Will you please turn to 2 Corinthians 4? We will read from verses 6 through 11.
Because it is God, who 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.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves;
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.
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.
The same book, 2 Corinthians 12. We will read from verses 7 through 10.
And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations—that I should not be exalted overmuch—there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted overmuch.
Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
And He hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My power is made perfect in weakness.
Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
And finally, Hebrews 12. We will read from verses 5 through 11.
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.
May we have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, how we praise and thank Thee that Thou dost give Thyself to us. We are redeemed by Thy precious blood. We are Thine, and our desire is that Thou shalt fully possess us.
We ask Thee, Lord, that Thou wilt through Thy Word again speak to our hearts. Bring us to the place where Thou wantest us to be. Make us what Thou wantest us to be. We just offer ourselves to Thee, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Yesterday morning, we shared together on the two kinds of knowledge. One is represented by the tree of life, and the other is represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
We call one life knowledge, and the other worldly knowledge. We call one spirit knowledge, and the other soul knowledge.
Now, brothers and sisters, the issue with us is this: What knowledge do we really possess? What kind of knowledge are we filled with? How much of the knowledge that we profess to have is spirit knowledge, spiritual knowledge, life knowledge? And how much of that which we profess to have is but soul knowledge, worldly knowledge?
I think if we really are in the light of God, we will discover how much of what we think is knowledge really belongs to soul knowledge, worldly knowledge, and is not really life and spirit knowledge. So, for this reason, we really need to be before the Lord, that under His light we may pursue the right kind of knowledge and not continue trying to accumulate more and more worldly knowledge.
When you read the epistles of Paul, especially his prison epistles, you find that in Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians he offered prayers for the believers. In each letter, you will find that he prayed for them on this matter of knowledge.
For instance, in Ephesians 1:17:
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
The Apostle Paul prayed for the believers in Ephesus that God would grant to them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of God.
Now, our brother mentioned last night that one means to spiritual knowledge is through revelation. The knowledge that we have accumulated through the years is informational and external; we gather it from our side. But there is a knowledge that comes by revelation, directly from God. It is by revelation that we come to the true knowledge of God.
Our brother also mentioned last night the having of the eyes of our heart opened—that is, our understanding. Not only do we have a revelation from God in our spirit, but we also need the eyes of our heart to be enlightened.
Now, brothers and sisters, when revelation comes, it does not come to our outward man. It comes to our inward man. It comes to our spirit. The Spirit of God reveals, opens up, and unveils something that is of God; and in our spirit, we see it.
But oftentimes, even after we see it in our spirit, we are not able to explain it to people. To make a simple illustration: one day God reveals His Son in you. You see in your spirit God’s Son. You receive Him as your Saviour, as your life. But after you are saved, when you try to explain what you have seen and what you have gone through, you find that you cannot do it.
Something has happened in your spirit, and yet you are not able to explain how it happened or what has happened. You need understanding. You need the renewing of your mind to explain what has transpired in your spirit.
Oftentimes we use the illustration of taking a photograph. When you take a picture, an impression is made upon the film. But if you show the undeveloped film to anybody, nobody can see the picture. It has to be developed. After it is developed, everybody can see it.
The same thing is true in spiritual things. First, we have to see it in our spirit; then it is interpreted by our renewed mind, so that we can tell people what we have seen.
Here, in Paul’s prayer, when we receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of God, and have the eyes of our heart enlightened and opened, what do we see? We see the hope of His calling.
We see the calling of God. God has called us into something tremendous. We also see the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
It is more than the riches of the glory of our inheritance in Christ. It is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. In other words, we are called with a high calling, and we will be an inheritance to God. God will inherit us, and that inheritance is full of riches and full of glory.
How can this be? We find the exceeding greatness of His power. It is His power that has transformed us, that we may be able to fulfil our calling and become a rich inheritance even to our God, to our Christ. Now, that needs revelation. That is spiritual knowledge.
Then, when you turn to Philippians 1:9-11, you find another prayer:
And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment;
so that ye may approve the things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Christ;
being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.
Here, his prayer is that your love may abound yet more and more in full knowledge and intelligence. Spiritual knowledge actually is love. By that love, with full intelligence, you are able to discern the things that differ, and you are able to be pure and blameless in the day of Christ.
