Lord, You said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden,” and that we would find rest—Lord, rest for our souls.
Lord, we are so weary of this soul life, so weary of trying to live by our own means. Lord, we do want to come to You and learn to enter Your rest continually.
Lord, You said that we would know the truth, and the truth would make us free. Lord, show us a greater vision of Him who is the truth this morning. Set us free, Lord, into Your glorious liberty of the sons of God. We will give You all the glory, and we ask it in Your precious name. Amen.
I have a few addenda to make from after the last meeting. When I got back to my room, I was thinking, and in the name of accuracy, I realized that the library at Alexandria was not one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
I went through my mind: the Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens, Solomon’s Temple, the Temple of Zeus, somebody’s mausoleum, the Colossus of Rhodes, the lighthouse—not the library, although they both start with “Li.” Probably the lighthouse was directing all those tours to the library. We would go there on library junkets.
The other thing was that, in all the message and everything, I did not have a chance to complete the record—to give you, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story concerning our brother Apollos. I thought I ought to do that, since I will be spending a long, long eternity with him, and I would not want there to be any apology I would have to make at that time.
Of course, everything I said concerning him up to that point, I think, is accurate. I think he was a man who had great zeal, gifting, desire, and all these things, and also a man who had not been dealt with by the cross.
I think he did go to Corinth and cause some problems—not that he meant to. But if the cross is not at work in our lives, we cannot help but be a problem.
One thing that tells us this a little more is actually at the end of 1 Corinthians. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 16:12:
But concerning Apollos our brother, I encouraged him greatly to come to you with the brethren;
and it was not at all his desire to come now, but he will come when he has opportunity.
Not alone this time, but with brothers. And it was not at all his desire to come now. I thought, Apollos—this man who is almost, as it were, stooping to be a coworker, letting you be a coworker with him, or letting you have something to do with him—this man who was called to be the apostle to the Gentiles.
This was not just something that we know about. Paul tells us in Galatians that he got with Peter and the pillars, James and John, and they all decided that Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcision and Paul to the uncircumcision. This was something that was known, and something Apollos had to have found out about.
Here was the man who went around not just giving wonderful sermons and giving light, but actually laying foundations. The Lord was establishing His testimony in this place and that place through Paul’s ministry.
So he says, “Look, go back with the brothers,” and Apollos says, “That’s not convenient with me right now.” He has his own agenda, you know. It is more proof that this man desperately needed this work to begin in his life—the work that he did not even know about before, not even being familiar with this baptism.
But the rest of the story is in Titus 3. A letter written perhaps seven years after the Corinthian letter contains this wonderful line. Paul writes to Titus:
Diligently help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way, so that nothing is lacking for them.
So seven years later, praise the Lord, God has been working. I do not think he is the same brother who went in and, without meaning to, caused a problem—an independent agent who was not going to go back with brothers and was going to do everything at his own leisure.
Praise the Lord, they were still in fellowship, still working together. Something had to give. I think perhaps it was our brother’s willingness to know about and take up his cross daily, deny himself, follow the Lord, and be built up with brothers. It is through the cross.
Today we are going to talk about being built by the Spirit. Turn to Zechariah. I will not read all the Scriptures I was going to read in Zechariah, since they were already read last night, but I do want to read this one verse.
Zechariah 4:6:
Then he answered and said to me, This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, saying,
Not by might,
nor by power,
but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Building by the Spirit.
You remember I mentioned that John, in the eighth chapter of his Gospel, records the Pharisees asking the Lord Jesus once again, “Who are You?” The word that the Lord made living in my heart was His reply: “What have I been saying to you from the beginning?”
From the beginning—from the beginning of the Bible—it is evident that the Lord’s purpose, His eternal purpose, is all wrapped up in God coming into man, inside of man, by choice.
It would have been so easy, and sometimes I think, “Lord, why did You not create man, form him out of the dust of the ground—red dirt—and then, when You breathed the breath of life into him, breathe again? Breathe Your Spirit into him.”
