Strange things happen to me when I eat a lot. I seem to lose my appetite. The funny thing is, though, if I smell something really good, I start to get hungry.
We’ve heard a lot, and our heads are full. Our bodies are tired. But one moment of the fragrance of Jesus, and our capacity amazingly increases.
In His presence is not only fullness of joy, but an expansion of our inner man. The Holy Spirit is working in all of our lives to strengthen us in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith.
So we want to pray for all those who are tired and full, knowing that the new man still hungers for more.
Our Father, we come, and we have sung and worshiped our great God. We have once again pointed to the fact that God is our goal, our inheritance.
We also are amazed, as we’ve been hearing, that we are Your inheritance. We ask that, by the Holy Spirit’s revelation, You might reconcile that great contrast as we desire to walk with You.
Help us now, strengthening us by the Holy Spirit within, placing Christ—our Lord, our Savior, our all—in our hearts, dwelling there by faith.
We come to You with great thanksgiving for such a spirit of worship, such a hunger among the saints, and such a light upon us. Oh, blessed be our God. What a great heritage we have.
We pray in His precious name. Amen.
We have several Scriptures we’d like to read, if you’ll follow me. First of all, simply a few verses in Luke 12.
This matter of our inheritance, as we mentioned last night, touches upon two other major themes in the Bible: one regarding sonship, and one regarding the kingdom.
When we talk about these great matters, they are awesome matters, and they can be fearful to us. We know that there is great gain in the kingdom, but there is also great price.
Jesus gives us Luke 12:31-32 as He speaks to His own disciples. Indeed, He is speaking prophetically to us as well:
But seek His kingdom,
and these things will be added to you.
Do not be afraid, little flock,
for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.
Then, in 1 John 3, touching again on this matter of sonship, beginning in verse 1:
See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us,
that we should be called children of God;
and such we are.
For this reason the world does not know us,
because it did not know Him.
Beloved, now we are children of God,
and it has not appeared as yet what we will be.
We know that when He appears, we will be like Him,
because we will see Him just as He is.
And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him
purifies himself, just as He is pure.
Then we want to read a number of verses beginning at the very end of Hebrews 11. I think we all know Hebrews 11, as it mentions many of those who gained their spiritual inheritance, as it were.
Yet there is a very interesting summation that the writer makes that I want us to consider seriously tonight. Beginning in Hebrews 11:39:
And all these, having gained approval through their faith,
did not receive what was promised,
because God had provided something better for us,
so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.
Then Hebrews 12 continues:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us,
let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith,
who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame,
and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself,
so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood
in your striving against sin;
and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons:My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor faint when you are reproved by Him;
for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines,
and He scourges every son whom He receives.
It is for discipline that you endure;
God deals with you as with sons.
For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
But if you are without discipline,
of which all have become partakers,
then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us,
and we respected them;
shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them,
but He disciplines us for our good,
so that we may share His holiness.
All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful;
yet to those who have been trained by it,
afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble,
and make straight paths for your feet,
so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint,
but rather be healed.
Of course, we could go on with that, but we’ll stop at that point.
Finally, we want to turn to Joshua 18, beginning in verse 1:
Then the whole congregation of the sons of Israel assembled themselves at Shiloh,
and set up the tent of meeting there;
and the land was subdued before them.
There remained among the sons of Israel seven tribes
which had not divided their inheritance.
So Joshua said to the sons of Israel,
“How long will you put off entering to take possession of the land
which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you?
Provide for yourselves three men from each tribe,
that I may send them,
and that they may rise and walk through the land
and write a description of it according to their inheritance;
then they shall return to me.”
I’m hoping that would be a word for all of us tonight: “How long will you put off entering to take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you?”
What an amazing word and what a wonderful thought this is. I feel like, in a sense, we’re gathered at Shiloh. We have pitched a temporary tent. We’ve gathered and worshiped our God. We confess that Jesus is our inheritance. It’s a good Sunday-school answer.
Joshua—that’s Jesus’ name in Hebrew. Joshua the Messiah brought us into the promised land. It is our inheritance. Wonderful Joshua. We worship our Savior, who brought us into the promised land.
But of course, the analogy goes far beyond that, because the promised land is Christ Himself. Here we are in Christ, our promised land, even as these different tribes.
