Good evening, brothers and sisters. I see this is a different venue for us here, kind of an adjustment to see you here and not up in Santa Barbara. But anyway, it is good to see you.
I give thanks to the Lord that His gospel is powerful to save us and changes us to keep us. I come here, and I have been here before, and I see many people that I recognize, which says to me that the Lord has keeping power. Not only that, but I think I see some spiritual growth, and for that I also give thanks.
The Lord’s gospel is effective, and I also praise God that many of you go to assemblies that preach the Word of God, believe in the full gospel, and share this gospel. It is the foundation of everything that the Lord is about and doing in these days. Unless we have this sure foundation, anything that gets built ends up in a shambles. But thank God, the Lord has kept us. The Lord is showing us His truth in the Word. For this, we really can be thankful.
For some of you, I see you on and off throughout the year. For others, maybe I have not seen you for a couple of years, so just to give you a very brief update: I now live in Manhattan. My wife and I sold our nice little house out on Long Island, trudged into the city, rented an apartment, and have begun a whole new life.
It has been very wonderful to experience the challenge of the whole thing, to gather with saints, and to find the faithfulness of the Lord there in New York City. My wife is doing fine. People wonder whether she survived the move. Yes, she is doing fine.
Some people have looked at my haircut and wondered if maybe I have gotten a little New Yorkish. I do not know. Actually, I have a Russian barber who just chopped my hair too much. So this is not a fashion statement, just the present situation until there is a little more growth.
But anyway, I felt right at home coming down on Interstate 5 today, because this traffic speed was about the same as around New York. So thank you very much for making me feel at home.
When we are saved, and the Lord works in our lives and makes the gospel real to us, we realize how precious the Lord is—this One who saved us.
I do not know about you, but for me, it makes me realize that God is up to something much greater than I ever realized when I first came to Him. When I found the Lord at twenty years old, I had a lot of guilt in my heart for past deeds done and wanted release from that. I do not know if, honestly, I was that concerned about going to hell, but I did see something really true about Jesus dying for me. I responded to that at twenty years old, and I got saved.
Well, I did not realize that my salvation actually went far back in God’s plan. That is the marvelous thing about this life that we have in Christ. The fact is, we are saved. Then, as we open the Word of God and the Lord begins to reveal things to us, we begin to see, “Wait a minute, His plan is a lot bigger than just healing my heart, getting me saved, and cleansing me from sin.” There is a big plan.
I want to talk, perhaps, if the Lord helps me this weekend, about something of that big plan. There is one single word that has been the center of my heart over these last days as I have been praying about what to share. That simple word is fullness.
What He wants to recover is fullness. Of course, this has its application in our individual lives: He wants to fill us with Himself. But it also has a wider application in terms of the Body of Christ and His fullness.
As I have looked around in the Scriptures and prayed about it, I finally came to this series that I want to share with you, Lord willing, regarding fullness as we see it corporately expressed in the book of Joshua.
If we could turn to the book of Joshua, just a few verses, and then some verses in the New Testament that correspond. In Joshua 1, just one verse, because we will only be introducing tonight. I know that many are tired, and actually I have a bit of jet lag myself. I would just like to present this before you for your consideration as we begin this week.
From the wilderness and this Lebanon,
even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates,
all the land of the Hittites,
and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun,
will be your territory.
And this is wonderful—to lay claim to this fact here and make it ours spiritually.
So the Lord gave Israel all the land which He had sworn to give to their fathers,
and they possessed it and lived in it.And the Lord gave them rest on every side,
according to all that He had sworn to their fathers;
and no one of all their enemies stood before them.
The Lord gave all their enemies into their hands.Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed;
all came to pass.
What a wonderful statement. When God decides to do something, this is what happens: it is done.
Now we want to go to the book of Ephesians. Again, we are just going to touch on some verses—one verse here and one verse there—because I want to present a sort of picture here tonight as we begin.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.
He made known to us the mystery of His will,
according to the kind intention which He purposed in Him,
with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times,
that is, the summing up of all things in Christ,
things in the heavens and things on the earth.
In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation,
having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,
who was given as a pledge of our inheritance,
with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession,
to the praise of His glory.
And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
Until we all attain to the unity of the faith,
and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
to a mature man,
to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation,
but be filled with the Spirit.
Put on the full armor of God,
so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
Let us turn to Hebrews 4, beginning in verse 6.
Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it,
and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience,
He again fixes a certain day, “Today,”
saying through David after so long a time,
just as has been said before,
“Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”For if Joshua had given them rest,
He would not have spoken of another day after that.
So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest,
so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword,
and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit,
of both joints and marrow,
and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
And there is no creature hidden from His sight,
but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
Let us have a further prayer.
