Hey, everybody.
Father, thank You that You put us in Your Son. Thank You that we are there right now. Now we ask You, Lord Jesus, to speak to our hearts. Amen.
It is really quite an honor to be able to represent the Lord to you today. All over this country today, a lot of things will be said about Christ. But rather than talking about Christ today, I would rather that we be in Christ and learn from Christ what He has for us through His Word.
If you will turn to Luke 12, I am going to read verses 35 through 37.
Luke 12:35:
Let your loins be girded, and your lamps burning;
and be ye yourselves like unto men looking for their lord, when he shall return from the marriage feast;
that, when he cometh and knocketh, they may straightway open unto him.
Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching:
verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them sit down to meat,
and shall come and serve them.
And then Luke 17, beginning at verse 7:
But who is there of you, having a servant plowing or keeping sheep,
that will say unto him, when he is come in from the field, Come straightway and sit down to meat;
and will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup,
and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken;
and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?
Doth he thank the servant because he did the things that were commanded?
Even so ye also, when ye shall have done all the things that are commanded you, say,
We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do.
Here we have, I think, a dichotomy. There are two opposites. One is that the picture in that parable is that the Lord comes, asks us to sit down, and serves us at the table.
It is a very common refrain through the Scriptures. Jesus used it over and over again. At the time of the centurion, He talked about sitting at the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. When a man came and asked if there were few to be saved, Jesus answered that there would be many coming from the east, the west, the north, and the south, and they would sit at table.
We have the imagery of the marriage feast: sitting at the table and feasting at the marriage feast. It is a very common theme in Jesus’ teaching about the privilege and blessing given to the saints to sit at table with Him.
But then there is also this other passage in Luke 17 that says, “But wait a minute. We are not asked to sit down; we are asked to serve at that table.”
What is the truth? I think the truth is found in the phrase, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”
In this, I see a picture of the saints seated at the table in the heavens with the Lord. That is God’s perspective toward us. But the second verse that I read is our perspective—our attitude toward the Lord: “We are unworthy servants. We should be serving You.”
There is that which is the saint and that which is still the sinner. There is still something of that recognition that we are unworthy; we are still sinners. That is what I would like to look at this morning: this whole idea of being a saint, yet being a sinner; and being a sinner, yet being a saint.
There was a banner in Pacific Beach, where I used to live in San Diego, on Mission Boulevard. It was a Lutheran church, and I always remember this big banner. It always said, “Welcome surfers, sinners, saints.”
I do not know whether the surfers are worse sinners or better saints, or what that really meant. I have never been a surfer; I do not know. But I did see a bumper sticker yesterday on somebody’s car. It said, “Pray for surf.” So maybe that explains to us about surfers, but their eyesight is way off.
So we come to this idea, and I want to look first at the sinner who becomes a saint, or who is a saint.
It is an exalted position that the Lord has laid out before us: that we are able to sit at table with Him, and He serves us at table. Yet there is this humble, grateful, repentant sinner who is there at table with the Lord, saying from the heart, “We are unworthy servants.”
I want to use the story of the prodigal son, as found in Luke 15, as an illustration of this. I might be skewing the parable a little bit, but I think it serves as an illustration of this whole idea of a sinner yet being a saint.
We find the younger son, and he receives the inheritance from his father. I mean, he has it laid out before him. He has received the inheritance. He is the father’s son, and positionally, I think he is declared to be a saint.
But there is something wrong with this young man. With this great gift given to him, he wants to be independent. He wants to be set free from what is there in the household that is sort of rubbing him the wrong way, or whatever the reason is. But he goes his own way.
He is still, in the father’s eyes, his son. But he leaves the home. He no longer is among his neighbors, friends, brothers, or sisters. We find that, as he lives in that land, he lives a very unprofitable life. Many things are said about that life which are very dishonoring to the father and the father’s name. Yet he is still the father’s son.
Until he comes to the place where it gets so bad, as he is out there in the world, that he is wearing rags. The clothes he had—the luxurious things that were given to him—are now just rags that he wears. We find him feeding on the swine’s slop, in just the worst condition that he could be in.
I think the key to this story about the prodigal son is that he came to himself. He looked and thought, “Wait a minute. I am my father’s son, and look at the rags, and feeding on the slop. Where am I? What am I doing?”
So he comes to himself. He considers where he is at. He comes to his senses, and he finally sees himself as he really is: just this ragged person.
