Well, good morning, saints.
Ah, it was kind of weak. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, amen.
Actually, it has been a tough weekend for me, and I have been considering this message. I do not know if it has to do with the sovereignty of God or not, but anyway, it has been a little difficult. We really need to stand this morning for the Lord, and whatever the Lord wants to say will be what comes out.
Let us begin this morning with a word of prayer.
Lord, as we come this morning, we are so grateful that You have given us Your Word, Lord. It is such, such an encouragement to us. It draws us to Yourself, Lord; it brings us to You. It shows us who You are and what You are like.
Lord, we are so grateful that You have given us this Word. Yet we realize that it takes the anointing of God, the Holy Spirit, to really open our eyes and hearts to see Your Word and to have Your Word have an effect in our lives.
So we come this morning. We do stand under that anointing, Lord, that You have given. It has been poured out upon Your body, Lord Jesus, that we might effectively speak and hear Your Word this morning.
We ask, Lord, that whatever is on Your heart to share is what will be shared. We ask that Your blessing be upon this time, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, we are on the life of Isaac. Last time, I reminded us all that when God gave His name, He said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” So, as marvelous and wonderful as it has been to consider the life of Abraham, the pioneer, we also need to see Isaac and Jacob in order to get a fuller picture of this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Our real heart is to see the Lord and to know the Lord through the lives of these three men.
Now, last time, as I began the life of Isaac—just as a quick review—I indicated that Isaac was a type of Christ. I will not go through it all again, but there are two fundamental things.
First, we see him as a type of Christ because his birth was divine in nature. God waited until it was impossible for Abraham and Sarah to have children, and it was only through divine intervention that Isaac was born. In that sense, he is a type of that promised Seed, Jesus Christ.
Christ was born of a woman, but He came from heaven. His origin was divine.
Secondly, there is this matter of the cross. We know that our Lord Jesus Christ went to Calvary and died on the cross for your behalf and my behalf. Isaac, like the Lord Jesus Christ, willingly put himself on the altar. He did not object to his father. He did not try to run from the cross at all, but willingly gave himself to be laid on the altar as a sacrifice to God.
God intervened, and Abraham did not have to slay his only son. But God, on the other hand, did have to crush His only Son. Oh, what a picture we have of Calvary and the cross through the life of Isaac—a real testimony to the life of God in Isaac.
Brothers and sisters, I related that to you and me. You have had a divine birth as well.
This birth you received when you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ was from God. It is divine in nature. It is a heavenly birth. It is the new birth—a birth in spirit, not just in flesh, as we gain from our mothers and fathers.
So, we too have that testimony in us: there is a divine birth.
Secondly, the Lord has asked us to take up the cross daily and follow Him. Daily, we need to go to Calvary. Daily, we need to offer ourselves there, a willing sacrifice, that the Lord can do whatever He chooses with us because we are His.
He wants to basically eliminate all that is not of Him, that what is of Him will be resurrected from Calvary. So, you see that we too carry a testimony of divine birth and the testimony of Calvary in our lives. And it is real.
Not only that, I mentioned that Abraham had to lay his Isaac on the altar, and that we too, as the Lord asks us to take up the cross, will have to lay many precious things in our lives on the altar and allow God to do what He will. That is living by the cross of Calvary.
Also, the big thing about Isaac that we learned was that Abraham was the pioneer. But how do you live this life of a pioneer? Well, to do that, you need to learn to be a receiver, because the life that you need has to be received. It is received through grace by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ.
So Isaac is the receiver. It says Abraham gave all to Isaac. Brothers and sisters, the Father, through Jesus Christ, has given all blessings in spiritual places to us. All the blessings of God, all the inheritance that will be the Lord Jesus Christ’s, is also ours.
How do we get it? Not by working for it, but by receiving. It is a great lesson that we have to learn as Christians: we begin our Christian life by receiving the Lord Jesus Christ, and we continue our Christian life by daily receiving of His life that He has given to us and placed inside of us.
That is the life of a Christian. We need that. Praise the Lord. We need to learn how to receive as Isaac did.
All your blessing—he received all. What is our all, brothers and sisters? It is Jesus Christ.
