Lord, we do ask You tonight by faith that You would give us that open heaven; that You would anoint for speaking, for hearing, and, Lord, for being fruitful, so that Your kingdom in us and through us might be made very prosperous.
Lord, I ask tonight that You would give me breath—for good breath—and, Lord, strength and words. Oh, Lord. Lord, we are weak, but He is strong. Thank You for that, Lord.
Bring forth everything that You mean to bring forth, Lord, and do not be limited by me. And we will give You all the glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, tonight we are speaking about warfare and the love of the Lord’s purpose. In fact, if you will turn to Matthew 16, this is a wonderful scripture that marries these two things.
Because in the things of God, in the things that have to do with our Lord, nothing is done without love. It is not a matter of obtaining some doctrine. It is not a matter of having some sort of experience, or of becoming a scholar. It is not a matter of getting enough people convinced in the system. Nothing is accomplished without love.
Here the Lord Jesus has the disciples: “Who do you think that I am?” Peter says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered and said to him:
“Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Who is in heaven.
And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Well, here the Lord is already speaking of warfare: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” He is going to build something.
Now, it is an interesting thing, because I have a feeling that the guys who were following Him around, who were right there listening to this, heard Him say what He actually says in the original language here. It might have even been an earlier language. It might have been Hebrew or Aramaic before this, but He said, “I will build My assembly, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
What is an assembly? What is included in this assembly? You know, in the Gospels the Lord only mentions the word church twice: here, and again two chapters later in Matthew 18.
I am going to change over to using the Greek word for church, which is ecclesia, which means assembly. I am going to do it just to help somebody in here more than myself, because we are so inundated with what the church is that when we use the English word church, it means nothing. It means a steeple, a big steeple building where people go on Sunday to have some sort of service. That has very little to do with the Body.
So let us look at what the Lord said: “I will build My assembly, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” And I believe the Lord’s word.
I believe that after the Lord rose from the dead, He sent out His apostles. They spent a lot of time in Jerusalem, but they finally got to, I think, pretty much the ends of the earth that they knew about in their own day.
And the apostles—the twelve, and Paul, and others who were apostles with whom they all worked—began to build the ecclesia.
If, in the first century, we could go back and take people from Corinth, or especially Ephesus, and bring them to a modern-day ecclesia meeting—and they had the gift of interpretation, so they understood everything they were hearing—they would be very confused. “What are they doing, and why are they doing this?” Because it was not the thing that the Lord built in the first century.
When Paul stood before King Agrippa, he said, “Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” And what is that heavenly vision but, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?”
Paul had never met Him before. “Who art Thou, Lord?” “I am Jesus, Whom thou persecutest.”
Paul must have seen in that moment all those many—who knows how many—that he had had something to do with: their scourging, their stoning, their murder. And he realized something about the Body of Christ. The heavenly vision.
And so he went from place to place to place, establishing this ecclesia. But remember, we are speaking about warfare and the love of the Lord’s purpose.
What the enemy’s chief job had to be in the first century, and after that, was this: How do I get these people away from what they are doing, away from what the Lord has built, away from what the Lord is building, and away from the desire of His heart?
We can already see that, at the end of the first century, there was already departure. We know that, down through the Roman Catholic Church—from about the year 500 to about the year 1500—there was nothing even closely reminiscent of what the Lord had desired to build.
He did not desire to build a papacy based upon, “Thou art Peter, this great rock,” with Peter being the first pope and then popes coming after that and all this stuff. No, that is the figment of mere men.
The Lord is building His church. And everything that His church is, that is really built of God, is deposited in that eternal city, His dwelling place.
If you want to know what the Lord’s eternal purpose is, all you have to do is go to Revelation 21 and 22 and see what is left when eternity has begun. You will see what was on the Lord’s heart the whole time.
The amazing thing is that He gets what His desire is by having it built on the earth and contested by the enemy daily. That is the warfare against the Lord’s people.
All down through the ages, there have been the most wonderful, glorious saints who were persecuted, who loved the Lord Jesus. Whatever they saw of that living city that comes down out of heaven—whatever portion they saw of it, whatever measure they saw of it—I think they did one thing: they possessed the measure of what they saw.
I think there is almost nothing in contention as much as the eternal purpose of God. So we see that not only after the Romans, but when the Protestants came in, they just set up a different system made by man. But the Lord has always had some outside.
Now, here is the problem: you cannot have the ecclesia unless you see it. But if you see it, quite often it is a fatal thing. I am not talking about it making you dead. I am talking about it taking away your spirituality. It can bring division in the Body of Christ.
