First of all, good morning. Sorry—good morning.
Let us read a couple of Scriptures in the Old Testament: Deuteronomy 33.
Deuteronomy 33:1
Now this is the blessing wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel.
Then I want to go backwards to Exodus 3, starting with verse 1.
Exodus 3:1-10
Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
And He said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
Moreover He said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.
And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people that are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto Me: moreover I have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.
Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My people the children of Israel out of Egypt.
And then one in the New Testament, Luke 2, starting with verse 40.
Luke 2:40-52
And the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon Him.
And His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the passover.
And when He was twelve years old, they went up after the custom of the feast;
and when they had fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and His parents knew it not;
but supposing Him to be in the company, they went a day’s journey; and they sought for Him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance:
and when they found Him not, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking for Him.
And it came to pass, after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them, and asking them questions:
and all that heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers.
And when they saw Him, they were astonished; and His mother said unto Him, Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? behold, Thy father and I sought Thee sorrowing.
And He said unto them, How is it that ye sought Me? knew ye not that I must be in My Father’s house?
And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them.
And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and He was subject unto them: and His mother kept all these sayings in her heart.
And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You that You have opened the door for us to come in and have fellowship with You. And You have done this at great cost. Lord, it was not something that cost You nothing, but it took You great cost, and You did this willingly.
Because of this, Lord, we come to You, and we rejoice that You have done this for us. And now, Lord, as we are in Your presence, we ask that You would speak to us. Speak to us the things that are on Your heart, the things that You really want, that You desire. Let us know Your heart this morning, Lord.
Lord, we tell You that these words mean nothing to us unless You take them by Your Spirit and make them practical, make them hearable to us. Otherwise, they are just nothing to us. So we need Your help, O Father.
We thank You, Lord, that because Christ died, You are willing to give us this help. You have given us the Spirit, and we trust in Him, that You will open the Word to us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
We have two microphones up here. I just want to let you know that on my notes it says, “Speak up,” in red. Okay?
Incidentally, it is okay if you ask me to speak up. I have had people do that before. I am not bothered by it, okay?
Last time I was up here, I was impressed by this phrase, or this title: man of God. I want to finish something today about that.
I was reading an Andrew Murray book, Abide in Christ, and in the first few chapters the phrase “man of God” caught my eye. It got into me. I started to think, you know, what is a man of God? What is considered a man of God? How do I become a man of God? Is it too late for me to become a man of God? You start thinking about all those things.
Andrew Murray defined a man of God this way:
A man of God is a man in whose heart and life God has taken the right place as the all and in all, who has only one desire: that God should have His rightful place throughout the world. Such men God is seeking, that He may fill them with Himself and send them into the world to help others to know Him.
Such men and women. I remember last time I talked about how “man of God” is a generic thing. It has to do with mankind; it is not just the male gender. It is man in general, male and female. There are women of God, you know.
Such men and women are what our Lord Jesus referred to in the Sermon on the Mount as the light of the world and the salt of the earth. They are what Paul, in 2 Corinthians, referred to as letters written by God—letters that He writes on our hearts and displays to the world around us.
Last time, we did not look at how I can become a man of God, because when we start looking for methods, that is a bad thing. We leave out the Person when we follow the method. We say, “Just give me the textbook. I do not need the teacher.”
Boy, I cannot stand it when kids take online classes. That just rubs me the wrong way as a teacher. Now, I understand they have to deal with my monotone and things of that nature, but you miss so much when you do not have a teacher.
A lot of times, they just have things before them on the computer. They answer questions, they have to write this and that, but they are missing that human contact—that actual, vital one-on-one contact with the person who is teaching. It always bothers me.
So we do not want to just get into a method. We are not talking about, “How do you become a man of God?” Because once we get a method, I will tell you, every one of us will try it and fail.
Then some of us will go in the tank about it, and we will not come out for months. Some of us will say, “No, no, no. I failed this time. I have to try harder next time.” The rest of our lives will be spent like little hamsters. Have you ever had a hamster or a gerbil? What do they have in that cage? Just a big wheel.
All they do is run, and they are not going anywhere. They run and run and run and run. They get fed, they get water, they get food, they get everything they need, but they are not going anywhere. They are still bound up in that little cage. They are not free.
So we are not looking at how I can become a man of God. We want to see what God has provided, that I might be what He desires of me.
Brothers and sisters, God desires all of us to be men of God. That is His will for everyone who believes in Christ. That is His will for you, and for this whole world that He sent His Son to die for—that they might become men of God.
Just like our Lord and Savior, as a human being, was a man of God—not just God, but man. He was a man of God. Of course, He had that sinlessness that we have never experienced, but He still was a man of God. He showed that, being a man, you could be a man of God.
Last time we looked at what was foundational to the creation of such a man, using Moses as an example. I just want to review quickly.
