Good morning, brothers and sisters. Again, wonderful to be with you. It is wonderful to be alive.
You know, it is wonderful that after that nice, hard rain last night, the sunrise this morning was gorgeous—beautiful. You just marvel that the One who has made all these things loves us.
Let us look to Him this morning. A few verses we want to read to begin with. This is the theme:
These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they also shall overcome that are with Him, called and chosen and faithful.
—Revelation 17:14
And then, in Matthew 22:14, Jesus said:
For many are called, but few chosen.
And finally, in 1 Peter 1:1-2:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the elect who are sojourners of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Let us turn our hearts to Him.
Our Father, we want to thank You for the entrance that we have into Your presence this morning, bought for us by the precious blood of Your Son, Jesus Christ. We worship You. We do not know what else to say other than, “Thank You.” Thank You for this great privilege of being before You, and for the love that You have for us through Jesus Christ.
Lord, we cannot say anything else. We only need You to speak to us now. And so we come here, and we would quiet ourselves before Thee and ask, O Father, that You would speak to us from heaven, straight and directly into our hearts and spirits, and that the Holy Spirit would make real to us those things that You are speaking.
Draw us out to You, O Father. We pray this in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
You know, I am starting to really get annoyed because I start to cry so easily, and it really bothers me.
There was a guy in the fellowship I grew up in. His name was Charles Barrett. Every time he would get up to share—and he did not share very often or very long—he could not get past a few words before he would just start bawling. He was a big guy like me, and I would sit there and think, I never want to be like that.
I have been learning: never say never. I said, “I’ll never date a coworker.” I married my wife, whom I worked with. I said, “I could never live on the East Coast.” And I am in Virginia now. I said, “I never want to be one who cries.” Doggone.
This morning, we want to look at this word chosen. I do not want to look at it merely in terms of what being chosen is; I have been touched by looking at it in a little different way.
You can see I changed my poster: “I choose you”—for the Army. If we looked at what “chosen” means, it simply means to be selected, to be picked. Some of you read in the devotions this morning about being picked for a team. That is being chosen. They chose you. Even if you were the last one picked, you were chosen.
You might say it was by default, but God never chooses by default. He knows what He is doing. He chooses every one of us—none by default.
How are we chosen? Just as we are called, it is a work of grace that chooses us. But what we want to understand is that grace is a two-sided coin. It is more than a one-dimensional thing.
We so often look at grace as the favor that God has for us, being in this place of favor. That is a wonderful truth, and it is a truth that you have to hold onto. Pray that you never lose this sense of the place of favor you are in with God.
It has been won for you. It is nothing you have to earn. You have been brought into this great place of favor. Never lose sight of that.
That is one thing you can always count on when you are feeling, “I just can’t make it.” You can go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I thank You for grace. I thank You that I am in a place of favor, even though I do not feel like it. But I am in that place, and I thank You.”
But, like Dana said yesterday, we live in a three-dimensional world. If you look at something on a flat piece of paper, you only get two dimensions. But when I am holding something in my hand, it is three-dimensional. There is another side of grace.
You can see this other side in 2 Corinthians 12:9, where Paul says, “I have this thorn in the flesh,” and he goes to the Lord, saying, “I need to get rid of it.” The Lord says:
My grace is sufficient for thee.
I do not think that means, “My favor is enough for you, Paul. Just gut it out.”
Or consider Hebrews 4:16:
Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need.
I do not think that is necessarily speaking only of favor. If you turn the coin to its other side, you see another part of grace: the enabling work of God in your life. God enables you. That is grace also.
When we are saved by grace, yes, it means we are saved by the favor of God. Our sins are forgiven through the favor of God. But our total salvation—not merely the forgiving of our sins, but our being conformed into the image of Christ—requires more than the favor of God. It also requires His enablement.
Now, there is a problem. Most of us think of grace as merely the favor of God. I am not saying this is true of you personally, but I am looking at Christians as a whole, especially those brought up here in North America.
In the 1950s and 1960s, there were these revival movements, and all of a sudden it was, “Everybody is saved by grace, and we do nothing.” Now you can get a sense of entitlement—that everything is simply going to be given to you and you do not do anything.
