You would turn with me once more to the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 12. Reading from verse 1:
Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame,
and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against Himself,
that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls.
Just a word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we are found here, gathered in Your presence. Whenever, Lord, we are in Your presence, anything could happen.
We want to praise You, beloved Lord, for the way that You have watched over our gatherings thus far—speaking in them, working in them, meeting with us in them. We have felt the enemy trying, one way or another, to contradict You and to frustrate Your purpose in these times, but we praise You: he is a defeated foe.
We thank You for the finished work of our Lord Jesus. We thank You that our Lord Jesus has brought him to nothing through His death on the cross.
We want very simply to praise You this afternoon that You have provided an anointing for the speaker, for translating, and for the hearing. Lord, we would be foolish if we ignored that anointing.
We want, Lord, to tell You that we are thankful that You have made the provision, and now, by faith, we stand into it. Let a double portion of that anointing, grace, and power be upon us all. Lord, let Your purpose in our time be fulfilled completely.
We want to meet with You. We want to receive of You, Lord. Therefore, we commit ourselves into Your hands.
Thank You for hearing this prayer of ours and for answering it. We shall be careful to give You the praise and glory for answering this prayer. We ask it in the name of the Messiah, our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, I do not think I need to say that the theme of this conference has been, “The time is at hand.” We have heard it in every single session, one way or another.
I have no doubt myself that we are very, very near to some very big events. Certainly, the gathering of the saints who are ready unto the Lord could come at any single moment. We need to be prepared.
For those of you—and I say it to myself as well—to all of us who in any way are encumbered or weighted down in this race that has been set before us, or by sin that has entangled us, we need to get these things settled. Do not leave them; get them settled.
Remember the word of the Lord: “Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” Do not put off till tomorrow what God is speaking to you about today.
It is so easy when you have buried something in your tent. Achan buried the things in his tent and had no idea that anyone knew. Of course, no one did know—but the Lord knew.
In many of our tents there are buried Babylonian garments, and gold shekels and talents, and so on. We need to come clean with the Lord and get these things settled so that we can run.
It is the same with this matter of an unforgiving spirit—the most common of all the problems amongst God’s people. An unforgiving spirit, deep buried within the heart, behind a smile, behind courtesy, behind politeness.
Yet there is a root of bitterness that grows underground and, in the end, springs up; by it many are defiled. As the Word says, every vile deed is found once that root of bitterness bears fruit. We need to deal with these things.
Well, my responsibility in these times has been running the race. I have read this Scripture from Hebrews 12 in each of these three sessions.
I want this afternoon to wrap it up. I always feel about afternoon sessions that everyone is asleep. Something inside me says, “The morning or evening, rather than facing the afternoon.” But I am sure the Lord can keep you awake.
Many people take my tapes, they tell me, to go to sleep. They say they are better than these pills that people take, which have side effects and bad consequences. My tapes have no such thing. They just put you into a blissful sleep.
Anyway, coming back to this matter of running the race, we have talked about running the race set before us. We have talked about, “So run that ye may obtain,” or attain, or win. As I said, I want to wrap up things this afternoon.
All the greatest things in this universe are utterly simple.
Theology tends to make things very complex. We believers are very, very clever at taking the simplest truths and somehow making them so complex.
It rather reminds me of our Jewish tradition, where our rabbis have fenced the law. The law itself is quite simple, but in order to stop us from breaking the law, they have fenced the law. That is, they have put a whole number of fences, one after the other, so that if you break those, you never actually break the real law.
Of course, I mean, you have to be Jewish, I think, to understand this kind of problem—although I think sometimes the Chinese come very near to it.
But it is a whole tradition we have had: to fence the law. Rabbinic Judaism is a fencing of the law. The actual kashrut, the kosher law, is very simple, but what has been added to it has made it much more complex.
What you are allowed to do, or not allowed to do, on a Sabbath is actually very simple. A Sabbath day’s journey is quite a journey that you can take. But the fencing of the law has made it much more difficult. There are a thousand and one other things.
Well, I think that Christians have made the simplicity of God’s truth very, very complex by somehow presenting it in such a way that it is no longer simple. The very simplicity of God’s truth baffles many believers, and they feel that somehow it must be more complex than that.
I am asked, “How can I reach the goal? How can we complete the course? How can we come to the end and win the prize?”
It is very simple—so simple that many overlook it: looking unto Jesus. It is as simple as that.
