I would like to read from Psalm 24 again. We will read from the beginning until verse 6.
A Psalm of David.
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;
The world, and they that dwell therein.
For He hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in His holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart;
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity,
Nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive a blessing from the Lord,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek after Him,
That seek Thy face, even Jacob. Selah.
I am going to read verse 6 one more time:
This is the generation of them that seek after Him,
That seek Thy face, even Jacob. Selah.
And one more verse in Revelation 12:11. We will use this verse a lot today.
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death.
Let us pray together.
Lord, we appreciate Your mercy this morning. We appreciate Your love, and we cast ourselves before You and cling to You. We depend on You. We pray that Your word would be smooth in our hearts and not fall on any rough edges. Soften our hearts, Lord. We want to be open to You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
This psalm has become very dear to me, especially since last summer at the Toronto Youth Conference. It was one of the last songs we sang.
The picture I had was of so many praying, “Give us clean hands; give us pure hearts. Let us not lift our souls to another.” Then, in the song written according to this Scripture, it says, “O God, let us be the generation that seeks Your face, O God of Jacob.”
Since that time, it has been stuck in my heart. When I am praying for the people of God, I am often praying that way. Often, when I am praying for the youth, this psalm comes to my heart. Sorry, I am very emotional. I think I have sympathy pregnancy with my wife, so I am very emotional.
I have been praying for perhaps this last generation—the ones alive when the Lord returns—to be part of this generation that seeks His face, that ascends to the mount, that makes that rapture, that pleases the Lord, that overcomes.
I have been considering this and praying this way, and I have been experiencing something that, for me, has been a little new in the way of overcoming. That is what I wanted to talk about today.
Last week we talked especially about the heart of seeking the face of God. Today, I would like to talk more about how the Lord leads those who seek the face of God to overcome.
We are going to compare Psalm 24, especially verse 4, with Revelation 12:11. To be among the overcomers—the generation described here—it only works if you seek the face of the Lord. It does not work another way.
To try to overcome without having a heart that seeks His face is constant failure. You can overcome some sins. You can overcome some worldly temptations. You can even be willing to be a martyr.
But, as 1 Corinthians 13 says, if I deliver up my body to the flames but do not have love, I profit nothing. I do not receive the reward of a martyr if there is no love behind the martyrdom. In Revelation 12:11, it says they did not love their life even unto death.
That has a deeper meaning, but at the very surface, at least, it means they were willing to die even through the enemy’s tactics of persecution. Those willing to die without the love that seeks the face of God profit nothing.
So it is a serious thing that behind all of this is a heart seeking the face of the Lord. Until we have this heart, we are in the negative realm. If you think of numbers—negative one, negative two, negative three—this heart brings you up to zero, where we can start.
If we are going to go forward and Christ is going to increase, we have to come to the complete, utter, wiped-out end and just cling to the Lord. It is the only way.
We are like the disciples when the Lord Jesus taught hard teachings. Many people wanted to be His disciples, but He spoke of eating His body and drinking His blood. It was very confusing at that time. They did not have the hindsight that we have through Scripture explaining what He was talking about, even through the breaking of bread and knowing the Lord.
His teaching was so hard that many people simply left. “He is so difficult.” Then He asked His disciples, “Are you also going away?” But they stuck with Him. They said, “Who else can we go to? You alone have the words of life.”
They did not understand it. They did not always understand everything He taught or everything He did. He said He was going to the cross; Peter rebuked Him, and then He rebuked Peter. It was confusing.
For us as Christians, sometimes our walk with God is confusing. God is good, and then I have a bad experience. If I am only in my mind, I think, “God is good, but this is bad. Something is wrong,” and I walk away.
But even though I do not understand it, if I can say, “I am stuck with You. Who else can I go to? I do not understand why this is going on, but You alone have the words of life. You are the Lover of my soul. I am clinging to You,” then I seek His face even though it hurts.
I seek His face even though the light from His face shines so much that it burns me up. I know that You love me, though. I know that the One with the fiery eyes is the One with the teary eyes.
I know that the One coming in the clouds, with the horse and the weapons and the armor and the armies—the hosts—the One coming to battle, this King, is the One that, if you see Him in His glory, you fall down almost as dead.
I know He is the same One who stood there at the cross and died for my sins. Knowing the love of Christ draws us to seek His face. It is the love of Christ that constrains us to seek His face.
This is this generation, and this is our foundation. Often we are crying out, “Lord, why am I failing so much? Wretched man that I am, who is going to deliver me from all these failures, from this body that keeps on sinning?”
We are at a good zero point if we seek His face then, because the question is, “Who will save me? Who will deliver me?” It is the Lord Jesus.
