Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.
Speak kindly to Jerusalem, and call out to her,
That her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sin.
A voice is calling,
“Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
Let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
A voice says, “Call out.”
Then I answered, “What shall I call out?”All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of the Lord stands forever.
Get yourself up on a high mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news;
Lift up your voice mightily, O Jerusalem, bearer of good news.
Lift it up, do not fear.
Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
Behold, the Lord God will come with might,
With His arm ruling for Him.
Behold, His reward is with Him,
And His recompense before Him.
Like a shepherd, He will tend His flock;
In His arm He will gather the lambs,
And carry them in His bosom.
He will gently lead the nursing ewes.
And then, if we could just turn to Romans 8. We will begin reading at verse 26.
In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
And He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
And these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
Let us pray.
We thank You, Lord, as we come to the beginning of our conference. We have already taken our position in worship. We are in the Lord Jesus, who has been made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
And in His life tonight, we ask that You would quicken and refresh tired bodies, especially quicken our hearts to receive the good news of the gospel of sonship. As we gather together tonight, we depend upon Your Spirit to be our Teacher, our Enlightener, and our Convictor in these matters.
Thank You for all who have gathered—indeed, predestined to gather, chosen for this time, called together. Oh, give us a living time in Your presence tonight, we pray. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Of course, I know you have seen that the theme is that of spiritual sonship. What I want to do tonight, simply by way of introduction, is take that passage in Isaiah and use it as a parallel to the four stages of unfolding sonship that we see in the book of Romans as it declares the gospel.
Most people, when we talk about the gospel, at least as proclaimed by the apostle Paul, resort to the book of Romans. Here Paul gives us a very thorough explanation and expounding of the wonderful gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the sake of introduction tonight, I am simply going to say that this book is roughly divided into four parts:
Paul shares all of these things in this magnificent book.
I remember, a number of years ago now, receiving a small booklet by T. Austin-Sparks. It was called The Gospel of Paul. For me, this book was an eye-opener because, in fact, I was guilty of the very thing the book was talking about.
I was born again among some gospel-preaching people who believed and taught, from the moment I was saved, the Roman Road. Now, do you know what the Roman Road is?
The Roman Road was basically four or five Scriptures in the book of Romans that we all should memorize, having to do with the fact that we are all sinners, that we can receive the free gift of God, and that if we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord. It goes through those familiar passages we know and shares the gospel with us.
Well, when I got saved, I was so delighted to get this little Christian Workers’ King James New Testament that had the Roman Road in it, and I wore it out. I walked on that road. Well, I knew I was saved, and then I told other people about it. Praise God, other people got saved.
Wasn’t the Roman Road wonderful? It is the gospel of salvation. Paul presents this so carefully, wanting us really to have the foundation of that salvation.
But you know, I did not know anything about the gospel of sanctification. I was just saved and trying to be the best Christian I could by my own strength.
Then I got hold of—or actually went to—some Keswick conferences. They were teaching along the line of sanctification, and I had never heard about this. Basically, it happened to be Romans 6, 7, and 8: this whole matter of our identification with Christ, our being crucified with Him, being resurrected, and following by the life of the Spirit.
This whole matter—I had never heard of that before. Isn’t that terrible?
Well, I thought I already had the Roman Road down, but it seemed like I had only gotten the first quarter of the Roman Road. There was more to go. So I eagerly ate it up and asked the Lord to help me experience the reality of this wonderful sanctification that we see in the gospel of Paul.
It was then that I became associated with charismatics. In the early days, the charismatics spoke of nothing else other than the Holy Spirit, receiving gifts, and body life—the gospel of the body of Christ.
They were fitted one with another. We are all joints of supply. We all have some common ministry one with another. And you know what? I had not clearly seen that.
I mean, they were even saying, you know, even people who were not preachers could preach—such heresies like that! Well, I thought this was a wonderful gospel: that the body of Christ is a living reality, a testimony of Jesus.
Among the charismatics, so often you could see some reality there that I thought was absolutely wonderful. So I took hold of that gospel of body life, which we find in Romans 12-16.
What happened to that little portion there—Romans 8, 9, 10, and 11? These Scriptures we just read tonight from chapter 8—what happened there? Why was that not included in the gospel?
Well, it was then that I read this book somewhere along that line, The Gospel of Paul. I do not know how many of you have read that little series of messages by Brother Sparks. But basically, here is what he said in a word.
At first, I did not agree with him, but then when I looked at it, he was absolutely right. When Paul uses the phrase gospel, it is much larger than anybody else has ever used it in the church that I know.
For Paul, the gospel was the sum total of all his teaching. It was not just salvation. Nor was it just salvation and sanctification. Nor was it just salvation, sanctification, and body life. It was salvation, sanctification, sonship, and body life.
And that is all the gospel.
Well, now that kind of revolutionized my understanding of the gospel—not only my understanding, but also the burden that I began to feel: that we be able to share the whole counsel of God with people when we share the gospel.
Thank God for those who have been saved on the Roman Road. Are you one of those people?
But have you seen the gospel of sanctification? Have you come to that place where the Lord’s life is lived out through you?
Having come there, do you understand these words in Romans 8 regarding sonship—this whole predestined, chosen, called matter of sonship? Having understood that, do we understand spiritual fullness in the corporate testimony of the body of Christ?
This is the gospel presented.
I would like us to take a little closer look at that tonight, just looking at Romans in these ways. Then we will go back to the book of Isaiah, and I just want to show a simple picture.
When Paul shares the gospel—and you remember in 1 Corinthians 15, when he declares the gospel—he says, “I delivered unto you of first importance that Christ died.” And then what did he say? “According to the Scriptures”; that He was buried and rose again after three days, according to the Scriptures.
Paul’s gospel was not something worked out in theory in his mind. It was something revealed to him as he went back to the Old Testament Scriptures and saw that the gospel was clearly predicted there.
So I want to go back to Isaiah after we just look at Romans for another moment. I want to be sure, as we are gathered together—so many individuals, actually from so many different places—that there may be somebody who is still in the Romans 1-5 stage, or maybe you are somewhere in Romans 6 or 7, saying, “Woe is me,” somewhere along the way.
What I really want to say tonight is this: it is all one gospel. It is not four sections of the gospel.
Paul spent a long time laying the groundwork of justification by faith and our salvation in Romans 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. But Paul was on a progressive journey, expounding the truth of the gospel, and he was heading toward sonship.
Meaning to say, our gospel must not just end with, “Thank God, saved and going to heaven.” There needs to be a realization that, in Paul’s mind, he is unfolding something that takes us right through sonship and then into its full expression in the body of Christ together.
Paul very carefully spells these things out.
Furthermore, can I say this? I have said that the book of Romans can be divided into salvation, sanctification, sonship, and spiritual fullness in corporate testimony. But actually, if Paul were here, he would say, “Well, if you are going to divide it”—which he would not like, I am sure—“at least you should divide it this way.”
It is not salvation; I am revealing the Savior. It is not sanctification; I am revealing the Sanctifier. It is not sonship; I am revealing the Son in whom there is sonship. And I am not revealing the body of Christ as people; I am revealing Christ as His body expressed through people.
So Paul was revealing a Person. It was not just doctrines. We tend to take the doctrines and forget that the central portion is really the Person of whom he is speaking.
Well, so let us simply look at this. We do not have time, and just as an introduction there is really no need, but just a few thoughts.
In every stage of this increasing sense of sonship that we obtain in our salvation, there is evident the work of the Spirit, the Father, and the Son.
At each stage, there is an increasing work of the Spirit that causes us to see the Father in a deeper way because we have identified with the Son in a fuller understanding of Who He is. You see what I am saying?
In each stage of our gospel glory, there is an increasing revelation of Who the Lord is—an increasing understanding. If it is about sonship, it has to be about you and the Father.
Many Christians seem to know Jesus, but the word Father kind of flies out except when they are saying the Lord’s Prayer. But indeed, if we are going to be sons, we have to get to know the Father.
The Lord Jesus is trying to show us and lead us to the Father. This is part of our sonship—growing up. We will see that all moves in this way through each section of His wonderful gospel.
Having done that, I suppose we should start back in Romans 1-5 and touch on a central couple of verses there, which we find in the Roman Road, by the way: Romans 3:23-24.
This is the first aspect of sonship.
For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.
Here we see the Lord Jesus, our Savior. We identify with Christ, the One who died on the cross for us. He has justified us, as verse 24 says. He has redeemed us. He has become the propitiation for our sins.
This is that wonderful part of the gospel. But how the Spirit brings it home toward my conviction! When we are born again by the Spirit of God, the Bible says that the Spirit of His Son—the Father’s Son—comes into us, and we cry, “Abba, Father.”
Our first awareness of sonship—how? Sonship? We just become aware of our Father. Isn’t it wonderful when we get saved?
All the time before I got saved, I had heard about God. But when I got saved, I met God. Something inside me, if I could put it this way, said, “Abba. Abba. I have got a Father.”
Now, when we are first saved, we are just children, aren’t we? Remember how John marks our first level of Christians as little children: you know the Father; you know your sins have been forgiven. That is a great starting place.
Already you are aware: because I have a Father, I am a child, a son. Abba, Abba—the wonderful starting point.
Paul so clearly defines these things. It is so important to be grounded in what we have in our salvation: in our Redeemer, in our Justifier, in our Atoner. Wonderful salvation.
Now we are connected to the Father forever. Some of you have been walking with the Father for years. Isn’t it wonderful? You still have this registration inside: the Spirit bears witness with our spirits, “Abba.”
Ah, there—wonderful beginning.
But then we move on. About the second half of Romans 5, we move to the second level. That happens because we, as Christians, wanting to please the Father and loving the Lord Jesus, start to live for Him.
If you have really sincerely tried to live for Him, you discover that there are some problems. Sin keeps raising its ugly head. Every time you try to chop it down, it just reproduces three times.
You find yourself in an inner turmoil, as Paul found himself in Romans 7, where he delighted to do the law of God but just could not do it. There is something wrong. There is need for a further identification in the Lord Jesus.
He is not just our Savior, but Paul shares with us the gospel of our being united with Christ. That is the key to our sanctification.
We are united with Christ in His death. We are united with Christ in His resurrection. Whereas we say, “Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” we discover, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.”
Now the Son has taken an inward identity in us—not just as our Savior, but now as our saving life within. We begin to learn that lesson that we find, if you want a verse important in the sanctification section, in Romans 8:2.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and of death.
That is sanctification. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus becomes a reality: the Son within. Christ in you, the hope of glory. You have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless you live, yet not you, but Christ lives in you.
There is a new life source. Oh, how important it is that we understand this gospel of sanctification. It is so crucial to our becoming sons. You begin to live by His life and no longer just by yourself.
There is this wonderful section where Paul is wrestling, trying to get delivered, and then discovering one day that he has been crucified with Christ and delivered. He comes out on the other side living in this Spirit of liberty, as he is united with Christ.
What a wonderful gospel. Do you know that gospel? Is it real to you? Is it precious to you?
If it is, you know the Father, because He has pressed into you in a more wonderful way as you begin to live with the Lord Jesus and do the Father’s will.
How about when we come to this third part? After Paul shares his deliverance and his walking in the Spirit, he comes to this point that we read this evening, where he confesses his weakness, confesses his ignorance, and confesses there are things way beyond his understanding.
There are things that God is doing along the lines of sonship.
For Christians, it varies, I think, how long you are a Christian before you become aware of this gospel of sonship. Now, what does that mean, the gospel of sonship? Well, you have seven more messages after I speak to find out what the gospel of sonship is all about!
