We do thank the Lord for such a time and conference as this.
The Lord is indeed speaking to us in these times. We had that very penetrating and challenging word this morning, and I believe we heard from the heart of God on this matter of service.
It is true that there are Christians who do not realize that they are servants of the living God by the right of their salvation. They should be aware that they are servants and held accountable for their service during their lifetime.
But I think the majority of those of us here realize that we are servants of the living God. In these times of rethinking, we realize how far short we have fallen, how unprofitable we are.
We just want to share very simply the hope we truly have, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Indeed, we are equipped for service by the life within us.
We want to look at some very familiar scriptures in the New Testament. We are just going to pick out a verse here and there. Probably every one of these verses you have underlined in your Bible, but they all have to do with this amazing matter of the inner life of God within us.
Let us look at Galatians 1. We will read verse 15 and part of verse 16.
But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles.
Then let us look at one verse in Ephesians 3, verse 16.
That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
Then, in Philippians 1:6:
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
And then Philippians 2:12:
So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;
for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
Then Colossians 1:27:
To whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
And then over to our verse for the day in Hebrews 13, beginning with verse 20.
Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will,
working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Let us just have a word of prayer.
Father, as we come to You today in the name of our Lord Jesus, this day we want to touch on this great mystery: that the Lord God, who is above us and all around us, is also within us. He is there faithfully equipping His servants for service.
Help us this day to look away from ourselves and our own failure, and to see our Lord within. By faith, help us to lay hold of this reality that Christ liveth in us, and that this is now our life indeed.
We pray for the Holy Spirit to be our Teacher this day. Oh, do make real in the heart of every Christian here the reality of this glorious gospel within. We pray in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
What amazing verses these are. They speak to us that there is a life determined for us. Our destiny is a Person. He has known you before the foundation of the world, and He chose you knowing the end for you.
There has already begun in our lives a plan for us—a plan full of many surprises, many mysteries. Only an omniscient and omnipotent God could devise such a plan and accomplish it perfectly.
We find two roads in our life. There is an outward road, a set of circumstances running through our lives, designed to bring us into sonship—our destiny.
At the same time, there is an inner pathway winding through our life. This inner pathway disarms us, deconstructs us, and brings us to the end of ourselves. Then it resurrects us and strengthens us within, that we might be spiritual servants and sons.
So a servant neither works nor walks aimlessly or in vain. All those things that we consider ups and downs have a divine stratagem behind them.
Your life as a servant will be a contradiction at times: at times unimaginable blessings, and at times impossible problems. Through them all, you will find two words upon your lips time and time again:
Grace. Mercy.
All of these things that our Lord does to us as servants are not just because of His love for us. He loves us indeed, but the reason for all of these things is a much greater eternal plan that He has for His Son.
The Lord God has determined with an unstoppable determination that, in the fullness of times, all things in heaven and on earth and under the earth will be gathered unto the Lord Jesus. Because of this great eternal plan, He has swept us up and begun to work upon us in conformity with that plan.
What do we discover as the years go by? We have been conquered by an indwelling life.
We have the privilege of cooperating with that indwelling life or resisting it. The rewards for our service are conditional, but our destiny in glory is inevitable.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
If we are servants of God, many times we have fully given up on ourselves. But then we hear that word again: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
The first afternoon we spoke on the environment for equipping. It is true that, as servants of God, we are responsible for the environment for other servants of God. The church should be the household that raises up servants, sons of value, and vessels of honor.
But when we look around, we see so few servants of any kind. How could it be, in the house of God, so many servants of the world? How could it be, in the house of God, so many servants of self, and so few servants of God?
That alone should be testimony enough of our need to repent as God’s servants. But our destiny as servant-sons is not hinged upon the environment around us.
The second afternoon we spoke about the servants themselves, being raised up by the grace of God. If there is difficulty with the environment, there is greater grace for anyone who would be a servant of God.
We can lay hold of that grace of God and find an overcoming life—to be soldiers, athletes, and farmers—with expectation of reward. Part of the proof of our calling is the ability to take the grace to become a servant of the Word of God.
But our destiny does not finally rest upon our gracious resolve as servants. Today we see the third One responsible for our equipping: the Lord Himself.
Here we have good news. Our Lord is well able to equip servants for Himself by an inner indwelling life. Our Lord is able to equip us for spiritual service.
How does the Lord equip us by this life? Is this not one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian life—the mystery of godliness? Here we are, human flesh, and yet able to live by a divine life. Such a great mystery, but attested to time and time again in the Word of God.
Think of the statement of Paul in Galatians. There he was, a sinful vessel, but by God’s grace the revelation of Jesus shone within him.