Last time, we especially wanted to look at this: as an overcomer, as a Christian called to be an overcomer, the one requirement that, if you lose it, you cannot do it, is to seek His face.
All overcoming has to do with the Lord’s presence. It has to do with the Lord in you, the Lord’s grace, the Lord helping you, the Lord doing it. To not seek His face and then try to be a tough Christian, or an elite special-forces Christian, does not work.
Even if you are very strong-willed and can stop many outward things, you meet the Lord and He is not pleased. He says, “I did not know you in those things.”
But if through our failures we get back up, get back up, and seek His face—seek His face, seek His face—and meet Him, we see Him smile and He says, “Well done, good and faithful bondservant; enter into the joy of your Lord.”
This is what we are after. This is our heart’s cry.
Last year at the summer conference, there was a real heart in the worship times: many prayers and heartfelt cries to the Lord to be His bondservants. To me, that is the feeling of it.
Now, is the crowd all overcoming? Do they walk away the next day and fail? I do not know. But the heart cry is this: “Let us be the generation that seeks Your face.”
What I have been discovering is that if you are seeking His face, the other things work.
For example, Psalm 24:4 says, “He that hath clean hands.” Another translation says, “blameless hands.” This is a description of those who ascend to the mount. It is a description of the generation that seeks His face.
Clean hands have to do with what you do—your actions. It is not just talking about whether you washed your hands. Spiritually speaking, are your actions clean or not?
It also means being cleansed when you have made a mistake. When you have sinned, you confess your sin and are washed clean by the precious blood.
As a Christian seeking the Lord’s face, something that stops you from getting His presence is sin. You try to pray, but you cannot pray. The thing stopping you is sin—some sin or sins between you and the Lord.
If you have failed and sinned, then in the midst of that sin, or after that sin, you and the Lord are separated as far as fellowship and presence are concerned. It does not have to do with your eternal salvation, but it does have to do with this: “Am I in His presence right now? Do I have His face?”
Remember, the face of God is His presence. The reason we confess our sins as Christians, even though Christ died on the cross for us and heaven is secured, is because we want His presence.
To have sin on my conscience means I cannot enter into the Holy of Holies and enjoy His presence. Hebrews 10 speaks of entering into the Holy of Holies, with our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.
The blood sprinkles on your heart. Your conscience is part of your heart. When you are convicted of sin in your heart, the way into the Holy of Holies, where the Lord’s presence is spiritually speaking, is to confess those sins.
The blood cleanses what is on your conscience, and you have a clean conscience. The way through into that spiritual communion is by the blood—always by the blood.
We never come to worship the Lord except by the blood. We come into His presence by the blood. We often experience this when we break bread and remember the Lord and partake of the cup. I believe many of us are having dealings with God, getting things right, and experiencing cleansing by the blood.
We thank God that we get to break bread here at least weekly, because sometimes we forget even to get right with the Lord. At least as that time passes, we know something is wrong and we get right with the Lord.
But we try to keep a clean conscience constantly. If you fail, immediately keep a clean conscience, because you notice, “I lost His face.” As soon as you sin, you notice, “I do not have His presence. Something is wrong,” if you are seeking His face.
Imagine that your heart is after Him, seeking His face. Because of our weakness, carnality, or struggle, you may have failed. You may say, “I just do not know how to overcome this sin. I failed.”
As soon as that happens, you confess your sins. As 1 John 1:9 says, you confess, God is faithful and righteous, and He forgives you and washes you clean. He washes that conscience clean, and then you have the presence of God.
As far as seeking God’s face, we seek His face by the blood. We have clean hands. When our actions have failed, we get cleansed.
This also keeps us with a heart that does not desire to fail. If you have genuinely confessed the same sin ten times, the next time temptation comes, you have less desire for it because you know that, as soon as you do it, you have that feeling: “I lost His face. I lost His presence.”
You are a Christian seeking His face. The temptation comes, but you know His presence is so much better. The more I confess my sins and am washed clean by the blood, the smaller those sins become as temptations.
Even though you may feel that you are failing over and over again, if you are repenting each time, something is changing in your heart. Your desire becomes more for the face of God and less for the sin.
Now, overflow this and see what happens. Revelation 12:11 says, “They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb.”
A person seeking the Lord’s face and keeping their hands clean wants to worship the Lord and be before the Lord. In the Old Testament tabernacle, there was a place to wash their hands before entering.
If you are wanting to seek the Lord’s face, then naturally you overcome the enemy by the blood. If you have this down—when you fail, you confess your sin and are washed clean by the blood—you are coming to the Lord.
You may also discover something new through fellowship with somebody. You may discover a higher way. Then it is your choice: do you allow the blood to cleanse you from the darkness in which you used to walk?
