Would you turn with me to Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew 26? I am going to read from verse 36.
Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto His disciples, “Sit ye here, while I go yonder and pray.”
And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and sore troubled.
Then saith He unto them, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: abide ye here, and watch with Me.”
And He went forward a little, and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”
And He cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, “What, could ye not watch with Me one hour?
Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Again a second time He went away, and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away, except I drink it, Thy will be done.”
And He came again and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy.
And He left them again, and went away, and prayed a third time, saying again the same words.
Then cometh He to the disciples, and saith unto them, “Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Arise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that betrayeth Me.”
Then I want to turn you to the letter to the Hebrews, Hebrews 10, from verse 5.
Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith,
Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,
But a body didst Thou prepare for Me;
In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hadst no pleasure:
Then said I, Lo, I am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)
To do Thy will, O God.
Lastly, in the first letter of John, 1 John 2:16-17:
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vain glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.
We will just have a word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we can be here in Your presence. We praise You, Lord, for when You are present, anything can happen. With You, nothing is impossible.
So we praise You and worship You this evening, that, Lord, You can make this time an eye-opening time, a life-changing time to us all.
We need You, Lord. We are moving so fast into deeper darkness, deeper turmoil, and deeper trouble. But, Lord, You have promised to be with us to the end of the age.
Therefore, Lord, we pray: will You reach our hearts this evening? We want to confess before You that without that anointing grace and power which You won for us at Calvary, and made a living reality in the Person of the Holy Spirit, our words are just human words.
But with that anointing, it can be Your voice that we hear. We ask for an anointing for the speaking of Your Word and for the hearing of it, that Your will may be done amongst us. We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
As I think all of you know, my portion in this conference is the character of the kingdom. I said yesterday evening, and I say it again, that really I could almost say anything that Dana says is the character of the kingdom, for whatever he says about the King has to be the character of the kingdom.
But he is going to speak in two evenings, so I cannot tell you to listen. You have got me instead, before he speaks, so I shall steal his thunder.
We have already spoken about two matters. The character of the kingdom of God is that we should be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus. Without being changed, transformed into His likeness, there is no kingdom to talk about.
The purpose of the Lord in coming into this world, and in giving Himself on the cross, was that you and I might be born again, might have a new life, might be able to grow from babyhood into childhood, into adulthood, and become soldiers of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.
But how few believers really grow. The reason is that there is no being changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. So we spent quite some time yesterday evening talking about this: as we behold the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, we are changed into His likeness from glory to glory.
It is a capacity for glory that the Lord works, and then a deeper capacity for glory. In actual fact, the way He works that capacity for glory is tribulation, affliction, difficult circumstances, difficult relationships, and a thousand and one other things.
But whilst He is in charge of our growth, our progress, and our training and education, we are growing. We are being changed into His likeness. Well, that is what we spoke about last night.
The second thing we talked about last night was service. The King is an absolute example and illustration of service. The Lord Jesus was a living sacrifice from the moment He was born. He once said, “I die daily.”
There would never have been a cross; there would never have been a Calvary, if He had not chosen to be a living sacrifice from the moment He entered this world.
That character of the Lord Jesus as King, as a Servant of the Father, to serve the people of God, is a marvellous example for every one of us believers. If He was a living sacrifice to save us, can we be anything else than a living sacrifice? We have to follow Him.
I spoke at length about service as the character of the kingdom. Now I want to take you, if you are with me, a step further. If you are not with me, then you can have a little sleep. The chairs are very comfortable and very pleasant, providing you do not snore. We do not mind if you fall asleep.
But for those of you who are alive and awake, here are two more characteristics of the kingdom of God. The first is central.
The character of the kingdom of God is all to do with the throne of God: with the rule of God, with the sovereign authority of God, with the purpose of God, and with the will of God.
Did you get that? I will start again.
The character of the kingdom of God is all to do with the throne. It is to do with the King seated on the throne. It is to do with His will, His sovereign authority.
