We praise God that we can gather with a single purpose in our hearts. We want the Lord Jesus glorified. And we know we have been drawn together not only by grace, but with purpose.
We want to seek and find our place in serving the purpose of God in what could very well be the last generation before His return.
With that in mind, we want to read some Scriptures that focus on this matter of eternal purpose. I would turn us first to Ephesians 1.
In Ephesians 1, we see grace from beginning to end: grace in our choosing, grace in our forgiveness, grace in our salvation. But in the midst of all that grace, there is a purpose for it.
The Lord saves us because He loves us. But, having saved us, He has a much, much greater plan than we could immediately understand when we first get saved. Paul writes to these Ephesians, who have known faith and love, wanting them to understand that there is an overriding purpose in their lives into which the Lord is drawing them.
In Ephesians 1:9-10, we see this condensed in a tremendous few words:
He made known to us the mystery of His will,
according to His kind intention which He purposed in Himself,
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.
Then, as our brother mentioned this morning, Paul prays in light of this tremendous opportunity. In Ephesians 1:17-19, Paul says:
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.
Let us turn also to Galatians 1 and read part of Paul’s testimony concerning the way of the Lord in his life. Beginning in Galatians 1:15:
But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb
and called me through His grace,
was pleased to reveal His Son in me
so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles,
I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood;
nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me;
but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.
Then, three years later, Paul went to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas. Afterward, he went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. Then, after an interval of fourteen years, he went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. He says that it was because of a revelation that he went up, and he submitted to them the gospel which he preached among the Gentiles.
Finally, Romans 5:1-5:
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.And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations,
knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;
and perseverance, proven character;
and proven character, hope;
and hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Lord, we are so thankful for these songs of victory and celebration that we sing. We recognize that sometimes, while we are singing those songs, we almost can see You there upon the throne—high and lifted up, reigning over all.
We would ask that tonight, in a very practical way, You would reign over us as we are together. We pray that the Holy Spirit may be present in the lives of Your people and that He might speak what You want to say to the churches in these days.
We come to You, Lord. We know that the times are short, and things are going on that are strong and powerful against the work of God. But we know that we are standing in a work that cannot be defeated, because Jesus already won the victory at Calvary.
Help us tonight to stand in this victory as we share together these wonderful matters of Your purpose. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Last time, we talked about the surrounding atmosphere of grace that brought us to the place where we were first introduced to God’s great eternal purpose.
We see in Ephesians 1:10 something simply stated, and we will leave it alone for the moment. It says that God’s plan is to head up and sum up everything into Christ—things in heaven and things on earth.
We see in that heading up that the church has a very vital part, as those first headed up. At the end of the chapter, Paul says that Christ was made head over all things to the church, which is His body.
Now that we have been saved, there is this magnetic force pulling our lives from earth toward His purpose. We find ourselves, by that magnetic pull, somewhere between earth and heaven.
Because of grace, we can be upon this earth and yet be seated with Christ in the heavenly places. There is a new reality that is part of our life, and it is called our spirit, which has been brought alive by the grace of God.
This spirit is the innermost part of our being and is not fully attached to earth. It has its purpose in heaven with Jesus. We have been connected with Jesus and with heavenly things by this spirit that dwells within us.
So we live on earth, but we sense heavenly encounters.
When we come to this matter of discovering the mystery of His eternal purpose, we have to realize that the way the Lord teaches us and makes us wise is that first He must write something upon our hearts. That is revelation.
He reveals with the eyes of our heart, like a projection onto a little screen. Back in the old days, if we wanted to show something, we had to put up one of those screens. Now there is a little screen that has been put up in your heart.
The Holy Spirit is the projector. I do not even know if you know what that is, but back in the old days we had those things that went around, and they had film. You were a big guy in high school if you were the audiovisual guy, because you came into the room and set up the movie for the teacher.
Now the Holy Spirit wants to show you something. He is the projector, and He wants to shine something into your spirit about who Christ really is.
The process has already begun. An amazing thing happened when we got saved: we were totally self-centered. But now that we are saved, praise God, by the grace of God we are only partially self-centered.
Something dawned on us: there was One greater than ourselves who loved us, rescued us, and saved us. So we say with our lips, at least, “Oh, He is the center of my life.”
I guess. But there are some problems we are going to have to deal with as we talk about it tonight. That is good, because we have been released from total self-centeredness, and we are on our way.
The Holy Spirit, as we know from John 16, has a specific purpose. What is that? To overload you with Jesus. He wants to reveal everything about Jesus.
One of the things we have to see, though it stretches our mind, is that Jesus is so, so much bigger and more glorious than we originally thought. That takes revelation to see. It is not something that the natural mind can abstractly see. The Holy Spirit shines something into our heart.
That shining is such that we can call it a revelation. You can almost say, “Oh, I have seen the glory of Jesus.” Then someone says, “Okay, describe it to me,” and you say, “Oh, well, I cannot exactly.”
That does not mean you have not seen something. But until that revelation becomes intelligible to the mind, there is a little gap where you see but cannot explain.
