Good morning.
Turn with me to the book of Revelation. I will read just part of one verse and then one other verse: Revelation 1, beginning halfway through verse 5.
To Him Who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in His blood,
and has made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father;
to Him be the glory and the might, to the ages of ages. Amen.
Let me read that once again.
To Him Who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in His blood,
and has made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father;
to Him be the glory and the might, to the ages of ages. Amen.
Let us pray once again. Lord, we thank You for Your Word. We know that Your words are spirit and life. We know that unless You speak, there is no value.
We just come to You. We respond as Peter did in John 6: “Lord, You have the words of eternal life.” Speak to us.
Open what appears obvious to us from Your Word, and cause us to behold things we have not beheld. Cause us to see things that we have not seen. Open our eyes to see You in a new and living way.
You alone have the words of eternal life. For those who are listening, and for the speaker, we depend wholly upon Your Holy Spirit to speak to us today. In Jesus’ name, amen.
This little verse and a half is a very small text, but I believe it deals with an enormous subject. It is very brief in its scope, but very broad in what it contains.
Some of you were not here a couple of months ago—perhaps it has been more than that by now—when brothers went to the retreat in Delmarva with Ed Miller. I began and shared the first message on this phrase: “To Him Who loves us.”
Today, we will concentrate on that second phrase: “and has washed us from our sins in His blood.”
Let me give a little background for those of you who were not here. I do not want to bore you with background, but I think it is important to set the context.
The burden the Lord placed upon my heart in this little text is that there is something we need to see of God that is essential. Now, my daughter says I get hung up on that word, so if I bore you with it, I will try to change it every once in a while. But there is something essential we need to see of God.
If we do not see that, then we do not see rightly. We may have cross vision. We may have double vision. You know, we may have blurred vision, like the man who just saw trees.
We may not appropriate the things of the Lord in a right perspective if we do not have this essential revelation of God.
I believe this verse and a half gives us three things. Although it is small in text, it is great in context. It tells us about His ways, shows us His work, and displays to us His will.
These three things make up the essential—or, let us say, the indispensable—revelation of God. There are three things you need to see. We make the Christian life way too complicated.
You need to know Who God is. That is the first thing. There is no single more important thing than for you to know Who God is. Everything begins with that foundation.
Our only foundation is Christ Jesus. As it says in 1 Corinthians 3, no other foundation can be laid than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. He is the sole and single rock upon which we build everything.
So, number one: we need to know Who God is. We know that by discovering His ways.
Number two: we need to know what God does. Not only Who He is, but what God does. We need to know not only His ways, but we need to see His work.
If we do not see what He has done, if we do not see what He has accomplished, you can never enter into a full relationship with God. You need to see not only Who He is, but you need to see what He has done. You need to see His ways, and you need to see His work.
I believe those are essential revelations.
But not only that, this small text gives us a third thing: “and has made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father; to Him be the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen.”
I believe this has to do with His heart. I believe it has to do with His will. We can put it another way: we need to see what His purpose is. We need to see what His heart is.
Staying with a “W” theme, we need to see what His will is. So, there are three things that are essential for us to see:
That, brothers and sisters, gives understanding to everything God is at.
I remember one of the early architectural drafting courses I took. We did these things called perspective drawings. I do not know whether you know what a perspective drawing is, but perspective is the way to view something.
If you do not view something rightly, they say you have the wrong perspective, right? You have probably been told that before. I have certainly been told that before.
When we did these drawings, there was a single point that set up the whole drawing. Unless you saw things from that single point, called the station point, everything was skewed. Everything was amiss. Everything was out of focus.
You did not view things rightly. You did not see things rightly. You did not have a right perspective on things if your station point was off. It was a single fixed point.
Now, I hope you follow where I am heading. That single fixed point is the Lord Jesus. He is God’s station point. He is the whole of God’s thought.
