Brothers and sisters, I trust that our hearts were fully engaged as we sang that last hymn. It was a prayer we made to our blessed Redeemer, and I think it is a prayer that He is glad to answer. I trust that it was not just singing, but that it was a genuine prayer from our hearts: that we wanted to be like Him.
Why? Because our heavenly Father wants us to be right. This is what salvation is. Salvation is not complete until you and I are fully conformed to the image of God’s Son.
I am so grateful to the Lord that He allowed us to come and have this time of fellowship with you, dear brothers and sisters. There are many dear brothers and sisters in Brazil who would want me to greet you and say to you that, if you have any opportunity to come south of the border, we would like to have you come. Now, please do not come all at the same time.
We would love to see some of your beautiful faces visiting us in Brazil. So I am grateful to those who have prayed for us, and to those who invited us to come and have this time of fellowship.
Tonight, we want to continue our fellowship in the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. If you will open your Bibles, we will read the last half—perhaps a little more than the last half—of this amazing portion of Scripture.
I think that, to get the sense of what Paul is saying, it would be good if we started with Romans 8:16.
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God:
and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;
if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.
For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him Who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
For by hope were we saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopeth for that which he seeth?
But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered;
and He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose.
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren:
and whom He foreordained, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth;
who is He that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, Who is at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Even as it is written,
“For Thy sake we are killed all the day long;
We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Hallelujah. Let us pray.
Lord, we are so deeply grateful to You for the abundant way that You have met with us during these days. We want to express our gratitude and commit ourselves, as deeply as it is possible for us to commit ourselves, to You tonight.
Lord, we know You have called us here because there is something You have been wanting to do. You have already been doing the work in the times of ministry, in our worship, in our fellowship, and just in our being together. You have been at work in our lives, and for this we are grateful.
Now we come to this time tonight, and we want to cast ourselves once again upon You and say to You, “Lord, without You, we do not know.” We wait upon You. We trust that by Your Holy Spirit, You will come and work in each one of our hearts and minds, making clear what it is that You are saying to us.
Then, Lord, continue to pour out Your amazing grace upon us, that we will find ourselves putting into practice what Your Spirit is saying. Please, in Your mercy, deliver us from being merely listeners and hearers who do not practice. Lord, please do not let us be deceived.
Give us grace. Work in our lives so that we begin to put into practice, in our daily living, the things that You are going to speak to us. We bless You, we worship You, and we thank You with all our hearts for Your goodness to us. We do it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
You notice in Romans 8:15 that Paul says we have not received a spirit of fear again, but we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons. I know there is not agreement as to what Paul is talking about here, and I do not want to get into any controversy tonight. I believe he is talking about the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of adoption.
When the Holy Spirit does His work in our lives and we become believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, a great miracle occurs. God takes His own uncreated, eternal life and places it inside of us as a free gift. This is what it means to believe in our Lord Jesus.
In 1 John 5, John says, “He who has the Son has the life.” It is the same word, zoe: the life of God—uncreated, eternal, unlimited. This life has been placed inside of us.
Our fellowship during these days has been on the matter of spiritual sonship. Let me say this at the beginning, and, Lord willing, we will expand upon it a little more toward the end: brothers and sisters, there is no way that any of us can become spiritual sons and enter into spiritual sonship without the blessed work of the Holy Spirit. It is impossible. He is the Originator of it.
When we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, God begins this work by putting within us the Spirit of adoption as sons. Something is at work in the deepest part of our being, in our spirit, crying out for God to make us the way He wants us to be made.
This is a big hurdle in our thinking that we need to overcome. If we are not careful, we will allow ourselves to think that God is pleased for us to be sinners, and also that this is what God wanted in the beginning.
But I want to say to us tonight: it was never, ever, ever in God’s plan for there to be any sinners. It was never His plan. There are so many of them around us—and we are one, a good one, in practice—that we conclude, falsely, that because there are so many sinners, God must have wanted sinners.
God never wanted sinners. He only wanted sons and daughters who were conformed, who looked like His own Son.
Brothers and sisters, this has been in the heart of God from eternity past. As our brother Stephen has mentioned to us, we were predestined—marked out—for the adoption as sons.
That does not mean that we were not part of the family and are now brought into the family. Rather, God has made us His sons, and now He wants us to be brought into the fullness of that sonship so that He can place us in the responsibility that He has always wanted man to have.
You remember in Genesis, when God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion.” Brothers and sisters, this was God’s mind for man, for this being called man. It was something that had been in the heart of God from eternity past.