Nobody can see it unless the Lord shows it to him by revelation. So you say, “Why would the Lord want to do such a thing to me?” Because He loves you, and He wants you to be in His assembly.
He wants you to be built up, built in, loving one another, forgiving one another. He wants you to be a son who grows up in His house. He wants you to be His house, made up of living stones. He wants you to be a holy, royal priest in a house filled with holy, royal priests—not just people wearing funny clothes, but people who are priests of God by right of being children of God.
I mean, there is no limit to all the things of the Lord’s eternal purpose. I say there is no limit because it is an eternal purpose. It is His purpose after time and space are done away with, and it was His purpose before God said, “Let there be anything.” He had something on His heart.
The enemy fell. Then, after the enemy fell, he caused Adam and his wife to fall. After that, it has been recovery until, in the fullness of time, our Lord Jesus Himself came.
The whole Old Testament has all sorts of things about the Lord’s purpose, but it is almost like the Lord has to give you eyes and ears to see them. Then, in the New Testament, the Lord begins to build.
Through the book of Acts, the departure had not become so great. But later, when you get to the time of the Book of Revelation—perhaps 100 A.D.—you see great departure.
So the important thing is that the ecclesia exists. Let me tell you what can happen. The Lord comes to you and begins to show you. Usually it does not just happen because one day you were meditating and suddenly it hit you.
Usually it comes through some of the many people who have come before us and seen something, or through other people who live on the earth today to whom the Lord has given this revelation of His eternal purpose. And you are knocked out—not violently, not now—but you are amazed.
You begin to see that everything on the earth that pretty much calls itself Christian has no biblical basis. What happens is that they change the names.
“Of course, we have a pastor. They have pastors in the Bible.” Yes, but I do not think what are called pastors today are what they had in the Bible.
Do you know that we have one place in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 14, where it describes a church meeting—a meeting of the ecclesia? It begins like this:
“What is it then, brethren? When ye come together, each one hath a psalm, hath a teaching, hath a revelation, hath a tongue, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.”
People teach. People have a song. People have a psalm. People have a tongue. People have an interpretation. Brothers have prophecy. All sorts of things come from the ecclesia, the Body of Christ functioning.
The Body of Christ nowadays has, by and large, become the place where there is one great mouth speaking, one great ear listening, and that is sort of the function. Maybe one great organ player playing. Okay. It is not biblical.
So the Lord begins to show you that. Once you grow up, you grow up in a certain way, going to ecclesia—assembly—every week. You become so sure that what happens in America’s denominations every week is exactly what the Lord is after, that this is the way He is building something that the gates of hell shall not prevail against.
Then you begin to see that. And the more you begin to see that—this could be my own experience; whether it is yours or not, I do not know—you begin to get a little angry that this exists.
So what do you do? About every week when you see your mother, you start haranguing her about where she comes to church and how it does not do anything of importance. My mother is sitting right over there, and anybody who wants to ask her afterwards, she will tell you right now that she had a haranguing son.
That is not right. That is not right.
The other thing it will do is make you say, “Do you know what God has shown me? I read all these books, and I went and heard so-and-so, and I studied the Scripture, and I have come to understand the way of God.”
And you are proud about it. You cannot help but be proud about it, because you are just a man and the Lord has not done much work in your life. You become proud.
Does anybody here think that if the Lord really shows them a vision of His eternal purpose, they will not become proud? Is there anybody in the room who would like to say, “Yeah, I missed that one. I never became proud at all when I really understood and got light”? Then you are just a little ahead of the apostle Paul.
Look at what he says in 2 Corinthians 12. He is talking about the time when he was caught up to the third heaven and allowed to see things that no one else had seen—things too lofty even to talk about, things unlawful to be spoken.
Then, after he came back to his place, verse 7:
“And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted overmuch.
Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
And He hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My power is made perfect in weakness.”
Paul, why would you want to do such a thing? Why would you exalt yourself? That is not like you. Well, it says right here by his own pen. His own statement is, “If the Lord had not humbled me, I would have exalted myself.”
I think I could become—especially someone who had just seen something from the Lord concerning His eternal purpose—very proud. Then the Lord has to resist me, because the Lord resists the proud.
What is the answer to these things? You know, you are caught. It is a catch-22. “Lord, do not show me anything, and I am in darkness, and I do not know what You are doing. I am just doing the usual thing in America and trying to do it to the best of my abilities,” which leads to a whole legalistic thing.