Certainly, it is this: you are going to be not only a son, but you are going to be a glorious son. Jesus is bringing many sons to glory. You have been predestined to look like Jesus. That is what sonship is about.
Now, these are words—la, la, la—until the Lord reveals to you, “No, I am talking about you.”
And then, what do you do? What can I do? I am so weak, I do not even know how to pray. But then you sense the Holy Spirit arranging the circumstances of your life. All things are working toward this end: that you be formed into the image of Christ, so that Christ may be the firstborn among many brethren.
You get to know the Father in this process of transformation—all the dealings of the Father. Praise God for the day you realize that those difficult things in your life are the Father dealing with a son.
It says that, of course, in Hebrews 12:7. Do you not know that when you are going through child-training, correction, and difficulties, the Father has decided you are a son? “I am going to deal with you like a son.”
What a wonderful gospel. It is beyond our understanding. Why would the Lord ever choose me in the first place? Then, when you look at the imperfect product at present, you say, “Well, how could I ever become a glorious son? This seems impossible.”
But here is the gospel: it involves sonship. You had better believe it, because it is in the Word of God, and it is going to happen. It comes to the point where you have to believe the Bible, not just your failing experience.
Now we are reaching higher. We have been saved, praise God. Maybe we have touched a little bit of His sanctifying, liberating life as our life. It is wonderful.
How about sonship? Are you pursuing this sonship? Or, more properly, is His sonship revealed to you and pursuing you?
Oh, wonderful gospel. Wonderful gospel. Beyond our understanding.
Then, of course, Paul comes to Romans 12:1. We all know that wonderful verse on consecration, based on the mercies of God. He tells us that we are to consecrate ourselves. Why? If you go on with the passage, you see why: it is because we are in the body of Christ together.
You are not just a son so you can be sitting up there, you know, with some kind of golden thing coming from you. You are a son in order to be fruitful, in order to be with the other sons and express Christ more fully.
A son is not unto himself.
Through the centuries, there have been people who have held to sonship as a teaching, even calling it “manifest sonship,” which was a teaching with error. The reason it was an error is because it was not connected to the rest of the gospel.
No, a true understanding of sonship has to be connected to salvation, has to be connected to sanctification, and has to be connected to body life—a corporate expression.
There are those who hold strong teachings regarding sonship and personal perfecting and transformation from glory to glory in their lives, yet they are not really living it out in full because they are not in fellowship. They are not connected somewhere with other brothers and sisters.
You cannot come to the full gospel unless you are connected with other brothers and sisters in a living way. Sonship has to be worked out in a life poured out with other brothers and sisters, or it is not true sonship.
It is even a delusion to think we can be perfected personally without this provision of God: being built up together and perfected together in the corporate life.
Well, this gospel of Paul’s is an amazing gospel. But I want to attach it, if I could, by way of introduction, to that passage in Isaiah. If you want to turn back to Isaiah 40.
All of you know the story of Isaiah. You know about his ministry. You know it began in a substantial way when he saw the Lord high and lifted up above the temple and had a vision of the Lord.
Subsequent to that vision, he began to seek the Lord, and he discovered that the Lord’s name was Immanuel; that He would be born of a virgin; and that He would become a King, with the government upon His shoulders. He would be a spiritual King—that is, the Messiah—with a sevenfold Spirit upon Him.
This Messiah, in Isaiah 11, would bring in the millennium: real reign, victorious reign. Oh, how Isaiah began to long for this Immanuel to come, even as we long for our Lord Jesus.
Isaiah was faithful. As a result of his seeing, the Lord opened his eyes. He became a watchman on the walls of Jerusalem. He looked around and saw all the nations, and the Lord gave him a burden for the nations.
He spoke about nation after nation—Egypt, Tyre, Babylon—and he spoke with a burden that came from the Lord regarding the righteousness of God as it meets these nations.
But this watchman on the walls and this ministry of prophecy drove Isaiah deeper. As he began to look at Judah itself—by this time Israel had already been taken captive by the Assyrians—Isaiah began to see the condition of God’s own people.
He sensed a woe in his heart. If I could put it this way, it drove him from being a watchman on the tower to being a prophet on his knees as an intercessor for this country that was rapidly falling into decline and captivity.
So he became an intercessor: from a visionary, to a watchman, through an intercessor. Of course, his intercession culminated in his relationship with that wonderful King Hezekiah.
Together they stood for the Lord against impossible odds. The Assyrian army was knocking on the door of Jerusalem. They stood by faith and prayed, and the Lord struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrians and sent them home.
We do not realize the significance of this moment, but the Jews think this was the second most important moment of deliverance in their history, the first being, of course, the Red Sea. The second was the victory over the Assyrians by the faith and intercession of Hezekiah and Isaiah.
Wonderful Isaiah.
But when Isaiah 40 comes, Hezekiah has now died, Manasseh has become king, and Isaiah is a very old man. What is there left to do, really?
His last prophecies were that Judah was going into Babylonian captivity. That is the history for Judah that lay ahead. It happened one hundred years after he said it.
Now, what was there left to do? I think he continued to pray for the coming of this Immanuel. I think he continued to intercede for his people, even as he saw them decline.
The main reason they declined was prosperity, by the way. Idolatry and prosperity went hand in hand. Mammon and prosperity went hand in hand.
So Isaiah just came to the end of his life—or so he thought.
But then one day, the Lord spoke four times from heaven and brought Isaiah to a level he had never been on before. It made him a gospel proclaimer, a herald of the gospel.
After being a visionary, after being a watchman, after being an intercessor, now he became a proclaimer of the gospel—seven centuries before it was fulfilled.
What a door of revelation opened up to Isaiah. We have these wonderful chapters, Isaiah 40-66, wherein is declared all about our Lord Jesus in a clearer way in Isaiah than in any other prophet of the Old Testament.
What a wonderful rest. He thought his life was over; his life actually ascended to new levels. The Lord showed him in his old days things that ear had never heard, eye had never seen, and had never entered into the heart of man in this gospel.
Here we have recorded, in these first eleven verses of Isaiah 40, in a sort of encapsulated form, a prologue or summary of this gospel that he is declaring and will declare through the remaining chapters.
Just as Paul’s gospel was in four stages—salvation, sanctification, sonship, and spiritual fullness in corporate testimony—so Isaiah has this same experience. He receives four voices from heaven.
The first voice says, “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.” Well, what should I comfort them about? Here is what you comfort them about: their warfare is over.
Their iniquities have been pardoned. What? Their sins have been paid in full.
What a gospel. What a gospel of grace. There we are—that is the first section, just like Paul. We have this little picture here of that which Paul, of course, could express so much more fully because he was in the light of Jesus Christ.
But Isaiah, as it were, began to see the Lord Jesus. We know in Isaiah 53 he saw things so wonderful. What a gospel. Who can understand this? Who knows the righteousness of God and can understand how our iniquities have been pardoned? How could our sins have been paid for?
As a matter of fact, if you look there, it says double has been paid for your sins. I read one Jewish scholar who said that when it says you have received double, it not only means you have more than paid for your sins, just as a simple phrase, but it also has some reference to the possibility that another has paid for your sins.
Not only have you suffered, but another One has come along and suffered with you. Very interesting thought from somebody who does not believe in Jesus.
But what a gospel. Who can understand this gospel?
No wonder when Isaiah comes to the center of his gospel in Isaiah 53, when he shares about the suffering Servant, he opens that whole gospel portion with, “Who hath believed our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” In other words, who can understand this gospel?
Remember, they were in the light of the old covenant. You can imagine the mystery of this gospel as Isaiah began to unfold it, even to his own heart.
First he gets this gospel that says, “Tell them, tell them, their sins are forgiven. Tell them, tell them, they are reconciled with God. The warfare is over.”
