Good evening.
Let’s open the Word to a few Scriptures. They are all in the New Testament, beginning with Luke 2.
This is Jesus going up to the Passover with His parents. When they found Him in the temple, the Lord Jesus said:
“How is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be in My Father’s house?”
—Luke 2:49
Then, in Luke 2:51–52:
“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.”
—Luke 2:51–52
In Luke 3:21–22:
“Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, that, Jesus also having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened,
And the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon Him, and a voice came out of heaven, Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased.”
—Luke 3:21–22
In Luke 12:50, the Lord Jesus says:
“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”
—Luke 12:50
In Ephesians 4:15–16:
“But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, even Christ;
From whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.”
—Ephesians 4:15–16
And in Ephesians 2:10:
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.”
—Ephesians 2:10
Our Father, again we come to You through Jesus Christ. We thank You for the standing that we have before You: that we are blameless, not because of anything we have been able to accomplish, but because Your Son stood in our place at Calvary, took our sins upon His body, and was crucified on our behalf.
Lord, because You were pleased with Him, You raised Him from the dead. Thus, we have this standing before You, and we worship You. We thank You that You are the God who loves us and that You have a purpose for us.
Lord, it is this purpose that we really want to be a part of. We really want to be about Your business. We ask that You would open our eyes and our hearts as You tell us how we can be about Your business in a way that is pleasing to You—not in the way that we think.
Lord, we want You to speak to us and to show us the way. So we commit ourselves to You. We give You Your Word and ask Your Holy Spirit to take it and apply it to our hearts. Only He can do this, Lord. There is nothing I can say that will help, but we ask for the ministry of Your Spirit tonight.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This evening, as I close up my section of the time up here, I want to speak as a teacher for a moment. There are a couple of ways we teach. I teach in a math and science high school, although I do not teach math or science—and they are lucky I do not.
In a science class, you have the theoretical first: teaching about what science is about. Then you have the laboratory to prove that what is taught in theory works. On Wednesday, we talked about the theoretical. I do not mean it is merely a theory; I mean it sets the foundation for life.
We saw that our focus for this time is: I want to be about my Father’s business. I need to be about my Father’s business. But a foundation has to be laid before we can be about our Father’s business.
First, we must realize that we are children of God. He is our Father. That does not mean merely that He birthed us. It means that He is the One who cares for us and brings us up, so that we are able to grow up and become the sons He wants us to be.
Second, children know that their sins are forgiven. We talked about that this morning. How important it is that we realize our sins are forgiven. It is not merely that somebody says, “Well, I forgive you.” It cost something to forgive us, and that cost was paid.
Once we lay hold of that, we are free. We are free to go on and think of other things.
As a teacher, we have to study the teachings of Maslow. Maslow teaches that a person cannot learn until certain criteria are met. If somebody is poor, concentrating on where the next meal will come from or whether he will be warm tonight, then he cannot concentrate on what you are trying to teach him.
Once we are freed from that—once we know God is our Father and we are provided for, once we know our sins are taken away and that we do not have to do penance or anything else—then we are free to think of higher things. Until that time, we cannot think of higher things because those concerns occupy our minds.
One of the songs we sang spoke of an “unfettered soul.” Once we realize that God is our Father and our sins are forgiven, we are unfettered. We are able to go on to higher things.
That higher thing is this: we are no longer asking, “Why would You save me?” Now we are asking, “Why did You save me? For what purpose have You bought me for Yourself and brought me to Yourself?”
This is not some outward thing that comes to us as a set of rules. The cry comes from the inner man—the new life placed within us. It begins to answer that question and says, “Do you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
That is the new life in us crying out. It is not a set of rules or regulations, but a life that has been birthed into us, speaking to our own consciousness and saying, “I must be about my Father’s business.”
That is what we stand on. That is the foundation for being about our Father’s business.
Tonight, I want to put in the practical. These are things we must act on. They are not things that we merely believe and put our faith in. Once our foundation is set, we say, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Well, that is practical. That is not theoretical.
What is our Father’s business? God our Father is gathering to Himself a people. That is His business. Out of that people, He wants to build them into a house—a house for Him to dwell in.
In Scripture, we can look at this as a house, a city with foundations whose Maker and Builder is God, or a bride. However we look at it, God is preparing something. He is gathering a people because it is made from His people.