It is like going to Washington, DC, sitting on the Capitol steps, and getting attacked by welfare pigeons. I do not know what pigeons do in the wild or how they get their food, but welfare pigeons do not have to go into the wild. They hang around expecting you to give them some of your sandwich. They are very bold about it. They just come right up to you.
Some of us as Christians think, “Well, God is going to do everything for us.” We look at Philippians 1:6, where it says that God will complete what He has begun, and we say, “Well, okay, He is going to complete it. Do I have to do anything?”
Well, I am sorry. There is something to do. It is not anything you do in order to get God’s favor or to get into heaven, but it has everything to do with being conformed into the image of Christ.
We need to draw a distinction between entitlement and enablement. What we are talking about here is enablement.
When we look at Revelation 17:14, those who stand with Christ are not entitled to stand there. They have been enabled to stand there, and they have been enabled through His training.
In 1972, I got my draft notice—not the NBA, the United States Army. I got my draft notice and had to go down for my physical. I did the physical and everything, and I was rejected. They rejected me.
I know you are probably wondering why they rejected me. I am like Moses: I was beautiful. And they said, “No.”
I have physical problems, okay? So they rejected me. I did not make the cut.
It says that many are called, but few are chosen. Basically, there are those who, when it comes to the training, say, “I have had enough of this. I just do not want to do it anymore.”
That does not mean they have lost their salvation. It does not mean they are going to hell or something like that. It means that what God has planned for them—the fullness of what He has planned for them—will not be accomplished in their lives.
But our hope is that we endure.
If we look at Hebrews 12:5-11, we have this. Some of you may not say it is a wonderful scripture, but in a sense it is a very true scripture:
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.It is for chastening that ye endure; God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not?
But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
For they verily for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.
All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.
The word chastening means discipline or training. You could put that in there: “My son, do not despise the training of the Lord.”
This training is no bed of roses. It is not a flowery thing, and it is not something really easy to do. We have gotten to a place where we do not want to do things that are hard, and when they get too hard, we quit. That is part of how our generation has become in the natural world.
God is not promising that it will be easy. Any of you who have been on an athletic team—or even an academic team—know the things they put you through to get ready for competition are tough. Whether academic or physical, it is tough stuff.
I know that as a basketball player, in college, when they had us running, it was a killer. But it paid dividends. It is work. That is the way it is. But it is worth it because of the fruit that comes out of it.
Now, I want you to understand: you do not eat the fruit of this training. The fruit is for others to eat.
When Abraham was called, God said, “I am calling you to be a blessing to others.” It is the same for us. This training—this being made into the image of Christ—is really for the benefit of others around you.
Yes, you receive the benefit of having that image, but I will tell you, it is a benefit to others. They are drawn to Him.
And so, for the joy set before us, we endure. That is the way it is. That is training.
A lot of us ask, “Well, okay, how do I train myself? How do I do this? Do I go into a Bible regimen or something like this? How do I go about training?”
The Lord answers this in John 14:16-18. We know that we are not illegitimate sons because the Lord is training us. But, in the same way, He has not left us to ourselves. Listen to this:
And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth: whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: ye know Him; for He abideth with you, and shall be in you.
I will not leave you desolate: I come unto you.
The Lord does not leave us destitute and say, “Okay, I have chosen you. Here is the course. I hope you make it through. Buck up.”
If you remember what Dana said last night, it is like He throws down that rope, which is His life. It is a mystery to us because I cannot simply explain it and say, “You do these steps, and this is what is going to happen.” It is the life. It is a life that has been put in you.
This life has been given to train you and to bring you into conformity with the image of Christ. It is not explainable, but it will be experienced. It is alive in you.
Just as when you see a woman with child, there is a life in her womb—a different life, a new life—so there is a new life in you. He will not leave us as orphans. He has given us an instructor within, and He begins to set up a personal training program.
It says that we are chosen by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. In other words, God will prove His choice. You will make it.
It is like when David went out to fight Goliath. He came into Saul’s tent and said, “Yeah, I’ll fight him.” Saul said, “Okay, you need to wear my armor.”
That would be like Albert trying to wear my clothes. I am a lot bigger than Albert.
What did David say? He said, “I cannot use these, because I have not tried them. I have not proved them.”
It is the same with us. The Lord is not going to put us in situations until we are proven. We will go through situations in the proving process, but when it comes down to brass tacks and we are standing with Him in that day, we will have been proved in some way or another—whether it be a little or a lot.
He wants proven character. That is what He is after in our lives.
The sanctifying work of the Spirit begins with separation by identification.
We find out that we are gray-speckled birds. That is what Floyd Police used to say. If you are going to follow the Lord, you will find out, even among other brothers and sisters, that if you are really following the Lord, you are going to be a gray-speckled bird—kind of an out-of-the-norm situation.
The separation is not outward. It is because something is happening inside of us. All of a sudden, we understand that inwardly we are different. The things that used to charm us do not charm us anymore. Sometimes we cannot figure it out.
The reason is that we have this new life in us, and this new life is rejecting the old stuff and saying, “I just do not fit in here anymore.”
We begin to identify with this life. Sometimes we have trouble with this. We try to push back this life and say, “I still want the old things.” But, like Dana was saying last night, we become uncomfortable. The Lord keeps coming after us until all of a sudden we say, “You are right. I just cannot enjoy this anymore. I cannot enjoy this world anymore.”
I have two examples of this. In Hebrews 11:24-27, it talks about Moses. Moses was raised in the house of Pharaoh—not as a servant in the house of Pharaoh, but as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, like one of Pharaoh’s grandchildren.
You can imagine how Pharaoh felt about Moses, because how do all grandparents feel about their grandchildren? They love them to excess.
But there was a time for Moses when he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. This was something he had to do by faith. All that means is that he realized, “I do not belong here,” and he had to step out.
When it says he “became of age,” it does not mean that he turned sixteen and got his driver’s license, or turned eighteen. It means that he became aware of who he was.
That can happen when you are thirty, when you are seventy, or when you are five. It is when you realize, “I do not belong here anymore.” Moses chose to suffer with God’s people.
Then it says he refused. That is a strong word. It is not a polite, “No, thank you.” It is like he turned his back.
If I am talking to you right now, and all of a sudden you all turn your backs on me, that would be offensive to me.
When we come of age and turn our backs on the things we used to do and the world of which we were a part, the world takes offense. It does. And it drives you out. Moses was driven out.
There is another one I want to talk about. This is Mimosa. I do not really think this is Mimosa, but for all intents and purposes, it is Mimosa.
Mimosa’s father took her sister to Dohnavur, the missionary settlement where Amy Carmichael was, so that her sister could go to school. Mimosa went with her father one day to visit her sister.
While her father was there letting them visit, they taught Mimosa a little Bible lesson. They did not even mention Jesus. They simply talked about the God of creation, who was so great. Mimosa wanted to stay, but her father said, “No, you have to go home. We are going home. Leaving one daughter here is enough.”
But somehow the Lord had touched this little girl. I do not know how old she was. She could have been six, eight, or ten, but she was a young child.
Just that little bit touched her heart, and she became a believer in the true God. She had heard no Bible and had no Christian upbringing, but somehow the Lord quickened her that He was alive.
You might say, “How do we know this is really true?” Well, in her village, each village had its own god. The Hindus have a number of gods, or manifestations of God, that they worship. In her little village, they worshiped Shiva.
Shiva is the destroyer. One of the things you do as a devotee of Shiva is keep ashes by the door. Every morning before you go out, you rub the ashes on yourself to show that you belong to Shiva. Sometimes men would put them on their foreheads, arms, and chests. They did that every day.
But when Mimosa came back home, she refused to take the ashes of Shiva.
At first, her family said, “It is just something she will get over. She was visiting the missionaries. It will be over in a while.” But it was not.
They tried to get her to take the ashes of Shiva. She went through some really tough corporal punishment daily because she would not take them.
You see, she was identifying with the One whom she had seen. She could not take those ashes. It was different for her.
When we come to the place of saying, “Lord, I am Yours,” and we turn our backs and begin refusing the old world, there are consequences. Moses was kicked out of Egypt. This little girl was beaten and ostracized. For more than twenty years, before she went to join her sister at Dohnavur, she was shunned and taken advantage of because she would not bow to the gods.
