If you would turn with me to that passage that we read yesterday afternoon in the letter of the apostle Paul to the Romans, chapter 8—the eighth chapter of the Roman letter—I am going to read from verse 14.
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear;
but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God:
and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;
if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.—Romans 8:14-17
Then I would like to add to that, in the Hebrew letter—the letter to the Hebrews—chapter 3, beginning at verse 6.
But Christ as a Son, over God’s house; whose house are we, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end.
Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith,
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation,
Like as in the day of the trial in the wilderness,
Where your fathers tried Me by proving Me, and saw My works forty years.
Wherefore I was displeased with this generation, and said,
They do always err in their heart:
But they did not know My ways;
As I sware in My wrath,
They shall not enter into My rest.Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God.
—Hebrews 3:6-12
In the same letter, chapter 12, I am going to read from verse 5.
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you as with sons,
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.
It is for chastening that ye endure; God dealeth with you as with sons;
for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not?
But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.
All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.
Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees; and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed.—Hebrews 12:5-13
So, we just bow together in a further word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful, when we come to the ministry of Your Word, that You make specific provision for us in every aspect of our gathering. We thank You, Lord, that You have, through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, provided us with an anointing for both the speaking of the Word, the translating of the Word, and the hearing of the Word.
We do not, Lord, want to be left to our own energies and our own gifts or talents, whatever they may be. But we want, Lord, to avail ourselves of that anointing grace and power for this afternoon. We stand by faith into it. We appropriate that anointing in its fullness for this time.
Lord, You know these afternoon times can be difficult times, especially with heat. But we want, Lord, to praise You that You are able, as it were, to revive and renew and quicken us all, that we may be able to receive from You. Hear us, Lord. We shall be careful to give You the praise and the glory for answering this our prayer, which we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. Amen.
Well, I have been asked to speak to you in these two afternoon sessions on sonship. I have already sought to open up a little bit of this subject yesterday.
When we talk about sonship, the King James Version—the old King James Version—actually made no distinction between these two Greek words, huios and tekna: one meaning sons, the other meaning children. But they interchangeably translated them, sometimes using tekna for sons and huios for children. The result is that you do not get a clear understanding of what the Holy Spirit is really saying.
But I hope that it became a little clearer to you after yesterday afternoon. I hope you are not more confused and muddled than ever on this matter of sonship.
We are all children of God if we have been saved by the grace of God. We are all born of the Spirit of God, and we are all sons. But to be a real son, we have to grow up.
When someone speaks of “my child,” normally you think of that one as young—a small child. “My child does this. I feel this about my child.” But when you say, “my son,” your son could be seventy years of age and you could be ninety. You are speaking of someone who has grown up.
Of course, you can speak of a little baby as your son. “My son was just born a few weeks ago,” you might say, and you are perfectly right. But when Scripture uses these two words, it uses them with very real significance.
Children—the word tekna in Greek—is really to do with your relationship to the Lord. You are born of Him. You are born into His family. You are born through the work of our Lord Jesus on the cross.
When it speaks of sons—huios—it normally is always thinking of you growing up to take your place in the household of faith.
Now, the biggest problem we have amongst Christians today is that we have millions and millions of babies, and very few who have grown up to take their place as sons.
I want to talk a little bit more about this whole matter of sonship, a little more in detail. Whenever you have the word son or sons, normally in view is the inheritance which is ours: growing up to possess our inheritance; growing up to take our place in the church of God, in the household of faith; growing up to become responsible; growing up in a way that means that we can contribute something to the fulfilment of God’s purpose.
There are some wonderful things in Scripture about our inheritance. It might be good if we were just to look at them. The first you will find in the first letter of the apostle Peter, chapter 1, and I will read from verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
—1 Peter 1:3-5
Now, is that not wonderful? You have been born again to an inheritance—an incorruptible inheritance. That is, an inheritance that does not deteriorate, that does not grow less. It is an inheritance that is incorruptible. It does not fade away. It does not disappear through use. It is something tremendous that you have been given.
Now, most of us who are children of God here today are quite clear that we have been born again. We know this word has been devalued in the American media. We hear all the time about someone born again, someone else born again. I sometimes wonder whether it really is a real new birth.
Many people are converted in the head and not born of God. When a person is born of God, two or three things immediately happen. First of all, their eyes open and they begin to see. That is the first thing. The second thing is they begin to breathe. The third thing is they get hungry. They want to drink and they want to eat, however solid the food is.