This does not mean that God is unconcerned about the world. He is gathering from every nation, tongue, tribe, and people into this building. Out of the world, He is gathering His people.
God does not rush us into service. He does not rush us into being about His business. Last night, we looked at Joseph, Moses, David, and Paul.
Joseph had his dream and the realization that God had called him to a purpose. Yet it did not happen right away. He was seventeen years old when he received the dream, but he was thirty before he began acting in the place where God had put him to be about His business.
Moses was about forty years old when he first went out among his Hebrew people. Yet it was another forty years before he came back, sent by God, to deliver them.
David was anointed by Samuel when he was a young lad or teenager. Yet he was not crowned king by the people of Judah until he was thirty-three years old. There was a long time in between.
What about Paul? After Paul was converted on the Damascus road, he did not immediately consult with flesh and blood. He went to Arabia for three years, then returned to Tarsus. It was almost as though he had been buried; nobody knew about him until Barnabas came and searched for him.
Naturally, once we get something in our heads, we say, “Now I see,” and then we go gangbusters trying to do things. That is what we naturally do. Naturally, we run into a brick wall.
God does not press us right into service. Instead, He brings us through a process. There are two aspects to this process.
The first part of the process is that He makes us pass through Nazareth, just as His Son, the Lord Jesus, did. He went back to Nazareth. We might say, “What good can come out of Nazareth?” But those of us who want to go gangbusters do not want to go to Nazareth. We want to start right away.
“I have got it in my head. I know He has called me to this. I want to go.” But Nazareth is a place of apprenticeship.
According to Jewish tradition, all sons learned a trade. Between the ages of twelve and thirty, the Lord Jesus would have been apprenticed to learn His trade. Joseph was a carpenter, and the Lord Jesus learned the trade of carpentry. He was apprenticed.
So it is with us. We are to be apprenticed. When you are apprenticed, you are given to a master.
Being a history teacher, when I teach the guild system, I explain that a parent would find a master craftsman and say, “It is a good trade. I will give you my son. Make him an expert in the trade.” The son would be left with that master.
An apprentice might begin at about seven years old and become a master at about twenty or twenty-one. It was a long process. He went from apprentice to journeyman and then to master.
The father had to pay that master before he sent his son. Brothers and sisters, this part of the process has been paid for. Our Father has paid for our apprenticeship, and He has sent us to a Master.
That Master is the Holy Spirit. The Master dwells within us. As we are sent to Him and given to Him, we belong to Him. It is up to the Master to teach us how we are to be about our Father’s business.
Being apprenticed is not always easy. I was an apprentice carpenter for five months. I hated carpentry and got out of it. But I will use my brother’s experience, because he toughed it out.
When he went to be an apprentice, they started him out sweeping floors. He never touched a tool. He swept the floor for weeks and weeks and weeks. Then he got to know the men working at the lathes and saws in the cabinet shop.
Pretty soon they had him become a gopher: “Go get this for me. Go get that for me.” That was how he learned the tools. Then someone would say, “No, wait. I want to show you what this tool does.”
In our apprenticeship, first of all, we learn the Master. We learn of the Master. We learn who our Master is. We learn the Holy Spirit.
What I mean by learning the Holy Spirit is that we learn to discern His voice. He has been given to us, and we learn to discern His voice so that He can lead us.
I am not going to say it is a hard thing, but it is not an easy thing. It has to be discerned. We are given to Him so that we can learn His voice.
Once we begin to discern His voice, He can begin to teach us. But we have to learn His voice first. Then He can set us out and teach us.
It is like being yoked. Matthew 11:28–30 says:
“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”
—Matthew 11:28–30
We find ourselves under this Master, who is the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is going to teach us many things. One of the most important things, though not the only thing, is the Word. The Word is in His hand, and He begins to teach us the Word because He is able rightly to divide it.
Sometimes we think that after we have attended a couple of meetings, or after we have been Christians for a year or so, we can start teaching. That is not always so, because we do not always know in our natural minds how to rightly divide the Word. But the Spirit does.
The Spirit who rightly divides the Word shows us distinctions in the Word. There are three Greek words for “word.” One is graphe, which means the actual writing.
We may say, “Well, it is the letter. The letter is bad.” No, it is not. The letter, when used by the Spirit, is a good thing. The Spirit gives life to the Word, but He uses the written Word to show us who God is.