Everything revolves around the Lord Jesus. Everything is in the Lord Jesus. Everything is through the Lord Jesus. Consider the full verse our sister read just a little while ago: all the fullness of the Godhead is in the Lord Jesus. God was pleased that it should dwell there.
This is the station point. Our focus needs to be upon Him. If our focus is on anything else, if we begin from any other point, we begin off—and we will be forever off.
Do you understand the difference between the essential and the important? I do not want to drive Jessica crazy by the end of this message.
The problem is that we take these two words and make them one. There is a difference between essential and important.
When you look at the book of Revelation, there are many revelations, as it were. There are many things opened to us in this book. We could spend the whole time talking about what is in this book—all the numerous revelations—and all of those revelations, I think, are important.
But when we begin this book, we begin to see what the essential revelation is. It begins to open to us what is vital. The word essential simply means indispensable. You cannot live without it.
There are important things—things that are important to you and things that are important to me—that are not essential. We may not agree on the second coming. You may have a different view. The second coming is important. It is going to happen. One day we will see who is right. He is right.
But the essential thing is seeing the Lord Jesus. It is indispensable.
So, the writer of this letter begins and gives us a key. Lately, we have been talking about keys. In Revelation 1:1, it says:
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bondservants, things which must shortly come to pass.
This is the title of the whole book. This is the explanation of the whole book of Revelation. It is the revelation, not of many things, but the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, which God gave to Him to show to His bondservants.
I used to read that as singular—“His bondservant”—thinking of John. Thank God, this revelation was not just given to John, but this indispensable revelation is given to all who believe. God wants to reveal His Son.
That is where we are headed. We looked last time at this first phrase: “To Him Who loves us.” We said that in this, we begin to discover God’s ways.
We thought about three things. First of all, knowing His ways. In the Old Testament, God had an issue with His people, and that issue, as Psalm 95:10 says, was that they “do always err in their heart.” This is the indictment: “They have not known My ways.”
That was the summary of the Old Testament.
I think you know David’s prayer, and I think we would do well to make it our prayer. David prayed this in Psalm 25:4:
Make me to know Thy ways, O Lord;
teach me Thy paths.
“Make me to know Thy ways.”
Then Moses—many of you know the distinction from Psalm 103:7:
He made known His ways unto Moses,
His acts unto the children of Israel.
Do you see the difference? What we need to know is His ways.
When we come to the book of Revelation, this little phrase, “To Him Who loves us,” shows us His supreme way. His way is love.
Unless we have a deep appreciation that everything God does springs from this supreme way, we miss all of what He is about. Everything has to do with love. It summarizes the whole of what God is about.
When John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, twice in 1 John 4, he said simply this: “God is love.” That is His way. That is Who He is.
That one, single, three-word statement gives us insight—revelation—into Who God is. Love explains it all.
Then we looked at walking in His ways. Our brother Jim has been sharing on Ephesians. Ephesians 5:2 says, in that practical section, “Walk in love, even as Christ Jesus has loved you.”
The Lord said in John 13, in that last meeting with His own, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”
Then, in the next verse in John 13, He says, “By this shall all men know you are disciples of Mine.”
That is the distinguishing mark that you and I should have as Christians. That is the way the world is to get a whiff—if that does not offend you—a sense of Who God is. They see something different about people. They say, “Those people, they really love each other.”
That is to be the distinguishing mark of the church.
Often, we get so hung up in what the church is and how the church functions. But I love that living illustration in 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 12, we discover what the church is: the body of Christ, many members dwelling together and meeting together.
We also look at 1 Corinthians 14, and we see the body of Christ functioning together unto edification, where everything is done in decency and in order. When the unbeliever comes into their midst, they say, “Surely God is here.” That is their reaction.
But in between is the key. First Corinthians 13 is the key. The key is love.
If there is no love, there is only a system. If we do not know God’s ways, then you can never go from the understanding of the body of Christ into the functioning of the body of Christ.
I like to tell stories, so I will not tell the story I told before. But there is something that comes between those two things that makes them effective, and that is 1 Corinthians 13: love.
