We are talking about our eternal inheritance. We had to be concerned about a watch, so I think maybe we can turn them off too, huh? Now, I’ll put it back on, just so nobody leaves. Okay.
There is one other matter that I want to mention to you. A brother reminded me that last year, when we were fellowshipping about spiritual travail, I felt so overwhelmed with this responsibility that I said it was like taking a teaspoon and taking the water from the bay to the ocean. So he brought me a teaspoon.
But this time, I feel like the responsibility is taking the ocean to the bay. This matter of spiritual inheritance is such an important thing, a thing that involves everything that our God is doing. So it is a real blessing from the Lord that He has put this on the hearts of some brothers and sisters, and He has indicated that this is what He wants us to fellowship about during this time we have had together.
As you probably realized, we were not able to finish what we wanted to share yesterday afternoon. So, I know it is a little dangerous, but I want to try to bring a conclusion to what was in our heart yesterday. Then I want to focus on this matter that our brother Stephen began fellowshipping about this morning: inheriting our inheritance, possessing our possession.
So let us pray together, brothers and sisters.
Father, we find it almost impossible to find the words we need to express to You what You have already done and said to us during these hours we have been together. We do thank You from the bottom of our hearts for bringing this matter before us and giving us this opportunity to fellowship in Your presence, in Your Word, and with one another.
Now we are trusting tonight that, as we continue to do this, the Holy Spirit will have absolute freedom to be here among us and take the truth of Your Word. Through it being spoken, even through a clay vessel, Lord, may it become living by Your Holy Spirit. May it find lodging in our hearts.
Because it is the truth, may we be liberated from some of the things that are preventing us from entering into this marvelous inheritance that we have in Your Son. So we all put ourselves under the sovereign ruling of the Holy Spirit.
We recognize You, blessed Holy Spirit, as being here among us. You have been sent here to accomplish a work, and we want to say amen to all that You want to do. So we ask You to help us in every way—with the speaking and with our understanding.
Lord, blessed Holy Spirit, give us revelation, not just information. Give us a real, deep spiritual understanding of what it means for us to have an inheritance and how we can enter into it. What are our responsibilities by Your grace?
So, Lord, we are before You. We thank You again from the depths of our hearts for what You have already done. Now, Lord, continue by Your grace, and we ask it in Your Son’s name. Amen.
When we focus our hearts on this matter of spiritual inheritance, I find for myself that this portion of God’s Word called the Letter to the Hebrews is especially helpful.
Now, there are those who say that maybe this letter was not written to Jewish people. I know that is the title, but in the original there is no title to this portion of God’s Word. Those who have read it, studied it, and meditated on it felt like it was written to some Jewish people, and therefore, to the Hebrews.
But, brothers and sisters, I do not think that this letter is restricted to Jewish people. There is no question, when we read this letter, that there were people who had a deep, genuine, wonderful experience of God.
The writer describes it in different ways. But the unfortunate thing was that something happened somewhere in the journey they were on. Something catastrophic began to happen. They were walking well. They were going well, entering more and more into their inheritance.
But something happened where they were turned away, and they were going back to where they started from.
Now, this letter, this portion of God’s Word, in my reading of the Scriptures, has more to say about this matter of inheritance than maybe we have even considered before. There are two aspects of God’s work that the writer spends much time talking about.
One is the new covenant. Brothers and sisters, as we read from our brother Nee’s book yesterday, our inheritance is what is in the details of this new covenant.
In this new covenant, God has abundantly, totally, perfectly supplied everything. Now, you know the Word of God does not exaggerate.
But in this new covenant, our inheritance is so rich and so complete that, from the moment we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, everything we need has been abundantly supplied for every day of our life and all the way out into eternity.
Now, I know for some of you that sounds like an exaggeration. But I do not believe for one second that I am exaggerating.
What is contained in this new covenant—what is our portion as our inheritance—is eternal and complete. The reason is that our inheritance is perfectly linked with the Person of God’s Son.
When you read this portion of God’s Word, what you discover is that the solution—the thing that this writer wanted to communicate to his readers—was the superiority of the Son of God and the work that He completed.
Now, brothers and sisters, here is where I think maybe we have made some serious mistakes, not knowingly, but perhaps being unaware of it. We have allowed our appreciation—how we value the Son of God—to somehow be lowered. Our appreciation of Him is not what it ought to be.
So maybe this generation could be very much helped by reading, meditating, and seeking to put into practice what this writer has to say. I think it is a message for now, with all the things that are going on in this world.
Now, I know I am a little older than most of you. I am not as old as some, but I am a little older than most of you. In my little bit of memory, I have never seen the world in such a condition as it is in tonight.
To me, this is a sign that it is the end, because the enemy is intensifying his efforts to try to frustrate this work that God is doing.
Now, brothers and sisters, you know who are the targets—the main targets—of the enemy’s work: God’s redeemed people, God’s new-covenant people, those who have inherited a rich inheritance. He wants to prevent us from entering in, experiencing, and making our own all that is ours in our Lord Jesus Christ.
So I trust that somehow the Holy Spirit will underline for us what we said a moment ago. Dear brother and sister in Christ—and I say it to myself as I say it to you—everything you need to be a victor, to be an overcomer, every day of your life, in every circumstance, and all the way out into eternity, has already been abundantly supplied.
God does not have to do anything else. All of this is contained in His Son.
