Good morning, everyone.
Please turn with me to Hebrews 10, beginning in verse 35.
Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which has great recompense. For ye have need of endurance, in order that, having done the will of God, you may receive the promise.
For yet a very little while, He that comes will come, and will not delay;
but the just shall live by faith.
And if he draw back, My soul does not take pleasure in him.
But we are not drawers back to perdition, but of faith to saving the soul.
And Hebrews 12, just the beginning part of verse 2:
Looking steadfastly on Jesus, the Leader and Completer of faith.
Let us pray.
Lord, we do thank You for gathering us together this morning. Lord, to be able to come to Your table, to remember You. Lord, we thank You just for Your great love that You have for us, and we thank You that You are One who desires to speak to us even today.
So, Lord, we do look to You. We pray that You would speak to us. Lord, that Your word would come forth, that You would open our ears, that we would hear You, and we would see You in that living way. Lord, we ask this in Your precious name. Amen.
As most of you know, this month the topic that we have is faith. We will be spending the next two Friday nights that we have together fellowshipping around this topic. During the whole month, we will have the opportunity to search through the Scriptures and see what the Scriptures say on this matter of faith.
During my study, looking through the Scriptures, when I tried to come up with a definition for faith, I came into great struggle. Every time I tried to give it a one-line definition, it seemed like faith is more than just this. It seems like it is this and this. I was not able simply to say, “Well, faith is this,” because it seemed to have other aspects.
I was greatly helped by a definition that our brother Kong gave in a message he spoke some time ago on faith and works. Since we will be studying this topic over the next month, I am going to read that definition so that we can have it clear in our minds. As we go through the Word, we can see how this is shown in the Scriptures.
His definition was a threefold meaning of faith as we see it in the Word of God.
The first is a strong conviction. Faith is a strong conviction producing an acknowledgment of the revelation we see—an assurance of what we have seen.
In other words, the foundation of faith is revelation. When the Lord gives us some revelation, some light—when He shows us something—then it produces in us a strong conviction. We are fully convinced that this is true.
You know, when the Lord shows us something, we say, “I know it. This is true. Jesus is the Christ.” He gives us some revelation, and it produces in us a strong conviction. We are completely convinced that this is true.
The second meaning is an absolute surrender. After you have received a revelation and have a strong conviction about that revelation, what happens? There is an absolute surrender of yourself to the truth that is revealed.
It is not just that you believe it. Faith is that you obey it.
To give some illustration, I do not know if any of you have ever been to an amusement park to ride a roller coaster. I know when I was younger, I wanted to go. People had often told me—and we learned this even in school—that roller coasters are so safe. Now, we do hear some stories; do not get me wrong. But statistically speaking, they are safe, probably safer than driving to the meeting today, overall.
If someone tells me they are safe, and I see the statistics, I believe it. I agree with them. I say, “I completely agree. They are safe.”
But when I am at the amusement park and someone says, “This one is the safest roller coaster. It is the safest roller coaster in the whole world. Why do we not get on it and ride it?” I say, “Oh, I do not think so.”
So it is one thing to believe it, but then to actually obey that belief is another thing.
But if I surrender myself and get on that roller coaster and ride it, at first I might be a little hesitant. Yet I get on there and ride it, and it produces something in me. This is the third meaning that our brother gives: a corresponding conduct.
After you have surrendered yourself to Him, then something will be produced in your life. There will be the walk of faith. There will be a corresponding conduct, a conduct inspired by such surrender. It will inspire within you a trust in Him wrought through obedience.
We see this even using the same example of being on the roller coaster. When we get on the roller coaster after we have gone through once, and we have seen, “This is safe. I can trust that these bars are going to hold me in, that those wheels—even though they look like they are not, and I am going to go upside down—I am not going to fall out.”
We begin to trust that which holds us. We are no longer gripping on like this when we are going down. Sometimes you just let your body loose and say, “Ooh, I can just relax and trust that this is going to hold me.” That is true. These are safe, and they will hold me even when I go upside down, even when I drop sixty or seventy feet. Praise the Lord.
Well, praise the Lord—but what I mean is, praise the Lord that this is the Lord’s way with us: that His hand in our life is the One who comes beneath us and holds us to carry us all the way through.
I would like to read in Hebrews again—Hebrews 11:1.
Now faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith substantiates what we hope for. We know in Romans 8:24, it says that we have been saved in hope, but hope seen is not hope. So we know that our hope is not something we see, right?
If I had to give a very general definition of our hope, it is Christ. That is the general summary: Christ is our hope.
But even Christ—in Acts 1:9, when the disciples are there with Him—it says that He is carried away and carried out of sight. He was carried away, and we no longer see Him. He is no longer here for the disciples or for us to see, but He has been carried out of sight. Our hope is in the unseen.
We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Everything is in Christ. We have even been studying that this month, right? We know that Christ is everything, and everything is in Christ. And where is Christ? He is in the unseen.
So all substance, all reality for us, is in the unseen. We do not see it, yet we hope for it.
The key here is to substantiate. Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for. It is not just to hope for it, but to actually bring the substance of the unseen into our experience.
I think we struggle a lot here. Even as we are going through this topic in Christ, one of our big struggles is that we know all these things about the gospel. We know that we have been placed in Christ according to the Word. We know that we have all things in Christ.
But yet we do not see it in our experience. We know it, but we have not really come in. We have not been able to substantiate, bringing that unseen into the seen.
Praise God, He has given us some revelation. We see it because the Lord has opened our eyes, right? He has opened our eyes to see that there is something outside of this world. Even when we are first saved, He gives us some revelation. But in order to bring that into our experience, it takes faith.
Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
I think this can be one struggle we have in the Christian life. It is not that we have not received teaching and great light. But actually, how? How do we exercise faith? How do we bring it into our experience?
In Hebrews 12:2, it is “looking away to Jesus, the Leader and Completer of our faith.” Or actually, in Darby, it is “looking steadfastly to Jesus.” The NAS also says, “looking away to Jesus,” or “looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter.”
He is the Leader and Beginner of our faith. He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Christ is our faith from the beginning to the end. Christ is our faith.
In Romans 1:16-17, it says that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, and it is on the principle of faith to faith. According to the Scriptures, the just shall live by faith.
When we are saved, it is not just that we have faith and believe in the Lord Jesus for the first time, and then receive the salvation of our spirit. It is not just that one time, but it is from faith to faith—the whole entire Christian life. From the beginning to the end, it is all faith.
He is the Leader of our faith. He is the Completer of our faith. He leads us from the beginning all the way to the end. He completes it. He perfects our faith.
This, to me, is wonderful, because I have tried so many times to muster up faith, but I cannot do it. I can want to believe so much and want to try harder, but I just cannot muster up faith.
When I fall—I think we have this experience of falling into sin—when we are first saved, maybe we are baptized, and we are thinking, “I am a new creation,” which we are, in Christ Jesus. We have this, and we think, “I am never going to sin again.”
We go about, maybe make it a week—I do not know. Maybe we do not see how much sin we have; we have a little bit of light. So maybe we think, “I have been sinless for this week.” But then we go and sin in the same sin that seemed always to have us, and we are so discouraged, because our experience betrays us.
“I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who now lives in me.” We know it is true, but in our experience we do not see Christ living. We see ourselves living, and we fall into sin.
But thank the Lord, there is a way. Even this morning, we might have had such a horrible day yesterday—such a day where we did fall. We are weak, and we fall, and we did something we should not have.
This morning, we may have felt like, “I do not even want to get out of bed and see the saints. I do not even want to come to the meeting, to come to the table, and actually enter into the Lord’s presence. I am just not worthy to do it. I am still the same sinner I have always been.”
But we look away. We do not look at ourselves. We look to Him, and we see that we are in Christ. We have been justified in Christ. He is our righteousness.
I am not righteous. I do not come this morning to break bread on my own righteousness. I hope not. But I come on His righteousness. He has made me righteous. I have been placed in Christ.
So when we see the Lord, we see that it is Him; it is not me. I can come. I can come this morning. As we look to the Lord, we see Him, and we receive the faith to believe, even though I sinned yesterday.
I am looking away. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.
Then one day, we are looking away—we are just looking to our Lord, so caught up in our Lord—and all of a sudden we notice that the Lord gives us such revelation: “You have been crucified.”
We ourselves have that fresh revelation. “Wait, before I always knew this was a fact, but now all of a sudden, the Lord said, ‘I was just about to sin this same sin,’ and the Lord said, ‘You have been crucified with Christ.’” And I say, “It is no longer I who live; it is Christ who lives in me.”
And this life that I now live, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Now whose faith is it? The faith of the Son of God. How wonderful is this? It is not our faith.
I cannot sit there in the morning and say, “You know what? I am just going to do it.” But I look to the Lord. I look away to Jesus, and I receive the faith to be washed by that precious blood, to confess my sins, be washed by the precious blood, to be forgiven, and to come and enter in.
I can praise Him—not just come and sit in the back seat. I can come in, sit in the front seat, and praise, because I came by the precious blood, in faith that the Lord has given to me to be able to enter in.
I think this can touch many areas of our walk.
Verse 3 says:
By faith, we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that which is seen should not take its origin from the things which appear.
We know that even creation itself—that which we see around us—was framed by that which does not appear. God spoke, and by faith it came into existence. In the same way, we substantiate that which the Lord has done into our own life.
Moving on to verse 5:
By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him. For before his translation, he had the testimony that he had pleased God; but without faith it is impossible to please Him.
With Enoch, his testimony before he was translated, before he was taken away, was that he pleased God. If we look back in Genesis 5:24, it says that Enoch walked with God, and he was no more.
The Greek translation of the Hebrew phrase “walked with God” is “to please God.” This is the way it is translated in the Greek. How did Enoch please God? By faith. Enoch walked with God by faith, and as he walked with God by faith, God was pleased.
Enoch sets this wonderful example. What a testimony. Enoch was just living in the unseen. He was living in this unseen reality, walking with the Lord, experiencing the Lord—not focused on all the world around him, but living in the unseen.
This is the way we too have to walk. To walk with God, to walk in a pleasing way to God, is by faith. We walk in the unseen. We do not walk in what we see around us every day, but we walk in the truth, in the Word of God.
As we walk in that, we begin to actually experience it in our lives.
When we come to the prayer meeting—our brother spoke on prayer last week—why do we come to pray? Maybe we come for many reasons, but the ultimate reason we come to pray is that we know, as our brother shared, it is the Lord’s priority.
If we have any desire to please the Lord and we know this is a priority, then we come to pray. But also, if we are living in the unseen, knowing that this place is not our home and that we just sojourn here, then we come to pray, “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
In a way, we are living in the heavens. I am not talking about being so spiritual that you are not human. I am talking about living in the heavens, living in the unseen, just trusting the Lord.
When we come to pray, our desire is that the Lord’s will would be brought down here on earth as it is in heaven. When you pray, you have to pray in faith, because oftentimes the circumstances look completely otherwise. It looks like there is no way this is possible.
Sometimes we look at the situation of the church and say, “Is it even possible? Can the Lord build His church?” Now, I know the Lord can build His church, and He will build His church, because He says so. But when we come to pray, we have to come and pray in this way.
To bring it very practically for us, when we are sitting around and praying, we have the heart that we want to pray real prayers. I do not want to come and spend an hour and a half just to pray some surface prayer. For what? We might as well stay home.
But I come because I want to please the Lord. I want to pray forth His will. When I come, no matter what my condition is, I just look to the Lord.
When we are there, we are listening to hear the Lord. What is the Lord praying? We do not want to pray our own prayers. We want to pray His prayer.
Sometimes the Lord, in your spirit, just shows you something. He gives you something. We are praying around a certain topic, and maybe it seems very surface-level, but the Lord gives you something, and it is an intense prayer.
You say, “Whoa, I do not know if I can pray this, because what if I am wrong? I do not want to take the whole prayer meeting.” Of course, far be it from me to take the prayer meeting. “I will just let everyone else pray because I am not sure about myself. I should practice a few more years before I actually pray. Maybe I will just sit here and listen.”
But I do not have the faith. I cannot do it. The Lord has given me something. He showed me how to pray, but I feel like I cannot even do it because I do not have the faith.
But if I look to the Lord—sometimes we look to the Lord, and as we are looking to Him, just crying out, “Lord, I cannot do it”—right there, we receive the faith.
It is like His life within us wells up and obeys that command upon us, and we just speak it out. It comes out of our mouth. As we are praying, we can hardly believe we are praying. It just comes out.
The next thing you know, it is like the whole heaven is open. That prayer touches the throne. It is from the Lord, and it is a breakthrough. It recovers the whole prayer meeting. The prayer meeting was just surface-level, then all of a sudden it brings us right into reality.
We see that it is by faith, and the Lord is pleased. Even if we are off—I pray lots of prayers where maybe I did not hear the Lord—the Lord knows we are not perfect. But He is wanting us to depend on Him and trust Him. That is what He is really about.
He is wanting us to learn how to actually trust Him, go along with Him, and be taught by Him.
In our walk with the Lord, I know I am sharing this very glorious experience, and it is true. It is a glorious experience. When we are saved, we have so much feeling upon us. It seems so wonderful to be in the Lord’s presence.
We want to be involved in everything. We want to do everything. We want to be consecrated, so zealous. We are willing to pay, it seems like, any cost.
You look around at everyone else and say, “I do not know what they are thinking. I do not know why they are wanting to do this in-between thing—halfway in the world, halfway in the church—because it is so good to be in the presence of the Lord.”
It is like a double blessing. You are blessed now, and you are blessed for eternity. You think, “Why would everyone not go this way?”
But as we go through our walk with the Lord and begin to mature some in the Lord, maybe we have an experience where we feel like we hit a wall.
Everything seemed to be going fine. Then all of a sudden, it is like your whole world is falling apart. You do not know what it is. You feel like, “Maybe I have sinned some great sin. Maybe I have done something wrong.”
You try so hard because the Lord has touched your heart. You have been captured in some way, and you want to go on, but you feel like all you face is defeat. It feels like a big wall is in front of you.
You are trying to climb over the wall. You are trying to break through the wall. But the harder you try to break through the wall, the more you find that you cannot do it.
You feel like your consecration begins to fall apart. It is so hard to be consecrated. You just feel like, “I am so tired.” You want to believe. You want to overcome.
A brother came to my house a while back—actually, a few brothers and a sister. We were sitting around the table, and the younger brother said to the older brother, “What happens if you hit a wall?”
The older brother looked at the younger brother and said, “You jump over it.”
The younger brother said, “How? How do you jump over it?”
The older brother looked at him and said, “I have been meditating on a verse today. That verse is Hebrews 12:2: ‘Looking steadfastly at Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.’”
By my God, I have run through a troop;
by Thee, I have leaped over a wall.—Psalm 18:29
It is by Him. Do you know it is actually possible to overcome? Do you know it is actually possible to leap over the wall?
We see the wall the Lord puts on us is so high. We think the only way is just to cast that wall off, throw it to the side, and say, “Ah, I made all this up,” and just go the way of the world.
We think the wide way is the only way. We can only go the wide way. The narrow way is only for those few, maybe for those real disciplined ones. I can count maybe on one hand those who are overcomers. But for me, it is impossible.
Praise God, there is a way.
By Thee, I have leaped over a wall.
By my God, I have run through a troop.
Looking away to Jesus, when we look to Him, we see Him on the throne. We see that He has conquered all. We see that He is the victorious One. We see that He will complete this work He has begun in us.
We look away from ourselves. We look away from our failures. We look away from the fact that I cannot do it. We look at Him, and we receive the faith. It wells up in us to begin to obey the Lord.
We find, “By Thee, by Him, I can obey.” He puts this high standard on me. It seems so hard. It seems like an impossible task. I begin to think, “Have I been taught everything my whole life? Is it true? Is it even possible? Maybe there is some other way. Maybe I need something else.”
No, we have received the truth, and we remain in Him. We look away to Him. It is by faith that we experience this overcoming life.
So many have come to me over the past year or two and said, “But where is the overcoming life?” I have just begun to see that it is in our Lord.
If we look to Him, if by His grace we obey the Scriptures, we will experience the overcoming life. There is power within to overcome. We have the life of Christ, that perfect life, and it can fulfill all the responsibility upon us.
Looking in verse 8:
By faith, Abraham, being called, obeyed to go out into the place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and went out not knowing where he was going.
By faith, he sojourned as a stranger in the land of promise as a foreign country, having dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.
For he waited for the city which has foundations, of which God is the Artificer and Constructor.
And just jumping down to verse 13:
And all these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them from afar off and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth.
For they who say such things show clearly that they seek their country.
And if they had called to mind that from whence they went out, they had an opportunity to have returned.
But now they seek a better, that is, a heavenly.
Wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.
When we come to this place of hitting a wall, I do not want to act like it is just so easy: we look away, and we leap right over. The reality is that there is a cost.
If we want to go on with the Lord, there is a cost.
If we want to cross through the Jordan, if we want to see and enter in and be a part of that city that has foundations, we have to go the way of the cross.
If we see the promised land, though, we see that the cross is a wonderful thing.
When the Israelites came the second time around, after forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the next generation had risen up. They were going to cross into the promised land, and they had to go through the Jordan.
We know that the Jordan symbolizes leaving the old life behind and walking by that new life. Only Christ can go through. Only Christ can come into the promised land.
So if we want to taste the good of the promised land, if we want to experience all that the Lord is even now, if we want to experience this overcoming life, the price—the cost—is ourselves.
Those who gain their lives shall lose them, but those who lose their lives for My sake shall gain them unto eternity.
This requires us to see the Lord. We have to see the promised land, because otherwise, when the wall comes, I do not want to go on. I do not want to go through because I do not want to give up my life. It costs me something.
I have to fix my eyes on the prize. I have to fix my eyes on Christ and run with that hope. So I am back to living in the unseen again. My whole world has to be caught up there.
It does not work if I do this halfway thing. If I am half in the world and half in the Lord, I am living a big false lie. On one hand, I am saying that Christ is reality. On the other hand, I am saying that this is reality.
Now, which is more reality: that which is unseen or that which is seen? We know that the seen is brought in from the unseen.
In order to come in, we actually have to go all the way. There is no halfway in the Christian life. There is no in-between.
If we think we can do both—try to live a little bit of this life and enjoy the fullness of the Christian life—we will never do it. We will enjoy the bitterness of this life, and we will never taste the fullness of the inheritance that the Lord has purposed for us, that He so greatly desires for us to come into.
He has such a desire that He gave His own life on the cross, that we could come in to experience Him.
But if we see the Lord—looking away to Him—when we see Him, it is like Paul: “I count all things loss that I may gain Christ.”
When we see how holy our Lord is, how wonderful; when we see He is the Servant King who was beaten and thrown in the dirt for us—how holy. What a Servant. What love. We have never seen anything like it. It is beyond expression. It is beyond understanding.
When we see how glorious He is, the cost is nothing. I count all things loss. My righteousness is as filthy rags, just that I may gain Christ.
But in this, it does take endurance. Even after we have had this experience of coming into the promised land, even once we have tasted something of the Lord, it takes endurance to go all the way through and claim all the land.
I am going to skip ahead to Hebrews 11:30.
By faith, the walls of Jericho fell, having been encircled for seven days.
By faith, Rahab the harlot did not perish along with the unbelieving, having received the spies in peace.
It is by faith. The Israelites came in, went to Gilgal, were consecrated, were circumcised, and came to Jericho.
We know the ones in Jericho had melting hearts, hearing of these ones who were coming in. But at the same time, think of the Israelites. The command of the Lord was to walk around this city seven times: one time each day for six days, and then on the seventh day, to walk around it seven times and shout.
When they shouted, the walls would fall, and they would go in and conquer. Knowing the story, it seems very easy. How wonderful. But really, what endurance.
They were weak in the flesh, but strong in the spirit, believing in the Lord, believing that the Lord was going to take down this big stronghold. They were walking around it, and they shouted, and the walls fell.
It is interesting: the only thing that comes out from that city is Rahab. Well, not just Rahab; it is the silver, the gold, and the iron that are consecrated to the Lord as holy. But the Lord’s command was that nothing else come out of the city. Only Rahab.
She does not perish along with the unbelieving. What does that tell us? It tells us that the city of Jericho was an unbelieving nation, and we see the Lord’s judgment on it.
He says, “Take nothing from it.” He even says that the one who lays the foundation will do so with the loss of his first son, and will hang the gates with the loss of his youngest. We know that happens.
This is the Lord’s judgment on this sin of unbelief. It is completely judged. Burn it with fire; destroy it. Only Rahab comes out. Only that which is of faith. Nothing else remains. Only that which is of faith can come through.
But these ones needed endurance.
If we look at Hebrews 12:1:
Let us also therefore, having so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, lay aside every weight and sin which so easily entangles us, and run with endurance the race that lies before us.
It says:
Count it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the proving of your faith works endurance.
And let endurance have its perfect work, that you be found perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.—James 1:2-4
So count it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. We are on this walk with the Lord, and we are hitting walls. We are having these experiences and experiencing real trial and tribulation.
I know there are ones in the assembly right now who are going through such things. It is beyond my experience. I have not gone through such things—things that seem so difficult, so hard to understand. They have been through so much.
You wonder, “Do I have strength to endure? Can I continue on?”
Having so great a cloud of witnesses, therefore, let us lay aside every weight and sin which so easily entangles us, and run with endurance the race that lies before us.
This sin—all sin—can be summed up with this sin of unbelief. Everything we do that is contrary to the life of Christ is unbelief.
There are great trials and great temptations upon us, and we need endurance.
The proving of your faith works endurance. Some of us have been going on for so long, so many years. Sometimes you think the temptation is too great, and I am too weak.
Even though we have leaped over the wall time after time after time, even though we have experienced the overcoming life, the race seems so long, and the finish line seems so far off. We think, “Can I make it? Can I endure to the end?”
When you are running a race—I do not know how many of you have run—some people think I am a runner at work because I tell them I run, but I am not really a runner. I have run about nine miles at the most.
But when you run a race, it takes endurance. We know this, right? It used to be I could only run a mile or two, and then maybe I got up to nine miles.
Someone once told me, “Isn’t it true that once you get to about the fourth mile, it is just about keeping one foot in front of the other?” I do not know if that is your experience, but once you get to a certain point in the race, maybe you are only halfway there, but you think, “There is no way. It is impossible.”
But you cannot look at the four miles in front of you. You cannot look at the great distance. All you can do is put one foot in front of the other.
It is just like crying out to the Lord: “Lord, I am laying in bed right now, and I have to get up. I have to endure today, and another day. I am so weak. But Lord, would You help me?”
Strengthen me in the inner man by Thy Spirit. Strengthen me to press on, to look away from myself and to look to You, to be able to endure.
Even when trials and tribulations are coming on us, we just keep one foot in front of the other. It does not feel good. When you are in that race, you think, “This is so painful. I am never going to run again.”
But it is for the hope set before you—to finish, to receive the prize.
Do we not want to finish the race as overcomers? Do we not yearn to hear our Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant”?
Just as we read in the beginning:
For ye have need of endurance, in order that, having done the will of God, you may receive the promise.
For yet a very little while, He that comes will come, and will not delay;
but the just shall live by faith.
And if he draw back, My soul does not take pleasure in him.
But we are not drawers back to perdition, but of faith to saving the soul.
Our feeling is to be drawers back. But we are not drawers back to perdition, but of faith to saving the soul.
You know the story in Matthew 25 of the master who goes on a long journey and has three servants. To one he gives five of his substance, to another he gives two, and to the other he gives one.
When he goes away, it says he goes away on a long journey, and then he comes back. When he comes back, he calls the servants to give an account: “What have you done with the substance, with what I have given you?”
The first one comes back and says, “Lord, with Your five, I have done business with them, and here are five more.” The Lord says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.”
With the second one, it is the same. He has two and brings out two more. The Lord says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.”
But with the third one, it is different. The third one comes in and presents the one. He says, “Master, here is Your one talent. I know You are a harsh man, reaping where You do not sow, gathering where You have not scattered. Therefore, I hid Your talent, and I give it back to You. You have what You gave me.”
The Lord says, “If you knew that I am a harsh man, reaping where I do not sow, gathering where I have not scattered, why did you not at least put it in the bank, that upon my return I would have interest?”
He says, “You wicked and slothful servant. Cast him into the outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
There is something wrong with this servant. The Lord’s judgment of him is that he is wicked. He is wicked and slothful. He is an unbelieving servant.
He has not trusted the Lord. He has not experienced the Lord. He has not done business with what the Lord has given. It was his master who gave him the talent. It was not even that he had to work it up on his own.
I sometimes wonder what the Lord would have done if he had said, “I went to use the talent, and I lost it, and there is nothing.” Now, that is impossible, because it is the Lord who works in us both the willing and the working.
We just bring it to the Lord. He does the business with the talent. He is the One who brings forth the fruit. It is not us. It is not our responsibility. We just put it into use. We just cooperate with the Lord. We just do business with what the Lord has given us.
But sometimes I think we look at our Master wrongly. We have this thought that He is a harsh man, reaping where He does not sow, just looking to wait until we mess up. But this is not the way our Lord is at all.
It says:
Consider well Him who endured so great contradiction from sinners against Himself, that ye be not weary, fainting in your minds.
Do you know who our Master is? He is a Master who loves us so much that He came to this earth and gave Himself on that cross. He was despised, thought little of.
He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of God. This is how our Master is for us.
In Romans, it says that God is for us, not against us. Our Lord is for us. We have no excuse for saying, “Well, the Lord helped him out more than He helped me out, and that is why I did not overcome.”
We will be without excuse. We will have no excuse when we stand before our Lord. We will have to give an account at the judgment seat of Christ. We will have to say, “This is what I have done with what You have given me.”
I know we long to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and not to be cast out, not to miss the kingdom, not to miss the reward. This is why we endure. We run in such a way that we might win.
It is not only that we win for ourselves. We win for the Lord, because He is worthy.
The Lord died and did this work on the cross. He finished the work on Calvary so that we could come in and experience who He is. It is not just about us. It is not just about me obtaining the prize. I obtain the prize because He is worthy.
That is why I run in such a way that we might win: because He is worthy. He paid such a price for us to come in.
Do we not see? It is all the Lord. It is all Him from beginning to end.
For you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He has prepared beforehand that you should walk in them.
Do you know that, as believers, when we are walking around, it is the Lord who prepared the work? When the Lord says, “Go minister. Go preach the gospel to this person,” we say, “I cannot do that.”
Do you not know the Lord has prepared it? When the Lord has you serve in some way in the church, you say, “I cannot do it. I cannot serve. I cannot take up this responsibility. Just pass. Just pass. For twenty years, I will pass on all the responsibility.”
Do you know that we are His workmanship? He is working in you. If He has put some responsibility on you, He has prepared the way. You are His workmanship.
As He is working in you, He is working through you. This is the Christian life. This is what the Lord is doing. He is working in us, conforming us into the image of His beloved Son, and at the same time, He is working through us.
He is expressing Himself to this world—to this dark world, to these lost souls we see every day. The Lord is at work, wishing that they would not perish, looking to and fro for those through whom He can show Himself strong.
He is looking for those who are willing just to present themselves to Him, that He could, by His own power, work in them, work through them, reach these ones, build His church, and mature the bride so that He can return.
Is He not worthy of that bride? He has paid such a price. He has brought us so far. He has done such a work in us.
He endured so that we would not grow weary, fainting in our minds. We have not resisted sin to the point of shedding blood. Praise God.
But we are weak. A brother shared in Hong Kong, and I found great encouragement in this. It is in Ephesians—Ephesians 3.
Ephesians 3, beginning in verse 14:
For this reason, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every family in the heavens and on earth is named, in order that He may give you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power by His Spirit in the inner man, that the Christ might dwell through faith in your hearts, being rooted and founded in love.
How wonderful is this? This is our prayer to the Lord. This brother was sharing, saying, “We are weak. We are just weak.”
But we come to our Lord, and we pray, “Lord, strengthen me with power by Thy Spirit in the inner man, to be able to look away from this world, to leave behind this world that is passing away, and look to our Lord who is coming.”
Soon He will come. We pray this prayer, and we do not just pray for ourselves. We pray for the brothers and sisters. We pray for one another.
“Lord, that my brother would be strengthened. I see he is struggling. May he be strengthened in the inner man—not just fall asleep, not fail to endure, and not fall asleep and fail to make it all the way to the end.”
We are not just concerned about ourselves overcoming. We see that it is for all of us to overcome, and we pray this prayer.
We bow before our Lord in humility. We pray, “Lord, we are weak, but He is strong, and He can strengthen us, and He can bring us in.”
Praise God. What a hope.
Well, hope. Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we just come with such thankful hearts. Lord, we just confess: it is nothing of ourselves; it is all You. We give You all the glory.
Lord, we are unable, but You are able. We pray, Lord, that You really would strengthen us by Thy Spirit with power in the inner man.
Lord, that we would be able to go the narrow way; that we would be able to follow You all of our days, even unto Your return; that we might hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Lord, we thank You that it is all by Your grace, and we praise You in Your precious name. Amen.