Vision Letter, Chapter 2.
I think this was the passage we read last week. I spoke upon the need of a practical faith, on verse 1.
And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins,
wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience;
among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
But God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved),
and raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not of works, that no man should glory.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.
Let us bow together in a further word of prayer.
Father, as we here bow in Thy presence, we thank Thee that Thou hast not left us to our own devices or to our natural energies, but Thou hast granted to us the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
And, oh, Father, we thank Thee that, as we have been praising Thee, Thou art alive from the dead, and Thou hast been made our risen Head. The Holy Spirit can make that glorious fact a reality to every one of us. And we, Lord, pray together that the Spirit of the Lord shall Himself bear witness to the truth that is proclaimed this night.
We remind Thee of that word, that that word which goes forth out of Thy mouth shall not return unto Thee void; Thou shalt accomplish that to which Thou hast sent it. We praise Thee, and we worship Thee, and we give ourselves to Thee in faith and trust now, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I have been speaking on Thursday evening and this morning about this matter of reigning with Christ. It seems to me that this evening there is just one more element that would be most suitable to take in an evening time such as this.
It is that those who are really going to reign with Christ have got to know in experience the risen power of Christ’s life.
In other words, it seems as if God is saying to every child of God who would really move on with the Lord that it is not only a matter of a living faith. We spoke about this morning, in the life of Abraham, the need of a living faith.
Of course, it is not just the possession of faith. It is not just the recognition of the need to have faith, nor just the possession of a living faith. It is the exercise of a living faith. That is the key to it.
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out.
He did something. He exercised the faith that God had given him. Everyone who would know something of reigning with Christ must know a living faith.
Of course, the interesting thing—we cannot go into it this evening—is that I am only going to take up this matter of life in Christ: its need, its fullness and power, and the joy of it.
But I want to say to those of you who have been following these other times that, when the majority of believers do not enter into all that God has so dearly won for them through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ—when the majority of Christians do not possess their possessions, do not fulfil the will of God, and do not come, as it were, to that place where the purpose of God is realised and fulfilled on earth in practical situations—then God takes up those who are prepared to go on in front.
Like an advanced party, He takes up those who are really prepared to pay the price, prepared for the working of the Spirit of God in their lives. He will take them on like pioneers—not a kind of elite inner circle, but those by whom He fulfils His purpose and works His work, and then brings all the others into the blessing of it.
Now, that is what the Bible calls an overcomer. There is a lot in the Bible about overcoming. We read this morning in 1 John 5:
Whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.
And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
Now, I said this morning that God has illustrated some of these principles of reigning with Christ in different lives. The first one we looked at this morning was Abraham, and the one I just want to underline this evening is Isaac.
Isaac is a remarkable character in one way, and yet he pales into insignificance between two vivid, almost flamboyant characters. You have Abraham and you have Jacob, and poor Isaac comes in between. Both Abraham and Jacob overshadow Isaac.
Dear Isaac never did anything original in his life. Isn’t it amazing? He never did a thing that was original in his whole life, poor man.
The one thing he did was dig wells, and the wells he dug were all the wells that his father Abraham dug before him.
It is quite interesting. All the way through, Isaac is like a valley connecting two huge mountain ranges: Abraham on one side, Jacob on the other. But here is this lovely, open, sunlit, fertile valley—that is Isaac—that connects the two.
The point is this: you cannot have a Jacob without an Isaac. Isaac is the link between Abraham and Jacob, who became the father of the house of Israel.
That, I think, is a very important thing to learn. The one great thing we learn about Isaac symbolically in the Bible is that he had something to do with wells.
If you look in Genesis—and I will just prove this point to you, lest you think it is fanciful—in Genesis 26:
And he digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.
And Isaac’s servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. And the herdsmen of Gerar strove with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek; because they contended with him.
And they digged another well, and they strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah.
And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.
It is all wells. It is interesting, is it not? It is all wells, the whole thing.
Even you go over the page, verse 25:
And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there: and there Isaac’s servants digged a well.
Over the page, verse 32:
And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac’s servants came, and told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, We have found water.
