Will you please turn to 1 Timothy 4? We will read from verses 8 through 10.
Exercise thyself unto godliness:
for bodily exercise is profitable for a little;
but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of life,
of the present and of that which is to come.
Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation.
For to this end we labor and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God,
who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.
Please turn also to John 14. We will read from verses 1 through 3.
Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe also in Me.
In My Father’s house are many abodes; if it were not so, I would have told you;
for I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again,
and will receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
Finally, turn to Luke 21. We will read from verses 34 through 36.
But take heed to yourselves, lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly as a snare:
for so shall it come upon all them that dwell on the face of all the earth.
But watch ye at every season, making supplication, that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.
Let us have a further word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we want to thank You for giving us another opportunity. We do realize how much Thou dost love us, and how much Thou dost want to transform us and conform us to Thine own image.
We pray, Lord, that Thou wilt speak again to our hearts. Bring us to face reality. Bring us into Thyself, that we may be those who hasten Thy return. In Thy precious name we ask. Amen.
Thank God for gathering us again this morning.
My burden is still on this matter of spiritual exercise. One day, as I was meditating before the Lord, the Lord seemed to direct my attention to these words:
Godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of life, of the present and of that which is to come.
Bodily exercise is profitable. I see that people today are more conscious and aware of it. I hope young people will also pay attention to that.
But the Scripture tells us, “Exercise thyself unto godliness.” That is spiritual exercise, and it is profitable for everything because it has the promise of life.
The life here is not our physical life. The life here is the divine life, the life of God. In other words, with spiritual exercise we shall experience the divine life in us.
To put it negatively, without spiritual exercise, even if we have divine life in us, we will not be able to really experience it.
Such spiritual exercise will be profitable for this life while we are still living on earth. It will be profitable for us in everything.
It is profitable for our personal life. It is profitable for our family life. It is profitable for our church life, and it is profitable for our social life.
In every dimension of our life today, we realize one thing: we no longer live in these dimensions with our old, fallen life. We live by the life of Christ.
Just like the apostle Paul proclaimed:
For to me to live is Christ.
Whether you are living your personal, private life, it is Christ who lives in you. Or even in our family life, how often we still live by our old, natural, fallen life. No wonder you find so many problems, even in so-called Christian families.
We cannot live our church life with our own lives. We have to live church life by the life of Christ in us. That is what spiritual exercise requires of us.
The same thing is true with our social life. What is our relationship with the world around us? How can we be a testimony to the world? All these things come through spiritual exercise.
It is the grace of God, and yet the grace of God is always there. But if we do not have spiritual exercise, this grace will, in a sense, be abused and wasted.
Spiritual exercise is profitable for all these things. It is profitable not only in the days when we are still living on this earth, but it is also profitable for that which is to come.
In other words, that promise of life is not only for us today. It is also to prepare us for the days to come. It is for the age to come, and even for eternity.
You can see how profitable spiritual exercise is, and you may realize how much we have neglected it, what precious things we have lost.
For our time here, I feel burdened with this matter: spiritual exercise is profitable for the time to come.
For us believers, we do not live just for today. People in the world will say, “Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” No, that is not the way we live. We live for eternity.
Our God is a God of eternity, so we live for eternity.
I remember when George Whitefield was on earth. George Whitefield was one of the greatest evangelists of his time. He said that every time he preached, he preached with eternity in view. He preached as if it were his last message.
How powerful his preaching was, because he lived for eternity, not just for time.
And I pray, brothers and sisters, that you are all living for eternity, not just for today. Thank God for that.
We would like to consider together how spiritual exercise will affect our days to come. We would like to approach it from four directions:
This morning we will focus on spiritual exercise and the coming of the Lord.
I do not need to remind you that our Lord Jesus will come again. As a matter of fact, I believe, brothers and sisters, that you are all longing for His coming.
The problem is this: Why is it that our Lord Jesus seems to delay His return? It is as if we are eagerly waiting for Him, and He is purposely delaying His return. How so?
You remember, at the first coming of our Lord Jesus, the whole Jewish nation at that time was waiting for the coming of the Messiah because they were under Roman rule. They longed for the coming of the Messiah to deliver them.
But as you read the record in the Gospels, you find that only a few were really waiting for His coming.
You find Zacharias and Elizabeth, and how God worked in their lives. God did not give them a son. In the Old Testament, if you loved the Lord, you would be blessed with many sons and many daughters. You would be surrounded by your children. But if you did not have a child, you were under a curse.
This couple loved God, and yet they had no child. We do not know how much they prayed about it, and yet there was no answer.