The letter is informational. As young believers, that is what we need: information about God. The Spirit leads us into information about God. We begin to see who God is by reading the Scriptures—how He deals with other people and how He deals with His own people.
Then He shows us logos, the conceptual Word. In that, we are given a vision of what is real. The Lord Jesus is called the Word of God—the Logos. We gain our conception of what God is like because we see God in Jesus Christ.
I was reading a biography of Oswald Chambers. He was talking with some agnostics who always wanted to look at God in abstract terms. He said, “I do not know anything about God except what I see in Jesus Christ.”
What a great answer. I cannot tell you anything about God except what I see in Jesus Christ, because that has been made known.
Then He gives us the rhema. The rhema is the Word meant to be applied in our circumstances now.
We can read the Word, but not every part is to be applied in the same way at every moment. The Spirit quickens it to us and says, “This is for now. This is for this situation. This is for your encouragement right now in what you are going through.”
He lets us know the rhema, and He is able to apply the Word to our lives. He uses the Word to divide between soul and spirit.
He gets right down to brass tacks and says, “This is just the soul. This is where it is really at. I have to cut you here so you can see.” Because of that, He is able to apply the Word to us.
That rhema is important. We need all parts of the Word, and the Holy Spirit, as our Teacher, knows how to show us how to use all three parts. No part can we do without.
A lot of times, we stick only with the letter. We forget about the Holy Spirit, and we try to do everything on our own. But thank God, the Lord reminds us. We hear that voice within us speaking to us.
The Holy Spirit does not merely illuminate the Word to us. Some of us think that is all Christians do: they read the Bible and it means something to them. But through Him, God begins to teach us and draw out the character of a son in us.
He brings us into faithfulness. We become faithful by following Him. He teaches us diligence. He teaches us endurance. He teaches us how to wait.
All these things are characteristics of a good son. The son is going to be about his Father’s business. We can even say that the son is about his Father’s business as a servant. He serves his Father.
Do not think that He teaches us these things only in a spiritual setting or only in church meetings. That is not it.
He uses as His classroom the circumstances of our lives, the relationships in our lives, and everything else: our jobs, going to school, living at home with our parents, and being parents. All these things are tools of the Holy Spirit, shaping us into the character that can be about our Father’s business.
Our lives and circumstances begin to chisel away at us and form character in us. We live under His tutelage.
Isaiah 53 speaks of Christ, the coming Messiah:
“For He grew up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground.”
—Isaiah 53:2
The ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives as our Tutor allows that tender plant to grow out of dry ground—which is us, our natural selves. Because we have been given to the Holy Spirit to teach us the life of Christ, and because we say yes to Him in all the ways He deals with us, that life is able to spring out of dry ground.
There is a second aspect to this process. In Luke 12:50, the Lord says, “I have a baptism to be accomplished.” When I speak about baptism here, I am not talking about water baptism. I want to use the Lord Jesus’ baptism as a way of explaining what He is talking about.
Why was Jesus baptized? He did not need to be baptized, so why did He go and be baptized?
It was not merely to show the people around Him that He was being baptized. They would have thought, “He is a sinner just like the rest of us.” We often say that He was identifying with the sinners He came to save, and that is true.
He was baptized, first, as a testimony to John the Baptist. John 1 tells us that John did not know who He was until the Spirit came down upon Him. Then John knew that this was the Lamb of God.
But secondly—and most importantly for what I want to share—it was a testimony to His own Father.
By coming to be baptized, what He was saying to His Father was what we find in Hebrews 10:7, drawing from Psalm 40:
“Lo, I am come (in the roll of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God.”
—Hebrews 10:7
“I have come to do Your will.” That was His testimony. That was what He was being baptized for.
In other words, He was bowing His knee to His Father and saying, “I know that I am to be about Your business. It is not simply that I know it; I am before You, bowing my knee and saying, ‘I will be about Your business.’ This is my purpose. This is why I have come.”
He was yielding to His Father’s will. He was committing Himself to do His Father’s will. He was not merely agreeing with it; He was committing Himself to do it.
What does that mean for me? When I come to be about our Father’s business, it means I am dying to my ambition.
When I think I am going to do my Father’s business, I can be like Moses when he first came out among his people. He saw the Egyptian hurting the Hebrew, went out and killed him, and thought the people would understand what he was doing. He knew he was called to deliver Israel, but he took it into his own hands.
He was doing it his way, not God’s way. God did not want to deliver them by the hand of flesh. He was going to deliver them by a great work.
I have to die to my own ambitions—to what I think my role is in doing the Father’s will. Sometimes I have to die to serving in the way I think I should serve.
“This is the way You should use me, Lord. This is the context in which You should use me. I should have this place.” Or I may have to die to serving the people I think I should serve.
“I think I should be a missionary to the wealthy. I like that. I think I would have a great ministry to them.” It has its perks, but I could deal with that.
What this baptism really means is submission—not merely in my heart, but the giving of my whole being, including my body.
A lot of times, we think that we serve the Lord only with our hearts. No. It includes our bodies, because often we have to bring ourselves physically to the place where He wants us to serve. We have to give Him our bodies to do that.
I would much rather say, “Well, I will just pray for them, Lord.” But He says, “No, I want you to go out there. I want you to touch. I want you to be My hands. I want you to be My feet. Give Me your body so I can do this.”
It is submission to His will. It is an embracing of His will, revealed to me by the Spirit within me—not my spirit, but the Holy Spirit within me.
I bow to the will of God as He shows it to me each day and each hour. I cannot say, “Lord, I did it yesterday. Today is my day off.” No. It does not work that way.
The apprenticeship is paid for. But this baptism—this is our cost. This costs us.
The Lord gives us the Tutor, but the doing of the will of God costs us. We pay for it with our lives, by laying down our lives to Him so that His will can be done.
I am not talking about laying down our lives merely so that we can get closer to God, as though saying, “I will not watch television so I can read my Bible and get closer to God.” No, it is more than that.
It is laying down my life so that His will can be done among the saints, or among the people of the world, drawing people into the kingdom of God. It is no longer just for me.
We do not mind the cross for ourselves when we think we will get something out of it. But the cross we are talking about here is not for our benefit. It is for the benefit of others.
Jesus died for others. That is what He calls us to do if we are going to be about His Father’s business.
A lot of us—and I am one of them—wish there were just a one-time commitment. I wish I could say, “There is one commitment, and that is it. For the rest of my life, I am sold out.”
But my experience has not been that. Does that mean the Lord has nothing to do with me, that I cannot be about my Father’s business? No, it does not.
If you read the Gospels and see the life of Jesus, every step along the way His commitment was renewed.
At His baptism, we see the first commitment. The next time we see something like it is at the Mount of Transfiguration. He is on the mountain with Moses and Elijah, and they are speaking about His departure—His death.
His commitment is renewed: “I am going to Jerusalem.” After that experience, Luke says that He set His face like flint.
Later, in John 12, as He is on His way to Jerusalem, we find Him again saying, “Father, should I say, ‘Save Me from this hour?’” But no: “Glorify Thyself.”
Finally, just before going to the cross, even though He cries out, “If there is another way, let this cup pass from Me,” He returns to that commitment and says, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be done.”
Every time there is a renewal, God owns that. God takes it for Himself.
At the baptism, the voice came from heaven, saying:
“Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased.”
—Luke 3:22
What was He pleased with? Jesus had not yet done anything publicly. He was pleased that He bowed the knee.
At the Mount of Transfiguration, the voice again came from heaven:
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.”
—Matthew 17:5
Again, it is confirmation: “I own your service. You are rendering your service to Me, and I own it. I take it as Mine.”
In John 12, a voice comes from heaven again. Jesus says, “Father, glorify Thy name,” and the Father answers:
“I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
—John 12:28
He is taking ownership of that service again. Even in Gethsemane, though we do not hear the voice of the Father, the Father sends an angel to strengthen Him in that hour.
In all these things, we find that our Father answers every time we renew that commitment. Every time we fall away from it, shirk it in some way, and come back saying, “Father, forgive me. I got off the path. Bring me back,” the Father owns that.
He has already paid for our falling away. He takes us right back and puts us on that same path.
“For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of.”
—Romans 11:29
He will not take them away from us.
At Christ’s baptism, another thing happened. When He bowed the knee to do the will of God, Matthew says that the heavens were opened unto Him.
When He committed Himself to that service, heaven was opened to Him for all the power needed to do the Father’s will. The Holy Spirit descended upon Him, empowering Him in life so that He could know the will of God and then do it.