If you do, you grow in the Lord, and the blood washes you clean. So whether you fail or whether you grow, it takes the blood.
First John 1:7 has to do with growth; 1 John 1:9 has to do with failure. First John 1:7 says that if we walk in the light, we fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.
As you fellowship with somebody—perhaps at a Bible study or over lunch—they may share something the Lord has been teaching them. Suddenly, you know in your heart, “I have not been walking in that. I did not even know that was the way.” But it clicks with you.
Spiritually, something is going on. It may not even seem as though you are repenting, confessing sin, or being cleansed by the blood, but your heart is warmed and suddenly you have grown.
The blood has technically washed darkness away as you walk in the light and increase in the light. Only the blood cleanses us from darkness. As you grow, it is the blood. If you fail and get back up to seek His face, it is the blood.
The closer and closer you get, the more and more blood you need. The more we need to depend upon and experience the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus at the cross.
If this is your foundation, then the overflow is that they overcome by the blood of the Lamb.
Satan is called in Revelation 12 the accuser of the brethren. You will notice that when you get down or depressed, you have your own thoughts, and then many other thoughts may come. You may get accused of a lot of other things.
Sometimes the brethren are the accusers of the brethren, unfortunately. We remember the wrongs of others and bring them up when we get upset. A husband and wife might do that; siblings might do that; people do this in relationships.
We experience people accusing us of our faults and failures, even when we have repented. This is Satan’s way. It does not matter to him if you have repented. He is the accuser of the brethren.
He wants to condemn you and bring thoughts to your mind—shoot arrows into your thoughts: “You failed. How many times did you fail? Are you going to fail again? Probably you are just going to fail again. You cannot win. You cannot overcome this sin.”
But the Word of God does not say that. The Word of God says your sins have been washed clean completely.
The Word of God also says that there is no temptation that has overtaken you except such as is common to man. Sometimes the accuser says, “This temptation is beyond you completely. Others do not normally have it. This is uniquely special to you. This is impossible. You can never overcome.”
But 1 Corinthians 10:13 says there is no temptation like that. There is no such thing. With the temptation, God always provides the way out. He always provides the way for you to bear through it and overcome the temptation.
There is no sin, worldly thing, or temptation that is impossible according to the Word of God.
To overcome the enemy by the blood, though, does not work unless you have sought the face of the Lord and are approaching His presence by the blood.
Imagine Satan is accusing you after you have sinned. You have condemnation. You try to overcome. You even say, “I plead the blood” to those thoughts. It does not work unless you have actually repented of your sins.
But a Christian who has repented of their sins, has been washed clean, and has the presence of the Lord can stand in that fact when those thoughts come. You can stand in the fact that you are washed clean by the blood. You can plead the blood.
It is the blood on the doorpost of your heart, and the angel of death passes right over. All that death, accusation, and deserved judgment is passed over.
When you stand and say, “I plead the blood. I have been washed clean by the blood. My sins have been cleansed and taken away. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed my transgressions from me”—infinity—they are all gone.
When you stand in that way, all those depressing accusations are gone. But it is an overflow of seeking the Lord’s face.
To be an overcomer who overcomes by the blood is to be a face seeker—someone who seeks the face of God.
As soon as we mess up, we quickly confess our sins, are washed clean by the blood, and enjoy His presence. This is an essential for overcomers. If we do not have this part down, nothing else works, because if we lose His presence, nothing can work.
This creates a hatred for sin—a deep hatred for sin in our hearts. Do not get depressed. Do not think of how many times you have failed. Know that every time you genuinely repent of your sin, you hate sin that much more.
To confess your sin is to hate the sin. “I am on God’s side. I hate this sin.” This is actually a way of overcoming. We end up growing this way.
If you have been a Christian for some years, there may be sins you used to fail in that you do not fail in anymore. At the time, it may have seemed impossible. You may have kept failing in the same thing.
But by God’s grace, perhaps without even noticing when it happened, you learned the way by the blood not even to succumb to that sin.
Keeping close to the Lord is our only hope. Staying in His presence, when sin comes, you have the spiritual sense of His presence. That makes the temptation of sin much less.
But if we walk by ourselves in our own strength, sinful temptations are very strong. A big deal is that we stay close to the Lord. We stay close to Him and enjoy it.
It is so good to be in the Lord’s presence that, when temptation comes, we do not want to lose that presence. We do not want to let Him down.
The Bible says there is no fear in love, as far as the fear of a slave before a cruel master. But there is the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom.
This is the fear of displeasing Him. A temptation to sin is right here, or there is a temptation to go your own way or into something worldly. I do not want to let the Lord down. That is the heart of it.