When a person is born again, the first thing that happens is they become aware of the Lord Jesus. With the eye of faith, they begin to see Him. There is all the difference between being converted in the head—second-hand, second-generation Christians. It is all up here. They have got it up here, but nothing has ever happened in the heart.
When you are born again, you begin to see the Lord—not with these eyes, these physical eyes, but with the eye of the heart. There is illumination. As you walk with Him, that illumination grows.
You begin to breathe by the Spirit. That is the only way you can grow: by the Spirit of God. You breathe. You begin to want to feed. When people do not want to come to a Bible study and are not interested in reading the Word, I think they are converted up here, but they are not born again.
When you are born again, you have hunger—a hunger for the Lord. You want to digest, as it were. Then there is yet another thing: when you are truly born, you want fellowship. You need your mother. You need your father. You need to be nursed. You need people around you. That is why you can wail so well. It is to let everybody know that you are there and that you need some kind of fellowship.
It is on a very poor level when we are babies, but it is nevertheless a very real level. Now, when people have no desire for fellowship, no desire for the Word of God, and no desire to get to know the Lord better, something is wrong. No wonder people remain dwarfed and stunted.
But when you are born again, something wonderful has happened. We have been born again through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus—that is, His life. We have been justified by His death, our sins cancelled, blotted out like a thick cloud. We stand before God clothed in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. But by His resurrection, we are born again. We have actually been born anew.
I imagine most people here know they are born again, but do you know that you are born again to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away? Do you know that you can be guarded by the power of God through faith, so that you will be able to possess that inheritance? I think that is a wonderful thing.
Again, there is another Scripture I would like to turn you to: Acts 20:32. These are the words of the apostle Paul:
And now I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are sanctified.
—Acts 20:32
To give you the inheritance among all them that are sanctified.
Lastly, in this matter of inheritance, I would like you to turn to the Hebrew letter again, Hebrews 2:10.
For it became Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
—Hebrews 2:10
Bringing many sons unto glory. It could easily have said, “bringing many children to glory,” but then we would have missed the point. It is not bringing many saved people to glory. It is bringing many sons to glory—those who are born of the Spirit and who have grown up in the Lord.
I would like this afternoon, if you can remain awake, to look at four matters that I believe are absolute necessities if we are going to grow up to be sons in the house of God:
The first is growth to maturity. It is an absolute necessity that we should grow. When we are saved, we are not adults immediately. We are just as it is in the natural world: we are babies.
Our eyes have only just opened. Our ears only just hear. We have lungs, because we breathe, and we are able to make a colossal amount of noise in order to get attention. We are babes. We need to be fed, but we cannot be fed on steak. We cannot be fed even on those dreadful McDonald’s hamburgers. We are two little tiny babies. We cannot digest such food.
We have to have food suitable to our bodies. We have not got teeth that can chew properly. We are babes. That is a marvellous stage to be when it is the proper time.
But when, as I said yesterday, you are in that stage when you are twenty years old in the Lord, forty years old in the Lord, fifty years old in the Lord, it is a tragedy. You have lungs that can cry because you want attention all the time. You are screaming for everybody to come round you. You are like a whirlpool: you suck everybody into the whirlpool.
Your needs are the biggest problem in the church. They need to be met. Everyone is there for you. Whoever preaches is there for you. The brothers are there for you. The sisters are there for you. Everyone is there for you. This is babyhood.
There is nothing wrong with this kind of babyhood when you are at the proper stage, when it is the right time. But when you are ten years old in the Lord, you should be beginning to grow up. You should be beginning, for the first time, to think about your younger brothers and sisters.
When you get to twenty years of age, you should be even more responsible. When you are thirty, even more responsible. Where are the sons?
The tragedy in the church today is that we have all babies and children and no sons. Oh yes, they are sons, but they cannot take responsibility. They cannot shoulder duties. They cannot lay down their lives.
You do not expect the little baby to lay down its life, do you? What an extraordinary thing it would be: a newborn baby, and you said, “You have to lay down your life.” Of course not. A little baby—it is only right that it should be cuddled and nursed and loved and listened to.
I was a terrible child when I was young. My mother had an awful time having me for a start. However, she forgave me for that. I had a very big head—and I have always had one—and it meant that she had a very, very difficult birth.
But the interesting thing is that when I was beginning to come into this world, I used to cry and cry and cry. My mother did not know what to do. It did not matter: she rocked me, cradled me, spoke to me—I went on crying and crying and crying.
Finally, she went to a doctor, who sent us to a specialist because he thought there must be something dreadfully wrong with this little baby. The specialist said, “Mrs. Lambert, there is nothing wrong with this boy at all. He is strong-willed.”
