A couple of passages I’d like to read this morning.
You know, I didn’t know it was Father’s Day. I thought Father’s Day was last week, so I made my kids celebrate. Then I found out it was this week.
I’d like to read just a couple of verses in Luke 2, starting in verse 41.
His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover.
And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.
When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and His mother did not know it.
But supposing Him to have been in the company, they went a day’s journey, and sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances.
So when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking Him.
Now so it was that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.
And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.
So when they saw Him, they were amazed; and His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.”
And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
But they did not understand the statement which He spoke to them.
Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. But His mother kept all these things in her heart.
Then, in Mark 12, starting with verse 28:
And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”
Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
This is the first commandment.”
Let’s pray.
Father, we want to again just thank You for what we shared earlier, how we shared Your Son with You. We want to thank You that, as our Father, You have been good to us. You have been gracious to us, and we want to give You our thanks back.
This morning, we want to ask that You would be able to speak Your heart to us in a full way. Lord, we’re not asking for a teaching. We’re just asking that You would have freedom to speak to us—Father to children, as Father to son—and be glorified, and draw us out to You through Your Word. We’re asking this in Jesus’ name.
I had a real nice canned message for you this morning—till about six o’clock.
I was on the West Coast for Memorial Day, and I was going to share one of the messages I brought that I thought maybe was what the Lord wanted. But I just couldn’t get through. You know, I was wondering why. I think that’s a pretty good message.
And the Lord was kind of saying to me, “No, I don’t want you to do that. I want you to share what I showed you.” So I don’t know how this is going to go, because I’ve got these really great notes. But I’m going to go with what I think the Lord wants.
When I was speaking in San Diego, I was really caught by this verse in Luke 2—I think it’s verse 49:
“Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
I made that the theme of the ministry I gave in San Diego. You know, you go to speak to other people, and then you find out that the Lord’s really speaking to you.
The phrase that really caught me in this verse was, “Did you not know?”
We might think, “Oh, well, what’s so interesting about that?” But look at the person to whom it was spoken: the one who gave our Lord birth, and one who knew what God’s purpose was for Him.
He was twelve years old. He had been living with her for twelve years. And I think that, with all these things that she knew, she didn’t know. He had to tell her, “Didn’t you know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
It made me really think. In August, it will be thirty-five years since I asked the Lord to forgive my sins and to take me into His kingdom. That’s a long time—thirty-five years, twice some of you guys’ age.
But I know a lot of stuff. I know a lot. There have been a lot of conferences. But I didn’t know that the One who lives in me must be about His Father’s business.
I’m not saying that I didn’t know it in a sense. But the Spirit of the One who lives in me is speaking, saying, “Don’t you know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
I think that Mary—well, a Jewish man kind of didn’t leave home until he was about thirty years old. And I think Mary might have thought to herself, “I’ve got eighteen years left before He goes out and starts His ministry. Eighteen years of me and Him, of relationship with me and Him. How glorious.”
Think about that, even with ourselves: an intimate relationship with the Lord, just Him and I—or you and He. And yet the life that was in Him said, “No, I must be about My Father’s business.”
It’s not, “I’m your life.” I mean, “I’m not yours. I’m My Father’s.”
It just started to make me think: What is it that God desires for me? What is it that He really wants from me?
I’ve been having some real problems lately—not things where you have to go, “Well, what’s going on with Jim?” No. Problems struggling with what the Lord wants for my life.
I felt a lot like just a big talking head. You know what I mean? I mean, all there is is once in a while I come out and speak, and then you guys don’t see me again. It’s really been bothering me.
So I started to say, “Oh, Lord, what do You want? What do You want from me? What are You desiring? What is the purpose You have for me?”
I bring that up because, when I was first searching, the thing that brought me to the Lord was that I was seeking purpose for life. Why am I here? Is it just that we’re here and we die, and that’s it? That can’t be it. A God who loves can’t be like that—make you for nothing. There must be a reason. There must be a purpose.
So I started thinking, “Okay, the Father says, ‘Be about My business.’ What’s God’s business?” Jesus was a carpenter. Maybe He wants me to be a carpenter.
But part of the Lord’s business is this: the Lord wants to make Himself known. The Lord wants to save and redeem. It’s part of what His business is. He wants to rule in our lives, as well as in the earth. And He wants to keep what is His.
There’s a verse in John 6 where Jesus says, “And this is the will of God, that I lose nothing of what He gave Me.” So that’s part of His business—to keep that.
