Thank you. Thank you.
It is not the heat that bothers me in Virginia; it is the humidity.
If you would turn with me to the Scriptures that have been before us during these days: Revelation 12, from verse 10.
And I heard a great voice in heaven, saying, Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Messiah: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God day and night.
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.
I want to add to that from the Roman letter of the apostle Paul, Romans 12. I am going to read from verse 1.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.
For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith; or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, to his teaching; or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting.
He that giveth, let him do it with liberality; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.
Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another; in honour preferring one another; in diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing steadfastly in prayer; communicating to the necessities of the saints; given to hospitality.
Bless them that persecute you; bless, and curse not.
Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Set not your mind on high things, but condescend to things that are lowly. Be not wise in your own conceits.
Render to no man evil for evil. Take thought for things honourable in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men.
Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto the wrath of God: for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto Me; I will recompense, saith the Lord.
But if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Shall we just turn to the Lord in prayer?
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we are here, found in Your presence. We sense that You are here. We worship You, dear Lord. We are not asking You to join us; we are coming to be with You, Lord.
We want You to speak to us. We want You to reveal something more of Your heart and mind to us. And, Lord, You have promised us that You are watching over Your word to perform it. Now, that is exactly what we need, Lord. We need that this word of Yours, You will watch over it to perform it. Make it reality in every one of our lives.
To that end, Lord, we want to tell You that without the anointing, we can only speak words and outline truths. Lord, we need that anointing grace and power that You have provided for us through the finished work of our Lord Jesus.
And into that anointing we stand by faith, Lord, that You will give a full portion of it this evening—not only for the speaking of Your word, but for the translating of it and for the hearing of it.
Lord, bring everything under that anointing. Anoint the tent of meeting, as it were, Lord. Let everything come under that anointing grace and power and fullness that You have won for us and made a living reality in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
We shall be careful to give You all the praise and worship of our hearts for answering this prayer of ours. We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, I do not have to tell you that my responsibility in these times has been the little phrase that is at the end of this word: “And they overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives even unto death.”
That last constituent—“they loved not their lives even unto death”—has been my responsibility during these days.
What is overcoming?
You might have thought I had been a bit hard on you, talking about self-life and your soul-life, and the need to give it up, to lose it, to let go of it. I have said it is unbroken, unyielded.
The fact is, they overcame Satan because they loved not their lives even unto death.
Whether that is martyrdom—as there have been so many who, through the ages of the church, this whole church age, century after century, have laid down their lives in faithfulness to the Lord Jesus—it is not just that.
As I have been at pains to point out to you, the deepest instinct in our being is to preserve ourselves. If we were faced with death, or denial of the Lord, or compromise, many of us would choose compromise, even denial.
I remember the story of Wang Ming Dao. After that incredibly powerful ministry in Beijing, he was taken into custody, brainwashed, and then sent to prison. But he compromised.
I remember the story about Wang Ming Dao: he could not sleep, and he could not rest, until he called the authorities back and took back his confession—his compromise, the compromise he had made.
They did not kill him. But the wonderful thing was that, like all of us, when it came to the final analysis, he was tempted. Then he found that he could not live at peace.
He took back his denial of the Lord and firmly spoke of his trust and faith in the Lord Jesus, even though it could have meant his death.
Dear friends, if you and I have not laid down our self-life, this instinct to preserve ourselves is so strong that it will undo us.
That is why, in the final analysis, those words of the Lord Jesus that I spoke upon last night are so important:
If any man follow Me, let him give up all right to himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever would save his life—his soul-life, his self-life—shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his soul-life, his self-life, for My sake and the gospel’s, shall find it.
We overcome not only through the blood of the Lamb, not only through the word of our testimony, but through not loving our lives even unto death. There is no other way to overcome.
What is overcoming? It has been said by Brother Stephen, and also, of course, by Brother Dana, that we often get this idea about the overcomer: that they are an elitist group, a kind of superior group, a special kind of Christian who knows no fear and is a Superman. It is not true.
Every child of God is meant to be an overcomer.
The Lord has so designed our salvation—if I could put it rather poorly—that, when we experience it fully, we become overcomers. We can do no other.
Let me ask you a question. If Jesus is really in you, can you be anything else than an overcomer?
Let me ask it again. Maybe you are not listening to me. Listen carefully. If the Lord Jesus is alive in you, dwelling by the Holy Spirit in your body, in your spirit, can you be anything else than an overcomer?
