First of all, I want to thank the brothers and sisters of Toronto for inviting me back again. It is always a pleasure to be here.
It is a pleasure because every time I come here, I meet the Lord in some way, and I really appreciate that. It is always nice to be with the younger folk. You do not know what a blessing it is to be enlivened by who you are in yourselves, and even by your desire to know the Lord.
It is nice to have people play little practical jokes. Someone put their gosh in my shoe last night, you know. But hey, it comes with the territory, right?
Let us go ahead and read a couple of Scriptures.
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called,
with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in all.
But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, Who is the head, even Christ;
from Whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.
And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, Who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we again bow before Thee. As we have sung songs that have brought us to Your presence, to see Who You are, Lord, we have to worship You. You are great. You are God. You are the Almighty. And we bow before You this morning.
Lord, we ask that You speak to us one more time. We do not want to be satisfied with the byproduct of being together—the fun of being with one another and the friendships that are going on. Lord, that is not what we want to be satisfied with. We want to be satisfied with You, and we want to be satisfied with what You have for us.
So we come this morning asking, Lord, that You would open up to us the mysteries of what is ours in You, what You have called us to, and plant it deep into our hearts. Lord, even if we do not understand at this point in our lives, let there be a time when it will flash up and meaning will take hold.
Lord, we trust You for this, because we know that You have our best at heart. You have a purpose for us, and You paid such a great price that purpose might be accomplished. Lord, we give You ourselves for this time. Ask Your Spirit to come in and open the Word to us. Bring us light, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
You know, there is a comic strip—maybe some of you are familiar with it. It is one of my daughter’s favorites, and I get a kick out of it from time to time. It is called Zits. You guys seen that before? I am not talking about what you have seen in the mirror; I am talking about the comic strip.
In this comic strip, there is a teenager whose name is Jeremy. In one strip, his mother is talking to him and she says, “You know, the universe does not revolve around you.” In the next frame, he is in this cosmic galaxy with all these stars around him, and he says, “My universe does.”
The reason I bring that up is that so often we are trying to walk worthy, trying to be what we should be in Christ, and it is all about us. We are struggling. We are trying to do what the Lord wants us to do. We are trying to fulfill our destiny. Sometimes we get so wound up in that that we do not see the bigger picture.
The Lord is saying, “I brought you into something much bigger than you.” It is not all about you. His purpose includes everyone He has called.
In Revelation, it talks about how He has purchased for Himself men from every tribe and tongue and nation. Let me make it a little more at home: He has called people from every age. I am not talking about the Stone Age and the Age of Enlightenment. I am talking about people who are ten years old, teenagers, in their twenties, in their forties, in their sixties, and some in their eighties and nineties—all part of what He is doing.
He wants us to be aware of it, because being aware of it is really our salvation. Our salvation is not apart from other people being saved.
We were talking yesterday at dinner. Dana has been talking about these time things, and Jimmy and Daniel were trying to give me this global kind of thing. Jimmy, you have got to show me the globe thing. I am waiting for it, right?
One of the things I brought up was that it is going to be like when the rapture comes, or when we are all together. It is like everybody will be stepping into heaven at the same time, including Paul and Abraham, because God is in eternity. It is kind of freaky to think about that. Everybody is coming in there at once because it is beyond our imagination. We are so finite in our thinking.
Not only are we finite, but we box ourselves in around us. We become the most important ones. Well, we are important, and we are important to the Lord as individuals. But what He has done is much bigger than your individual salvation. You have been brought into something bigger than yourself. You are a part of it.
I remember when I was young and first got saved. When you went out to witness, it was this: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for you.” Today, we kind of miss that. We say, “God loves you, God loves you,” and we forget about the plan He has.
The plan He has includes you and all other believers. Now, we might say, “How can I be attached to the people in Europe?” Well, you will find out when you walk into the door and find everybody coming. But in the moment of time we are in—in chronos—we find out that it is those who are around us.
I want to make a point of this by looking at the life of Jacob. We have talked about Jacob, and I want to bring out how Jacob was brought into something bigger.
You remember yesterday’s devotion, how it talked about Jacob being all about himself? Well, I want to talk about that a little bit.
