Morning. You guys can hear me, right? This is really weird—just weird.
First of all, I’m glad to be back in Canada again. I have adjusted my watch to Canadian time, which right now is 1985.
I was very grateful to have my comestibles last night, but I think someone took my notch. If you’ll return it, I won’t say anything.
I’m from Virginia, for those of you who don’t know me. I’m a schoolteacher. Let’s read a couple of Scriptures.
In Ephesians 4, verse 1:
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called.
Then, in Ephesians 4:17:
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind,
being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart;
who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we come to You this morning, and we bow because of who You are. You are the holy, almighty God. Even if You had not redeemed us, Lord, we would have to value You just because of who You are.
But, Lord, You have redeemed us, and we thank You. We come this morning wanting to know—wanting to know why it is that You have redeemed us, wanting to respond to this redemption in a way that is worthy of this calling.
Lord, open Your Word to us and speak to us this morning, not in a way that is merely an intellectual thing. Lord, take Your Word and the Spirit of Your Word, and speak it into the deepest parts of our being.
Lord, we confess that it is so easy just to let the Word dwell on the topsoil of our lives. But we are asking You, Lord, to press it in deeper—to touch us where we can feel it.
Lord, not that we would have a tingle, not that we would have some exuberance, but that there would be some registration that Your finger has touched us in the deepest part and calls for a response from us.
Lord, only Your Spirit—only You—can do this. The things I say, they are nothing. But, Lord, it is what You speak and what You make real that gives eternal life. This is what we are asking from You, in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
I want you to understand something first. A ministry does not always come in the sense that the Lord comes and says, “Oh, I want you to tell these people something.” It does not happen like that.
We have been studying Luke on Monday nights, and one of the things I have learned is that a lot of times the message comes from the person who speaks the message. In other words, it comes out of that person’s life—out of what God is doing.
For example, if you have ever read the prophet Hosea, his message came out of this very thing. God said, “Go marry a prostitute.” That is what He said. The rest of his message did not come until after.
I think Hosea would come back to God and say, “This woman—she goes out with other men. What am I going to do?” And the Lord said, “You know, that is just the way I feel about My people.”
The Lord does not just say, “I have something for you to say,” and then let you speak it. He whispers something, and then all of a sudden, you find out that this is the very thing you need in your own life.
I am saying this so that you understand that I am not talking down to you. Just because I am speaking up here does not mean that I am a finished worker. You need to understand that.
I have two daughters, and they are suffering from a condition. It is called Isaac syndrome. Have you ever heard of it?
Isaac syndrome is this: kids have been brought up in the church, and they know everything, but nothing is real to them. Maybe some of you have that. I do not know. But my girls have it.
On my flight out, I was sitting next to a career army guy. We were talking about places we would like to live, and he said, “Well, I’d like to live in Hawaii.” I said, “I couldn’t live in Hawaii.”
Here it is—paradise. People think of Hawaii as paradise. But I could not live in Hawaii. He said, “Why not?” It is an island. You cannot get off. That is all there is. I want to get off. I cannot just be confined to this.
I think some of us, when we are suffering from Isaac syndrome, feel that our life is confined to the parameters of the religion of Christianity. “I have to read my Bible. I have to go to meetings. I have to be good. I have to do all those things.”
But we do not see this as something bigger. What we do not understand is that we are not on an island; we are on a continent.
If you remember Abraham, when God was speaking with Abraham, He said, “Look around you. All you can see is yours.” That is what I want to say today: all you can see is yours.
Now, in looking at these verses, “walk worthy”—well, I could really do a number with that. You want to walk worthy? I think we all want to walk worthy.
I could say, “You want to walk worthy? Do this, this, this, this, and this.” You would go home saying, “Yeah, we are going to do this, this, this, this, and this.” But then all I have given you is a list of things to do.
That is not walking worthy. The Pharisees lived that way. They had their lists of things, and even though they were clean and righteous and everything, they were not worthy.
Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.
So what is this walking worthy? What is the Lord really saying? I think it is based on two things.
First, there is this word walk. I am not going to go deeply into what walking is, except to say this: when we talk about walking in Scripture, we can understand it as our manner of life.
May your manner of life be worthy of your calling. But if we look at walking physically, walking is one way we get from here to there. It is how we accomplish a purpose, how we reach a destination.