Lord, we read the Word, but Your Spirit must breathe on it to give us life. We come dependent upon You. Lord, our hearts are all full of the love of Jesus. We are so thankful for our salvation. We are so thankful that You placed us in Christ, and we are solidly there.
Oh Lord, as You treat us with great kindness and mercy, and Your love keeps being poured out upon us day by day, there is a response that wells up in us: a desire to be pleasing to You in every way.
Lord, I pray that You would take us all—young Christians and those who have been around in Christ for quite a while—and restore our hearts to first love, and to a real desire to be a testimony to fullness, to be fully pleasing according to Your plan for us.
Oh, help us in these days to meditate upon our own state in Christ and to find that overcoming faith that rises up, is not hard of heart, but listens and responds and obeys, and stands in the fullness that has been provided for us in Christ.
Oh, teach us of Your living ways, we pray. We give You thanks for this time. We ask that You refresh us all here tonight as we consider these things together. We pray in the name of our precious Lord Jesus. Amen.
We are going to consider this matter of fullness in relation to Joshua. As I am sure that all of you are aware, there is a correspondence and a relationship, first of all, between the book of Joshua and the book of Ephesians. I am sure that all of you have heard that before, and indeed, it is very true.
What we have pictured for us in Joshua—the actual coming into the promised land, defeating the enemies, taking down the walls of Jericho, and all of these kinds of things—we also see spiritually applied in the book of Ephesians.
The whole book of Joshua is about the inheritance: the children of Israel receiving an inheritance that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We open the book of Ephesians, and what does it talk about? We have received the down payment of our inheritance and every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. Indeed, we are in the promised land as soon as we open this wonderful book of Ephesians.
Ephesians speaks of an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, in which all things would be summed up in Christ. In Joshua, we see the children of Israel come in and take all the places of the land, taking them up and putting them under the headship of God. In that sense, there is a correspondence between these two books.
We see the testimony of oneness among the tribes as they are together in fullness. The different properties are distributed out to the twelve tribes. In Ephesians, we see that we gather with the saints in order to comprehend dimensions of Christ—His height and width and depth and breadth—almost as if we are parceling out the land. So great is He; we cannot do that singly.
In the final analysis, when the word fullness is used in the New Testament, it is speaking about something corporate. There is a fullness that cannot be attained just by the individual Christian, but only as we are together, comprehending Christ and finding Him as our land, as our inheritance.
In Ephesians, we read of being filled up to all the fullness of God. Now, how full is that? We see, as an example, the land of Canaan being filled up and possessed by the twelve different tribes. It speaks about being filled with the Spirit. Again, there is an application in Joshua: being moved and led by God. Certainly, in Joshua they are led by the Captain of the Lord’s host from place to place, from victory to victory.
We see in Joshua the great battle that the children of Israel are undergoing. Then, again in Ephesians, many people see the correspondence with the spiritual warfare spoken of in Ephesians 6. There is a correspondence between these two books. So, when we are talking about fullness, we can see that there is a picture in Joshua and an explanation in the letter to the Ephesians.
But as you can also see, there is a correspondence between Joshua and the book of Hebrews. Here we find it on a completely different line, if we want to put it that way.
At the beginning of Joshua, there are all kinds of promises: “I will give you the land.” Think about the size of that land. “I will give you all this land, and everywhere you put your foot, I have given you.” There are tremendous promises.
There are also tremendous promises mentioned in Hebrews. We have been given great promises, but let us be careful: if we receive those promises and do not act by faith, we can lose that rest which the Lord has promised for us.
In Joshua, we see this matter of rest: entering into the promised land, finding rest, and no longer wandering in the wilderness. Now you live in a city. Now you live on a farm. Now you have a home. There is this wonderful rest that we see in both of these books.
There is this Joshua leading in. Now, I am sure that all of you realize this by now, but in case anybody does not know this, Jesus’ name is actually Joshua. If we just transferred it over from the Old Testament to the New Testament, it would be the story of Joshua, because that was His name. Yeshua means, “The Lord is our salvation,” and that was a name given to Jesus.
We see in both books this Joshua who leads us in. As Hebrews says, “Look unto Jesus. He is the Author and Finisher of our faith.” “Consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.” We go into the promised land following this Jesus.
We also see that there is a ceasing from labor. We remember there in Hebrews 4 that Joshua brought them into the promised land, but he did not bring them into real rest—spiritual rest. There is still a rest, and it is a rest that has to do with ceasing from labor.
There are great rewards, and there are great warnings. When we are talking about fullness, we are talking about great promises necessitating great obedience, a heart that is responsive and not hard, and taking hold of the things that are ours in Christ—fully possessing our possessions.
