Okay, well, welcome here this afternoon. This is the session for young people, so I am glad all you young people are here today.
How many of you were here—not here, but in LA—last year when we did afternoon seminars or workshops? Okay. Well then, this should be pretty interesting.
Let us begin with a Scripture from Galatians 6. Our brother Lance read this Scripture last night: Galatians 6:14.
For Paul, as he writes this letter regarding the gospel, he explains throughout this gospel the central significance of the cross. Here, as a personal testimony, Paul says:
But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world has been crucified to me,
and I to the world.
Paul is testifying to a profound experience and a transforming process in his life. We want to have a prayer this afternoon, not only that we could understand the words being spoken this weekend by our brothers in the main ministry time, but that the Lord could begin to do these things in our lives.
Our Father, we come to You in the name of our Lord Jesus, Who went before us in every way. He showed us the way; He was the way. And He went the way of the cross to open the new and living way for us.
Thank You, Lord, as we gather together today. Already we have had instruction regarding this matter of the cross as it relates to the world and the law and other such things. Now, Lord, we ask that, in a simple way, You could make practical—or make intelligent in our lives—this work of the cross.
Because, as believers, every one of us has had a glimpse of this working in our lives. Help us to realize what is going on and to submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that Your work might be fully done in us and we may come on the other side in fullness and in life.
We want to give You this time, Lord, and depend upon the Holy Spirit. As we share together, as we use these various electronic things, help us, Lord. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Last year we began this series. We studied what I am calling the primary elements of cruciology—the study of the cross—and we answered five riddles. You remember the riddles, those of you who were here?
These were some of the riddles that we took up, and we talked about the cross in its most elementary aspects. That is, the identity crisis. We who come from the world are suddenly brought to bear with a whole new creation and a whole new crisis. Through baptism, witness, and testimony, we begin to stand in the new creation that we are.
Then we come to a crisis of ability, because as Christians we start to strive and carry on, but we find ourselves coming up short. We find that we are not able to live the Christian life, and we come to that crisis where we understand Christ as our life.
The third time, we talked about the crisis of sacrifice, where our lives have been saved by grace and blessed, but the Lord calls upon us to sacrifice—to take up our cross and follow Him. This becomes a crisis in a life, especially in a culture that thinks that life has no sacrifice to it and should be all prosperity.
These are the things we looked at last year. But this year we enter into intermediate cruciology, as I am calling it: the cross as a perfecting process.
I am going to share in these three days from the lives of the patriarchs, because I was studying the lives of the patriarchs all spring, and they spoke to me in my own life. I want to share some very simple things in these three times—things instructing us through the patriarchs.
Now, you know who the patriarchs are, right? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. We are going to be looking at some of those lives over these next couple of days.
First, our first part is “Sojourning to Fullness.” There is a word in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis, and it is used throughout the Old Testament. We are going to have to look at it and try to define it: this word sojourning. What does it mean, and how does it pertain to the cross?
We find out that the Lord gets us on a sojourn—a walk through life, if you will. In the process of that walk, we experience the cross’s effect upon our lives. So we are going to look at this sojourning to fullness in part one.
Now, there is corruption in this world. Our brother shared about it last night. This world is winding down. This world is passing away. Things are rusting up.
This world one day will be transformed by fire into an eternal world: the new heavens and the new earth. So everything is winding down. The more we participate in the world, the more we will sense this corrupting frustration and futility in our lives.
You know, any business you start corrupts. Any relationship you get into corrupts. There is a corrupting process that is inevitable. Every civilization corrupts; every country and nation corrupts. Corruptibility is within the very fabric of nature and creation.
Everything—from sin, love, pleasure, health, and purpose—has a shorter and shorter shelf life, because the old order is dying away. People get frustrated. They make great plans, hoping for a great future and a happy way, yet they meet corruptibility. Their own health breaks down. The financial situation breaks down. Everybody who is trying to attain some worldly goal comes to the end of life quite bitter, because you come up short all the time.
Paul says in Romans 8 that:
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him Who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption
into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
All of creation is waiting to be set free from this corruption. But there is a key to it: the corruption will only stop when the sons of God are perfected. That is what creation has to wait for.
For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
And not only this, but we also ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit,
even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,
the redemption of our body.
Here Paul is talking about the complete redemption—body, soul, and spirit—that will set creation free and bring it into the purpose that God intended for every particle of this wonderful world.
Right now, there are two things going on. There is a corrupting process, and those who have come to the cross and into the new creation experience a filling of life, a gaining of life. Even while there is corruption in the world, there is a new life coming to the fore.
There is a perfecting and filling process going on in the new creation. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away—that corrupting thing has passed away. As we come through the process of the cross, we find that there is a life in us, an uncreated life in us. There is a filling of life.
So the old is passing away, and the new is coming into me. This filling of the new creation involves everything. It proceeds from the heavenly overflow of resurrection life from the Lord down to the new creation.
You notice in Ephesians 4:11-13 that it speaks of apostles, prophets, preparing God’s people, works of service, building up the body, unity, maturity, and the fullness of Christ. But the most important thing in the process is verse 10, which is often left out:
He Who descended is the very One Who ascended higher than all the heavens,
in order to fill the whole universe.
Our Lord, ascended and enthroned on high, is the One Who fills everything and enables apostles and prophets to help God’s people and bring about this fullness of Christ. There is a filling of the new creation that includes very much what is going on in the church today, as God brings the church to maturity by this pouring out from the Lord Jesus, that He might fill the whole universe.
But the key process of the new creation is the work of the cross and resurrection. That is the way that you and I, as those who have been redeemed, are transformed from the old creation and experience the new creation and fullness of Christ.
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death,
certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.
This is the process that now effectually works in our lives, bringing us through into the new creation. The work of the cross removes all that is corruptible in us.
As we go on the sojourn of our lives, we should not be surprised when we experience a decreasing process, an emptying process, a frustrating process, because we must decrease.
Do not love the things in the world.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life,
is passing away, and also its lust;
but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
Not only is there a decreasing process, but there is the power of resurrection life transforming man into the image of Christ. Philippians says:
That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection,
in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
But you notice what I left out: “the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death.” So there is a death process and a resurrecting process. It is all part of our sojourn in this life.
The cross, therefore, is the initial phase of man’s perfecting. As the Lord brings us down in a decrease, the increase is a response of His life on the other side. We do not have to worry about how to get hold of resurrection life. We need simply to be willing to allow those things to die in our lives which the Lord is mortifying by the work of the Spirit.
Being in the new creation will always involve both a dying and a quickening, with incremental glorification—or, as Scripture says, “from glory to glory.”
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
There we are, looking at the Lord—our crucified, buried, and resurrected Lord—and, in the process, we are also being transformed into His very likeness.
The practical outworking of the cross is accomplished in our sojourn. The cross’s work is not theoretical, nor is it some mystical experience. It works as we walk by faith.
You know, many of you go to assemblies where you hear a lot about the cross and the work of the cross. Sometimes it almost sounds like theory—some kind of mental gymnastic process we have to be involved in, or some secret understanding of how things work. It is not that.
We experience the cross in our life as we journey in the sojourn. It is not theoretical, and the cross is not a mystical experience where we come through an experience and say, “Oh, I have been crucified.” We may see the revelation of it, but it has to be worked out. That is what the sojourn is all about: the working out of these things.
What is sojourning? Let us take some simple definitions. It is a journey—you notice the word journey in sojourning. But it is specifically a journey away from what was once home.
When Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were sojourning, they had left their home. That is the first thing about it. It is a settling in various places that are not your home.
Abraham sojourned in the land of Canaan. He settled in Beersheba, Shechem, and Bethel. He went different places and stayed there. But even when he settled or dwelt there, as Scripture sometimes translates it, they were still sojourning because they did not own the land. They were, as it were, passing through.
The Hebrew word gur does not always translate as “sojourn.” Sometimes you will read that they journeyed, dwelt, stayed, or lived. Sojourners are also called strangers or pilgrims. But it is all the same word: sojourn. There is a specific picture in this matter of the sojourn.
Simply defined, it describes the experience of the patriarchs as they walked through the land of the Middle East. It also describes the experience of Israel as a nation.
The Bible specifically mentions three places where Israel sojourned: Egypt, Babylon, and the Diaspora. The Diaspora describes what happened after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, when the Jews were dispersed throughout the known world and are considered dispersed even to this day by many.
If Israel is their home and they are not home, then they are in a place that is not their own. They are on a sojourn. According to Paul, the nation is presently on a sojourn of discipline because of its rejection of the Messiah.
Sojourning is also used in the Bible to describe the life of a Christian. In 1 Peter 1:1, Peter writes to dispersed Jews who had become Christians:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens,
scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.
Then, in 1 Peter 1:17, Peter says:
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 stay on earth.
And again, in 1 Peter 2:11:
Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers
to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.
Now, I do not know how you feel about this. You are a Christian. Maybe you feel quite comfortable in this world. But the proper understanding is that you are a sojourner. This is not your home. You do not own this. You are walking through; you are on a journey; you are discovering things.
How do you feel about it? Are you a settler? Are you a pilgrim, a sojourner, or somebody who just tries to feel at home wherever you are? It is a spiritual sojourning, of course, that Peter is talking about.
