Let’s go ahead, and we’ll read some Scriptures, okay?
First, we’ll look at Revelation 1:5-6.
Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood;
and He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father;
to Him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Then we want to look at Matthew 16:15-17. Actually, I think it is through verse 17. Let me make sure I’m correct here. I made a typo here. Yes, through verse 17.
He saith unto them, But who say ye that I am?
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.
Then we’ll look at Colossians 2, starting with verse 13.
And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, did He make alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses;
having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross;
having despoiled the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
Second Corinthians 2:14.
But thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the savor of His knowledge in every place.
And then one more: Ephesians 1:19-21. This is one of the things that Paul is asking that our eyes be opened to.
And what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might
which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named,
not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, how we thank You again that we have come into Your presence only by Your doing, only by the doing of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, whom You sent to earth because You loved us.
And He came on our behalf that He might save us, ransom us, Lord, and take the penalty for us, that He might bring us to You righteous, blameless, and holy; that we might be brought into the purpose that You have had for mankind since the beginning.
Lord, how we thank You. How we thank You that this is our standing this morning. And Lord, we would enter into that standing this morning. We would come in and ask that You would open up the Word to us and show us more of Your Christ.
Lord, it is Christ that we need to see, and it is Christ that we want to see. We do not know how to see Him unless You show Him to us, Lord. And so, we ask this morning that You will open Your Word and show us Your Christ.
And in seeing Him, Lord, may we be brought up to You, and may we be encouraged to know that everything that You have meant for us can be ours in Jesus Christ. We pray in His name. Amen.
Well, you know, this last verse—I was reading it again last night. Man, what a powerful word when you think about that: the greatness of His power toward us, and Him whom He raised and seated far above. This is Christ: far above.
Look at all those things that He is above: principalities, powers, might, dominion, and every name that is named—not just now, and not just in the past and present, but in the future and in the world to come.
That is amazing. That is Christ.
And you know, I know so little. When I went back and looked, I had this: the eternal purpose of God is seen in Jesus Christ.
I am not here to tell you that I know everything, like I can tell you everything about this. But last time, when we were talking about this, I just wanted to bring in the basics of the eternal purpose of God and what that means.
And so, as a good teacher, what do we do? We review, right?
Last time, when we looked at the eternal purpose, we saw that we cannot see the eternal purpose unless we see the purpose that God originally had for man.
And we cannot even see what God really meant for man because man fell, and his view of what God is and who God is has been distorted. So he cannot see it.
And so Christ came to us in the form of man. In Christ, as the Son of Man, we see man as he was meant to be—man as God wanted him to be.
Not just pleasing Him, but man without sin. Man was created without sin. Christ is without sin. What a wonderful truth that is, and what a wonderful thing it is to know that this is what God wants for us: to be those who are not imprisoned by a sinful nature.
And man, seeing Christ as man, is awakened and sees that he falls far short of the glory that God meant man to have. God can never be satisfied with man as he is in a fallen state.
Because of that, as we see Christ as this man, we desire Him. There is no man like Jesus Christ who walked the earth. When we see Him—even in the Scriptures—we find ourselves desiring Him.
We see our need to be redeemed, and we have a desire to be redeemed. In that, we have a hope that comes with redemption.
So, if you need to know any further than that, you can, as Floyd used to say, “Get the tape.”
This morning, today, I want to look at a different part. Last time, we saw that we have to see what man was supposed to be in order for God to be satisfied. What was the eternal purpose for man?
Now, the first verse we read today was out of Revelation. You cannot put the eternal purpose of God into five sentences. You cannot box it. You cannot say, “This is it. This is it.” Okay?
But part of what man is meant for, and part of the eternal purpose of God, is this: He has made us kings and priests unto His God.
So, in looking at that verse, we need to see this. Last time, we saw man falling short of the glory, but we also saw another Man who pleased the Father.
How does God bring us now from being those who needed redemption to those who are fully saved? Again, it is all wrapped up in Christ. There is no list saying, “You’ve got to do this and this.” It is all wrapped up in Christ.
And I know that to many of us, that sounds very vague. What do you mean, “wrapped up in Christ”? It is all Christ, and we have to see Christ. What does it mean to see Christ?
