves to take byproducts and turn them into goals, and to take starting points and turn them into goals. If you put your eyes on a byproduct, you miss the byproduct and the goal. We miss everything that way.
If we are wrong in the one thing essential, we abort everywhere. We are wrong everywhere. And so, this is the starting point.
Then this morning we looked at the second stage, or principle. When the Apostle Paul stepped over that line, in a sense, he entered a brand-new realm which we have called the all-sufficiency of Christ. On the other side of Paul, he saw the Lord.
He saw that God was adequate, God was enough, and Christ was all-sufficient. As he stood over that line, he knew he would never need another thing. Jesus Christ was everything. He saw Christ as his victory. He saw Christ as his testimony. He saw the glory of Christ as the purpose of all Bible study.
His heart, his eyes, and his mouth were opened wide in amazement as he just beheld the Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, everything began to fit together in the mind and life of this great saint.
Now this evening, I would like to take you into what I think is the next step in Paul’s experience. Yes, I must be emptied. Yes, I must be full of the all-sufficiency of Christ. Then what? What follows that? What comes next?
Before I come right out and state the principle, we are going to be looking at chapters 4 and 5, or at least segments from those two chapters. Let me suggest a transition that the apostle gives from step number two in the process to step number three. He does not jump right into step number three. He gives you a little transition.
It is almost as if the apostle could not find words to describe the glory of being on the other side of the line and seeing himself in Christ Jesus. That just took his breath away—to see himself in Christ and all that was his in that union, in that relationship.
And so he seems to ransack creation, hunting for some illustration to describe that experience. I wonder if you can remember back when you first began. Of course, we are all beginners. We are all just starting to know God and starting to see God. But the first time when that truth dawned on your heart—that you are in Christ Jesus—what a revelation that was.
Anyway, he takes 2 Corinthians 4:6. Let me read the first six verses:
Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we faint not:
but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully;
but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that perish:
in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving,
that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, Who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness,
Who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
I will ask you to look again at verse 6, because I think that is his illustration:
God, Who said, Light shall shine out of darkness,
is He Who shined in our hearts,
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
I think the apostle is saying something like this: “When I crossed the line, when God pressed me, pushed me, crowded me, engineered my circumstances—when God set me over that line, on the other side of myself, and I saw myself in Christ—that experience, that revelation, what I saw was the same kind of thing that happened when God created light in this universe.”
Try to visualize Genesis 1:2. I do not know if you have ever tried to make mental images of some of these Bible verses. It is interesting. I would like to see some of them on canvas. How would you paint this?
And the earth was waste and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
It would be an interesting painting, I think. It is hard to get an image of that: no light, no form, emptiness, vanity, profound darkness over the face of the deep. Then, all of a sudden, “Let there be light.”
What happened to the emptiness, the vanity, and the profound darkness? It just dissolved. It was just gone. Paul is trying to describe an experience in his life, and he says, “That is it. That is what happened to me.”
The same God Who said, “Let there be light,” shone in my heart to give me the light of the knowledge of God—the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Paul said, “I experienced that creative light, the same thing that happened when God created the universe.”
“Before I crossed that line, my life was without form, and void, and empty; and profound darkness was on the face of the deep. I crossed the line, and suddenly I heard in my soul, ‘Let there be light.’”
Paul says, “There was light, the veil was taken away, and I saw the light of the knowledge of God in the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” It is a powerful illustration, and he uses that to lead into this next step.
Let me suggest what I think might have been going through the mind of the Apostle Paul as he stood there in the sea of God’s all-sufficiency, basking in the glory of the Lord.
He said, “I got a new Bible that day. Every place I looked, I saw the glory of God. I saw Christ. It is wonderful. I come as a sinner to the Book, and God says, ‘Let there be light,’ and all of a sudden I see a Savior perfectly adapted to my need—a perfect Savior.”
“I come as a legalist, and I look in the Book, and all of a sudden God says, ‘Let there be light,’ and Christ comes out of that page as the end of the law to everyone that believes. I come to this Book as a weary pilgrim, and I am looking, and all of a sudden Christ comes out as rest. I see Him as my rest.”