Now, you see, we come from the Jerseyites and the Flushingites and the Richmondites—the various tribes of God’s people. We’ve gathered here together at Shiloh, singing the songs, worshiping before the tent of meeting. But then God speaks through Joshua: “Now wait a minute. Seven of you tribes have not gone and possessed your possessions yet.”
Now, it’s all well and good to sit here and worship and say, “Christ is our possession,” but we’ve got to do more than stay in Shiloh.
Of course, that’s the place where the Lord really works out our spiritual inheritance: back home, among the Manhattanites. Oh, what a ready tribe that is. And your tribe as well, whatever the name of your tribe.
You see, that’s where the Lord works out the spiritual inheritance. We have a lot of good Sunday-school answers here: Christ is our inheritance; all we want is Christ. Is that right? Amen. Then go find Him down there in the tribe of Dan.
Oh, but Dan is afraid to go. Dan loves to come together with Judah, because Judah is one of those tribes that claimed their inheritance. They got Caleb.
You know Caleb. His name means dog, and he’s like a dog. He’s a dog of faith.
We see back in Joshua 14 that he comes up to Joshua and says, “Now, Josh, I’m eighty-five years old, and I believe God will enable me to take that beautiful place up on the hill, three thousand feet above sea level—that wonderful fresh-air place where the giants live.”
“Let me go up there and put my foot on the neck of Goliath’s relatives.” Eighty-five years old—a man of faith. And he did exactly that.
He took the land and called it Hebron. I like fellowship better than Kiriath-arba, or whatever it used to be called. Hebron—the home of Judah’s city. Caleb, man of faith, dog of faith. Such a brother.
The tribe of Judah got all their property. As a matter of fact, it’s an interesting little story. It’s a picture for us.
I want to suggest that the Lord is saying to us here, “I want you to be more than conquerors. I want you to possess the land you’ve conquered.”
We remember the wonderful little story at the beginning of Judges. If you don’t know it, you might turn to Judges 1. Just below Hebron, a couple of miles down the road, there was a city called Debir. It was a stronghold of the enemy.
So Caleb said, “Anybody who defeats Debir gets my daughter Achsah for a wife.” Now, Achsah was Miss Israel for the year 1400 BC.
Well, Othniel, the nephew of Caleb, as it turns out—another Judah man of faith—went down there and defeated that stronghold, took over that city, and gained that wife.
And don’t you know what the wife said immediately? She said, “Oh, Daddy, now you’ve given me this wonderful desert spot. Could I also have streams of water so I can actually live in my inheritance?”
Caleb says, “Well done, daughter. You get the streams and the hills as well.”
Possessing our possessions—not just living in the desert, but wherever the Lord has us, placing our feet there, standing there, being built together there, and discovering a spiritual inheritance there.
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, the Lord is after something so much more than for you to be a vocational success, than for you in your lifetime to find a happy little house, two-and-a-half children, and a car.
The Lord is after spiritual inheritance to be gained through you.
Listen to that word at the end of Hebrews 11. Isn’t that amazing? All of these brothers and sisters, by faith, were a testimony of that spiritual inheritance which they still did not receive, waiting for us to make the final claims on that promised land so that the King can come back and say, “Now we have all possessed it, and here I come.”
All of those giants of the Old Testament—they’re waiting for Jerseyites. You have an appointment with destiny.
It’s no time for you to be building your own houses with sticks when the house of God lies in ruins. It’s no time to say, “Oh, we claim everything for Christ,” if we’re not willing to go and step on the land in the name of the Lord and be a testimony that His house is here.
Oh, these issues are large. As we said, going right back to Adam and Eve, God had no interest in having a gardener. He was after more through Adam and Eve.
“Be fruitful and multiply. Have dominion. Be a man the way I purposed for man to be. Inherit the earth. Then take this earth, and by the divine life and through My process through the Son, bringing many sons to glory, transform this earth until the glory of God fills the earth as the waters cover the sea.”
What a destiny there was for man. But how man fell. Instead of becoming possessors of the heavens and the earth as their heritage, we find ourselves losing ground in a world that is crying out in its corrupt state because of sin.
Oh, Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus, please bring to liberty the sons of God, so that it all can be turned around and the great moan of creation can be transformed into worship in the new heavens and the new earth.
This is why you are upon this planet. God wants you to get married and have a job, go to school, whatever it is that you do in your lifetime. But you know there is so much more about your life than just those things. You are being drawn by destiny.