Oftentimes in our lives, we are looking for holiness, sanctification, victory, and things. But what we have been given is Jesus Christ. He is your victory. He is your sanctification. He is your holiness.
Until the Lord opens your eyes to see that Christ is all and in all, until the Lord opens your eyes to see that that truly is the Christian life, unfortunately, we live a life that is weak. We live a life trying to depend on the flesh to do the things of God.
But once we see that it is all Christ, what liberty there is, because then it can be Christ that lives in us, and not we ourselves. A great liberty.
Thirdly, we learned that one of the secrets for Isaac was that he dwelt by the well of Beer-lahai-roi. Beer-lahai-roi means “the well of the living One who reveals Himself.”
We need to learn to dwell at the well. Where is that in your life? It is Christ. He is the well of Beer-lahai-roi—Christ.
It says that we are in Christ. Of God are we in Christ. That is where you are placed. That is your place of blessing, your place of life, and your place of revelation.
I went on to share that not only are we in Christ because we have accepted Jesus—God has put us in Christ—but we are in Christ in His body. He has placed us in His body.
So, if you want to know what the fullness of the well of Beer-lahai-roi is, it is Christ the Head and Christ the Body. It is the complete Christ—our dwelling place, the place of life and revelation.
Brothers and sisters, I have to say that the Lord has blessed me in my life. So much of what I have seen of Christ has come from being in fellowship with brothers and sisters.
Yes, I can go to the Word, and He does give me light, and I am so thankful. Such a blessing. But so much of the reality that I have touched in my life is through brothers and sisters.
So, being united with brothers and sisters is being in that place of life and revelation.
We have not only been placed in Christ, but in Christ in His body. It is one thing. Often we speak of being in Christ and in the body as two separate things, but really they are one thing. They are one.
They both happen when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You are put in Christ and in the body. Well, that was last time.
This morning, I would like to continue in Genesis 25. I would like to read some Scriptures from Genesis 25. We actually covered through about the eleventh verse last time, but let us start with verse 17, and then go to verse 21 through the end of the chapter.
And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, a hundred and thirty and seven years:
and he gave up the ghost and died, and was gathered unto his people.
These are the years of the life of Ishmael, verse 17. Now go to verse 21.
And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian.
And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, wherefore am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord.
And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb,
And two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels;
And the one people shall be stronger than the other people;
And the elder shall serve the younger.
And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.
And the first came forth red, all over like a hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.
And after that came forth his brother, and his hand had hold on Esau’s heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.
And the boys grew: and Esau was a skilful hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents.
Now Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: and Rebekah loved Jacob.
And Jacob boiled pottage: and Esau came in from the field, and he was faint:
And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint. Therefore was his name called Edom.
And Jacob said, Sell me first thy birthright.
And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall the birthright do to me?
And Jacob said, Swear to me first: and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
And Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.
That word despised means to think little of. Esau thought little of the birthright. The Holy Spirit makes great emphasis of that point.
Continuing in this chapter, the first thing we run into is verse 17, where it says Ishmael died. He passes from view, and Isaac comes into full view.
We remember that Ishmael represents the man of the flesh, and he passes out of the picture. Isaac comes into full view.
Now, Isaac is a man of the covenant—the covenant of grace and promise. He is a man who dwells by the well of living water. He is not living by the law, but by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. He is the spiritual man in this analogy.
It is a great day, brothers and sisters, when the man of the flesh in our life passes from view.
That does not mean he is dead, because unfortunately we will have the flesh with us until we die. But there does come a time when he passes from view, when he is no longer the one in control, when the Spirit is in control of your life. That is a great day.
The Holy Spirit makes note of this. Sometimes you read this and wonder why He bothered to put it in there. It is because there is something critically important to us as Christians: Esau, the flesh, needs to pass from view in our lives. It needs to be the life of the Spirit that rules our lives.
Now, from verse 21 through 34, we have what transpired concerning the birth of Esau and Jacob. There are two things this morning that I think are important for us to understand about these two men’s lives.
First, we see that the promised seed is divine in nature.