When Jacob first came, he wanted the birthright. He saw something and he wanted it. God was okay with that. God did not say, “No, no, no, you cannot have it.” He had promised him that. The way Jacob went about grasping it was not the right way, but God had promised him.
Jacob went around—we might say, if he were a rapper, we would call him ten percent, not fifty cent, but ten percent. When Jacob went to Bethel, God showed him everything, and Jacob said, “If You do this, this, this, and this for me—if You give me clothes, feed me, bring me back safely—you will be my God.”
God did not say, “Hey, Jacob, you have got it wrong. I am God. How about one hundred percent?” No, God said, “All right, I will take the ten percent.” But He was after the hundred percent. The rest of Jacob’s life was God getting one hundred percent.
The wonderful thing about God is that we might be frustrated with someone who seems like they will never give more than ten percent, but God has paid such a price for you that He cannot let you go. He cannot, because the price is so precious to Him. He cannot let it be wasted. He will be after you the rest of your life.
It depends on your response. You respond to Him or not? You can respond to Him now; you can respond to Him later. But you will miss opportunities on the way depending on when you respond.
Jacob got his first revelation at Bethel—the house of God. You guys were brought up in Bethel. Think about that. You were brought up in the church. You knew all these spiritual truths.
Even when God appeared to Jacob, He said, “I am the God of your fathers,” because that was all Jacob knew. He wanted the birthright and everything, but all he knew God as was the God of his fathers—unreal to him. Even when God appeared to him, he said, “I am afraid. This is really spooky,” but still, God was only the God of his fathers.
Later in life, Jacob was coming back to live in the land after he went to the University of Mesopotamia. That is where Professor Laban showed him what a good guy he was. He met face to face with the flesh that he was.
Now, ladies, when you go to college, it used to be the joke that college degrees were BA, BS, and MA. The joke was that a girl went to college for an MRS degree—“Mister,” you know, the one you get married to. That was part of the college plan. We know that is not so, but sometimes it is Plan A: go to college, get your degree, get married, and stuff like that. Some of you have to wait for Plan B or Plan C. Sometimes some plans are not even written and shown to you; they come up later.
Jacob got married, had kids, had all these things, and yet he was not satisfied. He settled in Shechem. He almost compromised his entire life. He wanted to settle down in Shechem, mix in with the people, and become worldly.
You would think God would say, “I gave this guy the birthright? Man, what was I thinking?” But no. God let all these things happen.
When Dinah had been violated and two of Jacob’s sons went into Shechem and killed all the men, Jacob started saying, “Now the whole world hates me. My life is miserable.”
Then, in Genesis 35, God comes back into the picture and says, “Jacob, get up. Just get up and go back to Bethel. Go back to the place where you first met Me. That is where I want you to be.”
It is a wonderful thing that God would come after us when we have been spinning our wheels, doing what we want to do, not getting anywhere, and forgetting the purpose. We are satisfied that we have the birthright, but we are just running around with no understanding of what it means.
God gives Jacob a little call: “Jacob, get up. Wake up. Go back to Bethel.” So that is what he does. He gets up, and he goes back.
All Jacob’s life up to this time, he had not been a person who walked with God; he was a person who called on God. What I mean by that is, if you look at the book of Judges, you never see people who go very far with the Lord. They call to the Lord. They cry to the Lord.
In other words, they are not aware of what the Lord has done for them. They are not aware of what their purpose is in the kingdom of God. All they are aware of is themselves. Anytime they get into trouble, they call on God: “Get me out of here. Oh man, I am stuck. Just get me out of here. I will give You Your ten percent.”
The Lord comes to Jacob and says, “Come back to Bethel.” Jacob was not even calling on Him at this time. The Lord came to him.
Jacob responded. If you read the rest of Genesis 35, verse 2 says:
Put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments.
All of a sudden, Jacob saw where he was. He said, “There are idols in my life. My garments are unclean.” It is like the prodigal son. He went out there, spent all the money, and found himself eating the garbage fed to the pigs. He said, “Oh man, here I am eating garbage. It is so much better in my father’s house.”
He got up and went home. That was God bringing him to the end of himself. Jacob goes back, puts the idols away, and says, “Let us go up.”
I want you to understand this: now we are switching to the plural. “Let us go up. Let us go up to Bethel, and I will make an altar there to God Who answered me in the day.” So they all go up.