By looking at the patriarchs, we are going to mention seven vital principles in our present walk with the Lord unto perfection. The Lord used this sojourn to perfect Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You learn in the sojourn.
We are called out of what we once thought was home to a journey according to His purpose.
Spiritually speaking, this happens the moment you are saved. But for many young people, you are still living at home or going to college, and you are not really on that sojourn yet. You are still sort of in a hothouse environment. You are going to church, but you are not walking on your own, as it were; you are in your parents’ care.
Spiritually speaking, you have already begun the sojourn, so you will understand some of your experiences according to the principles of the sojourn. But at some point the Lord, as it were, says, “It is time to leave home on this adventure that I have called you to.”
In Genesis 17:8, the Lord says to Abraham:
I will give to you and to your descendants after you
the land of your sojournings,
all the land of Canaan,
for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.
Abraham’s sojourn was in Canaan. That was not his home. His home was Ur of the Chaldeans. He went up along the Tigris-Euphrates River to Haran, where he lived for a while, and then came down into Canaan. Now he was sojourning in Canaan. He did not own any property. He did not know anybody there. He was walking there, based on the command of God. He was away from home.
Isaac also sojourned. Genesis 26:1-3 says:
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.
The Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you.
Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and bless you.”
Poor old Isaac was so happy living at Beer-lahai-roi. He was having a wonderful time with the Lord and with his wife. Then a famine came up, and he had to leave his ideal little place. He went on this journey into Philistine territory. But it was on this sojourn that Isaac was perfected as the son of Abraham.
Jacob sojourned during his time in Paddan-aram. As he instructed his servants concerning Esau, he said:
Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: “Thus says your servant Jacob,
‘I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed until now.’”
Jacob wandered up into Paddan-aram, where he obtained his children, his wives, and whatever you call those other ones. This was considered his sojourn, and then he talked about returning. Technically, the sojourn was the time he was away from home.
Jacob felt at home in Canaan land, but he was sent out to Paddan-aram. Yet spiritually, Jacob testified to Pharaoh that his whole life was his sojourn:
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.
Jacob looked back through his one hundred and thirty years and saw that he had had a difficult sojourn. In his own estimation, his sojourn had not attained to the level of Abraham and Isaac. He was simply telling Pharaoh the facts.
The sojourn is different from wandering. It is possible, I suppose, in the strict sense, for a Christian to wander. It is interesting that Israel’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness are never referred to as their sojourn, because sojourn has a purpose to it. It is God moving according to purpose. It is not just circling around and going nowhere.
Are you just circling around and around and going nowhere, or is there some progress in your life? Are you on a sojourn according to purpose? We will see how that develops. It is not like we understand all of it, but the sojourn is not wandering.
By being called out of our home, we are cast completely on the Lord for protection and help. Once you get dislodged from your little comfort nest, you find yourself really seeking the Lord and praying for protection, help, and all those things along the journey.
As we sojourn, we discover that the Lord is our dwelling place. Even while we do not have a home, the Lord is our dwelling place. Some of you will have jobs and travel around all the time. Somewhere along that line, you need to discover that the Lord is your dwelling place.
Wherever you settle your tent, you immediately open your Bible and have devotion, whether you are in Pittsburgh, LA, or wherever you are, because the Lord is my dwelling place. Is that not marvelous?
Moses said:
Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Moses had been trailing around here and there. He spent time in Midian, Egypt, and the wilderness. Yet what he said was, “O Lord, You have been our dwelling place.” That is one of the things we realize as we go through the sojourn.
On the other side, we realize that the world is not our home. We have been lied to so much by the enemy, especially young people. You may feel quite at home in the world, studying and going to school to prepare for some job or career. Perhaps things seem quite at home right now.
But when you really get on your sojourn, you will start to see that this world is not your home. That is not just a sentimental spiritual thing. It is a reality that you discover, and it sets you free.
C. S. Lewis said:
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,
a bathe, 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.
When we find ourselves on the sojourn, complete satisfaction will elude us, and complete safety will elude us. But in the sojourn He allows us many wonderful blessings along the way, even as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob learned.
Whatever the circumstances that start us on our sojourn, the Lord arranges to meet us at the crossroads.
We start out, and the Lord meets us. That is when we really come to know the Lord: when we meet Him out there as we are walking through this life.
I like this little Scripture from the King James Version. It is the testimony of Eleazar, Abraham’s servant, as he explains how God led him to find a wife for Isaac:
I being in the way, the Lord led me.
The sojourn is what gets us in the way. If we are just sitting still, going nowhere, doing nothing, there is no way the Lord can lead us. But the servant went out. How did he know exactly how to find a wife for Isaac? It was an impossible task.