The second word I want to bring up is ignorance. Ephesians 4:17 speaks of those who walk “in the vanity of their mind,” being alienated from the life of God “because of the ignorance that is in them.”
If you are ignorant of something, you are unaware of something. You can be willfully ignorant. “Do your homework.” “Did you say something? I didn’t hear you.” That is willful ignorance.
Or it can simply mean that we are unconscious—we really are unaware. You can know something and not be aware of it.
I had a student named Alex Mills when I was teaching American government and the American Revolution. I asked, “What is the slogan of the American Revolution? What were they fighting for before independence?”
“No taxation without representation.” Sometimes you teach something so often that you are simply going through the motions. But Alex jumped up in the back and said, “That’s what it means!”
It was a revelation to him. He now understood why they were fighting for their freedom and why they wanted independence. It was an amazing thing.
Brothers and sisters, you cannot walk worthy until you are aware of something.
When Paul brings up this matter of walking worthy, this is the first time he uses the word walk in this letter. In the first three chapters, all he does is tell them what they have.
He says, “You are blessed. You are seated in the heavenlies. You have been redeemed.” He gives them all this knowledge. Then, toward the end of the chapter, he prays, “Lord, open their eyes.”
In other words, he is saying, “I know it is not enough that you just know. You have to be aware of what you know.” If you are not aware of what you know, what good is it to you?
What does the Lord want us to be aware of? I think there is one major thing, and there are three parts to it.
It is not merely that He wants us to know that the time is short. We hear that a lot: “The time is short. The time is short.” If that is all He wants us to know, then we had better get moving, and it becomes a frenzy of activity.
But the Lord is not into that. He wants us to be diligent with what He shows us, but there is a whole process that comes out of awareness. We look at it as being pressed for time; the Lord does not look at Himself as being pressed for time.
The Lord wants us to be aware that we are redeemed.
That is kindergarten. We know we are redeemed. But are you aware of what that means? Are you aware of your redemption?
One thing He wants us to be aware of is the cost of our redemption. This is so easy just to say, “I know that.” So let us look at it a little closer.
What we are really aware of will affect the way we live. If I am aware that my neighbor is a mass murderer, it is going to affect the way I live. If I am not aware, he is just my neighbor.
We can say, “I am redeemed,” but are we aware? Look at 1 Peter 1:17-19:
And if ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to each man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear:
knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers;
but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.
I know you know this. You have been taught in Sunday school from the beginning: Jesus loves you and died for you. But my question is: has it registered—not just in your mind, but in your spirit and in the depth of your being?
Do you understand that the cost of redemption is the same for the greatest of sinners as it is for the least of sinners? Have you ever thought about that?
Whatever the price was for the greatest sinner’s redemption, it cost the same for your redemption. There is no difference in cost.
Do not think, “Well, the Lord really did not have to pay much for me because I was not much of a sinner. I was raised in church.” Do not lessen the price He paid by that type of thinking.
The price for your redemption is very, very great. But it is not meant merely to be understood in your mind—not merely a sense of, “Oh yeah, I believe that.” It has to be revealed.
The price of my redemption was not silver or gold—things that perish. Brothers and sisters, we are really in the dark. It has to be revealed to us.
I brought an iron up here. It is wet; it is leaking. It is not really a funny iron.
I know this is an iron because I have used it before. I bring it every year because I iron my clothes. I used to think that once I got married, I would never iron again, but my wife taught me how to iron even better.
This morning I was ironing my clothes. It is a steam iron, and you have to put water in it. It was hot, but it was not steaming. I kept thinking, “Come on. What is wrong with it? What am I not aware of?”
There was a little triangle that indicated where to set it for steam. I thought the triangle was somewhere else. I was unaware of this thing, and so my clothes were not being properly ironed.
But when I became aware of it, I could set it correctly. Awareness changes the result.
There is a wonderful hymn that says:
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 Thee love despising,
All the shame my sins have brought;
Now by Thy torments realizing
What a price my pardon bought.
Sometimes we just do not realize the price paid for us.
I know some of you saw the movie The Passion. In it, you see the tremendous physical suffering our Savior went through on the cross. We can be sad, and rightfully so, when we see such suffering.
But, brothers and sisters, that really is not the whole of it. The real suffering He went through was when He was forsaken—when He was separated and became sin for us, and suffered an eternity of separation from God, an eternity of darkness.