Then we would have Adam in a garden with many trees to nourish his body and two spiritual trees. This would solve a lot of problems.
Did you ever wonder why, when we come into the story, Adam had not already eaten of the tree of life? Perhaps we think the Lord pointed out the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and said, “Now, don’t eat of that tree,” and figured Adam would be bumping around the garden, eating of this and that, stumble over the tree of life, and perhaps eat some of it.
But that is not it at all. Anyone with the innate wisdom to name all those animals, and to give each one the name it should have, knew about the two trees and could have gone first to the tree of life and taken of it.
It says something to us about this choice. You say, “Well, why wouldn’t anyone want to do that?” Well, let us see.
Adam was created a living soul. He had a sinless body. He had a functioning spirit. He could communicate with God and had been given dominion on the earth.
He had to choose to go to a tree and partake of spiritual fruit, which meant that the life of God would come into his spirit. His soul would then take a place of yieldedness and submission to the Spirit of God, and he could become a bondslave.
Now, he had been told not to take of the other tree, so he had not partaken of that one. He was sort of really there between two opinions.
In one sense, perhaps he thought, “If I take of this tree of life, I could lose everything. I wonder what it is like just to be someone completely yielded, someone completely submitted. My soul, instead of being whatever it might become, would just be that which magnified Another.”
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
Whatever it was, he did not partake of that tree. Even without sin entering into it, it was still a choice. There was still going to be something for him: either that tree—“I must decrease and He must increase”—or the other.
And he had not done it. The Lord was after a man who, by choice, by an act of volition, made that decision: “I will take this life into me, and I will take my place in submission to this glorious God, who is dwelling forever united with me in my spirit. I will give my being over to being a magnification of Him.”
The Lord can use that man. The Lord always intended to have that man. The Lord’s eternal purpose is all concerning that sort of man.
Then when Eve, or Isha, was deceived and partook of the other tree, and then Adam partook of it, they fell. They became independent agents.
Perhaps that was what they were thinking about when they were between two opinions. That is what the enemy came to them with. In essence, first of all, he says, “God is a liar. You surely shall not die. God said that? No, no, no, no.”
Then he says, “Not only that, He knows that in the day you eat of this tree, you will be like God.” Now, which would you choose? You can be a bondservant over here, or you can be like God.
Maybe Adam said to the Lord, “Let me pray about it.” Is that not what we always say when we do not want to make a decision right now? “Let me pray about it.” Well, who was he praying to?
He ate of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and he became this self. His eyes were opened. His passions now could flow like rivers through the sky.
They became a kind of man that the Lord could not use at all. This kind of man could not find his place in the purpose of the living God.
From the very beginning, it was all about the Lord coming to dwell inside man by man’s own volition, his own choice.
It is very amazing to me that the Lord has constructed a universe in which everything is according to His sovereignty, and yet at the same time everything depends upon our decisions and our will to choose Him.
I am like David: such knowledge is too great for me. I know these two things are true, but I live in responsibility. Maybe the whole universe is according to the Lord’s sovereignty—it is—but I live in a place where every day I get up and make a decision.
What will I do today? What life will I live today? Who will I glorify today? Who will have the throne in my life today? This decision is very important.
I once knew a guy who was some sort of Calvinist. He had his own thing going, and basically everything he did, if it was a mess, he said, “Well, it was God’s will.”
He was a contractor. If he slept until three o’clock and had promised a lady he would be there at ten o’clock, the brothers would go wake him up. “You were supposed to be someplace. The lady is calling.”
He would say, “Well, it was God’s will to sleep in today.” How can you say that? “Well, I did it, didn’t I? Proves it.” So he was always at peace with himself.
Maybe he has changed. I have not seen him in years and years and years. But the Lord’s purpose has always been about God coming on the inside of man by an act of man’s volition to choose the Lord to come and dwell within him.
