Good morning, brothers and sisters. Again, it is so good to be with you this morning.
This is my last time to share, and I am grateful for the opportunity that I have been given. I am grateful for the opportunity to come before the Lord myself and find Him for these days. I thank the Lord that He has been faithful to me, and I am grateful for these opportunities.
I am grateful to be pushed into those places, because I am a passive person. I am so grateful that the Lord knows that, and He pushes.
I want to say that I have really enjoyed being here. I know I kind of seclude myself, but at meals I have been with some of you. Now that my time is over after today, I will be a lot freer and more accessible, and I always look forward to those times. But I am grateful to be here. I am grateful that you have allowed me to be here.
So, let us turn again to the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.
Our Father, how grateful we are to have a God such as You. There is no other God who loves His people like You—who does not demand things of us in order that we might come to You, but who comes to us first and loves us.
Oh, Lord, we thank You that it is because You love us that You have called us to Yourself. Because You are calling us, we do come unto You. We come into Your presence right now through the way You prepared for us, through the way that You have made for us through Jesus Christ—His life, His sacrifice, and His resurrection. We take hold of that and come into Your presence with thanksgiving.
Now, as we are before You, O Father, we ask that You would speak into our hearts. Speak right into our very spirits. Let us hear that Word register and resonate in us, somehow becoming caught in our very being and woven into the fabric of our lives.
Only You can do this. So we invite Your Spirit to take Your Word and weave it into us. We ask this in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
This morning, we want to turn back to our verses, especially our first one: Revelation 17:14.
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.
Then, in Matthew 25:21, Jesus gives the parable about a master who had gone away and given talents to his servants.
His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
One other verse I would like to share is 1 Corinthians 1:9, which I think was shared last night.
God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
We can look at these three verses as though they were a house. The first verse is like the finished house—this is what it looks like when it is complete. The second verse is the construction of the house. The third verse is what the house is built on.
Our word today is faithful. I do not want simply to define faithfulness, but to look at faithfulness in what the Lord has called us to. He has called us to faithfulness.
As I mentioned on the first day, Alistair was leading singing one time and was talking about these words. He said, “This is the thing that we do. This is what we are called for. The other things are what the Lord is doing.”
Here is the practical. This is the summer assignment. You know, when you leave school and are going on to your next year, they have the summer assignment. You usually leave it until the last week, but there is a summer assignment. This is the summer assignment: we are being called to be faithful.
We are called to be faithful in different parts of our life. We are called to be faithful in our relationship to the Lord Himself—to the Person of the Lord, not merely to some religion or something like that, but actually to the Person of the Lord.
He wants us to know Him in such a way that we want to be faithful to Him and to have a relationship with Him. It is not merely that I read the Bible and say prayers, but somehow we come into a place where we see that He is a Person who can be known. In knowing Him, we become faithful to Him and faithful to a relationship with Him.
We are also called to be faithful in our relationship with other believers, to be faithful in our assemblies and in what we have there. We want to be faithful in the ministry that the Lord gives us. The Lord gives us a ministry to Himself, and He gives us a ministry to others.
In looking at faithfulness in relationship, let us consider marriage. You can see Elkin and Judy there, with Mac in the middle. Mac is smiling because he knows what it is like to be married. They are all smiling now, but he is saying, “Yeah, you will find out how wonderful it really is.”
That is the truth. It is wonderful. But to be faithful in a relationship—faithfulness is not merely the idea of being loyal, although loyalty is part of it.
When people are getting married, when those of us who are married, those of us who will be married, and even those whose marriages have unfortunately been split up, the whole thing about marriage is that it calls for a commitment: to be committed to one another.
At the very end of the ceremony, after the songs and the sermon and all those things, they get down to the vows. This is the serious matter.
Will you take this one for better or for worse? It sounds terrible, does it not? But that is the commitment: better or worse.
Look how nicely dressed they are, how beautiful they are. That is what they look like right now, but who knows what circumstances will come into their life? What things will come into their life? You do not know. You are not guaranteed anything.
What happens if this is where you move into, or this is your place to live? Will you still love that person, even though they brought you to this place? That takes commitment.
Or for richer or poorer. Now, that really is poor, because that is American money. That is U.S. money—my retirement plan.