Every time I have a need, I come to the Book, and God reveals Christ. Let there be light. Let there be light. Let there be light—again and again and again.
Paul almost raises this question: Is that what it is all about? Just standing there, seeing Jesus—more light; seeing Jesus—more light; seeing Jesus—more light; being emptied; being full?
It is almost like Paul says, “What is the point of all this light, all this revelation, and all this illumination in my heart? How does my fellow man fit into all of this?”
Should I not be concerned about my brother? Should I not be concerned about my sister? Should I not be concerned about my neighbor, the stranger, the prisoner, the orphan, the widow—my enemy? Is there not some place in there that says something about that?
What about verses 3 and 4, where the gospel is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving? What about the lost, the perishing, the unbelieving, the blind—those who are deluded by the god of this age?
What about soul-winning? What about missions? What about ministry? What about the Christian church?
Paul is about to learn the next step. You must be emptied. You must be full. But now comes the question: “Let there be light, let there be light—I get light, I get light. I think I need to be a transmitter as well as a receiver. All this light coming in—how does it go out?”
It would be nice, I think, if God would, once we are saved, put a nimbus around us. You know, the nimbuses the artists used to use—that little round circle of light around the head so you would recognize the saints, recognize deity.
Would it not be neat if God put a nimbus, a radius, around our head? It would make things a lot easier. You would say, “Oh, look, here comes a Christian.” You could tell by his nimbus. All the unsaved would know who the Christian is.
You could tell how you are doing in Christ just with a light meter. “Hey, just check your numbers. Is it growing?” Of course, if you were backslidden, your nimbus would tell on you. There would be no hypocrites if you had a nimbus.
Is that what Jesus meant when He said in Matthew 5:14:
Ye are the light of the world.
Let your light so shine before men.
Brothers, since there is no nimbus, how is the light going to be manifested? This Christ that we are taking in and taking in—seeing more revelation, illumination, quickening, revelation—the manifestation of Christ?
Light in the soul is one thing. Releasing that light is another thing. Now Paul must learn how God has planned to release the light from within.
For the theological connection, let me show you the illustration Paul chooses from chapter 4. Then, just to make it real simple, I will state it in four simple principles, and then pray that we get beyond the principles and have life and see the Lord.
Notice how verses 6 and 7 are contrasted:
God, Who said, Light shall shine out of darkness,
is He Who shined in our hearts,
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
But—the next verse starts with a “but.”
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels.
Wonderful light. Wonderful treasure. Wonderful Christ. But, unfortunately, we have this treasure—the Greek says—in a clay pot, an earthen vessel. Not some glass vessel, or metal, or brass, but a cheap, unattractive, fragile, worthless clay pot.
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of this book are full of contrasts. Light is contrasted with darkness. Life is contrasted with death. That which is seen is contrasted with that which is not seen. The present is contrasted with the future. Light affliction is contrasted with an eternal weight of glory.
Now, in verses 6 and 7, the precious treasure is held over against the clay pot. Marvelous light we have; wonderful Christ in us. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels.
Now, I cannot prove this, but I go along with the majority of commentators who believe the Apostle Paul, in this text, is referring to an Old Testament story. I am talking about Judges 6 through 8—the story of Gideon, Gideon’s three hundred.
I cannot prove that was in his mind, but I think it was. Whether it was or was not, it is in my mind. So let me just tell you the story. I am sure you are familiar with it, but I will tell it in its basic simplicity, and then we will come back to this.
Gideon was selected by God to lead an army against the Midianites. God the Holy Spirit is careful to tell us the odds. It started off with 135,000 enemies against 32,000 in the army of the Lord.
Here you have a corporate illustration. As you go through your study of God’s Word, remember that everything that is true of the body is true of the individual. Everything that is true of the individual can also be applied to the body.
So you better know, in your life, God is going to take you personally over your limits. He will do it. But He will also take the body over the threshold as a group.
