Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a little hard to know what to do when you see twice as many people here the second night as were here the first night. I don’t know—should I start out all over again? I’m not sure what to do.
But fearing being stoned if I took that course, I guess we’ll just have to hope that those who weren’t here last night can hear the tapes and catch up.
Our theme comes from a prayer of Moses that we’ll look at in just a minute: “Show me Thy ways, O Lord, that I may know Thee, that I may be pleasing in Thy sight.” Let’s look at some Scriptures along the way before we come to it.
Let’s turn to Genesis 47, and simply verse 9: the testimony of Jacob at the end of his life before Pharaoh in the land of Egypt.
So Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my sojourning are one hundred and thirty; few and unpleasant have been the years of my life, nor have they attained to the years that my fathers lived during the days of their sojourning.”
You see the word sojourning there, I’m sure. Then we go right to the book of Hebrews to see the New Testament reality regarding this, in Hebrews 11, where it speaks about faith, and specifically Abraham’s faith.
By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise.
All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were sojourners and exiles on the earth.
Then we find this phrase, sojourn, even used in 1 Peter. Let’s turn there: 1 Peter 1, the very first verse.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.
And there, that word is “sojourners” once again. Verse 17 of chapter 1:
If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your sojourn.
And finally, chapter 2, verse 11:
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.
Then let’s come back to our theme verses. First, we’ll go to Psalm 103, verse 7. In this great psalm, we all love to say, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Here is one of the declarations:
He made known His ways to Moses,
His acts to the sons of Israel.
Then over to Psalm 95, an exhortative psalm where we find this Scripture often, and also repeated in Hebrews:
Today, if you would hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts, 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 finally, Exodus 33, where we find that prayer of Moses. Exodus 33—we begin in verse 11.
We know that Moses—where do you get these ear flies from? This is amazing. You know, they just decide. They watch your ear, and they keep coming, you know?
Moses has already been through so much. He hasn’t been with the children of Israel all that long. He went down to Egypt and found them, and he’s already been through the mill. By the time he gets to Mount Sinai—and that’s only the beginning—by the time he prays this prayer, they’ve already worshiped the golden calf. It’s just amazing.
Anyway, he finds this prayer in his heart despite all of the discouragement of looking about him.
Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. 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, “You see, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people.’ But You Yourself have not let me know whom You will send with me. Moreover, You have said, ‘I have known you by name, and you also have 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 the Lord said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.”
I feel in these last days this should be very much one of the prayers upon the hearts of those saints who are mature and have walked with the Lord for a while: “Show me Thy ways, O Lord, that I may know Thee, and that I may find favor in Thy sight.”
We looked last night, in an introductory way, at these three simple words that reveal to us a progressive revealing of God unto His children. There are the acts of God. The Scripture said there in Psalm 103 that He showed His ways unto Moses and His acts to the children of Israel.
Indeed, the children of Israel saw His acts: His miraculous acts, His signs, His deliverances, His redemption, His care of them, His providing the rock with water and the manna, and so forth. They saw His acts. But it says it was given to Moses to know His ways.
It is one thing to see God doing something miraculous, and even to praise God for doing something miraculous, as they did in Exodus 15 when they sang that song of Moses and Miriam. It is another thing to get behind those acts and discover His ways.
And then that revealing of discovering His ways is toward a further end: “that I may know Thee.” Not just a revelation-knowledge, not just a casual knowing or a knowing about, but knowing by experience—“that I may know Thee.”
So here we find this threefold progression into a full knowledge of the Lord. Of course, we see in Psalm 95, and by the exhortation in Hebrews 3, that it is also possible for Christians not to realize that it is today, not to hear His voice, and to test Him.
It is possible to walk with the Lord but not be aware of it, and to see His acts but not understand His ways. Isn’t that what the Lord said in the end? “You err in your heart because you have not known My ways.”
In other words, there has to be a willful refusal to go deeper. That is worthy of judgment: “You shall never enter My rest,” because all you are concerned about is the outward things, while I am trying to lead you into something deeper.
So this is before us. Last night I just threw out sort of a bombshell by presenting some facts and figures up on this wall, basically showing something really amazing. I’m not sure that any one of us can fully grasp the fact that in the last thirty years, since 1970—way out of the normal curve of what happened in the twentieth century—there have been over 500,000,000 people saved around this world.
There is a tremendous harvest going on in the third world that we sometimes miss as left coasters—or lost coasters, if you come from New York. But the Lord is doing amazing and marvelous things and bringing in a harvest that is incredible to believe.
That is the acts of God today in our midst, whether we are aware of it or not. That is the act. I hope you see the act. I hope you realize what is going on in India, in China, and in the Muslim countries.
When I go to Russia, all the stories are about what is going on in the “stans”—Tatarstan and these various places. It is amazing what the Lord is doing. It is just one by one, but the Lord is saving multitudes and multitudes of people.
In South America, there is an absolute revolution going on: people leaving the Catholic Church and that background and embracing a living Christ. It is amazing—500,000,000 in these last thirty years. That is the acts.
Do we know God’s way from here? That is what I tried to present before us, because it seems to me that this is where we fall down: by a total lack of intelligence in what to do about those who have been gathered together.
It is wonderful to see that here. Last night I took a show of hands: how many of you were gathered in since 1970? In a way, that is cheating, because half of you were not even born in 1970, and yet you are here. You had your hand up. Well, but you were gathered in. That is all part of the big gathering that is going on.
Now we have a responsibility about this thing. I talked about the ways of the Lord. Can you picture Moses at this point? He has not traveled with the children very far yet. He has no idea what he is asking for: “Show me Thy ways, O Lord.”