One of my friends is a divorce lawyer, and one of the biggest reasons for divorce is money. “We cannot spend our money the same way,” or, “I do not have a job that makes enough to give you what you want.” Well, are you still committed to me if we go into poverty?
In sickness and in health. You are laughing, but that is what I looked like in high school.
Remember: it is for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for the whole thing. You are not guaranteed anything. You do not know when you make a commitment.
A lot of us come to the Lord and think, “Now everything in my life is going to be straight, everything is going to be good, and I am going to live prosperously.” There is teaching around that says we are supposed to prosper.
It does not mean that we are supposed to prosper materially. But I will say this: it is true that we are supposed to prosper in our inner man. That is the truth. That is a solid truth. The other thing puts you on shaky ground.
Who knows what may happen? My best friend did not get married until he was forty-five. Some of you guys are going, “Oh, I am never going to be married.” But he got married for the first time at forty-five. I got married when I was in my thirties.
Jerry married a wonderful gal, Luann. About six months after they got married, he was struck with fibromyalgia. It has been really hard. It has been a hard thing.
But they have been married for years now, and she loves him. She is committed to him, and he to her. That is the whole thing. We just do not know.
Many times, when we do not know what is going to happen and the Lord is in our life, we start saying, “Lord, why this? I thought You meant that You loved me. I thought You were going to do this and that for me.”
All of a sudden, we come to a place of asking, “Is this worth it? Are You who I thought You were?” You have those questions.
When you get to those places, that is what you do: you go to the Lord and say that. For example, consider John the Baptist in Luke 7.
John the Baptist was the herald of the Lord. He went out, making the rough places smooth, bringing the valleys up and the mountains down. He was preparing the way for the Lord, righteous in his testimony, even to the point that he called out Herod the king and said, “You are living in sin.”
Herod threw him in prison. Then, in Luke 7:18-23, John called two of his disciples and sent them to Jesus.
And the disciples of John told him of all these things.
And John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to the Lord, saying, Art thou He that cometh, or look we for another?
And when the men were come unto Him, they said, John the Baptist hath sent us unto Thee, saying, Art thou He that cometh, or look we for another?
In that hour He cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits; and on many that were blind He bestowed sight.
And He answered and said unto them, Go and tell John the things which ye have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to them.
And blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in Me.
Sometimes we get offended with the Lord because He is doing things that we do not understand, or we do not understand why He is doing them.
But what Jesus did with John’s disciples was bring them in. He let them be with Him, and He did not even answer them at first. He went about His business—healing the sick, cleansing lepers, and casting out demons. Then, at the end of the day, He turned to those disciples and said, “Go and tell John what you have seen.”
It was as though He said, “I am bringing you into a bigger picture that you do not see. Let Me show you.” He opened things up to them.
This was the last week of John the Baptist’s life. Of course, he was going to be martyred. But when these disciples came back and brought this news, he could say, “Oh, that is right. He is the Savior of the world. He is the One to whom I am bearing witness. It is not about me.”
John had once said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Sometimes we pray, “Oh Lord, I must decrease and You must increase.” Then the Lord says, “Yes, that is right,” and He brings us to the place where we decrease. Sometimes we get offended.
There is that little book about Maimouna. When she was before the Lord and all these things were happening to her, she would say, “I am not offended with Thee. You are the God of gods. You know what You are doing. I will trust You.”
There is a precious part in that book where one of her sons dies. People said, “If you just do a sacrifice—a little piece of fruit to this god—he will be made well.” But she would not do it, because she knew that was not God.
She said, in effect, “My God is this God. If my God does not heal him, then my God does not heal him.” The ridicule she took after her little boy died was tremendous. Yet she came before the Lord in her little closet, her little spare room, and said, “I am not offended with You. Even though You have taken this from me, I am not offended with You.”
Even Peter said, after the feeding of the five thousand, when the Lord gave a hard teaching and people began to leave Him, the Lord turned to the disciples and asked, “Would you also go away?”
Peter said, “Where will we go? Where are we going to go?”
We go from place to place in the world, thinking that we are going to get satisfaction here and there. The satisfaction is not in those things. It is in the One who has called you. You have to find Him.
Trials in an ordinary marriage reveal who your spouse is. You find out who they really are, become attracted to who they really are, and become committed to that. It is a wonderful thing.
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my wife loves me. I kid with my students and say, “I am a big, ugly guy. I am a teacher, so I do not make much money. I know my wife loves me not for my looks and not for my money. She must just love me.”