The answer has to be, “No, I can be nothing else.” If He really lives in me, if He is really there in power, if He is there as Lord, if my will has been surrendered to Him, if He has the right to do with me anything He wants to do, I can be nothing else than an overcomer.
Whatever affliction comes to me, whatever circumstances are mine, whatever difficult relationships I come into, I can be no other than an overcomer.
I once asked Father Sparks, many years ago, “What is an overcomer?” It was in his home in Scotland. It was a coolish evening, as so often in Scotland, even in the summer, and there was a fire.
I remember that he looked into the fire for a while. You had to know Mr. Sparks. Mr. Sparks could sit for half an hour without saying a word, and you became more and more uncomfortable. He could even be an hour and not say a word.
He looked into the fire for a few moments—long moments—and then he said, “An overcomer is someone who is in the full will of God at the end of their life.”
An overcomer is someone who is in the full will of God at the end of their life.
I must say, I have thrilled with the messages that we have so far received. But I must have a question with Dana over the other term about overcoming: gaining the victory. I do not really like it.
I was brought up, ever since I was saved, on “victory, victory, victory” all the time, and nobody had the victory. All these wonderful people sang songs about, “My chains fell off.” I found out afterwards that the chains were certainly still on them.
The Lord was the answer to the double cure of sin. I remember that hymn we used to sing with gusto, and the pastor always spoke about it. But years later I asked him, “Did you really experience that victory, or how did you preach it?”
He said, “I preached it in faith. I did not have it.”
So that meant not only the whole congregation lived defeated lives, but so did the pastor.
I was always a little afraid of “gaining the victory.” Of course, it is that; obviously, theologically, that is right. Dana is completely right, so I am not arguing with him about this. But it just disturbs me.
I like “overcoming.” Why? Because you are coming over. In other words, you are actually coming over. Some obstacle is there; you come over it. Here is some difficulty; you come over it. Here is a mountain; you traverse over it, or remove it by faith.
To me, overcoming is something so simple.
Now, I know you dear Americans use a number of terms that we use, and we use them with a different meaning. In the sea, we have a thing called buoys. Now, do you say “buoy,” or “buoy,” or something? Buoys. I cannot say it. Why you do not just say “boy,” I do not know. But anyway, American English is something amazing to me—the development of it.
But we have what we call buoys. You tie boats to them. Have you ever seen them when there is a storm? The waves go over them; they go right under, you cannot see them, and then suddenly they come up, all the water pouring off.
There is something in the buoy: you cannot defeat it. It always comes up. It is its nature. It is its nature. It is overcoming; it is in it.
If the Lord Jesus is in you, you can do no other. Even if you go right down under a problem, then in the end you come up, because He is in you.
The Lord Jesus said in John 16:33, “In Me ye shall have tribulation.” I am sorry—in Me you shall have peace. Sorry for that slip of the tongue.
In Me you shall have peace. Do you not have peace in the Lord? I do. In the worst circumstances, I find in Him—not in the circumstances, in Him—I have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation. I find that also.
Now, is that not an amazing thing? When I first read this, when I first came to the Lord, I only had a little booklet of John’s Gospel. Nobody bothered to give me a Bible, or even inquire whether I had a Bible.
I read that little Gospel of John through and through and through and through, so many times until it fell to pieces. But I remember, when I read this, I thought it was very unfair of the Lord: “In Me ye shall have peace; in the world ye shall have tribulation.” Well, we certainly know that.
But, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” I thought it was a terrible thing for Him to say: “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” I thought to myself, in my arrogant way, “Well, is not the Lord saying something? He is almost laughing at us. ‘Be of good cheer; I have overcome.’”
I was only young. I was twelve and a half, thirteen. You must forgive me.
Then I discovered what it really means. I thought, “Why did He not say, ‘But be of good cheer; you shall be an overcomer’?” He never said that. He said, “But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
In other words, when He is in you, when He is dwelling in you, when He is untrammelled by your will and your stubbornness and your obstinacy and your plans for your life—when you have let go of that self-life, when He is Lord—He will overcome in you.
There is no other way. That is overcoming.
So we come back to this question of loving not your lives even unto death. If we love our lives, we hinder and frustrate the Lord’s plan and strategy to be the Overcomer in us. We have a civil war going on inside our own being.