He wanted man to represent His own authority. So He created a being, designed him, and created him so that he could live in full fellowship with God. He could know the will of God, and he would be here on this planet to execute the will of God.
In my understanding, God has not changed His mind about that, regardless of how Adam failed. How do I know? I read the end of the Book.
What are we going to be doing forever and ever? What are we going to be doing, brothers and sisters? Reigning—exercising authority, executing the will of God in His universe. This is our destiny, because it was what was in God’s heart from the very beginning.
His plan was not that we would function independently of Him, making independent, self-centered decisions. Rather, out of our fellowship with Him, and out of God’s life living in us, we would understand and have whatever is necessary to fulfill this responsibility of taking dominion.
Now, I need to be careful, because there is much that we need to try to get to tonight. But, brothers and sisters, let us consider together for a moment: Why did God create man?
What was the condition of the world before God created man? First of all, we need to become very clear that when God created His universe, it was absolutely, one hundred thousand percent perfect. You are getting the message. There were no imperfections.
How do I know that? Because of the God Who has revealed Himself to us in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is impossible for Him to create something imperfect.
As we will find out in just a moment, He is the God of glory. Remember Acts 7, where it says, “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.” God Himself is glory. When Moses said, “God, let me see Your glory,” he wanted to look into the face of God, because God in Himself is glory.
Our brother Sparks helps us at this point when he helps us understand that glory is when God is satisfied.
For a number of years, I had the joy, privilege, and blessing of being in the homes of many dear brothers and sisters with a Chinese background. Some of you, I have had the privilege and joy of being in your homes.
Many times, when I was there, the children in the family would have a musical recital. Those of you who do not know, almost all the children in Chinese families have to take music lessons. Some of the children will testify, yes? Yes.
I would be in their home, probably on a Friday night, and there would be a recital. I have been to a few recitals. I would sit there and enjoy the recital, but after a few of these experiences, I stopped looking at the children and started looking at the faces of the mothers and fathers.
If the child was doing a beautiful job, what did you see? Glory. The parents were so satisfied. Their little one—even though it was a squeaky violin—their faces were glowing because there had been such progress, and they were pleased with where the child was at that age.
Brothers and sisters, God’s face glows with full satisfaction when things are the way He designed and created them to be. God has designed us and created us—and, praise God, redeemed us. He has redeemed us, and He is determined. He has predestined us.
Listen to that word: predestinate. He determines something beforehand. What did He predestine us to? To go to heaven or to hell? No. He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son.
Even though there was nothing in us that looked anything like His Son, He still predestined us. His great salvation means that He can take us in whatever condition He finds us and do such a work in us that, when the work is finished, He looks at us and says, “You are My beloved son. You are My beloved daughter, in whom I am totally pleased. I do not find anything in you that brings displeasure to My heart.”
Do you believe it, brothers and sisters? This is salvation. This is God bringing us to that place. This is God’s glory.
You remember that in Genesis 1:1-2 it simply says:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
That is all. It does not tell us how; it says He did it.
Now, you do not have to agree with me on this. You can be wrong if you want. But I believe that when God created it, He created it perfectly. There was nothing wrong with it.
But something had happened that brought darkness and emptiness into God’s creation. It was here on this planet where you and I live. As I read my Bible—and I am open for you, brothers and sisters, to help me with this—the only place in God’s universe that is a problem for Him is this earth.
Why does Genesis say that the earth was formless and void, and that darkness was over the surface of the deep? What is earth? It is a planet in God’s universe.
How big is it in comparison to the other planets in this galaxy? Small. And when you compare it to God’s universe, how big is this planet Earth? Like a grain of sand. Yet, when you read your Bible from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, where is the focus of God’s heart? What planet? Mars? Jupiter? Does it say, “God so loved Jupiter”? No.
Brothers and sisters, our God is a perfectionist. He never changes. You and I ought to rejoice that our God is a perfectionist, that He will not settle for anything less than perfection. Hallelujah.
How long does He want us to live? Forever. How long is that? Forever and ever; there is no end.
Here is my question for you: do you want to stay the way you are tonight forever and ever and ever? Do you want me to stay the way I am? I do not want you to stay the way you are, because I have to live with you—and you have to live with me.
God has to be totally satisfied. He has to be able to look at us and find nothing wrong in our lives.
This is glory, brothers and sisters. There may be other dimensions to it that our other brothers have shared, but it means that when God looks at us in His Son, we are, in His estimation, just like His Son. We are as perfect as the Lord Jesus Christ. We are as righteous as He is. He is our righteousness. It is not that we take His righteousness; He Himself is our righteousness.