Until the time of Calvary, we never understood that His way is the cross. Moses did not know that, but he prayed it and he got it. You see, because he embraced the cross, he became something larger than a prophet, larger than a national leader, larger than a priest.
You know what he became? The one standing in the gap to bring the children into God’s end. Oh, for those intercessors. It comes only—it is only the purview of those who have understood God’s ways.
So we have this question before us. In these last days, if we have seen afresh the great gathering of God around the world, even if we feel quite isolated here in some small assembly in the United States, the fact of the matter is that we are integrally connected with everything happening around the world in terms of His kingdom. Amen.
Somewhere along the line, there is a fresh seeing of something in God regarding that gathering, and a fresh embracing of His cross in order to be part of that gathering, if you see what I mean. There must be vital intercession and standing in the gap.
There was a very wide gap between God and the children of Israel, and Moses stood in the gap. That is how they got to the land.
There is a great gap between our Savior and these many millions who have been saved and have no idea now how to go out and come in. Who will stand in the gap? It is exactly the question, in order to bring them to the Lord’s end.
Here we are: a cluster, a very self-centered, selfish, comfortable people, who have our own little crosses to bear, and we all grunt and groan about it.
We have got to get hold of the reality: our life is no longer about us. Time is too short. If there is any credit we need to give to our dear brother who wrote that book—what is it, The Purpose Driven Life or whatever it is—the first sentence he wrote in that book is, “It is not about you. It is about Him.” That is a great sentence.
So get over whatever you need to get over. Everybody in this room, we all have an excuse why we are not serving the Lord, you see. But it just will not work.
Imagine, with all of our teaching and all of our understanding, if all we are is the rank and file standing at the bottom of the mountain, helping make golden calves upon request. Then we deserve a greater judgment than those who are being gathered and do not know what to do now.
Anybody who is murmuring is somebody who does not know God’s ways. Period. If you are a critical know-it-all, judging others; if you are a murmurer in the body of Christ, you do not know the ways of God.
Because if you knew His ways and were standing in the gap, you would not have time for that stuff. Murmuring is the inheritance of people going nowhere.
So there is a lot of cross to be taken in these last days, and I think the Spirit is trying to help us see this.
Now, let’s look in Exodus 33, because I want to try to answer a question more specifically tonight as we talk about this prayer: “Show me Thy ways, O Lord.” What exactly does this mean: “Show me Thy ways”?
We see it must be something beyond merely, “Show me Thy will.” Moses had been the recipient of the Ten Commandments. God had revealed His will in the Ten Commandments, in the other commandments, and in the giving of the tabernacle. His will was known.
But this prayer, “Show me Thy ways,” represents something beyond merely knowing God’s will. Knowing the ways of God has something to do with knowing His principles: the principles upon which He works, the principles of approach and service, and so forth.
This is part of the ways of God, but there is something more than merely knowing His principles—as in, “La, la, la, there are three principles involved in bearing the cross,” you know, that kind of stuff. No, there is something more even than that, even something more than knowing His motives behind His will and those principles, as deep as that is.
It is not His end, because it is the way. What is this: “Show me Thy ways”?
It is nothing less than the practical directing toward the end promised.
Those who can pray this prayer with urgency are those who have seen something of God’s grace and have seen a revelation of the end. Because of that, they really have no idea how to get to the end.
“Show me Thy ways” is a more practical prayer than we would believe. Moses is being very practical. Listen to his prayer here.
Moses said to the Lord, “Now, seeing You say, ‘Bring up this people,’ but I do not know how. Show me Thy ways. You Yourself have not let me know whom You will send with me. I do not even know who my associates are.”
Actually, God had said, “I am going to send My angel with you, but I am not going.” Now that caused Moses great concern. “All right, I see the end. You said, ‘Get them to the promised land.’ I do not even know the way.”
Would You want us to go up this way or down that way? Do You want us to take Hummers, or what? How? I do not know. Then I do not even know who is directing me in this whole thing.
Besides that, You have made certain big claims about me. You have given me a name, and You say I have found favor in Your sight. Oh, please, God, if I have found favor in Your sight, remember that these are Your people, and I have no idea of the way.
Just like Thomas prayed, “We have no idea of the way.” Jesus said, “I am preparing the Father’s house, and you know the way.” Thomas said, “Show me Thy way. I do not know the way. How do I know the way?” Jesus says, “Ah, I am the roadmap.”
You see, this question is much more practical than we might think: “That I may know Thee.”
This implies that it is not merely a matter of revelation, because revelation is actually the start—that vision that enables us to see the end. But that is not it. Neither is it merely a consideration of the ways of God, a passive meditation upon the ways of God as though somebody is watching a parade go by.
It is a wonderful thing to glory in the ways of God and to consider the ways of God as you look in history, in the past, and in the Word of God. But this is not what this is talking about.
“Show me Thy ways” was answered by the Lord walking with Moses in a practical, purposeful way, in service toward the end God had in view. That is what “Show me Thy ways” means.
Now, do you want to pray that prayer? We are people who have seen the Lord. Praise God. We are praying, “Open my eyes, Lord, I want to see Jesus.” Wonderful.
Some of us claim to have even seen something of His eternal purpose. We have seen the end. Now, who, having seen that end, says, “Okay, God, I will volunteer. I know how to get there”?
Do you know the end? Take those 500,000,000 Christians and gather them into maturity until the bride is perfected, and then I am coming back. That is the end. Do it.