He said, “He will cry and cry because he wants something, and until you give him that, he will go on crying. Put him in the pram. We lived in a very big house with a very big garden—yard, I think you say. Wheel him right down to the end of the yard, and leave him there.”
My mother did precisely that. She took me, wheeled me down, and left me there. I wailed and wailed and wailed until various neighbours would either phone up or come round and bang on the front door and say, “Oh, Mrs. Lambert, your little child is crying dreadfully.” My mother got so fed up with it, she felt all the neighbours were in league with her little son.
There was no good saying to me, “Lay down your life, Lance.” That was the stage in which I was. I was expressing something. I was expressing myself. I was expressing my needs. I was expressing my will. I was expressing, I suppose, my emotions.
If you had said to me, “Lay down your life,” I would not have known what you were talking about. Anyway, it would not have been right. It is only when you start to grow up that you have to think of others. Then comes the challenge: you have to lay down your life.
I do not know how clearly I can get this over to you, but there is such a thing as babyhood. It is the nursery. It is the cradle. It is being carried in arms. It is a question of rattles, dummies, and little toys. I think you say “pacifiers” for dummies. When you say someone is a dummy, I believe you mean something else.
Dummies, rattles—you know, the little things. Here is a little baby, and you give it a rattle and it plays with it. They are very happy. You have a little thing across the cot, something that dances up and down, and the baby is very happy. I mean, it is exactly the stage we are in in the church.
We have to give them rattles and pacifiers all the time to keep them quiet. Put it in the mouth, keep them quiet, rock them backwards and forwards. But when they are thirty or forty years old in the Lord, it is a tragedy.
They should now be taking responsibility in the household of faith. Instead, an inordinate amount of time has to be spent upon us because we have not grown. There is a place for the nursery. There is a place for being carried. There is a place for rattles and pacifiers and little toys—as we say, little things please little minds. But if they keep the little one happy, that has fulfilled the objective.
But we were never meant to stay there. The greatest problem we have in the house of God today is that we have thousands and thousands of dwarfs, stunted children. They have never grown. They have never grown up. They never come to maturity, and therefore they can never take responsibility in the things of God.
I say this is a tragedy. Children by nature are self-centred in a beautiful way. When we were young, generally speaking, we thought a precocious child rather beautiful. The child comes over with its drawings and shoves them on your lap. No matter if you are talking about the deepest things in the world with another believer, the child has come with their drawing, and they want you to see it.
It is not evil self-centredness. It is natural self-centredness. It is beautiful when it is at the right time. But when someone twenty-five years of age shoves a picture in front of you that they have done and stops you from being able to talk with someone else, there is something ugly about it. You understand? I hope I am not being too coarse.
When you are a child, you have limited ability. There are a whole number of things you cannot do. It is only when you grow up that you can start to really do that. You have limitless ability—the possibility of using your ability for others, and so on.
Well, I only want to point out to you that you have something tremendous here that you and I need to consider. Am I growing? Are you growing? Have you stopped growing? Can you put your finger on when you stopped growing?
Because if you can, you will know that there was some issue that you did not settle, and on that issue you stopped growing. In other words, if you can settle the issue, you can start to grow again.
Take, for instance, some of the Scriptures very quickly. Let us take a quick tour through a number of Scriptures. First Peter 2:1-2:
Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation.
—1 Peter 2:1-2
Now, is that not wonderful? Long, as newborn babes, for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow unto salvation. What does this mean? It simply means not that you have not got salvation. You have salvation if you are a newborn babe, but that you may possess your salvation.
It is like the children of Israel on the wrong side of the River Jordan, singing about it, praying about it, studying it, and everything else. They never go over and possess. You have to go over and possess the land. Wherever you put your feet down, that is yours. When you claim it, it becomes yours.
So it is with your so great salvation. It is all yours, but you have to possess it. Now, you cannot possess it if you have no muscle, if you are so weak. You need spiritual milk so that you grow. As you grow, you can stand; then you can walk; then you can run; then you can possess your so great salvation.
I cannot spend too long on this, but it is tremendous, I think, just to think about it: “As newborn babes, desire or long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation.”
Or again, 2 Peter 3:18:
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
—2 Peter 3:18
Not knowledge about Him, but knowledge of Him. That is growing in your knowing of Him. Get to know Him. Grow in grace. You cannot grow any other way. The only way you can grow is by the grace of God. But as you take step after step by faith, so you grow in your knowing of the Lord Jesus.