Now, it is interesting because we do not know everything. In fact, we know very little. We begin the journey, but we do not really know where we are going or the means to get there. By the grace of God, we begin it.
It is interesting the different reasons people have that are not really the Lord for desiring the Spirit. Lance last night mentioned Simon the magician, or Simon the sorcerer, who really desired power.
He saw these apostles able to lay their hands on people and things would happen—not tricks, but real, powerful things—and he desired this.
I remember being a young man and reading the Scriptures and saying, “Oh, if only I could go down to the VA hospital, where all those paraplegics are, and just begin going through and putting my hands on people. I could clean that place out for the glory of God, of course.”
I would slip in and slip out, and they would not even know my name. But I am sure I would have been negligent enough to drop something that identified me, so all the reporters the next day would have said, “Hold all calls, Miss Jones. I have got to talk to these people.”
We have all sorts of hidden motives for wanting the Spirit of God. But the one the Lord wants us to have is that we would just choose Himself.
It would not be for power. It would not be for works. It would not be to do great things. It would not be to foretell, to have all knowledge, or all gifts. It would just be to know Him.
We all sing that song, “Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing.” Do not sing that like a Christian atheist. Think about it: knowing You, Lord, there is nothing else but knowing You.
Knowing You in that rightly related way: the Lord of heaven and earth, the God of creation, taking up residence here—the Holy Spirit of God.
What else is there for me to do but to come to that One in yieldedness and submission and say, “Oh, Lord, be my life. Be my life.” This is the kind of man God intended and can use.
We have this self-nature, which we talked about last time, and God’s provision for that. God has made provision for our escape from that. So now God does have a man, if we choose, that He can use—a new man, a new creation.
In the fullness of time, there was no such man on the earth for all those centuries. Then, in the fullness of time, the Lord Jesus came forth: a prototype and a progenitor.
He was a different kind of man, a completely different sort of man. He was a man who had the living God dwelling in Him, and He always put Himself in submission, subjection, and yieldedness to this indwelling Father.
We do not often think about all the thirty years that the Lord lived with this life within Him in a hidden way. What do you suppose was the difference between the Lord Jesus at twenty-nine and the Lord Jesus at thirty?
Do you suppose He was not ready at twenty-nine? No, I am sure at twenty-nine He could have done everything He could have done at thirty. He knew why He had come forth.
He was yearning to do the Father’s will, and He was willing to wait. That was the Father’s will. He was willing to remain hidden and not get out ahead of His Father.
He did not say, “They are perishing. I have got to do something. I know who I am.” Basically, the Lord’s stance was, “I come to do Thy will, Father.” He lived a hidden life with the Father for thirty years.
Then when He came forth, oh, He was so other than we are.
I think I said to you in the first time we had together, that first evening, that each of these messages would be linked to one of the testimonies the Lord has given us to repeat over and over again. Baptism was the first one, concerning the cross.
This morning, it is this bread that we break every week and share among ourselves—the need of the Lord, who said, “This is My body.” From the very beginning, there were two trees. What will you eat?
From the beginning, when the Lord Jesus was baptized by John in the water and driven into the wilderness by the Father’s Spirit, here was a yielded, submitted man—the Son of God—willing to be driven into the wilderness by the Spirit.
He fasted because it was the will of God for forty days, becoming very hungry. In that context, the enemy came to test Him.
Man was tested in a garden filled with trees, full of fruit and things to eat, having not missed any meals. The Lord Jesus was tested in the wilderness, near physical death, forty days without any sustenance.
The enemy came to Him and said, “If You are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread.”
The Lord Jesus did not say, “The Son of God shall not live by bread alone.” He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.”
He was a different sort of man. He was the progenitor, the first one, the prototype of this man that God could use for His purpose, for His eternal purpose.
He was a man who had God dwelling on the inside—not just dwelling there for works of power or moments of ecstasy, but dwelling there to be known, to be fellowshipped with, to be submitted to, yielded to, and magnified through His soul.