In a sense, I know the Lord wants service. But we can get onto service and say, “Well, we just do things. Okay, I’ll teach a Bible study. I’ll do a youth group. I’ll do something like that.”
But that’s not apart from everything else. The Lord doesn’t deal with us by saying, “Jim, I saved you to teach a Bible study.” The Lord is not so mercenary as to do something like that.
So what is He after? What is He after? That’s my dilemma. And I think I found out. It hurts me, because I’ve fallen short.
I’ll tell you what the Lord wants, or what He’s been showing me. Sorry. He wants a whole offering. He wants a whole offering.
Let me explain what I mean. I’m using this because I have no other way to explain what a whole offering is. I’m not talking about a sacrifice.
Those who served the Lord and served Him wholly were called servants. For example, Moses is “My servant,” faithful in all My house. The Lord Jesus, in Isaiah, prophetically was called, “My Servant.” Peter and Paul, in their letters, start out, “Paul, a bondservant,” or “Peter, a bondservant.”
Now, I want to just check that whole word, bondservant. I’m not saying, “Hey, we’ve got to be bondservants.” That’s not what I’m saying. But I just want to look at this for a moment.
In Exodus 21:5-6, there is the first mention of a bondservant:
But if the servant plainly says, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,”
then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door, or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.
The parallel passage is in Deuteronomy 15:16-17:
And if it happens that he says to you, “I will not go away from you,” because he loves you and your house, since he prospers with you,
then you shall take an awl and thrust it through his ear to the door, and he shall be your servant forever.
Also to your female servant you shall do likewise.
I want to bring this up because I think there are three things that go into a whole offering that God wants.
The first thing is this: this guy would never be a bondservant if he had not loved the master.
I want you to understand that it’s not that he loved the master out of himself—that he chose to set his love upon his master and then serve him. That’s not the case. The case is that he was loved first.
It’s a response to the one who is his master. It’s a responding love to this One. So you could say, in this sense, for a whole offering, the Lord wants our affection.
I didn’t say our heart. I wanted to say affection. I think affection speaks of warmth and life that goes with the heart. It’s not just, “Here’s my heart.” It is the emotion, the feeling, that goes with it.
This was the first commandment, even though we read that passage in Mark. What’s the greatest commandment? That you shall love the Lord your God. But notice what it says: with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength.
It starts with the heart, but it doesn’t finish there. But the Lord definitely says to us, “I want your heart.”
When I started reading this passage about being about My Father’s business, I saw it as a call—not a demand, but as a call.
It was as if the Lord was saying, “Those who can hear Me, I want you to be about My Father’s business. I want you to respond to what you hear.”
There was another call in Genesis 35. Jacob was called. You say, “Well, wait a minute. I thought Jacob got the blessing way back in Genesis 28.” Well, yeah, he did. But he lived years, and the Lord called him again.
Jacob knew something about the Lord. He had gleaned something. When God first introduced Himself to Jacob, He introduced Himself as, “I am the God of your fathers.” Jacob understood that, but that was all he knew Him as.
Later on, you can read that he calls Him “the Fear of Isaac,” because that’s all he knew—the Fear of Isaac. But later on we come to see that he knows Him as his own.
He found out something about God in his walking, in his sojourning. And his sojourning wasn’t the greatest sojourning. If you read from the time he left Peniel, when he met Esau, until Genesis 35, it’s only a couple of chapters, but it’s miserable. He’s in the land, but he’s going the wrong way.
What’s interesting is that the Lord calls him again. The Lord doesn’t say, “Jacob, you’ve really blown it. You need to get back on the stick. Come on, let’s get happening again.” No.
The Lord calls him and says, “I want you to go back to Bethel and build an altar.” That’s all He says. “I want you to go back. Go back to where you met Me, and build an altar.”
Do you know how Jacob responded? The first thing he did was tell everybody, “You’ve got to get rid of your idols.”
Why am I saying this? Because where do idols reside? They reside here. They reside in your heart.
We might say, “Well, you know, I don’t have little statues or anything like that. That doesn’t mean I have idols.” And you’ve heard that anything that takes the place of God is an idol. I want to amend that.
Anything you want more than fellowship with God is an idol.
Anything you want, whether it be good or bad. Not all idols are what we would consider bad things. It could be your kids. It could be your job. It could be your spouse. It could even be what you do here in fellowship.
