Good evening, brothers and sisters. Good evening, Dan.
I’m wearing my Hawaiian shirt. This is as close to Hawaii as I get these days. And this is also one of the only places I can wear it without anybody feeling it’s at all weird. In New York, I can’t get away with this, you know.
I’m glad to be here with you. I am also burdened about the fact that our brother John Saunders could not be with us. I have it more and more in my heart these days that the Lord would raise up men. Whenever I see one taken out of service, as it were, even if only temporarily, it burdens my heart.
We need to be faithful to the Lord, asking for these things—not only asking the Lord of the harvest to gather in those whom He would save, but also that the Lord would raise up men who can go about and share the good news and the secrets of the mysteries of Christ in these last days.
And that is what we want to do here again this week. We are people who hear the Word of God often: Bible studies during the week, and Bible study again on Sunday. We are full of the words sometimes, and we need to ask the Lord to give us a spiritual hunger.
I remember during this New Year, my wife and I were in Russia. Even though the people there were quite poor in the areas we went, they went totally out of their way to be hospitable to us, and they kept feeding us to an incredibly ridiculous point.
I remember after the seven o’clock feeding, going to an eight o’clock meeting, preaching the gospel, and all kinds of things happening. Then about eleven-thirty or midnight, they took us to another house for yet another meal. Now, it is about that point that my stomach has gone south. I had run out of room, and I had just no hunger at all—until I smelled the borscht.
Something revived in my hunger, and I found I could eat the soup. Now, we are coming to the Word of God, and maybe you say, “I cannot have anything more. I have just had enough. If I hear another Bible study, I am going to go crazy.”
But what if you smell the aroma of Christ here this evening? Would not our hunger be stirred again? That is what we have to trust. When we are in His presence and when we are smelling His fragrance, we find that hunger again. May the Lord help us in that.
Now we want to share tonight, and actually throughout our time, on a very general theme. I would like you to turn to three familiar passages of Scripture so that we can line these things up as we look at them in an introductory way tonight.
Turn first to Exodus 33, a prayer of Moses with which we are all familiar. That is where we want to start tonight. Let us begin in Exodus 33 and read a few verses from verse 11.
Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face,
just as a man speaks to his friend.
And when Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man,
would not depart from the tent.Then Moses said to the Lord, “See, Thou sayest to me, ‘Bring up this people.’
But Thou Thyself hast not let me know whom Thou wilt send with me.
Moreover, Thou hast said, ‘I have known thee by name,
and thou hast also found favor in My sight.’Now therefore, I pray Thee, if I have found favor in Thy sight,
show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee,
so that I may find favor in Thy sight.
And consider too that this nation is Thy people.”And He said, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”
Now turn to Psalm 103, just for one verse.
He made known His ways to Moses,
His acts to the sons of Israel.—Psalm 103:7
Then turn back to Psalm 95, beginning in verse 7.
For He is our God,
and we are the people of His pasture,
and the sheep of His hand.Today, if ye would hear His voice,
harden not your heart, as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the wilderness;
when your fathers tested Me,
they tried Me, though they had seen My work.For forty years I loathed that generation,
and said, “They are a people who err in their heart,
and they do not know My ways.”Therefore I swore in My anger,
“Truly they shall not enter into My rest.”
And Lord, we do look to You tonight. It is Your Spirit who gives us spiritual hunger. We cannot work it up on our own. But Lord, we thank You that, as we come into Your presence, Your Spirit is the One who comes to teach us, bring us into remembrance, and cause us to be convicted of the truth of Thy precious Word.
We come and ask Him also to help us, to quicken our mortal bodies that are tired from travel, and to quicken our minds as well—to hear and receive the living Word of God. We commit this meeting wholly into Your hands, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, now you can see from these three different passages that this has to do with the ways of God. My message theme for this whole time that I will be speaking is: “Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee, that I may find favor in Thy sight.”
I am hoping that we can, as it were, climb up on the mountain while we are here—in Moses’ position, rather than in the position of the children of Israel down at the bottom, murmuring, making noise, building idols, and dancing around. May we be up on the mountain with Moses and have such a prayer in our hearts as well: “Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee.”
We see in these three passages that there is a progressive revealing of God. God is so gracious to man. He could hide Himself from man, and He should because of our sin, but He has chosen to reveal Himself to us. There is a progression in that revelation that we can see in these simple words.
First of all, God acts. If God does not act, we do not know God. But praise God, by His mercy He acted. He acted on behalf of Israel, on behalf of Abraham, and on behalf of you and me. So He acts. That is the first revelation, a self-revelation of Himself. Wherever He acts, you can gain some knowledge of Him.
But beyond those acts, there are the ways—a yet deeper revelation. He reveals not only the acts, but the ways. You remember: He showed His acts to Israel, but He showed His ways to Moses. There is a deeper level implied there.
Then, of course, the third level is the end of it all: “That I may know Thee.” From the acts, through the ways, in the end we come to know Him experientially. Perhaps in His acts we see a revelation of Him, but by knowing Him, we know Him experientially. That is a different level from revelation merely in itself.
Now, many people see the acts of God. When you look in the record of the Bible, you see that all ten lepers knew the acts of God. Only one went back to worship. We see in the Gospel of John all of those things that John calls signs, and they are nothing more than acts—miraculous acts, wonders that Jesus performed in the hope that somebody would take a moment and look beyond the acts to the ways, and to the One, the great “I AM,” behind it.