Let us lay aside every weight,
and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
Let us run the race set before us, looking unto Jesus.
You will notice that in one or two of the modern versions they put it a little differently. Instead of saying “looking,” which is very poetic, they say, “fixing your eyes on Jesus.”
Because of the way the Greek tense is used here, it is not just a complacent look, a kind of, “Well, look to Jesus.” It is a fixing of your gaze upon Jesus. It is a turning of your gaze upon the Lord Jesus.
It is, as it were, a deliberate looking to Him—not just a laid-back kind of looking, but something active, not passive. You have to look, fixing your eyes on the Lord Jesus.
Now, it seems to me that the devil’s whole plan—the plan of the powers of evil and darkness—is to get our eyes off the Lord Jesus; to somehow come between us and the Lord Jesus.
Whether it is problems, obstacles, difficulties, relationships, Satan himself, works of darkness, or whatever else—the world itself—it is somehow to bring those things between us and the Lord Jesus, so that our gaze is taken off the Lord Jesus and our eyes are fixed upon the problems.
You will never finish the race if your eyes are fixed on yourself.
You will never run the race and receive the prize if your eyes are fixed on one another.
You will never run the race and receive the prize if your eyes are fixed on the world.
You will never run the race and receive the prize if your eyes are fixed on Satan.
The only way—it is so simple—the only way you can win the prize is by fixing your eyes on the Lord Jesus. Could there be anything more simple than that?
When you see the Lord Jesus with the eyes of your heart, when the eyes of your spirit really see Him and you behold Him, something happens. Is that not the way you got saved?
Some of you were brought up in Christian homes. You knew the truth from the very beginning. But there came a day when suddenly what you knew academically, what you mentally understood, became a reality.
You saw, you beheld, the Lamb of God who bears away the sin of the world. In that moment, it became yours. The truth became yours. Certainly something happened. It was translated from being merely theology, biblical truth, or sound doctrine. Suddenly, it became reality. You were saved.
That is true, actually, of everything else. I remember very well when I first saw that the Holy Spirit was in me and that I was crucified. No one had ever told me about it—or I suppose I must have heard it, because in the assembly in which I was, the pastors were Keswick speakers.
We must have heard it, but it never meant a thing to me until one day it dawned on me. I was on my knees in a dusty old parish church behind the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, and I was desperate.
I knew that my Christian life was just impossible. It just did not work. I thought I was the black sheep in the whole assembly.
I watched them all singing those wonderful hymns about, “My chains fell off,” and I thought, “Well, mine had not.” They all looked through their lovely, scrubbed, gleaming faces. They all looked so—well, I found out years later that all of them were defeated.
At that time, I thought I was the black sheep, and they were all singing about something that was actually real. Many years later, I asked the pastor himself. He was always preaching about victory, and I said, “Did you really have that which you preached about?” He said, “No, I preached it by faith.”
So that meant pastor and congregation—all of them did not have the victory. And I thought I was the black sheep.
But when I saw the Lord, and I saw what He had done for me, I have never forgotten it. I cannot really, even now, fully explain it, except that I understood the Holy Spirit was in me and upon me. It was as if I had never heard of the Holy Spirit. My eyes opened.
I said, “Lord Jesus, I am so sorry that I have ignored the Holy Spirit.” Then light flooded my heart. When I was going to get up, the Lord said, “Just wait. There is something else: you have been crucified with Me.”
It was like a bolt out of the blue that came into me. I had tried to make myself such a good Christian.
Now, talk about sin that entangles and weights that weigh you down and pull you down in the race—well, I was hardly running. I was just filled with a sense of how unreal my Christian life was.
But when I saw the Lord, I cannot explain it. I saw that two thousand years ago, when He was crucified, I was crucified. There I had been trying to make the old Lance a wonderful Christian.
I had put phraseology into his lips. I had managed to get the Bible into his brain. I had got zeal and devotion. I tried always to win people to the Lord—with the most disastrous results.
I never led a soul to the Lord. But it was not for want of trying, believe you me. I used to corner them left, right, and centre, and speak to them about their soul being on its way to hell.
But the fact is, when I saw something—when I saw the Lord—it became mine. From that moment, it was as if I relaxed and became, for the first time, myself.
I had been living a projected Christian life, a life that I thought was acceptable to everybody else, that was supposed to be the Christian life. But in that moment, I relaxed and became myself. I began to laugh, I began to live, and I began to enjoy life.