That is why the Lord says, “How am I straitened till it be accomplished!” If we do not bow the knee to serve God as God wants to be served, then we are straitened in our service.
The Holy Spirit will not be given to empower self-directed service. We serve out of our flesh, and when we serve out of the flesh, there is never enough. We are weak. We cannot accomplish that service, and any result from it is weak.
But when we bow the knee, we find heaven opened to us. There is ability—enabling grace—that enables us to do His will and receive the results the Father is looking for.
That is what it is all about: doing His will. It is not about me anymore. It is not about what I think should be done. It is not about my place. It is all about Him, His will, and doing what He wants us to do.
That is the process. But what about the job? What is the job description? You people preparing résumés want to know what the job description is. “What do You want me to do? How do You want me to go about it?”
There is a twofold job. We read two verses from Ephesians, and I want to use those two verses.
The first verse speaks of being joints of supply. What does it mean to be about our Father’s business? It means that we become a joint of supply to the body.
What is being supplied? What are we supplying? A gift? No, we are not supplying a gift. We are supplying Christ.
Gift is not enough. The gift of the Holy Spirit manifests Christ. It brings Christ. The gift is meant to bring Christ.
We cannot get puffed up. We are just joints. Our joints are not the prettiest part of our bodies, especially as we get older. I have noticed that my elbows have wrinkles now. When I was a teenager, I had nice firm elbows. Now I look in the mirror and say, “Oh my gosh, I have old elbows.”
Think about the joints in your toes, fingers, knees, hips, and shoulders. They are not necessarily impressive. But that is what we are: joints.
Joints are weak in themselves. They get weak. But they supply Christ. It is okay for the joint to be weak, because when I am weak, Christ comes out much more.
When I am strong, there is more of me. When I am weak, there is more of the Lord. That is what we want. The operation of the gift is to supply Christ.
Joints are channels for something to flow through. There is a hymn that says this beautifully: “Channels Only.”
How I praise Thee, precious Savior,
That Thy love laid hold of me;
Thou hast saved and cleansed and filled me,
That I might a channel be.
That is what we were talking about on Wednesday: He has saved us, filled us, and cleansed us. We have this life in us.
Just a channel full of blessing,
To the thirsty hearts around;
To tell out Thy full salvation,
All Thy loving message sound.
Emptied that Thou shouldest fill me,
A clean vessel in Thy hand;
With no power but as Thou givest
Graciously with each command.
Channels only, blessed Master,
But with all Thy wondrous power
Flowing through us, Thou canst use us
Every day and every hour.
That is being about His business: being a channel, a channel of His life. It is His life that, when it touches, makes free. It is His life that heals. It is His life that brings the revelation of God.
How many joints does your body have? Come on, you physical therapists. You studied this. Oh, you forgot your anatomy class, huh? You have about 207 bones, but how many joints do you have? There are a lot of them.
The point is that we are not the only joint of supply. The body has many joints because Christ is so big. Christ is so vast that He needs many joints of supply.
We are all different kinds of joints. We all supply Christ, but perhaps a different aspect of Christ, because Christ is so huge.
We are not to compete for preeminence. We simply say, “Lord, use me how You will. Flow through me as You will. Let me be ministered to by another joint. Let another joint minister to me while I minister to a different joint.”
That is the mind of Christ. Our natural mind says, “No, no, no. I have got to be the one.” No. The Lord has many joints, and He meant it that way, so that we are not alone in our service.
Because we are joints of supply, we are at His disposal. When does He want to flow through us? Only at the meeting? No. All the time.
What does that mean? Oh, gee whiz, we are on call.
How many of you have jobs where you are on call? Two o’clock in the morning, right? The Lord calls us when He needs us, when He wants us to serve in some capacity. We are on call.
Every member is on call. The functioning of joints is not done only at a meeting.
There are difficulties in being joints of supply. I want to speak about a few of them.
First, we can be preoccupied. We are preoccupied with other interests that distract us.
I got my wife to use her computer to Google the definition of “preoccupied.” It said “distracted.” But do you know what one of the synonyms was? Absent.
Absent. Think about that. It means I am absent from service. The Lord is looking for me to serve, and I am not there because I am preoccupied with something else.
It could be, “Hey, Dodgers-Padres tonight, isn’t it?” If it were not for this, I could be watching. Or it could be family, or something else. Something else gets in the way. I am serving myself. I am preoccupied. I am absent from where I should be.
