Well, we are thankful that we can be together.
You know, one of the things that has really caught my eye this weekend already is how proud all these college kids are here to tell you younger guys what it is like. But let me tell you a secret.
There is this fellow who meets with us, this older brother named Stephen Kong. When he talks about being in the school of Christ, He does not talk about graduating from the university. He says, actually, in the school of Christ, we start at the university because we have so much knowledge in our own heads, in our own selves.
And you know where we graduate from? We graduate from kindergarten. We return to a place of simplicity. We get out of all the complexity of everything we know. We return to that place of childlike faith, and that is our goal. Our goal is kindergarten, not college.
So you guys are already closer than all these other guys. You know, they are picking on you, so, hey, I will give you a little ammunition if you need to pick on them a little bit this weekend.
But actually, that is really part of our Christian life: we come in, and we have to unlearn so much stuff so that we can simply learn Christ. And that, in essence, is the essence of the Christian life. It is forgetting about ourselves and putting aside all this stuff that we know, and trying to come back to a simple life of Christ being our all in all, Christ being that simplicity, Christ being our sufficiency. And that is our goal.
So, as we are here this weekend, I appreciated what was shared last night from some of the ones who had this burden, even though they were college kids looking down on you. But they were bringing us back to Christ: the simplicity. It is about Jesus. It is about obeying Him. It is about walking with Him. So we want to continue in that spirit this morning.
Lord, we are so thankful that we can be together here this weekend. We are thankful for just the blessing of Your life. We are thankful for how You care for us. You call us unto Yourself, and we really do come. We look to You, Lord, to meet us now, to encourage us, and to speak into all of our hearts. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I know you have already been sitting down for a while, and I will be sharing only for about two and a half hours. So, if you get tired during the time, feel free to stand up. It will not be any problem.
Let us turn to 2 Corinthians 11. I am going to read verses 1 through 3, as Paul is writing to these ones.
I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness; but indeed you are bearing with me.
For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.
But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
Now, I think, as you even start to read these verses, you sense within Paul’s heart that he really cares about these people. He is not writing to strangers. He is writing to ones that he has known for a while.
One of the keys that we see within these verses is that Paul has a relationship with these ones. He cares about them. Paul actually spent about a year and a half or so with these dear ones in Corinth as he was sharing with them. And, as we read in 1 Corinthians, he just preached Christ: “I preach Christ and Him crucified.” He was bringing them to Christ as they were full of so much worldly knowledge.
Paul really cared for them, and he loved them. Because he loved them so much, there was a jealousy there, and he noticed a change. Because if you ever love something, you will notice a change.
Bring this down to your own life. If someone is real close to you, and you literally love and care for them, you notice little changes. Your cell phone—which I know none of you love—but if it starts to act funny all of a sudden, you notice that change right away. If your tablet or computer starts not responding, you notice it right away.
Those things that you care about—the video game that is all of a sudden slowing down, the car that you buy, your first car that you are in love with—you notice when there is a little sound in the engine. Things that you care about the most, you notice. If you do not care about something, you do not really notice it that much until something really big changes.
This is really showing us Paul’s relationship with those in Corinth. Because he loved them, he cared for them, and he started to notice something. This is one of the calls that God has upon us. He has us here together so that we can encourage one another and walk together with one another.
Because we have these loving relationships in Him, we can also notice things in one another and say, “Hey, are you okay?” This is the preciousness of the body of Christ. As we are with one another and start to see those little changes, we catch things quickly before it gets too late.
Because of this, Paul says he is jealous for them. Now, does that sound like a strange word: jealous?
Let me ask a question. There are no fence-sitters in this question. Everybody has to raise their hand. Is jealous a good word or a bad word? Is it a positive word, or is it a negative word?
How many say jealous is a bad word? No offense. Okay, now how many say jealous is a good word?
Well, you know what? You are all right. You thought I was going to trick you. I am not like that. Jeffrey might trick you. I am Mr. Nice Guy here for the weekend. We have good cop, bad cop—we have it down.
Jealous is a good word, but actually, jealous is a neutral word. Bible trivia time: in the Bible, who is the first person described as being jealous?