How can we talk about fullness and look at the picture in Joshua? I suppose probably the first thing that happened with the book of Joshua to Christian interpreters is that they began to interpret the promised land as when we die and go to heaven.
In our hymns, we have this picture presented that when you cross the Jordan, you go into heaven, and then forever you are in the promised land and have your little shack up in glory. It is all crossing the Jordan. There are hymns all about that, and that was a precious promise to many Christians. They were looking forward to crossing the Jordan and going into the promised land.
But the promised land cannot simply be heaven, because you have warfare—giants, Amorites, Perizzites, and all those other kinds of “ites.” How could that be heaven? Of course, that is true.
The most usual and helpful literature for most Christians has been to take the book of Joshua as a personal picture of Christ in our lives. Many of you have probably read Ian Thomas’s The Saving Life of Christ. It is a great book to read. Alan Redpath’s Victorious Christian Living: Studies in Joshua is also a wonderful book.
These books show that twofold aspect of our salvation: one, coming out of Egypt and getting saved; and the other, coming into the promised land. One is coming through the Red Sea, being separated from the world; the other is coming through the Jordan, being crucified with Christ.
They show us that it is not just enough to be saved. As Redpath and Ian Thomas say, we are looking for the victorious Christian. The victorious Christian is the one who has gone through the Jordan, realized that he has been crucified with Christ, and is now living by the life of Christ in the promised land of Christ.
But I have not seen any book—and it is probably my own shortcoming—that really shows how this book of Joshua is a picture of our corporately coming into fullness.
This book is not just a book about an individual, and the Jordan is not just one person who got plunged into the Jordan. It is a whole people who came out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the promised land. Surely this must be a book for us as a corporate people, in this matter of entering into corporate fullness.
It is together that we are to inherit the land. It is together that we are to discover Christ. It is together that we are to learn the lessons of fullness, seeing what it means to live in all that Christ is to us.
God’s thought for the church is fullness. It is fullness alone that satisfies the Lord.
When you think of Joshua 1:4, the Lord is telling Joshua, while he is still on the other side of the Jordan, exactly the land that He is going to give him:
From the wilderness and this Lebanon,
even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates,
all the land of the Hittites,
and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun,
will be your territory.
He is saying, “From the wilderness where they are standing, even up to Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, on the east—God’s intention is for the land all the way to the Euphrates. And all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea”—that is, the Mediterranean—“this is the land that I have given you.”
What an overwhelming inheritance. It includes Saudi Arabia, I think, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. You can see why all of this land is under contention. This is the inheritance that God says is the inheritance of His children.
There were a couple of times during Solomon’s reign and David’s reign where they almost touched those borders—all the way to the Euphrates, all the way to Babylon, but on the right side of the river.
What a huge inheritance. What a fullness of possession. He did not say, “Take a strip out of Tel Aviv and give the rest away to somebody else. Just take Jerusalem and be satisfied.” Oh, God says, “Here it is. This is how big My intention is. This is the size of the fullness.”
Ah, but it takes people who believe these things.
For us, the church in its fullness—have you ever thought about the church, really? What does it mean to gather in fullness? What does that bring up in your mind: the church in its fullness?
It says, “The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” The church is His fullness, and it is all filled up with Him. “That you might be filled up with all the fullness of God.”
Can you imagine the church coming together, praying in the fullness of the Holy Spirit? Can you imagine the church coming together? That passage in Ephesians 5—“Be filled with the Spirit”—is a worship verse. The context is worship.
Be filled with the Spirit,
speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
making melody in your hearts to the Lord.
This is worship—fullness of worship, fullness of ministry. God has given apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers; then there is fullness of Body life, where every joint supplies other joints and builds up the Body in love. There is such fullness. What a beautiful picture. This is our inheritance.
There are no barriers, because God broke down the wall of partition and the enmity between us. Now we are one new, full man. What a tremendous picture this is.
This is not just, “Come together and try not to fight for one hour, and go home quickly.” Just like the promised land, take it all the way to the Euphrates. Such a beautiful picture of corporate fullness.
I say all of that because this thought of corporate fullness being a reality, for the most part, is not taken seriously in the church. As a matter of fact, the testimony is usually the opposite: rather than fullness, limitation; rather than fullness, a certain emptiness; rather than fullness, division.
We should not even spend time talking about the lack of fullness in Christendom as a whole. By Christendom, I mean everything that calls itself Christian—from St. Luke’s Christian Hospital to the Salvation Army to the YMCA and all of the churches, everything put together.
Is it a picture of fullness? Ah, the Lord in all of these things? No, not at all. As a matter of fact, it is usually a picture of the fullness of the world.