The Lord would say to every one of us: We stand in Christ. Now will Christ, in glory, dwell in us? We dwell in Christ—that is our rest. Now Christ wants to rest in the rest as He dwells in us.
There is a glorious undertaking that takes much battle. It takes sacrifice. It takes a work of the cross. It takes self-denial. It takes following the Lord in lonely places.
I’m sure those seven tribes, as they are listed immediately following, each had a dark place, a stronghold, where victory had to be gained. Just as surely, in every one of the places we represent here, there are strongholds that protest the full inheritance of God being testified to by the body of Christ in those locations.
There is some gospel witness to be made. There is some sacrifice to pay. If we are just sated with selfishness, we may talk about Christ, but we lose the inheritance.
Where is that piece of property for your family, your tribe, and your town? Where is it?
The Word of God is so precious. The Word of God is a two-edged sword.
Where there are people gathered who are the Lord’s people, standing for the inheritance, and they are persecuted and hated, do you know what the Lord says?
Do not be afraid, little flock,
for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.
We find such words of encouragement especially in contexts where people are going through very difficult times. The Father says, “The inheritance is yours. Stand here. It is My good pleasure.” This is the assurance and comfort of those who are battle-torn and persecuted.
There are many in this world who have nothing but that promise from the Lord.
On the other hand, the Word of God, being a sharp two-edged sword, speaks by the spirit of exhortation, as we see throughout Hebrews, and warns us about being lazy, about falling short, and about neglecting all these things that have been given to us in Christ.
The writer is so strong, and to me the strongest point he makes is when he comes there in Hebrews 12. There is so much he says and warns, but when he says, “Be careful that you don’t come short of the grace of God, and that a root of bitterness rises up in you, that you become like Esau, who despised his birthright for some soup.”
Afterward, Esau repented and wanted his inheritance, but he could not gain it. It was too late.
We know the Bible says an awful thing. We know that God is love, but it says, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
God hated Esau with a holy hatred. Do you know why? Did God hate Esau before he was born? No. Did God hate Esau because He didn’t like the way he looked? No.
God hated Esau because he despised his birthright. God said, “I hate you.” Esau, born of the patriarchs and of the family of faith to gain the inheritance, said, “I care nothing for their spiritual inheritance. I don’t care about the birthright. I don’t care about any of that. I just want what I want. I want to hunt. I want to fish. I want to eat. I want to sleep. I want to be married to fifteen women.”
God says, “I hate that.” Among God’s people, those who despise the birthright are as bad as Esau. That’s a very strong word, isn’t it? The Word of God says it right out.
Of course, the writer says many times, after giving those strong exhortations—especially in Hebrews 6 about falling away—“But, brothers, I am convinced of better things concerning you.”
Now, we’ve gathered together at Shiloh because we’ve been drawn by a sense of destiny. We know there is something the Lord wants to gain in us, and so we’ve been drawn.
I don’t know why you came. Maybe you just came with friends. Maybe you came because you got a free ride. I don’t know. But I know something: the Lord has a deeper reason for you being here.
There is destiny to be gained. There are things to be done. There is a powerful force going on right now in this world according to the Scriptures.
In Ephesians 1:10, it says that in the fullness of times, God will gather together under Christ all things. Right now there is this powerful spiritual magnet that has been turned on, and it is drawing all things under the headship, lordship, and majesty of Christ.
That includes you and me. Do you sense yourself being drawn into something by the Spirit of God? It is all the spiritual force and energy in this universe. The Spirit of God is drawing us under Christ, drawing us into inheritance.
What a wonderful time to be alive, to see the Lord doing this.
I’ve often said this is one of my favorite examples: for most of you here, it is already too late. You’ve been drawn into the inheritance, and there is no stopping now.
You can drive up so close and put your wheels in those little rails and get up to the place of the car wash. But when that thing hooks your car, you’re going to go through.
Now, you can say, “Whoa, stop. Wait, I don’t want to go.” Put it in reverse—you’ll still go through. You can roll down the windows and protest. I wouldn’t recommend it.
If the Lord has captured you, He will draw you through this process of sanctification by which we gain the inheritance. He will have His way. Most of you have suckered your way right into that Christocentric spiritual car wash.
Now why don’t you take your foot off the brake and let the Lord take you through? We need to get all the way through.
As you can see, each of us as brothers has different concerns and burdens. One of my concerns, as I see a young generation grow up, is that they have all a language of worship and love for the Lord.