It is actually not used until Exodus. God—how about that? The first time the actual word jealous is used, God is describing Himself. He says, “I am a jealous God,” because He is jealous for us.
That is the difference in this word jealous. God is jealous for us to know His Son. Now, in our natural selves, we are jealous of things. “I am jealous of their car. I am jealous because they have a new iPhone. I am jealous because of her hair—it never frizzes or anything. Her hair is just always perfect.”
We have our little things that we are jealous of, and that is the negative thought in jealousy. But jealous for—we are jealous for one another in the Lord. Paul was jealous for those at Corinth that they would go on in the Lord. So jealousy, in and of itself, is a neutral word; it depends on how it is used.
The preposition defines it: jealous over or jealous for. At the end, we are going to have a test, and you will have all these questions.
Also, in this verse, Paul speaks to them of how he betrothed them, or engaged them. Now, that sounds kind of strange to us. But one of the things that happens when you are born again is that you are engaged, and you become part of the bride.
Now, guys, I know that sounds kind of funny. But there are male and female members in this bride making herself ready. In the old days, when you were engaged, it was not like nowadays. If you look at somebody who is engaged nowadays, it is like they are thinking, “Oh, I have seven months left of freedom, and I am going to do everything I want to do, because after I get married I will not be able to do it.”
But in the old days—and what the real spirit of this is—as soon as you were engaged, you were as committed as when you were married. You started at that point living for the person to whom you were engaged.
This is what Paul is saying to each and every one of us: we are engaged to Christ. Each one of us has on a little engagement ring, you know, and we are engaged to Him. It does not matter what you think. It does not matter if you do not feel engaged. It does not matter if you even disagree with it. When you are born again, you are engaged. That is the truth in the Word of God.
It is amazing what He has done. We have heard in the past of the bride being made ready, and the bride becomes ready as more of Christ is formed in us. This engagement process is Christ’s life being worked out and manifested in us.
Paul was reminding those in Corinth, “You know this stuff. This is nothing new. You know this, but you are starting to slip away.” It is interesting how he uses the phrase at the end of 2 Corinthians 11:2: “that I might present you as a pure virgin.”
In some ways, that sounds pretty odd, because can you imagine an impure virgin? You think, a virgin—that person is pure. But the Holy Spirit never carelessly uses words.
We know that virgin speaks physically of being a virgin, and this is what God desires for all of us before we are married. But when He adds the word pure, the word virgin is speaking more physically, while pure is speaking of an inner character.
He is saying, “I do not just want you to be okay outwardly. I do not just want you to go through outward motions and do everything right. What I am interested in is your inner character, the purity of your life.” This is what God is always after.
Yes, He loves the outward manifestations, and those will come as we walk with Him. But they come from having that pure inner life. This is what He is so jealous for.
Paul, in his love for them, was noticing something. He noticed, as we read in 2 Corinthians 11:3, that they were being led away from the simplicity and purity of their devotion to Him.
Depending on the translation you have, sometimes it does not use the phrase “devotion to Christ.” Different translations use different phrases, but in all the translations the spirit of this is there. We are going to use the New American Standard, because I use the New American Standard, and that is the right one to use. Oh, you Darbyites, I am sorry.
When we think of simplicity, we already had it defined for us last night. Emma gave us a great definition of simplicity. She beat me to the punch—stole my material there.
Simplicity is something that is just very simple. It is something that is single. It is not complex. We talk about having a single heart for the Lord.
The opposite of simplicity is complexity. Complexity simply means that you are adding something to something in an attempt to improve it. You have something very simple, but you are not satisfied with it. You want to add something to make it better.
This is what those in Corinth were doing. We see it in the world, but it happens a lot in Christianity. Christ is not enough, so somebody says, “Oh, we need to add this. Oh, you need to do this. You need to do that.”
All of a sudden, all these add-ons that have occurred to Christ make this life seem so overwhelming and complicated. The spirit of this weekend is to shatter all of that—to remove all those add-ons, remove all the complexities, and bring us back to the simplicity that we have in Christ.
It speaks not only of simplicity but also of purity. Purity simply means free of impurities. It is clean within. There are no mixtures.
