Well, the Lord has been faithful to us again this year. I understand that not only our times of ministry in the morning and evening, but also the fellowship times in the afternoon, have been very precious.
It is good to be together with the saints: the encouragement we receive, the joy of worshipping together, and just finding out what is going on in other places.
I was particularly blessed last night by Lance’s message, and then again this morning by our brother Stephen. I am charged with the last message, after the messages have all been given. But the Lord is faithful, and if He is with us tonight, as I believe He is, He still wants to share with us some new angles, and then just some simple things before we leave.
So we want to turn once again to Ephesians 1, where we looked at these verses, and add to them the last verses of the chapter.
He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him,
with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times,
that is, the summing up of all things in Christ,
things in the heavens and things on the earth.
And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
And let the one who hears say, “Come.”
And let the one who is thirsty come;
let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.
Our Father, we thank You for the riches of the times we have had together. Indeed, it is a blessed thing for brethren to gather together in unity. Thank You for Your presence, for Your mercy, for Your grace, for Your quickening power. Thank You for Your protection and the encouragement we have received.
Now we come again unto You, dependent upon the Holy Spirit, asking that You would give us further room and an appetite to know more about our glorious Lord. Help us, Lord, in this hour. Quicken our tired bodies. Refresh us. Let our hearts hear even what You are speaking to us.
We thank You for all that You have done for us already, and realize, as always, that we are in the midst of a great move of God. Oh, give us eyes and ears to see what You are doing in these days. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Here we see, at the very end of the Bible, a summing up. Here we see the church in such a position of fullness that she is called the bride, and she is gathering, gathering along with the Holy Spirit, saying, “Come.”
Let him who wills come; let him who is thirsty come. The church, in fullness, gathering in her beauty by the Holy Spirit. And we believe that the days are coming when the church will be in such a place that her invitation will be listened to.
You know, we have all probably tried battling and sharing and preaching the gospel to our friends, perhaps in some kind of outreach meeting. A lot of times we receive a lot of resistance. But in this tremendous last day, in this tremendous mega-gathering that our God is doing to glorify His Son, there are many hungry people.
It is true that there are those who are evil, those who prefer darkness rather than light. But the strange thing is, we are finding all around the world, and also here in America—even where I live, up in New York—that there are many hungry people who are longing to see some light, some truth, some faith, and some love.
You do not even have to fight with them. You just need to tell them that Jesus is gathering them to Himself, as a shepherd gathers a straying sheep. And these people respond.
Sometimes I go up to Times Square Church. Many of you have heard of David Wilkerson. Still, he is alive, and even though elderly, he sometimes shares magnificent messages. But no matter who is sharing there, they usually have an appeal at the end where they gather people up.
There are a thousand people meeting there three times on Sunday, and when they put out their hands and say, “Now, who is broken, but wants to come to the only One who can heal you?” people pile out of the balcony and out of the lower place. They come down and fall on the floor in the front. They kneel, and people come and pray with them.
In that evil city, New York City, there are broken people who are longing for somebody to say, “Come home. Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden; I will give you rest.”
This is not just a local phenomenon. As we shared in our first message, there has been a great mega-gathering by the Lord of the harvest over these last thirty years. From 1970 to the year 2000, I presented some statistics of amazing numbers of conversions across the world, in places whose names we are not even quite sure where they are on the map.
The Lord is doing wondrous things, gathering people from the north, the south, the east, and the west, gathering them into His kingdom. Oh, He is gathering even today.
And we, whether we are Christians—or maybe you are just a guest here tonight—perhaps you feel by the Spirit that He is gathering you. At times, Christians are rebel sheep, out alone somewhere on a hill, and our Lord is always calling you home, gathering you to Himself.
If there was ever such a sense of love we get, it is when we see Jesus, who has continued compassion upon those sheep that are lost and straying around.
In New York City, everywhere I go, I see people straying. Julie and I just walk around in our neighborhood, which is quite a popular tourist place, and see people with maps upside down—people just lost. They have no idea they are going the wrong way. They do not know. People are lost all the time. We get to direct people all over the place.
But how wonderful if they all came to Jesus. That is the hope they really need.
We looked at this wonderful harvest, and it is surely a sign of the last days that so many people are being saved. It is tremendous. If the statistics are right—and if I even reduce them a little bit just to be conservative—there are going to be fifty million more harvested this year. Fifty million.
Over half of them will not be saved through denominations, big ministries, big evangelistic groups, or big mission groups. Over half of them will be saved and brought into a little house church somewhere—an unregistered church, not even a church, just a house.
In Russia, they call them “houses of prayer.” I go to one place where they have three hundred of these things. It is just a house where somebody lives, and people come there. They pray and worship and preach the gospel. Thousands of people are being gathered by the Lord even now at this point.
But, as we have heard—and as we heard so wonderfully this morning from our brother Stephen—when it says that in the dispensation of the fullness of times God would gather all things, or sum up all things in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth, we know that the Lord in His final purpose has something much more than just gathering sheep into a pen, as it were.
He wants to gather us up into Himself. There is this tremendous work going on right now, especially among Christians. There is this transition: having been gathered unto the Lord, we are being gathered into the Lord.
We have been gathered to the Lord and have experienced all of His goodness and grace, and now we are being gathered into His life—to the very place where we can say with sure testimony that Christ is our life.
You saw the masterful development of examples in the New Testament this morning from our brother. He shared about the Galatians, who were holding on to a thing. What was the thing they had? Justification by faith, right?
Because of that, somebody was coming along and saying, “Oh, you need to be circumcised for justification,” and they were getting confused, holding on to that doctrine. But Paul was saying, “What you really need to see is that you have been clothed with Christ, who is your justification.”