The Father, the Lord Jesus said, has committed into My hands all authority and power, both in heaven and on this earth—on this fallen earth, now, at this very moment. With all the darkness and turmoil and confusion and revolution that is everywhere on every side, He has sovereign authority. He rules in the kingdom of men.
Now listen carefully. That throne of God, and the King above all, seated, enthroned, is all to do with the purpose of God, with the fulfilment of the Word of God, and the will of God.
Have you followed me thus far? I hope you have. Now let us take another step.
The Lord Jesus was totally obedient to His Father. Never did He disobey His Father.
You have only to read the New Testament in a superficial manner to discover those words again and again: “I am come to do Thy will, O God.” The meaning of His coming was to do the will of God, to fulfil the purpose of God, to bring a people into the salvation of God, restore them to the purpose of God, and give them hope of glory.
That is the Lord Jesus. Everywhere you look in the New Testament, you will discover that He says, “I do not do My own will, but His will. I do not speak My own words; I speak His words. I do not do My own works; I work the works of the Father.”
So if that is the character of the King, it has to be the character of the kingdom. In other words, if you and I have been born of the Spirit of God, if by the grace of God we have been called to the throne of God, called to the kingdom of God, called to reign with Him not only now but in the ages to come, that quality of our Lord Jesus has to be found in us.
However young you are, however old you are, it is to do with total obedience.
It is not easy for many of us to accept this. In reality, we all accept it theologically, academically. What does it mean?
It means that you and I, saved by the grace of God and born of the Spirit of God, have to do the will of God if we are to be in union with the throne of God. I wish I could put it more clearly, but I think so far we are getting there.
Did you notice that passage we read in Matthew? It was the one time the Lord Jesus wondered whether there could be another way other than Calvary: “Let this cup pass from Me.”
What was it? Why did the Lord Jesus falter? It was so beyond our comprehension, what He suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane.
I think most people think Jesus only suffered on the cross. But in the Garden of Gethsemane He suffered so colossally that the Gospels tell us He sweat drops of blood. We understand medically that that is near to death.
It was the whole hierarchy of darkness and evil that centred upon the Lord Jesus in that garden. He said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.” In one of the other Gospels, we are told an angel came and ministered to Him.
Then we hear those amazing words: “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” The battle was won. There would have been no Calvary if Jesus had not uttered those words: “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”
That is the character of our King. He loved you so much—and me, unbelievable as that sometimes seems to me—He loves us so much that He was prepared to go through the agony of the cross for us.
Now remember: never in the whole being of God the Son had He ever been departed from God the Father. Never.
I think the devil brought, like television pictures, before His eyes what it could mean to be forsaken; what it could mean to be, as it were, parted from, divided from, the Father. Those pictures that came before the Lord Jesus as a man horrified Him.
But thank God, He said, “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” And He went to the cross calmly. He had won the battle of His being.
Dear child of God, you have no idea what the Lord Jesus suffered for you and for me. We take the Lord’s Table so lightly, so easily. We take the bread, we drink the cup; we have no real idea what it cost the Lord Jesus.
In the Hebrew, in Psalm 40, it says, “I delight to do Thy will, O God.” In the Greek version of our Old Testament, the Septuagint, it says, “I am come to do Thy will, O God.”
This is the character of the King, and it is the character of His kingdom.
I sometimes cringe a little when we sing these songs about being kings. Of course, we are kings. This is the amazing thing: the King has made us royal. He has made us kings.
But it is not that we have an authority that we can just throw around, beat up the saints, and generally sort of behave as if we are bullies. We have authority; we have power; we are kings.
To be a king like the Lord Jesus is to be under the sovereign authority of God. To be a king like the Lord Jesus is to do the will of God.
Are you getting what I am trying to say? I hope so. How can we enter the kingdom of God if we do not do His will? Good question. Did you hear me?