Gideon’s army was 32,000 against 135,000. That is four-to-one odds. To paraphrase it, God says, “Now, I know you are going to trust yourself with those odds, so I am going to reduce the odds so that you will not trust in yourself, but in God who raises the dead.”
God told Gideon just to announce to the people, “Anybody chickenhearted, go home.” And so 22,000 soldiers went home. That changed the odds to thirteen-and-a-half to one.
God says, “No, because you are so full of self-trust, if you got a victory with odds thirteen-and-a-half to one, you would say, ‘Look at the great victory we have.’” So God said, “I am going to have to press you again beyond your limits so that you will know it is from the Lord.”
The word went out to Gideon to test those who were real soldiers. He said, “The test will be this: you take them down to the river. Watch the ones that lay down their weapons, because they are not real soldiers. If they reach into the water with both hands and lap up water like a dog, they are not real soldiers. If they hold on to their weapon and drink with one hand, keep those.”
They did it. Out of the 10,000, you know the story, 9,700 dropped their weapons, leaving 300 men and a new set of odds: 450 to one.
God says, “Okay, now, with these odds—450 to one—you know you are outnumbered. You know you are outflanked. You know you are out-everything. You are outskilled. Now I know, if you have a victory, you are going to know it is because of God who raises the dead.”
Then, in Judges 7:15-25, the Holy Spirit records this strange but very instructive story. He told Gideon to take those 300 men and equip them with torches, trumpets, and a clay pot—the same word, pitcher.
Each of those 300 soldiers was to take a trumpet in his right hand, a burning torch in his left hand, over which was the clay pot so that you could not see the flame. It would still be light enough under it to keep it going. I suppose it rested on their arm or something like that.
Then the 300 soldiers were to surround the Midianites. On every hill all around the camp of the Midianites was to be a soldier. At the given signal, when someone yelled, “The sword of the Lord and the sword of Gideon,” they were to take the trumpet, smash the pitcher, blast the trumpet, and leave the rest to the Lord.
Well, they did that. Do you realize what went through the mind of the Midianites? It was night; it was dark; and all of a sudden, everywhere they looked, they saw a torch and heard a trumpet sounding.
They thought they were surrounded not by 300 men, but by 300 regiments of men. Confusion took over. According to the Bible, men, women, children, horses, camels—everybody was running every which way. Everyone thought his neighbor was an Israelite, and they all started killing each other.
So these men walked down into a battle already won. Tremendous story.
All to say this—and I think Paul had it in mind—and our next principle, and you already know what it is: in order for Christ to be released, in order for Christ to be manifested, the vessel—the clay pot—had to be broken.
This, my brothers, is the principle toward which we have been moving. It has got to be emptied. It certainly has got to be filled with Christ, the all-sufficiency of Christ. But now, in order to manifest Christ, in order to release Christ, in order that Christ might come out—that precious treasure that is in the clay pot—the pot must be broken.
Second Corinthians 4:10 says:
Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake,
that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
Some of you sighed with relief when you passed over the line and said, “Finally, it is all over. No more pressure now. No more troubles, no more trials. God pushed me to the limit. God pushed me over the limit. Now I am over the line. I am safe.”
God is very serious, brothers, about the making of bondservants. He is very serious. He is very serious about having Christ released. The vessel must be broken.
Having said that, let me back off and come back again and give you four simple principles. I am going to be going over some of the same ground. Just to make it clear, let me state these principles.
The clay vessel must be broken in order to release Christ, in order to manifest the life of Christ. If the light within is going to be exposed, the vessel has got to be broken.
I read a wonderful story of some old clay jars with some precious treasure inside. Perhaps you have heard the story. I am referring to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, as you may know or not know, were discovered in 1947. Some of the oldest manuscripts ever found were in those scrolls. Included were seventeen sheets of the book of Isaiah, leather all sewed together, twenty-four feet in length. It was the book of Isaiah. There were also portions of Habakkuk and Daniel, and so on.
According to the story, these treasures were found because some little shepherd boys—boys will be boys—and this little Bedouin shepherd boy was playing near Qumran, in the northwest of Jordan there. He was throwing stones.
