Good to be here with you for these days in New York. It is very hot these days, close to 100 degrees, and I am kind of glad now that I have come and see that you do not have the big Boeing fans going here. I remember some years it was quite hot here, and all we could do was have these big fans blowing all across. I never could hear anything. But this weather is just absolutely wonderful. Glad to be with you.
I would like to share, in the times I will be speaking, from the book of Hebrews. So I would like to introduce it tonight and wonder if we could look at several passages within this book. Let us begin in Hebrews 1, just getting a little flavor here for tonight by way of introduction.
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,
in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the world.And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature,
and upholds all things by the word of His power.When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.Hebrews 1:1-4
In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath,
so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil,
where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.Hebrews 6:17-20
But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings,
partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations,
and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property,
knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.
For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.For yet in a very little while,
He who is coming will come, and will not delay.
But My righteous one shall live by faith;
and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
For by it the men of old gained approval.Hebrews 10:32—11:2
See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking.
For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven.And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying,
Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe;
for our God is a consuming fire.Hebrews 12:25-29
But I urge you, brethren, bear with this word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly.
Hebrews 13:22
Let us just pray for another moment.
Our Father, we thank You so much for the precious word of God we have before us. As we gather together for these days, we thank You for the rest and the fellowship, for the remembrances of Your faithfulness over the years.
We pray that all of these benefits and blessings, as we are gathered together, would fortify us for the race that lies ahead. We pray that You will help us to understand, and especially to obey, that which we hear from Your throne.
We pray that these days will be an encounter under an open heaven, when we may see our Lord Jesus clearly before us and run the race with Him before us.
We ask tonight for Your help, for refreshing of tired bodies, and for opening of hearts—stubborn hearts—for clear seeing in our spirit as we fellowship together in this time.
Thank You, Lord, that we can depend on You for all that we need. You have been made to us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. We take our full portion in Christ, and we pray in His precious name. Amen.
One of the great lessons that we learn from the book of Hebrews overall is that God sends a strong word of encouragement before He brings on a strong shaking. This we see from the context of this letter to the Hebrews.
When this letter was written, already the ground was trembling—not only among the Diaspora, that is, the dispersed Jews throughout Asia and Macedonia, Greece, and so forth, but most especially in Palestine, in Jerusalem and Galilee. The ground was already shaking when this strong encouragement was given.
When you read even the accounts of Josephus and other historians, you realize that this time, which most Bible scholars believe was just before AD 70, was a time of great chaos, not only in Jerusalem but in Judea as a whole.
During these days, since Jesus had lived upon this earth, Judaism was falling into greater and greater splits, fights, and sects. They were forming groups, false messiahs were being raised up, and all kinds of zealous counterattacks were attempted upon Rome.
They were building Masada, and they were hiding out in the wilderness among the Essenes. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of chaos, and a lot of division. The fact of the matter is, the Jews were killing each other by the thousands every year, just over different sectarian differences that they had among them.
The day was growing ripe for that time in AD 70 when Titus came and destroyed what was left of all of the system of Judaism. A million and a half Jews were killed. He came and destroyed the city of Jerusalem—its temple, its altars, its system, its priesthood, and its sacrifices. The whole thing went down in AD 70, and the tremors on the ground could be felt before it happened.
Now, we do not know what happened to all those Jews, but our question is, of course, what happened to the Jewish Christians?
We know that as late as around AD 55, when Paul returned on his last journey back to Jerusalem with a gift for the saints in Judea, it was clearly stated that the Jewish Christians were still zealous for the law. And that means an awful lot.
It does not just mean they were following the Ten Commandments. It means they were continuing in the traditions, the sacrifices, the centrality of the temple, and all of these kinds of things, along with their belief in Jesus the Messiah.
Paul had been martyred by the time of the writing of this letter. Now, some people believe this was a letter written by Paul, and it is possible. The language is quite different, but perhaps through another writer, an amanuensis, he dictated and so it came out differently. Some believe it originally was in Hebrew and later translated into Greek, but that does not seem to be the case.
If it was Paul, it was certainly a different sort of spirit. But one could imagine, as he was ripening there in jail and waiting for his martyrdom, that perhaps something like this was written.
But Paul’s message was not to the Jews, to the Jewish Christians. He was sent to the Gentiles. As we all know, Paul’s universal gospel, which was so well received out in the Roman Empire of those days, was really not that well received among the Jewish Christians.
They put up with Paul. Even when Paul came to Jerusalem on that last visit before he was thrown into jail, he told them everything that the Lord had been doing in those places, and it says they all praised God for what He was doing.
So they were in full accord with the evangelism of the Gentile world. But they were having a problem with what to do as a Christian and a Jew. They had heard stories that Paul was going around telling Jewish parents not to circumcise their children, nor to observe any of the traditions of the Jews, and they were very upset about this. They wanted to know what was happening.
But in any case, I believe that Paul had already been martyred by this time. Now, what was going to happen to these Hebrew Christians?
Think about Jerusalem. They had been together almost a generation, almost forty years. As James says in Acts 21, there were tens of thousands of these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. A large number of them were Greek-speaking, and a large number were Hebrew-speaking.
Thank God, they were holding together as the church—a wonderful testimony. But they were going through troubling times. What was going to happen because the ground was beginning to shake? What were the Christians going to do in that atmosphere?
More specifically, who would be raised up to speak to them during this very difficult time? Somebody needed to give them strong encouragement.
Now, it is amazing, is it not? There is a word, exhortation. That is an old English word, and it is the same in the Greek, because this word exhortation means two things: encouragement and warning, both at the same time.
It is a double-barreled word. An exhortation is a positive encouragement, if you want to put it that way, and a negative warning, both at the same time. This whole letter to the Hebrews is a strong encouragement, a strong exhortation.
It is interesting the way our translators usually settle on the positive side. In my translation, the American Standard, it usually says “encouragement,” as in, “that you may have strong encouragement.” But actually, take the full dosage. It is a strong warning and a strong encouragement. Can you handle both at the same time?
Who could bring this strong exhortation at such a time as this, as the ground was beginning to shake, as the Roman army was collecting and beginning to come down toward Jerusalem? For the Jews, it could not be some Gentile. It had to be a Jew, somebody familiar with the law.
But, of course, it had to be somebody who had come right through in grace. Who was such a person?
Well, now I have my own idea. It is not my own, of course; many people believe it. But I believe the job for writing this letter fell to Joseph the Levite.
Joseph the Levite, I believe, was just the man to write this book. Now, if you do not believe that, it is perfectly okay. You can be wrong. And if you are right, then I am wrong. But there was certainly somebody like Joseph the Levite, if it was not him.
Perhaps you do not know him under the name Joseph the Levite, because his name was also Barnabas. When you look at Acts 4, you see that he is called Barnabas by the apostles.
Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles (which translated means Son of Encouragement), and who owned a tract of land, sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
Acts 4:36-37
Cyprian birth means he came from Cyprus, so he was a Greek-speaking Jew. Barnabas means “son of exhortation.” Then we see him again in Acts 11, up in the church of Antioch.
Then when Barnabas arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to exhort them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord;
for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And considerable numbers were brought to the Lord.Acts 11:23-24
Here we see this wonderful brother. He comes to Antioch and sees what is going on. His heart senses that this is from the Lord, and he immediately begins to bring strong exhortation for those saints, those newly born saints. Many more were saved during his brief stay there.
He was a man of strong exhortation, the son of exhortation, as he was called. I believe he was the man just right for this situation.
Where was Barnabas’s home? Well, you know it was Cyprus originally. Of course, he sold his property. We do not know exactly what that means. But for sure, he had never left Jerusalem and was always received in Jerusalem by the saints there.
He was originally sent out from Jerusalem, and yet he was at home in Antioch. Later he was working with Saul of Tarsus for more than a year there in Antioch. He was welcomed in Antioch, among the Jews and among the Gentiles.
Beyond that, because of his journeys with Paul, he was also welcomed among the churches in the Diaspora, in Cyprus and Asia Minor, at least that far. So this Barnabas was a man just raised up for such a time.
In the midst of the shaking, there arose one who brought strong encouragement. Now, if with all of that it was not Barnabas, then leave it like this: God had to raise up somebody just before AD 70 who could bring that kind of strong exhortation to the saints and release them from the bondage that they were in.