When we take that stand and begin refusing the old world, that is when God begins to take ownership of us.
It says of Moses in Hebrews 11 that he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. Because of his refusal, the Lord showed him more of Himself. It was as though the Lord said, “Moses, because you have done this, I am going to show you more of Me. You are going through the first steps. Now I am going to draw you on by showing you more of Me.”
I want to read a couple of things out of the book Mimosa. It is a good book—not just for girls.
The reason I am reading this is because sometimes we read Bible stories and say, “Well, that is the Bible.” But this is something more modern, so to speak, although God is always present.
If God, the God to whom she clung the more fiercely because of the sharp smitings, little limpet that she was, were indeed, as she had heard and believed, living and powerful and loving, why did He not keep her mother’s hand off the whisk, which was her favorite instrument of correction?
It was a question that found no answer. Was the child forgotten by the love that had shone upon her?
Love never forgets.
Gradually, through her troubles, a gentle sense of still being loved stole in upon her soul. She knew, though she could not explain, that the God she would not forsake had not forsaken her.
God was showing His ownership in a way that you cannot simply explain. You cannot say, “Well, this is exactly what He did.” In some way, He got into her heart and spirit and said, “I am still with you.”
Later, when Mimosa was older, married, and had children, she had been taken advantage of by her husband’s brother. She had never known how to pray before, but she began to speak to the Lord.
“O God,” she said aloud, and the words seemed to rise through the thin blue air above her. “O God, my husband has deceived me. His brother has deceived me. Even my mother has deceived me. But You will not deceive me.”
Then she waited a little, looking up and stretching out her arms, and declared, “Yes, they have all deceived me, but I am not offended with You. Whatever You do is good.
“What should I do without You?
“You are the giver of health and strength and will to work. Are these things not better than the riches of people’s wealth?”
She was working in a cotton field. She drew the loose end of her sari around, spread it out, and held it open before the Lord, perhaps like Ruth before Boaz when he filled her garment with food for Naomi and herself.
Thus Mimosa knelt and said, “You will not deceive me.”
The sun beat down on her. The little young cotton plants about her drooped their soft green leaves. But she knelt on, heeding nothing, her sari still spread out before her God.
“I am an emptiness for You to fill.”
Not one Scripture did she know. There was nothing from the Book of books for the Spirit to take and show her at that moment. But His resources are limitless.
Back to her troubled mind came the memory of a wise word from her father: “He who planted the tree will water it.”
Yes, God was her heavenly gardener. Had He not planted His little tree? Would He not water it?
She dropped her sari and rose. Then what happened? Was it as in that older story, when God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water and drank from it?
Suddenly all her weariness passed, and she knew herself refreshed and invigorated. He had heard her. God had heard her. She was not battling along as best she could, lonely and desolate. She had her God.
“Oh, what should I do without You?”
The words rose like a triumph song. With the little gesture of her folded hands—the universal Indian amen—she bowed her head and stood a moment, drinking from the waters of comfort.
God owns you, and He will see that you do not fail. Just as He did with her, it is no different for us. He will not let you perish by yourself. He will come to you. Some way or another, you will understand that it is Him. He will strengthen you because you have refused to be called the son of Pharaoh.
There is also the work of the Spirit in conforming us into the image of His Son. Romans 8:29 speaks of being conformed to the image of His Son.
Joseph illustrates the conforming of us to the image of Christ. These are the Spirit’s tools, figuratively speaking. What are the tools of the Spirit?
We know the story of Joseph in Genesis. He had two dreams. In one, the sheaves bowed down to his sheaf. In the other, the sun, moon, and stars bowed down to him.
Let us look at Psalm 105:16-19 to understand this tool:
Moreover He called for a famine upon the land;
He brake the whole staff of bread.
He sent a man before them;
Joseph was sold for a servant:
His feet they hurt with fetters:
He was laid in chains of iron,
Until the time that His word came to pass,
The word of the Lord tried him.
It says that the word of the Lord tested him. One of the tools the Lord has is His own word.
I am not merely talking about the Bible. To Joseph, the word of God was these dreams. He did not have a Bible. Abraham did not have a Bible. Moses did not have a Bible—he wrote part of it. When you read Genesis, those men did not have a Bible.
The word was their contact with the Lord. Joseph’s contact with the Lord came through dreams. The Lord gave him not one dream, but two dreams, because He wanted to confirm the first one. He was saying, “This is going to happen.”
Just as Pharaoh was given two dreams, and Joseph said they were one and the same, showing that God was going to do it, Joseph knew that the two dreams meant God was going to do what He had shown him.
Those words held Joseph through all the trials he was going to go through. They were things God had spoken to him.
Brothers and sisters, we talk about reading the Word, and you need to read the Word. But there are times when the Word will jump out at you, and something will be spoken just for you. Or something you have read before will suddenly be brought back to your mind. The Lord will use it and say, “This is My word for you right now. Grab onto it.”
There is another place in Mimosa where an old Christian lady, nearly insane, held onto a few words she had known from God. There was another instance where Mimosa’s sister wrote her a letter. Mimosa was illiterate and could not read, so someone read it to her. It contained parts of Psalm 23, and she latched onto those things and kept them.
Those words helped keep her through the circumstances she was about to go through. It is the same with us. The Lord gives us His word so that our hope is set in Him.
It is not just the Word. If you remember Romans 8:28, which we looked at yesterday:
And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose.
That purpose is conformity to Christ. Circumstances are some of the tools that the Lord uses.
Look at Joseph’s circumstances. He begins happy and carefree, loved by his father. That is really key. One thing that kept Joseph through this whole thing was that he remembered the love of his father.
When he met his brothers, the first thing he always asked was, “Is my father still alive? How is my father?” He remembered his father’s love.
That is one of the things that holds you through circumstances when you are pressed: always remembering that God loves me. God loves me. It is not just a little slogan. It is the truth. God loves me.
Joseph started from this wonderful place and went to the pit. His brothers—the ones nearest and dearest to him—threw him into the pit. These were not enemies, though perhaps they were as enemies.
Then he was sold as a slave. Then he went to jail. And then he came to the throne.
I left one part out because I could not find a picture clean enough to put up here. Remember, he refused Potiphar’s wife. He refused sin during this time.
All these things happened to Joseph: from a favored position, to a lowly position, and then back up to an exalted position. Is that not the life of Christ?
In the same way, that is the life of Christ lived out in us. You go down, and then you come up. You go down, and you come up.
The Lord has made it so we understand this a little naturally. You go from fifth grade into middle school. You are at the top of the ladder in fifth grade; then in sixth grade you are at the bottom of the totem pole.
Eighth grade, you are at the top of the ladder. You go to high school, and in ninth grade you are at the bottom. Twelfth grade, you are a senior—top dog. Then you are a freshman in college, back at the bottom of the ladder.
You graduate with your MBA, PhD, MD, or master’s degree in history, and enter the workforce at the bottom of the ladder. That is the way it is.
The Lord is showing us that this is His training: from glory to glory, place to place. He is not finished with you just because you reach one place. He is ready to take you to the next place.
How was Joseph able to endure? Philippians 2:12-13 gets to the point:
For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.
Joseph was not left on his own. God was with him. It is the same with us. We have this little Trainer inside to bring us to these places.
It is God working in us, and we respond to Him. We respond to what He is doing. We lay down and say, “Okay, Lord, I believe that You want me to do this.” We lay down and go to the next step, but He is always there.
Joseph started at the bottom, and it says that he found favor with God. Is that not amazing? Every time you take that step down, you find favor with God. That was the story of Joseph.
If you read 1 Peter 1:6-9, 1 Peter 4:12, and James 1:2-4, these are references to God using trials.
In 1 Peter 4:12, it says not to be surprised or to think it strange that fiery trials have come. Do not think it strange, because that is what the Lord does: the refiner’s fire.
When metal is refined by fire, all the dross comes to the top. One reason we do not like the refiner’s fire is because we see all the bad stuff come up. But the bad stuff comes up for a purpose: so that it can be taken out.
Now, the test of sin and failure. Brothers and sisters, I am sorry to say this, but you are going to sin in your life, and there are going to be failures in your life.
I have read great men of God who say that failure is one of the biggest tools the Lord uses in your life. I will just leave that there. Some people say that, but it is true: the Lord uses your failure, and He will use your sin too.
You may ask, “How can He use my sin?” Look at 1 Peter 1:1-2. It says that we are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, unto obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling of His blood.
When the Lord went to wash Peter’s feet, Peter said, “Wash my whole body.” The Lord said, “You have already been cleansed. It is only your feet that need cleansing.”
Brothers and sisters, when you sin, you do not have to go back and say, “I have to do the whole thing over. I am not saved anymore.” You are saved. You have already been washed. But what needs to happen is that cleansing needs to be freshly applied every time.
The example I have here is Peter’s denial. There are only a few things that are in every Gospel: the calling of the disciples, the Last Supper, the feeding of the five thousand, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and Peter’s denial.
Peter’s denial is in every Gospel. It must be important to the Lord.
I think this is why it is important. Peter was the top dog. He was the top apostle. It was always Peter, James, and John—not John, James, and Peter. Peter, James, and John.
And here he denies the Lord.
Sometimes we think of sins such as adultery, theft, and murder. But the root of all those things is denying the Lord in your life. That is the root of them.
Any denial of the Lord is as bad as all those other things, because it is denying the One who bought you and claimed you.
When Peter denied Him, Matthew and Luke say that he went out and wept bitterly. The Lord looked at Peter when the rooster crowed and caught his eye.
The Lord knows. The Lord knows your denials. He even predicted Peter’s denial: “Peter, you are going to deny Me.” Peter said, “Oh, not me.” Yet he went out and wept bitterly.
What is the purpose? What do we learn from this?
In 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, Paul speaks about the gospel he preached: the Lord died, rose from the dead, and appeared to others. He appeared first to Cephas.
I was reading F. B. Meyer, one of my favorite authors, and when he came to this passage he said that we cannot even speculate about what the Lord said to Peter and what Peter said to the Lord. Really, we are not meant to, because that was a private matter.
But the point is that the Lord went and recovered Peter. He went to him and recovered him. It was as if He said, “You may have deserted Me, but I did not desert you, even though I am on the cross.”
He took away Peter’s guilt. The next time Peter heard a rooster after this, do you think he started weeping? No. If he had started weeping, he would have been remembering his sin. Instead, he could say, “Oh, the rooster is calling. It must be breakfast.”
Reconciliation does away with guilt. The blood of Jesus takes care of your guilt.
We have to be brought to this time and time again, not because we necessarily sin time and time again, but because we need to understand how great a sacrifice Christ’s sacrifice is for us—how great a provision it is.
It is so great.
I was talking with Dana and John Smith last night, and I said, “I do not believe that once you are saved, you can be lost again.” The reason I think that is because the blood of His Son is so precious to the Father, so costly to the Father. How could He say, “I will let it go to waste”?
Even in my own experience, the times I have fallen—and fallen the hardest—He has never forsaken me. He has always come back and gotten me through strange circumstances and everything.
It is not because I am something. It is because the blood of His Son means so much to Him. The sacrifice of His Son means so much to Him that He cannot simply turn His back on it. He honors it. He honors what His Son has done by getting us back.
In John 21:18-19, Jesus says to Peter that when he was young, he went where he wanted; but when he was old, others would take him where he did not want to go, and he would stretch out his hands.
John says that this signified by what kind of death Peter would glorify God. That is what caught me: he would glorify God.
Here you have the man who denied Him, so full of shame, and in the end he glorifies God by his death. He goes from shame to glory.
Reconciliation is like the kindling of the fire of redemption, because glorifying God is the full redemption coming into glory. You will not do that unless you are reconciled.
When you are reconciled, you are free. Your sin is not on you anymore. The guilt of your sin is not on you anymore. You are free—free to serve God—because your sin has not merely been forgiven; it has been judged.
That is a big statement, if you understand. It is not just forgiven, as if God simply said, “Oh, I forgive that.” No, it was judged. The penalty was paid. The sentence was carried out. Because of that, you are free.
If you read A Tale of Two Cities, remember Sidney Carton at the end. He is the look-alike of the lawyer. He loves a woman, but she loves the man who looks exactly like him. That man is sentenced to the guillotine.
Sidney knows the woman will never love him, but he loves her. So he trades places. He takes the punishment, and the other man is free.
Sidney Carton says at the end of the book:
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.
You have to believe that Christ would feel this way about us: “What I have done for you is the best. I would not take it back for anything.”
From shame to glory. Then He says, “Follow Me.” After reconciliation, He says, “Okay, that is behind you. Now follow Me. Let us keep going.”
I need to wrap this up. There is another aspect of being chosen. Consider 1 Peter 2:9 and Revelation 17:14. Notice the plural nature of these words. A generation is not grammatically plural, but it is a group of people—a whole generation. There is a plurality of people in that singular word.
An army is not made up of one soldier. I know there is that saying, “I am an army of one,” but I am sorry. It is not one guy who is going to stand up against all these things. No way. The Lord Jesus knows that too.
Many soldiers make up an army. That is the way it is supposed to be.
We are not called to live alone. We are not called to carry the testimony of Jesus by ourselves. We are called into a body.
When people are drafted, they go to boot camp. You do not have individual boot camps. Everybody comes together, and they go through things together.
I am not saying that you all go through exactly the same things. But some of you go through things together, and some of you go through things with other people vicariously.
For example, when my daughter was in college last year, she was lonely and miserable. I went through that with her. I was miserable because I knew she was miserable. I was hurting because I knew she was hurting.
It is the same with us. We are called for that. Ecclesiastes speaks of a threefold cord not being quickly broken. It speaks of two together keeping each other warm. It is all through Scripture. The Lord has planned for us not to be alone.
Dana talked yesterday about our calling: it is me and Him. I am happy to be with the Lord Jesus. Amen.
But the greater thing is we and Him.
I am not dismissing the individual relationship with the Lord as lesser in value, but it is lesser in scope than this greater corporate expression.
The Lord Jesus said:
Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.
It is a wonderful thing to be joined together with other saints, to walk with them, and to be a light. That is what we are called to. We are not merely called to be alone.
It is hard because I know some of you are in fellowships where your youth group has maybe three people. That is a tough thing. But I know, because I have talked with some of you in those situations, that your desire is for fellowship with other saints.
That is because that is what God wants. That is the Lord in you saying, “When this circumstance is over, when you are faithful in this place where it is just you burning, I will bring you into a place where you are with others.”
Endure for the time being. Trust Him.
Some of us try to go into the greater corporate setting so that we can hide how dim our light is. “I will hide in the crowd.”
But the Lord’s plan is not that you hide in the crowd. You need both. He wants the individual, but He wants the individual to bless others in the corporate expression.
There are two sides. If you remember Dana’s illustration, you have the key and the two sides of the key. But once you have that, and you turn the key, you come into a new dimension.
That new dimension is where God is. He wants us out of merely a three-dimensional world and into that four-dimensional world—ascending and finding out how high our calling really is, and all that is involved in it.
The question we will close with is this: Will you be the chosen? Will you be one who submits to the training so that you can enter into all these things that the Lord has planned for you?
That is the choice. That is it.
Nobody makes it for you. Nobody forces you. The Lord says, “I have already brought you in. I have chosen you. But now I will prove My choice of you.”
Will you be proved? Will you let Him prove you?
“I have all that you need to help you endure. Will you trust Me? Will you believe Me for that?”
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You again for Your goodness and grace to us. Lord, sometimes we do not understand how great a thing You are bringing us into. Sometimes we look at that and say, “How can I ever endure these things?”
O Lord, we thank You that we are not asked to endure these things as men of flesh, but You bring us into a whole new realm. You put a whole new life inside of us, and that life is to lead us to the very mountaintop where You want us to be.
O Lord, we pray that You would make this life that is in us real to us. Show us afresh that You have not left us as orphans, but You have given us Your Spirit.
Lord, I pray that You would lead us and let us know the leading of Him whom we know so little of, and that You would lead us into all truth and into life.
Lord, we cannot do these things. We admit our inability for these things. We come to You and ask, Lord, that we might take Your provision, let You own us, and let You bring us to those places so that we are conformed to the image of Your Son—to Your glory, and even to our satisfaction.
We ask in Christ’s name.