God is determined. He will not rest until everything in His universe is totally restored to what it was when He first created it.
In Numbers 14, God says:
As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.
Now, brothers and sisters, you do not even have to go outside this room to discover that it is not true now. All we need to do is look at ourselves and our situation, and we discover much, much, much imperfection.
Is God going to rest with that? He cannot rest until everything measures up to His standard of acceptance. Then there will be a full glow on the face of God, and the glory of God will fill this earth.
We are caught up in a big universe. I remember, ten or twelve years ago, a brother pointing out to me an article in Time magazine or the New York Times. They had sent a telescope into space and were able to discover approximately how many stars are in our galaxy. They estimated somewhere between fifty and eighty billion stars in our galaxy.
That itself is mind-boggling to me. But then they turned this telescope into an area where man had never seen before. Do you know what they discovered, brothers and sisters? Fifty billion more galaxies, bigger than our galaxy.
Did you hear what I said? Fifty billion more galaxies, bigger than our galaxy. As far as we know, there is no problem out there. The problem was here, and this is where God has focused His heart—His redemptive heart—recovering and restoring everything back to perfection.
I have good news for you tonight, my dear brothers and sisters, and it is very good news for me: that includes me, and it includes you. Full restoration, conformed perfectly to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember the hymn we sang at the end: “O to be like Thee.” Where does that cry come from? Is it just the words of a hymn writer? I do not think so.
I think this brother who wrote this hymn—assuming it was a brother; perhaps Brother Ben can help us with that—had something deep inside him longing, having a deep desire:
O to be like Thee,
O to be like Thee,
Come in Thy sweetness,
Come in Thy fullness;
Stamp Thine own image
Deep on my heart.
Brothers and sisters, I think this has something to do with becoming sons and entering into sonship. It is the Spirit of the living God. In the same way that He hovered over that darkness, He is hovering over us to produce this kind of result in our lives.
First of all, Paul tells us that we have received, as a gift from God, the Spirit of adoption as sons. There is something crying out in the depth of our being, saying, “I want to be what God has designed me to be, and I want to fulfill the purpose for which He created and redeemed me.”
Who is producing this cry? Yes, it comes out of our mouths sometimes. It works in our hearts. But it is the blessed Holy Spirit Who has come to impel us—the Spirit of adoption as sons.
When you and I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we enter into a great tension: something has already happened, and something still needs to be done.
Notice Romans 8:23:
And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
We have already begun to experience it, but we are still eagerly waiting for it. Paul tells us that the ultimate thing God is going to do is the redemption of our body, bringing our bodies all the way back to perfection.
Then the life of God that has entered into us and transformed our character will have a body through which it can perfectly manifest the life of God.
You can see by looking at yourself—if you did not look in the mirror this morning, you probably have in the last few days—that it is not perfection yet. As a matter of fact, the older we get, the less perfect we are. More wrinkles: signs of decay.
Paul says that even though our outer man is decaying day by day, our inner man is being renewed day by day. To what? To glory.
Brothers and sisters, please give serious thought to this: God’s goal is glory. Something will happen to us by God’s work that will enable God to look at us and have a beautiful glow on His face. He will be absolutely, totally satisfied.
This, to me, is glorious, brothers and sisters, and it is part of what is involved in spiritual sonship. Our God will not place us in the position of reigning with His Son, of representing His King, until we have the character necessary to fulfill that responsibility.
Sometimes, as human beings, we make foolish decisions. We put people in places for which they do not have the character to fulfill the responsibility. But I can say to you, our God is not like that.
God wants you and me to share responsibly in governing His universe. Before we came to know the Lord—and probably, at least in the beginning of our Christian experience, and maybe even tonight, some of us are not aware of it—this is what God was after when He sought us out and brought us to Himself.
It was not just to deliver us from hell. He had something very, very, very positive in mind.
He wants us to have the character and qualifications that God finds in His own Son formed in us. Our brother Ed mentioned Galatians 4:19 this afternoon:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
That word travail is used to describe a woman giving birth to a child. We find it here in Romans 8: creation is in travail, and we are in travail. Inside of us, there is a travail taking place, a groaning. What is this groaning? A desire to give birth.
I am the father of three sons. When my first two sons were born, they did not allow fathers to go into the hospital room when the birth was taking place. With the last one, they allowed me to go, but my wife had to have a Caesarean. She was under medication, and there was no groaning.