As we see Christ, it will unfold. We will see, because God will reveal it to us. Just as He said to Peter, “Flesh and blood has not shown you this, but My Father revealed it to you.”
I cannot show you these things. They have to be revealed. My only hope is that I can lead you to Christ, and then, in leading you to Christ, Christ will reveal Himself.
So we want to see God bringing man into His eternal purpose through Jesus Christ. He brings man into the eternal purpose through Christ.
Colossians 1:13 says that He “delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.”
The purpose that God meant for man to have is to be at the very center of His purpose. Part of that purpose, which we are looking at today, is that we be kings—in other words, reigning with Christ and God—and that we be priests, serving God in His eternal purpose.
That is what is meant for us as redeemed men and women in Christ.
So how is man recovered and brought back into the purpose of God? We just said that it is all wrapped up in Christ.
As much as we need to see Jesus Christ as the Son of Man, we need to see Jesus as the Christ—Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ of God.
In order that we may be brought into the salvation God means for us to have, and experience the fullness of that salvation, we must see Him as the Christ. Without seeing Him as the Christ, we will fall far, far short of the salvation God has bought for us in Christ.
Now, we have all these familiar terms, right? “You are the Christ.” That is what Peter said. That was revealed to Peter. What does Christ mean?
What good is it if He says that He is the Christ and we do not know what the Christ is? What does it mean that He is the Christ?
Well, if we want to go into the language itself, Christos is Greek for the Hebrew Mashiach. Mashiach means Messiah.
So, He is the Messiah. What does Messiah mean? Messiah means that He is the Anointed One. Well, what does that mean—that He is anointed?
Really, the word anointed means to smear something on. But in this case, we want to understand that God anointed many things. He anointed prophets, and He anointed vessels for the temple.
All that means is that these things were set apart for a special purpose. The vessels were set apart for the service of God in the temple. Kings were set apart to rule His people. There was an anointing for them, indicating that they had a special role.
But the Anointed One—the Messiah, the Christ—is not a common anointing. It is not just that something was smeared on His head to point Him out.
It was God setting apart this One to have an anointing above all others. No one else had this anointing. No one else had this purpose but Christ Himself.
And this Messiah—what was His purpose? Why was He chosen by God? Why was He set apart by God?
He was set apart to be a Deliverer. The Messiah was anointed, or commissioned, by God to deliver His people out of bondage.
We have types of this. We can see Moses as a type, delivering the people out of bondage in Egypt.
But this was not a temporary deliverance. The deliverance of the Messiah, of the Anointed One, was not like the deliverance given by the judges in the book of Judges, or the kings in Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, and 2 Chronicles.
Those deliverances were temporary. This deliverance is a final deliverance. It is an eternal deliverance, not like any other deliverance.
That is a wonderful word, isn’t it? A final deliverance.
The Deliverer would also be seen as a Savior. He is the One who saves us from the power that holds us captive.
It is not merely a political power, as in Israel’s case. For us, it is a power that holds us captive so that we cannot do the things we are meant to do, and we cannot be what God meant us to be in the beginning.
We are captives to sin, to a sinful nature, and to an enemy beyond that. We are to be delivered from that, and this Christ is our Deliverer.
Now, in looking at Christ as Deliverer, there are two sides to every coin. I do not carry coins because they jingle, but if we had a coin—those of you who are going to watch football today—how do they start a football game?
Come on, you can tell me. It is okay. You toss a coin, right? You toss it, and it goes in the air. It ends up on one side or the other.
Well, in looking at Messiah, there are two faces to the coin of Messiah.
One face of the coin looks like this: Napoleon. You know, all the good rulers are small and all the bad rulers are tall. I do not get it.
But that looks like some deliverer, does it not? That is the kind of deliverer we want, right? We are looking for a strong person who can deliver us from all our weaknesses and from all our foes.
This is the mighty man that Jeffrey talked about last week. We are looking for a mighty man to come and take us away from our troubles.
And that is not wrong. That is true, because one side of the coin of Messiah is that He is a mighty man. He comes to deliver.
All the Jews were looking for this side of the coin, and that includes the disciples. The disciples were looking for the mighty man. They were saying, “Are You going to restore the kingdom now?”
But there is another side of the coin: a lamb.
Now, if I asked you which one you would choose for your deliverer, which one would you choose? I choose the one on the left, because he looks like he can lead me somewhere. The other one, I do not know. He does not look too strong to me.
But when Christ came, His forerunner, John the Baptist, announced Him as the Lamb: “Behold, the Lamb of God.”
Even though John said, “He that cometh after me is mightier than I,” the way he introduced Him was, “Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.”
In other words, in God’s first coming as Deliverer, He looked first and foremost at what man was, and He said, “That is what I deliver man from. I deliver man from sin.”
The only way was by a lamb—a lamb of sacrifice. So John introduced the Lamb of God.
And the Lord Himself reaffirmed this. After Peter gave his great confession in Matthew 16, we find the Lord telling him, “I have got to go to Jerusalem, and I am going to be given up to the elders and chief priests, and they are going to kill Me. On the third day, I am going to rise from the dead.”
So even Jesus, after Peter’s confession, began to say, “I come first as a Lamb. I am Messiah. Peter, you are right. I am the Christ. I am the Deliverer. But as Deliverer, first things first: I am a Lamb. I am the Lamb of God.”
And you remember, Peter did not want any part of this because he did not understand. He would later, but he did not understand. He said, “This shall never be unto Thee.”
And the Lord rebuked him: “Get thee behind Me, Satan,” because you are looking at it like a man. You are not looking at it as God looks at it. God’s thoughts are higher than your thoughts, and His ways are higher than yours.
But I know, because I am here to do His will, and His will first is that I am the Lamb—the Lamb of God.
Now, what about the other side of the coin? We, as Christians today, relegate the other side of the coin to when Christ returns.
We have the Lamb of God, but this Conqueror, this Deliverer on horseback—we say He is not there until the end of tribulation, or depending on where your eschatology is. Okay? But we say He is not coming until the end time.
So the Lamb saves from sin, but we as Christians seem to have relegated the other side of the coin to a time that comes at the very, very end.
Just like Israel, we have relegated ourselves to only one side of the coin. In other words, our Christ has become one-dimensional.
I am not saying the side of the coin that we are looking at is wrong, because we do have to see Him first as the Lamb of God. But we must remember that He is not just the Lamb of God.
Messiah is not just Lamb. He is also a Conqueror, and we have to understand this.
Almost all of us, when we grow up, are always talking about the Lamb of God. Even the Lamb of God is on the throne. But, like Jeffrey pointed out last week, He is not just the Lamb of God; He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
I think it is a wonderful thing that when C. S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, the type of Christ was a lion—not a lamb, a lion.
Like Israel of old, we have to be delivered. Israel of old had to be delivered from Egypt, and they were brought to a promised land.
Here is the question: now that we have been delivered, how do we get to the promised land? Are we led by a lamb?
I know it says in Revelation that they follow the Lamb wherever He goes, and that is true. But we have to look at things from another perspective. It is not just this little lamb that we are seeing here.
As Christians, we have been delivered from the penalty of sin, and that is what the Lamb of God does. He delivers us from the penalty of sin.
But the question is: what about deliverance from the power of sin? That is where we get stuck.
Where do we go? The Israelites went into the wilderness, but they finally got to the promised land, did they not? It took them forty years, but they got there.
What about us? How do we get to this place of being kings and priests? Is that just meant for some other time? Is that just meant for when we die?
I do not think it is. I think our Messiah, our Deliverer, is not just a Lamb; He is a Lion as well.
So where do we go? This is where we usually go: we go to Moses.
Moses, after all, was the one who turned us on to the lamb, right? He was the one who, in Egypt, showed us the Paschal Lamb. The lamb will deliver you.
We have the lamb, and He leads us to the Passover Lamb. We get acquainted with the lamb, but this is all that Moses can do.
Moses cannot bring us into the promised land, because he never got there himself in his one hundred and twenty years. Now, I know, if you want to be a stickler with me, you will say, “Yes, he did get into the promised land. He was there on the Mount of Transfiguration.”
But that was after he had gone to be with the Lord. The Lord buried him, if you remember, because He would not let him enter the promised land.
So here we have Moses, and Moses cannot get us into what Christ has promised us—the riches of Christ. He cannot get us to being kings and priests because he never got there himself.