Many people see God acting, even as Israel did, even as that generation God rebuked. Many see His acts; fewer see His ways. And not only do fewer understand His ways, but even fewer come to know Him.
People saw Jesus as He walked about Galilee and performed miracles, and they said, “Oh, look at that miracle.” But when Jesus spoke of His ways, He spoke through parables, and fewer people understood His ways. People saw His acts but scratched their heads: “What is He doing? Why does He do what He does? We do not understand.”
So there is this progression going on. Each stage involves a deeper response to the Lord as we go deeper and deeper into Him.
Now we go up on the mountain, and we see Moses there. He has already been through a lot. You notice how Exodus 33 says God had been talking to him face to face. That is really something.
Before he prayed, “Show me Thy ways,” Moses said, “Lord, You have called me by name, and You said that I have found favor in Your eyes.” So he had known something of grace for sure. The Lord was speaking to him, and he had known somehow the favor of God. Yet he was after something more: “Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee.”
Then comes this strange response. Knowing that he had found favor in God’s sight, he says, “Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee, that I may find favor in Thy sight.” I guess there is something addicting about grace—you want more of it. If I have found grace, now I want to find out how to get more of that grace, to be more approved by Him.
What does Moses mean by this: “Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee”? Some would say, “Surely when Moses saw the great deliverance at the Passover, or the great deliverance at the Red Sea, he saw the ways of God.” No—he saw the acts of God.
Since they came to Mount Sinai, of course, all that revelation had happened there, including the revealing of the law. “Aha—the law of God. Now that shows the ways of God.” Well, then why is Moses praying this prayer?
Moses wrote it down twice—or at least saw an angel’s handwriting writing it down, which is even spookier when you think about it. He saw the pattern of the tabernacle on the mount. He had fellowship with God face to face in that tabernacle, according to this record. Yet he was asking for something more: “Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee.” What on earth could he mean? What more could he ask for?
You go into the tent, the presence comes down, God speaks—and yet Moses is talking about something more.
Today our popular and favorite choruses are all filled with this kind of mysticism: “I want to come before Your face. I want to live in Your face. I want to see You all the time.” We are filled with such mysticism, which Moses would not dare say. He knew that you cannot just come and say, “Okay, Lord, I want to know You. Show up. Come on, show me something.”
That is what a lot of our choruses are like. It is sort of, “Hey, I want to see some more of God. Oh, that would be so cool. I just want to see what I have got.” If He really showed up, we would be flattened like pancakes.
By His mercy, He gives you a little blessing but does not show Himself. If you do not know His ways and He shows Himself, you are cooked. There is something about knowing His ways that enables us to know Him and enables Him to show Himself.
What does “ways” mean? Beyond seeing His acts, God works according to certain principles. We need to know those. Otherwise, we will overstep our ground. Otherwise, we will be praying in the wrong ways. Otherwise, we will not understand what He is after.
There is something about the ways of God that is so important in seeing Him. So, I am sorry, young people—you want the shortcut, just the straight mystic experience. But I am afraid that your mystic experience will be frustrated until you know His ways.
He reveals Himself through His ways, and as He reveals Himself, He reveals His ways. There is a relationship, you see, between His ways and knowing Him—experientially knowing Him. That is something we want to look at tonight.
What is it about Moses that set him apart from the din, the noise, and the murmuring of those people down at the foot of the mountain?
On the Fourth of July, I went up on the mountain. Well, actually, I went up on the fifty-third floor of somebody’s apartment in New York City. That is as close as we come to a mountain, you see.
They had this humongous fireworks display on the East River, and this person lived in an apartment up there in some stratosphere where you could see the fireworks. But you could hardly hear any of it. It was kind of spooky nice. You were above the whole thing.
You could be down there on the dock, wrestling with people, getting gunpowder smoke in your nostrils, and seeing the thing up close. Or, better yet, you could be a couple of miles away, up high. We saw all the dazzling fireworks, but it was kind of quiet—beautiful and serene. You know what I mean?
Well, we need to discover that area in our life. Lord knows we are down in the din most of the time, are we not? I live in New York City. I found out what din means in New York City: noise, always noise.
Somebody is honking a horn at one o’clock in the morning. Julie and I sleep eight feet from the sidewalk, on the first floor. At one o’clock on a Saturday morning: “Hey, how is your dog, Fido?” “Oh, okay. How is yours?” They are walking the dog, waking us up at one o’clock in the morning.
We are in the din. It is always there. We could go down in the subway. Like a fool, I put on an iPod and go on the subway. All I hear is noise. It is impossible—such noise.
The Lord wants us to get up, get up on this mountain, get up where we can see things the way Moses was seeing things.
It is amazing that Moses, to whom God spoke face to face, was so different from the people. By the time you get to the book of Deuteronomy, you realize how much Moses had come to know the Lord.
Deuteronomy means “second law,” and Moses repeated the laws. He repeated the Ten Commandments and various other laws. But that is not what the book is about. It was the testimony of Moses, who was not allowed to go into the promised land.
Just before he dies, he says, “Now, children, listen to me. Let me tell you about the God who gave you the laws and everything. He is merciful, compassionate, and full of love. He chose you because He loved you, and He tested you because He loved you. Do you not know every time He blesses you with a test? Oh, you do not know God’s ways.”