But some of you have had the joy of going in and witnessing—perhaps having your hand half squeezed to death as you held hers while she was going through the process of travail and groaning.
Brothers and sisters, this is the picture Paul uses to help us understand what God is seeking to do and desiring to do. This is why He saved you. This is why He ran after you and pursued you.
Sometimes in our testimonies, we are very foolish. Have you ever heard anybody say, “When I found the Lord”? When I found the Lord? Think about what that means: the Lord was lost, and you found Him.
Somehow, it seems like we have it backwards. As though we were the ones looking after God, seeking after Him. Oh, brothers and sisters, we are so deceived sometimes. We think that our flesh is so wonderful that it wants God.
What does Paul say in Romans 8 about the flesh? Does it love God? No. It is hostile toward God and cannot do the will of God. It does not even want to do the will of God. That includes your flesh.
Here is part of the problem: some of us have nice flesh, and some of us have not-so-nice flesh. But some of us with nice flesh—good flesh—erroneously believe that we have something going for us that other people do not have, because God loves nice flesh: education, culture, all these other things.
Brothers and sisters, what does the Word of God say? What is flesh? Flesh. All flesh is flesh. Anything that has its origin in Adam is flesh and is not acceptable to God. That includes your flesh, and it includes my flesh. All flesh.
Our God had to do something miraculous, something new. He had to start all over again by causing our spirit to be regenerated, placing the very life of Christ in our spirit.
The sad thing, I believe, is that many of us live our lives as God’s children without realizing the reality of what God has done. It is almost as though this wonderful thing has happened, but we are totally oblivious to it. What we do is go on trying to make the flesh act, talk, and dress like a Christian. God will have nothing to do with that.
As God seeks to bring everything back to what it was when He created it, He has chosen to create a being called man, and man is to be the instrument of God’s great recovery work.
This is why God put Adam in the garden. I think the garden was a place of training. If they were successful there, if they passed the test there, then God would allow them to go out and recover. But we know that is not the story. Adam failed.
He ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In my understanding, this means that he made a clear decision. Eve was deceived; Adam was not deceived. He made a clear, calculated decision to eat that fruit, knowing it was absolutely wrong.
What was the outcome? He disobeyed God. When he disobeyed, the same poison that was operating in Lucifer, the enemy of God—Satan—entered into Adam and his descendants. They were totally disqualified from ever fulfilling that responsibility.
By one man’s disobedience, we were all made sinners. We started out there. You did not go to school to learn how to become a sinner. We started out there because this is who we are by nature.
But God had another plan. In order to get the man He wanted, God had to send His own Son. He became a seed that fell into the ground and died, and it was going to produce much fruit.
God, by the Holy Spirit, takes the very life of His Son and puts it inside of us. He begins this great work of fully restoring us to what He always wanted us to be. It includes two things:
Brothers and sisters, if we are honest with ourselves tonight, we know that our character does not measure up. You may measure up pretty well alongside some other people, but I suggest that we stand ourselves alongside the Son of the living God. Let us be compared to Him. Then how do we measure up?
I do not care who we are: we are all total failures in and of ourselves. When we come to know the Lord Jesus, there is nothing in us like our Lord Jesus. We do not like to admit this, but it is true. There is nothing in your natural being, inherited from Adam, that is acceptable to God.
God has to take every area of our lives and bring it up to His standard of acceptance. His standard is His Son.
I do not care how many lifetimes you live. Suppose you were able to live a thousand lifetimes of a hundred years each—ten thousand years—and every day of your life your goal was to make yourself like Jesus. What would be the result after ten thousand years? How much would you have accomplished? Would you be any more like Jesus than when you started? Absolutely not. You would have wasted your time.
Why? Because you have elephant life. You have the wrong life in you.
The only way you can become like our Lord Jesus is to have His life in you, and for that life to grow, influence everything in your life, and transform you from glory to glory. This is what it means, in my understanding, to become sons of God. Then He can qualify us, train us, and equip us to enter into sonship—to fulfill its responsibilities.
Brothers and sisters, please ask the Holy Spirit to write it deep in your heart: God’s goal is glory.
God’s intention, when He began His work in you, was to glorify you. He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. Those whom He predestined, He called; those whom He called, He justified; and those whom He justified, He glorified. Hallelujah.
Here is what I want you to see: He did the foreknowing. He did the predestining. He did the calling. He did the justifying. And He will do the glorifying.
You cannot do anything to add to it except learn how to cooperate with Him in the process.
There are three things I believe are important for us to be aware of—three things that will help us cooperate fully with God as He does this work of salvation in us personally and for God’s creation.