And he called it Shibah: therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba unto this day.
It is all wells—wells of water. Now, of course, in the Bible water is a symbol of life, because in desert conditions water makes all the difference between life and death, between barrenness and fruitfulness, between fertility and just an arid desert, a wilderness.
It is water—sweet water—that makes all the difference.
You know, Jesus spoke a lot about wells. When we come to it, we make a tremendous discovery here: the Christian life is not all to do with doctrines, not all to do with technique, not all to do with some institutional, traditional movement. The Christian life is all to do with being made alive together with Christ.
That is the characteristic of the child of God.
Now, the overcomers—all these that God takes up to bless the rest—all they really have in them are the qualities and characteristics that every Christian ought to have, but many do not have through unbelief, or through sin, or through backsliding.
So God takes certain ones, and He sees to it that they are a testimony; they are a witness. They not only have a living faith, which they exercise, but they are also made alive together with Christ.
Look in John 4, the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verses 13 and 14:
Jesus answered and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;
but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
Oh, it is such a sad thing when Christians become morbid, dark, heavy people, because the characteristic of the child of God is eternal life, resurrection life, abundant life—more abundant.
It is this marvellous word of the Lord: “It shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.”
You know, it is one thing to have to run off every time to this meeting and get a little drink, go off to that conference and get a little drink, go off to this speaker and get a little drink. But it is another thing to have the well inside.
Now, when you have got the well inside, that makes all the difference in the world, because you have something which springs up. It is not just an automatic supply, in the sense that it is always the same level. It springs up.
There are times when the water does not spring up quite the same in you. There are times when it is quieter, and other times when it springs; but it is inside of you. Think of that. It is inside of you.
The life is right inside. The Spirit of God has brought the source of eternal life into your being, into your house of clay, into this funny little old vessel that we have all got. We have all brought them with us this evening. There they are, all sitting in the chairs.
But inside these bodies that we have with us, in their various states and conditions, we have—if we are children of God—the heart of the matter brought into us: made alive together with Christ.
Some Christians, you would not believe it, are so miserable, so dark, so heavy. Somehow or other, you would think that everything in the world is against them, and they say so.
“Oh,” they say, “it is hard being a Christian. It is a difficult thing to be a Christian, especially today when it is not popular. People sneer at you. They laugh at you. The whole current of the world is against you. You have got obstacles no one else has to face. You have an antagonism that no one else has.”
Of course you have. The only time you did not really have it was in the Victorian era. All through church history, really, there has been this. At the very beginning it was a good deal more. Think of those early Christians fed to the lions. That is some obstacle.
Do you think it was easy to become a child of God at the very beginning, when everything was against them? Not at all. But they went to their deaths with laughter in their mouths. They went to their deaths again and again and again with joy and absolute faith in God.
You read in the library a little book, which we will not allow out of the library, called The Mirror of Martyrs, in which are recorded the last words of some of those who died under that evil woman, Bloody Queen Mary. Their last words were recorded as they were burnt at the stake—hundreds of them.
I remember some years ago, after times when we read some of those stories—all in old English, their words actually taken down at the time by eyewitnesses—it was an incredible thing. We could not believe that people could go to their death with such joy, almost to make a joke of it, because they had seen the Lord. They had been made alive together with Christ.
That is the characteristic of the Christian life. Only a dead fish floats with the current.
Once you are a live fish, you can use the current. You use it to go upstream. You use it to face incredible torrents and rapids and strong, strong currents. You use it.
Your life is so constituted that you can take the very thing—the very current flowing against you—and use it to go up. That is exactly what happens to the child of God once he or she discovers the fullness of Christ’s life, once he or she discovers the power of eternal life, the power of His resurrection.
They have a key which means that the very afflictions and problems, the antagonisms, the obstacles—every one of them—is used to advance that person in the Lord. Instead of destroying them, it perfects them. Instead of bringing them underneath, it brings them out on top.
Instead of making them miserable and empty and unhappy, they come out reigning with Christ, because it is through much tribulation that we enter into the kingdom.