In a moment of time, this empty vessel became full of Christ. This revelation of Christ within Paul was his motivation; it was his source material for the messages and prayers of the rest of his days.
We read that precious scripture in Ephesians 3. The Holy Spirit comes into our spiritually weak lives and strengthens us. A servant needs that inner strength of spirit, and the Holy Spirit builds that into our lives.
He fortifies us so completely that Christ is able to dwell in our hearts by faith. Imagine that.
What can we say about these precious words in Philippians? We find that God is the Initiator. He has begun a good work.
Since God has initiated, now we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It is God within us, both willing—giving us the will—and doing according to His good pleasure.
Oh, what a precious mystery, this life within.
Imagine how this promise fell upon the ears of the Colossians in Colossians 1. Many of those Gentiles felt like quite second-class citizens compared to their Jewish brethren.
But Paul said this is a mystery given to the Gentiles: Christ in you, the hope of glory. Those Gentiles realized that they had the same life within them that their Jewish brethren also had.
Finally, this precious passage in Hebrews 13—what a strong word this letter is to the Hebrews, but what a strong consolation at the end.
That simple verse says that God has raised up the Shepherd of the sheep and placed Him by the Spirit into our lives, to work out His will according to His good pleasure.
If we are to trust Somebody to equip us for spiritual service, I think we should trust in the Lord who dwells within. Only He can truly equip us for spiritual service.
We know that there are some servants who have stature and intelligence, but it seems that it is God’s will to choose those without much intelligence, without much stature, without much background, and without a religious pedigree.
It is a magnification of the grace of God to take unprofitable, useless people and turn them into useful servants. God delights to find servants in the most unusual places: broken homes and superstitious religious backgrounds.
He finds those dwelling with sinners and brings them out. Somehow, by that inner life, He transforms these people into useful servants.
I made mention of the fact that I visit Russia about once a year, if the Lord wills. The primary gospel ministry in Russia is ministering the gospel of Jesus Christ to alcoholics and drug addicts.
That is because most of the men and young people are drug addicts or alcoholics. They pick them off the streets, sometimes homeless vagabonds looking for another fix.
But I have been going there five years. Five years later, I see the ones I saw saved off the streets serving God.
God makes us a new creation in Christ Jesus. We believe in the new birth. We believe the Lord can sanctify, and that the Lord can transform from glory to glory any vessel whom He chooses by the power of that inner life.
Yet, is it not true? Even though we can believe that God can change such a rugged sinner, we stagger in unbelief at how much God cares for us unprofitable servants.
How could God pay so much attention to you as His servant? I would love to hear the testimonies of His care today from this assembly. We would have testimony after testimony and infallible proofs of God’s miraculous provision for His servants.
Is it not amazing how God knew just what you needed and brought it to you at just the right time? It is one thing to say, “I believe in the Lord who provides.” It is quite another thing to say, “The Lord who provides has come to me.”
If you are His servant, you have known Him graciously taking you aside for seasons of rest, seasons when you stop. He puts you upon the Father’s wheel and begins to mold you and make you in a new design.
Maybe it was through sickness that He took us aside. But according to His will, He sets us aside in order to talk to us, in order to give us understanding of something deeper about His plan.
The greatest consolation of service must be His intimate revealings of Himself to us. When the Lord speaks just a word to us, or reveals something of Himself, it becomes the fuel of our worship and the message that we serve with.
Is it not wonderful to have a life springing up within that comes out of some revelation—some intimate revelation He has given to you regarding Himself?
Think of how He takes a servant and expands him spiritually from the smallness in which He found the servant. We are all so petty and narrow and prejudiced and small in our thinking, but the Lord lays hold of us and begins to expand our inner life.
We meet more people than we ever could have imagined. We are enlarged as we meet dear saints of God. We recognize that we have touched in fellowship with some who are God’s heroes and spiritual saints, even in the day in which we live.
The Lord will take us places we have never been before. Australia, to people in America, is like going to the South Pole. Who would imagine going to Australia?
The Lord, as we serve Him, enlarges our family. My wife and I have two sons. They are both grown and live quite far away from us, but I am a brother in a large Chinese family in New York.
I do not understand them any better than I understand my sons. The Lord blesses us in so many ways. Many servants can testify how the Lord has kept them in health to do His bidding.
I do not know of any servant who really serves with gratitude who is not filled with blessings upon blessings.
If that were not enough, the Lord also lays hold of us by this inner life. He takes the precious gospel that we preach, and He makes it a spiritual reality within us.