This strong word of exhortation had to shake them loose—shake loose from them that which would soon be shaken.
This exhortation was so strong, and indeed the book of Hebrews is so strong, that for those who read and heeded, it shook them out of the shadows of those traditions and vestiges they were holding onto.
We find a wonderful and helpful phrase for us: He shook them out of the shadows and into the living. He brought them into a living faith, even as he talked about in Hebrews 11—a living faith that pleases God.
He brought them back before the living God. Notice what it says in Hebrews 3. When the writer of Hebrews says “the living God,” he is making a point by adding “living,” because all the Jews believed in God. But the question is: are we related to a living God?
Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.
Hebrews 3:12
This exhortation is meant to shake loose those things that cause us to fall from a living relationship with a living God by living faith.
Of course, through this we enter in by His living word. Everybody here knows Hebrews 4:12:
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.
Hebrews 4:12
Oh, is it not wonderful to have a living word? Not just some letter that we are trying to observe in the shadows of effort, but a living word that cuts, separates, sanctifies, and sets us free.
It even makes us partakers in those who can walk in the new and living way in Hebrews 10. Oh, how precious is the exhortation of the word of God.
I would like to talk tonight, just briefly by way of introduction, on the importance of the exhortative power of the word of God to snap us out of those things that hold onto us and bring us into some kind of maturity.
Barnabas, or whoever it was who wrote this, certainly gave this, and it is meat of the word. It is that which matures people—with strong warnings, but, of course, strong rewards; a strong stand in objectivity; and a strong experience in the Lord Himself.
All of this comes through the strength of this kind of message of maturity. One of the ways you can tell that something is an exhortation, especially unto maturity, is when it uses this exhortative phrase: “Let us.”
The book of Hebrews is full of “let us.” All kinds of passages have to do with, “Let us do this. Let us do that.” We will just look at a few.
Therefore, let us fear.
Hebrews 4:1
That is, receiving these promises, let us not fail to unite them by faith and enter the rest.
Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest.
Hebrews 4:11
Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace.
Hebrews 4:16
Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity.
Hebrews 6:1
Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.
Hebrews 10:22
Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace.
Hebrews 12:28
Let us have grace, that we may offer to God an acceptable service. You may have “gratitude.” This word grace can also mean gratitude. But it means that in the midst of the shaking, take His grace. Let us have grace. Let us be full of grace and thanksgiving.
Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.
Hebrews 13:15
There is so much to say, and we will be covering some of these things when the time comes. I remember the first time somebody taught me the book of Hebrews. It was quite unusual: a Pentecostal preacher in a conference, and his subject was “Into the Holiest.”
His subject was the importance of holiness, and he used the book of Hebrews. Of course, you can imagine why. It is full of matters of holiness.
But the thing that impressed me so much about that particular Pentecostal preacher was how much he showed the beauty of holiness. His whole message was really this: as Christians, we need to get used to this unfamiliar territory of holiness because it is altogether beautiful.
He pictured the beautiful, holy Christ. Then he pictured a beautiful, holy, living way that has been opened before us. In every way, he showed the beauty of holiness.
The times I had heard holiness mentioned, it was kind of like something that gave me the creeps a little bit. It was kind of tough, sort of austere. I had heard an austere holiness, but not a beautiful holiness.
But this man was enraptured in the holiness of Jesus. Is that not wonderful? Surely, this book of Hebrews is full of the beauty of holiness.
It is interesting that Psalm 8 was read, because here is part of the worship in Hebrews 2. Even the exhorter, whoever he may be, begins this strong word of exhortation by bringing the saints in through worship. He starts right off talking about the Lord Jesus and who He was, and then brings in Psalm 8, that wonderful worship hymn. It is a worshipful experience.
But I want us to look at it tonight in an introductory way. We will look at it in more personal aspects in the next times, but tonight I want to introduce the book by stating four absolutes that bring us to maturity.
This book has absolutes in it. Now, I am sorry for those of you who may be relativists, and you do not believe in right and wrong, light and dark, and all that sort of thing. It is very popular today not to believe in all that sort of thing.
But to go on to maturity, you have got to stand your ground on absolutes. One of the wonderful things about the Bible is that the word of God has absolutes. If you can believe it and cross over on these absolutes, they bring you into maturity.