So, dear child of God, of course you can say, “Oh dear, dear, dear, it is so difficult being a Christian—the world, the flesh, and the devil.” But why do you not put the emphasis on the other foot? What about the fact that you have been made alive together with Christ?
The world has not got that. The world has not got it. Look at it. What a miserable world it is, my word.
I thought I would make a list of some of the things we heard this week: this person shot in the stomach; this person machine-gunned down; a bomb in Lisbon; a bomb in Paris; a bomb in Belfast; a bomb somewhere. Oh, it is the most miserable world to live in.
We never hear about any joyful, happy things anymore. It is just one long list of misery.
But the child of God has got something that the worldling has not got. They have been made alive together with Christ. When Christ was raised, they had been brought into the very power of His resurrection.
Listen to the words of the apostle Paul. He says that he prays for the Ephesian Christians that God may give to them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ.
What about? He says two or three things, but the third thing is this: that they might know “what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named.”
Then he says, “And you did He make alive together with Christ, and raised us up together with Christ, and made us sit together with Christ in heavenly places.”
Therefore, if anyone is to know anything about overcoming, if anyone is to know anything about the fulfilment of the purpose of God, you must know the life of Christ.
If you are not a Christian, if you have never ever tasted of the salvation of God, that is where you must begin: by receiving Christ as the life of God. When He steps into your life, you can sing, “Christ liveth in me.” Oh, what a salvation is this, that Christ liveth in me!
Then you can have all the obstacles this world can think of. You can have all the antagonism this world can think of. You can have all the strong current flowing against you. You have a life inside of you that will not rest until it has got you home.
You have got a life inside of you that is constituted for problems. Think of it. You did not realise that, did you?
You see, we think of ourselves: our own wisdom, our own strength, our own resources, our own grit, our own courage. In the end it breaks down. But we fail as believers to recognise that we have been constituted for catacomb life.
We have been constituted for persecution. We have been constituted to stand against the flow of things in this world—unpopularity and all the other things that come with it. We have a life this world has not got.
Do you think it was easy for the Lord Jesus Christ when He endured the gainsaying and contradiction of sinners? Do you think it was easy for Him to bear the malice and hatred of the establishment in the nation—all their plotting, their cunning, their cleverness, their insinuations, and all the rest of it? Of course not.
But Jesus Himself stood against the current of this world and fulfilled the purpose of God. Once we allow the Overcomer to get into us, we start to know what it is to gain the victory.
Now, I find this a tremendous matter. I once asked an old brother, years ago, who knew very much about this thing, “What do you call victory?”
Sometimes we hear this term, “Victory, and victory, and victory,” and we tend to think victory is when there is not a breath of trouble anywhere; when everything is wonderful and marvellous, and we are smiling and triumphant and full of praise, and so on.
He thought for a few moments, and he said to me, “Victory is to be still on course at the end of your life.”
What a wonderful way to put it. Victory is to be still on course at the end of it. It does not mean that you have not been knocked down, that you did not flag, that there were not times when you nearly got out of the way, or that you did not stumble.
But what victory really is, what overcoming really is, is that by the grace of God and by the life of Christ inside of you, by the Spirit of Christ within, you come right through and end on course.
Made alive together with Christ.
You know, we sang in that hymn, “As in the cone, the seed.” Many of you have been in mountain areas, and you have seen the pines or the fir trees in those mountain areas.
If I had in my hand the seed of a pine tree, or the seed of a fir—we are not talking about the cone; if I had the cone, you could see it—but if I had one seed that is in the cone in my hand, you would think, “Look at that little black thing there in the palm of his hand.”
You would think, “There does not look much life in there. My, a shrivelled-up, dried-up, insignificant, weak little bit of chaff.”
But look here: you take that little piece of chaff and drop it into a crack or fissure in a huge boulder, many, many tons in weight. If some damp gets down there, under the right conditions, that little bit of chaff germinates.
What happens? Why, if you could see it, you would laugh your head off. Two little white threads would go down, and then another little white thread would go down—the weakest, stupidest, silliest little things in the whole world.
Then two little green shoots would come out the top, and you would think, if you could talk to it, you would say, “You silly little thing, do you really think that you are going to overcome this boulder? Do you think that you are going to become a fir tree, a pine tree?”
You do not even look like a pine tree. If you have seen a little pine seedling at the beginning, it does not look a bit like a pine tree, does it? You would say to it, “Oh, you are kidding yourself. You are just a case of delusion. You think that somehow or other you are going to grow and live.”
But listen: as those little roots go down into the fissure of the rock, and somehow or other get the nutrition that they need, and as that little stem goes up, slowly it becomes a sapling. In the end it becomes a tree, and it goes up into the sunlight, into the heavens.
What happens? It splits the boulder.
If you had said to me, “What are the odds against that little sapling living, that little piece of chaff ever germinating?” the odds must be colossal against it. How can a little piece of chaff do anything against a boulder tons in weight? Why, it is ridiculous, is it not?
Supposing that little bit of chaff says later, when it has grown into a great tree and the boulder lies shattered—and there are many examples of this in mountain areas—there the huge boulder lies shattered, and in the midst of it is a magnificent tree. Now, where did it all begin?
Of course, some people say, “Well, of course, if the twig got dropped out of heaven like that, I can see there could be just a possibility that lightning might have struck the rock in a miracle, and the thing shattered, and then this magnificent tree just appeared.”
But it did not. That is the miracle of it. The miracle is this: that little bit of dried-up brown chaff that was a seed out of a cone had life in it. Once it learned to obey the law of its life, that was all it needed.
It did not need some great mechanical bulldozer or stone crusher. It did not have to get something else to come in and say, “Crush this stone for me. I cannot live without your help. Crush it.” No!
All it had to do was obey the life that was in it. But you would have thought that ridiculous. How can a little seed that size overcome a boulder nearly half the size of this room? That is impossible.
But if it obeys the law of its life, it happens.
That is the wonderful thing about being a child of God. Some people come to me and say, “Oh dear, you do not know me. It is wonderful to hear you preaching. It is all a wonderful theory, a marvellous ideal. But for me, it is impossible. You do not know my family background. I have got the most impossible family you have ever seen.”
Now, I have lived long enough to find that there are an incredible number of these impossible families. Indeed, it seems that nearly everybody has got some impossible relative.
Somewhere or other, there is an impossible background. They say, “You know, it is impossible. I would love to become a Christian. I would love to know the fullness of Christ, but it is impossible for me. You do not understand. I have problems. I have inherited weaknesses. I have inherited family problems, flaws in my temperament, traits in my personality. I just do not know what to do with that.”
My dear friend, listen: if God has put within you the Lord Jesus Christ, He is sufficient for your family weaknesses. I do not care what they are.
If you will only learn to obey the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, you will grow out of all your problems.
The problem is this: we all do not put the emphasis upon the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We put it on ourselves.
Other people come to me and say that they have other great problems and difficulties. Things have gone wrong in their lives. Circumstances have now come into their lives which are irrevocable, which cannot be changed.
They say, “It is like a great boulder that shuts out the sunlight of heaven. It is like something sitting on top of me. It is no good. It is no good. It is not for me.”
Oh yes, it is. You wait. It is the only answer to your problem. No doctor can answer it, no psychiatrist can answer it, no social reformer can answer it. No one can answer it—not even religion can answer it.
No, listen to me: not even religion can answer it. The only answer to your problem is the life of Christ.
You let the living Christ into your life, and you will find that once you obey Him, follow Him, do what He wants, and experience His life more and more, you grow in Him. Then, almost unknowingly, the boulder begins to be split as you grow.
It is amazing. There will come a day when that boulder will lie shattered all around you, and you will be a stately tree in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the Lord. Think of that.
It is a wonderful thing what God can do. Life.
I have used this illustration before; I will use it again tonight. There are times when I sit in a jumbo jet, and, being someone who has no experience of that side of matters, I wonder how on earth that thing will ever get off the ground.
Four hundred people. The last time I was in a jumbo jet, there was not a single spare seat. Think of it. Every single seat filled; some of them were large people.
Then all the food for two meals for a transatlantic flight, and all the luggage. I thought, if everyone has got as much as I have done, think of the weight.
