Let us begin with a word of prayer this morning.
Lord, as we share Your Word, we realize once again, in real freshness, that it is only through the Holy Spirit that we are able to really hear what You are saying. Lord, we would ask that You would have mercy upon us today, that we might really hear Your Word and really see Who is behind these marvelous words.
Lord, You know all of our hearts in this room this morning, and we pray that every heart would be touched with whatever is needed this morning. That Your work might be done among us, and that You might have that bride that You have so desired, even before the foundation of the world.
So we ask Your blessing upon our time this morning, Lord, and upon our children who are also being ministered to this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, these days I have been sharing on this matter of sonship. I think it is interesting that the Lord has many children—many children. But how many sons does the Lord have? The Word is very clear that His desire is to bring many sons to glory; it does not say many children to glory.
Of course, in order to become a son, you must first become a child. But our Lord has no desire that we remain as children before Him; rather, that we grow up unto sonship.
This matter of sonship is fairly simple to understand. We come to that place in our life where we realize that, before the Lord, we are responsible for our life—not our parents, not our best friends, not even those who encourage us in the Lord and upon whom we often lean.
It is when we come to that point in our lives, when we are growing up, and suddenly realize, “Hey, I am fully accountable for me and for my life.” Yet we have to go beyond that, because the thought of sonship is to grow up and be responsible in the family business—to come in and do the Father’s business.
It was very clear when our Lord Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem at the age of twelve. His parents missed Him, and a couple of days later they went back to find Him. He was in the temple. What did He say?
“Wist ye not that I must be in My Father’s house?”
—Luke 2:49
That is the point. That is the age at which our Lord Jesus Himself came into what is referred to as sonship. In the Jewish religion, He became a son of the law at that point.
This matter of sonship is very important. The whole earth is in travail and is awaiting the manifestation of the sons of God. So sonship is not only critical in being about the Father’s business, but it is critical to the consummation of the ages and to bringing in the kingdom of God upon this earth.
The things I have shared in the past have been the fundamental foundations needed for a son to grow—for us to have a solid foundation on which we can grow and learn the Father’s business.
I began with the life of Joshua. It was a challenge to us all to keep the faith, to press on, and not lose heart in this matter of being sons. As we grow up in the Lord, sometimes we do get discouraged. I did not want any of us to fall away from that great responsibility we have as responsible sons: to be about the Father’s business.
I shared on the life of Samuel, and with Samuel the matter was consecration. The outstanding thing in Samuel’s life was that he was brought to serve in the house of God around the age of four—not forty, not eighty, but four years old.
Samuel was consecrated in the womb unto the Lord by his mother. Remember, the Word says that we are the salt of the earth, and if the salt loses its savor, it is not good for anything. Well, savor is consecration. That is your savor.
You are the salt of the earth, but when you lose that consecration in your life—giving your life to the Lord and serving the Lord—then the salt has lost its savor. It is something we always need to be concerned about in our lives as sons of God.
The third person I shared on was David. Out of his life, something stood out that was absolutely essential to this matter of sonship: the life of communion.
It was out of a life of communion that David discovered what God’s heart was—God’s heart to have a permanent house from which He could be among His people, a place for the Lord Jesus Christ and for the Father.
The fourth person was Daniel, whom I shared on last time—twice, I think. Daniel was the one who said, “I purpose in my heart not to defile myself.” He was a young man taken captive when Jerusalem fell, carried to Babylon at around sixteen or eighteen years old.
All of a sudden, he was a captive. Yet the Lord raised him up, and he became the number-two person in the government of Babylon. The Lord raised him up to serve God and to show that God is the God of heaven and earth, that He rules over the affairs of men. That was the testimony of Daniel’s life.
In this matter of staying pure before the Lord, I brought out two things that relate to man’s spirit. Man’s spirit is designed for communion, to receive the anointing, and to have a conscience before the Lord. Those are the three functions of man’s spirit.
