Good morning, brothers and sisters.
My spirit pants for Thee, O living Word.
There is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable when we come to the study of God’s Word. We have just sung that indispensable principle: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. It is His Book.
Thirst is the coin of God’s kingdom.
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye, buy.
Thirst will not be denied. If He creates a thirsty soul, He will satisfy that thirst. He will pour water on him that is thirsty. If we could come as dry ground, He would rain His water upon us.
Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.
He delights to show Himself far more than anyone in this room desires to see Him. We have come to see the Lord, and only God can reveal God. He delights to do it.
Before we go to prayer, I want to remind you of our sister Ruth in the Bible, and how she became a gleaner in the fields of Boaz. You remember that?
From early morning until night, she would go out, and secretly Boaz would have his servants drop in her path handfuls of purpose—supply.
But then one day Ruth ceased being a gleaner in the field of Boaz. She entered into a union with Boaz, and she had to glean no more. Now she had the field. She was a co-heir with the whole field. She had everything because of her union with Boaz.
I think some of us perhaps have come as gleaners. And blessed be the Lord, He is faithful: He gives, and He gives, and He gives again.
But there is a union with the Owner of the field that will put an end to your gleaning. Oh, may God take us there.
I do not know if you have come this week, as someone said, to have your batteries charged. What is a battery? I do not know where my battery is. To have your cup filled—that is a gleaner.
I pray that God would enable you this week to sink a well, not just fill a cup. Sink a well in the person of the Lord Jesus Himself.
I am going to ask you to bow with me, please, as we commit our time to Him, and then we will pick up where we left off.
Our Father, we thank You so much that when You draw us, we run after You. We ask You even this morning to create a thirst in us. Work in us that attitude of childlikeness that is indispensable in receiving Your secrets and the hidden things.
Take us, we pray, beyond the sacred page, and enable us by Your grace to see the Lord. We want to behold our Lord Jesus.
We thank You, Lord, that this is not too much to ask, because Thou art a great God and You desire this. So reveal Your Son to us, we pray. Teach us what it means to be serviceable to the Master.
We ask in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Well, as you know by now, both brothers have pointed it out: I had first choice. In deference to the young upstart, the brothers gave me that privilege, and I chose this marvelous theme: service unto the Lord.
2 Timothy 2:21 — A vessel unto honour, sanctified, meet for the master’s use, prepared unto every good work.
As I sought the face of the Lord concerning this wonderful theme, as I suggested on Monday evening, I found my heart crying out for some place in the Bible. When you come to a theme like serving the Lord, where do you go?
I read the Gospel of Mark, and I read Peter, and I read 2 Timothy, and I read the servant passages in Isaiah. I looked every place somebody was called a servant. My heart was crying out to the Lord for His guidance.
If there could be somewhere in God’s revelation a master plan, if there could be a blueprint of design—somewhere that God had laid out His heart, His heavenly intentions—I asked the Lord if He would lay on my heart the divine original, so that it would not just be a message on serving the Lord, but that I might, in some measure, lay hold of His heart.
What does it mean to serve the Lord?
And I believe, in His mercy, He did direct me to something that sheds great light on this whole matter of serving the Lord. Let me get that before your heart again, and then we will pick up. I want to do a little review and then pick up where we left off.
If you will turn, please, to Revelation 7.
Revelation 7, speaking of those who are before the throne of God in their eternal condition, beginning at verse 15:
Therefore are they before the throne of God;
And they serve Him day and night in His temple:
And He that sitteth on the throne shall spread His tabernacle over them.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more;
Neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat:
For the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd,
And shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life:
And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Verse 15: they serve Him day and night in His temple. There is a service up there. As our brother Kenny Pittman said when we first arrived, a service after all the doing is done.
What kind of a service is that? They serve Him day and night in His temple—glorified, blood-bought saints.
And then, if you look at Revelation 22, please. Chapter 22, beginning at verse 3:
And there shall be no more curse:
And the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein:
And His servants shall serve Him;
And they shall see His face;
And His name shall be on their foreheads.
And there shall be night no more;
And they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun;
For the Lord God shall give them light:
And they shall reign for ever and ever.
Glorious picture. His bondservants serve Him.
Brothers and sisters in the Lord, there is a service in heaven. As ages roll upon ages, His bondservants will serve Him.