Or I will give you something simpler. You are gathered together as an assembly of those who have been redeemed. Now be built together unto perfection, until you come to the fullness of the stature of Christ. Do it.
That is why, in the Christian vocabulary, one of our favorite words that I hear wafted in prayer very often is, “Somehow, Lord.” “We need to be changed. We need to become a new creation. Somehow do it, Lord.”
That is somebody who has no idea of God’s way. Well, that is a good confessional place to start. Now get on your knees and discover the way—the practical way through.
I am tired of leaderless Christianity. Everybody reneging: “No, no, no, no, no, you go. I am not going. No, I do not want to lead. Nobody leads. Only Jesus leads. Okay? Somehow Jesus is going to lead.”
That does not fly. He wants to teach a brother and a sister how to practically move from point A to point B. That is not all the way to the end, but you go from point A to point B, then you get your next direction.
What kind of roadmap did Moses get? Up there on the mountain, did God say, “Now you are going to go down next Thursday, and then this is going to happen, and that is going to happen”? Is that what happened? Did he get a forty-year roadmap? No.
He embraced something that embraced him and made him an intercessor who, although he had to fall short of the promised land himself, brought the people to the edge so that God could bring them in.
May it be that those here tonight who are called and charged with leadership would stop reneging and stop abdicating, and get on your knees and say, “Show me Thy ways, O Lord, or we are never getting there.”
This is a serious matter. All we have are complainers and humbugs, self-conscious and self-centered people more concerned with themselves than they are with the children of God.
It is a serious matter. Do not just look at the bozos whom we call the men in leadership, because sisters are just as responsible, and those who lead the young people are just as responsible. It is a serious, serious matter. That is why this prayer is so beautiful as Moses offers it.
Now I want to take that, because I am sure you are saying, “Well, okay, none of us know the way. We know the end. We know the Lord. We do not know how to get there. So how do we know? ‘Show me Thy ways’—how is this going to happen?”
Tonight, episode one in the practical outworking of this: here is the first explanation. The ways of the Lord are revealed in a sojourn.
This term sojourn, which we heard Jacob use to describe his life as a 130-year sojourn that had been bitter and evil and fallen short of Abraham and Isaac—this sojourn that Abraham started on, where he sojourned in tents as he traveled from place to place—we are going to look at this thing because the ways of the Lord are discovered in the sojourn.
We especially see this used when it is talking about the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. But it also became a description of what the children of Israel as a whole were going through as they sojourned.
As we see in the New Testament, it is a description for Christians of the life we now lead when we understand what is really going on.
The word sojourn is beautiful. In the King James it is used a number of times, but not all the times that it is in the Hebrew, actually, which is a shame. But it is the most faithful translation to “sojourn.” Most other translations have gone off into “journey,” “lived,” and “dwelt,” so you do not know when that word sojourn comes up.
But it is actually a very particular word talking about a very particular process going through in our lives. That is what I want to talk about tonight: this matter of the sojourn.
As we look at the sojourn in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, I want to share with you seven vital principles we learn on the sojourn. Are you on the sojourn? Do you realize you are on the sojourn? Maybe you do not know. Well, let us look and see what this thing, sojourn, is all about, and then you can make up your mind about where you are in this whole thing.
God sends us on a sojourn, and it is a journey. See, sojourn: it is a journey without a home. That is the first thing. The sojourn is a journey without a home.
In this, we learn that the world is not our home.
Let me show you some Scriptures so you can see what I am talking about. It is a specific term that means somebody who is living somewhere that is not their home.
If you go back to Genesis 17, we find the Lord talking to Abraham regarding his sojourn. In verse 8, the Lord promises him this:
I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan.
Just stop right there. What is God saying? “Abraham, you are sojourning in a land that is not your home.” Where was Abraham’s home? Ur of the Chaldees. You are no longer at home. Actually, when you start on the sojourn, you can never come back home.
This land you are sojourning in now—Abraham sojourned there a number of years—but it was never his home. This land of Canaan is your sojourn, and I am going to give it to your children after you. This was the promise.
So what was Abraham’s sojourn technically? Living in Canaan, which was not his home. You can live in a place a long time but still not be at home if you are on a sojourn.
Now let us turn to Genesis 26 to see Isaac as he comes along to his sojourn—late in life, by the way. He had a nice honeymoon before he got into his sojourn. But anyway, in chapter 26, it inevitably comes to each of the patriarchs.
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and bless you.”
Isaac was all ready to go to Egypt like Abraham did. God said, “Stay here in Philistia.” Gerar was outside of Canaan—on the border, for sure—but it was part of Philistine territory. “Live here,” God says, “and during the famine I will bless you.”
God did bless him in that Philistine territory, in that area around Gerar, but that was his sojourn: no longer living in Beer-lahai-roi, his hometown.
In Genesis 32:4 we see Jacob’s sojourn mentioned.
Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: “Thus says your servant Jacob, ‘I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed until now.’”
Where was Jacob’s sojourn? In Padan-aram, when he went away from his home and married and went through those twenty years of Labanic trials. He was doing it in Padan-aram.
Now, notice something. Technically, that was his time of sojourn, when he was in a foreign land that was not his home. But notice Jacob’s testimony at the end of his life, at 130 years old. He says, “My whole life has been a sojourn of 130 years. I have discovered I do not have a home on this earth.”
Without going into Joseph, because the references are numerous, Joseph’s sojourn was in Egypt, of course, when he was sent away by the skulduggery of his own brothers.
So first we find that the sojourn is a journey without a home.
Just before I came here, I came upon an interesting little quote from C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain that applies to this, and I thought I would read it.
The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world. But joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast.