The word of God is strong. It necessitates this, in a sense: standing by faith in the absolute truth of the word of God. When we do that, then the Lord brings us into the reality of the experience.
The key, as a starting place in looking at Hebrews from the outside, is this: are you ready to accept the absolutes that bring us to maturity? I will name just four.
The first one is this: Jesus is God.
Now, that is where the writer starts. You may say, “No problem for me.” Well, maybe this is more than a doctrine.
Probably you know that in the background of this, during the shaking time just before AD 70, there was a problem already evident among these Jewish Christians that only grew into the second century. It was decided to be a heresy.
What was that problem? There were a number of these Jewish Christians—especially, they say, from records that have been found—who were Galilean Christians. These were Jews from Galilee who had been saved and believed that Jesus was the Messiah.
They believed that Jesus was the suffering servant predicted in Isaiah 53. They believed that their sins were forgiven through Jesus’ death on the cross. They believed that Jesus was raised again from the dead. But they did not believe Jesus was divine. They believed He was a man.
You may say, “Well, how could they work out their theology of salvation?” Well, people do not always work that out. But they accepted Jesus as their Savior and Messiah. They were living in messianic community, if you want to say it that way, but they could not quite step over.
I hope you can appreciate this. If you are a Jew, when you have heard all your life, “The Lord is one,” and then you suddenly hear somebody saying, as Paul might come along and say, “Jesus is divine, the Son of God, who existed before all creation,” you say, “Oh, wait a minute. What are you saying? Two gods?”
The mind cannot get around this whole problem. So among the Jewish community, there were those who were Jewish Christians—truly Christians. They really believed in Jesus, but they did not understand that Jesus was divine.
Now, what does our dear brother do to bring them into maturity? He just cuts them right off at the knees. The opening statement in the book of Hebrews is this: Jesus is God.
He is the Son of God, the image of God, the expression of God, the nature of God.
He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.
When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Hebrews 1:3
The writer just cuts right through and says, “Jesus is the Son of God.”
If these Jews could cross that border, I hope you understand what would happen. What happens when everything gets shaken and the big shaking comes, and you do not understand that Jesus is God—that He is the Lord who is in control, that He is the Lamb who holds the scroll, and that the shaking is by His permission and allowance?
What happens when difficult times come, but you do not have a high enough view of Jesus? You do not really see that He has got it. Well, you could fall apart, you know.
That is why it is so important to cross over on this. If you do not think this is a problem today, then you do not understand the Christian problem today.
I am going to make a broadside statement which I cannot prove. But I am going to say that a large number of professors in various Bible colleges and seminaries today no longer believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, no longer believe in a sinless life, no longer believe in the vicarious atonement of Jesus on the cross, nor do they believe Jesus rose from the dead.
And they are teaching all of their students. I had a professor—I could not understand this. When I first went to this seminary, these different professors would preach in the area of Louisville. I was in Louisville, Kentucky.
There was one man who was so powerful, preaching the resurrection and preaching the gospel. People got saved, and this guy had the gift. He had the words, everything. Then I took a class on John under him and found out he did not believe in a resurrection.
I came up and said, “Well, how can you preach the resurrection out there?” Basically, to make a long story short, they change all the definitions so that they can say, “I believe in a resurrection. I believe in a virgin birth. I believe in this. I believe in that.” But they have just changed it all.
He believed in a resurrection—a spiritual resurrection. But when he got up before the people, he was just a preacher. He did not say that, you know what I mean?
When you hear that kind of stuff, it is so heady, but it is such a problem among Christians today. One reason Christians cannot go on to maturity is that we have to come to grips with the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ in His work and the all-supremacy of Jesus Christ in what is happening around us, or else we will fall apart when the shaking comes.
Some people go back to their rosary. Some people say, “Well, I worship Jesus, but I had better check up with Mary again. She may hear my prayers.” When things fall apart, some people believe in Jesus, but they go back for a prophetic word from somebody.
Here is a mark of somebody who is stepping toward maturity: they have made the crossover, and they believe Jesus is all-sufficient and all they need for their full salvation. I do not need to scramble, search, crawl, or climb up a mountain, looking for something extraneous. Jesus is God.
How do we know Jesus is God? That is something we see by revelation. It does not make sense to the natural mind. You can try to figure it out and play around with it, but it does not sound reasonable: there is God, and there is Jesus, and they are both God, and yet they are both distinct.
That only comes by revelation. You just see it. But this crossover is so important in the survival of our lives, and in the book of Hebrews it has a particular impact.
Here is the paradox: we have to establish that Jesus is the Son of God and all-sufficient, and then He can minister to us as the very human Jesus, the High Priest and Apostle.
We have to understand that He is God before He can help us in His humanity. In the book of Hebrews there is very much to do with Jesus helping us in His humanity. Of course, He is both man and God, but you will see that as we continue on.
That is number one. Do you understand what I am saying? That is the absolute: Jesus is God. If you can handle it, you cross over. If the Jews could handle that, then when the crushing came, they would make it. They would hold on to Jesus as their all-sufficient Lord and make it through.
The second absolute is this: to come to maturity, you have got to believe that Jesus’ work was once for all—one time, perfect redemption. Nothing more needs to be done.
This goes along with the first one to a certain degree. But some of you may not have seen this in Hebrews in this way, so let us look at some verses that use this phrase, “once for all,” in this particular redemptive context.
For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens;
who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people,
because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.Hebrews 7:26-27
He does not have to do it again. Once for all—that is a perfect, finished work.
And not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
Hebrews 9:12
Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
Hebrews 9:26
By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Hebrews 10:10
But He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.
Hebrews 10:12
For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
Hebrews 10:14
The Jewish believers had a little mix-up here, because they believed in the sacrifice of Jesus for their sins, but they were still holding on to the sacrifices of animals.
Even after they were saved through the forgiveness of sins by the death of Jesus, they wondered, “Now what happens when I sin? Is this sacrifice still effectual?”
This is where I am preaching to the choir, because you really believe in the once-for-all, perfect, finished work of Christ. But it is the way unto maturity. There are many Christians today who are not clear on this.
Because they are not clear, their consciences can be spooked into not being sure that they are Christians because, after their confession of faith, they did something wrong. You know how the enemy can get in and work you around.
But if we would go on to maturity, we have to stand in this absolute: once for all. For those who have broken through, how wonderful it is to rest in His finished work, is it not?
Even with all our failures, all our problems, and even all our sins, we can rest in His finished work because it was once for all—never to be undone, never to be repeated.
Interestingly, or paradoxically, it is when one sees this absolute, perfect work of Christ—that we have been made perfect by the sacrifice—that we are freed to press on to perfection.
Is that not interesting? People who press on to perfection through works, striving, and everything are pressing on the wrong basis, and they will eventually run out of gas.
But once you see Hebrews 10:14, “For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,” then you see that He has already perfected those for all time. It is you and me. Do you believe it? He has already perfected you.
That is the basis for you pressing on to perfection and being made perfect. If you do not believe that, you think you are attaining something you have not gotten to yet. If you understand that you have got it already, then you are just going and becoming what you already are. There is a lot of difference between those two.
The third absolute that the book of Hebrews tells us is this: there is no going back.
You remember a major example in the book of Hebrews is the children of Israel, who got into the wilderness, started testing the Lord, and said, “Let us go back. Let us appoint other leaders.” There is no going back.
When he talks about the great saints in the school of faith in Hebrews 11, he says this:
All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance,
and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own.
And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return.But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.Hebrews 11:13-16
Once you get going, there is no going back. Some people hang around in the shadows: “Well, I am saved, but I am thinking of going back to the world because this saved business is not really turning me on too much.”
They do not realize that once you have gone through the Red Sea, you cannot reopen the Red Sea and go back. You can drown. There is one way out, and there is no going back.
Where are we going? It matters. It does not matter where you start; if you go on to maturity, you eventually end up outside the camp.
So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.
Hebrews 13:13
That had immediate application to those Jewish Christians. The camp was Judaism. If you are going on to maturity, I am sorry, you have to go outside the camp. Your sufficiency is not in the practices of Judaism. It has to be in Christ alone.
There is no going back now. You set your course toward the Lord. Draw near to Him, and do not go back. You cannot go back. It will not work.