And as I studied, I thought, there is the master plan. If God could begin to dawn on my heart what it means for bondservants who are beyond sin to serve Him forever—if I could see that service—maybe the prayer of our Lord Jesus in Matthew 6:10 would become clear:
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
His will is being done up there. How is it being done up there?
And so we are looking at that, because I know—I do not have a doubt about this—when that day comes, we will be serviceable to the Master. No question about that.
God has given us a picture of those who are serviceable to the Master, who serve Him day and night, who are called His bondservants. My heart cries out, “How do they do it?” That Thy will might be done on earth as it is done in heaven.
That is the plan. That is the blueprint. That is the master plan.
Now we are not focusing, as you know, on the verbs—what they are doing, the action words. God likes adverbs better than verbs. We are looking at how they are doing it:
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
I suggested this little outline. We are following it in each of the messages. We leave the lower arena, we leave the earth, and we look up at the blueprint. We ask this question: How does heaven begin?
There is a picture, and that picture contains a reality. If we can see how heaven begins, then we ask the second question: How does it continue forever?
As I came before the Lord and went before that blueprint, I looked at heaven and studied what God has given as a revelation. I said, “How does it begin?” And He showed me this. There is contained the principle.
Then I asked, “How does it continue forever?” I looked again. How does it begin? He showed me this. How does it continue forever? It is a principle of what heavenly service is.
I looked a third time, and there it was again. I almost did not want to come to the conference. I almost wanted to look again, and again, and again.
I have not seen it all. I have only touched; I have only begun to see the glory of this.
The last time, I was describing for you how heaven begins. Let me get that principle before your heart again.
Heaven begins with a marvel of grace: a resurrection.
I think I overstated the case last time. I said it never entered the thoughts of men, this bodily resurrection. One brother came up and shared about Job, and how God had dawned on him that though worms would eat his body, yet in his flesh he would see God.
So now and then God did dawn that great truth on some saints, but it was rare. It was rare.
What a marvelous way heaven begins: with a resurrection. How does it continue forever? It begins with God doing it. Man cannot help; he cannot do anything. He is in the grave. God does it all.
How does it continue forever? The answer is: the way it begins. God does it forever. It is all grace, grace.
God is a Giver. God is a Servant.
I suggested that He created the sun in the sky to be the great giver in our solar system. It just gives and gives. He puts the earth in a proper relationship with the sun so that the earth can receive and receive.
What can the earth give to the sun? Can it augment the glory of the sun? Can it add to it? Can it increase its splendor?
The earth has one thing it can give: a testimony by receiving.
As the earth receives, the sun gets a testimony. Otherwise, we would think it is just a blazing ball of fire in the sky. We would never know what the sun could do. But now we look at the earth: life everywhere, color, energy.
All the sun can do is revealed because the earth learned to serve the sun by allowing the sun to serve the earth.
We read that there is no sun up there. The reason there is no sun up there is that we do not need the picture. We have the reality, and He is the Giver. Up there they have learned to receive. That is how it begins, and that is how it continues forever.
Luke 12:37 — He will gird Himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will come and serve them.
What a marvelous passage that is.
That is the first principle—the heavenly principle of Christian service. We are going to serve the Lord. This is the resting place for the servants of the Lord.
If I am serious about serving Him down here as they do it up there, then I must let God discover to my heart, I must allow the Lord to dawn on me, the truth that I am a receiver.
Naturally, I think I am a giver, and I am always trying to give to the Lord. He is the Giver; I am the receiver.
Grace turns that around so that we understand: as I receive, I serve the Lord by allowing the Lord to serve me. That is the heavenly pattern.
As the earth receives from the sun, as the body receives from the head, as the plant receives from the soil—so, as you have received Christ Jesus, walk in Him, rooted in Him, grounded and built up in Him.
There is nothing else. He is your soil. You just take and take. And how you serve the Lord is by allowing the Lord to serve you.
Hold that in your hearts, please, and allow the Lord to guide you with me as we look a second time at the blueprint, at the master plan, at the great design.
Is there any clue? Is there any revelation? Is there any light?
We will follow the same plan. How does that begin? How will it continue forever?
I look again, and I see this. I see this. How are your translators going to put that? I see this. We need to see that together.
What is it? How does it begin? How does it continue forever?