He recounted how they walked through their various adventures and how God was with them through the whole thing—merciful, compassionate, and full of love. “He chose you because you were the smallest, but He set His love on you.” What a testimony.
Now this Moses knew God. The other people had the commandments: “Ah, yes, thank Him. Now I have to do them. If I do not do them, I get in trouble.” But they did not know Who it was who gave the commandments.
Then in that famous song at the end of Deuteronomy, in Deuteronomy 32, Moses sings this prophetic song. He basically says that God coordinates all the actions of history and all the boundaries of the land just for you. People say, “Wow, what are you talking about?”
God stirs up your nest and gets you into all kinds of fuss and trouble because He loves you and wants you to grow up. “No, we did not know that.” It was a prophetic hymn, so of course nobody understood it except Moses—and a few others.
I would like to stay with Moses because he knew so much, but tonight we have to go back and look at the people.
God said, “I showed you My acts for forty years, and you tested Me ten times. But you erred in your hearts, and you never got to second base. You knew My acts, but you never knew My ways. You err in your hearts, and you have not known My ways. Therefore I swore in My wrath, ‘You shall not enter My rest.’”
That sounds like such a cool thing when we read it in Psalm 95: “They have not known My ways.” But look what God had shown them. He is talking about the generation that fell in the wilderness.
They were eyewitnesses of the plagues God sent down upon Egypt. They were eyewitnesses of what the blood did over the doorposts, when their firstborn remained alive and all Egypt’s firstborn died. They remembered seeing the Red Sea pulled back and walking through on dry land.
They saw these acts. Going through the wilderness, they remembered the rock that gave them water, the quail that gave them meat, and the manna that gave them bread. They remembered at the mountain how God came down in His glory, with thunder and lightning. Oh, they saw God.
Then He gave the Ten Commandments and sent Moses up. Moses came back down with the commandments and said, “God wants to fellowship with us, so He has provided a house of God for fellowship with His children, and this is exactly the way it is to be built.” God had also given offerings to sanctify them so they could have fellowship.
The children of Israel saw the whole thing, including looking at their Birkenstocks, which never wore out for forty years. They saw victory against the Amalekites, and the fear of the nations around them as they walked through the wilderness with a cloud by day and fire by night.
They saw God. They saw His acts, but they never knew His ways. What is the matter with God’s children? I am so glad we are different.
If we compiled the testimony of the children of Israel during those years, here is what they would have said about God. Of course, after Miriam’s tambourine dance on the other side of the Red Sea, in which they all joined, they praised God because He had gained the victory. They lasted a couple of days. Two days later, they were grumbling because they had no water.
Here is the testimony of God’s kids as they follow the Lord to glory:
Boy, such grateful people.
God says, “Whenever I withhold something from you, it is to test you and help you realize that man does not live by earthly comforts alone. I pull a little something away from you for a couple of days just to see how you are going to react.” But oh, the murmuring and carrying on that goes on.
I do not want to get political—do not take anything by what I am saying now—but it kind of reminds me of the testimony of the Iraqis with the U.S. troops there. They hold up signs saying, “Go home. Oppressors.” It is so difficult to bless the Iraqis. We blessed them with more than 2,500 soldiers dying. We blessed them with billions of dollars poured into that place. Here is their testimony: “Go home. Stop oppressing us. Where is our water? Where is our oil? Oh, we remember the way it was in the past. Who are our leaders? Oh, for another Saddam Hussein.”
Does that not sound like the children of Israel? They were murmuring while God was blessing them. They were just on the negative path, and they could not get off.
Of course, the point of Psalm 95, written by David, is that this was not merely a problem with that first generation that died in the wilderness. This problem continued on throughout the rest of the history of the children of Israel, right down to the time Jesus came.
God’s children saw His acts but never knew His ways. As a matter of fact, they misinterpreted His ways, and they never knew Him.
Typically, this is what happened. God forbid it should happen to any Christian. Whenever God blessed the Israelites, they got proud and self-righteous and began pursuing their own riches. The problem with pursuing your own riches—building your own houses instead of the house of the Lord—may sound innocent enough. But here is the deal: if you are not pursuing the Lord, you are pursuing an idol.
That is how clear it is in the Old Testament. If you are pursuing the Lord, then anything you do is a blessing. But if you are pursuing something else, it is idolatry. I do not care how good it sounds.
Every time God blessed the children of Israel, what was the result? They went into idolatry, including Solomon. God blessed Solomon so much that he started worshiping idols. What is the story here?
On the other hand, talk about misinterpretation. God sends a finger of discipline and withholds water for three days. The children are defeated: “God has abandoned us. Where is our God? Where are You, ever-lover? Let us go after other gods. Let us make alliances with worldly nations. God has abandoned us. We do not know where He is.”
Every time they were touched by discipline, they completely collapsed in self-pity. How can you deal with such people? They misinterpret, misunderstand, and never know God.
When God disciplines you, He loves you. When He blesses you, watch out—He is disciplining you. Oh, I just gave you one of the secrets of His ways, so you will probably forget about that.
God bless those people, but they never knew. Of course, God sent along the prophets to help them understand the ways of God. Isn’t that wonderful? When people became blind, God raised up somebody. This person said, “Let me share with you God’s heart.”
They said, “What is wrong with God?” And the prophet said, “Okay, let me share with you God’s heart.” The prophet shared God’s heart, and the people trampled on God’s heart. Or he said, “Let me show you God’s standards,” and they trampled on the standards.