In this letter, this portion of God’s Word, we are told in Hebrews 1 that our Lord Jesus has been made heir of all things. Now, who made this decision? God made the decision that our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, has been made the heir of how many things? All things.
So it all belongs to Him. But hallelujah, my brothers and sisters, we are heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ. So it all belongs to Him, but guess what? It all belongs to us too, because we are joint heirs.
Whatever He has inherited belongs to us. So how can you become any wealthier than you already are? It is already yours. God does not have to add anything. It is complete.
When our Lord Jesus said, “It is finished,” nothing else needed to be done—not just in terms of our being forgiven, but in terms of anything and everything that you and I will ever need.
Our Lord Jesus, after He had been faithful and finished this work, was exalted to the right hand of the Father. He sat down at the right hand of Majesty on high, and in cooperation with His Father, He sent the Holy Spirit to this planet.
For two thousand years, our Lord Jesus has been faithfully fulfilling His responsibility, and the Holy Spirit is His representative here, fulfilling in the lives of God’s people and bearing testimony in the whole world about our Lord Jesus.
So you and I need to know—we need to be so clear that something grabs hold of our hearts—that no matter what your circumstance, it does not make any difference where we live.
The most difficult place may even be New York City. Now, I would find it extremely difficult to live in Manhattan. I praise God for the brothers and sisters who take the grace and live there every day. I know it is a challenge.
But I want to say to you, in my understanding of the Word of God, if it is God’s will for you to be there, then He has provided everything you need to be a victor, to be an overcomer, living in Manhattan with all the things that are going on.
You may live out on a little farm where there are no neighbors for ten miles. Brothers and sisters, you need to be an overcomer there.
We need to know that in this inheritance, this eternal inheritance that has been provided for us through the work of the Son of God, there is an adequate, appropriate, sufficient provision for any and every situation. Please do not think this is exaggeration. This is reality.
He is our all in all. Now, is that just words—nice-sounding spiritual words—or is it reality? Is He all you need in all situations? Is He? Is He?
Well, He is whether you want to say it or not. Maybe you are afraid to say it because you know if you do, you are going to have to start putting it into practice when you go back.
I want us to spend some time here in the beginning focusing on some of what the writer of this portion of God’s Word says about our blessed Lord Jesus, the Son of God.
He says, first of all, that He is superior. This is his word, his way of communicating to us how we need to focus our hearts in one place: looking unto Jesus. We will get there a little bit later.
In the beginning, this writer shows us the superiority of our Lord Jesus over the prophets, over the angels, over Moses, and over Joshua, who led the people of God into the promised land.
He is superior because, with Joshua, there was still another rest awaiting the people of God. But our Joshua has led us into that rest.
He is also superior to Aaron. Therefore, the writer calls Him our great high priest—not just a priest, not just a high priest, but a great high priest. When God says something is great, you had better believe it.
He is a great high priest. He is in a category all by Himself. There is no one like Him.
I want us to take a little time to focus our hearts on some wonderful things this writer says about this great high priest. In Hebrews 2:17, the writer tells us, first of all, that He is a merciful and faithful high priest.
Now, to whom is He merciful? To us. To whom is He faithful? To His Father. He is faithful to us too, but He is faithful to His Father, and He is merciful to us.
This has such meaning for us, brothers and sisters, because we know by experience that regardless of how much understanding we have, how much clarity we have about what is available to us, we do not always avail ourselves of the riches that are ours in our Jesus.
We feel like we can pull it off on our own, and therefore we do not need Him. Time after time after time, we fall on our faces as utter failures. But when we come back to Him, there is no condemnation, no accusation—just mercy.
Now, that does not mean that He does not want us to learn how to overcome. But He is very, very merciful.
In Hebrews 4:15, the writer describes Him as being sympathetic. He sympathizes with what? With our weaknesses.
Now, let us be careful. He does not sympathize with our sin. He does not sympathize with anything but our weaknesses.
One of the major problems that we have as the Lord’s children is that some of us are entirely too strong. Therefore, we do not need Him. Since we are strong enough in ourselves, we do not feel the need to have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses.
But, you know, even in Romans 8, our Lord Jesus not only sympathizes with our weaknesses, but so does the Holy Spirit. He sympathizes with our weaknesses.
Now, if you are a strong person, what has to happen? He has to deal with your strength. This is something that the Holy Spirit is an expert at. He knows your strong places, and He will carefully design situations to reduce you and me to weakness.
Is this not Paul’s experience in 2 Corinthians 12? He had these great revelations, lifted up into the third heaven. Because of the greatness of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to him, a messenger from Satan.
A messenger from Satan? You mean Satan even does some of God’s work sometimes? He does not know he is doing it because he is not sovereign, but God is sovereign. A messenger from Satan to buffet me.
What did Paul learn from this experience? That when I am weak, then I am strong.
Now, brothers and sisters, our blessed Lord, as our great high priest, is not impressed with our strengths. But He is deeply impressed and responds wonderfully when we are in a place of weakness and we need Him.
As I was considering this, I thought of Matthew 5, the so-called Sermon on the Mount:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Isn’t it interesting that this is where our Lord begins in this so-called sermon? This is where He begins: blessed are those who are reduced to a nobody; blessed are those who cannot do it on their own.
One translation I have is, “Blessed are the poor in pride.” So our blessed Lord Jesus, our great high priest, has no problem with you and me being weak. This qualifies us to allow Him to fulfill His ministry in our lives.
He is also a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Now, we do not have time tonight to consider all that this means. But it means, first of all, that our Lord Jesus, like Melchizedek, is a king.
Melchizedek was king of Salem, king of righteousness. Our Lord Jesus has been made King of kings and Lord of lords. This is our high priest.
He is seated there in the highest position in the whole universe, and for two thousand years He has been sovereignly reigning over all the affairs on this planet.
Nothing happens on this planet that is not under His sovereign rule. Now, He sovereignly permits things to happen. That does not mean that because He is sovereign over it, everything that happens here is according to His will.
But just because there are rebels living on this planet, that does not in any way affect His being the sovereign Lord. A sovereign decision was made by God Himself that His Son would have this position, and nothing can ever change it. He is there, ruling and reigning sovereignly.
The question is whether you and I are acknowledging this and whether it is a reality in our lives. In other portions of the Word of God, it simply means that we need to believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that Jesus Christ is Lord—King, sovereign.
When we do, and we seek to work that out in practical ways, then His kingdom, His rulership, His kingship, is a reality in our lives. This should be wonderfully demonstrated in the assemblies where you and I meet.
Unfortunately, it does not seem to be an issue that we are too concerned about. Somewhere along the line, we have learned to do things very well, according to us, without even consulting Him.
The consequences are very clear, my brothers and sisters. We are not connected in a living way to Him as the Head. Because of it, the churches have become something other than what He has in His heart and mind.
But, brothers and sisters, He is the King. He is the Lord. He is the Head. It is our responsibility to find a way to let that be real personally and corporately. When we do, we will know something more of our inheritance.
Oh, my dear brothers and sisters, I wish we had the time—which we do not have—to take two hours. For the first hour, you would sit and consider what you know of the Word of God, trying to find the best words that describe your Lord Jesus.
For instance, is He the Lamb of God or the Good Shepherd? Is He the Alpha or the Omega? We could go on and on and on—many, many titles. We can even tell from our own experience, even though we may not find the word in the Bible.
I would encourage us to take all the words we are able to discover, and then take some more time to consider the ones that are most important to you. Which ones register the deepest in your heart? Who is He to you?
Is He your Good Shepherd? Well, hallelujah. Is He your King? Well, hallelujah. We can go on and on and on.
But here is what I want to say to us tonight. Dear brothers and sisters, if we spent these two hours thinking about this, meditating on it, working on it, and came up with a wonderful description of who our Lord Jesus is, we would still fall so short. He is so wonderful, beyond human words.
This is why you and I need to become more and more clear about what is available to us because of who He is. He is the Son of God.
He has more value than all the prophets, the angels, Moses, Joshua, Aaron, or anybody else. My own little bit of observation is this: the reason we get into trouble individually and corporately is because we allow someone or something to replace His place in our lives.
This is why this letter is so important. He is superior. He is in a category all by Himself. We cannot put anybody else even close to Him.
When we do, we begin to devalue Him. We devalue the covenant that we have with our God through Him, and therefore our inheritance does not mean as much to us as it should. It is a serious matter.
Many times, it has to do with the way we think about Him. May God help us. If you have any little thoughts, little things in which you have devalued Him in your thinking, I plead with you: repent of that. Change the way you think.
Take the Word of God and ask the Holy Spirit to take the truth of God’s Word and get it into your thinking, so that you think the way the Word of God presents our Lord Jesus. He is superior.
Anything—I do not care what it is, no matter how good it is—if it is a substitute for Him, then it is idolatry. It is devaluing Him as a Person.
In reading this letter to the Hebrews, what the writer is trying to do is hold the Lord Jesus before them so that their value of Him would increase and increase and increase. You see, my brothers and sisters, our inheritance is in Him.
It is all the treasures, all the spiritual treasures. You remember what Paul says in Ephesians 1:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing
in the heavenly places in Christ.
Now again, God does not exaggerate. How many blessings? Every one of them. Where? In Christ. All the blessings of heaven are located in Him. He put us in Him and put Him in us, and we now become joint heirs. All this in Him belongs to us.
There is no way God can add anything else to us. That is what is available to us. This is why there needs to be this deep hungering: “Lord, I want everything that belongs to me.”
When the Father can find some children like that, who are willing to meet the conditions necessary, all of heaven rejoices. You know heaven rejoices; the angels rejoice when one sinner repents. Well, brothers and sisters, what do you think happens in heaven when some of God’s children, His sons, enter into the fullness of their inheritance?
Oh, hallelujah. I think we will hear heaven singing, the angels singing, if more and more of us would be determined by the grace of God to take everything that has been made available to us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I want to say this again to my dear young brothers and sisters: you do not have to have gray hair to begin to enter into this inheritance. It is yours the moment you believe.
You need to find a way to be encouraged and to encourage one another to enter in a fuller way. Brothers and sisters, I know we can say these things too strongly, and I do not want to do that. But I want to say it to us: there are no excuses. Sorry.
There may be reasons, but once the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to see something, He immediately, along with the seeing, imparts to you the grace you need to go in there and make it yours.
As our brother Stephen says, you need to go in and put the sole of your foot down on it: “It is mine.” Otherwise, it just remains there. But it is mine. I want it.
In a sense, we need to become radical and say, “Lord, I want it all.” Like our brother told us last night about Caleb: he was eighty-five years old, and he still wanted more.
Our Lord Jesus is the King. He is a priest of the Most High God. His priesthood, according to Hebrews 7:3, is a perpetual one.
You know that the Levitical priesthood changed from time to time because the priests were only human beings, and they died. When Aaron died, somebody else had to become the high priest.
But hallelujah, brothers and sisters, our high priest is permanent. Why? Because He always lives to make intercession. Not only is He permanent, but perpetual. It is ongoing. No change.
Finally, Hebrews 7:28 says He is perfect. He is a perfect high priest. As the Son of God, He is perfect. When God was searching for someone to be the great high priest, well, He found one in His own Son.
So, my dear brothers and sisters, I want to encourage us again: stop thinking that Jesus is on a vacation. Some of you do not even think about it. What has He been doing for two thousand years?
Many of us are totally unaware. We do not even think about it. But He is there at the Father’s right hand. I mean, He is as close to the Father as you can get. He is right there.
Guess where His eye is. His eye is on you, and He is interceding for you. What do you think He is asking the Father?
“Father, help them come into all of the inheritance. Help them come into experience all that I provided for them when I gave My life. Under this new covenant that I made with My blood, help them to come in and enter in and make it theirs for themselves.”
In Hebrews 7:22, the writer tells us that He is also the guarantor of the new covenant. Oh, brothers and sisters, I wish there were time for us to focus on this for a while. This is so glorious.
For me, in my mind, it is almost impossible to believe this. If it were not the Word of God, I would not believe it. Sorry, but I would not.
Do you know what it means for our Lord Jesus to be our guarantor? Maybe your translation says “guarantee.”
I have learned a few Portuguese words. The ones I have learned are words that have somehow caught my heart. The Portuguese word for guarantor or surety is fiador.
Now, a fiador is someone—let us suppose you are in an emergency situation and need to borrow five thousand dollars. But you have no collateral; you have nothing. You need to go to the bank, but they are not going to give you five thousand dollars because you do not have anything to back it up.
But you have a friend, and he has the necessary resources. So you get him to go with you and co-sign on the loan. Now, what happens if you do not pay? What happens if you do not pay? He pays.
Hallelujah, brothers and sisters. That is what it means for Jesus to be the guarantee of this new covenant. If you do not keep it, guess what? He keeps it.
I know you do not believe it. I know you do not believe it. I did not either. But this is what the Word of God says:
It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.
We feel that when it comes to these things, we are the ones who have to do it by our own human energy, strength, and willpower. But this is not God’s way. This is not the new covenant.
The new covenant is that God has given us a new heart, a new spirit, and put His Spirit in us. Whose Spirit is it that comes to live in us? It is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God.
God Himself is coming to live inside us to be our fiador. When we cannot pay it, He does. When we do not fulfill the conditions of the new covenant, He is there to do it for us.
You still do not believe it. I do not care whether you believe it or not, but it is true. I pray God, by His mercy, will open our eyes to see that Christ is our all in all.
He is not only the One who makes this covenant. He is not only the Mediator of this covenant. He is the One who keeps His covenant inside of us.
What does it mean when Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”? When Christ, who is my life—what does this mean? It means that He is inside us to be to us and for us everything that we need.
This is our inheritance. Our Lord Jesus is there on the throne, and by the Spirit of God He is being our guarantor. He is our surety that the covenant will be kept.
Hallelujah, brothers. Maybe you do not have a hallelujah in your heart, but I have many of them in mine when I realize that this is what God has provided. He is our guarantor and Mediator.
Finally, in terms of the high priest, He is the author and finisher of faith. We are going to fellowship about this matter of faith in a few moments, but our Lord Jesus is the beginner and the finisher of faith.
In Hebrews 11, there is a long list of those who lived “by faith, by faith, by faith” under the old covenant. But under the new covenant, our Lord Jesus is the author and finisher.
As our dear brother mentioned to us this morning:
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Not faith in, but faith of. It belongs to Him. Brothers and sisters, He is living in us. It is His faith, not ours. It is His faith.
Even in Ephesians 2:8–9:
For by grace have ye been saved through faith;
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not of works, that no man should glory.
What does “that” refer to? It is a relative pronoun. What does it relate to? The grace? We know grace is free, but what about the faith? Where does it come from? It comes from God. He gives us a measure of faith.
Our Lord Jesus is the author, the beginner, and the finisher—the author and consummator—not our faith, but His faith. He has this long list of people, but our Lord Jesus is superior to all of them.
He says:
Looking unto Jesus,
the author and perfecter of our faith.
Two more ways in which our Lord Jesus is superior: He is superior because He has established a superior covenant, a better covenant. You can find it in Hebrews 8:6.
Brothers and sisters, the benefits and promises of this new covenant are something you and I need to find a time and a place to consider. Shut the door and get alone by yourself. Begin to let the Holy Spirit open your eyes to see everything that is yours.
Let us suppose tonight, after the meeting, someone comes to you and says, “I have been sent here by a lawyer. You have a rich relative who died last week, and he left you three million dollars.”
Do you think you would sleep tonight until you found out what the details were? Huh? Do you think you would go to sleep? Probably not. Probably you would leave this conference and go find that lawyer.
You would find out, “What is mine? What did I inherit?”