Once you see that it is not the doctrine of justification, but Christ who is your justification, it makes a lot of difference. Did you catch that? That is when Christ becomes the sum of your justification.
Then he went on to talk about the Corinthians, who were called saints, but seemed anything but saints. He was trying to tell the Corinthians that it is not a question of being sanctified through effort or something, but that God has made Christ sanctification to you. It is Christ, our sanctification.
To the Colossians, it is Christ our perfection. And to the Philippians, it is Christ who is our life. In 2 Corinthians, our ministry is the writing of Christ and the impartation of Christ into a person’s life, not just the ministry of the word.
Throughout our Christian life, whether it is the ministry we are involved in or these things we have understood about our salvation, the Lord wants to make them real in Himself, so that we all say, “Christ is our life.”
We have also shared that the whole of Scripture speaks of Christ and shows us Christ, from the Old Testament through the New Testament. Now we want to go back to Ephesians, because I feel we should pick up some pieces so that we can understand some of these great terms being used: the summing up of all things in Christ and the fullness presented to us.
When we read in Ephesians that in the fullness of times God would sum up all things in Christ, as we said the first night, the Greek literally says, “head up all things in Christ.”
If you were a Greek in the days when Paul was writing this, and you read that in Ephesians, then came to Ephesians 1:22-23, you would immediately get the association. When it says Christ has been made Head over all things to the church, it is that same word, kephalē, used back in Ephesians 1:10—heading up.
Part of the heading-up process is that Christ begins by being Head over all things to the church. We do not always take that seriously, but He seriously wants to be the Lord and Master and Head over everything that happens in the church.
This is how the church is expressed in its fullness: He is Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. So He is heading up the church.
The sister letter to Ephesians is Colossians. If you look over in Colossians 1, we see a further thought regarding this whole matter of fullness and heading up.
In Colossians, we see that this gathering up is not only involved with sinners being saved and gathered up, nor only with the church being gathered under His headship. This gathering up is larger. It involves the whole of creation.
Paul, by revelation, has seen that Christ not only was the Creator of the world, but now all things are being summed up in Him.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—
all things have been created through Him and for Him.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
He is also Head of the body, the church;
and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him,
and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself.
What the Lord is doing is not only heading up sinners to Himself and heading up the church as its Head, but now heading up creation, reconciling creation, bringing creation as a whole into fullness.
He is taking this natural creation and, through the process of His redemption and reconciliation, making that which is natural spiritual. This is a tremendous cosmic gathering. This is going way beyond us now, as we understand that He is the One who is bringing about a heading up of all creation.
One day, even as we consider the sun the center of our solar system, we will all understand that Christ is the center of all creation. He will be in charge of everything. He will be the source of everything, the cause of everything, and the purpose of everything, clearly seen.
Paul has already seen this revealed: a cosmic summing up. Creation has found its stake pole in Christ, and it all makes sense when you look at Christ in the center.
Colossians also goes on to show that there is a microcosmic gathering in our individual lives.
For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our life, is revealed,
then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
When Christ, who is our life, is revealed—that is why we are seeking the things above. We realize we are dead. Our life is now hidden with Christ in God. We cannot quite see what our life is yet; it is something in process.
But when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, we will be revealed in glory. He is taking our lives and making His life the sum of our life in this wonderful way.
Then, as he is sharing about these things, Paul talks about this new man. By this new man, he is talking about the church as one new man.
And have put on the new man who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—
a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised,
barbarian, Scythian, slave and free man,
but Christ is all, and in all.
That means the new man—namely, the church—is being created in the image of Christ. This is not an individual new man; it is a corporate new man.
One day Christ will fill the church with His glory. Christ will be all and in all. All the brothers and sisters belong to Christ, and He wants all the brothers and sisters to be full of Christ.
This is the process: the process unto fullness, the process unto the summing up that we notice here in the Scriptures.
We also see that this process in the church is vital to that final fullness of all creation. Again, we know these verses, but let us look in Romans 8.
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly,
but because of Him who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption
into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
When God’s children are transformed as sons of glory, creation is waiting for that. First it has to start among us, and then the whole creation is set free.
There are three expressions concerning this great gathering that God is doing through Christ Jesus: fullness, the summing up, and glory.
Glory is also a term that shows God’s ultimate intention for all He is doing in these days: bringing many sons to glory, glorifying these sons, and bringing all creation into glory.
The fullness is His measure, the summing up is His process, and glory is His essence. It is all a tremendous gathering by the finished work of Christ.
When we talk about fullness, we mentioned the first night that Paul actually only uses the term fullness in Ephesians and Colossians. In his most mature understanding of what God was doing, he sees that the end is fullness, that maturity is fullness.
Let us look at just a few Scriptures in Ephesians where Paul mentions the matter of fullness.
The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
The church is the fullness of Him who fills the church.
And to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
He is talking to the church gathered together as they comprehend the dimensions of Christ.
Until we all attain to the unity of the faith,
and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
to a mature man,
to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
The church grows up into the Head and grows up into the fullness of Christ—the full stature of Christ, the full character of Christ. This is what Paul sees as the end of things.
He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens,
so that He might fill all things.
Paul also shows us the resource for this fullness. Christ in heaven, the Anointed One at the right hand of the Father, has this infinite capacity to fill. He loves to fill. He expresses love by filling.
Paul says that He ascended up in heaven that He might fill all things. Then he immediately gives examples: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and teachers. They were filled by Christ, and they bring fullness to the church.