If we are to keep our life pure before the Lord, we need to learn to follow the anointing. All of us who are the Lord’s have the Holy Spirit in our life and in our heart. We need to pay attention to the inward anointing the Lord gives, for we all have it.
If we do not exercise that inward anointing, we tend to lose the ability to use it. We begin to lean on reasoning more than on the anointing from the Lord Jesus Christ. That anointing tells you what is good and evil, what is the Lord’s will and what is not the Lord’s will.
Conscience is essential because conscience reveals to you what is right and wrong: this is right, and this is wrong. It is essential to have a clean conscience before God.
Without a clean conscience before the Lord, it is like a boat with a hole in it: our faith begins to leak out. How critical it is to keep a clear conscience before the Lord.
Today I am going to begin sharing from the life of Jeremiah. I have already realized that I will not finish today, but I want to share on this matter of calling. As sons of God, you are called.
Let us begin by reading a few Scriptures: Jeremiah 1:4-7.
Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee;
and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee;
and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.
But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child:
for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee,
and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.
—Jeremiah 1:4-7
Listen to that: before I formed you in your mother’s womb, I knew you. Before you came forth out of the womb, I had sanctified you, or set you apart, and ordained you a prophet to the nations.
Let us turn to Matthew 11:28-30. This Scripture actually came out this morning during worship.
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
—Matthew 11:28-30
Let us turn to Ephesians 1:9-10 and Ephesians 1:22-23.
Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him,
unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ,
the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in Him, I say.
—Ephesians 1:9-10
And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
—Ephesians 1:22-23
Then Revelation 2 and 3:
To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.
—Revelation 2:7
He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
—Revelation 2:11
To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna,
and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written,
which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it.
—Revelation 2:17
And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth My works unto the end,
to him will I give authority over the nations.
—Revelation 2:26
He that overcometh shall thus be arrayed in white garments;
and I will in no wise blot his name out of the book of life,
and I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels.
—Revelation 3:5
He that overcometh, him will I make a pillar in the temple of My God,
and he shall go out thence no more:
and I will write upon him the name of My God,
and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem,
which cometh down out of heaven from My God,
and Mine own new name.
—Revelation 3:12
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne,
as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
—Revelation 3:21
That is quite a bit this morning, but obviously the thing on my heart is this matter of calling. We have been called into sonship, and within that calling there are a number of calls.
God is a God of purpose. I think we need to remember that all of our Christian life: God is a God of purpose. He is the God of creation, which we see daily. It is marvelous creation, though flawed with sin. But even behind creation, God had a purpose for His creation.
What we need to understand this morning is that every person was designed by God to enter into His purpose. Every person has a divine destiny to be part of God’s great purpose.
What is that purpose? We read in Ephesians 1:10 that, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, God will sum up all things in Christ.
The Word of God says that Jesus is God’s Son, and that all things were created by Him, through Him, and unto Him. He is to inherit all things.
It also says that we are created for God’s pleasure. What is God’s pleasure? I think it should be clear, as you read the Word of God, that it is God’s pleasure that we believe in His Son, Jesus Christ; that we might become His disciples and follow Him; that we might begin to take up the cross and follow Him.
We take up the cross so that the character and nature of Christ might be worked out in our lives individually. It is His pleasure that the many sons be built together into a house for the Lord.
In the fullness of times, He will sum it all up, and we will see the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven—His bride, presented as a bride or a helpmate to the Lord Himself. What a purpose.
Now, I do not know this morning what impact God’s heart and God’s purpose have had on your life individually. But, brothers and sisters, if God is a God of purpose, should we not be a people of purpose? If we are the sons of God, should we not be about the Father’s business?
That business is to take up God’s purpose, not our own purpose for our lives. This is particularly important for young people who are being called into sonship. Praise the Lord, I think it was obvious from many of the testimonies last time that many of our young people are entering into this stage of sonship in their lives. I am thankful for that and grateful for that.