But when I look at the assemblies as we’ve gathered together, we’ve hardly inspected the land. We know so little of Christ. You can hear it in our prayers: it is the same old mumbo jumbo.
But who is checking out the Word and coming up with a fresh valley that they have found? Who found a spring and brings it to report it to us? Where are those spies who are going out to let everybody know, “Let’s go, let’s go”?
Brothers and sisters, we need spies. Are you willing to be a spy—to check out the valleys, the springs, the wells, and the mountains? Christ. You are exploring Christ. You are discovering Christ.
Oh, it is such a fragrant thing whenever we have a worship service and somebody brings back something original. It is like those spies who came back with that big bunch of grapes on their shoulders, like basketballs. Now that’s refreshing.
Now, I know that we’re all part of one big tribe called Chickenites.
It is just like the armies of Israel: we put on our Sunday best, we show up, and we dance around and say, “We love the Lord. The Lord’s everything.” Then the Lord says, “Okay, go into the valley,” and we say, “I’ll see You next week.”
We are in Christ, but Christ wants to possess us. Oh, for assemblies that are full of Christ. Just wow—you can’t wait to come.
If we really have seen by revelation the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, I tell you what, brothers and sisters, we would probably meet, if possible, every night of the week.
The very fact that we say, “Ah, I’ve had enough of the saints. Oh no, is it Sunday already? Oh no, not another Bible study with these guys. They keep munching that beef jerky. I want something fresh”—if that is what you are saying, you don’t see the treasure.
We want to look at something tonight. I know there is much exhortation that could be made in the Scriptures about how we should press on, run that race, and look unto Jesus. You know all that stuff.
But since I am convinced that most of you are already locked into the car wash—I can hear the squeaking tires—I thought instead we might all remember together the real secret to us entering into the spiritual inheritance.
It is not actually by redoubling our effort. It is by remembering that we have been captured.
That wonderful Scripture which is our theme verse for this conference has to do with calling us out of darkness into light, out of the power of Satan, and giving us this inheritance through sanctification. Do you know all of that comes just before Paul says, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision”?
His whole calling and ministry in life came out of this marvelous vision he had on the road to Damascus. I want to say to you that, in some measure, every Christian has a heavenly vision of Christ.
In that heavenly vision of Christ, as the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of our heart, we come to see three things.
First, the glorious Lord Jesus Christ. That is what Paul saw on the road to Damascus: “Who are You, Lord?” “I am Jesus.” He saw the glorious Lord.
But a secondary revelation from seeing the glorious Lord is that you come to see who you are. It is an undoing, but it is also a revelation of your value to the Lord.
Thirdly, of course, we see that glorious treasure of God known as the body of Christ.
Could I just mention those three things? I am convinced that if anybody has seen Him, heard Him, tasted Him, touched Him—as the writer of the hymn says—“Is not yours a captured heart?”
Have you heard Him, seen Him, known Him? Is not yours a captured heart?
I know that we all have not had such an experience as Paul had on the road to Damascus—actually going blind, actually seeing this Shekinah glory. But the Spirit of God who has been given to us is the down payment.
You remember what Jesus said the Holy Spirit’s job is: “He will lead you into all reality, and He will keep telling you about Me.” He is going to keep revealing Christ until you see Him in the breadth and width and height and depth. He is going to keep on showing you who Christ is. That is the Holy Spirit’s job.
I have to believe that you and I who are saved—the Holy Spirit has shown us something of the Lord that captures us.
There is that period of time when we first become Christians when, for most people, we would not honestly say, “Christ is everything to me.” It is true that we are saved. We are very glad for forgiveness of sins, but we are pretty much going about our merry life the way we want.
Then the Holy Spirit starts to work. He brings us to a place where we realize, “Wow, looks like I’ve been captured.”
There comes a time when the Spirit says, “Everybody is having a hard time with Jesus saying, ‘Follow the cross.’ Are you going to leave Him too?” And you say, “Where else can I go? I’m caught.”
That famous biography title: Once Caught, No Escape.
It takes us a while to realize we have been caught. But once you know you have been caught, half the battle is over.
At first it may be slow going, but here is what happens. Like Paul says, you have been caught by Somebody who not only caught you, but caught your eye and caught your heart.