How can we enter the kingdom of God and be what the King wants us to be if we do not do the will of God?
This is the supreme problem of all human beings. Oh, you say, “You are exaggerating. That is the trouble because you have got a Jewish background. You exaggerate.” Well, I mean it. It is the supreme problem.
Do you remember how Satan, in his cunning, deceitful way, came to Eve? He is very clever. He never bothered with Adam; he came to Eve. He knew if he got Eve, he had Adam—which is in itself very interesting, but I will not develop that matter.
He came to Eve and he said, “Hath God said, Ye shall die if ye eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” Then he said, “Ye shall not surely die.”
This is how Satan gets many believers. “Hath God said? It is not true. You have misunderstood.”
Then he said an incredible thing. He said, “If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall be as God.” In the Hebrew, “Ye shall be as gods.”
You do not have to do the will of God. You can do your own will. You can decide your own life. You can choose your own career. You can choose whom you will marry. You can choose every single thing you want to do, because you are as God.
The authority has moved from the throne of God to you, so that you are an authority in your own right. This is why we have such a mess in the world.
We have thousands upon thousands of self-centred people. We are all self-centred. Do not tell me there is someone here who has, from the moment they were born, been the sweetest, modest, humble person. It is a lie.
If you think you are modest, it means you are very proud. If you think you are humble, it means that you are exceedingly proud. Remember the Christian who wrote the book Humility and How I Attained to It.
I used to explain it like this: sin is the great problem. What is sin? It is disobedience to the will of God. God had said something right at the beginning to Adam and Eve, and they disobeyed. All the problem we have in the world comes from it.
Sin: S-I-N, “I” in the centre. Sorry for you who are Chinese-speaking or Portuguese-speaking, but in English, S-I-N: “I” in the centre. “I think. I know. I feel. I will not. I will.”
The whole of human history is the expression of this “I.” Every great dictator has a slightly larger “I” than the normal.
John the apostle wrote this. He said, “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” Let it sink into you.
It is only when you and I surrender our will to the will of the Lord Jesus that we begin to live the Christian life.
The only way we can live a kind of Christian life otherwise is religiously. We dress it up; we use the phraseology of Christians. It is all do’s and don’ts, and there is a total absence of life.
When you and I are born again, into our being, saved by the grace of God, comes eternal life. That life joins us to the Son. So the character of the kingdom is the character of the Lord Jesus.
Now, I do not want to beat you into the ground—not that I can—but I do not want to beat you into the ground.
But if you have not surrendered your will to God, you cannot live the Christian life. You can only be a counterfeit Christian man. You can take communion, you can be baptised, you can join the church as a member. What does it mean?
When C. T. Studd, that great missionary and sportsman originally, before he was saved, was dying, he said to his son-in-law, Norman Grubb, “I know I have been a very difficult old man.” And he was.
“I know I have been a very difficult old man. But the one thing I can say is that all that the Lord told me to do, I, by His grace and power, have done.” That is how C. T. Studd died.
That work of C. T. Studd has gone on in one of the biggest missionary fellowships in the world. C. T. Studd was a difficult man.
A dentist went all the way from Britain to the Congo, out into the jungle, into the bush, because he heard that C. T. was suffering from bad teeth. He looked at C. T.’s teeth and told him they were dangerous and had to come out. He said, “I will make you a set myself, a false set of teeth.”
C. T. accepted it, but he found the false teeth difficult. So what did he do? He took the false teeth out, put them on his desk, and used them to put his pens in.
Then, if any visitor came, he quickly took the pens out and put the teeth in his mouth. He was a difficult man.
I remember Mary Grubb telling me, “We did beautiful meals for him, and then he would take the custard and plonk it on top of the chicken.” We would say, “Oh, what are you doing?” He said, “When it gets down inside, it is all the same anyway.”
He was a difficult man. But he did the will of God, and what he has done has lasted. It is a tremendous thing to surrender to the will of God.