Now, so that we may be helped, I am going to ask you to turn to Psalm 100, please. I want to come back down in the lower arena, down on earth, lay hold of a little truth, and then take it up to heaven and let God expand it.
Shout for joy unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness:
Come before His presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord, He is God:
It is He that hath made us, and we are His;
We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.
Here it is. Mark it:
Serve the Lord with gladness.
We are all about serving the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful singing.
All right, now let us go upstairs. Let us go back to the blueprint.
This is rhetorical; do not answer. Is there any gladness in heaven? Is there any gladness up there? Any joy up there?
Serve the Lord with gladness.
May I suggest—I do not want to add to the Scriptures, but I have an idea—in the balance of truth, in the balance of Scripture: serve the Lord with gladness; serve the Lord with heaven’s gladness.
What makes heaven heaven? Why are they glad up there? Why are they rejoicing up there and singing up there? What is the joy of heaven?
You say, “The streets of gold.” Someone says, “Is that literal?” It is literal or better. Literal or better.
I do not have a problem with those who say it is figurative, because the reality is always greater than the figure. It is literal or better. But that is not why they are rejoicing.
Dana was sharing about a house, and the present foretaste of the house, and the house with many rooms. Is that what the singing is all about? Or the pearly gates?
You say, “Well, they are glad because of the absence of so many things.”
There is no sickness up there. There is no old age up there. There is no death up there. There is no night up there, no weariness, and no fatigue. There is no sin up there.
Is that why they are singing? I do not doubt that maybe a verse or two of their song might include some of those things, but that is not what makes heaven heaven.
The fact that there is no temple up there, or that there is a tree of life, or that there is a throne—what makes heaven heaven?
What arrests and rivets our attention as we study God’s revelation of heaven?
I felt almost like a peeping Tom when I studied this. I felt I was invading this holy place.
In my study, as I went up and began to study this, as I looked into heaven and put my ear to heaven’s door, I saw nothing and I heard nothing except praises to the Lamb.
It was all about Him. It was centered in Him.
There are mysteries. We talk about heaven, and someone says, “What is it going to be like? Is it a place, or is it just a condition? How are we going to appear? My grandfather died; will he be old? My baby died; will it appear as a baby? The miscarriage—how will that appear in heaven? How will we communicate? Will we know all the previous things? What is our relationship to the angels? Will the Bible be there? Is it progressive?”
So many questions.
As I studied this, I had all those questions in my mind, as many do. It was almost as if the Holy Spirit asked me, “Would you be more satisfied if I told you less about Jesus and more about those things?”
What makes heaven heaven? It is Him.
If you do not want to hear about Him, you do not want to hear about your Bible. If you do not want to hear about Him, you do not want to hear about the Christian life. If you do not want to hear about Him, you do not want to hear about heaven.
1 Thessalonians 4:17 — To meet the Lord in the air.
That is the point.
1 John 3:2 — We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.
That is the point.
Revelation 7:17 — The Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd.
Revelation 21:3 — He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His peoples.
Revelation 22:4 — They shall see His face.
You are familiar with the seventeenth verse of that wonderful poem by Anne Cousin:
The bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear Bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory,
But on my King of grace.
Not at the crown He giveth,
But on His pierced hand:
The Lamb is all the glory
Of Immanuel’s land.
It is Him. The glory of heaven, the delight, the joy that they have, is Him.
Now, if we are going to serve the Lord with heaven’s gladness, then we need to understand the centrality of Christ in that place called heaven.
There is no question, when you read Revelation, that the Lamb is all through the book. Dana is studying Revelation now, and I know he has already been caught up with the Lamb. The Lamb all through the book is the Lamb.
We will never stop praising the Lord for the Lamb and the finished work of Christ. But the gladness of heaven is even beyond praising Him for the joy that made this joy possible.
It is based on the finished work of Christ, but I think it transcends it.
Let me ask the question again: serve the Lord with gladness; serve the Lord with heaven’s gladness. How does heaven begin?
If I were to ask you this question, where in the New Testament is the record of the Last Supper, I wonder where you would take me.
You would say Matthew 26, of course, where He broke the bread and poured out the cup and called it the New Testament in His blood. Or Mark 14, or Luke 22, or John 13 through 17.
With you, I agree: that is a wonderful supper. But it is not the last one.
Turn, if you would, to Revelation 19.
Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto Him:
For the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.
And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure:
For the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
And he saith unto me, These are true words of God.