Every time somebody has been filled by Christ and expresses that fullness of Christ, other people are filled. There is a sense of the church coming into fullness.
The term fullness does have to do with the maturity of Christ, the fullness of the stature of Christ. This is the goal. But, as I said the first night, right from the very start the church expresses fullness.
Think of the church after Pentecost. We all remember Acts 2:42. The new disciples—the three thousand who had all been baptized, and the one hundred and twenty who had been participating in Pentecost—they all gathered together.
They continued steadfastly to gather together. Nobody had to tell them, “You have to go to Sunday,” because they did not have Sunday. They had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching, in fellowship, in breaking bread, and in prayers. Nobody said, “No, I do not want to go.” Why? Because it was at your house.
They gathered in their homes, and they gathered out on Solomon’s Porch. They gathered and gathered and gathered wherever they gathered. Oh, there was such a sense of fullness.
It was a very young church. So what does fullness mean in terms of the young church? As assemblies, wherever you go to church, if we are rightly aligned under our Lord and enjoying His living presence, there is a fullness there that is really wonderful.
I think there were four components of fullness that you could see even in the young church.
The first was that they were full of gratitude. They were taking their food together with joy and singleness of heart, and people were being saved just by saying, “Wow, how thankful they are.”
Paul mentions a number of times in his exhortations, “Give thanks to God.” When we give thanks to God, it gives glory to God. There is fullness when people’s hearts are full of gratitude.
When the church really worships with real thanksgiving—not that humdrum, “Let us sing songs about thanksgiving and pretend we are thankful, though I cannot think of a reason why”—but that sense that I have newly been saved and my whole life is brand new, there is fullness.
I travel to Russia, and I go out there where people are hearing the gospel for the first time. They have a new vocabulary. They are so excited about it. Words like faith, truth, and love—they almost sound Brazilian.
We have a brother Lucio here. I do not know where he is tonight. Brother Lucio is from Brazil, and he speaks occasionally back home in Flushing, where I fellowship. He loves to stretch out words. He says, “God so loved the world.” I think love is about four seconds.
He just loves this word. He just lays on this word. The Russians just lay on this word: “I have got forgive.” That is old to you and me, huh? Faith, hope, love—eh.
They were full of gratitude. I do believe I can almost sense when there is a fresh working of God in any assembly, because there is a lot of thanksgiving, just a lot of thankfulness.
How can the church be the fullness of Christ? I mean, does Christ not have everything already? He does not have to ask the church for a Toyota. He has a Honda already, where everybody is in one accord.
Forget it. Okay, but listen: is not the Lord already full? How can we be the fullness of the Lord?
Here is how we can be fullness today. First, gratitude. Second, just being servants of the Lord Jesus, being His messengers, going out telling the gospel, being the ones who bring love and compassion and mercy to those who need it.
We are just servants of His. Oh, that brings fullness. There is nothing more wonderful than a master who has servants running around, doing whatever he wants.
Of course, it goes deeper than that. What is it that really makes it fullness? That first love. Thirdly, that love which knows no price, knows no cost—like the love a person has before they get married.
“What can I do for you, honey? Can I get you something?” Then you get married, you come to the cafeteria, the husband goes on one end, the wife goes to the other.
No, no. I see a lot of love even here at the cafeteria: “Honey, can I get you something?” All this kind of stuff. But you know what? It is a glory to Christ, and how the Father loves it when His children have first love: “Whatever You want, how can we fulfill Your desire?”
Is that not a great question? “How can I fulfill Your heart today, Lord Jesus?” There is fullness in that love, fullness in that kind of earnest serving, and fullness in gratitude.
The fourth thing, which is kind of like the kickback even in the early church: what was the church full of? The presence of Christ.
People came into the church and just said, “Wow, what is going on here?” Some people were afraid to join themselves with the brethren. There was such a presence of Christ there.
It was all by grace, but it is so wonderful when you see this kind of fullness there.
Paul uses this word fullness in Ephesians and Colossians, and we find it nowhere else—oh, except where? The Gospel of John.
Full of grace and truth.
And of His fullness we have all received.
—John 1:14, 16
Grace upon grace. John was written years after Paul, and John, to my mind, is one of the most Gentile Gospels. It is just so Gentile. It is universal. You know what I mean? It is for anybody.
They love that Gospel anywhere. It is just so Gentile. But John is trying to recover; John is trying to bring back the very things our brother Stephen has been sharing in these days.
John was faced at the end of his life with a church that was losing the fullness and the reality. They were going back to the things on the outside. So John presented the Gospel that said, “Look at the things as signs, and look through those things to the I AM, because that is your fullness.”
John was trying to draw them back. So it is John who brings us again, years later, to this matter of fullness: full, and of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.
Our brother shared a wonderful section in his message this morning on the grace of God. It is wonderful. It is undeserved. It is freely given. Paul says it is lavished upon us.
Certainly, in those early days, grace is initiated sovereignly by God. He pours it out on us even unexpectedly. We talked about this mega-gathering from 1970 even to this day.
How many of you have been gathered in since 1970? You have come to the Lord since 1970. Well, there we are. You are part of that gathering process. You have been gathered in by His grace. Praise God.
Fifty million people this year, gathered into grace—gathered into the grace room for the big buffet.
In that grace room, there is a wonderful buffet. There is forgiveness. There is love. There is peace with God. If you have needs, you can pray and they will be answered. You know what it is like in that grace room.
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand;
and we exult in hope of the glory of God.
And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations,
knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;
and perseverance, proven character;
and proven character, hope;
and hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
You notice there in Romans 5:2 that we by faith have been brought in through the door of faith into this grace in which we now stand. We stand in the grace of God. I am going to call that the grace room.