The next thing you know, you start running to catch the One who caught you. Isn’t that what Paul says in Philippians 3? “I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” The One who apprehended me—I am chasing after Him.
It has turned around. The Lord had to come and capture us, and when you realize you are captured, what is your response? “Well then, I’m going to go capture Him. I’ll show You.”
Are you running after Christ? Look away unto Jesus and run that race. He is the author of our faith.
Slowly but surely, the Lord becomes more and more the exclusive One who is our heart. Oh, we want so many things in life, and it is quite natural.
But what happens over time is that we see the hem of His garment sometime when we are healed, and we realize His mercy. We see His hand, as the Song of Solomon says, through the doorway—a loving hand, the hand of our Lover, picking us up when we fell down.
We see His face, perhaps in the face of some brothers and sisters, but we see His face. Somewhere along the line, we hear His voice.
I do not know how to say we hear it, but I just know that you’ll recognize it. “That’s my Lord.”
I remember, I was saved in 1964, but I remember 1971—the first time I heard a voice inside that said to me, “Don’t worry. You’re My child.”
Now, I had just received the left shoe of fellowship as a Baptist pastor, and I was driving a school bus—thirty-five dollars a week and all the kids I could eat.
There was not much future in my life, because I was a school bus driver. Eight years of college—school bus driver.
But all the Lord had to say to me was, “Dana.” He said my name. “You’re My child.”
Now, how can you not love a Lord like that?
Have you heard Him, seen Him, known Him? Is not thine a captured heart? I do not know what to say to you if you are a Christian but you are not captured yet, except I just think you do not realize it.
I also know the Holy Spirit has some amazingly creative ways to bring us to the place where David could sing, “The Lord is my portion, my inheritance.”
That is an exclusive statement. If we look in Psalm 16 for just a moment, I think you will see something very interesting there. This is David’s psalm, of course.
If we look at the beginning, we see that there are circumstances involved in this revelation. In a sense, it is this threefold revelation I mentioned, where we see the Lord, we see ourselves, and we see the saints.
Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in You.
I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have no good besides You.”
As for the saints who are in the earth,
they are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight.
David was most likely hiding from King Saul. Yet he says, “You are my Lord. I have no good besides You.” Wow. Now there is a good estimate of who he is.
This is the boy who played the instrument, the boy who could sling the thing, the boy who killed Goliath. What does he say? “I got nothing except You.”
If you do not like the saints where you are fellowshipping, then I think we should have a special retreat house out in the desert for about six months. Just take you away from all the saints and see how your hunger grows.
You will say, “Oh, I wish I could hear that brother who prays on and on and on.” I love the saints. They are my great delight. Oh, if we could only see that by revelation now.
There is David. Circumstances have stripped him of all his resources. Even that anointing he received from Samuel—what does it mean when you are hiding in a cave from King Saul? He had nothing.
And there is where he said in Psalm 16:5-6:
The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup;
You support my lot.
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
We know by looking at the record how the Lord devises ways of bringing us into that corner where we are at the end of our rope. That is where we discover the Lord is everything to us.
When something we loved has been stripped away, then we discover the Lord is everything to us.
Sometimes the Lord even takes us into a dark place, a difficult place, a place where Job was that nobody could understand. In the end, the Lord became everything to him.
Oh, dear saint, there are some of you who have been tossed about and hurt by circumstances. Perhaps you are in that dark place, which simply means you are all alone.
Perhaps you are on the backside of the desert like Moses, who for forty years was stripped of all that royalty in Egypt business, until he saw the Lord, the I AM, and discovered his inheritance.
The Lord has His unique way in everybody’s life. But usually, can I be honest? Unless we are stripped away from those things we hang on to, we say, “Oh, I love the Lord and everything else I have as well.”
We find out at the end of the story of Job that it is not that the Lord wants to take stuff away from us. He is not mean and saying, “Well, he’s got two cars. Watch this.”
The Lord is not jealous of His blessings in our lives. But until He is number one exclusively, with no number two in view, He sometimes has to strip away our self-confidence, our vocational genius, our money-making schemes, and our best-laid plans.
This applies mostly to girls: how to gain a guy. Or whatever it might be. Somewhere along the line, we are going to learn, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.”
Having learned that through difficult times, we find the Lord restores plenty to us. When? When we seek first His kingdom, and everything else is added unto us.
There was dear Caleb. He loved the Lord so much. He had such faith. He took every city he could. It was not that he wanted to be rich; he wanted the Lord to be glorified.