My dear brothers and sisters, please: what you have inherited by being a member of the new covenant, a new-covenant people, is far beyond all comparison. There is not even any way to compare it with anything earthly you could ever have.
We are multi-trillionaires. Yes. As co-heirs with Christ, He owns it all. How much is this world worth? All of it is His, and we are co-heirs with Him. We have inherited with Him all of these things.
When I stand here and look out upon you, I am looking at the wealthiest people in the universe. You are looking at one of the wealthiest people in the universe.
Now, do you think this is no joke? We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. There are conditions, but anyhow, this is the emphasis right now. This new covenant has superior promises.
Now I want us to focus for the rest of our time on this question: How do we enter into, how do we experience, this wonderful inheritance that is ours in Christ?
Let us get something clear again: there is no lack. There is no emergency situation with God. There is an abundant supply for you and every one of God’s children.
Do not think, “Well, the reason I do not ask the Lord for something is because there are others who need it more than I do.”
Then there are others whose attitude is like an illustration our brother Lance gave us a number of years ago. They had purchased a place where they were going to meet. A lot of work had to be done because it had been bombed out. This was back in the 1950s.
They had a plot of land, a big house, and a little house separate from the big house. Apparently, when they bought the property, they never looked at the little house.
One day, while they were working on the big house, one of the young men ran in and began to say, “Lance, Lance, Lance! There is a woman living in that little house outside.”
There was no toilet, nothing. She had taken old clothes and put them in that little building, and this was where she lived. Lance said, “I do not believe it.” Well, you know Lance, so he went running out there.
Her name was Mrs. Williamson. He said, “Mrs. Williamson, what are you doing living in this little place?”
She said, “Well, I have gone down to the so-called social security office, a place where they supply the money you need when you are in a situation like this, but they will not give me my money.”
Lance did not believe it, so he went down to the office. The way I remember it, when he mentioned Mrs. Williamson’s name, everybody in the office turned and looked, because she had been there many times. He asked to speak to the manager.
The manager said, “Mr. Lambert, we are not able to give Mrs. Williamson any money at all. The fact is, she has enough money to have a palace and servants for the rest of her life. We cannot give her any money. The laws will not permit us to do so.”
So he went back and had a conversation with Mrs. Williamson and pointed out to her what they had said. Her response was, “I do not think my father would want me to use that inheritance.”
Here she was, living in poverty, and she had enough money to live in a palace. Brothers and sisters, please: this brings sadness to the heart of our Father.
When we live in this kind of situation, all the riches are ours, and His Son has purchased them for us. They are in Him.
Therefore, we need to discover what we need to do to inherit our inheritance.
As our brother read from Joshua 1 this morning, it is very clear that this already belonged to the children of Israel because God had made a covenant with Abraham.
You remember our brothers shared with us the making of the covenant. They cut an animal in two, some animals in two, and laid them side by side. Then the two parties would walk through.
But what happened with Abraham? God put Abraham to sleep because He knew Abraham could not keep his end of the bargain. So He put him to sleep, and God walked through on His own.
What was He saying? “I will be responsible for Abraham’s part too. I will surely bless thee, and I will surely multiply thee.” Did He? Without Abraham, because He made a covenant. But He was also making covenant with Himself.
So, brothers and sisters, for us to go in there and take what is already ours, we have to do it by faith. We have to go in and put the sole of our foot down on what is already ours before it becomes ours experientially.
Now, is this clear? In other words, it has already been abundantly supplied. Nothing more needs to be added.
Every dear brother and sister, everything we need to live victoriously, to live as overcomers—this song we sang, “An overcomer, an overcomer”—there is all we need to live one hundred percent of the time as overcomers.
Now, do we do it? No. But that does not mean somehow there has been a shortage in what God has supplied. The problem is not on that end. The problem is on our end, not knowing how to go in and possess.
We are not very good receivers at times because we are so proud to think that we can do it on our own and we do not need Him. May the Lord help us.
Now, I want us to read some verses in Hebrews again. Let us begin in Hebrews 4. There are many verses that would be good for us to read, but we do not have the time.
Hebrews 4:1:
Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left
of entering into His rest,
any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
Now I want to read it again. Follow along carefully:
Let us fear therefore,
while a promise remaineth of entering into His rest,
lest any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us,
even as also they:
but the word of hearing did not profit them,
because it was not united by faith with them that heard.
For we who have believed do enter into that rest.
Now, brothers and sisters, what I hear this writer saying is that there is only one thing that prevents us from going in and inheriting our inheritance. What is it? Unbelief. A lack of faith. Unbelief.
It is already ours, the same way it was with the children of Israel. This was a covenant that God had made four hundred years earlier—indeed, even before that—and it was already there.
You remember when they came down to Kadesh-barnea and it was time to go over. The first act of unbelief was sending in the spies. Why did they need to send in spies? If God said, “It is already yours,” why did they have to send in spies?
Why did they not just say, “Okay, part the waters. Let’s go”? No, they did not.
You know the story. Because of their unbelief, because of their disobedience, they wandered in the wilderness for forty years until that whole generation died out. Then God had another group of people to go in.
Now, this is written for our admonition. This is written for our instruction. This is to be a learning lesson for us, because the same thing can happen to us that happened to them. That is why the writer says, “Let us fear.”
We do not like that word. But I will tell you what, brothers and sisters: we need to hear what the Word of God has to say to us.