All these provisions are freely given to us in Christ—even, and this is so important for many of the Russians, just a reason to live—as well as love, forgiveness, hope, deliverance, and healing. It is all there in the grace room, all absolutely free.
The provisions of the Holy Spirit are all absolutely free. It is just a gift. Go to the buffet. Go ahead. What do you want?
But, of course, the Lord wants to bring us from grace to glory. We can stand in that grace room, and sometimes I think some Christians have stood in that buffet an awfully long time.
But God has utter confidence in His ability to get us to glory, because He has His trump card just waiting for you unexpectedly.
There you and I are in the grace room: “I think I need a little forgiveness today.” I am standing around in the grace room: “I think I need a little love.” A couple of saints come over and give me a hug, hug, hug. Oh, this is grace. This is wonderful.
But then one day I look through the window of hope, and I see the glory room. Now, I am not there yet. But I am standing in the grace room, and I also rejoice in the glory of God.
I look through the window. By the Word of God, the glory is revealed to me. And there is something about the glory room: it is no longer buffet. It is things custom made.
It is not the buffet. Now you have seen, through the window, the Chef. A new and deeper hunger starts to rise in your heart.
I go probably about once a year up to Toronto. One thing they do in Toronto that is hard to find a match for is taking you to the best places to eat food.
I asked my host one time, “How come you always seem to know where the best restaurant is for the best food?” Of course, I am some kind of food critic—what do I know? I eat anything.
I said, “How do you always know where to be?” He takes us to different places in different years. It is always Chinese food, by the way. You know what he told me? “I follow the chef.”
He has learned a couple of the great chefs there in Toronto. These fellows get more money at the next restaurant, so they go to the next restaurant. He just follows the chef.
It is so wonderful to be in the grace room. My fifty million brothers and sisters are enjoying all these things for free. But when you look through the window into the glory room—and, of course, it is Christ that you see—something, a hunger, comes inside you.
This is God’s absolute confidence that you and I will be captured if we see Jesus revealed.
It is almost like the song takes on a second verse. You know the salvation song:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
look full in His wonderful face,
and the things of earth will grow strangely dim
in the light of His glory and grace.
It is almost like there is a second verse: even the things of grace seem strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. We love the grace of God. It is always free and ready for us, but we have seen the glory room.
Have you been gathered to the glory room? Have you looked through that window and seen this Christ?
I was not saved until I was twenty, so I got started late. For ten years I was so happy serving in the church, which we called “the hospital for sinners, not the hotel for saints.”
I heard that from some guy, and I liked the motto. I would always say, “The church is just a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.” We would preach the gospel and try to gather broken people and needy people into the church. This is a hospital for sinners.
I was happy for ten years, until one day I saw the most beautiful Christ I had ever seen. And it was a corporate Christ: the church.
I did not know the church was Christ. I thought it was a hospital for sinners. I thought it was a gathering place. I did not know until I looked through that window that day and saw the most beautiful Christ I had ever seen.
It was not that I saw His Head and then I saw this hospital body. No, I saw Christ from Head to foot. Christ is the church. I had even heard that, but I had to see it.
When I saw it, I left the hospital because I found home.
But that church is a glorious church without spot and wrinkle. Back in that hospital-for-sinners thing, nobody has to really get serious about sanctification. Everybody can just have sloppy agape.
You did not have to deal with the flesh. You just held down the flesh you wanted to, and used the flesh you wanted to. It is just a hospital for sinners. There is no big standard. You just have to be saved.
In the church I was in, you had to be saved and baptized. That was it. Now suddenly I see a church. It is my home. It is a glorious place without spot or wrinkle.
I not only saw that it was my home, but that is when I learned how you get from the grace room to the glory room: through the hallway of tribulation.
I have to tell you, I would not have received this message of the cross. This was back in those days, as I was telling you the first night. I was listening to Brother Stephen, and he would always talk about the cross—how you find a cross in Numbers, or Judges, or Samuel, or Ruth. I did not know at that time. Now I have a clue.
The cross. I knew there was something. But listen: if you just want to be a hospital for sinners, just loosey-goosey, going nowhere, growing, dividing, fighting—just be that.
But I am betting you have already seen the glorious church. Now two things happen when you see the glorious Christ: you are caught. You are caught. Do not say, “Catch me, Lord.” You have been caught. You are caught by glory.
The Lord begins to take you through a process to make you fit for the glory room. That is what it is all about. It continues all by grace. By grace you have been saved, and by grace you continue on. But it is grace in the hallway of tribulation.
Have you been gathered to the glorious Christ? Have you seen Christ—not just the Christ, the Man who died on the cross? Have you seen the Christ of glory?
Whether you are at the beginning stage of your life, like Paul on the road to Damascus, when he saw the Christ of glory and it changed his life and captured him; or whether you are a veteran Christian in a place of devastation, in the hallway of tribulation, like the Apostle John on the isle of Patmos—he saw the glorious Christ, and he was captured.
There is no way to go through the hallway of tribulation except in capture. The only way we are able to go through the hallway of tribulation is through His resurrection life.
We cannot battle it by our own wits or guts. We are going through something that is over our heads. But He has captured us, and He leads us on.
Paul says in Romans 5, “We not only rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, but we also rejoice in tribulations.” What a nutcase!
Now wait a minute. Paul is not saying he laughs when he has tribulations, but he knows where tribulation ends. He mentions that there is a track there: tribulations lead to perseverance, then proven character, then hope, and then hope pours the love of God into you by the Holy Spirit.