There are many dear saints among the Presbyterians, and they are having to decide whether to allow gay priests. How is that the fullness of the Lord? But we should not spend time on that, because there is such a counter-testimony and lack of fullness in the thing as a whole—so much organization, so much that does not have even the touch of Christ’s life.
No, no, no. In order for there to be any fullness at all, there has to be a foundation laid, which is Christ. There have to be born-again people.
The first pastorate I ever had was while I was in seminary. They called me to a church—I accepted and went. The first problem I encountered, within a couple of months of being engaged as pastor, was that at least thirty percent of the congregation were not Christians.
Their names were on the roll, so they were members. If you asked whether they were Christians, they said, “Oh, yeah.” I said, “Did you ever accept Jesus?” “No, I got baptized when I was twelve.” Such things as that.
If you try to lead a group of God’s people forward and a third of them are not even saved, you are going to have a lot of problems. We had a lot of problems. Brothers and sisters, that is the state of a lot of church.
Unless the foundation is Christ—that is, unless we have a regenerate group of brothers and sisters—we have no hope of coming to fullness, because Christ, in the end, is our fullness.
What about fullness among evangelical, Bible-believing, churchgoing Christians? Do we have such a testimony? Have we taken the land? Do we see the church in fullness?
Unfortunately, the picture is more one of division, kingdom building, all kinds of little organizational things and gimmicks. Some of you are blessedly naive because you have been involved in some very simple meetings for years.
My youngest son grew up in one of those groups. He always had a hard time explaining what it was when people wanted to know. Now he lives in North Carolina, is married, and has children. He could not find one of these strange fellowships, so he had to go to the little storefront church downtown. It was a non-denominational Baptist church.
The pastor was a wonderful guy, with a very loving heart, and he shared the Word. My son went up to the front where the guitar player was after the meeting and started plucking. They found out he was a guitar player. Well, that kind of did it. The next week he was up there playing guitar.
Then, two months ago, a really tragic thing happened. There was a man who was the guitar player, music leader, and choir director, about forty years old, and he died of a heart attack. It left this group with nothing. Guess who they tapped to be the choir director and minister of music—for one thousand dollars a month?
They started by saying he had to join the church. He said, “Join the church? I am in the church. I am church.” They said, “No, no, no, you have to join.” That is when he found out it was Baptist. It had actually been a split from another Baptist church down the road. They do not call themselves Baptist anymore, but still, you see the reality.
The more he got into it, he had to contribute to the building fund. He did not. Now he sits in the back row and does not even play guitar anymore. He just could not.
That is the kind of thing you get into. Next thing you know, there are all these things going on. Actually, there is a fight going on in that church, and there is going to be a division soon. I say that because it was probably the nicest church in town.
But there is all this competition going on—which church is better, which is bigger. Instead of fullness, there is narrowness: “We believe this; we do not believe that.” They split over, “We believe this; we do not believe that.”
I had one teacher in seminary. He was a Baptist professor, but he was a little sour on Baptists. He said, “Ah, yeah, Southern Baptists. We were conceived in iniquity.” A young minister raised his hand and asked, “What do you mean by that?” He said, “Well, we decided to become Southern Baptists because we wanted to keep slaves.” That is why the denomination was born.
One day he told us about something that truly happened around 1900 in Kentucky, where the seminary was. There was a church called Harmony Baptist Church. That is a wonderful name: Harmony Baptist Church.
They had some problems with renegade Cherokee Indians—guys getting drunk, going around beating people up, stealing things, and all that sort of thing. The deacons got together, and someone posed this question: “Suppose the Indians came to your house and said, ‘We want to kill your children. Where are they?’ And you had them hidden down in the root cellar. Would you lie and save the children’s lives, or would you tell the truth, as you always should, and therefore lose the life of the child?”
They got in such a fight that you can look it up—it is on record—they split. They formed Harmony Baptist Church and New Harmony Baptist Church. They split over a hypothetical question.
This is the kind of thing that we so often find: exclusiveness, denomination, racial narrowness, methods, and all this kind of thing.
Here is the tragedy in a way: Bible-believing Christians, for the most part, take this whole matter of Joshua as an individual-fullness matter. We need to be victorious Christians as individuals, but they do not take seriously any real thought that the church as a whole is supposed to be brought into fullness.
The church becomes merely a means for perfecting Christians. Then you jettison it—go to the best one, because none of them make any difference anyway. They are just means for you to get your gas tank filled up. But on the magic day, God is going to change that church and make her a perfect bride, just like that.
They have never worked things out before. They have always been divisive, fighting each other, cutting each other off, and judging each other. But suddenly, on that day, everything changes.
Some of you studied classic literature. The Greeks were famous for their plays. In Greek comedies, many times they painted the hero into a corner and could not get him out. But they had this thing they called deus ex machina—God in the machine.