Then the Lord gives you light, and you can become a haranguer or someone who becomes proud. Usually, it is wonderful. It is so wonderful, because we all need this almost every day.
If you have this every day, you will be more like Jesus. If you are just a little more humble—if I am just a little more humble—every day, a little more humility.
Our Lord said of Himself, “I am meek and lowly in heart.” When He said, “Come unto Me,” He said, “I am meek and lowly in heart.” Oh, I want to be like Jesus. Nothing for me, and everything for the Lord.
With such a people, the Lord can work among them. There are probably some older people in the room who have had to go through this any number of times.
The other thing that can happen is that there becomes greater division in the Body of Christ. Before, you were in fellowship with some people. You loved them, and they loved you. They did not understand the things you wanted to go on in, in that fellowship.
But you begin to present the things that you have seen in such a way that they say, “You must be against me. You must be, because you stand against everything that I have experienced and been taught and believe in.”
You almost say, “I wish I had never said anything like that. I cherished my relationship with that person. I did not want there to be a barrier between us.”
You have got to be careful with these things, I think. If you want to start talking to somebody about truthful things, talk about the gospel. Talk about the new creation.
The Lord will call and usually draw people into understanding. He is able to bring people into a greater understanding of His eternal purpose, to bring them to the place where all things drop away and they see anew and afresh.
So here we are in a battle, and the enemy wants to stop this ecclesia, the one Jesus spoke of when He said, “I am going to build it, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
Well, if I were the enemy, I would stop that first, because I would want the gates of hell prevailing against everything that the Lord tries to build.
So here we are, trying to see, and also trying to keep what we see living. If you do not keep it living, after a while even that beautiful thing the Lord showed you can lose its vision. You will just be going through the motions of it.
Just going through it. Then, after a while, it can be like an old trend that I had: “It is funny how I used to think this and this and this, and now I do not really remember that anymore.”
But the Lord said, “I will build My church.” Through the ages of church history, the Lord has had little groups. Sometimes they have been very big. The Waldensians in Italy were a large group. The Anabaptists were all over Europe.
These were people who gave their lives and loved the Lord with all their heart. I think that during the times from the 1400s or 1500s up until the 1800s, the city of God was greatly prospered.
Let me just say something about this eternal purpose of God. We said it the other night during the Revelation meeting, but it is the place where children—babes in Christ—get to grow up into full sonship. You do not have to be a babe your whole life. You can actually grow up.
The Lord will be the firstborn among many brethren, that He may bring many sons to glory. Remember what the Lord said: “He that overcometh, I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
You get to be a living stone, built up with other living stones. You know, I do not know what people do when they see 1 Peter 2. Let us turn there.
Chapter 2, verse 4:
“Coming unto Him, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious,
ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
Again, we are being built up into a spiritual house, built on the great cornerstone of the Lord Jesus, for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus.
Oh, for the house of God to be filled with priests who have grown up into maturity and who are continually bringing spiritual sacrifices to the Lord in the assembly, among their brothers and sisters. This is the Lord’s purpose.
For this is contained in Scripture:
“Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious:
and he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame.
For you therefore that believe is the preciousness: but for such as disbelieve,
The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner;
and, A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence.”
“But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession,
that ye may show forth the excellencies of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light:
who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God:
who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.”
A royal priesthood, under the tutelage of the Lord Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. In the house of God, we have a great High Priest.
Every one of us is not doing what seems good to us. We have a Lord Who is our King, Who is our Head, Who is our great High Priest, and He is leading us, drawing us, training us by His indwelling Spirit.
In our daily life in the ecclesia, as interesting things happen in daily life, He is teaching us to be those who have a right to the city: the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
The ecclesia must be a place where there is an unfettered love expressed from many brothers and sisters toward the Lord Jesus, and therefore also toward one another. To be just head over heels in love with Jesus Christ.
Oh, how we fall away from the Lord. We love Him to a point, and then somehow the enemy can come in and begin to whisper, “Oh, this is enough. Look around. You are better than many.” Right there, you know it is the enemy. Shake yourself. Throw a pail of cold water upon yourself when you hear that.
The Lord’s wife, the Body of Christ, the new man, the new creation.
You know, there is something interesting. Most Christians that I meet, just anywhere in the world, for the most part live like mere men.
Now, you all will have to get me cornered tonight, back over in this corner, and say, “Yeah, we have been meaning to talk to you, John, about the way you have been living your life as a mere man.” I hope, by the grace of God and the kindness of God and the mercy of God, that is not true.