Another hindrance is being casual in our Christianity. By that I mean being lax in our testimony.
“It does not really matter if I am wholly following the Lord, as long as I put on a good façade. People think I am a good person. That is enough.”
There is no casualness. There is no casual Friday for a joint of supply. You are always on call. You are always ready. You are always in uniform.
Being casual means we are not prepared to serve. We are not right. We are not in the right place in our hearts, minds, and spirits. Therefore, we cannot be vessels through which Christ flows for that need.
Finally, there is the feeling of inferiority, which so many of us suffer from. Sometimes it can be a source of pride, but often it is real. We feel inferior.
“Oh, other people are so able to do things.” I remember the first time I was asked to do the Toronto Youth Conference. I had to do it with Dana. How could I compare with Dana? That is what you think, right? You have to look to the Lord.
Think about the Lord’s disciples. Let us look at eleven of them, because Judas Iscariot left. When we think of the disciples, three come right to mind: Peter, James, and John. They get the most ink.
We know Simon Peter. We know James and John, who were always together. They went to the Mount of Transfiguration. They were called the sons of thunder. They had fire in their bellies.
Then we remember Matthew because he wrote a Gospel; Andrew because he was Peter’s brother; Thomas because he was a doubter; Philip because he said, “Show us the Father”; Nathanael, or Bartholomew; Simon the Zealot; Judas the son of James; and James the son of Alphaeus.
But how many of these disciples are nondescript? Is that not a revelation?
Why would Jesus choose nondescript, unimportant people as His disciples? Because He can flow through them.
“For behold your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
But God chose the foolish things of the world, that He might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that He might put to shame the things that are strong.”
—1 Corinthians 1:26–27
This should take away our feelings of inferiority, because it is not us doing the ministry. It is Christ ministering through us. Channels only.
The second part of the job comes from Ephesians 2:10: we are created for good works.
Brothers and sisters, I think this is the hardest thing for us: good works. We are people who like knowledge.
We can come to a conference, listen to ministry, and fill notebooks. We love it. We love taking notes. We love talking about the notes we took.
Sometimes, in sharing meetings, we just want to tell people what we know because we get off on it. “Look at what I know.” “Oh yeah? Well, this is what I know.” That is what we do.
But good works.
In Luke 24, the two men on the road to Emmaus referred to Jesus as:
“Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.”
—Luke 24:19
What was first? Deeds. That is amazing. The Lord Jesus is a doer, and He lives in us to do His will.
We are not merely to think about what His will is. We are to do His will.
When we speak about good works, we have to be careful. There is a movement in the church that wants to take every command of Jesus in a simplistic, literalistic way. If He says, “Sell all,” then they say everybody must sell all. If He says, “Give to the poor,” then they say everybody must do it in precisely the same way.
But listen to Jesus speaking about His own ministry in Luke 4:18–19:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor:
He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
—Luke 4:18–19
The operative phrase is this: “He anointed Me.”
If He has not anointed you to do something, then do not do it. That is important.
We cannot look at everything mechanically. Otherwise, we could simply open our Bibles and do whatever verse we see. “Judas went out and hanged himself.” Well, that cannot be it. So we turn to another verse: “What thou doest, do quickly.” Oh my goodness.
You see what I mean? It has to be rhema. It has to be quickened to you.
The Word of the Lord is quickened to us to do something. He may tell you to sell all. I am not saying He will never tell you to sell all. I am not saying you are going to live in Beverly Hills for the rest of your life.
He might tell you to do that. If He tells you to do that, and the anointing is upon you to do it, then you had better do it.
But He might not tell you to do that. If you go and do it without His direction, you are not doing His will. You are doing what you think is His will, but it is not His will.
The Word has to be quickened by the Spirit so that I am under the unction, under the anointing of the Spirit, when I do it. Then I have His power to carry out whatever He has called me to do.
We may say, “The Bible says to heal the sick. After the meeting, we are going to go to the hospital and heal the sick.” I do not think so. God must send us to do that.
Let me give you an example from life. We hear a lot about Lady Ogle. Stephen talks about Lady Ogle sometimes, and Lance talks about Lady Ogle. Finally, Barb and I had tea with Mom, and I asked, “Who is this Lady Ogle? You people talk about her all the time.”