It is not, “I want to be a strong overcomer. I want to be elite among the armies of God. I want to be in the special forces.” It is, “I do not want to lose His presence. I enjoy Him so much. The love of Christ constrains me.”
Behind overcoming by the blood is, “Lord, give me clean hands. Wash me. Wash me from my sins.” Behind it is, “Lord, I do not want to be away from Your presence.”
It is like Hebrews 10, where they enter into the Holy of Holies by the blood. This is the new and living way, which is through the Lord Jesus. This is the way: seeking His presence and being there with Him.
The next thing is a pure heart.
Purity is like water. This water is probably not pure, unfortunately. It might look as though it is because it is in a bottle like this, but actually I got it from the water fountain.
Pure water is just H2O. It may not taste as good as spring water, but it also does not taste like some of the chemicals we drink out of the faucet.
Pure means there is only one thing. Pure snow is very white coming down, but once it is on the ground, depending on where it lands, it may not be completely white. Especially if you step on it with your boots or drive over it with your tires, it is still snow, but it is no longer pure snow. It is snow that got dirty.
A pure heart means a larger variety of things than what I am going to focus on today, because the heart has several aspects—your thoughts, your conscience, and so on.
But in a general sense, from looking at many verses on purity of heart, the pure heart is a heart completely laid down on the altar, completely consecrated. Basically, you are not holding anything back that is not given over to the Lord.
In our pursuit of the Lord’s face, He may touch something in our life that we are also pursuing. But if we obey and consecrate our lives, there is a pure heart.
It is like Romans 12, where it says to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. You lay down in a spiritual sense and say, “Have Your way with me completely. Here is everything.”
“Here is my time, my thoughts, my emotions, my money, my stuff, my abilities—anything. Here is my will. I am still a person with individuality, but I am deciding to do Your will. I want Your will.”
This is the seeking-face, pure-heart reality. It is not a divided heart that is partly after my own enjoyment and then partly after the Lord. It is not a heart holding one little thing back.
There can be something in your heart where your desire secretly wants something else. The Lord will show us and expose it. But the pure heart says, “The love of Christ constrains me. I am after Him. I am pursuing Him.”
The pure heart is a consecrated person, at least in the sense I am bringing out today. If anybody wants to read more into this, I completely agree. There is much more we could talk about.
In the way of seeking the Lord’s face, it does not work unless you give your life completely to the Lord. We have many messages about consecrating your life for a reason.
Even if we do not know what to do after that—“All right, I am given to the Lord; what is next?”—we need to be in that spot. If you are going to seek His face, everything has to be given over to the Lord.
How does this lead us into overcoming? The consecrated soul, the consecrated heart, the Christian who is consecrated becomes a living sacrifice.
The Word of God cuts through in your heart and exposes what is spirit and what is soul, what is of God and what is of me. It exposes the thoughts and intents of your heart, as Hebrews 4:12 says.
There is this High Priest, the Lord Jesus, and we are living sacrifices on the altar, fully consecrated. What does the High Priest do with that pure heart seeking His face and wanting everything of Him?
He takes His Word, the two-edged sword, like a priest in the Old Testament, and cuts up that sacrifice. It is a little gross to think about, but this is scriptural in Hebrews 4.
The picture is spiritual. He is dividing between the soul and the spirit. The Holy Spirit wields the Word of God, and the High Priest lays everything bare.
If you seek His face, He is going to show you everything. If you seek His face, you have the prayer from the Psalms: “Search me, O God. Show if there is any wicked way in me. Expose me.”
This is the prayer of a person seeking the face of God. If you seek His face, you lay down there ready for Him to expose things.
As you read Scripture, hear someone share Scripture, or have a memorized Scripture come to mind, the Holy Spirit divides and exposes. We actually grow through this.
I may have thoughts or intents in my heart that are wrong, but the Word of God exposes them and lays everything bare. As soon as I see it, if I am seeking His face and consecrated, I can grow.
This overflows into overcoming. The temptations of the world are overcome by the Word of God. We learn this from the Lord Jesus when He overcame the temptations of the world in the wilderness.
Revelation 12:11 says that they overcame him by the word of their testimony. This is one of the ways of overcoming. They have the Word, but they have the testimony behind it.
When the Lord Jesus was in the wilderness, Satan came and tempted Him. He had three temptations, similar to Adam’s and Eve’s temptations in the garden: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.
Satan came fiercely, tempting the Lord Jesus. But each time, the Lord quoted Scripture and overcame by the word of His testimony.
It does not work unless you have the testimony. Behind the Word is this: “I am laid on the altar. I am a living sacrifice.” Behind quoting Scripture when worldly temptation comes is that I have allowed that Scripture to cut me up.