Whatever the prophets did, they were a way God tried to reveal His ways to the people, but the people always responded negatively. What a pathetic history.
When Jesus came, He really threw off His own—the Bible calls the children of Israel “His own”—because He came to them and said, “I am the way. No one comes to the Father but by Me.” It could not be clearer than that. But His own did not receive Him.
Here is the problem: the further away we get from God’s heavenly way, the better we become at manufacturing man’s way. By the time of Jesus, the Jews had so many different ways they could go that they did not need God’s way anymore.
Once you set up a good religious way to go, it is a good way to go. You had your choice. There were four basic choices in Jesus’ day.
You could go with the ritualism of the Sadducees. If you like stained glass, organ music, and the smell of sacrifices, become a Sadducee. It is like giving to public broadcasting: you give them a donation every year, and they continue on the rituals. That is all you need. Forget a heart for God; all you need is rituals. Just bring a sacrifice. The Sadducees were the priestly tribe. Just satisfy the ritual thing.
The further away the church gets from the heavenly ways of God, the more it gets into the beauty of liturgy. It is a response.
Then there are the aggressive ones—the Pharisees, like the Apostle Paul had been. Here is a good antidote if you do not know God’s ways: get into something really good and legalistic.
The Pharisees were so busy doing things, jumping through hoops, and finding ways to break the Sabbath laws. What a great life—you are so busy. Pharisees are busy. Type A personalities go into Pharisaism all the time.
The church is the same way. There are super-legalistic people. They have it all together. The system is so hard-bound and fast that you cannot possibly break through it. But they do not know the ways; they made that thing up.
Of course, the Herodians would be my favorite choice, because they were compromised. They liked all the Jewish stuff, but they also liked all the Roman stuff. So they went down to the temple and offered a sacrifice, and then they went to the circus.
Did you know there was a circus in Jerusalem? A circus was that big track where they had gladiators, chariots, and all that stuff. In Jesus’ day, there was a circus there. If you go to Jerusalem, you can see a model of the city in Jesus’ day.
That is a perfect combination—a little bit of the world, a little bit of the Lord. Oh man, that is the way to go.
Then, of course, there are always those who like asceticism. The Essenes said, “No, no, no. Live out in a cave. Cut yourself off from everybody. Everybody is wrong except you. Go out to a cave, write some books, stay in the cave, and wait until somebody discovers your writings years later.”
Yet none of them knew the ways of God. Let us look at a couple of Scriptures. You all know these things, but when Jesus commented on their blindness, He pointed to it clearly.
In Luke 19, after He wept over Jerusalem, Jesus said:
If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace!
But now they are hid from thine eyes.For the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast up a bank about thee,
and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side,
and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee;
and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another;
because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.—Luke 19:42-44
To me, this is one of the most awful condemnations: to have the Messiah looking you right in the face and saying, “I am visiting you right now,” and you say, “Where? Where?”
All these religious people—name the group—were too busy to see the Messiah right there in Jerusalem, visiting them. So He said, “You know what is going to happen? God will take away Jerusalem. Maybe then you will look for the Messiah.” The whole center of their religion was pulled up. Hopefully, one day they will see their Messiah.
Look at Acts 13. Paul is in Antioch of Pisidia, preaching on his first missionary journey, and he makes this striking comment in Acts 13:27, again concerning the leaders in Jerusalem:
For they that dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew Him not,
nor the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath,
fulfilled them by condemning Him.And though they found no cause of death in Him,
yet asked they of Pilate that He should be slain.And when they had fulfilled all things that were written of Him,
they took Him down from the tree.—Acts 13:27-29
It is an amazing message. Paul says these men in Jerusalem were reading the Word of God every Sabbath, but they were not hearing the voice of God. As a result, they did exactly what the Bible said they would do in rejecting the Messiah, persecuting Him, and killing Him. They exactly fulfilled what the Bible said.
But if they had known the voice behind the Bible, they never would have done it. It is quite an incredible thing. Children of God can know the Bible and not hear God’s voice.
I do not know if there could be a greater condemnation, except perhaps this in John 14. It raises a question that we will have to answer provisionally now and then answer through the next messages.
In John 14:4-6, Jesus says:
And whither I go, ye know the way.
Thomas saith unto Him, “Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; how know we the way?”
Jesus saith unto him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life:
no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”
Even the disciples did not know the way. That is extraordinary. They were following the Lord, but they did not know the way.
What is the proof? I have to give you two secrets about the way. The way has very much to do with knowing the Lord. But the thing that blinds us and makes man unable to understand God’s ways is this: God’s way is always the cross.
That is what man rejects and cannot understand. You remember those times when Jesus was up on the mountain with His disciples. He began to teach them how He would go to Jerusalem, be persecuted, die, and three days later rise again. The disciples could not understand.
To me, there were two great secrets that God kept under wraps until the resurrection. What were they?
In the end, “Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee,” was answered by God showing His ways so that we may know His Son. Ultimately, the end of that prayer is knowing His Son.
The first great mystery hidden through the ages was who the Son of God was. The second great mystery hidden through the ages was that the cross was the way. Nobody understood that.
The Jews could not believe it. It was a scandal to them. They could not believe that their Messiah could ever be crucified. They said, “There is nowhere in the Bible that says the Messiah has to be crucified.”