Going back, staying back, is that which makes us fall away. We read that in Hebrews 3:12. Be careful lest, through the deceitfulness of sin and hardness of heart, we fall away from the living God. That is the backward step.
It is made even more dangerous when it comes to Hebrews 6 and it talks about after tasting, and after all these things, if you fall away at that point, then there is real trouble.
I do not believe you lose your salvation, but I think what he goes on to say is that if you fall away from all the things the Lord has given you and blessed you with—the forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, the word of God, and a taste of the life to come—what replaces all of that encouragement is a sense of dread and a sense of judgment that is about to fall.
You cannot go back. If you go back, you fall into these shadowlands. Do you know some Christians living in the shadowlands?
You may say, “Well, are they Christians?” You can remember the time when they were saved. They asked Jesus to come into their life, and they started walking. You have to say, “Yes, I believe they are truly Christian. I have a witness in my spirit that they really belong to the Lord.” But now what has happened to them?
In one sense, of course, they have a job, they moved somewhere, and they are somewhere. But I do not know what is happening. It is sort of like time stands still.
Some of us have experienced that, have we not? We went away from the Lord for some years, then came back. It was like those five years away—nothing happened. It was wasted years.
There is no going back. You have to set your mind for that. There is no going back. All the shakings, the stuff, the predictions, the things that are going to happen—you cannot go back. What will you do, go back and hide in the world? You will be found. Christians smell different. They will find you out.
There is no going back. You have to press on toward Jesus. You cannot turn back. That is what the whole matter of the Apostle of our faith is all about.
Here again we find this interesting paradox: once you make this steely resolve in the cold light of faith that there is no going back, the living way forward seems to open up.
Once you cut off your escape route, then God opens the way forward. These things are important in our stand toward maturity.
The last one I will mention is this. This is a strong word of exhortation, this whole book, and here is what we have got to face: there is going to be a shaking.
Since you have been meeting for forty-two years, a lot of you know our brother Lance Lambert. Every time he speaks now, when he gets a chance to talk a little bit, he mentions the fact about the United States and our total naivety.
We live in a la-la-la world. Everything is fine. Nothing is wrong. This is God’s country. We are well protected. What could possibly go wrong?
Even though we feel ground tremors, we say, “No, la-da, everything is good. Let us press on with the gospel of prosperity. Let us all get rich and love Jesus,” and all these kinds of things.
Lance just really gets into us, you know. Of course, I am suspicious because he is not an American citizen, but leaving that aside, the Lord is going to shake this thing up.
That means the assembly where you and I are, our own personal lives, the United States, or any other country you want to name. He has got to shake things up to shake out the stuff that is shakeable.
He wants to purify a people. He wants to simplify a people. He wants to focus a people. He has got to shake. It is called a shaking.
Now, does that scare you? I remember there was a dear sister on Long Island. There were some different meetings on Long Island for a while. There was one meeting farther out on the island, and they happened to be building a nuclear energy plant five miles from her home.
They had just bought the home, and then they started building this plant. She absolutely was shaking in her boots. She did not know what to do. They did not have a good escape-route plan and everything.
After the six-billion-dollar building of the thing, they never ran it one day. They disassembled it for four buildings, and they strapped the people with the electricity bill for a ten-billion-dollar debt because they never did have an escape route.
But this lady was afraid. I remember one time we got to talking about it, and she started crying. She said, “What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Me and my children, if this thing melts down? We are five miles away. What am I going to do?”
One of the other sisters, perhaps in temptation, said, “Well, I will tell you what I am going to do. If I am over at your house in a meltdown and there is no way out, I am going to walk right into that nuclear reactor. It will be over with. I am not going to burn for years.”
You know what? It snapped this girl right out of her fear. I guess she took that resolve. I do not know. She kept her bicycle tires pumped up or what. She determined, “Well, if it is happening, I am walking toward it. That is it.”
But it set her free. Now, that is a silly example, but listen: there is going to be shaking.
If you can handle that, then you also find out that there is grace sufficient for any shaking. If you are with the Lord, He takes you through the shaking.
You will be shaken, and I will be shaken. Nobody is exempt. You do not get exempt from shaking.
