Will you please turn to 1 Timothy 4? We will read from verses 8 through 10.
Exercise thyself unto godliness.
For bodily exercise is profitable for a little; but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come.
Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation.
For to this end we labor and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, Who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.
And please turn to Romans 12, verses 1 and 2.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
May we have a little prayer.
Lord, we want to thank Thee that Thou hast opened the way for us into the holiest of all, that we may be able to behold Thy beauty and to hear Thy voice, to worship Thee and to serve Thee.
So, Lord, we do commit this time into Your hand and pray that, out of Thy throne, Thy word will come forth to us. May Thy word sink deeply into our hearts, give us understanding, and bring us into the reality and truth of Thy word.
Lord, Thou hast promised us that Thy word will not return unto Thee void, but will accomplish Thy purpose. So, Lord, we do pray that this may be true and effective in each and every one of us. Speak, Lord; Thy servants hear. In Thy precious name. Amen.
Well, brothers and sisters, we are still in this matter of spiritual exercise. I hope we really understand how important spiritual exercise is. It is very basic, but it is very essential to our spiritual life.
The word exercise, in Greek, in its verb form is gymnazo, which means to exercise naked. That is, when you exercise, you have to take off all the heavy coats so that you can really be in exercise. The noun form is where our English word gymnasium comes from.
So, brothers and sisters, my question is: Are you still in the gymnasium of Christ, or have you quit already?
I hope, brothers and sisters, none of us will be quitters, but that daily, hourly, we are in the gymnasium of Christ. Because only in that way do we have the promise of eternal life. We may experience real life today, and also forever.
So you see the profit of it. It is profitable for all things, and it is something that we cannot afford to neglect.
Now, this time, God willing, we will review together four life-changing lessons in spiritual exercise. The first one, of course, is consecration, because consecration is the first real Christian experience.
If you have already believed in the Lord Jesus, you are supposed to have consecrated yourself to the Lord.
If you have believed in the Lord Jesus as your personal Saviour, and you are saved and have received His life in you, and yet you have not consecrated yourself to the Lord, then something is drastically, basically, fundamentally wrong.
Because it is the will of God that He saves us, that we may be His and may live our lives not only for Him, but also by Him and to His own glory.
So, I know the word consecration is familiar to us, and probably you have already consecrated yourself. But the more I meditate on it, the more I realize how much we have missed the real meaning of consecration.
You know, in Romans, we find that the whole book is talking about the salvation of the Lord. From Romans 1 through Romans 11, we see all the mercies of God toward us.
We were sinners, in bondage to the law of sin and death: no hope, no God, no eternity. And yet God, in His marvelous love, sent His only Son to come into this world to seek and to save us.
What a great price He has paid for our salvation. Not only has He borne our sins in His body and died for our sins, His blood was shed for the remission of our sins. But He also took the old Adam in us and crucified it with Him on Calvary’s cross.
So you find salvation not only reaches to solve the problem of the sins we have committed, but it also solves the problem of the very power of sin over us, that we may not live sinning all the time. Rather, we may be able to overcome the power of sin through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are called by Him, and whom He called, He justified; and whom He justified, He glorified. In other words, His salvation toward us is full. He not only saves us from the place of sinners, but He wants to save us to the uttermost, that we may be conformed to the image of His beloved Son and be co-heirs with Christ.
Dear brothers and sisters, when you think of the immensity of the salvation that our Lord Jesus has provided for us, you cannot but be touched by the mercies of God.
And because we are touched by the mercies of God, therefore you find Romans 12 beginning, “Brethren, I beseech you, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.” This is your spiritual worship, your reasonable and intelligent service.
So this is where spiritual life really begins. Strictly speaking, you do not really begin your spiritual life merely because you have life. You have life, yes, because you have believed; but you do not really begin your spiritual life until you have consecrated yourself to the Lord.
So consecration is the door of spiritual life. You begin with consecration.
And you know, according to the word of God, you are not your own; you are bought with a price. That is 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.
Once we were slaves to sin. We were slaves to the enemy of God, Satan. We were in bondage. But thank God, our Lord Jesus came and set us free.
But in setting us free, He paid the highest price for our souls. As the Bible says, we are bought with a price. He bought us, as it were, out of our slavery, and He bought us for Himself.
So that is the reason why the Bible says, “You are not your own. You are bought with a price.” You belong now to Christ, to God. Formerly, you belonged to Satan. He directed your life; he was in control of your life. What a hardship it was.
But now you have been set free by our Lord Jesus. Yet this very freedom does not mean that you are now free to do whatever you want to do. Because if that is the case, you will find, sooner or later, that you will be returning to your old master. You will again be under the bondage of sin and death; you will again be under your master, Satan.
That is the reason why, when our Lord Jesus saved us out of the bondage of sin, He saved us to Himself, that we may be under another kind of bondage—a benevolent, merciful, glorious bondage. That is, He binds us to Himself.
So, brothers and sisters, as we are moved by the mercies of God, what should we do? Do we simply accept the salvation He has provided for us and go ahead and live our own lives again? If this is the case, we will return to our old master, Satan. We will again be under the bondage of sin and death, with no hope.
But thank God for His wonderful provision: He has bought us for Himself. Yet, strangely, you know, when He bought us with such a price to Himself, He set us free.
By right, we are His. But He did not want to deal with us by legal rights. He set us free and says, “You may go and do whatever you like. But if you really are constrained by My love, then you will come back, give yourself to Me, and say you want to be a love-slave for life.”
You know, in the old days among the children of Israel, if a Hebrew sold himself to another Hebrew, he would serve his master for six years. But in the seventh year, he was set free; he might go free.
But if he loved his master and his master’s family, he would say, “I do not want to go free. I want to be your slave forever.” Then he would be taken to the door and have his ear pierced, which was a sign that he was an everlasting, forever bond-slave to his master. But it was out of love, not out of legal rights. So that service would be different.
Why was the ear pierced? It shows how important ears are in being a real servant of God: hearing Him.
So, brothers and sisters, if we are constrained by the love of Christ—and I suppose we are—the first response to His mercies is to present our bodies a living sacrifice.
Why the body? Because we live through the body. It actually means our whole being: a living sacrifice.
You know, the sacrifices of old were all dead sacrifices. If you wanted to give a sacrifice to God, it meant that the lamb, the goat, or the bull would come out of your hand. You willingly presented it to God, killed it, and burned it on the altar. That was a sacrifice, out of your hand and given to God, and it was all done out of gratitude.
But today, in New Testament times, it is different. It is not merely something that belongs to you. Your whole being has been bought, and you want to give your whole being to God, out of yourself and unto God.
So, in other words, the right meaning of consecration is not to give yourself to God to serve Him by yourself, but to give yourself to God and let Him have you for Himself.
You know, when we think of consecration, we always think of service, and that is included. We consecrate ourselves to God that we may serve Him. Formerly we served Satan, the enemy of God; we served sin. But now we want to serve God, and we give ourselves to Him to serve Him.
But basically, that is not the real meaning of consecration. The real meaning of consecration is to give up your right to yourself.
You give yourself to God as a sacrifice and live daily for Him and by His will. In other words, you give the control over yourself to Him and let Him control your life, make your life wonderful and glorious, and transform your life into the image of Christ. Now, that is what consecration really is.
But when you really think of this matter of consecration, consecration is not just one act. That is to say, when you are constrained by the mercies of God, you give yourself and present your body a living sacrifice, and that is it—one act. No.
When you really look into this matter, consecration is a lifelong experience. It has a door—that is to say, once you enter it—but then you are continually presenting yourself to the Lord.
You know, in Old Testament times, when you think of all these sacrifices, there was the daily sacrifice: in the morning, one lamb; in the evening, one lamb. Then, when it was the beginning of the month, more sacrifices were added to the daily sacrifice. If it was a festival, more sacrifices were increased.
In other words, consecration is an increasing experience. It is a daily experience.
So when you come to this matter of sacrifice, this matter of consecration, you know the Bible says it is holy. Holy simply means separated. By presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice, you are separated.
Separated from what? Not only separated from the world, but also separated from yourself. It is holy—holy for God—out of your own hand and into the hand of God, acceptable to God.
You know, we want to be acceptable to God. How? The first and foremost thing is to present your bodies a living sacrifice. Then you know you are acceptable to God. If you have not done that, and you may try to serve Him in any way, it is not acceptable.
And it is your spiritual worship. There is where real worship begins. Also, it is your intelligent service: you serve God intelligently, according to His will.
So consecration is a big thing in our spiritual life, and it is an everyday thing. We cannot say, “I have graduated from consecration. It is behind me now. I am more advanced than that.” Never. You are going into this matter of consecration deeper and deeper and deeper.
So we would like to share together this matter of consecration based upon our experience, and of course, also based upon the word of God: what consecration really is, and when we have really consecrated ourselves, what kind of life we will be living and what type of service we will be rendering until the coming of the Lord.
Consecration, roughly, can be divided into three stages.
The first is the initial stage of consecration. Now, the initial stage of consecration is after we are saved, when we are really moved by the Spirit of God and constrained by His love. We realize that we are redeemed and cannot live for ourselves any longer. We want to live for God. We want to serve God. For that, we present our bodies a living sacrifice.
That is our initial experience of consecration. And maybe after that, what do we do? Well, we try to do things for God. We try to serve God in the best way that we can.
I remember when I was first saved. I was so touched by the love of God, so grateful. I was under a burden of sin for a year, and now the burden of sin rolled away. I was set free. I was so grateful to God.
So, on the last day of that conference—it was way back in 1930—the pastor began to speak on consecration. He said, “If you really love the Lord, well, you shall serve Him as a preacher, evangelist, or Bible woman. You need to express your love to the Lord.”
A huge map of China was hung on the wall, and he said, “You can choose where you want to serve. Come up and put your finger on the place where you want to serve.” I was just fifteen years old. I was so filled with the love of God, and, of course, youthful zeal. I went up to the platform and pointed my finger on Mongolia.
Well, that was my plan for serving God. And I meant business, because I prepared myself for it. That was my last year in senior high school. I tried to get all the information about Mongolia, and after I graduated, I chose my Bible school. I thought I had to prepare myself to do that.
Even while I was still in high school, I started to serve God. I led meetings, led prayer meetings, spoke, and also went to the country to evangelize.
I did serve God my way. I did serve God according to the best that I knew, and I did serve God with all the talents that I had. Now, that was all I understood about consecration.
But is this really consecration? Let me tell you the story about Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis. I think her name must be known by many of you. She was greatly used by God.
When she was about twenty years old, one day she was so troubled by the coming of the Lord. So she took down a small Bible that she had and just carelessly opened it. Her eyes fell on Isaiah 53:6.
The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Then she turned again, and her eyes fell on John 6:47: “He that believeth hath eternal life.” And she got saved. That is how Mrs. Penn-Lewis got saved.
After she got saved, she was very zealous. At that time, the YWCA had just begun, so she helped in the YWCA and led Bible classes. The Lord used her to bring some girls to the Lord.
Then she longed for the power from on high. So she prayed that the Lord would endue her with power from on high, just like Peter on the day of Pentecost, when he spoke and three thousand were saved.
One morning—I do not know whether it was a dream or a vision—she saw a hand, and in that hand was a bundle of filthy rags. Then a voice came to her: “This is all your past years’ work.”
Now, if you heard that, what would be your reaction? She said, “Lord, I have consecrated myself to You. This is all consecrated work.”
Then she heard a voice: “Yes, but this is your consecrated self.”
Do you catch it? Yes, it was all her consecrated work, but it was consecrated self. In other words, it was herself. She prayed for it, worked for it, and used her own talent for it. It was all herself.
Then she said she heard a voice: “Crucified.”
Brothers and sisters, as I read it, it dawned on me that that was what consecration was to me. I had consecrated my life to God. I wanted to serve Him. I used my own plans and my own talents. Everything came out of me, not out of God.
Yes, the Lord did bless somewhat, but the Lord said, “It is consecrated you. It is you. It is not Me.”
And that transformed her life. You know, her message was the cross. That was her special message. She realized it.
So, brothers and sisters, we do not really understand what consecration is. First of all, we think consecration is to work for God, which is wrong. Consecration is to let God work in you.
Secondly, we try to serve God with our own self—our own mind, our own thoughts, our own plans, our own strength, our own talents.
You know, when you sing that famous song, “Take My Life, and Let It Be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee,” we think that we really ought to use our talent for Him. If I were a person talented in government, then I should serve as an elder. We use our own talents. That is the thing we are urged to do: use your talents; put all yourself into it.
Brothers and sisters, do you think God will accept our old man, ourselves, our flesh, to serve Him? Unless we are crucified.
Crucified to what? The most important thing is to crucify self. If yourself is not crucified, nothing is crucified.
So I would say that the initial stage of consecration usually is in that area. We mean it well, but we miss the whole point.
Because when you are really going into consecration, you will come to the second stage. I do not have a good word for it. I call it crucified consecration.
In other words, God will lead you on until you come to a crisis, and that crisis leads you to experience the cross in a deeper way.
I remember when I was in college, the Lord began to reveal to me His way, and I tried to obey whatever the Lord showed me.
The Lord began something in the city where I studied. God gathered seven brothers and sisters together, and we felt led to follow the Lord according to His will. The Lord began to bless.
But there was a big struggle within me. I wanted to follow the Lord all the way, but I could see how difficult it was. So I was wavering. I was, as it were, with my two feet on two boats, and the two boats were gradually sailing apart. I was in that kind of situation.
Then, at that moment, a brother came and spoke on Luke 14. The Lord said, “If you want to follow Me, if you do not, according to strict translation, hate your father, mother, children, wife, husband, and your own self, you cannot be My disciple.”
“If you are not willing to lay down everything, you cannot be My disciple. If you are building a tower, you should sit down and count the cost first, whether you can complete it. If you are fighting an enemy who comes with twenty thousand and you only have ten thousand, are you willing to count your cost?” The essence of the message was: count your cost.
So after I heard the message, after lunch we were sitting there resting, and I was praying. I said, “Lord, maybe my problem is that I have never really counted my cost. Yes, I responded to You, giving myself to You out of love and emotion, but I never sat down and counted my cost. Now I am going to do that.”
So I began to count my cost, and the more I tried to count the cost, the more costly it became. Satan threw all kinds of thoughts into my mind: “I will be thrown out of the university. I will be thrown out of my family. I will be dead.” And I told the Lord I could not do it. I just could not.
But it was there that I saw the Lord coming to me, extending His bleeding hand and saying, “I did all this for you. What have you done for Me?”
This broke me down. I told the Lord, “Everything.” But it was not that easy. After I promised the Lord, for three days and three nights I could not sleep. I went to classes, but I could not hear what the professor said.
But finally, the Lord worked it out. And that marked a change in my life: crucified consecration.
You know the story of F. B. Meyer, a young pastor, brilliant and loving the Lord. One time, two of the Cambridge Seven visited him.
You know the Cambridge Seven. That was in the nineteenth century: seven famous students and graduates from Cambridge University. They were not ordinary graduates. C. T. Studd, for example, was the best cricketer in England. They were saved and moved by God to go to China as missionaries, and that stirred the Christian world in England at that time.
One day, C. T. Studd and Stanley Smith, two of them, visited F. B. Meyer when he was pastor at Melbourne Hall in Leicester.
It was in November, about seven o’clock in the morning. It was very chilly and still dark. F. B. Meyer noticed that the light, the candle, was on in the room where C. T. Studd was staying. So he was a little worried. What had happened?
He waited and waited, but he could not contain himself. So he knocked on the door. “Come in,” came the reply. He went in and saw C. T. Studd wrapped in rugs because it was very cold, studying the Bible.
So F. B. Meyer said, “You are early.” C. T. Studd said, “I love the Lord, and I am searching the Scriptures for His commands.”
Now, brothers and sisters, we search the Scriptures for His promises, not for His commands. But he searched the Scriptures for His commands.
F. B. Meyer was touched. He said that C. T. Studd had something that he did not have. He did not have that peace, that rest, that overcoming life. So he asked C. T. Studd, “What is the secret?”