So now you are up to speed. You do not need to go back and listen to the message.
We need to understand His ways. The second thing today comes from this second phrase: “and has washed us from our sins in His blood.” We need to understand His work.
If we do not see what God has done, you will never enter into a full life of fellowship and freedom with the Lord. You never will.
If we do not have indispensable revelation as to what He has done for us, what He has accomplished for us, we will never enter into a full expression of life with the Lord Jesus. His work is essential.
Often, when we think of the Christian life, or when we are service-oriented, we think of our working with God. We quote 1 Corinthians 3:9, where it says, “We are God’s fellow workers.”
I like what Brother Darby says. He says this can be translated “workers” or “laborers together with God,” but he says this goes too far, as if it is our working.
He says the sense really is that we are journeymen. We are fellows doing the Chief’s work. Do you understand the difference?
Sometimes, when it comes to Christian life and Christian service, it is all about our work. But in the Bible, the emphasis is on God’s work. It is on His work. It is on what He does. We simply enter into what He does.
I do not know whether you use the word journeyman much anymore. People may not have a sense of it. John is shaking his head; he must know what journeyman means. But I think of boxing. I reveal my innermost secrets: I am a boxing fan.
That used to drive sisters to distraction. They said, “How could you be a Christian and be a boxing fan?” But they always talk about a journeyman fighter. He is not so well equipped. He is just a journeyman. He goes here and fights, goes there and fights, and all the big names use him for a human punching bag.
We do not have ability in ourselves to do the work. It is only when we see His work, only when the Holy Spirit comes into us and does through us His work, that we have an understanding of what God’s work is.
Let us begin with the Old Testament. God’s work in the Old Testament. You might be interested to know this: what do you think the first view of God is in the Old Testament?
Turn with me to Genesis 1. The very first view of God in the Old Testament is of God working. That is the first thing we see: God is working.
It says in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Here is God. What is He doing? He is working.
I think this is significant. You may think I am just straining things here, but the very first view, the very opening view in the whole Bible, is God Who is working.
Then there is that second verse:
And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
It seems to me—and you may not agree; it may be an important thing, but it is not essential—that something happened. Something came in. Something, it seems, tried to destroy the work of God.
There was waste and void. I take that from Isaiah 45:18, if you want to look it up later, where it says that God created the heavens and the earth—not, this is my paraphrase, as waste and void—but He created it to be inhabited.
God did not create it this way. Something cataclysmic happened.
I believe, from my own view, that if you ascribe to what is called the gap theory, this is the period of Satan’s rebellion. Satan came in and took a third of the angels with him in rebellion. The result was waste and void.
Some people think it is a big deal when they get people to agree with them. Satan got a third of the angels to go along with him.
Korah almost convinced almost all of Israel there at the foot of that mountain to make a calf, to worship a calf, and they said, “This is our god, who delivered us out of Egypt.”
Do not ever think because some go along that it is right.
But then we come to the third verse, and we see again God working. It says, “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
We see once again this God Who showed His enormous power in creating the heavens and the earth. He begins to restore what was lost, begins to recreate, and begins to bring into view what He is really after.
Now here, saints, is the encouragement to me: God never gives up on His work.
Do you hear me? Did you really hear me? God never gives up on His work.
Something came in. Something intruded. Something of enormous scope came in, but God did not let it stop what was in His heart.
So, when we come to the third verse, we begin to see God in His creative power, beginning what He has done.
Turn to Genesis 2. Genesis 2:1-3 gives a summary of the whole thing:
And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made;
and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
I do not know whether you noticed, but the word finished is twice in those three verses. The phrase His work is three times in those three verses, and made or making is three times in those first three verses.
Brothers and sisters, here is the encouragement: God finishes His work.
Twice it says, “the work which He had finished.” Is that not good news?
I have a bad habit. I do not mind telling you—Linda, you can just ask Linda—I have trouble sometimes finishing things. I can get them to about ninety percent. She would say sixty percent, I am sure. Then I do not quite finish.