But people live like they are not part of a new creation, but like mere men. When you think about what we do to entertain ourselves, or just to do things, so much of it is of this world—things of this world, which are passing away.
We put great stock in things of this world, which are passing away. I was looking at the news tonight. This is the anniversary of some terrible London bombing, and people lost their lives.
I was thinking to myself, “Oh, what if they hit London again with some sort of terrible device that would cause it not to be London anymore?” There would go the Houses of Parliament. There would go Big Ben. There would go all the little things that make that city.
As I thought about it, I thought, London is a city that is part of the kingdom of this world, and the kingdom of this world is passing away. I do not want anybody to do any mean thing to any city, but the city of London is passing away. Why should I put my joy there?
The Lord has begun the new creation. In the old creation, first He built and created the whole habitat for His man. He built this planet and all the animals and all the flora and fauna and all the things that exist. The last thing that He did in creation was to build His man.
On the sixth day, it was over. The way He is creating this time, first He is building the new man. He is building ecclesia, the Body of Christ under the headship of the Lord Jesus. This is the new man.
The old man was Adam, and everyone who is in Adam. But as soon as we trust the Lord for salvation, He takes us out of Adam and baptizes us into Christ, the new man.
On the earth today, if you want to go anywhere where the new creation is, you have to go around some Christians, because there is not anything else that is of the new creation.
If you live as a mere man, it means that you are living like a man from the other creation. Christians always seem to be so schizophrenic about this, setting our hearts and minds and affections on things of the earth.
Now, I am guilty of this. I do not know if you are. I am guilty of this, so I know this by firsthand knowledge. But I do not want to be such a man. I do not want to live my life as a mere man. I want to live my life as a new creation.
People will respond, “But that is sort of a boring life.” Especially if you are young, you are immediately thinking right now, “Oh, man, come on. Give me a break here. I have to have some entertainment, or I have to have the things that I like to do, or go, and all this other kind of stuff.”
But you young people, and us older people, as we grow up into Christ, there should be more and more of that which is of the kingdom of this world simply falling away from us.
I mentioned that song. We have seen quite a bit from Colossians:
“If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.
Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth.
For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
Oh, I wish I had the whole song. “I am seated with Christ and God in the heavenly realm. Set my mind on things above, not on things of the earth.”
So I wonder what would happen. You can do this if you want, and you do not have to if you do not want. But what if we began making an inventory of little things that we use just to pass the time, or little fillers in our lives, that have nothing to do with the new creation?
I do not think this is against hobbies. I think there are many things people can do, many hobbies people can have, and many pursuits of knowledge. People can read and study history or anything they want to learn more about.
I am not speaking about a straitjacket Christian life, in which there is someone in the back with a long pole and a little prick at the end, like the Puritans had. The fellow in the back would jab somebody who was sleeping, and people would probably look like they were always getting infused in the meeting about what the dull old Puritan preacher might have been saying.
He may have been saying wonderful things, but perhaps in a dull manner. I do not know.
So, we are a new creation. This is the beginning of the Lord’s eternal purpose for us, and we never leave it.
If you see the Lord’s eternal purpose, I believe the Lord can bring it about. If you do not see it, you are still part of it.
You might say to people, just as the Lord said, “Blessed are ye if ye know these things, and do them.” He also said in Luke 12 that the one who had more understanding of the Lord’s way would receive a more severe judgment.
Then you begin to say, “Okay, maybe this is enough,” because how many in the room want to be increasingly held to a higher and higher standard?
Well, we all should say, though it is difficult, “Yes, I want to.” I do not think the Lord is showing me something, then showing me more, and then showing me more, because it is not important, or just to put me at risk, so to speak.
He is showing us so that the ecclesia can be built up in love.
The other great danger, and one reason we are talking about warfare and the love of the Lord’s purpose, is because you can give up.
I know people who have met together for a long time, and it seems that there is beginning to be that passivity—not running the race, not fighting the good fight, not keeping the faith.
The Lord has given us an understanding, a vision, a revelation of His purpose. Oh, may we wake up every day and count that as precious—precious from the Lord.
Because as He builds us up, we are also building. We are being equipped by the Lord Jesus for the building in His house. He builds, and we build.
Only, we do not just build something. We build as the Lord leads: “Encourage this one. Go alongside this one and be a friend to that one. Go apologize to this one; you have offended that one.”
The Lord is building us up into everything that He wants that city to be. How far short we are of that.
But every time something is gained, every time a brother or sister overcomes and forgives, or loves, or serves another—however mundane the thing may seem—serves the saints, the Lord knows all of it. He keeps all of it.