He had been talking to that woman in Nablus, or Sychar, Shechem—that woman at the well. She ran back to the city to tell everyone, “I met a man who told me everything from my whole life.”
His disciples had come back with the food they had bought. They said, “Rabbi, eat.” And He said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
They wondered, “Did somebody else give Him something to eat?” Did you ever think how difficult it was for the Lord Jesus to go around with these men?
Usually I think, “Well, if He had selected me, He would have really gotten a bargain.” Peter and I would have been the biggest bargain. “Lord, You chose rightly when You chose me, because I am faithful—stick like glue. I will never leave You or forsake You.”
No, He is the One who never leaves us or forsakes us. It is very easy for me to leave Him or forsake Him. They did not know what He was about. They were the other kind of man, actually. But He knew what they would become.
What a cost it was to tolerate them. They would come in from the country, and He would ask, “What were you talking about along the way?” Well, they were talking about what the other kind of man always talks about: who is the greatest?
Peter was the prototype disciple. Whatever mistakes he made, they all made those things. Quite often it says, “Then they all said the same thing.”
He had to go around with them, and He loved them. Do you know what a cost it was for Him to love them? They were just like me and those paraplegics.
They came back after He deputized them and sent them out. “Even the demons were subject to us in Your name,” they said, telling Him all the things they had done. He said, “Do not rejoice over this, but that your names were written in the book of life.”
They liked the power. What kind of aggravation was it to Him when they were on the way to Jerusalem and that Samaritan city would not receive the Lord Jesus because He was traveling with His face toward Jerusalem?
James and John said, “We have a solution.” This was not an idle thing; they had experienced power before. It reminds me of David and his nephew saying, “Just give me the word, and I will put old Saul out of his misery. I will not have to do it twice.”
“Just say the word. You do not have to do it. Do not raise Your hand. These people have dissed us in the Samaritan village. Lord, do You want us to call fire down from heaven and consume them?”
He said, “You do not know what spirit you are of.”
Was it a wonderful thing for Him to always be with these people? Sometimes you are at work or somewhere you have to be around people. Maybe you go to a family reunion, and you have relatives who are not saved and are just worldly—not merely worldly with things, but worldly to the core.
You are there, checking your watch to see how much longer you have to be there, trying not to show too much condescension toward these worldlings. You are much closer to them than the Lord Jesus was to the disciples.
How He tolerated them. I do not think they ever knew, except when He would marvel at their lack of faith and say, “How much longer will I be with you?” But He loved them, and He kept them. Not one perished except the son of perdition.
They could not understand Him. Praise the Lord, every now and then the Father would give one of them revelation: “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona.” The Lord probably said, “Oh, thank You, Father. Blessed are you, Simon Barjona. You did not figure this out. My Father showed this to you. Father, show him more.”
He was always saying things they did not understand. “What does He mean? What is He talking about?” They could not understand Him.
Remember after He fed the five thousand? The very next day He was speaking, and He said, “I am the bread of life. I am the bread of heaven. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you.”
It caused many people who had been following Him to stumble. They were not His disciples anymore. He turned to His own and said, “Do you want to go away too?”
Peter said, bless his name, “Lord, where do we have to go? You have the words of eternal life.” They knew that much. They could not understand Him, but they knew He had them.
Again, He is speaking of being the bread of life. Now, not only does He have food they do not know about, but He is food they do not know about.
It is interesting because that last night He spent with them, our Lord Jesus—God, who knows all things—had spent thirty-three and a half years in a circumstance He never had been in before, and never will be again: in total humility, in the likeness of sinful flesh.
He suffered, tempted in anything that you could be tempted in, yet not sinning. He learned obedience through the things He suffered. He was with these men, tolerated them, and loved them so much. This was His last night.
Sometimes if I am going someplace and I know I will be back in a month, I will see my wife and children again. But sometimes we embrace and say our goodbyes like it is the last night, because we do not know what will happen between now and then. This world is a very unpredictable place.
