First of all, we’re going to have a time of prayer tonight, primarily. We’ve asked everybody to please move forward. We don’t want to have a shouting match and make it hard to hear. So everybody, right now—now is the time. Let’s go. Everybody move forward.
You know, when we gather on these Friday nights to begin the Harvey Cedars Conference, most of us have come from work, or driven down, or driven through some kind of traffic jam—all kinds of things happening like that. But it’s a wonderful thing to come together and worship the Lord, because it refreshes our hearts.
Now, the Bible says, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” And the Bible says, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His mercies endure for ever.” Now, we sang those songs—boom, boom, boom, boom—about four or five in a row.
I want to share some matters for us to pray about tonight as we begin this conference. But before I do, I think we need to spend a couple of minutes and just open the meeting for us to express some praise through prayer as we come to the Lord.
Now, we sang, “Glory, glory, hallelujah. The Lord is coming soon.” That alone should cause us to pray, huh? So let’s have a few moments, please, brothers and sisters. This is no time to be shy. We’re talking about spiritual perfection here, but it is time to come before the Lord and offer our praises to Him.
So before I share any burden at all, let’s first just give thanks to the Lord and praise Him for Who He is, for His soon coming, and for all these things we’ve been singing about. Okay, let’s pray.
Glory, glory, hallelujah. Lord, hallelujah. Lord, hallelujah.
Lord, we believe that this whole matter of the perfecting work has to do with Your coming. Yes, Lord, we give You first place now in our meeting tonight, as we have sung and worshipped You.
We pray that You’ll place living burdens within our hearts that we could release unto You tonight, that we might be gathered for a time of significance here this weekend. Lord, we pray that You would give us attention tonight, that You would overcome our fatigue by the lightness of Your Spirit with us, refreshing and quickening us.
Lord, give us ears to hear, even tonight, the things that are upon Your heart. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I’d like us to turn to two passages of Scripture. They’re both very familiar. One is in the Old Testament, in Zechariah, chapter 4—a very familiar passage about, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.”
We’ll just read Zechariah 4:6-10. Again, we’re not here tonight to share a message with you, but rather to lay some burdens before us so that we can pray tonight.
Usually Friday night is quite a difficult time to share a message anyway. Those who have attempted it have died in the process. So we just feel it better to worship and to pray tonight, that the Lord would really have His way.
Then He answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying,
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain;
and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings of, Grace, grace, unto it.Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house;
his hands shall also finish it;
and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.For who hath despised the day of small things?
for these seven shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel;
these are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.
And then, in the New Testament, right at the very end of 1 Thessalonians—1 Thessalonians 5, just verses 23 and 24.
And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly;
and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faithful is He that calleth you, Who also will do it.
Now, this topic this weekend, spiritual perfection, is a topic that’s loaded with dynamite. There are cultic groups that preach on this very message and say that we can attain, in this lifetime, freedom from sin and a state of perfection and all of that. So, you know, this is really a loaded kind of topic.
But we, more humble Christians, realize we’ll never be made perfect in this ultimate sense in this lifetime. We hear the same message: spiritual perfection. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” And a topic like that scares us to death.
How can we ever come into the reality of this perfection? I remember a professor in seminary going to great lengths to explain to us in class that, when Jesus said, “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect,” He didn’t really mean it.
Then he gave that kind of sludgy liberal viewpoint: it kind of means, you know, He wants you to sort of think about that and start moving in that direction, but He doesn’t really mean it.
But we need to believe the word of God. And this verse, if we take it seriously—even just this first theme verse, “Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect”—throws us completely on the Lord for the doing of it.
There is only one perfect One Who can do this perfect work. And so I read these two Scriptures from the Old Testament and the New Testament because they have this in common regarding the picture of the perfecting work of God: both of these passages declare that what God has started, He will finish.
Here in 1 Thessalonians 5:24 it says, “Faithful is He that calleth you, Who also will do it.” What He starts, He will finish.
And Zechariah also says, in verse 9, “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it.” We know that Zerubbabel is not only a picture of Christ, but is in the lineage of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are talking about a great matter here, something that is beyond our control. But it says that God Who started it will finish it. And yet, in both these passages, we understand that we have to cooperate with this process.
We can’t just get fatalistic about it, or sovereign about it, and say, “Well, let God do it. We’ll just go on living our lives.” No, there’s a cooperation. And that’s what I want us to pray about tonight.