I mean, all the things Christians are not meant to do. You know the sort of thing: you are supposed to be miserable, heavy, afflicted, and look dreadful—look as if you are just about to drop into the grave.
For me, it was something amazing. That is where the ministry—whatever it is worth—the ministry that was given to me began. It began with seeing the Lord.
Looking and fixing your eyes upon Jesus—what an amazing thing it is.
One day, when I am in glory, there are a whole number of questions I want to ask some of the saints. What did Abraham see? What did he really see?
It says, “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham.” Who did he see? Did he not see the Lord Jesus? We are told that he saw the Lord. Jesus Himself said that: “He saw My day.”
How did he see? What did he see? This is the amazing thing: that aristocrat, that unbelievably wealthy landowner, was turned overnight into a pilgrim.
He was never the same again. His whole life and circumstances changed. He went out, keeping sheep and goats and camels, for the rest of his life, wandering up and down in the land that God had given him.
When he saw the Lord, in my estimation, he saw more than many Christians. He saw the city of God in the glory of God. How he saw it, we do not know. But the writer of this Hebrew letter says:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance;
and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
For he looked for the city which hath the foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.
He left an amazing city, Ur of the Chaldees—sophisticated, quality, high standards—to become a pilgrim. We are told that his whole life was explained in seeking this city. He sought for the city which hath the foundations.
Another character I think of immediately, who saw the Lord, is Jacob. Jacob represents our people so well: shrewd, clever, intelligent, enormous ability, and capacity for hard work.
People represent Jacob as some round-shouldered, anaemic, spineless, home-loving sort of interior designer. You know, the kind of person that you think, “Oh, he is gay—definitely gay.”
But the interesting thing about Jacob is that when the shepherds could not move the great stone over the well, he moved it alone. So he had some strength.
Now, it could be that it was Rachel. It could just be that he got superhuman power to move the stone simply because Rachel was there. I do not know. I do not think so.
I personally think that Jacob was a remarkable man—someone who could wrestle with the Lord and get the better of the Lord, so that the Lord could not get out of his grip. Of course, I know that the Lord deliberately, in one sense, weakened Himself.
But the Lord kept on saying, “Let Me go.” Jacob said, “I will not let You go.” Can you believe it? This man had the Lord in a wrestling clinch.
Have you ever heard such a thing? Certainly not in a Christian church.
Here was the Lord Himself, held by one of His created beings in a wrestling clinch, and he would not let Him go.
In the end, the Lord touched his thigh, in the sinew of his thigh—the strongest part of his being, which is another indication of Jacob’s strength—and crippled him. From that day to the end of his life, he was disabled.
Do you know what he called that encounter? The face of God.
I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.
Jacob became Israel.
I think it is amazing that the name God gives Himself again and again in the Bible is this: the God of Jacob. If He had only said, “the God of Israel,” we would have understood, because that is the change in Jacob. But He called Himself the God of Jacob again and again and again.
What is the meaning of this? Abraham would never have reached the end of the race but for seeing the Lord. Though he fell two or three times, he had his eyes fixed on the Lord.
Jacob would never have become Israel if he had not seen the Lord, and if he had not kept his eyes fixed on the Lord for the rest of his life.
One could go on and on. I think of Isaiah. When he was a young man, he was in the temple of the Lord—obviously not in the sanctuary, because he was not a priest.
According to our tradition, Isaiah was a member of the royal family. He was the son of one of the brothers of the king. That is our tradition; I do not know how true it is. Certainly, his language is the most beautiful Hebrew in the Old Testament.
Such command of language, such an amazing person as Isaiah. But when he was young and in the temple, he saw the Lord, high and lifted up. To his amazement, the whole temple, its four courts and everything, were hidden in the Lord. The train of the Lord’s garments filled the temple.
Out of that seeing of the Lord, one of the greatest ministries in the Bible was born. It began with seeing the Lord.
Again, according to our tradition—although there is probably an inference in the New Testament—Isaiah was eighty-eight years of age when he was martyred by the evil King Manasseh, sawn in two when he hid in one of those great giant olive trees.
You have an inference of it in Hebrews 11: “and some were sawn asunder.” He remained faithful to the end. He could have saved his life if he had only been prepared to deny the Lord, but he kept his eyes fixed upon Him. He could say, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”
If we come right across to the New Testament, of course we have the Apostle Paul and that amazing experience on his way to kill believers—to liquidate Messianic communities, as we would say today.