Paul has experienced this enough to know that, when he is going through the hallway of tribulation, the compensations of the love of Christ are great compensations indeed. Plus the fact that he is being fitted for glory as he goes through these various processes.
I do not need to convince you, I think, of the work of the cross. You know heavenly arithmetic. If Christ is going to be the sum, something has to be subtracted.
If He is going to increase, someone has to decrease. We know this arithmetic. There is no way around it. We want our lives to be summed up and full of Christ; there is a subtraction process. He is the sum. We are the remainder.
He begins to work on us and work on us and fit us for this glory. The grace is still there. The grace from the grace room is still there, but it is a deeper grace.
These are my own phrases, because it is hard to explain grace sometimes. In the early days, there is that initiating grace that comes from God as a surprise to you, even uncalled for perhaps. It is just given to you freely.
But when we are going on in maturity in our lives, there is grace already there for us, but we have to respond to it and take it.
I was really helped one day when I was reading Professor Lightfoot’s explanation of 2 Timothy 2. There it says, “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
But Dr. Lightfoot explained that what it really says there in the Greek, in the reflexive tense, is, “Strengthen yourself in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
Do you see the distinction? Strengthening yourself in the grace that is in Christ Jesus implies two things. One, the grace is right there. But you have to take it.
In the early days, as a basket-case Christian—as somebody like you and me who was completely on Christian welfare—God had to motivate you, do it for you, everything by grace. He had to start it and complete it.
Now you are in a place, going through this hallway of tribulation, and there is all the grace in the world we need there. But you have to take it.
Responsible grace is what I call it. Why? Because you have to respond, and then He is able. It is His grace that is the ability, but you have to respond.
You still live by grace. It is His supply. It is His ability. There are two differences between that initiating grace right at the beginning and this responsible grace that is yours to take now.
First, you have to take it. Secondly, you will find that you are taking not a thing, but a Person—not peace, but the peace of Christ; not a power, but Christ in His power; not healing, but Christ the Healer.
There is a new level to the provision. It is Christ Himself.
But by the grace of God I am what I am.
Brothers and sisters, may it be that we all come to this place. What is this place? What is Paul saying? “I have stopped arguing that I am not worthy. It is a done deal.”
“I have stopped arguing with the Lord: I am disqualified, or I cannot do that, or I do not have that gift, or this is too much for me. I just stopped. Here is the deal: by the grace of God, I am what I am.”
Even though he was not worthy to be an apostle, the Lord said, “Paul, you are an apostle.” Okay—by the grace of God.
Then Paul says:
His grace toward me did not prove vain;
but I labored even more than all of them,
yet not I, but the grace of God with me.
He makes grace almost a person. “I have worked harder as an apostle by the grace of God, but it is not I who am working as an apostle. It is the grace that is with me.” Who is that grace who is with him?
He has discovered that Christ is his apostle. He has discovered that he apostles by the grace and the life of Christ. That is why his ministry is so abundant.
How we need to learn this fact. I thought Lance’s message last night was tremendous, and all those eight imperatives are something we should write down in the back of our Bibles and look at as we stand fast in these last days.
But I sometimes think that perhaps the source of the grace that enables us to stand and be faithful in those imperatives is this: once having seen the glory of Christ, to respect glory.
Do you respect glory? Do you value glory?
It is unnatural to us. Naturally, we value ephemeral things, things that can be seen. But Paul says he does not look at the things that are temporal, which can be seen; he looks at the unseen and eternal things. That is where he is investing. He values glory.
Do you value glory?
As I look at some of the saints and servants of God who are faithful, I have noticed a few things. When you find the saint who really has the hope of the coming of the Lord Jesus, you see somebody who is in the race, because they value glory.
We all talk like we want Jesus to come back, but some people really have this hope as a motivator in their lives. They are pressing on because they know it is coming. They value glory.
Those who value glory seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated. Do you treasure the Word of God? Do you seek the things above, or are you just seeking more of the things on this earth?
The Lord has to help us come to this kind of valuation, because we are so earthbound. We go through all kinds of hallways of tribulation and moments of tribulation to come to the place where we value glory.
Certainly for me, I remember the devastation when my oldest son died in a car crash. When you raise your child up, and you are a Christian, and you are trying to do things right, and then your son dies, it is a devastation.
It is, “God, I did my part of the deal. Why did You not do Your part of the deal?”
But that was one of the moments in my life, through the devastation, through the coming back to square one, that I began to value the things above.
One thing I knew: my son was saved, and I am looking forward to seeing him. Just that little bit of heavenly investment lifted the weight of my earthly cares.
The Lord will teach us to value glory, because it is a very important key to having absolute devotion to the Lord, as our brother Lance was exhorting us. Do you value the glory of the Lord Jesus?
I feel confident that I am fellowshipping tonight with people mostly who have already been suckered into the hallway of tribulation, because you love the Lord.
Once you see the glory, you want to seek for glory. But the interesting thing about seeking for glory, when you read in the Bible, is that it does not work if you seek your own glory.
Even Jesus, when He was questioned by the leaders of the Jews, said, “No, I do not seek My own glory. If I did, I would not be true. It is My Father who glorifies Me, and I try to glorify the Father.”
Seeking our own glory is not the point. We have that song, “Oh, that will be glory for me.” When we get to heaven and are with the Lord, it will be glory for us. But our focus is not on our glory; it is on His glory.
If you really see Christ in glory, you want to glorify Him, and your life is about Him. Paul even says in a few places, “I am willing to suffer that you might come to glory.” Is that not wonderful?