Again, Hebrews 5, beginning at verse 11:
Of whom we have many things to say, and hard of interpretation, seeing ye have become dull of hearing.
—Hebrews 5:11
So often we become dull of hearing. I have a hearing problem now, and when people do not speak clearly, I cannot hear them. Some of them—it is unbelievable, the number of people who do not speak clearly. Maybe I am supposed to understand that. You cannot even read their lips. Some people do not use their lips, especially men. I suppose they do in some ways, but they certainly do not when it comes to speaking.
Dull of hearing. Listen, it gets worse.
For when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that some one teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food.
For every one that partaketh of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness; for he is a babe.
But solid food is for fullgrown men, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.—Hebrews 5:12-14
They cannot have much experience. The only experience a babe has is being born. You cannot have too much experience when you are a baby.
The apostle—or whoever it is, probably Apollos, I think—says here, “For everyone that partaketh of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness; for he is a babe. But solid food is for full-grown men, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.”
Sons. They have learnt to discern between good and evil in a right way, by the Spirit of God.
I only want to give these things to you. I think they are tremendous. If someone says, “Can we ever become full-grown down here?” Well, the apostle said so. In 1 Corinthians 2:6, he says, “We speak wisdom among those who are full-grown.”
In Philippians 3:15, he says:
Let us therefore, as many as are fullgrown, be thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have attained, by that same rule let us walk.
—Philippians 3:15-16
So you can come to full growth—not to perfection, but to full growth. That is, you can come to maturity. It is a goal. That is what it means to be a son in the house of God.
There is also one other thing in this matter of spiritual growth to maturity that I think I ought to underline: there is a corporate dimension.
Sometimes people think they can grow alone, without other believers. It is impossible. If you read in the Word of God, again, in Ephesians 4:15:
But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, even Christ.
—Ephesians 4:15
Now, is that not an interesting phrase? That you “grow up in all things.” In all things. There is no single aspect of our lives in which we cannot grow up into Christ as Head.
But whenever you have the Head, this word head in the Word of God, you have the body. If you read the next verse, that is exactly what it goes on to say: from whom all the body, fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, increaseth with the increase of God.
In other words, as you grow up, you need your brothers and sisters. Now, how do we find our brothers and sisters? Not by trying to be one with them. We find them by growing up into the Head. When we are growing up into the Head in all things, we discover the body. Do you understand?
We do not discover the body by trying to find brothers and sisters. We discover the body and experience the body by growing up into Christ as Head. He is my Head. Do you have another head? No, you have the same Head. Do you have another head? No, you have the same Head. That means three of us have the same Head. If we are growing up into the same Head, we are going to find each other in the Lord.
Then we maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
I will not spend too long on it, but it is tremendous. I must say again, listen to this: Ephesians 2:21-22:
In whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
—Ephesians 2:21-22
There is a corporate dimension to this. Each one of us has to grow personally, individually. You cannot grow by proxy. Some people think, “Oh, if I belong to such-and-such a company, I will grow spiritually.” You will only grow spiritually if you take in from the Lord what the Lord is saying and obey it. Then you will grow.
But you will not grow by sitting in the midst of other people who deeply know the Lord. That is a mistake. What happens is you take on what they are saying and the teaching, and it looks as if you are at the same level as they are—until the storm comes. Then, when the storm comes, it sweeps away a whole lot because it never was inside.
You cannot hide in the corporate. Each one of us has to grow individually, personally, and we have to grow up into Him as Head. Then we have a fellowship of saints that is strong in the Lord. Each one has their own experience of the Lord. Each one is directly related to the Lord as Head, and therefore they discover one another.
Well, that is all I want to say about the matter of spiritual growth to maturity. It is an absolute necessity.
Here is the next necessity: training and discipline. Training and discipline. It is an absolute necessity. No one will ever become a son in the house of God, in the household of faith, who does not accept training and is not subject to discipline.
It is a vitally important part of growing up to be a son. We have all observed and suffered children who have had no discipline or training. Of course, it is not your children.
We have all observed and suffered, and we have seen the tragedies as people grow up into teens and into their twenties when there has never been any training or any discipline. It is a sad observation to make.
All life—listen, I say it again—all life has to be proved, and it has to be trained. Discipline. Training.
Any of you who are gardeners know exactly what I am talking about. Any of you who are farmers will know what I am talking about. I have one or two trees. For some reason or other, they got ill at one point, and instead of growing properly, there was a whole bald patch.
Well, you know, when you plant a tree, you get very upset about digging it up. You think, “I have planted it.” I have an affection for the thing. I do not know about you, but I sort of think, “Surely it is going to live.” But it does not.