That is to say, when Christ shall come and we shall all appear before Him, we will be pure and without blemish. That comes through spiritual knowledge, which is love.
Again, in Colossians, Paul prays for the Colossian believers. In Colossians 1:9-12, he says:
For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray and make request for you, that ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joy;
giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.
Here you find that he prays for them that they may be filled with the full knowledge of His will. When you are filled with the full knowledge of His will, then you are able to walk worthily of the Lord unto all well-pleasing.
The reason why sometimes we find that we cannot walk worthily of the Lord, and are not able to please Him in all things, is because we do not know His will. If we have the full knowledge of His will, if we know what His will is, then we may be able to walk worthily of our Lord Jesus.
So you find how important it is that we have spiritual knowledge.
Now, brothers and sisters, what is spiritual knowledge? We mentioned yesterday morning that there is a knowledge which does not come from life. It is a knowledge that begins in man and ends in man.
Man has within him the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have that. It is soul knowledge. It begins in us, with us, and ends up in us.
But there is another knowledge. It is a knowledge that comes from the life of God. This is eternal life: that you may know the only true God, and Him whom He has sent.
When we believe in the Lord Jesus, something happens: we know God.
You know, before we believe in the Lord Jesus, we may be brought up in a Christian home, we may be educated in a Christian school—and that is just what happened to me. From my childhood, I was taught of God. I was taught of the Bible. I was taught of the gospel. I knew all these things, and I have to say that I believed all these things.
I never doubted God. I never doubted Jesus Christ. I never doubted the gospel. I accepted everything. I believed in everything. I prayed, and I read the Bible.
But strangely, God was always Someone distant from me. I believed there was a God, but He was billions and billions of miles away. I prayed to Him, but my prayer only hit the ceiling. It did not go through to heaven.
I believed in the gospel. I even preached the gospel before I was saved, but it did not save me. I believed in the Word of God. I read the Bible every day, but it was a closed book to me, as if I were reading somebody else’s family letters. I did not understand what He was talking about.
But strangely, one day, when I believed in the Lord Jesus—I can remember it so vividly, as though it happened not yesterday but right now—the moment I believed with my heart, not with my mind, something happened.
I had believed the Lord with my mind from childhood. But one day I really opened my heart and believed in the Lord Jesus. I did not need anybody to tell me that there is God. I began to call Him, “Abba, Father.” He was close to me. He was real. He was living to me.
Not only that, when I opened the Bible that afternoon that I was saved, He spoke to me. It was different.
Life brings me a knowledge that no teaching, no reading, no instruction can ever give to me.
Brothers and sisters, what people can give to us is instruction, information, teaching, doctrine, and tradition. But there is no life, no relationship.
When God reveals His Son in you, it is life. It is relationship. It is real. It is living. It is eternal. It is inward.
Life gives us a knowledge. It is heart knowledge, not head knowledge.
Now, brothers and sisters, we have lots of head knowledge, especially those who are educated. Yet people who may not be educated—perhaps even illiterate—may know God better than we do.
But those who are educated often have too much head knowledge and too little heart knowledge. Now, that is our problem. What we really need to seek is heart knowledge, not head knowledge. Head knowledge will tell us about God, but only heart knowledge will give us God.
What is spiritual knowledge? Spiritual knowledge is the knowledge of God. We know Him. We know Him in our spirit. He has been revealed to us. We have a touch, a contact, with Him. We know that it is real, living, vibrant, and working in us.
Spiritual knowledge is that we know God. We know His will. We know His mind. We know His character. We know that He is holy, that He is righteous, that He is light, and that He is love. We know Him.
How much do we really know God? How real is God to us?
Spiritual knowledge is love. Love is life. With that love, we are able to discern what is of God and what is not of God.
We do not live by the knowledge of good and evil. We do not merely see things as right or wrong, good or bad. Instead, with the love of God filling our hearts, our life principle is this: Is it of God, or is it not of God?
There are many things that may be good. There are many things that may be right. But if you have spiritual knowledge, if there is love in your heart, even those things that are right and good may not be of God.
To you, it is a matter of whether something is of God or not of God, whether it pleases Him or displeases Him. Now, that principle of living is different.
What is spiritual knowledge? Spiritual knowledge is the knowledge of Christ. You know, Christ is the wisdom of God.