The price for our salvation was not merely that He hung on the tree for six hours. It was much greater than that. And when you consider who He was, it was not merely that He was a great man or a great teacher. He was God Himself.
He was suffering separation for us, taking on our sin for us. We look at it in time—six hours, three hours of darkness—but in those hours was an eternity.
I have almost drowned twice in my life, both times because I did something stupid. One time, I was at a water park with sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in a wave pool.
I saw a man with panic in his eyes and realized he could not swim. I thought, “I must help this man.” So I went over to help him.
The man was flailing and crawling, pushing me down under the water. I could not breathe, because his whole weight was upon me. I could not move.
I felt the whole weight of that man. It was not that he weighed five hundred pounds, but he was standing on me, and I could not get up.
The Lord was under the weight of the sin of the world. But it was not because He did not know what it would be like. He willingly took on the weight—the sin of the world—for eternity.
We can talk about it, but until we see it, it is just words.
Let us understand sacrifice in human terms. Suppose your parents are paying for you to go to college—or, for some of you who are younger, they are paying to send you to a private school.
You might think, “They are paying for this. This is great.” Then you go to school, goof around, and do whatever you want.
But suppose you begin to realize that, in order to pay for your schooling, they have to make sacrifices. Mom and Dad may say, “I could retire at fifty-five, but in order to pay for my child’s school, I am going to work another ten years.”
Maybe your mother or father takes a second job. If you are not aware of it, you are just getting your schooling paid for and doing what you want.
But once you become aware of the sacrifice being made for you to go to school, does that affect the effort you put into school? You see, awareness has an effect on your life.
When you realize the sacrifice made for you, it opens up a whole other realm.
There is another hymn, Beloved of the Lord. It begins by saying, “Consider. Think about. Become aware.” Consider the love.
Then, finally, it says, “Consider how you live.” You do not consider how you are going to live first. You consider how you live after you have seen what has been given to you and what has been done for you.
When we begin to understand what sacrifice the Lord has made for us, we begin to understand that He has done this in order to make a claim on us.
He is not merely claiming your body as His own. He is claiming every feeling of your soul. Not just that you come to church—He is claiming the very being of you.
“I want not just your knowledge, but your emotions and your will. I am claiming everything in your soul.” He is making a claim upon us.
Consider the final verse of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
When you consider what He has done, first notice who did it. The Prince of Glory did it.
There is a song that says, “Like a rose, trampled on the ground.” I am not picking on that song, nor am I saying you should not sing it. But I want to tell you how far short it comes.
You cannot compare the Prince of Glory to a rose. It does not fit. He is so much greater. I know the songwriter meant it as a thing of beauty, but that beauty falls so short of what really occurred.
Isaac Watts, when he wrote this hymn, came to a realization of the supreme act of love—the giving of the Son of God. Because of its greatness, and because of who made it, he could honestly articulate the response it deserves:
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
This is not just poetry. This is truth—somebody who saw something so great that the Lord gave him the ability to say, “This is what Your love should engender in me: the feeling that You deserve this.”
This is our redemption. Are we aware of what it costs? I am not saying that so you will say, “Oh dear, I am not aware of it.” I am simply asking: are you aware? Are you conscious?
Secondly, are you aware of the calling in His redeeming you? He has not redeemed you merely to forgive you.
He does not save you so that you can say, “All right, now I am going to live my life.” He did not save you so you could be a Republican. Think about that.
There is a purpose for saving you. In 1 Peter 2:9, it says:
But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.
A chosen generation, a royal priesthood. That matches Exodus 19:6:
And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.
When He redeemed Israel and brought them to the mountain, He said, “This is what I did this for. I took you out of there so you could be a kingdom of priests to Me, so that you could serve Me.”
Revelation 1:5-6 says that He “loved us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood,” and “made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father.” It has not changed.
Our redemption has in it a call to Him—for service and service to Him. Has this even dawned on you? Are you aware of this call?
Or are you just aware that you are on an island, that this is all there is? Have you become aware of what you have been called to and Who you have been called to?
Do you know something about this call? This call ennobles you. It makes you noble. When you begin to realize the high calling that you have, you begin to be ennobled by it.
Think of Joseph. He had the dream, and he understood in that dream that the Lord had called him into something great. God was going to do something great through him.
That calling made him noble. You can see it not merely because he was placed in Pharaoh’s employment, but before he ever reached Pharaoh’s house.