If something is not pure, something has been added to it. When something gets added to it, it dilutes it. It can dilute or pollute, and it makes it less effective—not what it was originally designed to do. It weakens it.
When we are talking about getting away from simplicity, things get added to Christ. When we are talking about getting away from purity, things are coming in and taking away from all Christ has done for us.
I get to show you some illustrations here, because visual things always work better. Nobody ever wondered what these bags were, but we will see what is in bag number one.
In bag number one, we have pure and simple water. We have two cups, and we will put pure and simple water in both cups. This is actually purified water.
What is in these cups? Nothing but water—unless you are a smart aleck and say, “Mac, there is water in the bottom and air in the top part.” But no smart alecks are allowed this weekend. This is pure water.
Now we have everybody’s favorite: apple cider vinegar. How many of y’all drink apple cider vinegar every day? I mean, don’t you really? Isn’t that one of the things you like to drink? Well, when you get older, you start drinking it. It is good for you.
How much apple cider vinegar does it take to make the water impure? One drop. One drop.
Now, this side over here is not pure anymore. But can anybody see the difference? Does it look different? It looks pretty much the same. It even tastes the same. There is one in every crowd—I told you.
Now apply these things spiritually. Sometimes we can touch something impure, something of the world, or we say, “Well, I am going to do this. It is not going to hurt anything.” Then you do it, and you do not notice any real effect in your life. People around you do not notice any effect, and you say, “Oh, see, it was okay.” But that is impure.
We live in such a relative world today that we think we can categorize sins. We say, “That is a small sin. This will not hurt too much. This is a big sin. I will not do that—I know I should not do that. But this little thing, nobody will see.” But it creates impurity.
This is what the Lord is calling us to. He wants us to wake up and see. He is calling us to this place of really being pure in Him.
As we continue in this impurity, we can put a little more apple cider vinegar in. As you put a little more in, you start to notice a taste. Some of you at the front can probably notice a difference. You have to look hard, right? Those of you in the back might not even be able to tell the difference if you are far away.
This is the value of relationships. If we are close to one another, we can start to notice things in one another because we love and care about one another.
We may think, “Nobody notices.” The people who are away from us might not notice. Like, I know none of you ever do this, but you go to the meeting on Sunday. You walk into that room, and most people do not know you. Maybe you have been doing something that week, but you put on your nice little face and go in.
Everybody says, “How are you doing?” You say, “I am fine, fine, fine.” But then those who are close to you say, “Are you sure you are okay? What happened this week?” Out of love—not judging you, but because they love and care for you.
Those closer to you start to notice things. But then, as you continue on, you have more apple cider vinegar, and then your life crashes and everybody can see and tell the difference. You are sour to be around. People do not want to be around you.
But those who love you are like Paul, and they say, “Hey, I am jealous for you. I care for you. I am concerned that you are being led away from the simplicity and purity, because this is the life the Lord is calling us to.”
Paul’s concern was for those in Corinth. He said, “I am fearful, just as the enemy led Eve astray, that you are being led astray.” So let us turn back to the beginning. Let us look at the story of where Eve was led astray. We are familiar with it, so we are not going to go into all the details. But let us look at Genesis 3.
Genesis 3—page two in the Bible here with mine. We have been called to this life of simplicity and purity. This is really what Adam and Eve were put into in the Garden of Eden. It was a great place. It was a pure and simple life.
But we know, as you come to Genesis 3, how it speaks about Eve being led astray. The enemy came in and started to tempt Eve.
How many trees were there in the garden? A bunch—okay. What are the two most famous trees? The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The tree of life is a good tree. So, if the tree of life is a good tree, is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil a bad tree? No. God told them not to eat of it, but there was nothing wrong with the tree itself. Everything God creates is good.
God put these two trees there and said, “I want you to obey Me. I do not want you to eat of that tree.” The issue was their obedience. He wanted to know that they were under His authority.
We know the enemy comes in, and there are really two ways that the enemy tempted and tested Eve. These things continue today, and these are two of the ways we get led away from the simplicity and purity of our devotion to Him.
One way was that the enemy attacked God’s Word. The enemy comes in and says, “God does not really mean that. You are not going to die.” We see how the enemy comes in and distorts God’s Word.