But it is important never to lose sight of the fact that God has a great purpose. He has a great purpose for your life personally. Unfortunately, many are called, but few are chosen. Many are called to take up God’s purpose, but few do. Ultimately, it is up to us.
God will fulfill His purpose, but will we, as sons, take up our responsibility in the fulfillment of that purpose? I think we should always keep that in view.
If you really see the big picture and we talk about God’s purpose, you will see that God’s purpose can be summed up in a Person: our Lord Jesus Christ. After all, even the house He is building is to be a reflection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s real purpose is to fully reveal His Son, Jesus Christ. One day, brothers and sisters, we will enter into the kingdom age. That kingdom age will be a thousand years, and those who have entered into full sonship and have overcome, as we see in Revelation, will be called to reign and rule with our Lord Jesus Christ for a thousand years.
As glorious as that may sound, at the end of that thousand years Satan will finally be cast into the lake of fire. God will create a new heaven and a new earth, and we will see the New Jerusalem coming down. We will enter into something about which we have very little light today: a world without sin.
Our Lord has big plans. I hate to use the word, but I do not know another way to say it: He has big plans. They encompass all of creation, and they encompass you personally. You are part of that plan.
He has known you from before you were conceived in your mother’s womb. That is how careful attention is paid to you personally. He has given His life on Calvary’s Cross so that you might be redeemed, come to Him, and enter into His great and glorious plan.
If God’s real purpose is all about His Son, Jesus Christ, does that not say to us that it is important for our life to be right with the Lord Jesus Christ? If our life is not about the Lord Jesus Christ, then we are missing the great plan. We are missing what God is after.
If we are not in agreement with Christ and His life, then we are no longer moving along the path of God’s plan—not only for the world, the universe, and His Son, but for your life personally. You are off track, so to speak. We are on a side road.
Sadly to say, there are many of God’s children—and by God’s children, I do not mean merely everybody who is born. I mean those who have received the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior—who have never entered into sonship and may never enter into sonship. They will actually miss what life is all about.
I am soon to retire, and I am amazed that I have reached that age and can retire. It seems like only a few years ago I was a little boy, going to school, riding my bicycle, and doing the fun things in life. Of course, I thought it was a hard life at that time.
I am amazed at how quickly it goes. I am also amazed at how much I may not have grown in the Lord. I put it that way because the Lord has so many great plans for me, and I wonder how much of that plan I have really fulfilled. I do not know.
I do know God is merciful, and He is always asking us to return unto Him. If we find that our life is not in agreement with Jesus Christ, we need to come back and say, “Lord, I need to get in agreement with You. If there is something between me and the Lord, I need to get it straight. There is something I need to deal with, and I need to deal with it.”
God has a great plan, and He wants us to be part of that. Obviously, we can be sidetracked for a good part of our lives because we have missed what the Lord is really after.
I think the Lord is so marvelous, so gracious, because, brothers and sisters, He never forces us. Even His call to return to Him is nothing He forces upon you. He does not grab you by the arm and snatch you back. Sometimes I wish He would.
But He always draws with love, mercy, and compassion. We talked about the prodigal son this morning. The prodigal son was wasting the grace of God and was outside the plan that the father had for the family, but he was restored.
First of all, we need to see that if we are not in agreement with the Lord Jesus Christ, then we are not actively involved in God’s great plan, and we have missed life. We have really missed what life is all about.
Sometimes we think life is about learning, education, growing up, having a family, having at least one car for every member of the family, and a nice house where everybody can have their own separate room. We hope our children will go on to higher education or training in a certain field so they can do well and support their own family.
We have come, frankly, to the end of man’s glorious plan to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, if we look at the statistics, man has not lived happily ever after, has he? Even those who have had all of these good things in their lives have not found it.
It is because, brothers and sisters, we are not in agreement with Jesus Christ. Being in agreement with Jesus Christ does not mean there will not be trials, troubles, and tribulations in your life, because there will be.
