From Amos Chapter 7, just two verses, and then from Zechariah Chapter 4.
Thus He showed me, and behold, the Lord was standing by a vertical wall with a plumb line in His hand.
And the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Amos?”
And I said, “A plumb line.”
Then the Lord said, “Behold, I am about to put a plumb line in the midst of My people Israel.
I will spare them no longer.”
And then let’s turn to Zechariah. We’ll just read three verses from Chapter 4 and that great vision that our young prophet received. The temple was languishing, only partly built. Zechariah received a vision, and this is just a fragment of that vision, beginning in Verse 8.
Also, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house, and his hands will finish it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me to you.
For who has despised the day of small things? But these seven will be glad when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. These are the eyes of the Lord, which range to and fro throughout the earth.”
Our Father, we come to You tonight, asking that Your Spirit’s eyes would again be upon us, that we could look upward and see our Lord high and lifted up—our greater than Zerubbabel—standing over us, calling unto us even in these days.
Lord, we thank You for the whole day in our meeting together, the things that have been shared, the testimonies given. Now we ask that You once again would warm our hearts by Your precious Word. We thank You that we can be together for this time. Indeed, make it precious to Yourself as well. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
We have such a varied group here. We’re very thankful for everybody who has come. There are some young ones, maybe under twenty-five years old, and some young ones on the border of fifty. But if you have the heart of a servant, there is something that keeps refiring that heart and enables you to serve the Lord in the strength of His years, as long as He wills.
I wanted to begin tonight by giving us a little background and perspective. Many of you, perhaps younger in the Lord, would not see such kinds of things at stake. But really, behind our little serving in our own little ways, there is a Lord who stands over with a plumb line. Have you ever seen the Lord standing over His people with a plumb line?
A plumb line was used by architects and builders. It is basically a line with a weight—actually lead—on the bottom, and it makes for a straight line. With this, the walls were measured in the vision of Amos. He saw that the walls of God’s people, the house of God, were all askew. And the Lord said, “I will spare them no longer.”
Have you ever seen the plumb line in the hand of the Lord? I confess to you, you know, I was a pastor fifty years ago. About forty years ago, I was serving the Lord in my own understanding of service. I was a pastor of a church. I was preaching, and actually I was a revival preacher, because I had seen that the Lord was unhappy with the church—its low state and its backslidden members.
We had a membership of so many hundred people; half of those members did not even go to church. They were considered perhaps unregenerate membership. It was a very strange thing. But in the midst of all of that, as I was serving God one day, by His mercy, I saw the Lord standing over the church with a plumb line. And it broke my heart.
It was like Isaiah, when he saw the Lord high and lifted up, and he saw who he was. He saw what the temple was, and he saw what God’s people were like. It is a heart-rending moment.
Even as we are gathered together in this day, there is a plumb line over the church. It is not just a vision that you see from heaven. You can read it in Revelation Chapters 2 and 3. That is Jesus holding His plumb line over the church.
When you see its condition, you realize how devastated things are, how lukewarm the church has become. Or, like the church of Sardis, it has become a sleepy church, just halfway going about, half serving, and thinking that life will continue on like this. All the time, the Lord stands with a plumb line.
I do not know how many of you got to read Rethinking the Work as part of your preparation, one of the Watchman Nee books. But just reading it again in preparing for this time, did you see the plumb line? The book is written according to the ideal way that the whole church should be operating: the interrelationship between the work, the ministry, and the church, each adding to the other, helping the other, yet each functioning in such a way as to build up the other.
What a beautiful book. What a beautiful definition. But when we hold that up as a plumb line to where we are today, where are those workers? Where are those servants who go from place to place building and planting the church? Where are those prophets and teachers in the assembly who are raising up a new generation of teachers and prophets? Where are elders who are really spiritually responsible, who have spiritual oversight rather than merely going about the business of the church?
When you look at the plumb line, you wonder what is going to happen. I am so thankful that I met our brother Stephen. As I met him and began to hear his ministry, the plumb line came down over my life and everything.
Well, I would have been devastated, I have to say, except for one thing. The second vision that we read here is of Zerubbabel—or, for us, Jesus—holding the plumb line.
Now, as our brother shared this morning, if a man looks into himself and sees what is going on in there, if he sees how far short he has fallen, he becomes disconsolate. When I was a super-pastor and the plumb line came down, the Scripture immediately came into my heart from Luke 17: “Lord, I am an unprofitable servant.”
You could say that all you want in false humility, but when you see the plumb line, you see the Lord standing and saying, “This is what I want.” When you see what you have before you, you realize—and I still realize today—what an unprofitable servant I am.
But I am so thankful that at least I got to see the Lord holding the plumb line. Otherwise, I would have been disconsolate. I would have been so discouraged. I am sure I would have left the ministry. But I saw the Lord high and lifted up. He is the One holding the plumb line.
The plumb line is a line of judgment. The church is under judgment. The Lord is unhappy with the condition of the church when you look at it. But I would rather have the plumb line of judgment held by that merciful hand of Jesus than in the hand of anybody else, because He is merciful. Even in judgment, He is merciful.
But you notice in that vision that we briefly read, there was rejoicing as this plumb line was shown. Imagine rejoicing about it. Because seeing Zerubbabel and the plumb line meant two further things that made them all rejoice.
First, if you read the whole vision, it means that the end is coming soon—that the Lord will finish His house. As it continues to prophesy, He laid the foundations of the house, and He will put the topstone on that house very soon, with shouts of, “Grace, grace to it!”
Can it be that even at a time of judgment, with the plumb line being held down, it is a time near completion, despite the condition of the thing around us?
The other thing that caused me great hope is in this message: “Who has despised the day of small things?” What the prophet was having revealed to him was that there would be a remnant of people who would also see God’s plumb line. They would be servants of God with such a heart, unwilling to sleep along with Sardis or be lukewarm along with Laodicea.
The Lord would raise up some—a remnant of people, to be sure—who wanted all that the Lord wanted. They wanted to see God’s work done according to His plumb line, not according to man’s. We have more architectural ideas of what the church should be like today, but there is a standard, and Jesus Christ holds the plumb line.
The Lord is going to give and raise up a generation, even as He did forty years ago in a most amazing way. I will not go into the story, but some forty years ago the Lord seemed to do a work all across the United States. Many people were saved in the Jesus Movement and all kinds of things. There was a moving of God, and I was glad to be part of it.
I was glad to lay aside the old wineskins and seek to find a new wineskin in which the Holy Spirit could be poured out. Well, now forty years and a generation have passed by, and I am getting kind of old myself—although I am a young chicken compared to our brother.
But having said that, even at the end, even as the Lord prepares to put that topstone in, I believe He is still looking for a new generation. I think of what the Lord has done and what I have witnessed, and many of you have witnessed.
Over these last forty years, the Lord has done something sneaky. Well, it has not escaped the attention of the devil; he always notices such things. But over these last several decades, the Lord has brought a whole bunch of new missionaries to the United States. Most of them come from China.
There are some people who found the Lord with His plumb line over the church. They began to understand what God’s eternal purpose was all about. They began to understand that God was trying to recover the church. They began to understand the Lord Jesus as Lord and Head of His church in a practical locality. What a wonderful revelation was given to that school over in China.
Over the last decades, the Lord has been sending missionaries over to the United States. These people have seen. These people have touched. These people know something of the reality. But they have not found God’s work yet in building the church here in America.
The churches are mostly insulated by language and culture. Not many of them are willing to take American ground, learn to speak English, and learn how to be a church where anybody can come. Mind you, a church in America has to be multicultural. It is not just a bunch of German people like me. There are Hispanics, African Americans, and all kinds of people. That is what the church is supposed to look like today.
Somehow the Lord sent this secret package over to the United States: a lot of people who really love the Lord, but they cannot find that ground. They are hemmed up within themselves. How is the Lord going to do this? How is He going to do it?
If we wait too long, if the Lord cannot raise up servants, then all those young Chinese students will grow up, go to college, attend InterVarsity, become leaders there, leave InterVarsity, and go to a wonderful denominational church. All that vision and plumb line will be lost in the shuffle, and we will lose all of our young people.
We will come down to what I call the Chinatown Syndrome. Now, I have been to several churches in Chinatown, and because of the influx of Chinese, some of those churches are starting to fill up. But it is all with Mandarin-speaking people and some Cantonese-speaking people.
The point is, those old Chinatown churches in New York City, where I used to go and speak, were all old people. No young people. You may have a great church somewhere in New Jersey or somewhere else, and there may be a whole flood of people, but give it one generation and all those young people are going to go unless we can find church ground.
My hope is that in these last days the Lord is going to raise up some who are willing to pay the price. Yes, it is a price.
Those dear Moravians—you have heard all about that Moravian revival in Germany and Saxony. The Moravians ended up getting in trouble, and the government kicked them out, the whole bunch of them. They were kicked out of Herrnhut, Saxony. Do you know where they went? Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Within five years, they were speaking English in their churches. They all had to learn. They were German—or actually, some were Czechoslovakian, with all kinds of languages—but they came to the United States and learned English. Within five years, they were sending out missionaries to the Native Americans. They found the Moravian revival here in the United States.
I do not know how the Lord is going to do that, but I see a lot of potential if the Lord can find a way.
These are days when I believe the Lord is once again bringing the plumb line down, saying, “Now, do you see the work like I see the work? Do you see the church like I see the church? Now look at yourself. What do you say?” We have to adjust if we would be faithful.
The Lord is looking for such visionaries: people who are more desirous of doing the Lord’s will than afraid of making mistakes and breaking out of what seems to be working right now.
Here we are fellowshipping about consecration and calling. What are these various things? We are going to keep ourselves talking about calling to ministry, although our calling is much wider, is it not?
We were called to salvation. We were called with a heavenly calling. We were called to holiness. We were called to be conformed to the image of Christ. Jesus predestined each one of you, and then He called you, justified you, and is in the process of glorifying you. The call is a tremendous thing.
That is why I wanted to leave the whole thing open. What have you learned about your call? There is a lot of ground, but it has to be something that you have learned for yourself.
When we talk about ministry in the more specific, narrow sense—as spoken of in the book Rethinking the Work—ministry refers to those word-speaking ministries necessary to build up the church of Jesus Christ. There needs to be that administration of the Word. The Lord is always looking to call people into such a ministry.
You heard the first testimony that came this afternoon. In that testimony, our brother Daniel said the Lord caught him up on two things: first, to consecrate himself absolutely to the Lord, to be His servant; and second, to become an adequate student of the Word who can present it and rightly divide it.
Now there is a man called to the ministry of the Word. The Lord tries to call people. It is a personal thing. It is a specific thing. And it is something only God can do.