When you look out of that window—as high as my bedroom window, by the way—and I sit up and look out of the window, I see an engine in which I could stand up inside. That is only one of four engines.
Then I think to myself, “How is this thing going to get off the ground? Four hundred people, all the cabin crew, the pilots, all the meals, all the luggage, and all of us. You mean it is going to get off the ground?”
I think to myself, in my sweet, simple little way, why, if I went out there on the runway and ran as fast as I could and flapped my wings, I would not get off the ground, because there is such a thing as the law of gravity.
I could run as fast as the fastest sprinter, but still I would not get up into the air, even if I had some kind of wings attached to my arms. I would only just perhaps go up and down. Gravity would be too much for me.
Then I think, “How is this thing going to get off the ground?” The law of gravity—that is about the one law I know.
Well, that is true, is it not? It is a good illustration, because most of us know only one law morally: the law of sin and death. We do not know any other law. That is the only law we know.
We know that, like a bowl in a game of bowls, there is a bias inside the bowl which makes it go crooked. We know we have a tendency to do the things we would not, and the things we would not, those things we do. We all know it.
We know the law of sin is as strong as the law of gravity. We know that we can run for hours spiritually and try to flap our wings, but we cannot get rid of the law of gravity. The law of sin and death pulls us down.
So someone says, “I know what I will do. I will read the Bible. I will read the Bible for five days on end.” Let them. They are exhausted at the end of it. They have got quite a lot of biblical knowledge, but then comes a temptation—down.
So they say, “Ah, I will spend the day in prayer and fasting.” They spend a whole day in prayer—think of that—and at the end of it they feel wonderful. They go to bed, get up the next morning, and find a temptation. Down. The law of sin and death.
Then they say, “I know what it is. I need to know more fellowship.” So they rush along and get as much fellowship as they possibly can in two months. Then temptation, and they are down.
The law of sin and death is too much for us. It is like the law of gravity. We cannot get rid of it.
So some of us try to suppress it. Now, to me, suppressing the law of sin and death is rather like—well, I thought of a very funny illustration, and I must suppress it.
Well, perhaps I will tell you. First of all, I will tell you the other one. To me, it is like a Lilo. When you push it down here, it comes up there. You see, you cannot get rid of it.
If you push it down here, the air cannot get out; it has only one other place to go. It comes up somewhere else. So you push it down there and it is up here; then you push it down there.
That is what some people try to do with the law of sin and death in their lives. They spend the whole time until they are absolutely miserable. No wonder Christians are down and miserable and depressed and empty, and sort of look all heavy, and say everything is so difficult being a Christian. It is full of suffering.
Well, the illustration I thought of was one of our dear American ladies who was here today. I heard her speaking in her home to a group, and I laughed so much that I had to almost get out of the room.
She said, talking about the law of sin and death, “It is just like baptising a cat.”
I was all interested. She said this was quite true. There was a famous preacher in their parts around Alabama, where anything appears to happen. On this occasion, he caught his son baptising the black cat.
He was a Southern Baptist pastor, and he saw the boy putting the cat down and trying to baptise it in a pail of water. As he put it down, its tail came up; so he pushed the tail down, and the head came up. Then he pushed the head down, and the tail came up.
The father could see that the cat was going to get drowned, so he went as fast as he could. As he called out the son’s name, he heard the boy say, “All right then, stay a damned old Methodist.”
Well, I should not have told you that story, and I am afraid I have done it. But some people fight with the law of sin and death like baptising a cat. They push down one end and the head comes up; they push the head down and the tail comes up; then they push the tail down and the head comes up. It is a terrible job.
No wonder there is no life.
But listen: when that jumbo jet gets onto the runway and its engines start up, and the full thrust of the power is there, then it begins to run along. That amazing thing—and really, when you are in a jumbo, at times you wonder whether it is ever going to leave the ground.
But finally it suddenly starts to go up and up and up and up and up, and it is into the air.
A superior law has taken over from the law of gravity. That is the only way you and I will ever know deliverance from the law of sin and death.
It says in Romans 8:2:
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus—it is a superior law. Made alive together with Christ; knowing the power of His life inside; knowing something of His care, His faithfulness, His provision, His energy, His resources inside of me. Then I find that I am free from the law of sin and death.