Eve also made God’s Word complex. Remember, God’s word was very simple to Eve: “Do not eat.” But she made it complex by adding something to it. She said not only, “Do not eat,” but also, “Do not touch it.” God had not said that.
She made God’s simple word complex by adding something. We can add things to the Word, take things away from it, or distort it. There is a great attack on God’s Word, and we know that is going on today.
The second thing that occurs in this chapter is that God’s authority is challenged. The enemy challenges God’s authority. Eve has this desire to do things on her own. She and Adam are going to do this. They are not going to be dependent.
We do not have time for a detailed study, but it is interesting. When God is talking about creating man, putting him in the garden, giving Adam and Eve the instructions, and creating Eve, He is called “the Lord God.” Lord means Master—not just God, but Lord. When we use the word Lord, we think of the Master, the Boss.
But it is interesting: when the enemy comes, he does not use “Lord God,” because he is not under His authority. He just says, “God.” “Oh, yeah, there is a supreme being out there.” When Eve responds, she does not say, “Lord God.” She just says, “God.” In a subtle way, His authority is being challenged.
This is what we see going on today. Two things permeate our time: doubt in God’s Word and doubt of who He is, and His authority being questioned. “Is God really in control of this world? Is God really returning? How long does your master delay?” You can see that even in the Gospels.
The enemy, at the very beginning, was able to make things complicated for Eve by attacking God’s Word and questioning God’s authority. In our individual lives, do we have it settled that God’s Word is what it says?
God’s Word says He loves you. We heard last night, and this morning, that He says, “I am with you. I will never leave you or forsake you. I am with you.” Praise God. But when we find ourselves in a certain situation, do we ever doubt God’s love? That thought can come into our minds.
If we do not have the Word settled within our hearts, we can start feeding upon those thoughts. We get out of rest. We get all complex. God is saying, “Stay in this place of simplicity. I said it—believe it.”
When our Lord was upon earth, as He was trying to encourage His disciples and those He was teaching to stay in this place of simplicity and purity of life, there was one thing He used frequently to describe how people had gotten away from simplicity and purity of devotion to Him. That was what we call leaven.
Does anybody know what leaven is today? Yeast. What is the effect of yeast? It makes the dough rise.
Bag number two: we have two kinds of bread. I bought this recipe for leavened bread. I got this recipe for regular bread, but, baby, it did not work, so I went to the store and bought it. I am not a baker. I looked back at it, and it was just a couple of things in the directions that I did not quite follow.
As you look at these two things, the ingredients are both flour, oil, and a little bit of salt. That is it. The only thing in this one is that yeast has been added to it.
As far as the substance of the flour and the bread, they are the same. But the yeast puffs it up and makes it look like it is something that it really is not. What it has done is create a lot of air bubbles in there. You have a lot more air in this one than in that one.
This is what can happen in our Christian life. Things can get puffed up. Think back on Eve, how she looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: it was pleasing to the eyes. You look at these two breads—which one is a little more pleasing to your eyes? This one seems a little more appetizing than this little piece of flatbread here.
Unless you are a real health nut, you are going to stick to that one. And you are going to put butter on it too. You are going to make it more complex.
As we look at these things outwardly, this leaven just puffs us up. We see it in the world all the time. We have prime examples in the middle of this election of puffed-up men—and women too, full of hot air. They are trying to puff themselves up, talking about how great they are.
There is nothing really more in them, but they keep pumping themselves up and saying, “I am this, I am that.” It is hot air, and it causes them to rise.
Sadly, even within Christianity and religion, you can see the same things. We can say, “Oh, I have been to every Christian family conference.” As a Christian, you learn to say things humbly, but you are very proud of your humility. You get that?
We learn that we cannot act prideful, so we learn to talk humbly. But actually, inside we are saying, “I have been to every youth conference. I am a college student, and I am up here to tell you middle schoolers what it is really like.” That was no direct comment toward anybody at all.
If you ever watch Christian shows on television, some of these preachers spend half the show saying, “I am great. I am great.” It just gets puffed up more and more.
The Lord gives us three examples in Scripture of the way leaven is manifested in mankind. It was true then, and it is true now. Look at Luke 12:1.
Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
The leaven of the Pharisees was hypocrisy. Now, what is hypocrisy? A hypocrite is one who is play-acting. It is not real; you are putting on a show.
Generally, you are putting on a show to please other people. You are putting on a show based upon some past experience or tradition. The Pharisees held to all the traditions of the fathers, and they could go through all the outward motions. But in their life, there was no reality there.
This is one of the things we have to watch out for as believers. It is very easy for us to learn how to act during a meeting. Most of y’all, as you have been brought up in Christian homes, have been going to meetings. As soon as you walk into that building at 4424, you know how you can act. You know what you can do. You know what you cannot do, regardless of what your heart is saying.
Hopefully your heart is in the right place. But sometimes our heart is not in the right place, and we go through the motions. We know how to play church, play meetings, even when we are having worship times.
What the Lord is really looking for are heartfelt prayers and songs that are coming from the heart. He is not looking for our performance. He is not looking for us to be able to sing every song beautifully.
Do you ever find yourself singing one of these songs, but your mind is somewhere else? You finish singing and think, “Whoa, we just finished that, and I was not even there.” But you were going through the outward motions. You were play-acting.
We all do it. I am not going to sit up here and say I never do that. We have this tendency because it is a lifelong struggle of saying no to ourselves and yes to Christ.
To me, one of the greatest detriments to worship is overhead projectors. Why is that? We do not have to learn the words. “Oh, I can come. Somebody else has all the words for me. I do not have to learn the words.” But if we have a real heart of worship, those words are in our hearts.
These are helpful, because some of us old people cannot remember all the words anyway. But sometimes I would like for us to almost turn it all off and sing from our hearts, and really allow the Lord to express it.
Even in our prayer, maybe you have had a lousy day, or maybe things are not going well for you here. You have a prayer time in the cabin, but you have been around Christians long enough that you learn how to offer acceptable prayers—acceptable to our brothers and sisters, acceptable to people around us—so that we can act like we are doing okay.
This is the great issue with the Pharisees, because so much of it comes out of tradition. We just keep doing it because we do it this way, because this is the way we have always done it.
Do you ever ask anybody in regard to anything with our meetings, “Why do we do this? Why do we gather on Sunday? Why do we have the Lord’s Table?” I hope nobody ever tells you, “Well, that is just the way we do it,” or, “That is the way we have always done it.” That is tradition.
We should come every week with freshness, every week desiring to remember the Lord. Tomorrow morning, we have an opportunity to have the Lord’s Table. Why do we do that? Do we really know in our hearts why we are doing this, or are we just going through motions?
It is easy for us to learn how to play the game and look good. The only person we fool is ourselves. If we play it pretty well, we might be like one of those first or second categories of apple cider vinegar, and fool some people. But the Lord knows.
The opposite of hypocrisy is simplicity and purity.
The second leaven is the leaven of unbelief. This is so prevalent today. It is actually the thing that the Lord rebuked the disciples about the most: “Oh, your unbelief. Oh, your unbelief.”
Praise God, once they came through, they all believed and they saw. Even in Hebrews, it talks about the sin that so easily entangles us: unbelief.
To me, the core reason that we do not believe the Lord is because we do not know Him. If you know somebody—y’all know Jeffrey—when Jeffrey says something, you believe it. If some stranger walked into the room whom you did not really know and said something, why should you believe them?
I will challenge you: if you do not know the Lord, why should you believe Him? But if we find ourselves questioning and doubting, it is a wonderful sign from the Holy Spirit: “Hey, there is a way I do not know the Lord. I need to come back to this place of knowing Him.”
That is what this weekend is about: the simplicity of really knowing Christ, because He is the reality. There are so many things that can come in and distract us.
The third leaven, besides hypocrisy and unbelief, I am calling the leaven of convenience. This was the leaven of Herod. The Herodians did things so that they could get their own selfish desires fulfilled.
In Mark 8:15, the Lord says:
Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.
Herod was the government ruler at that time. Certain ones, for their own selfish ambitions, had allied themselves with the government. So the leaven of Herod is leaven of convenience—to get your way, to get your own selfish desires fulfilled. In a broader way, we can say it is leaven of worldliness, using the world’s techniques.