He threw a stone into a cave, and he heard the shattering of an old clay pot. He went up into the cave to investigate, and that is when they found those great earthen vessels.
We have this treasure in earthen vessels. We are also clay vessels, and I will tell you, we contain a treasure infinitely more valuable than those clay pots that held those Dead Sea Scrolls. We are talking about the Lord Jesus.
As in Gideon’s day, the pots had to be broken. As Mary had to break that alabaster vial of costly perfume to minister to the heart of Christ; as the Lord Jesus had to break the loaves in order to minister to the hungry multitude; as the grain of wheat must die and be broken before its latent life can be released; as our Lord Jesus Himself had to be broken on the cross before we could drink of the wells of salvation; as those vessels containing the Dead Sea Scrolls had to be broken before that treasure could be found—so, brothers, there is no shortcut to this.
If you are serious about being a servant, you have got to be broken. I have got to be broken. Our true life is not measured by how much spiritual wine we take in, but by how much of it is poured out in the ministry, in the service of our fellow men.
Second principle: God uses everyday life to break the vessel.
Very often, when people hear this—“I need to be broken”—the first temptation is to run to legalism and say, “I knew it was too easy to be true. You cannot just see Jesus. No, there has got to be brokenness. This clay vessel has to be broken.”
“So now let us go about and mortify our flesh. Let us deny ourselves and suppress our sin. Let us willingly pour ourselves out. Let us start inviting everybody to dinner. Let us start a visitation program. Let us begin to look again like walking tract racks and ramrod the gospel down everyone’s throat. Let us weave Jesus into every conversation. We have got to be broken. Let us go out and do these things.”
Well, if Christ is going to shine through the vessel, it is not because we are going to enter into some kind of self-renunciation or asceticism. Paul did not say, “Break the vessel.” Paul says, “The vessel must be broken.” There is a difference. We are not the ones that break it.
In fact, it is quite passive. Listen as Paul describes the stones that broke his clay pot. Second Corinthians 4:8-10:
We are pressed on every side, yet not straitened;
perplexed, yet not unto despair;
pursued, yet not forsaken;
smitten down, yet not destroyed;
always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
He was talking about the everyday troubles that he was going through on his missionary journeys and so on—his troubles, his afflictions, his trials, his tests, his harassments, his confusions, his oppositions.
God has never told us to do more than look to Jesus. But what He does say is, when you do that in reality, then God will engineer your life so that the vessel will be broken.
It only takes a moment’s meditation to prove that. Just think of when Christ is seen by others. Is it when the sea is glass and the weather is fair, and there are no troubles, and Christians are just going along and everything is going fine? Is that when Christ shines through? Just think about it.
It is when you are cast down, when you are afflicted, when you are wounded, and when you are broken. Then they are looking and observing. They see, somehow, that you are supported during that time.
They would have to run through a building or a bridge in order to cope. They cannot cope. And they watch you. They see your joy, your mind, and the comfort that you are receiving. They see the fact that you are supported.
When these things come into your life, you are still praising God. You are still rejoicing. You are still worshiping. When you are opposed, somehow you are not bitter. You do not carry animosity or a vindictive heart. You do not try to get even. You do not grumble.
We have gotten a million miles away, I think, from these great principles. If what I have been hearing among the brothers is true, if God is speaking to His people around the world about this whole idea of being poured out for others, then if revival comes, one of the great signs of that revival is going to be a broken people before God. It is going to be a childlikeness before God.
We hear all kinds of words like scholarship and degrees. We do not hear so much about brokenness, weakness, helplessness, and dependence. Instead, we hear words like blessed, healthy, prosperity, prosperous, wealthy, secure.
Our seminaries and our churches are so full of talented men and women, gifted men and women, eloquent men and women, zealous men and women, and even dedicated men and women.
Where are the broken? Where are the broken men and women? It seems like somehow we resist brokenness. And I will tell you, brothers—and your heart knows—if we resist brokenness, we are resisting the only way Christ is released through us. He is released through brokenness.