But by the faith of Abraham and with his own faith, he just stepped out. He got down the road, and the next thing you know, the Lord began to lead him. “I being in the way, the Lord led me.”
There were different reasons the patriarchs began their sojourns. Abraham began because of a revelation from God:
The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran,
and said unto him, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred,
and come into the land which I shall show thee.”
That is what started Abraham out. Truly, for all of us, that is when we start our sojourn: when we see a revelation of Jesus Christ and come to Him, saying, “Okay, Lord, I am going to follow You. You are my Savior; You are my Lord.” In one sense, the Lord begins preparing a sojourn tailor-made for you.
What started Isaac’s sojourn? He had his little happy family nest, way out of the way. Everything was peachy creamy until the famine came, and he had to leave. A famine pushed Isaac out into Gerar, and there his life began to be challenged and take on fullness.
What about Jacob? Jacob was a homeboy. He liked to stay at home. He liked his mama’s cooking. He was even learning how to make stew himself. But he had to leave.
When the words of her elder son Esau were reported to Rebekah, she sent and called her younger son Jacob, and said to him,
“Behold, your brother Esau is consoling himself concerning you by planning to kill you.
Now therefore, my son, obey my voice, and arise, flee to Haran, to my brother Laban.”
How did Jacob’s sojourn begin? He had to run away. He was a fugitive—probably not like most of you. Whatever the circumstance is, the sojourn begins, and the lessons begin to be learned.
We start out escaping, because of a famine, or under a revelation. We get a little way down the road, and the Lord meets us at the crossroads. It is because the Lord wants to meet us at the crossroads. It is His delight. It is His good pleasure.
Maybe you and I would be satisfied knowing the Lord only as our Savior, remaining in our nice little nest. But He wants to prove to you that He is the Lord of life. So there you get out on the way, and the Lord meets you.
According to G. Campbell Morgan, Abraham had seven divine encounters on his sojourn, including Genesis 22, when he offered Isaac. Isaac had six divine encounters on his sojourn, including that same time. Jacob had five divine encounters on his sojourn. So it works out: seven, six, five.
We all talk about Abraham’s encounter with God when Isaac was offered, but I think Isaac was happy to know that the Lord was Jehovah-jireh as well. Abraham was happy to find the ram, but Isaac never forgot that day.
Isaac had been daddy’s boy. He went everywhere with daddy—ball games, soccer games, piano lessons, polishing the car—and then he went to the altar with his dad. Oh, boy. But he had a sojourn, and it began that day when he could say, “Boy, I saw God and I lived. I am going to remember that day.”
The Lord’s grace met Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were just sinners. They used to be idol worshipers. They were superstitious. They subscribed to some of the religion of the land. They were learning to set up altars and worship the Lord, but many things were not perfect by any means.
Yet the Lord decided to meet them. The Lord gets you on your sojourn because He wants to reveal Himself to you.
The sojourner comes to the crossroads of divine self-revelation. God meets the sojourner in loneliness and fear. Often that is why I call it the crossroads: it is a crisis in a person’s life, where they are alone, afraid, and do not know what to do. That is when you meet God on your own.
He is no longer merely the God of your parents or the God of the man who speaks on Sunday. You meet God, just like Jacob met God when he saw the ladder ascending and descending from heaven. He met the living God on his sojourn.
The God of purpose arranges the circumstances that push the believer out of the nest, and then He spreads His wings to catch him. Why does the Lord want to reveal Himself to you? Well, He has plans of capture. That is the best way I know how to put it. He wants more of you than what you have given.
Moses gives us this beautiful poetic prophecy:
He found him in a desert land,
and in the howling waste of a wilderness;
He encircled him, He cared for him,
He guarded him as the pupil of His eye.Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
that hovers over its young,
He spread His wings and caught them,
and carried them on His feathers.
That is an amazing phenomenon. Those who study eagles say this is what mama eagle does. The baby eagle sits in the nest, opening its mouth all day long, just sucking in worms. But there comes a point where mama eagle starts hovering over the nest, saying, “Look, look at my wings.”
Then one day mama eagle starts picking apart the nest. What a terrible mama! The next thing you know, she shoves the little eaglet out of the nest, and the eagle goes down like a rock because it has not caught on that it has wings too.
Of course, mama swoops down and catches it, brings it up, and lets it fall again. After a while, the little eagle begins to see that there is some kind of thing going on here.
God not only meets the sojourner in the way; He begins to carry the sojourner into His way. You can start out almost from any point. It is like one of those hedge mazes. It makes no difference where you start out in the maze—God is going to meet you in the middle somewhere.
