There are times after the Lord’s table when one senses that they should stand up and give a benediction. This was one of those times.
The value of the Lord—the pricelessness, the preciousness of the Lord—and to stop, hit that reset button, and be refocused. There is so much that grabs our attention each day and neutralizes that preciousness. Many times, we do not even realize it. We are about good things, not realizing that what is really valuable is the Christ in each one of us.
It is a little early for a fireside chat. Get my age, and you think of just sitting down with the children and grandchildren and just chatting. So, late for breakfast, so we will have a spiritual brunch. I am not going to preach; I am just going to share what is on my heart.
Turn with me to Psalm 11. Psalm 11:3:
If the foundations be destroyed,
What can the righteous do?
Or, what have the righteous done? What can the righteous do?
Well, there is an answer: Colossians 1:27—Christ in you, Christ in me, the hope of glory.
Let us prepare our hearts.
Father, thankful for the time around Your table, we do thank You that there is an answer to the day in which we live. It has always been the same from the very beginning, and always will be the same to the very end. And that is our Lord Jesus Christ, all in all.
May we know it. May we experience it each moment of the day, readying ourselves for Your imminent return. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
The foundations have been destroyed, for the most part. We must add that, because there is always a people—as we have even experienced this morning—who know in their heart, not just their head, that Christ is all and in all.
And it gives us great hope as we think of all that is around us, all that is going on on this globe. If we look too closely, we become confused, like the world is. But I do appreciate always the Lord’s wisdom in bringing us back each Sunday morning to the Lord’s table. It is kind of like the ending of the week and the beginning of the new week, and it focuses us on the one reality of life.
Ever since February of 1971—and it will be fifty-two years this next month—this word reality became very much a part of my life. I had been a believer already for over twenty years. What is life all about?
I would hear the gospel Sunday morning and Sunday night, year in and year out, eighteen years, twenty years, till I was twenty-nine. But there seemed to be a missing link. In February, there was just that shaft of light that revealed that Christ is to be all in all. And that began a journey.
Being in business at that time, my center of focus was the reality of Christ in business. It was not too long after that that the emphasis became reality in marriage. Why was I kinder to staff than to my own wife, who I worked with? The Lord just hit me with that question.
That was followed by the reality of Christ in raising children, the reality of Christ in body life. It has been a wonderful journey, but, as all of you have experienced, not an easy journey. God loves us too much just to let us selfishly go through life, not even knowing that we have a self-life that dominates our whole being.
Yes, I knew I was going to heaven. Yes, I knew I was forgiven—two very important pillars in our walk. But there was something missing. And, of course, in that search, the reality of Christ becomes more and more evident.
That is what I would like to share this morning: this Christ, this life, that is for the now, for the kingdom age, and for eternity—His life in us.
We see very clearly, particularly in the Gospels, this life of Christ: how unique it was, how perfect it was, how He traveled through those first thirty years in such a magnificent, wonderful, perfect way that, before He even ministered, His report card was announced from heaven.
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” This man pleases Me. This man is the delight of My heart. This is God—the Father—saying this of a man who did the common things of life and did them right.
As a son, as a sibling, as a servant to His father, everything was right. We have a religious word, a biblical word: righteousness, righteous. It makes more of a reality to me just to think of right.
His eyes looked rightly. Everything that came into His eyes, He covenanted with His Father: “I am going to see right. I am going to hear right. I am going to use these hands for You.” Yes, He received a compliment for something He might have made, but gave all the glory to the Lord for what He did.
He walked in the path of His Father in all things, doing the Father’s will, not saying one thing that was opposed to the heavenly standard of His Father. This is the righteousness, the right heart, of the Son through those thirty years in the common things.
And I emphasize that word common because that is where you and I live. We live in the day-to-day, in the tedious, tedious things of life.
Recently, a young man came to me. He had been in the workforce for two years. I said, “How are things going?”
“Wow, this five-to-eight thing—this is something else.”
Well, son, get used to it, because this is life: changing diapers, doing dishes. This is what makes up life.
Actually, we can be a testimony in Jesus in this. This is what the Lord was. He was a testimony to His Father, to everyone on earth, of what it meant to be righteous and diligent. He was diligent in everything He did.