I read that passage in Romans 12. I read the whole chapter. It is one of the most extraordinary chapters in Romans, I think.
I think all of you know, and it is generally accepted by Bible teachers and theologians, that the Roman letter is the greatest exposition of the Gospel in the sixty-six books of the Bible—the clearest exposition of the Gospel, the greatest interpretation of the Gospel that we have in the Bible.
The apostle Paul takes all those eight chapters to explain that Gospel. Then he takes three more chapters to talk about the Jewish question.
If God can forsake the Jewish people, can He not also forsake the church?
Then he sums up the whole thing: “I beseech you, I urge you, by the mercies of God”—not even mercy of God, but mercies of God—that I have spoken of in those eight chapters, and then from chapters 9 through 11, “to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is,” my version says, “your spiritual service.”
I will seem to be as simple as I can. Those of you who know your Bibles will know very well that the living sacrifice could not be maimed or lame, half blind, or spotted with some kind of disease.
The living sacrifice for the offerings had to be without blemish, without wrinkle, without any such thing. It had to be a perfect representative of the sheep, or of the goats, or of the birds.
So what is the apostle saying? “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable.”
Set apart—that is the intrinsic meaning of holiness—set apart to God, well-pleasing to God, acceptable to Him.
Can anyone claim to be a candidate for a living sacrifice, if that is the case? The best of us here today has spots or wrinkles, or something that renders us unacceptable, unholy.
But the Gospel he has preached is all about Jesus dying in our place, and we, through His death on the cross, through His bearing of the punishment of our sin, being declared righteous in the sight of God—clothed with the righteousness of the Lord Jesus.
In another place, in another letter, the second Corinthian letter, the apostle Paul puts it this way. I have lost it. This is what happens as you get older. I will read it to you. At least I know exactly where it is: 2 Corinthians 5:21.
Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
That means that we are justified. Our sin He became, and we have become the righteousness of God in Him. Is that not incredible? This Gospel is incredible.
In those three chapters, from 9 through 11, he speaks about the grace of God on vessels of mercy, afore prepared for glory. It is incredible.
Now, this Gospel that he has preached to us—this incredible letter written to explain and interpret it—he says, “Now then, you are living sacrifices. You have neither spot nor wrinkle in the sight of God. You are not maimed. You are not lame. There is nothing wrong about you. You are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.”
Well, we would say, “Surely You are not calling us to be living sacrifices. If we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we are kings, we are royal priests. Surely we have been called into royal service by God, where we are somehow known.”
He says, “You are to be living sacrifices—not dead sacrifices—living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.”
I do not know whether we should dwell more upon this, but this is the end of the Gospel, the goal of the Gospel. What is it?
“Oh,” you say, “that we should be children of God, that we should be filled with glory.” Absolutely. “That we should be changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus.” Absolutely. What else can you add? You can add a few more things.
But the aim of the Gospel is that you should be a living sacrifice. We are back to the verse: “They overcame Satan because they loved not their life even unto death.”
What is a living sacrifice for? To be burnt up on the altar.
That does not sound, for some people, like the Gospel. “Oh no,” they say, “no, no, no, no, no. The Gospel is that once you are converted and brought to the Lord, washed in His blood, you will be carried by angels on a bed of roses the whole way into glory. That is the Gospel.”
“No tribulation, no affliction, no fellowship of His sufferings, no antagonism from the devil. He has been beaten already. He has gone off to his own place.”
No, no. We have something tremendous here: a living sacrifice.
This is the aim of the Gospel. You say, “Do you mean that glory is not the aim of the Gospel?” Of course glory is the aim of the Gospel—the glory of God.
“Are you saying that we are not to be transformed into the likeness of the Lord?” No, I am not. That is the purpose of the Lord. What I am saying is this: unless you and I become a living sacrifice, there is no progress, no advance, no growth.
We are back to the same matter as last night. You see, if you love your life over everything else, and hold on to it, cling to it, seek to preserve it, there is no possibility of you moving forward. You are stuck, like so many.
John the apostle also wrote later, in one of his letters, about this faith that has been given to us. What is it? It is to do with the Son of God.
Remember in his first letter, chapter 5: we overcome the world as we behold the Lord Jesus.
Well, I do not know whether all this we have said is almost too much of it, but what are the consequences of this? That is why I read the whole chapter. They are incredible.