But in going through those trials, troubles, and tribulations, the Lord will be training you up and building you up as a son, as long as you are going through it with Him.
God does not force anyone, and He never will. He wants us to return to Him out of love. He draws with love, and He wants us to return to Him in love. He wants us to serve Him out of love and not duty.
Some of us, as we go on with the Lord, begin to sense the things that the Lord loves, desires, and wants. At times we will serve Him out of duty, and our heart is not in it. But we know that is not acceptable, because the Lord says, “No, you must always serve Me out of love.”
So, brothers and sisters, the primary thing in this matter of sonship is getting your life right with the Lord.
God has a great plan. The enemy goes to every extent to destroy the possibility of God achieving that plan. He can no longer attack the Lord Jesus Christ, but he can attack you and me. That is how he is slowing down God’s work—trying to hold off that day when the sons of God will be manifested, because that will mean his end.
There are at least four callings in your life, and we need to be responsive to all four of them.
The first one we read is Matthew 11:28:
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
—Matthew 11:28
Many of us as Christians might relate to that verse and say, “Well, I am heavy laden, and my soul is torn up, and I need rest.” But this verse is really written to unbelievers.
What is this burden referred to here? How many of you have read Pilgrim’s Progress for children? That is the only one I can read and understand. The other one I cannot understand, but the one for children I understand. I think it is one of the best stories written, frankly.
Little Christian has this pack on his back, and he is trudging along until he gets to this gate. He has this heavy burden, and once he goes through the gate—which is our Lord Jesus Christ—the burden is lifted. It is the burden of sin.
The Word is very clear: we are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. Unfortunately, when Adam and Eve fell, it created a bad seed. We have become the bad seed. Not only is there sin in our life, but we are fundamentally sinners, and it creates a heavy load on our lives.
It creates guilt in our conscience, and that becomes the heavy load which, at some point in our life, hopefully becomes unbearable.
Man is made with a spirit, and it says that man is dead toward God. We are dead in our sins and trespasses. That means we cannot commune with God. Our spirit is dead toward God.
The human spirit—not the Holy Spirit, but our own human spirit, which every person has—is unable to commune with God. It does not have the correct tuning on the radio station to get through.
That does not mean the human spirit is dead in every sense, because people can still commune with the evil spiritual realm. We see that in mediums—genuine mediums who communicate with evil spirits. The human spirit is dead toward God, but it still functions.
One function of that human spirit is the conscience. Before we accept Jesus Christ, the conscience is an evil conscience. It is untrustworthy because its standard of what is good and bad does not come from God. It comes from the society around you.
Whatever your mother and father are willing to accept, you accept. As you get a little older, you say, “Well, their ways are old-fashioned. I am not even going to accept that. I am going to accept a new set of rules that I call good and evil.”
So society sets what your conscience thinks is good and evil instead of the Holy Spirit. But the conscience is sensitive, and thank God, He will touch your conscience.
As He begins to move on your conscience, brothers and sisters, you begin to understand and see that indeed you are a sinner, that you are outside God’s plan and outside God’s purpose. You are not even a child of God in the spiritual sense.
The Lord calls:
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
—Matthew 11:28
Most of us in this room remember the day we came to the Lord, asked forgiveness for our sins, asked Christ to enter our life, and had that burden lifted. Our soul was restored to health before God. That does not mean we were perfect, but it does mean that heavy burden of sin had been lifted.
He puts away that sin as far as the east is from the west. That is how clean He makes your conscience. What does that mean? It means, brothers and sisters, it is gone. Even the consequences of your sin are gone, because the Lord Jesus Christ, when He died on the cross, took the punishment for that sin.
Not only that, but God forgets it. Brothers and sisters, that has always astounded me. The all-knowing God makes the choice not to remember our sins anymore, and they never come before Him again.
Your conscience is cleansed by the blood of the Lamb because of the sacrifice that Christ made on Calvary’s Cross. That is the burden in Matthew 11:28.