When we see the Christ of glory and have looked into that glory room, there is a new motivation in our lives. It is no longer just about ourselves anymore.
As long as we stay like babes in the grace room, taking this and taking that, we are just selfish, selfish, selfish. But once we look into glory, you might be the most selfish person in the world, but there is something more important than yourself worth going after.
Our life begins to change.
You and I have been in this hallway of tribulation, I am sure—almost everybody here. If you have entered the hallway, I want to share with you four lessons that we learn as we are being fitted for glory.
As soon as you set your heart to go toward glory, even through tribulation—you do not choose tribulation; you just start heading toward glory, and tribulation takes care of itself—as soon as you set your heart that way, that is when you first come under the earnest attack of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The whole spirit of this age is against glory. It hates God’s glory, even more the glory of Christ, and even more the glory of the church.
When you set your heart in this direction, the whole spirit of this age starts working against your absolute devotion to Christ. Here is the deal: if you set your face for the Lord and just walk toward the Lord by the Spirit of God, taking His grace, the world, the flesh, and the devil do not have much influence on you.
But if you look back—I do not know why we are Lot’s wife, but we look back—and right behind us, there are the dogs.
I just picked out three spirits of this age that are antichrist because they are anti-glory. They come all over you and attack you if you turn back from looking toward Christ, looking away unto Jesus, and running that race.
The first thing perhaps is Mammon’s temptations. If I were a nasty person, I could list people’s names whom I have seen running after Jesus, and then they turn back because Mammon said to them, “You can do both.”
“Gain the world and gain the glory. You are exceptional. You can do both. You can work on that job and make that money and everything. You can also serve God. Do not worry.”
It is Mammon’s game: “Just another year. Just another year. I know they want you to serve. I know they want you to go somewhere and speak. I know they want you to get yourself free. No, no, no—just another year. Just accumulate a little bit more.”
Mammon’s game begins to clutch over people’s lives, and they lose the race.
The second spirit of this age, which our brother mentioned, is the absolute obsession with psychology and self-centredness.
A hundred years ago, people were not so self-centred because you had to go to work. You did not have time to get a cold. Now somebody thinks they are coming down with something and they do not show up.
People are into themselves. “How am I feeling? What is that for me? Who is me, me, mine?”
Rick Warren wrote that huge book, The Purpose-Driven Life. It struck a chord within the church. Do you know why?
One of my sons, who is not pursuing the Lord, saw the book, picked it up, and read the whole thing. You know why? How many of you know the opening sentence in that book?
Here it is: “It is not about you. It is about Him.”
This whole self-centred culture of Christians says, “Whoa, what does that mean? What does that mean for me?” So they read it, and they are totally obsessed.
Dear brothers and sisters, so many of us are so into ourselves. It is a trap. We cannot think of anything without thinking what it is going to do for us.
It was not too long ago when you just did something because it was the right thing to do. Sometimes, even though your marriage was not going so good, you just stayed together because that was what you should do. I am not such a person that I believe that is such a bad idea.
We have all these people saying, “But I am not happy. I am swimming in selfishness, and I am still not happy. How else can I fulfill myself?”
It is a deep trap. It is a deep trap. For Christians, they are trapped.
The other thing about this generation, as Jesus called it, is an unbelieving and perverse generation. Such unbelief.
You work on your job, dear brother or sister, and you just mention the Lord Jesus, and ridicule is liable to come your way. There is such unbelief in this world.
But unbelief for Christians is manifested by fear. Christians are so afraid that they cannot serve God. They are afraid.
Among everything else they are afraid of, they are afraid they are going to make a mistake. And that is their biggest mistake.
I do not know why we have such pride that we just cannot stand to think we could make a mistake. “I thought the Lord was telling me to go next door and talk to my neighbor, but it must have been a colossal mistake.”
We are bound up by fear. It is a terrible thing. It is all because we have stopped looking at the Lord and turned around to see what the world has to say.
The spirit of this age is not worth listening to. If you are going through the hallway of tribulation, stick in there with the Lord. Put the blinders on and go.
The second thing I think we have all learned is this: in the hallway of tribulation, subtraction is gain.
You only learn that in the hall. Subtraction sounds like loss until you go through tribulation. Paul says, “All those things that were gain to me, I now consider loss.”
What were those things that were gain? Gain is those things which affirm your self-life: “I am an important person, and I will tell you why. I am of the tribe of Benjamin. I was circumcised on the seventh day. I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews. I am a Pharisee.”
“I have a lot of gain.” Those are the things that make me say, “I am good. Me, me, me, me, me. I am worth something.”
Then Jesus said, “I want you to go, Paul. I want you to preach to the Gentiles.” He said, “No, no, God, they do not know my credentials.”
He goes out somewhere in Asia Minor and says, “Hey, I am of the tribe of Benjamin.” They say, “Hey, I am of the tribe of Mesopotamia.” What is the tribe of Benjamin to a Gentile?
All those things that were gain, which he could use for leverage to be somebody, were nothing. In his loss of all things, he gained Christ.
When he went out to those people in Asia Minor, he took Christ to them. That was much more powerful ministry than ministering out of his credentials.
Subtraction is gain.
Everybody has a certain level. What happens with young people—I see this all the time—is that they get fired up, they are Christians, they start to serve the Lord, but very quickly they get maxed out.
They get maxed out by the American dream. All their credit cards are maxed out. All their time is maxed out. They have no more time.
They used to go to Bible study three nights, but there is no time now. Now they are making good money, so they go to the bowling club, the movie club, this and that, and then they have to spend twenty-six hours a week on the websites.