Then some dear old brother said to me, “You have to cut it right down.” Oh, I thought that was a terrible thing to do. “Cut it right down?” “Yes, cut it right down to where the green is at the bottom.”
Oh, I went through such agonies over that. Finally, I thought, “That silly tree is doing nothing.” So I cut it, and it blossomed. It went bananas.
You know, the Lord looks at you sometimes. You have had a doubt in your life, or something has gone wrong. You have made a big mistake. You have a fault—there is something very apparent in your growth. The Lord comes and says, “I am going to have to cut this right down.”
We think it is the end when the Lord cuts us down like that. Actually, it is a new beginning. It is amazing how quickly the tree grows once it has been so severely dealt with.
No doubt some of you can give me amazing experiences of this with plants that, for some reason, did not do well. Then someone who knew better said to you, “Cut it right back.” You thought, “I cannot do that.” But when you did, it became so full of new growth and so full of blossoms.
It is so with fruit trees—and certainly vines. When they become too old, they do not bear the same amount of fruit. You have to prune them. If you prune them correctly, they bear more and more and more. It is exactly what the Lord Jesus said in John 15.
We do not like pruning. We want a shortcut, if we can, to fruitfulness. We want a shortcut to usefulness. If we could only have some enormous experience that would blow us into fruitfulness and usefulness without us having to suffer at all—overnight, the thing is done.
You know, here in the States, everything has to be instant. It is getting that way all over the world now, due to good American businessmen. Everything is instant cream, instant this, instant that, instant the other. You do not need to take time or trouble. Why not? You just go as quick as you can and get the thing done.
So we have instant salvation, instant holiness, instant power, and instant everything else in the church. I am all for real experience of the Lord. I have absolutely no doubt that there is an experience of the cross—a definite experience of the cross, of laying down your life. It can lead to tremendous usefulness and fruitfulness.
But sometimes there is a long path up to the point where you have the experience, and certainly afterward. It is the same with the baptism of the Spirit. You hear people say, “Oh, I need an experience with the Holy Spirit,” but they want an experience that the Holy Spirit will suddenly make them wonderful people, useful people.
I thank God for any experience of the Holy Spirit. I would never despise such experiences of the Holy Spirit. It comes into the category of quenching the Spirit or grieving the Spirit when it really is the Spirit.
But, my dear child of God, the greatest experience of the Holy Spirit will never make you an instant servant of God. Paul had a tremendous experience, but he had to go for three years into the desert.
What happened in those three years, we really do not know. All we know is the fruit of it. We see it in the revelation he had, the understanding he had, and the ministry he had, which is with us to this day.
Pruning. Oh, we do not like that when we see the Lord coming with pruning clippers. We prefer to be babies. Then He comes to cuddle us and rock us and give us our rattles and pacifiers and our little toys. But when He comes with clippers, we do not like it.
Yet this training and pruning is absolutely essential if you are going to be a son. I see that Prince William, who is the crown prince of the British royal family, is now going to go into the military. There has to be training.
If you are called to special service, there has to be special training. If you are someone marked out by God for a special ministry and a special work, you will have special training. The greater your ministry will be, the greater the training and pruning will be.
Now, we read that passage in Hebrews 12, did we not, about chastening. “No chastening seemeth for the present to be joyous, but grievous.”
I always remember dear Brother Sparks. For me, it was an eye-opener when he said, “I think we need to rewrite this,” because the Greek is literally child training.
Now, when you think of it like that, it takes all the sting out of it. We think of chastisement as someone coming with birch—boom!—to beat us, or taking the belt off and giving us what for.
Mind you, I always feel that when I go to Finland. I hope there are no Finns here. I like the Finns. I mean, that sauna they have, where they cook you until you drip, and then out you come and you are rubbed with sailcloth so it nearly takes your skin off. Then in and out again, plunged into ice water, and then beaten with birch twigs.
Then they say to me, “We never get colds in Finland.” I should think not. Everyone who was weak died when they were young, I should think. Now, forgive me if anyone here is Finnish. It is a marvellous thing, of course.
But nobody thinks, “Oh, how wonderful it is. The Lord is coming with a chastening rod. The Lord is coming with birch twigs to beat us, rub us with sailcloth.” Child training.
No child training seems to be joyous, but grievous. Absolutely right. I remember the times I was chastised. I did not find it at all joyful. I was no believer then, but if I had been, I would have prayed for my mother’s immediate entry into the kingdom.