Spiritual knowledge is not an it. That is to say, it is not a teaching, a doctrine, an instruction, a rule, or a regulation. That is not spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is not it; it is He. It is a Person.
For instance, when we think of righteousness, how can we be righteous before God? We know that God is righteous and we are unrighteous. How can we be righteous before God?
We discover that our righteousness is not an it; it is a He. Christ is our righteousness.
In the beginning, we may feel that we are unrighteous, but thank God Christ took our sins away. If we believe in Him, our sins are forgiven, and God calls us righteous. We are justified, just as if we had never sinned.
That is true. But, brothers and sisters, if our understanding of righteousness is only that God has reckoned us righteous, that is not enough. We have to see that the reason God has reckoned us righteous is because Christ is our righteousness.
It is not that we have changed to become righteous. We are clothed with Christ, who is our righteousness. God has made Christ our righteousness.
What is spiritual knowledge? It is not merely a teaching. We have heard teaching about sanctification: God is holy; therefore, we must be holy. We try very hard to be holy, to be separated from the world.
But, brothers and sisters, holiness is not an experience. Holiness is a Person. One day you realize that holiness is not you. It is not your work. It is not your striving. Holiness is Christ. He lives in you. That is holiness.
That is spiritual knowledge, and that kind of knowledge sets you free. So, brothers and sisters, what we really need is spiritual knowledge.
Now, how do we obtain spiritual knowledge? I think that is a very important question.
Seeing that spiritual knowledge is life knowledge—that is to say, it comes from life, from divine life and not our natural life—then the only way to attain more spiritual knowledge must be through life.
When your life increases, when your realization of life increases, then your spiritual knowledge automatically increases. The way to spiritual knowledge is by the way of life.
How we begin is the way that we need to continue on. That is what our brother mentioned about pressing on. We have begun, and now we need to pursue and continue in that way.
I would like to use an illustration: metabolism. In our physical life, as we grow, there is a process going on. It is the dying of old cells and the coming forth of new cells. It is a process of dying and living, dying and living. That is the process of life.
In spiritual life, you find the same thing. There is a spiritual metabolism going on. Daily there is a dying, and daily there is a living. In that way, you grow spiritually, and you grow in spiritual knowledge.
To put it another way, our brothers have all mentioned it, because it is one message: the cross. The way of the increase of spiritual life is by way of the cross. Therefore, the increase of spiritual knowledge is also by way of the cross.
Now, the cross of our Lord Jesus is more than a historical fact. People may believe that two thousand years ago, outside the city of Jerusalem, there at Golgotha, Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross. They may believe it as a historical fact.
That is knowledge, but that is head knowledge, soul knowledge. It does not help you in any way.
Or you may be able to see that the cross of our Lord Jesus is more than a historical fact, because it is an eternal redemption. When you look at the cross of our Lord Jesus, you see two aspects of the cross.
One aspect is the objective aspect of the cross. That is, we need to see what our Lord has accomplished for us on Calvary’s cross.
There on the cross, our Lord Jesus accomplished something tremendous for us. What He accomplished on Calvary’s cross is eternal. Even though it happened two thousand years ago, it is still living and fresh today because it is eternal.
Its value never diminishes. Its value never changes. Before God, it is eternal. When you think of the objective aspect of the cross, it is truth: God’s truth, settled, accomplished, eternal, and unaffected by environment, circumstance, time, or place.
We need to see the objective aspect of the cross of our Lord Jesus.
On the cross, the Bible tells us in 1 Peter 2:24:
Who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.
When our Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He took all our sins and bore them upon Himself. He paid the penalty of sin, which is death.
The death of our Lord Jesus on the cross is more than a physical thing. People put Him to death, but in the last three hours God Himself crushed the Lord Jesus on the cross. God forsook Him. Why? Because He bore our sins in His own body.
The Lamb of God was the substitute sacrifice for us. Because of this, He tasted eternal death for us. During those three hours on the cross, He was separated from the Father, and He cried out.
Brothers and sisters, when our Lord died on the cross, He took our sins with Him. That is the reason why, when we believe in Him—that is, believe that He bore our sins in His body on the cross—our sins are remitted.
The moment you lift the eyes of faith and see Christ bearing your sins in His body, your sins are gone. That is the eternal effect.