But thank God, God always finishes His work. Then He rests in what He does.
Do you know that we, as people, were created on the sixth day? What happened on the seventh day? Think about it. What happened on the seventh day?
There was no work to be done. The work was finished. The work was over. All that man and woman had to do was enter into what God had already done—His finished work.
Brothers and sisters, that ought to speak volumes to us. I hope you do not mind me getting excited about that, but our view is not work. Our view is rest.
We enter into all that God has accomplished in His work, and our beginning is in rest. You remember the prophet Isaiah said, “In returning and rest shall ye be saved.”
Oh, to me this is wonderful. God works, finishes His work, and we rest.
What a great country: six days He does His work; the seventh day, He rests.
Now think with me. Bear with me. I want to stretch your imagination. For you literalists who do not subscribe to the gap theory—six-thousand-year literalists—a day to the Lord is as a thousand years. You remember that in the New Testament.
Just maybe history has been six days repeated. On the sixth day, man was created; and in our time, we are in the sixth day, and that new Man, Christ—Head and Body—has been created. On the seventh day, we are brought into full rest.
It is amazing. It is a little tickler. This is not part of the required reading, by the way. A little tickler: sixth day, and we are about to enter God’s full rest.
Well, I hope you get the impression: God is at work.
Often, we think of our work. You ride down the road and see a big, big orange sign. You are supposed to pay attention to those big, big orange signs. I do not always see them too well.
The big orange sign says, “Men Working.” You have seen that sign. It usually means you ought to slow down and pay attention.
I believe, when we look at the Bible, there ought to be an even bigger image that says, “God working.”
That is the summary of the whole Bible.
Now come to the New Testament. When you come to the New Testament, what did the Lord Jesus say? In John 4:34, when He was with the woman at the well and the disciples came back and wondered that He had been talking to this woman, Jesus said to them:
My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work.
That was the whole mission of the Lord Jesus. That was the whole explanation of the Lord Jesus.
Jesus said to them, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” That was the reason our Lord came.
In John 5, you remember the story of the man by the pool, who had been there for thirty-eight years. The pool would be troubled from time to time, and all those who lay around it would try to be the first to enter. If they were first, they would be healed of their diseases and infirmities.
There was one there for thirty-eight years. You had to feel sorry for this man. I have been thirty years showing up at my business. This man showed up every day with his bed for thirty-eight years, waiting for the waters to be troubled.
At the moment he thought he would get into the pool, somebody else would beat him. The Lord healed him. He said, “Take up thy bed.” What a great work.
The Jews were furious because He did it on the Sabbath. It says in that section that they sought to kill Him.
He had just said what He was coming for: to do the work of the Father, to finish His work. And they tried to kill Him.
But Jesus said to them—this was His single answer in John 5:17:
My Father worketh even until now, and I work.
Praise the Lord. The whole of the Bible is God working.
Then I thought of the heart of the Bible. In Psalms, you not only see the heart of the Bible—literally, the center of the Bible—but you see the heart of the heart of the Bible. You see worship. You see praise. You see adoration.
You see those who appreciated God, who poured their lives out for God—the heart within the heart.
There, you see repetitions of words like these: His marvelous works, His mighty works, His wondrous works which He has done, and the works of His hands.
It is interesting, if you ever want to do a study, to look up the word work and go through the Psalms.
Psalm 107 has a phrase repeated again and again. In verse 8, it says:
Oh that men would praise the Lord for His lovingkindness,
and for His wonderful works to the children of men!
It is repeated again and again: “Let them give thanks unto the Lord for His wondrous works that He has done for the children of men.”
Brothers and sisters, we should give thanks. When we behold His works, we should give thanks. Wondrous works, mighty works, majestic works, marvelous works—works so great that you have to use the most extreme adjectives to describe them.
I will never forget, not knowing much about English, in my late pursuit of education, having to take several literature courses. I dreaded that. I cannot tell you how difficult that was.
