I would like to read a few Scriptures, beginning with the theme of this conference.
In Philippians 3, I am just going to read two verses: Philippians 3:13-14.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold:
but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Then I would like to read one single verse from John’s Gospel, John 16:33.
These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye may have peace.
In the world ye have tribulation:
but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Then in Revelation, the last book of the Bible, Revelation 21:7:
He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.
In the same book, Revelation 3:21-22:
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we are found here in Your presence this evening. We thank You again for these children, and for what we have received through them in listening to them sing—just the blessing of it, Lord. We thank You.
We pray that You bless those children. Turn them into real Daniels, Lord, in the years that lie ahead. We pray for ourselves, Lord. We are entering a time of unparalleled turmoil in the world, and in this country as well. Lord, we pray that You will have mercy upon us, and grant that we also may be Daniels in times of much difficulty and problem.
Lord, we come to this last time this evening of ministry, and we want to praise You, Lord, that You have provided an anointing for us: for the speaking, for the translating, and for the hearing. Into that grace and power, we stand by faith.
We praise You that it is through the finished work of the Lamb that that anointing is given to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit. We together now look to You for a full measure of it, Lord, that we might hear You and see You in this time. Touch our hearts, Lord.
We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, I do not have to tell you, on this last evening of ministry, that the theme of this conference has been, “I press toward the mark, to the prize of the high calling—or the upward calling—of God in Christ Jesus.”
My responsibility has been to do with the prize of the high calling of God in Christ. I do not think I will go over anything that we have thus far said, through the voice of all three of us. I believe that the truth has been livingly communicated.
I want to talk this evening about a subject that is vital, strategic, important—especially in the light of the period in world history into which we are now moving rapidly.
I have to say that I believe that the United States faces a time of unparalleled turmoil in these immediate years ahead. Now, I may be wrong, and if I am, I am sure you will all remind me. And I shall be very glad to be wrong.
But my reading of the situation is that the status of the United States as a superpower is over. And this will mean colossal problems for minorities all over the world, and especially for the work of the Lord throughout the nation.
We have no need to fear. The Lord is with us. There are other empires that have come and gone, and the work of the Lord has endured through all. The one thing that we know from our hearts is that the Word of God lives and abides forever.
This matter, however, of overcoming is strategic. It is of vital importance. That is why I believe it is important for us to underline and emphasize the fact that we need the Holy Spirit to touch our hearts.
We should not be demoralized or depressed by the things that are beginning to happen. Rather, we should look to the Lord Jesus and know His overcoming grace and power in our lives.
I have to point out to you those wonderful words upon which yesterday morning I spoke: “He that overcometh shall inherit these things.”
Now, there is a condition here. These things, if you look carefully, are the capital city, the New Jerusalem, the holy city; the wife, the bride of Christ, the wife of the Lamb.
“He that overcometh shall inherit these things.” It is not a question of salvation. As our brother said this morning, we do not believe you can lose your salvation. But you can lose your inheritance.
There is a condition here which the Holy Spirit has lovingly, clearly, and pointedly put in this statement: “He that overcometh shall inherit these things.”
In other words, the strategic nature of overcoming is emphasized in this one single statement that gathers up everything into it: the wife of the Lamb, the bride of Christ, the New Jerusalem, the capital city of God in the ages to come—not just the millennium, but in the ages to come.
That city is no ordinary city. It has no place of worship in it; it is, in its entirety, a place of worship. It is the dwelling place of the Almighty. It is the tabernacle of the Almighty. It is the Holy of Holies, in which He is resident forever.
From that city He will work in all that He plans and purposes in the ages yet to be. “He that overcometh shall inherit these things.”
What is overcoming? Good question. What is overcoming?
There is so much misunderstanding about this matter. Some people have got the idea that it is an elite, select few, chosen by God, who overcome.
Some people have got this idea that to be an overcomer is to be a super-brand of God’s children: a kind of hyper person—not normal, abnormal.
Years ago, Angus Kinnear put together a whole number of messages of our brother Watchman Nee, and he entitled it The Normal Christian Life. For many, many Christians, it was an abnormal Christian life.
They lived in defeat. They had lived a life that was a façade, very often just a religious routine. To suddenly discover a book that actually called it normal—to hear the Lord, to obey the Lord, to experience the life of the Lord, to know what it is to die in order to be fruitful, and to live in the power of His resurrection—that that should be normal, for many people, was stunning.
I remember one elder of an assembly in which I first came to the Lord, who was highly thought of, saying to me, “I cannot understand a word of what he has written. It is beyond me.”
When the normal Christian life is beyond a deacon in a Baptist church, one naturally scratches one’s head.
What is overcoming? We have the idea that to be an overcomer is to be something weird, something radical, someone overboard, someone who is somehow too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use.
What is overcoming? The Greek word simply means to gain the victory, to come over, to prevail. Now, prevail is a very good word. I think it is a little old-fashioned, perhaps for Americans. It is a little unusual, I do not know, but prevail is a very good word because it has within it the idea of endurance and coming out on top finally.
Actually, the simplest way to understand this word, overcoming, is to say that it means to come out on top. To come over; to come out on top.
Years ago, I asked Mr. Sparks, in his home in those days in Scotland, “What is overcoming?” I remember he looked into the fire, then looked up. He looked at me for a few moments, then looked back into the fire.
Then he said, “Overcoming is to be in the race, within the will of God, at the end.” I have never forgotten it.
It is to be in the race, within the will of God, at the end. You may have fallen; you may have very real weaknesses and failings. But you have persistently pursued the mark, the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
If I may put it—I hope without being misunderstood—it is to take your failings and even your besetting sins with you until the Lord delivers you, but always pressing on toward the mark.
Now, I will back that up in a few moments with the further things I have to say. But all I want to say right at the beginning is this: what is overcoming? Very simply, there will be nobody who is part of the wife of the Lamb, the bride of Christ, who has not overcome.
There will be no one who is part of God’s capital city, the New Jerusalem, who reigns with Christ in the ages to come, who has not been an overcomer. It is not something so abnormal that there are only a few who are overcomers. It is something that belongs to every child of God.
I want to make another statement and seek to explain it as we go along: God has given all the grace needed for you and me to be an overcomer.
That is why the Lord seems to be very harsh when it comes to this matter, as if it is only the overcomer who will inherit these things. Why is He so severe? Because He has provided all the grace necessary to be an overcomer.
If you do not avail yourself of that grace, you cannot blame God. You cannot say He is severe. You have not availed yourself of what cost the Lord Jesus His lifeblood to provide.
It is not only grace that is provided; it is power that is provided. Do you need the divine ability to live the Christian life? Do you need the divine ability to be changed into the image, the likeness, of the Lord Jesus?
Do you need, far more interestingly, the divine ability to die? People often come to me and say, “Could you tell me what is the key to the Christian life?” The key to the Christian life is not actually living. The key to the Christian life is dying.
If you die, the life takes care of itself. The moment you die in any given situation, the power of His resurrection takes over. It is spontaneous. You do not have to work it. You do not have to pray for it. It happens the moment you die in any given situation. The resurrection is immediately spontaneous. You die; you live.
The key to living the Christian life is how to die. Do you have the divine power, the ability, to die in any given situation?
You know that relationship you find so difficult. You know that church situation that is impossible. You know those circumstances that are getting you down. You know the problems that you deem insoluble.
The key to everything is to know the cross of the Lord Jesus. For once we know what it is to die, He takes care of the life.
Now, this matter of overcoming is as simple as that in the end. I will say a number of things now in this matter. All through the Bible, you have this truth.
You know, you have two or three major themes in the Bible. One of those themes is redemption: the Redeemer, the work of redemption, the redeemed. It is like a threefold cord that runs through from Genesis to Revelation. It is everywhere. It is a major theme of the Bible.
The question of salvation is there in the first chapters of the first book of the Bible, and it is there in the last chapters of the last book of the Bible. All the way through, you see the process of salvation. It is everywhere. That is a major theme.
Now, here is another major theme, as important: the eternal purpose of God. God’s redemption, His redemptive work, God’s salvation, is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end.
It is the means—glorious means, powerful means. Fathomless grace has provided this means by which God takes you, a hopeless, twisted, complex, basically insoluble sinner, saves you, and puts you back into the eternal purpose of God.
You are back in the race. You were never in the race. Salvation in itself can only start you on the race. But there you are: on course, in the race, keeping the faith.
Your salvation is a means to an end: to bring you to the goal, to bring you to the prize of the high calling of God in the Messiah, Jesus.
Everywhere you look, you will find this major theme. It is in every book of the sixty-six books of the Bible. It begins in Genesis; it ends in Revelation. I talked about that in the first evening I spoke, so I am not going to go over it again.
But what I want to say is this: a major supporting theme to this theme of God’s eternal purpose is overcoming.
Overcoming, you will find everywhere from Genesis right the way through to Revelation. It does not matter where you turn. The simplest words God used at the very beginning, when He said, “Have dominion,” are all to do with overcoming.
When He said, “Replenish the earth,” that is a very interesting word. I am not going to go into it, because I think there could be a lot that is speculative. But what did the Lord mean: “Replenish the earth”? Why did it need replenishing? Very interesting.
Did it mean that Adam and Eve, though without sin, in a world that was good in the eyes of God, created by God, were yet in a riot of life? We tend to think that everything was in its right place. There was not any disease. Of course, that is right.
There were not any weeds, although my good friends we had at Halford House, who were eminent botanists, always told me off whenever I used the word weed. They said, “There is no such thing as a weed. Every weed is a plant. When a plant gets into the wrong place, it is a weed.”
That is a very interesting observation. Anyway, coming back to our subject: what were Adam and Eve to do?
Do you not think, when God created an allotment—He created a garden in the midst of this riot of life—and told them, “Now tend it. Keep it,” that His original purpose was that they should add allotment, and another allotment, and another allotment, until in the end they had replenished the whole earth? Perhaps that is speculation.
What we do know is this: there was overcoming from the very beginning. Wherever you go from there, you find it.
Let me read it to you in a few words. When God chose the seed of Abraham to be a special nation, He said in Deuteronomy 28. I will read the last part of Deuteronomy 28:12-13:
And thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.
And the Lord will make thee the head, and not the tail;
and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath;
if thou shalt hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day.
Is that not interesting? You will be the head, not the tail. You will be above and not beneath—above only. Is that not an interesting statement?
This chapter begins with this: you shall be a nation like no other nation. This is God’s thought. It is overcoming. You shall be above, not beneath. You shall be the head, not the tail. You shall lend, but you shall not borrow. You will not be compromised. You shall not be in the hands of the world, or those who do not know God.
Whenever you turn in the Book, you will find this matter of overcoming. When you come to the Book of Revelation, the whole thing is summed up in the first three chapters—in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3.
The risen, glorified Messiah stands in the midst of seven churches. To every one of those churches, He says the same thing: “To him that overcometh.” And the same refrain: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”
Before you come to all the other great visions and the whole panorama of world history, and especially the last events of this age, you have these seven churches. In the midst is the risen, glorified Messiah: the Head of the church, the Savior of the body.
He is speaking to those seven, representing the whole church of God on earth in time and place. Whether you understand it historically, or whether you understand it simply as speaking to the whole church of God in time, on earth, and in place, He says the same thing: “He that overcometh.”
When you come to the end of the Book of Revelation, you have exactly the same thing: “He that overcometh shall inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
In the midst of the Book of Revelation, in Revelation 12, you have these words:
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb,
and because of the word of their testimony;
and they loved not their life even unto death.
This whole matter is therefore summed up, as we would expect, in the last book of the Bible. It is so strategically important that the Holy Spirit takes the whole matter at the end and lets no one escape.
No one will ever overcome Satan and his works but by the blood of the Lamb. It is the finished work of the Lord Jesus—not our good works, not our devotion, not our knowledge, none of these things. It is by the blood of the Lamb.
That was the only way the angel of death was overcome when God visited Egypt and took the firstborn in every family. It was the blood of the Lamb.
But then there is the word of our testimony. This word testimony is peculiarly used in the Book of Revelation: the testimony of Jesus. It is everywhere—the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
Here it is almost as if these things are brought together: the word of their testimony. Of course, it does not mean exactly the same as the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus, but what it does mean is this: you overcome only when you confess with your lips what is absolute truth.
When people dither—when it is, “This may be,” and, “Perhaps,” and, “Oh, will You”—there is no overcoming. But the moment you say, “I am saved by the grace of God,” there is a witness in your spirit by the Holy Spirit: you are a child of God.
When you say, “I can do all things in Christ who strengtheneth me,” there is a witness in your spirit, and with the Holy Spirit, that you can do all things in Christ. It is when you take that step of faith.
Not dithering, “Oh, please, please, help me, help me. I am hopeless.” We all know you are hopeless. I mean, who is not hopeless?
Do you realize that the Holy Spirit takes years to bring us to hopelessness? I know there is an awful lot about hope in the Word of God, but the Holy Spirit works and works and works to bring a child of God to the place where he has no trust in his ability, no trust in his background, no trust in what he is.
This is the testimony of the apostle Paul: “Circumcised the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees,” and all the catalogue that he gives. “I knew it was nothing,” he said. “I have counted it as refuse, that I may gain the Messiah.”
The word of your testimony—listen to it. Every time you turn the promises of God into a statement, the Holy Spirit will begin to fulfil them. You may have to have patience and faith—faith and patience that you will inherit the promises. It is a divine must.
I wish I could say a good deal more about this, but I find it very interesting. You have two things: they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony.
Then comes this one little word that is part of the statement of this one sentence, and it is not put in the same way. It does not say, “And because they loved not their life.” It says, “And they loved not their life even unto death.”
In other words, underlying the whole is a deliberate, cold-blooded decision to let go of the self-life. Lay it down. Let go of it. Say goodbye to it.
“And they loved not their life even unto death.” The word life here in Greek is psuchē, which means the self-life, the soul-life: you, what you are in yourself. I will not go into all of this—the spirit, soul, and body—but it is the self-life.
All our problem is in our self-life: our ambition, our jealousies, our rivalries, our backbiting, our ability somehow or other to downgrade others in order to upgrade ourselves. It is all part of our self-life: the advancement of our self-life, the building up of our self-life, the protection of our self-life.
Is this not amazing? What is overcoming? Dear brother, dear sister, dear family of God: overcoming our self-life is the biggest single problem that any child of God faces.
It is the problem why the Christian life is not lived. It is the problem that stops a person from being changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. It is the problem that lies at the root of a thousand divisions in church life—factions, and many other things one could say.
It is the problem that lies at the root of Christian work, when what began in the Spirit ends in the flesh. It is all to do with a self-life: a retained self-life, a hugged self-life, a loved self-life, a preserved self-life.
Do you find this too much?
Overcoming begins in the moment you and I let go of that self-life. In that moment, by the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit, you have become an overcomer: by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of your testimony, and because you do not love yourself—you have let that self-life go into death.
Now you say to me, “Oh dear, you are setting such a high standard. Why did we have to have this on the last evening? We needed to have something more comforting, more sort of mollycoddling. We do not like to use that word, but you could be a little more kind to us on this.”
You might say, “We have endured these days, and they have been very blessed up to now, and we have managed the truth so far. But to speak like this about overcoming is really—how do you mean that not a single person in this audience tonight is exempted from becoming an overcomer?”
Yes, I do. Not a single one. I am not sure, unless there should be here tonight those who are unsaved. But every person in this audience, in this congregation—however you like to put it—who is saved by the grace of God and born of the Spirit of God, no one of you is exempt from overcoming.
Built into your salvation is the call to overcoming. Built into the very life we call the Christian life—the life of Christ that has been given to you—is the call to overcoming.
You can turn the life of Christ into deadness unless you learn to die. Then, as I said earlier, the Christian life blossoms.
When you look at this Book, this incredible Book that we call the Bible, this revelation of the heart and mind of God, we have in one single chapter, in a book called the Letter to the Hebrews, a whole list of overcomers.
It is Hebrews 11. Unbelievably, everyone in this list overcame by God-given faith: living faith, active faith, working faith, faith that joined them to the Lord.
We tend to think of these heroes as beyond us. Abraham—but he was not beyond us. Do you know that he is here as one of the great overcomers listed? And do you know that twice he lied? He deliberately lied about his wife Sarah.
Now, the first time you can forgive him, but the second time? We know that Sarah was very beautiful. It is incredible. Abraham was an overcomer.
In our Jewish tradition, we understand that Abraham came from one of the great aristocratic ruling families of Ur of the Chaldees—the Babel complex of cities. His family was in charge of the idol-making business, a very lucrative business. According to Jewish tradition, Abraham was one of the top salesmen.
Until the day that the living God revealed Himself to him. In that moment, his business died, and he died. He was never the same again.
When he saw the God of glory, he saw in the God of glory the Messiah of glory. He not only saw the Messiah of glory; he saw the city of glory. His whole life was redirected. He was never the same again.
He became, instead of a top salesman, a nomad, so that liberal theologians can call him a smelly, illiterate, unhygienic Bedouin shepherd. He went out, not knowing where he was going. He was an overcomer.
All he had was a visitation of God, the Word of God, and living faith. And he became an overcomer. But do not think for a single moment that that means he was an elite super-brand. He fell.
The first time he fell with Pharaoh is understandable—Sarah was very beautiful. I think Abraham, quite honestly, liked coming back into the sumptuous palace of Pharaoh, the standard of living he had been used to originally. He did not want to make any difficulty.
So he said to Sarah, “Look, you are my half-sister, so we will just say you are my sister.” I do know the rest of the story. But the second time, with Abimelech—Abimelech—I mean, that is something we cannot explain. He did the same thing all over again.
Yet still, he is in the Book as an overcomer. I take it he confessed, he repented, and is there as an overcomer.
Now, I could go on and on. I could take Jacob. Jacob’s name means twister. He was a twister—a marvellous twister. He knew just how to twist everybody that came. He had that kind of business acumen. He could spot a deal, and he knew how to go for it.
He did not give his poor twin brother a chance. Why was he making a stew, by the way, that he knew his brother liked? Very interesting, is it not? Did he know his brother was in the vicinity? Did he know he might be coming? I do not know. That is not in the Word; that is speculation too.
But what I do know is this: he twisted his brother out of his birthright, and later he twisted his brother out of his blessing. He deceived his half-blind old father.
Well, I am not going to tell you the whole story of Jacob, but the wonderful thing is this: it was Jacob who is listed as an overcomer. This man that we would least believe would ever see the face of God, because the Lord Jesus said, “The pure in heart shall see God.”
It is amazing that this one, who was so, so of this world, had this problem within himself. God brought him to an end of himself. The Scripture says so simply, “And Jacob was alone.”
When Jacob was finally alone, the Lord met him and wrestled with him. Do you not believe that the Lord could have knocked him out with one blow? Of course.
Do you really believe that Jacob got the better of the Lord? Oh, how amazing the Lord is. He weakened Himself so that Jacob could wrestle Him to the ground and hold Him in a wrestling clinch, and would not let Him go. The Lord Himself had to say, “Let Me go. Let Me go.”
As if the Lord needed Jacob! One single blow, and Jacob would have been blind, paralysed, finished.
Instead, God touched his strength in his leg, and he limped for the rest of his days. He was an overcomer. He said, “I have seen the face of God, and I have lived.”
Is that not amazing? Shall I go on? I mean, the list is endless.
Do you know one of the most beautiful pictures, in my understanding, of Jacob is when he came into Egypt and the greatest potentate in the greatest superpower of the age saw something in Jacob he had never seen in another human being, and said, “Bless me.”
Jacob blessed the Pharaoh. When Jacob died, it was a state funeral that was declared. To this day, it is still called Abel Mizraim, the field of Egypt, where the state funeral took place for Jacob. Overcomer—can you believe it?
If there is anyone here who is twisted, I imagine there are quite a few. Anyone here who is twisted—you have problems with it, you cannot help it, you try to suppress it, and the more you suppress it, the more it comes out.
Is this not amazing? Jacob had one great desire: it was spiritual hunger. With all his twistedness, God finally changed him.
Or you take Joseph. Joseph was so pure, so unlike his father Jacob. But he had one problem that I am not sure Jacob had: he was arrogant.
He bragged about the dreams he had, when everything bowed down to him. Of course, they were absolutely right, and they were of God. That is the interesting thing.
You know the story, how he was sold by his own brothers into slavery, ended in Egypt, and went into a dungeon. There, in Psalm 105—I think it is 105, or 103; no, 105, I think, but you can look it up yourself—it says:
Until the time that his word came to pass,
the word of the Lord tried him.
His feet they hurt with fetters:
he was laid in chains of iron.
I think that is a most incredible prophetic insight into what happened in Joseph. What did he mean, “The word of the Lord tried him”? It was the word God had given him that he had bragged about—that he should be great, and everything would bow down to him, and he would become, as it were, the deliverer and saviour of all.
The word of the Lord tried him. Do you not believe Satan came to him in those hours, those months in the dungeon, and said, “Well, so much for that word you got that you thought was the Lord. Your brothers were right. You were just an upstart.”
And the iron entered into his soul. In Hebrew, exactly that: the iron entered his soul.
You know the rest of the story. He rose to become the great, the greatest, most powerful man next to Pharaoh in the whole of Egypt. He became the saviour of Egypt and the saviour of his own people. What an amazing story.
I could go on and on. I could talk about Moses, how he was saved. He was drawn out of the water. He was an overcomer from the very beginning. Can you believe that? His very name, Moses, means “drawn out.” He was an overcomer from the beginning.
The most amazing thing is that he refused, when he was of age—when he was in his late teens or early twenties—to be called the grandson of Pharaoh, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God. He was an overcomer.
I do not know where else to turn. They are all here in the Book. Well, someone says, “They are not that bad, the ones you have done.” Oh well, I will give you one: Samson.
What a rotten person Samson was. Oh well, physically he was terrific, but morally, ethically—what was Samson? Yet he is in this list of overcomers. By the grace of God, through faith, he became, in the end, an overcomer.
Or I think of David, the sweet psalmist of Israel. How incredible David was, and how deeply David fell. Of all the overcomers, no one ever fell as deeply as David.
He planned the murder of a faithful servant in order to get that servant’s wife. Yet David is also an overcomer.
Well, I had better stop. I think of the children. They sang to us about Daniel. I think of Daniel often. We are living in much the same condition. Is it not interesting that we are seeing what he saw? We are actually seeing it taking shape before our eyes. Amazing.
Do you know that it was the custom to take the sons of nobility and royalty and castrate them so that they could enter into imperial service? This meant that Daniel was a eunuch. That is why we have no record of wife or children.
Incredible. And there in the Word it says that a eunuch shall not enter the house of the Lord to the third or fourth generation. I wonder if sometimes Satan came to Daniel and said, “You are cursed. It is no good you trying to be anything.”
Yet the incredible thing about Daniel is that he refused to compromise. He remained kosher right through all the trials, and came from one position to another position, to another position, until in the end he was next to the sultan—the emperor, the most powerful man in the Persian Empire.
Because of that faithfulness and the overcoming grace and power, Daniel was able to oversee the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. He outlived their return by two years. His grave is still in Persia, in Iran, to this day.
Why did he not return with them? Because this beloved man, who was such an overcomer, laid down his life right the way through and refused ever to contradict any part of the law of God. He wanted, in my estimation, to make sure that when they got back to the land, no problem arose.
Overcomers—that means, dear child of God, you have got no excuse. I have no excuse. The same grace is available to you as it was to them, and the same power is available to you as it was to them. We are all without excuse.
That leads me—and I must watch myself. I know they said you could go on for longer, but I imagine you are more tired.
Do you not think this is amazing, what I said about these different ones? I find it encouraging.
Even more remarkable are the words of our Lord Jesus: “In Me”—listen carefully—“in Me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
Now, I find this very interesting for a number of reasons. Here is the first reason: did you notice He says, “Ye may have peace”? That means it is a choice. Some Christians do not even find the peace. It is there, available in Him.
“You may have peace.” In the world, He did not say, “You might have tribulation.” He said, “You have tribulation.” That is a certainty. In the world you have tribulation, but in Him you may have peace.
Years ago, I stayed with a titled lady in Britain. Some of you will know her, Lady Ogle—Daisy, Lady Ogle. She was an extraordinary sister and servant of the Lord.
When I was in her beautiful home overlooking Ashdown Forest in the south of England, I was convalescing. I saw up on the wall, on a little piece of wooden bark—polished in one way, a piece of bough with the bark still around it—the words painted in blue: “My peace I give unto you.”
I thought to myself, dear, dear, dear—this is how arrogant I was—“How trite. ‘My peace I give unto you.’ Could she not have found a better text to put up on the wall?”
I was gazing at it for some time, thinking to myself, there were so many wonderful Scriptures you could put up on the wall, but that worn bit of wood in this beautiful home.
A little later she came into the room and said, “I hope you feel at home.” “Yes, I do,” I said, “but I have got a question.” “Yes,” she said, “what is it?”
I said, “I do not understand why you have got that text up on your wall.” Now, she was very gracious, and I was very arrogant.
She said, “Oh, that is Amy Carmichael’s work—Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, South India. She actually painted that.”
“But,” she said, “she painted it because that little verse has a tremendous meaning to me. I went through a terrible time of tribulation. I could not find peace. I knew that the Lord is peace, but I could not find it.”
“In my desperation, I cried out to the Lord,” she said, “but He did not answer me. But that night, into my heart clearly came the words, ‘Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you.’”
“She said, ‘In a flash, I saw it. The peace He leaves with us is not His peace; He never needed it. It is peace for sins forgiven. I needed that.’”
“‘But suddenly,’ she said, ‘I understood: “My peace I give unto you.” The same peace He had in Gethsemane, when He was tried to the nth degree and said, “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”’”
“The same peace,” she said, “He had on the cross, when after He cried out, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ He said, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.’”
“She said, ‘In that moment, His peace flooded my whole being, and I have never been the same since.’”
You know, I felt dreadful. I never told her—she must know now in glory—but I never told her what I thought about that little text on the wall, how trite I thought it was.
I thought, “I will tell you who is trite: you are. That is me. I am the trite one.” Could I have thought, “That is so trite”? I did not know what was behind it.
Peace. “In Me ye may have peace.” You can hug your problem in your agony and everything else, but if you want His peace, it is there. “In Me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation.”
That is the first thing. Here is the second thing: “But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
Now, again, I have to say I have arrogance in my heart sometimes. I thought to myself, “Well, why did the Lord say that? I mean, it is almost as if He is mocking now: ‘Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’”
But that is not the point. It is us. We are the ones who are supposed to overcome the world. Why did He say, “I have overcome the world”? He never said, “I have overcome the world; therefore, you also can overcome the world.” He never said that. He just said, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
Why did He say this? Why did He not say, “Look to Me, and you will become an overcomer”? No. He said, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
I saw it in a flash. Is it not amazing when the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of our hearts, and what we cannot understand, in a single moment of time, we understand?
In the moment He opened my eyes, I saw it: He is the overcomer, not me. When He gets into me, and I obey the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, I become an overcomer. Do you understand? I say, is that not amazing?
The key to overcoming is found in the hymn that Ben actually read to us this evening: “Let in the Overcomer, and He will overcome in us.”
The Lord Jesus has overcome far more than ever you and I have to overcome. All the powers of darkness and evil, all Satan’s host, centred upon destroying Him and frustrating the purpose of God that He was to fulfil.
You and I will never have to face anything like what the Lord Jesus faced. He overcame. And in us, He can be the overcomer.
There is a little phrase in Ephesians, in the Ephesian letter, Ephesians 3:20. Let me read it to you:
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that worketh in us.
I think most of us get so excited with this—“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think”—that we do not take note of the next phrase: “According to the power that worketh in us.”
According to the power that worketh in us. Here is the overcomer. He is the overcomer. He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.
Do you realize that the overcomer is in you? Do you realize that that power is there to work in you? Do you know that the Lord can do exceeding abundantly above all that you have asked or even thought, according to that power that works in you?
Well, let me take you a step further. If you look in the same letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians 1:19-23, we read these marvellous words:
And what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might
which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Listen for a moment. If you have been asleep, just wake up. Think about this for a moment: “The exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.” Do you believe?
Exceeding greatness. What is this exceeding greatness? It is to be measured not by your poor circumstances or mine, but by the fact that He raised Jesus from the dead when the whole realm of darkness was bent on keeping Him dead.
When He raised Him to sit at God’s right hand, far above all rule and authority and every name that is named—I find this amazing—He made Him Head over all things to the church, which is His body, placing everything in subjection under His feet.
Where are you? You are in Him. If I may put it rather crudely, you are between the Head and the feet.
Everything is under His feet, and He has been made Head over all things to the church, which is His body. You are in the body. You are in Him.
I say this is really amazing when you think about it. Then he goes on. You see, we have chapters and verses which have actually stopped us from sometimes understanding the process of thought.
He goes on and says, in Ephesians 2:6, that He “raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
What is an overcomer? An overcomer is someone who, in spite of all the enemy’s activity and all the problems and weaknesses that we face, both without and within us, knows that the Lord Jesus is the overcomer.
I think I have told many of you this story, but I will tell it again for the sake of any young people.
Years ago, Mr. Sparks told me that when he was a young man, he had a question about which way to go. One of the people who meant a tremendous amount to Mr. Sparks when he was a young man was Dr. F. B. Meyer.
He asked Dr. F. B. Meyer if it was possible to have an appointment with him. The doctor very graciously said, “Yes, be at my home at such-and-such a time.”
When Mr. Sparks got there, the mistress of the house opened the door and said, “Oh, do come in. Dr. Meyer is expecting you, but you will have to wait a little while. He has been unfortunately delayed.”
She showed him into Dr. F. B. Meyer’s study and showed him a seat. He sat down there. He was only a young man, and he began to look around at all the books because he was rather interested.
“What are the books he has been reading? What has made him so great? What is it that has given him insight?”
Then suddenly, on the mantelpiece, he saw a piece of wood engraved with two words. The engraving was gilded, so they shone: “Look down.”
Mr. Sparks thought to himself as a young man, “Look down? Surely that is not right. Should it not be, ‘Look up’?”
Just as he was thinking this, the door opened and Dr. F. B. Meyer came in. Dr. Meyer greeted him and then said, “I see that you were a bit taken by that statement on the mantelpiece.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Sparks, “but should it not be ‘Look up’?”
Dr. F. B. Meyer said, “It is all a question of your position. If you are under the problem, you have to look up. But if you are seated with Christ in heavenly places, you look down.”
Mr. Sparks never forgot that interview. That is overcoming.
It is such being joined to the Lord Jesus that you look down. You are seated with Him in every problem.
Will you notice one thing about that great list from which I have just taken one or two names? Did you notice that every one of them, it is said, lived “by faith”?
Not dead faith, not academic faith, not religious faith: living, working, active faith.
That is the difference between religion and spiritual life. The difference is that when you are the recipient of living, active, working faith, it joins you to the Lord.
When you have been brought up in a Christian home, you can be as dead as a doornail when it comes to spiritual things. You know it all. You have heard it all from childhood.
You can sing what they sing. You can pray almost what they pray. You can almost say what whoever is going to preach is going to preach. I mean, you know it all from the first milk you ever drank. You have got it all.
But living faith is the difference. When living faith is gifted to any human being, in that moment they are joined to the Lord.
“They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb.” How? By living faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
By the word of their testimony, they actually spoke out what was true in faith. And they loved not their life unto death.
No one can let go of their self-life unless they have living, active, working faith. It is really as simple as that.
Is it not interesting that these seven churches are anything but perfect and beautiful? I think there are only two that approach it, and even those have problems.
There is Nicolaitanism in some, clericalism in others. There are Jezebels teaching the deep things of Satan. There are all kinds of dreadful problems.
What do you do? It is within such circumstances. These were real churches. These were not denominational churches, or institutional churches, or—these were real churches.
What do we do? Those churches become the builder’s yard for the Spirit of God. That is where the building work is done. That is where everything is put to the test.
That is where we have to learn to know Christ crucified—Christ and Him crucified—in each other. That is where we have to learn to wash one another’s feet.
Even when there are a number who are going to deny the Lord, or when, worse still, there is a Judas, Jesus washed their feet and said, “I have left you an example, that you should do to one another.”
Overcoming is put to the final test in such circumstances. When everything is going well and you have a wonderful assembly—all of them in the same spirit, all growing, all pursuing the Lord, all centred in the Lord—there is hardly any need to overcome.
But when you are in the normal assembly, there is every need to overcome.
Well, only the Lord can translate all of this into experience. But this overcoming—we are facing days now, I think, as I have already said at the beginning, of enormous turmoil and trouble—and only the Spirit of God will be able to take us through.
May I quote Mr. Sparks just once more this evening? I remember another story he told me.
On his very first visit to the United States, when he was still in his late teens or early twenties, he went to see A. B. Simpson.
He said to A. B. Simpson, when they finally got together—he was only a young man, of course, and Simpson was already an older man—they talked about what was happening and what Mr. Sparks hoped to do with his life.
Then Mr. Sparks said to Mr. Simpson, “I am a young man, and you are an old man. Do you see anything about the end of the age?”
A. B. Simpson thought for a moment, and then he said, “Yes. At the end of the age, there will be a new discovery and revelation of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit.”
I have absolutely no doubt at all that A. B. Simpson hit the nail on the head. There is no way for us to be overcomers apart from the Holy Spirit.
That is why the Lord Jesus said seven times to the churches, “To him that overcometh,” and then said, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”
Are you understanding me? The key to overcoming is to hear what the Spirit is saying. I do not mean these fanciful things that some people say the spirit is saying. I mean what the Holy Spirit is really saying.
When He takes the Word of God and makes it live; when He applies the Word of God to our situations; when He gives us understanding of the times in which we live; when the Holy Spirit enables us, through hearing Him, to know the indwelling Word of God—we need the Holy Spirit.
It will be “not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit” that the work of the Lord will be fulfilled, that the house of the Lord will be built and complete, and that the whole purpose of God will have come to its final fulfilment.
Well, may He help us—overcomers, every one of us, designed by spiritual birth to be an overcomer.
Every one of us, with the same Saviour and Lord dwelling within us—the Overcomer.
Every one of us having the grace and the power available to us to be overcomers in small things and in great things.
Only the Lord can do it. May He do it. Amen.