He was in Potiphar’s house serving, and he served in such a way that it brought the blessing of God. He was in jail, and in jail he served in such a way that it brought notice.
People saw the nobility in him through God. God had brought it to their awareness because it was being worked out in him.
Think of Moses. Hebrews 11:24-26 says:
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter;
choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward.
Look at that phrase: “when he was grown up.” What does that mean? Does it mean he turned twenty-one and suddenly said, “Hey, I do not want to live with you anymore”?
It means he became aware of the calling the Lord had on his life. I believe his parents knew something of that calling, because they hid him. It was not merely because he was beautiful. They knew something.
Moses learned about his identity and calling in those early years. Over all those years, though he was schooled in all the arts and knowledge of Egypt, he became aware of what he was made for and what he was called for.
Because he became aware of it, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He could forsake the pleasures of sin.
Brothers and sisters, do not believe that sin is not pleasurable. But where does the power to forsake it come from? Some of it comes in the awareness of knowing who you are.
That is an amazing thing about Daniel. Why did Daniel say, “I cannot eat this stuff”? It was not merely some legal thing. He was aware that this was what God had called him to.
Even to the point of saying, “Let us test it and see.” That is for us also. Let us find out. Let us become aware. This is what God says, but let us find out that it is true.
The third thing He wants us to be aware of in redemption is what has been given to us. Are you aware of what you have in this redemption?
I had a teacher in college named Shelley Byram. I had him for a history course on Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. I know most of you are thinking, “I’m going to take that course.”
There are two things I remember about him. First, he hated athletes—not because they were athletes, but because some came on scholarships to go to classes and did not take advantage of the opportunity.
They did not go to their classes, or they got somebody to do their work. They were really just there to play. That upset him because he thought, “You are robbing people who really want to be here of the opportunity to get something.”
So he made all athletes sit in the front of the class. That means they could not sleep.
One of the best things that ever happened to me was in an art history class. I used to sit way in the back, and they would turn off the lights and show pictures of art. I would sleep.
One day, the teacher caught me and put me in the front. That turned out to be one of the best classes I ever took, because my eyes were opened to all these things.
Now I teach world history, and I teach things I learned in that class because I was made aware of them. How cool.
The second thing I learned from Shelley Byram was the value of the opportunity I had—the value of what was given to me.
I hate assigning essays because I have to read them critically. When I hand an essay back, I have written all over it: “Where is the proof for this? How does this relate to that?” I draw arrows and make comments everywhere.
Then, on the way out of class, what do students do with an essay when they get it back? They look at the grade, and then they throw it away.
Even though it has all the instruction for how to become a better writer, the only thing they are aware of is, “C-plus.” “B.” A few people really look at it, but on average, they do not.
As a teacher, that hurts. You have given them all this instruction, and they are simply not aware of what you have given them.
It is not merely that we have been given an opportunity of which we need to be aware. We have been given life.
We know that. But are you aware of it? Are you aware that you have been given life?
It is not merely life. It is the very life of God. It is a life that has within it the power to overcome.
If you have planted seeds, you know that you put them deep in the earth and pat down the soil over them. Is it not amazing that you bury this thing and place all that weight of soil upon it, yet it has within it the power to push itself up above the ground?
Not only does it rise above the ground, but it grows higher and higher and higher. Brothers and sisters, the same thing has been done to us.
We have been given a life that has been implanted into us. The Lord is saying, “Are you aware that you have been given life?”
It is like asking, “Are you aware that you are pregnant?” Are you aware that within you is His life? That is the amazing thing.
I remember when my wife was having babies and we would listen to the heartbeat. Even before she was showing, there was this joy on her face because she knew there was life in her.
Then they put the little jelly on her stomach and use that machine, and you hear the heartbeat. It sounds like a washing machine, but it is real. That is so amazing.
We have that same thing in us. Do you realize it?
If you realize it, if you are aware of it, what do you do? How do you care for the life in you? The life has to be cared for.
We have to nurture and care for that life. But we have to be aware of it before we do those things. Otherwise, reading the Word and praying become merely stuff—things we do.
If you are not looking at those things as nurturing the life within you, then that is all they are: stuff. Just an island—small and confined. We are simply not aware.
Then we come back to that word therefore in Ephesians 4:1. Therefore, in the light of these things—being aware of these things, being awake to these things—walk worthy.
You see, walking worthy does not come before awareness. It comes after you are aware.