The thing is, Jacob knew, because he knew God was holy. It’s not that God says, “I don’t want you to have any idols because I’m God; you can’t have any idols.”
It’s because God wholly loved Jacob. And because He wholly loves Jacob, He wants to be wholly loved. That’s it. He wants a response: “I love you wholly. Love Me wholly in return.”
“I’ve given Myself completely to you. Give yourself completely to Me in your affections. Love Me as I have loved you.” Isn’t that what the Lord said?
So Jacob went out and got rid of his idols. And I just want to say this: don’t go out with flashlights looking for stuff. Idols are quite obvious. They’re quite obvious. They won’t have to be really pulled out.
Now, as you get further and further on with the Lord, there will be things He shows you. But let me tell you one thing about the Lord: the Lord is so gracious. The Lord is so gracious when He deals with you and is after your affections.
First of all, He wants to show you the unreality of idols. Let me give you an example.
I know some of you guys know the Pikes—Floyd’s son-in-law and daughter. Jeannie Pike, when we were little kids, there was a television show called Sheriff John. It was one of those early cartoon shows where it was live. This was before they had tape, so everything was live.
On Sheriff John, he did a birthday song: “Put another candle on your birthday cake.” I don’t know if you had it back east. It was an L.A. thing. You watched every day, and they had someone on for their birthday. People would write in, they’d invite them, and Jeannie Pike got to go on the show.
She was stoked, because when you saw the show, you saw the buildings where the sheriff came out, the prizes, and everything. She was really stoked. Then she got to the set, and it was all façade. The buildings were just plywood with backing. She was so disappointed that it wasn’t real.
The Lord wants to save us from that—from giving ourselves to something that’s not real.
I want to give you an example from my own life. You know that I once aspired to be a basketball player. The Lord was very gentle with me.
When I went and played on this touring team, the Lord couldn’t shake it from me. This is what I wanted. My affection was in there. I loved basketball. I felt I could do so many good things for the Lord. What a witness—that people could see me out front being a Christian while I played basketball. What a witness.
So I said, “Okay, Jim, here’s your opportunity.” I got out there, and it was façade. It was crummy.
Have you ever seen something that looks really good, and then you bite into it and it’s almost all air? That’s what it was like. It was so disappointing.
But it was at that very time that the Lord spoke to my heart in many ways. I remember one time we were on an airplane, going from Australia to New Zealand, and the Lord spoke in my heart. He said, “It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be, is it?”
I said, “No.”
He continued, saying, “You’re Mine now. I have you, and I will not let you go. Your life will never be the same now.”
And that’s true, because He won’t let go. Because He wants your affection. How gracious He is.
I’m not saying it was because I stood up and said, “I love the Lord more than basketball,” because I didn’t. I loved basketball a lot more than I loved the Lord.
But the Lord had to show me, in comparison, it’s nothing. It’s just nothing. It’s air, nothing more than that.
Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love Me more than these?”
The Lord had to say to me, “That’s why I was asking you that question. What would the ‘these’ be if I asked you that? How will you answer Me? What are they, Jim?”
Then He seemed to say, “Whatever you love has got to be touched. It has got to be touched to show you what’s real and what’s not.”
Even Jacob, when he gave up all his idols, still had one. That was Benjamin. And the Lord said, “I’ve got to touch it. I’ve got to touch that thing that you love more than Me, so that it takes its place.”
We have a sign here that says, “That He may be preeminent.” It’s also in our own hearts. No rival throne. No other love.
“I want a whole offering.” It starts with your affections.
Another part that He wants is our ear. You might say, “Well, that’s really weird. Why an ear?” What do your ears do? They hear.
The Lord wants not just our affection; He wants our attention. And I don’t mean like, “Got your attention, didn’t I?” But He wants us to recognize when He’s talking to us.
The person who went over and gave him his ear—that’s an interesting thing. It says he gave him his ear. In the same way, we’re to give the Lord our ears.
Yes, that means we read the Bible and study the Bible. But we read it not just for study. We read it to know Him. Sometimes I don’t think we think about that. We read it to know Him. It tells us who He is.
But it also says in Psalm 40:6-8, “My ears You have opened.” In other words, if we give Him our ear, He’ll dig it—not dig it in the way that He’ll like it—but, in other words, He’ll speak to us.
Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not that it will just give us an understanding of what the Word is. That’s why we have Bible studies, go to Bible studies, and things. But there will be those times when we have that still, small voice that speaks to us because we have the Word hidden in our heart. He’s dug our ear.