On the way there, Jacob’s nurse died. Genesis 35:8 says:
And Deborah Rebekah’s nurse died, and she was buried below Beth-el under the oak: and the name of it was called Allon-bacuth.
This was the last vestige of the old life for Jacob. Rebekah, his mom, was the one who pushed Jacob. It is interesting—she was the one who pushed Jacob, and Jacob followed the lead.
Now the Lord is saying, “We are burying it.” On the way to Bethel, Jacob buries the last vestige of what he thought he wanted.
I remember telling you guys that I used to play basketball on a team that played against the Globetrotters. I did not really want to play against the Globetrotters; I wanted to play professionally.
We got on this tour, and that was where the Lord really got hold of me. We were in New Zealand and Australia, and it was the season when they were starting to recruit among the players—the ones they wanted to take to Europe.
I had met the Lord there in a wonderful way, where I knew that this was not for me. The interesting thing was that I had always wanted to play basketball. I always wanted to.
When the Lord let me go my way and play on that tour, I came to the realization that it just did not make it. It was like eating sawdust. You eat sawdust, there is no taste to it, it makes your throat scratchy, and you just want to spit it out.
They were recruiting people to go to Europe, and they kept coming to me saying, “Hey, Jim, come on. We want you to go to Europe. This is the Globetrotter organization. We would like you to be on the team.”
I remember it was there that the Lord said, “Well, Jim, here is your opportunity. You have come this far. Now you have heard My call.” I had left a fellowship, and I was longing for the fellowship of the saints I had been with.
The Lord said, “Well, here we are, Jim. You want to go to Europe?” And I said, “No.”
From that point on, basketball was buried. It did not mean that I did not play anymore. I played in church leagues and did stuff like that. But the idea of basketball as a living, basketball as fulfillment, was gone.
I remember we were on the plane from Australia to New Zealand. I was writing a letter to my sister, telling her the experience I had, and it came over me that I could not go back to the old things. I started to cry.
We were on this airplane with all these people, and I started to blubber. It was not because I was sad that I was not getting my dream of playing basketball. It was the idea that I had been called to something greater. It just dawned on me, and I began to cry.
You can see here that Deborah was buried under what they called the tree of weeping. The old things have now passed away.
Jacob came to Bethel, and when he came, the next verse says that God appeared to him again.
The first thing He said was, “You are Jacob.” There was no bawling him out or anything. It was just God saying, “I know who you are. I know everything about you. You are Jacob.”
But it will not stop Me from doing what I want with you. I am not throwing up My hands here. As a matter of fact, you are Jacob, but I am God Almighty.
Notice, this time He does not say, “I am the God of your fathers.” He comes and says, “You are Jacob, but I am God Almighty. And you are not Jacob anymore, as far as I am concerned. You are Israel.”
He gave him a new name. In God’s eyes, forever, he is Israel. God sees it as finished. Even though we see Jacob going from Jacob to Israel and Jacob to Israel, God sees him as finished. God is bringing him to the place where it is no longer Jacob, Israel, Jacob, Israel, but only Israel.
God works toward that thing He sees that He is building. No matter whether you see yourself as Israel, God has given you the new name.
It changes the whole way Jacob looks at things. He is no longer seeing himself as the old man; he is now seeing himself in Christ.
Even when Rachel dies in childbirth—this is the one he loved the greatest—she says, “I will call his name Ben-oni. He is the son of my sorrow.”
Jacob could have said, “Yes, my Rachel is gone. He is the son of my sorrow too.” But Jacob has new eyes. He says, “No, he is not the son of my sorrow. He is the son of my right hand.”
Now he sees something in the loss of certain things. He does not see what he is losing; he sees the power of God to make life. It is an incredible thing.
Jacob goes on to Bethel. He is there, he makes an offering, and he pours out a drink offering. That is different.
There are three things about walking worthy that are at Bethel, in this idea of being part of something bigger:
We are yoked together with other believers. When Jacob went to Bethel, you can see that he said, “Let us go up.”
If you will permit me a little frivolity, who was he yoked with? Let us take a look at who he was yoked with. I brought my little slideshow.
You guys open up to Genesis 49 while I work this out here.
Well, you can see here, this is not my gift. Okay, that is great.
I think the people Jacob was yoked with are here in Genesis 49. There is Reuben. Check him out there by the pool.
The thing about Reuben is that he really wants to be in leadership, but his life is unstable. He has problems, and he really has a problem with the ladies. But you know what? That is one of the guys Jacob was yoked with.
There are Simeon and Levi. Simeon is the guy with the eye patch and the tattoos. These guys can be pretty cruel people, but they are jealous for God, jealous for God’s people, and jealous for the testimony of God. But in their jealousy, they can be cruel to some people.
Levi is the guy with the gold tooth. He really has a servant’s heart. You can see that he tries to function as a priest. But sometimes the flesh gets the better of him. He can be cruel too.
There is Judah. He looks a little older, and he looks as if he has been through some wars—and he has. He has been humbled. That is the thing about Judah: he has been humbled, and he is learning how to lay down his life.
Because of that, when he worships the Lord, it is wonderful. He does not do a lot of speaking, but he lays down his life.
There is Zebulun. Notice what he has there—a surfboard. He is a laid-back dude, out there by the seashore. He has his own business too. He is a good guy. He comes to meetings.
There is Issachar. The thing about Issachar is that he works like a dog. He has two jobs. He is overwhelmed by these two jobs because he wants his house and his SUV. He is a workaholic.
There is Dan. He can be kind of a serpent of a guy sometimes. You have to watch out, because sometimes he will bite you from behind. He has a judgmental spirit. Oh, he is judging. But that is Dan.
There is Gad. People just walk all over this guy—not like that, but the world always gets him down. He is always under condemnation. He is trying, but if you look real close, you can see the Lord working in him, trying to overcome those things. I believe that if we pray for this brother, he is going to find victory.
There is Asher. This guy is a great speaker. He gives great words. But he is one of those people who drinks tea with a pinky outstretched. You go to his house for dinner, and they serve gourmet meals, but they are always small portions. You are glad to be there, but after you leave, you go get a hamburger. Still, the brother is a gifted speaker—a wonderful speaker.
Here is Naphtali. This guy is hyper. He is running all over the place. He has a million irons in the fire. He is here and there and everywhere. But when he speaks once in a while, man, it is beautiful. Then the guy is all over the place again. You try to get a hold of him: “Oh no, I am doing this. Oh no, I am doing that.” It is hard to get a hold of him. He is just hyper, but there is a good word here and there.
Here is Joseph. Now, this guy is precious. I am not saying the other guys are not precious, but this guy has really suffered. At the same time, there is something about him: no matter what is going on with him, he always seems on top.
He never gets down on other people, saying, “Oh, you should be like me,” or anything like that. But man, he is someone you just need to be around. Sometimes you are afraid to go around him because you feel like you do not measure up to him. He is such a gracious guy. It is wonderful to be around him.
There is Benjamin. This guy is so young. He is so hungry for the Lord, grabbing at us. You know, he travels in packs.
Let us not forget the sisters. There is Rachel. She has her hands up, praising the Lord, eyes closed and everything. She is wonderful. Yet she wants to be with the world at the same time. She loves the Lord, but she is straddling the fence. She is in the giant zone. But that is fine.
There is Leah. She may not be pretty, but this lady is faithful. She has a husband who really does not appreciate her, and yet she is faithful. Just a wonderful lady.
Here are Bilhah and Zilpah. They have real servants’ hearts. You always see them together. That is who they are.
Brothers and sisters, you are yoked.
We want to think that we are yoked to Christ. We say, “Oh Jesus, come beside me and let me be yoked with You, and we will walk in this fellowship divine. Oh, how wonderful it will be.”
First of all, you have a bad picture of a yoke. A yoke is a big, heavy thing that you put around your neck. You cannot move this way or that way. You pull one with the other. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy,” but a yoke is not a pleasant thing to think about.
Have you ever tried to put a bridle on a horse for the first time? The horse is going, “I do not think so. You are sticking that thing in my mouth?”
I do not know how many of you have gone horseback riding. When you go to the horseback-riding place, you get on that horse, and that horse knows, “This guy is green.”
The last time I went horseback riding, my horse thought, “How do I get this guy off?” First, he started taking me by trees, where the branches hung down. Then he started rubbing me by walls, like he was going to get me off.