He can only point us to the Lamb. Moses, then, is a picture to us of the law.
This is where we usually go. We get saved, and we want to be all that Christ wants us to be, all that God wants us to be. So what do we do? We look for ways to do it.
And where do we go to look for ways? We go to the law.
I know I have used this example before, but if you have read Pilgrim’s Progress, when Christian gets inside the Wicket Gate, he is traveling and goes down the road of legality.
As he is climbing up the hill, he meets Moses. Moses pushes him down. Christian gets up, and Moses pushes him down again. He gets up, and Moses pushes him down again.
Christian is befuddled by now. He is saying, “What is going on, man? Have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.” And Moses pushes him down again and says, “I do not know what mercy means.”
That is exactly what the law is like. The law does not know mercy. The law can only show you that you fall short.
So Moses cannot get us there. Well then, how do we get into the place where God wants us to be? That is where we meet our man, Joshua.
You know, Joshua looked like that. He looks just like Russell Crowe, does he not? Just like Russell Crowe.
But here we have the situation that Joshua brings us into the land. Joshua is a type of Christ.
After the Lord was the Lamb of God, He rose from the dead, right? Well then what? Christ comes to live in us.
What does it mean that Christ comes to live in us? Christ is in us, right? What does that mean?
A lot of us, especially as young Christians, think of Christ in us as though we are just kicking back. We do not know what that means.
Does He just come in and say, “Hey, let’s chill together. Just sit down; we’ll talk”? Is that what it means, Michael?
Because if that is what it means, how does that fit with “Christ in you, the hope of glory”? How does that get you there? It is confusing.
Christ is in us, the hope of glory—but what is He doing in us? What does it mean that He is in us?
It means this: when Christ comes into us, He comes into us as eternal life. And eternal life is not passive. It is not a passive life.
When Christ comes into us, He comes to deliver us from the power of sin. He comes into us as a Conqueror and as the Captain of our salvation.
This is a great picture. This is Eisenhower with the men before the D-Day invasion. He is talking to them. He is not writing out orders and sending them through someone else; he is there with them personally.
And look at what he is saying. I love this: “We.” Not “you.” “We will accept nothing less.”
That is the life of Christ in us. When the life of Christ comes into us, that eternal life comes into us saying, “Now that I am in you, we will accept nothing less than total victory.”
That is the purpose of God for us. The purpose of God is not that you are going to be a teacher, a football player, a nurse, or something like that. The purpose of God is that you are going to have total victory.
Christ is going to live in you as the Captain of your salvation and as a Conqueror.
I want to illustrate this life of the Conqueror, this life that breaks the power of sin in our lives, in four ways:
We will do this quickly, okay?
What does it mean now that we have Joshua? When Christ comes into our life, He does not come into us as spilled water.
What I mean by this is that when you spill water, it has no purpose in the way it goes. It goes wherever there is an opening, and it only goes where there is no resistance.
That is not the life of Christ. That is not eternal life in us. Eternal life in us comes with purpose and direction for us. It is not random; it is purposeful.
It is just like when you read the book of Joshua. There is a way to get into the land. There are places to go, bit by bit and place by place, as Joshua was directed by the Lord Himself.
Christ in us is the same way. He comes in as this Captain, and He begins by surveying the land.
He looks over the land. Remember, Joshua sent spies in to check things out. That is what He does. He comes in and He looks over.
Then remember the question: “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” Joshua saw the captain of the Lord’s host and asked, “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” And the answer was, “Nay.”
That always puzzled me too. “Nay”? What do You mean, “Nay”? What kind of answer is that? Are You for us or against us? “Nay.”
He is for the Lord and for the Lord’s purposes. That is what He is here for. It is not about you. It is about the Lord’s purpose. That is what He is after.
So we see that He does not run wild. He enters into the land and surveys it as its Captain. He goes after strongholds.
He is not going after things where there will be no resistance. He goes after those strongholds. He sets out to pull them down, and He takes areas of our lives under His control. That is what the Captain of our salvation does.
Basically, when we first get saved, the Lord starts picking away at the peripheral things in our lives.
As we grow in salvation, we start finding out that He takes little things in our lives. Not necessarily the core things at first, but little things: unholy practices, harmful practices—perhaps not sins in themselves, but harmful to us.