Eventually, the Holy Spirit brings us to the place where we understand in our mind what happened in our spirit. Praise God for that.
I posed the question that Lance asked me forty years ago: “If you could, in one sentence, say what God’s eternal purpose is, what would you say?”
Forty years ago, I just went, “Uh.” But now it is intelligible to me, and I can answer it in a sentence. Many of you can too.
Here is the problem: once it gets upstairs here, we can shove it up into the attic, and our spirit closes back down. Now we know something, but we do not see it anymore. It becomes a doctrine, a truth—God’s eternal purpose.
But if you lose the spiritual reality inside, something has to be recovered. Otherwise, it is just knowledge.
If we walk in that truth by experience, that truth becomes a reality that is not only intelligible to our minds, but it continues to thrill us. The glorious revelation of Jesus Christ expands exponentially beyond what any one of our spirits is able to grasp.
To the degree that you obey the revelation you have seen, just to that degree the Holy Spirit has more to cram into you in the next class you are in, in the school of Christ.
Thank God it all begins by the grace of God, and it is all going to end by the grace of God. He saved us. He is going to get us to the place He wants us. What a wonderful, thrilling thing this is—all God’s grace.
Grace gave us faith and eyes to see, and now we see the glory of Christ. We read Paul’s testimony in Galatians 1. In Galatians 1:15-16, he says:
But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb
and called me through His grace,
was pleased to reveal His Son in me
so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles.
Paul knew nothing about being set apart from his mother’s womb at the time. He first woke up to his salvation on the road to Damascus. But God was pleased to reveal His Son in Paul—not merely to Paul’s mind.
Something was revealed in here, so that Paul could preach what he had seen. It was wonderful revelation of Jesus.
On the road to Damascus, Paul saw Shekinah glory. He heard the Lord speak. He fell down. But that was only the beginning.
God trusted Paul as a steward of His mysteries. What was the mystery of God? Colossians 2 tells us that Christ is the mystery of God. What was the mystery of Christ? “I will build My church.” What is the mystery of the church? It is a bride. What is the mystery of the Christian life? Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Paul stewarded all of those mysteries. Wherever you are in your Christian life, Paul says, “Oh, you are at that point? Let me tell you something: it is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
You have been crucified with Christ, but you live—yet not you, but Christ lives in you. That is what you need to see right now.
Paul could bring out these things because they began in a revelation of Christ and were made intelligible to his mind through the process of the Holy Spirit’s working in his life. This wonderful process is grace.
We got to the place last night where, in Romans 12, by the grace of God, we began to serve God’s eternal purpose by being members of the body of Christ and serving by the grace of God in that body.
When we talk about grace, grace has to be one of the most positive words Christians use. It is always totally positive. It is the very ground of our Christian life.
But grace has fuller dimensions that we are a little more hesitant to embrace.
When Paul went through his time with the stake in his side, the Lord had to teach him a deeper dimension of grace than he had understood before. The Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for you, Paul. Were you looking for something else?”
If grace is all positive, why did Paul have to learn a new lesson about how much deeper grace was than he imagined?
There are two phrases that really, really bother me. One is, “It’s all good.” People are quoting Romans 8:28, whether they know it or not. No matter what happens, they say, “It’s good. It’s good.”
Then Christians have adopted a phrase that I really do not like because of what they mean by it: “It’s all grace.”
Some say, “Don’t judge me. It’s all grace.” You see, grace is being stolen away by the devil.
But grace has deeper and greater dimensions in our lives, and the Lord wants to reveal this grace. He does this by taking us, as we read in Romans 5, from grace to glory.
How comprehensive is grace? His grace loves you so much that He is going to take you from grace to glory. And when I say He is, sometimes it is against your permission.
With all of your strugglings, He loves you so much that He is not going to let you win the grace war. He is going to overwhelm you with grace and say, “Oh, you are going through a tough time? My grace is sufficient for you.”
That takes on a little deeper tone, does it not? We are now on the way, in His eternal purpose, from grace to glory.
Romans 8:30 says:
And these whom He predestined, He also called;
and these whom He called, He also justified;
and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
Grace to glory—it is in God’s eternal plan.
In Romans 8:30, Paul lets us peek back into eternity past. God predestined us. I did not know that. Did you know that when you were five years old?
But, looking back into eternity past, Paul says God predestined us, and then brought this glorious salvation to us when He called us and justified us. That is the present.
Suddenly, He called you to salvation. You did not know you were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, but you found out one day when Jesus was knocking on your door and you let Him in. You were called. You were justified.
Then Paul jumps right over to those whom He justified, He glorified. There you are: already glorified in eternity future. You have gone from grace to glory.
How He is going to get us there, I do not know. But there is another mystery in there: the present perfecting process that gets us from grace to glory.
From the scene of eternity, sanctification is but a moment, just a twinkling of an eye. But on earth, it seems like a lifelong experience.
Brothers and sisters, we cannot come into sons of glory unless the present work of the Holy Spirit transforms us from glory to glory.