The Lord was God, but He was a man. This was His last night with these men He had loved and suffered with all this time. He was going to tell them everything that was on His heart.
Dana touched on this the other day. John—about twenty-five percent of his Gospel—is simply the Lord pouring out His heart to these men on that last night.
He knew He would go to the cross, be raised from the dead, and come to dwell in them by the Spirit. He knew that. But still, He had all the emotions of a man who would never again be with them in this way.
Even when He was in their midst afterward, He was in a resurrected, glorified body. He was the resurrected Christ. Things were different.
He spent that night speaking to them of many things on His heart. He said specifically some things about this life coming into them—which is what the Lord has wanted from the beginning: men with this life in them.
Men who, of their own volition, receive this life, and then after they receive it, men who, of their own volition, come to Him and know Him. That becomes the basic meaning of their life, their vocation.
Job one today: knowing Christ. Job two: knowing Christ. Job three: knowing Christ. Job four: repent when forgetting one, two, and three, and then know Christ—turning, renewing your mind, knowing Him.
These are all things we know and have heard and have known for years. May the Lord cause them to be living to us.
The Lord said that night, “I am leaving you.” He had been telling them this all along, but they could not hear it. They were making plans for the kingdom, hoping to sit one on His right and one on His left, arguing about places and niches in the kingdom of the Messiah.
John 14:16-17:
And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;
that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him;
but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
Up until this time, the Lord Jesus Himself, in the midst of the disciples, was doing the work and taking the place of the Holy Spirit. That is why He would call them to account: “You do not know what spirit you are of. What were you discussing on the way? Where is your faith?” He was also nurturing them and loving them.
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
Because when the Holy Spirit comes, the Holy Spirit is God, and God is one. So in the Holy Spirit, Christ is in you, the hope of glory. Also, the Father comes. He said, “The Father and I will come and make Our abode with him.”
John 14:23:
If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.
John 14:26:
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
John 16:13:
But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth;
for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak;
and He will disclose to you what is to come.
Men, finally—finally, after all these ages—men who have God dwelling in them, that the Lord would be their life.
There is another thing He said that is basically the same as all the things I just read to you. In John 15, He said:
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.
If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.
By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.
Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
This is the behavior of this new creation, this new kind of man, that the eternal purpose of God is all bound up in. God cannot have His purpose unless there are men and women who have God Himself dwelling in their spirits.
You are a child, a babe in Christ, one who has been born from above. Then you come to Him again and again, and then finally continually, dwelling there in the Lord’s presence, abiding in Him, yielding to Him, submitting to Him.
Your words are His words. Your work—His work—is your work. You do what you see Him doing. You are being changed into His likeness.
The whole creation is groaning, in travail, yearning and waiting for the revelation of such men and women.
This new man, this new species, of whom the Lord Jesus is the prototype and the progenitor—for all who are part of this new creation have been baptized into Him and have received His life.
This is what we have been called to.
Not just, “Well, you believe in the Lord; He forgave your sins. Now you do not have to go to hell, and when you die, you will go to heaven.” If He does not change me, I would be like the drunk uncle at a family reunion.
What would a person like me do if He does not work in my life, if He does not change my basic nature? Everything that is not Christ will not be there. There would be very little of me.
If one mina becomes ten, there will be a great amount of Christ in me for His glorious, eternal purpose. But if I just live my own life—if I have the Holy Spirit but do not walk by the Spirit, do not seek out the Lord continually in spirit for love and fellowship—then what?
It is like someone you were in love with. When you first meet the person you believe you are going to marry, nothing can keep you away from that person. Well, maybe something can, but you are waiting until every obstacle is removed. Your heart is there.
What sort of marriage would it be if you were very lackadaisical about that? “Well, if I see her today or if I do not, it is okay. Whatever. There will be plenty of time to be together after we are married.”
Is that the heart that is on fire? Is that first love? Is that passion? Our Lord is passionate toward us. That is why they call the movie The Passion.
