How wonderful it is to worship the Lord and to give Him all the glory.
I want just to read two places in the New Testament this evening. First of all, in John’s Gospel, Chapter 14, Verse 6:
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life:
no one cometh unto the Father, but by me.
I want to add to that, in the Colossian letter—sorry, not the Ephesian letter—Chapter 1. The Apostle Paul writes, from Verse 12:
Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light;
who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love;
in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins:
who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;
for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers;
all things have been created through Him, and unto Him;
and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together;
and He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.
Just a further word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we bow here in Your presence this evening. We are so thankful, dear Lord, that it is unto You that we gather. Lord, we thank You that You have made provision for us for this time this evening.
Into that provision of grace and power, that anointing, we stand by faith. We need that anointing for the speaking of Your Word, for the translating of Your Word, and for the hearing of Your Word.
Will You, in a marvelous way, give a double portion of that anointing this evening, we pray? We need You, Lord, and we are moving into days of unparalleled disturbance, turmoil, darkness, and conflict. We need You. If we have always needed You, we need You more than ever.
Be gracious, O Lord, and visit us. Grant that the Holy Spirit may not be quenched nor grieved, but be enabled to give us that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, the eyes of our hearts being enlightened, that we might know what is the hope of His calling.
We shall be careful to give You all the praise and worship of our hearts for answering this prayer, which we ask in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
You, of course, all know that the theme of these days is preparing the way of the Lord. My responsibility, given to me, is to speak of Christ as the way.
It is, in fact, impossible to prepare the way of the Lord without Christ. He is the key, the power, the grace, the energy, the wisdom that we need to be able to be part of those who will prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.
Jesus said very simply, as we have read in the Gospel of John, “I am the way.” He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”
In fact, the early church described the gospel, and those who were born of God, as people of the Way, and the gospel as the Way. It is quite interesting in the light of what we are studying.
I am always amazed—I do not know about you—but I am always amazed at the utter simplicity of all divine truth.
In our theological seminaries and Bible schools, we have made the simplicity of the truth incredibly convoluted and complex, so that somehow or other we feel that nobody can really understand these things except those who are theologians, or at the very least Bible teachers and Bible scholars.
But in actual fact, the truth of God is absolute simplicity. God has not given us things, gifts, techniques, or methodology. He has given us a Person.
In that Person, the Lord Jesus, we discover everything. It is only as we are born of His Spirit, only as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him, and only as we mature to adulthood spiritually, that we are able to be part of preparing the way of the Lord.
The Father gives us everything in Christ.
Even the universe we are in, the planet we are on—we are told very simply in the Colossian letter, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that all of this was created through the Lord Jesus and created for the Lord Jesus.
In that simple phrase, you have the key to everything in this world that we know: the heavens, the universe beyond it, the other universes—everything was created through the Lord Jesus and for the Lord Jesus.
We are told that He is before all things, as if He is the pattern for the whole thing. Man was created for Him. Men and women, when He created us, were created through Him and for Him.
Then we have this extraordinary little word: in Him all things consist, or hold together. The Greek is very interesting. It simply means that the whole of this universe is held together in the Lord Jesus.
It was not only created through Him, and not only created for Him, but it is held together in Him. If He wanted to, He could let go of the whole thing and it would burst into a million fragments. He is the basic energy of the universe and of the planet on which we live.
You will remember that when the Lord Jesus died, in the darkest part of the hours He spent on the cross—the hours in which He cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”—the sun ceased to shine.
Ignorant people—and there are plenty of us—say it was an eclipse. But all of us know very well, surely, that no eclipse ever lasts for three hours. Secondly, it was a Passover moon. There cannot be an eclipse during the Passover moon.
It is incredible, therefore, what happened. It is a little evidence that everything holds together in the Lord Jesus. In that moment when He became a sin offering for us, when all our iniquity was laid on Him, when God shattered Him and crushed Him, it was as if the basic energy of the universe and the whole creation failed.
Do you realize how great the Lord Jesus is? Do you realize that the One who died to save you, who was born of a woman and came into this world, is the One through whom the whole universe and this planet were created, for whom they were created, and in whom they hold together?
At least it should bring us into a new place of worship and praise that the Lord should ever think of little microbes like you and me, and die to save us.
Can you believe that the Lord could love a human being so much—human debris, human rubbish, human trash—that He was prepared to come into this world and die in order to win us? What treasure did He see in us? What was it that caused Him, somehow or other, to forget everything else in the winning of our salvation?