And we respond to this. We respond to that rhema. The Lord is after our ears.
But that’s not the only thing He’s after. I know I’m not taking a long time on this, but it is not enough for Him to have our heart and our ears.
Brothers and sisters, this is where I find this is where I stop. It is okay for me to say, “Lord, deal with my idols.” Okay, I can deal with that. And it’s okay to say, “Lord, have my ear. I’ll go to the conferences. I’ll go to meetings, and I’ll hear ministry.”
But then He says this. This goes in connection with that verse from Psalm 40, in Hebrews 10:5-7:
“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me.
In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin
You had no pleasure.
Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—
In the volume of the book it is written of Me—
To do Your will, O God.’”
Brothers and sisters, here is where the rub hit me. It’s not enough for the ear and the heart. It’s a whole offering. He wants our body.
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but I’ve been thinking about this. “What do You mean, Lord? You want my body?” Well, how can you obey what you hear without your body? Think about that.
How can you obey if you do not give Him your body? Like Paul says, is the body just an ear?
The Lord is saying, “I don’t want ears. Yeah, I want to have your ear, but an ear is not enough. Your heart is not enough. I want the whole thing. I want the whole offering. I want your body.”
If you look at Romans 12—and we’ve read this so many times that you can quote it, even though you can see I’m having trouble quoting it right here—it says:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
I have always thought this was talking about reading the Word, meditating on the Word, and being transformed in that way. You know, I don’t think it is anymore.
I think the way that we’re transformed is when we hear the Word spoken to us and we obey it. It’s then that we find out that the will of God is good—not just for God, but for me.
The will of God is perfect—not just for God, but for me. The will of God is acceptable—not just to God, but to me.
But my thinking has to be transformed. My thinking cannot be transformed unless I go out and do what the Lord tells me to do, and see that it is right. That’s exactly what fulfills me. That’s exactly the thing that I should be doing.
If we don’t give our bodies, we’re half an offering. Yet, at the same time, we can’t give our bodies without giving our hearts.
It’s easy just to go through motions and say, “I’m going to do this and this and this for the Lord,” but our heart is far from Him. Or not to give Him our ears: “I’ll do what I think is right,” but we don’t hear it from the Lord.
We’ve been called into this relationship. Any works we do that do not come out of this relationship have no eternal value—none whatsoever.
You can feed the poor, but if the Lord hasn’t told you to feed the poor, it has no eternal value. Those people are going to live and they’re going to die.
But if the Lord has told you to do it, then His blessing is upon it, and He has something in it that is eternal. Maybe that eternal thing is just for you—to make you move out in faith and find out that God is true.
I think so much we think that God is true just by reading things. But it wasn’t like that. You read Genesis: they found out that God was true by obeying what He told them to do.
“Go out into the land which you’ve never known before.” Well, that sounds good. “Okay, I believe that.” No, Abraham went out.
“Offer up your only son.” “Well, I don’t think that God will really kill him. I think He’ll give him back to me; He’ll find a ram.” No. He had to go out and do that, and believe that God would raise him up.
It’s not just books. It’s life. God wants life, not knowledge. And life comes from giving our bodies to Him, giving our hearts to Him, giving our ears to Him, so that we find out that these things are true.
Sometimes I think I’ve had a generic God. He’s just common, plain, wrapped—He’s just God. That’s a word that can sometimes be so vague.
But He would be known. He would be known by a name. Didn’t He reveal Himself as the God of glory? Didn’t He reveal Himself to Abraham as El Shaddai?
He revealed Himself to Jacob—you read Genesis 49—as the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel. In other words, Jacob found out that even though he was wandering around, the Lord was there guiding him.
To Moses: “I AM.” To Paul: “Lord.” He wants to be known. He wants to reveal Himself by a name to you. He wants to be that personal God, because if He’s not that personal God to you, how can you ever give Him affection?
Why is this all coming about? It’s not just that the time may be short. But whether the time is short or not, these are our only days.
These are the only ones we have. We’ve already burned the bridges behind us—I mean, the ropes are burned behind us. These are the only days we have left.
Whether the Lord tarries for a hundred years or not, that doesn’t matter. What matters is today.
And the Lord says, “Today, I want a whole offering.”
If you’re like me, you’ve come to the place of saying, “God, I failed miserably,” and you want to give it all at once. I want so badly to do that.
Every time I try to do something like that, I find out that I’m an Indian giver. I take back.