Hold that principle, and let me share this third one. Not only must the vessel be broken in order to release Christ, and not only does God use everyday life and all the situations of life in order to break that vessel, but everything that comes into my life designed to break the vessel is designed for my good.
They are employed in my service. They are working for me. They are working for you.
If you would go through chapters 4 and 5, you would notice the great emphasis on faith in those two chapters. We will not take time to prove that, but the Holy Spirit, through the apostle, just begins to talk about faith. It is almost like He jumped into the topic.
It is almost as if Paul is saying, “You need to be broken. Now you need to see that by faith. Otherwise, you will never believe that this is working for you.” The apostle saw it by faith.
Look at verse 17, please:
For our light affliction, which is for the moment,
worketh for us more and more exceedingly
an eternal weight of glory.
Take those three words: “worketh for us.” He is talking about all the afflictions that come into his life, and he says they are working for us. In fact, what he does in that verse is take every problem he ever faced—and if you read the rest of Corinthians, you have the catalog of that, at least some of it—he adds them all together and calls them light affliction, working for us.
It is the exact opposite of Genesis 42:36, when Jacob says, “All these things are against me.” He had not understood it at that point. Momentary light affliction, working for us.
I will tell you this, brothers: we are called to this. It is going to help when God begins to break us—or continues to break us, as the case might be—to know by faith that it is working for us, that it is producing for us.
I think one of the greatest mysteries on earth is a woman’s attitude toward childbearing. Those labor pains—we would not have six children if it were reversed. They say a man’s pain, if he has kidney stones, comes close or something like that. I never had kidney stones. I never gave birth to a baby. I do not know. Personally, I think it is a beastly thing.
But there is nothing to compare to this woman giving labor. My question is, why do they do it more than once? My wife did it five times. We had six children, but we snuck twins in there. She did it five times.
Well, God tells us why. Because their labor pains are producing for them. They understand that. John 16:21 says:
A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come:
but when she is delivered of the child,
she remembereth the anguish no more,
for the joy that a man is born into the world.
The apostle recognized that everything that came into his life was a labor pain. He understood that it was producing for him. When he put his eyes on what it was producing, it was not only worth it—he desired it.
He said, “This light affliction, this little bit that we are going through, breaking us, is producing,” because he saw the Christ that was being released from his life and the tremendous fruit that it was bringing forth. He said, “Oh, because of that baby, it is worth it. It is worth it.”
For Paul, the breaking of the clay jar was producing for him an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. I love that expression in verse 17: “far beyond all comparison.”
I am not against hymn writers. Hymn writers have a license, and they can give shallow things. If you climb a shallow song, do not be afraid to sing that. Sometimes we get so spiritual, we just say, “I am not singing that anymore. It has got a verse in there that contradicts this.” Sing it anyway.
There is a shallow part of all of us; there are deeper parts of all of us. Some of the songs have this idea in them: when we see the Lord, compared to what we are going through now, it is just going to look like nothing. Well, the apostle did not say that.
What the apostle said was, “I would love to tell you what is coming compared to this. I cannot do that, because what is coming is not worthy to be compared to this.” Beyond all comparison.
The contrast is so tremendous that it is contrast, not comparison. He said, “If you would know what you are called upon to do—to experience through breaking—if you could understand what is coming from that, you would never resist it again. You would long for that.”
That is the path I have taken: over the line, filled with Christ. Now, in order to release Christ, I must allow all of these things to come in and break me, in order that Christ might be released. Everything that comes into my life is employed in my service. It is working for me. It is producing for me; it is producing for you.
That is why God has given us the faith sense to know that. We need to understand that brokenness works for us. Sometimes, when we are going through it, we just say, “Wow, everything is against us.” But we need to understand these things.
It is hard when you are going through it to say, “This bankruptcy is working for me. Isn’t it tremendous? Oh, I love this failure, how it is working for me.”
Or, brothers, let me give you some theological honey. I call that which is very sweet and a little sticky theological honey. You could not say these things everywhere, but you guys are as radical as I am, so I will say it: Is it true that my sin is working for me? That divorce is working for me?