I want to use a couple of quotes from Watchman Nee. The picture I see of this young man at this point in time is what is very necessary for this saint: to see himself as a sinner, to see the real state of what he has become.
Watchman Nee makes a very definitive statement that I think can be so liberating for us: “The nature of the flesh is sin.”
The best that we can do—all the bad, all the good—the very best that we can do in the flesh is sin. It is rags. It is nothing before the wonders of the Lord. All of it is stained by sin.
I think we all need to come, as brothers and sisters, as saints in the Lord, to that position: to see the flesh. Some of us still think that there is a little bit of good still in us that the Lord will honor, that the Lord will accept, and that everything does not always have to be done away with. There can still be just a little bit of me that is acceptable before the Lord.
But no, it is rags. It is feeding with the swine.
I quote what Jim quoted last time, that verse in Romans 7. Finally, Paul gets to the place where he says:
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Then Paul went on to say in Galatians 2:20 that he finally realized:
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.
This young man—and us as Christians, through the process of the Lord’s dealings with us—must come to a real crisis of the cross before we can really get on with the Lord and know what it is to be His child, to be a saint for the Lord.
Not just positionally, in the Father’s eyes and in the blessing of the Father, but experientially—in our own life’s experience—we know what it is. Now I know what it is to know God’s anointing on His Son through me, rather than trying to do something in my own strength and power.
Watchman Nee went on to say in one of his books, “Death is emancipation.”
Do you hear that? Death is emancipation. What freedom there is to finally know what we are in the flesh.
Of course, you do come to a crisis in this, but it is also a process. I do not care if you have been a Christian for one day, or have been a Christian for fifty years, like myself, or even the greats that we consider great in the faith, whether it is Stephen Kaung or whoever it might be: they all experience the same thing, probably on a daily basis—a death to self, a death to the flesh.
It is a new experiencing, a new coming into the reality that it has all been dealt with. It is dead. What I am doing is dead. I accept it. I accept that it is dead.
Then Watchman Nee said this profound thing. He said it is no longer an issue of prayer: “Oh, Lord, crucify my flesh. Oh, Lord, deal with me. Oh, Lord, the things that I do, I do not want to do.”
He says, “Forget it.” It is no longer a matter of prayer about these things when you finally see that you have been put to death, that you died with Christ on that cross, and now there is a new life living in you. Christ now lives in me.
Watchman Nee said that now it is a matter of praise—just a matter of praise. “Thank You, Lord, that You have dealt with me. Thank You that now I know what it is to have Christ live in me.”
But we all have to come to that place once, and then twice, and then throughout our lives. Finally, we know that we have been set free—truly set free.
So when the son finally realizes just who he is in the flesh, now he goes back to the father.
There we see that wonderful picture of the father’s heart. He is looking for the son to return. He sees the son off in the distance, and he goes to him. He embraces him in his rags, with that smell all over him, but the father still puts his arms around him and loves his son, welcoming him back to fellowship in his home.
Those rags are taken off. That ugliness of the flesh is taken off from the sinner, and he is given the robes of a saint. He is able to sit at table, with the father serving him at that table.
Positionally, we are always saints. The day you first believed in the Lord, the Lord declared, “You are a saint.” But we have to go through the experiences of life, and we have to learn it for ourselves. Truly, though a sinner, though I still have that little sense of flesh that is still in me, yet I am a saint with the Lord.
Then we finally see the son’s attitude about all this. He says, “Father, I have sinned. I am unworthy to be called Your son.” Again, there is that same refrain: the feeling, the sense of unworthiness, yet robed with the robes of a saint and sitting at the Father’s table, while feeling so unworthy of it because he has actually seen who he really is in the flesh.
I hope that we can all come to that place in our lives and stop trying to be a Christian. Please stop trying to be a Christian. You are not going to become a Christian by trying harder—trying to get rid of that temper, trying to get rid of that pride, or whatever it might be in your own life.
You are never going to get rid of it. It is just going to crop its head someplace else. But accept the Lord’s verdict: you have died. You are dead. Give it up. It is gone.
I want us to think not just in terms of our being a sinner, yet a saint, on this earth. I might suggest something that I think is indicated in the book of Revelation as we look at the eternal things. There is something that might still be there which might surprise us.
We look at the book of Revelation, and there is the Lord. In Revelation 4 and Revelation 5, we see the ascended Lord Jesus. He has come into the heavens, and He is there before the throne. What does it say?
I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.
Whoa. Wait a minute. I thought He was now the exalted Christ—the One we see in Revelation 1, or the triumphant, mighty One we see later on, riding on the horse with the sword. But no: “I saw a Lamb standing.”
Then we find that through the unfolding of this age—or maybe it is at the end of this age—as He opens the seals, it is the Lamb who opens the seven seals.
You might say, “Well, that is all because of humanity, and there is still redemption going on in the earth, so He needs to be a Lamb and have the appearance of the Lamb.”
But when you go on to the end of the book of Revelation, we are shown this marriage feast, this beautiful thing at the end of the age. The age has now ended. We have entered into the eternal of eternals, at the marriage feast. It says:
Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
He is still the Lamb in the heavens.
Finally, in the last chapter of Revelation, when we get to what may be called the eternal of eternals—however we want to phrase it or think about it—when the new heavens and the new earth are before us, John is shown a river of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
He is still a Lamb. Why?
I think because there has to be some suggestion still of our humanity, of our flesh. I am not saying that it is the prevalent thing in our life. As Paul says, when we get into the heavens, we are going to have new bodies—bodies that will not perish, bodies of glory, bodies that are powerful, spiritual, and heavenly. Yes, we have all that as saints.
But He is still the Lamb. There has to be something there that still suggests to us a remembrance of what we are: no longer in its prevalence, no longer the flesh in its glory and all of that, but now just a suggestion. It is the tiniest of seed, I think, within us, but it is still there. We are still going to appreciate the Lamb in the heavens.
I want to turn gears a little bit here and talk about our sainthood.
We know that Paul uses that term quite frequently as he speaks to the churches—most of the churches, even the Corinthian church. He is writing to the saints that are in Corinth. That might surprise us, but it is true.
So, positionally, we are made saints. But then there is something we experience in life: there is a sainthood there, a wonderful thing that the Lord has done for us.
I want us just to ponder a couple of the things that the Lord has done for us. First, when we are first born into the kingdom and the Lord has introduced Himself to us, He calls us the children of God.
Ah, what a term. What an idea. We are the children of God now—no longer children of this world, children of the enemy, children of darkness. But now, you are the children of God.
What does that idea connote? I just want to suggest a couple of things. One is that now you are part of a family. God is our Father. Jesus is our elder Brother—our God also. We are in a family now.
Oh, man. We are no longer orphans. We are no longer the wayward sons out there in the world, but now we are brought back into this family.
As a child, we know what it is to be nurtured, to be cared for, to be fed, to be clothed, to be taken care of, to know what it is to be secure. It is all there in the family as the children of God—the nurtured ones.
We begin to recognize and know that there is a Provider there. There is Someone taking care of us. There is Someone always there. There is a voice that I hear which is familiar to us, and it becomes more familiar as the days go on. It is such a comfort to us, such a solace to the soul of man, until we know what it is to be contentedly dependent on the Father—on our Father.
We are His children. We do not want to go off free and independent and live our own life, because we know what it is to eat the swine’s slop. We have all been there. We know what it is like.
We know what it is in our life to offend the Lord or grieve the Holy Spirit, and how uncomfortable it becomes within us. Oh, how I want that fellowship back with the Lord. How I want that voice to be speaking to me. But now I feel so ugly, so dirty.
Then we come back to the blood of Jesus Christ. Fellowship is restored for us. We do not want to go there anymore. We do not want to touch those things. We want to know what it is to be dependent, to be living under the shelter of the Father.
This quality that we have learned as a child will see us through all the stages of sainthood. It needs always to be there and never to be lost: that quality of dependence.
I am just absolutely dependent on the Lord for His life, for His everything in my life, always present—probably with more and more import in our lives as we go on, the longer we go on with the Lord.
Then the Scriptures talk about our becoming sons of God. It might be said, sons and daughters of God. There is a sense of maturity there, a sense that we have grown up.
There is something as though the Lord expects something from us now. We are no longer just babies to be fed, drinking the milk of the Word, but now we are old enough to eat the meat of the Word.
We come to a place of capacity. There is a capacity to rule and reign with the Lord. There is now a wisdom that has been given to us so that we can discern the mind of the Lord in matters before us—not only individually, but corporately.
I think that is probably the greatest sense of being sons and daughters of God: the corporate sense of it. You are no longer that independent child who is the center and focus of all the universe. Now you are a son or daughter with brothers and sisters. You become aware of your brothers and sisters around you, and you are no longer living only for yourself. You are living for your brothers and sisters, for the Father, and for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then the Lord gives us, as sons and daughters of God, dominion—a dominion given to us that we might rule and reign.
I just want to say one thing about dominion, because I think it is misunderstood: dominion does not mean dominance.
Husbands or fathers, your having dominion over your family does not mean you are an overlord. It does not mean you have dominance over your wife and children and can do what you want because you have dominion.
Dominion means tender care. You have been given the privilege of having dominion—tender care of those under you, whether it is a husband, a wife, children, the body of Christ, or the sheep.
Do not be dominant. Do not be an overlord. Consider things with tender care for those who are under you.
There are a few phrases found in the New Testament that speak of this whole idea of being sons and daughters. Second Peter 1:3-4 talks about an aspect of being a son or daughter of God:
His divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness,
through the knowledge of him that called us by his own glory and virtue;
whereby he hath granted unto us his precious and exceeding great promises;
that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Oh, wait a minute. Not only have we been adopted into a family and know God as our Father, but it says that we are partakers of the divine nature.
That is quite the calling, quite the position: to be partakers of the divine nature, to draw on that which is divine that has been given to us in Christ and dwells within us.
Make sure that you understand: we are never, ever divinity. Do not make the mistake of some churches and some cults. We are not divinity. The church is never part of the divinity, but we do know something of the divine nature within us.
John tells us in 1 John 3:9 that the better translation is that the divine seed has been planted within us, that it has been implanted. There is a divine seed growing within us now, which is just such a marvelous thing for us.
Now, if that was not enough, I am going to enter into a little controversy right here with you guys—maybe, maybe not.
This verse was pointed out to us while we were in Los Angeles: 1 Corinthians 12:12. It is a very interesting verse.
Paul is talking about the body of Christ—the members, each of us. I am talking to you, me, over here, over there. We are all these members of the body.
First Corinthians 12:12 says:
For as the body is one, and hath many members,
and all the members of the body, being many, are one body;
so also is Christ.
Now, the Revised Standard is a bad translation here. Darby, King James, and many of the other translations are better. They say, “So is the Christ.” Actually, the translation is, “So is the Christ.”
When I say that, I do not mean that we are Christ—the divinity. But Paul does say that the body, the members gathered together and joined together, is Christ.
What I want us to understand about that is the privilege God has given to us: that He would look at His body, this small expression of His body in this room, the larger expression throughout the earth and throughout the ages—the saints gathered together—and God says, “That is Christ.”
You are the representatives of Christ. You are not Christ Himself. You are not the divinity. But He so identifies with you, and He so imparts unto you, that He says, “You are Christ.”
So when we gather together, let us not come as individuals. Let us not come as just a stone here or a stone there, as we studied recently. We are something in God’s eyes that is so wonderful.
As we know, Jesus, the Son of God, is the most precious thing to the Father. For Him to say that the body together is Christ—there is a great mystery there.
Of course, it is the only place it is mentioned, so, as many great men have said, do not ever build a theology on one verse. But I am just saying that, to me, it seems like such a privilege God has given to us.
If that is not enough, there are a couple of verses I want to read in John 10. Jesus is at the Feast of Dedication, three months before His crucifixion.
The Jews take up stones to kill Him, to murder Him. It says in John 10:33:
The Jews answered him, For a good work we stone thee not,
but for blasphemy;
and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
Jesus answered them:
Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came
(and the scripture cannot be broken),
say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world,
Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
It seems to say through the Scriptures that we are brought to a position of being gods with a small “g.” I have no idea what that means in the ages to come. I have no idea what that looks like. But all I know is that the Word of God says that God said to the saints of old, “You are gods.”
Again, I am not going to speculate on it, except to remind us of what Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6. Right now, as we sit here on this earth, Paul said, “You are not in a position, brothers and sisters, to judge the world.”
Remember, there was that immoral man among them, and Paul had to deal with him—this immoral Christian. The Corinthians misunderstood what Paul did. They thought, “Well, that means we cannot fellowship with or deal with any immoral people, even in the world. We cannot touch that immorality.”
Paul says, “Corinthians, you are ridiculous”—paraphrasing. What he is saying is, “I am not telling you about the world. I am saying that you are to judge things that are in the church right now. If there is an immoral person in your midst, you are given the authority and position to judge that person, but not the world.”
Paul goes on to say that God is judging the world. You are not to be the judge. But then he goes on to say that, in the time to come:
Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?
Know ye not that we shall judge angels?
I think that is the aspect of being in a position of being gods: being judges of worlds to come. I have no idea what that means or what that is going to look like, but we are to be judges. You are to judge even the angels.
If we had any conception of what angels are, we would fall down and say, “We are unworthy servants, Lord.”
We were singing a hymn here many months ago, and there was something in the hymn that talked about angels. Suddenly, I got this thought of angels.
We sometimes have an image of angels as cherubim with wings—kind of fat little babies, as they are pictured sometimes. I think there are probably beings like that, sweet and gentle, and that every child has their angel in heaven. I do not dismiss that.
But when we talk about another form of angels, they do not care a hoot about us. All they are concerned about is the purpose of God, and that is what they are going to accomplish.
They do not know anything about grace or mercy that has been given to us. But if God commands them to complete His purpose on the earth, they will come and do that, regardless of men. God will protect us from these angels. God has to protect us from these angels.
These are mighty beings that live for one reason: to accomplish the purpose of God.
And so, let us fear the angels. If that is the angels, then who is our God—the God of these angels? We should come before the Lord so thankful and so grateful for the position He has given to us and the recognition He has laid upon us.
One last thing I will say is found in Romans 11. You know that Paul uses this illustration of the olive tree.
It is something we have really lost a sense of as Christians: what it is for Gentiles to be brought into the kingdom. I have no idea what that really means.
This was given to the Jews. This was the inheritance of the Jews. And You are going to bring Gentiles into that?
I think the first generation of Christians really understood it and appreciated that, as Gentiles, they were brought into the kingdom. They so appreciated what the Lord had done for them—to bring them into the commonwealth of heaven and all the inheritance that was there for us.
But we almost think that the church was meant for people like us.
So Paul warns us as Gentiles who have been grafted into that olive tree. First of all, he says, “You guys are a bunch of wild olive branches. The only fruit that is ever going to come from you naturally is these little hard things that are not good for anything—not good for food or anything else.”
Here are wild olive branches that have been grafted into the tree. The natural branches—the Jews—have been plucked away that you might be grafted in.
He says, “But listen, Gentile Christians: remember, do not boast. Do not boast because you are grafted in and the Jews have been cast away. Do not become proud about these things. There is no place for you to be proud about these things.”
He says, “Always note the kindness of God to you, that you have been grafted in.”
So in this, I want us to remember that we should always have this attitude: we are just unworthy servants. We do not deserve any of this.
We are just Gentile, unworthy servants who have been brought into something glorious and magnificent. Wow, look at the position He has brought us into—not only to be children, but then to be brought in as sons and daughters of God.
But from God’s perspective, He says to us:
Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Sit at the table, and I will serve you as saints.
What a dichotomy.
That is why I end on this. There is a hymn written back in the 1970s. It is not in our songbook, but it really speaks of this to me. The first stanza reads:
O welcome, all ye noble saints of old,
As now before your very eyes unfold
The wonders all so long ago foretold.
The refrain is:
God and man at table are sat down,
God and man at table are sat down.
Then the third stanza says:
Beggars, lame, and harlots also hear;
Repentant publicans are drawing near;
Wayward sons come home without a fear.
God and man at table are sat down,
God and man at table are sat down.
Wow. What a marvelous, marvelous inheritance God has given to us.
So I hope that we have not merely seen things about God today, but that we have experienced God today—that you know what has been given to you as a saint.
There is a burning desire to get on with the Lord: “Oh, Lord, just make me more and more of that saint. Lord, thank You that You have dealt with me as that sinner, that flesh. The flesh is sin.”
Let us just have a word of prayer.
Father, thank You that, as Brother Nee said, it is no longer a matter of prayer and asking and longing for something, but, Lord, it is now a matter of praise. You have brought us into this place, this position, Lord.
Oh, Lord, may it be that as we face our flesh later today—I think of the young people maybe going out witnessing today in the park, and how self-conscious many of them will be, how awkward they will feel. I have been there. But, Lord, may these brothers and sisters find themselves in You, being Your representatives today, dead to all that they feel.
Lord, in our days to come—and because I have said this, I am going to face things that You are probably going to really bring home to me—but, Lord, I say thank You. What a marvelous inheritance You have in Your saints.
Thank You that You made all of us saints before You. In Jesus’ name, amen.