There is a transition. What started out as your way begins to move into His way. This process takes a while, because you and I are pretty set about our way. Once you get an MBA, basically you think you have to do business. You head out to do business, then the Lord takes you on the way, and the next thing you know you are fixing computers.
The Lord begins to open up His way for you:
Righteousness will go before Him
and will make His footsteps into a way.
Whatever way you started going, the Lord catches you and begins to draw you according to His purpose. He has a large purpose: the exaltation of His Son and the completion of His bride. He has a big purpose, and He needs you and me in that thing. But He has to circle us, catch us, and begin to lead us in His living and wonderful way.
When did my way become His way? I cannot tell the hour.
It was a fearsome transfer from my weakness to His power.
Faith is tested and proven on the sojourn.
All the patriarchs were tested. All Christians are tested out on the sojourn. How much faith do you have? You may think you have a lot; you may not think you have much. But on the way, He proves to you the faith you have.
The patriarchs’ faith was discovered in the sojourn. Abraham did not know that he had faith in God until God revealed Himself and he stepped out. In the sojourn, Abraham began to discover faith.
Abraham’s obedience of faith was tested and proven:
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed;
and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
That is a mighty big step of faith. It must have been the size of the revelation of God that gave him courage to step out at such an age, take his family, and begin moving toward a place he had never been before.
As Abraham sojourned, the faith within him kept growing and focusing on a heavenly home. Where did this notion of finding a city whose builder and maker is God enter into his life? As Abraham sojourned with the Lord, something was lifted above this earth, and he began to desire a heavenly way.
By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles;
for he looked for a city which hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.
How did Abraham’s faith grow? He learned faith in the sojourn as he walked along. He began to see God and heavenly things, only vaguely, and he began to desire those things which he knew came from God.
Isaac’s abiding faith in God’s promise was tested through famine. God said, “Stay right here, and I will be with you.” Here is what happened:
Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold.
And the Lord blessed him, and the man became rich and continued to grow richer
until he became very wealthy;
so that the Philistines envied him.
Isaac stepped out of his comfort zone, went to Gerar, planted, sowed, and God blessed him a hundredfold. Along the way, his faith was proven and tested.
Isaac’s persevering faith was tested when the Philistines persecuted him. He began digging the wells of Abraham, but the Philistines had stopped them up with earth. Isaac would dig a well and find water for his sheep, and the Philistines would come and say, “That is ours.”
What did he do? He persevered. He went a little further and dug another well. Boom, up came the water again. It was a miracle that he was finding water out there in a time of famine. Every place he picked turned out to be like gold. Boom, here comes the water. Then the shepherds would come and say, “Now this is ours.”
They kept persecuting him, but he persevered and went further out, further out, and further out. Finally, when he got to Beersheba, he was left alone.
Jacob’s self-confident faith was tested in his sojourning with Laban. Jacob grabbed blessings and did whatever he thought he should do. He knew God was blessing, but his time with Laban was difficult.
Jacob testified:
If the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had not been for me,
surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed.
But God has seen my affliction.
His faith was tested there, even in his sojourn. But when Jacob wrestled with God, he found wrestling faith. His face was transformed into that of a victorious, limping prince.
The angel said:
Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel;
for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.
Jacob learned the vital lesson of faith. He wrestled with God, and as he did, his faith was proven and developed. He was now a prince, even if a limping prince.
Faith is proven in your sojourn and in my sojourn. We may say, “Oh, I do not know. Do I have faith? I do not have much faith. I do not have Abraham faith.” But you start walking in the way, and you find something: the Lord has given you faith.
The world tolerates beliefs and dogma: “I believe in this; I believe in that.” But if you have a faith that works in life while you are walking, that is something the world is envious of. The more one presses on the upward way, the more the world just wants to settle.
The sojourner is not aware of great faith within himself. He simply faithfully obeys each step of the way. That is how faith grows. You see the Lord at one crossroads, you obey what He says, and He takes you to the next one.
You are no great person of faith, but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob became known as men of real living faith because they met God out there on the sojourn. They wrestled, abided, and persevered in all of these things on the way.
The sojourn teaches us the true nature of blessing.
That is part of the reason you are out on the sojourn. The Lord wants to show you His blessing. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob learned these things.
Abraham was progressively captured by the God of grace and promise—the God who promised him, showed him mercy and grace, and covenanted of His own free will: “I will bless you, make you a nation, protect you from the enemy, and give you a land and inheritance.”
Every time Abraham had another experience with God along the way, his desires became more heavenly. He did not desire Sodom like Lot. Eventually, the earthly blessings Abraham gained set his face toward a city where God dwells.