I was told that she was a wealthy woman. Her husband died, and she had two fortunes. Since she had all that money, she thought, “I am just going to give it away.”
She began to give it away, signing gifts here and there. Then the Lord spoke to her and said, “Lady Ogle, why are you giving away My money when you have not asked Me who I want to give it to?”
She thought, “Well, I just thought that since You gave me this money, I should give it away.” The Lord said, “Yes, I will let you give some of My money away, and I will show you where to give it. But you have not even asked Me who I want to give it to. After all, it is Mine. You are only a steward of it.”
That is what we are talking about: finding the lordship of the Lord over us, and then doing the work He gives us to do—whatever that work may be.
There are good works. Some works are for edification, to build one another up. Some works are simply love.
Think about the good Samaritan: a work of love. Nobody is trumpeting about it. It is simply the Lord living through His people to touch others with compassion and love, or to build them up.
Sometimes, when we think of good works, we think of healings, leading people to the Lord, preaching, and things like that. But some of the good works the Lord has prepared for us are to go and be with somebody who is suffering.
Because you have suffered in some way, you know the grace of God. He may say, “I want you to go share the grace I showed you with this person. I want you to come alongside.”
He may say, “I want you to encourage this person who is going through a bad time. This person has fallen. I want you to go and confront him, because I want him brought back into the family.”
Good works. These are good works. No one is good but God. These are works that come out of God and come through us because we are vessels.
Speaking about the body, if love is motivating our works, Colossians says that love is the perfect bond of unity.
This is what binds us together. This is the glue between us. It is not the doctrine that we have. It is the love that we have for the saints.
It is not our love; it is agape. This is love that is not motivated by, “Oh, you did a favor for me, so I will do a favor for you.”
No. I may not even like you. We may not have the same interests. But the Lord says, “I want you to go over there and invite this person to dinner.”
That is agape. It is not motivated by who you are. I am motivated by God saying, “Go over there and do this.”
If your fellowship is falling apart, maybe there needs to be some good works. Or perhaps your fellowship is going through the ringer but holding together. Why is that? Maybe it is because people are loving one another, because Christ is in them loving them.
That is a big thing.
In Revelation 19:8, speaking about the bride, it says:
“And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”
—Revelation 19:8
How is God’s righteousness manifested? Through good works. It is through good works.
You read the Bible and see how His righteousness is shown: see Him act. His righteousness is not manifested merely by giving a law; it is manifested by the things He does.
In closing, brothers and sisters, I want to read from Matthew 20.
Matthew 20:20–21 says:
“Then came to Him the mother of the sons of Zebedee with her sons, worshipping Him, and asking a certain thing of Him.
And He said unto her, What wouldest thou? She saith unto Him, Command that these my two sons may sit, one on Thy right hand, and one on Thy left hand, in Thy kingdom.”
—Matthew 20:20–21
You know something? Jesus did not berate her for that. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to a high calling. Do you understand that? There is nothing wrong with aspiring to a high calling.
Your motive behind it may need to be purified, but the desire itself is not wrong.
“If a man seeketh the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.”
—1 Timothy 3:1
But Jesus answered and said, “You do not know what you are asking.” He was not speaking merely to the mother. He turned to James and John. He knew where the request was coming from, and He said, “You do not know what you are asking.”
Then He asked them:
“Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink? Or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
—Matthew 20:22
That is a heavy question. They answered right away. I do not think they thought about it. If they had thought about it, they might have said, “I think Peter can have Your right hand. Maybe Thomas can have the left.”
But they said, “We are able.”
Notice how Jesus replied. He did not say, “There is no way you are able.” No. He said:
“My cup indeed ye shall drink: and with the baptism wherewith I am baptized ye shall be baptized.”
—Matthew 20:23
That is a wonderful statement. It is just a wonderful statement.
My prayer is that, to as many as aspire to be about His business, He will say the same thing: “You will be about My Father’s business as I have been about it.”
Heavenly Father, it is a hard thing to talk about things that are going to cost us, because we shrink from them. We do not lie before You, Lord: we shrink from them. We count the cost, and sometimes we say it is too much.
That is true, Lord, in our natural selves. But I thank You that the Spirit within us is crying out, “Oh Lord, I want to be about my Father’s business.”
Father, we ask that You would grant this petition of the Spirit in us, who cries to You, “Abba, Father. Let me be about Your business.”
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.