There are four burdens that I have on my heart from these two passages, simply to share as we begin. See, you guys are sort of like the spies sent into the land. Now, there’s another group bigger than this that’s going to show up after tonight, and you’re going to have to give them the reports of the grapes in the land.
We have the privilege, as the spies who’ve come early—by the grace of God you were allowed to come early—to pray for all the saints. When we’re here this weekend, may it be a very profitable time.
Now, the first prayer burden that I would like us to pray is this: in light of this great subject of spiritual perfection, that we would find ourselves resting by faith in Him.
This is the first thing. We need to exercise faith regarding this whole matter. If He started it, He’s going to finish it. Now, He said that.
At first, we all say, “Of course, this is true. What He starts, He will finish.” But I’m talking about a living faith that will cooperate with God even this weekend in His perfecting process.
Some of us, anyway, I’m sure, can identify with Zechariah. Here is when this message was brought to Zechariah by the Spirit of the living God. He was one of that remnant that returned to the land. He was involved in building the house of God, which was God’s will.
He came there with the others of the remnant, and they gathered together by the grace of God after they’d arrived. They came together in Jerusalem under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest, and they began to build the house.
Well, they were scared to death. But they did the best they could, and they laid first the altar. They set up the altar, and they began to offer sacrifices of praise unto God. That was all the courage they had—to just build that, raise an altar. That’s all they could do at the time.
For about six to seven months, that’s all they did: they just worshipped. Then they found that space, and they stood together. Zerubbabel said, “All right, let’s go.” Joshua said, “All right, let’s go.” And they began to build the foundation of the temple.
Within two years, this foundation—and now the altar—was complete. And then eighteen years went by.
Zechariah looked at the situation, and it seemed like, you know what? We’ve been here doing this work that God told us to do, and now twenty years have gone by, and we’re still basically on the foundation. We’ve just basically begun. We’re nowhere near the completion or the perfection of this work.
And this is our experience too. You know, some people have been gathering in various assemblies, seeing the house of God being built, and you feel like after twenty years we’re just at the foundation place, with very little visible work going on.
We begin to say, “Lord, what’s going on?” The Lord says, “Be perfect. I’m coming.” We say, “Lord, all we see is a foundation and an altar. There’s so much more that needs to be done.”
Zechariah, at this point, had to decide whether he believed the Lord could do it. How would he, or anyone else, have possibly believed that that temple would be built in four years? After lying there, as it were, in the beginning stage for twenty years, let’s just say, in four years it was completed.
Obviously, there had been a lot of hidden work going on. But during that time, there’s that temptation to say, “You know, this just doesn’t work.”
Or, “What we’re doing, gathered together here in some small group—I mean, you can imagine these poor remnant. They’re in Jerusalem, and they’re looking around them in Samaria and everywhere. People are prospering, and here they are sacrificing and going through the tough thing, saying, ‘You know, does it really matter that we’re doing this?’”
“All these other things are growing like crazy, and we’re suffering and struggling. Is it worth it? Is it worth it? Isn’t it going to work? Can God do it?” Twenty years will cause you to ask those questions.
Now, the first thing I’d like for us to take seriously is to believe the God Who says, “I will do it.” You know what Zechariah’s word was that got them started? In fact, it was the word of Zechariah and Haggai that got them started, and they built that temple in four years.
You know what the word was? “I will finish what I started,” says the Lord. And they believed it, and the building work started.
Well, so here’s the first request I’d like us to pray about tonight: that we not be staggered by unbelief, but that we believe that God will be faithful.
Or let me put it another way: we need to lay hold of the God Who has promised and ask Him to be faithful to His work. Now, isn’t it funny that He wants us to do this?
He will be faithful, and He has promised us. But here’s our part: for us to lay hold and say, “I believe God. I believe You want to do that.”
Do you really believe God wants to bring us to spiritual perfection? Or do you not believe this? Do you think that’s just way over the top? Where’s your faith here?
Now, there’s no way any one of us could believe that we could individually reach spiritual perfection unless God said He will do it. Now that’s where we need to stand. We need to stand by faith in God. If something is going to happen here this weekend, we need faith.
You know, God was called the God of promise because the children of Israel were waiting for that day when the Spirit would be poured out on all flesh, and sons and daughters would prophesy, and there would be dreams and visions happening among God’s people.
In these last days, the Spirit of God wants to do His work, and we need to believe the God of promise. If there was ever a time that this promise of God’s Spirit doing His work is necessary, it is right now, in this finishing work.