I cannot put into words, really, what I want to say. But, you see, the Father gives us Christ, the Messiah—not things, not gifts, not methods, not technique. He gives us a Person, and He gives us that Person for our salvation and then to fellowship with Him.
There is much more than what I am saying in all of this, but I can carry you through a few things. Jesus is called the First and the Last. In my estimation, that does not mean that He is merely the First and the Last. It means He is the First and Last and everything between.
Think again: He is called the Beginning and the End. He is the beginning of the creation of God. He is the firstborn from the dead, but then He is the Amen. So He is the beginning and the end. He is the beginning of God’s purpose and the end, the fulfilment of God’s purpose.
Through Him is the Amen. How many soever be the promises of God, in the Messiah they are “Yes,” and it is through Him that they are performed and become our experience. He is the Alpha and the Omega.
You must have heard me say it before, and others say it too: it does not mean He is the first letter of the alphabet and the last letter of the alphabet and everything in between is something else. It means He is the alphabet of God.
It means that all God’s language is in terms of Jesus. He speaks to you through Jesus. He declares His mind and His will in and through Jesus. His mind and His heart are expressed in the Lord Jesus.
It is amazing that God should give us the Lord Jesus as His alphabet. Every word is formed from an alphabet. Think of English, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch. It may all be pronounced in different ways, but the fact is, you have an alphabet.
Now, you who are Chinese have a problem. I am not going to go too far into that, but you have a problem. I thank God for Chinese, because that is what gave me a photographic memory.
Having to learn characters every day, losing about a third of them, and then having to start again with the third I lost and add a whole lot more to them, I discovered that my lazy mind suddenly became photographic. I had a memory for the Word of God. Thank God for that. I even knew from my Bible on which page things were.
But now forget, for the moment, Chinese. Come back to all the European languages. Take Greek. Take Hebrew. You have letters. You have A and Z—Z, you call it here in this part of the world.
But Jesus is A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and all the way through to Z. The same with Hebrew, aleph to tav. He is every single one of those letters. Every word God uses is made up of Jesus. It is the expression of His mind and of His heart.
Do you realize that this Book, which we call the Word of God—sixty-six books—Jesus is the living Word of God? He is the thought process of God, if I may put it reverently: the thought process of God unveiled, expressed, uttered, articulated—in that dreadful American English—verbalised.
That is the Lord Jesus. He speaks to you. Through Him, God speaks. He unveils Himself.
Through the Lord Jesus, we understand what happened to our forefathers. We see how they fell. We see what happened to this world. It is through Jesus—through Jesus—we see how the purpose of God has been pursued all the way through the years of Israel’s history, to the coming of the Messiah and then beyond that.
It goes further. It is amazing. The Lord Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega of God. He is the alphabet of God.
Think for a few moments a little more about this. Christ is our salvation. I hope that everyone here is saved. You are born of God.
If the Lord Jesus is in you, you are saved. If the Lord Jesus is not in you, you are not saved. Salvation is not a method. It is not a technique. It is not a series of steps. Salvation is a Person.
That is why the angel said to Joseph and Mary, “Call His name Yeshua”—salvation, Jesus. His name means salvation. When He steps into a human life, that life is saved, delivered, and the whole process of conforming that one to the image of the Lord Jesus begins.
The whole possibility of glory is in the worst sinner in the world when Jesus steps into their circumstances and into their life. Never put anyone beyond the grace of God.
The Lord can take the biggest swindler, the biggest gangster, the biggest crook, and if He steps in, it is salvation. There is nothing like this gospel, because God saves to the uttermost those who put their trust in Him.
I am often subject to fears—strange fears. I am sure many of you do not have the same thing, but maybe something in a different way. I find that when I have that kind of fear, into my heart comes a Scripture:
God is my salvation;
I will trust, and not be afraid:
for the Lord, even the Lord, is my strength and my song;
and He is become my salvation.
First, a statement of faith: “He is my salvation.” Then the process: He becomes my salvation in reality.
Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
I do not know if you get as thrilled as I do about this, but I had a completely unsaved background. So I get so excited about this question of the Lord Jesus. I do not know all these things about seven steps to get saved, or seven stages, or five stages, or whatever.
All I know is that when Jesus is outside knocking on the door and you open the door, He comes in. The Saviour enters your heart, and in that moment you are saved by the grace of God. It is salvation.
There is a psalm that I find very precious, at least to myself. You will find it in the Psalter: the ninety-first Psalm.
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High
shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress:
my God; in Him will I trust.
Then listen how the psalm ends:
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will deliver him, and honour him.
With long life will I satisfy him,
and show him My salvation.
Your version says, “My salvation.” In Hebrew, it is Yeshuati: “I will show him My Yeshua”—Jesus.
All this is so tremendous. How can we prepare for the Lord’s coming unless we are saved, and unless we are experiencing, day to day, our salvation? There is such a power in our salvation. There is so much within it. I do not think any of us have yet explored to the full what is given to us in our Lord Jesus.
Now, here is the second thing I want to dwell on for a few minutes. Christ is not only our salvation; He is our life.
Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Jesus said He is the bread of life by which we live and grow. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Everywhere you turn in the Word of God, you discover that Jesus is the life of God.
May I put it another way, following what our brother Stephen said this morning? Jesus is the tree of life, if you like.
Do you remember? “I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light”—the light of knowledge? No, the light of life.
So the life of Jesus in us becomes our experience. It becomes our getting to know Him, understanding Him, being educated by Him, being trained by Him.
I feel sorry for Christians who had a conversion experience years and years ago and nothing ever since. We are not meant to hark back to something that happened ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, fifty years ago, sixty years ago—in my case, seventy years ago—as if it was the only thing that ever happened.
Jesus is our life. God has given us, in the Lord Jesus, eternal life. Eternal life is not something that happens after death.
Everyone seems to think, “Well, you know, we live here until we go through the routine of life day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and then when we are about seventy—or sometimes before, sometimes later—we drop dead. Then we float away into eternity, and there we will sit on some damp cloud with a harp and sing praises to God forever and ever.”
One wonders, did the Lord go to all this trouble to have an eternal choir? Is that the whole thing? Is that the purpose of God?
Is God so, if I may put it reverently, eccentric that all He can be interested in is thousands and thousands of people just around Him worshipping, worshipping, worshipping, and worshipping? A thousand years of worship, and then a bell goes, and we all have something to drink and eat. Then the bell goes again and we all come back for another thousand years of worship—and that is eternity.
No wonder the world laughs at us. They say, “Your Jesus came into this world to die so that you might join a choir forever and ever.”
No, it is not as if God has retired and is sitting somewhere in the heavens vegetating in retirement. God is full of power, full of wisdom, full of grace—if I may put it, I hope reverently—full of ingenuity. God has not finished.
Do you think that this world, in all its original beauty—the scenery we see, the animals that have been created, the birds that have been created—has exhausted Him, so that now He sits in retirement, sort of an old gentleman with Alzheimer’s? Do you really think that is the gospel? Never.
There is an eternal purpose in the Lord Jesus. The eternal purpose of God is centred in Him. He is the beginning of it and the fulfilment of it. It is Jesus.
The way to enter in is through life. You are saved. How could you be born again without life, unless you are stillborn? If you are born of God, the life of the Lord Jesus is yours. It is yours, and by that life, by the experience of that life, you grow.
There is a verse that puts it all very simply. Romans, Chapter 5, Verse 10:
For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son,
much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.
Get it. Have we been reconciled to God? How have we been reconciled to God? Through the suffering of the Lord Jesus on the cross. We have been saved by the blood of the Lamb.
If God has gone to such lengths to reconcile us to Himself—many of us not even interested in being reconciled to Him—the most wonderful thing is that we are saved by His life.
I remember when I was saved, reading the life story of C. T. Studd. I thought God was a myth, but I realised that maybe He was not a myth. What He had done in C. T. Studd, I thought, was amazing.
I stood, I remember, and then I thought, “No, I think they kneel.” So I knelt. Then I felt uncomfortable. Then I got up again and stood with my hands out, and I said, “Oh God, if there is a God, will You please do in me what You did in C. T. Studd?”
I was reconciled. I cannot tell you how. All I know is I went off to see a Charlie Chaplin film that afternoon. But suddenly, in the evening, I had a feeling to go to church.
I had never been to church, only to Sunday school, and that only because I was roped in to look after my dear sister and her friends. Then my sister and I went, and that was the first church meeting we were ever in.
We were reconciled by the death of His Son. But the most wonderful thing is that we are saved by His life. That is an ongoing, daily process.
That is something: when you hear the Lord. Some people tell me they have never heard the Lord. What is wrong with you?
“Oh, you see, I am just a very ordinary…” Rubbish. You are very ordinary? Well, why has the Lord saved you, if you are so ordinary, so very sort of worthless? Why has the Lord come to all this trouble to save you? Now He has brought you to Himself.
Jesus put it again very simply:
My sheep hear My voice,
and they follow Me.
Could there be anything more simple? “My sheep hear My voice.” This means that in your spirit—if I may put it this way—I call computers household idols, but I think there is a gadget within the spirit by which we can receive God’s speaking.
When you are born of God, you can hear. How did you first learn your father’s voice? How did you first distinguish your mother’s voice from all those other female voices?
You heard, you heard again, you heard again, and you began to discern that voice. You distinguished that voice: mother.
Dear child of God, half our problem is that we do not expect the Lord to speak to us. You should expect the Lord to speak to you. How can you grow in an experience of the Lord Jesus if you never hear His voice? How can you obey Him?
“Well,” you say, “I have got the Bible.” Yes, but I am not sure that merely having the Bible means that you are hearing the voice of the Lord.
It is when the Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and illumines it, when you are given the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, then you know what is the hope of His calling.
Not know about it. You can read the Bible and know about it, but when it dawns on you, you know what is the hope of your calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe.
Life.
John, writing his letter later, said this:
And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life,
and this life is in His Son.
He that hath the Son hath the life;
and he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
You can have all the theology, all the doctrine, and all the biblical knowledge, but if you do not have the Son, you do not have the life. He is the life of God.
I do not know how to put it more simply. I have done my best. That was 1 John 5:11-12.
But once you begin to experience His life, you are born of God. What happens when a child is born? Your eyes open. What happens when a baby is born? You begin to hear.
What happens when a baby is born? He or she begins to grow. Before long, you are crawling. Before long, you have teeth. Before long, you are climbing on things. Before long, you are your parents’ worst nightmare.
What do you do? Can you stop someone? “Oh,” you say, “yes, yes, yes—kill them.” That is not the answer.
The answer is much more simple and much more wonderful. It is that you are growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus—not academic knowledge, but experiential knowledge.
You are experiencing Him, and as you experience Him, He becomes the bread of life. What do we do to live? We eat. What do we do to live? We drink. He is both the food and the drink that we need to go on.
How does it happen? The Lord allows us, gently at first, but before long, into difficult circumstances and situations in which we are baffled, confused, depressed, and tested. Then we discover the Word of the Lord made real to us by the Holy Spirit.
Then we come through it, and now you have your own experience. The Lord has done something in you. It may be very small at the very beginning.
I was just a young kid when, for the first time, the River Thames overflowed. Every time the River Thames overflowed, it came up the avenue in which I lived. It would flow round the house and finally through the garden, so you could not walk anywhere. You had to stay in the house.
I was alone in the house, and this river was coming. Apparently, the toll keeper was drunk, and so the river overflowed. Where we lived was in the tidal basin of the River Thames. Twice a day, the river comes right over the towpath and then goes down again.
I did not know what to do, but I remembered Aunt Ella. I remembered her sewing machine. I remembered how she had trusted God and sent an angel.
I was alone in the house. I went out into the garden, paddled through the water, got on my knees, and said, “Lord, send back this water.” I could have only been thirteen, fourteen at the most.
To my amazement, the water gurgled back to the next neighbour. I then found out that they discovered the toll keeper drunk, and he had lifted the toll gate. The water was receding, but to me it was an amazing answer to prayer.
When I had no Christian background and no experience of the Lord, now I had my first experience. My first experience was with Auntie Ella, when I saw her sewing machine touched by an angel. Now I had my own experience, so I grew. That is how we go.
You see, we have to hear Him. Do you not think it is an odd thing, if our Lord has gone to such lengths to save us—came into this world, born of a woman, lived for those thirty years, been contradicted by sinners, gainsaid by sinners, then died on the cross for us—that you think He would never think of speaking to you?
Dear child of God, wake up. Would it have been better if He had never thought of you in the first place? Did not come, was not born of the Spirit, did not come into this world, did not die on the cross?
It is quite clear that He wants you. Now how can you prepare the way for the coming of the Lord if you do not hear Him, if you do not experience Him? It is clear that we need to experience Him.
Everything of Christ is given to us in His finished work and in His resurrection life. Think of that. There is nothing God withholds. In giving His Son, He says, “I give you everything.”
With Him, I will give you all that you need to overcome, all that you need to endure, all that you need to come right through all these experiences and be conformed to the image of My Son.
Then again, here is another matter. I can only take a few matters, but everything is in Christ. Yes, salvation is Christ. Life is Christ. Eternal life is Christ. The church is Christ.
“Oh no,” you say, “now you are going too far. We are the church. Christ is not the church. He is the Head. He is the Saviour, but we are the church.” No, no, no. I am right; you are wrong.
Christ is the church, like that old dear black brother who was once asked, “What is the church?” He said, “Mrs. Jesus.” The church is Mrs. Jesus.
You say, “This is a bit too hard for me to understand, now, what you are saying.” But what I am trying to say is that the church is not a building where you leave your umbrella, your purse, or your Bible.
The church is not a place with a steeple or a tower with a bell in it. A church is not a place, as in Britain and Europe, where all the dead are buried around it, and often within it.
What is the church? Listen:
He is the head of the body, the church;
who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead;
that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.
He is the church. Look, I will give you an illustration. Here is my head. You see it? I am sorry for you, but this is my head. Just look at it for a moment. Stop writing your notes and see: this is my head. From here down is my body.
Are you going to tell me that the church is severed from its Head? That is what it has become again and again and again through church history.
But the real church is the expansion of the Lord Jesus, if I could put it so—almost irreverently—the extension of the Lord Jesus. It is His body.
We are members of Christ and members one of another. Now, that word members does not mean membership on a church roll. It means limbs. It is a Greek word meaning limbs. We are limbs of Christ and limbs one of another.
Where did this all begin? With the Head. How did it begin? When the Head reached the throne of God, when He ascended on high, and when He sat down on the throne of God.
He received the promise of the Spirit and poured forth the Holy Spirit. In a single moment of time, something that had never happened before in the history of the universe happened: a Head in heaven became joined to one hundred and twenty limbs on earth in Jerusalem.
Now, do not just look at me as if I am stark raving mad. It is truth. That is Pentecost.
This Head and body were destined to turn the Jewish world upside down and inside out, and in the end, the Gentile world upside down and inside out.
How did they do it? By great organisation? No. By great planning? No. Great funds? No. They did it by being joined to the Head.
When they could hear the Head and obey the Head, the world was turned upside down. Within hours, one hundred and twenty members of the body of our Lord Jesus became three thousand one hundred and twenty members of the body.
Within a few weeks, it had reached five thousand. Within a few more weeks, eight thousand. Even a great company of priests and Levites believed on the Lord Jesus.
That kind of church is invincible. That kind of church the gates of hell cannot prevail against. Whilst it remains within the principles of its beginning, whilst it is joined to the Head, whilst it hears the directions of the Head, whilst it obeys His directions, it is invincible.
When you put man in place of the Lord Jesus—be it pope, archbishop, cardinal, bishop, or leader—you have paralysed the church. It begins to die.
Then the Lord Jesus, blessed be His name, launches a new initiative by the Holy Spirit. Take the history of the church: wherever you turn, you find them. There they are. They are called by names that they never called themselves: Donatists, Montanists, Paulicians, Bogomils, Waldensians, Priscillianists, Quakers, Methodists—first called enthusiasts, much better—the Brethren, the Pentecostals, the last great move, the Charismatics.
Wherever you turn, the Lord launches something by His Spirit and turns the so-called church upside down.
Dear brothers and sisters, I realise that you have some difficulty over my saying that the church is Jesus. But let me just tell you again—I am sorry that I am making this rather more personal this evening—but I was reading a little booklet by Theodore Austin-Sparks.
I was not very well at the time, and I was taking walks along by the River Thames. Whilst I was walking, I would read this little booklet. It was wonderful.
Then I read, “So you see, the church is Christ.” I thought, “He cannot have said that.” So I read it again. He said it. I read it again, and I thought, “Now I know what is wrong with him.”
Everyone speaks against Theodore Austin-Sparks, tells you to be careful of him, that he is a bit of a heretic and all this kind of thing. So I said, “I have searched and searched to find what is wrong. I found it.”
I closed the book, put it in my pocket, and thought, “Well, now I know what is wrong with Honor Oak.” God has enormous humour.
The next morning, my daily reading portion was 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12, Verse 12:
For as the body is one, and hath many members,
and all the members of the body, being many, are one body;
so also is Christ.
Then I thought, “Just wait. That is what Theodore Austin-Sparks said. It cannot be right.” So I looked it up in the Greek—the little that I knew from school—and then I found out it is exactly correct: many members of the body, one body; so also is Christ.