If I tell you, “You want to walk worthy? You have to be virtuous, diligent, love your brothers, forgive one another, and do all these things,” but you do not realize that all those things have been done to you, how can you respond? You cannot.
If you are not aware, these things become work—hard, joyless work.
You become like the brother of the prodigal son. When his father rejoiced over his son, he was angry because he never realized what he had in the father.
“You have never given me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends.” But the father’s response was essentially, “You never asked. All that I have is yours.” He was never aware of what the father had for him.
Walking worthy is not meant to be work. It is not meant to be a burden. Jesus said:
My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
We talk a lot about bondservants. We say, “You have to be a bondservant.” The apostles speak of being bondservants of Christ.
But you do not become a bondservant until you realize the goodness of your Master.
In Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15, where it speaks of bondservants, they realize that they prospered in their master’s house. Then they say, “I do not want to leave.”
You have to become aware before you can say, “I want to walk.” Otherwise, you are walking blind. You are walking without any knowledge.
If you desire to walk worthy, you have to be aware of these things.
The Lord is not saying that all the knowledge you have is no good. Please do not get that message. That is not what He is saying.
What He is saying is, “I want to touch that knowledge that you have. I want to press it against you so that you feel it, so that you are aware of what it is that you know.”
“I want to take what you have and press it a little deeper, and a little deeper, so that you become aware.”
Is it not amazing that a small touch can wake someone up? Have you ever noticed that? Somebody is really asleep, and you accidentally nudge them. All of a sudden, they are awake and aware of everything around them.
The Lord is not saying, “Come here. I want to hammer you. I am going to beat it into you.” He is saying, “I just want to press your knowledge in on you so that you are aware.”
Then being aware, walking worthy is not trying to get points with Him. It is a response of love to what He has done for you and to who He is.
Yes, we want to walk worthy. That is a wonderful thing. But to walk worthy, you have to be aware.
You may say—and this is what I will close with—“How do I become aware? I am so dull. How am I going to do it?” We look at these things as being impossible.
The Lord draws us to it.
You know when Moses was called? It is interesting. He had given up all hope of being the deliverer of Israel. He had killed one man, thinking the people would recognize him as their leader, but they said, “Are you going to kill us as you killed him?” Then he fled for forty years.
The Lord draws us to it. Moses was out there feeding the sheep, and all of a sudden he saw a burning bush. The thing about it was that it kept burning, but it did not burn up.
Listen to his response:
I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
Brothers and sisters, it is the same with us. The Lord will draw us. He will catch our eye.
It is up to us, as He catches our eye, to respond like Moses—to say, “I must see this thing closer. I have to look at it closer. What is this?”
As Moses came to look at that thing more closely, the Lord opened up everything to him.
We are not our own, but we are responsible to respond. That is what the Lord is after. You want to walk worthy? Respond to Him. He will draw you; you respond.
You can look at this in two ways. You can look at it and say, “I lack, I lack, I lack.” But that is not what the Lord is trying to draw your attention to.
The Lord is not trying to draw attention to your lack. What He is trying to draw attention to is this: “I want you to be aware. I want you to be aware of things about Me that will change your life.”
“I am not chiding you. I am not scolding you. I am simply saying, ‘Have you considered? Have you thought about these things?’”
Not merely, “Have I written it down in a notebook?” Have you thought about it? Have you brought it in beyond the mind, into the very inward parts of you?
That is what the Lord is after. Walk worthy? Yes—by being aware.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You so much that Your desire for us is to walk worthy. But we thank You that You have not simply left it to us to obey rules, to work these things out by ourselves, or to try to figure everything out.
Lord, You have come to make us aware of what You have done for us. We want to open ourselves to You and ask You to make us aware.
Lord, we do not want to become hardened by hearing so many things over and over and over. We are asking You to make us soft. We are asking You to do things that we cannot do.
Lord, You know there is a desire in our hearts to walk after You and follow You. You know that is so because You put that life in us.
Oh Lord, please make us aware of all these good things You have done for us, in a way that we do not merely try to do things, but let You show us what You have done and draw out the response that You want so much from us.
Lord, thank You. The thing You really want from us is to love You, and this is what we really want to do. Please help us.
We pray in the hardness of our hearts. But again, we thank You for that word Hosea gave us: with man it is impossible; with God all things are possible.
Lord, we simply say, do unto us what seems good to You. We ask this in Your name.