If there is anybody in this room today who has not actually got your life right with the Lord Jesus Christ, He is and desires to be your Savior and Lord. He wants you to be part of His marvelous plan—the plan He designed for you even before you were conceived in your mother’s womb.
You are missing it, and the only way is to come to the Lord Jesus in repentance for your sins and ask the Lord to be Lord of your life. That is the first call.
Think of the multitude of people who have been born on this earth, brothers and sisters, who have never responded to this first call and will never be part of God’s plan.
The second call is Matthew 11:29:
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
—Matthew 11:29
I am so thankful that these two Scriptures are together. This second verse is the call to discipleship—to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, not only to be saved by Him and redeemed by Him through the purchase of your life with His shed blood, but to follow Him as His disciple.
It has always been the Lord’s intention that these two things happen immediately: when we accept the Lord Jesus as Savior, we give our life to Him and want to enter into a life of discipleship. But unfortunately, that is not always the case.
Sometimes many years separate seeing that the Lord Jesus is your Savior, having your ticket to heaven, so to speak, and having your fire insurance, from the time when you say, “Look, not only is He Savior, but it is His desire and intention to be Lord of my life.”
At some point in your life, you have to come to the place where you say, “I want You to be Lord of my life.” This is the second call.
In the early days of the Christian church, those two callings came one right after the other. But as the years have gone by, we have emphasized getting our fire insurance so that we do not go to hell. We appeal to people by saying, “Look, you do not want to go to hell, do you? Well, just accept the Lord Jesus Christ.”
We do not realize that what they are committing themselves to is the Lord, and that He wants to be Lord of their life, not just their Savior. This is the second call that we must enter into.
It is second because it is absolutely necessary to respond to the first call. You cannot really receive the second call unless you have responded to the first call.
Nicodemus came to the Lord Jesus. He was a very righteous person and came at night because he did not want anybody else to see him. He began talking to the Lord about the kingdom and wanted to know what he must do to come into it. The Lord said, “You must be born again.”
In other words, there had to be a spiritual birth. A spiritual seed had to be planted into your life, into your soul and spirit—a life not of man or of your parents, but a life of God. That is what is planted when we accept the first calling. The second calling is to discipleship.
He says to take His yoke upon you. What is that yoke? The yoke is the will of God. Take My yoke upon you: accept the will of God in your life.
He goes on to say:
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
—Matthew 11:30
Why would the Lord say that? Often, brothers and sisters, when we accept that second call to discipleship and follow the Lord Jesus wherever He goes, we begin to realize that there is a yoke upon us. That yoke is the will of God for your life and for your daily decisions.
We begin to strain and struggle against this yoke because we realize we have our own self-life within. There are things we would prefer to do with our lives, and we would prefer to make the decisions about our life that the Lord is wanting to make. So we struggle against this yoke, but the Lord says, “My yoke is easy.”
The yoke is easy if you are not struggling. It is only hard and difficult when we are struggling against God’s will for our lives and what God wants to do in our lives. That is when it becomes hard.
Brothers and sisters, we are in the yoke with the Lord. What that means, frankly, is that He is carrying ninety-nine percent of the weight—maybe even more.
We just need to keep pace with the Lord in doing the Lord’s will. All we really have to do is say, “Lord, I am willing.” If you are not willing, you need to say, “Lord, I am willing to be willing.”
That is how gracious the Lord is for all of us who are yoked with Him. There are many times in our lives when we come to that place and say, “Lord, I cannot do this. I just cannot go on. This situation has gotten me overwhelmed. I know what Your will is, but I just cannot do it.”
Do not give up. Do not just leave it with, “I cannot do it, Lord.” Say, “Lord, I am not willing, but I am willing to be willing.” The Lord will take that and work that willingness in your life, so that you stay in the yoke with Him and do not fight against the yoke.