Take this matter of assurance of salvation. There is some controversy about just when John Wesley was actually saved, but I believe he was saved before he ever went out to serve the Lord.
He knew the gospel of salvation. He went to America and preached the gospel to the Native Americans. He preached and read the Bible through and through.
But only after some years was his heart strangely warmed with an assurance of his salvation.
There was that young servant, D. L. Moody, the evangelist. Oh, he would preach, he would sweat, he would yell, he would proclaim the gospel.
But after he had been doing that for several years, one day walking down a street in New York City, he was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Those things that he had spoken about became reality to him, and the fruit of his ministry increased manyfold.
There was a dear saint, A. B. Simpson. What a precious brother. After the Civil War in the United States, he went to Louisville, Kentucky, right in the middle between the North and the South.
Through his preaching, he brought reconciliation to the whole city of Louisville, Kentucky. Indeed, he brought a two-year revival to that city by his protracted preaching of the gospel.
He moved to New York City in 1881, to a large and influential Presbyterian church. Within one year, that church had doubled in size, all through salvation.
But chronic sickness and weakness prevented our brother from continuing on. He was laid aside for months, with no improvement to his health. He cried out and asked for healing many times.
One day he realized, and he never prayed for healing again. He realized by faith that he could take hold of the Healer Himself, and he was immediately healed.
Healing was no longer merely a theory but a blessed reality that he preached everywhere he went.
We all know the reality of miraculous provisions. I bring to your mind George Müller, who received everything he needed to carry on his orphanage work.
A servant of God experiences destiny encounters—moments of destiny.
I will give you an example. Charles Finney was an evangelist. The Lord encourages us sometimes when we are serving Him.
Our brother went to a little village in upstate New York. He was traveling through on horseback. In the nineteenth century, when somebody came to a little village, all work stopped, all the shops closed, and everybody came to see who was in town.
So they opened up the one-room schoolhouse, and everybody came in. He began to preach the gospel to the dear people there. He spoke about Lot’s departure from Abraham and his going down into Sodom, and he pressed in upon the matter of turning to worldliness.
But his message had an unusual effect. Halfway through the message, a man got up and walked out. But he came back a few minutes later.
He was the first one down to the front when they had the altar call. That man was soundly saved. It turns out his name was Lot, and the name of the village in which he was preaching was Sodom.
How the Lord encourages us that we are on the right track with these divine moments of destiny.
How about this gospel truth of sanctifying victory? Do you know who Ian Thomas is? Ian Thomas, an Englishman, was a servant of God. He worked hard in his service, but he did not see any fruit. He became spiritually despondent until Galatians 2:20 became a reality to him.
If you have read any of his books, you know his theme already: Christ in you. Every book he writes is on Christ in you. That was a reality of rest for our dear brother.
Or even this that we call the exchanged life. What a wonderful doctrine this is: Galatians 2:20. We all know the verse. We all understand what the Word says.
I love to ask sometimes, “Dear brother or sister, are you crucified with Christ?” Do you know what the most common answer I receive is? “I’m trying to be.”
Now, does that give you a hint? They do not understand this wonderful truth.
Our dear brother Hudson Taylor went out as a missionary to China. He worked faithfully and he worked hard in the China Inland Mission, but he soon came to the end of his energy. Exhausted, he came before the Lord.
He took seriously his calling as a missionary, but he was such a failure in the fruit of it. Then, through a simple letter from a friend, God opened his eyes to see that all he needed to do was abide in the vine as a branch.
The testimony of those who knew him after that time was that Brother Taylor, no matter how busy he was, was always resting. In his rest he was busier than ever, but no longer fretful. And, oh, so fruitful.
In some manner and measure, the Lord is not satisfied if we servants of God preach the doctrines of our gospel merely as those talking about something. The Lord sends the Spirit of reality to bring us into the very reality that we are preaching about.
He brings us in step by step, as we are able to bear it.
This inner life and power is able to change us. It is a tremendous equipping force. This inner life within us is strong because it is completely based on the work of the cross.
For the sake of the young people, when we say “the work of the cross,” we really should fill out the sentence: the work of the cross and the resurrection.
When the Lord brings us to the cross—to the end of ourselves—at the end there is always a release of resurrection life through it.
The Christian servant, for all his days, will know what it means to walk with his cross. All our days as servants, there is a divine veto upon our flesh, and at the same time a divine yea and amen to the life of Christ within us.
We will know a continual decreasing in our lives, and as we decrease, we will notice a continual increase of His life. This inner strength and equipping is based on this work of the cross.
