We would like to turn to Ephesians chapter 1 and begin reading some Scriptures there.
We will start with Ephesians 1:5-10.
In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.
In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him, with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth, even in Him.
Then, up to verse 15:
For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.
Then we want to go to Ephesians chapter 2 and read two verses there, Ephesians 2:4-5.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Our Lord, we are so thankful to be gathered here together tonight in Your presence. With a single purpose upon our hearts, we gather, and, as our brother asked last night, we seek.
We are so thankful that grace allows us this freedom to pursue You, to know You in Your height and depth and width and breadth. So we come together with sincere hearts of faith, knowing that we have been forgiven our trespasses and cleansed by Your precious blood, and desiring to enter into greater and fuller plans than we have perhaps ever realized before.
Oh, lead us in such a way that we may be cooperating with that great stream of purpose that is flowing inevitably from the throne of God to achieve its full, finished purpose here upon this earth. Gather us together, Lord, to understand by Your Holy Spirit how it is that we may see and understand Your eternal purpose, and then serve that purpose in our generation.
Do be with us. Oh, how we need Your grace. We thank You for Your lavished provisions. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Truly, it is an exciting time to be here, gathered together for one purpose.
The more we get to the end of time, the more necessary it is for those on earth to know what God is doing in heaven. There are things going on right now that have been triggered from the moment of Jesus’ resurrection. As He proceeded to the right hand of the Father, we see, as John further revealed to us in the book of Revelation, that the Lamb of God came out from the throne and took the scroll. That has to do with this eternal purpose.
We may not realize it fully upon this earth, but a new economy has transpired. A new kingdom has been set in place. Something eternal is inevitably going to happen, and it is already being worked out even as we are here.
Recently there have been a number of reports, and they are exciting because they show us that we are nearer and nearer to the fullness of the times. We get reports around the world that, even in intense persecution, places like India are finding a new harvest of those coming into the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those in Iran are growing and growing in numbers as believers.
We just had a report this week that, in the midst of the persecution that seems present in Turkey, a number of secular Muslims are turning to the Lord Jesus. Indeed, this is an auspicious time.
There have also been two reports recently in Christian magazines reporting that, here in the United States, there seems to be a new seriousness among a young generation of people, around junior-high-school age. This group, for some reason, has a tremendous desire to pursue and seek the face of God.
Some of the evangelists have said, “I feel like the Jesus Movement from the West Coast is happening again.” This particular man was talking about Florida, but others are suggesting that something is happening among God’s young people.
Isn’t it wonderful to hear this—that there are those who can serve the purpose of God in their generation, whatever that generation must be? My generation has no label; we are so old.
But I do not know: is it the millennials, that generation that will serve the Lord in such a way that the Lord says, “Okay, it is done”? Or perhaps Generation Z, or the younger generation even before us? Actually, the generation is all of us together at any given period of time. Are we here to serve His eternal purpose?
I loved what Jerry shared last night in a very winsome way, asking us and inviting us to seek—seek after an understanding of this eternal purpose. It draws me back to over forty years ago, when I came to this first conference. Then it was held up at Randolph-Macon, outside of Ashland.
I came up there as a pastor. Among the courses I took in seminary, I took a whole semester course on Ephesians. We studied it in Greek. We studied it in English. We learned everything about every word in the thing.
Then I came to that conference in the seventies, more than forty years ago, and I had never seen God’s eternal purpose. I knew all the words. I knew the meaning of all the words. Still, I could not see.
Until my eyes were opened by the mercy of God, as Brother Lance and Brother Stephen shared, it was a left-right punch. Lance would punch me down; Stephen would pick me up; Lance would punch me down.
That was more than forty years ago. But I was one of those people, like Jerry said: “What is this eternal purpose?” I mean, it is right there in Ephesians 3:11: “according to the eternal purpose which He realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But if you had asked me, “What is the eternal purpose?”—which Lance did in this message—“If you had to say in one sentence, what is the eternal purpose of God?” I would have said, “Well, it all starts with Genesis.” I could not put it in a sentence back then.
I am going to reveal how old I am, because I saw the Grand Canyon when I was six years old. Now, I did not actually see the Grand Canyon, but my dad had what was called a stereopticon. Do you know what that is?
It was a wooden thing like this, with two magnifiers. You put it up to your eyes, and it had a wooden track. You looked at two pictures side by side of the same thing, both of them blurred. But you put them in this thing and moved it until it came into focus, and suddenly it was three-dimensional.
Now, back when I was a kid, that was the cat’s pajamas: 3-D. I saw the Grand Canyon in 3-D.
Years later, I got one of those Polaroid View-Masters. Do you know what that is? It was a little plastic thing with little round discs. You put in the disc and went, “Click, click, click,” and you saw 3-D again. I saw the Grand Canyon again, this time in color.
The stereopticon was black and white with that yellow sepia—whatever they call it. But this was pure color. Now I had really seen the Grand Canyon. I do not know how many of you remember that, but I looked it up to be sure it was called a Polaroid View-Master, and it is. If you have one of those stupid little plastic things, it is worth four hundred and two dollars on eBay.
That is how ancient those things are. Well, anyway, guess what? In 1975, I saw the Grand Canyon. No, I saw the Grand Canyon—not in a viewer, not in a clicker. I saw it.
I could not even describe it to you. It was too big to describe. It had too many colors to describe. It had too many dimensions. It had too many rivers. It had too many canyons. How can you describe it?
Now we are going to try to explain the eternal purpose of God. But you know what? It is just like those crazy people who go up to the edge of the Grand Canyon and take a selfie of themselves. Some of them have fallen over. It becomes a serious matter.
You can imagine these iPhone-crazy people standing at the Grand Canyon with a little box in front of their eyes, saying, “Oh yes, I see the Grand Canyon. There it is,” instead of looking at the Grand Canyon.
We need to look at the eternal purpose of God. But it has dimensions to it, colors to it, and depths to it that are amazing to behold. It is not something you can take just a cursory glance at. It is something we have to behold.
Now this is very important when it comes to serving. We are talking about serving the purpose of God. Christians are not short on serving. Oh no, we are busy as bees.
If you are in a church, you get a program and you have to go at least three or four times a week. There are things going on, actions going on, preaching going on, prayer meetings going on, Bible studies going on. Oh, we are busy, busy, busy.
Christians have no problem serving and being busy, but serving according to the purpose of God is a whole other story.
All those who serve the Lord, after a period of growth and time, if we do not come to the place where we see God’s deeper purposes, our ministry gets distracted with small things—our own ambition, goals, or lesser things. We are no longer looking to heaven; we are quite distracted with earthly things.
This has always been the case. We find in the Bible that churches which knew something of this eternal purpose easily got distracted, did they not? The Corinthians were distracted by pride and the lusts of the world. The Galatian churches were distracted by religious small business. The Colossians were distracted by philosophy.
It is amazing how we get distracted. This church is distracted now with the neo-this and neo-that. It is all a great distraction. It takes us away from serving the eternal purpose which is seen, and we lose touch with all of that.
My burden is to try to share something pretty simple, I hope, over three days. Last night, I was sitting right back there, and I noticed the junior-high group going out. I said, “Whoa, this is a big group.” Then this morning I saw a high-school group.
I do not know if a lot of college kids are sneaking out with the high-school group, but there are a lot of high-school, college, and young people here. I am hoping to gear this back a little bit, be a little simpler perhaps, and try to explain how we come to see the great eternal purpose of God.
Of course, you realize something right off the bat: we are not going to see God’s eternal purpose without the Lord taking us through the school of Christ. He does not share His richest treasures with the casual observer. There are lessons we are going to have to learn and things we are going to have to do.
Remember, the disciples spent more than a year just watching Jesus as He ministered from place to place. Before we just go running off—“I’m saved to serve”—and begin to serve and serve and serve without vision, I want to share three stages of how we enter into serving the purpose of God in our generation.
It all has to do with those simple verses in Ephesians 1:7-10 that we have been reading as part of our theme.
Tonight, it is simple: grace is necessary to serve the purpose of God.
It is wonderful that we are saved by grace. We sing “Amazing Grace.” Let us sing just a chorus.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
Such a tonic to our souls—such a truth of saving grace, so wonderful.
I have been among the Chinese so long now that I am mostly Chinese, actually. Do you know what they love to say?
Only a sinner, saved by grace;
Only a sinner, saved by grace.
This is my story, to God be the glory:
I’m only a sinner, saved by grace.
Everybody has their own expression of worshiping Jesus for His wonderful grace to us. I remember, as a brand-new Christian, somebody gave me what I thought was the cleverest thing I had ever heard: that acrostic of grace, G-R-A-C-E: God’s riches at Christ’s expense.
I thought, “Whoa, that is heavy.” That is what we used to say back in the seventies. “Man, that is heavy. That is cool. That is really something.”