It is a life of discipleship, brothers and sisters, that we have been called to. While we are in the yoke with the Lord, we should be looking at Him.
If you are yoked right next to the Lord, you ought to be looking at Him. What we tend to do is look everywhere else. We are looking around at other things—the world and what it has to offer. We are looking inside at what we are not, instead of looking at the Lord and Who He is.
If we will do that, the yoke will be easy. This burden is different from the burden of sin. The burden that is light is the burden of the Lord Jesus Christ, which He allows us, in a sense, to get our hands on and lift just a little bit.
It is His burden: His burden for a lost world, His burden for His house to be built and His bride to be made ready, and His burden for us to enter into the full purpose of God for our life. Have we even taken up any of that burden?
The reason the burden is light is because He is carrying most of it. I know with my two sons—they are men now—but when they were little, they always wanted to help me out. If I was moving something, trying to move a chair in the house, I would pick it up and one of them would grab hold of a leg and walk along with me. He was carrying part of the burden.
That is the way it is with us and the Lord. Often we feel this burden is so heavy that we cannot handle it. Brothers and sisters, maybe—just maybe—we are hanging on too tightly to the burden. The Lord really carries the burden.
I think the best example of this is the apostle Paul. If you are going to be a disciple of the Lord, you will suffer. That is very clear in the Word. The Lord will take you through things for His own purpose that you may not understand, but He will get you through them because He is in the yoke with you.
One of the best examples is Paul. Paul was given the thorn in the flesh, and he did not understand it. He said, “Lord, I have this thorn in the flesh.” A lot of people think it was blindness from malaria, but whatever it was, Paul said, “Lord, this is hindering my ministry. This is hindering Your work.”
The Lord let him know, “I do have an answer for you, Paul: My grace is sufficient.”
What a great lesson to learn as His disciple: His grace is sufficient. In order to learn that lesson, brothers and sisters, you have to be put in a situation in your life where, with all the struggling you might do, you are unable to handle it.
Finally, after you have exhausted every resource, you cry out to the Lord and say, “Lord, I cannot handle it.” The Lord speaks those words: “My grace is sufficient.”
A day later, a week later, a month later, or years later, you find out you are still here. You are still loving the Lord. You are still functioning before the Lord. His grace is sufficient. What a tremendous lesson to learn as a disciple.
The Lord said in Luke 14:27:
Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple.
—Luke 14:27
That is taking up the yoke. This second calling to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus is a life given to Him. Brothers and sisters, it means we have to take up the cross.
What is the cross? The yoke is the Lord’s will, but the cross comes in when His will crosses our will. Then we have to yield to Him. He says, if you are not willing to take up your cross, then you are not My disciple.
Many are called, but few are chosen. Brothers and sisters, I want to challenge us all today: are we really disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ? Have we entered into this second calling in our life, of being a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Give me a few more minutes, if you will. I will try to be short. The third calling: the first two callings are really for you. They are necessary, and they serve God’s purpose for you.
First, you have to have that spiritual life within you to follow Him. Second, you cannot just be satisfied with being saved; you need to follow Him in discipleship. But the third calling is toward the Lord’s purpose. The first two are to get you prepared.
In following the Lord Jesus, you begin to take on, through the work of the cross, the nature and character of Christ in your life. You are a living stone, and that character and nature of Christ is being built into your life.
But the third calling, which we read in Ephesians, is that one day He is going to sum up everything in Christ, and that He is the Head of the body. The third calling is to be the body of Christ.
It is interesting: if you read the Scriptures, you find out that the Lord does not say that the church is like a body. He does not say merely that the church functions like your body does, with hands and everything interrelated and needed. That is all very true, but He says, “The church is My body.”
It is livingly connected to Me, Who am the Head, and you are interrelated with one another in life—not just in principle. It is a living, real thing. You really are a part of the body of Christ.
You are His spiritual body, which He will use throughout eternity and in the ages to come. We will be His body, and that body will be fully matured, with every part participating, every part using its gift, and every part taking on the character and nature of Christ.