After the hero had been killed by his enemy, or after everything had gone wrong, God comes down—Zeus or one of these gods—and straightens everything out. It was just part of the play form used in Greece in those days, because everything became impossible. So God had to come down and straighten it out.
Now that is the way most people think about the church. “Oh, the church is hopeless. There is no hope of us coming into fullness together, being one together, sensing His presence, the membership really working, every part and everything. It is impossible. One day, the machine will come down and fix everything up—presto chango.”
For the present time, just perfect your own life. Do not take church too seriously. People say they go to church. I know I have an axe to grind about this, but if you say you go to church, you do not understand the church. You are the church.
If you are going to church, you are doing something less than the vision you should have of what the church ought to be. Can you imagine this fullness that Ephesians talks about, this fullness that Joshua pictures, and the reality of a local assembly?
I do not want to keep picking on evangelicals. But how about us? Thank God, many of us meet very simply. Many of the external causes of division, divisiveness, and smallness, we have thrown away. But really, have we come to fullness? Where we assemble together, is there rest?
It is the only thing that will satisfy our God. I think sometimes we have such problems that perhaps we even sort of give up on the idea. Have you given up on the idea that there can be real fullness in your assembly, where you are?
Everybody thinks that up in the Bay Area things are almost perfect. The further you are away from something, the more likely you are to think it is almost perfect. They are dreaming about San Diego, where everything must be perfect. Everybody on the West Coast dreams about Arizona, because we know that is where perfection blooms.
But where you are, in the assembly you are in, is there any hope for fullness? Or are you saying, “No, we are hopelessly divided. We have a generation gap. We have all these problems with leadership and everything.” What do you really think?
Let me start by asking you this question: Do you believe the words at the end of Joshua, where it says the Lord did everything like He said? He gave victory over the enemy on every hand, and everybody came into rest. Do you think that is possible?
I do not want us to think we are talking about some kind of total perfection. But there must be a way for us to live in fullness, and there is a testimony to fullness. What does this mean: the church in fullness, the church as the fullness of Him who fills all in all? What does it mean for us to gather together and be filled with all the fullness of God?
Surely there is a perfecting end to this whole thing, when the Lord comes back and does the final work. But can we be a testimony to this fullness now? Surely there must be a reason we have been drawn together, gone through so much, and been established upon the salvation of Jesus Christ. Surely there must be a deeper reason.
He wants to bring us to something. He wants to recover some things that have been lost since Adam and Eve sinned—the recovery of fullness with Him and with us, with a presence and a life and a blessing.
What is the problem with us when it comes to fullness anyway? Why is it that we fall so short of this thing? We could call it sin, and I guess in the end it is. But I think there is a specific picture we see in the book of Joshua that we are going to look at in these nights that we spend together.
Basically, it has to do with this: it is our flesh that prevents fullness in the church.
I was thinking about this, and I came up with this little statement. I just give it to you so you can shoot me down on it if you want:
The genius of the natural man is to make his small things great, thus rendering great things small.
The saddest thing is to see an assembly that fulfills this definition: the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Brothers and sisters, you have been to many different assemblies, fellowships, and churches. To me, that is a sad thing to see. I was recently at a place where I do not know how to describe it except to say this: the saints are precious. They love the Lord. They know His Word, the songs, and the hymns. They know how to pray. They are giving people.
Yet when they gather together in Jesus’ name, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. All these wonderful Christians get together, and something gets jammed up. They cannot worship in fullness, pray in fullness, or testify in fullness. They get all jammed up, self-conscious, and critical.
This particular group has a rule: “We gather together as a family, so let anybody do anything.” They get together, and it is completely undisciplined.
They start to sing some songs, and you think, “Wow, this is wonderful.” You join in the singing, and then somebody says, “You know what happened to me yesterday? I went out shopping. I left the gate open, and my dog got out. I got back home, my dog was gone.” They proceed to tell for twenty minutes about how the lost dog was wandering around. They could not find it, thought the dog was dead, and the kids were crying. Then, at sunset, in comes the dog. Twenty minutes. Now, we were worshiping up to that.
Then there is a man who has a favorite song, and he calls it, so they sing it. By then things are pretty dead. But they are going to retrieve it, because fortunately they have three or four men, some former preachers and some former missionaries. So these men get up and start preaching.
The particular meeting I am talking about was three and a half hours long. Meanwhile, the kids are squirming, crying, and screaming because the kids are in the meeting. Some children are acting up and distracting everybody. Of course, the grandparents are just smiling: “Oh, the kids are wonderful.”
It is almost as if the whole life goes out of the meeting. After three and a half hours, they say, “Okay, let’s stand up around the table and break bread, and then we will go.”