What a wonderful gospel.
Then, as he is contemplating these things, in verse 3 we see a voice calling—another voice. This one says, “Clear the way of the Lord in the wilderness. Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.”
Let every valley be lifted up,
Every mountain and hill be made low;
Let the rough ground be made plain,
The rugged terrain a broad valley.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together,
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Immediately upon sharing this gospel of grace, he shares the gospel of the Lord’s coming and the need to be prepared—sanctification in picture.
That highway, that straight highway, is to be made out of our crooked lives. The low places of our insecurities are to be filled up with the confidence of God. The high places of our pride are to be brought down until they are level. The rough places He is going to make smooth.
Oh, and the places that are narrow, He is going to make broad.
All this is the preparation for the coming of the Lord, that the glory of the Lord should be revealed and all flesh see it together. What a wonderful gospel. You see a picture here: sanctification. “Get ready, get ready, He is coming,” says this voice from heaven.
But, of course, it is the third voice that excites our interest tonight because it has to do with sonship. You will notice there in verse 6, another voice calls. The voice says, “Call out.”
Evidently, there is some delay. Isaiah has heard the gospel of grace. He has heard the gospel of sanctification, but he does not know how to respond. These things are high.
So a third voice says, “Just call out.” Isaiah says, “What shall I call out?”
What is going on here? When you get to this matter of sonship, it is matters that go beyond our understanding.
It was not that Isaiah was ignorant and did not know what to call out. Nor was it that he was disobedient and would not call out. He was staggered by this gospel.
“I do not understand the basis of this gospel. Okay, You are telling me that sins are forgiven?” You see, we have not gotten to Isaiah 53 yet. “I do not understand. It is too wonderful for us to proceed. How does this work out? It is beyond me. I am staggered by it.”
“You want me to proclaim something that is not real to my own experience yet?”
Then comes this very interesting little portion where there is an answer, I believe. There are different interpretations on this, but I believe this is Isaiah’s answer.
After all, as a man over seventy years old, or who had been in prophetic ministry for fifty years, there was one thing he had learned: all flesh is grass.
All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
Oh, how he had learned that lesson. He remembered the days of Hezekiah. It seemed like Judah caught a religious fever. They suddenly struck down all the idols and started having feasts in a proper way. They opened up the temple and cleaned things up.
Oh, they had a regular revival during Hezekiah’s reign. When Hezekiah died, the thing collapsed like a house of cards. It was just like a fever: you get over it.
As quickly as Hezekiah’s reign ended and Manasseh took the throne—and he was an idol-worshiping king—it was only a few years before the land was filled with more idols than ever before.
You do not need to tell Isaiah that all flesh is grass. You do not need to tell a Christian who has been around the block a few times that all flesh is grass. Haven’t we seen religious fevers ourselves? In fact, haven’t you been infected?
Sometimes we all make our vows: how faithful we are going to be, how we are going to read the Word, how we are going to witness, how we are going to do this and that. We have all caught the religious fever. But then it seems to go away.
Back to all flesh is grass.
Sometimes, when we are in the midst of religious fervor and have made some progress, we begin to think, “You know what? I am no longer grass. I am now a flower.”
I think Christians think they are like a flower. But, of course, you know what happens. As it says here, the breath of the Lord, meaning the Spirit, all He does is go whoosh—and it turns out we are just those dandelions. They go everywhere.
So little substance.
Over the years, the church has heard all this truth. So little substance. They catch hold of something, then within a few—at least maybe a generation or so—it seems like the truth is covered over again.
They lose that which they seemed to have found, or perhaps they speak these things as doctrines, but the reality that used to be in their midst is gone. All flesh is grass. Isaiah knew that real well.
Well, I just want to make this one point, if I could make it—if you all wake up just another moment.
I really think one of the keys to understanding sonship is to understand these twofold things as they happen simultaneously. Here it is: all flesh is grass, and the word of the Lord endures forever.