What an amazing thing. Can you imagine, as they began to build that temple after twenty years of delay? Of course, the enemy was attacking them on every side. There were plenty of good reasons and excuses.
But when they finally believed the Lord, they stopped wasting time and did what the Lord was telling them to do. They built that temple in four years. They found there were stones that had fallen down to the ground, nevertheless useful—just like some of us.
And the Lord began to do that building work as soon as they believed. So that’s the first prayer request: let’s believe God according to His promise. Hold Him to it. “Lord, do Your work of spiritual perfection in our lives.” That’s number one.
Number two has to do with this little phrase in 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely.”
I’d like for us to pray for the atmosphere here this weekend. It is in an atmosphere of peace that God can do His sanctifying, His perfecting work.
How we need this atmosphere in our midst here tonight, and that sense of grace—that they believed in God and came to Him and allowed Him to do this wonderful work. Peace—that is to say, no condemnation.
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. Now tonight, and for tomorrow’s meetings and Sunday’s meetings, when people come here, let there be that peace of God reigning over us—that conducive atmosphere in which God can do His perfecting work.
And not only that, but grace. You know, for some people, when they hear the message of spiritual perfection, it would cause us to strive in the flesh to try to be perfect. But that’s not the peace in which God can work. We really need His peace.
You know, as soon as some people hear even just the term spiritual perfection, condemnation begins to knock on your door. Now, we need to be under the blood of Jesus Christ and in an atmosphere of His peace, with a real sense of God taking us up.
In other words, what we need to pray, number two, is this: that all weekend we can be under the throne of grace, knowing His grace and mercy as this word is spoken to us.
We want no condemnation coming in and pushing anybody outside where God wants them to be. But we want to be under that throne of grace and mercy, receiving all that we need and the help we need in this time as this message is shared with us.
Do you notice that when Zerubbabel set in the top stone? Of course, Zerubbabel, the governor, actually put the top stone in that temple. I mean, it’s an actual historical fact.
When he did that, there was such an overwhelming sense of God’s grace that they all cheered. It wasn’t so much a prayer; it was a cheer: “Grace! Grace to it!”
Well, when we’re speaking of this spiritual perfecting, it’s grace that says this. And we’ll sense it at the end, when the top stone goes in, which only the Lord Jesus can put in.
But by faith, let’s stand in that grace right now as our Lord is doing the work. That’s number two.
The third burden has to do with the fact that this is such a comprehensive work. This spiritual perfection has many areas to it, and I’m not speaking on the matter. I just want to bring us to prayer regarding this comprehensive thing.
Just look in this passage here in 1 Thessalonians: “Sanctify you entirely.” Is that comprehensive? “May your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete.” This is a very comprehensive thing.
Now, perhaps we miss a little bit about why He is called the God of peace in this situation, because we have a definition of peace that is a little bit narrow in our Western thought.
But, of course, to the Jew, shalom, this word peace, meant something so much more. As a matter of fact, I remember I was taking a Hebrew course at a school, and I asked my professor, “What does it mean? You know, in modern Hebrew, you still say shalom to one another. When you greet each other, you say shalom. They don’t say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ You say, ‘Shalom.’”
I said, “So what does that mean for the contemporary secular Jew today when you say shalom?” And they said, “May God’s help and prosperity be upon you.”
And that’s the idea behind the God of peace: the God of wholeness, the God of healing, the God Who completely blesses you. “May the God of peace sanctify you entirely.” Think of that comprehensive work.
Now, here it is, the comprehensive work as far as we understand it: it has to do, in part, with integrating our body, soul, and spirit all together.
Integration comes from that word integer, which means a whole number. We come to the Lord as Christians. Thank God we’re saved, but our soul is a renegade, and our body is out of control.
In the church, especially in medieval times, they got to the point of even believing, “Listen, concentrate on spiritual perfection, but your soul will never be any good.” They made this terrible mistake, really, of mistaking what Paul calls the great war between the flesh and the spirit as a war between the soul and the spirit. But that’s not God’s intention.
Think of the comprehensiveness of this. It is not only to come into our spirit by the Holy Spirit, thus illuminating our minds to commune with God, sensitizing our conscience, and giving us a sense of His will deep in our spirits.
But then God needs to save our souls, to make our human personality useful to Him, to put it under the command of the Holy Spirit. So we say, “Yes, Lord,” with our will; our heart runs after the Lord like that deer panting for water; and our mind seeks to know the will of God.