Believers who had found the Lord amongst Jewish people: everywhere he was hauling them, arresting them, taking them into prison, torturing them. Many of them died.
Then the Lord appeared to him. When he was struck to the ground, he said, “Who art Thou, Lord?”
I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.
In that single moment, a ministry was born.
Paul said toward the end of his life, “I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” What was it? Was it just the vision? Did he just see the Lord and hear the Lord? Was he struck to the ground by some miraculous power? Is that what he thought about? Of course not.
He saw something in the Lord when the Lord said, “Why persecutest thou Me?” Somewhere at that point, seeds were sown. Somewhere along the line, it was revealed to him that those who were born of God, redeemed by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus, are part of the body of the Lord Jesus.
They are part of Him in such a way that, if you touch them, you touch Him.
Is that not a lesson for all of us regarding an unforgiving spirit?
That is why Moses was not allowed to go into the land. He saw God in the thornbush. It was a fire in a dead old thornbush, and he heard the Lord. He understood it was Him—quite right.
He also understood that that thornbush was Israel.
When he lost his temper with them and struck the rock with the staff, bringing water out of it—“Shall we bring water out for you rebels?”—God did not allow him to go into the promised land.
He forgot the lesson of the fire in the thornbush. So do many believers. When we talk about one another, when we gossip about one another, when we misrepresent one another, when we do not forgive one another, it is the same lesson.
But to come back to the Apostle Paul: this wonderful ministry that we have from him, this revelation of the mystery of the body of Christ—the Head and the body, this amazing organic union into which every born-again child of God is introduced by the Spirit of God—it all began with seeing the Lord Jesus.
If we had time, we could follow this through all the letters of the Apostle Paul, where he speaks about seeing the Lord, beholding the Lord, the eyes of your heart enlightened. It is everywhere.
Our brothers have spoken about revelation, and this is what it is all about: seeing the Lord. The only way to come to the end of this race and to win the prize is by fixing your eyes upon the Lord Jesus.
There is another instance. I find I am encouraged to say something about it because we have sung about it twice.
When John was given those visions—fearful visions in some ways—of dragons, serpents, Antichrist, 666, and the great conflict between light and darkness, between the Christ and the Antichrist, between God and Satan, he sees almost at the beginning a throne.
And in the throne, a Lion. The Lion was a little Lamb, as though it had been slain.
Wherever you go through the Book of Revelation, you will find the Lamb. He is everywhere.
Dear John, he saw the Lion who is of the tribe of Judah, the little Lamb as though it had been slain, in the midst of the throne, taking that scroll which was sealed with seven seals and breaking them, one after the other, until the whole purpose of God was fulfilled.
No doubt John reached the end by keeping his eyes fixed on the Lord Jesus.
So I believe that this looking unto Jesus, this fixing of your eyes upon the Lord Jesus, is not just some little Christian thing to talk about or sing about. It is of tremendous importance, of tremendous significance.
It is relevant to every child of God, especially in the days in which we are living. We have got to learn to keep our eyes fixed upon the Lord Jesus. That is the only way to run the race—to run the race with patience.
Those of you who know your Bibles know that this word patience is a wonderful word, but it also has the idea of endurance and steadfastness in it: a determination.
Let us run with steadfastness, with enduring persistence, the race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
Now that leads me to say something more about this next phrase: Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
I do not want to get complex in this, having talked about the simplicity of truth. But this word author in the Greek really means originator. Sometimes it can mean captain. Sparks used the word pioneer.
I notice that Dana used the word pioneer, leader. But I have a little bit of a funny feeling about this: author and perfector, author and finisher, leader and—then again, we have the same problem with the word faith.
Is it “the faith”? Not in Greek. It is just faith.
So what does it mean: looking unto Jesus, the author? Yes, of course He is the Prince. Of course He is the Captain of our salvation. Of course He is the Apostle. Of course He is the Leader. That is absolutely right. We have no question about it.
He is the First and the Last. He is the Beginning and the End. Is that not so? He is the Alpha and the Omega. It is true.
But what does it mean, “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith”?
I think it means that He is the source of living, working, practical faith.
I am sure that He is the Pioneer, the Leader, and everything else. But I cannot help feeling that here the question is, how does it help us? “The leader of our faith”—does that really help you in your problems?
But if we are looking to Him who is the source of living faith, the source of working faith, the source of faith which changes circumstances and sees the will of God fulfilled in our lives, in our lives together as the people of God, and sometimes even in our nation—then that helps us.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
Dear brothers and sisters, dear family of God, we need such living faith.