You meet people who get these squirrely ideas. You say, “Hey, what are you doing?” They say, “Well, I am retiring, and I am going to Panama.” Panama, huh? I suppose that is as far away as you think you could be from trouble, but I think it is right in the middle of trouble. I do not know.
People get ideas about where it is safe. Montana—is that the place? “Then it goes down, move to Montana.” No, listen. When everything goes wrong, go right forward to the Lord’s center.
I do not mean that literally. But I think sometimes, if we can handle the fact and prepare ourselves, set our minds to understand that there is suffering ahead in these last days—not only because the enemy has something he wants to do and his time is short, but because the Lord is going to shake His bride until she is good and ready.
That means you and me. Do not be afraid of it. Just walk into the Lord, and whatever needs to be shaken will be shaken.
I live in my own place, just like you, feeling safe and secure. I live down on Long Island. I remember when September 11 came in 2001 in New York City. You know what? That was just a little ground tremor. That is all that was.
I remember our brother Christian Chen. He was there, and I was there in Queens at the time. I remember him sharing a message that next Sunday. He said, “You know, brothers and sisters, part of the reason that happened is we do not take seriously that we need to pray that God’s kingdom and covering would stay over New York City. Who prays that?”
He said, “We have been negligent, and we are under the same judgment as everyone else.” I really saw something in that time.
Am I saying anything out of school by saying New York City is under God’s judgment? He mercifully withholds judgment for a season so that people can be saved and people can come to their senses. He just shakes it a little bit to see who will respond, who gets saved, and who will wake up.
But New York City is under judgment. If you live there, I think you have to settle on that fact. You do not know what is going to happen.
May I add, Los Angeles is under judgment, and all the environments around it. You cannot move far enough out into the valley. The whole thing is under judgment.
I am sorry. I know there are some people who do not like that. I do not think you could love America more than I do. I love this country. That does not mean I have to lie or be blind about it. We deserve judgment.
God is merciful and withholds that judgment. You should pray for revival. Pray that God would spare, revive, restore, and bring the church through maturity. But the present things that are happening are not doing it, and I reckon there is going to be shaking.
Let us not be blindsided by that, get knocked out of our tree, and lose our goal. You should expect these things and be pressed into the Lord, so that when the shaking comes, we are holding onto that one thing that is unshakable—even our Lord Himself.
That will get us through whatever we have to get through.
All of this I just want to share and say: how powerful is the word of God to bring us to maturity.
If we can realize that the word is speaking to us, and we need to stand in the absolute truth presented to us to believe by faith, then the Lord can take us, prepare us, and move us into the reality of the maturity for which we are longing in these days.
I am very thankful for this brother, whoever he was—Barnabas, somebody—who came along just as the shaking was starting and said, “Okay, my dear brothers, it is time to start letting go of things.”
The day will come when, if you have not let go, you will be devastated.
I wonder what it was like in AD 71, the year after the destruction, when, by the mercy of God, those thousands of Christians left Jerusalem just before the destruction and went to Pella.
You know about this? Thousands of Jewish Christians, Hebrew Christians, evidently believed the words of Jesus when He spoke about the shakings that were coming. Maybe they believed this exhortation here.
Whatever the circumstances were, they believed, prayed, and left in various numbers and groups. They went out to this place called Pella across the river.
When the shaking came, thousands of Christians were spared. But I wonder what it was like that next year—what kind of traumatic transition they had to go through.
First of all, they were probably humbled by the fact that God even spared their lives. He had to pretty much pull them out as Lot was pulled out of Sodom and Gomorrah. That is how much those Hebrew Christians loved Jerusalem.
God pulled them out, and they realized, “We would have been so stupid. We had been so blind. Now what do we do? Our whole system is gone.”
“We have no Solomon’s Porch to meet on. We have no sacrifices that can be offered. There is no more priesthood. There is no more system. What do we do now?”
Probably in the trauma, somebody said, “I guess we have to follow Jesus only.”
Which is my last point. I believe the Lord will bring us all to maturity—some the easy way, and some through much humiliation.
Oh, may we realize that when God gives us a strong word of exhortation, then there is a strong shaking soon to come.
Let us heed His word. Stand upon His word. Cross over. Consecrate ourselves according to His word, that we may be able to stand in these last days.
May the Lord help us. Amen.