What do I mean by that? Once again, just as with Sarah, Rebekah is unable to have children. Now, the promised seed is to come through Isaac and Rebekah. He was married at forty, and the children were born when he was sixty. So it had been twenty years with no children. Rebekah was barren for twenty years.
Isaac, I am sure, was beginning to think, “What of the promised seed?” And I know Rebekah was crying out, “Lord, why me?”
The marvelous thing is—and I am not sure why it took him twenty years—but it says that Isaac inquired of the Lord.
I think there is something to take note of. You do not have to wait twenty years. But for some reason, it was twenty years later before Isaac finally was so convicted, so challenged over this matter, that he finally went to the Lord and said, “Lord, I entreat You. You have promised this promised seed, but my wife is barren. Will You not open her womb?”
At the request, the Lord opened Rebekah’s womb, and she had twins. That is what I mean by this promised seed being divine in nature. Once again, we see that it is the hand of God. It is God’s sovereign hand that opens her womb, and the promised seed comes.
It is God the Father’s sovereign hand by which Jesus Christ came.
God’s sovereign hand was at work in Isaac’s life. But we need not forget, brothers and sisters, that God waited until Isaac inquired.
It kind of gets back to the lessons we have been talking about on prayer, right? How God waits for an intercessor—waits for one who will pray. God waits, and when Isaac comes, He responds. Thank the Lord.
The second thing we want to consider is God’s sovereign will.
Rebekah was obviously having a tough pregnancy. Two boys were wrestling inside her womb and giving her quite a stir, apparently. I remember when my wife was pregnant, there were a few times I saw her wince and hold her side because one of the boys kicked her in the ribs, I guess. But apparently this was going on much more than normal.
So Rebekah goes to the Lord and says, “Lord, what is going on? What is this that is happening?” The Lord tells her that two nations will come out of her womb, and that the elder will serve the younger.
Now, that was not the order for that day. The order for that day was that the younger would serve the elder, and the elder son would be the one in charge of the family affairs.
But the Lord said, “It will not be this way.” Not man’s choice, but God’s choice. God’s sovereign will came into play in these two men.
Man would choose Esau, but God chose Jacob.
Now, when I say man would choose Esau, Esau was a hunter. He was a man’s man. You know, he went out, got the food, brought it in, and took care of the family. From the picture we get, Jacob more or less hung around the tent and helped his mom out—which is admirable. He was not a man’s man.
It says that Isaac loved Esau, which is okay. But Isaac was yielding to natural affection. God had said that the elder son would serve the younger, yet Isaac chose Esau and was going to actually bless him, as we will see later.
Rebekah loved Jacob. Now, what is the difference? What is the weakness in Isaac’s life?
Rebekah, in this case, was the one who had gone to the Lord. She had received direct revelation from the Lord that the elder would serve the younger, and that Jacob would be the respected one. Isaac had not received this direct revelation, but I am sure his wife had told him about it.
For some reason, he did not respect that, and his eyes were on the natural instead of the spiritual.
Now, brothers and sisters, we all fall into this trap in our lives before the Lord. In our everyday lives, we often see events and things that happen to us in natural light. We look at them in the natural and say, “This and this and this, and I am going to go about solving this problem this way,” or, “This has happened to me, and I am really down about it, and I just do not know what to do.”
As Christians, when things happen to us, our first response should be to try to view this from the spiritual standpoint. That is, “What is the Lord saying? What is the Lord doing?”
You know, I was really deeply touched at work recently by one of my coworkers. He found out he had a mass in his lung, and it was cancerous. He told me that the type of cancer was extremely slow-growing, which was, of course, a blessing to him, and that it could be years before it really affected him. He is the same age as I am.
But you know, it is a scary thing to have something like that. What so blessed me as I talked to him, I said, “You know, we just really need to look to the Lord, do we not?”
He said, “You know, what I really want to know is what the Lord is saying. What I really want to know is what the Lord is saying.”
That is a spiritual perspective. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
That is what I mean when Isaac here failed in his vision. He was looking at the natural and not accepting the spiritual. That is a great lesson that we need to learn, and it is brought out in this chapter.
It was God’s sovereign choice. Isaac was not recognizing it, and it became a critical point in his life. The fact that the elder son would serve the younger was God’s sovereign choice. It was divine election, and divine election affects your life and mine.
Let us look at John 1:12-13.
But as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name:
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
I want us to see this morning: it was God’s sovereign choice for you. Not born of blood, nor of the will of your flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
There are three pairs of children that we have looked at so far which illustrate that it is not of blood, not of flesh, nor of the will of man.
First of all, Cain and Abel: not of blood. When Eve had Cain, the first son, she called him Cain, which means acquisition. In other words, “I have acquired the man. I have acquired the promised seed that God had given.”
But it is interesting that with the second son, she called him Abel, and Abel means vanity. I cannot help but wonder if, after Cain was born and she began to observe her son, she realized that he may not be that heavenly in nature. We certainly see the evil that finally came out when he slew his brother Abel.
Secondly, Ishmael and Isaac through Sarah: it is not the will of the flesh. Remember how Sarah and Abraham tried in the flesh to have this promised seed, and it did not work out. They had Ishmael instead.
Eventually, because God opened Sarah’s womb and gave them the ability to have children after Abraham was one hundred years old, they were able to have Isaac. It was not the will of the flesh. It was God’s divine hand by which Isaac was born.
Thirdly, Esau and Jacob: the will of man. Man would choose Esau. Isaac certainly chose him. But God chose Jacob—not the will of man, but the will of God.
Let me read Romans 9:11-12.
For the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth,
it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
Not of blood, not the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but the will of God.
Brothers and sisters, the lesson to learn here is that your birth in Jesus Christ is not through blood. In other words, because your parents are Christians does not make you a Christian. It does not come through the bloodline. There has to be a transaction made.
Christ was very clear: you have to be born again. Not of the flesh, but born again in spirit. Your spirit needs to be brought back to life. That is the new birth.
Probably not many here would doubt that at all, but there are many out there who call themselves Christians who are not, just because they either grew up going to church and their parents were Christians, and they think they are Christians.
Well, no—not until there is that transaction with the Lord Jesus Christ in their heart and they are born again. That is the new birth. This is not by blood.
Secondly, it is not by the will of the flesh. A lot of people, you will say, “Are you a Christian?” They will say, “I am a good person.” And they are, in a relative sense, a good person. They say, “Surely God would not send a good person to hell.”
Well, that is not the issue. The issue is that you need to be born again. It cannot be just because of good works. You are not brought to be a Christian through good works.
Other people say, “Well, I am trying, and I hope that one day I will get good enough. There will be enough good deeds in my life to balance out the evil ones, and I will be accepted.”
Once again, that is not God’s way. It is not the will of the flesh—not by blood, nor the will of the flesh.
But if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you choose Him, you will find out that it is not your will, but the will of God.
Now, what do I mean by that? You may think that because you have accepted Jesus Christ, you have exercised your will and chosen Him, that it was through your will that you were saved. Right? Free will.
In 1 John 4:19, it says:
We love, because He first loved us.
This matter of choosing Christ is very similar. We choose Him because He first chose us.
Let us look at Ephesians 1:4-5.
Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love:
having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
Did you get that? You were chosen before the foundation of the world. You were chosen before the foundation of the world that you should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated us unto adoption as children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
Having predestinated us—chosen before the foundation of the world.
What is on my heart this morning, brothers and sisters, is to see how precious this is: that God would choose you before the foundation of the world. Yet it does not negate your having to choose Him. But you have been chosen by God.
How is it so? It says that we are chosen in Him—in Christ. We have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
Now, when the Godhead got together in Their counsels together, and the Father said, “You know, I have a heart to do something special for My Son. I desire to have a family like My Son, and I desire that My Son should have a bride. It is on My heart that We create man, or that We make man, in Our image and after Our likeness.”
That was His desire.
When that determination was made—God would make man in His likeness and after His image—He looked at His Son, and He saw you in Christ. He saw me in Christ. He saw us in Christ.
How is this, brothers and sisters? It is because God is Spirit. Do you not see things in your spirit? If you are a Christian, you see things in your spirit. When we think of seeing, we think of eyes, but we have spiritual eyes, and God saw us in Christ at that time, before the foundation of the world.