Until, at the end, at the right time, when that angel takes John—I do not know what time, I do not know what non-time is, but I know I like it—when that day comes, it will have been worth it all.
All the suffering, all the bearing of the cross, all the doing things that you did not necessarily want to do because of someone else, all the laying down of your life, not taking up your life, losing your life that you might find it.
The Lord knows it all and keeps it all. In that day, we will be so glad that the city of God was prospered by us.
How foolish it would be for us, especially some of us who are older, to now begin to ebb even in our love for the Lord Jesus. Because when you quit loving the Lord’s people, you are not loving the Lord.
I mean, it is perfect. You want to check the pulse of your love for the Lord Jesus? How are you loving His saints? You know in your heart.
Do we avoid people? Is it, “Yeah, of course, let me help”? Are we laying down our lives for one another? Or are we nowadays just going through the motions because we still remember the motions?
If that is true, you can come to the Lord tonight, before you go to bed tonight, and say, “Lord, do not let me keep on drifting off more and more into sleep.”
You remember what the Lord said to the saints in Sardis:
“Wake up, and establish the things that remain, which were ready to die: for I have found no works of thine perfected before My God.
Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear, and keep it, and repent.
If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”
Everything that the Lord has shown us—and, by the way, saints, especially you younger ones—everything that the Lord has given us, every understanding, is for you. It is yours also.
It is not, “Well, you know, Kit knows everything, so as long as he is around, we are okay, because he will always know the right thing to do.” Well, go find out everything he knows.
He might give you books to read. He might assign certain things. He might start meeting with the young people who say, “My parents always talk about God’s eternal purpose, and I feel like I am among a people who have, in some way, shape, or form, laid hold of the Lord’s purpose—a portion of it, coming into it.”
Maybe we are just past beginner’s license. But if he knows something, it is yours to know. It is yours for the Lord to show you and impress you with, as much as anyone else here who is an old person.
Do not just say, “We will rely on the older people.” Ask, “Lord, what is Your purpose?”
Maybe the enemy, in warfare, has been whispering in your ear, “You do not have to get into that. You know what you want to do: come and be at the prayer meetings, be at the worship times, have fellowship, and it is wonderful. But you do not have to take so much for yourself. You are a young person.”
I think you should take so much for yourself.
So, in this warfare that we are locked in, forewarned is forearmed. You should know this: the enemy will try to stop you from running the race that the Lord has shown you to run.
The enemy will try to cause you to say, “You know, I have come far enough.” But everything is about the end of the race—running until your race is over.
The enemy will be trying to blind us, trying to wear us down. “I am so tired.” A lot of it is because we are living by legalism instead of by the Spirit of God, being led by His Spirit.
That becomes so tiring. It becomes so wearisome. After a while, you say, “I cannot make it anymore.”
Yes, you can. The answer is always the same answer: the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus.
The One Who has begun a good work in us will keep doing that same good work unless we prevent it. When we sing that song—we were taught it by Chicago—it is easy to think, “Oh, do not worry. It does not matter what you do, because He is going to be faithful to complete it.”
Unless you stop it. He will complete it all the way up until the day of the Lord.
Now, it is not that He will be faithful to complete it in you unto the day of the Lord in such a way that some people think, “Oh, well, I was so far behind that I just quit trying, but it is okay because Jesus is going to work magic on me when I get to the end.”
No, He will not. He is working supernaturally, empowering you right now. This is the day of salvation, and He keeps working.
Do not stop Him. Do not tear down what He works. Do not refuse to wake up in the morning and say, “You know, this is a day for just living in the flesh.”
No, this is a day for living in the Spirit. This is a day for following the Lord Jesus wherever He goes. This is a day for the Lord to prosper His city, His ecclesia.
Do not let the enemy steal anything that the Lord has manifested among us. Do not let him steal anything from you personally.
Learn, if you already have it, learn to love the Lord’s purpose and to take it for your own until you say, “This is my purpose. This is the new creation. This is where I am headed for. I am going to live in this city forever.”
There are all sorts of things about the ecclesia that are found right in that city, because the Lord said, “I will build My ecclesia, and the gates of hell will not prevail.”
So it is the building up of us that He is getting. While He is building, He is getting what He wants.
So let us give Him all the glory, and keep on warring against the evil one. Keep on loving that which the Lord has given us.
Does anybody have any questions? I am sorry; I used to ask that from the Revelation meeting, but I do not mind if anybody has a question. And then, if we could have some prayers.