Now, there is something in that crisis that brings about sonship.
As long as we think we can do it ourselves, we may attain, we may seek sanctification, we may find knowledge, and we may find experience.
But there is something so profound about being called a son of God and being called to glory. There is something so profound about it that I am afraid we cannot even hear it unless we have come through this conclusion.
It is absolutely impossible for man, by his own wits, to attain unto sonship. It is not in man to have the faith to do it. It is not in man to have the religious fervor to do it. It is not in man to have the perseverance to do it. It is not in man to have the strength to do it.
Before we can even begin to understand this wonderful gospel of sonship, we have got to come to this conclusion: all flesh is grass. All men are grass.
Notice that is not the gospel. Here is the gospel: at the end of verse 8, “But the word of God stands forever.”
What does that mean? We will become sons because God says we will become sons. He has dictated this. He has decided this. He has predestined it. He has chosen us for it, and He will bring us into it.
As we come to this crisis of our own undoing, at the same time somehow we lay hold—or the word of the Lord lays hold of us.
We begin to respond to that Word in a transforming obedience. It takes us into this gospel of sonship.
Now, for sure, nobody in this lifetime is going to come into glorious sonship in its fullness. Truth is, many dear believers are not even on the way. They have come to the grassiness stage. They realize, “You know what? I will never be much, so I am just going to be a sinner saved by grace. When God has mansions in the sky, I will just take a little shack over here and be happy.”
No, you have not caught your calling yet. You have not understood your destiny. Your destiny has nothing to do with shacks. Destiny has nothing to do with leveling out in some kind of normal state.
It is something that only God can draw you up into, but you have to see it and want it. You have to say, “God, I cannot do it. I am grass, but I yield to Your Word because You alone can do it in me.”
Allow Him to begin to take us into this. How could it possibly be that the Lord is going to perfect you and me into glory?
That is why, as I have designated the four sections of Romans, I said that this whole matter of sonship is delineated in Romans 8, beginning in the second half of the chapter, through Romans 9, 10, and 11.
What is that whole section about Israel all about? It is about how God deals with sons.
Sons who have been disobedient, but are chosen.
Sons who have been pulled off the vine through disobedience, but will be grafted back.
Sons who know severity and sons who know mercy. Sons who know that their gifts and callings cannot be repented of, but they are sons. Israel is sons.
God is dealing with them to bring them to sonship because His Word is unchangeable. His desire is immutable, and He is going to do it.
When we look at that thing, it is an awesome picture of how God is going to make sons out of Israel. They can be as uncooperative as they want; God is going to get the last word, because it is the word of the Lord that endures forever.
Even our backslidings do not endure forever. He will bring us to the place of submission. We can behold the Son and be transformed into His likeness through the working of God.
If there is ever a picture of the fact that God loves His sons, look at how God still loves Israel. He even says to the church, “Now, do not think you are so hot just because you are saved by grace. Do not think that Israel is so bad, because, except for the mercy of God, that is the way you would be too.”
“I have grafted you in, but you take your sonship seriously.”
Just as I am going to bring Israel to a glorious position one day, so I am going to bring you by My mercy.
In this matter of sonship, there is something regarding the Father’s immutable will and His Word. He is going to work that which He desires. It is predestined.
So Isaiah came to the place where, I guess, he said, “Well, Lord, I am grass, but Your Word says proclaim it, so I am going to proclaim it. I am going to proclaim the gospel of sonship, even though I hardly feel qualified to say anything. I know so little of sonship experience, but I will speak Your Word because it is Your Word that does the changing work.”
Oh, what a high, wonderful gospel Isaiah saw, even in the shadows: Christ.
Finally, the last little section there—just read it together with me. Verse 9: the last voice speaks the fourth time.
Get yourself up on a high mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news;
Lift up your voice mightily, O Jerusalem, bearer of good news.
Lift it up, do not fear;
Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
Ah, this is something marvelous. We cannot go into much of it, but let me put it this way.