Now, I know literature is valuable. Do not get me wrong. But to an engineer, it can often be like a foreign language.
I wrote this paper, which I thought was a good paper. It came to find out that I used way too many superlatives. The professor got all over me for using the word great too many times.
He said, “You should not use that word great.” I thought it was a perfectly fine word. What is wrong with great?
Then I discovered that, in the academic world at least, they say you should only rarely use superlatives, because most often, when you use superlatives, you are over-exaggerating the case.
But when the psalmist spoke about the works of God, he could not contain himself. He said, “These are marvelous works. These are mighty works. These are wonderful works.”
When you think about God’s work, you can only use the superlatives.
The second thing we want to think about is God’s supreme work. Turn to our text, if you are still with me, if you have not expired.
The first point was God’s work: a global view throughout the Word of God. The second point is God’s supreme work.
When we turn to the book of Revelation, we see this phrase: “and has washed us from our sins in His blood.”
Brothers and sisters, this is the most supreme work of all the works of God. This is the work of works. This is the greatest work. This is the greatest accomplishment.
God takes something which was nothing in us, and He transforms us through the work of the cross and the blood of the Lord Jesus. Brothers and sisters, we need to see how great this work is.
This work was so great that it required the death of God’s Son. Think about that.
I grouse at people who say our forgiveness is like a presidential pardon. You have heard me say this before. It is nothing like a presidential pardon.
It is true you were on death row. It is true you were about to come to your end. It is true you were dead in trespasses and sins. But there is a huge difference.
Those who are opposed to the death penalty fight right up to the last minute for pardon. Their last resort is to hope for an executive pardon. That executive, by one single word, can say, “You are free,” and you will go free from death.
The Lord Jesus did not do that. Think about it.
It says in 2 Corinthians 5:21:
Him Who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf;
that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
He did not just issue a heavenly decree, send it through the two-thirds of the angels who were left, and say, “Go out and publish it to the world that you are free.” God says it; believe it.
But this is His Word: “He Who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in Him.”
Read that phrase again: “and has washed us from our sins in His precious blood.”
Dear saints, this is no executive pardon. This is the death of the Executive.
What a great work. What a wondrous work. What a mighty work. What a majestic work.
The day the Savior died, can you imagine? You were loosed from your sins. This is the most supreme work of God.
The supreme work does three things. First, it concludes the past completely.
It is of such powerful consequence that he uses the words, “He has washed us in His precious blood.” That tense is past tense. This is a finished work. He has washed us—washed us—in His precious blood. It is done.
In this great and mighty work, He releases us from all of the past.
Now, the best the Old Testament did, when you read Psalm 32:1, was this:
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
The best the Old Testament could do—and I do not want to take away from God’s work in the Old Testament—was limited in power and scope. The very best it could do, with a yearly offering on the Day of Atonement, was provide a blood sacrifice to cover sins.
But those sins were never removed. They were never removed.
There was always, as it says in Hebrews, a calling back to mind of the sins committed in the past. Annually, that sacrifice needed to be made again and again and again, to cover the sins and allow the high priest to be in the presence of God.
I hope you see the difference between the great work of our Savior and the work of the Old Testament.
I have a bad habit. It is a nerdy thing I do: I put way too many pens in my pocket. I try to restrain myself, but I always carry a black pen and a red pen.
One of my engineers says, “You look like a nerd. You have five or six pens. Please take some of your pens out of your pocket.” I say, “Well, they are all needed. There is a pencil, there is an eraser, there is a red pen, there is a black pen, and there is a highlighter.”
All those things are important—maybe not essential, but indispensable. But they are important.
I have a bad habit of sometimes, in a hurry in a conference room, putting the pen in my pocket like this. Linda, I promise I will not do this. Have you never done that?
I will never forget. I went down to ODU and had to speak to distance educators from all over the country. I got out of the car, went up to the lectern, opened my shirt, and had this enormous black spot. Enormous.