We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world, and oppose an obstacle to our return to God.
A few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on our journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
We are on a sojourn. This world is not our home. Abraham finally caught on. He originally left Ur of the Chaldees—why? To have a child, to discover a land that he could call his. But by the time he had been moving around a while, God opened up an understanding in him that he was looking for a city whose Builder and Maker is God.
This world is not our home. We have to learn this lesson. So we have to go on these various different sojourns.
Israel was said to have sojourned in three places according to the Old Testament. Do you know them? Israel as a nation sojourned in Egypt. Israel as a nation sojourned in Babylon. Israel as a nation now sojourns in the diaspora, in the world, in the nations.
Since 70 AD, when the Romans crushed Israel, they were scattered to the nations, where they are to this day in a sojourn.
Now, the sojourn is a sojourn of purpose. It is not just wandering. Why? Because nowhere in the record does it say that they sojourned in the wilderness. The wilderness was not according to purpose.
Their time on the mountain and their time with God was all part of that, but then they were meant to go right to the promised land. Their forty years were wasted time.
We find today some Christians who are on a sojourn that has purpose and an end to it, driven and initiated by God. Then we have some people wandering in a wilderness, and their life is a waste of time. There is no purpose in it, and it is not a sojourn. It is just wandering.
We are called out by different circumstances, by the Lord. Abraham was called out by a revelation and a promise. Isaac was called out from his home by a famine. Jacob was called from his home as a fugitive—he had to get out of there. Joseph was brought into his sojourn by the betrayal of his own brothers.
The sojourn is not necessarily geographical. You can stay at home and go on a sojourn, but what has happened is that the Lord has taken your home—your nest—away from you.
Sometimes it is through a tragedy, sometimes through divorce, sometimes through the loss of your job. Or you are a young person and you leave home, imagining you can go away and come back and still have home. But you come home, and it is not home anymore. Your friends are all gone, and you wonder, “What has happened here?”
You remember that idyllic life you lived in high school, and it is no more to be found. Ah, God has got you on the sojourn now. It is not as though you have to move somewhere in order to get on the sojourn.
What happens is that a person becomes aware that they are in a place that is not their own. Eventually, everyone does. Then they desperately hold on to the Lord, who is their home away from home during the time of their sojourn.
That is number one: the sojourn is a journey without a home. There is that beautiful picture in Deuteronomy 32, where our God comes down like the big eagle and just busts up our nest.
As I said last night regarding our assemblies, “Lord, bust up these nests, if that will get us on the sojourn.” Because the sojourn is according to purpose.
The second vital lesson we learn from the sojourn by looking at the lives in the Bible is this: no matter where you start out, God delights to meet you on the road.
Some people say, “Oh, God, I want to know You. Show Your face. Show me Yourself.” God says, “Well, as soon as you get on the road, I will.”
Many people want to see God, but they are not on the road. They are not in the way. Again, this is where we have to be careful of our worship songs, because they can go way beyond our true experience.
We may have seen some revelations of the Lord, but I am telling you, unless we are in the way, we are not really coming to know the Lord. The different patriarchs got out of their little homes, and as they got out, the Lord met them along the way.
According to G. Campbell Morgan—and I tried to count it up, but I could not quite get it to figure like he does; G. Campbell Morgan is always perfect in his assessments—God met Abraham on the road seven times, Isaac six times, and Jacob five times.
Joseph was not included, because it never talks about God meeting Joseph. Joseph walked with God. But they got out on the road, and the Lord met them.
Abraham went somewhere, built an altar—boom, God showed up. Jacob laid his head down on a stone—boom, God showed up. Isaac wanted to go into Egypt—boom, God showed up and said, “Do not go. Stay here in Gerar.”
No matter where you are, the Lord wants to meet you. I love this little phrase—and once again I am advocating the King James entirely because I have not found it in any other translation.
The testimony of the servant of Abraham, who goes out to find a bride for Isaac, says to the house of Rebekah in Genesis 24:27:
I being in the way, the Lord led me.
That is such a beautiful little phrase, because that is exactly the point. In the sojourn, you have to be on the journey, and you meet the Lord. “I being in the way, the Lord led me.”
Here is a typical example of a sojourner. Abraham’s servant—most people think it is Eliezer, but whatever—one day Abraham says, “Go find a bride for my son.” “How?” “Just go. Go up to my relatives.” “Well, how? When? What train? How do I go? Where is the money?”
I bet you that servant prayed, “Show me Thy way.” So what did he do? He went down the block, turned the corner, and, “I being in the way, the Lord led me.”
What if he had stayed in the house and said, “Well, I am still trying to buy one of those GPS things. As soon as one comes in, I am going”? Sounds like a lot of Christians. “As soon as I get MapQuest, I am heading out. I do not even have a computer. I do not know how to work it yet.”
We set up all kinds of barricades. Sometimes the Lord sends you out by kicking you out the door. He says, “Get out. Go on, get out of here, and I will show you where to go.”
Oh, we do not like that, because the third point, of course, is that we have to do this venture by faith.
What pushes you out of the nest? It is very sovereign with God, isn’t it? The promise of a child got Abraham moving, because back in those days, if you did not have children, you did not have answers.
Then there is Isaac in that little retreat at Beer-lahai-roi, which means “the well of the seeing of God.” I just picture him there receiving revelation, a real mystical, passive kid. God says, “I have to get him out of here. This guy is going to drive You crazy. All he wants is visions and mysticism.”
So God says, “Let us blow a famine over this Beer-lahai-roi until he has to go to the Philistine territories. There I will teach him how to dig wells and come unto sonship. I want Isaac in sonship, not just some kind of mystic down there by the well.”