Listen, God doesn’t throw away our souls. He wants to integrate our soul into our person, and our body as well to be His servant—not runaway, but His servant.
Here’s maybe the most wonderful thing about perfection: Christians are the only religious group that actually have a clear understanding of what it means to be spiritually perfect, because all we have to do is look at Jesus.
Now, a lot of religions have this notion, and even secular man has this notion. You know, I recently heard somebody talking about how we have no idea what man will eventually become, his full potential when he is using his whole mind and has this whole capacity. “Oh, there’s a whole new age out there. We have no idea what the perfect man is like,” you know, and they picture some kind of Superman in body.
But no, we know exactly what spiritual perfection is. If you look at Jesus, there you see Somebody Whose body, soul, and spirit were absolutely one. There was no war between the three functions.
His spirit was leading the way; His soul was alive and witnessing and testifying to the life of God; and His body was the servant in the kingdom of God. What a wonderful spiritual perfection we see in Jesus, even in this earthly life.
There we are. We see what spiritual perfection is. Now, in this great comprehensive work, realizing these dimensions of how the Lord wants to integrate our body, soul, and spirit—not make us megabuzz, you know what I’m saying?
We don’t need to think, “Well, spiritual perfection means I move on with my spirit, even though my soul still hates people, still rebels, and my body’s out of control. Well, it’ll never be any good, so I’m just going to pursue.” That doesn’t work.
Because the Holy Spirit is trying to bring us—He’s trying to make us glorified sons: fully human, but completely enclosed by the Spirit, run by the Spirit, and full of the Spirit. Ah, this is what He’s driving for.
And so, for this reason, the third thing I’d like for us to pray for is that the Lord would really give us the desire to consecrate our bodies and our souls for the Spirit’s work.
We need consecration. Spiritual perfection will not go to first base unless our bodies are given to the Lord, unless our souls are given to the Lord. If you want to leave your mind to yourself, you see, this work is hindered.
The Lord wants us to be molded and perfected—body, soul, and spirit. So we need consecration. Could we pray tonight, and for this weekend, that the teenagers would find themselves consecrating themselves afresh?
That adults as well would consecrate their mind, soul, and body to the Lord—to His service, to His work, to His perfecting. Consecration: the third matter I’d like us to pray about.
And then the fourth thing is that this spiritual perfection is a corporate matter, not just an individual matter.
Now, in 1 Thessalonians 5, it’s true: this matter of body, soul, and spirit, and its keeping and sanctification, is a very personal, individual matter. We cannot have corporate perfection and completion without our individual lives being transformed in this process.
But after all, it is a corporate process, as we see so wonderfully in that picture in Zechariah. There’s just one phrase that came up two times in the story of the children of the remnant who came back to Jerusalem: “The people came together as one man.”
I wonder if we couldn’t pray that tonight—that as we come together for these days, we can come together as one man. Do you know, there’s such a difference in atmosphere when the saints come together as one man.
It allows the Lord to do so much. And you know, brothers and sisters, it’s so wonderful. We have some people who are going to be here for the first time. We have some people who will be here as brand-new Christians. We have some people who are going to come here from some assembly, and they’re pretty much by themselves in their spiritual pursuit.
Then we have others who are in an assembly of people; they’re almost all going to be here this weekend. How wonderful. We have so many people coming from so many different places, but the Lord can bring us together as one man in order for Him to do His wonderful work.
Now, this phrase comes up twice in this little recovery story of the remnant. It comes in Ezra 3:1. After the remnant came back, settled, and set up their tents and whatever, they all gathered together in Jerusalem as one man to build the house of God.
Oh, what a wonderful moment that was, you know? They came together. There was Zerubbabel—the first kingly authority that they had standing in their country for seventy years. Here was Zerubbabel, their government. Here was Joshua, expressing their heart of worship and their desire to serve the Lord.
There was Joshua. There was Zerubbabel. Here they were, gathered together as one man, remembering God’s mercy: that He brought them through all the desert and all the danger, brought them back to Jerusalem safe, and even with building money and provisions. Oh, God’s mercy.
As a matter of fact, when they finally built that altar and then the foundation, what was their first song? “The Lord is good; His mercy endureth for ever.” It’s wonderful to come together initially as one man, isn’t it?
Perhaps some have experienced that when you’ve come together with brothers and sisters at that beginning work—laying a foundation, building that altar as one man, remembering His mercy.
But the work couldn’t be completed until they were gathered together once again as one man under the word of God.