A gal I used to work with had married a plain-looking guy. She said, “Yeah, he is not much to look at, but when I kiss him, I close my eyes.” But she loved him.
Here is another thing about being committed. To understand this little cartoon, you need to understand what cows are known for—and do not tell me, “Giving milk.” Cows are known for never looking flustered.
You watch cows, and they never look like, “Oh my gosh, what is happening? Where is my food?” They are just chewing their cud. Cows are content. Wherever they are, they look peaceful.
The cow says, “Wendell, I am not content.” The root word of content is content. It is what is in your life that makes you contented—what your life is made up of.
We are in a generation where new gadgets are produced so quickly that we become discontented with things after a while. We have to go to something new, and we have to move.
Do you know what that does? It makes us unsettled. We cannot grow unless we are settled. You have to understand that: we cannot grow unless we are settled.
If you put a plant in a pot, and every week you take it out and plant it somewhere else, then take it out and plant it somewhere else again, that plant will have a hard time growing because it is trying to get settled.
We are of that generation now. So many things are happening this way that we cannot sit still. We are not contented, and we are not settled.
Paul found something. In Philippians 4:11, he said:
Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.
The Philippians had given Paul some money, and he was thanking them. But he was saying, “I am not thanking you because I simply need these things. I have found the secret of being content.”
The secret of being content is to know the One who can make you content.
That is one of the things about a relationship. My house could burn down. My little toys could burn up. Even my dog could run away. Even my children could forsake me. But if my wife forsook me, I would be broken.
All these things can be taken away, but the relationship—the relationship with the person—is what makes me content. I can deal with all that loss as long as you are here.
That is why it is so hard sometimes, as we get older, when spouses pass away. It is tough because someone has lost the person who has been their settled ground. But there is grace for that.
Remember how the disciples all scattered after the Lord was crucified? Is it not wonderful that the Lord did not leave them? He rose from the dead and came to them, never to be taken away again. That is our hope: He is never to be taken away from us.
Circumstances will test all these things. But remember: the test is to prove that these things are real and satisfying. That is what it is all about.
We are also called to be faithful in the church. Some of us think, “Well, I just go to church and sit in the—oh, I am sorry—I just go to the meeting, because we do not say ‘go to church.’”
You need to look at it in a different way. Being called into the body of Christ is like being on a team.
On a team, there are lots of different positions. Some people stand out, and some do not. There are people who guide the team, and all sorts of different things happen.
You have the defensive specialists. Bill Russell was one of the greatest players, in my view, because he was on the Celtics of the 1960s. They were a team. Were they ever a team.
Bill Russell was not the greatest personality. He was cantankerous. But, boy, he was all business when it came to basketball, and he was committed to the team. You have the defensive specialist and the rebounder.
Then you have Jerry West. You younger ones may not know him because he was a player of my time. But he was called “Mr. Clutch.” When the game came down to the end, you wanted the ball in his hands.
You would say today, “That is Michael Jordan,” or “That is LeBron,” or “That is Kobe.” But before them, this was the guy: Jerry West. Give him the ball at the end of the game, and he is going to put it in. He is going to be the one you depend on.
Then there is a guy who can handle the ball. This is Curly Neal of the Globetrotters. If you watched the Globetrotters in the 1960s and 1970s, this guy was amazing in his ball handling.
You have the person who can bring the ball up the court. He is not necessarily a scorer, but he can dish, bring it through the defense, and do something else. Curly Neal—they called him Curly. Look at that bald head: Curly.
Then you have the bench. Let me tell you something about the bench.
When you watch these games, you never look at the guys on the bench—unless there is somebody there you think is cute. You never pay attention to the bench. The only time you see the bench move is when they call a timeout and they get up so the other guys can sit down.
After the game, you say, “Hey, you stood up really well that game. That was great.” You never have an all-bench team—an all-pine first team. You never have that.
But let me tell you something about these guys: if it were not for them, the skills of the players would not be honed.
When I was a senior in high school, I played on a team that went twenty-seven and one. We did not win the championship because we lost in the tournament, so that was a bummer.
But the guys we practiced against wanted our jobs. Because of that, it made us play that much harder. When we came to games, we were really, really ready.
Think of this: because they did not play—and many of them did not play at all except in a blowout game—it could seem as though they were just sitting on the bench. What good was that for them?
But imagine if they said, “I do not get to play, so I am just not going to come to practice.” What effect would that have on the team? They would not be as good.
Their part was more necessary than the guys who were simply playing the game. You may think, “Oh, I want to sit on the bench,” but your being there—simply your being there and participating—is what builds up the body.
Not everybody is called to a speaking ministry. But it is not right to say, “Gee whiz, I am not called to a speaking ministry, therefore I do nothing.” You participate by being there.
When you participate in a Bible study, you may have something very simple. But just by coming out and saying it, all of a sudden it can change the whole direction and bring it out of the heavens and down to earth.
Some of us get old and think, “Oh, we know so much.” Then someone says something simple. I will give you an example. Enoch Wei and I were discussing the ministry of the Richmond Conference and what we saw in it.
Toward the very end, Enoch—a very humble man—said, “This is all well and good that we have been talking about what we see in this, but how does it work?”
It was almost like we had missed the whole point. We had been talking about all these things, and he said, “But how does it apply?” Just a little question redirected us into a place of saying, “Oh, we have missed the mark. We have gotten out of the practical and into the ethereal and the religious.”
So it is important to be a member of the bench. There may be a time when you get in the game. But if you are not participating in the practice, you are not going to be ready for the game. You have to understand that.
It is hard to be one of the players for a while and then find yourself on the bench. What do you do then? Will you be offended?
Or will you say, “Lord, help me to have grace to be a bench player and to do my part, even though I am not in the lineup anymore?” That is a hard thing to do. But there is grace for it.
The reason I know it is hard is experience. The Lord is so gracious. He has other things for you to learn besides being out front. He takes you into the place of saying, “Let us get you into the place where you are not seen. Now I want to deal with you where no one else sees you out front.”
He is faithful to do it. Will you be offended?
We all have a ministry. Our first ministry is here—in the unseen place.
Remember, the Lord said that when you pray, do not go out so everybody hears you, but go into your closet, shut the door, and pray where no one else can see, but your Father in heaven sees.
Our first ministry is the unseen thing. This is the hardest ministry because no one sees it. You are not performing for anybody.
Who knows if I am praying? But if I go to a prayer meeting, I can pray, because at least I know people hear me. I think some of it is because we do not think God hears us.
But the Lord says, “I do hear you. You just have to trust Me. Even though you do not see, you have to trust Me. I hear you.”
Let me talk a little about this ministry. I want to take us inside the veil, into the temple. Here are the priests, and they are preparing and arranging the showbread.
They are dressed in their priestly garments before the Lord with the showbread. We know that bread is a type of the Word of God. Before they arranged the showbread, they had to make the bread.
In making bread, you need to knead the bread. It is a nice play on words, is it not? You need to knead the bread.
In other words, it is not enough merely to read the Word. We talked about this last year, those of you who were here. You have to put your hands into it. In 2 Timothy, it speaks about handling the Word of God.
I was talking with Sandy and Maurice at mealtime about Polish food. There is something like a Chinese dumpling called pierogies. If you put meat in them instead of cheese or potatoes, we call them kołduny.
My mom would make kołduny about once every two years. They were only about this big, but we had six kids in the family, and all the boys were my size. We could eat about twenty of them each.
My mom would be in the kitchen with the dough and everything for half the day. It was tough work. I remember that when I was about twenty-one or twenty-two, she made kołduny for the last time. She said, “This is the last time.”
We enjoyed them. But the point is that we need to get our hands into the Word—not merely reading it devotionally, but handling it.
Take it to the Lord. Pick it apart, whether through study, reading other things about it, or meditation. We need to take that Word apart, put it back together, roll it up, make it ready, and present it before the Lord: “Lord, here is Your Word. What do I do with it?”
This was to be done every day. You need to knead the bread. This is part of our ministry to Him.
“Lord, I have read Your Word, but I am not just going to go away. What are You trying to say to me? What are You trying to show me?” You may not get something shown to you every day. But you can come and say, “I do not get it. You have to show me.”
As you develop the habit of doing that, you will find that more often than not, in times of need, there is that showbread before you, giving you something to eat.
This bread was only for the priests to eat. Only those who functioned there could eat. Remember in Revelation, the Lord speaks of giving hidden manna to the overcomer. This is where the hidden manna is.