What if you have all of this inheritance before you, but you stay on the other side of the Jordan? You do not obey. You do not learn how to obey. You do not learn how to put your faith into practice.
Then it is all there. It remains yours. Our God is full of mercy, but He is also righteous. We are going to be judged.
Now, what application does this have for us right now? I am going to share with you my understanding, and I am prepared to be adjusted and corrected.
When I read Revelation 20:4–6, what I discover is that there is coming a time in God’s economy when a certain group of people are going to be raised in the first resurrection.
Now, there is a second resurrection. But it is clear to me from those verses that not everybody is going to be part of the first resurrection. It is those who have not followed the beast and who do not have the mark of the beast.
Basically, they have followed the Lamb wherever He has gone. Their reward is to reign with Christ for a thousand years, to sit on the throne with Him and reign with Him.
Now, this is part of our inheritance. I do not remember which song it was in—the one, I think, where it talks about sharing His throne. “A victor, a victor,” yes? To share His throne with Him, to sit on the throne with Him.
Are these just words we sing, or is this something that is a hope in our hearts? Something we are looking forward to, trying to be faithful now so that the Lord can say to us, “Well done”?
But if we have not been doing well, He cannot say, “Well done.” Now, this has nothing to do with our eternity, okay? This has to do with when our Lord Jesus returns to this planet, sets up His kingdom here, and needs some people who will be with Him on the throne governing this planet.
He is seeking to prepare those for this responsibility. Everything that is needed has been richly and abundantly supplied. But we need to learn how to put our faith into practice so that we are appropriating that which is necessary for us to sit with Him on that throne.
Do not think, brothers and sisters—get rid of this foolish idea—that He is somehow going to wave a magic wand and you are going to be prepared. No.
Every day, being faithful, obeying, learning to obey, day by day by day.
I hope you will forgive me for using a personal illustration. It has to do with my son Benjamin. He was five years old about three months ago.
One of the difficulties my son Benjamin has is maybe something all of us have a little problem with: obedience. Yeah?
He has much energy. He has his own ideas of how he wants to do things. It takes five times of saying, “Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin.”
He is very clever in some ways. One day we were going to go out to a restaurant, and I sat down and talked with him in advance. I said, “Benjamin, we are going out, and I would like for us to enjoy being together with our friends at the restaurant.”
“But I want you to know that if you do not obey, Papa is going to find a way to bring discipline to you.” That meant going to the bathroom in the restaurant.
So you know what happened. He and I had to head to the bathroom. He went in ahead of me, sat down on the toilet, looked up at me, and said, “Dad, can we talk?”
About three months ago, he and I were sitting at the breakfast table having a conversation about different things. Somehow, the conversation turned to the Lord.
I said, “Benjamin, you know, when I read the Bible, it says that God has all of these wonderful blessings He wants you and me to enjoy every day of our life.”
I said, “Benjamin, you know there is only one thing the Lord requires that we do in order for those blessings to be ours.” He said, “Yes, Dad, I know, I know.” I was shocked.
I said, “What, Ben?” He said, “Obey.” I could not believe it.
So on my MSN logo, I had for many years, “He never fails,” speaking about our Lord Jesus. Now I changed my logo: “Lord Jesus, teach me to obey all day, every day,” just from what Benjamin said to me.
I wrote a song for Benjamin. Please, some of you who have to stand beside me when I am singing—but I want to sing my song for you:
Today is the day Benjamin learns to obey.
Today is the day Benjamin learns to obey.
Today is the day Benjamin learns to obey.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! He is learning to obey.
Dear brothers and sisters, only one lesson. Only one lesson. How do we appropriate the riches of our inheritance? One thing: just obey.
God has done absolutely everything to make it possible. How? Because He sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of us, to reveal to us what we need to do, and to give us the grace that we need to do it.
Now again, this new covenant sounds so marvelous, so unbelievable, that I think some of us do not believe it. But everything—there is absolutely nothing lacking.
Like we mentioned previously, and our brother Stephen mentioned this morning, what does it take in order for the Lord to bring us to this place where we can say, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing”?
But it is necessary, because this is living a life as our Lord Jesus taught it in the Sermon on the Mount: blessed are those who are willing to start at the bottom without anything.
That is what He says are the blessed people. These are the people who inherit their inheritance, who experience it here and now, who know beyond any question of doubt that there is nothing in them that can enable them to come into and experience this inheritance.
The writer of Hebrews calls this letter a word of exhortation. It seems to me there are two aspects to exhortation. As we mentioned the other night, none of us like to be exhorted.
But here, because of the situation, it was necessary. It was a manifestation of the mercy of the Lord. He warned them: “Fear. Be afraid.”
They were doing things that put their inheritance in jeopardy. God did not ignore the situation, but He moved upon this writer.
He wrote this letter to this group of people who were going in the right direction. They were entering into some of their inheritance. But something happened, and they turned back.
The writer had to tell them in Hebrews 10, as well as in Hebrews 6, that they were moving in a very dangerous way. They were trampling underfoot the Son of God.
They were devaluing the blood of the covenant, and they were insulting the Spirit of grace. When we do that kind of thing, brothers and sisters, there is no way we can get our inheritance. We are totally at the mercy.
It is in the Son of God that we have our inheritance. It is because of the covenant God has made in the blood of His Son that this inheritance is available to us. It is the blessed Holy Spirit who enables us to come and enter into it.