First, Moses was born. That is the beginning of becoming a man of God: you have to be born. I know it seems redundant, but without being born, you are nothing. Moses was born, and we have been born again. We have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Moses was born an Israelite, born into the commonwealth of God, born with a destiny in mind. We are born again in the same way. We were born into the kingdom of God. We are born with a destiny in mind.
This gives us access to the sovereignty of God in our lives—access to God. Being born again, He is now our Father. We have access to our Father. That is a big thing. No father turns away his child.
Then we saw that Moses had godly parents. They kept him alive. If you remember, there was an edict for the Egyptians to kill all the Israelite boys. And they saw that he was beautiful. Of course, I think they were a little prejudiced about that.
But we related that to the fact that God has given us spiritual parents, and their ministry keeps us alive. They see the beauty of Christ being formed in us, or being worked out in us. They recognize it.
They recognize gifts that God has given to us, and they encourage us in the use of those gifts and in following the Lord. They give advice and direction without interfering. They do not say, “You had better do this or that.” They say, “Brother, this is my advice to you. You can take it or you do not have to, but I am telling you because I care for you.”
They correct our thinking sometimes—what we think about the Lord or what we think the Lord’s purposes are for our lives. And they point us to Christ, not a Christ who is just in a book, but the living Christ.
I will say it again: I just remember Boyd Phelps in my life. He never said, “Jim, do this.” He would always say, “Jimmy, you need to pray about this. You need to pray and find what the Lord has for you.”
He would never say, “Jim, you need to do this.” Sometimes he would say, “You know, I think it would be good if you did this, but you pray about it.” Always, “But you pray about it, and you find the Lord’s mind.”
Those are fathers. And again, “fathers” here is generic. They are parents. We have mothers and fathers. Remember last time we talked about Watchman Nee having Margaret Barber act in that way. And Apollos—who helped Apollos? Was it not Aquila and Priscilla?
So God has put fathers and parents in His Body to help us grow. In seeing this, we see there is a corporate responsibility in raising up men of God from our own assembly for our own localities.
We should be taking up that ministry of fathers. That was a big point I made last time. Those who are mature: are we taking up that position of fathers by having our hearts turned to our younger brothers and sisters, seeing them, praying for them, and bringing them advice when we need to?
We want to see them along, so they grow into the very thing God wants them to be, as well as our children.
Finally, we talked about Moses realizing his identity. He knew he was not of Egypt and did not belong to Egypt. He went out among the Hebrews because he knew he was a Hebrew. But, as our brother Stephen’s ministry showed us, Moses thought he could serve the Lord according to his own thoughts about how to serve the Lord, and he was a failure.
We also saw that we have no excuses for failing to fulfill our calling to be men of God. James 5:17 spoke of Elijah, who in Scripture was called a man of God. If you read 1 Kings and 2 Kings, they call Elijah the man of God.
James said Elijah, though a man of God, was a man of like passions, or with a nature like ours. So it has nothing to do with my personality, my weaknesses, or anything like that. What it depends on is God’s sovereignty, and my bowing to that sovereignty. That is the whole key.
Today I would like to bring up three more things—God’s provision for us to become those men of God that He wants us to be.
First of all, He calls us and makes us aware of His calling to be men of God. This is not like, “Well, I was not there for that lesson,” or, “How do I know He is calling me?” You will know. You all know.
I think a lot of times younger people ask, “How do I know how God speaks?” My daughter Jamie asked along those lines, “Well, how do I know? How will I know?” I can only say, “You will know.”
It registers in your spirit. You know it in your spirit. You know that God is speaking to you. You know when you are convicted. You know when the Lord is speaking to you from the Word.
It resonates—not in your mind; it resonates in your spirit. And I do mean it resonates. There is something in there that you know is going on, unless you are dead in spirit.
Praise the Lord, the Lord wakes us up, does He not? Thank the Lord for sending people into our lives who have walked us out into the voice of God. We have heard Him for the first time, been awakened, and come to Him.
There is no given age when you receive the call of God. I think that is important, because kids think, high schoolers think, people in college think, and people just out of college think that you do not get called until you are old.
I mean, look at Moses. He was eighty. But there is no age. At the same time, people who are my age—and I am more than out of college—we think, “It passed me by.”
We think, “I should have responded earlier, when I was younger, when I felt the Lord was really moving.” Then we think, “It passed me by, and I cannot get it back.”
What does Paul say about Israel in Romans 11? I think it is verse 29:
Romans 11:29
For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of.
The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. They will not be taken away. Even if we missed it on the first go-around, or the second go-around, or the tenth go-around, there is hope that on the eleventh, the fourteenth, or the twenty-sixth, we will go forward. There is hope.
There is no age limit on when we are called. The only thing we need to know is that we receive this call after we are born again—after we are called into His kingdom and into His purposes.
How do we receive this call? Like I said, you will know it. But I will say this: if you read biographies of great saints, missionaries, preachers, and great people of God, you will find that sometimes God invades our lives through our circumstances.
Moses thought he was just doing his job, but in the circumstances of his job he saw something for the first time, and God invaded his life right there.
For others, God invades our lives intuitively. Like the Lord Jesus Himself: when He was twelve years old, something inside Him let Him know. He knew that He must be about His Father’s business. He knew it intuitively.
Amy Carmichael is another example. If you read Mimosa, when she went to the missionary place and was not allowed to stay there, she knew she had been touched by God. She could not be the same.
I think that is the whole thing. When you know, intuitively in your spirit, that you cannot be the same anymore.
Last time I spoke, I told about being on a basketball tour when I realized my identity. I should not be identified as a basketball player, as a guy on this touring team. My identity was back with that little Tuesday-night Bible study.
I was saying, “What am I doing here? Why am I here?” But when you come to realize your identity, and you come to realize that you are God’s, then God lets you know that you are His and that He has purpose for your life.
It is not just that He wants to make you secure, so that you are not going to face His wrath. He has purpose for your life, and His purpose means that you can never be what you were before.
I do not mean your personality is going to change, or you are going to become all quirky and everything like that. But the goal you are pursuing, the thing that drives you, can never be the same.
I remember, after having that experience in New Zealand where I realized that I did not belong to this world and that the world was dead to me and I was dead to the world, we were on a plane ride—I think we were going to Australia.
I was writing a letter to my sister, Maureen, and I remember writing, “Maureen, I cannot be the same anymore. I just cannot. I cannot go after the same things.” I remember weeping while I was writing it.
The Lord was speaking to me and saying, “You are Mine. You are Mine.”
We like to sing, “I am my beloved’s, and He is mine.” We like to think of God being ours. We take joy in God: “This is my God.” But there is a flip side to that: we are His.
Really, that is the first part of that verse, is it not? “I am my beloved’s, and He is mine.” To find out that we are His, and that He lays claim to us, is a big thing.
We have been purchased by Him—not just to have wrath done with, but we have been purchased by Him to fulfill His purposes.
In writing that letter to my sister, basketball lost all its taste. It was not what it was anymore.
There is an old hymn called “Rise Up, O Men of God.” I remember first hearing Phil Keaggy do a kind of heavy-metal medley to it. It says:
Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things;
Give heart and soul and mind and strength
To serve the King of kings.
Those better things are to show in all ways that Jesus is Lord. He is Lord of me. He is Lord of this world. But we have to come to the realization that He has purchased me so that He might be Lord of me, as well as Lord of all the earth, all the heavens, and all that has been created.
He is the Lord. Brothers and sisters, that should be our testimony. We can say, “Jesus is Lord,” but what backs it up are the actions that show that He is Lord.
So that is first: He calls us and makes us aware of that calling. You will know it. Do not worry and say, “Oh, I do not know if I will ever know.” You will. It will register in you, reverberate in you, resound in you. You will know it. It may come as a still, small voice, but I will tell you: you will know it.
Secondly, He brings us to a place of submission. Notice I am saying He brings us to a place of submission.
Now, submission—boy, we have problems with that word, do we not? That is one of the words we really hate. We cringe when we hear it, because when we think of submission, generally we think of being forced to submit: “Okay, I will do it. All right.”
It has that negative connotation. In a way, it is a negative word: submit.
I want to give a definition of what I think submission means. Submission means that He brings us to a place where we are teachable.
We are going to talk about obedience, and I want to draw a little line between obedience and submission. When we submit, that is the road to obedience. But submission brings us to a place where we are teachable.
We think we know it all. That is just our nature. How many of you have teenagers? Is that true? They know it all.
I teach gifted kids. They know it all. “Oh, we know that already. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Okay, write about it. “Oh, no, we do not.”
Submission involves emptying, or stripping us down, to what we really are.
A lot of tables have layers of veneer. This table—I think this is real wood, is it not? It has veneer on it, right? No? Well, what is on top of it? A finish, which is a veneer. Submit, Kenny.
Okay, you do not have to agree, as long as you are teachable. No, I cannot say that, because I am not a woodworker. But the whole thing is, we have layers. We have layers of veneer.
Have you ever seen the movie A Christmas Story? The little kid gets all bundled up for the snow, and he cannot move his arms. That is like us. We have so many layers on that we really do not know what is underneath.
Those layers have to be peeled away so that we know what is underneath. Until we really know what is underneath, we cannot be dealt with, because we think, “It does not apply to me. All I see is my veneer.”
So the Lord, in His faithfulness and in calling us to a purpose, says, “Okay, I am going to bring you to a place of submission.” In doing this, He gets down to the bare essentials of who we are.