Another part of the priests’ ministry was trimming the wicks. There was a great lampstand filled with oil, with wicks burning.
Why do candles become dim? The wick burns up, and all the burned material gathers at the top. There is nothing new to burn.
One of the things the priests did in the temple was trim the wicks so that there could be more light.
Trimming wicks is like responding to the light the Lord gives you. That is what makes things bright for you.
If you do not act on what the Lord shows you, you have all this excess stuff burning, and it grows dimmer and dimmer. But when you begin to act on it, you are trimming the wick.
The Lord begins to deal with you by His Word. You bring it back to Him and say, “Lord, You are showing me this. You are showing me light in my inward parts, and I am seeing things I do not like. Or You are telling me to do something, and I do not want to.”
You have to trim that wick. That is part of the cross in our lives—trimming that wick, cutting it off, spiritual circumcision, cutting off the flesh sometimes.
This is the altar of incense. This is worship in truth.
As you begin to see the Lord for yourself, in reality, for what He is showing you, you begin to say, “Lord, I praise You for what I am finding out about You.”
It is truth. It is no longer merely something from a book—“This is what I read about You.” As you go through experiences, finding depth in worship, praise comes out of what you have truly known of Him.
Sometimes, when people are praying—and please do not be self-conscious about this; I am talking about grown-ups, not children, because you are learning and need to be drawn out—there are prayers that are simply nice.
But sometimes someone begins praying and thanking the Lord, and all of a sudden it strikes a chord. The reason is that something has happened in that person’s life. The Lord has touched them or done something in their life, and worship comes out of reality.
People are able to feed on that and go from there. It changes things.
You are getting to the place where you need to start peeping. There is nothing wrong with peeping.
It is like the person who comes to Bible study and brings something simple. It brings those of us who are older out of the upper things that have made us callous to words and phrases, and causes us to say, “Oh Lord, that is right. You are simple in this way, and I have been missing the whole thing. Now I realize what You are like. I praise You.”
Our public ministry is represented by baseball. What is our public ministry?
2 Timothy 4:2 says:
Preach the Word; be urgent in season, out of season.
Be ready. Be faithful in season and out of season. Some of you are saying, “Well, preach the Word? I do not have a speaking ministry, so I am off the hook.”
I am sorry to let you know that you are not off the hook. Let us define the Word here. 2 Corinthians 3:3 says:
Being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh.
The Lord is writing a letter in your life, and it has to be lived out. All of you are like little letters walking around, being read by your parents, your schoolmates, and the people in your assembly.
The letter says, “Dear so-and-so, I am just telling you I am alive.” This is the Lord writing: “I am alive, and I want you to know Me.”
That is what is being written in you, and that is what people are reading in you. “Oh, the Lord is gracious. Oh, the Lord is this.” It is because the Lord is writing it in you.
Preach the Word by living out what the Lord is doing in your life. You do not have to be merely speaking.
Some of you will say, “Well, I just live the life.” There are times when you have to step out and witness, tell others about Christ, or testify. In the little meetings, you say, “This is what the Lord has been doing.”
There is a vocal part, whether you are up front like me or in a discussion group. It is public ministry because you are out with others.
The Lord has not thrown a whole load on us. He always starts with us small.
He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.
You are building a character of faithfulness. You begin small, doing little things—like this boy taking out the trash—until you are entrusted with great things.
These soldiers were preparing for the invasion of Normandy. Their commander was speaking to them and encouraging them to do their duty, even though it would mean the death of some of them. Yet they would be faithful because they had been faithful in little things. They had been trained to be faithful in small ways before great ones.
Who then is the faithful and wise steward, whom his master shall set over his household, to give them their portion of food in due season?
Blessed is that servant, whom his master when he cometh shall find so doing.
That is what the Lord is looking for in you. He is looking for faithfulness.
This is where we start getting strange as people, because we want to please the Lord. Then we start taking things upon ourselves.
Some of us get so into things that we wind up saying, “This just does not work, and I cannot do it,” because we are trying to take things on our own.
It becomes a burden, heavy to carry. We lose our joy in doing these things. Then we realize, just like Peter, “It is me. There is something wrong with me. I just cannot do these things.”
We get stuck there. That brings us to the foundation. You start working on the house, but you must remember that the house is built on a foundation.