He saw the bride before the foundation of the world. He saw you included before the foundation of the world—chosen before the foundation of the world.
God has had you on His heart even before He made this world—before He renewed the world, but before the foundation of the world. He had you in His heart because Christ was His heart, and you were in Christ.
What a glorious thought of your and my beginning. Our beginning was in the thoughts of God, not just passion of the flesh. Our beginning was in the thoughts of God. Praise the Lord.
It goes on to say that not only were we chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, but He predestinated us unto adoption as children. Predestinated us unto adoption.
Now, why adoption? Why not just say, “Predestinated us to be His children”? Predestinated us unto adoption.
Let me put it the best way I know. I hope this does not confuse you.
God made Adam after His image and likeness. He gave Adam the choice of the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When Adam was born, even though he was made of God, he was not at that point an actual son of God.
To become a son, he would need to have that life that comes from God, and that was to be obtained by eating of the tree of life. We know the enemy came in, deceived Eve, and she went to her husband. He could not give up Eve, so he too fell into sin.
Their nature became sin. In other words, they no longer really carried the image and likeness of God. They were fallen man.
God knew this. Brothers and sisters, what we need to realize is that when we are born of our parents—born of the flesh—we are a child of Adam. We are part of Adam’s family. I am not talking about the TV movie either—Adam’s family. We are part of this original Adam. We are part of his family.
That is the way you are born: a son of Adam, not a son of God.
How in the world are you going to get out of Adam’s family into God’s family?
Well, you have to remember 1 Corinthians 15:45-47. It says that Christ came as the last Adam and the second man.
In other words, when Christ died on the cross of Calvary, in God’s eyes His judgment fell on the family of Adam and Adam’s race, and He says, “It is over. It is ended. In Christ, it is over.”
But Christ also came as the second man—God’s second man. With the second man, He is going to start a new family.
All in that family will become children of God, sons of God. How is that done? A legal transaction has to take place. We call it a covenant today, but a legal transaction of adoption has to take place to get you out of the family of Adam into the family of God.
That legal transaction takes place when you are willing to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. When that happens, your spirit is quickened by the Spirit of God. Christ dwells in your heart. You have been born again, and you have become a son of God.
You are now a part of the family of God and no longer a part of the family of Adam. You have been adopted.
That is the sense in which, at least as I see it, this word adoption applies. Praise the Lord. You have been adopted—no longer in the family of Adam, but now in the family of God, a son of God. God’s choosing.
Let me say it another way. When you accept Jesus Christ, what God saw in Christ before the world began becomes real on earth in your life. I know, and I hope that makes sense.
What God had done in heaven, in seeing you in Jesus Christ and predestinating you to adoption, actually takes place when you accept Jesus Christ.
What is determined in heaven is now done on earth. Does that sound like a familiar verse to you?
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Something like the Lord’s Prayer.
One thing we need to learn, brothers and sisters, from the beginning to the end of our spiritual life, is that we are always making real now what God has done in heaven—what His will is.
All the value of Calvary’s cross, what Christ did there, only becomes effective in your life when you accept Him. That event occurred over two thousand years ago.
In God’s eyes, even before the world was in being, it says the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world as well. All of that, all the good of Calvary, comes into your life when you accept it. Then it is made real in your life.
So, brothers and sisters, you have made a choice, but what you discover is that you were already chosen.
Now, that may seem to confuse your theology. You might say, “Well, if I was not chosen, that is it.”
But you know what? In 2 Peter, it says God is longsuffering and not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
I do not care who you are. God’s desire is toward you, and His love reaches out to you. You will never be able to say to God, “I never had a chance.”
It does not negate God’s sovereign will at all.
How can this be? God can make a sovereign choice, and yet man still has to choose.
Brothers and sisters, I can only tell you that it is only possible in Jesus Christ, because that is where you are chosen and that is where you receive your new birth: in Christ.
Maybe I have raised more questions than I have helped, but what I want you to see is this: it is a precious thing when we accept the Lord Jesus Christ because He is God’s Lamb on your behalf.
But it is also precious—is it not precious?—to know that He saw you before the foundation of the world? He had you in His heart before the foundation of the world, and He had predestinated you to adoption.
Knowing that you would be born of Adam, born of the flesh, born with that sin nature which He could not tolerate, which was not fit for Him, He goes through this great work of redemption to bring you back to His original purpose.
His original purpose is that He might have many sons like His only Son, Jesus Christ, and that His Son would have this companion, the bride.
The marvelous thing is that things have been happening in eternity concerning you and me. What a marvelous Lord we do have.
Well, that is my main heart this morning, brothers: that maybe the Lord would just refresh us with the greatness of His love toward us. But there is one other thing we need to see before we leave this chapter.
It ends by saying, “Esau despised his birthright.”
The Lord Jesus has had you in His heart from before the foundation of the world, that you might be conformed into His image, that you might become that precious bride to His Son.
In this life, there is this transformation that is going to take place, and that is Jacob’s life, which we will see later.
But Esau—the fundamental issue with Esau was that present gratification overruled any desire for the things of God. In other words, he wanted that food right now. That was what would immediately gratify his soul.
So immediate gratification he chose over the birthright, over the things of God.
Brothers and sisters, I want to say that this is probably one of the main things in our lives that grabs us: the desire for immediate gratification.
You know how we are an instant society now. Even instant grits, which I cannot stand. But it is an instant society. You know, we have got to be gratified now. I cannot even wait long enough for the pot to boil; just stick it in the microwave.
Amazing. Remember how we used to do popcorn over the fire, and now you just stick it in the microwave?
Well, the point being, immediate gratification overruled his desire for the things of God. If we live our lives just trying to gratify ourselves, if that is our main—not even purpose, but main way in which we operate our lives—we will be giving up something.
Now, the birthright is a precious thing, brothers and sisters. When you accepted Jesus Christ, you had a birthright.
One of the things that God wants for you is to be involved in His kingdom, in the kingdom age—a thousand-year period where He is going to come back, end all the mess that we see going on today, and set up His rule on this earth for a thousand years. He wants us to be a part of that.
Included in that birthright is the right to reign and rule with Him, to serve Him during that thousand years. But if we are more interested in immediate gratification, we can lose that reward of being with Him in that special place.
Learning God’s government in our life today is important because that is what the kingdom is about: God’s government ruling over everything. We need to be ready for that.
We need to learn God’s government in our life instead of just gratifying ourselves. But if our choice is to gratify ourselves, we can miss out. That is a warning here that we cannot overlook.
The kingdom age is coming pretty soon. If you do not believe me, just go back to the news and see what is going on, and look at your Bible. You will discover that things are lining up pretty quickly for the Lord’s return.
Well, brothers and sisters, I just wanted to end by encouraging us that, in order to live this life, we need to learn to receive from the Lord. We need to respect His sovereign choice.
You will be conformed to the image of Christ if you are willing to yield your life now, that that conforming can take place now, rather than just trying to gratify yourself. Then you will be prepared for the kingdom.
If not, there will be a thousand-year delay in your being able to serve the Lord and be with Him. In the end, God’s purpose will be fulfilled, and we will all be a part of that bride.
I do not want us to look at this in the wrong way, but He has called us to be conformed. So may we yield to that.
Lastly, I just want to say this: the well of Beer-lahai-roi—in Christ, living in Christ, being responsible in the Body of Christ—is extremely important because it is the place of life and revelation.
Brothers and sisters, if we are going to make it as pioneers, and that is what we are called to be, we need to learn where to live. We learn that from the life of Isaac.
Lord, we just come to You today. We are so grateful, Lord. It is almost hard to fathom the depths of Your love—the fact, Lord, that You were able to choose us even before the foundation of the world.
Lord, I want to say today, thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord, that we are one of the chosen ones. Thank You, Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank You that You gave me the faith to accept You and to make it real in my life. Lord, I just praise and worship You this morning.
We ask, Lord, that whatever the Holy Spirit desires to touch in each heart will be done, that Your will might be carried out on earth as it is in heaven. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.