What did He do? What was He willing to suffer to gain you and me? He loves us so much.
This indwelling life is more than something just to have. The Lord prayed after spending the whole night—a fourth of the Book of John—telling them everything that was on His heart and telling them, really for the first time, about the indwelling Spirit.
They had heard things before but could not understand. Finally, at the end of it, they said, “Now we understand.” I wonder if they did, but they understood something. Then He prayed.
John 17:11:
And I am no more in the world, and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to Thee, Holy Father.
Keep them in Thy name, the name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are.
John 17:20-23:
I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word;
that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us, that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.
And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;
I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.
This salvation that we have been saved into is this precious fellowship that for ages was between the Father and the Son. The Lord Himself has brought us into it.
He has brought us into it not just as individuals, but with the same unity the Father and the Son have—the unity of the Spirit, the same life of the Father, the life of the Son. He has put that life in all of us.
We are one not because we have the same light, dress the same way, come from the same background, speak the same language, or have the same socioeconomic background. We are one because we have the same life.
We are all in Christ together, and we will be eternally, eternally. That is why I wanted to make it right with my brother Apollos.
We are one. Nothing we need to do but just walk and receive everyone who has that life in him.
John 17:24:
Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
If you think that means when you pass away you are going to go to glory to be with Jesus, I beseech you to think again.
My Bible says that I have been seated with Christ in the heavenly places.
The Lord asked the Father, “I desire that they be with Me where I am.” I believe the Father gave the Son what He asked, and I believe the Scriptures when they say I am seated with Him in the heavenly places.
This life that is in me—the life of God that has become one with my spirit—is indivisible. If Christ is in me and He is on the throne, I am where He is. It is not a time-and-space issue at all.
Why is it that we know so little of heavenly places?
Is it sort of like my mother’s house at Christmas time? The whole family comes, and my mother puts all the leaves in the table. It is a long table, with at least sixteen places around it, and she has name cards and puts each one where he should be.
When we get there, we want to know where we will be sitting. Maybe I am sitting in the entry hall looking into the dining room with my sister-in-law, Vicky, and I say, “Well, let’s see. I am over here, and you are over there.” She says, “That’s right, and Linda is over there.”
Someone listening would say, “What are you people talking about? You are not over there and over there. You are here.” Oh, I see—you have a name tag someplace, a positional thing. It is just where you will be, so we say you are already there.
It is not like that at all. It is not like my mother’s house.
Seated with Christ in heavenly places—we hardly know Him at all here. How are we going to know Him in heavenly places? Oh, to know Him. “Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing.”
As we know Him, yield to Him, and submit to Him, our knowledge and experience of Him go beyond just the here and now—beyond simply, “What do I need to do for the next moment?”
The Lord will give light. His word is a lamp unto our feet. He will give us that. But He wants to fellowship with us, to fellowship deeply with us.
Brothers and sisters, you cannot manufacture anything. Being in submission to the Lord Jesus, submitted and yielded to Him, is not manufacturing anything. Let Him reveal Himself to you and me. Let Him show us not only what He is doing so that we can do it, but bring us into intimate fellowship in heavenly places.
We are a heavenly people. We are on the earth because we have physical bodies, and not long from now we will get glorified bodies. Right now, we are limited to these physical bodies.
But the rest of us can be fellowshipping with the Lord here and there, knowing His presence, living in the reality of that throne, seated with Him at His feet.
Let us not settle for a touch two or three times a day. “I have got to get my devotional done so I can get to work and do all the things I have to do today.”
Yes, do your devotional, and then take Jesus to work with you. Drive with Him on the way, park the car with Him, walk inside with Him, greet and speak to everyone, and do everything in His presence.
He does not want to leave you, or for you to leave Him.
There is an example of this in the Gospels, in one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Luke 12. Matthew and Mark put parts of this passage at the end of the Olivet Discourse.
Beginning in Luke 12:35, the Lord says to His disciples:
Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps alight.
Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast, so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes and knocks.
There is our covering—the clothes, garments. Be dressed in readiness. There are the lamps. There is the wedding feast. There are the keys—unlocking the door and opening up to the Lord.
Blessed are those slaves whom the master shall find on the alert when he comes; truly I say to you, that he will gird himself to serve, and have them recline at table, and will come up and wait on them.
Whether he comes in the second watch, or even in the third, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
They are completely intent upon One who is not physically present: dressed, alert, watching, with lamps lit into the night.
But at the same time, they are doing something else. They are feeding their brothers and sisters, giving each one his ration at the proper time. They are members of the body, functioning according to the proper working of each individual part.
They are priests building up the living stones. They are those making the bride ready. There is love going on between them and their brothers and sisters, and at the same time this glorious relationship to their Lord, who has gone away for a little while.
This is abiding in Him. This is “that they may be one, even as We are one.” This relationship they have to the Lord and to one another is a glorious relationship.
Now, I will get off the subject for just a moment. It is what I like to do the most—get off the subject. Well, it is in the Bible and I read it, so I have to comment on it, do I not?
“Whether He comes in the second watch, or even in the third, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.”
Just to give you something to encourage you: the first watch was from six o’clock to nine o’clock. The second watch was from nine o’clock to midnight. The third watch was from midnight to three, and the fourth watch from three to six in the morning.
The Lord did not mention that He might come in the first watch, and He did not mention that He would come in the fourth watch. He said, “Whether He comes in the second or even in the third,” which puts His coming someplace right between those two watches—or, as Matthew 25 says, about midnight.
When Peter said that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, he was actually quoting Psalm 90, one of the psalms written by Moses.
Moses said it this way: a thousand years is as one day, or as a watch in the night. The Lord Jesus said, “Whether He comes in the second watch”—that would be the second thousand years—“or even in the third.”
Sometime, probably at the union of those two watches, about midnight. So you should be saying, “Well, what time is it now?”
It says here that last September we passed into midnight from the crucifixion—or Pentecost, actually. Two thousand years of prophetic years, three hundred and sixty-day years.
This is way off the subject, is it not? Well, I do not know. If it would help our hearts to be alert, on fire, looking for the Lord, and putting all other things away from us, maybe it is part of building.
Maybe we would say to ourselves, “It is not just something we say. Oh, may the Lord—He really is coming, and coming soon, and coming quickly. There is not much time left: enough time to build, but no time to waste.”
There is no time to be dissipated. What did the Lord say about that servant? When his heart changed, when he was no longer dressed in readiness with his lamp looking for the coming of his master, ready to use the keys to open up to him, he said, “My master will be a long time coming.”
It made him begin to be dissipated—to eat and drink with drunkards and get drunk. Dissipation: a dissipated life, no focus. A drunk man is all over the place. Then he began to beat his fellow servants: division in the body.
Where is the love of the brethren in beating the other servants? Why? Because he quit looking for his Lord’s coming.
I am telling you, this anticipation of the coming of the Lord Jesus is not just that we wait for Him because He is coming. He gave it to us because it is one of the greatest purifiers, one of the things that keeps us in the race.
You do not have to figure out how you are going to run the race for the next thirty, forty, or fifty years. Just run the race today, until Jesus comes. If He does not come by tonight, tomorrow run again.
You just have to run today, as long as it is called today. Run the race. We will be ready for Him when He comes.
Not only that, there will be building—building by His Spirit—because our hearts are alive to the indwelling One. We are keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, holding fast to the Head, the living Head, with whom we are seated.
Therefore, we are building up the body in love, feeding our brothers and sisters. Oh, brothers and sisters, this is a great matter of this life by the Spirit.
I began with that Scripture in Zechariah 4. The time of Zechariah prophetically speaks of the day in which we live.
The early church prophetically is spoken of by Solomon’s temple. Solomon built this glorious house.