But I have since come to find out something very mysterious indeed. Even though we are saved by grace and brought into His purpose by grace, many Christians are not standing firmly in the grace of God.
A lot of churches, strangely, teach a sort of probationary grace. If you get saved, they will say that you are saved, but you have to do some good works, keep some sacraments, and do things in order to know that you are saved.
What a terrible position that puts people in: a probationary position. “Oh, I do not really know if I am saved,” they say.
In 1970 and 1971, when I was up on Long Island, something happened. As you know, this Jesus Movement also hit Long Island. In that period of five years in the early seventies, hundreds of thousands of Catholics who believed that Jesus was God and believed Jesus died for them entered into grace and were saved by grace.
It was an amazing thing to find. Many Catholics, of course, left the Catholic Church and joined mega-Pentecostal churches and all kinds of things. But praise God, they got saved by grace. It was a wonderful thing to see that sweep there on Long Island.
I would go and preach in places. Back in those days, I would sing with a guitar and preach about Jesus, and people would get saved. Nine out of ten of them were Catholics. They just never knew they needed to ask Jesus into their hearts and receive His grace—that their sins were forgiven, they were going to heaven, and there was no purgatory in between.
Man, that was a heavy thing. It was such a time of rejoicing there.
Here is a prayer. Have you ever heard this prayer?
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
How many of you have heard that prayer? It is a very popular prayer in the United States. The reason for it is that it was written in what they call the Puritans’ first primary reader. The Puritans in New England developed books of readings for children, and they put that prayer in the first primary reading book.
Think of it now: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep”—because He might throw it away while I am asleep? I do not know. He may forget about me. Does He love me? Does He not? I am not sure.
“So if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take,” because I do not know if He is going to take my soul. What kind of a prayer is that for a child? The child would stay awake all night: “Oh, what is going to happen?”
But it is not only Catholics who put you on probation. There are many Christians, Christian churches, Protestant churches, and Puritan groups that put people on probation. Many people simply do not know whether they are really saved or not.
These things should not be. Grace’s first instruction is: rest.
Rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Rest and know that you have been saved and given eternal life.
You may ask at this point, “What does getting saved have to do with God’s eternal purpose?” Well, let us look at it this way. It is very important.
In God’s eternal purpose, which remains a mystery still at this point, there are three parties involved:
When we read in Ephesians 1 that, at this fullness of times, He is gathering up all things under Christ, then we know that our salvation itself is part of God’s eternal purpose. He is summing up; He is gathering up. Every time somebody gets saved, it is part of this eternal-purpose work.
So evangelism is very much a part of God’s eternal purpose. We are saved by grace, and grace brings us into His wonderful purpose as we are gathered right up there.
When we get saved, we are brought into a bigger purpose than we realize at first. When I got saved, I just thought, “Man, I am not going to hell. I am saved by grace. It is all about me.” I had no idea I had been swept into a bigger program.
How many of you realized you were getting involved in something a lot bigger than just your own salvation? But being self-centered, you know, we do not always realize these things at first.
When we see these wonderful verses of purpose in Ephesians 1:7-10, I want you to see that they are surrounded on either side by grace, grace, grace, grace. Only by grace do we come into God’s eternal purpose, and only by grace will the topstone be set into God’s eternal purpose. It is grace from beginning to end.
Look at those gracious words in Ephesians 1:5:
He predestined us to the adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.
According to the kind intention of His will. This is a great mystery about God: His will is good. He is good.
Most people who do not know God do not think He is good. They think He is doing all kinds of nasty things in this world—making people die, bringing tragedy to people. People do not understand that the very depth of God is His good intentions.
“To the praise of the glory of His grace”—that is how He has adopted us.
Then Ephesians 1:7 says:
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.
There it is again: grace lavished upon us. Then He tells us of this great purpose in the middle of it all—this great thing wrought in heaven and now proceeding through earth, gathering us up and summing us up.
Then, when we look on the other side of this passage, at Ephesians 2:4-10, we find perhaps the most famous section on grace there is:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we should walk in them.
Oh, how wonderful is this grace. How firmly we need to be established in this grace before we begin to serve.
That is why I like Watchman Nee’s Sit, Walk, Stand. This grace means we need to sit and be bathed in the grace of God until we know we are forgiven, we know we are living with God, and we know that we have eternal life.
Unless we do that, we start to serve and faulty motives sneak in.
Some people serve hoping to be saved by that. Some people serve hoping to keep their salvation, which might be lost at any moment. Some people serve to prove that they are saved. Some people say, “Because I am saved, I ought to be serving.”
All of those are wrong motives. What do you think the Lord thinks about that? He gives us grace to serve, and we are to serve out of the overflow of grace.
When we are serving to prove that we are saved—“Now I think I am saved, because look, I am serving”—no, no, no. This is not the basis of our service. Amazing grace has to be the basis.
Because grace is so tremendous from beginning to end, this is where the devil tries to steal our grace day by day. Does he steal your grace? Does he make you feel guilty? Does he make you feel like you are still a sinner even though you know you are saved? Does he make you feel far away from God when He is as near as your heart and your mouth?
Do you lack peace with God? Are you trying to pay God back somehow for the fact that He saved you? All of these things fail to recognize the fact that we are saved by grace alone.
Down through history, the great battle for the servant of God has been to find grace as the sole basis for serving the purpose of God. When we look at great ministers through time, let me mention two: Martin Luther and John Wesley.
I recently read a biography of Martin Luther. It was a wonderful biography, so enlightening. The dear brother was raised up in a very strict Catholic family. As a young boy, he was always afraid he was going to go to hell.
One night, he was walking home and lightning struck a tree near him. He swore to God that, if he got delivered and came home alive, he would join the monastery. He got home, and he joined the monastery.
He gave up the lawyer profession and the future his father hoped for him. He became a monk in a monastery, started beating himself, started fasting, took vows of celibacy and poverty—all in order to try to get saved. He crawled up the steps in Rome in order to buy, perhaps, salvation somehow.
Oh, how he struggled. He was five years as a monk before he ever saw a Bible. They just did not use Bibles. But because they thought he was a very smart young man, they decided he should be a teacher in the monastery, and they gave him a Latin Bible.
Do you know what happened the day he read Romans 1:17?
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
He wrote one word: alone.
His great motto was this:
This man was tortured for years. But when he read the Word of God, he saw. He was saved. He was going to heaven. He was not going through purgatory. He did not have to prove it. He did not have to do any work. Jesus paid the price.
That was his great trumpet call: they were justified by faith in Jesus Christ. Wow. I am so glad he got delivered from that.
How about John Wesley? I do not know how many of you know the story. John started what they call the Methodist movement, but he actually grew up a very strict Anglican.
His mother taught him the Bible in French, Greek, German, and English. He knew the Bible. When he went to college, he joined the Oxford Club. They would get up at four in the morning and pray until seven. They gave away their clothes if they saw anybody in need on the streets. They tried to live a life of good works.
When he got out of school, he was ordained as a minister and went to Georgia. Anybody here come from Georgia? Ah, there we go. He went to the great colony of Georgia—this was before the Revolutionary War—to minister and evangelize the Indians.
He was very fervent about all these things, but he wrote in his journal while he was there, “I went to America to convert the Indians, but, oh, who shall convert me?”
Can you believe that? A man who knew that Jesus died for his sins, who knew the Scriptures backwards and forwards, and he did not have assurance of his salvation. “Oh, who is going to convert me?”
After his inglorious failure as a missionary, he returned home on a boat and met some Moravians. One Moravian said, “Are you a Christian?”
He said, “Well, the Scriptures say Jesus died for me.”
They said, “No, no, no. But do you know you are a Christian?”
He had to say, “I am not sure.”
They said, “You need the assurance of your salvation. You need not only to know in your mind that Scripture says Jesus died for you; you need assurance in your heart.”
So he went to a Moravian meeting when he got back to London, and you know his heart was strangely warmed. He called it a second work of grace.
Once he knew he was a Christian and knew his destiny, he set out and started preaching the gospel. What an amazing man of God.
Isn’t that interesting? These great servants of God struggled on this ground of grace because the enemy is always trying to steal it from us. These men had to learn these lessons.
Only by grace can we live from faith to faith. You remember the Scripture I read in Romans 1:17:
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.
What does it mean to live from faith to faith? By the grace of God, the Lord gives us something totally by grace. You know what that is? It is what I call faith eyes—eyes of the heart that can see the unseen.
When we read the Word of God, faith eyes see something behind the Word of God. By grace, we receive eyes. Remember how Paul prayed for the Ephesians: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.”
Faith eyes are what we need before we can serve the purpose of God in our generation.
What does that mean, faith eyes? You think I have gone squirrely here, so let me give you the example of David.
David had faith eyes. As a shepherd boy out in the field, he saw the Creator behind creation. One day, he saw the Shepherd behind the shepherd. You see what I am saying?
With faith eyes, by faith, he saw the Worthy One behind the worship of Israel. He saw something. By faith he saw the Psalm behind the psalm. By faith he saw mercy behind the law.
With faith eyes, he saw Aslan behind the lion that he slew, if I could put it that way. Only young people know what I mean.
He saw the giant God behind the giant Goliath. You see, faith eyes see something in the unseen—something in this world, but something beyond this world. He saw the Rock behind the rock in which he took refuge.
He saw, behind man, a purpose for the Son of Man. He saw the anointing upon a king, even when the anointing was on King Saul. When all his soldiers wanted him to kill Saul, and when he had those two opportunities, David would not do it. Why? He saw an anointing over a king.
Faith eyes see. As David grew, he came to the place where he saw the throne over the ark. When he had to inquire regarding warfare or something, what did he do? He went before the ark because he saw God’s throne over the ark and inquired of the Lord.
He saw that, in the dwelling place—even the tent in which was the ark—God was dwelling there. He said, “I have one desire: to dwell there with God.” He felt God in the dwelling place of God.
Faith eyes—wonderful faith eyes. Faith eyes connect us to the living God and bring us, step by step, from faith to faith, closer to God’s eternal purpose.
Dear brothers and sisters, I pray that you might have faith eyes. My brother said, “A seeking, a seeking after.” If you are not seeking, you will not have faith eyes. You will simply read Scripture and stumble over the outward words, never taking faith eyes and looking deeper.
You will never find the eternal purpose of God without faith eyes. Never. It is hidden except to faith.
Now I want us to see that grace leads us, through these faith eyes, more deeply into the eternal purpose of God. Turn to Romans 5. In Romans 5, Paul tells the Christians in Rome that they are standing in the grace room.
Romans 5:1-2 says:
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.
This grace room in which we stand—we gained access there with faith eyes. In this grace room, we look above us and realize we are at a banqueting table, and His banner over us is love. He has justified us. We have peace with God. We have forgiveness of sins. We have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, by grace, totally free.
We see these things with faith eyes as we stand in the grace room. There is no more wonderful place, it seems, than that grace room: forgiveness of sin, the Father who loves us, and others who are saved, all there in the grace room.
Jesus has set hors d’oeuvres of His kingdom all over the place for us to freely partake. As newborn babes, we take the milk of the Word—grace milk. The more we take grace milk, it starts to make us hungry for something.
Going from faith to faith brings us to glory to glory.
One day, while we are standing there enjoying the grace of God, we look through the window of hope. We had not noticed it before; we were too busy chomping down on the hors d’oeuvres. We look through the window of hope, and there is a glory room.
“We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We are not in the glory room yet, but look inside. In the grace room, there are just hors d’oeuvres; the feast is in the glory.
Drinking the milk of faith has made us hungry to eat the glory meat. As we go from faith to faith, faith leads us to something: seeing the glory of God.
How do we see the glory of God? Now we have faith eyes. John puts it this way in John 1:14:
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.
One day, you see Jesus no longer merely as Savior, friend, Lord, or Shepherd. You see the Lord of glory. You see the Jesus of glory. “We beheld His glory”—and that is the life changer.
From faith, and faith eyes, by the grace of God, suddenly we see Jesus Christ and realize that He is much greater than we ever thought He possibly was.
The glory of Jesus. If we want to know the eternal purpose of God, we have to see the glory of Jesus.
Listen: you cannot see the eternal purpose of God with the naked eyes of the mind. You have to see it by the faith eyes of the heart.
You cannot see the glory with the natural mind, because the glory of God is the end of His eternal purpose. His eternal purpose is glory. That is the end.
How can you see glory with the naked mind, on the tablet of the mind? No. The Spirit of God projects into your heart the glory of Jesus, and you see the glory of Jesus in your heart. The Holy Spirit writes Christ into your heart.
It is the Christ of glory. It is the Christ you have not seen before. If you are looking forward to seeing His eternal purpose, it starts when you see Him—not just Him as Master, but Him as the central One, Him as the Alpha and Omega, in His glory, much larger than you ever thought.
How do we know if we have seen the glory of God with faith eyes? Some of you are teenagers; some of you have been Christians for quite a while. Maybe you ask that kind of question: “Have I seen the glory of Jesus?” We certainly sing a lot about it.
I am going to give you two simple effects that seeing the glory of Jesus has upon us. By these, you know whether you have seen the glory enough.
When you see the glory of God—not in your mind, but in your heart—it is a revelation to your heart which then becomes understandable to your mind. But it starts in your heart.
That projection of the glory of Jesus by the Holy Spirit in your heart does two things. First, it utterly captivates us.
Glory captivates. Glory is greater than gold or silver. When you see the Christ of glory, you are captivated by that glory. Faith eyes see that it is a capturing glory, and it is a capturing glory that captures the heart.
The Holy Spirit is responsible to bring us into that fullness, to show us all that there is about Christ—Christ all in all—because that is our basis of serving.
We cannot serve the purpose of God in this generation unless we have seen the Christ of glory. It is not a small matter. It is a glorious thing. It is something tremendous, beyond all description.
Only glory can be seen and captured in the heart. Do you want to see the eternal purpose of God? What is your heart like tonight? That is the only place you will see the Lord of glory. It is the only place where you begin to understand the mystery of God’s eternal purpose.
By the eyes of faith, we see the glory of the Lord within our hearts and outwardly. When you look at those who have served the purpose of God in their generations, you have to admit something: all of them were serving out of a captured love.
It was not merely for motivation, status, accomplishment, or pride. They did it because they loved the Lord more than life.
Think of Paul’s testimony in Philippians. There he is in jail, and he is still pursuing the Lord. You cannot back him down. He is buoyant with joy because he is captured by the Lord of glory, and he is pressing on to know more about his precious Lord.
What about David? What was his motivation? He had a heart for the Lord, captured by glory. What about John Calvin, J. N. Darby, and Watchman Nee? Were they serving for money, prowess, or pride? There was love that caused them to serve.
Whether they were rejected, whether they were fruitful, whether they went through difficult times—it was love. They were captured. They had seen the glory.
If you have seen the glory of God, you realize that every human being you have ever met may be a nice person, but they do not hold a candle to the Lord Jesus. He is the greatest person you will ever meet in your lifetime. When you see Him in His glory, it captures the heart.
This is true for the church as well. That is why first love is the absolute essential of a church serving the purpose of God. Serving the purpose of God is a heart matter.
If we do not have first love, we may be busy serving, but it is not what the Lord wants. He is not trying to capture dutiful servants. He is trying to capture a bride. There has to be a real dimension of love in it.
That is the first thing that happens when you see glory: it is a capturing glory. When you see it, you cannot go back. “Jesus, Lord, I am captured by Your beauty.” Do you just sing that, or have you seen it? Such a difference.
The second strange thing that happens when we see glory is that we sink in shame. We are humbled when we see glory.
When Isaiah saw the glory of God, he said, “Woe is me, for I am undone.” When John, in Revelation, saw the glory of Jesus, he fell down like a dead man. When Paul, a notorious persecutor, saw the glory of God, he saw he was nothing and worse than nothing—the chief of sinners.
When you see the glory of God, you see who you are. Nobody has to tell you that you are a sinner. You know it perfectly well.
Paul was such a notorious sinner that when he saw the glory of Jesus on the road to Damascus, he saw who he was and fell down on the ground. He knew that for the rest of his life, humbled by the glory.
Many of us were saved as young people. We were eight years old, ten years old, and we got saved. We did some little sin. Now, a sin is a sin. We confessed that sin and asked Jesus to save us, and He saved us.
But I think some of us are not really convinced what bad sinners we are—how independent we are, how much we fight against the will of God in our lives. We are not really convinced. We actually think we are pretty good.
You remember our dear Brother Stephen, when he testifies of his own life. He says, “I was such a good Methodist, I did not need to be saved.” Then he saw the glory of God, and he saw his sin.
When you see glory, you see who you are. You do not have to fake it. You do not have to pretend that you are humble anymore. If you are seeing His glory, you know who you are. You are nothing and less than nothing. Why would He even care for you?
Glory has that humbling effect. It brings us into the deep humility you see in all men who have truly seen the glory of God.
This glory works in a strange combination with grace. Why? Because glory humbles us to zero, and grace enables us to act by faith and press into Him.
Glory humbles; grace gives us access. Isn’t that strange?
You can tell when grace and glory are really there. If somebody is proud and serving God—glad that they are serving God, convinced they are the best Sunday-school teacher teaching fourth graders that there ever has been, fighting the other teachers because they are the best teacher—you know what? They have not seen the glory.
If they have seen the glory, they will say to their assistant teacher, “Please take over.”
On the other hand, if somebody says, “Oh no, no, no. I am nothing. I could not possibly serve God in His purpose. I have nothing,” then you have not seen grace.
Think about David, since David is the man we are considering as one who served the purpose of God. What happened when Nathan went back to him and said, “David, the Lord says you cannot build His house, but He is going to build your house”?
David saw the glory of God and went in before the Lord, before the ark. Do you know what he said?
“Who am I, Lord? I am nothing. I am a shepherd. I am from a little family—nothing. There is no reason for You to do anything like this. But now You have said You are going to make my son sit on the throne forever. Lord, this is too glorious for me.”
“I just say, ‘Why me, Lord?’ I do not understand it. Yet by Your mercies, I say, ‘Do according to Your will.’ I accept it. I embrace it. I say, ‘Do it, Lord, even as You promised.’”
Glory and grace have to work together. Do not tell me you are unworthy to serve God—you do not know grace. Do not say, “I am too good to serve God,” because you have not seen glory. They work hand in hand in bringing us to the purpose of God.
Let us look at 1 Corinthians 15. I like the way Paul says this. In 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, he is talking about his ministry and what the Lord has told him to do.
For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.
Do you see the four mentions of grace in these two verses?
Paul had been trained by the grace and glory of God. He recognized that it was all grace from start to finish: grace in his apostolic ministry, grace in his stewardship of the mystery, grace from start to finish.
True grace, leading to glory, humbles us and enables us to serve. Grace gives faith eyes to serve the purpose of God, and glory captures the heart.
Now let us come to the last section for tonight. By grace, we have been given faith eyes. By grace, we have looked into the glory room and seen the glory of Jesus Christ in our hearts. As a result of that, we come to Romans 12.
Romans 12:1-2 says:
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
The grace of God brings us to the place where we realize how rich His mercy and grace are to us. Paul says, “I beseech you by those mercies.” By the grace that you receive, how are you going to respond to that?
Have you been captured by His grace? Have you been captured by His mercy? What is the response? Consecration.
How do we know somebody who has truly progressed in grace? They have seen Christ. They love Christ. They consecrate themselves to serve Christ out of love: “to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”
How wonderful. A heart captured by Christ consecrates itself to the Lord.
Something happens in that consecration that takes us yet another step deeper. From that heart response, the will is yielded.
We cannot serve the purpose or the will of God without His will becoming our will. We yield our will to God’s will in the eternal purpose of God.
In Acts 13:22, as Paul is preaching his sermon, he says this of David:
I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who will do all My will.
You see, the love in the heart—the being captured in the heart—has to work itself out by grace in yielding our will to do God’s will.
The very center of the Lord’s Prayer is: “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
We yield our will to His will in this consecration. In this consecration, our heart is united with our will.
When that happens, as we continue to read in Romans 12, we see that He renews our mind. As we do the will of God, we prove what the will of God is—that which is good, acceptable, and perfect.
Now we are serving by the will of God. We are proving what the will of God is. We are proving that it is a good will, a perfect will, and an acceptable will—but only when we are consecrated and renewed in life.
Further, in Romans 12:3, we see that the Holy Spirit unwraps that which Satan has wrapped around us. You recall this morning how Stephen said that Lucifer was serving God and then looked into himself. In his pride, he thought he needed something more, even to be like God.
Notice what Romans 12:3 says:
Through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think.
Because you have seen the glory of God, how can you think too highly of yourself? Where is the pride?
Yet at the same time, we are “to think so as to have sound judgment.” On the other extreme, some people say, “No, I am worthless. I am no good.” Oh no, no, no. Do not say that. You are looking into yourself.
The Holy Spirit is undoing all that inward thought—“Oh, how great I am,” or, “Oh, how terrible I am.” By the renewing of your mind, you gain a sound judgment of who you are: a member of the body of Christ.
The Lord’s great purpose is that He is summing all things up in Christ. We come to the place, as children of God, by the grace of God, that we commit ourselves in consecration. He takes our wills, and we begin serving in this great summing up called the body of Christ.
The body of Christ is very key to this eternal purpose. When we find ourselves consecrated, we find suddenly that we are members of the body of Christ.
Look what Paul says: we all have grace, but it expresses itself differently in each member. We all have faith, but each has a different measure.
You take grace, and by faith you exercise this grace, and it becomes a gift. From grace, through faith, to a gift.
Grace is the Greek word charis, and gift is the Greek word charisma. Charisma means grace made tangible.
You take that grace and you are in the body of Christ. How do you know your ministry in the body of Christ? “Oh, I am an apostle.” “Oh, I am a healer.” How do you know all that? You do not.
But in the body of Christ, you are there with brothers and sisters, and some need comes up. Someone is sick, and you pray for them to be healed. Well, that is how you find out.
Most gifts that many people are searching for are really discovered only in body life. As you give yourself to the Lord, and as a member of the body you are merciful, or you prophesy, or you minister in whatever way, it is by the grace of God.
As you do it, the Holy Spirit begins to produce a gift in you as you exercise faith. Here is grace: do not get backed up with grace. Grace is there to serve the will of God.
We open ourselves and begin to serve in the body of Christ. The eyes of the heart see the glory of the Lord. The heart is captured, and we consecrate ourselves. As we consecrate ourselves, He releases more grace and faith to serve the purpose of God in the body of Christ.
Then we begin to serve according to the will of God.
Even in these early stages, our faith eyes still have to be developed. We still have a lot more to see.
When we read Ephesians, these wonderful verses are the distillation of a lifetime with the Lord Jesus by the Apostle Paul. He did not see all these things at once. That vision, that glory, and that breadth of God’s eternal purpose continued to increase.
It is not something you can simply say, “I want to know it. Write it down so I can memorize it, and then I will have it on the tablet of my mind.” No. It has to be written in your heart. It has to be seen with eyes of faith.
As it is walked out, you see more and you see more.
Here is the last thing I will say. From the moment you are saved by the grace of God, you are already serving the eternal purpose of God. Why is that?
Ephesians 2:7 tells us very clearly. After you have been saved by faith, raised up with Christ, and seated with Him in the heavenly places, it says:
So that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
As soon as you are saved by grace, and He has snatched you out of this world, and you are being summed up in Christ, you are already a trophy in eternity of God’s kindness and God’s grace.
Even when you are newly saved, still making a lot of mistakes, the angels look down and say, “Look what grace has done. Look at that trophy down there of God’s grace through Jesus Christ.”
In the ages to come, for millions of years, every time the angels, the living beings, the seraphim, or someone else looks at a Christian, they will say, “Wow, what a trophy of God’s love. What a trophy of grace.”
We are already serving God’s eternal purpose if we live in the fullness of grace.
My final exhortation is this: you have been saved by the grace of God. Live fully in the grace of God.
Embrace the grace of God. Live in that grace room. Taste all those appetizers of God’s grace. Enjoy the milk of the Word. As you look in that Word with faith eyes, you will see something more.
Love the Lord Jesus. As Peter calls it, this is living faith:
Though you have not seen Him, you love Him.
What does that mean? Your faith eyes have seen Him, and you love Him.
Live in the grace of God. Do not let the enemy steal the grace of God from you. Do not feel as though you are on probation, that you may be rejected, that you have to serve or He will not like you, or any such thing.
Let grace overflow in consecration. He is waiting for us to join in His wonderful eternal purpose.
Do you see His eternal purpose? It is seen in the heart. Do you have faith eyes to see? It starts when you see the glory of Jesus Christ, and then it moves from there.
I hope this helps the young people a little, because I want you to be pursuers. If you seek the Lord, He will give you faith eyes. They are an anatomical provision for everybody born again.
He who is born again can see the kingdom of God. There are faith eyes. Use them.
This is where Brother Stephen often talks about doing spiritual exercise. We are talking about seeing with our spirit—faith eyes—not just seeing outwardly.
May the Lord help us. If we are going to serve His purpose, we have to start seeing things above. We have to start seeing things in the Word. We have to start serving God with our will laid down in the body of Christ.
May the Lord help us. Let us pray.
We have no idea how long we will be living on this earth until the fullness of the times comes and all that is presently hidden is fully revealed. But we want to be those who have been educated by the Holy Spirit to see and to know those glorious things that You are and that You are doing, and to join with the full force of faith into what You are doing.
We know it is all by grace, from grace unto grace, and only You will get the glory. Lord, we want to live in the full abundance of Your grace—not halfway Christians, not sort of in but worried about it.
Make us those who are saved, those who are receiving, those who are growing, those who are seeing, those who are consecrating, those who are serving the will of God.
Oh, bring us to this place, we pray, Lord, that we might be servants of Yours. For Jesus’ sake we pray. Amen.