Through this, God brought them, as it were, to a higher step. Perhaps they ceased to pray for their child, but they prayed that God would send someone to prepare the way of the Messiah. God gave them John the Baptist.
We remember Joseph and Mary. They were engaged, but they had not been married yet. Mary was conceived through the Holy Spirit. It was something unheard of, and she would have been considered an adulteress.
Joseph had the responsibility to cast the first stone, yet he gave up his own life. He was willing to take Mary, that God’s purpose might be realized.
Then we also have Simeon and Anna, how they longed to see the Messiah, how they prayed and fasted. These people were really waiting for the Messiah.
We may say that these are the people who really brought in the Messiah.
When the news of the Messiah came, the Jewish people were afraid. They were not ready for the Messiah. Even when the Messiah arrived, they could not understand Him. They rejected Him. They crucified Him.
Is there a lesson for us today? It seems as if God’s people are all waiting for the second coming of the Lord. But how many are really waiting, preparing, and hastening the coming of the Lord?
This is something that we really want to consider together. When we talk about the second coming of the Lord, probably the most favored approach is the prophetic approach.
We would like to know when the Lord will return and under what conditions. We watch all these signs. There are certain things that need to be fulfilled, and then the Lord will come.
Brothers and sisters, wherever you speak of prophecy, people just love to hear it. It is very popular.
But this morning we would like to use another approach. We are not going to talk about prophecy. We are not going to talk about what events we are expecting.
As a matter of fact, I believe that, so far as the coming of the Lord is concerned, all the prophecies that precede His coming have already been fulfilled. He can come at any time now.
Now, it is true that there are still other prophecies that need to be fulfilled. But these prophecies will be fulfilled during or after the coming of the Lord.
But why is it that the Lord still delays? We would like to adopt the practical approach.
Instead of looking at the second coming of the Lord from the prophetic point of view, we will look at it from the practical point of view.
Will you please turn to John 14?
We remember that in John 13, the Lord had His last supper with His disciples. His disciples knew that our Lord Jesus was going to leave, and they were very sorrowful.
The Lord had been with them for three years or so. He took care of them and talked with them, and now the Lord was leaving. They felt themselves as if they were orphans. They were very sorrowful.
From John 14, you find that our Lord Jesus tried to comfort them. He said, “Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe also in Me.”
Then in verse 2 He says, “In My Father’s house are many abodes; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
“In My Father’s house are many abodes.” Now, the traditional interpretation of the Father’s house is heaven. That is to say, one day we will go to heaven, and in heaven we have a place because the Lord has saved us.
In other words, there is already an abode there. He has already saved us. Heaven is a certainty.
In some Bibles, it says “many mansions.” Perhaps you are living in a cottage, but one day you will live in a mansion. Thank God for that.
But the word is not “mansions” in the sense of separate dwellings. It says, “In My Father’s house are many abodes.” In other words, there is only one house. It is not separate mansions. It is one house.
Actually, the abodes there would probably be better translated as suites or apartments. Young people may not understand this, but when I was born, I was born into a big family. We had four generations living under one roof in Hong Kong. Every single family had a suite, but it was one house.
That is the feeling of the Bible. You are not going to live separately. We are going to live together, and it is God’s house.
Now, what is God’s house? You remember Isaiah 66:
Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool:
what manner of house will ye build unto Me?
and what place shall be My rest?
What is heaven? Heaven is God’s throne. To put it in a modern way, heaven is God’s office. God created the heavens and the earth. He has His office, but God wants to dwell with man. That is His house.
In the Old Testament, we have the tabernacle and the temple. During the time of our Lord Jesus, you remember when He first started His ministry, He went into the temple and cleansed the temple.
In John 2, He said, “This is My Father’s house,” and you make it a house of merchandise.
But we all know that the temple of old is just a type. When you come to the antitype, when you come to the New Testament, you find in 1 Timothy 3:15 that God’s house is the assembly of the living God.
In other words, you find that “My Father’s house” here refers to the church. In the church, you find many abodes, and every one of us has a place in it.
The Lord said, “If it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself. Where I am, ye shall be also.”
Brothers and sisters, what is My Father’s house? It is the church of God.
When our Lord Jesus came into this world the first time, He did not tell us why He came until almost the end of His ministry. Then He said, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
At His first coming, He was preparing for God’s house. He was preparing the materials for God’s house. He saved people and called people to be His disciples. Simon Peter was one of them. He was one of the materials of God’s house.
The Lord said, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” But when did our Lord Jesus begin to build His house?
Strictly speaking, He began to build His house after His ascension. After He was ascended, on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came, and one hundred twenty believers were baptized into one body and drank of the same Spirit. That is the beginning of the house of God.