So if we insult Him, we are left to ourselves.
The writer mentions some practical things we can do by faith. This is why it is important that we understand our faith needs to be a living faith.
In Hebrews 11, the writer gives us not so much a definition as a description of what faith does:
Now faith is assurance of things hoped for,
a conviction of things not seen.
Can you see your inheritance with these eyes? No. Is there an inheritance? Do you have an inheritance according to the Word of God? Yes, but you cannot see it. So what does faith do?
First of all, it makes real in our experience—it substantiates—that which is hoped for. It is the conviction of things not seen.
When you read this letter to the Hebrews and get to Hebrews 11, it is a marvelous chapter. The writer begins by helping us understand what faith does: it takes that inheritance and brings it into our everyday living experience.
We need to be clear that every day of our life, God has looked in advance to what you are going to experience—the rest of this day, tomorrow, all the rest of your life, and all the way out into eternity. He has abundantly supplied everything you need.
I do not know how many years ago, but one day I was meditating on Ephesians 1. This matter of all the blessings—having blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus—was working in my heart.
I do not have visions, but I saw a vision. I saw in my mind a big room filled with file cabinets. I noticed that my name was on one of them, so I went over and looked to see what was in that file cabinet.
When I opened the drawer, what I understood was this: there was a file for every day. I did not look to the end, but there was a file for every day of my life.
I was made to understand that in that file was the grace I needed for that day. What brought joy to my Father’s heart was if, at the end of the day, the file was empty except enough grace to get up and take the next one the next day.
Oh, brothers and sisters, this is for every one of us. No exceptions. It does not make any difference what kind of a person you are. You are a child of God. You are an heir. Your inheritance is there. It is yours.
But it is by faith that we take it out and make it ours. When the difficulties, the problems, the challenges, and all the things are happening, may the Holy Spirit remind us that there is all we need available to us for us to be an overcomer in that situation.
You remember Romans 8:37? I hope you have memorized this verse:
Nay, in all these things
we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us.
Overwhelmingly conquer—in all things, all situations. That is what the Word of God says.
Now, I have twelve points—twelve things that I have selected that the writer says. We will go through them quickly because I do not want to keep you too long.
Let us go back, first of all, to Hebrews 2:1:
For this reason we must give the more earnest heed
to the things that were heard.
That is the first thing: we need to learn to listen by faith. Your God is faithful to speak to you and communicate to you what He requires of you in any given situation, with the understanding that what you need in order to be obedient has already been supplied.
The Holy Spirit is inside of you, prepared to take what is yours in Christ and make it yours in experience. So you need to learn how to listen.
It seems to me, brothers and sisters, that this new covenant God has made in the blood of His Son is a covenant with the new man, not with the old man. He has given us a new heart, a new spirit, and put His Spirit inside of us.
This new man needs to be able to listen:
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
How many times do we hear the Lord Jesus saying that, both in the Gospels and in the Book of Revelation? “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
We are not responsible if God does not speak. But has He spoken? In these last days, He has spoken to us. Superior to the prophets, He has spoken clearly and completely everything that needs to be said. He has spoken in His Son.
We have it recorded for us, and the blessed Holy Spirit has been sent here to take it and make it real to us. So we need to be good listeners.
We need to do what Solomon did. When the Lord came to Solomon and said, “Solomon, I will give you anything you want,” do you remember what request Solomon made?
Some translations say wisdom. No. He said, “Give me a listening heart, a heart that can hear You.” All wisdom is in God, and the Holy Spirit can take that wisdom and impart it to us in any situation.
We need to learn to ask and to be open when we are faced with situations. Trust that we learn how to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying.
Secondly, Hebrews 3:1:
Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling,
consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus.
Now, consider Him. That does not mean just to hear somebody preach about it. It means that you take this Word of God, get alone by yourself, and let the Holy Spirit help you understand what it means for Jesus to be your Apostle and High Priest.
We cannot go into these things tonight, but I am suggesting that if we want to enter into our inheritance, part of our inheritance is who Jesus is. He is the Apostle. He is our High Priest. By faith, we need to experience the reality of it.
Praise God, in some of the prayers I heard somebody referring to our Lord Jesus as our High Priest. But this is something we normally do not do, brothers and sisters. What it reveals is that this is not clear in our understanding.
I am praying that all of us will grow in our understanding of who He is as our Apostle and High Priest. As Apostle, He was sent here. He finished His work; it is finished.
As High Priest, He has gone back to the Father, sat down at the Father’s right hand, and is taking all that He accomplished and making it available to you and me now by the Holy Spirit. That is our High Priest.
Thirdly, we read this earlier:
Let us fear,
while a promise remaineth of entering into His rest.
Brothers and sisters, there needs to be a holy fear. We could miss much of what God has provided for us because it does not mean enough to us. It does not have the value to us that it should have, and therefore we do not pay the necessary price to enter into it.
Hebrews 4:11:
Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest.
In other words, you do not get into this rest by riding on an airplane. You have to diligently enter into this rest. It means working at it.
Now, where is the big obstacle? Who is the big obstacle? We are. Does your old man die easily for you? Well, if he does, please come and tell me your secret. It does not die easily for me. So we need to be diligent.
Hebrews 4:16:
Let us therefore draw near with boldness
unto the throne of grace,
that we may receive mercy,
and may find grace to help us in time of need.
Now, brothers and sisters, please: there is a place that has been provided for us. It is called the throne of grace. Guess who is sitting on the throne? Our great High Priest.
He is a merciful High Priest, and you will find Him always ready to be merciful. But He is also the One who is full of grace, and He gives us grace upon grace upon grace.
But if we never go into the throne room, if we never draw near, then it means we are trying to do it in our own strength. It is foolishness. It is failure.
We need to humble ourselves and learn how to come. Find a time. Designate a time, preferably the same time every day. Even if something happens and you cannot go in at that time, find another time during the day.
There is nothing more important than for us to find this time to draw near to this throne of grace. Grace upon grace.
Hebrews 6:1:
Let us press on unto perfection.
Now, for some of us, we need to hear this. We have been in the baby stage or childhood stage entirely too long. Now is the time to take the grace, press on, and overcome some of the things you are allowing to interfere with your growing in Christ.
Hebrews 10:23:
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.
Hebrews 12:1:
Let us lay aside every weight,
and the sin which doth so easily beset us.
Now, brothers and sisters, as Americans, you have many encumbrances. I guess it is true in all cultures.
My wife had a question for me when she first came to visit the United States. She said, “Ernie, I see all these people have garages, but their cars are sitting outside. Can you please explain to me?”
I explained to her: many encumbrances. The garage is so full of things they do not need, there is no place for the car. Is it true? Is it true?
We are never satisfied. Some new thing comes, and we have got to have it right now. It can become an encumbrance.
I want to be very careful, but I think one of the encumbrances that has been foisted upon us in these recent days is cell phones. Anyhow, I will not go there, okay?
But laying aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles our feet—what is that sin? Unbelief. Disobedience.
Brothers and sisters, please: there is grace available as part of our inheritance. There is a supply of grace for us to overcome unbelief.
By God’s grace, we need to declare war on every facet of unbelief in your life. I will tell you this: you will not get any of your inheritance experientially through unbelief. You will never have it. It will be a great hindrance to you.
So declare war on it. Let the Holy Spirit take the Word of God. Where you are weak in faith, say, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” Let us make that prayer.
Where you find unbelief, ask the Lord to help you with it so that you overcome the unbelief. Then you can experience more of the inheritance that is yours.
Hebrews 12:1–2:
Let us run with patience
the race that is set before us.
Our dear brother Abraham this morning helped us to see the importance of running this race. It is a long race. It is a marathon, brothers and sisters. The issue is not winning; the issue is finishing.
You can see from reading this Hebrew letter that many of them were in danger of never finishing the race. Do not let that be your experience. It is not necessary.
Everything you need in order to finish the race has been provided for you. So let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses—people who already ran the race with less grace than we have. They did not have the revelation that we have. Our Lord Jesus had not yet come.
I counted twenty-six people by name that the writer of Hebrews mentions in Hebrews 11. They ran the race by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith.
I also counted another twenty-four things that they did. So fifty things in total, all by faith, by faith. The Lord Jesus had not yet come as the author and finisher of faith.
What does he say? Brothers and sisters, we have something better provided for us. We have more responsibility to learn how to live by faith. This is the only way for us to enter into our inheritance.
The righteous shall live by faith.
Twice we find it in the New Testament and once in the Old Testament. So, let us learn how.
Hebrews 12:3:
Consider Him that hath endured
such gainsaying of sinners against Himself,
that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls.
Even though He endured great antagonism against Him, He did not become weary. But, you see, we can become weary. This is one of the dangers.
My dear brothers and sisters, please, I know I keep saying this, and I do not want in any way to belittle it or devalue it, but everything you need has been provided. We do not have to become weary.
Isn’t this what our brother told us this morning?
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.
But you need to come. He is not going to push you into a corner and force this yoke on you. You have to come. Without Him, I can tell you, you are going to get weary.
He does not want us to get weary and give up. There is grace.
Hebrews 12:28:
Let us have grace,
whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God
with reverence and awe.
Oh, my dear brothers and sisters, how can we not be a grateful people? How can we somehow begin to see something of the riches that are ours in Christ and not be able to say, “Thank You,” again and again?
Ten thousand thanks, ten thousand thanks. We sing them more and more. We need to be the most grateful people walking the face of this earth because we are the richest. It has all been given to us because we are members of a new covenant.
Finally, Hebrews 13:13:
Let us therefore go forth unto Him without the camp,
bearing His reproach.
Brothers and sisters, let us face something. The world did not receive our Lord Jesus when He came here in the flesh, and they are not prepared to receive Him now.
We need to realize that if you are going to live in the reality of your inheritance, you are going to encounter some hostility. You need to be willing to go out and face it.
Blessed are they that have been persecuted
for righteousness’ sake.
Blessed.
So, my dear brothers and sisters, I know I have taken more of your time, but I trust that we see what God has provided for us in this great inheritance: everything.
Not only that, He has given us a great High Priest to help us enter into it, to know how to take our inheritance and make it ours. He even creates in us the faith we need to appropriate, to substantiate, to make real in our experience what we need for that inheritance to become ours.
What can we say? What can we say, brothers and sisters? Hallelujah. We are the richest people. Our inheritance is beautiful to us.
So let us take a few moments, and some of you verbalize to the Lord a way in which we can show Him gratitude and tell Him we want to enter into all that is ours as heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.