Have you surrendered to the will of God? If I am speaking to someone who is thirty, forty, fifty years old in Christ, let me ask you: have you surrendered your will to the will of God?
You younger people, the biggest problem is our will. We want to choose what career we shall have, what kind of life we shall have, what kind of home we shall have, who will be our wife or husband. We want to choose it just ourselves.
Now, of course, there is a certain amount—I mean, we are not expecting the Lord to say, “You must marry so-and-so,” and so-and-so is the most ugly person you have ever met. No, no, no. That is not the will of God.
God’s will for us is—listen—good, perfect, and acceptable. It is only when you and I become a living sacrifice that we can prove that God’s will is good, perfect, and acceptable.
Otherwise, when we are still arguing as to whether we will do His will or our will, we always think that His will is not good, not perfect, and not acceptable.
We only discover, when we let go of our own will and do His, that in the end it is marvellous. There is nothing like doing the will of God.
Why do we have all this problem? Do you know the answer? Why do we have this problem? Because of the big “I.” That is the root of the problem.
We think that if we get our way and do what we think is good for us, it will be marvellous. It will not.
Your Saviour, who died for you because He loves you, only leads you into what is good for you, perfect for you, and acceptable for you.
This, to me, is the character of the kingdom: to do the will of God.
Look over these thousands of years of church history. Look at those who have done the will of God. It is incredible. I could give you so many stories, but Stephen spoke this morning about Hudson Taylor. What would it have been if he had done his own will, if he had followed his own will?
Instead, he surrendered his will to God. What would it have been with C. T. Studd if he, as a famous cricketer, a famous athlete in Britain, had held on to his career instead of sacrificing himself, surrendering his will to God?
I think of dear Mary Slessor of Calabar. You know, she was so terrified of men. Mind you, some women are not terrified of men at all. I mean, they are like tanks. God help any man who stands in their way.
But Mary Slessor was so humble naturally that, when she spoke on a platform where men were present, she could not look at the congregation. She looked at the wall and spoke at the wall.
God not only saved that woman; He called her to Africa. When she went to Africa, she could not bear the fact of living in the bush, in just a kind of bush hut. She could not bear the cries of little children in the middle of the night.
She inquired about it, and she found out they were twins, who were thought to be demonic. So at birth they were taken by their mother or father and thrown into the bush for wild animals to eat.
Mary Slessor began a work in Calabar. She went out every night collecting twins. She formed orphanage after orphanage after orphanage.
It is incredible that this lady, who was frightened of cows and horses and men, could wander around in the bush in the middle of the night, listening for the cry of twins and rescuing them.
At the end of her life—I have to tell you this little bit of the story—there was a big powwow between all the big chieftains. They came together and asked Mary Slessor if she would be present. “Yes,” she said, “I will be.”
They came wearing nothing but feathers and paint. This woman who could not bear to look at a man sat knitting from breakfast in the morning right through until the sun was about to set.
Then she heard the voices beginning to rise, and she knew exactly what it was. These were cannibals. They did not want to stop fighting one another because it gave them human meat.
So she put her knitting down, and she went round the whole lot of them and boxed their ears, one by one. They signed a peace that lasted two hundred years.
Would to God we had a few of those in the Middle East.
The Lord had said to Mary Slessor, “Queens shall bow before you.” He gave her the Scripture: “Kings and queens shall bow before thee.” When Queen Elizabeth visited Calabar, she went to see Mary Slessor’s grave.
The Queen did something extraordinary. She curtsied before the grave of Mary Slessor. So amazing is it to do the will of God.
I could go on and on. You would all be asleep. But I mean, listen: the greatest thing you could do in your life, other than receive the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, is to surrender your will to the Lord while you are young.
Let Him be Lord in your life. Let Him be King in your life. You will never regret it. The Lord will lead you into works of His will.