The question here is this: Has our Lord Jesus accomplished His mission when He came for the first time?
We heard Him cry on Calvary’s cross, “It is finished.” Everything that He was sent to do was accomplished. There was nothing left. Salvation is completed.
So far as God’s work is concerned, it is done. So far as God’s purpose is concerned, it is done. Everything is done. There is nothing lacking. You cannot add anything to the work of our Lord Jesus.
This is objective truth. So far as objective truth is concerned, He has done it all. You cannot take away from it or add anything to it. If you add anything to it, it is heresy.
We have to understand that there is another side: the work that He will be doing in heaven.
Maybe we think that after He had finished all His work, He went to heaven and rested. It is true that He sat at the right hand of God. You do not sit until you have done the work. But was He sitting there doing nothing? No.
We find that He sits there with lots of work to do. After our Lord Jesus ascended on high, He became our High Priest. While He was on earth, He was the Apostle; while He is in heaven, He is the High Priest.
What does the High Priest do? Hebrews tells us how He ever liveth to make intercession for us, and He is able to save us to the uttermost.
Brothers and sisters, we need to know the ministry of our Lord Jesus in heaven. He is not only High Priest of every individual believer; He is High Priest of the whole church. You see that in Revelation 1 through 3.
That is the ministry of our Lord. He sent His Holy Spirit to us. The Holy Spirit comes and dwells in every one of us, and the Holy Spirit dwells in the church.
This is the heavenly ministry of our Lord Jesus. He puts all these objective truths into subjective experience.
What He accomplished on Calvary’s cross, He now brings into every one of us. Without the Holy Spirit working in us, without the prayer of our Lord Jesus interceding for us, objective truth and subjective experience will never become one.
He has accomplished all, but we may not have experienced anything. It is His high-priestly ministry. When He prays, the Holy Spirit works.
The Holy Spirit is bringing all that our Lord Jesus has done to each and every one of us, and it becomes our personal experience.
This is the building of the church. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Lord said, “I will build My church.” Men cannot build a church.
How is He building His church? He is building His church through the Holy Spirit.
You can see how important spiritual exercise is. If there is no spiritual exercise, the Holy Spirit is bound. There is no problem with the Holy Spirit. He is here in every one of us.
The Bible tells us very clearly that He is here to glorify Christ. The divine anointing within us will teach us in all things—small things and great things—and things concerning the Lord Jesus, nothing but the Lord Jesus.
He came not to glorify Himself. He came to glorify Christ. He wants to see that Christ is no longer merely the Christ on the cross, but Christ is the Christ within us.
Not only has He accomplished all on the cross, but everything that He has accomplished becomes real, living, and operative in our lives.
That is what He means by, “I go to prepare a place for you.” The Lord is preparing His people. The Lord is building His church. The Lord is completing His house.
God and man can dwell together in unity. His eternal purpose concerning us will be fulfilled.
He has called us. He has justified us. He has sanctified us, and He will glorify us. By glorification, I simply mean one thing: that we will be transformed and conformed to His own image.
That we may truly be built into the church. It is Christ in you and in me that builds us all together. We all have a part in it.
When all these parts are ready and put together, you have the Father’s house. The Lord Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you.”
Brothers and sisters, how much the Lord loves us. He goes to prepare a place for you. He wants to see that you are really being transformed and conformed to His image, that the life He has given to you will really be living and operative.
You will be transformed from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, do you see what the Lord is doing today? He said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” and then, “I will come back and receive you unto Myself.”
So, who is waiting for whom? Are we waiting for the Lord? Or is the Lord waiting for us?
Why is it that, even after twenty centuries, He is still not here? Did He not promise even to the apostles, “I come quickly”?
Is it not true that all those who loved the Lord throughout the centuries were waiting for the coming of the Lord in their time? Were they all mistaken? No. The Lord could have come in the first century. The problem is not with Him.
When He said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” the Holy Spirit working in us is faithful. He will never fail. But where is the problem? The problem is with us.
So far as the objective truth is concerned, we cannot do anything. We should not do anything. We are not expected to do anything. If you do something, you spoil it. It is all done. Just believe. Just accept it.
But, brothers and sisters, when He is building and preparing in each and every one of us, there is no problem on His part.
If you read 2 Peter 1:3 and following, you find how He has called us by His glory and virtue, how He has prepared everything for life and godliness, and how He has given all these precious promises that we may be partakers of His divine nature.
Everything on His side is done, and He never fails. But the failure is when the Holy Spirit is working in us.
The Holy Spirit works in our spirit. He does not work just in our mind. He does not work with our physical body. He dwells in our new spirit, where the life of Christ is.
He is a diligent worker. He will work according to the heart of God. He will never leave you nor forsake you.
We may grieve Him. We may quench Him. We may disobey Him. We may resist Him. We may neglect Him.
Now, is not that wonderful? Dear brothers and sisters, this is the love of God. How much we have offended Him, how much we have resisted Him, how much we have rebelled against Him—yet He will never leave us.
Yes, He is grieved, and yet He will not give up. This is the love of God. If it were not because of this, we would all be long gone.
Thank God for that. Here is our responsibility.
The problem with God’s people today is the reverse of the problem before the Reformation. Before the Reformation, everybody thought they had to save themselves. After the Reformation, we say, “Well, you do nothing but believe.”
Before the Reformation, it was all works. After the Reformation, it is all grace.
True, we cannot do anything. But there is one thing we must do: we must cooperate with the Holy Spirit. He does it, but you let Him do it.
You find in Philippians 2:
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.
It is God who wills in you and works in you. But while He wills and works in you, you work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
Listen to what the apostle Paul says in Philippians 3. He said, “I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.” Then he says, “I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.”
God has laid hold of you. He has a thought concerning you. He has a purpose for you. There is a place He is preparing for you. Are you going to lay hold of that for which you have been laid hold of?
Dear brothers and sisters, we need to look at the second coming of the Lord from the practical viewpoint. The Lord knows when everything is ready. He knows the timing, but it depends on how much we will be obedient and faithful.
Again, let us remind ourselves: there is no problem with the Lord. When He says, “I go to prepare,” He prepares. There is no problem with the Holy Spirit in us. He will prepare according to what Christ wills.
The only problem is with us. When the Holy Spirit touches our conscience, do we respond?
The apostle Paul said, “I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offence toward God and men.” I believe the Holy Spirit is touching our conscience.
But oftentimes we neglect it. Oftentimes we use our reasoning to overcome it. We do not maintain a pure conscience.
How often the Holy Spirit touches our intuition and directly reveals God’s mind to us, but we do not walk according to the light that He has given to us.
As long as you walk according to the light that He has given to you:
If we walk in the light, as He is in the light,
we have fellowship one with another,
and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Yet we do not maintain a living communion and fellowship with God. Every moment, every time, we may be in union with Him.
He has already removed the veil between the holiest place and the holy place. We may live within the veil. We may live daily in His presence. But oftentimes we wander away.
The Holy Spirit is faithful, but we are not. That is the reason for the delay of the coming of the Lord. He is waiting for us, not we for Him.
Dear brothers and sisters, there is a practical way of looking for the return of the Lord. The preparation for the coming of the Lord is all very practical.
Just like the ten virgins, you find that the wise virgins have extra oil in their vessels. We all have lamps. We all have oil in the lamp. But oftentimes we do not have extra oil.
We are not willing to pay the cost to buy it. So far as serving the Lord is concerned, the same thing applies.
The Lord has committed to every one of us some talent. But some are faithful and prudent, and some are lazy and do not understand God.
So, dear brothers and sisters, the conclusion is clear: we need to be people who are waiting, prepared, and even hastening the coming of the Lord.
When you turn to Luke 21, you find that it is said here:
Take heed to yourselves, lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly as a snare.
The coming of the Lord is as a snare to the world. Verse 35 says, “For so shall it come upon all them that dwell on the face of all the earth.”
Those who dwell upon the face of the whole earth refer to the people of the world. To them, the coming of the Lord is a snare because He will come unawares.
But to us, for we are children of light, it should not be so. But if we really live as the people of the world, then we will have to share the same fate as the people of the world.
So it tells us:
Watch ye therefore, and pray always,
that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass,
and to stand before the Son of Man.
Dear brothers and sisters, there is only one exhortation for each and every one of us: let us prepare for His coming in this practical way.
The practical way is that we exercise our spirit. Allow the Holy Spirit to complete the work He has set Himself to do in us.
Then, when the Lord returns, we can face Him without shame.
When you think of the coming of the Lord, I think the only attitude we can take is this: ever ready, never ready.
If we think we are ready, we may be foolish. But if we are not ready, we certainly lose. So our attitude should be ever ready, never ready.
That is the attitude of the apostle Paul. Thank God, before he was martyred, he could say:
I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the course,
I have kept the faith:
henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day;
and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved His appearing.
May the Lord use these words to encourage us. Let us press on. Let us follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes. Let us be willing to pay the cost, that the purpose of God may be fulfilled in us.
Dear Lord, how often we feel that You have delayed. We are the ones who hinder the work You are doing in our lives. We pray that Your work of preparation may be completed in us, that the house may be built, and that You may come back and receive us unto Yourself.