Of course, you know the story with Jacob. He had to get out of there. That is how his venture started. How about yours? Where did the Lord push you out of your nest? Has He pushed you out of your nest?
Some people act very worldly. How do I define worldliness? All they want is a nest. You are wrong. You are wrong.
If you are nesting in anything other than God, you are going to be disappointed. He will not let you enjoy that nest. The more nostalgic you are about your nest and the way things were—“My nest, my nest, all I want is my nest”—the more you will be disappointed.
Living in New York City, I really want to know: there is no nest for me. Not in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan—not when I used to have a nice old home, more bedrooms than I knew what to do with, and more stuff in my basement than I could fit in my whole apartment.
Just junk. I had plenty of junk. My nest was full of junk, that is all—just full of junk. We are stripped down to one-third the size. Well, it is a home in the Lord.
I am not just talking about myself. How did the Lord get you out of your nest? We all go relatively unwillingly, I think, because the worldly desire is to be a settler. We want to settle, and the Lord wants us to be pioneers of the heavenly way.
He has His hands full trying to get us out of those nests. But however He pushes you out of the nest, here is the wonderful part, if you can see the consolation of it: as you get down the road, He will meet you at the crossroads when you are lonely.
He will meet you at the crossroads when you really do not know what to do next. You will have a fresh revelation and begin to know personally a wonderful Lord.
Some people get out there on the road arrogant. Young people love to get out on the road. Somebody will take this message tonight and say, “Okay, Dad, Mom, I am leaving, because I have to get out on my sojourn.”
But actually, wanderlust can keep you from your sojourn. Sometimes your sojourn will stay at home. So I do not want to give you all the idea to kick off the traces of your family and head out.
But God met Jacob. He was full of moxie and sure of himself. The Lord met him on the road. What did He do? He loved him, blessed him, promised him things. He got Jacob so deep in that sojourn, he could not get out.
It is like the old tar-baby story, getting stuck in the tar. God just stuck him in there so deep with sweet blessings. Jacob got it in the sojourn.
Some people get in there because they are afraid. They get out on that road, really do not know what to do next, and the Lord has not shown up for a couple of hours. They are really desperate now: “Lord, You have got to show up now. Come on. I walked down the block and turned the corner, and all I have is one day’s worth of granola chewy.”
Well, the way the Lord shows up, and His timing in showing up, is all up to His sovereign grace and love. But I know it is all grace and love.
What you discover is that He takes, as it says in that wonderful psalm, your footsteps and makes them into a way. How wonderful. Not just walking and wandering, but He takes your footsteps and starts moving toward His end, which becomes your end, and you are on the way.
Number three: in the way of the sojourn, the way opens up. The answer to the question, “Where do I go? Who is going with me? What are we going to do?”—how did God answer that for Moses?
The way opens up in the proving of faith. That is the third vital lesson. The sojourn is meant for those who have faith, but it is interesting that nobody thinks they have faith when the sojourn begins.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were not standing around saying, “You know, I have a lot of faith. I just need a little bit of a challenge.” They had no idea.
One day God, in His glory, showed up and said, “Hey, move out.” He said, “Yes, sir,” and he walked out. He did not know that was faith.
Over there in the Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11, we say, “By faith he stepped out, not knowing where he was going.” I think Abraham did not feel like he had much choice. He did not think he had great faith, but he became the father of faith.
My only point is this: do not think these men were sitting around with a boxload of faith waiting for God to challenge them. No, they learned their faith as they were out on the road.
Abraham had obedience faith. He had to learn that by obeying, and it was out there on the way that the whole thing opened up.
For Isaac, it came another way. He learned abiding faith as he got up there in the Philistine territories and all his enemies started bothering him. He had to keep digging wells, and they kept throwing stuff back into the wells. Then he dug another well, and they threw stuff into that one.
But he learned faith, he learned faith, he learned faith. Isaac did not know he had faith. He was a mystic; he did not want to dig wells. He had two hundred servants, and God told him, “You dig. You dig unto sonship. You dig and find for yourself.”
So he developed faith, but he developed it in the way. And Jacob—did Jacob have any faith? What do you think? In those early days, was it all outward? Did he have an inward faith? I believe he did, but he did not know his faith.
When did he know his faith? When he wrestled with God. That is what he discovered: he had wrestling faith. I wish we had ten men in this place right now who had wrestling faith, who wrestled with God until they got the answer.
If God got you, He pinned you down—good. If you pinned God down—good. But you found out His way.
We have so many chicken-livered people who say, “Oh, God, if You want to reveal Yourself, You probably do not. But if somehow You do, maybe next Thursday—I do not know—whatever You think. I do not know what You are doing, God, so I am going to go live in my little nest.” Oh, please.
God wants a wrestler. Are you willing to wrestle? I have a feeling most of us have not even been tested in this kind of faith.
How we need that obedience faith of Abraham, that abiding faith of Isaac, that wrestling faith of Jacob, and that overcoming faith of Joseph.
Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and thrown into jail, then betrayed by Potiphar’s wife and thrown deeper into jail, then betrayed by the cupbearer, and yet he continued on somehow faithful to the vision he had from the Lord. What an overcoming faith that was.
All different kinds of faith, all learned in the sojourn. That is where faith is really learned. So do not say, “Oh, God, give me more faith, and then I will do something.”
When you find yourself in the sojourn, over your head, this is where faith is really proven. That is when the way opens up. You say, “Ah, I see now how to get me and the children from point A to point B.” It is in the way that we discover these things, in the midst of the sojourn.