I always remember to this day how lovely it was when I was a child, before I went to school, and was able just to sit in the garden looking at insects—sometimes taking their wings off. That is the kind of thing we do when we are kids. Dreadful.
But it was lovely to wander around, chasing the cat, making the dog’s life a misery. Then one day Mother said, “You are coming with me.” I thought we were going outside. I said, “Where are we going?” Mother said, “You will see.”
She knew very well there was no point telling me; otherwise, I would have been absolutely in a tantrum. We went off to this place, and there Mother stood. She rang the bell, and this lady—the nearest thing I had ever seen to God—came to the door.
She was a very marvellous lady, with a straight back and a huge bum, steel-grey hair, and blue eyes. She looked at my mother, and Mother said, “This is Lance Day.” Miss Day said, “Come, Lance. You are coming to school.”
Well, I did not want to go to school, so I immediately drew back. Mother pushed me. Miss Day looked at me in a stern way. I remember my mother saying to her, “Miss Day, we do not want him to be in prayers.”
I remember Miss Day saying, “Mrs. Lambert, two minutes on our knees before the Almighty cannot possibly harm a child.” I remember that very well.
Anyway, I vanished in tears and everything else. It did not matter. Now my life was totally different. Now child training had properly begun. I could not just wander around any more. I had to sit in a desk and listen. I found it very difficult.
Although this has nothing to do with the message, to this day I still remember Miss Day. She was the first person I ever heard Bible stories from. The first story I ever heard in my life was the story of Jacob.
When Miss Day prayed—this lady whom I felt was basically more pope than the Pope—she knelt on the wooden floor, and I thought to myself, “Who in the world is she talking to?” She was, to me, the biggest authority I had ever seen. She actually quelled my mother, and that was something incredible in my eyes.
She knelt there on the wooden floor, and we all had to kneel, of course, beside our desks while she talked to somebody. I have never forgotten it.
We do not like it when God takes us into training. We all want to get to the end of the training and get the prize, but none of us like the training. We do not like the discipline.
But the Lord says, “Every son”—not every child—“every son whom He receiveth, He scourgeth.” It seems so foreign in 2003: “scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” Apparently, this kind of training is absolutely necessary if a son is to become responsible in the things of God.
Well, I have to leave it because otherwise we will never finish, and I have to watch myself on time always. But I think this matter of training and discipline is absolutely essential.
What is wrong with us believers? I think we have been infected by a virus that is in the world. The virus that is in the world is pleasure-seeking. We do not want anything tough any more. We do not want anything hard any more. We do not want anything that hurts any more.
We want everything that is a shortcut, everything that is instant, everything that is easy. It has got into the house of God, so that really we do not want anything that has some discipline in it.
Training and discipline. Someone may say to me, “Well, how is this discipline applied?” In relationships, very often.
In your home. At your work. And in the church.
Is it not interesting how much of the New Testament letters are taken up with husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees? Have you noticed it? As well as the church. It is all to do with discipline. “Obey your parents in the Lord,” just as an example.
Relationships are very hard sometimes. Right relationships to parents, right relationships to children, right relationships to husbands, right relationships to wives, right relationships to your employer or those over you, right relationships to those who are under you and working for you—and in the church.
What a field day the powers of darkness sometimes have in the church. Relationships. Training comes through relationships: having to be bound together, having to go through together, having to maintain the unity of the Spirit. It is no easy matter.
Well, I leave it with you. But there is another way that the Lord uses for training and discipline: circumstances. It is not just relationships; it is circumstances. Sometimes we lose our job. Sometimes we find ourselves in unbelievable circumstances. Sometimes it is our making, sometimes it is not. But those circumstances become the means of discipline and pruning.
There is one other way the Lord uses. I pray that it may not be for too many here, but it is what I call the inexplicable problem.
Why does the Lord entrust some people with the most terrible problem? A child that cannot grow up properly. An accident that leaves you disabled for life. A barrenness that means you cannot have children. Why? Why does the Lord do it?
I sometimes think it is because there is a very special calling, and the training is therefore the more severe because the calling is so great. Think about it.
Amy Carmichael had no idea, in the day that she went to look at a new property not far from Dohnavur in southern India, that that day was to change her life and the direction of her ministry.
Many of you will know the story. They went to see this new property. The person who should have come did not come—typical of our part of the world. An hour or two went by. The tropical dusk fell. Finally, he came with the key.
When he opened the door, coolies had dug a huge ditch where they were not supposed to dig the ditch. Everyone stood aside for Amy Carmichael to walk. She walked in, fell into the ditch, broke her ankle into her hip, and in great pain was pulled out of the ditch into the jeep and bumped over roads twenty or thirty miles or more to a hospital.