I have allowed the Scripture to expose everything God has shown me. I am on the altar and consecrated to the Lord. When the Word of God shows me something beyond me, something I have not been walking in, or something in which I have made a mistake, I repent.
I consecrate myself to do that, and I say, “Jesus is my Lord.” I read another Scripture and see that, in an area of my life, Jesus has not been my Lord. Then I say, “I repent. Jesus is my Lord in this area too.”
The more I read Scripture, the more I discover of Christ. This grows me closer to His presence, because the more we can say, “Jesus is Lord,” the closer we get to our Master.
The more things we discover, the more we can please Him. C. T. Studd was up early one morning, and somebody asked him about his morning watch. He said, “I am searching for any commands in the Bible.”
I think that is wonderful. He was looking for things in which he could obey the Lord. That is the way: “I am seeking His face. Is there something I am not obeying You in that I can find?”
As we search the Scriptures, read the Bible for a Bible study, do our daily Bible reading, or memorize verses because we need help with something, we are in the Word of God.
But when we find something to obey, we say, “Jesus is my Lord.” The essence of the word of testimony is, “Jesus is Lord.” Those are the words, but there must be truth behind them.
If I say, “Jesus is Lord,” but He is not actually my Lord, it does not work. It is like the seven sons of Sceva who tried to cast out demons. They said, “In the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches, come out.”
The possessed man said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?” Then he beat them up, and they ran away naked.
This is what happens to us. The world’s temptation comes—something that wants to distract you from Christ. Something catches your attention. You want to go toward it. Something may be physically pleasing, but you feel, “That is not what I should be doing right now.”
Maybe you say, “I should not have five dinners a day, but I love apple pie so much,” or whatever. When the temptation is there, you can quote a Scripture, but it does not work if Jesus is not your Lord.
But if Jesus is your Lord, then you can bring out the Word of God. Maybe it will come into your heart, or perhaps you have to find something. At the very least, you can say, “Jesus is Lord.”
Sometimes I have not had a Bible verse that exactly matched the temptation. Perhaps later I tried to find one. But at the time, I did not know what to say. It was so tempting, and all I could say was, “Jesus is my Lord,” and I could walk away.
But it only works if you are fully consecrated. I have tried it before, and it did not work because I was not fully consecrated.
You may sit there saying, “Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord,” and then grab the candy out of the bowl on the table. We have this happen at home. I should have brought a video.
Gabriel, when he wants to get candy out of the bowl on the table, says, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” but then he grabs it.
Then, like us, he comes back and feels guilty. He comes to Mommy or Daddy and says, “Dad, Dad, no, no, no, no,” and brings his mistake.
One time, Catherine caught him standing on the coffee table. This is a no-no. He had grabbed his no-no stick and was hitting himself, saying, “No, no, no.”
This is like us. His problem is that he is not consecrated.
You can overcome by the word of your testimony if you have a testimony. No testimony, no overcoming. No testimony, and you do not have His face either.
I am not merely talking today about being overcomers, though I am talking about that. I am talking about seeking His face. If you are seeking His face, you have a testimony, because you cannot have His presence without being consecrated.
Try to be a Christian and do not get baptized. Baptism is your first step in saying, “I belong to the Lord.” You will struggle. Only by accident do you get His presence.
Try to be a Christian and pursue Him: the first thing is to be baptized. That is the first thing He will speak to you about. Probably most everybody here is baptized, so I am using it as an example.
But suppose there is something you know you should be doing, or should stop doing. You want to seek His face, but as you begin to seek His face, the first thing that comes up is that matter.
As we seek His face, first we may run into sins. We confess our sins and are cleansed, and we can go into His presence. But if something is not consecrated, we run into that too.
If we cannot say, “Jesus is my Lord,” then we cannot have His presence. This does not mean you must be able to say, “I am going to overcome. I am going to stop sinning. I am going to stop all my failures.”
But you must at least say, “Lord, here I am. I cling to You. I cast myself on the altar. I do not know how it is going to work, but I am stuck with You. Take me.” That is all you have to do.
If you cast yourself on Him, knowing how strong the temptations are and how impossible it has been for years to overcome, or even to do what you feel you should be doing, you say, “Lord, I am stuck to You. I cast myself on You, and here I am.”
That is it. If you have that, you have the testimony. If you have that, you belong to Him and have His presence. Then, in His presence, when things come up, you can say, “Jesus is Lord,” and it works.
Behind all of this is a desire to have His face—a desire to know His presence. Personally, what I have been discovering is that all that matters, as far as these other things overflowing, is this: am I really after Him?
I catch myself not being after Him, and I hate that. I repent from it. More and more, I see that we must be after Him. This is it.
It is not the rules. It is not merely the actions of overcoming. It is, “I want Jesus. I want the Lord Jesus.” That is it.
When we do that, we have the testimony. Naturally, when worldly temptation comes, because you want the Lord Jesus and His presence, you do not want to give in to it.
It can be strong, but you stand and quote the Word of God. There is something about saying it out loud, as the Lord Jesus did when tempted by the world. It even tells your body not to do it.
Something about saying, “Jesus is my Lord,” works. Romans 10 says it is with the confession of the mouth that you are saved or delivered. With your heart you believe unto righteousness, but when you say it with your mouth, you are delivered.
As Christians, confess it with your mouth, and you are delivered from the world and all these temptations—everything that wants to pull you into sin.
Another thing brought out in Psalm 24 is not lifting our souls to another. This translation says not to lift our soul unto vanity. Some translations say idols.
In Revelation 12:11, it says they did not love their life even unto death. The word is soul. They did not love their soul life even unto death.
At a basic level, it can mean life—your actual physical life. So they were martyrs. But you can be a living martyr, where you do not love your soul life even unto death.
It means I am not lifting up my soul unto my own selfish things. I am not lifting up my soul unto vanity. It means I deny myself.
I deny my soulish ambitions because I want the face of God. I want Him. I want His things. He is my God. I am after Him. I am not after my own things.
There is a pursuit in this. The soul always wants to be lifted up unto vanity. I do not mean the function or essence of the soul, but the strength of yourself often wants to go after its own things.
This is because we are in fallen human bodies right now. We still have sin in us, and we are not complete yet. When we receive our new bodies, it will be different. But right now, there is a struggle between the flesh and the spirit.
The flesh wants to seek vanity and go after other things. But the desire of this generation is, “I want His face.”
Those who ascend to the mount, those who seek His face, those who seek the face of the God of Jacob, do not go after idols. What is an idol?
It is something else for you to worship, care about, or pursue. An idol can be a good thing. It can be something very evil. Physically, it can be something like a Buddha idol in a restaurant or somewhere else.
But it can also be something in your life that you want, something that seems to compete with the Lord.
All these things are connected, but I especially want to bring out that lifting up your soul to another is natural and has to be denied.
I am not saying we are strong, tough, or so strong in our wills that we want to deny ourselves, apply the cross, and live by the Spirit. But if you have something in your heart that wants His face, you can do this because you want Him.
You want Him as God. You see this other idol thing in your life. It may be precious to you, and perhaps you can even excuse it, but you feel, “This is always drawing my heart and stopping me from drawing toward Christ.”
When you have this in your life, the experience is this: to seek His face, at least my desire for this thing has to stop.
There are things you desire that you cannot simply get rid of. For example, for some parents, their children become an idol. Their whole heart’s desire becomes wrapped up in the child. You cannot simply get rid of the child—you have to keep them.
But you can refuse to lift up your soul to that. If you pursue the Lord and He is your one desire, you will be the best parent. But if you pursue the child, you ruin the child.
It is like that with many things, even with a husband and wife. You pursue the Lord, seek His face, and you are the best spouse you can be.
But if you pursue only your spouse, they will get tired of that. It does not work. In the world, that is all they have, so many songs are just about boy-and-girl relationships. But we can sing far more songs about the Lord.
What is the experience of a Christian marriage where they pursue the Lord? It is the best experience. What is the experience in the world, where there has been a great emotional, human-love pursuit of each other? After a while, it dies down.
Then marriages are breaking up all the time, or they become sad marriages. But in a Christian marriage, if you pursue the face of God and do not let your spouse become an idol, the Lord leads you to love them with the love of Christ.
One of His commands is that husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Because husbands want to follow the Lord, they say, “Jesus is my Lord,” and learn to lay down their lives for their wives.
The same applies to children and parents. Because they pursue the Lord and discover that they are to honor their parents, their relationship with their parents becomes much better.
But some children, perhaps because of terrible experiences or whatever, look up to their father or mother so much that they become their everything. If they see them fail, it is a disaster.
This can happen in the church too, with somebody we respect greatly. If they fail, we fall apart. But Christ is the One we are after. Christ never fails us.
There can be idols even in good things. I know a brother whose idol was his guitar—his music. He was very good. You cannot say that a guitar in itself is wrong.
But in his case, he laid down his guitar, and it was a wonderful experience afterward. When he was by himself, he simply wanted to play his guitar—anything, random things—because he loved the feeling of playing.
But he felt a tug in his heart: “When I am by myself, I do not want to seek the Lord’s face. I just want to grab my guitar and enjoy playing it.” For him, that was his idol. For someone else, the guitar might not be a problem at all.