I got out of there that day and said, “Lord, deliver me. Help me, Lord. I know these saints are precious. Why can’t we have fullness in the meeting?” But it is self, self, self—undisciplined self. People asking for their favorite songs, people preaching their favorite sermons, people talking about themselves, and the Lord is not magnified.
So the genius of natural man takes these little, small things and makes them great, and then renders the great things small. Where is God’s fullness in the midst of all of that?
If we go to the New Testament, I will give you two verses that say virtually the same thing. In Galatians 5:1, it says:
It was for freedom that Christ set us free;
therefore keep standing firm,
and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
We are free in the grace of God, and we have to maintain that freedom. But Galatians 5:13 says:
You were called to freedom, brethren;
only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh.
Ah, there is the problem.
In Hebrews 4, we see that the writer says:
For if Joshua had given them rest,
He would not have spoken of another day after that.
So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
For the one who has entered His rest
has himself also rested from his works,
as God did from His.
In order for the church to come into fullness, there must be some cessation from self-absorption, self-centeredness, and self-greatness that prevents the Lord from being magnified.
This has so many tragic elements and so much that depletes the fullness of the Lord in our midst. When we see this wonderful picture of the fullness of the church in Ephesians, it should put fear in our hearts.
Fullness is not just a matter of a lot of people. Fullness is a matter of His presence. Two or three can gather together under our Lord in such a way that you sense the fullness. It is a testimony to His fullness. You do not need nine hundred people to have fullness.
But you need His presence. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, where the Spirit is Lord, there is liberty. There is a sense of fullness. Just two or three people can worship the Lord, magnify the Lord, and pray to the Lord in a Spirit-filled way. Fullness has to do with His presence.
But for His presence to be there, flesh must be checked in some way.
I recently heard from my brother Ernie, coming to the United States, and he shared about an assembly in Brazil. The original gracious blessing that this group experienced several years ago is now all but gone.
Ernie’s wife was almost weeping as she said, “The sisters have actually taken over the meeting because the brothers let anybody do whatever they want.” I thought that pretty much said it all.
It is a charismatic group, and they get all crazy. But the brothers have this word that passes around among some assemblies: “Do not correct anything. The Lord will correct it.” Now that sounds very spiritual, but what will happen is flesh will rob the Lord of His due worship when the saints gather together.
Of course, since we are looking at ourselves, we leaders are the ones who so often bring in this stuff.
Maybe our greatest problem that prevents the fullness of the Lord is that we think we are full already.
Young people are great. Right now, we have a Bible study in our apartment on Monday nights with a lot of college students and young people. It is such a large-hearted meeting. Young people are large.
Young people go to college and start out Democrats. Then they get out, get narrower and narrower, and become Republicans. They start out wanting to heal the world—“We can do anything; we are for Jerry Brown”—but then, with time and reality, they realize, “Hey, they are cutting too much out of my salary,” and they shift over this way and get narrower.
But have you ever noticed how large young people are? When you have a young people’s meeting, there is this sense of such potential. They believe anything. They believe the Lord is coming soon. They believe the Lord wants His church full, and all such things.
But what would happen if you just let the young people go at it? At times, it happens. It is total destruction. They divide, fight, compete, destroy each other, and break off into five different splinter groups. Why is that?
Because young people are full, but they are full of themselves. Maybe they do not even know it, but they are completely full of themselves. So, of course, when they come together, they collide.
There is nothing like a young person who has just graduated from college, studied, been in InterVarsity for two years, and now knows everything.
One of the reasons we do not come into fullness is that we come together thinking we are full already.
Leaders—why is it that something starts out by the grace of God, just the touch of God’s love and grace on a fellowship, and then gets all tough and everything? Usually, there are leaders who think they know.
Now, I am number one. When I graduated from seminary, ah, I knew everything. Not only did I know everything, but I had been a Christian five years. So I knew everything.
I need not bore you with the stories of the disasters I created by my knowledge. But I can say that I am thankful that one day the Lord sat me down in a fellowship and said, “Dana, you shut your mouth. Just be part of the Body. No preaching, nothing. You just learn. You think you know.”
Brothers have divided over doctrines and things they think they know. You see what that really is? It is a small thing that we make great. We think our knowledge is great. It is a very small thing.
As soon as we think we know, fight over it, circle the wagons around it, and defend the faith with it, all we end up doing is dividing and causing less than fullness.
Attitudes, self-attitudes, self-absorption—people come together, and sometimes you hear somebody say, “I do not care what the Lord wants. I want to tell you what I need.” Well, at least they are being honest.