They are maxed out. When you see a young person twenty-five years old and already maxed out, you realize something: God is going to call them to do something, and they will not be able to do it because they are maxed out.
Unfortunately, that is pretty much the adult malaise today, is it not? That is why the Lord comes along and says, “It is time for a little subtraction.”
I am talking about a little simplicity here, in order that you might have some time to serve Me. So many Christians say, “I am going to get around to it one day.”
When we go through the hallway of tribulation and He starts subtracting stuff from us, we experience that every time He subtracts something from us, our loss becomes gain because we gain Christ.
A third thing we find in the hallway of tribulation is that many people—not everybody, but many people—go through a devastation.
A devastation that arithmetically takes them to zero. A devastation that undoes them. A devastation that takes them back to square one.
What we learn by devastation is that there is no devastation. Even devastation is gain to us. Why is that?
Most of the time, it is when there has been some devastation in our lives that we remember, repent, return, and come back fresh.
I praise God. I know there are brothers and sisters who wander away for a while, then something terrible happens to them. It does not have to be a tragedy. It can be the loss of their job, when everything goes wrong. They lose their house in a storm. There are so many things that can happen.
It brings them back to realize that all they really needed was Christ anyway. Of course, they end up with whatever they need to get on with their lives. The Lord knows what we need in order to survive and overcome and live.
But is it not refreshing sometimes, even after devastation, to realize that what you really need is the Lord anyway? We all say that, but sometimes it takes a zeroing out of our balance to get us to really appreciate: Christ is our life.
We are so dependent on our self-life. Before the devastation, we thought that just an outward maintaining of things would be enough. But when the devastation comes, we realize how devoid we were of Christ.
We return. We repent. We find His grace again. Even devastation can be gain.
The last thing I want to say tonight is the fourth lesson we learn in the hallway of tribulation. There are others, but this is good enough.
The lesson is this: when you are going through tribulation, and when you have made the mistake, taken a detour, caused devastation, hurt others, and lost your way, that is when He comes to you again.
There is such mercy in our Lord.
This spring, I was doing Genesis Bible study with the young people in New York. I was looking at the stories, and I was looking at Joseph. Of course, that is such a wonderful story, but I had never really quite seen Christ in Joseph in this particular way.
Joseph came to glory at thirty years old, through the way of the cross, through betrayal by his brothers, through prison, through betrayal, and through this whole life that he lived, just trusting in God.
He was raised to a place of prominence at thirty years of age, to be the right-hand man before Pharaoh. He had come to glory.
But still, that was not His purpose—for Joseph to come to glory. It was about his family coming to glory.
Although Joseph realized this, now that he was in that place of glory, what could he do but serve Pharaoh? There he was serving when God made that wonderful arrangement and sent his brothers along to get grain during the famine in Egypt.
When Joseph saw his brothers, he was just like Jesus when He sees us in the hallway of tribulation, on the wrong track, all out of sorts, carnal, and out of the Spirit.
Joseph longed to hug his brothers, to reveal himself to his brothers, but he could not—not because he was not ready, but because they were not ready.
They went through these ordeals. As Joseph wisely put them through these God-led ordeals, there in the prison, as they sat there three days, they began to say to themselves, “Perhaps this harsh treatment…”
At first, the brothers were completely offended by the treatment. “How could we be treated like this? We are honest men. We have never done anything wrong. We just came to get grain. Why is this man saying we are spies? Oh, this is so unfair.”
Three days later they were saying, “Do you think this has a connection with what we did to Joseph?” It took that pressure for their conscience to be awakened.
They said, “I think this is because of something we have done to our brother.” On the way back home, they opened the sack and saw their money was in the sack. They said a further thing: “What is this that God has done?”
Now they knew they were going through the hallway of tribulation and God was leading the path, but they were trying to figure out, “What on earth is God doing to us? Why is He messing with us? We are just Jacob’s kids—innocent kids.”
Eventually they had to go back. They had to bring Benjamin with them. You know the story. Benjamin was the last beloved of the grieving Jacob.
They brought Benjamin back and had a wonderful feast together with Joseph. It seemed like the whole tribulation was off. But as they started heading back, Joseph’s servant found the goblet in Benjamin’s sack.
That meant Benjamin would have to go back and be the slave of that master for the rest of his life, and the brothers would have to go home without the only one who kept Jacob alive.
It was at that point that Judah did a noble thing. He took responsibility. He personally repented. He openly said that God had done this to them because of what they had done to their brother.
He pleaded with Joseph, not knowing who he was: “Please keep me, and send Benjamin back.” Judah repented. He had the guts, the grace. He saw the reality, and he repented.
When he repented, Joseph could not restrain himself another moment. He began to sob and cry, and revealed himself to his brothers: “I am Joseph.”
Judah’s whole life flashed in front of him: the one we threw in the ditch, the one we were thinking of killing, the one we betrayed—here he is standing here.
They saw the glorified Joseph. They could hardly take it in, but all Joseph could do was show them love. He showed them a sobbing heart.
He said, “Oh, listen, brothers, listen, brothers. All this evil you were doing was evil, but God was using it to bring the whole family to glory.”
“Go back and tell Dad that I am alive. Take these gifts and show him.” His brothers went back. He brought his brothers to glory. He brought them to Goshen. He brought them to the land. He brought them to a place where God could cover them and bless them and enable them through a famine time.
I really think Jesus is like that. I know sometimes I have gotten stuck, because the hallway of tribulation goes like this, and you get stuck in a corner sometimes.
You quit, or you lie down, or you squabble, or you get mad, or get frustrated, or take a detour—whatever you do.