Now, do not get lost in the details here. Do not get swallowed up in some system of theology. Catch the wonder of this.
How does heaven begin?
Brothers and sisters in Christ, it begins with a marriage. It begins with a wedding. It begins with a marriage feast.
Do not read that, “La, la, la.” That is the gladness up there.
The Lord and His bride have become one, and they live happily ever after. That is heaven.
Revelation 21, please, verses 1 and 2:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth:
For the first heaven and the first earth are passed away;
And the sea is no more.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
Made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
Verse 9:
Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.
God does not begin to describe the eternal state until He tells us what it is. It is the marriage of the Son of God.
Jesus is getting married. Guess who the bride is.
I tell you, this day of presentation touches my heart. I know when we come to end-time things, everybody goes in this direction and that direction. Some are all excited about the resurrection in phase one, two, three, four—or however many phases there are. Someone else is saying, “Oh, the rapture, the rapture.”
I have never been too excited about something that takes a twinkling of an eye, and it is done. I have not even really entered in, as many saints have, to the glories of the millennial kingdom.
But I tell you, there is a day coming that touches my heart so much. It is the presentation. It is the day when the bride is presented to the Groom. That is His day.
You know, we sang, “Oh, that will be glory for me.” I cannot sing that—not that way. I know I stand out when we are singing it because I always say, “Oh, that will be glory for Him. Glory for Him. Glory for Him.”
How He has longed for that day when the bride and the Groom have been brought together.
Everything is moving toward that day when He receives His bride without stain, spotless, without wrinkle, blameless, holy, pure, sanctified. As Brother Stephen shared yesterday, even He is not ashamed as He sees this glorious bride.
Now we cannot get into the details, but God describes that bride as this heavenly city, the Lamb’s wife. In His description of His bride, He describes her as this magnificent, transparent crystal gem, all decked out in pearls and gold and gems and glory.
Revelation 21:11 — Having the glory of God: her light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal.
How does heaven begin? It begins with a wedding. It begins with the bride and Groom coming together.
What is the fruit of that union? How does it continue forever?
Oh, the glory of it. Let me show you the bride. They are united, and she has become a gem that is filled with Him. It is a transparent gem that shines to the ends of the new heaven and the new earth with the glory of the Lamb on the inside.
She is the radiance of His glory. That is marriage as God intended it to be: union with Him and the manifestation of Christ to the ends of the universe through the bride.
That is the blueprint. That is the master plan.
The bride and the Groom are one. The outworking of that oneness is that the bride is now the illuminator. The Lamb is inside this marvelous gem, and He is radiating His glory throughout the new heaven and the new earth.
1 John 3:2 — When He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.
All right, now let us get back to this:
Serve the Lord with gladness.
What is heaven’s gladness? You say, “It is the Lamb.” Yes, it is more than that. It is the bride and the Groom. The Lamb and His wife have become one.
How does it continue forever? One in such a union that Christ is manifest through His bride to all the ends of the universe.
I do not want to leave that, but let us come downstairs. We have to come down here because we are here, and we are talking about serving the Lord.
How do I serve the Lord? Heaven begins with a marriage, and it ends with the manifestation of Christ through the bride throughout all the extent of God’s universe.
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Sometimes—many times—when we think of serving the Lord, the gladness is not there.
You can fake the serving, but you cannot fake the gladness. You cannot say, “I do, I will, I delight to do Thy will,” if the delight is not there. There is no faking the delight.
Sometimes service here is so cold, so formal, so mechanical, so tedious, and so dry.
Instead of serving the Lord with delight, it becomes a burden, a drudgery, a heaviness, and a frustration.
Unless we could serve like they do, what is that secret?
When we left off on Monday, I was using God’s creation to illustrate spiritual life. We started with the sun and its relationship to the earth, and we moved to the soil and its relationship to a plant.
I could illustrate this point by staying there with botany. In fact, our Lord Jesus did it when He talked about the vine and the branches and the union.
There is no possibility of bringing forth fruit apart from the union of the branch into the vine.
John 15:4 — The branch cannot bear fruit of itself.
It cannot. It never can, it never has, and it never will.
But let us leave botany. Let us move up to the crown of God’s creation.
This is the frustration of thousands and thousands of God’s children. They think somehow that the life is in them and not in the soil, that it is in them and not in the branch. They try to serve the Lord with gladness, but they cannot.