Here is the foundation. There is a nice book by A. W. Tozer. You younger ones may not read A. W. Tozer, but you older ones should start reading some A. W. Tozer.
This is the whole crux of the matter. This is the foundation: God is pursuing you.
Let us take the life of Jacob for a moment. You saw the little chart yesterday: he was one of the grabbers, the deceivers.
Here Jacob is wearing gloves so that his father will think his hands are hairy like his brother Esau’s. Jacob wanted the blessing. He started out well: “I want the blessing.”
The Lord said, “That is good, Jacob. I want you to want the blessing. It was meant for you in the first place.”
Jacob was driven away, fleeing from his brother Esau. He was out in the field with a stone for a pillow. The Lord gave him a wonderful dream about the ladder going up to heaven and angels ascending and descending. He received a wonderful vision.
It had such a great effect on him that he said, “Lord, since I have seen this and am so taken up with it, if You provide for me the things I need—clothes, flocks, and these things—I will give You ten percent.”
That is very gracious, is it not? But are we not like that? We come to the Lord and are afraid to give everything.
Some people jump right into the water. Others test it with their toe first, go to the first step, wait until they are used to it, and then go to the second step. By the time they get all the way in, it is time to go home.
But the Lord did not say, when Jacob said, “I will give You ten percent,” “What? Ten percent? Is that all I get?” No, the Lord took him. “Okay, I will take the ten percent, because I am a good businessman.”
Then Jacob came to Laban, who had two daughters. Jacob was dealt with according to his own personality. Laban was twice the grabber Jacob was, and Jacob had to deal with it.
The Lord brought Jacob back and said, “I have got you. I have got you.”
Then, coming home after the Lord told him it was time to leave, Jacob wrestled with the angel. The Lord got hold of him, and Jacob got hold of the Lord for himself.
He said, “I have seen the face of God, and I have not died.” Even though all these other things about him had not been the greatest, he wrestled with God and did not die. It is a wonderful thing.
When Jacob got back into the land, he was trying to get away from Esau. The Lord saved him out of that. Then Jacob began to settle down in the land and almost pick up the habits of the land.
He was going to make a deal with Shechem because Shechem loved his daughter. Two of Jacob’s sons said, “We will let you marry our sister if you all get circumcised.”
They had all the men circumcised, and when the men were in pain after a couple of days, the sons came in and killed all the men in the city.
Jacob said, “Oh my gosh, you have made me odious.” He meant that people would hate him now. We see him being driven away from the world, even as he was getting caught up in the world.
It may not look like a gracious way to do it, but that was the way the Lord did it. People were offended with Jacob because of the way he was.
Then the Lord began really to go into Jacob’s heart, peeling away layer after layer.
Joseph was gone. The brothers brought Jacob the coat of many colors, covered with animal blood, and said, “We found this coat. Do you know whose it is, Dad?” Joseph had been put into the pit and sold.
Then Rachel died. Jacob returned to Bethel, got rid of his idols, and the Lord kept taking little parts out of his heart—like peeling an onion, getting down to another layer, then another layer, then another layer.
Finally, Jacob came to the last layer: Benjamin. Benjamin was all he had left. He came to that core center.
Remember what we read on the first day:
If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.
Earlier he had said, “Joseph is gone, Simeon is in prison, and now you want Benjamin. All these things are against me.” But then he came to the place of saying, “If I am bereaved, I am bereaved.”
When he came to that point, he was reunited with Joseph.
Out of this whole thing, out of all this dealing by the Lord, we find Jacob becoming exactly what the Lord wanted him to be: a blesser of others instead of a grabber for himself. Here he is blessing Pharaoh, and here he is blessing the sons of Joseph.
The Lord pursues. He gets us. You can put this into your own circumstances and say, “This is how the Lord does things.” The thing is, He is pursuing after you all the way.
Even though you may slip into unfaithfulness, the Lord comes back and brings circumstances into your life that bring you back. It is not merely that He gets you back; He uses it to get what He wants out of you: the faithfulness that He is seeking.
Let us go back to these vows. The faithfulness to which He calls us is not a one-way street.
When Elkin and Judy get married, it is not just Judy who takes the vows. It is not as though we say to Judy, “For better or worse? Richer or poorer? In sickness and health?” and then present her to Elkin. No, both take the vows.