But Jacob started out at ten percent. When Jacob met God and God spoke to him, he said, “If You’ll do this and this for me, I’ll give You ten percent.” It’s good business.
I think we want to give it all. We should say, “Lord, I want to give it all, but I just don’t trust myself. But I’m willing to give it all if You’ll be patient with me.”
Here’s the encouragement: When did a bondservant become a bondservant?
It wasn’t at the beginning. He didn’t decide at the very beginning, “I love you, master. I’m going to serve you forever.”
But I’ll tell you what was the beginning of his becoming a bondservant: he was in debt. He was in debt.
Brothers and sisters, are you in debt? Are you in debt to the Lord? Then you’re a candidate for bondservice. You’re a candidate for a whole offering.
That person was in the care of his master for six years before he made a decision and said, “My experience of you has been such that how can I leave you?”
“How can I go out on my own when I’ve been cared for so by you? How can I not give you my affection for what you’ve done for me? How can I not give you my heart? How can I not give you my ear? How can I not give you my service for the rest of my life?”
But, brothers and sisters, that doesn’t come until we start experiencing Him in our own life and seeing that He is that way.
We want it over right now. It’s a process. And that’s the hard thing, isn’t it? That’s just the hardest thing in the world: process.
I hate process. It’s slow. It’s tedious. It’s successful. You hear that? It’s successful. And that’s what the Lord wants.
The Lord is saying to me, “Come. Come to Me with all that you owe Me. Come. Just come, and serve Me like you are. Let Me reveal Myself to you—not in a book, not in just a ministry, but in real life. I want you to touch Me. I want you to see that I’m real.”
Because, brothers and sisters, if He’s not real, what’s going to happen when the floodgates open?
Our witness, brothers and sisters, isn’t in our words. It’s in our lives. Words without a life behind them are nothing. But life behind words is a witness.
So, brothers and sisters, I’m sorry. I hope I haven’t brought you down. But I just want to say this: I’m going to leave you with a hymn. It’s not in our book, the last time I checked.
This is a wonderful song. It was written, I think, by a sister named Booth. I’m not sure if it was a sister or brother. But I want to leave you with this hymn. This is how it starts:
Let me love Thee, Thou art claiming
Every feeling of my soul;
Let Thy love in power prevailing
Render Thee my life, my all.
For life’s burdens they are easy,
And life’s sorrows lose their sting,
If they’re carried, Lord, to please Thee,
If their pain Thy smile should win.
Let me love Thee, come revealing
All Thy love has done for me;
Help my heart, so unbelieving,
By the sight of Calvary.
Let me see Thy love despising
All the shame my sins have brought;
By Thy torments realizing
What a price my pardon bought.
Let me love Thee; gladly will I
Love Thee, Lord, the best;
For in sunshine or in sadness
I can find in Thee my rest.
But without Thee life is fading,
Treasureless, its choicest flowers;
Taken are its gifts eternal,
Left its empty passing hours.
Let me love Thee; love is mighty,
Swaying realms of deed and thought;
By it I shall walk uprightly,
And shall serve Thee as I ought.
Love will soften every sorrow,
Love will lighten every care;
Love unquestioning will follow,
Love will triumph, love will dare.
I want to just change that a little bit. This person is singing about the love that we could have for the Lord that could triumph and dare and do those things. But His love has already triumphed for us, and we have to stand on that.
We’re given two legs. One is to stand on what He’s done, and one is to stand on what He’s doing.
So, to be about our Father’s business—that’s what He wants. But let’s do it in a way that is a whole offering, and not just part. Let’s pray.
Lord, forgive me for stammering and not being clear. But, Lord, I just pray that if Your heart’s desire has gone out, I pray that that would be the thing that wins the day.
Father, I pray that You would awaken our hearts afresh—not to demand, but first to Your love for us, and then Your great desire for us: that we would know You as You are, that we would know You as real, and that, Lord, You would win our hearts.
Lord, that’s all we can ask. We want our hearts to be won. The hymn writer wrote, “Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.” O Lord, we pray today: capture our hearts for Yourself.
But, Lord, don’t just stop with our hearts. We pray for our ears and our bodies—Lord, especially our bodies. We’re so unwilling to give them to You.
But, Lord, You paid for all of it. You paid for us all. You paid for every part of us: body, soul, and spirit.
Lord, we would give ourselves to You and ask that You would take us up on the offer and bring us to the place that we come to the door and let You have Your way. We ask this in Jesus’ name.