It is an amazing thing that happened in the lives of all of these men. In their warfare, in taking the promised land, it brought forth the most noble warriors of all Israel.
Do you know who they were? Not the Judahites. Caleb and Judah were faithful, to be sure. Not even the two-and-a-half tribes that were fighting on this side, even though their inheritance was on the other side.
I will tell you who was most noble, and what the Lord is looking for today: Levites.
They fought and risked life and limb for no inheritance except the Lord.
This quote of David’s in Psalm 16 is a quote of the portion given to the Levites. “You as a tribe, Dan, you get this. Ephraim, you get that. Judah, you get that. Simeon, you get that. Levites, you get nothing. All you have is the Lord.”
The Lord is looking for saints today who want to see the Lord be glorified even though they have no inheritance. You are like a fox that has no hole and a bird that has no nest, but the Lord is your portion.
Where are the Levites? There are enough selfish ones around.
What nobility—to take up sword, to fight beside your brothers in the other tribes, knowing you go home to nothing except the Lord Himself.
But I tell you, the Levites gained the best reward. It is like David said: “The lines have fallen to me.” It means the boundaries of my inheritance of the Lord. I am telling you, I got the best piece of land there is. It is an unseen land.
The saints that I see who serve the Lord, sacrifice, go to foreign lands, and face incredible persecution and suffering sometimes—in the midst of all those things, they discover this one thing.
Would to God we all experience this reality: the Lord is my provision. The Lord, my Provider, has never abandoned me. Whether ravens come from the brook or a supply comes from here, the Lord is my Provider.
Once you learn that lesson, you have no fear of losing your job, not making enough money, and all that stuff that makes gray hairs like mine.
When we have seen that the Lord is our portion, we have been captured.
But the second thing is this: when one sees the Lord in heavenly vision, it is a complete undoing, isn’t it? Paul was undone. All his righteousness, all his pride, all his accomplishments—filthy rags.
Isaiah saw the Lord and said, “I am undone.” When we see who the Lord is, by contrast we are undone. We are nothing.
People talk and argue about Paul and his pride, Paul and his self. Paul was so undone. He threw away all that stuff that we are so proud of.
By his latter days, as the Lord had done this transforming work in his life, Paul could surely say, “I am constrained by the love of Christ. I am dead, and I live for Him.”
Paul was concerned for the Lord’s reputation, not his reputation; for the Lord’s glory, not his glory; for the Lord to be glorified in the church, not for him to get the credit.
I think you misread those epistles if you think Paul was bragging. The only time Paul brags is when he says, “I am a fool for doing this, but my heart is telling me to tell you that there is a cost and there is a sacrifice, and it is all worth it if Christ can be glorified, whether in life or death.”
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
That is not a person holding on to, “Oh, my reputation. Oh, what people think of me. Oh, my religious heritage.” No, he has let it go.
It is by sanctification that we enter into the inheritance. We all know that sanctification is the car-wash process. But sanctification starts with a crisis experience where we realize we have been crucified with Christ.
We no longer live, and Christ, by the Spirit of God, can begin to build Christ’s life into us. That is the hope of glory that we have as individuals.
We begin to live a sanctified life, which does not mean a perfect life. It means a life that has been set apart to serve Christ, to live for Christ, to be a worshiper of Christ, to be a priest of Christ, and all those sorts of things.
I find that the tribes of Christendom, of Christianity, the saints, realize that they are crummy sinners and failures, but they do not take seriously their calling to be sons.
Paul did not think he was a great man. He said clearly, “There is nothing good in me, that is, in my flesh.” But Paul took seriously that he was a vessel in whom there was a treasure.
He was serious about his sanctification. There are many people who just call themselves sinners, and they are sloppy in their sanctification. They do not take up the cross, they do not let the Spirit work in their lives, and they may miss their inheritance.
Don’t you know you have been captured? You have been captured to be a vessel, a servant. Paul called himself, from that day on, a bondservant of Christ. That is who he was: just a servant. “Lord, what do You want?” That is the important thing.
Oh, we read 1 John 3. We all love that, but I like this one word, which is a word that always has faith involved in it:
Beloved, now we are children of God.
Now, are you living up to that?
You have an appointment with destiny: to become a son. In bringing many sons to glory, Christ came through as the Son, and now He is bringing us through this sanctification process into glory.