They said, “She will be all right.” She had no idea she would never walk again.
Dear Amy Carmichael. I remember Lady Ogle saying that her memories of Amy Carmichael were of her hair streaming out behind her in her sari, running between the children’s houses—so quick, so sensitive, so amazingly thoughtful.
She wrote a book, Rose from Brier, and a poem, “Rose from Brier.” In it she said, “I am so sorry that I am writing this book because I am only here for a month with my leg up. But I have learnt so much of the Lord in this time.”
She had no idea that it would be twenty-five or twenty-seven years that she would be on her back. But then came a ministry that would never have come to the church, for she wrote book after book, and it was like deep calling to deep.
There is nothing that can help people who are suffering from the inexplicable like Amy Carmichael’s ministry. Inexplicable.
Well, I must go on; otherwise, we will never finish. Education is the third absolute necessity. You cannot become a son without education. Can you think of someone being trained for service and having no education? Of course, that is nonsense. You must have education. It is an absolute necessity.
This is the Holy Spirit’s work. Jesus said, “When He is come, He will teach you all things.” Are you a stranger to the work of the Holy Spirit?
It is a tremendous thing to know the ministry of the Holy Spirit: always unveiling the Lord Jesus to us, always directing our gaze to the Lord Jesus, always taking up the things of the Lord Jesus and making them real in us. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the Teacher.
He, if you like, is the One who instructs us, leads us into situations, into problems, into difficulties, and there teaches us the deep things of God.
It is the Holy Spirit’s ministry. Do not think you can ever know the Lord Jesus apart from the Holy Spirit. If you think you can, you will end up with a head filled with ideas, but you will not know the Lord Jesus directly.
For it is the work of the Holy Spirit to lead you at all times to see Him and to receive from Him.
Now listen to the Lord Jesus:
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.
—Matthew 11:29
Some people go off to theological seminaries. I have no problem with training, Bible-school training, special training courses, and so on. Training is a principle. I have no problem with it.
But I sometimes think people think they can go off to a seminary or a Bible school, and there they are going to receive everything, and they are going to come out fully fledged ministers, able to preach.
No seminary has ever produced a preacher. Only the Holy Spirit will produce a preacher. No seminary has ever really produced a Bible teacher, just like the schools of the prophets never produced a prophet.
Not a single one of the prophets says they came out of a school. We are very thankful for the schools of the prophets, and we would not have our Bible without them. They are the ones who so accurately and exactly copied it out in Hebrew and watched over its transmission. But that is by the way.
Education. My dear friend, you need the Lord, and you need to learn of Him. The Holy Spirit is only too ready to start your education.
Do not be surprised at the way the Holy Spirit does it. He does the most extraordinary things in order to teach us the Lord. But you remember what it says in Ephesians 4:21-22: “the truth as it is in Jesus. Ye have not so learned Christ.”
The truth as it is in Jesus. That is the kind of education that makes a son. That is the kind of education that brings a person to a place where they have a contribution to make in the house of God and to be involved in the fulfilment of the purpose of God.
Have you ever thought about it? Listen to me. Jesus said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” You know, that is the first letter and the last letter of the Greek alphabet. If you took it in Hebrew, the Aleph and Tav—the first and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. If you said it in English, you would say, “I am the A and the Z.” You say “A and Zee”; I say “A and Zed.”
What did the Lord Jesus mean: “I am the A and the Z”? What a strange thing to say. Because you are Christians, you all take it: “Well, yes, of course, it is in the Bible, is it not?” Yes, it is, at least two or three times.
A and Z. Why does He say, “I am A and Z”? He is saying, “I am the alphabet.”
Oh, well, why does He say, “I am the alphabet”? Because if you are going to have an education, you have to learn the alphabet. The only way you can learn the alphabet is through Jesus. He is the ABC of God.
Let me put it another way. Here is the language, of course. Here are the letters. You have got to learn the language. I do not mean what used to be called in evangelical circles “Canaanitish phraseology.” I mean the language of God.
When God speaks, it is always in and through Christ. Alpha and Omega. Do you get it? Have you got it?
Your education is to start to learn the alphabet. Then, when you learn the alphabet, you can start to read. You can learn the language of God. Then you can understand how Jesus is called the Word, because that is the mind and the heart of God expressed—the heart and the mind of God revealed. It is all in Jesus.
Education is not just learning doctrines and what they are. That may be important in its own sphere—or theology—and I would never devalue theology, real theology. When there is no real theology, we get ourselves into problems.
But theology is theology, and doctrine is doctrine. It is not learning Christ.
Learning Christ is really to begin to understand what life is all about: why there is life, when it began, what His purpose was for it, how it changed, what has happened to the whole world, where it is heading, and what the end will be. It is all part of education. It is all centred in the Lord Jesus.
You know, it says in Colossians that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in the Lord Jesus. Knowledge is to do with facts. Wisdom is how to apply them. Very simple. Did you get it? Knowledge is facts. Very important—we need to know the facts. But wisdom is what to do with the facts.
When I was first saved, I had never read the Bible. Therefore, when I first began to read the Bible, I only had a Gospel of John to start with, which I read and read and read until it fell to pieces. Then I started on the New Testament, and finally I came to the Old Testament.
I found it amazing. I was full of questions which nobody could answer. Being the kind of person I was, I would worry them to death with my questions. After every meeting, I would be there to ask this question, that question, and the other question.
One of my questions was why Moses and Aaron fell on their faces all the time. Now, of course, most Christians just take it: “It is in the Bible. It is in the Bible. That is enough.” Not for me. I wanted to know why they fell on their faces.
I thought about it. It was not a stupid question. I thought to myself, if there are two people who know what to do, it is Moses and Aaron. Every time there was a problem, instead of applying their knowledge, they fell on their faces before the Lord.
As if they were nincompoops. As if they were totally empty-headed. I could not understand that. I was only fourteen or fifteen. I would go to Alan Redpath and say, “Mr. Redpath, why?” He would look at me as if I had come from Mars. He would say, “What?” I would say, “Why did Moses and Aaron always fall on their faces?” “Well, I do not know,” he would say.
Why did Moses and Aaron fall on their faces? Because, to put it in New Testament language, they had learned Christ. They knew you could not be doctrinaire. You could not just take doctrine and proof texts and apply them just like that. You cannot do it.
You have got to seek the Lord: “Lord, these are the facts. How do we apply them?” That is wisdom. That is wisdom.
All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in the Lord Jesus. Our education, if we are going to grow up to be sons in the household of faith, is to do with that wisdom—the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are in the Lord Jesus.
It is into experiences that He brings us, so that in those experiences, what is in the Book becomes real in us. It becomes flesh and blood.
Well, education—I could say a lot more about education. But finally, let me finish and say the fourth absolute necessity is character.
The only thing you will take into eternity is character. Everything else you leave: your money, your clothes, your degrees, your titles, your car, your cars—you leave it all. The only thing you go into eternity with is what God has produced in you by His Spirit. Character.
The Lord is in this business of character-building. He will go to extraordinary lengths to produce character.
You want to be a son? Listen to me. The Lord is not interested in sons who are civil servants, bureaucrats, who know all that is in the books. He is interested in sons who have character.
In other words, they have been changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus.
What a wonderful word that is in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
—2 Corinthians 3:18
What a wonderful word that is, is it not? I think so. It is an unveiled face. So often we have veils on our face. With unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory, we are changed into His likeness.
The Lord will take all kinds of action to change us into the likeness of the Lord Jesus, but it is absolutely necessary if you and I are going to be sons in the household of faith.
May the Lord make these words real to you. The Lord Jesus, Son over God’s house, is bringing many sons to glory. Are you one of them?
If you are, then what I have said this afternoon will live in your heart by the Spirit for years to come.
If you are young in the Lord and have very little experience, this day commit yourself to the Lord. The Lord never pushes anyone into this training or into this education. If you do not want it, you do not have to have it. You can remain a babe in the kingdom of God.
But if you are ready to say, “Lord, I am here. I am afraid. Nevertheless, I commit myself to You, that You will bring me into all that You mean by sonship,” believe me, the Lord will start with you immediately.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we do just bow in Your presence. We feel a tremendous need in our hearts to be real and honest.
Lord, we pray that You will open the eyes of our hearts. Grant us that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Yourself. Lord, challenge us.
We are living in days of tremendous danger, especially for the United States. Lord, You know what is in store.
Lord, our prayer is that we may not put off this matter for another moment. Challenge us and enable us to respond to You directly.
We want to be men and women who, in whatever time we have left to us, in a society which is still free—for however long—to be able, Lord, to grow into maturity, to know Your training and discipline, to be educated by You, and to know something of that character of our Lord Jesus produced in us.
Lord, we have not so much time in the luxury that we have at present. Help us, Lord, to hear You, and to hear that word: “Today, if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.