He starts dealing with our relationships and all sorts of these things. Sometimes He does these things subtly, and sometimes He does them not so subtly.
I shared this up in Toronto. We had dinner with the Tozers—remember? A big dinner. I sat next to Chip King. If you ever have a chance to sit next to Chip King, you should. He and his wife are wonderful believers to fellowship with.
We were talking about how, when I was a young believer, we had long hair and things like that. Floyd stopped people from coming into the Tuesday-night Bible study because it was unfair to have us cut our hair and be thinking about those outside things instead of what the Lord really wanted to do in us.
Then Chip said, “Well, let me tell you a story.” He said there were three hippie guys who had their own rock-and-roll garage band.
One Sunday morning, they had nothing else to do, so they said, “Let’s go to church.” This was in the late 1960s or 1970s. Now picture what a Baptist church was like.
Everybody was dressed nicely. The women were wearing dresses. Then here came these three guys: long hair, probably barefoot, unshaven, maybe smoking as they came up.
They sat in the back. The pastor saw them and wondered what he was going to do. He decided, “I am just going to preach the Word.” So he preached the Word.
The three guys left and shook hands with the pastor on the way out, because that is what you do in a Baptist church, right?
They went home, back to the garage, and said, “Hey, that was really cool, what we listened to today.” While they were talking, they were smoking marijuana and saying, “That was really cool. That was really neat.”
The next Sunday, they said, “Why don’t we go to church again?” So they went. The same thing happened. The preacher preached, and they greeted him at the door.
On the way home they said, “This is really cool with this guy. We have never heard this stuff before. This is great.” And then they started smoking again.
The third week they went. They heard the sermon, shook hands with the preacher, and went back to the garage. They were talking about what they had heard while they were smoking, and one of the guys said, “What do I need this for?” And he threw it away.
You know, sometimes the Lord does not have to beat you on the head and say, “You better not do this.” He comes subtly. Just from what you are hearing, all of a sudden something rises in you: “I do not need this.”
So subtly, but gracefully. We think the Conqueror has to come by beating us up, but sometimes He simply comes with words that cause you to say, “You do not need that.”
Other times, He comes not so subtly. I was just sharing with the kids how I quit smoking.
My brother was saved at that time. He was listening to Kenneth Hagin. I know you know who Kenneth Hagin is—a name-it-and-claim-it kind of guy.
Now, we all smoked cigarettes, even as Christians. I got saved when I was seventeen. At this time, I was about twenty-one.
We were closet smokers. You would go to church, but you would not smoke at church. The reason I would not smoke there was because every time I went to youth group, there was one guy who smoked, and everybody knew it.
This one guy would go up to him every day and greet him: “Hey, how are you doing? Have you quit smoking yet? Well, I am praying for you.” Oh, that used to burn me. So I thought, “They are never going to know I smoke.”
Anyway, my brother came out with this white ribbon. I said, “What is that?” He said, “Well, I am claiming the blood of Jesus to deliver me from smoking.”
I said, “What a crock. That is a bunch of stuff.” He said, “No, I believe it. I really believe it. I believe that the blood of Jesus cleanses me of this and will break the power.”
So we went to the movies that night. We sat up in the balcony, where nobody sits, so you could smoke. That is what you did, right?
I sat behind my brother and blew smoke at him all night. What a nice guy I was, huh?
We were coming home from the movie, and my older brother said, “You know, I am going to quit smoking too.” Then my best friend said, “Yeah, me too.”
Now I am getting convicted. It is not subtle anymore. I was not ready for that. I said, “Well, I am not. I do not care what you guys do. I am not doing it.”
Man, I am telling you, the Lord was so heavy on me. Finally, I said, “Okay.” I threw the cigarettes down and said, “Okay, there. I quit. You got what You wanted.” I was mad. I did not want to.
But He had His finger on my life in that thing, and He was showing me something else. He was showing me that He is able to do things that I do not think He is able to do.
He was showing me that I do not need these things, just like those guys in the garage band did not need it. He is able to deliver us from so many things.
After that night, I have never smoked since. And I think of all the money I have saved now. Cigarettes cost about five dollars a pack now. Man, look at all the money I have saved. When I quit, they were fifty-five cents. It has been about forty years—a lot of money.