When we begin to see who we really are, we turn to God and say, “I am undone. I need help.” That is when we are teachable. We only get teachable when we need help, and even then it is a struggle.
But it brings us to a place of saying, “I do not know how it is done.” We want to end God’s help real fast because we say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how to do it now.” The Lord says, “Yes, wait.”
We have to find out, like Paul found out, that in my flesh dwells no good thing. That is a truth. Some of us, in our heads, say we know it, but we have probably just scratched the surface.
The thing is, it is true, and we like to cover it up as well as we can. Joseph had to be stripped of his coat of many colors. Moses had to come to the place where he was no longer Pharaoh’s daughter’s son.
God has to get rid of our sense of favored status. “Because I am a Christian, He is not going to deal with me like this. Everything is going to be good now. I am okay now.” No, there is no favored status.
What does Hebrews say about favored status? What does He do with every son whom He loves? He scourges. He disciplines. So we should know that this is going to happen.
It is like refinishing a piece of furniture. You have to strip off the layers until you get down to the bare wood. Then you sand it, and you bring out the grain. Then you can stain it and have it look like the one handling it wants it to look.
The table has no say: “Well, I want to look like this.” The craftsman says, “That is fine, but this is how you are going to look”—in a good way.
God uses the circumstances of our lives as tools. We know these things, but do we understand? We say, “Why am I going through these trials?” Because God is trying to make you teachable.
Look at Moses. He had favored status, right? He was the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He went to the finest schools and everything like that. Now where is he?
How did God use the circumstances? The first thing He did was get him married. God says, “Moses, I just want to show you who you are. So I am going to let you get married. You will see who you are.”
Then Moses had to get a job, probably the first job in his life. Who was he working for? His father-in-law. It was a great place, right? Okay, scratch it just a little more.
Then his wife had kids. Scratch it just a little bit more. Then He left him that way for forty years.
A little scratching here and there, eroding away those things, letting nature take its course, so to speak. Moses came to the end of himself. When God called him, he said, “I am not the man. You need to send somebody else.”
That is when God said, “No, no, no, no. You are the man. You are the man I want.” You were not the man before, when you were so strong, but you are now, because you are not full of yourself anymore.
You do not think you can solve the problems of the world anymore. You have come to the place where you are humble.
You become humble. You are not humble naturally; you become humble. It happens through the circumstances of life, when you see that you are not the pie in the sky, you are not the top banana.
Our Lord Jesus was subject to His parents. This has to do with emptying. He learned a trade. This boggles my mind. When I think about the Lord of glory coming down to earth and submitting to learning a trade, that blows my mind.
And He read the Scriptures. He read the Scriptures. Why? He knew them all—that is what we think, right? But no, He was like a man. He read the Scriptures.
Let me say one thing about the Scriptures. I do not know where you are in reading the Scriptures, especially young people, but even older people. To read the Scriptures is to open the door to God.
Even if you are a non-believer, to read the Scriptures is to open yourself to God. When you open the Scriptures, what you are saying to God is, “I am opening myself up to You.” And God notices, because God wants to reveal Himself to us.
It is the first step in hearing God speak to you. When you open the Scriptures, it is the very first step in hearing God speak to you.
The second step in hearing God speak to you is when you begin not just to read the Scriptures, but to meditate on them. By that I mean turning them over in your mind, where something gets hold of you and you begin to say, “I do not know what this means. I want to know what it means.”
You begin to linger. You know what it says about the Lord Jesus when He was in Jerusalem and His parents had gone? It says He lingered in the temple.
Linger does not mean to loiter, like, “I am just hanging out.” When I was pursuing my wife, I lingered. I did not stalk; I lingered. There is a difference.
If I was making coffee for the faculty in the morning, I knew she would get there at a certain time. I just took a little longer making the coffee, because I was waiting and hoping there would be a chance that she might come through the door and I could start a conversation.
That is lingering in the Word. I linger because I want something given to me. I want to stay around, just maybe, perchance, something will happen. I linger, take a glimpse, seeking Him and thinking that He might reveal something of Himself to me.
To meditate on the Word is to take it deeper than just the mind—to seek meaning from it.
Have you seen The King’s Speech? It is a very touching story, and it is applicable to what we are saying. This king did not know he was going to be king, but he was in the royal family, so there was a good chance he would be king. There was a high calling for him.
In the movie, he is brought to the end of himself, painfully so. He is so aware that he is unfit to have the office of king. If you remember the opening part of the story, he has to make that speech. He gets up to the microphone.
Did you die with him? Did you die with him when he was trying to get out those words? Oh.
We try and try and try to do things that God wants, and we find that we come up so short.
There is a hymn, “He Giveth More Grace.” The second verse says:
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our ho