Remember the Corinthians. Here is a classic example of how fullness is robbed. The Corinthians had men going through there like the Apostle Paul—pretty good for starters—then Apollos, and then Peter. Let us just stop with those three. They had these three men going through there administering.
The Corinthians got together and decided, “We should vote on which one of these three we want.” God said, “I am providing for you a three-course balanced diet with the three basic food groups.” But the Corinthians said, “We want ice cream all the time. Give us Apollos. We do not want Paul’s hamburgers. We do not want Peter’s fish. We want ice cream. Apollos gives us ice cream.”
Does the church want fullness? Here is what we need: one guy to do all this. Obviously, this is a total joke.
Thank God, in our assemblies, the Lord raises up perhaps four men apt to teach. Is that not wonderful? Four basic food groups. Some of those food groups, you have to be patient with. Kids do not like to chew vegetables so much. But if you get the diet of all four, you have a fullness. This is God’s plan for you. This is fullness of ministry.
Do not say, “No, no, no, we decided we just want the ice cream man.” How many assemblies do that? What is that? Nothing more than carnal preference.
Sometimes what is good for us is not always something we particularly smile about, but it surely is something we need.
Here is a strange thing. The largest fullness the church can experience is from an assembly that has Jesus Christ as their foundation. What could be larger? What could bring in greater fullness than Jesus Christ as our foundation?
But we say, “No, no, no, no. We need to add something to that foundation to make it larger.” As soon as we do, it makes it smaller.
So it is Jesus plus baptism, or Jesus plus you have to be baptized in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues, or Jesus plus membership and a new members’ class, or Jesus plus this or that. As soon as we add the plus onto it, that largeness that is all-inclusive in Christ is immediately narrowed down somehow.
God’s plan is for fullness. But man’s little mind gets big, and as soon as that happens, the largeness—the fullness that is in the assembly—begins to decline.
Many times in the history of the way God works, perhaps in the history of where you are, when people first come together, it is a wonderful time. You sense such fullness, such grace, and such blessing.
I remember some groups I have been part of. We came together and had no plan. No brother had a message. Nobody had to put the songs on the overheads, or we would have to memorize them. Nobody brought a guitar on a particular Sunday. It did not make any difference. No planning, no preparation. We came together, and it was full of God’s grace.
It is because God loves us. He is so glad that we are gathering together. But for the long run, that is not going to bring fullness.
The Lord has a plan. He takes a bunch of people full of themselves, and He begins to apply the cross to their lives. The way He brings in fullness is that He rubs us together with one another to see if we will die and hold on to the Head.
He brings us through problems, blockages, disputations, and potential divisions, and we hold on to the Head. Do not make any decisions. Just hold on to the Head and wait for Him to speak.
If a group goes through this tremendous transition, which is represented by the Jordan River, if a church goes through this transition, they come into a greater and greater fullness.
But if the church comes to an argument between two strong brothers who both know everything, and if these men cannot die, then a little death comes into the group.
I do not know how the enemy’s strategies are always done. We know some of his devices, but he is so clever. He gathers together people—brothers and sisters who have first love, who love one another, who love the Lord, and it is so apparent.
Then they get into differences, things get tough, and they become distracted by job promotions. Somehow they lose their first love, but they are too busy to realize it. Now they are running together, but they are not really praying before they gather.
The church which originally came together, loved the Lord, and worshiped the Lord begins to sleepwalk, like the church of Sardis or Laodicea. They just have a smooth service, go to church for one hour, and everything is good. The message is only thirty minutes. Breaking bread comes after five songs.
Somewhere along the way, they do not even know how it happened, but there is not the fullness of His presence. There is just something missing. There are brothers who have an issue with another brother: “Oh, yeah, yeah, I have forgiven him. I just do not talk to him.” How can there be fullness in this sort of thing?
Now, I have presented a real bleak picture. I see some of you are very discouraged. But the whole point is this: I do not think the Scriptures are here to mock us about this fullness.
I believe that if we are willing to pay the price and learn the lessons, we can experience fullness. Two or three gathered, two hundred, three hundred gathered—it makes no difference. But if we are willing to learn the lessons of Joshua, I believe we can touch this matter and testify to the fullness of Christ in our midst.
I want to say to you, brothers and sisters, with all my heart: I believe if there are any people who have the possibility of coming to this fullness, it is us. Are you willing?
What do we have to do? That is where we get to the simple exhortation of Hebrews, which we are going to spell out in practical ways. The exhortation is this:
Look away unto Jesus.
If we have issues, if we have self and all of this, to hammer down self or to bust down somebody else’s self is not going to do the trick. But to look away unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith; to consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.
As we look at Jesus, as we look at Joshua, we can perhaps see some ways into fullness. I hope that the messages I share will help us to see that.
Joshua itself is interesting because Joshua represents three types of Jesus to us.