It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. I apologized to them and said, “You think I am in trouble now? Wait until I get home.” It was my best shirt.
Linda still makes me wear that shirt.
If you ever see me with my red sweater on, you have my permission to pull it off. The red only covers the stains.
But when we come to the New Testament, this work is so great that it concludes the past.
Isaiah 1:18 says:
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord:
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Praise the Lord that this washing of the precious blood completely removes the stains.
In Jeremiah 31:34, when the prophet prophesied the coming New Testament, he says:
I will forgive their iniquity,
and their sin will I remember no more.
Do not keep reminding God of what He has forgotten.
Do not keep beating yourself up for the past. It is under the blood of Jesus. It is gone. It is covered—excuse me, it is not just covered. It is taken away. Washed away.
Oh, that is the work of the cross. How great is that work.
It even says, I believe in Psalm 103, that He removes our sins as far as the east is from the west. Now think about it: how far is that?
Suppose the psalmist said, “I will remove your sins as far as Damascus is from Jerusalem.” We would understand that. Or suppose He said, “Your sins will be removed as far as the South Pole is from the North Pole.” Quite a distance, right?
But He said, “As far as the east is from the west.” This is a linear thing. Do not get hung up about the globe being circular and say, “Oh, it comes back, so I have got to remember it.”
This is a linear scale: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.”
Is that not good enough? Too many Christians are hung up on the past. In Christ, the past is done away. It is over. This is the supreme work of God.
Not only that, He deals with a person. He deals with a person.
God, in His wisdom, realizes there is a cause to sin. Not like you and me—we only see the evidence when we see sin. But God, in His wisdom, realizes there is something producing the sin.
He realizes there is a source problem. You have always heard it: if you want to solve a problem, get to the source.
I cannot tell you how much time I spend writing root-cause reports. What is the root cause? What is the reason for this thing happening? Why does this thing happen? How come it happened? What is the root cause?
God looked upon Adam, and He said, “There is the root cause.”
So, not only does He deal with the past—concludes the past—He deals with the person. This is the great work of our Savior.
It is a historical fact, just as His blood was shed for our sins. If you read Romans 6, He included you in His very death.
Did you know He discovered that you were the root-cause problem? He knew you could never live this Christian life, and He took you within the Lord Jesus that day, nailed you to the cross, and as surely as our Lord died upon the cross, you died upon that cross.
Now, it is a mystery to me. When I listen to different Christian workers and speakers, they never seem to talk about this. They are always talking about sins being forgiven, and how great that work is.
But you need to see that God’s work goes far beyond just our sins being forgiven. He deals with a sinner. That is even greater.
He takes the whole race of Adam—that is you and me.
You have heard that phrase, “He is a chip off the old block.” You are. You are just like your father.
You say, “I am going to sin someday. I know I am going to sin. I try not to. I try to be very careful. You can pray about it, believe it or not. You may not believe that.”
But you are a sin-producing factory.
We think we are so good. We think, “Brother, you are being extreme.” I will never forget going down the road the other day and seeing a young lady with a bumper sticker that said, “Eve was framed.”
We think we are pretty good. I mean, once in a while, an omission or a commission; once in a while, a sin or slip-up. But all in all, not so bad. Not so bad.
God does not have that estimation. He took the whole race of Adam to the cross. He said, “It is impossible. The root cause is Adam’s life.”
Something needs to be done to deal with the person, and something needs to be replaced in that person so that they might live the Christian life.
Romans 6:6 says:
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him,
that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.
So, in His wisdom, in His work, He deals with a sinner.
You will notice in the book of Romans that the word sins occurs up to chapter 6 in the plural. These are the outcomes, for all of you business people. These are the outcomes that spring out of something.
But the problem, you do not discover until you get to Romans 6, is the source. God, in His supreme work, dealt with the source.
I hope that is clear. I wish more people would preach upon that.
It was not until many great men of God came into a full understanding of that that they were free to serve in newness of life. They were not really free.