The leaven of convenience during the Lord’s time was what we refer to as the money changers at the temple. It was very convenient for the people. It helped them when they had to make their offering. They did not have to do anything themselves. They just came, changed the money, and everything was done for them.
For us, we have a lot of temptations with devotional books. You do not really have to focus and ask, “Lord, where do You want me to be in Your Word today?” We have a devotional email every morning, and boom. Those are helpful—I do not mean never do those—but are we relying on those more than we are relying on the Lord?
Convenience leads to complacency. Maybe we are going to a meeting and say, “Well, I do not really need to worry about a prayer or a song beforehand, because somebody else will have something. Somebody else will offer a prayer. Somebody else will do this, and I can just sing.” It makes it a lot easier.
Our Lord is not always interested in the most convenient way. Today, we want to find the fastest way, the most convenient way, the most instant way to get something done. Our Lord is not interested in the convenient, quick way. He is interested in the process—the process in our lives of finding Christ.
There is an interesting story in Acts that shows this pretty well. Turn to Acts 8. Well, before we actually do that, I am going to go over to Acts 10. How is that?
In Acts 10, there was a man named Cornelius who lived in Caesarea. He was a Gentile, and he desired to hear and learn from the Lord. That is in Acts 10:1.
We know the story of how the Lord got Peter’s attention up on the roof and sent Peter to Cornelius’s house. Now, that was a lot of trouble. Some men had to go from Cornelius’s house all the way to where Simon Peter was staying. That was a couple of days. They had to spend the night, and then they had to work their way back. This was not a very convenient thing.
But we see in the process how the gospel came to Cornelius. We might think the Lord would work in a more convenient way. Cornelius lived in Caesarea and was seeking the Lord. Who else lived in Caesarea? A famous evangelist named Philip.
Look at Acts 8:40. After Philip had seen the Ethiopian eunuch, the Lord took him, and Philip passed through Azotus and kept preaching until he came to Caesarea. Here is Philip the evangelist in Caesarea.
We would think with our natural minds, “Hey, Philip, Cornelius wants to hear the gospel. Go down and share with him.” But God had something more in view.
Maybe after Cornelius got saved, he and Philip met each other and had wonderful fellowship. We do not know. But if you look at Acts 9:30, Paul was in Caesarea too. After Paul had been converted and had this wonderful salvation, because he was so hot, they sent him away to cool off some and to protect him. Paul came down to Caesarea, and they sent him away to Tarsus.
We could say, “Well, Lord, Paul was there in Caesarea. This great man, Paul, could share the gospel with Cornelius.” Very convenient. But no, the Lord had a purpose. The Lord had it in His heart for Peter to share the gospel with Cornelius.
There is a lot more concerning the reasons why—God’s eternal purpose for both Jews and Gentiles—but I do not want to get along that path today. The issue we are looking at is convenience. Let us be careful when things can be so convenient. The Lord is interested in the process.
In the history of the assembly, we have bought two meeting places. We learned more from going through the process of buying those buildings than from the actual purchase of the physical places.
Many of you can testify to this in preparing for this weekend. There was a process that you had to go through. Dave, if you had just relied on the world, you could have hired people to organize a weekend, found an event coordinator, and had somebody cater the food. Boom, boom, boom—the whole weekend would be done.
But out of the process of praying, seeking the Lord together, fellowshipping about a theme, coming up with the food, and deciding who has each responsibility, there was a process. It was not always the most convenient thing, was it?
Some of you are probably sitting there—some of us very efficient guys—saying, “Why do they not just do this and this and this, and it is over?” But no, God has a process. He wants to work us through it.
We have these warnings before us: let us not be play-actors. Let us not be those of unbelief. Let us not simply do things that are convenient for ourselves. Let us stay in that place of simplicity and purity of devotion to Him.
The question, to finish this up, is: How do we do that? Okay, Mac, it is easy to go around and say we need simplicity and purity. How do we do it?
Actually, the Lord shows us a very simple way, and it is not a surprise to any of us. He shows us His simple way for staying fresh in Him throughout our lives. It is simply called a daily life with Him.