For another person, it was pursuit after a girl. This brother shared that it was his idol. I saw him the next day after he and the girl had talked. They did not know whether they should marry, so they stopped the relationship.
He came the next day beaming with Christ, overflowing with joy. He said it had been an idol to him. That day, he also led his brother to the Lord. He was overflowing with Christ.
People were getting infected with Christ left and right. I mean, it was wonderful.
This is our experience. There may be some idol in your life—some vanity, some temporary breath of nothing compared to God—and this is what you are seeking after. You do not get His face then.
Only one pursuit can work: the Lord. He will allow only that one thing to be pursued if you are truly going to find Him.
If you partially pursue the Lord and partially pursue something else, it is not true pursuit. If you partially seek something else, you are not partially seeking the Lord, because His path is narrow.
It is like the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3. He said that all the things he had once counted so much were now loss—nothing compared to knowing Him, compared to having Christ.
His pursuit was, “I want to know Him.” It was a pursuit that grew, but this is the heart of it.
What are our idols? What is the thing in my life that I really pursue? If I sit down and have free time, is there even a thought in my heart: “I enjoy the Lord. I am in His presence. Lord, what would You have me do? What are we going to do together?”
Or is it immediately, “I have that really good book over here,” or, “I want to do this,” or, “I need to check my email twenty more times today to make sure nobody has sent me anything”? What is the first thing on our hearts?
Within the realm of seeking Him and His face, you can take hold of all kinds of things. You can handle your guitar. You can be a husband, a dad, a wife, or a mom. You can live in this life. You can email people. You can function.
You can be a Christian who seeks His face, and that is what you are after. That overflows into overcoming.
One of the fiercest things to overcome is the flesh. Satan’s great tactic began to work in the garden when man took in sin and corruption began.
Inside us is carnality. It is not merely that we walk around as Christians and face attacks from the enemy. Inside us, there is already something fighting us—an evil desire for sin, which is the flesh.
In overcoming that, because you want His face, you deny yourself. When the desire for selfish ambition, selfish pleasure, or selfish sin rises up, you say, “I want the Lord. I am seeking His face. I do not want my own vain things. I want the Lord.”
They overcame because they did not love their soul life even unto death. They overcame by the cross.
This is not a teaching for the elite. It is a teaching for those who want to cling to Christ. This is the way to cling to Christ.
When you are clinging to Him, some vain thing in your heart is going to rise up. At that moment, you have to make a choice. Do I choose the tree of life and cling to Christ, or do I choose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and become my own god?
Do I choose for myself to be the idol, or do I choose for God to be God? It is a choice of whether I love Him or not. It is a choice of whether I am stuck with Him or not.
It is not something only for mature Christians. This is for Christians who need Christ. This is for Christians who cannot do it by themselves. If you have failed over and over again, you know you have no hope except with the Lord Jesus.
This is our way. With overcoming sin, temptation, Satan, the world, and the flesh, all of these things are impossible unless you want the presence of the Lord.
Then gradually, Christ increases and we decrease. Even in denying ourselves, we become more used to living by the presence of the Lord and His life, and less used to our own strength.
Gradually it changes. We are all hoping, right? The more we experience and practice this, the more the carnality that used to be so strong becomes weaker and weaker, because Christ is stronger and stronger inside.
It all has to do with our pursuit of the Lord.
Why bring this up? It may seem enough to talk about having this pursuit of His face for our own sakes. But actually, it is not enough, because we love Christ.
You can technically make it to the kingdom just barely if you simply stay right with the Lord. But you cannot just stay right with the Lord, because if you stay right with the Lord, you are going to overcome.
Do you see that? It is impossible to remain right with the Lord and not step into overcoming. If you are truly seeking His face and staying right with Him, you will overcome actual sins and worldly temptations.
We can make it to the kingdom just barely, or we can have a larger experience of overcoming. Our responsibility will be greater, our closeness to Him will be greater, and His joy will be increased.
That is the thing. We do not simply want the kingdom for ourselves. We do not simply want blessing from God for ourselves. We want Him to be blessed.
If you are seeking His face, you want to see Him smile—not merely because five minutes before you died, or five minutes before you were raptured, you repented of your sins and were washed clean.
You want to see Him smile because He has seen the life of Christ overcoming in you at different times in your life. There is a record of times when you allowed the grace of God to overcome, and He saw you clinging to Him, loving Him, and pursuing His face.
It is, “I want to please the Lord more.” Consider the Apostle Paul and the Christians. Why did he travail so much for Christians who were already saved?
Many Christians today say, “Well, the person is saved. Let us move on. At least they are going to heaven. They should walk better, but who cares? They made it to heaven out of hell.”