We read the New Testament and our hearts burn. “Oh, if only we could get back to those days.” Lance said, “Those good old days were not as good as we think.” But I think they were. They were, with all of those things.
Those things were the exception that proves the rule. The fact that they were what they were—we now accept them all as normal.
What happened to Solomon’s house was that the whole work of God went into decline and finally ruin. Then, in His grace and mercy, at the end of that whole Old Testament time, the Lord called—not all the people—back from Babylon.
Ezra 1:5 speaks of those whose spirits He stirred up to come back and rebuild. They were excited. They saw something, something was quickened within them, and they said, “Yes, we will go.”
It was an eight-hundred-mile journey from the most wonderful city in the world, with those hanging gardens and all its technology, to a city that was a ruin.
When they got there, there was only a remnant of them—about 42,360, I believe. There they were, looking at the work to do.
Solomon had built the first house of a whole nation, and now it was just this ragtag remnant. Zerubbabel was of royal blood, but he was not there as a king. He was there as an appointee of the Persian emperor.
They set up the altar and began to sacrifice. They began to obey the Lord. They went to the mountains, brought down timbers, gathered stones, and got ready to build.
Then all their enemies came and frightened them. What happened was that, in putting their eyes on their enemies and on expediency, they lost their vision.
They even began lying to themselves and saying exactly the opposite. That is what the Lord came in Haggai saying: “This people says, ‘The time for the rebuilding of the Lord’s house, even the house in Jerusalem, has not come.’”
That was what they came back for. The Lord said, “So I am against you.” But then these brothers began to prophesy, and in their weakness they built that house.
They completed it just as the Lord said they would. But that Scripture is about more than just that house. It is also about this house, this building, this bride today, and us.
You do not have time to worry about anyone in Babylon. You had best worry about yourself.
I remember once, years ago, we were having a meeting in Memphis. I got there early, and Sister Harriet Levenue was there, and my brother Rob was there. We were the only ones, because no one else had come yet.
Rob lived there, so he had to be early. It was the only time he was ever early.
We were sitting there, and Harriet said, “Oh, I hope the Lord comes back soon.” I said, “Well, I do not.” She got whiplash turning to me, because Christians are not supposed to say that.
“What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, let me explain myself. Let me explain.” They both had the guns out, ready.
I said, “Look, when the Lord comes, our place in His kingdom is going to be decided on how much work He has done in us, and He has not done too much. If He will just delay a little longer, I will have a little time to follow Him, get some transformation done here, and be built up, so that I can at least have something in His kingdom.”
About twelve years later, somehow the Holy Spirit reminded me of that foolish statement. I repeated it in a meeting. I said, “A while back, someone said to me” and I told them what I just told you.
“I said then that I wanted the Lord to tarry so I would have more. But now I want Him to come tonight while I am still a Christian. By tomorrow, I may deny Him outright.”
We live by His grace. We have today. Will we be faithful to Him today?
Do not make plans: “Well, in ten years we are going to do this, and in twenty years we are going to do this.” We have today.
Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart. Today, turn to the indwelling Lord in your spirit.
You are that new kind of man, the one of which the Lord Jesus was the prototype. Once He won the victory, came to His Father, and was glorified, they said, “Now let us do it again. Let us bring many sons to glory.”
Those sons will know Us. They will choose to know Us. They will eat from the tree of life continually. They have food that other people do not know about.
We will be their food, and they will feed their brothers and sisters and build them up by the Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, it is built by the Spirit:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.
Lord, we need You more than the food we eat, or the water we drink, or even our next breath. Lord, we must have You. Lord, we must live by You. We must be knowing You.
Oh, Lord, speak to us. Open our eyes. Lord, we are so tired of the weariness that comes from just living by our soul life.
Lord, You have come that we might have life and have it abundantly. Oh, Lord, open our eyes, and by Your grace we will respond.
We will eat and eat, fellowship and know and love, and continue with You and with one another until You come.
Lord, this building will be built to Your glory. Amen.