You say, “What about Isaiah 53?” They say, “That is talking about something else.” That is exactly what they do today. They say, “That is talking about all of Israel. That is Israel, the servant of God—the whole country. We are going through sufferings now.” They could not conceive that the Messiah would have to die. The way of the cross was anathema to the Jews.
But not only to them. The Bible says that if the rulers had known who Jesus was, they never would have crucified Him. They thought He was just a chump when they crucified Him. They did not know He was the King of kings, Lord of lords, Creator of the universe, the King of glory. You do not crucify the King of glory if you know Who He is.
The disciples did not know. Wonderfully, Satan did not know. He thought he had won something when he got Jesus up on that cross, because he had no idea that was the way through—the way to victory, the way to know God, and the way to everything.
So we can provisionally say that when we pray, “Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee,” there is going to be something of the cross there and something of the revealing of His Son there.
How many songs do you know that say, “Lead me to the cross, that I may know Thee”? Only the old hymns, back in the 103 section. They say those things. But the ones over in the 635 fluff songs say, “No, God, take me directly by Your elevator to Jesus. I want to see Him. I want to feel His presence.”
Well, you see, that is the gospel. That is what is going on.
Isn’t it wonderful—the testimony of the early church in the book of Acts? They did not even have a name for them in the early days. They were just the people of the Way.
These people had found something, and it was all life. It was resurrection life. They were living in resurrection life and resurrection power. They were marching to some other drummer. People did not know what was going on. This thing was fresh, vital, new, real, and powerful. It was a way.
That is all people could say: “They are going a way—the people of the Way. They are way out there.” The Jews could not understand that because the Jews did not have a way. They had systems.
The early church was a marvel. How did they do it? How did they spread? The whole book of Acts is about the Way—Jesus revealing Himself and expanding this early church in resurrection life. It was a really wonderful thing. It was a new and living way.
That has to be the quality of anything marked as His way. It is new, fresh, vital, and under the direction of a Head who is communicating.
That is why we have to come finally, as it were, to Hebrews. In Hebrews 3, the writer clearly says, “Now, is this you, church?”
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
harden not your hearts, as in the provocation,
like as in the day of the trial in the wilderness,
where your fathers tried Me by proving Me,
and saw My works forty years.Wherefore I was displeased with this generation,
and said, “They do always err in their heart:
but they did not know My ways.”As I sware in My wrath,
“They shall not enter into My rest.”—Hebrews 3:7-11
That is what the writer of Hebrews is saying. Who is he applying it to? The Jews? No. He is applying it to a church that has found systems instead of a living, thriving, fresh, vital way.
If we do not have that heavenly way, we have not got anything. This is where we fall as absolute paupers in the kingdom. It does not matter how long we have been going to church. If it is just the system, it is a waste of time. God is moving in a living way.
Now I want to share some good news, having knocked you to the ground and implied that every one of you is in the system.
I have been stirred up for the last couple of months because I got hold of a book called The World Christian Encyclopedia. I will not go into the details, but I want to show you some of what I saw and what it did in me.
I have some overheads. We can clip the lights and take a look at these. I am showing this partly because I know you are tired and ready to fall asleep, so I am trying to keep you awake with a visual. But I also want to show you something that I hope will excite or challenge you, because there is something very important I want to say tonight.
Between 1970 and 2000, the Lord of the harvest gathered people in a unique way that had never been known before in the history of the church. He has been gathering people in an amazing mega-gathering.
The World Christian Encyclopedia costs $350. It is that thick and that big. I saw a used copy at the archives today, but it was the 1981 edition. The 2001 edition blew everybody out of the water.
Do you want to know what they are talking about at Fuller, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Gordon-Conwell Seminary right now? You think they are talking about the megachurch? No. You think they are talking about women in ministry or gays? No. You know what they are talking about? They are talking about this, because these documents have come out.
Gordon-Conwell had its own study, and they put it together with others. These men who had been studying these things for years came up with some amazing findings. I hope you have a heart that can believe this, because I want to show you what happened in the last thirty years. They have statistics up through 2005, but they were so extraordinary that I decided to stop at 2000 so as not to wipe you out completely.
I want to give you a sense of what is going on in our world. The global gathering by the Lord Jesus Christ—the Evangelist of the world, the Lord of the harvest—is working.
The world population grew from 3.69 billion to 6 billion people in those thirty years: a 64% gain, about 2% a year. That is why they say that every fifty years the population doubles at the present rate.
Catholics and Orthodox grew from 804 million to 1.26 billion. That sounds like a lot—56% growth. But that is less than population growth. People count their children. If you just have children, you will grow at the rate of Protestants and Anglicans, who had a 63% growth rate, close to the 64% growth rate of the world population.
The Catholics were not even keeping up anymore; they were losing so many people that they were not keeping up with world population. If you are not growing by 2% a year, it means you are falling behind.
Protestants and Anglicans went from 258 million to 422 million in that period. You can see that is about the population growth rate.
But here is what I want you to see: evangelical independents went from 98 million to 225 million in those thirty years—130% growth, twice the speed of the world’s growth rate.
Then, when you look underneath that at Pentecostals and charismatics, they grew from 72 million in 1970 to 527 million in the year 2000. Do not begrudge them—these people are saved. That is 631% growth, about 21% a year.
But those are not the important things. This is only the beginning. They had to create a new category called Great Commission Christians—made up of charismatics, evangelicals, independents, and anybody who really believed the Great Commission, went out, preached the gospel, and brought people to the Lord.