There is no production. They are barren. The more they try, the more frustrating it is.
After Jesus told about the vine and the branches and gave that wonderful secret, He made this comment:
John 15:11 — That My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
If you could learn the secret of the union of the branch with the vine, it brings fullness of joy, because bearing fruit brings fullness of joy. If you had fullness of joy, maybe you could serve the Lord with gladness.
Heaven’s illustration is a man and a woman joined together as husband and wife. Out of that loving union—the man pouring into the woman and the woman pouring into the man—there comes this great desire that God Himself expressed.
One day, as the man loves the woman and the woman loves the man, as they communicate together, they say, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had another one just like us?” As Brother Cromke was saying, many sons.
Out of that loving union there comes issue. What is the issue, we ask? Fruit. A baby is born.
If you have seen my wife this week, she has been on pins and needles all week. Ken, you really disturbed my wife when you said, “Turn off that phone.” She was sitting there—we are waiting for a call for our fifteenth grandchild. Anytime.
There is joy connected with that fruit, that event that brings life. She has already informed me, “If you look around and I am not there, I will be in Delaware. I want to be there. I want to see it.”
She calls it a miracle. “I want to watch the miracles,” she said. “I want to be there.”
God has connected that. That is not just man’s idea. Marriage and fruit—they are connected.
You may have noticed, as you study your Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, that there was sort of a stigma in the mind of the Jewish woman if she was barren, if she could not produce, if she could not have a baby.
You read over and over again: she grieved, she suffered, she groaned, she agonized. She almost felt cut off from God, as if God had displeasure with her in some way.
The sadness was deeper than, “I want a baby. I want to be a mother. I want to have a little baby.”
Rachel cried out:
Give me children, or else I die.
My brother Cromke pointed out that it goes deeper. Deep calls unto deep. Underneath that cry, “I want a baby,” was the grief: “I cannot produce.” The barren womb.
It goes deeper than that. Commentators tell us—and I am inclined to believe they are right—that the agony in the heart of the barren Jewish woman was mysteriously connected to the Messianic hope.
God had promised that through the woman, through the seed of the woman, Messiah would come.
The Jewish woman may not even have known it as she cried out. On her level, it might have been, “I wish I could have a baby.” But she was sad because she could not produce.
She may have looked at her womb and said, “How come I cannot produce? How come my womb is barren?”
But it is deeper than that. It is not only, “I cannot produce.” In her deep heart was the Messianic hope: “I cannot produce Christ. I want to be in the line. I want to produce Him.”
I want to be like the bride up there who is one with Him, who is filled with Christ and radiates Christ. I want to carry. That is what fruit is.
Fruit is life, and it contains the seeds of life. It is life that contains life that contains life. That is what fruit is.
That is why being a hypocrite is so bad. If you have Christmas-tree righteousness instead of apple-tree righteousness, you are in trouble.
Christmas-tree righteousness is hanging a ball here, a star here, a pencil over here, all these little lights and glitter. But it is not real.
You have your fellowship over here and your Bible study over here. For years, that is all I knew: Christmas-tree righteousness. I could fool people. They looked at my tree and said, “Oh, you are a wonderful tree.”
But I never dropped seed. I never taught life.
Fruit is the womb of the seed. It is life.
Barren and sad. Fruitful and glad. That is the story of the whole Bible. Over and over and over again, we can see that.
There is a great sadness. Maybe you have experienced it. I certainly have.
When God discovers to your heart the barren womb, when you learn for the first time that the branch cannot bear fruit of itself—you are going to serve the Lord, and this is My Father glorified, that you bear fruit.
If you cannot bear fruit, you cannot be glad. If you cannot be glad, you cannot serve the Lord with gladness.
It is connected: marriage, fruit, gladness, serve the Lord with gladness. There are relationships there.
I have heard Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they were not. I have shed many tears over my own barren womb, wanting to produce.
At first, I thought on the simple level: “I just want a baby.” I do not mean baby, baby. I mean I looked at the fruit of the Spirit, and then I looked at my life.
How come, after all these years, I should be further down the road? How come there is all this abiding corruption? How do I still have this struggle?
I look at the fruit of the Spirit: joy, peace, patience, longsuffering, kindness, self-control. Then I look at my own life.