This is the proper response to blessing. Abraham was blessed. When he went out to war, he gained the victory. The Lord provided for him. He was greatly blessed by God, but his response was to worship the Blesser, pursue the Blesser, and want to be where God dwells.
That is what it means to look for a city where God is the founder: to live with God. This became more and more Abraham’s pleasure, because he had learned the lesson of the sojourn.
The presence of God is your blessing. It is not your blessings. The presence of God is your blessing. When He is with you, you are doubly blessed. When He is not with you, even your blessings can become a curse.
When Abraham walked at the end of his days, he walked like a king. People feared, respected, and revered him wherever he walked, though he did not have a plot of land except the sepulchre for his wife. The presence of God made him that way.
Isaac inherited riches. Abraham gave everything to Isaac, except for a few things he gave to his other children. But even though Isaac was incredibly rich, riches can be a burden.
“How do I keep this? How do I keep it from the enemy? I have to find water for all these sheep and animals. Oh man, this is tough.” It is tough having a lot of money. You have to worry night and day and watch the stock reports all the time. Isaac discovered that blessings could be a burden.
But at Beersheba, after digging those wells, Isaac sensed the blessing of God’s presence. When he returned to Canaan and got to Beersheba, Abimelech came to him and said, “We are not going to touch you anymore, because we fear you. We know God is with you.”
Isaac realized that God’s presence was what kept all these blessings, and he blessed the Lord there. The lesson he learned was this: blessing involves being in the right place to enjoy it.
Some people have many blessings, but they are in the wrong place—not where God wants them. Because they are in Philistia or somewhere else, they are hassled rather than blessed. It is such a blessing to be in the presence of God where He wants us to be. We learn that on the sojourn.
Jacob discovered that when you grab blessings, you cannot enjoy them. He grabbed the right of the firstborn and the blessing of his father, and what did he get for it? A train ticket to Paddan-aram. He had to run away.
He went to Paddan-aram and grabbed Rachel, but he got Leah—the trick of his father-in-law. Every time he grabbed something, it was tough.
Finally, Jacob came to the wrestling match at Peniel. His blessing came when he let go of all that stuff and grabbed hold of God. That was the best thing he ever did in his life.
He let go of his wife, his kids, and himself, for that matter. He held on to God and said, “I do not care. Cripple me; I am holding on to You till You bless me.”
At the end of his life, who did Jacob become? At the beginning, he was the grabber. At the end, he was the blesser. Here he is blessing Pharaoh. Jacob, the old man, is blessing Pharaoh. He has everything to give.
Why is Jacob no longer a grabber but a giver? Because he got hold of God—the eternal resources and life of God. Something magnanimous and large developed in Jacob. He became a giver. This was his purpose in life.
In our blessed sojourn, we learn these things too. The sojourner eventually sees beyond the blessings to the Blessed One. We see beyond all those things and see Who is behind the scenes, leading us on the sojourn.
Spiritual blessings in Christ become our riches and character enlargers. What enlarged Abraham? What enlarged Jacob from that mean little grabber to that big patriarch of a family of twelve and a blesser? That enlargement comes by the very presence of God discovered in the sojourn.
Both the place of blessing and the presence of the Blesser are discovered and coveted through the sojourn. The longer you walk, the more you discover the absolute importance of the presence of God.
I think we speak cheaply about the presence of God these days, as if He comes into every meeting we have. In one sense, He is gracious to us, but you know what? He does not come in all the time. But when the conditions are right, His presence is upon us, and we are in the house of God where He wants us to be—there is no greater place.
Leviticus 25:23 is an interesting verse:
The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine;
for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me.
Even when Israel entered the promised land, they had to remember that they were still sojourners. The promised land is a land of rest, but it is resting in His land, not taking hold of ours. They had to possess the possessions and yet realize the possessions were His.
The second thing God reveals is that God Himself was a sojourner, sojourning with them through the land. God’s purpose was not merely the geography of Canaan. God was walking with His children through the sojourn of their lives.
In the sojourn, one discovers utter weakness and fleshly resistance.
When you are walking and walking and walking with the Lord, you may think you are some kind of a big deal, but eventually you will be stripped down to size. We start to see our failures; they are all too evident. We start to see our weaknesses; they are all too true.
But in that very emptying we go through, on the resurrection side, one learns to lean on His life and not our life. The more you see the emptiness and futility of your life, the more you start to lean on His life.
In the sojourn, one realizes that complicated thoughts and actions make you an unprofitable liability to the Lord. One of the things about smart people is that they are too complicated.
One of the great blessings—or great humiliations—I have is when I go to Russia and deal with simple people. They just have faith. They believe God can do things, and He does them. We are all so complicated. We have to go through hoops.