Great Commission Christians grew from 170 million to 752 million in those thirty years: a 340% increase. What a tremendous harvest.
If you look at statistics from 1960 to 1970, it was a sleepy deal. From 1950 to 1960, sleepy deal. From 1940 to 1950, sleepy deal. Then, in 1970, the doors opened.
A large cause of that was the charismatic movement. I do not care what you think about it—the charismatic movement absolutely opened the floodgates, and people have been pouring in by the millions. Praise God, people are getting saved.
Not just there, but among evangelicals, there has been a fresh outpouring of gospel outreach in the Third World that has brought in an amazing number of people.
In 1970, Western evangelicals outnumbered non-Western evangelicals two to one. Now non-Western evangelicals outnumber Western evangelicals four to one. When they had the global evangelism conference sponsored by Billy Graham and Lausanne in Switzerland, the largest proportion of the people who came were from Africa, South America, and India.
America had some, and Europe had some, but they were totally outweighed by the non-Western church. Since the year 2000, more missionaries have been sent from non-Western nations than from Western nations.
Western nations are spending fifty times as much to send somebody, and the results are negligible. That is what has missiologists—people studying missions—in such alarm. They are saying, “We are doing something drastically wrong.”
Every hour, 6,000 people are added to the church. By the time I am through speaking, 6,000 more people are saved. Every hour. At Pentecost, 3,000 people were saved, and Peter’s sermon was probably about an hour long. Now the ingathering is at least as fast.
The five nations with the highest per-capita growth, by counting baptisms, are Bhutan, Mali, Mongolia, Nepal, and Saudi Arabia. I read a report that more than 6,000 Kurds had been converted that year to Christianity in northern Iraq. There is now a meeting in one of Saddam Hussein’s old palaces, full of evangelical Christians worshiping God.
Have you noticed the media never tells you these things?
Now, this does not mean that most people are being baptized in Saudi Arabia. It represents a new trend, per capita. Saudi Arabia does not have many Christians, so when you baptize some, it is a great increase per capita. But this shows a tremendous trend: in the Muslim world, people are starting to come to the Lord left and right.
More evangelicals now attend church in Latin America than Catholics. There are many more Catholics, but you never get off the roll in a Catholic church, whether you go or not. On any given Sunday, if you count the heads of people in the churches, evangelicals have more people attending than Catholics throughout Central America, South America, and Mexico.
These are statistics by conservative men. David Barrett was conservative, and the other men involved at Gordon-Conwell are very conservative. They err on the conservative side of these figures. They have all kinds of caveats and qualifications.
Here is where we come in, if I can put it that way: the missiologists’ interpretation. The missions men are sitting there saying, “What is going on?”
The most rapid-growth segment is in non-established churches, defined as unaffiliated indigenous assemblies with non-professional ministries, meeting in houses or rented buildings. That is the largest segment of Christian growth going on in the world right now—people like you, who live in homes, have house meetings, unregistered and non-professional ministries.
That is who is growing the fastest right now, and that is what has the missiologists so baffled. All that denominational money is producing a rate barely keeping up with population growth. Here are people with no money, sending missionaries from China to Mongolia and Russia, and people are getting saved left and right on a shoestring—fifteen dollars a month.
They are saying, “What are we doing wrong? We are trying to produce leaders as fast as we can. We send them to Bible schools and seminaries, and by the time they get out, the thing has doubled again.”
Here is another thing to think about: Great Commission Christians now outnumber traditional and denominational Christians. Do you hear that?
The non-traditional ones, meeting in homes, meeting in some little place in China, meeting somewhere else—they outnumber the denominational, old, big churches, megachurches, and everything we can throw at it. Continued defections from the older churches into these new frameworks are redefining twenty-first-century Christianity.
Twentieth-century Christianity was defined by what denomination you were in. Twenty-first-century Christianity has nothing to do with denominations anymore.
The fact that these groups can become denominations is possible, but right now they are growing so fast. In Russia, where I go, it is growing so fast they cannot raise a pastor fast enough. If somebody gets saved in a house in some little town, they say, “Open your Bible and bring in your friends.” Next thing you know, the man is the pastor. He is the de facto pastor because there are thirty people in his house who are getting saved.
God must be making a great mistake, because we know you have to go twenty-six years to seminary. Then you have to study, hide in a fellowship for twenty years, take deeper-life studies, and study the Bible until you can read it backward and upside down. Then maybe you can do something.
Well, evidently God is bypassing the whole thing.
The figures for the period from 1970 to 2000 are conservative because these groups are unofficial, isolated, and difficult to count. They are not including all the evangelistic crusades going on through radio, television, and the internet.
The internet is not even a category yet in the World Christian Encyclopedia. Do you know how big the internet is? Do you know how many internet churches there are right now—people who go to church on the internet?
You say that is stupid. But they have a big chat room, and they also have videos. You are talking to one another, praying for one another, and worshiping together. God is breaking all the rules and doing things we cannot even believe.
To show you how conservative these statistics are, do you know how many Christians they say are in China? According to their statistics, 71 million. A lot of people say there are 135 million.
They are not even counting the 710,000 Indians, since 1970, who are in non-associated churches throughout India because they cannot verify them.
Now, brothers and sisters, what does all this have to do with what we are talking about? Here is what I think. The question is: How do we interpret the statistics?