Then I thought, maybe there is no hope. Maybe it is not for me. Maybe some Christians are called to have fruit, and I am not.
I got so tired of surrendering and raising my hand and coming forward and signing cards and dedicating and rededicating and doing everything I knew how to do.
How come I cannot bear fruit? How come I am so barren?
I never knew about the union of the branch and the vine. I never knew about the marriage of the Lamb and His bride that produces fruit.
Barren and sad.
I looked at my life. No deliverance from sin, as our brother Stephen was sharing so wonderfully. Thank you, brother, for giving us that message, to remind us again of God’s great provision.
But there was that recognition of barrenness: “Lord, my heart is filled with lust and sin, and I need deliverance.” It is not there. How am I going to serve the Lord at all, let alone serve the Lord with gladness?
After seven years of that kind of barrenness, God in His great grace allowed me to crash. Nineteen seventy-five. Oh, I praise the Lord for that. That is another story.
I understand better now what my sadness was. It was not, “I wish I had patience. I wish I had power. I wish I had longsuffering. I wish I had deliverance.” It was bigger than that.
It was more than, “I wish I could produce fruit. My womb is barren. I cannot do it, no matter how hard I try or how much I surrender.” Bigger than that.
Down deep in my spirit was the Messianic hope: “I cannot produce Christ.” I am a Christian. I felt cut off from the line, not in the Messianic line. I could not produce Him.
Well, you see, the woman had a great desire to be able to be in the line. That is why our Lord Jesus, at the end, called His mother “woman,” to tie her into that seed-of-the-woman promise. He honored her by not calling her mother, so that she could enter in. She was the honored one who became the mother of Messiah.
As I try to bring this together, I know I have given you a lot. We have been here and there. You do not need to look at these passages. I have chosen stories that you know, but there is a recurring emphasis all through the Bible.
I am going to pick up three illustrations, and then we will wrap it up.
Barren and sad. Fruitful and glad.
My first illustration is Sarah. You remember Sarah: beautiful woman, extraordinary beauty. At age ninety she was attracting kings.
But Genesis 11:30 says:
Sarai was barren; she had no child.
For ninety years she was barren. She could not produce. A barren woman is a sad woman. A barren Christian is a sad Christian.
You know the story. Sarah’s sadness drove her to every human effort, somehow to shake off that barrenness and become productive after all.
When we learn our womb is barren, we try everything to circumvent the barren womb. She did that. How many schemes do we have to go through? It is not just the story.
Nothing can take the place, in a believer’s life, if he is serious about serving the Lord—nothing can take the place of being fruitful.
Peaceful coexistence with barrenness is an utter impossibility to a quickened spirit. It is not possible.
Sarah was desperately discontent. One day God came in with a message and gave her a promise that she was going to have supernatural fruit. She laughed. You can read about it in Genesis 18. She laughed in unbelief.
But what happened? God kept His promise. He visited her, and Isaac was born.
She laughed again. This time it was not a laugh of unbelief. She named her son Laughter, and she said in Genesis 21:6:
God hath made laughter for me;
Every one that heareth will laugh with me.
Barren and sad. Fruitful and glad.
Psalm 92:4 — Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through Thy work.
Second illustration: Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Do you remember how her chapter opens? In 1 Samuel 1, she has no children.
The Lord had shut up her womb.
How sad she is—in bitterness and grief.
Chapter 1 tells her story. She is mourning and grieving and weeping, and she goes into the temple of the Lord. Eli the priest, so heavy with flesh, could not see into her heart, and he thought she was drunk.
God opened her womb, and He gave her a song. What a song—the song of Hannah. Some have likened it to Mary’s Magnificat. Such a song.
Barren and sad. Fruitful and glad.
Consider one other illustration: Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Luke 1:7 says they had no child; Elizabeth was barren.
After God delivered her and gave her fruit, she said in verse 25:
Thus hath the Lord done unto me in the days wherein He looked upon me, to take away my reproach among men.
The disgrace was not to bear fruit. Suppose Elizabeth had said—or Hannah, or Sarah—“Let us just pretend everything is all right. It does not matter if I do not bear fruit.”
Or let us say, even worse, they came to the conclusion that I came to: “It is not for me. I will never be able to bear fruit.”
Praise God for the way these stories end. God sent the angel Gabriel to tell Zacharias:
Luke 1:14 — Thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth.
Barren and sad. Fruitful and glad.