Isaiah is told to speak this word at a time when Jerusalem is in decline. Yet he says, the word of the Lord is this: we are to stand together as Zion.
It is only through sonship that we come into Zion—the corporate testimony of God.
Do you understand what they are doing? Zion and Jerusalem have been lifted up into a high place. They have been lifted up to a place where they can say, “Behold your God.”
Now, they are not pointing to the stars in the sky. They are pointing to Zion: “Behold your God.” They are not saying this in some kind of proud way. But the fact of the matter is, God can be seen in Zion.
All of the dealings of Israel come to this magnificent testimony where you see the Lord’s people and you see their God. You see the mighty arm of their God; you see the shepherding love of their God. You see their God when you behold Zion.
This is the end of the gospel that Paul begins to declare: based upon the mercies of God, consecrate yourselves—a living sacrifice, serving in the body of Christ, standing together as a testimony of the Lord.
Be called up higher. “Get you up, get you up.”
May the Lord deal with us if our testimony in corporate life is just sort of, once again, leveled off into some kind of Sardis experience—half-finished faith, half-done works, or, God forbid, even worse, a lukewarm self-satisfaction.
The Lord’s call is, “Get yourself up on a high mountain and testify: here is your God.” Say to the cities of Judah around, who are searching and looking for reality, “Here is your God.”
What a glorious gospel.
Paul tells it to us with brilliant light there in Romans. Isaiah pictures this in partial light, even here in Isaiah. This gospel is not something Paul invented; it is something seen in picture form throughout the Old Testament.
So Paul could say, “My gospel is according to Scripture.” When he says, “My gospel is according to Scripture,” he has many references to Isaiah in his mind.
Here it is. As we share this weekend on spiritual sonship, let us all understand that it is part of a single whole. It is a gospel. It is good news.
The Lord gets us from our sinful state, saves us, sanctifies us, brings us to glory, and gathers us together that there might be a testimony. This is the gospel.
Sonship has a very key element in that whole gospel. So I hope when you say, “I believe in the gospel,” you mean something more than just a Roman Road salvation.
The Roman Road: salvation, sanctification, sonship, and spiritual fullness in corporate testimony.
May the Lord help us this weekend, because as our dear brothers share on these matters of sonship, there are very wonderful things to understand.
To understand sonship, we have to see the Father more clearly. To understand sonship, we have to see the Father more greatly. We should pray that.
We need to see how we are identified in the Son. You see, it is His glorious sonship that provides for us to be sons in glory. We need to see the Son more clearly this week.
We even need to experience the Spirit’s working this weekend. Oh, may the Lord help us as we gather together for these days.
Father, so many of us can remember when we were first saved. We were so happy with the gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. We lived in the good of that light and walked along the way.
Then we saw that the gospel took us more deeply into our Lord Jesus and opened our eyes to understand more of Your Father’s purpose for us.
Now we come to this weekend, where You are going to speak of Your purpose. Oh, that we might see Jesus, the Firstborn, clearly revealed—the glorious Son. May we understand what it means to be a son by looking at our Lord Jesus.
Then help us, Lord, we who feel so grassy. Help us to believe that the word of the Lord endures forever. Ask that Word to lay hold of us this weekend, that we may be brought into sonship by the whole working of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as we are together in these last days.
O Lord, we believe that so much of the Bride’s readiness has to do with sonship. We plead for Your help this weekend. We know there are many who will be tired. We know there are many times of ministry ahead.
We pray for a quickening power from heaven and a spirit of wisdom and revelation upon us, that we may see our glorious destiny and cooperate with the processes that would get us there.
Oh, help us, Lord. Remove from us all of that independence that keeps us from body life.
Remove from us all of that disqualification that does not even allow us to think about these great and wonderful things.
You have purposed many sons in glory, and so You sent Jesus in order to predetermine our history. Now, Lord, we pray that You will work toward that fulfillment even this weekend. We pray in Jesus’ precious name.