We do not know yet what we are going to look like, except that we are going to look like Him. What a tremendous thing to say.
There are those two little boys, and we have watched them grow up: Prince Harry and Prince William. All the tabloids in London are watching every step they make.
Prince William is not the smiley one. You do not hear much about him because he is the heir apparent. Every move in William’s life is to prepare him for the throne of England.
Every move in your own life is to prepare you for sonship in glory.
We do not have free rein just to live our lives casually, because something is drawing us to a higher purpose. It involves an education of the Holy Spirit, as we read about in Hebrews 12—a discipline, a training as sons.
Because He loves us, He will not let us alone. He tells us, “Now, you are weak in this area. Strengthen that limb. That which is crooked, straighten it out.”
If you want to inherit and be a partaker of My holiness, now is the process of sonship. Keep running the race. Allow the Lord to discipline you. Do you see all of that?
A person will not do that unless they really see who they are in Christ.
There is a certain nobility that should come about in your life for one simple reason, which I have already mentioned: you and I are just clay vessels, but we have a treasure.
We are stewards of a treasure. There is nothing to be taken lightly. All the saints gone by are waiting for us to be glorified, that they might join in the great inheritance when the Lord comes.
This brings us to the third and last of these great things seen under the light of our Lord Jesus Christ: that the Spirit of wisdom and revelation may grant us to know what is the exceeding greatness of the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
We sell each other pretty short. The Lord sees us as glorious.
When we gather together, two or three—what does your assembly look like? I do not even know. But when we gather two or three and He comes with His presence in the midst of us, it is the joy of His heart.
It is the church gathered around their Lord, even like tomorrow morning. It is the Lord’s delight. It is His inheritance. It is His treasure. “Look, My kids gathered as one, worshiping My God and Father.”
Oh, how the Lord loves it. Then you and I pick on each other: “I don’t like this. I don’t like that.”
In the end, to our humiliation, we discover we are wrong. We sell each other short. We criticize somebody.
The thing I have always seen is that if you hang in there long enough with brothers and sisters, there is a story behind everybody’s life.
You know that eccentric who gathers with you, that you joke about? There is a story behind that life—of the Lord’s love for somebody hapless and hopeless until Christ came into their life.
Oh, how we sell them short. We look at one another and might think somebody is stupid or somebody is stubborn. If you want to look at one another according to the flesh, how can we possibly dwell together? This fellowship, this assembly, is a disaster.
If you feel that way, please don’t move to Manhattan. We are a sorry lot just like where you live.
But there is a treasure. There is something worth more than a million bucks to the Lord, right there assembled in our midst.
Here is where we actually see the treasure, and that is where we discover we are wrong. Are you disappointed by people? You are wrong.
If you will hold fast to the headship of Christ and bear with one another, we discover the treasure as we serve together, as we cry together, as we pray together.
Brothers and sisters, remember in the book of Philippians: does Euodia really see how precious Syntyche really is?
Does Philemon really understand how precious Onesimus has become since he got saved?
Whenever we look at one another in the flesh, the one thing we will discover in the end is that we are wrong. We have sold somebody short whom the Lord loves and died for.
This revelation—I do not know what else to say about it except the Lord wants us to see the preciousness of the body. It is so precious to come together on a weekend like this and camp at Shiloh, but the greater treasure is back home.
I will finish up with one more Scripture that we all know so well, in Matthew 13.
Here in Matthew 13, the Lord shares these amazing parables. Actually, if you look on the outside basis, it is a pretty discouraging thing.
To think that in the kingdom there is sowing going on and most people do not bear fruit; that sowing goes on and then tares are thrown in when you are not looking; that the loaf is made and somebody sticks leaven in there and spoils the loaf.
To think that in the kingdom there is a little planted seed of faith that grows, then gets gargantuan and all wrong, and the next thing you know evil birds are sitting over this man’s kingdom that started out as just an assembly and a little flock. Whoa. Who wants to be part of that?
It appears to be what is going on today.
Then the Lord takes the disciples inside. Of course, they understood so little that He had to explain every parable. “What does that mean? What is this wheat and tares? What is this sowing?” Wait, wait, wait.
But once He gets them inside, He says, “Okay, let Me tell you why I am willing to sow even My life into the ground and let it die.”
The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field,
which a man found and hid again;
and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has
and buys that field.