For us to do something, we have to go through a Rubik’s Cube kind of thing. “Well, what about this? What about that?” There are all kinds of complicated thoughts and actions. “First I have to do that. Then I have to do that. Then, after I graduate, I am going here and there.” It makes us unprofitable to the Lord.
But on the resurrection side, we begin to choose a simpler life. Once you go on the sojourn, you realize how complicated you are and how unprofitable you are to the Lord. He has to wait and wait and wait. That is what happened because we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have been complicated ever since.
Third, our sins reveal sin reigning in our life. First, it is just our sins. We try to overcome them, but sooner or later we realize we have a problem called sin—singular. It is a force within us that drives us down, continually frustrates us, and brings corruption about even in our good intentions.
But on the other side, during the sojourn, we learn how to lay hold of that exchanged life, where we know we are crucified with Christ, yet we live by His life. We have to go through that process.
On the sojourn, we deliberately go with the situations and get tripped up in our own sins. The Lord is trying to deliver us from our own self-effort and self-sanctification.
Abraham realized just how good as dead he was concerning the promises. Abraham had the promise that he was going to have a child. He and Sarah were as good as dead. They could not do anything about it, but they thought they could do something about it.
So they tried the Hagar scheme and all this kind of business. They learned, “You know what? We are as good as dead.” In the sojourn, Abraham came to the place where he had to believe that God was able to give him a child through Sarah. The whole thing of his own self-effort had to die.
Isaac’s sojourn began at death on Moriah. Imagine your life with God beginning with a knife over your head, and you barely escape. Throughout his life, Isaac did not pick out his wife; the Lord picked her out. He wanted to bless Esau, but Jacob got the blessing.
Isaac discovered that his life was not being determined by him. There was a deeper process, and he had to live in trust. Yet through the cross’s decrease, the patriarchs sensed the increasing life of God within them, rich with blessings and purpose.
Do not forget that at the same time you sense the decrease in your life—the deadness, inability, and failure of your life—you also sense the great grace of God, purpose, and blessing.
Jacob sensed the cross upon all that he touched in his sojourn. His early life was strife with the family. The middle of his life was conflict with Laban. The end of his life was struggle with God. What a life.
No wonder he said, “The years of my sojournings are one hundred and thirty; few and unpleasant have been the years of my life.” If there was anybody complicated, it was Jacob. His complications caused strife in the family and problems through the years. His prejudice caused problems with his own children—one thing after another.
Jacob acknowledged, “Everything I tried to touch, the cross came upon. Problems came up. What started out as a blessing became a problem.”
Yet at the same time Jacob sensed his own nothingness and the blessed presence of God throughout his sojourn. As he blessed Joseph’s sons, he said:
The God before Whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God Who has been my shepherd all my life to this day,
the Angel Who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.
Jacob recognized that the God of Abraham and Isaac had been with him all through his life. God had been his Shepherd, even when he seemed to be astray in Paddan-aram or in Shechem when he should have been in Bethel. Still, God was his Shepherd. The Angel who wrestled with him at Peniel guided and protected him all through his life according to God’s promise.
The model of the sojourn as the way of the cross is seen in the Lord Jesus. Luke picks up this model. From Luke 9:52 right through until Jesus comes to Jerusalem, we get the sense of the sojourn of Jesus’ life.
He set His face toward Jerusalem. People began to reject Him because He had His face set for Jerusalem. Everywhere He went, He was passing through on His way to His purpose. He was on a sojourn. He had an end in view.
All the stops in Jericho and various places during the last six months of His life were along the way. During that time, Jesus found no home on earth, nor among His own people, except at Bethany—in the intimacy of the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
The way of the cross perfects. Through the humiliation and emptying of self-confidence and pride comes a deep confidence in the grace of God. It is not that these men became perfect in character, but they learned to live by the life of God.
This is what perfecting means in the cross: we lay hold of the life of God as our life. The measure of perfection is how completely one abides in Christ.
Of course, He wants to develop godly character in us and establish corporately the measure of the fullness of Christ through the work of the cross. But this perfecting is not something we attain permanently in our lives so much as we find ourselves permanently holding on to our Lord, Who has become everything to us.
The sojourn is the way one comes to really know the Lord. We said the Lord meets us at the crossroads. We meet Him along the way, but those are revelations. Experientially, we come to know the Lord as we walk with Him.
How well do you know the Lord? You have been saved. You are studying the Word. God reveals Himself to you. You have gone through a few crossroads in your sojourn, and you have met the Lord here and there. But the Lord wants to walk with you until you really come to know Him and trust Him by experience.