We are facing Darwinian theory, evolutionary theory, that leads to abortion, euthanasia, genocide. It is not over.
There will come a day when they will try to wipe out all the Christians, just as they tried to wipe out the Jews. It will come, because it is based in evolutionary theory: to get rid of diseased people, subhuman species, those who are mentally deficient, those who are in some way or another wrapped up with superstition. Get rid of them.
We will need faith—living faith.
Our whole educational system is changing before our eyes. The very fabric of it, the very principles upon which it was founded, are changing before our very eyes.
Do you mean to tell me that Christians are just going to be able to sail through this? Never. The stress, the pressure, is going to be tremendous.
You and I need to look unto Jesus, the author of faith. Then we shall find faith, which is the gift of God—not of ourselves—springing spontaneously into action.
Do you understand what I am talking about?
Looking, fixing our eyes upon Jesus, the originator of faith, the source of living faith.
Sometimes we will need faith to initiate. Sometimes we need faith to develop. Sometimes we need faith to complete.
What an amazing word this is: let us run with patience, with steadfastness, with persistent endurance, the race set before us, looking to Jesus, fixing our eyes upon Jesus—the origin, the source, the originator, the leader, the pioneer of our faith.
The pioneer and the perfector.
Do you need perfecting faith? Do you need finishing faith?
I do not know how old you are, or whether you are even prepared to admit your age. But I am talking about spiritual things.
When we first move into something, when we are born again, everything is fresh and wonderful. It is not so hard to look to the Lord Jesus. He is so alive, so near.
Sometimes we hit the problems and difficulties in our families, in our circumstances, our relationships, in our business world, in our workaday world, and certainly within the church. Then we begin to have problems.
Somehow our eyes come off the Lord Jesus and onto the problems, onto the people, and we begin to become despondent and depressed.
That is when we need to fix our eyes upon the Lord Jesus and determine not to know anything in one another save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
That is when we need to understand that word: “There must be factions amongst you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” So the Lord even allows these things in order that those who will walk in white can go through, fixing their eyes on the Lord Jesus.
I do not know why we are always looking for a perfect church. But most believers are looking for a perfect church.
There is a whole line of teaching about this: we have got to be pure and right; we have got to be holy. Of course we have got to be holy. But the church down here on earth is an awful mess.
You have broken lives and broken marriages. You have people with problems within their temperament and their background. You have relationships that somehow do not seem to heal. You have all kinds of things that just do not yield.
We are made saints through the way that we care for those who are difficult.
Our relationship to those who are the most problematic is the way God creates sainthood in practice.
Years ago, we had a very difficult man in the fellowship in England. Oh, he was difficult. He was a self-made businessman, very, very successful, and at least fifteen or twenty years older than the rest of us. We were all youngsters in our late teens and early twenties.
He was an extraordinary mixture. At one time he really knew what the Lord was saying, and at another time it was the devil. I am not joking.
What a problem he was. He messed up everything. His clammy hands got on every single thing. Because he felt, being older than the rest of us, that he should tell us how to do it and what to do, there were times when we felt, “Should we gang up together and put him out?”
We really sought the Lord, those of us who were the nucleus. We really sought the Lord. The Lord gave us a word that we found very hard. The Lord said to us, “Wash his feet.”
It came to us that the Lord washed the feet of Judas. We washed his feet to the last day he lived.
I still remember the amazing experience. I may have told you the story before. Dear Lady Ogle—what a woman of prayer she was.
When I was recovering from an illness in her wonderful home in the south of England, she said to me, “Let us—you and I—have a time of prayer.” I said, “I would love that.”
When we had this time of prayer, it was in this magnificent dining room. You could hardly see the end of the long table. We two sat at one end, and there was this enormous table. It reminded me of those in which you had a railway that took things around it, you know what I mean.
She said, “Now, we are going to pray for my brother so-and-so.” I said, “Oh, really? Well, we need to.”
She said, “Yes. I believe the Lord has given to me the thing that I should pray him out.”
I said, “Oh, I will not be able to join you on that.”
“Why?” she said. “He is destroying the whole testimony.”
“Yes, that is absolutely right. But when we sought the Lord, the Lord told us to wash his feet.”
“Well,” she said, “the Lord has not told me to wash his feet.”
So we had this time of prayer. I have never forgotten it. This little lady—Brother Stephen knew her well—she was only about this high. She stood up at the end of that table, and I tell you, it was as if the whole place shook.
She prayed. She took that brother out, she dragged out the spirit in him, and she executed it in the name of the Lord.
I just felt in my heart, “Something has happened. Something has happened.” He died within a month.
As we continued to wash his feet to the end, we sat with him right to the end. One of my colleagues, one of my brothers whom he had attacked most, sat with him when his own family would not sit with him, because out of his mouth came such filth.
Amazing, is it not?
This is developing faith—not just initiating faith, but developing faith.
How do we face problems? How do we stay within the race and not allow someone like that to force us out of the race because of bitterness within our hearts, because we have nightmares over what the brother is doing or the sister is doing?
We must not allow such a thing to grip us and force us out of the race. But we are so foolish. That is exactly what we do.
Our reactions are normal. They are human. We get bitter, we get angry, we want to bang people on the head, and then we go round bashing everybody’s heads together.
In the end, it becomes a kind of spiritual fistfight.
What we need is to fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus and get instructions from Him.
When we get instructions from Him and obey them, it is always right. You stay in the race, you learn the lessons, you go on.
But we do not only need faith for development. We need faith for finishing.
As we get older, the doctors tell us that our horizons get smaller and smaller and smaller. Well, I have not found mine getting smaller and smaller, I must say.
But I can understand the tendency. You get older, you get a little more languid, a little more laid back, a little more—I would not call it lazy, but you know what I mean. You have lost the fire of youth.
We need finishing faith. We need the kind of faith that sees something completed.
Remember the Lord said, “I have not found any works of thine perfected.” What a terrible word to say: “I have not found any work of yours complete.” It began in the Spirit, developed a certain way, and then got stalled.
You and I need such faith. We need finishing faith.
Looking unto Jesus, fixing our eyes upon Him, turning our gaze upon Jesus as the author and the perfector of faith.
Well, could there be anything actually more simple than what I am saying this afternoon? I do not think so.
When we see Satan, we are paralysed. When we see the world, we feel hopeless. When we see ourselves, we are depressed. When we see one another, we become despondent.
But when we see Jesus, faith springs into action.
So simple. Not only initiating faith and developing faith, but completing faith.
Is it not a wonderful thing that when the Lord spoke to the church at Laodicea, which in one sense so represents the church that we know in the twenty-first century, He introduced Himself as the Amen?
Amen comes from the Hebrew word amen, which simply means, “I believe.” Faith.
Even in a Laodicean situation, the Lord could say, “There is faith for those who will hear My voice and open the door.”
Faith—living faith.
I like very much Spiros Zodhiates and his work. I feel it is the best study Bible any of you can get, because it does not give you lots of ideas. He does give ideas, but basically he goes to the Hebrew and the Greek.
I love the way he discusses this last word here, perfector. This is how he puts it: “One who brings something through to the goal so as to win and receive the prize.”
Looking unto Jesus—the author, the originator, the pioneer, and the One who brings us to the goal so that we win the race and the prize.
I find that wonderful. It is the only way I can see.
Well, what do you need? Do you need grace to begin, grace to continue, or grace to finish and complete? It is all there.
All the grace is there, all the power is there. As I said this afternoon, it is all available to us. The problem is faith.
Normally the enemy gets us on this one. He says, “You do not have enough faith.” Of course, your normal response is, “That is right. I do not have enough faith.”
Then the enemy says to you, “Then you had better start looking at the condition of your faith, because you need more faith. If you are going to get through, you are going to need great faith.”
So you begin to inspect your faith. Faith is the most self-conscious of all spiritual qualities. The more you look at it, the more it disappears.
If you try to put it under a magnifying glass and say, “Now, have I got working faith?” you will find that it is not only not working—it disappears.
Faith is an extraordinary thing. You never get faith by centring on faith.
There is a kind of teaching—I call it Christian Science faith. You say, “There is no devil, there is no devil, there is no devil, there is no devil.” If you say it enough times, there is no devil, so they say.
They say that if you have rheumatism, you say, “I have not got rheumatism. I have not got rheumatism. I have not got rheumatism.” Then you hobble out.
But you know what I mean. The idea is natural faith—something, some quality of the mind, of your psyche. It is a psychological thing. You can kid yourself, deceive yourself, into believing.
That is why I always found it so difficult when one great divine said, “You should be crucified, so pinch yourself, and if you feel it, you are not crucified.” Well, how does that help us?