Actually, the phrase is in Nehemiah 8:1. It has to do later on, when the temple having been built, they were now building the city. Even in that perfecting work, here’s what happened.
After the walls had been erected, the saints came together and said, “Could we please hear the word of God?” You remember how Ezra stood up on a big podium with a bunch of translators around him, because the people didn’t know Hebrew anymore; they knew Aramaic.
Ezra stood up there and began to speak. It says, when Ezra began to speak the word of God, they all stood up and listened to him speak.
This is what brought them together as one man: under the living word of God. Even as they were brought together, as Haggai and Zechariah began to prophesy, they were stirred and strengthened by the word of God, and they completed the work that God had given them to do.
Now, the Lord wants us to gather as one man under the word of God, to really listen and obey the word of God. It’s a very touching scene, isn’t it, in Nehemiah?
Ezra began to read, and as the translators began to translate what the word said—what they hadn’t known for years—the people started crying. So much so that Nehemiah had to stop the people and say, “Stop crying. This is a holy day unto the Lord. Be happy today. You’re hearing the word of God.” But all of them were crying.
You know, God’s word of perfection should bring tears to our eyes. He means it when He says, “Be ye perfect, even as My Father in heaven is perfect.”
But may we come together as one man and really hear the word of God this weekend. We need a living word. It’s even something beyond the doing of our brothers. We need that voice speaking out of there, speaking that can really touch us and burden us tonight.
So this matter of spiritual perfection is a very important thing. I don’t know if you have faith to believe this, because I know there are important things going on tonight—there’s a playoff game going on, there’s a debate.
I wonder if you believe it may even be more important what we’re doing tonight.
Then we need to pray. Now, just review the four things, and then let’s pray as the Lord leads. Let’s pray as well for people who are traveling, still getting here, some through many complications and all this. Maybe you pray as the Lord leads you, but I’ll just mention these four things again.
Number one: Let’s believe God regarding this matter of spiritual perfection. He said He wants to do it. We need to stand in that word and believe Him, and ask Him to do according as He promised.
Number two: Let’s pray that we might be under His throne of grace and mercy throughout the weekend. There would be that atmosphere of peace, that surrender to God, where He can speak to us and we can yield to Him—no fighting with God, no condemnation, peace, mercy. Let’s be overflowing with these things this weekend.
Number three: That we may find ourselves consecrating our body, soul, our whole life, for God’s work to be done in our life.
Number four: We might come together as one man. Oh, what God can do in a very short time when people truly come together as one man—not fighting, not divided, not feeling individual, but just coming together as one man.
Oh, how the Lord wants to perfect the work of His church, even perfect His bride, as He is doing now by the washing of the water of the Word, so that He can come back again.
So let’s pray these four things. May the Lord lay these burdens upon our hearts and give us a heart to pray.
Now, at this point, we’re just going to pray for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, however long the Spirit is alive in our prayer. Please don’t be shy, sisters. If you want to pray, feel free to pray.
But let’s pray in the Spirit tonight. Let’s not pray for silly things or unessential things. Let’s pray that this matter of spiritual perfection will become our heart’s desire as we’re gathered together here this weekend.
All right? Let’s join our hearts together. I’ll start out the prayer, and then let’s pray as the Spirit leads.
Dear Father, we come to You. We are gathered together, but we want to be as one man.
Lord, we thank You so much for what You have done in our lives. We have tasted Your grace and mercy. Sometimes, when we hear Your desire for us to be perfect, it staggers us. How could this possibly be?
But tonight, along with my brothers and sisters, I want to take hold of this living word and believe that You’re not kidding us—that we can put our faith in a God Who perfects us and ask You to do a perfecting work in our midst.
Oh, Lord, when we look around, we don’t have to look far to see great imperfection, especially when we look into ourselves. But, Lord, it does not decrease Your promise.
Because of what the Lord Jesus did on Calvary, and then His resurrection and the release of His Spirit into our lives, we believe that You’re going to save us—body, soul, and spirit. Oh, Lord, bring us to full redemption.
Lord, forbid that any of us would just be complacent and satisfied with where we are. When we hear this, this word lifts us upward and heavenward: “Be perfect.”
Oh, Lord, make this the desire of our heart—not to settle for anything less than Your complete work in us.
Lord, we pray tonight that You would give us prayer. Give my brothers and sisters freedom with Your very presence throughout this whole weekend.
Lord, we bring our hearts to You and pray in the name of our Lord Jesus.