As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
But we all, with unveiled face,
beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image
from glory to glory,
just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
In the context, that mirror is the Word of God. Paul is talking about the new covenant ministry, which is a ministry of the Spirit, where the Spirit writes upon our hearts.
As we look in that mirror, the Word of God, we see the glory of the Lord. Every time you see the glory of the Lord there, you are transformed a little more from glory to glory.
You have been saved, and then Jesus says, “Spirit of God, bring them to glory. Whatever You have to do, get them from grace to glory.” That is what we are experiencing at the present time.
Before we get into that process, I want to underscore something Lucio said so wonderfully this morning. This is it: it is absolutely impossible to serve the purpose of God in our generation unless you are full and baptized in the Holy Spirit.
I make no apologies for the fact that every one of us needs a greater, deeper experience of the Holy Spirit than we have experienced so far.
Could you possibly imagine the apostles going out and serving the purpose of God without the power of the Holy Spirit clothing them and sending them out?
Jesus said, “You wait until you are clothed with power,” because you need it to serve the purpose of God.
Some of our Christianity is monkey business. We are fooling around. But serving God’s purpose is life and death, and it is not fooling around at all.
I remember in 1971 having the privilege of being out on the streets of Manhattan with a famous evangelist. He held street meetings right outside the Broadway theaters. When the shows were over, he started holding gospel meetings.
One night he could not make it, and his assistant was preaching. In the middle of the preaching, a woman stood up with the power of hell—a demonic woman—and stopped the preacher from preaching. She contradicted him, spoke louder than he could speak with a bullhorn, and had an infernal power.
Finally, the brother said, “Let’s just get down and pray.”
As I drove home to Long Island, the Lord said to me in my heart, “In New York City, you cannot mess around. You cannot go out there and play church, play witnessing, and act like it is just a simple little thing.”
If we do not have the power of the Holy Spirit, the enemy will win. Jesus would never send His disciples out until they had been endued with power. That word in Greek simply means clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Could the early church have served in the unity of the Spirit, in one accord, if they had not been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ?
They knew they were functioning members, one of another. Where one was weak, another was strong. They were a complementing ministry.
The early pictures in Acts show the body of Christ full of grace. Anybody who had need was taken care of. Prayers were answered. Things were done because they were in one accord. They knew the Holy Spirit had baptized them into the body of Christ.
For six years after I got saved, I was a pastor—the Lone Ranger. I was like the cowboy in America who had a horse named Silver. He would come into town, shoot out the bad guys, and, just when you wanted to thank him, ride out of town.
That was me. I was a lone preacher going from place to place and preaching away. But I was not a functioning member of the body of Christ.
There are many Christians who are totally independent. They have no idea that they are connected. Still, they weep when others weep. They sense weakness because they are connected to the body of Christ, but they do not understand it.
Oh, how we need to be baptized into the body of Christ. You cannot live alone anymore. There is a calling in which you must be involved in fellowship.
Do not forsake the fellowship of the saints together. It is life and death. In the last days, the enemy will chew you up if he can get you out on your own.
Could the early church have moved as they moved, said what they said, and been led as they were led unless they knew the indwelling Holy Spirit speaking a word to them, revealing Christ to them, and telling them where to go?
They depended not only on the wind of the Holy Spirit—the word pneuma means wind or breath—that blew them out of Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. Their sails were filled with the wind of the Holy Spirit.
But they also had the breath of the Holy Spirit saying, “Go here. Go there.” Philip, get into the desert, and I will tell you what is going to happen. There he met the Ethiopian eunuch.
What would have happened if they did not have that still, small voice—the indwelling Holy Spirit showing them the things of Christ as they went along?
Could these early Christians have attained to being holy saints without having been baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire?
When John said that Jesus would baptize in the Holy Spirit and fire, that particular aspect of the Holy Spirit’s work was sanctification. The Holy Spirit comes in fire to purge, cleanse, and make holy.
It is just as much the Spirit’s job as filling us with power, indwelling us, or incorporating us into the body of Christ. These things all go together.
We ought to be a Spirit-led people. As our brother Stephen said yesterday morning, you must follow the Holy Spirit. That is the only way through to serve the purpose of God in this generation.
In the last days, whatever lies ahead for us, the enemy has some deep, dark, and powerful tricks up his sleeve. We need every bit of the power of the Holy Spirit in order to be overcomers and victorious in these last days.
We must live under the precious blood of Jesus as our great defense. But if we do not have the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and if we do not have the Spirit giving us that power, then we will not come into serving His full purpose.
Remember what the Bible says:
Greater is He that is in you
than he that is in the world.
This precious Spirit was given to us by grace. We were saved, and then, as Paul says in Ephesians 1, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit—all by grace.
You cannot work up the Holy Spirit. Oh, how many times I have wanted to quit, and the Holy Spirit spoke a word that kept me alive.
I remember when my son was twenty years old and he died. I wanted to give it all in. The Holy Spirit started playing tricks on me, because in my spirit He would sing songs. I was so depressed, and a song would come up: “My glory and the lifter of my head,” while I was weeping and mourning.
The Spirit would not let me lie down and die.
If we do not have the Holy Spirit, we will not make it through. We need every bit of His preciousness. It has all been given to us by grace.
Tonight, I want to talk about how we get from grace to glory. You can put it in other ways:
This is the preparatory process that enables us to serve the purpose of God.
You may ask, “If we are being prepared by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and by the Father’s discipline, how is this serving the purpose of God? Should it not be that after we are prepared, then we serve the purpose of God?”
It is a good question. But as soon as you were saved, you were already sanctified. You are called saints, holy ones. By the finished work of Calvary, you are already saints.
Now, in the present process, the Holy Spirit is making good on your position. He is going to work holiness into our lives day by day by a great inward work that He is doing.
The Father’s discipline is part of the eternal purpose. Why? Because as our Father disciplines us, the side effect is that we get to know the Father. That is part of the eternal plan.
When we speak of the Father’s discipline, we are talking about Hebrews 12, where it says not to faint under discipline but to realize that your Father disciplines you because you are a son.
The word translated “discipline” would be more profitable if we translated it more literally as child training.
Picture Joseph in the carpenter’s shop, with Jesus being trained by His father how to be a carpenter.
We get the idea that the Father’s discipline means the Father always says, as some of us dumb fathers do, “No, do not do that. No, no, no. That is wrong.”
Could you imagine Jesus in Joseph’s shop? Jesus takes up something, and Joseph says, “No, no. Let me do it. Horrible.” Jesus takes a little plane, and Joseph says, “No, no, you are cutting too deep.”
If you do not teach your child how to do it right, you have not been raising up a child in a father’s discipline. You have just been telling them no and making them feel bad.
But if Joseph trained Jesus rightly, and I believe he did as a holy man, Jesus not only learned how to be a carpenter, but He also learned Joseph.
As we are disciplined by our heavenly Father, we get to know the heavenly Father. When He is crossed, after a while He does not have to say anything. It is just that look—all you need.
This is part of God’s purpose: that we would know Him.
The sanctifying process is part of this whole summing up. With every degree you are separated from the world, and with every degree your character expresses holiness, you are being summed up and brought up into Jesus and this great purpose.
So, if you are in a present process of discipline, congratulations. You are involved in the eternal purpose that God has for His children.
Was David serving the purpose of God when he was just a young lad? When he was writing those little psalms out in the field, being a shepherd boy, spending hours probably slinging rocks—was he serving the purpose of God then?
Was he serving God’s purpose when he was Daddy’s errand boy and ran to the battle to bring his brothers some cheese?
We tend to think David served the purpose of God only when he became king, took Zion, brought in the ark, and prepared for the house. But was he serving God’s purpose when he was a little tyke doing all those other things?
The first thing any child of God should do is write psalms. Since you cannot, I know you are not as talented as David, but you can be a worshiper.
There is David under the stars, singing songs like, “Oh, God, I look at the universe. Wow.” God looks down, and David says, “There is my guy. He is already worshiping.”
Even as a little kid, David was already seeing things with faith eyes.
What about when David became anointed, became a warrior, and slew Goliath? Then he became a fugitive and hid in caves for seven years. Did that serve the purpose of God?
Those were years of character-building, years of patience, years of prayer, years of feeling weakness and finding God’s strength. They were years of hanging on to a promise—an anointing Samuel had put on his head seven years earlier that still had not come about.
Serving the purpose of God is a heart matter. David’s heart was toward the Lord through all those circumstances in his life.
When David became king, we see these things visibly. But the preparation was absolutely vital, was it not?
Even David’s failures became occasions for God’s discipline and mercy. When David sinned with Bathsheba and had Uriah killed, he paid the consequence. God took the child that was in Bathsheba’s womb. There was righteous judgment, and David knew God had done what was just.
But David had a heart for the Lord, and God works all things together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
God showed mercy. Bathsheba bore Solomon, who became the son chosen to build the house of God. God turned something terrible into something redemptive.
David also learned through the tragedy of Uzzah’s death when he attempted to bring the ark to Jerusalem in the wrong way. God had to deal with him because he did not understand the priesthood or the propriety of worship. You do not do it your way, David.
But when they finally brought up the ark in the right way and it was set in Zion, David was blessed in all that he did.
Then there was David’s census. Thousands died. David saw the death angel, bought the threshing floor, built an altar, and made atonement for his sin.
Yet even that was turned. That threshing floor became the place where the brazen altar would stand when the temple was built.
God’s mercy is like Old Testament grace.
David learned these lessons as he was disciplined by the Lord. Though he was a sinner, because of his perfect heart, God folded these things in and brought them into His purpose.
Is Romans 8:28 for everybody? Everybody claims it: “It’s all grace. It’s all good.”
No. How about this? For people who love the Lord, He folds everything into His purpose.
Are you following His purpose? You are going to make mistakes. You are going to be humiliated. You are going to be humbled. But God will fold even our mistakes into what He will do in His purpose—for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
When the mystery of God’s eternal purpose floods into your heart and you begin to make sense of it, strangely, sometimes it causes confusion.
When you see His way, it is so different from us. It contrasts completely with everything we previously thought. When He reveals something of Himself, it often causes confusion as He starts to deal with us.
We begin to say, “What is going on here?”
One of my favorite little books is one written by Oswald Chambers on Job. As Job went through his process of sonship and seeing God’s eternal purpose, the title of the book expresses it wonderfully: Baffled to Fight Better.
For thirty-eight chapters, Job asks, “Why? Why? Why?” Sometimes, if we are going to become fighters and serve His eternal purpose, the Lord has to baffle us first.
Paul gives plenty of testimony about his own bafflings. In Romans 7, he says:
That which I do, I know not.
You would hardly think Paul would ever say something like that. But he was saying, “I am so confused. I have things going on in me that I do not understand. I want to do good, and I do bad. I do not understand.”
Servants of God, in order to have revelation made understandable in our minds, sometimes have to go through a process of confusion.
Remember Habakkuk. He saw God allowing the Chaldeans to come in and take over Judah, and he said, “God, You are not doing the right thing. You are blessing the bad guys, and You are hurting the good guys. What are You doing?”
God’s ways are higher than our ways. Sometimes He says, in effect, “Go to your room.” Habakkuk went up on the watchtower, waiting to see what the Lord would say.
God said, “I am doing a whole new thing. I have to baffle you so you can fight better.”
If you are a Christian who is totally positive about grace—“I am saved by grace, and now I am going to experience prosperity by grace and blessings by grace”—you are going to get confused when you go bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, bump.
Nobody told you about that. But the Lord was going to put you through it anyway, so you are going to have to learn something.
Some people have a little bread-of-life box with a hundred promises in it. If you believe in “total grace,” every day you take out a promise. There are no conditions and no warnings—just promises. They left out the warnings.
You take out a promise and say, “Oh, God is going to bless me today. Praise God. God is going to bless me tomorrow. Praise God.”
Then people tell you that God will make you rich, especially if you give a thousand dollars.
We stopped at the Hampton Inn and saw seven Christian channels on local television. Sure enough, there was a man saying, “I know you are watching right now on television, and God told me to tell you: send me one thousand dollars.”
Then he said, “When you send one thousand dollars, God will open the storehouse and bless you. You are going to get rich.”
If you believe that getting saved by the grace of God means going up and up and up, you will be confused when the road goes through tribulation.
The Lord is so gracious that He often puts a hedge of grace around us when we first get saved. When I was twenty and had just been saved, I had five devotionals I read every morning. Every one of them touched me.
I would pray and get goosebumps on my arm. I would say, “God, fill me with the Holy Spirit,” and I would sense some kind of tingling. Oh, man, those were great devotionals. I told my wife, “Stay out of the room. I am having a devo.”
God is so good to us by grace. He spoils us in that way.
A man who really loves the Lord and knows the Lord’s grace, especially if he gets saved after twenty-five, wants to quit his job. He wants to quit his job so he can read the Bible all the time and just serve God. Why work in this lousy world?
I had been saved for a year when I was twenty years old. I was ministering at a church with a group of laymen who were testifying about how they had been saved.
After the service, an older man named Sam came to me and said, “Brother, I believe God is calling you to the ministry.”
I was majoring in business at the time, and I thought it was kind of a joke. I went to my father-in-law, a wise man, and said, “Sam is telling me God wants me in the ministry. What should I do?”
My father-in-law said, “Pray. Ask God.”
I went home to my five devotional books every morning. Whether it was Morning and Evening, My Utmost for His Highest, or whatever book it was, I opened it and it seemed to say, “You are called into ministry. I am separating you apart. I am sending you out.”
I brought the books and showed my father-in-law. I said, “Is this the Lord speaking to me?” He said, “Pray.”
I loved the Lord, and I said, “Okay, I am going to serve.” I graduated from seminary while I was still a senior in college. I was already a part-time pastor in a church. I went off to seminary and became a pastor while I was there.
After graduation, they made me a home missionary. Since this was down south, they sent you out to the heathens—and for them that meant New York.
They sent me back to my native territory. I oversaw four churches on Long Island. One had one hundred and fifty people, and the other three had perhaps ten or fifteen people each.
There were four million people on Long Island, so it was a drop in the bucket. But there I was preaching. I was filled with the Holy Spirit, I loved the Word of God, and everything went well for about a year and a half.
Then the Lord started dealing with me.
I loved Him, but I was so, so on the wrong track. I went through five years of dealing. It is different for everybody—completely different.
While I was in seminary, I had studied under some liberal professors. I believed enough of their liberal theology that I struggled with what I could believe in the Bible. Was it J-E-P-D? Was it redaction criticism or form criticism? Was it higher criticism or lower criticism?
The seminary had filled my head with a lot of gobbledygook. It seemed rational, and I did not know what was true and what was not true.
I remember getting down on my knees in my church office, which was in the basement, and saying, “I need to resign from this ministry because I just do not believe the Bible. I do not know what is true and what is not true.”
The Lord was so gracious. He started putting thoughts in my mind: “Do you know you were saved?”
I knew I was saved.
Then He said, “Do you love Me?”
I had to think, “Yes, Lord, I love You.”
Then the Lord said, “Preach what you believe, and I will give you more belief.”
The next Sunday, I got up and preached what I believed: the gospel of salvation. It was not long until I said, “Lord, I believe every word in this Book. If I do not understand it, I still believe it. I do not believe my professors. I believe this Word.”
That was a wonderful moment in my life, but it immediately got me into trouble.
I read something by Watchman Nee—perhaps The Normal Christian Church Life. It basically said, “Whatever is in the Bible, we should be doing. Whatever is not in the Bible, we should not be doing. And we should not compromise.”
That touched my heart. I said, “Lord, I do not want compromise.”
Then I looked around and saw this wasp’s nest called my church. I saw so much compromise. There were members who were not even born again, but they were on the register as members and had to be treated as such.
The Holy Spirit was saving and filling people, but my church did not believe in the Holy Spirit saving and filling people. I came to a crisis: was I going to compromise, or was I going to go along with this denominational scheme?
I went to the heads of the denomination in New York City and told them, “I believe this Bible speaks about the Holy Spirit doing powerful things.”
They said, “Well, we do not preach that.”
I said, “But it is in the Bible.”
They said, “Yes, but it is not our denomination.”
I quit. I resigned that ministry. I lost my annuity, my ministry, and my ordination. I went and lived in my mother and father’s house with my wife and three children for four years.
I went through a process of undoing things. I had a conflict with the denomination, but I also had a conflict with who I was. I knew I was not a pastor, yet I was called a pastor because that was all they called people.
Whether you were an evangelist, an apostle, or a father, you were a pastor because that was the one word they used. I knew who I was not, but I did not know who I was.
The deeper conflict that took four or five years to deal with was my flesh—my self-life. I had been doing everything my way. I knew how to minister out of myself, use my own gifts and personality, and build the church out of myself.
But I did not know how to build the church out of the Lord’s life.
I later went to North Carolina and became a pastor in a church there. I said, “This time I am going to do it the right way. We are going to build a church according to the New Testament pattern.”
But it was not born of God, nor was it in the unity of the Spirit. It was just something cobbled together according to an outward pattern I had in my head. I saw that it was not working.
At one point, I was substitute teaching school every day. That was much better—it was twenty-eight dollars a day.
Meanwhile, my wife and my three children were struggling. I was struggling. I felt in my bones that somehow I was a preacher, but I had no opportunity to preach because I could not preach in compromise. I did not see any way to go.
In Tennessee, in about 1975, Lance Lambert was speaking. I talked to him after a meeting and said, “Lance, how am I going to live? What am I supposed to do?”
Lance told me his favorite line: “The problem is not how to live. The problem is how to die.”
That killed me.
In other words, “I am dying here, and there is nothing to do but die. Go ahead and be a substitute schoolteacher the rest of your life if that is what it is.”
But Lance said, “When you learn how to die, the Lord will bring you back to life.”
I went through four or five years. It was miserable. Ask Julia—she had no good time during that period. The Lord had to undo things out of my life.
I was stuck and defeated. My soul and body were sick—physically sick. I felt abandoned. I remembered the verse that says the Lord tries the hearts and the reins. He was really getting after me.
I felt like Romans 7:18:
For I know that nothing good dwells in me,
that is, in my flesh;
for the willing is present in me,
but the doing of the good is not.
All of that is part of the process of getting us from grace to glory.
Back in Romans 5, we see that we have been given access by faith into this grace in which we stand. Oh, the grace of Jesus. One thing I know: Jesus loved me, and I know He forgave my sins.
We can live in that grace room. He can pour out His love. We can taste and see that the Lord is good. We can find peace. It is always there in the grace room.
For the rest of our lives, we can live in the grace room and eat those hors d’oeuvres of the kingdom of heaven.
But then there comes that day when, with faith eyes, we look through the window of hope into the glory room. The glory room.
We had a brother in North Carolina, a regular old Baptist member like the rest of the folks. Every once in a while, something would get exciting to him. Maybe he had a revelation, because about once a month, in the middle of the preacher’s preaching, he would yell, “Glory!”
It shocked everybody. You could hear heads snapping back, including people who had been asleep.
He would say, “Glory!” because he saw something in his heart, something of the glory of God. He seemed like such a crazy man, but he sure seemed to be enjoying the Lord.
The rest of those Baptists were baptized in lemon juice—not him.
You have been to the grace room, have you not? Have you looked into the glory room and seen what lies ahead? Have you seen the glory of Jesus and how wonderful He is? Have you fallen in love with Jesus?
Once you look through that window, I am sorry—you are spoiled. Grace is great, but you have to head to glory. That is our destination.
Romans 5 says that we not only stand in the grace room, but we exult in the hope of the glory of God.
But now we have to hear the rest of the story. I do not know how many are old enough to remember Paul Harvey. He would tell a story, break for an advertisement, and then say, “Now, the rest of the story.”
How do you get from the grace room to the glory room, brothers and sisters? Through the hallway of tribulation.
Maybe you did not want to hear that, but that is how you get there. You are in the grace room, you look into the glory room, and you exult in the glory of God. But then Romans 5:3 says:
And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations,
knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;
and perseverance, proven character;
and proven character, hope;
and hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
I do not care how deep the hallway is or how dark the tunnel of tribulation may be. It is your way from grace to glory, and the Holy Spirit will give you a heart of rejoicing all the way through.
That is how we grow up.
I have come to bring you the bad news. I gave you the good news of grace; this is the bad news of grace. Did I not tell you God was going to bring you from here to there? He loves you so much.
Everyone with a heart to serve God’s purpose will be dealt with uniquely, from grace to glory.
What kind of king would David have been if he had not gone through the hallway of tribulation? If he had not spent those seven years wondering whether God was still with him, whether he ever had an anointing in the first place, whether he was really supposed to be king, or whether he was just a little shepherd kid?
He was pursued by Saul. He hid and hid and hid. He had his family and was trying to provide, moving from place to place. What a time.
David was gifted by grace. He was a singer and a songwriter. He was gifted with a sling, able to slay Goliath. He could love Jonathan.
But for seven years he was tested in tribulation: a fugitive pursued by a king, separated from beloved Jonathan, living in caves, and passing through times of despair.
One of the last cave psalms David wrote, just before the matter with Saul was over, was Psalm 57. There David finally said:
My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast.
When you go through trials, your heart starts to question and wonder. But if you hang in there, trust in the Lord, and wait during that excruciating period, you come to the place where you say, “My heart is steadfast. I am not going back. I love You, God. You are my Lord. I have no one else but You, and I am sticking by it.”
Whatever happens to me, my heart is steadfast.
That is exactly what has to happen to us. Our hearts must be brought into full alignment with the purpose of God.
David came out of the cave after Saul and Jonathan tragically died and the Philistines had overtaken the country. David was raised up as a chaste man with godly character.
He went to Hebron, and they made him king over Judah. He waited patiently for seven years. He did not try to grasp the other eleven tribes. As the sons of Saul rose up and rebelled, and soldiers and generals died, David mourned over every one of them.
Something had happened deep in his heart concerning the mercies of God.
When David became king, he knew God needed His city. He took Zion. Once he took Zion, he said, “God’s ark has to be in God’s city.”
In his heart, he knew that God wanted a home in the city. “God, I am living in a palace, and You are in a tent. No, God needs a home. Zion is His home.”
When the prophet told David, “God wants a home, but you cannot build it. Your son will build it,” David did not give up. He consecrated himself one hundred percent. Every time he defeated a king, realm, or city, he brought back the spoil and stored it up to build the house of God.
David also prepared Solomon. He said, “Listen, my son, I want you to know the ways of God.” He prepared his son to take over and build the house of God.
There was a man who served the purpose of God in his generation. But he went through testing to build the character that made him a glorious king.
When he became king, it was more than his kingdom. God’s kingdom could reign upon the earth because God knew He had a prince under Him who would do His bidding.
This, to me, is the secret David learned through the cave and through the hallway of tribulation: he discovered that it was the mercies in the heart of God that drove His purposes.
Most people looked at God and thought it was His law that drove His purposes. But David saw beyond the law that it was God’s mercies and kind intentions that drove the purpose of God.
What we see initially by revelation with faith eyes is confirmed as we go through difficulties into a knowing—a real knowledge of Jesus Christ.
You have seen a vision. You have seen Jesus. You have received revelation in your spirit. Great. Walk with Jesus through tribulation, and you are going to come to really know Him.
A revelation has to be strengthened, corroborated, as we walk in the vision we have seen with the Lord. Then we discover, “Now I really know Him. I have understanding in my mind of that which I saw in my spirit.”
All of that comes through the wonderful provision the Lord makes for us as we go through the hallway of tribulation.
There was another man more like me: King Saul.
King Saul became king without preparation. What was his preparation? He was the biggest guy around. The people wanted a king, so they found the biggest guy, the handsomest guy, the humblest guy, and picked him.
No preparation. No dealings with God.
Saul had the best intentions, but he did everything out of an uncrucified self-will. He did not know how to seek God or know what God wanted. He did what he wanted and thought that would please God. He kept making mistake after mistake and was totally out of line.
That represents many of us as we try to serve the purpose of God without having been dealt with as David was dealt with. We are like King Saul.
That was me as a minister. I was doing things my own way, dependent on my own wits and my own whatever. What could I build that would be worthy of the Lord out of my own strength?
I am so glad the Lord threw me down on the mat. He did not allow me to compromise way back there at the beginning. That was where the river began to flow, and the Lord began to deal.
We do not need more King Sauls building things according to our own way. We need training in the school of Christ, where the Lord is allowed to deal with us.
I used to live on Long Island, and we asked Brother Stephen Kong to come and speak at a little conference. Long Islanders, even as Christians, were a bit slipshod and shallow. They loved the Lord, but they did not know much of the Bible. We asked Brother Stephen, who was a walking Bible, to come speak.
One of our brothers, a fairly new Christian who believed God had called him to be a teacher of the Word, was sent to pick Brother Stephen up at the airport.
While they were driving, this brother said, “Stephen, what do I need to do to be a teacher? What books do you recommend? What should I do? What do I need to be a teacher?”
Stephen just looked at him and said, “Twenty years.”
Our brother never forgot that: twenty years.
The Lord has to deal with us to bring our lives in line with the Word of God that we preach. Often, it is through a hallway of tribulation.
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts.
The mystery of Christ and glory, revealed in our hearts by spiritual eyes, becomes intelligible to the mind as He renews our minds. His ways are so much higher, His thoughts are so much higher, and His purpose is so much vaster. How could we possibly understand these things?
Consider Paul’s testimony in Galatians 1. When he got saved on the road to Damascus, he thought he was doing the will of God. Many of us, when the Lord finally lays hold of us, thought we were doing the will of God. Paul had a surprise.
It reminds me of Rip Van Winkle, the old story by Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle went up into the Catskill Mountains and slept for twenty years. When he woke up, he went into the village and everything he said was wrong because there had been a revolution. He was under a whole new government.
Paul was under the wrong government. When he met Christ, he saw that everything he had tried to do was wrong.
It took Paul three years in the desert to begin to understand: Christ lives in you. It is His life, not yours. You are crucified.
Then it took him eleven more years in Tarsus to begin learning how to minister out of Christ’s life and not just Paul’s life. Fourteen years before the Lord really used him to serve God’s purpose.
But the whole time, the Lord was making him a steward of the mysteries. Every revelation Paul had in his spirit had to be proved out in his life.
That is the hallway of tribulation. That is the grown-up way of putting it.
But I tell young people that it is the Christian car wash.
By the grace of God, you love the Lord, and the Holy Spirit leads you to the car wash. You are okay until you get hooked up on that car wash. But once you are hooked up, you are going through.
You can put on the brakes, but you just go, “Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.” You can roll down the window, but you just get soap suds in the car. You can put on the windshield wipers, and it is still all messed up. You can say, “No, I do not want to go,” but you are still going.
You are going to go from grace to glory through tribulations, character, and discipline, so that you are shaped according to the glory of the precious Son of God.
Once you are in the car wash, there is no turning back.
Young people get discouraged when they hear that. But those chains in car washes are pretty strong things. They just bring you along. You can try to turn, but you cannot turn. You are in the track.
Ah, the Lord has got you. The Lord has got you too, right?
The Lord is trying to bring those things we have seen in our hearts by revelation into a reality of knowledge in our minds of who the Lord Jesus is in this purpose.
Oh, the Lord has a great plan for our lives, brothers and sisters. He is not through with us yet.
I hope He has hold of you. I hope you love Him so much that He tricked you into consecrating yourself. I hope the Holy Spirit has blessed you so much that you say, “I want more Jesus.”
Because the more you want Jesus, the more He will take hold of you and deal with you.
From the grace room, to glory, through the hallway of tribulation—and, for young people, through the car wash—He has got you. He has got you.
He is going to fulfill His purpose.
Most of you are saved. You love the Lord. You are hopeless. You are singing these hymns like you mean it. You are hopeless. You are in. You are somewhere in the car wash.
When you go through tribulation, suddenly everything in your life begins to make sense according to His eternal purpose. You realize why you went through what you went through.
Sometimes, while we are going through something, we have no idea why. Some of you have gone through really tough times. Some of you have gone into some deep hallways. Some have been going through it for a long time.
While we are going through, sometimes we do not understand. But if you will stand still and see the salvation of God, you will eventually see the light at the other end. You come out on the other side, and you understand why everything happened as it happened.
It was according to His eternal purpose to get you where He wanted you. It was His plan.
All that which is mystery in your life now—“Why is this happening? I am trying to serve, and this is going wrong. I try that, and that does not work.”—one day you will understand.
He has deeper fish to fry. He is trying to get at you deeper, and He is working glory in you.
This is the good news and the bad news I want to share with you tonight. May the Lord help us.
If you will not put on the brakes and let Him get you through that car wash, you will get through a little quicker. But you will still get through with character. The Lord wants His people looking like Him.
You are on the way from grace to glory. Congratulations.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, we know that David must have chomped at the bit. He was such an activist, such a powerful young man, and all those wasted years in the cave turned out to be his preparation for being a most glorious servant of Your purpose in his generation.
We have young people here who are just connecting up with the car wash chain. Bring them through, Lord. Show them Yourself.
Let the Holy Spirit console their hearts as they go through difficult times at school, face temptations, and see their friends committing suicide and all kinds of things.
Oh Lord, help them to grasp all the life in the Lord Jesus by grace. We know that the whole thing is from grace to grace, and it is all for Your honor and for Your glory.
We submit ourselves to You, and we give You thanks.
Dear Jesus, thank You for loving us so much. Thank You that You love us so much that You will not let us go. Thank You that You love us so much that You are going to accomplish what You purposed for us.
In Jesus’ precious name. Amen.