We find an interesting thing around us when we begin to exercise faith in the sojourn: the world really hates you when you do that.
The world puts up with beliefs. Beliefs are free. Everybody can have beliefs. You can believe in Marvels or you can believe in Jesus Christ—there is no problem.
But when you start living by faith—“If God does not come through, I am falling out of this tree”—and God starts coming through, people hate you.
There is an interesting little episode in Genesis 19. When those perverted men of Sodom were knocking on Lot’s door and saying, “Let us have those men,” with the angels inside, Lot made the trade and said, “No, take my daughters.” Nice guy, that Lot.
But you know what the men of the city said? “Look at this sojourner. He thinks he can boss us around.” These were Lot’s friends last week. But when push comes to shove, the world can tell you are a sojourner.
Some teenagers are hiding pretty well, just like Lot hiding right in Sodom. We have thousands of Christians who are born again, living in New York City, hiding in Sodom. They get smoked out, every one of them.
In the end, they can tell you are a sojourner just passing through. You are not settling as they are settling. You are not living at home as they are living at home. They can sense the difference, and they resent the difference.
Number four: in the way of the sojourn, we discover the true nature of blessing. I will be so bold as to say that it is those saints who have been on a sojourn who really enjoy all the blessings that are in Christ Jesus.
These men had to learn the true nature of blessing.
Abraham started out from Ur of the Chaldees, but by the time his life came to an end, he was a prince. He was respected by people. He had come into some kind of authority, princeliness, and stature that made people stand in awe of this gentleman.
But what was the blessing he had discovered? He had discovered along the way that the Lord was all of grace. The Lord called him, the Lord promised him, the Lord kept him, the Lord kept His promises, and the Lord fulfilled everything He said He was going to fulfill.
You know what he found out? “I have a loving Savior. It is all of grace.”
By the end of Abraham’s life, what could he really boast about anyway? The way he treated his wife? The way he tried to have children? What could he boast about? He could only boast about one thing: “I have got it all by grace. He called me, He promised me, He did it, He kept me. I tried to go astray; He somehow salvaged it.”
That was the blessing.
Isaac had to learn a blessing as well. Now, when Isaac was a kid—I am going to guess maybe sixty years old, just for the sake of argument; a kid, you see, now that I am sixty-two, sixty seems very young—Abraham gave him everything.
Abraham says, “Okay, here are the Treasury bills. Here are the stock certificates. Now you have ten zillion sheep.” Isaac came into this fantastic blessing of riches.
You can see in Isaac’s life that riches and all that property were a great hardship to him. “How can I stay by my well and read my Bible and talk to God? I have ten zillion sheep now, and somebody is going to come try to steal them from me. I know it, sure as the world.”
His blessings were anything but blessings until he started in the sojourn and learned to dig those wells.
God let him be there with all that antagonism, all those arguments, all that stuff—just niggling, niggling, niggling. Meanwhile, he was growing a hundredfold in wealth. It was unbelievable.
But when he got back to Beersheba and dug below it, fresh Beersheba water came out. He met God again, and he realized what blessing really is.
You know what it is? Our outward blessings are nothing until the presence of the Lord is with us, and then our blessings are everything.
He enjoyed his blessing so much after the presence of the Lord came back to him at Beersheba. He realized he could be a millionaire, but without the presence of the Lord, what did he have? Anxiety. Fear of losing what he had.
No. When you have the Lord’s presence, you have already got the real currency. The rest of your life is a double blessing because of that.
There is an interesting little verse in Leviticus 25. We are just talking about this thing of sojourning, and there is an interesting statement that the Lord makes to the children of Israel about when they come into the land.
The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but sojourners with Me.
God says, “The land is never yours.” Do you know your riches are never yours? Your house is not yours. Your nest egg, your 401(k)—that is not yours. Remember this: “The land is Mine.”
For you are but sojourners—and here is the key, do not lose the key—you are sojourners with Me.
Ah, what a terrible thing: to have to sojourn with God. That is our blessing. That is our blessing.
Whatever blessings the Lord has given to you, praise God. But it is His presence with you that is the real blessing. Remember, you are a sojourner with Him. That is the real thing that counts.
What did Jacob learn about blessings? He learned that all those blessings he gained—the blessing and the birthright and all—when you grab blessings, you cannot enjoy blessings. He grabbed his wife and could not enjoy it.
What did he discover years later? Finally, one day at Peniel, he grabbed God, and he discovered the secret of blessing: it is more blessed to give than to receive.
Having grabbed hold of God, who is the source of everything, he became not a grabber anymore—stealing, grabbing, cheating. You know what he became? A magnanimous blesser.
He did this with his hands on Pharaoh. Pharaoh got the heebie-jeebies—blessing hives. He blessed his children, he blessed his grandchildren, and he found out that is the real secret of blessing: to be a blesser, not a grabber.
Some folks need to get to Peniel to learn that lesson. I am so thankful for so many generous Christians. Some people are so stingy, it is just unbelievable. But Peniel will take care of that.
Once you grab hold of God—of course, when you grab hold of God, and when Jacob grabbed hold of God, he had to let go of everything. That is the thing.
He let go of his children, his wives, his future. Esau was storming down on him with four hundred men. “Okay, God, You have everything. I have got You. I will not let You go till You bless me.”
God was willing to be his blessing the rest of his life.
Joseph was bestowed with great blessing and honor after that tremendous trial and trauma he went through for thirty years, because people misunderstood him, abused him, and betrayed him. At thirty years old, he was exalted next to Pharaoh.