It was true two thousand years ago, and it is true today. Just by faith, believing that Christ bore your sins away, your sins are forgiven. I think we have all experienced this.
You also find that on the same cross, at the same time, our Lord did something more for us. He not only bore our sins—the sins that we have committed—in His body on the cross.
He also bore us in Himself. He took us in Him, and when He died, we died in Him. In other words, He is the last Adam.
He embraced the whole Adamic race in Himself. When He was put on the cross and died, the Adamic race came to an end.
Our old man—there is only one old man: Adam, not many old men. In Romans 6, it says, “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him.” Every one of us is in that old man, no matter how young we are.
We are all in that old man: all creation, everything old. Our old man was crucified with Christ. Why? Because that old man was in Him, in Christ.
Because we were crucified, no longer do we live; it is Christ now who lives in us. He not only took our sins away; He took us sinners away—this old creation, our old man. He took it away with Him on the cross.
When He was raised from the dead, we were raised with Him in newness of life. That is the reason Paul could say in Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
When you see the cross, you see not only your sins taken away; you see yourself taken away. Every time by faith you look at the cross, you see that you were there, crucified in Christ, not in yourself. It is a matter that we have to believe and take by faith.
For instance, if you look within yourself, you may not be able to see that all your sins are forgiven. In recent years, among Christian circles, there has been teaching that tries to bring you back to your childhood to see what happened, hoping that it can be dealt with.
But, brothers and sisters, if you do not see Christ and are trying to look within yourself at all the days from childhood until you knew Christ, you may find many things still there. But thank God, we do not need to look within ourselves. We look to Christ, and we know our sins are all forgiven. There is no need to heal the memory; it is already healed.
The same thing is true of our old man. If we look within ourselves, we find our old man, our flesh, very living and very active. Every time you look within yourself, you find yourself there.
But every time you look off unto Jesus, you see your old man on the cross. Now who lives in you? Christ.
These are objective truths. These are things to which you contribute nothing. You do not make them work. They are already done. It is finished.
Do not try to add anything to it. If you try to add anything to it, you destroy it. It is absolute truth that you receive by faith. You believe it as done. That is the objective truth of the cross.
But the cross has another aspect, which is the subjective aspect. When you come to the subjective aspect, it is experience—our daily experience.
This morning, we would like to emphasize our daily experience. Objectively, truthfully speaking, you are already dead. The One who lives in you is Christ, no longer you.
But subjectively speaking, you find yourself still very active. Within yourself, it is as if there are two persons living there, two trees there: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
You find that Christ is there, but yourself is also there. These two are always struggling against each other. There is a civil war going on within yourself. Now, that is experience.
Remember, your experience does not change or affect the objective truth of what Christ has done for you. No matter how you feel, what God has done in Christ on the cross stands. It never changes.
What changes is within yourself. You experience something there. That is why the Bible says we need to know the subjective aspect of the cross. Knowing the objective truth of the cross is not enough. We must also know the subjective aspect of the cross in our lives.
What is the subjective aspect of the cross? To put it simply, it is the Holy Spirit who makes real in your daily life what has already been done on Calvary’s cross two thousand years ago.
The Holy Spirit makes real to you what is real on Calvary’s cross. The cross has to be planted within you.
That is why, in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul says, “Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus.” Or, to translate it more accurately, “the slaying of Jesus.”
In other words, there is a slaying going on within you. It slays everything that is of the old creation. It slays everything that is of you, everything that is of the old nature, everything that is of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
On the other hand, there is living—the slaying of Jesus and the life of Jesus. The more the slaying, the more the life of Jesus. That is the way life goes, and that is the way spiritual knowledge grows.
The Apostle Paul says that it is God who spoke out of darkness, “Light shall shine,” and that light shines in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
You know, the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ shines upon us. When that light shines upon us, it enters into us and becomes a light within us.
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Now, brothers and sisters, because life is in you, light is also within you. There is a divine life in you, and there is a divine light in you.
You did not have that before you believed in the Lord Jesus. In mysticism, people believe that everybody has a divine spark in him or her. That is unscriptural.
But when we believe in the Lord Jesus, there is a divine spark there. There is a divine life there, a divine light there. That light will shine upon our path.