First of all, Joshua is the Apostle who brings us into fullness. In Hebrews, the writer says, “Brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.” He is going to talk about Moses, and then in Hebrews 4 he is going to mention Joshua.
In the most general sense, Moses and Joshua were examples of apostles in the Old Testament. Moses was an apostle in the Old Testament, but he could not bring them into the promised land. Joshua was an apostle in the Old Testament, and he did bring them into the promised land.
So first, we find Joshua as the apostle who brings us into the promised land. That is the first thing we see about Jesus. He is that Joshua.
The second thing we see is that Jesus is also the promised land. Not only do we have the One who brings us in, but when we get in, we find that He is the promised land. You know that typology already: He is the food that we eat, the water that we drink, and the land flowing with milk and honey. He is the promised land.
But the third type is that Joshua represents us as mature sons, as those who have been through the wilderness. We have been redeemed, we have been through the wilderness, and we have learned the lessons. We make the transition through the Jordan, go with Joshua, and possess the land.
So in all three ways, we see Jesus represented in Joshua.
Lord willing, I am going to give three messages from this point on.
The first one is going to be on sonship: Joshua trained, called, raised up, and led into fullness. That is you and I. You were saved, right? You were called, right? To be sons, right? You are being trained right now to be sons—to be a Joshua, to be faithful as a Joshua, to come in and take possession of this land. We together are sons now coming through to take in the land.
The second message will be regarding that great transition of Jordan. We are going to be the assembly leaving the reproach of Egypt behind, being circumcised, leaving the reproach of Egypt behind, and entering in on resurrection ground in the promised land through the great transition. This is the key in the life of the assembly.
Third, we are going to see a warfare that the Lord leads in unto fullness. This should not surprise us by now, but the Lord used warfare to mature the children of Israel, and He uses warfare to bring us to fullness—to teach us how to use the armor, to teach us where to go and how to fight.
We want to look at the assembly of Israel, representing the church, coming into fullness by looking at the book of Joshua.
Once again, I say to you: I pray that the Lord will give you hope about this.
I cannot think of anything more tragic than a group that has settled in and said, “Well, fullness is all well and good, but we have got what we have got. The brothers will not get any better. The situation will not get any better. I still do not like that person, and I am not going to make up with them. I am just stuck, and we are stuck.”
Are you stuck in your assembly life? Well, may the Lord help us. It is all about dealing with self. By the grace of the Lord, He wants us to do that.
What a wonderful victory the book of Joshua is. Is that not a great testimony? When you read just before it and read about life in the wilderness, you say, “Boy, I do not want that.” Then you go over to Judges and read where everybody did what was right in their own eyes. Uh-oh—that was the robber of fullness, was it not?
Ah, but let us go back to Joshua. There it is: victory, testimony, faith, obedience, fullness. Right there in Joshua. Let us look at it in a positive way. Let us see how the Lord can lead us in, and may the Lord help us to be led in.
Let us pray.
Lord, forgive me for testifying about limitation and division and problems. But I know I am among friends who have experienced or known about all of these things. What we want is the fullness. What we want is to know that fullness in our assembly life.
Lord, we would even confess that there have been moments and times when that has been a reality to us, a precious reality to us. But perhaps even with that, we have gotten stuck at some point along the way. Oh, do recover us unto fullness.
Lord, we know that You are not satisfied until we are in an administration suitable for the fullness of time, until we are living in the good of every spiritual blessing that You have given us, until we are the inheritance, and we have seen by revelation the riches of the inheritance in the saints as You see it.
Oh, fill us with Your Spirit again, and grant us that blessed experience of gathering with the saints and considering the height and depth and width and breadth of Jesus Christ. Oh, grant us fullness, Lord.
Forgive us for limitation. Forgive us for divisiveness. Forgive us for pettiness. Forgive us for unforgiveness. Forgive us for all of those things that just stew us in the flesh.
Oh, forgive us for thinking we are full. Forgive us for the divisiveness that we have caused by our minds and our doctrines, which have just caused the fullness of love to evacuate the premises.
Lord, we want to live in the fullness of Christ. Lord, we want You to teach us how to do so. We thank You that You have grounded us in our great salvation. We thank You for Your mercy that is willing to forgive, and we also thank You for that vision that gives us hope—even Christ in us, the hope of fullness.
Oh, gather us unto fullness, Lord. Even in these days, we know that this matter of fullness is more than just a local assembly. Even in these days, as we are together here, and our brother Stephen shares, and we have fellowship together, and all that happens in these days, let there be a tasting and a touching of fullness.
Oh, bring us into a real experience of that which You desired from the beginning. Recover us, Lord, to that which pleases Your heart. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.