Oh, how wonderful it all is. Dear Isaac is for us the illustration of this lesson.
How do you know this life? Very simple: Isaac received and passed on.
Such a simple lesson. The one lesson in dear Isaac’s life—why he is not a flamboyant personality, why he is not one of those vivid characters—is that God was through him teaching us the one great lesson: if you and I want to know the life of Christ, we must learn to be a vessel. We must learn to be a receiver.
We receive the life. We do not have it in ourselves. We have to receive the Lord, and then we have to know what it is to grow in that life, that that life may grow more and more and more in us.
Jesus said:
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
Is that not wonderful? He did not say, “I am come that you might have eternal life when you die. So now you have a miserable existence down here, facing all the problems and difficulties and obstacles, but one day, when you die, after that you will get eternal life.”
He said, “I am come that you might have life, and that you might have life more abundantly.”
John the apostle put it like this:
He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
I find that wonderful. In another place He said:
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
Rivers of living water. This well springing up unto life eternal is the most wonderful thing, because it becomes a river for others—rivers of living water for other people. Overcomers overcome.
No wonder God said to Abraham, when He said to him, “When the season comes round, your wife will bear a son,” Abraham fell on the ground and laughed.
God said to him, “Abraham, it is so. It shall come to pass, and you shall call your son Isaac—Yitzhak—because it means laughter.”
When that boy was born, it says in Genesis 21:6:
And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh; every one that heareth will laugh with me.
You know, there is a laughter about this life. Oh yes, Christians are the only people who can afford to really laugh.
No wonder it says in Psalm 35, “They shall return for Zion with laughter in their mouths.” They are the only people who can afford to laugh.
How can you laugh when you are on the broad way to hell? How can you laugh if you are a child of God and living in the world, if you compromise with one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom of God? How can you laugh?
But if you really belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, let the obstacles come, let the difficulties come, let the antagonism come. You have got a laughter. You are an Isaac.
You see, what happens to the world is to nothing. But what happens to the Christian is to glory.
A tragedy in a worldling’s life brings nothing. There is no meaning. But a tragedy in a believer’s life brings glory, because through it they learn to reign. They learn to rule.
Have you ever noticed that wonderful little phrase in Romans 5:17? It is buried in a theological passage, as it were, that I think most people will miss. But this is what it says:
For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the One, even Jesus Christ.
The world knows death reigning over them: corruption, futility, emptiness. But the child of God, through the work of the Lord Jesus, can know what it is to reign in life through Jesus Christ.
Isaac. Are you an Isaac?
I do not know where you stand this evening. I do not know whether you are a child of God or not.
If you are not a Christian, God can speak to you about this matter tonight: about life, about knowing the gift of God, which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Do you not want to?
Why, for me, it is the most wonderful thing in the whole world. That is the thing the Christian has that the Hindu has not, the Buddhist, or the Muslim, or the Confucianist.
Ethics, yes; morality, yes; decency, yes; much else, yes. But the one thing the Christian has is this: he or she has been made alive together with Christ.
Maybe there are others of you. You are Christians, but you do not know too much about life. Sin is hampering your way with God. Something is holding you back. Something is settling you. You want to know the fullness of His life, the power of His life.
God can meet with you. Shall we bow together in a word of prayer and ask Him, in His mercy and love, to meet every need represented in this room?
Dear Lord, Thou knowest every single life in this place. Thou knowest those who know Thee not, as strangers to Thy grace and Thy salvation. Thou knowest those of us who are backsliders.
Thou knowest those of us, Lord, who have tasted of Thy life, have tasted Thy salvation, and yet, Lord, are compromised. We do not know the power of Thy life in our experience.
And Thou knowest those who have a real experience of life more abundant, and the problems they are facing. Now, Lord, apply Thy word to every one of our lives this evening.
Wilt Thou grant, Lord, that each one of us may in some way take a step forward: some perhaps to Christ, to know Him; others back from backsliding; others to know the power of His resurrection; and others just to go into deeper waters to swim in.
Oh, God, do it, we pray this night, for we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.