The Lord takes us, and He brings us to the end of ourselves. You know that each asset is now a liability. Your natural strength can become a great spiritual weakness, and all your natural gain can become spiritual loss.
Now, I know that as servants we do not believe that, because when we serve the Lord, we serve with all our strength. So the Lord has to let us wind down until we come toward the end of ourselves.
Eventually, we have to cross through the Jordan River—His crucifixion—and come up in the Promised Land in resurrection life on the other side. In order for His indwelling life to be more freely released and to express Himself through us, He has to bring us down through this work of the cross, in order that His life may be free.
You who are servants of God know the wisdom with which the Lord does this. He usually takes our greatest strength and takes it through the river.
For the sake of the young people, I will make this illustration. You have a pack of Boy Scouts. They come to the Jordan River, and it is flood tide flowing, but they must get to the other side.
They always pick the biggest guy to go first. They all tie a rope around themselves—all six or eight of them in a row—and get ready to go across that river one by one.
Who is the biggest guy? Maybe it is your pride. Maybe it is the quickness of your brain. Maybe it is your personality. Maybe you have more energy than anybody else. Maybe you are an eloquent debater. Maybe you are funny. Maybe you have a good personality. Maybe you are very righteous.
I do not know who the big boy is in your Boy Scout pack, but we send him out to go across the stream. Of course, he has to be brought to the end of himself.
The river is too deep, and the river is too swift. He cannot hold his feet anymore, but he swims as best he can. He goes down and comes up, and goes down and comes up.
Occasionally he grabs hold of a rock, finds some rest, and thinks he has almost made it. But then he goes down again, and the current takes him way downriver. Eventually, he wastes his energy, and he cannot even swim anymore.
He goes under the water. He looks almost dead—maybe almost.
And suddenly, he feels two arms under his arms and lifts him up. He finds himself on the shore on the other side.
It is the Lord Jesus. He was crucified for us. We did not have to die; He died, and we died with Him.
He pulls that big boy up on the other side. The boy is too weak to do anything else, but he can hold on to Jesus. He has the rope around him, and one by one those other strings are going to have to come through the river.
Once you have learned that one big struggle—two years of wrestling, defeat, and then victory on the other side—it becomes a little bit simpler for the Lord to deal with other areas of our life. We get the point before we have to drown.
This work of the cross is always working upon us. The servant’s life, after ten years, finds new strengths. Not necessarily carnal strengths—sometimes good strengths—but the Lord demands that they also go through this work of the cross.
What wisdom there is in this way of the cross. If it means life on the other side, is it not worth it?
Listen to this wisdom: We must serve in order to fail, for it is only in failure that we learn to serve.
Our dear brother this morning confessed openly before us all that he felt he was a failure as a servant. I suppose everyone here who serves the Lord would say amen and include themselves. You have to serve in order to fail, in order to serve.
This is why I think the big boy among the Chinese is Mr. Clever. Mr. Clever says, “I will not serve until I learn the right way to serve, and then I will serve without making a mistake.”
But that is not serving God. If you wait until you are perfect, I am afraid you will never come there.
I want to promote something here today. Do you love the Lord? When He tells you to jump in the river, jump.
Yes, you will sink. Maybe you thought you could swim—not in the number-six rapids. But after a while, you begin to learn the lesson.
When the Lord says, “Serve,” you say, “Yes, Lord, but I cannot serve. You want me to speak next Sunday? I have nothing to say.”
Do you know what the Lord says? Does He say, “You are so dumb; you have nothing to say”? No. He says, “I am glad you have discovered you have nothing to say.”
Then, by His mercy and grace, He puts a little burden in your heart. If you will be faithful to work out that burden, you find He has something to say.
All the wisdom of the cross—there is no easy way through.
Here is some more wisdom. Sometimes He encourages you in the most impossible situations. He encourages you to go through, and yet even while He encourages you, He is stripping things away from you.
He encourages His servants. But, at the same time, by the work of the cross, He always clarifies to His servant the difference between the treasure and the vessel.
It is only those who serve completely in the flesh who become proud of their service and think they have some value.
I cannot think of any servant more valuable than the Apostle Paul. But, in the wisdom of the cross, he saw and discovered that he was nothing at all without the Lord.
As the most accomplished apostle and writer of the epistles, he could still say at the end of his life, “There is nothing good within me, that is, in my flesh.” The cross has much wisdom.
Here is another matter. We go through times where we break down, where inexplicable problems and tragedy come to us. Even sometimes the enemy seems to attack us.
As we go through these breakdowns and these tragedies, dear brothers and sisters, this is the very moment you sense the fellowship of His sufferings.