Then, brothers and sisters, God will present us back to His Son as His bride. You look at yourself today and say, “No way,” right? But God is going to do it. It is a marvelous plan.
When He gets that plan done depends on you and me and our cooperation with Him. The third calling is to be the body of Christ so that one day we might become the bride of Christ.
It is also referred to as a house of God—living stones built together so that He might abide among us. I have said this before, but it is a good illustration.
The house of God is not a pile of stones. We have some masons here, and they understand that if I take a load of bricks and put them at 1150 Shady Farm Lane in Ashland, Virginia—that is where I live—and set them on my lot, I do not have a house. I have a pile of bricks.
They might be good-looking bricks, if there is such a thing as a good-looking brick. I guess there is, right, Stewart, who has laid many? But that does not make a house. They have to be built together.
That is what the work of the Lord today is. Brothers and sisters, we need to enter into that calling. That means we have to be a part, we have to exercise, we have to live with one another, we have to share with one another, pray for one another, and worship together.
That is why we do these things: that we can be built together and that God’s plan can be achieved. That is the third calling.
Let me ask you this: in the Christian world today, how many people do you think have entered into this third calling to be the body of Christ? How many have even heard of this third call?
Obviously, to enter into the third calling, you have to be well along in the first two. Well, the first one is absolute. We are to be an organic, living body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The fourth call, as far as I can tell, is the last call. It is in the book of Revelation. I want to share more on this at a later time, but just for today, that fourth call is to overcome.
The fourth calling we must enter into is to overcome. After you have begun to enter into these first three callings, after you have taken up these first three callings responsibly in the Lord Jesus Christ, you begin to say, “Will this house ever be built? Will the Lord’s body ever be whole? Will we ever come to the place where there is a bride that can be presented?”
We see all of our failures in the church down through the ages. There was a period in history when the church went through what is called the Dark Ages. Almost everything was lost, but God, in mercy, began to recover.
Today His word to us, to the church—and we are right in the midst of it—is to overcome. In the face of failure, in the face of the failure of the church, we must stand for the Lord’s testimony. We must give ourselves to the Lord and stand for His testimony.
Not only must we be saved, we must remain disciples. We cannot fall away from our discipleship in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must continue to take up the cross and follow Him. We must stay in the yoke with our Lord, and we must overcome.
We do not overcome by our own strength and energy. We overcome because He is the Overcomer.
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb,
and because of the word of their testimony;
and they loved not their life even unto death.
—Revelation 12:11
These were not extraordinary Christians, brothers and sisters. These were ones just like you and me, but they recognized the value of the blood. They recognized that when they were not right with the Lord, they could go back to Him and get it under the blood.
They recognized that they must live their life in a way that is a testimony not only to the world, but to the principalities and powers. They recognized that they must give themselves, even being willing to give themselves to the point of death.
That death is really not so much physical death as death to our own souls. Maybe one day you will understand more what that means. But the Lord said that he who seeks to save his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for the Lord’s sake will gain it.
Your soul needs to be renewed, restored, and brought into fullness. We are called to overcome. I think this is an important word for our day because I think we have been greatly encouraged to quit the race.
You want to know who the overcomers are? Those that overcome. Look at Hebrews 11. They overcame in the most difficult of circumstances.
Today the Lord says to us, “Overcome. Take up My cross and follow Me, and overcome. Do not yield. Do not give up. Do not quit the race. Do not quit.”
Lord, we come to You today. We are thankful that You do call us, Lord. We are thankful for this great plan that You have.
Lord, I am thankful that You are calling many of our young people to sonship. Lord, help us to get right with You, to get our lives right with You, that we might be right with You in Your plan.
Lord, there is much that I feel I could not get across today, but Your Holy Spirit does the work, and we depend on Him.
My heart is, Lord, that we would all enter into our calling in Jesus Christ and not miss it. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.