John mentions that little children know God as Father, but the fathers know Him Who is from the beginning. The fathers have been walking with the Lord, walking with the Lord, and coming to know Him in their experience.
When we say we know the Lord, we come to understand the Lord through whatever revelations we have seen along the way: the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, the love of God, and the power of God. But as we walk with the Lord in our sojourn, here is the God we discover: the God of all mercies.
There is a twofold process that enables us to understand and really know God in His love and mercy. On the one hand, one comes to the end of himself in failure and disqualification.
Once you have walked long enough, there is plenty of reason to be disqualified from walking with God. You see that you are not perfect, not even faithful, not profitable. You have been walking with the Lord, and you see how often you have come up short.
But at the very same time, this is what absolutely grabs us: we see the mercy of God. We realize that a forgiving God not only knew our failures, but somehow put these into His overruling plans and accomplished His purposes through them.
That is an all-wise, merciful God. Not only did He know we would make mistakes and fail, but He even programmed them into His purpose and plan, turned them about, and caused something good to happen.
Consider Abraham’s deflections from faith. When he said of Sarah, “She is my sister,” where was Abraham the great man of faith? He was saving his skin. Yet God used that to perfect Sarah in total and perfect submission.
What about Ishmael? God used Ishmael to discipline Israel. God uses everything. It comes back in some effective way.
Isaac’s blatant preference for Esau was overruled by God, Who looks at the heart. God saw that Esau had no care for the things of God, while Jacob did. God chose to bless Jacob.
When Isaac realized he had been tricked by Jacob, he trembled violently and said:
Who was he then that hunted game and brought it to me,
so that I ate of all of it before you came, and blessed him?
Yes, and he shall be blessed.
That was a wake-up call for Isaac. Isaac’s prejudice had been overruled by the purpose of God. Through Rebekah and Jacob, however crazy the situation was, God obtained His purpose.
Jacob saw God’s overruling hand. As he looked back over his complicated, difficult life, he could have said, “That is not the way I would recommend anybody do it—having four women and twelve sons all fighting each other.” But the fact of the matter is, God needed twelve children.
God needed those four women to provide those twelve children. If Jacob had had his way and married only Rachel, she would have had two kids, and there would have been two tribes of Israel in the promised land. It was no good.
Even there in Paddan-aram, when all the trickery and hard work were going on, God was fulfilling His plan. The twelve tribes happened.
Even a man as sinful as Paul could see God’s overruling mercy:
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good
to those who love God,
to those who are called according to His purpose.
God took even the things Paul had done in his fanaticism and used them for good. God is an all-wise God.
The final principle is very simple: the result of the sojourn is that a unique testimony is established in every sojourner’s life.
Each one has his own experience of God. Is that not wonderful? The wonderful thing about being among God’s family is that everybody has their own experience with God. Those who have been through a sojourn have a real experience of God, unique in each case.
We have this treasure in earthen vessels,
so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.
In that verse, two things are made clear as happening in the sojourn: the vessel and the treasure are clarified. In Paul’s life, in your life, and in our lives, you can see the difference between the treasure and the clay vessel. No doubt about it.
Yet we also have to say this: through the sojourn, the vessel and the treasure have been united. God placed His treasure in Paul, and God used Paul as He broke him to pour out His treasure.
As a result of the sojourn, Paul came to know his living God. Abraham came to know his living God. Isaac and Jacob did the same.
Next time: Sojourning the Way of the Cross for the Sake of Others.
We usually think of the cross in terms of the Lord dealing with us, and indeed He does. But there are higher stakes involved in the work of the cross, and it involves others.
It is the way of the cross. Are you ready for this? What does bearing the cross mean to you?
O Lord, how faithful You are to take each one of our lives and tailor-make a sojourn for us. As we go from place to place and through various circumstances of life, You mercifully reveal Yourself to us.
Even as we go through a process where we decrease and You increase, we thank You for the way of the cross.
Even though we go through frustration, and we sense the corruption in our lives and the failures of our lives, we are there in the sunshine, on this walk before You. Yet we find You possessing us, laying hold of us, bearing us up on eagles’ wings, surrounding us, and caring for us in the most loving and merciful way, even as we go through difficult circumstances in life.
Who knows a God of such mercy and love? O Lord, we have found You because You found us and became our Savior.
Lord, we want to understand the ways of Your work in our lives, even as we walk through this life. We pray for those who are here, perhaps even today, who are going through a difficult time—a time of fear and loneliness.
O Lord, meet them at the crossroads and reveal Your mercy to them. Help them know the capturing mercy that leads them from their earthly walk to the heavenly way.
Thank You, Lord, for Your mercy upon us all in these days. Teach us more of the ways of the cross, even tonight, as we gather again for a meeting before You. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.