Has your soul ever been so devastated that there was nothing left except the buoyancy of His resurrection life that would not let you go down?
Again, this wisdom of the cross teaches us how to live between Alpha and Omega.
What does that mean? It means Jesus is the Initiator, the Alpha, of any service. And He is the Omega, the Completer, of any spiritual service.
We have to wait for His initiation, then join ourselves to Him in that service, and trust His completion at the end. He lays the foundation, and He puts the capstone.
It is almost impossible for a man not to take the initiative himself. Most men are just initiators. That is what makes you a man, but it does not work in spiritual service.
The cross teaches you how to live—how to be a waiter. Can you imagine teaching a man to be a truster in Somebody else? The cross teaches us to let go, and to become primarily intercessors.
When we have been servants for years, we learn a great corporate mystery of the cross.
There is a mystery in the kingdom right now, and it is hard to understand for a servant who is naive. God begins to work among His people, and an assembly of people comes together and worships the Lord.
Wonderful days—perhaps even years—of grace ensue. But then, in the growth and in the service, there comes some trouble, perhaps even divisiveness. That original wonder of unity seems to disappear, and great trial begins.
Sometimes the glory of God leaves, and all there is over such a work is Ichabod.
In that process, some servants have laid down their lives. They do not understand, after so much labor, prayer, and work, how something could turn so bad.
Maybe they did not understand that the enemy sows tares wherever there is wheat. Or sometimes we do not realize what man’s hands can do to God’s work.
With the passing of years, some things just seem to die in a great heap of ashes. If you are a servant and have been through something like that, you know how heartbreaking that is.
But I say, keep looking, because out of those ashes and that failure arises something new.
In the new work that God begins to raise up, to the amazement of those who study church history, there is a continuity with what has gone on before.
Whenever God starts a new work, there is always something in the past that has died in the process. The Lord brings new life out of something we thought had died.
That is an amazing thing to see. You realize God’s wisdom in all that He does.
In the servant’s life, we also learn the personal process that the Lord takes us through in order to be conformed into the image of Christ. Even as our Lord suffered, so the servant of God must suffer.
I was only a Christian two years when I felt the Lord calling me to go into the ministry. Believe me, I had very little idea what was happening, but I felt the Lord was leading me.
I remember getting a chance to talk to a dear servant of God who really had a spiritual ministry. Just before I went off to seminary, I asked him if he had any advice for me.
He said, “If you serve the Lord faithfully, I can guarantee you something. In your ministry, just like the Lord Jesus, you will have first a year of popularity, followed by a season of conflict and controversy, followed by a season of persecution.”
“And so finally, the saints that you have served will kill you and throw you away.” He said, “If our Lord went through such a season, do not think that the servants of God do not have to go through the same sort of thing.”
But he said, “Do not worry. If they do not really kill you, the Lord will grant you a new life—more life than you had before, and a fuller ministry. You will have a season of popularity, and you can finish the story.”
Dear servant of God, I do not know what phase you are in, but I do know the Lord uses all of these things. By His inner life, He conforms us to the image of His Son.
All we who have been saved by the grace of the Lord—the Lord will conform us to His glory. The process may seem excruciating at times, but if you will look, you will see something precious.
You will see the blessed Lord who dwells within, who says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
I do not know what rewards lie ahead for servants of God, although the Scriptures give us pictures. But is not our reward at least this: that we know and experience the life of our Lord within?
We do not have to climb up to the heavens. We do not have to dive down to the depths of the ocean. He is as near as our mouth, as near as our heart.
This precious Good Shepherd was raised from the dead in order to dwell in you and me, and in order to perfect us as servant-sons.
We have fallen far short, but I hold on to this truth: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
This is precious to us. Let us pray.
Oh, blessed Lord, we cannot know all there is to Your wisdom, nor can we understand all of Your ways. But we have read the report, and we believe that the living God does dwell within. We need to learn to live by that life.
Oh Lord, thank You for equipping us by the life within, for being our Teacher and our Convictor, for leading us into the spiritual reality of these doctrines of the gospel, and for dealing with us individually, so personally, so mercifully.
Oh Lord, I pray, by Your mercy, You would place a fire in the souls of Your servants, and the resolve that nothing can stop the purpose of God.
Oh Lord, if we need to be more radical with ourselves in dealing with things, we would rather have the acknowledged presence of the Lord in our midst than to have ourselves still dominated.
As we rethink this matter of our service, we thank You, Lord, as You are speaking to us. You have begun a work, and we believe You will complete it unto the day of Christ Jesus.
Oh, make us servants pleasing to Yourself, we pray, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.