What did he learn? All his blessings were not about him. They were to serve and help others.
That is what Joseph was learning there in jail. He was originally seeing dreams about himself, but he came to the place where he could interpret dreams to help other people.
In the end, he was exalted to that high position in order to help his own family and save a remnant through a time of famine. Praise God.
Number five: the way of the sojourn is the way of the cross.
Moses said, “Show me Thy ways,” and he was undone. But he saw, in the process of the cross working in his life, those things that really mattered and counted as he went on the way.
The cross is so crucial, because in the Christian life, as you embrace the cross, you do not cry about it, you do not quibble, murmur, and carry on. You just take that cross, and you know what happens? The way opens up for you.
You want to know how to get to the next step? You have got to come to zero, and God reveals that to you. That is why it is so crucial.
That is why it was so crucial in these lives. You know the stories. In each of these stories, they had to come to a cross.
For Abraham, he was as good as dead from the start. But as good as dead, he believed in God, and God gave him the desire of his heart: he had a son. Then God said, “Give him up to Me.” He went back to the cross again—absolutely zero, except for God. Oh, he learned the way of God.
Isaac—where did Isaac’s sojourn begin? I want to give you my considered opinion. It began as he was laying on an altar, strapped down, seeing a knife over his head.
Suddenly he met the Lord who provides. I know Abraham was excited to meet the Lord who provides, but I think Isaac was even more excited.
He started out his life, his sojourn, coming back from the dead. His life was basically lived on resurrection ground because he started at the cross. His life was dead. That knife was over him. It was over. His whole life flashed right in front of him.
Then he met the Lord who provides and lived off the elegance of a resurrection life throughout most of his life.
Jacob—we read that testimony in Genesis 47. “Jacob, what was your life like? What was your sojourn like?” “Oh, it was a trial. And I know it was a trial, you know why? Because of me.”
“I was the one. It was my stubbornness. It was my self-will. It was my supplanting. It was my trickery that put me into such a sojourn of woe and trial for 130 years.”
Yet the very next chapter finds him blessing his grandchildren, and he says, “Through all that trial, I met a God who kept me in the way, preserved me with angels, and fed me on my sojourn.”
Oh, what Jacob learned. He learned the cross late in life. I am afraid many of us have that Jacobic gene, that learns the cross late, after you have tried every sort of sneaky thing.
Some Bible teachers—I know my brother Christian Chen—say that Jacob was ninety years old when he came to Peniel and laid it down. Trying, faking, dodging, grabbing, taking initiative for years and years and years, finally laying it down.
But he came to know the cross. What was his testimony when he talked about his sojourn of 130 years? Basically, he was saying, “You know something? Everything I touched became corrupted—until I touched God.”
And Joseph—oh, poor Joseph. Joseph experienced the cross, and this is perhaps the deepest and most mysterious application of the cross.
Joseph experienced the cross on account of his brothers betraying him. We can understand Jacob’s needing the cross. I am not saying Joseph was in any way perfect, but the record does not say that Joseph endured all that he endured—the cross of those years in the bowels of the earth, with iron entering into his soul—because of himself. It was all because of others.
I want to challenge you, because there are some in this room whose experience of the cross is because others have laid it on you. People have done something to you. You are there suffering on account of others.
In Christian history, that is not an uncommon thing. But what did Joseph learn?
He not only saw at the beginning that the whole ordeal he went through was on account of others; he found out that the whole ordeal he went through was for the sake of others.
How redemptive was that renewing of his mind as he stood before his brothers and said:
You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
Thus he opened up a whole new way of understanding the cross, even the cross others have placed upon you, wrongly placed upon you. The Lord will use it for others’ good.
If you can embrace a cross that big, God will open His way before you.
Number six—and of course, this is probably the most wonderful part of it all—in the sojourn, we come to know the Lord.
“Show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee, that I may find favor in Thy sight.”
This knowing of the Lord is not the knowing of revelation—seeing the holy God, the righteous God, the Lord of hosts, or something like that. No, no, no. This is a personal coming to know God by experience.
At the bottom line, there is only one way we come to know the Lord in experience: when we come to see the God of mercy.
Everyone who has really come to know the Lord has seen the God of mercy. Some of us were merciless. Some of us were self-righteous. But as the Lord dealt with us, we came to see the God who is merciful.
Let us look even more specifically at the way the Lord brings us to a knowledge of Himself. It comes at that moment where two things collide.
First, we realize openly, in the sunlight of truth, the absolute basis for our disqualification.
Some of us actually believe we have good reason to serve the Lord. But we will all eventually disqualify ourselves, take ourselves out.
There are so many people today who cannot stand the pressure in the body of Christ, and they commit spiritual suicide. They are disqualified. “Take them off the list. They do not deserve to be on the list if they are going to act that way. Take them off.”
That is the very moment they meet God, who says, “I am not taking you off the list. Even those things that you have done, I have overturned and used for good.”
Now that is the God of mercy. Not, “I just forgive you for your stupidness,” but, “I knew you were going to be stupid. I got before you, and I overturned your mess to make it good.”
All these patriarchs learned this lesson in one way or another. Abraham got down into the promised land and then deflected. He got out of the way.
Imagine this: God says, “I am going to give you a child, your child by Sarah,” and he goes into Egypt. The first thing he does is become willing to give his wife away. I do not know about you—I am not too scientific—but I believe he gave away half of the equation for having that son.
But God stepped in. You know what He did? He used it for the perfecting of Sarah’s faith. That is why all you sisters model yourselves after Sarah. You say, “Yes, Lord, dear husband,” and all that kind of stuff is because of Sarah.