Particularly when He got into His ministry, we see that in the book of Mark: “And immediately,” and “immediately.” The Lord—no procrastination. Do the next thing, as our dear sister Elisabeth Elliot would say: “Do the next thing.” Now, do not wait. Do not back off. Be diligent.
And, of course, love—a love that none of us will ever have in ourselves naturally. Some are born with a personality, a motherly personality, that can love the most unlovely person, but only to a limitation. Not the Lord.
It was a love that could reach out to Mary Magdalene, could reach out to the woman at the well. The Pharisees, the religious type, could not even be in the vicinity of these people. Zacchaeus, Matthew the tax collector—whom the Jews did not really appreciate—this Man reaches down and demonstrates a perfect love each day.
Not only love, but there was that underlying foundation of humility—a humbleness, a lowliness. Really, basically, brothers and sisters, the Lord works His entire life to bring us to that place of nothingness. In ourselves, we are nothing.
Even Jesus recognized it and became that cornerstone for us: “I can do nothing of Myself.” Our strength, of course, is in the Lord.
Even going to the cross, we see that humility: not defending, not blaming. Something that, of course, all of us have to overcome. Many of us get to be very old and we are still blaming, still being critical, making excuses for whatever. But it was not the Lord.
Then there was a grace, a graciousness, in our Lord that, again, we do not have naturally. He was disciplined in everything that He did. And truth—reality—represented everything.
Reality comes from one Person: the Lord Jesus. Otherwise, everything is virtual. Everything is unreal. What we say, what we think, what we possess, what we want, what we desire—it is all going to burn.
But there is one thing that is going to last, and that is Christ in us: the hope of satisfying the Father, the hope of pleasing the Father. We can be that delight.
The Lord Jesus set the foundation for all of us so that we now can have His life and those very characteristics that we have just talked about. Incidentally, those are the seven pillars in that little book of Proverbs—wisdom in building the church. That is the foundation of building the church.
Proverbs 9:1 speaks of seven pillars.
For us, the followers, first of all, we are often ignorant of our condition. The Lord has to deal with us. One of the things that He uses, of course, is His Word. He uses the Holy Spirit, but He also uses an environment—an environment that often is not pleasant.
We use that phrase, “a Job job.” We think that was for Job. That is the oldest book in the Bible. But you have to ask the question: why would the oldest book in the Bible be old? Why would that book be so long? Why would there be so many chapters on this discourse—Job and his friends, back and forth, back and forth?
It is very important to understand: it is representative for all of us. When God does a Job job with each of us, I have yet not seen a person who did not squirm, who did not question what was happening.
“What did I do? What is wrong? I thought I was walking right. I thought I was doing right. Why this hurricane in my life, this tornado? Everything is being stirred up.”
It is God’s love.
God does not want us to remain infantile, childish, wanting our own way, vindictive with everything that happens in our life, explaining, having to explain, making excuses, going home and telling our spouse, “You cannot imagine what happened at work today. If you only knew what happened.”
Brothers and sisters, we are in the devil’s world. The confusion did not start two years ago. It started long before that, long even before Noah’s time. There was not much good happening in Noah’s day.
But there is an answer, and we immediately come back to the Lord Jesus Christ being the answer for this day and age in which we live.
The foundations are Christ, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the living Word. Brothers and sisters, this is the living Word. This is Christ living, Christ personified, Christ-breathed. God breathes His Son into us.
It is not something that we just take and read a verse and say, “Oh, that is a good verse. I am going to try to obey that.” Wrong.
I know we have just had a January 1 New Year, and I hope no one hearing my voice this morning made a resolve that you have already failed. The good news is that in about nine days it will be the lunar calendar year, and you will get another opportunity to make a resolution. But I am equipped to say: it does not work.
It does not work. None of us has that discipline that the Lord Jesus had as He tapped into the Father’s resources. And now we can, in Ephesians 1:3. All the spiritual resources of heaven are yours and mine. Are we laying hold of them? Is it a reality in our life?
In the daily thing, we need wisdom. We need joy. We need peace. We need rest. We need humility. There it is. We just wait.