If you and I are prepared to be a living sacrifice, clothed in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus, who has borne our sin away—we are clothed in His righteousness. Of course, it does not mean there is not sin to be confessed. If we say we have no sin, we lie.
But it does mean that we are clothed with His righteousness. We can be that living sacrifice.
Now, here is the first consequence: spiritual service. “I urge you, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is your spiritual service.”
Now, the Greek here is very interesting. If you look at all the different versions, you will find almost as many translations.
Years ago, we had in the fellowship a Cambridge don in Greek. I remember puzzling over this because “reasonable service” did not seem to me to be “spiritual service.”
I went to him and asked him. He said, “Let me look it up.” He looked it up, and a day later he came back to me and said, “It is very, very interesting.”
I had said to him, “I wonder whether I could translate it ‘spiritually intelligent service.’” He came back and said, “That is the best way to translate it. It is very difficult to get the real meaning over, but you have to add one other word: spiritually intelligent worship and service.”
Got it? So, the first consequence of being a living sacrifice is that it is your spiritually intelligent worship and service.
Now, there is nothing wrong with having emotion in worship. After all, Mary herself said, “My spirit hath glorified the Lord, and my soul doth magnify the Lord.” What began in her spirit got into her soul.
Can there be worship without some emotion, without some feeling? I know some people believe we should not have musical instruments; we should only use the human voice. I have never understood it.
But I remember once talking with a dear brother in one of the strangest assemblies I have ever known of in Scotland—which does deal with some strange assemblies. They had this thing about music, and they came to it in the word that everything has to be baptized.
Because that is the new creation. When it has gone through baptism, it is the new creation. So they baptized the harmonium—not by sprinkling, by immersion—because it never played again. Then they put the piano down.
I cannot believe the Lord’s people can be so stupid at times, but never mind. I should not have said that; you should rub that out. But I mean, it is incredible sometimes what we get up to as the Lord’s children.
What is real worship? Real worship is not just being touched by emotion—emotion for the moment, transient, passing.
This kind of worship, which leads you in cold blood to lose your self-life, to become a living sacrifice, is your spiritually intelligent worship. It means you have thought it through, and with your will surrendered to His will, you have offered yourself as a living sacrifice.
The same is true with your service. We can all be touched. I have met in my life many servants of the Lord who went to different parts of the world to serve Him and who told me, “I do not really believe I should have been there. I was caught by emotion and by the excitement of a big missionary meeting, and I offered myself and went.”
Now, there are those, of course, who have gone by the calling of God. Thank God for them and for what they have brought to the nations of the world. We thank God for them.
But there are those who say, “It was just the emotion of a moment.” This kind of service is when you have, in a cold-blooded way, sat down and said, “Lord, here am I. Send me.”
Such worship rejoices the heart of God as no other worship can. It is reality, the heart of the matter.
Then look again. Here is the second thing we find in this incredible chapter in Romans 12: “Be not fashioned according to this world.”
Well, that is a good word. Can you tell me any child of God who is not moulded—that is the Greek word, moulded—by the fashion of this world?
All of us, to some extent or another, unless we are really weird, are moulded by the fashion of this world. We cannot help it: its philosophy, its rationale, the way it does things, the way it thinks, its strategy, its aims, its goals, right down to small things. It is amazing.
“Be not fashioned according to this world.”
If your self-life is still intact and under your will, you will be fashioned according to this world. It is only when you surrender your will to God, to the will of God, that for the first time the mould is broken.
You are free from being a slave to the philosophy of this world, to the thinking of this world, to the ways of this world.
You see how important it is? No wonder the apostle Paul, by the Spirit of God, says, “I urge you, therefore, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice.”
Note it: he links it. “And be ye not fashioned,” moulded, according to this world.
Now, here is the third thing: “But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The mind is the most important thing.
If your mind is not renewed by the Holy Spirit, you will be a slave to the fashion and the philosophy of this world. It is only when the Lord can get hold of your mind and renew it.
He links transformation with the renewing of your mind. Once your mind is being renewed, you are in the process of being transformed. Then you will become like the Lord Jesus. There will be a Christ-likeness in you.
What amazing consequences there are in this whole thing. Then, fourthly, listen to this: “That ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
Now, let us be honest. Let us forget all the shams. Let us be honest with one another. Does anyone find God’s will good, acceptable, and perfect?