First: we need to accept the fact that suffering is necessary.
Notice Romans 8:17:
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.
He wants us to be glorified with Him, and God is the One Who does it. But what is part of the process? Suffering is a part of it.
This is what is so evil—perhaps I should not be that strong—so demonic about some of the teaching happening today. I think some teaching today is doctrine of demons. The focus is all on us getting rich. You are supposed to have three Cadillacs in your driveway, expensive suits enough for every day of the month, and on and on they go.
This is proclaimed in the so-called church of our Lord Jesus Christ. No cross. No suffering. Everything is supposed to be just perfect.
Brothers and sisters, the Word of God will not allow you, if you are going to be honest, to think that way.
We have to learn—or let the Holy Spirit develop in us—a mind to suffer. Think about it. We are living in a very, very imperfect world. We are actually living in the enemy’s territory. Do we expect no suffering, no problems, no difficulties, no tribulations? We are living in a dream world if that is the way we think.
Suffering is part of this process. You have to go through the experience.
Suppose our brother Job could stand here and give his testimony. What kind of a man was Job? A good man. He hated evil and had a good reputation. Yet there were things in Job that Job did not see, but God did.
What did God do? He mentioned Job to Satan. As far as we know, before that, Satan had not paid any attention to Job. When the sons of God came and appeared before God, God said, “Have you seen My servant Job?” There were limits, of course.
You know something of the history, of what Job went through. He lost everything. And he had some wonderful friends.
But do you remember his testimony at the end?
I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth Thee.
Do you think there was a way for God to do His work in Job without Job having any suffering?
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.
I think Job, if he were standing here tonight, would say, “My dear brothers and sisters, I do not want to go through that experience again, but I would not trade it for anything in the world. I do not want it withdrawn. I appreciate so much the work that God did. But it was impossible for that work to be done any other way.”
If we understand that God’s objective and goal—the thing we are pressing on toward and eagerly awaiting—is the redemption of our bodies, then we must not expect that to happen while escaping difficulties, problems, tribulations, and suffering.
Look at Romans 8:18:
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.
I think Job would say, “I am glad it is over, but I am glad also for the work that it brought in me through that experience.”
The writer of Hebrews, in Hebrews 12, talks about sons and a father’s discipline. Why? First of all, He wants them to share His own holiness. What does that mean? It means glory, brothers and sisters. When we have the very holiness of God built into us, that is glory.
Please, my brothers and sisters, do not look at the difficulties God permits—or even engineers—in your life as accidental. As Brother Stephen mentioned, there are no coincidences in the lives of any of God’s children. He either permits them or designs them. He engineers them.
Do not forget: the blessed Holy Spirit knows everything about you there is to know. When He looks at us, He knows what is in us that is unlike our Lord Jesus. What does He do? He either permits or designs a situation in which those things will be exposed and come to the surface. You get so disgusted with yourself that you are willing to die. Then, by resurrection life, something of the character of Jesus is produced in us.
Brothers and sisters, there is no cross, no dying, without suffering. We are being very foolish if we think God can finish His work and we will not have difficulties.
Hebrews 12 says:
All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.
It never tells us how long the “afterward” is. Many times we think the work has been done in a few weeks or months, but it is still continuing. Why? Because our God is a perfectionist. We would have been satisfied a long time ago. He is not satisfied.
Can we say with Paul that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory? Do you know that momentary, light affliction is producing an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison? Is this something you are allowing the Holy Spirit to make real in you when you are going through the experience?
If you want to come to God’s end, God’s end is for you to be glorified and to be seated with His Son in a position of responsibility to represent the will of God. But, brothers and sisters, it takes difficulties, problems, and suffering.
How did our Lord Jesus learn obedience, according to Hebrews 5:8?
Though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered.
He was without sin, yet God’s design for Him to learn obedience was for Him to endure suffering—not only on the cross. He suffered long before He got to the cross.
Do you think somehow God can bring you to His goal for you to be conformed, while there are no problems and no difficulties? Do not be foolish, brothers and sisters.
We need to learn to kiss the hand that brings suffering. We need to learn to welcome it. It is not an easy thing to do.
But what does James tell us in James 1? Does he say, “Count it all pity parties when you encounter various trials, and call all your friends together and tell them how horrible it is”? No.
Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations.
But we do not do it. Why? Because we feel sorry for ourselves. We feel as though we do not deserve it. That is because we lose sight of what God is doing.
Some of us need to write out Romans 8:29-30 and put it where we can see it when we are going through trouble. We need to remind ourselves:
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son.