I do not care how many times you pinch yourself—you are going to feel it, unless you anaesthetise yourself first.
What is this faith we need? How do we get it? By looking to Jesus. It is so simple.
I told you before my own theory about Peter in the boat. When he was in the boat, it was the Lord Himself who took them down and saw them all into the boat and said, “All right, you go over. I will meet you on the other side.”
None of them said, “How are You going to do that?” It is quite a little journey, I can tell you, to walk right round the whole northern part of the Lake of Galilee.
I always feel the Lord really wanted them to learn this lesson earlier with that other story of the boat, when it was sinking and they were all furiously getting water out of it.
When they panicked, they shook Him and said, “Do You not care that we are perishing?” The Lord realised they were panicking so much that He could not give them any instruction or help at all. He just stood up and spoke, and the whole thing went calm.
They said, “Who is this, that He can stop a storm with a word?”
But I have often thought He was really hoping the boat was going to go down. Now, I know this is speculation, but that is my theory.
I think He was rather hoping the boat would go down and they would all follow Him when He said, “Follow Me.” They would have walked on the water. What an experience.
Instead of forever talking about the Lord stopping storms, they would have said, “We do not bother about storms. We can walk through them.”
That is a bunch, Tim. If you have only got a Lord who stops a storm—and I have known the Lord stop storms in my own life, and you must have done—then you worship. But what have you learned?
You have only learned His power and His authority. You have not learned anything concerning yourself.
But if you lose the boat and walk on the water, you have learned something. From now on, you can do without a boat.
So when they came to the second time, He herded them all into the boat and said, “Now go to the other side, and I will meet you on the other side.” He was making sure He was not in the boat this time. This is my theory.
We shall find out one day when we are there. Then you can tell me I was wrong, or I can say to you, “You see, I was right.”
The thing is, I think the Lord—when that great storm blew up, they were really worried. Then they saw someone walking on the wind-tossed waves, and they said, “It is a ghost.”
Peter said, “You know, it looks like Jesus.” Then he yelled, “Jesus! Is it You?”
The Lord Jesus said, “Yes, it is Me.”
Peter said, “Well, tell me to come to You.” Think of that. He never thought—that is Peter, of course—he never thought, “How is it possible for me to walk on the water?”
“I have not been to Bible school to be taught the three stages for walking on water. I have never had a Bible study on this.”
Peter saw the Lord. He heard the Lord. He obeyed the Lord and did the impossible. He walked on the water.
Somehow, at some point, a wave came between him and the Lord Jesus. I imagine that he suddenly said, “Peter, what are you doing? You are walking on water.” Then he sank. He began to sink.
Jesus said, “Why didst thou doubt, O thou of little faith?” We have all taken that to mean Peter did not have great faith.
Peter did not have great faith. Peter saw the Lord, heard the Lord, obeyed the Lord, and did the impossible. Where did the faith come from? It sprang into action the moment he saw the Lord in the storm, heard the Lord, and obeyed the Lord. It sprang into action spontaneously.
Every time a child of God sees the Lord Jesus in some storm in their life, in some great problem in their life, immediately, if you hear Him and obey Him, faith springs into action.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
I do not know what your problem is. I do not know how great it is, how complex it is, how impossible it is, how storm-ridden it is. But this I know: if you see the Lord, fix your eyes upon Him, hear Him, and obey Him, you will do the impossible.
May the Lord touch our hearts, and may every one of us be found at the end, winning the prize.
Shall we pray?
Beloved Lord, we have so many problems and difficulties. You know them all. But the wonderful thing, Lord, that we can say is that You have the answer to it.
Dear Lord, will You use this word that we have heard this afternoon to strengthen us, comfort us, encourage us, correct us, and deliver us from false faith?
Deliver us from the idea that we have got to have some kind of psychological faith pumped up, inflated, as it were, within us.
Lord, You said that all we need is faith as a grain of mustard seed—so small.
Lord, every one of us who has been born of Your Spirit has within us, buried somewhere, that grain of living, working faith.
Beloved Lord, what we need is not to look at the grain of faith; we need to see You. When we see You, Lord, and hear You and obey You, then that faith—that little grain of faith—will unite us to Your infinity, Your authority, Your power, and Your life.
Do it, Lord, we pray, for every one of us in this place. We are moving irreversibly into more and more difficult and dangerous days.
Lord, do it for every one of us. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus.