Morning. I’d like to read a few verses, starting in Romans 1:16-17.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
And I’d like to turn to Philippians 1. Starting with Philippians 1:3:
I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.
And then, skipping down to Philippians 1:6:
Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
And then to Philippians 2:12-13:
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;
for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
And then finally, in Hebrews 11:13. In the middle of the verse, it starts:
But having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them.
Let’s pray.
Father, we want to thank You this morning that You have brought us to Yourself through Jesus Christ. We want to thank You for the place You put us. We want to thank You, Lord, that You took us from where we were and brought us right to Yourself.
And Lord, we want to thank You that there is an end to all of this. There is an end that You are striving for, working in us to complete. Lord, I ask that You would, this morning, open that up to us and let us see it, that we may embrace it even from afar. Even though we look at ourselves and say, “How can this be?”
We ask that You would open it up to us and show it to us, that in seeing it, we might believe; and in believing it, Lord, we might hope; and in hoping in it, Lord, we might be made into Your likeness.
Lord, only You can open these things up to us. Only You can show us. We ask that Your Word will be taken by Your Spirit, and it would enlighten us. We ask this in Thy name. Amen.
I think I have maybe today—I do not know if we will have another one left—but I have been talking about the gospel the last four times I spoke. Just in review, in looking at the gospel, we see first that God has to raise His standard. He does not compromise the standard. He shows us what He wants, what He expects, what He wanted in His creation.
We see that we fall short, but that does not mean that He lowers the standard. He shows us the standard, and then He shows us His work to bring us to that place.
The second time I spoke on this, we saw justification. We saw how the Lord justified us in Jesus Christ. But the question was not just, “We are justified”; it was, “What do we do with this justification? What does this mean to us? How does this apply to our lives?”
The third time, we talked about sanctification—not that we sanctify ourselves, but how God has sanctified us, how God has set us apart for His purposes. He has done these things for us, and how are we to respond to that?
And the last time, we looked at our response being consecration. Consecration is not a thing that we do, but it is a response to the love of God for us that we have seen, that we have experienced—a response to His blessing for us.
We looked not just at our part in consecration, but we also saw that He has a part in consecration: that on the throne He prays for us, that He has given us of His Spirit, that He has given us all things that we might be what He wants us to be. So we are not left on our own. Like Ephesians says, we are saved by grace and not of ourselves; it is the gift of God.
This morning, though, you know, we look at these things, and if you are like me, this is half empty. You know what I mean? That is the way I look at it. That is the way I work. That is my psyche. That glass is half empty.
Every time I come to things like this, I look and say, “How can these things be? How can this work out?” I cannot tell you how it works out, because it has not worked out all the way in me yet.
But I feel that what we have to see is that, in order to believe the gospel, we have to see the end of it. What is the end of the gospel for us? That is what we need to see, because it is in seeing the end—and, like the verse in Hebrews, embracing it—and saying, “This is mine. This is what God has for me, and He is able to take me there.”
So let us look. I am just going to look at three simple things about the end of the gospel. What is the aim? What is God shooting for?
The first thing is redemption. Now, I do not remember if it was Kenny or someone else who brought up S&H Green Stamps. Was it you? In California, we had Blue Chip Stamps.
You used to get them from buying groceries. Your groceries cost more, but then you got these stamps, and you took them to a redemption center and got something for them. I never knew the value of these stamps.
I remember once, when I was about seven years old, I found the stamps. My mom had them in her purse, and I thought they were pretty neat. I stuck them all over stuff. I stuck them in books. I remember showing my mom: “Hey, Mom, look what I did.”
Now, my mom did not get angry very often. There were two ways I knew she would be angry. She would call me James Aloysius. When she said, “James Aloysius,” I knew that was bad. But the other thing was, when she saw this, she went, “Gotcha, dumb jetchy.” Which means something like, “You are going to get yours, boy.”
But it was because I did not understand the value of this. I did not know. They were just stamps, thin pieces of paper.
I think sometimes we look at the gospel and the message of the gospel, and even salvation—especially, I am talking to you folks who have been raised Christians—and you do not see the value. That is salvation. You do not see the value of the gospel.
I am not saying you need to go out in the world and really live bad or something like that. I am saying that you have to see how it is valuable. I saw how those stamps were valuable by my mom’s reaction.
Then I remember, once after that, she took us to the redemption center. When she turned in our stamps, we got to see, “From these little things, look what you get.” So many books of stamps, and we got this and that and the other thing. Then it made sense.
Then we knew these were not playthings. This was not just a game or something like that. These were valuable. In the same way, our redemption is very, very valuable.
If we do not see the value of it, for sure our Father in heaven knows the value of it. He will not turn His back on the value of what He has done. So first of all, I just want to say, you may think, “I can never—I am going to give up.” Our heavenly Father will not let you.
I mean, from His part, you can deny all these things, but He is ever faithful to make sure that you will get what He wants. Now, you can say, “No, I am just not going to do it,” because He will not force you. But on His side, He will try everything. He will go through great depths to bring you to see this.
Now, what is redemption? Redemption puts us back to the place that God originally wanted for us. And what is that place? Oh, we are going back to the Garden of Eden? That is not the place.
When God redeemed Israel—and I said this last time—if you go to Exodus 8:1, God said:
And the Lord said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let My people go, that they may serve Me.
So redemption is not just the forgiveness of sins. Redemption is bringing us back to a place where we can serve the living God. That is what redemption really is. It is bringing us back to that place, that we can serve Him unhindered.
In the end, we can serve Him unhindered—unhindered by this body of sin, because in the end we will have new resurrection bodies; unhindered by guilt; unhindered by failure—because we serve Him by faith.
Service is not, for example, like when I was raised Catholic. My service to God was, “Well, I said certain prayers. I did the sacraments. I went to Mass on Sunday. Every three or four weeks, I went to confession. I took communion. I did the things I was supposed to do. I did the religious things.”
Or say I was a Muslim: I am going to pray five times a day, face toward Mecca when I pray, and give alms and charity. But this is not what I am talking about. I am not talking about following the eightfold path, like Buddhists do. I am not talking about doing dharma, like Hindus do. You do good dharma, you get good karma; when I come up in the next life, I will be in a better state. That is not what I am talking about.
Service to God is like this: in Luke 2, when Jesus was twelve years old and He was in the temple, in Luke 2:49, His parents were looking all over for Him. They had left after coming to the feast, and they could not find Him. They came back and found Him in the temple with the teachers.
They said, “What have You been doing?” And He said this very simple thing:
Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?
What service is, then, taken from this verse, is first of all something that comes out of a relationship: “My Father’s business”—a relationship with my Father.
We have different ways of looking at the word Father. There are two Greek words in the New Testament for father. One is Abba, which is kind of “Daddy,” and one is patēr, which is “Father.” The word in this one is Father, not Daddy.
What I am saying is this: we come into a relationship, and it is not the little-kid relationship. It is the full-grown kid relationship, where he knows who his father is, respects his father for who he is, and submits to his father because of who he is and what he has for him.
It is that type of relationship. It is a relationship where we come to see God as He is. Now, it is a wonderful thing, and I am not down on the idea of Abba. It is a wonderful thing to know that we have that love relationship with our Father in heaven. I am not saying that is something to belittle. That is something to embrace.
If we did not have that, we would give up. But because we know that He loves us, we can also accept Him as Father—not just Daddy, but Father. That is a big thing: to know Him as He is.
I remember, my dad started out as a cabinetmaker. Then he progressed, and he became a union business agent. He helped make contracts for union workers. I never knew how important my dad was until once in a while he brought us to work with him. You would see these people dressed in suits and everything talking to him, and he was important.
To see him like that almost gave me a new respect for him. Or to see how the men at the jobs greeted him, and how they respected him—that was something else to me.
But we have a relationship with Almighty God. Do we recognize that? Our relationship is not just with a deity; it is the Deity. It is the only God. We are brought into this relationship with Him through Jesus Christ, through the forgiveness of sins. He has drawn us to Himself, to be in His presence.
The relationship we have has to do with our understanding of that, understanding Who He is. The other thing is, “I must be about My Father’s business.” It is not my business. It is not what I think should be done. It is My Father’s business.
I have been brought into a relationship to serve the living God in what He is after and what He is doing. That is a whole different way of thinking. It is not natural. It is different.
It is interesting: Jesus said, “I must be about My Father’s business,” and two verses down, in Luke 2:51, it says that He went down to Nazareth and was subject to them.
Service is being subject to another. Last time we talked about the bondservant. The bondservant got his ear pierced, but it was not like, “Well, now I just get to live with You.”
We sing a song, “I love to live in Your house.” It is not that we live in His house; it is that we serve Him in His house. I am not saying do not sing that song again, okay? But I am saying, we look at it and go, “Oh, I just love to live in Your house.” That is true. It is a wonderful place.
But the thing is, we have been redeemed to serve in this house—not just serve in His house, but serve Him in His house.
This service is not that I do this or that or the other thing. This service actually is a submission to a life that He has put in us. That is the thing that we do not get.
We, in our natural minds, think, “Okay, to serve God, I have got to do this, and I have got to do this, and I cannot do that. I have got to do this, and I had better not do that.” We think that is service to Him.
But really, service to Him is: when He tells you something, you do it. It is not anticipating what He is going to tell you; it is waiting until He tells you, and then doing it.
The reason why I say it is submission to a life is because that is the truth. He has put His life—the life of His very Son—in us to live through us.
It is that life that leads us. It is that life that communicates to us His will. Yes, we get it through His Word, but it is the life in Him that responds to that Word.
So it is not me trying to do what He wants me to do. It is me, by that life in me, witnessing, “This is what I want you to do,” and in faith going out and saying, “I do not know if I can do this, but since You are prompting me, I am going out.”
Then we find out that we do it, because it is His life in us that is doing it. Brothers and sisters, that whole thing—that is service. That is the service that He is after.
That is the end that He is after: that the life in us, that we are led. What does it say in Romans 8? Those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God. That is what it is.
It is interesting, if you look at this—and I know this is really stretching the point, so do not make this a doctrine—it says He went down to Nazareth. I looked up the word Nazareth, and it did not tell me anything. But in Hebrew, the closest thing you can get is Nazarene.
The word for Nazarene is something like a branch—matter of fact, a green branch. More than a green branch, I believe it is almost like a wild branch.
We, being a wild olive branch, have been grafted into a good root. It is not a dry branch; it is a green branch, one that is flexible. We have been put into that.
What is subject? The branch is subject to the life that is in the vine, the true vine.
I am the vine; ye are the branches.
If ye abide in Me—
If you find your life in Me. I know this is one of the really hard things we have to do, because it is so unnatural. It is so unnatural to think that He has this life for me that I can live out of, but it is true.
You really have to go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I want to know the truth of this. I want to know—or even this: I have to know. It is just too hard. Show me.”
That is what Hudson Taylor did. Hudson Taylor got to the place, serving in China, where he said, “I just cannot do it anymore, God.” The Lord opened up to him that section from John 15 about the true vine, and he learned about an exchanged life. It changed him.
He was probably as old as me when that happened. So there is hope. There is hope for us—an exchanged life.
The other thing I want to talk about is that we are to become the hands and the arms and the feet and the legs of the Lord Jesus. Do you understand what I am saying?
It is not that we are serving God detached from everything. God has a plan. It says we are His workmanship, created for good works, prepared before. He has things all planned out. He has things down the line for us to do.
But the thing is, we become His hands and His feet. When the leper came to Jesus, and Jesus reached out and touched him and said, “I will,” we are the hand that reaches out and touches. He does it through us.
We are not detached from Him in our service. We are His hands and His feet. That is so important for us to know: that God says, “I will use you. I will touch others, because it is Me touching them, and I have chosen to do it through you.”
It is so important to know that God has chosen man to do these things. There is a funny little incident—you listened to Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby did a thing on Noah once. Those of you who are my age know that was very, very funny.
He was talking about Noah. Toward the end, Noah was really frustrated. He was bringing up the last two animals, two hippos going up, and the Lord stops him and says, “No, you have got to bring one of those hippos back.” Noah says, “Why?” The Lord says, “Because you have got two males there, and you need a female.” Noah got really frustrated and said, “You change one of them.”
The point I am making is that is not the way God works. God has chosen man as the one He works through. That is His choice.
Let us go further: He has chosen you. If you are in Christ, He has chosen you. I do not care what you feel your inadequacies are or anything—He has chosen you.
Moses tried to get out of things: “Oh, Lord, I cannot speak well.” He said, “Who made your mouth?” What does it matter what you can do or what you cannot do? You go in faith, and I will do it.
That is the point. You go in faith. We are called to live by faith. The end of our salvation is that we are serving God through this life He has given us in faith, and He is going out, reaching out and touching and bringing about His kingdom.
I am not saying we are going out to save the world. This world is not going to be saved altogether. Do not think that it is. Do not think Christians are out here to change the world so that everything is going to be hunky-dory. No. There is going to be a great tribulation, and the Lord is going to come back.
But while we are here, we are here to do His business, to be about what He is doing. We are not called to save the world. We are called to be lights. We are called to be His arms and His legs.
We are called to that type of obedience, to that type of subjection—not the subjection of “Do this and do not do that,” but the subjection of, “I am calling you to go here. I am calling you to touch this person. I am calling you to go alongside this person.” That is what He is after.
Our service, again, is not our deeds, but the submission to a life that produces a deed. Do you understand that? It is a submission to a life that produces this deed. The service is to Him.
We are not called to serve the world. We are called to serve Him. We are not called to save the world. In 1 Thessalonians 1:9, it says that you have turned from idols to serve the living God. In other words, we are serving Him.
But also, the service in the end will not be service that is halved. There is a great hymn—I think Frances Ridley Havergal wrote this:
I love my Master, I love, I love my Master;
I will not go out free;
For He is my Redeemer,
He paid the price for me.
I would not leave His service,
It is so sweet and blest;
And in the weariest moments
He gives the truest rest.
My Master shed His life-blood
My vassal life to win,
And saved me from the bondage
Of tyrant self and sin.
He chose me for His service—
That is a wonderful verse—
He chose me, even me,
For His service,
And gave me power to choose
That blessed, perfect freedom
Which I shall never lose.
That is what Romans 6 is all about. You are no longer a slave to sin. Now present yourself to God as alive from the dead.
And this is the part: “I would not halve my service”—not H-A-V-E; H-A-L-V-E, like half. I am not going to give Him just half.
I would not halve my service,
His only it must be;
His only, Who so loved me
And gave Himself for me.
Rejoicing and adoring,
Henceforth my song shall be:
I love, I love my Master;
I will not go out free.
The things that hold us back, in the end, what the Lord is saying is they will not be there. We will have a service offered to Him that nothing can hinder. That is the wonderful thing.
We might say, “I am hindered now, Lord.” But can we see ahead to what He has planned? Can we latch on and say, “I put my hope in that. I am looking forward to that. Things are clinging to me now, but there is a day, if I just go on with the Lord, that these things will fall away one by one.”
We want them to fall away all at once. The Lord will take them one by one. He will ask us for them. That will be part of our service, and we will give them to Him as we see that His way is good and acceptable and perfect.
So, “I would not halve my service.” That is redemption. Redemption really is that we are made to serve Him. We were brought into that place of service.
The second thing that comes out of this is in 1 Timothy 1:5:
Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith.
The end of the gospel is love. What I want to point out here is that love is actively aware. It is actively aware. It is not a passive awareness; it is an active awareness.
What do I mean by aware? First, it is aware that it has been redeemed. Are you aware of that—that you have been redeemed, in all that you are? Not only have you been redeemed, but are you aware of the One who has redeemed you?
The One who has redeemed you is not J. P. Morgan. I think I told you the story: J. P. Morgan, once, when the United States asked him if they could borrow some money, refused them. They did not have enough collateral. That is amazing. That is how rich that man was.
It was not J. P. Morgan who redeemed us—Someone much greater. Almighty God has redeemed us. Are you aware of the price of your redemption?
Are you aware to this extent: that in faith you will enter into His presence? That is what I mean by being actively aware. Are you aware of these things to the extent that by faith you will come into His presence, even daily, to have fellowship with Him?
Because if you do, you love Him. To go into His presence is to love Him. Why would you want to go into His presence for duty?
The bondservant is a bondservant because he says, “I love my master.” It is the same for us. That is what consecration is. It is saying, “I love my Master.”
To the extent that we serve Him, that we go into His presence and be with Him and have fellowship with Him, and out of that fellowship we serve Him—that is what He is after.
There is no service that is pleasing to Him that does not come out of that relationship. Anything that is not out of that relationship is not pleasing to Him. It is nothing to Him. But that which comes out of that relationship is blessed—blessed. It is satisfying to Him.
To think that we sinful creatures can satisfy Him.
Love is actively aware of others in the body. First, it is others in the body, in the family. You know, the family first, before you go out to others.
It is aware of others in the body to the extent that I sense through Him when it is my responsibility, my responsibility, to by faith come alongside someone; to encourage by faith; to rebuke someone by faith; to instruct someone; by faith to comfort someone.
To the extent that I see it is my responsibility. We hate this word responsibility because it makes us accountable. Brothers and sisters, as servants, we are accountable.
But the end of service is this love that sees the way the Master sees, and that when the Master says, “Feed My sheep,” we respond and say, “It is my responsibility.” “Tend My lambs.”
Brothers and sisters, we are judged in our service as servants not by what we know, but by what we do or do not do.
In Matthew 25, when the Lord calls all the sheep and the goats together, I think it starts in Matthew 25:31, and He says, “Enter into the joy of your inheritance,” because when I was hungry, you fed Me; when I was naked, you clothed Me; when I was in jail, you visited Me.
We might say, “Well, I never saw You like that.” But He says, “When you did it to the least of one of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” When we see, when we act on the responsibility He has given us, that is where His blessing is.
This is where I fall the worst: where the Lord puts something on your heart and you do not act on it. When I first started teaching, I had a poster that had a polar bear lying on its back like this, and the message on it said, “Whenever I get the urge to do homework, I lie down till it goes away.”
A teacher should never put up that poster, but I was young and naïve. Okay, but I learned.
Brothers and sisters, how many times have I done that when the Lord has said, “I want you to call this brother and encourage him,” and I say, “Well, I am writing this right now, but when I am finished, I will.” And it never comes back.
Am I aware to the extent that when He shows me it is my responsibility, I act? The end of our salvation is that happens. That happens.
The process we have to go through is worth it. Yes, there is failure that goes with it, but brothers and sisters, can you see to the end? Not see yourself to the end, but see the Lord working in you to the end He is after.
Thirdly, are we aware of His desire that we be knit together? To the extent that, by faith, I allow the Lord to forge that bond between me and other brothers and sisters—not on the basis of what I like and they like, but strictly on the basis that we are His.
To that extent, am I actively aware that I will say, “Yoke me with them. Yoke me with that brother”?
I think, for example, of Paul and Barnabas. What two different temperaments—Paul and Barnabas. How could they ever be knit together? And yet they were.
Think, too, about encouraging one another. Paul was so hard on Mark: “We do not want him here with us anymore. He is not coming with us next time. Just go home, you big baby.”
Mark went with Barnabas. Now, Barnabas did not coddle Mark, but I think, as a shepherd, as a father figure, he took him under his wing until the day he could say to Mark, “Paul was right,” and Mark could respond, “I can see it now.”
To the point that he could go back to Paul, and Paul could find him useful. It started out—it did not look too good starting out—but in the end came that awareness. It came where the Lord could tell them through a brother or through a sister, “This is where you missed the mark. Now get up and do better.”
To forge those bonds—you know what forge means? I did not say form those bonds; I said forge. You know how a forge works? It is heated up and shaped with a hammer.
To forge that bond. Because when a bond is made that way, it is very hard to break.
We are to be knit together. It is just like the weave in my shirt. It is hard to get the little threads out of here because they are all so woven together. Unless you pull something, but you do not want to do that—it unravels the whole thing.
The way they mix, it is almost like it is one piece. Knit together with love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Love is the perfect bond of unity.
This is what the Lord is after. This is what our service is going to be. It is love. It is out of love. When you are attached to the body, you are attached to the Head.
You watch the Learning Channel once in a while and you watch those animals. You ever see a cheetah? When a cheetah sees that animal over there, the head thinks, “Food,” and the body responds to the head. It is after it like that—the claws are out, the fangs and everything.
When the Lord sees His people, He does not say, “Food.” He sees love. Love is what comes to His mind. Love is what comes to His heart. Love is what motivates Him to reach out to others. Love, only love.
God is love. When He deals with us, it is always in love. Always in love.
In Nehemiah 3, using these two points, the word repair is used over thirty times. Brothers and sisters, sometimes the responsibility that we have in His house, among the brothers and sisters, is repair.
There are some broken lives among us, and we are to repair. That is our ministry.
Another thing you see all over Nehemiah 3 is, “Next to him. Next to him. Next to him.” There is nobody in Nehemiah 3 by themselves. It is body.
Is that not what the Lord says in Hebrews 10?
A body hast Thou prepared for Me;
I delight to do Thy will.
That service: “I delight to do Thy will.” First to the body, but it does not stop there.
We are actively aware of the outside world. We do not live in a monastery. The gospel is not just for Christians. The love of God is not just for Christians; it is for the world.
He wants you to be sons of the Father. When He talks about that in Matthew 5, He says, “I cause the rain and the sun to shine on the evil and the good alike.”
Sometimes I think we sit there and look at the outside world and judge them. Judgment is for Christ alone. He will judge the world in the end. We are to show kindness.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies.
Are we aware to the extent that we allow Him to show kindness to those who do not believe, even those who are adamantly against Him?
I think of Gunther going to Lebanon to pass out Bibles and to share. Some of those people hate Christianity, and they hate Christians. Yet God has said, “Give them My Word.”
Because I do not want them not to know Me. I want them to know that I am not just a God of vengeance—that is what Islam believes—but I am a God of love.
That is what they cannot understand. I do not think there is anything about forgiveness in the Koran. Now, I could be wrong; I have not read the Koran. But God forgiving—that is a tough thing.
Finally, glory. That is the end of the gospel: glory.
Now, glory does not mean that all of a sudden I turn bright. Sometimes I think that is what we think: all of a sudden, we are going to be a little bright. I mean, it talks in Corinthians about one star differing from another in glory. Maybe that is what it is.
But you know what glory is? It is reaching your intended end. That is what glory is: reaching that intended end for us.
As a basketball player, I never reached glory. My intended end was to be a champion. I never once played on a championship team. Never made it. At the beginning of every season, that was the goal: “We are going to win all our games. We are going to win the tournament.” Never reached glory.
Some of us think we are never going to reach glory here. We are never going to make it to the intended end. But what is the intended end? We look at the intended end as, “I am going to be something.”
How do I get to that intended end? This is how I get to the intended end: to know the love of God for me, for the world.
Does it not say that in Ephesians, that you might know the love of God in all its dimensions? It is not just a little poetic verse. He says, “In all its dimensions. I want you to know My love in all its dimensions. It has height, it has depth, it has breadth. It is everywhere.”
I want you to know it in reality. That is it. It is not something just to memorize. I want you to experience it in everything.
And in knowing it, to rest in it completely.
I listen to our prayers at the end of meetings, and you know what I hear almost all the time—and I am including myself? “Lord, we are so bad. How can we ever make it?”
Have you ever noticed that? Never resting in the love of God for us. Never looking at the power of the resurrection that is there for us to complete us.
Did I not read that verse? He is working in you. He is working. It is not you working. It is, “Work out your salvation,” by submitting to that life.
We throw the baby out and keep the bathwater. We throw the life out. We do not believe it—to have Christ formed in us.
That is glory. That is the intention that God is working at: to have Christ formed in us. And He is able to do it.
Think about this. I love the thing when Abraham laughs: “How can I, being old, and Sarah, who is just as old, produce something?”
The Lord does not say, “Well, if you try harder—if you take some fertility drugs, that should help out. I have got a good drugstore down there.” He never says that.
He says this: “Next year Sarah will have a child.” Abraham had to act on that, but that is it. It was acting on the Word of God.
Acting on the Word of God spoken to us in faith, acting on that, and receiving the fruit of it.
Glory is to have proved what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Brothers and sisters, have you ever obeyed the Lord, and He has something in your life, and you go, “I just do not know about this, but because I feel that You are saying this, I am going to go out and do it”?
Then you find out that God just comes in, and that is glory. That is the intended purpose for you doing that. There is glory there. Sometimes there is glory when you suffer. Sometimes there is glory when you obey.
And then it says, “with all the saints.” It is not just me. Glory is with all the saints. God will not be glorified except with all of us. That is what He has chosen: that we share in that glory.
In other words, think about this: God being satisfied with the work that He has done in us. Now, that is something. I bet you have a hard time thinking that. I bet you do. “How could God ever be satisfied with me?”
He can, because He is bringing up His Son in you. Do you believe that? See, that is the whole thing. It is a life effect. Do you believe that? Do you look ahead? Do you embrace that?
That is where the whole thing is. In Hebrews, it says they saw it from afar, and some of them did not even catch it in this lifetime, but they embraced it anyway. They confessed it, like was shared this morning. They confessed it.
What about us? Do we go to the Lord and say, “Lord, thank You that in the end there will be glory”? Do we do that?
Maybe we should. Maybe it is time for us to start taking the Lord at His Word and saying, “Lord, I do not see it. Show it to me. Let me see it. I will go because I believe right now blindly, but show it to me.”
It is like I tell kids about reading their Bibles. You read your Bible in faith. You might say, “Hey, it means nothing to me, so why am I doing it as a duty?” No.
You go to God when you read the Word and say, “God, to me this is like reading math. It means nothing to me. But I am going to read it because You say You reveal Yourself to me.”
You may not reveal Yourself to me today or tomorrow or something like this, but I am going to read it because I believe that You are going to use this to reveal Yourself to me. That is in faith—not feeling. It is in faith.
I love C. S. Lewis’s autobiography, Surprised by Joy.
So I want to leave you with this one word, because I have spoken too long. I want to leave you the word that Ellen spoke a while ago, that I think started a bunch of stuff. In Hebrews 6:1, it says:
Therefore leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection.
That is the word for today. Therefore, knowing that God has planned for us that we serve Him unhindered—that is His plan for us—that we serve Him unhindered; that we love Him and, because we love Him, are moved by His love to love others—
—and that in the end we will reach His intended end for us, therefore let us go on to perfection.
Let us not stop by the roadside and say, “Oh, I just cannot do it.” No. Let us get up and go on.
It is like Jesus spoke to the man who was at the pool of Bethesda: “Do you want to be made well?” “Oh, there is just nobody to carry me. Everyone else gets in there faster than me.” “Do you want to be made well? Take up your bed, get up.”
That is all He said. He did not talk about, “Well, this is your problem,” and the other thing. He said, “Get up and walk.”
Do you know where He found that man after he got up and walked? He found him in the temple. What was he doing? He was with the Lord.
That is for us. We have to see the end of the gospel, to have hope in it. There is no hope in ourselves. But do you see the end? Do you see what God has planned so that we can say like Mary?
When the angel said, “You are going to have a child,” she said, “How can this be?” And he said, “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you.”
Then she just said this very simple thing:
Let it be according to thy word.
Brothers and sisters, let us therefore go on to perfection. Let us pray.
Lord, we want to thank You that what You have for us is attainable—not because we can attain it, but because You have said it.
Lord, we want to lay hold of You in a way that we are brought to that place where You are completely satisfied with Your work in us, so it can be like at the very beginning, when You spoke and things came into being, and it says, “And God saw that it was good.” And it was.
Lord, we want that. We want that. And Lord, we want to come to You and say we cannot see it. We want to tell You how much it hurts us in ourselves to think we will never attain that, and how that discourages us because we think it is all on us.
Lord, we want to have our minds transformed. We ask that You will speak to us in Your Word, from Your Word, in a sense that it will just draw us up to see You, to see Who You are, and what You are able to do, so that we can believe You, trust You, and You can have Your way in us.
Lord, we want it to be so to the extent that You have what You want. That is what we are asking, Lord.
I think, Lord, that we would say we are asking it, but we just do not believe You can do it. Lord, we are saying, help us in our unbelief. We do not want to be those who are just saying, “We just cannot do it.”
We want to come like Abraham. We want to laugh, but at the same time we want to just go and say, “Well, You said it. I will go about and do my part. I will do what You ask.”
Lord, we want to respond to the life that is in us. We want You to make us aware that there is that life in us—that life that wins, that life that brings about what You want. We want to respond to that. We want to respond to Him in us.
Oh Lord, we want to thank You so much that You have provided all things for us. There is nothing, nothing that has not been provided.
Oh, help us not to go back to other things. Help us not to go back to our old ways, our old ways of thinking. Help us, Lord, to see with new eyes. Help us to lay hold of You.
To lay hold of You. You have laid hold of us, but Lord, we need to know how to lay hold of You. Please help us.
Lord, this is our cry. It is not a cry of thinking that You cannot do these things, but it is a cry of saying, “I have seen it in others. I want it for me.”
Oh Lord, this is our cry to You, and we thank You that this is what You want from us. You want us to come to You. You want to live in us. You want to bring these things about. This is Your will for us.
Lord, we give ourselves to You for Your working. In Jesus’ name, amen.