Hear me. What I am saying is not a fairy tale. It is absolutely true. Oh, dear child of God, listen.
Without such surrender to the King—to His Lordship, to His ownership—we have a civil war going on in our life. We may be saved, but there will be no progress, no being changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. It is all to do with the will.
Satan knew exactly what he was doing when he poisoned the mind of Eve. He knew that he was bringing a poison into her self-life that would not leave, and through her, to the rest of us. We have all descended from Adam and Eve.
We have a really big problem with this matter of the will, and it all started with Satan’s deceit—his hoodwinking of Eve.
When you and I surrender our will to the Lord, something really happens. Listen: the Lord promises to lead you. The Lord promises to protect you. The Lord promises to provide for you.
It is so simple. You can either have your own way or His. Think.
What did Jesus say? “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me; and I give unto them eternal life.” Hear it again: “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me; and I give unto them eternal life.”
A living, continuous experience of the Lord Jesus. I cannot think of anything more wonderful in this world.
Well, I do not know what to say more than that. I think I just cannot understand people who do not want to do the will of God.
I mean, I am old enough now to have experienced what it is to have the leadership of the Lord, to have the protection of the Lord, to have the provision of the Lord. I would want that more than anything else.
Well, I think I must watch myself on time still. I am in good time at present, so I can bore you for a little longer. Here is the second thing I want to talk about.
At first, it may not seem quite the same as what we have just said, but it is a very real characteristic of the kingdom: faithfulness.
The King is absolutely faithful. You remember that wonderful promise in the little book of Lamentations—such misery, misery. Even the way it is written in Hebrew is like a slow march at a funeral.
Then suddenly, in the third chapter, the twenty-second verse, I think it is, suddenly the sun comes out in all this darkness:
It is of the Lord’s lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Thy faithfulness.
The Lord is my portion, saith my soul;
Therefore will I hope in Him.
Faithfulness. How faithful the Lord is. We are not very faithful, but the Lord is absolute faithfulness.
Dear child of God, listen to me on this. I have proved His faithfulness myself. I know many of you also have.
When I was baptised, I was given a verse in the Scripture by my old Sunday school teacher:
The Lord, He it is that doth go before thee; He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.
All my life, that Scripture has come back to me again and again and again. Shall I tell you something? I have never found the Lord fail, and I have never found the Lord forsake.
I have given Him cause to forsake me, but He has never forsaken me. This is one of the most amazing things about the King: He is absolutely faithful.
This faithfulness of His is something so tremendous. If once you will surrender, if once you will give your life wholly to Him—not just take what you can get, that is, His salvation and His life: “Well, that is me. Give me, give me, give me.”
But if you are prepared also to be faithful in the responsibilities God gives you, in the stewardship God gives you, and in the calling God has called you with—to be faithful—He is faithful.
The character of the King is the character of the kingdom.
Well, I think that Abraham, the father of all who believe—my dear friend, the former director of the International Christian Embassy, said once in my hearing, in a moment of, I believe, real true inspiration—he said, “God put into Abraham the whole DNA of world redemption.”
I believe that was an inspired statement. He is called, after all, the father of all who believe—not just Jews, but Gentiles who have found the salvation of God. He is the father of all.
But when there was a famine, he did not remain in the land like Elijah. It was rather remarkable: Elijah got fed by ravens. Only the Lord knows what morsels they brought to him, but they certainly were not kosher.
The little stream never dried up; the ravens kept bringing him food. But Abraham, his faith failed, and he went down to the south, to Egypt.
When he came to Egypt, he called Sarah, who was apparently unbelievably beautiful, “my sister.” Pharaoh and his courtiers did not inquire too much, because Pharaoh himself rather fancied Sarah.
You know the rest of the story. What a mess Abraham got into—the father of faith. The Lord had to get him out of it.
The Lord was so faithful that He caused the whole family of Pharaoh to have some virus that gave them upset stomachs and headaches, and I do not know what else, until they went to their miracle men and said, “What is wrong?”