Right there next to you, in disguise, is Jesus, the glorious Jesus. But He cannot show Himself to you yet, until you repent.
I say, “I am sorry, Lord,” and then, to my surprise, find the Lord crying for me. What a humbling thing.
Just when you think you are completely unworthy and should be disqualified, and there is no way you can go on, and your sins are unforgivable, and your detours irreconcilable, that is when He says, “Go feed My sheep.”
He comes and reveals Himself to us right there in the hallway of tribulation, when we are going through difficult times.
He knows you are going to fail, take a detour, quit, get mad, and take offense. He knows all those things. Knowing that you have done that, knowing that you are human, He is just waiting for you to repent and return. He is right there.
You do not have to climb back up to the grace hall. He is right there.
When you see Him again, you start running with Jesus again. He gets out in front of it, and you start going. Sometimes it is as if nothing ever happened, but a lot has happened. He has brought you closer to Himself.
Is it not amazing, the mercy of Jesus, that He would meet us down there in what I call the bowels of tribulation—where we are in the intestines down there—and give us the privilege of following Him along?
Then once again, He gets out of sight because you have slowed down or gotten off on a detour. How many times do you need to repent? How many times do you need to recall? How many times do you need to return? Is it once, twice, three times a year? How often is it? It depends on what you are going through.
What eventually happens is that you learn in the hallway of tribulation: if there is something that is not right, it is probably your problem.
You just come before the Lord broken: “Lord, I do not know what to do. I tried to do my best and everything went wrong, so I am obviously doing something wrong,” rather than saying it is somebody else.
In that hallway, we start to own up. Oh, what a glory. Through all that process, what He does is pour out some more love, give us some more grace, and we lay hold of Him as our life in another way and run on.
Dear brothers and sisters, how many more conferences will we have anyway? Not just Richmond. How much longer before the Lord comes back?
How quickly He is gathering people in from the world. How wonderful to see that. Does He not want to gather a group of people together in such a way that they can stand with the Holy Spirit and say, “Come. Is anybody thirsty? Let him come.”
Oh, that the church could have that kind of fullness and beauty, that you could see the beauty of the Lord. This is a bride who has been made ready, and the bride is saying, “Come.”
You can see and hear the words of the Lord gathering people to Himself. There is a great gathering going on. Millions will be gathered in this year. Are you part of the gathering process?
Not only does He gather us to Himself, but He gathers us from the grace room into the glory room. We find ourselves down here somewhere together. That is why we can understand each other, right? We are all down here in the hallway somewhere.
Have you seen the glory?
If you have seen the glory, you could be just as selfish as I am, but something is going to press you forward anyway.
Have you seen the glory? Then the work He has begun in you, He is going to complete.
Have you seen the glory? Then you have to learn to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
There is only one way forward: look at the glorious Lord and value glory. Value glory. Do not throw that glory away.
Even the rewards our brother talked about—we talk about rewards so seldom—but all I know is that those who lose reward because they have not grabbed that responsible grace are going to regret it beyond imagining in that day.
Value glory, the things that He promises to those who will be faithful. These are the things that will keep us, help us, and give us grace in these days.
In the end, the Lord is so gracious, so merciful. When the top stone is laid in, what are we all going to say?
“Grace, grace to it!”
After all, let us pray.
Lord, You have us on the journey from grace to glory. We have seen our Lord Jesus. He has the glory of the only begotten of the Father. He is the glorious Son, and yet we see and find Him full of grace and truth.
Oh, Lord, when we see our Lord—whether through the Word, through some revelation, through some message given—our hearts reach out and we want to follow after Him. Yet we know that as we are going toward glory, we will go through much tribulation.
Help us not to look at the tribulation, but to keep our eyes on Jesus. Help us to realize that our loss is our gain, and our gain is our loss. Help us learn these lessons, Lord, as we are going through this narrow way.
As You are funneling us up and summing us up in Christ, as You are taking the various disparate aspects of our lives and bringing them into an integer, oh Lord, make us one in Christ.
We pray for the assemblies that are represented here: precious brothers and sisters meeting together, just trying to maintain the outward. Oh, forgive us, Lord.
You have brought us into all kinds of tribulation just so that we can learn that sometimes our losses are gain, and just to teach us how to have absolute devotion to You, no matter what.
Oh Lord, all of us probably have faced great disappointments, some devastation, some things in our lives. Lord, do not allow our dear brothers and sisters to become hardened and bitter and angry and take offense.
Rather, break us, Lord, and then hug us with weeping as You restore us to Yourself.
Lord, we know there are many wounded sheep, for various mysterious reasons and some not so mysterious. Oh, gather Your sheep together, Lord.
How can sheep have pride when we wander so easily? But You are the glorious Lord, and that is the thing that holds us together anyway.
It is not that there are great brothers and sisters here. It is that we see a glorious Lord, and we see Him in the church.
Lord, for all of us, as we live out our assembly life, may we experience the fullness of Christ: with His presence, with service and gratitude and love.
May we know the fullness of Christ’s life in our assembly, in our ministry, and in our fellowship together. Lord, we know these are wonderful goals, but they can only be attained as we follow the Christ of glory and lay hold of that grace that is provided for us.
Forgive us for all the times we say, “Give us grace to do something,” when the grace is already there. Give us the faith to say, “I take the grace to be faithful to You.”
Oh, help us, Lord, in these last days. You want a testimony on this earth of those who say, “I love the Christ of glory. I have seen, I have tasted, and I want more.”
We want to run along with the Apostle Paul toward that upward call in Christ Jesus. Oh, help us, Lord. In Jesus’ name. Amen.