Now everybody tunes out again because we are so tired of hearing this: daily life. But that is the simple answer. Jesus is a very simple Man. He says, “Come unto Me.” He says, “Follow Me.” He does not give complex instructions.
Even Paul’s testimony is a simple equation: not I, but Christ. I thought about writing it out math-wise, but I could not find a symbol for but. Still, it is simple: not I, but Christ.
This Christian life is a simple way of staying fresh in the Lord: having a daily life with Him. That is how the Lord works in His life and has worked ever since creation.
The daily life is the Lord’s cycle for working, the cycle for training, the cycle for teaching us, and the cycle for us staying fresh. Think back to Genesis 1. He created each day. He went through a daily cycle of creating this, saying it was good, and this was very good, and then He stopped.
Why do you think God did that in six days? It was to show us, “This is the simple way I work. I have a purpose for each day. This is some work I want to accomplish each day, and I am going to do it each day.”
Is there any question in anybody’s mind that, if God had wanted to, He could have created everything in one day? He is the great Creator. He is not limited. He chose to limit Himself to create everything in six days in order to teach us.
“This is My cycle of instruction. This is My life. This is the way I work.” He could have just said, “Creation,” and everything would have been there. He is that powerful. But He chose to humble Himself to teach us from the very beginning: “This is My life. This is the way I want you to be living.”
As you go through Genesis, you get to Genesis 5, and it talks about how long these men lived. If you really look at the Hebrew, it says, “the days of their life.” Oftentimes we think of years: they lived nine hundred years, they lived eight hundred years. But literally it talks about the days of their life.
Job and David, at the end of their lives, were full of days. Moses prayed, “Lord, teach me to number my days.” There is a daily life that God is calling us to, and that is the simple truth and reality in which He wants us to live.
Think about the story of manna in the wilderness. He provided manna for each day—enough for each day. In the Lord’s Prayer, He says, “Give us our daily bread.”
Is there any question that, if God had wanted to, He could have created manna that would last for a week without preservatives? He could have said, “There is manna. There is your week’s supply,” and it would have lasted. The worms would not have eaten it up.
Again, He limited Himself to teach us the value of this daily life. This is the way He works. Somehow we think we can get beyond this, or we do not need this, or we can just do something a couple of times a week. No. We need to stay fresh in Him.
Look over at Numbers 28. He gives us a beautiful picture there of how He operates on a daily basis. I said Numbers 23—no, Numbers 28. I am sorry.
Numbers 28 speaks about all the offerings. We look at these offerings and get all complex about everything, but all these offerings simply speak of Christ. Christ is our Savior. Christ is our peace. Christ is our provision for every day. Christ is the One who forgives us of our sins. It brings us back to Him.
At the beginning, in Numbers 28:3, it speaks of the tabernacle in the wilderness. The tent was right in the middle, the center, the focus of everything.
This is the offering by fire which ye shall offer unto the Lord: two male lambs a year old without blemish, day by day, for a continual burnt offering.
Morning and evening, a lamb was sacrificed. This is our continual burnt offering. This is Christ. Every morning we are to start with Him.
This is why I liked that your handout for the weekend began with solo time. It is not talking about a goalkeeper—for you hockey and soccer fans. I am just seeing if you are awake.
But it is solo every morning. This is to be done, and it is so important in our lives. I was glad you did it here because, sometimes, even when we get involved with a Christian activity, we can let our personal lives go. But it has to start with that.
Even when we come to meet on Sunday or go to a conference, we need that personal time. Throughout Numbers 28, there are offerings made every week at the Sabbath, every month, and at all the various feasts. But it always says, in addition to those offerings, there was the continual burnt offering.
The Lord is showing us more and more, over and over again, the importance of this daily life.
Do you know who knows the importance of the daily life far more than we do? The enemy does. If you look at the stories of Joseph and Samson, those women tempted them day by day, day by day, until they wore them out.
The enemy knows he is going to try to rob us of this daily life. “You do not need to do it every day. Just a couple of times a week—it will be okay.” No, it is not.
That is why the Lord said in Luke 9:23:
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself daily, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
At the beginning of the church in Acts 2, it says that day by day they were continually with one another, from house to house. There was this dailiness there.