But you know, you have things like that, where the Lord comes in and takes away peripheral things.
If you read Joshua, you come to Joshua 12, where Joshua has taken care of thirty-one kings. There is a lot of stuff in our lives that we do not know about.
But as you go on with the Lord, if you give the Lord His reign in your life, you find that all these things come under His rule.
Some of these things have to be killed. Some of these things have a death sentence.
For example, smoking for me had a death sentence. I am not saying smoking is a sin, but I am saying that habit in me had a death sentence. The Lord said, “It has got to go.”
Some relationships have to go. Some practices and some sins have to go.
Then there are other things in our lives that pay tribute. In other words, they have to take a lesser seat.
For example, our jobs. Jesus does not say your job has to go. You have to work for a living. But He does say that it does not rule. It must come under Him. It must bow the knee to Him.
Sometimes our families take priority, and the Lord has to say, “Not your family.” Family has to bow the knee. Our friends and the things we like to do have to bow the knee.
There is nothing wrong with having them. The question is: are they in their place?
What happens if we do not give in? For example, we have the sin of Achan in Joshua.
Achan saw something he liked: gold and a Babylonian garment. He wanted it, so he took it and hid it. It was under the ban, and the Lord said, “You cannot have that.”
What happened? Right then and there, the whole spiritual life came to a stop. It came to a stop until it was dealt with.
We can hide things from other people, certainly. There are things that we do that nobody in here knows about, but the Lord does.
We can hide it from other people, but we cannot hide it from the Lord. The Lord has His lieutenants. One of those lieutenants is conscience.
Conscience finds us out. It just finds us out.
You have to confess, and the sin has to be dealt with. In Achan’s case, it meant death. For some of us, that is what it means: the death of something. It means the death of self in some way. We have to give it up.
But the wonderful thing is this: if you read Hosea, it talks about the Valley of Achor, where they piled up the stones after they stoned Achan to death.
In Hosea 2, the Valley of Achor becomes a door of hope. You see, just because He is Conqueror does not mean He ceases being Lamb.
There is always that provision. Once we take our sin to Him and confess it, we go back to the blood. We never lose sight of the blood. It always brings us to the place where we can go on.
There are some things in our lives where the thing itself is not the sin, but the disobedience is the sin.
The gold that Achan took was not the sin. The Babylonian garment was not the sin, as I understand it. But he was told not to take them. That was the sin.
Those things have to be dealt with—that spirit in us that is disobedient to the Captain of our salvation.
If we are disobedient, the army cannot go any further. We are left in that place, and a lot of us are encamped at a certain place.
We will be there until we let it go, until we give in to the Commander and give Him what He wants. He comes after these strongholds. He goes after them.
There is another thing that happens. Once we find these things being taken care of, we make a discovery. I call it the Rebekah discovery.
There is Rebekah. Remember Rebekah? That was Isaac’s wife. Remember, she was pregnant and having a hard time. She went to seek the Lord and said, “Why am I having this hard time? What is going on here?”
The Lord said, “Two nations are in thy womb.” They were fighting it out: two nations.
There are Jacob and Esau. Remember, Esau was a hairy man. They had two nations in the womb, and both were fighting for preeminence.
What is this symbolic of? What is this a picture of? Even though we are Christians, we still have our sin nature, our self-life, our unconverted self. It is still with us.
And we have the life of Christ in us. They are vying for preeminence. They are fighting for preeminence.
What does Galatians 5 say? “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.” Galatians 5 talks about that.
This is all about our self-life wanting preeminence in our lives. “I want to rule my life.”
When we look at self, we say, “Well, not everything is bad. I have some good qualities. Does everything have to go?”
“No, surely not. I will save the best for God, and the other stuff can be thrown out.”
Well, what you have there is the fight between King Saul and David.
If you remember King Saul, he was really an extension of the judges.
The Scriptures speak of the time of the judges as a time when every man did what was right in his own eyes.
You look at Saul. Saul started out well, but then you get to 1 Samuel and the Lord says, “Do not offer the sacrifice until Samuel gets there.”
Saul sees the people going away, so he offers the sacrifice. Then Samuel comes. Saul did what was right in his own eyes. “Well, the people were leaving. I had to.”
Or when the Lord said, “Go out and destroy the Amalekites. Do not leave anybody alive, not even their cattle.” What happened when Samuel came back?
Saul had saved the best of the cattle. For what reason? “Well, Lord, I am going to sacrifice them to You. They are offerings to You, Lord.”
And he did not kill Agag. He left some things alive.
Agag, if you remember, was an Amalekite. As we go on in history, in Esther’s time, we meet Haman. What was Haman? Haman was an Agagite.
What did Haman want to do? He wanted to wipe out all the Jews. Sometimes you leave things in your life, and they are out to destroy you. You cannot do that. You might think it is a good thing, but it is not, because it is out to destroy.
As far as David goes, although David is not passive and he takes command and has many victories, he will not take the crown. The crown has to be given to him.
That crown, which is meant for him, he will not take from you. You have to give it to him. It has to be a willing offering of your heart.
And I mean heart—not just your affection. I am talking about the very core of your being that says, “I make You King.”
The self-life steps in. Now, you know something? Saul knew that David should be king.
In our self-life, we know that Christ should be King in our lives, but we hold on, just like Saul. That is the way we are.
So we have this struggle in us until we give ourselves over to the Lord.
It is like F. B. Meyer’s illustration: “Give Me the keys.” “I can give You all of them but one.” “You have to give Me that one too. I am not going to take it from you. You have to give it to Me.”
The whole question is, “I cannot, but make me willing.” “I am not willing.” “Then make me willing.”
Then we come to Josiah. There is King Josiah.
King Josiah is sitting on a bunch of books there because, while he was king at the ripe young age of eight, they found a copy of the Word, a copy of the Scriptures.
The Scriptures came to him, and as the priest read them, he was undone by them.
All I am saying is this: we read the Word a lot, but the Word can be just a legal thing to us, or it can be just something we do.
But when we let the King have the Word—when we let the King take the Word, read it, and apply it—then the Word of God, instead of becoming merely the letter, becomes the rhema, the sword of the Spirit.
It is able to minister to us by saying, “This needs to be cut out of your life,” or, “This is an encouragement for you,” or, “Go this way,” or, “Go that way.”
As long as the King has it, then you have a real rhema, a real word for that day that speaks to you and is meant for you. You have deliverance, comfort, or whatever it is that you need at that time.
The Word does that as long as it is in the hands of the King.
But if it is in the hands of our own mind and we are trying to make sense of it—“Oh, I want to make a sermon. I have to look up these things”—well, sorry, that is you.
It has to be the rhema. It has to be the King having the Word.
Lastly, we have the Lord’s heavenly ministry.
We know that Jesus is within us. Christ is within us by the Holy Spirit. But we also know that the man Christ is in the heavens.
What is He doing in the heavens? He is interceding for us.
What does it mean that He is interceding for us? It means that He is looking to make sure that we make it all the way.
He is invoking His Father, and He is bringing into play in our lives all the power of heaven so that we are able to enter into the eternal purpose that God has for us in Christ.
In this case, we are talking about being kings and priests.
All the power of heaven is brought into play by His praying. It is not just, “Deliver him.”
Remember how He prayed for Peter: “Peter, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.”
This is not merely our struggle against ourselves. This is against a real spiritual enemy. Satan desires to sift you like wheat.
“But I prayed for you.” When you recover—when you go through this testing and trial—it may seem as though I am not there, but when you get through it, you will know it.
“I will deliver you because I prayed for you. You are going to go through a sifting. I am letting you go through a sifting, and I am praying for you.”
“And when you recover, strengthen your brethren.”
That is the Lord’s heavenly ministry for us. All of this is the ministry of the Christ to us, bringing us into God’s eternal purpose for us: being kings and priests unto God.
All of these are ways He does it. Not only is He the Lamb, but He is also the Conqueror, the Captain of our salvation.
So, in closing, using D-Day as a type, first He establishes the beachhead.
He does that just as we read in Colossians: by the blood of the Lamb, by nailing everything that was against us to the tree. He establishes that beachhead in our lives. Our sins are forgiven.
That is the first way. That is the first thing established.
Then He gives us a Captain. That is what Corinthians says: He leads us in His triumph.