He is using what is happening right now as a means of doing that work—conforming us and perfecting us.
This is why I need you as my brothers and sisters. We need one another. When we go through these times, it is easy to lose our focus. We forget to look at the compass. That is why we need to be encouragers to one another.
My experience is that when these things happen in my life, I do not raise my hands and worship God, saying, “Thank You, Father, for making it so difficult.” But that is what I should do if I understand that this is coming from the Holy Spirit, that He is designing it or at least permitting it.
What if a brother or sister came and said, “Ernie, I want to remind you of Romans 8:29-30 and what James tells us to do”? How about if I lift my hands and encourage you to lift your hands, and together we worship the Lord in the midst of this situation?
Remember the prophet Jonah. Even if we get ourselves into problems—and many times, brothers and sisters, we are the origin of our own suffering—God is still at work.
We make stupid decisions, like Jonah did. God told him to go one place, and he went another place. He thought he could get away, but God prepared a big fish. Jonah was thrown overboard, and the big fish was waiting for him.
You can read about it in Jonah 2. Do you know what Jonah did when he was in the belly of that big fish? He worshiped, brothers and sisters. He turned toward Jerusalem. I do not know how he knew where Jerusalem was, but he turned toward Jerusalem, toward the temple, and began to worship.
What happened? The fish vomited him up on dry ground.
Do you think it was easy for Jonah to lift his hands and worship God in that fish’s belly? It takes amazing grace. It takes an ability that we do not have naturally. It means the life of Christ in us has to energize us and enable us to do something that is naturally impossible.
I think this is one of the secrets for us to enter into becoming sons in a fuller way—developing as sons and daughters, and then being trained through all these experiences to have the ability and position of responsibility in His kingdom.
We have been foolish as God’s people. We have not looked at what the Word of God has to say about this.
We groan within ourselves. The whole created order is groaning, because God is doing a work that requires suffering.
Do you remember what Paul said in Colossians 1:24?
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the church.
What in the world is Paul saying? What kinds of things produce suffering in you? What are the things that cause you to groan in the depths of your being?
Perhaps one of them ought to be that, when we look out and see the body of Christ in the condition it is in, it ought to cause us to groan.
Brothers and sisters in Brazil told me five years ago that there were three thousand denominations in Brazil. I do not know how many there are in the United States. But it is reason for us to groan, to be saddened, and to grieve that His body has been so hopelessly divided.
This groaning ought to make us willing to be a part of His recovery—something of reality, not something for ourselves.
Oh, brothers and sisters, it is so sad when we turn the church into something for us, even calling it “our church.” How dare we? Do you have a document signed by the Lord Jesus saying that He gave it to you? Then why do you call it yours or ours?
It is a mentality that we as God’s people have that needs to be radically changed. We need to cast down this kind of thinking and stand for the oneness of the body of Christ, being willing to agonize and travail within.
I am not saying that it necessarily requires a lot of words, although sometimes words can come. But there should be an inner agonizing when we see the condition.
Can we somehow sympathize? Can we fellowship His sufferings?
Let me ask you, brothers and sisters: when our beloved Lord Jesus, from His exalted position right now, looks down upon His church, what do you think He feels in His heart? He is deeply saddened. He is grieved because of what we, as human beings, have done to His church.
How can we fellowship His suffering? We allow Him to show us what He wants us to see—the reality of the condition—and become willing to suffer whatever is necessary in order for Him to gain something for Himself, some recovery, some spiritual reality again.
The Holy Spirit has His own wonderful way of creating situations in which we experience the kind of suffering that is necessary. You do not have to go looking for it. He is the One Who knows. He knows the solution, and He knows what kind of suffering is necessary to produce the right result.
Then there is an increase of the life of our Lord Jesus being built into us.
As I read those verses in Hebrews 12, what the writer seems to be saying is this:
Life plus discipline equals character.
We have the life. It is a free gift. You cannot do anything to receive that gift except receive it from God. You cannot bribe Him. You cannot promise Him anything. It is an absolute, one hundred percent gift from Him. It is His life, and He gives it to us.
But the character that should result from that life growing and entering into our whole being is the character of Christ. If it is the life of Christ, then He wants to produce the character of Christ.
How is character produced? Discipline: the discipline of our circumstances and the discipline of our relationships with people.
I was joking with one of the young couples who recently got married. I said, “You know, the Lord is going to deal with you in areas that He could not have dealt with if you had not gotten married.”