Before He calls you even into ministry, He has already sovereignly arranged your background to shape you for the ministry that He desires.
I have noticed three things in common with those who serve the Lord in a faithful, trustworthy way as stewards of the Word of God. There are three background things that are interesting to note. It does not always have to be this way, but it often is.
Number one: those whom the Lord calls into ministry respect their parents. That may sound strange, but the Lord wants to teach a minister of the Word His authority. The only way we learn authority is under submission.
Only those men and women who truly respect their mothers and fathers understand what it means to submit. If you have a problem with that, you will also have a problem in ministry. If you do not respect your mother and father and have not learned that in a deep way, it means that you will have to rely on yourself.
That is a hard way to minister. Or it means that you are going to have to try to find the approval of everybody else.
The second thing I notice is that, for those who serve the Lord, the Lord places in them, in His own way, a God-shaped soul in a certain direction of need and desire that the Lord uses for His ends.
Some people hunger and have a need to know. This becomes their fossil fuel to pursue the Lord. Some people have a need to do, to serve the Lord and do the will of God. Some people sense they have a need to be justified and have their conscience cleared. Some people have a need to be recognized. Some people have a need to be loved.
A servant of God is usually pressed forward with some kind of need. It is a natural need. All those things are natural. They can be found in a man who is lost as well as in somebody who is a Christian. But the Lord will take those needs and sublimate them and transform them by the work of the cross until you realize that He is the only One who can meet that need.
The person pursuing knowledge finds out that it is only in the Lord that he really understands. Those who need to do understand that only the Lord knows what they should do.
What was Paul’s driving force? He had a need to be righteous: “I need to be justified.” When he got saved, he pursued the Scriptures until he was sure that he was justified by faith. Yet something in his conscience was not clear, and it was bothering him. The Lord led him into Galatians 2:20 and that whole understanding of the freedom of the exchanged life. All that came out of the pursuit for righteousness: “I want to be clear. I want my conscience clean.”
John, as a young man, got to lay his head on Jesus’ breast and fell in love with the Lover of his soul. For the rest of his life, he looked around for that love in the church among the people. He found his need met in the Lord Jesus. He became the one brother who could say to all of God’s dear saints, “My dear little children, whom I love in the Lord.”
Peter, of course, had a drive to do. Give him five minutes and he was building a new boat to go out and do some more fishing. He was always up to something. He was always a doer. But he had to find out that his doing always went astray, did it not? Until he did things the way the Lord wanted him to do.
It made him a great man of God when he understood that impulse he had—that need and desire to do—could only be satisfied by saying, “Lord, what would You have me to do?” So he not only was a great fisherman, but he became a shepherd. That takes some calming down for a doer, does it not?
Timothy, it seems to me, from his very beginning, because of his grandmother and his mother, had a desire to know. He was a scholar. He wanted to know. He wanted to study. Somebody who wants to know always wants to know. They want to know the Greek, what this means, and what that means. They want questions.
When I go to Singapore, I get a headache, because after every time I speak, people come up to me and want to know about this: “Now, what do you mean about that? What do you mean by that?” They want to know, want to know, want to know.
What Timothy had to learn was this: all knowledge is theory until it gets worked out in reality. Paul had to keep saying, “Timothy, come on, get out there and preach the gospel. Come on, get out there and help those people.”
We want to know in theory. We would like to be lifelong students in the university of Christian knowledge. But that is not God’s way. It turns out we only come to a reality of true knowledge as the Lord gives us experience of it.
The third thing about a servant is this: he gets tested in every way, but still comes forth. A servant of God has a heart for the Lord that will not let him go. He may fail. He may rebel. He may be confused. But he is not cast down because he still has a heart for the Lord.
You can beat him up. You can say, “The Lord has not been faithful to you.” You can prove it to the man, and yet still his heart is going to press on for the Lord. Do you have such a heart? If you have a lukewarm heart, I do not know if you can ever be His servant.
Surely the Lord can stoke your heart with His love and fill you with a passion for Him. Because in the end, ministry is not about serving people. Ministry is about pursuing God through Jesus Christ. Ministry is about discovering God. In the midst of your discovery of Christ, you receive truth that you can steward.
Paul was a pursuer. He had a heart that could not be let down. Those who really are the Lord’s servants have a heart of obedience. I hear so many Christians: they hear the Word of God, but they just do not obey. But that is no heart for God.
God is looking for servants in this day. I do not know how He is going to do it, but I know the one secret, and the main thing I want to say tonight, is consecration.
How does it all start? How does the servant of God’s life begin? With consecration.
I know that many of you have heard all about consecration. We had several testimonies today that said, “When I was twelve, I consecrated my life; then again at fourteen; then at a youth conference at sixteen. Then I went to Bible camp at eighteen, and I consecrated myself.” Your consecration was pretty worn out, was it not?
You keep giving Jesus everything, and then you take it back by next Thursday. You get your body back off the altar. But I am talking about a consecration when all else has failed and you are up against the end. There is nowhere else to go. You present yourself to God, and He can finally start working on us. That is a tremendous moment.
In Romans 12, it is the verse we always use. It does not even use the word “consecration,” but what does it say? You finally present your whole body to God, which includes, of course, your spirit and your soul inside. You present your whole body to God: no excuses, no backing off. This is it. “I give You myself totally.”
It is when you present your members to God that He begins to use those members according to His will. He is a gentleman. Even for all His love, Paul has to say, “He is not going to force you, but I beseech you, by the mercies of God, to give Him and present to Him everything you have.”