Hudson Taylor served the Lord in China, but until he came into this understanding of the exchanged life—that he was dead in Christ and made alive unto God in Christ Jesus—he was never free to serve in fullness of life.
This is the great work that He has done.
Lastly, in the second point, He provides the power to live.
Paul the apostle, writing in Philippians, said this powerful verse: “For to me to live is Christ.” Now, do you think that is poetry?
Our sister thinks it is poetry. Okay, I will follow you. I will play with you a moment. Do you think it is just poetry?
I will never forget. It was like lightning came into my mind one day. I saw that verse. It was opened to me: “For to me to live is Christ.”
I knew it: this was the Christian life. It was freedom from having to live the Christian life in Adam’s strength. “For to me to live is Christ.” That is the Christian life.
Paul said this in Galatians 2:20. I think you all know it:
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.
That is the Christian life. He now gives us—not only does He conclude the past, not only does He deal with the source, the person—but He gives the power to live the Christian life. Is that not marvelous?
Power to live.
You remember when the Lord Jesus was with His own at the very end. He said, “It is expedient for you that I go away, because I will send the Comforter, the Holy Spirit of truth.” The Holy Spirit will be with you.
And what did He say after that? “And shall be in you.”
Can you imagine? The work of God is so great that He sends the Holy Spirit to reside in you. You have the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Godhead, in you. I would say that is power.
Do not just get hung up on power. The Person of the Holy Spirit takes up permanent residence.
We get all excited when a visitor comes and quickly clean up the house, get things in order. Brothers and sisters, the One Who has come to abide permanently in our house is the Holy Spirit. He gives power to live.
Now, what will you do with all this? I think maybe you get the point. Let me bring this to a close.
Not only do we need to see God’s work, not only do we need to apprehend His supreme work, but we need to enter into God’s work.
This is not theological discourse. The work of God was meant to be experienced. It was meant to be lived. It was meant to transform lives and bring us into a living, abiding relationship with the Lord.
We enter into it through three words. Turn again to Romans 6. Three simple words. Do not make this too complicated:
The very first key is the simplest key of all: believing what God has done. Faith is the key.
Romans 6:8 says, “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” In Romans 6:6, it says, “knowing this.” In Romans 6:9, he says, “knowing.”
What does Hebrews say faith really is?
Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.
Believing is the key.
You remember when our Lord Jesus was at Capernaum, and they came to the Lord and said, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” It is an honest question.
The Lord had a profound answer. He said, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent.”
Do you not think that is a questionable answer? These people were sincere. They said, “What can we do, that we may work the works of God?” He said there is a simple answer: believe.
Brothers and sisters, the key to entering into the work of God is simply this: believing. You do not have to do anything. You simply have to believe.
I know everybody will jump on me and open James and quote to me about all the works we need to do. I believe those works flow out of what we are.
Those are not works I produce in my own strength. Those are the works that come out of that resident life of the Lord Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Absent those works, it makes you wonder who your life source is. Those works should be there. Those works will be there for those who believe, and even greater works than these, the Lord Jesus said.
Believe is the simple answer.
Remember the ruler of the synagogue in Mark 5:36. His daughter had died. What a terrible circumstance that was. The one word that was brought was simply these words of the Lord Jesus: “Only believe.”
How often those words have come to my mind. “Lord, what is going to happen? This thing seems impossible. I am overwhelmed. You do not understand.” I often tell the Lord that, by the way.
He says, “Only believe.” It is the best advice that can be given. That is how we enter in.
Secondly, we need to reckon. Romans 6:11 says:
Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin,
but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
Now, this is not a Southern colloquialism—“reckon,” like Jerry speaks. That is not what it is about.
Brother Nee got this right. This is powerful. The first time I read The Normal Christian Life, I saw this as an accounting term. It is to count on it. It is to account for it. It is true. Put it in the ledger.