The miracle men did all their little magic and came up with the answer: Abraham. Then Pharaoh went to Abraham and said, “What have you done this to me for?”
Of course, Sarah was his half-sister. That is true. It was a white lie. A half-truth got Abraham into a lot of trouble. But the Lord remained faithful.
I think of Jacob. It is interesting that God never called the covenant people Abraham, or Isaac, or Moses, or even David. He called them Jacob.
Again and again and again, the Lord says to His prophets, “O Jacob,” speaking of the whole people.
The word Jacob in Hebrew, Yaakov, means a twister. It means someone who was twisted round his twin brother’s ankle as he was born. He was trying even then to get out first.
Of course, they were twins. There was no elder brother and younger brother; they were twins. But you know the story of Jacob. You know what a twister he was. He could not help it.
He was filled with intelligence, acumen, business acumen, and much else. As soon as everything he came into contact with, he had eyes like a till that rang cash. He saw immediately what was the profit in this situation.
When his brother came in from hunting, exhausted, and smelt the wonderful soup, that lentil soup that Jacob had prepared, Jacob said, “You are not having a drop of it till you give me your birthright.”
And Esau sold his birthright for a pot of lentil soup.
But there was something in Jacob deeper than his twistedness, deeper than his intelligence and acumen and his incredible self-estimate, his confidence in himself. There was something that somehow valued the things of God.
The Lord never left Jacob. He deceived his old blind father by a trick and a deceit that his mother, who loved him unbelievably, had worked out. He stole the blessing. Then he had to flee from his home. He never saw his mother again, whom he loved so dearly.
He had to flee all the way across the Middle East to the second greatest twister in the Middle East. It was his uncle Laban. It ran in the family.
They spent twenty-one years deceiving one another. Poor Jacob, right from the beginning.
Then he worked all those years for Rachel, and who did he get? Leah. They were all twisters.
They must have had a family get-together, and Uncle Laban said to his wife, “We just have to dress Leah up to look like Rachel. We have to tell her, ‘Shut up. Keep your big mouth shut. Watch how your sister walks; walk like her. We will dim the lights. You will be in a veil from head to foot. He will not even see that it is not his beloved Rachel.’”
When Jacob woke up, he found the next morning it was Leah, not Rachel.
But the Lord never left Jacob. He loved him into Israel. That is the faithfulness of the King. He never forsook him. He judged him. He came into much problem because of his twistedness, but the Lord never left him. Is that not incredible?
I could go on and on. I could talk about Rachel, how he thought never an evil thought went through her little head. But, of course, you know when Uncle Laban chased them with a posse of men, “Why have you left?” he said. “Could you not even stay and say goodbye in a civil manner? And who stole the household gods?”
Now, you Chinese know all about household gods. These other folks from the West, they have no idea what household gods are. But these household gods were everywhere, and they were title deeds to property.
That is a very interesting thought, is it not? Rachel could see Dad was deceiving my husband, and I am not going to get any inheritance for the children. So she gathered up all the idols she could, put them in a bag, and took them when they fled.
Then dear Jacob said to Laban, “Search everything. You will find I have never had anything to do with household idols. I do not believe in them.”
When Laban searched everything, in the Hebrew it says he felt everything, because he could feel whether there was an idol somehow under cloth. Then he found dear Rachel sitting on the camel.
He said, “I must search everything.” She said, “Yes, Papa, do that. But I am not feeling well.” “Oh,” he said, “I am sorry to hear that. So do not bother me.” “Of course I will not,” he said.
He went all the way round and could not find them. She was sitting on the household idols.
Poor Jacob. First he found Laban a twister, then he found Leah a twister, then he found the whole family of Laban twisters. Then he found Rachel was a twister. Finally, he was ready for the Lord to deal with him.