Then Abraham deflected again when they decided to take matters into their own hands with Hagar. He deflected to the world’s way; then he deflected to his own fleshly way to try to gain this thing.
They had Ishmael in the process, and God says, “You know what? I will use Ishmael.” Every time Israel gets out of line, the Lebanese are going to throw missiles over into Israel. To this day, Ishmael is being used as a discipline tool whenever Jacob goes awry. God uses that, you know. Amen.
All right, then how about Isaac? Do you know why Isaac should be disqualified? I am serious. You might think Isaac was a nice guy who never did anything wrong. He did something terribly wrong. You know what it was? He preferred Esau over Jacob.
Could you imagine raising a kid saying, “I like Esau. I do not like you, Jacob. I like you because you are a hunter. So you take sewing. Go ahead, talk to your mother.”
This is a man of God, disqualified for two reasons. Number one, he was prejudicial in the first place. Number two, he did not have eyes to see who was the spiritual child and who was the worldly child, and he preferred the worldly child.
But God overturned him. Read that story closely. After Jacob snuck in wearing the hairy clothes and everything, he ran out, and Isaac realized what had been done to him. He shook violently.
Why? Because he was mad at Jacob? No, because he knew he had been had by God.
Indeed, I have blessed Jacob, and he will be blessed.
“This is what God is doing. He overruled me.”
Sometimes the things we do to our kids should disqualify us. Sometimes our anger ruins our Christian kids. Sometimes our laxity ruins our kids. We should all be disqualified, and I will start with myself.
How the Lord is going to overturn all the damage we have done is unbelievable. But if we cannot humble ourselves concerning this matter of deserving disqualification, we do not understand what has been going on in our lives.
We have made mistakes, done terrible things, and have not gotten to the end the Lord desired for us. But you know something? The Lord is overturning stuff.
Then consider Joseph’s life: all that family discord, all the preference. Here is Jacob, who was not preferred by his father, and now here is Jacob preferring his son. I do not get it.
It caused all kinds of discord, the hatred of the brothers, and everything. The Lord overturned that whole thing and used all that hatred and all that family turmoil to do two things: to save the family through Joseph, and to bring the other brothers out of carnality into a spiritual relationship.
What an overturn. I do not know anybody who can do that. Do you know any psychiatrists who can do that? Turn our mess into triumph?
Well, that is the God we come to know. That is the God to whom we become attached, the God in whom we hope and trust and pray—our merciful God, who understands our weakness, puts up with us, overturns our problems, and helps us in our weakness.
This is the God we come to know by going on this sojourn in the way.
The last thing is simple. In the sojourn, number seven, He produces a unique testimony in every one of us.
It is wonderful to know that each of us has a sojourn set before us, tailor-made by God to bring us to some unique testimony.
This testimony always involves two elements. You know the Scripture in 2 Corinthians where Paul says, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” Here is the wonderful thing about the testimony.
Two things happen through the sojourn. First, the testimony of the treasure and the vessel are united in one. You can see it in Paul. He was united with Christ. The vessel and the treasure are one.
On the other hand, there has been an absolute clarification of the difference between the treasure and the vessel. That may be hard to understand, but God does it.
Our testimony is only, and can only be, that we have come into a union life with this merciful God, and somehow God shines through us.
But because of our history and our life, the difference between this earthen vessel and that heavenly treasure is very clear. There is no saying, “I become God.” No, everybody can see the difference.
These are the vital lessons we learn on the sojourn. But the more essential question is: are you on a sojourn with the Lord?
Some of you are, and you do not even know you are. It is not as though the sojourn is something that cannot take a lifetime.
If anybody gets on the sojourn, they probably get out of the way at one time or another, like Abraham did. Maybe you are out of the way. Maybe you need to come back.
The way to come back is to go to a lonely place and say to the Lord, “Lord, I have seen You, and I have seen the end, and I do not know how to get there. I do not know how to bring the children there.”
“Lord, You say they are Your people. I say they are Your people. We have got to work this thing out.”
Brothers and sisters, we are responsible to get to that end, but we need to know the way. It needs to be clarified before us, and we cannot sit around and say, “Somehow.”
God has a worked-out process if we are willing to bear the cross that gets us to the end. Oh, may the Lord help us. He is teaching us of His ways, and His way is found in the sojourn.
Father, we come to You. Father, You are the One who has known all of our lives even before we were saved. Then, on the road, You presented our Lord Jesus to us, and we found salvation.
Because You were so gracious to us, You filled our cups with blessings and with the Word of God. At some point, we had a heavenly vision of our Lord, of His purpose, and of our end.
Since that time, O Lord, You have set us out on a sojourn. It is a humbling sojourn. We learn it is all of You and not of us. We see how feeble and frail we really are.
But Lord, tonight we do not want to make that an excuse for passivity, an excuse to abdicate, or an excuse for irresponsibility.
Rather, find us willing to be placed through the work of Your cross in that intercessory position that Moses was in, as he stood between You and the children and they went on to the promised land.
O Lord, in this day, how we give You thanks for the hundreds of millions who are being saved around the world. We feel, in some measure, that it is incumbent upon us to pray for them, to stand in the gap, and to be part of seeing all these, Your dear children, come into maturity and fullness, holiness and purity, spotless and blameless.
You have called into Your great work men and women willing to go on this great, great sojourn.
Thank You, Lord, that You teach us the ways of life in the experiment of our life. Prove our faith and lead us on, and cause us to come to that end by Your miraculous way.
Take our footsteps and make them into a way, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.