I have lived a quite long life—not as long as my brother over there—but long enough to know this: young people are terribly afraid of the will of God.
They think, “Well, if God has His way with me, I will be a monk or a nun. I shall live my whole life alone. If I let the Lord have His way with me, I shall end up in Timbuktu, or Mongolia, or somewhere else in the world, and I do not want it.”
How in the world can a child of God prove what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God unless you are a living sacrifice? Unless that transaction has taken place in your life where you have surrendered to the lordship of Jesus—He is Lord in your life.
Then, for the first time, you are able to prove what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.
Let me just say something. I have not found in my life thus far a single time that the Lord has led me into the doing of His will which has not been good, acceptable, and perfect.
I did not think it to begin with. I was afraid of it. But once I was ready to obey the Lord, I found out that it was good, acceptable, and perfect.
The problem is our self-life again. That is the thing. That is our self-life that causes all the fuss: “Oh no, the will of God for you could not possibly be good, acceptable, and perfect. He wants to put you in a straitjacket. He wants to put you in a little prison. He wants to put you in a factory and set you to work the whole time for Him. He will exploit you.”
I have never found any of it to be true. I found exactly the opposite: that when you are ready to be a living sacrifice, you will find out—you will prove—that the will of God is good, acceptable, and perfect. Perfect. Think of it. Think of it.
Here is another thing that is the result—the fifth thing that is the result of being a living sacrifice: think of yourselves moderately, soberly, with good judgment, modestly.
How Paul puts it is this: “I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.”
I think the church scene is beset with people who have very high opinions of themselves, much higher than they ought to have. They think they have this status, this gift, that gift.
What a work the Holy Spirit does in us when, for the first time, we can think of ourselves soberly instead of being drunk—drunk with ideas of who we are, of what we are.
You think so? You believe yourself? “No,” you say to me, “I think you are being a bit mean.” Well, let me tell you a few things. I have seen so many things in my little life.
I remember a lady who used always to catch us after a church meeting and talk to us. She was from Ireland, and she used to say, “You know, you can trust me with a confidence. I can keep confidences.”
We all knew very well that if you were to say something to her in confidence and say, “Please tell no one,” the whole town would know within an hour. She had no idea of herself. She thought she was able to keep confidences.
I remember another brother who was a big noise in the Full Gospel Businessmen. He wrote to me on one occasion about another brother who was the other leader. He said, “You know, dear brother, this man is this, this, this, this, this.” It was quite an accusation.
He ended the letter by saying, “Pray for me. You know, I am the humblest man on the face of this earth.”
Every one of us who knew that dear brother knew very well that the one thing he was not was the humblest man on the face of the earth. He was quite the opposite. He was an incredibly proud man, but he did not know himself.
There are people who believe they have the gift of speaking, and it is dreadful. They just drone on and on and on and send us all to sleep.
There are other people who think they have other kinds of gifts. I shall never forget one sister who believed she had the gift of singing. It was the most dreadful thing I have ever heard in my life.
When she sang a solo, she managed to hit every note either above it or below it. It was absolutely awful, but nobody could tell her. She believed it was a gift from God, a natural gift, a talent that she had, and that she must use it for the glory of the Lord.
Well, there was not any glory of the Lord in it, but we could not tell her.
One of the reasons why we become a living sacrifice is that, in a right way, there is a division between our spirit and our soul for the first time. For the first time in our Christian experience, we begin to see ourselves objectively.
We begin to see what is the Lord in us, and we begin to see what is not the Lord in us.
How many times people have come to me and told me, “The Lord has said this and this and this to me.” But it has not been the Lord who said that and that and that to them at all. It has been their own soul masquerading as the Spirit of God, and they do not know it.
Whenever I have said to them, “I do not believe this is the Spirit of God,” they say, “Then how shall I ever know what is the Lord?”
There has to be division between soul and spirit. This is the same thing here: you are to think soberly, according as God has dealt to each a measure of faith.
What is the measure of faith God has given to you? That measure of faith will take you the whole way to the throne of God.
If it is a smaller measure, you are only a help. I was just going to say “only,” but that is not the right way to put it. If you are a help in the Lord, thank God for that. We could do with any number of helps in the body of Christ.
You begin to see that being a living sacrifice is much more than just a word that the apostle Paul used toward the end of this letter.