When that light begins to shine upon your path, what happens? You find the cross begins to work within you. When the light shines, it exposes. It reveals darkness.
Anything within you that is still dark will be exposed. It requires—it commands, it demands—that this be killed. Now, that is the cross.
Our old man, our flesh, likes old habits. You know, when you have old shoes or an old hat, you do not want to throw it away. So there is a cross working there, working against your natural life, your soul life, and it has to be slain.
That brings us to what our brother said: obedience. In subjective experience, obedience is the way. Objectively, faith; subjectively, obedience.
Obedience to the light of life, to the light that comes by the Spirit of God. He enlightens you from within.
The Holy Spirit will also arrange your circumstances. We call it the discipline of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit arranges our circumstances.
Believe, brothers and sisters, we who are the Lord’s are loved by Him so much, and cared for by Him so much, that even the very hairs of our head are numbered. Can you believe that our circumstances come by chance, accidentally? No. He arranges our circumstances.
By the working together of the light that shines from within—the light of life—and the circumstances that the Holy Spirit arranges around us, He breaks us. He slays us, in order that we may live in newness of life.
In going through that process, you gain spiritual knowledge.
The Apostle Paul says that we are earthen vessels, but there is a treasure within us.
So far as we are concerned, we are earthen vessels: opaque, not transparent, fragile, easily broken, common. But there in us is a treasure: Christ. His life is in us, a treasure.
For the treasure to be manifested, for the power of the treasure to be manifested, there needs to be a breaking, a cracking. When there is a breaking, a cracking, then the light within shines forth.
Sometimes the Lord allows us to come to our wits’ end. We come to our wits’ end and do not know what to do. But this is not the end. As a matter of fact, it is the beginning.
I like Phillips’ translation: “You may be knocked down, but you will never be knocked out.”
Now, this is Christian experience. It is the working of the cross, the slaying and the living. As you go through that process, what happens? You obtain spiritual knowledge.
It is not head knowledge. It is working knowledge, as our brothers say—experiential knowledge. You know Him in a real way.
To put it again in a different way, it is dealing. Brothers and sisters, spiritual knowledge comes through dealings. God will deal with you, and you will deal with God. Through those mutual dealings, you come into spiritual knowledge.
God loves us so much. Once He puts His hand on you, He will never let you go. You know that?
But on our side, will we let Him go?
God will not let us go. He will work upon us and in us until He transforms us and conforms us to the image of His beloved Son. That is His will. That is His love. He will never give up. He will never let go.
But oftentimes, we let go of God. Now, that is our problem.
When God deals with us, sometimes we despise His chastening, His dealings. That is to say, when God is really working in us, we ignore it. We despise it. We do not take it to heart.
We allow circumstances to come and go, trials to come and go, and never learn a lesson. We despise His training, His dealings.
On the other hand, we may faint under His chastening. When the Lord touches us a little bit, we faint. So He can do very little with us.
He cannot say a word. If He says something hard, we say, “It is too hard,” and we quit following Him.
That happened to many disciples when our Lord was on earth. Many followed Him, and the Bible says they were disciples. But when our Lord began to tell them, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which abides unto eternal life. I am the bread of life that came down from heaven. Eat Me; drink Me,” people said, “What are You talking about? That is too hard.”
Even His disciples said, “That is too hard,” and many left Him. The Lord turned to the twelve and said, “Would ye also go away?” He gave them freedom to do so.
The Lord is so loving. He never forces us in any way. If you want to go, even though it breaks His heart, you may go.
Thank God, Peter said:
Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.
And we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God.
Now, brothers and sisters, when the Lord is dealing with you, do you welcome it, or do you faint under it? Do you reject it? Do you despise it?
Those who deal with God and let God deal with them grow in spiritual knowledge. They know God in a real way, and that is the only way.
If you are careless, you miss many opportunities. Spiritual knowledge is for the diligent. You have to be diligent.
Brothers and sisters, how many dealings have you gone through since you believed in the Lord Jesus? When the Spirit of God is dealing with your sins, what is your response?
Do you experience what Paul experienced in Romans 7? He wanted to please God and keep the commandment. He found himself unable to do it, but he willed to do it. He tried and tried and tried. He was dealing with his sin.
Until he discovered that sin is a law, more than he could cope with, the only thing he could see was this: “In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”
Where is the deliverance? Thank God, through Jesus Christ. He saw that deliverance is in Christ. Christ is his deliverance—not only his Deliverer, but also his deliverance.
Do we have these experiences, these dealings? Do we have dealings with the world?
I believe that when you believe in the Lord Jesus, the Spirit of God will shine upon you and show you what the world is. In the beginning, it may be the things of the world. Perhaps there is something that represents the world to you. It may be a small thing, or it may be a person.
But the Lord begins to deal with you. Are you willing to let go in order that you may be holy?
Do you have dealings with the Lord concerning this matter of your flesh? You used to live by your own flesh—your own will, your own mind, your own emotions, your own energy—even in serving the Lord.
But the light of life begins to shine, and God begins to arrange the environment to show that this is you; this is not Christ.
When you are revealed in these things, God is dealing with you. What do you do? Do you continue stubbornly, keep your integrity, keep yourself intact, and refuse to allow God to break you? Or do you yield to the Lord and be delivered?
We can go on and on. How about this matter of mammon? The Lord certainly will touch you on this matter. Whom are you serving? Are you serving God or serving mammon?
When God is dealing with you, what is the result? Do you faint, or do you despise Him and go on as usual?
Brothers and sisters, how about God’s dealings in your family life? I often feel strange.
When you believe in the Lord Jesus, or after you believe in the Lord Jesus, there is bound to be change—not only in your personal life, but in your family life.
But strangely, after we are saved, we still live our family life in the usual natural way. The husband, the wife, the father, the mother, the children—we are still trying to fulfil our functions naturally. There is no change.
The husband does not seek the Lord as to how he can be the head of the family. The wife does not seek the Lord as to how she should submit herself to her husband.
The children, when they believe in the Lord Jesus, do not seek the Lord as to how to honour and respect their parents.
Brothers and sisters, why is it that Scripture has so much instruction on these things? Because you have a new life, and the light of that life ought to shine upon your family life.
There needs to be transformation there—dealings. The Lord must be dealing with you.
In the church life, the same thing applies. God has put us together, brothers and sisters. When we are serving the Lord together, you find that many, many problems arise. It demands forgiveness, humility, submission, and all these things.
Are we learning through dealings, or do we want to have our own way?
In every aspect of our life, even in our service of the Lord, there must be dealings. When we first believe in the Lord Jesus, we feel that we need to serve, but we usually serve God according to our own will.
That is what we think God ought to love, and that is the way we are serving Him. Then the Spirit of God begins to speak to us and deal with us. Do we accept the cross?
Are we brought to the point where we see that without Him we can do nothing?
My time is up. Let me conclude with this.
If you read the Word of God, if you read the biographies in the Bible—in the Old Testament and New Testament—our brothers have already mentioned some: Paul, Peter, Jacob, and others.
You find, even today, that those who have gained spiritual knowledge gained it through dealings.
Jacob wrestled with God—or God wrestled with him—and transformed him from Jacob to Israel.
David knew the Lord so well. Why? Because in everything he inquired of the Lord. He brought everything to the Lord.
In Psalm 27, David says:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
When David did not inquire, he failed. He did not inquire when he first brought the ark to the city of David, and God’s judgment came. He did not inquire when he numbered the people, and God’s judgment came.
But every time he inquired and brought the matter to the Lord, the Lord revealed His mind. Now, brothers and sisters, do we inquire? When things happen to us, do we bring them to the Lord and inquire of Him?
That is dealing. You know, prayer. Do we bring everything to Him in prayer?
If you read, you will find that everyone who really knows the Lord, everyone who really has spiritual knowledge, has had much dealing with the Lord, and the Lord has had much dealing with them. That is the only way.
We should see this. Do not faint under His discipline. Do not despise Him, because He is trying to train us that we may be partakers of His holiness.
May the Lord help us. Let us pray.
Dear Lord, do deliver us from anything that is superficial, anything that is counterfeit. Lord, we want to be real. We want to be real with Thee and real with ourselves.
We pray that Thou wilt enlighten us, that we may see when Thy love comes to us in dealings, that we may embrace them, cooperate, yield, and believe.
We pray, Lord, that by Thy grace we may grow in life. We may grow in spiritual knowledge. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.