Sometimes the old revivalists used to call it absolute surrender. I do not know about absolute surrender, because I find there is always something else I have to surrender.
Great preachers of the past in England spoke about still holding back a key to your heart. The Lord wants that key: “Every key to my heart, Lord Jesus, every key.”
Absolute surrender? Well, I do not know if anything is absolute in the final sense, but I do know this: I have never seen a servant of God full of the Spirit and filled with the Holy Spirit who has not absolutely surrendered.
If a candle is half flesh and half spirit, the Lord will not light it. Have you ever thought about really giving your whole self to God? No take-backs. I wonder what could happen when you present your life on that altar.
Does that time ever come when you are following the Lord and He says, “Now, I want you to keep following”? You say, “Well, Lord, I cannot, because I have too much money, and my job is too involved, or I have this and that.” The Lord says, “Well, now it is time for you to take up your cross. If you want to keep following Me, you are going to have to lighten your load.”
I cannot imagine even overcoming in the Laodicean church if you are not willing to sacrifice your financial goals. It is impossible. What does it mean to deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me? We do not need a theoretical definition. If you start following the Lord, you will get to a certain point where you cannot keep going unless you are willing to take up that cross.
I have never seen a servant of God who is really serving the Lord in whom you cannot see real sacrifice. They have sacrificed something because they love the Lord. It is not, “Have your cake and eat it too. I am going to serve the Lord, but I am also going to have everything I want.”
A servant of the Lord has some evidence that there has been a sacrifice in his life, out of love for the Lord. That is part of the fragrance of Christ that comes through a servant’s life.
When we finally come to the Lord and He has given us rest, He says, “Now, I know you are serving Me and you are in that church. You are teaching Sunday school, doing this, moving the chairs around, and doing some of it out of duty. How about taking My yoke and learning from Me?”
What a wonderful thing when a servant learns from the Lord Himself how to serve, rather than merely learning from other men or mimicking this or mimicking that. These all have to do with what happens when real consecration happens in your life.
Out of that consecration often comes a sense of calling. Our brother Daniel, when he shared his testimony, did not say, “I am called to be a prophet,” or, “I am called to be a teacher.” But he said, “I feel pressed to study, to show myself approved unto God, a workman who does not need to be ashamed because I am rightly dividing the word of truth.”
That is a good beginning point for any servant of God. But something has been laid down there, you know for sure. There is going to be some sacrifice.
How does this calling come about? First of all, without consecration, I am not sure what the Lord can do. But once there has been consecration, the Lord has all kinds of ways of confirming His calling in your life.
You fellows are fortunate in a way, because you were recommended by your assemblies. That is really wonderful. You have been there, serving in body life in such a way that brothers have recognized you as somebody with possibilities and potential.
This is a leadership conference, and you are not going to get a halo screwed onto your head as a spiritual leader now. But you are here because the body of Christ says, “We see something of Christ in you.” That is a tremendous thing.
As a Baptist fellow, I got saved and had to sense my calling from God all by myself, like most people out there. They do not have any fellowship to confirm them, help them, or encourage them. I had to sense the Lord calling me. I had to go all by myself. I said, “I feel called,” and the saints said, “Okay,” and you go off to seminary and so on and so forth. It is a lonely world out there.
But you have this advantage. You are fortunate because there are brothers who recognize that there is something in you. But how do you know in your fellowship life that you have been called? Immediately, various difficulties set in. Is that not strange—to know your call because of problems?
Even though the fellowship recognizes something in you, if you do not really consecrate your life, all you will do is come down to the level of ministry presently in the church, which is subnormal. Do you understand what I am saying?
Only a servant of God who is willing to take the cross and swim upstream can have a ministry at this level. It is like being in a union. In New York City, we have the Carpenters Union. They have a rule that you can pound only so many nails. It was intended so those fellows would not die from overwork.
Now they have those nail guns, and they leave by noon because they have punched so many nails. It takes a carpenter four times as long to do it as it used to be. It takes only half the time, but they only work half as much.
Ministry in the church, if it comes down to the norm, to the median level, is not what the Lord is looking for. You know the kind of ministry that says, “The brothers asked me to share, so I have to come up with a message. Oh, that Scripture looks good. Maybe I will do that one.”
But then you are being asked by the Lord in that assembly to get down on your knees and ask, “Lord, what time is it? What can we say? Are You holding a plumb line over us? What do we need to know? What is important to us right now? How can You save us from future problems?”
There is a whole drag of gravity downward, to be just like everybody else: just bore the life out of everybody for sixty minutes, and when they get through, everybody feels, “Boy, are we not spiritual? We put up with that for an hour.”
How about giving them some life for fifteen or twenty minutes, but you found it on your knees by the living Word? Now that is somebody rising above. But it takes some overcoming, and it begins with consecration.
Of course, we always have that wonderful gift of older brothers who hold us down. When we want to serve and want to rise up, we have older brothers at the top saying, “Not so fast, sonny. You are only forty-five years old. You are still young.”
You get discouraged and say, “That is it. I quit. I can go to an American church. I can be the pastor next week.” True. But even that the Lord gives you as a cocoon. You work your way out from being that old creepy crawler to turn into a butterfly.
Some of that pressure over you is to teach you and confirm your calling in you. Are you willing to be patient? We need younger people learning how to speak by the gift of God. But we cannot just have a free-for-all where anybody can speak. The brothers need to raise them up.
It is already almost too late. Young people are leaving like crazy. We can just snooze away, or we can see what the Lord is doing with this present generation. It may be very unusual what the Lord might do.
Let me give you one word of encouragement. Paul tells Timothy, “Guard, by the Holy Spirit within you, that good deposit, that treasure that you have within you.”
If you are a servant of the Lord, if you have consecrated yourself and want to be one who loves God and Jesus Christ one hundred percent, understand this: on that kind of ground, as a consecrated servant of God, everything that happens to you—every cross taken, every yoke worn, every lesson learned, every time you get held down—everything that happens in your life, blessings and problems, will accrue a deposit of Christ in you that will make you rich.
Usually, in a young servant’s life, there is a certain amount of time when you are held down. We will discuss those reasons in a minute. But do not look at being held down merely as a limitation. When you feel held down, realize you are in the Potter’s hands, and He is just giving you a little love squeeze as He shapes you where He wants you to go.
Circumstances may seem limiting. “Man, I wish I could be like this brother who spent a whole year not working. I would read my Bible and pray, and it must be wonderful.” I do not think most people could take a year.
You need a certain level of life to spend a year reading the Word and praying. Most people only have enough life for twenty minutes, and the rest of the day they watch television. I do not think the Lord wants you merely to be free from a job so you can pursue the Lord and go to the library and read.
The Lord sets limitations on your life to see how fervent you really are. Are you really willing to pay the price to study the Word? “Be diligent to show yourselves approved unto God,” Paul says to Timothy. Timothy was already a study-holic.
When you have consecrated yourself, the Lord has a tailor-made study program just for you. It involves Bible study. Maybe it involves listening to online messages and things like that. It involves reading books. Are you willing to do that?
The interesting thing is that the Lord even has a timing for when you should read these things. Have you ever noticed that? There is a certain time to read a particular book, and it is not the time right now. Then there is another time when you are not going anywhere until you read a book.
The Holy Spirit has your life in His engineering hands. He is going to teach you to discover God’s study program just for you.
The problem we have with servants of God and the ministry of the Word is exactly this: we have to learn the living Word of God.
There are a number of assemblies here, I am sure, where we would have to say, “We have heard a lot of good teaching on eternal purpose, a vision of the church, heavenly vision, and all kinds of things.” But it can go into the realm of theory. Sometimes we are strong in theory. We say we have seen all these things.
But the Lord leads us into revelation. How? In the Bible, how does the Lord lead people into revelation? Usually through crisis.
You can hear all you want about God’s eternal purpose, but someday in a crisis you may see it. Somebody testified that they saw the borderlands of God’s eternal purpose in a crisis.
It is not merely that you study, study, study. No: you study and learn reality; you study and learn reality; you study and learn reality. God reveals Jesus Christ by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, in His Word, through experiences and even through trials we go through.
The Lord is bringing you into such vision, but we will see it in matters of crisis. He has to hold back our zeal to serve Him. As soon as you say, “Lord, I want to serve You one hundred percent, ready to go, in the blocks, ready for the race,” that is when the Lord hems you in and says, “Now hold on just a second.”
I do not know if any of you like that. I do not know if any of you are that aggressive. Do you really want to serve the Lord? That is a hard passion. I hope that you have it.
I hope when you read 1 Timothy 3:1, “If any man aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble work,” you see what a noble desire it is, for the sake of God’s house, to be a leader with sensitivity, understanding, and maturity.
I hope you are in the blocks, ready for the race, though the Lord may hem you in. He has to deal with things in our early days. The flesh has to be dealt with. Peter had to be held back because his flesh always came first. Paul was impatient. The Lord takes us through experiences, and as we are hemmed in, we are broken down and discover resurrection life on the other side.
The Lord hems us in often to bring us through death and resurrection. What comes out on the other side is living stewardship and ministry for the Lord.
I am not proposing that if you want to be a servant, the Lord is going to beat you up and you are going to have a terrible time. No, let me put it another way. If you consecrate yourself and really want to serve the Lord, the Lord places you in His hands. He will keep you. He will help you. He will have mercy on you.
You cannot believe how intimate He can be with you, how really He can talk with you. But you have to be in His hands one hundred percent.
If you are called into being a servant of God and have consecrated yourself, you know you are going to have to deal with some practical issues.
The first issue, as Paul reminded Timothy on a number of occasions, is this: if money is your thing, you are disqualified. Money will become a snare, and the love of money produces all sorts of evil.
I do not care to tell you how many saints—brothers of godly gifting—I have seen go out of the way because the thorns of the riches of this world snatched them away. You probably know some in your own assemblies: gifted men with a great future with God, pursuing the Lord, but then they started making money, and they just kept making money.
It is a snowball. It just keeps growing, and the next thing you know, you cannot stop. You are on the wheel, going around, and you miss what God wanted in your generation. When you get older and sit back and die and retire, you may realize you missed your chance when you were forty years old to make a difference in this world. You will have a regret that is hard to repent of.
Money has to be touched. If you are a servant of God, He is going to deal with money. Here is the goal: the Lord wants you to be content whether you have much or little, but it is not your obsession.
Often the Lord leads you through financial circumstances. He may test you in a season of want, in a season of hand-to-mouth living. People may see that you are financially sacrificing. Are you willing to do that, or is that just not an option anymore?
The millennials—I tell you what, we have a whole bunch of people in our young assembly in Manhattan. I am praying that not one of them will be a millennial, even though most of them are in that age group. You understand what I am saying? Millennials believe you should buy the world and have whatever you want right now.
How can God find a servant there? They are already snared. At twenty-eight years old, they are already snared with riches.
But I will make you a bet—a finger-pinky bet. You serve the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and give yourself one hundred percent to the Lord, with no holdback, and I will guarantee that at the end of your life you will not say, “I am poor.”
Your friends may have gotten ahead, started a third or fourth business, and have so much money that they are sending it back to China. You may not be as rich as the fellow next door, but the Lord will not be beholden to any servant of God. The Lord is our Provider, and you will discover that the Lord meets your needs and much more.
Not only that, He gives riches to your children because they have a heart for Jesus. You take some rich fellow who says, “No, I am not going to serve God. I do not have time. I am too busy making money,” and stack him over here. Then I will stack over there a servant who goes through some tough financial times and has to rent while others are buying.
Move them ahead twenty years, and I will show you a rich man and a poor man. But money has to be dealt with. Paul mentions it again and again in 1 Timothy to young Timothy.
The second issue that has to be dealt with, if you are going to be a servant of God today—especially in this day—is sex.
In this needy world, in this broken world, there are a lot of people who come to ministry wanting something more. Somebody who wants to serve the Lord will be tempted by flirtations, needy people, people of like temperament, soulmates, and all such kinds of things.
You will be tempted by pornography, or now they have virtual-reality pornography. There are young men in our group in Manhattan who love the Lord, and they are entangled in pornography. How can they serve the Lord? They cannot do it unless the Lord can take them out of it.
Brothers, listen. Sisters, this is the number-one problem among ministers in the United States—well, maybe second to depression—is sexual immorality and adultery.
It is one of those temptations that comes with ministry, because there are a lot of overtones and vibrations involved in ministry. People pick it up in all kinds of interesting ways. There are groupies and all kinds of things.
Why do you think Paul said to Timothy two thousand years ago, “Flee youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, and hope with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart”? Flee youthful lusts. Timothy, who was about your age, was not a young kid. But you can still be forty and have youthful lust.
The enemy can snag you right and left. Even if you do not get involved in something disastrous—such as fornication and adultery—you may get into pornography, and your conscience goes right down the tubes.
Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy that you cannot have faith unless you have a good conscience: “Keeping faith and a good conscience.” Do you want to believe God can do great things? You have to have a clear conscience. If it is dirty and foul, then your ministry is foul.
I am not talking about perfection. I know the precious blood can cover your sins. But if you are playing with these things, these are tests.
The third issue is what I am going to call our natural strength. Every servant starts out with something he feels he is especially good at. That is why Jacob’s thigh had to be pulled out of joint: he was too strong in the natural man.
Moses had to minister to sheep for forty years just to take off that worldly leadership syndrome. Oh, if we had elders who could get rid of that worldly leadership syndrome and be nothing as Moses was—just fall face down on the ground—how we need that.
Of course, Peter’s self-confidence had to be nailed to the coffin time after time. What is your strength? Are you clever? Do you have strength of mind? Are you an organizer? Maybe it is your personality.
The Lord has given you those things, but He is going to take them through the cross and deal with them until you do not trust your personality, your instincts, your gut level, and things like that. Whatever you feel your strength is, it will have to be weakened by the Lord if He is going to use you, if you are going to be His servant.
Why is the Lord putting us through all of that? I am asking you to consecrate yourself, give yourself to the Lord, and let Him call you into what He wants. Yet I am telling you that if you do it, you are going to have a tough time. Why does the Lord make us go through all this kind of stuff?
I want to give you two final reasons. The first is this: the ministry of the Word.
How many of you read The Ministry of the Word by Watchman Nee in your preparation? A couple of fellows. Listen: the ministry of the Word is not like in the Old Testament, where you merely receive some words and speak them out.
The Lord has to do a work in our lives, and it is basically a turnabout. When we start out—and I include myself; I am the number-one guilty fellow—I take the Word of God and mold it into what I want it to be. I wrestle with the Word until it conforms to my doctrine. Then I say, “Ah, see? I can prove it to you. There it is, right there.”
I wrestled that word until it fit exactly what my doctrine was. But actually, the Spirit has to wrestle you into conforming to the Word of God. If you are going to be a servant of the Word, the Word has to wrestle you. The Spirit has to wrestle you.
Let us look at another passage of Scripture in 2 Corinthians. Paul is talking about his ministry and what new covenant ministry is. It is a lot different from ministering the letter.
For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;
to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.
And who is adequate for these things?
For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.
There is what we have so often: peddlers of the Word of God. “What do you want to hear today? Grace? Here you go. What do you want to hear today? You got saved, you got lost? Here you go. What do you want to hear today? Holiness? Here you can peddle it.” Just spout it out. Just peddle it.
No, no, no. You cannot peddle the Word of God if you are going to have an adequate ministry as a servant of God. No peddling.
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you?
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men;
being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Oh, my. New Testament ministry is not just letter, peddling letter, which kills. It is writing by the Spirit on the hearts of believers.
The new covenant says that no man will have to say, “Know the Lord,” because you will all know Him. You will know Him, and He will know you. You will have Him in your hearts. The law will be written in your hearts. Your ministry is to write that by the Holy Spirit into their hearts. That is a whole different kind of ministry.
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,
who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Brothers and sisters, there is nobody adequate to do such a thing. But the Holy Spirit can make us adequate if He can wrestle with us in such a way that we come into conformity to the Word of God.