Sometimes, brothers and sisters, when we become yoked, that is the way we are: “How do I get out of here? There has got to be a way. Got to grease it, maybe.”
But we are not yoked to Jesus in the sense that Jesus comes down from heaven, appears to us, and says, “Join Me in a yoke.” No. He says, “I am in this brother. I am in this sister. I am in this company of people. I am yoking you to Me in them.”
That is a whole other ball of wax. When we look at people, we see them. But the whole idea of being brought to Bethel is not so that I can see whom I am hooked up with; it is so that I can see Christ in them and learn to submit to Christ in them.
It is a living thing. It is not a bunch of rules. How do I walk worthy in the light that I have, coming out of this brother, that sister, or this group of people? It is all different. You need whole new eyes for that, and those eyes will come eventually. But they do not come all at once.
I think that, being raised up with the teaching of grace, we have been so affected that we think we do nothing. We just lie here and God does everything. “Oh, give me an IV. Oh, He is feeding me. Oh, wonderful.”
We do not realize that we have to do work too. It is not work to be saved. We are saved by the blood of the Lamb. But does it not say, “Work out your salvation”? There is some effort you have to expend.
When Isaac was in the land, how did he find out the richness in the land? He began to dig wells. He expended effort. He planted. By expending that effort, by digging, he found water—and it was living water.
Some of us come to meetings like this and get what we think is water because it is ministry, but it is nothing. It is like getting a bottle that is empty. It looks like it is something, but it is really nothing. It is not living. It is just air.
Some of us are waiting for something to grow when we have not planted anything. “Oh, this land is arable land. It is good for farming.” That is great. What are you doing with it? “I am just watching it.”
“Do you not think you should plant some seed?” “What? Wow, that is a novel idea. How do you do that?” “You dig it up.” “Oh, that sounds like work to me. I am saved by grace.”
No, you dig it up. The seed falls in. “Oh, that is it?” No, you have to water it. “What? The river is over there. How am I going to water it?” Dig an irrigation ditch.
“What are all these things growing here?” “Those are weeds.” “Are they good?” “No, they are not.” “What do I do with them? Poison them?” “No, no, no. Here is a fork. You pull out the weeds.”
We do not understand that there are things we have to do. There is responding to what has been given to us.
When Jacob gets to Bethel and begins to be yoked with these other believers, it is not fun being yoked. Imagine this: when I taught United States history, we taught about the Industrial Revolution. Before it, there was the Agricultural Revolution. You had guys like Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaper, and John Deere, who invented the plow.
When they started to combine some of these machines, they called them combines. They threshed and reaped and did all this stuff. But the machines got so big that, to pull them, you needed a team of horses—not four horses, but fifty horses—all yoked together.
When we get yoked together with a great group of people, it hurts. We are living stones. Have you ever been hit by a stone? It hurts.
But the thing about being hit by a stone is that sooner or later some of the rough edges fall off you. You lose a corner, and all of a sudden you start becoming building material. The Lord is able to fit you together.
You come into a situation and say, “I do not fit here. They are all old. How can I fit in here?” Well, get there first. As you are getting jostled around and hit, all of a sudden the edges start getting smashed off.
The first thing that goes, I think, is a divine attribute. You ever have one of those chocolate Easter bunnies? What is the first part you eat? The head. The first part that has to go.
You are transformed in the way you think. The head has to go first. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, as Paul says in Ephesians. The way you think has to become all different.
Otherwise, you will just get out of the yoke saying, “I want nothing to do with this. I am going somewhere else. I am going where I can sing songs, be satisfied with singing songs, and feel good. All I want to do is feel good.”
The Lord says, “No, I am sorry. You are a stone. I am doing a work. Hang in there. Stay in there with Me.”
Then you begin to exercise your priesthood. We have been called to be priests. One of the priests wore a breastplate, and it had twelve stones on it.
All of a sudden, you find on your heart the people you are yoked with. You find out that the Lord is after them. You become lost in what the Lord wants, not just in, “What is in it for me?”
You begin coming to the place where you say, “I see Christ in that brother, but I see that life struggling to come out of him.” You pray for him. Maybe you come alongside him. Maybe you encourage him. You do not know, but these things start to happen. You begin exercising your priesthood.