You can argue and be sour grapes and say, “Ah, well, most of them probably are not saved. We can only imagine the problems that exist in these home churches.” Actually, we cannot imagine, because we come from too stable an environment. There are all kinds of things.
But I think we have to give credit where credit is due. The Lord is gathering in people by the millions, faster than any man or any global evangelism strategy has ever figured.
We have to use statistics like these the way Acts uses statistics. In the book of Acts, 3,000 were saved. I actually think there were 3,009. It was about 3,000. Do you think they actually counted? “3,001? No, no, you are right. We want 3,000.” Luke likes things nice and orderly. No, it was about 3,000.
What are those statistics in the book of Acts for? They are nothing more than signs of the mega-gathering—God doing His work, gathering people together, saving people, and bringing them into the kingdom by the millions.
There has been a tremendous work going on since 1970. It was not always charismatic. In 1970, 370,000 people were martyred in China, just for starters. That is why there has been such an increase in China.
But here is what I think we need to recognize: God is acting.
Here is my concern: do we understand His ways?
God is doing this tremendous gathering. Do you think He just wants to gather people in and get them saved? Is that all? Do you think that now that He has gathered them, He wants to bring them to some kind of fullness, some kind of union, some kind of body life, some kind of maturity? Amen. This is part of the bride He wants to prepare.
What are the ways of God? Does God just save them and then forget about them? This may be an end-time harvest going on right now. Praise God if it is, but God still has further plans.
Do we know the ways of God? Do these people know the ways of God? They know His acts. They are praising God for His acts. But do they know His ways? What is going to happen here? We cannot stop at simply gathering.
What is God up to? What has God been doing in your life for the last twenty years? Are you part of the gathering process?
How many people here have been gathered in since 1970? Raise your hand. Since 1970? Well, there you are. You have been gathered in. Praise God, right?
Now, how do we get from those acts of God to the ways of God? This is where the church so often comes up short. They gather people, and then they sit there. They do not mature, grow, or develop. What has to happen?
Some people need to begin praying, “Show me Thy ways, O Lord, that I may know Thee.”
This is the biggest act in the history of the world going on right now—God saving millions of people. What are we doing? Are we part of the gathering process, or are we out on the sidelines?
We might think we are out on the sidelines. I am not sure I agree with that, but I am not sure we are doing what we should be doing.
Let me give you a little taste of what I am talking about. There are two aspects to “Show me Thy ways” that we know from Moses’ life.
The first is this: Moses needed revelation of what God was doing, and he sought it. Brothers and sisters, this is something you have heard for a long time, but you need to take it seriously. What is God doing? Do you see what God is doing? Do you have a revelation of His principles, His purpose, and His end?
Moses was standing there on top of the mountain, with two million children at the bottom. They were going this way and that, despite the law, the covenant, and everything. He said, “Show me Thy ways, Lord. How am I going to lead these people? Who is going to go with me?”
Do you see what he was asking for? This was not just mystical stuff. “Lord, I need to see what to do.” The first thing is revelation. There is a prophetic element in “Show me Thy ways.” There is an opening of our spirit to understand what the Lord is doing in this time, in order to join with Him rather than be against Him.
We have to understand what He is doing. That is the first part, the prophetic element. But the second part is just as important.
Having seen His ways, do you know what that places us in? A place of intercession.
Oh, for saints who are really praying for this mega-gathering. People do not even know about it. Most people are questioning it or whatever. I think we need to be before the Lord on this matter in intercession.
Intercession is not merely praying with a burden for these people. Intercession is something wherein you know the ways of God and know the Lord in such a way that you can take hold of the Lord and bring Him to bear on the situation.
Intercession is being in the gap for this kind of thing. It may include not only our earnest prayers regarding this end-time gathering but our being sent out.
I am so thankful for the young people. I believe the Lord is going to send out most of our young people. This is the last days. This is the end time. This is not a time for systems to be established and for people to remain in their comfort zones. It is not the time for that anymore.
But God is looking. Where can He find this? Out there in Russia, where I go, these men are harvesting people. They are praying, people get healed, and people get saved. It is a wonderful work going on.
But do you know what they need? They need an evangelist who sees the end God has in view, not merely the gathering process. Do you understand what I am saying?
They need people with prophetic vision who can open up the mysteries of Christ and the mysteries of God’s purpose, because they do not see it. Do you think I am overstating the matter when I say I believe that 90% of Christianity does not know God’s purpose, God’s mystery, or the centrality of God’s Son? They do not even know that.
There need to be those with that kind of prophetic insight, and shepherds who can reveal and lead people to God’s heart. That is where you and I come in.
We know all that stuff—la, la, la. I think the Lord has allowed us to be, as it were, little pockets. I do not know what else to call them—little nests. I am praying that God will shake up our nest.
Oh, if we could get rid of half our young people and send them around the world. What were those recovery movements that made all the difference in the world? Were they all stay-at-home people?
Take the Moravians. What was it—three out of four of them went out as missionaries? That is an amazing thing. Or consider the Brethren. The Brethren did not merely meet in holy huddles and study the Word. The Brethren went out with the gospel. They sent out missionaries like crazy. The best of them went out.
Not only that, in their own local town there was some crazy Brethren shoemaker in the middle of town preaching the gospel. They preached the gospel—not only in their churches, but out in the world.
God wants a sending out. We want to collect people in. I know I scare adults to death. We want our kids to be in the same church for the rest of their lives. We want our cozy little community, grandma with the kids, and all of that.