Christ has triumphed over everything: the works of the enemy and sin. He breaks the power of sin. He is trying to lead us out of that sin. He has given us a Commander.
Finally, as an Intercessor, He brings all the power of heaven to assist us into the eternal purpose of God for us.
This is Christ.
This is Christ, and I have hardly touched the surface of who Christ is. I have hardly scratched the surface, because I do not know the depths of Christ.
Right now, I know the surface. Oh, that I would know more.
He has done these things for us so that we might be brought to the place of ruling as kings and serving Him in His eternal purpose as priests.
Last time, I ended by using a hymn as a prayer when we saw Jesus as the Son of Man. As a prayer, I read the hymn, “Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.”
Today, I want to leave us with a portion of Paul’s desire in Philippians 3. Let this be our prayer.
Paul says, “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection.”
That I may know Him. I want to know Him as that Lamb of sacrifice. I want to know Him as the One who cleanses me, so that I do not have to cleanse myself.
I want to know Him as my righteousness. I want to know Him as my standing.
Every day, you come to God and say, “O God, I thank You that You placed me in Christ. In Christ, I have His righteousness. I have all that He is.”
“I can come to You freely because of Him. I take my stand in Christ.” And you have an openness into heaven. The heavens are open to you.
If you have sin, you confess it and bring it under the blood, which is ever there—ever.
I want to know Him as a Conqueror in my life. I want to know Him as the One who overcomes all the things in me that I cannot overcome myself, things that I battle with and struggle with for many years.
Oh Lord, I want to know You as that Overcomer—the One who overcomes and gives me victory.
Not my victory, but I find His victory. I find myself able to walk in His victory because of something that He has shown me about Himself, not because of my trying or anything else.
Like Romans 7, we say, “Wretched man that I am!” We are always there. But Paul ends up saying, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.”
He leaves us there: Jesus Christ. There is no method—Jesus Christ.
It is Jesus Christ living in me as the Captain of my salvation who leads me out, who overcomes in me.
I want to know Him as my Intercessor. I want to know that I can count on Him. I know that right now He is praying for me.
It is a wonderful thing to know that people are praying for you, is it not? Those of us who go to other places and speak know how much it means when people say they are praying for you.
Even when you are standing in a place and you sense that people are praying, you sense their prayers. It is a wonderful thing.
But how much more wonderful it is to know and sense the intercession of Jesus Christ, pleading before the Father on our behalf, that we might come into all that He has for us.
He does not pray that life may be easier. He says, “O Father, bring them into all that You have meant for them to have. Get them through this time.”
May we begin to experience eternal life and see that it is not passive—not a passive life—but powerful.
It is powerful for the overcoming of sin, for the overcoming of self, and it is able to ascend God’s holy hill.
Remember Psalm 15 and Psalm 24: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?” You may say, “Well, that leaves me out.” But no—the life of Christ in us makes us able to ascend that holy hill.
That is where we are supposed to be. That is where we are supposed to be now and forever. It is not just for a future time.
Are we ascending now? If we are, it is because of the life of Christ in us. It is not because of our own efforts, because our own efforts will not get us very far.
But we are meant to do this. I want to know the life of Christ in me—to ascend, to ascend out of who I am—because that is what Christ is. That is who Christ is.
The eternal purpose of God is that we be with Him—not merely that we be with Him in heaven after we die.
He says that we may know Him now. We know Him in us. We know Him working through us.
We know Him as a real Being who is alive and who has fellowship with us.
If we have that, other people see us and ask, “What is this hope you have in you?” And we tell them, “That is Christ.”
Let’s pray.
Oh Lord, how we thank You that You have given us Christ. Lord, we want to know what this means. We want to know what it means that we have Christ.
We want to know the eternal purpose that You have prepared for us in Christ. Lord, open our eyes to see Christ.
Lord, we just tell You that we cannot see Him. We are blind to that. Only You can open our eyes.
But we have already had a taste. We have had a taste somewhere in our lives that there is a marvelous Christ, and we want to see Him so that we can leave these other things behind just for the vision of Him.
May these other things dry up like dust and fall off us like scum. Let us go on, and help us to ascend to the place that You have always meant us to be.
That place is where we are knowing You and living with You forever, starting even now. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.