That is when the Lord said, “What is your name?” He owned up and said, “My name is Yaakov, Twister.” God said, “You shall no more be called a twister. You shall be called a prince with God: Israel.”
Faithfulness. What about David? David, whom the Lord even said of, “A man after My own heart.” But David fell terribly.
If you read the story of David’s fall, it is terrible. He actually planned the murder of Bathsheba’s husband so that he could get Bathsheba. When he died, it was in a deliberate tactic that David had thought out.
That prophet came into David and said, “What have you done?” It is interesting that Bathsheba became the mother of Solomon.
It is amazing to find how faithful the Lord is. We are not like this with one another. As soon as we find there are faults in one another, we start withdrawing.
The Word says something about esteeming each other better than ourselves. If we do not, oh, we say, “Look at so-and-so. I do not know why the Lord saved them.”
It is an amazing thing to love the Lord and to know the Lord. Do you know what it says in Psalm 37? A righteous man will fall, but he will come up again because the Lord delivers.
Listen to Proverbs 24:16: “A righteous man falleth seven times, and riseth up again.” Dear child of God, all the faithfulness of the Lord: even if you fall seven times, He will pick you up. You will fall again, and He will pick you up. You will fall again, until finally He gets you.
Well, I think I have said enough, really, for one evening. But this is a characteristic of the King, and it is a characteristic of the kingdom.
How faithful are you? How faithful am I? Are we faithful to the calling God has given us? Are we faithful to the ministry God has given us? Are we faithful to the responsibility that God has given us? To the stewardship that God has given us?
This is the character of the kingdom.
I remember there was an old brother in the company at Alford House. He was a patriarch of the work. He was called the patriarch of the work. We knew him as Daddy Rees. He was Welsh, a Welsh speaker from the north of Wales.
I always remember one morning he stood up at the Lord’s Table, and he read something in Chronicles about the pillars in the temple. On the top of the pillars, which you could not see from looking up, on the very top was lily work.
Then he said, “Why did the Lord put lily work where nobody could see it? Only He could see it.”
He said, “Is it not that we should be faithful over the responsibilities that we have been given by the Lord?”
Because often it is only what we think other people see that we are faithful in. But it is what others do not see—no one sees, only the Lord.
To be a pillar in the house of our God—something, is it not? Well, may the Lord bless these poor words of mine to every one of you.
I have spoken about all these different ones: Abraham, Jacob, David. What about the apostle Peter? Always the first, always putting his foot in it, always saying what the rest of the disciples thought anyway—only they had not got the courage to say it, so they never got into trouble.
Then the Lord said, when Peter said, “I will not let You die,” “Before the cock crows three times, you will have denied Me.”
When that happened with Peter, it was like a nuclear explosion that blew away his self-manufactured Christian life. The whole thing was destroyed.
But the Lord said, “When you come through this, strengthen your brothers.” In other words, the Lord Jesus was going to remain absolutely faithful. He said, “I prayed for you, Simon.”
Satan hath desired to sift you as wheat:
But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.
Peter came through that experience. Satan, as T. Austin-Sparks used to say, got the chaff; God got the wheat.
Peter came to be the great apostle, to open the door to the Gentiles, and much else. How faithful the Lord is. Is this not something amazing? Something to thank the Lord for.
May God give us grace not only to know His faithfulness, but to be faithful ourselves. For if we are faithful in small things, God will put us over much greater things.
Lord, bless this word to each of us. Make it real, Lord. Help us to surrender our will to Yours, however young we are, however old we are.
Take this word and make it real. May we, Lord, come to appreciate Your faithfulness in such a way that we become faithful.
We remember, dear Lord, You endured the cross for us. May we have that kind of steadfastness, that determination to really follow You to the end.
We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Why do we not just reflect for a few minutes and commit these thoughts back to the Lord? Ask Him to seal them in our hearts.
I wrote two questions down that I think we should each one take with us.
First, Lance’s premise tonight was the character…