Jacob did something that was really different. God said, “Build an altar.” Then it says Jacob poured out an offering. The first time he went to Bethel, it says he poured oil. But here it says he poured a drink offering.
When you think about it, this is when we lay ourselves on the altar. We build an altar for God. It is not the altar He wants; it is the offering that is on the altar. You have to lay yourself on the altar.
We spiritualize so much: “I am laying myself on the altar.” But it is true. When Paul says, “Present your bodies as living sacrifices,” do you know that is what he actually meant? Give your whole body to God.
Sometimes we think, “Well, I will pray for this brother,” and that is okay. But when you are praying, the Lord says, “I want you to go.” Well, how do you go over there? You take your body over there. You get over there.
Present your bodies. You lay down your life. It is not just your spirit that is saved. Present spirit, soul, and body to God—the whole thing. It is a whole burnt offering, not just spiritual stuff.
The spirit is in the body. So what is happening with the spirit should also be happening with the body. You say, “I am God’s in the spirit,” and your body is God’s too. You should act according to that light.
It says Jacob became a drink offering. “I am poured out as a drink offering.” Nobody told Jacob to pour a drink offering. God said, “Build an altar.”
All of a sudden, we see Jacob’s freewill offering. Out of his own desire, he says, “I am a drink offering.”
Paul said, “I am already being offered,” in 2 Timothy 4:6. In doing that, what he was saying was, “God, I am Yours. You pour me.”
It is not that we pour ourselves out and decide, “I will pour myself here or there.” We give ourselves to God, and then God does the pouring.
We are yoked with one another for a purpose, so that we can be built up together. This is where we find our spiritual gift.
Like Dana was saying last night, God does not write you a letter and say, “Oh, by the way, this is your gift.” You go out, you are yoked with one another, you are serving one another, and all of a sudden you find there is blessing. God is blessing others through you doing this, that, or the other thing.
You find out, “Ah, this is what God has given me to do.”
Brothers and sisters, do not think that being up here is the gift. God could speak through a donkey. Think about that. God could speak through a donkey, and sometimes I think He is.
There are so many other things He does that are eternal. The things set up here could go way over your head, behind you, and never touch you at all. But when they do touch you, they do something that makes you do something. That is what lasts.
That is what the Lord is after: living sacrifices, not living mouths. Living sacrifices in His hands, which He is able to pour out, because the whole body is being offered to Him.
Walking worthy of God means that we become a blessing. I do not want to say that what we do blesses others. What I am saying is that God blesses others through us.
Let me say one other thing about laying down your life. We looked at Simeon—the guy with the eye patch and the tattoo. He really rubbed Jacob the wrong way.
But when the family was in Egypt, the ruler of Egypt kept Simeon back and kept him in bondage.
Jacob laid down the very thing he loved to get Simeon back. He laid down Benjamin. It was not easy for him, because when they first came back and said they needed Benjamin, he said, “No way. There is no way in Hades I am letting this one go.”
But when the famine continued, the Lord just said, “I am not letting you go.” It is interesting: we talk about passing opportunities when we say no to the Lord. The Lord let the famine come. He let the famine do its work until Jacob finally said, “Okay, Lord, have what You want.”
He gave Him what He wanted. He laid down his life, and Simeon was freed.
Greater love has no man than that he lay down his life for his friends. We lay down our lives for those we are yoked with.
Now, Jacob went to Egypt. You might say, “Well, God told him to live in Bethel. What is he doing in Egypt?”
You know where Bethel is? Bethel is in Egypt. I do not think my geography is wrong.
Bethel is not like a physical city. It is the city of the living God. It is made up of believers. Where does God put His city? He puts it in Egypt.
As Jacob went down to Egypt, he blessed Pharaoh. Does not Scripture say that the greater blesses the lesser?
Does that mean I am greater than Pharaoh? No. But it means that the One Who is in you is greater. He is the One Who leads you to bless the other.
The greater is blessing because Christ is living in you, touching and blessing another. The greater is blessing.
Brothers and sisters, it is not just that we are to be light in Bethel. Jesus says, “You are the light of the world,” not the light of the church. Christ is the light of the church, but Him living in you is the light of the world.