Brothers, you pull out the stops and believe that with all your heart. These things that are designed to break you—every forward step in helplessness, emptiness, brokenness, and weakness—is a forward step in the knowledge of God and in the knowledge of His Book.
God is going to release Christ, but there has got to be brokenness. We need to know, as it comes, that it is producing for us, far beyond all comparison, an exceeding weight of glory.
All right, one more thing and we will be finished. God uses the everyday trials of life to break us. All of those everyday trials are working for us.
Here is the last principle: when I am on the other side of the line and God begins the breaking process, there is the temptation to be brokenness-centered rather than Christ-centered.
Sometimes that makes us glorify suffering. Sometimes it makes us weird. Some people just glorify suffering, and they say, “Oh boy, I love suffering.” Some people are just obnoxious. They get themselves into trouble with their mouth or their strange behavior, and then they write it off as suffering for Jesus’ sake.
Really, if they had acted normally, they would not have had to go through some of that.
In 2 Corinthians 5, the apostle takes a marvelous illustration. He talks about the glorious future, but he is not all of a sudden jumping into a word about the intermediate state or a word about heaven. He is not doing that.
The apostle is taking a future truth and applying a present principle. Every future truth has a present principle, and every future truth is designed to show us a present Christ that we can enjoy in foretaste now—heaven in the bud.
He talks about the time when we are literally going to die and literally going to be in the presence of the Lord. He compares this dropping off of the old tent to that which breaks the clay jar. He says nakedness—dropping off this old tent—is not what we are after. We are not looking for nakedness, but in order that we might be clothed.
Paul describes life in 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 in these words—well, this parable. He says there are two ways to live. You can live at home in the body and absent from the Lord, or absent from the body and present with the Lord.
Now, you say, “That is a future truth. When we die, we are absent from the body, present with the Lord.” That is true, but there is a present principle.
Paul describes life on the level of earth sight, physical life, as living in the body. He says, “If I live on the level of earth, in the body, by sight, I am absent from the Lord. But if I live present with the Lord, I am absent from the body.”
The apostle began to explain how he was able to face all these troubles that came in. It was simple: he was never home.
If I went to my neighbor’s house and threw a stone through his window, and he did not come running out and grab me by the throat, I would say, “My neighbor is not home.”
If I saw my neighbor standing in the window, and I picked up a rock and threw it through his window, and he just looked at me; then I ran over to his flower garden and began to step on his flowers, and he just watched me; so I broke the limbs off his fruit tree, and he just looked; so I dug up his lawn, and he did nothing; so I set his house on fire, and he still did nothing—I would say, “He is not home.” Right?
Well, that is what they did to Paul. They broke his windows, they stepped on his flowers, they broke his limbs, they dug up his lawn, and they set his house on fire. And he was not home. He was never home.
He was not surrounded by the brokenness because he was living in the presence of the Lord. He was absent from the body and present with the Lord.
Brothers, do not fear brokenness. It is going to come. It has got to come if Christ is going to be released. Do not be afraid of that. You just live in the presence of the Lord. You live in a secret place with God.
Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, if you talked to them later about a fire, they would not know what you were talking about. “Fire? I remember strolling with the fourth Man in the furnace. I do not remember a fire.”
To those who are going through it, they do not know anything about it, because they are living in an unbroken relationship with God. To those who are observing, like Nebuchadnezzar, they have a testimony. Christ is released. They see Him. That is the release of Christ.
Brothers, we need to step over the line. Oh yes, we need to be filled with Christ. Oh, we do. But He needs to be released as well. We need to be broken.
Now Paul says, “Now I can know Christ. Now I can be a servant.” Not yet, Paul. You need to come back tomorrow morning. There is one other step, brothers, that we need to see. Oh, may God grace us as we look at this. Let us pray together.
My Father, we know it is a great thing to ask of Thee, but Thou art a great God. And so we ask Thee to work in our lives, that we never be at home, that we would always be in the presence of the Lord, so that when we are broken, they might see Him.
Do it, we pray, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.