We need to understand that the Lord has taken the same vows. He has taken you for better or worse. He has taken you for richer or poorer. He has taken you in sickness or in health.
This is not merely a pretty story. If you look through the Word, you find these things. We looked at Jacob and saw that the Lord took Jacob and was faithful to him. But consider those whom we might say did not pan out.
Consider Samson. Here was a man after the flesh. Yet the Lord said, “I am faithful to you anyway.”
After Samson had his eyes put out, at the sorrowful end of his life, they brought him out to make sport of him. He cried to the Lord and said, “Oh Lord, just give me this one more time.” The Lord said, “Yes,” because “I have taken you for better or worse.”
Or consider the house of David. David was a man after God’s own heart, but look at some of those who came after him from his family. Manasseh was among the worst kings, yet he was part of David’s line.
The Lord had said, “Your house will not lack someone sitting on the throne.” He was taking David’s house for better or worse.
If you read 2 Chronicles about Manasseh, you find that although he was the worst king, there came a time in his life when he was taken away, I think into Assyria or Babylon. He was in prison, and he called out to the Lord and humbled himself.
There is testimony in 2 Chronicles that the Lord heard him, answered him, and brought him back to Jerusalem. Manasseh tried to undo much of what he had done.
The Lord still brought judgment because of those things. If you read the prophets, you find, “This is because of what Manasseh did.” Yet the Lord took him for better or worse.
It is the same with us. It is better or worse. Israel is a nation for better or worse.
Romans 11:29 says:
For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of.
In other words, they will not be taken back. The Lord is not an Indian giver. Once He has called you, He is faithful. He is faithful to the end—whatever end it may be for you.
We hear these wonderful things, and we come to the place of seeing how gracious the Lord is to us. Yet we still say, “But Lord, that is wonderful about You, but I am still me. What do I do?”
We all come to this place. Here is a hymn you are probably familiar with: “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”
In the first two verses, the writer—Robert Robinson, I think—is saying, “I have come to this high place. I have started to ascend the mountain. I have found that it is really good. I am enjoying it. I am praising You, and I will raise my Ebenezer. I have reached this higher plane. Praise the Lord.”
Then, in the last verse, he comes down to reality. Not that the other is not reality, but he comes to the reality: “I am still here. It is still me.”
He says:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
Prone to leave the God I love.
This is us, is it not? Is this not the story of our Christian life? We are prone to wander.
But are you not glad this is not the end of the verse? It is the last verse, but it is also our salvation.
All we can do is say, “Lord, I cannot guarantee my faithfulness. I just cannot do it. I would like to. I will even say, ‘Lord, I will be faithful.’”
The Lord says, “Yes, I know,” because, remember what we saw yesterday: He sees the end. He sees the end, but we do not. We see the past, and we are in the present, and we say, “Well, history repeats itself.”
But here the man says, “I am prone to wander.” So all I can do is say, “Lord, You take my heart. You take it. You seal it.”
In the letter of Jude, the letter right before Revelation, there is one verse that I want to leave us with. It is Jude 24.
Now unto Him that is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set you before the presence of His glory without blemish in exceeding joy.
There are two things here. He is able to put you before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. It is joyful to Him to put you there.
It is not as though He says, “Oh, I begrudge that I had to do all this work to get you there.” He is ecstatic to put you before Him.
But I do not want merely to say, “Keep you from stumbling.” Now unto Him who is able to keep you—just keep you, period—to keep your heart.
That is to Whom we commit ourselves. By the grace of God, let us allow the Lord to commit us to the Holy Spirit and to the Father, to keep us and to find out that God is faithful, who called us.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to be faithful. That is the desire of our heart.
Whether we doubt ourselves or anything, down at the bottom You have put something in our heart that says, “Yes, O God, I want to be faithful to You.” We thank You that this is there.
Lord, we are thankful that You are able to keep us and able to bring us to that place of being presented to You faultless.
Lord, we look to You to make us faithful, to keep us faithful, to keep us committed to You. Lord, as You take us for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health, we want to take You in that same way.
We want to be content with You. We want to find that we can be content with You.
Lord, we do not want these things to be something we have learned merely as a message. Lord, we want, like Jacob, to be brought through life to the end, letting You take us from phase to phase until we are finally faithfully blessing the people You want us to bless.
All to Your glory. Lord, we commit ourselves to Thee for this, in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.