C. T. Studd just said, “Consecrate yourself to the Lord.” “Of course, I have already done that.” “No. You go to the Lord. Come to the Lord with everything in you. Count everything in your life and turn it over to the Lord.”
He had not done that, so he said he would. F. B. Meyer began to do that. He went to the Lord in prayer, and one by one, everything in his life, he gave to the Lord.
But there was something that he could not give. So he held it back. He said the Lord came, and he gave the Lord a bundle of keys—the keys to all his rooms except one small key.
And the Lord shook His head and said, “No.”
So F. B. Meyer tried to bargain with the Lord. “I promise You this and promise You that.” But the Lord said, “No.” Then came that famous word: “If I am not Lord of all, I am not Lord at all.”
And the Lord turned away. In his desperation, F. B. Meyer cried out another famous phrase: “Lord, make me willing to be made willing.”
Then he said the Lord came and took the whole thing, including the little key. And He spent time clearing every room.
Brothers and sisters, this is the story of crucified consecration. When you first consecrate yourself to the Lord, you are full of joy. But when you really come to consecration itself, you do not have joy. You will pass through the valley of weeping.
But that is where the consecrated life begins. So the third stage is the consecrated life.
Now, it does not mean that after that there will be no breakdown. No. We have no assurance in ourselves; our assurance is in Christ. Only He can preserve us.
But basically, the hump is over, and you are able to live a life really consecrated to the Lord.
So that brings us to Paul. You know Paul—what a wonderful young man he was. The young men of his time were all seeking fame and wealth in this world, but he was different. As a young man, he thought he was spiritual.
As an orthodox Jew, he was trained in his family until he went to Jerusalem and became a student of Gamaliel, the most famous rabbi at that time. He studied under Gamaliel and became a Pharisee.
Today, when we hear the word Pharisee, we think, “Hypocrite.” But he was a true Pharisee. He tried his very best to keep all the letters of the law.
But he was under the influence of the tradition of the fathers. He was zealous for his religion, so he persecuted the believers of Christ because he considered Christ an impostor of Judaism.
And he was serious. He seized people and condemned them to death. When Stephen was stoned, he was there as a chief witness.
My brothers and sisters, God knew his heart was sincere. So God let him go as far as he could, until he went to Damascus with letters from the high priest to seize the believers, bring them to Jerusalem, and condemn them.
Then a light brighter than the midday sun shone about him. It struck him to the ground, and he heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.”
It was a gentle voice, a voice of sympathy and love. It was for his sake: “Do not do that. Turn around.” And thank God, he turned around. From that time, he became the apostle Paul.
Look at his life. There is one book that shows us his life, the secret of his life, and that was the letter to the Philippians. In that letter, he shows us how he lived a surrendered life.
In Philippians 1, he said, “For to me to live is Christ.” It is no longer I who live. It is not I, Paul, who can live such a life; it is Christ who lives in me.
In Philippians 2, he has the mind of Christ, meek and lowly. He called himself the chief of sinners and the least of the apostles.
That was his pursuit. He counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.
And in Philippians 4, he found in Christ his all-sufficiency: “I can do all things through Him Who strengtheneth me.” A consecrated life.
Brothers and sisters, this is the will of God—not just for Paul, but for everyone.
We may not be chosen as the great apostle Paul, but we are all chosen to live for Christ, in Christ, and as Christ.
This is what Christian life is, and this can only be lived through consecration.
So, dear brothers and sisters, you may have consecrated yourself to the Lord five years or ten years ago, but are you still in that consecrated life? What about today?
This is something we need to examine in ourselves. It is only by the way of exercising our spirit that we are able to have such a consecrated life. So may the Lord have mercy upon us.
Dear Lord, deliver us from just touching the surface of Thy truth, but bring us into the very depth of Thy word.
Lord, we confess how often we think we know what we are, but Thou art the only One Who knows exactly where we are.
So we just want to present ourselves to Thee and pray that Thy light will shine upon us. Bring us out of ourselves and into Thyself. Give us a life of consecration for the praise of Your glory. In Thy precious name. Amen.