Reckon it to be so. Stand in what is truly spoken in God’s Word. That is the way you enter into it. Reckon it to be so.
Now, if you reckon on the wrong thing, it will not count. That is what happened to Enron. You might be a partner with Ken Lay—a cellmate.
He counted on the wrong things. He accounted for things that were not true. He said, “This is true about Enron, right? It is the greatest place since heaven and earth. We have all this stuff, great stuff, all this money, everything. You have all this money in your 401(k).” Oops.
He reckoned on the wrong thing.
Dear saints, do we reckon on the Lord’s work? Do we just passively step back? You have to reckon it to be true. These are basic things in the Christian life.
You have to account for it to be true. You have to say, “That is mine.” Not because I have done it, but because He has done it. Because the Lord Jesus said, “That is mine. That is true.” Reckon it to be so.
The third word in Romans is yielding. It says in Romans 6:13:
Neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness;
but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead.
Notice there are two. Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but yield yourself to God as alive from among the dead.
Now, here is the problem: what do we yield ourselves to? I am not talking about a yellow sign on the road that says “Yield.” That is not what it means. What do you give yourself to?
It says, “Neither yield yourselves as members, instruments of unrighteousness to sin.” That is the negative. But yield yourselves to God as alive from among the dead.
Do we yield ourselves to God? Brothers and sisters, I do not know about you—I will not speak for you—but this is the problem I discover in my life: who do I yield to?
There comes a point. There comes a fork in the road. There comes a place where I can go that way or I can go that way. It is a two-way yield sign.
You can yield yourselves as members to unrighteousness, or stand upon the finished work and enter into God’s work. Or you can yield yourselves as instruments to sin and unrighteousness.
It is always the battle, and it will ever be until we go into the presence of the Lord. Who do you yield yourself to?
An interesting thing about yielding: yielding is when we are out of strength. We say, “Lord, You are Lord.”
I do a lot of work with steel every day. It used to be understood that steel would go up, it would yield, it would keep on going in strength, and then it would fail. That is the old elastic theory.
There is a new theory: elastic-plastic. The steel goes up, it yields—no strength. No strength. No continuing to rise.
The Lord is my strength.
Who do you yield yourself to? Young people, let me tell you, this is a great challenge. I do not want to single you out; it is a challenge to all of us.
But yielding is probably the most important key once you understand what the work of God is.
Here is the encouragement. In Philippians 2:12-13, it says:
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
for it is God Who worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.
I have always wondered, what if Paul stopped there? Could you imagine the nail-biting? “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” I think that is sometimes the way we read it.
But listen to the next half of that verse: “For it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.” This is the encouragement.
Some people have translated this verse this way: “It is God Who does the willing and the doing.” Or, put another way: “It is God Who does both the willing and the working for His good pleasure.” That is the encouragement.
Paul also said in the same letter, Philippians 1:6, having confidence of this very thing:
He Who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, do you see the great work of God? This is one of the essential—excuse me, indispensable—things we need to see.
If you do not see what He has done, you can never enter into a whole, living, dynamic relationship with the living God.
You must see that He has concluded completely the past. You must see that He has dealt with the source. And you must see that He has given the power to live this Christian life that would be impossible for us: Christ living in us through the Holy Spirit.
You must not only see it; you must believe it. You must not only believe it; you must stand upon it and reckon it to be true in your own life.
And you must not only do that; you must yield. You must yield.
When you come to the place where you are without strength, that is the place where you say, “Yes, Lord.”
Lord, we commit these words to You. We stand in the name of Jesus, that You would make them real to us in our experience; that we would see Who You are, and we would see what You have done.
May we see with our own eyes, because it says in the Old Testament, “Behold the wondrous works of God.”
As it says in Revelation 15, they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying:
Great and marvelous are Thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty;
righteous and true are Thy ways, Thou King of the ages.
Make them real, Lord. Give us this indispensable revelation of God.
Give us, Lord, this one focal point: to see You. Then we can see everything rightly.
We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.