I want to conclude in Hebrews 3. This is the preciousness of fellowship that we have with one another.
Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today”; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.
Encouraging one another day by day—having these relationships. It is interesting: there are two words that the enemy uses to tempt us all the time. The enemy’s words are yesterday and tomorrow.
He says yesterday because he accuses us of all our sins and how unfaithful we have been. But we are thankful for the blood of the Lamb that cleanses us. We do not have to live in yesterday, but he is always talking about it: “Look, you did this. You did that.”
Or he says, tomorrow. The enemy never minds you promising to serve the Lord tomorrow, because he knows tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow never gets here. Tomorrow, something else comes up.
But the Lord’s word is today. If you look through the Scriptures, it is today. In these difficult days that we are living in, this is so vital for us: to maintain this personal relationship with Him, of knowing Him. That is how we keep the simplicity and purity of our devotion.
As you are together, give one another permission to hold you accountable. Say, “Jeremiah, if you start to see me fading away, I want you to come into my life. I want you to say, ‘Are you okay?’”
All of us need that at times. We all go through cycles. We have times when we are a little stronger, maybe times when we are a little weaker. At times, maybe the ones on this side of the room are in the stronger position, and these guys are in the weaker position. But you have one another. You come alongside.
I always played sports, and it is a team effort. We are individually accountable, but we are in a team. We are on a team, we are in the body of Christ, and we go on daily encouraging one another.
I want to close with a story. You know, I am a big music fan. I love classical music. I just love to sit around and listen to the old classical music—all those old, who is that guy? One guy named Mozart and another guy named Bach. I have learned a couple of names. I can really impress you, right?
There is this famous guy who plays the piano named Arthur Rubinstein. Anybody ever heard of him? That is okay. He is a famous guy. Believe me, I read the story. This is true.
Somebody was talking to him because he had this strange thing: when he traveled, there always had to be a piano in the place where he was staying. He would not stay in a hotel or a house unless there was a piano there.
They asked him, “What is the big deal? Why do you need a piano?” He said, “I need to have the piano there because I have to practice every day.”
They said, “You are so great. You are such a great piano player. What do you mean you need to practice every day? You have got this reserve. You have got this history.”
He said, “No. If I do not practice every day, nobody notices—but I notice.” That is the one drop in the cup of water. “I notice.”
He said, “If I do not practice for two or three days, my wife—those closest to me—starts to notice. If I do not practice for a week, everybody notices.”
He saw the value of practicing daily. This is what the Lord is simply calling us to: have a daily walk with Him. We are talking about simplicity. That is about as simple as we can get: daily feeding upon Him, daily having time with Him.
I am sorry that sometimes we are more satisfied with the complex formula. But Christianity is simple. I think Emma said last night, “It is simple but not easy.” It is not easy, because you are having to say no to yourself: “I want to do that one, but I need to do this.”
All I am trying to encourage us in this morning is to make us aware that we have this natural tendency in us to get complex, to become polluted, and to allow things to impact us. We see many examples of it in Scripture, but the Lord has made a way to always allow us to come back to Him.
Maybe we have had a bad day, but praise God for that evening sacrifice. We confess our sins, we are cleansed, and we are right back there in that place of simplicity toward Him. It does not get much more simple than the blood of the Lamb.
Tomorrow at the Lord’s Table, it is pretty simple. We have a cup and a loaf. This is it. This is what the Lord is looking for.
Somehow we think we are better Christians if we can make it more complex. That is why we are going from college down to kindergarten: to allow the Lord to bring us back to that childlike faith of simply following Him.
Lord, we are thankful for Your patience with us. Lord, we are thankful for how You understand our natural nature to make things complicated, and You even know how easily we can get polluted.
We are thankful that we have this time this weekend, and we present ourselves to You that Your Spirit would search us, and that You would bring us back to a place of simplicity and purity of devotion to You. Teach us more and more of that necessity of the daily life.
Lord, that comes about as we see You. The bottom line is: are we really in love with You? We say we love You, but are we really in that place of knowing You in such a way that we have been captured by You?
We sang that song:
How vast the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure,
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure.
Thank You, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.