The fact is, my dear brothers and sisters, it is true. There are areas in your life as husbands that would never have been dealt with had you not married the woman you are now married to. Sisters, there are many areas in your lives that would never have been dealt with, because they were inglorious and unlike our Lord Jesus. It is through being married to that man that God is producing the character of Christ.
What does that mean? It means that on a regular basis, I need to lift my hands and worship God for the mate He has given me. We may consider them impossible.
In my first marriage, my wife and I were going through some difficulties. Ninety percent of the time, I was the origin of the difficulty. We went to someone and asked if we could speak with him about some wrong. After we both shared a little bit, do you know what this person said? “You deserve one another.”
Amen. I will not get many amens tonight.
Brothers and sisters, please get it clear in your minds: God intends to bring you to glory. It includes suffering God will design. The question is, how are we going to respond to these things that happen? Are we going to respond positively, taking the life of our Lord Jesus?
Remember Hebrews 12:2:
Looking unto Jesus the Author and Perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame.
It was joy for Him to do His Father’s will. He did not go to the cross because He was afraid of dying. What was He doing in the garden of Gethsemane when He was sweating great drops of blood? Was He trying to avoid the cross? Oh, no.
He wanted to be absolutely clear that this was God’s will and God’s time. “Thy will be done.” Three times: “Thy will be done.” This was the issue for Him.
May we allow the Holy Spirit to do something in us so that we remember. Our forgetters work so well, but may we remember. Maybe within twenty minutes, perhaps before you leave this conference, somebody may do something that deeply offends you.
Can you see it as coming from the Lord? It may not be something we would think the Lord would do, but what is the Lord after? He is after getting you to respond in the right way, whatever somebody else may be doing.
There is no option. If you want to come to God’s end, if you want to be glorified, if you want to enter into the experience of being sons and knowing sonship, suffering is an absolutely necessary part of it. Write it down. Underline it. Ask some people to help you remember.
Secondly, when we read the end of this portion of the Word of God, Romans 8, what comes to my heart is that we need to see the capability of God’s sovereign love.
Many times we do not think of God’s love as being sovereign. There are many things Paul mentions here that we do not have time to go into tonight, but they are evidence of God’s great love for us.
Why does He love us? Let me ask it personally: why does the Lord love you? Because you are so lovable? Because you are so easy to love? Because He feels sorry for you? Because He pities you?
Oh, my brothers and sisters, God has compassion, but do you know why He loves you? Because He loves you. Do I need to say it again? Do you know why He loves you? Because He loves you.
Who told Him to love you? He told Himself to love you. He sovereignly chose to love you.
Because He loves you, He wants you to arrive at His destiny. He is going to invest everything necessary. There will be an unlimited supply of everything you need coming from His heart to you, given abundantly.
When you read Ephesians 1, it says that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Then, a couple of verses later, it says that He has taken the riches of His grace and lavished them upon us.
Some of us think God dispenses grace with an eyedropper. You know what an eyedropper is. You squeeze that little piece of rubber, get some fluid in it, then very carefully squeeze it so that one drop or two drops go into your eye. Some of us think that is how God dispenses grace.
We imagine God telling the angel, “Be careful. I want to make sure that drop gets exactly where it is supposed to go. I do not want any waste.”
But, brothers and sisters, out of His great love for us, He takes the riches of His grace, takes the whole container, and pours it out. He lavishes it upon us. This is how much He loves us.
What is the difference between love, grace, and mercy? In Ephesians 2, Paul speaks of all three. Is love and grace the same? Is love and mercy the same? Is grace and mercy the same? I think there is a difference.
Very simply, grace is when God pours out upon us that which we do not deserve. There is nothing you can do to deserve God pouring out His grace upon you. This is difficult for us because we are not good receivers.
In our minds—and sometimes in our hearts—even though we know it is not Scripture, we still believe it and practice it: “God helps those who help themselves.” Chapter and verse, brothers and sisters? It is not there. But we believe it.
That is not what the Word of God says. God pours out His great love, mercy, and grace upon those who do not deserve it. There is nothing you can do to earn it or deserve it. It is pure favor on God’s part.
We need to understand that it is God’s great love that is capable of doing anything in our lives. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10:
But by the grace of God I am what I am.
Everything Paul did, he saw as a manifestation of God giving a fuller portion to him so that he could fulfill his responsibility.
Brothers and sisters, we need to learn how to be good receivers. If you do not learn how to be a good receiver, you are going to greatly limit what God wants to do. It will take longer.