Here is yet another thing. The consequential result of being a living sacrifice is that you find yourself within the body of Christ: one body in Christ, severally members one of another.
If that self-life has never been dealt with, you are going to have nothing but sparks flying the whole time—division, faction, clashes, jealousies, rivalries, a thousand and one things.
When you have settled the question that you are a living sacrifice, you discover that you are moving in Christ. And in Christ—mark the word—it is not “one body of Christ”; it is “one body in Christ.”
In Christ, you discover the body. You discover that you are members one of another. You belong to each other. You are sharing the same Lord Jesus.
We do not share the same ethnic background. We do not share the same social status. We do not necessarily share the same educational background. But the one thing that we have absolutely in common is the Lord Jesus.
He is in me; He is in you. Because He is in you and in me, what has happened to us? We are members one of another. Is that not amazing?
I have seen many groups come together over the years to set up the church, to be the house of God. I have also seen them fall apart.
The key to the falling apart is the nonexistent living sacrifice. It is only when you have people who are living sacrifices that you discover the body.
That, I think, is tremendous. That is overcoming.
So all these things are overcoming: our spiritually intelligent worship and service; not being fashioned according to this world; being transformed by the renewing of our mind; proving what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God; thinking soberly of ourselves; being able to see ourselves objectively; being able to see what the Lord is doing and what is just my flesh.
It means discovering the body of Christ, the body of the Lord in Christ. You are in Christ; I am in Christ. We have the same Christ. I do not have a tailor-made Christ. You do not have a tailor-made Christ. There is only one Christ.
You are in Him; I am in Him. He is in you; He is in me. So we now have a double union: we are in the same Christ, and the same Christ is in us.
Now we discover each other. We discover that we are living stones being built together into a spiritual house, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus the Messiah.
Well, I must end, but there is a little more to this. You see, out of this comes the priesthood of all believers.
Does a man have a prophetic gift? Let him prophesy. Does he have the gift of exhortation, encouragement? Let him encourage. Is he a teacher? Let him teach.
Suddenly we discover that in this one body there are all kinds of different gifts, different positions, as it were, different ways in which the Lord contributes to the whole. It is wonderful.
But what are you going to do about the last verses? They are very interesting, are they not? “Let love be without hypocrisy.” Now, what has that got to do with the priesthood of all believers?
I would call it spiritual character. So, out of being a living sacrifice, spiritual character is formed by the Holy Spirit.
This kind of character here is really something. Have you ever had enemies? Have you ever prayed for them? Have you ever blessed them? Have you ever fed them? Have you ever really looked after them—and they are enemies?
That is not so easy. Bless those that revile you. Not so easy.
This is another kind of character. This is not the old self-life that is first, and last, and everywhere in between. This is the Lamb of God. This is another kind of character.
Well, dear folks, I believe that what we have really said this evening about overcoming—let me just go back and finish—what we have said is this: What is overcoming? Overcoming is to be a living sacrifice.
When a person is a living sacrifice, a whole number of things result. That child of God becomes an overcomer—very normal, not elite, not a supremacist, not someone who thinks that they are the cat’s whiskers, the dog’s ears, that they are wonderful.
It is something so normal, but you are an overcomer because the Lord Jesus is able, through you, to build the house of God. You are able to function in the house of God, and at the same time a spiritual character is being formed in you.
May the Lord challenge every one of us, because it comes down to this: are you prepared to be a living sacrifice?
It is not exactly saying, “Do you want to be a Hollywood star? Do you want to be some big athletic icon? Do you want to be someone popular in the whole world, known by all?”
To be a living sacrifice—only the word of God could speak of such a thing.
Yet, to be a living sacrifice is the first major step after you have been saved. If you are going to progress with the Lord and grow in the Lord, and if the beauty of the Lord Jesus is going to be seen upon you, you have to be a living sacrifice.
There is no substitute, and there is no alternative.
That is why they overcame him: through the blood of the Lamb, through the word of their testimony, and because they loved not their lives even unto death.
May God help you to make a cold-blooded, spiritually intelligent decision.
Shall we pray?
Lord, help us this evening. We need You, Lord. It is not a very popular thing to pray about, being a living sacrifice. But, Lord, it is all part and parcel of Your service, and it is all to do with the effect of the Gospel.
Challenge us, Lord. Challenge us.
For we ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.