We are talking about Him wrestling with all those strengths of ours. It is amazing: if we are ministering in our own human strength, somebody can take any Scripture and end up making it a theoretical message. Another fellow makes it a practical message, but every message is a practical message. Another takes any Scripture and makes it anecdotal—he starts telling stories.
We can make the Word of God funny. We can make the Word of God seem angry at us. But it is usually coming out of a vessel that has not been wrestled with by the Holy Spirit. It is just letter. Even somebody who finds everything in the Bible speaking about God’s love—even that message can kill, because it is just letter.
In New Testament ministry, it is different from the way the rabbis used to argue, take Scripture, use proof texts, and all that kind of stuff. A New Testament servant, a servant of the Word, must first be made adequate by the Holy Spirit.
He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
Dear brothers and sisters, I set that plumb line before you. That is the ministry of the Word. It is a ministry of living water.
How does that happen? You have to eat the Word. That is the first part. Then it has to be worked into us. When you eat something, even something precious, the Holy Spirit has to make that real to you. To some extent, it has to be digested and assimilated into your system.
Once that is a reality within you, the Holy Spirit enables you to speak a word from your spirit, through your soul and body, that is living water. Our ministry is living water, not clever words, not intellectual thoughts, not argumentative opinions.
What do you do with a brother who is full of opinions? For one thing, a person who has a lot of opinions is completely subjective. It means he does not listen; he just talks. If somebody can open the Word and merely give his opinions on things, you might like his opinions—it just depends. But whether you like them or not, it is not life.
What if the Spirit of God can work in you in such a way that when your word comes out, it is a word born from God? It is like living waters to people. I think this would bring revival to your church and a lot of help to all of us.
I remember we had a conference like this forty years ago—perhaps thirty-five years ago. Brother Stephen was there, and I was there. There was an Italian fellow from New York who picked up Brother Stephen at the airport.
Driving back from the airport to this conference in upstate New York, this young fellow said, “Brother, I feel like the Lord is calling me to the ministry of the Word. What do I need to be a minister of the Word?” What do you think Brother Stephen said? Two words: “Twenty years.”
The fellow thought, perhaps, “If I just get a concordance, learn a little Greek, and get some better books—such as Christ in the Bible by Stephen Kaung—then that is all I need.” No, you need twenty years for the Lord to get hold of you by His Word, so that when it comes out, the chances are it is going to be living.
The Lord has to do such a work in us. Some of us are word-twisters. He has to deal with twisters. I like that verse in the Old Testament that says, “With the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure; and with the crooked Thou wilt show Thyself shrewd.”
The Lord knows how to beat out the twister. If you like to twist the Word, you get a good wrestling match with the Lord on that one. Or maybe you are a scholar. He has to strip you of diplomas, because scholarliness is just dead letter. We do not need it.
You may be a proof-texter who takes a word out of context and preaches on it. The Lord is going to make you a trustworthy steward. But the biggest change involved with you and the Word of God is this: if you are going to be a minister of the Word, the Word of God has to work on you.
What is the primary thing the Lord is trying to work into you through the Word of God? It is so that you see Christ in the Word of God. When you open a passage and want to share it, you see how it is related to Christ. It is the testimony of Jesus in there, one way or another.
Have you found it yet? It takes a while to find Him. You have to keep digging, keep going through, keep discovering. The more the Word of God is about Christ, the more you have seen and can share a living word.
For all that, the Lord is going to wrestle you pretty thoroughly, to get it to where His Word can come through you in a trustworthy way as living waters to other people.
One final statement: why would the Lord put a servant through so much? Why not give him an easy time? It is tough enough serving the Lord.
I know many of you know the Hebrew names of God: the Lord our Healer, the Lord Who Is There, the Lord our Provider, and all that kind of thing. How about this one? Do you know the Lord, whose name means “Jealous”?
That is the reason He is dealing with you so much. Exodus 34:14 says:
Thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
Do you know why the Lord gives you such a time? I will tell you why: because He wants a bondservant.
In Romans 1:1, Paul introduces himself this way:
Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.
There he is. He has a calling as an apostle. Do you have that calling? I do not know. Are you called as an evangelist? Paul said he was set apart for that. But what came before any calling to serve in ministry? This: “Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ.”
What does that mean? “I am Paul, and I have come to the place where I will do anything that my Master wants. I am Paul, and I have attached myself to my Master of my own free will, and I am not leaving Him anymore.”
No matter how strong my flesh is, no matter how much I am going to have to decrease in order for Him to increase, no matter how much He is going to have to hem me in, no matter how many mistakes I am going to make, I am His bondservant.
Oh, the Lord is looking for bondservants—just bondservants. If He reduces you down to zero, all your cleverness is gone, and all the mistakes you have made leave you on the floor, can you still say, “Lord, can I put my ear by Your door? Would You just take me in? Let me be Your bondservant”?
That is what the Lord is looking for. It is not just a servant who is going to minister the Word of God and get up in a pulpit somewhere. A bondservant is willing to do something for money or not for money, willing to do something whether criticized or not criticized. It makes no difference.
“Lord, what do You want me to do?” That is all a bondservant says. A bondservant can have no status. Some people, for all that Paul did, just threw him out. They did not need him anymore. Paul was hurt, but he went right on.
The most blessed people in this world are God’s bondservants—the most blessed people in this world. Never will a person be taken care of as much as a bondservant. Never will a person be mercifully long-suffered over like a bondservant.
You may be full of mistakes, full of errors, full of passions that are elsewhere, and all kinds of things. But He takes His bondservants and He blesses them. Even though you say, “Lord, I am an unprofitable servant,” still He blesses you. He uses you. He loves you.
Sometimes He decides not to use you, and you still love Him, and He loves you. That bondservant is the deepest desire of our Lord Jesus’ heart.
I do not know what you are striving for here. I do not know what you really want. I hear some of you saying, “I do not want to do anything. I want to hide.” That is not what God’s bondservants say.
God’s bondservants do not say, “I would rather not do that. I would rather not be hospitable. I would rather not teach the Word.” That is phony-baloney stuff. God’s servant says, “Lord, I will do whatever You want me to do.”
Who is adequate? Not me, but I will do it. That is it. Game over. You are in His hands, you are a delight to Him, and He uses you and loves you.
I will end with a famous quote by D. L. Moody. One time he preached a sermon, and it became one of his immortal words:
The world is yet to see what God can do through a man fully consecrated to Him.
By God’s help, I aim to be that man.
Sometimes you do not hear the rest of that quote. The world is yet to see what God can do through a man fully consecrated to Him. By God’s help, I aim to be that man. I want to be that man. I want to lay hold of whatever the Lord has.
Of course, I am getting too old to fool around anymore and say, “Oh, shucks. No thanks.” No. Lord, what do You want us to do? Where is your heart?
There are many of you here tonight, at many different stages in your Christian life. I do not want you to do anything that is not truthful to your heart. But I am going to give an invitation for people to come down to the front of this place tonight.
It is for those who feel that God is pressing them to really cash in, in total consecration to the Lord. If you want to be His servant, that is the place to start. We will talk tomorrow about how He starts in body life and all that kind of stuff. But where is your heart?
You have been on and off, and on and on. How about getting on and staying on? Are you willing to stay on that altar this time? Are you ready to have a doing-business consecration that you really mean?
If you really lay your life down and present yourself to God, His fire will come down on you. He will use you, He will deal with you, He will bless you, and you will grow up. You will see that merciful Lord with the plumb line standing over us, yet giving you by His mercy a chance to be one of the anointed trees in the house of God.
But it starts with consecration. If you do not give yourself to the Lord one hundred percent, as best you know, then I do not see any sacrifice that He can take up off the altar. What have you got?
We have a lot of sort-of part-time servants—sort-of volunteer, part-time servants. Out on Long Island, where I used to grow up, they had volunteer firemen, but they were never there when you really needed them. They needed real, businesslike firemen who were there twenty-four-seven.
Are you a volunteer part-time servant: whenever you want it, whenever it meets your fancy, whenever you have time? I think I see a Lord who wants something higher.
God wants you one hundred percent. Ninety-nine point five will not do.
That is an old Black spiritual they used to sing:
God wants you one hundred percent.
Ninety-nine point five won’t do.
Won’t do for my Lord.
Won’t do for my Lord, for my Lord.
Now let us just have a moment of silence. Bow your heads. I do not want everybody coming up here, but I want people coming up here who really feel like it is time for them to stop being part-time potential, merely thinking about it, and who want to consecrate and present themselves as living sacrifices to God.
I would like you to come down to the front here so that we can all pray for you. There is no reason to be embarrassed to come here, because you are coming before the Lord. He alone knows what is going on.
As we are sitting here right now with our eyes closed, come up here if you want to do this, if it is your time. You may be young; you may be old. It makes no difference to me. The Lord knows He wants your life.
Lord, You look down upon these, Your people. So many of them, we heard today, have precious testimonies of growing up in the house of God. Everything has been handed to them, and now they are trying to sort out their lives.
Lord, I pray for those who would be willing to come up here and respond and say, “Lord, You have healed me of my leprosy, and I am coming back to thank You. I give You everything in my life.”
I give You my career, my finances, my family, my life, my future, and my ministry, whatever it is. I just lay it down. I want to be a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto You.
Dear God, I pray for these precious ones who are willing to say that to You. You know every heart. There are no secrets hidden from You here tonight.
Lord, as I look out over this place, thinking about how soon You are coming, what You still need to do, and how that work needs to continue in the United States until You come, I see young men and women saying, “Lord, here am I. Send me.”
Now, Lord, help everyone in their heart to give themselves fully to You. May You take this sacrifice, fill them with the Holy Spirit, and give them a sense of Your Spirit’s leading and direction in their lives.
Lord, let this be, for those dear ones who have truly gotten into this spot by faith, a crossover, a change of direction, a way of You augmenting Your presence in their lives.
Thank You for whatever service they have done in the past. But now we bring it to You, Lord, that they may serve You as bondservants with no strings attached. Lord, take this offering. Bless these dear ones, even as we are here tonight before You.
With just a few of you who are kneeling here, express your heart in prayer—just two or three—before we end this session tonight. Just pray as the Lord is leading you.
Several prayers were offered, but portions were indistinct in the recording.
Lord, we thank You for these sincere hearts, and even for those who are sitting, who have also rendered their hearts to You. We pray for a generation of bondservants willing to pay the price to see You get Your way.
Lord, may they see You holding the plumb line down over us, with Your expectation for ministers of the new covenant. Lord, bless and help us to learn how to be lovers of You, bondservants of You, and to do Your bidding, whatever Your will is.
These are the things we pray and give thanks for in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.