We are not of the world, but we are in it. The thing about witnessing that was brought up last night is that this is one of the problems you guys have with witnessing: you have the idea that you have to convert people.
“If I could only make them see.” It is not your job to make them see. It is the Holy Spirit Who convicts of sin and judgment. It is not you.
But you are to become the witness—or the martyr, because the word martyr is witness. You have to die to yourself and ask, “What are they going to think of me?” I do not know. They are probably going to think I am a Jesus freak, and this, that, and the other thing.
You have died to that. You just say, “Let me tell you about Jesus.” They might laugh at you, and they might laugh at you to scorn. But it is not your job to convert them. It is His. It is your job to obey Him. Big difference. Big difference.
When you open your mouth and share the Lord, sometimes you do not understand it, but heaven just opens.
I remember one time in college. I was just sitting with a guy, and we were talking. I started to share the Lord with him, and all of a sudden there were about twenty people around listening.
I was just talking to this one guy, and all of a sudden the Lord brought all these people. The glory of the Lord was there.
I remember going back to my apartment and falling down, saying, “God, what are You doing? I am nothing.”
That is why I can do this, because you know what you are not. It is not what they think of you. You just go on and do what the Lord wants you to do.
Finally, the last point leads us to Genesis 49:29. Jacob is dying, and he charges them:
I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite,
in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan,
which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying-place.
There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah.
The field and the cave that is therein were purchased from the children of Heth.
Brothers and sisters, Jacob realized that he did not belong in Egypt. God had him living in Egypt, but he had in his heart the sense that this is not his home. This is not where he really lives.
There was a realization that he was an alien.
Right now, as I am standing here in Canada, I am an alien. I do not look like an alien. I mean, I look like a Canadian. If you brought Ben and June up here, I look like them. If you brought Gracie up here—although I am a little taller—I look like her. Somewhat. Use your imagination.
There is no reason to look at me and think I am an alien. Now, some of you might think so. We think of aliens as being like E.T.
But I will tell you something about E.T.: home. You understand what I am saying? I do not live here. My home is there. That is where my heart is.
I do not own the rights of a Canadian. I do not say, “Oh, I have the right to do this because I am in Canada.” I do not own those rights. But I do own the rights of the place where I am a citizen.
I have behind me the power of that government. If I were in danger, that government would have the power to get me out of that danger and release me from it.
I am not a citizen here. I am an ambassador.
I am like a brochure of America—no, unlike a brochure of heaven. People look at me and they might see a picture and say, “Wow, that is really neat looking.” No, I am just paper.
But on it there is a picture of what heaven is like. There is a picture of the King of heaven. There are pictures of what His character is like. All of this is in this brochure. That is what I am. I am just a brochure for other men to read.
His character begins to be written on me. As that character is written on me, I begin to see that I do not live here anymore.
I want to leave with one Scripture, in Romans 11.
As we think of all these things, and think of what we are called to, brothers and sisters, no one can twist your arm. God will not twist your arm. It has to be a freewill offering to Him. He will take no other offering. It must be freewill.
Romans 11:29 is talking about Israel, who had fallen away. This is what Paul says:
For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of.
They can never be taken away. Once you are saved, what God has done for you can never be taken away—not by anyone. Whether it is physical or spiritual, it cannot be taken away from you. It is that secure.
What He has called you to is to be like His Son—not to act like His Son, but to be a son. That calling will not be taken away, and cannot be taken away by anything.
Now, you can refuse to take it up, but He will not take it away from you.
It is like when the prodigal came back and said, “Oh, Father, I am not even fit to be a son anymore. Just make me one of Your servants.”
The Father said, “Bring the robe. Bring the ring. He is My son.” Those things cannot be taken away from you.
Brothers and sisters, it is not that we are saying, “You better walk worthy. You better do these things.” That is not what it is about at all.
Do you see what has been presented to you? Do you see what God has for you? He loves you, and He has a wonderful plan for your life.
Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.
Oh, heavenly Father, how great You are, and how great Your love is toward us.
We do not want to be like those ten lepers who, once they were cleansed, went on their merry way. We want to be like that one leper who turned back.
We want to respond and say, “I know what You have done. I know what You are calling me to.”
Lord, we want to be like You. Do this in our hearts, we ask, in Christ’s name. Amen.