It is all in the blueprint. These stories are redemptive stories. They are not just in the Bible to give us facts; they tell us a spiritual story.
Two more passages, and I will let you go. Turn to Romans 7. I want you to see that I am not making this up—that what is true in the reality in the heavens is true now on the level of earth.
Romans 7. I want you to get the context, so let us start in verse 6:
But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held;
So that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.
Now that is our theme: that we might serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. So this passage is talking about serving. How do we do that?
Look at verse 4:
Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ;
That ye should be joined to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead,
That we might bring forth fruit unto God.
That is marriage, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
I am not making this up. That is how heaven begins: with a marriage. The fruit is the manifestation of Christ. That is heaven and how it continues.
He says, “Do you want to serve in the newness of spirit? Then you have to marry Him who was raised from the dead, in order that you might bring forth fruit unto God.”
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
The thing that makes heaven heaven is Christ. The thing that makes earth heaven on earth is Christ: union with Him and the fruit of being so filled with Him that His life radiates to the ends of the earth.
I can only serve the Lord with gladness when I have learned that principle.
Delight thyself also in the Lord;
And He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
You want fruit? You are going to have to learn to delight in the Lord. It is so wonderful.
For years, I thought what I was called to do was ramrod the gospel down everyone’s throat—especially my dear relatives. How patient they were with me. My dear in-laws—oh, I could tell you stories.
I did not know about delighting in the Lord.
You husbands, are you praying for your bride, your wife? The best thing you could ever do for your wife is delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Husbands, wives, mothers, children—delight yourselves in the Lord.
That is the one problem you will ever have in your Christian life: to maintain your relationship, your union, your delighting in Him.
In Acts, when Paul and Silas were in prison, they did not say, “Now, let us figure out how to win this whole world to Jesus.” They just delighted themselves in the Lord.
God came and shook the place, and someone cried out, “How do I get saved?” Fruit, because they were delighting in the Lord.
Stephen did not say, when he was being stoned, “Now, I am a Christian. I am supposed to forgive you guys for throwing those rocks at me.” He just saw Jesus, delighting in the Lord—Jesus standing at the right hand of God. God used that redemptively.
I am going to turn you to one more passage. I promise, it is the end. Isaiah 54.
Let me give you the background of this. There are servant passages from Isaiah 41 to Isaiah 54. Dana made reference to this in one of his messages.
Sometimes He is talking about Israel as His servant, and other times He is talking about the remnant in Israel as His servant. Then He gets to Messiah as His Servant.
You have to read those chapters. It is all about service. You want to serve the Lord? Read these servant chapters. They are marvelous.
As He comes to the end, Isaiah 53 presents the great Servant. Then He comes to chapter 54, and He is wrapping it all up.
I am going to ask you to look at chapter 54. We will start at the end so I can give you the context. Verse 17:
No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper;
And every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
And their righteousness which is of Me, saith the Lord.
That expression, “This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord”—what is the heritage? That is what I want. That is our theme: serving the Lord.
What is the heritage? It is not just that verse, that God will supernaturally protect us. It is that whole chapter, Isaiah 54. You have to read the whole chapter, because He has been talking since chapter 41: serving, serving, serving, serving, serving.
He comes now, wraps it all up, and says, “This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.” What is it?
Now let us go to the beginning. Verse 1:
Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear;
Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child:
For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. You who are barren, rejoice. Why?
Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed:
Neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame:
For thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth,
And the reproach of thy widowhood thou shalt remember no more.
For thy Maker is thy husband;
The Lord of hosts is His name:
And the Holy One of Israel is thy Redeemer;
The God of the whole earth shall He be called.
That is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.
Have you come barren? You cannot produce. Way down deep in your spirit is the Messianic cry: “I want to produce Christ, but I cannot. I am barren.”
How does heaven begin? It begins with a union. How does it continue? It continues with the manifestation of Christ.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
How do I bear fruit down here? It begins with a marriage, joined to Him who was raised from the dead, that you might bring forth fruit unto God.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.
Let us pray.
Father, thank You so much for what You have shown us, this twilight of Your truth. Work it in our hearts, Lord.
We know we only dream of serving You if we have not learned to receive. We only dream of serving You if we have not learned union with Christ and to delight ourselves in the Lord.
Write these things in our hearts, that we might be serviceable to the Master.
We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.