But the Apostle Paul’s main burden was for those who were already saved. He preached the gospel to the lost, and the Lord raised up churches through him. Souls were saved and brought in, but Paul went back to those churches.
Why not leave them alone? They were already saved. But he went back. In Galatians, he says, “I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.” He was burdened for this.
In Philippians, he says that he wanted to pour out his life as an offering for their sacrifice. He wanted to present them before Christ. He wanted to have something that pleased Christ.
Even in helping another Christian in the Lord—praying for them, comforting them, encouraging them—you want them to stand before the Lord and want the Lord to be pleased. You want it for the Lord’s sake, not your own sake.
Sometimes you think of an older Christian in the Lord, and you simply want the church to do well for their sake.
Brother Kong is not here, so do not tell him I said this. But many times when Catherine and I have prayed for the church, we have felt, “Lord, even to encourage Brother Kong.”
I have been helped a great deal by this brother and have seen through the years his labor in the Lord in different things.
It can be sad. In my case, there are some people I led to the Lord who are not walking with the Lord right now. It is a sad thing, and it breaks my heart.
Sometimes we pray that, in a Bible study or prayer meeting, a brother will be encouraged because of the real life of Christ.
But it is that way with the Lord. I am giving a human example because sometimes the Lord brings it down to that level with me.
With the Lord, do you not want this Wednesday prayer meeting to be pleasing to Him? For all His labor of prayer for us, all His care for us, all His everything for us, do you not want a time when this is truly the house of God?
“My house shall be called a house of prayer.” This is His presence here, and He is really leading us.
Do you not want to see, even in our breaking-bread time, that we are at His table and He is joyful, instead of coming here without thanksgiving in our hearts?
Do you not want to see the individual Christian learning to experience more of Christ, learning to discover His face and His presence, and then overcoming when temptation comes?
It is for the Lord’s sake. It is because we are seeking His face.
What is our pursuit? To please the Lord Jesus. What is our goal? To see Him smile.
I was talking with some people who said they did not want to be overcomers. They were happy enough just to be in heaven. They said it seemed selfish because there are rewards and other things.
But I asked, “When you see Jesus, do you want Him to cry or smile? Do you want to hear Him say, ‘Enter into the joy of the Lord’? Do you want to please Him, or just please yourself?”
The reward is for His sake. The reward is not selfish reward—money, wealth, property, or anything like that. The reward is more of Christ.
This is this generation. After I spoke with that person, they said, “Yes, you are right.” It is not selfish ambition. This is clinging to the Lord.
The song we were singing at the beginning, “The Stand,” speaks of how the Lord stood before all creation. It is about the wonder of God. But the next line says He also stood before our failures.
He is the One who died on the cross for our sins. The heart cry, “I will stand,” is the cry of failing Christians standing to serve the Lord, carried along by one thing: they are pursuing Him.
That is it. “I seek His face. I will go on and overcome.”
There is a way for everyone in this room to be overcomers—not only by the blood, but also by the word of your testimony, and by denying yourself. We can overcome the world, overcome sin, and overcome Satan.
This is God’s desire. There is a way for us even to sing a song with a real testimony. The only way is, “I am clinging to Christ. I belong to Him. I am stuck with Christ.”
This is our direction. This is our way. They overcame. This is our call.
I just felt to share some of that.
This is the generation of them that seek after Him,
That seek Thy face, even Jacob. Selah.
This is our call: not to try to overcome this week, but to try not to be away from His presence. If you try that, you will overcome. It will automatically, naturally happen.
Try to be near His presence: you must come by the blood. Try to be near His presence: you must lay down your life on the altar and say, “Jesus is Lord.”
Try to be near His presence when your selfish life and flesh rise up. You must deny it and allow the life of Christ to live in you.
If we seek Him, we will go in this direction of overcoming. So let us commit ourselves to the Lord.
Lord, this is our confession: we do not seem to be standing; we seem to be falling. We do not seem to be overcoming; we seem to be failing.
We can confess our failures before You, and we can say, “We need You.” We can say that today we are not by ourselves, and we cannot do this by ourselves.
I pray for all of us that these vain things that keep us from Your presence would be exposed in our hearts. Even now, we can determine to seek Your face—not by our abilities, but by clinging to You.
Lord, we cling to You right now. We want to be this generation. We want to be those with a real heart cry for You.
Even though we do not know how to overcome, we want to be after You. We commit ourselves to You. We pray that the Word would dwell in our hearts richly, that we would consider this matter of seeking Your face.
As we pursue You, allow Yourself to overcome through us. We cast ourselves on You. In Jesus’ name, amen.