But anytime we think we can try hard, we fail. Try-hard Christianity does not work. It never has worked. It is one of the key factors of failure in our walk with the Lord: we read something and say, “Oh, that is good. I am going to try and do that.” But we cannot.
The Word is living. So we take a verse like Psalm 119:11:
Thy word have I hid in mine heart,
That I might not sin against Thee.
Thy Word—Christ—I have hid in my heart. Is the Lord Jesus hidden in our hearts this morning? Is He living, or is it just for two hours?
The Word is the foundation: Christ the foundation, ministered by the Holy Spirit. Are we walking in the Spirit, or are we walking in our own person, in our own self, in our own life, in our own desires, our own wants, that which pleases us?
You know, brothers and sisters, we are thankful for the American dream. But the American dream has so undercut our walk with the Lord in so many ways—materialism, things.
It is a wonderful thing, our Constitution, to have those privileges, to have the freedom that we have. But there is a cycle in history, and it has gone over and over many times. When people are in want, when they are in need, when there is pressure, when there are problems, what do we do? We look up.
When we are full—just look at our tummies—we do not look to the Lord. We are not dependent upon the Lord. We become independent. The very thing that is a blessing becomes our Achilles’ heel.
But the living Word, this foundation, this light—Jesus is the light of the world. This light is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Oh, do we need that lamp today: Christ taking the step ahead of us, and us following, denying ourselves.
Taking up our cross simply means obeying through that valley of the shadow of those problems that are mounting. Many times, a person could be told, when they are going through deep problems—and often chronic, one thing after another: children, finances, work, health issues—“The Lord really cares for you. The Lord is shepherding you. He is strengthening you.”
On the other hand, it could mean we are just very stubborn, and He is having to clobber us over the head again and again and again. We are not sensitive. We are not repenting. Repentance becomes one of the very keys of our walk with the Lord.
The Word, spoken to us by the Holy Spirit and made real in our life—this foundation—is so fundamental. It is very easy to fall into a trap: get up in the morning and say, “I am going to read Proverbs 23 today so that I can finish it in one month.”
It takes me six and a half minutes. I read it. Well, I have done that. There is a sort of a saying: “The conscience is satisfied. I have had my quiet time.” But, at best, it has entered the mind only—a fallen mind—instead of the heart.
Lord, speak to the heart. And I dare say, when the Lord speaks through that twenty-third chapter, you will repent; I will repent, because it refers to a fool.
“Oh, that is not me.” How many times do we read the Bible, and anything negative immediately applies to someone else? We immediately think of who that applies to, but not ourselves.
“Lord, why do You have that word fool? Why is it repeated again and again? Why do You have King Saul? Why do You have Peter, who denied the Lord? The Pharisees—have we ever read ourselves into the Pharisees as being a Pharisee?” I hope so.
Otherwise, we will just stay in this religious, unreal world that most of us live in as believers, when we have such an inheritance.
How can we be His inheritance when we have an inheritance? I love that verse in Obadiah 1:17. I should not take a chance on trying to find Obadiah, should I?
But upon mount Zion shall be deliverance,
And there shall be holiness;
And the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.
We are under the throne of Christ, or in His presence, on Mount Zion. We have come to Mount Zion, Hebrews 12 says. There shall be deliverance. Oh, how we need to be delivered from this world.
It is not just people with addictions who need to be delivered. We are all addicted to this world, and there needs to be a deliverance. It happens in Christ, the hope of glory, on Mount Zion—the fullness of Christ.
And there shall be holiness, something that came up this morning a couple of times at the Lord’s table—something that is totally missing in our gatherings: holiness. And the grieving of the Spirit that takes place so often: idle talk, trivia, things that take us away from why we are here.
We are here to grow up, to come into our heavenly position. Not to live in the clouds—we are living down here—but as heavenly people, delivered from self, delivered from this world.
“The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.” That is Christ. That is the fullness of Christ. It has to be a reality today.
Paul came into it when he wrote Philippians. What was his environment when he wrote Philippians? “Rejoice, rejoice in all things.” Joy, joy. Is this a pipe dream? Are we on planet Earth, confused?
As our brother John Blanchard said, I think December 26, standing right here: “Right has become wrong, and wrong has become right.”
Why? Because we have lost the source. We have lost the beginning. We will never come to the right end if we lose the beginning, if we lose the foundation.
But we have foundations. We have Christ, we have the Word, we have the Holy Spirit, and we have body life.
No one, no one will ever come into the fullness of Christ without loving one another, without being built together. That word built is really just two words: love and life—resurrection life and love.
When you have two people who are one with one another, you are the body of Christ. There is life. There is resurrection—His life.
Those pillars are inside a person, and they come into relationship with another person with humility, with God’s love, with God’s truth, God’s diligence, God’s righteousness, God’s holiness. Then you have something very, using the word of the day, precious. Very precious.
It is what God has counted on all His life. There is only really one thought on God’s mind: a people who, according to Matthew 22:35-40, love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love one another.
That is the one thought God is possessed with. Nations come and go. What we see, what we read about, what we hear about—they come and go.
But then there is a person like Paul, who is so clear. It is interesting: he never talks about Rome.
I preach Christ, and Him crucified.
Rome was not on his radar. One thought, just one thought: the house of God, God’s people.
That is the pillar. That is where there is covering. That is where there is protection. That is where we are tested—tested, tested. That is where we learn to pray.
Because the house is spiritual. God is Spirit; His house is spiritual. You and I cannot fix spiritual things. We cannot counsel spiritual things. We cannot even stand up here and minister spiritual things. God has to do it.
So why did we pray at the beginning? God has to do it. Man cannot do it. I cannot even take care of my own problems. God has to do it. So how do I do that? I pray.
This house is not a house of evangelism. It is not a house of preaching. It is not platforming. It is a house of prayer.
Out of that comes ministry. Out of that comes evangelism. But it is not the cornerstone. It is a house of prayer, where we are totally dependent upon the Lord to do this—inch by inch, three inches forward, two back—and not quitting, staying in the race, going forward.
This is the foundation that God has given us, and we can come into the fullness of it. Those various characteristics of the Lord Jesus Christ become ours by faith: laying hold, repenting, turning from that.
“Thank You, Lord. You are love. Forgive me for not being compassionate to that person, overlooking that person, thinking I am better.” And saying, “But You are love. It is You, Your love being expressed through me, through us.”
This is the foundation. It takes perseverance, brothers and sisters. God has to do it, but He will. He wants to. It is His heart.
All He is looking for is a people who are abandoned to Him, who are given to Him moment by moment by moment. I cannot emphasize that enough.
There is great opposition, brothers and sisters. There is a verse in Song of Solomon. Some of you have heard me mention this: Song of Solomon 2:15.
Take us the foxes,
The little foxes,
That spoil the vineyards;
For our vineyards are in blossom.
I appreciate that word little. If you have ever seen a couple of fox pups frolic, that is all they can do. They either sleep or they are frolicking. When you get to raising chickens on the range, you become aware more than once of the damage, particularly, that a mother fox can do.
But here we have these little foxes that are opposed to this inheritance that we have in Christ—the answer to everything every one of us has. Each one of us could right now put a list on the wall: “This is what I am faced with. This is my surrounding, my family, the surrounding things that are happening.” It would be a very sobering list.
But there is an answer, and it is the Lord. But the enemy is ever waiting, looking, prowling around, trying to deceive, trying to swallow up what God is doing.
I made a list of things some time ago. Recently, it came to my mind again as I was thinking about today. What are these little foxes?
When we get to Luke 17, in the days of Noah, it was food. They were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage. In the days of Lot, they were eating food. Something as necessary as food becomes the potential problem.
You say, “Well, I do not really understand.” Well, just go out to dinner with someone, and as they bring in this sumptuous service, what is the conversation for the next hour? Food. Eating. “Have you gone to this restaurant? Have you tasted this?”
We become occupied with it. Is there anything wrong with food, eating? Of course not. But it had become important in the days of Noah, in the days of Lot, and today food becomes one of the little foxes—so subtle.
This is why, when Jesus comes off the Mount of Transfiguration and the disciples have tried to cast out this demon in a child, Jesus rebukes them and says, “This comes out only by what? Prayer and fasting.”
But fasting is not only food. I am going to make a list of things just to leave something in our minds, that we would see the seriousness of these little foxes. These little foxes really keep us from coming into the fullness of what God intended.
Many, many times, family is a little fox. Is family important? Very important. It can become our life. Children, grandchildren—we become occupied with them, or we miss gatherings because of family.
What is our foundation? Gathering together.
Friends are wonderful, but they can become a little fox. “I have got to answer this. I have got to do this. Oh, this is going to interfere with my quiet time.”
Nothing, nothing is more important than spending time in the Word, morning, noon, and night—always coming back, coming back, letting the Lord minister to us in the thick of the battle.
Fame. Oh, how we like to become famous. It can become a desire of heart. But instead of desiring to be loved by the Lord and to love Him, to be captured—just to be captured—by this preciousness of the Lord.
We do see through a glass darkly, but there is a shaft of light when He sees the desire of our heart. He opens a window. It becomes a larger window when there is that desire.
Fame is not out there. I hope there is no one who wants to become famous in any way—even famous in ministering the Word, counseling, or whatever. No. We are to be a humble people: God’s humbleness, not a pious phoniness, but His piety in us.
Fame, fortune, finances. Fortune—money. I dare say, I will pull out both six-shooters at the same time: a billfold wallet and this.
Two deadly, deadly things that have done more to hinder our growth than maybe anything else. This can be a wonderful slave, but the sad thing is that the information here, using a drug term, mainlines not to the mind but to the heart of each one of our children.
This becomes a substitute for this. This has to be a slave—a slave of Christ—not that we are slaves to it. Our slavery is as we are hidden in Christ.
Football. You notice all these are starting with F? We chuckle, but it is serious. Much time, much time. Sports, entertainment, all the things that we deal with; monetary things, possessions.
Everything in this world has a spirit behind it. That is why we are excited. You can turn on a game—you do not care who it is—and in two minutes, you are glued. It is supposed to do that. There is a competitiveness, and you are drawn to it.
The commercial is designed to do that. There is a spirit of cosmos, the spirit of the world, that pulls and draws. We have to be so careful.
I am not talking about being legalistic here. I am not saying we are not free. But if our freedoms are not sanctified, if our minds are not sanctified, if our emotions and desires are not sanctified, we move into an area that compromises, grieves the Spirit, and even quenches the Spirit.
The liveliness that we saw for a glimpse this morning around the table—then all of a sudden, at four o’clock this afternoon, it is the last thought. “This dinner is precious. Food. We have friends coming over.”
We become occupied with secondary and tertiary things that move us ever so slightly. You know, the little foxes are just frolicking. It is very innocent, but they are damaging those little petals, those little buds, those little flowers that are so tender at that developmental stage.
Then the fruit becomes obsolete. There is no fruit. It is blighted by entertainment and these various things.
Fun. “Let us have fun.” What are we doing? Hanging out, having fun.
Fashion. Again, the world has learned it. Fashion pulls at our heartstrings. We do not have to dress like a bag lady; that is not even the point.
The point is that nothing is to be important in our life. If there is anything more important than the Lord Jesus, we are drifting, as Hebrews speaks of drifting away, not even knowing it. “Oh, there is Niagara Falls.” Boom.
Fads—trendy fads. It grabs us; it has a spirit. You say, “Well, that is not my problem.” Something on this list is our problem. If you do not think so, then you have a bigger problem. I have a bigger problem.
I am not preaching. This is for me. I am talking to myself this morning. This is something the Lord is dealing with—these things.
As was said yesterday in a letter, it results in a little flicker in our life—just a flicker. And it is not a testimony. The world does not know what Christ looks like from being around us. They cannot tell because we blend in, chameleon-like, to the surroundings.
FOMO: fear of missing out. I might just use that word to say something about fear. Fear is more than just a little fox. It is sin.
Anytime we are fearful of anything coming down the pike, we have forgotten, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” You could use that little phrase as a great thesis for a spiritual PhD.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
It is a tremendous statement. It is, of course, a thesis statement for the gospel of the Old Testament.
What is the gospel of the Old Testament? Psalm 23. It is all there. Everything is there, even to the end:
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
What is God’s purpose? What is His plan? That we dwell with Him.
Facebook. Not legalistic—not saying you cannot have Facebook. Facebook needs to be a ministry, not your face.
God works our entire life to get our face out of the picture. The world comes in and has Facebook: “I need my face to be seen. I want people to see where I have been, what I have, what I possess.”
The Lord comes along and says, “No. I do not want that. I just want Christ in you. I want you to disappear.” That is what He is saying to us.
And we come along with something like Facebook—the whole social media world—just promoting man.
The firm, the factory—this is where we work. Do we bring our work home, or are we making tents? We are to make tents. We are not to make a million bucks. We are to pay the rent, buy gas, buy food, and have shelter.
The Lord will provide those things. The righteous do not beg bread. We do not have to sell our soul to the workplace.
When we seek first the King—His kingship—it is amazing how we stumble over the simplicity of the gospel. That is why I entitled this, “The Simplicity and Profundity of the Gospel.”
Seek first the King. And what does it say? Shelter, transportation, food will all be taken care of. These other things are taken care of. Simple faith.
But oh, how we dodge the King. How we will do anything else. We will Google every answer, seek every way to make more money, eke out this, live in a bigger, higher place—and we disobey. We do not seek the King first.
Feelings. Oh, how easy it is to get our feeling nerve touched. We can walk out of here today and someone does not look at us. “Oh, well, I am not going back there anymore.”
The simplest little thing, real or imagined. Maybe the person is shunning you. So what? Suffer for Christ. It is a privilege. But it is not easy for the flesh.
The flesh will come up with excuses, and then we gossip to our spouse or the family about it. What does James say? A forest fire. It goes crazy, and all of a sudden someone is gone for the most ridiculous thing.
But it is a little fox. Just a little fox has crept in and neutralized our relationship with the Lord.
And, of course, fretting. If fretting is not enough, we fall into form. The word came up this morning, and I appreciate it: common.
There is not one of us—I do not care how many times you have come in here around this Lord’s table—there is not one of us who does not have to go to the Lord and cry out, “Lord, make this table real.”
We want this, but we have to cry out. We need the Spirit. Otherwise, we are just going to do what the universal church has basically done: “Well, let us have it on Christmas. We are to have it.” And then it probably means nothing.
Through repentance, brothers and sisters—admitting where we are—that is how we get to reality. And it is a day-to-day thing. These foxes are there this afternoon, this evening.
We cannot just ride on, “Well, we had a good time. We have done our nod-to-God thing, and now we are just free.” No, it does not work that way.
It is a relationship. It is an intimacy. It is moment by moment, just talking to the Lord. Even booting up the computer, you can talk to the Lord while you are booting up.
Driving—this driver! What? Pulling our hair out instead of praying for that person. What did Paul mean when he said, “Pray without ceasing”? What does that mean?
It means pray without ceasing. It is just that simple. We are talking to the Lord all the time.
I see a lot of gray hair, a lot of haircuts like mine this morning, which means we have children, grandchildren, some great-grandchildren. They have been brought into a day very similar to the day of Noah and Lot.
That is not a stretch of the imagination at all. What are we going to do?
Well, we have to kill a lot of foxes. We have to restore those foundations. They have to become real—not by saying, “I am going to read tomorrow morning, and I am going to read from my heart.”
No. We have to say, “I cannot.” You and I do not have the strength to do that. “I am going to—” No, no, no.
That is when we come empty, totally bankrupt, every morning, at noon, at night—bankrupt, spiritually bankrupt.
“Lord, You are the answer for me, for my marriage, family, children, grandchildren, the body of Christ. You are the answer, the only answer. It has always been that way. That is what we are created for: to be His body.”
Let us pray.
Father, we are thankful that You have summed up all things in Your Son. He is, and we declare right now, He is the all and in all.
We are a worm, at best dust. Lord, we are thankful that You breathe into that dust, hour by hour, as we submit to You, as we recognize our need, our total dependence upon You. You breathe life into us.
We do not have to be a slave to this world. We do not have to be a slave to the enemy. We do not have to be a slave to sin, this self-life, this flesh. But Lord, You lift us above it.
Thank You, for You are the foundation of our faith in Christ. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.