Then, in a moment—forgive me, any of you who are Baptist; I was a Baptist—in that single moment, I died as a Baptist. I went down into the grave as a Baptist and came up a Christian.
I suddenly realised the church was not denominational—not a thousand divisions, not a thousand different ways of doing things, of different routines. Suddenly I realised the church was the Lord Jesus.
Well, you know very well—I do not have to go on. I have been going on too long anyway. I do not have to say any more to you on this matter. You ought to be able to understand by now.
This church that the Lord has brought about is Head and body. It is not body apart from the Head, or the Head apart from the body. It is Head and body.
Well, dear folks, how can we prepare the way for the coming of the Lord if we are in all kinds of dead things? How can we prepare for the coming of the Lord if we are in a church that is not the church?
How can we prepare for the coming of the Lord if we do not know anything about His life, if we do not know Him as our salvation?
Vision is an unbelievable thing. When God touches the eyes of your heart, in a single moment of time you see what you would have thought would take years of academic study. Suddenly, in a moment, you see it.
I can take a very simple illustration. You may be brought up in a Christian home. “Well, are you a Christian?” “Well,” you say, “yes, I am.” But you are not really. You have got all the trappings, but not salvation.
Do you remember, some of you brought up in Christian homes, when the Lord revealed Himself to you? In that single moment, you were saved. Then what you had heard as a child became reality. It became experience.
When the God of glory appeared to our forefather Abraham, it knocked him out. Here, according to Jewish tradition, his family had a very lucrative business in idol-making in Ur of the Chaldees.
He actually made the idols that people worshipped. There were household idols, kitchen idols, bedroom idols, idols in the garden, idols at the gate into the house, idols on the corner of the street, idols in temples. Very lucrative.
One day, the God of glory appeared to Abraham. It was one of the great turning points of history. It was the beginning of the people of God. Until then, it had been individuals; now, suddenly, it was a people.
Abraham was never the same. He saw something in the God of glory that he had never seen in an idol. He saw a purpose, an eternal purpose. He saw the Saviour. He understood.
He went out from Ur of the Chaldees, in obedience to the command of the God of glory, as a nomad—a shepherd, a goat-herd—with camels and donkeys.
He saw in the God of glory the city of glory. He was never the same again.
When Moses saw the Lord and saw the glory of the Lord, it changed his whole being. He spoke of a prophet coming like himself, he said, but much greater. It was Jesus.
Jacob saw the God of glory when that heavenly visitor wrestled with him and changed his name from Jacob the Twister to Israel, prince with God.
Dear folks, everywhere we look in the Bible, when people have really seen the Lord, it has changed their lives.
One of the best examples, in my estimation, is a rabbi. His name was Shaul. He came from Tarsus in Asia Minor. He was filled with hatred for Messianic Jews, filled with derision for this talk about this Messiah, Jesus.
He went everywhere hounding the Messianic believers into prison, torturing them, being witness to their execution.
Then, on his way to Damascus to hound out those Messianic believers in Damascus, God knocked him out.
When he came to, from being smitten to the ground, in a dazed state, he said, “Sir, who are You?”
And Jesus said, in Hebrew, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
I do not know whether you have ever realised that in that single statement was the seed which was to take root in Paul, the great apostle.
He said, “I am not persecuting You. I am persecuting these disciples of Yours.” Then it dawned on him: when he touched those disciples, he was touching the members of the body of the Messiah.
From this came all Paul’s understanding of the church as the body of Christ. Dear folks, is not this amazing? It changes our lives. We see something.
People sometimes say to me—and I must not talk about Israel because that is not my subject—but I cannot help saying this. People say to me, “Oh, it is awful, is it not, in Israel? All this visa question being cancelled for Christians, and all this difficulty for Christian work in the land.”
Yes, absolutely. But I always say to all of them, “It is no problem with God. When God’s time comes to save Israel, He will knock out the chief rabbis with one clean blow.”
They will be knocked out, and reeling from it, they will say, “Who are You?” And He will say, “I am Jesus.” Some of them will become, if the Lord tarries, great apostles.
Those natural branches have to be regrafted into their own olive tree. It will happen, more surely than I stand here.
Now, dear child of God, listen to me. How can you possibly prepare the way for the coming of the Lord if you are not saved, if you are not experiencing His life, if you are not experiencing His body—the church, the house of God, however you put it?
That is what you and I need above everything else.
May the Lord take these poor words of mine and use them to reveal something to every one of us. Amen.