Brother Stephen says that you cannot speed up the process, but we can slow it down. One way we slow down God’s work of glorifying us and making us like His Son is that we do not know how to be good receivers. We are proud, self-sufficient, and unwilling to humble ourselves.
To whom does the Lord give grace, according to Peter? He gives grace to the humble. How difficult it is for you and me to humble ourselves and say, “Lord, I cannot do it. I am not even going to try. You have to give a measure of the life of Your Son so that I can fulfill what You are asking me to do.”
We need to come to a place where we are able to receive. God needs to break up our pride, our arrogance, and our self-sufficiency so that we can receive.
I know my illustrations are the same ones almost every year, but until the Lord gives me a better one, I am going to continue to use this one. How many of you have ever seen a nest of baby birds? Little baby birds, perhaps just a few days old?
When you go to that nest, what do you see? All mouth. What are they waiting for? Mom and dad to bring something to eat.
What are those baby birds doing that deserves Mom and Dad to bring them food? Absolutely nothing. Do you know what they are doing? They continue to make a mess in the nest and create problems for Mom and Dad. But Mom and Dad keep bringing food, and the babies sit there with their mouths open and receive.
How about you and me becoming baby birds, just letting God impart His grace while we learn to be grateful receivers of that grace?
This is the love of God. We need to become convinced that God, by His sovereign love, is capable of doing the work He desires.
Talking about being conformed to the image of Christ, Paul says that God freely gives us all things:
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Then, in Romans 8:37:
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
This is a manifestation of the great love of God: that you are able to be an overcomer.
What is the alternative to being an overcomer? To be overcome. That is, you let the circumstances overcome you.
Many times in the United States, when we have not seen someone for a long time, we say, “How are you doing?” They say, “Oh, pretty good under the circumstances.” What should we say? “What are you doing under the circumstances?”
I am saying that our God, by His great sovereign love, wants to enable us to have a genuine experience of overcoming all these things.
Paul asks:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Even as it is written,
“For Thy sake we are killed all the day long;
We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
The original word is hypernikao: super-overcomers. You know where Nike shoes got their name? From this word: overcomer, winner.
We are to be super-overcomers. How? Through Him Who loved us.
God will grant us the measure of Christ in us by His Spirit that enables us to overcome in victory—not merely squeezing through, but going through with victory as super-overcomers.
Finally, I know my time is way past, but we need to be totally convinced that nothing can separate us from this sovereign love of God. Nothing.
The only way we can become convinced, as Paul was convinced, is to go through the experience. This cannot be theory. This cannot be merely something that we fellowship about tonight. You need to go back and let the Lord prove to you by experience that no matter where you go, what happens to you, what other people do to you, what is happening now, or what happens in the future—nothing can separate you from the love of God.
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Nada, nada, nada—that is a little Portuguese. Nothing. No created thing is able to separate you from the love of God.
I want us to see that He has put His sovereign hands on your life. No one and nothing can separate you. He is the only One Who could separate you, and He has decided He does not want to do that. He wants to keep you in His great love.
Our goal is glory: glorified, conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus, going from glory to glory. We realize that it requires us to go through difficult things in our lives. We also remember that it is God’s great, sovereign, capable love that is able to accomplish this.
You and I need to let God love us the way He loves us. He loves us perfectly. Brothers and sisters, God cannot love you any more than He already loves you. He loves you perfectly.
We need to keep ourselves in the love of God. In other words, we must not allow our minds to lead us somehow to separate ourselves from the experience of knowing His love.
There was another point, but I am not going to get to it tonight. Let me simply say this: brothers and sisters, we desperately need to know the Person and work of the Holy Spirit if we are ever going to get to the end.
He is the One sent here. Our Lord Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. The work has been finished. But how are you going to experience this matter of being sons of God and being qualified to be part of the sonship? How is He going to do this work?
The blessed Paraclete—another Helper, just like the Lord Jesus—is here. Some of us need to greatly improve our experience of Him, our understanding of Who He is, our relationship to Him, and our respect for Him.
Brothers and sisters, He is sovereign. If our Lord Jesus were here, we would want to bow our knees to Him. The Holy Spirit is here. He is sovereign too.
You need to learn to be led by Him, to walk in Him, and to recognize the law of life that He imparts to us.
I hope we are all somehow stirred in our hearts. Even though it may not be as clear as we would like it to be, one thing is very clear: our God wants every one of His children to become sons, qualified to reign with His Son and fulfill their responsibility.
He is using our lives—what is happening day after day, circumstance after circumstance—without any waste. He is causing all things to work together. Well, perhaps some of you brothers and sisters—