But let me make it as real as I can. I am not talking about what God is doing among denominations. I am not talking about going to Dallas Seminary or Gordon-Conwell and becoming a minister.
My impression of many people involved in missions is that they are caught in some system that will not even budge anymore. It has been set and planted. People go and give their lives with a good heart in something set in concrete.
I am saying we have to find where God is moving and pour our resources, our children, those who have vision, those who are responsible, and those who are called into meeting that need.
I hate to keep bringing up Russia, because I know you get tired of hearing about it. But when I go there, I share things that are common parlance in our circles, things we talk about while sipping coffee. Those brothers are blown away when they hear them.
I heard one brother reprimanding Bible students in his Bible school about the need to be righteous and live righteously. Some of the young people had done things that were not right. They had been Christians six months and were already studying for the ministry. They cannot send them out fast enough.
Later, as we were having tea—because in Russia they all have tea, not coffee—I said to him, “Have you ever heard this? It is not merely that we as Christians live a righteous life; Christ is our righteousness.” The teacher said, “What?”
I showed him the Scripture. “Oh, yes, yes.” But then I had to explain that I was talking about a life within us that is the righteousness coming out of us. It was like dropping a bomb on the man. He took it and ran with it. He had no resistance at all. He had never heard it before.
Then I felt bad that I had not told him Christ is also our wisdom, redemption, and sanctification. But you know what I am saying. Twenty of you could go out for six months in these places and share what you take for granted. It is not “la, la, la” to the rest of the church. It is music to the ear.
People are trying, and they have an outward behavior form of Christianity. They have a Christian life, but they do not know that Christ is their life. How are they going to come to maturity without this kind of knowledge?
Oh, praise God. I praise God for the young people who have the courage and guts to cut out and go somewhere. Even when they go out and find that they walked into a system, get stung a few times, and come back—that is okay. But God is moving outside the system right now.
How about if we just pray and concentrate on the 300 million non-affiliated Christians? They are fertile ground either for the devil or for God to do a real work in their midst. They have no system. They do not even know enough about a denomination to imitate one.
Of course, if somebody comes in with that kind of thing, they will accept it. They will say, “Hey, this makes sense.” But God wants to do something.
I talk about Russia as if it is the center of the world, but this is happening in China, India, South America, and Chile. I am going to Chile in October. There is something so vital, real, and fresh—something untouched by human hands. It is incredible.
It makes servants of God, and people who have been Christians for years weep. They see this fellowship and koinonia love. People are sharing everything with one another, and it is just so wonderful.
I do not know who else God can send. I am appealing to you guys. I think it is time to stir up the nest.
When we remain in a nest too long, we get all snippy, fight with one another, and carry on. We get as small as the children of Israel. We murmur: “Well, it was bread, but I like whole wheat.” That is what happens when we are around too long.
Sometimes our kids get ants in their pants, and we send them out to some system thing that just about kills them. They come back with their tails between their legs: “What do I do now? I guess I might as well make a million dollars like everybody else.”
No, there is something out there. We need to say, “Oh God, show me Thy ways. Lord, what are You doing? How can we be part of it? How can we pray it in? How can we stand in the gap for these people?”
How can we insist on reality, freshness, and vitality? How can we pray that they would be protected from outside systems, sources, and the enemy? How can we take these matters up seriously, find vital contact and relationships—email, something—with people out there?
There are so many people serving God faithfully and sacrificing their whole lives. Surely we need to find contact with these people. There is a way. We need only be willing to find it. But it will shake us out of comfort.
That does not mean we send out everybody. The Lord needs to do things on the home front too. But I am saying that I think we are right on the cusp of something so tremendous.
I do not know when the Lord is coming back, but I would much rather be busy trying to see if we can help some of those people than dawdling around in something stale where we do not even depend on the Lord anymore.
I am just sharing my heart with you. I am not trying to get after you guys, because I have to go back home and deal with this myself.
May the Lord help us. I think we have been down at the foot of the mountain too long. It is time to get up there, where the Lord can show us His ways and bring us into that kind of gap intercession that Moses was in—the intercession that enabled the children of Israel to get into the land of promise.
May the Lord help us. Let us pray.
Lord, I shared, I know, in a scattered way. Perhaps I took away from the burden You wanted to present. But Lord, I bring this whole matter to You.
Somehow, Lord, I feel that I am touching the edges of Your ways, even as I bring these matters up. Oh Lord, Your ways are so global, so mega. We are so small.
Lord, we are so concerned with our comfort and so fearful of the unknown. Yet there are, we can say with shame, millions and millions laying down their lives without regard for cost because they love Jesus.
Oh Lord, may they understand Your ways, Your principles. We know what it is like to be gathered and just be gathered. Without the cross, it does not work.
Oh, that we may have that experience and example in our own lives, and then be able to share it with those who are so hungry to be gathered up into Christ.
Oh, show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee, that I may find favor in Thy sight.
Oh Lord, we look to You to be faithful in these end days. Lord, teach us by Thy grace how to be intercessors, and really to be on top of what You are doing—not merely as spectators, but as fellow gatherers and coworkers with the Lord of the harvest.
Lord, speak to our hearts in these very regards. Open up the lines of communication within our fellowships and with those strewn about the world in some isolated but real way. Oh Lord, help us be part of what You are doing. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.