This is Matthew 13:44. Now, hymn writers usually change it around and make Christ our treasure. We have to give them credit for that, because Christ is our treasure.
But this parable is talking about the treasure that Christ has found in this soil, this earth. Christ has found the treasure. It is hidden. Oh, it is good and hidden, isn’t it?
For this treasure, He sells and gives His life to buy the field, to gain the treasure.
That is what our assemblies are like: treasure hidden in the field, precious to the Lord.
The parable that follows immediately is that pearl merchant who, after buying a lot of good stuff, sells everything for the one pearl. We know what that is: there is the bride.
These are two parables that simply say, “It is the Lord speaking to us: My dear hidden treasure, I love you so much. I desire for you to come and be a treasure that all can see—My bride, which is even hidden now.”
“I am sanctifying you by the washing of water with the Word. I am bringing you, and the closer you get to Me, the more this treasure is being exposed. You are why I am here. You are who I am waiting for.”
As we gather together at Shiloh and worship, we have a Lord who is waiting for us to rest in the rest, to come to that final rest where the saints of old can join with us.
Brothers and sisters who died fifty years ago, a century ago, and all through the history of the church—they are all waiting to be gathered. They are part of that treasure that Jesus died for.
May the Lord give us eyes to see that that brother or sister sitting next to us, behind us, and before us are precious treasures.
Now, can we, by loving them, bring forth the treasure? Do you know, it only comes how? If we spend enough time, we will all be broken.
Every time a person is broken, what do we see? Christ. Look at Christ in my sister. It took a breaking to let that ointment come out. Oh, what a fragrance, and how it enriches.
So we hold fast to the Head and dwell together as brothers and sisters, very incomplete and hidden in fields. One by one, the Lord breaks us.
As we go through tragedy, trouble, problems, dark places, and strippings, we do not pour condemnation on brothers and sisters. We cover them in mercy.
As the vessel is broken through circumstance by the arrangement of the Holy Spirit, it is really worth it. Oh, what a treasure we have.
The Lord recognizes it already. We, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, can see that treasure we have.
Watch tomorrow morning before the Lord’s table. There is a certain facet I love, because I am such an extroverted person. I have no problem standing up and praying. The Lord is always holding me down, you see. There are actually some invisible suspenders.
When I get together in Manhattan on Sundays, I always feel this: “Twang, twang—stay down, stay down.”
But what I love is to see normally shy, timid people forget about themselves and worship God. That is one of the greatest miracles of destiny.
“What? That shy sister prayed such a prayer?” She just went out of herself. She was so in love with the Lord. Look at that prayer. She is such a chicken.
If I went up afterward and said, “Hello, sister, wonderful prayer,” she would turn blood red and would not pray for two months, I am sure. You know what I am saying.
Isn’t this a precious treasure we have with one another? May we appreciate it.
The day will soon come when the veil will be lifted off our eyes, and we will see that those people we have shortchanged around us—we have been wrong, wrong, wrong.
Regarding our moms and dads, we have been so wrong. Regarding those brothers in leadership, you have been so wrong. Wait until you see.
Now, by faith, may the Holy Spirit show us these things, at least enough that it will allow Him to gain His spiritual inheritance.
All I can say is, press on, realizing you have been captured. You have been gained by the great Gainer. You have been apprehended by the Lover of your soul.
So run that race. Find Him. Discover it. Bring us back some spies’ reports; we will be glad to hear.
There is so much ground yet to tread before the Lord comes back. Oh, help us. May we all be in the process of possessing our own territory, as it were, for the Lord’s glory when He comes back.
Father, we thank You so much that the Son is Your treasure, and He is our treasure too. We know as we are stripped, it becomes more real to us than it was before.
We realize, Lord, that we are nothing, but we are called for important purposes in glory. So we take it seriously as those called into a royal priesthood.
Lord, grant that we might live a kingdom life as we gather together and assemble. Oh, may it be that Your presence would be in the midst, and we can see Your face expressed in brothers and sisters of all kinds and shapes and forms.
May it not be just an assembly of old people and young ones just looking on. May it not just be an assembly of young people with no old people. May it be full—full—because Your saints gather together in Your name and express Your life.
Oh now, Lord, we pray soon enough we will be traveling from Shiloh back to our own lands and territories to claim. Oh, help us, Lord. Help us, Lord, to stand true to You as You gain Your spiritual inheritance in us.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.