Good morning.
Let’s read a few verses, shall we, in John 14?
As Jesus is about to go to the cross, we have these chapters—John 14 through 17—where He speaks to His disciples. In John 14:18, He says:
“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me.
Because I live, you will live also.
At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
Then, a couple of chapters later, in John 21, the last chapter of the Gospel of John—sorry, beginning with verse 18—we have the risen Lord Jesus speaking to Peter. He says:
“Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.”
This He spoke, signifying by what death Peter would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, “Follow Me.”
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, there is nothing—there are no little computer things, no clever stories—that can portray anything of any value. Only You can reveal the truth. Only You can take Your Word, reveal the truth in it, and implant it in us.
Lord, I say we need You so badly. We need You to reveal these things to us, that we would know the truth, and that the truth would set us free. So, Lord, I give You Your Word and ask You: take Your Word and reveal it to us. In Christ’s name, amen.
I apologize to you first of all. Mac told me that many of you were saying, “We’ve got to get a copy of Tozer’s That Incredible Christian,” and it is out of print.
You know, a lot of Tozer’s stuff is out of print. So you are going to have to find some old saints, invite yourself over, ask if you can look in their library, and ask if you can borrow a book. Then read it and discuss it with them. That would be a great blessing, I am sure.
Okay, this morning: last time I told you there were two parts. One part was the lecture part, and the other part was the practical part, or the lab part.
Last time, you could just listen and say, “Well, I am a smarter person than I was before because I heard certain things.” But in a lab, you take something and have to do something with it.
Now, I am not going to have you do anything here, so do not get worried, okay? You can all stay seated. But this will mean nothing if you do not take it home and do something with it. It will just be a little talk—nothing more.
A lab is when you take something you have been reading about and go into the laboratory to handle it. You get to see: is this true?
And this is your homework: Is this true? You have to find that out for yourself. I cannot say, “This is true,” and then you say, “Okay, we agree. It is true.” No, you have got to find that it is true for you.
And that is our hope: that it is true for us.
Last time we were talking about Christ in you. My picture did not come out very well this time—the Annunciation, Gabriel telling Mary that she was going to have the Christ.
We had this quote:
“The doctrine of the divine indwelling is one of the most important in the New Testament, and its meaning for the individual Christian is precious beyond description. To neglect it is to suffer serious loss. The apostle prayed for the Ephesian Christians that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith.”
—A. W. Tozer
We spoke about that last time. This has to be made known to you: that you need Christ, Christ living in you. That has to become a need.
You have to find out that you need another life. If you do not find that out, then you just have a religion. But you have to find that out.
We also found out that Christ in us is a provision. That is another thing we must discover: this has been provided for us, and it has been provided from the beginning. This was never outside the plan of God.
When He said, “Son, I want You to go, and I want You to lay down Your life,” it was not merely, “Lay down Your life.” It was also, “I want that life to be in these.” It was not a second thought. It had always been in the mind of the Father to have sons like His Son.
This is all provided in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have to find these things.
Today, we want to look at Christ in you as the hope of glory—in other words, as the life that comes to pass, the life that will be manifested in you and through you.
The question we need to ask is, “How can these things be?” Just as Mary asked, “How can these things be? I can see no reason why these things can happen to me. I have never been with a man before. How can I have a child?”
It is the same thing for us. We look at ourselves and say, “How can these things be? I look at myself; I see my nature. How can I get out of these things? I do not see it.”
In the same sense, it has to be revealed to us.
I want to look at this first as having a child, having a life. I hate to use this idea, but in a sense, we are custodians of this life. Yet that is not where it ends. We are not always custodians, because this life grows, and this life is to become the Lord in us.
Still, in a sense, we are custodians of the life that has been given to us. Now that God has given us this life, what do we do?
We cannot just say, “Well, Christ is in me. That is great.” What now? That is the question. Now that I know He is in me, what now?
The first thing we need to know is that, now that we have this life, in order for this life to live, you must feed it.
When we took our children home from the hospital—or when the doctor or midwife left and we had the baby at home—none of us said, “That is over. Put it in the playpen, and let’s go out to dinner tonight.” None of us did that.
All of a sudden, there was an awareness: there is another life with us. We knew that we had to care for that life, and one of the major things in caring for it is that you have to feed the child.
Just like our natural life, we must be fed. Some of us enjoy being fed; we enjoy eating. We kid about conferences and retreats being “meet and eat,” right? We go to a meeting, then we go eat. Then it is time for another meeting, and then we go eat.
Nobody complains. I hardly find people saying, “You know, I think I will skip this meal,” because we like to eat. Some of us eat a little too much—I know Dora tells me about that.
But the whole thing is, you have to feed the new life. You have got to give it food.
In Matthew 4:4, it says:
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
From the beginning, when God made man, He never made him to exist alone on the physical level. That was never His intention. He made him spiritual. He breathed into his nostrils.
So He says, in effect, “You cannot live life without feeding the spirit.” We are made that way. And when we are born again, how much more? The spirit is no longer dead, but alive. What do we do? We need to feed it.
How do we go about doing that? In 1 Peter 2:2, it talks about:
“As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby.”
The life in us is meant to grow. It is not meant to remain the same size all the time. None of us would like our children to remain the size they were at birth. We want them to grow into good adults, into everything that we had pictured for them.
We are to desire that milk. We desire to be fed, and we are to desire spiritual food too. The life in us desires spiritual food. Our natural man may not desire spiritual food, but the life in us desires it. It yearns for it, and it cries for it.
You may say, “There is something wrong. I have not been reading the Word. What is happening?” Well, the baby is hungry. He wants to be fed.
Now, we can say, “Okay, I am going to read the Bible.” But reading the Bible is not just reading the Bible.
I remember our first child, Katie. Barb naturally fed her, so I did not have to do anything. It was pretty cool. But when Jamie was born, Jamie did not take to natural feeding, and it was my turn.
I learned that this is a responsibility you share. I remember getting up at night, getting the bottle, and heating it up. But what I remember is not merely going to the sink to heat it.
I remember this: feeding is a time of communion.
There is an amazing thing when you feed that child. Those of you who are not parents may not have experienced this, but the child is looking right back into your eyes, looking for who you are.
It is an amazing thing. You get such a rush from that little child when you feed him. There is so much delight in your heart at doing that.
Even when you get up at three o’clock in the morning, you are able to hold that child, and suddenly you see that child looking at you—looking to see who you are, what you are like. All of a sudden, it changes you. There is delight.
Do you think our Father is not excited to feed us? Do you think He looks at it as drudgery?
My question is: do we think of this as drudgery? If we do, it is because we are selfish. You know what I mean? We are just selfish. “You are biting into my time.”
But if you want the child to grow, you have to feed the child. You must feed the child.
The life desires it. You may not desire it at first. Those three- or four-o’clock-in-the-morning feedings were tough. But once you started feeding, suddenly the desire was there.
Once you saw that child looking back up at you, you knew this was a time of communion—a silent communion between baby and parent.
A lot of times, when we go to read the Word, there is that same silent communion: God communicating from His Word to you, “I love you.” Just that type of thing.
Another thing is that the baby does not stay like that. As cute as babies are, they do not stay that way. They start growing these things—teeth.
And all that is saying is, “I need something of more substance.”
I do not know about you guys, but I am carnivorous. I did not eat a salad until I was about twenty-one—maybe twenty-two. Not even a tomato. Ask my mom.
But I have those little incisors, those little canine teeth. I am a carnivore.
That is the thing about this life: it grows, and it is not stagnant. It cannot be satisfied with something simple forever. Yes, it has the milk of the Word, but why does it have teeth? Because it is ready to go on to something else.
Hebrews 5:13-14 says:
“For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
But solid food belongs to those who are mature, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”
In other words, it is time for us to start chewing for ourselves. Mom does not have to grind it up. The Lord has given us teeth so that we can have meat.
What do we do with our teeth? We grind. We grind our food.
I am glad I have teeth, because when I chew, I get all this wonderful flavor. When you bite into something and chew it, you expose all the flavor that is in it. Then you make it ready to be digested.
Even if you have a tough piece of meat and really have to chew that thing, what is the value of it? It feeds you.
A lot of us say, “Some stuff is just too hard. I want to stay away from that.” Well, when you stay away, what happens? You are not going to mature. You are going to stay at the baby level.
A lot of us would like to say, as students would say when I taught eighth grade in California, “Just tell me what is on the test. That is all I need to know.” Nobody wants to understand.
But the Lord has made it so that we grapple with Him in the Word. He wants that for us. He wants us to look at it, wrestle with it, and go at Him with it. Out of that comes a newer understanding, a greater understanding—something that will help you go further than being a baby.
Second Timothy says:
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly