That song, that hymn, was written by a sister named Frida Allen. She was a contemporary of Jessie Penn-Lewis. We know her through a song for which Dana Condon put a tune to a poem she wrote. The song is called “Set Apart”:
Chosen vessels, empty, weak, and small.
And we are thankful that this dear sister had a touch of what was upon God’s heart and always had that desire to be fully sold out to Him, allowing His life to be lived out through her.
So, as we come, let us have another word of prayer.
Lord, we do come rejoicing—rejoicing in Your mercy, the greatness of Who You are, the great wonder of Who You are, and all Your wondrous works. Lord, we thank You that You have given us Your Word. By faith, we want to step into the fullness of what You have in Your Word for us today. In Your precious name, amen.
And so that people do not get anxious and jump on me later, it is now 11:15. Okay? At 12 o’clock, people start getting anxious, so all right—11:15 now.
First, let us read a couple of verses: 1 Corinthians 2:9-10.
Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,
And which have not entered the heart of man,
All that God has prepared for those who love Him.
For to us God revealed them through the Spirit.
You know, I have been thinking about this verse lately, especially that little phrase at the end of verse 9: “All that God has prepared for those who love Him.” Do we know the vastness of what that “all” is, when we start touching all that God has prepared for us?
You understand a little bit of what Paul touches upon in Ephesians, where he speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Throughout our whole life upon this earth, we are progressing more and more, learning more and more of what He has prepared for us and allowing us to enter into more of those riches.
One of the things that He has prepared for us, and paid the price for us at Calvary, is what we are going to call the overcoming life. We can overcome because He overcame. We are thankful for the privilege we have—that this has been given to us—and we are going to consider that today.
As we look back at that verse we just sang, it is wonderful how she affirms this:
A life of overcoming, a life of ceaseless praise,
Be this thy blessed portion throughout the coming days.
The victory was purchased on Calvary’s cross for thee.
Praise God, that is a fact. The victory of Christ, and all that He has for us, is a settled issue.
And sin shall not have dominion,
Because the Son has made thee free.
Praise God for that. We are very thankful as we consider this more today.
A couple of other verses: Revelation 2:7. Now, to each of the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, a similar call goes out. For the sake of time, I am not going to read all seven of those verses. I am just going to read the one from the letter to the church in Ephesus.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.
“To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
Later on in Revelation 5:4-5, they are looking around to see who was worthy to open that book. John says he began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it.
And one of the elders said to me, “Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.”
Praise God—the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome to open the book and its seven seals.
Revelation 12:11 tells us how they overcame the dragon, Satan:
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony,
And they did not love their life even when faced with death.
Then one final verse, 1 John 5:4:
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
This is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith. We will touch more on this, but to be clear from the beginning, our faith is in Him. He is our faith. It is not something we work up in ourselves, but He is our faith. We are thankful for that.
As we look around the world and everything going on today, there is probably one thing that almost everybody in the world—believers and unbelievers alike—agrees on: we cannot go on the way we are going. There is debauchery, declension, and things are out of control. I mean, the world even has a doomsday clock.
The world has an answer. What they think is the answer is man. Man can fix that. “We will bring climate under control. We will eliminate this. We will do all that.” Yet we see throughout history that man has always failed.
But God has an answer. God has an answer in His Son and in His Bride. Praise God that, in spite of the days of debauchery and declension, we believe God is doing a great work. It is not seen by the whole world, but God is doing a great work of preparing a people for Himself and for His soon return.
He is calling out to His people in a marvelous way to wake up. As we have been lulled to sleep, as we have drifted away—as Hebrews speaks of—He is crying out to us to return to Him. Return to Him. Praise God, many are returning, because He is preparing that people all over the world. He is doing a great work.
The question for us is this: are we involved in that great work? Are we actively involved in it, or are we just spectators—listening, reading about it, Googling about it, seeing all the marvelous things that He does? Are we actively involved in it? This is the challenge that He has for us.
There is one cry that goes out from God’s heart, particularly characteristic of the last days and the last hour. I am using the word cry. Some people say call, but I use cry because it comes more from the heart. It is a heartfelt thing. You do not cry about things you do not care about.
There is a cry from God’s heart, and you see it particularly in John’s writings: the cry to overcome. In this last hour, in spite of everything that is going on, there is a great cry going out to all of God’s people to overcome.
Now, as soon as I mention the word overcome, everybody has various reactions to it because we have a lot of false concepts. There have been false teachings about it, and there is so much misunderstanding.
Really, what is upon my heart today is to bring this down—this thing that some have lifted up so high—and make it approachable for us. That is the testimony in my life. I remember when I first heard some dear brothers sharing about overcoming. I said, “Well, that is a great teaching, but that is not for me.”
I looked at myself. I saw my struggles, my failures, my weaknesses, the circumstances I was in, and where my priorities were in life. I said, “It is not for me. Praise God, I will support them. They can just go on.”
But I thank God, in His mercy, that as I have considered this more and more, He has helped me gain a little more understanding of this call and cry to overcome. It is a progressive thing. Our whole life, we are overcoming. It is not like all of a sudden—boom—you have overcome.
No, it is day by day. We face something one day and, by His grace and His victory, we go through it. We go through another thing the next day. I am thankful how the Holy Spirit and His Word have been helping, at least within my own heart.
I have called it the demystifying of overcoming, because I had such a mystique about it that I had to have shattered. I am still working through that, but I am thankful that by His grace, He is ever patient with us.
As we consider this word overcoming, we can go to the Greek word. The Greek word for overcoming is nike, and it means to win the victory and to overcome. Thank the Lord—it is this thought that He has won. He has won the victory. He has overcome. He is the all-victorious One.
In many ways, we look at the Nike swoosh, and it is like a V for victory. Actually, trivia people, do you know where that came from? It came from the Greek goddess Nike. She was the goddess of victory, and it is representative of one of her wings. That is supposed to be a wing. But anyway, I like it as a V for victory, though it is not really that at all.
The confidence we have is that He has won the victory. He has overcome, and He is the victorious One, as we read in Revelation 5. He has overcome the world. He has overcome sin. He has overcome the flesh. He has overcome the devil. Whatever there is out there, He has overcome it.
There was complete and full victory. Because He has overcome, each believer—each one of us—now has that overcoming life living within us. That overcoming life is desiring to burst forth in every circumstance we have, to prove Himself to us.
He does not force Himself on us. But as we surrender to Him and allow Him to come into what He is calling us to, we can start experiencing that.
I was thinking about this and about that hymn we sang:
Though all the path before thee the hosts of darkness fill,
Look to the Father’s promise and claim the victory still.
Faith sees the heavenly legions where doubt sees naught but foes,
And through the very conflict her life the stronger grows.
Praise God for that. Faith sees through all the circumstances of life to the victory—to the heavenly, beautiful picture that we have in Him.
There is another hymn I was thinking of sharing today. Several hymns came to my mind, and one we would like to sing also is “Faith Is the Victory.”
Faith is the victory that overcomes the world.
It is faith in Him. He is desiring to show forth the excellency of all that He has prepared for us, wanting us to enter in and share that.
Now, who does this cry go out to? There is a cry that goes out; who does it go out to? Really, it goes out to all of God’s people. In Revelation 2 and 3, you see it going out to the seven churches, which are representative of all God’s people.
It goes out to all of God’s people, but you will notice that the response is individual. The response to overcome is an individual response. There are no overcoming assemblies. Assemblies do not overcome; individuals overcome.
In the end, there will be a corporate vessel of those who have overcome, but it is made up of individuals, not assemblies. I think all of us, in many ways, will probably be surprised. You look around at people from every tribe, tongue, and nation—and you could add from every denomination, from Catholicism and whatever.
Some will be in that group who have never even heard of the teaching of overcoming. Why are they there? Because they had the life of the Overcomer, the One who had won the victory. It is not dependent upon our teaching. It is not dependent upon our knowledge. It is dependent upon His life being lived out and expressed in and through us.
Why is there this cry to overcome? The cry to overcome comes out of a jealous heart for the Son’s Bride to be made ready. The Father is jealous that His Son’s Bride would be made ready. This is the cry that goes forth.
His cry goes out in His great love for the people of God to return to Him, to repent, to put aside things that are distracting us and things that are weakening us, and to be the testimony that He has called us to be.
Today, as you look around Christianity, there is a lot of outward form of godliness, but where is the inward reality of His life being expressed through His people? That is one reason I appreciate the testimony times every month, because you get to see that life being expressed in so many wonderful ways.
We see this cry of love going out to us today. The question is not whether we have an ear to hear. We all have an ear to hear. Having an ear to hear is not the issue. But do we hear what the Spirit says to the churches?
Do we hear? We have the ability. We have the enabling. He has given us everything we need to hear His voice. But do we hear it?
In the Scriptures, hearing also means responding and obeying—not just gaining knowledge about it, not just hearing about it, but allowing it to impact our life. The decisions we make, where we go, what we do, and the priorities we set should come from the foundation of His call upon our life.
As we respond to Him in faith, it allows that precious Holy Spirit, through the working of the cross, to let us experience more and more of this victory of overcoming. It is not our efforts—not our efforts at all—but simply His life being lived out in us.
There are a couple of great hindrances to overcoming. One of the great hindrances is unbelief. Our eyes are on self, on circumstances, and on the entangling world.
Just as we saw in the hymn, faith—the opposite of unbelief—sees the heavenly legions where doubt, or unbelief, sees naught but foes. Faith sees the victory. Faith sees the overcoming.
It is so easy, and it comes so naturally to us, to see all the circumstances and everything around us and say, “I can never do that.” But may the Lord help us, that He could deal with this issue of unbelief in our hearts and lives.
This is the way the Lord has always worked. Think back upon His first coming. Who was there to greet Him? It was a few faithful, unnoticed people: Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zacharias, and some shepherds out in the field.
All this great religious ceremony was going on in Jerusalem. They had everything going on. They had knowledge of His coming. They could tell you exactly where He was to be born. But they missed the life. They missed that life that came because they could not see through.
If you look at all the parables related to our Lord’s second coming, what does He commend people for? Does He commend them for their biblical knowledge? Does He commend them for how many meetings or conferences they attended? He commends them for being faithful, for being alert, for being wise, and for being watchful.
As you are alert, faithful, wise, and following Him, you will be at meetings. You will be with God’s people. You will hunger and thirst for opportunities. But it is not the other way around. The overcoming life is allowing His life to be lived out and expressed through us in the daily activities we encounter.
Now, I wanted to consider what some people have said when asked the question, “Who is an overcomer?” But before I say that, how many times in Scripture is the word overcomer used?
Actually, zero. The word overcomer is never used in Scripture. That does not mean there is not the principle of it in a life. It is like the word Trinity—that word is never used in Scripture, but there is a truth in it that we can stand on.
The word overcomer, as a noun, is never used. Overcoming is always a verb. It is an action being lived out in life.
Sometimes I speculate that maybe the Holy Spirit did that on purpose. He never named a person as an overcomer because we would turn it into a position. We would turn it into a title.
Now, for fellowship, we can use the word. I am not telling you to eliminate it from your vocabulary. But be aware: it is not a noun; it is a verb. It is an action. It is a life lived out within us.
So often we can say, “Oh, you know, I am an overcomer,” or, “He is an overcomer.” No—Christ is the Overcomer. If anybody is the Overcomer, we could say Christ is the Overcomer, without any doubt. He is the Overcomer. We have that overcoming life living within us.
Brother Sparks said, “An overcomer is not someone who is perfect, elite, or a superman, but someone who is in the will of God at the end of their earthly life, finishing the race well. No matter how many times they have fallen, in the end they have gotten back up into the will of God.”
There is nothing to boast of in ourselves. Praise God, we all fall. The enemy says, “Ha, you are out now. No more hope.” Oh, but we can get back up by the blood of the Lamb.
One thing all of these brothers consistently speak of is that this is not some elite group. It is not some special group. It is not someone like Superman, SEAL Team 6, the Equalizer, or the Terminator. No, it is all Him. It is His life.
The enemy wants to get our eyes on ourselves instead of seeing the Victor. As soon as our eyes get on ourselves, we do see truth in ourselves: we see our weakness and our frailties. We can give up at times because we start believing his lies.
That is where unbelief comes in again. Instead of standing on the truth of what He has done and believing in the Word of God, we begin to believe the enemy’s lies. We want to be those who allow Him to show us, in a fuller and greater way, this matter of overcoming.
Brother Kong said, “An overcomer is one who is living”—note the word living—“the normal Christian life. Not supernormal, but normal. Sadly, many today live subnormal Christian lives, not possessing our inheritance in Christ.”
Notice that last little phrase: not possessing our inheritance in Christ. Not possessing all that He has prepared for us, as we read in 1 Corinthians. Oh, there are so many riches that He wants us to enter into—possessing those riches and living that normal Christian life.
Brother Lance says, “An overcomer simply means to come over.” Whatever the obstacle, we come over it by His overcoming life in us. We have that all-victorious life, regardless of the circumstances.
Some, as they talk about this matter of overcoming, say that it appears to be based on works. “But what about grace? Is it not all of grace?”
There is a dear brother in California whom Jim and Jerry know far better than we do: Floyd Filson. Floyd Filson was a great proponent of the grace of God. Nobody could out-talk him on grace.
But when he saw this matter of overcoming, he said in his commentary on Revelation that it is idiotic to say it is contrary to the doctrine of grace. These are ones who actually know more of His grace in their daily lives than the rest of us.
They know more of His grace because it is not of them. Surely there are works, but their works are the fruit of His life; they are not the way to His life.
Some of us get it backwards. We think our works will make us more spiritual. We think our works will allow us to enter in more. No. Our works are the fruit of His life working in us. When we deny ourselves and allow the grace of God to take over and bring us into what He has, that is the overcoming life.
So, how do we overcome? How do we overcome? In the letter to the church in Laodicea, we are encouraged to overcome as He overcame. How did Jesus overcome?
He overcame as the Lamb of God. He went to the cross and He died. He did not overcome as the mighty Lion. In Revelation, it speaks of Him as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, but then when John turned and looked, he saw a Lamb freshly slain.
How do we overcome? By dying. By going down.
How did those in Revelation 12 overcome the works of the enemy? Revelation 12 tells us:
They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb,
And because of the word of their testimony;
And they did not love their life unto death.
Three very simple, straightforward things. It is not some high, elevated thing that is so far out of reach. It is right before us and readily approachable: the blood of the Lamb, the word of testimony, and loving not our life unto death.
We can easily forget, in the hecticness of daily life, the necessity of the Word of God. That Word of God is there every day for us to feed upon and to be strengthened.
It is interesting: perhaps you pray with someone at a different point in life, and they are going through something. You say, “As you read the Word this morning, what did God speak to you?” They say, “I did not read the Word.” “Well, how often do you read it?” “I am so busy, and I have so many problems in my life, I do not have time for it.”
Sometimes it is a shock to our system to realize how little the people of God read the Word of God. That is one of the ways we get to know Him: through the Word of God and through fellowship.
It is so precious. Through the Word of God, we come into communion with Him, meditating upon Him. Through fellowship with brothers and sisters, we get to know Him.
One thing you notice about those experiencing this overcoming life is that it comes from a firsthand experience with Him. It is not secondhand; it is firsthand. You have a firsthand encounter with Him as He meets you in a particular problem or situation, and you experience that overcoming life.
As we look at these three things—the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and loving not their life unto death—they are very straightforward.
What does the blood of the Lamb speak of? It speaks of our salvation. How have we been redeemed? The past is concluded. Daily, it speaks of our continual cleansing by the blood of the Lamb from all our sins. It also tells us that He is our shield, our Defender, and our Mighty One.
I love that little chorus: “No weapons formed against us can stand because we are under the blood of the Lamb.” Praise God for that. It is His blood and all that He has done.
It also shows us that living an overcoming life is not living a sinless, perfect life. Every person who is overcoming is a great sinner, but they are sinners cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.
Somehow we think that the more spiritual we become, the less we are sinners. Now, we might sin less. We might not use the vocabulary we once used; things like that happen. I get old tongue-tied when I try to say some things. But anyway, we may not sin as much as we used to.
We are thankful that when we do sin, every day we have the blood of the Lamb. Because of that certainty and security we have in the blood of the Lamb, we have a strong testimony.
Because of all He has done, we can say, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” That is our testimony: He is Lord. It is not just words in our mouth. We may not even utter the words, but it is seen in our life. It is expressed.
God is jealous for the life of His Son to be expressed through His people. You look at all the different aspects of the Lord, and He is always jealous that this aspect of His Son would be manifested through His people.
He wants people to know that Jesus Christ is Lord of this person’s life—oh, far more than just words.
There is a recent book out on some teachings from Ezekiel. There is a phrase in Ezekiel repeated more than fifty times. What was God’s cry consistently throughout Ezekiel?
That they might know that I am the Lord.
Over fifty times, that was a burden within Ezekiel’s heart, coming from God’s heart for His people. He simply wanted them to know that He was Lord. He was Master. He was caring for them.
They could say it with their lips. They could sing the Psalms about Him being King. But was it lived out in their lives? That is what He is jealous for.
Finally, loving not our life unto death can, at times, involve physical death. But more often, it involves our death to self.
Our great enemy there is self. Self is full of unbelief in Him. It believes in ourselves. No matter how many times we fail, what do we say? “Next time I will get it right.”
It is amazing how positive we can be about ourselves. It is like, for fifty years, every time this happens, you are wiped out. But next time, “I will get it.” Nope. It is unbelief in Him and what He has done.
Another great hindrance in our personal life and our life together is self-love. Self-love is so strong, always watching out for our own interests. Because of self-love, we get so attached to the things of the world.
Our roots are rooted in this world, and we get entangled with these things. Then they overwhelm us and ensnare us, and we say, “Oh, it is impossible. I cannot overcome this. I cannot. Look at these situations.”
No—look to Him. If we look at the circumstances, it always discourages us. Often, when we are overwhelmed, we look at these circumstances. Some circumstances really are overwhelming, absolutely. I am not making light of anyone’s circumstances. I am simply trying to show that God is greater than our circumstances.
Praise God. It does not matter what circumstance you have or how overwhelming it is: God is greater, and He has a way for us.
Sometimes, when we find ourselves overwhelmed by circumstances, it is because of His great love. He wants to do something within us. He wants to set us free from ourselves more and more.
He is desiring to disentangle us from the pull and perils of this world. If we are honest, each one of us has deep, hidden character faults and flaws that only the Holy Spirit, through the working of the cross, can deal with.
Praise God. One of the greatest displays of God’s love is that He does not deal with us publicly. He does not expose your sin to everybody on Facebook and then say, “Now, what are you going to do?” He does not deal like that.
No, He comes in that still, small voice. He speaks to us and says, “I want to get this. I want you to be set free of it, because it is entangling you.”
Unconsciously, we can love these things because they are our identity and our security. He wants us to be set free so that He would be our identity and our security in all these things.
Sometimes the circumstances do not change, but we do. We overcome in them through the life we see in Him. Circumstances might not change, but we see how He changes us.
That is what verse four of that hymn meant so much:
More stern will grow the conflict as nearer draws our King’s return,
And they alone can face it who this great lesson learn:
That from them God asks nothing but to unlatch the door,
Admitting Him who through them will conquer evermore.
I would say the door is the door of your heart. Unlatch that door, admitting Him who through you will conquer evermore. He is simply calling us to surrender unto Him and allow Him to conquer evermore. Praise God. This is what we are looking for.
He is wanting us to eat, to enjoy, and to have that firsthand experience with Him. As I mentioned, in Revelation 2 and 3 you have the call to the seven churches, and in each one there is a cry to overcome.
The cry to overcome is not, “Once things get better, then overcome.” So often we say, “Once the circumstances change, once they get better, then I will overcome.” No.
Not when your circumstances change. Not when someone else does it for you. Not by going somewhere else. We are called to overcome right where we are—right where we are today. This is where we are called to overcome.
This is the provision He has made for us. He has called us to overcome even if things never change.
We are not trying to make light of circumstances. There can be physical circumstances, emotional circumstances, natural disasters, conflict with brethren, and conflict within our own families. It goes on and on.
If our eyes are upon the circumstance, our response is, “I cannot.” That is true, but we end up stopping there so often in unbelief instead of taking a step of faith: “I cannot, but He can, because He has overcome.”
So many of us are put into a whirlwind by circumstances. We cannot think straight. We cannot go this way or that way. It can paralyze us. But praise God, by the grace of God, wherever we find ourselves in life, there is a way through because He has made that way and He has overcome.
When He died at Calvary and prepared this life for us, there was nothing He did not conquer. There was nothing He did not make provision for us to face.
Now, each one of us loves to play the lawyer role. What is the little phrase we love to say? “Except.” “Well, I know God did all this stuff, but except for this.” No. All of it. Period. Full stop, as they say in Britain. Full stop.
He has made full provision for us and is calling us to enter into it.
One of the calls we have upon our lives in this day and time as God’s people is to restrain evil. How do we restrain evil? How is evil restrained? By saints overcoming.
We cannot restrain evil in ourselves, but the overcoming life within God’s people can restrain evil. It is going to get worse and worse in these days, but we have to be those overcoming in the midst of the debauchery of this world.
Hopefully, by God’s grace and as we yield to Him, there will be a restraint of evil. Evil is coming. It is not going to turn around and run. Evil is in our face now, and it is coming even harder and more intensely in the days ahead.
But the overcoming life has overcome evil. By that life being strong in His saints and strong in His people, by the testimony of God being strengthened, there can be a restraint upon evil.
That restraint protects us individually. It protects us as families. It is a shield, a mighty shield for us. Can we really enter into that?
One other thing I want to say about overcoming before we look at the seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3: overcoming has a reward.
If you look at each of the promises made in those verses, there is a promise there. In Revelation 2:7, He says, “I will grant you to eat from the tree of life.” In Revelation 3:21, He says, “To sit down on My throne.”
Praise God. That promise is to Laodicea. They were not disqualified. He said, “You repent. Return to Me. You will sit on My throne with Me.”
Then there is another phrase used four times: “I will give you.” Not because of anything you have done, but “I will give you the crown of life. I will give you a new name. I will give you authority over the nations.”
Praise God for what He has done. He is giving this to us as we return to Him. He gives us these wonderful privileges.
Revelation 3:5 says, “I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” I think it is interesting that He puts the angels in there. He says, “I will confess your name.”
Revelation 3:12 says, “I will make you a pillar in the temple of My God.” What precious, magnificent promises we have by His grace as we enter in and respond to His call to overcome.
As we look at this matter of overcoming, I am not going to get into prophetic interpretations of when this is going to occur. There are many interpretations, but my desire is to bring the thought of overcoming down to our daily life and keep it there.
All the interpretations of the future speak of overcoming as a reward. There is a reward for those who are faithful. All interpretations agree on that.
We are not going to get distracted by when this occurs or when that occurs, because the issue is His life in us. We do not get extra credit at the end by getting the interpretation right, and we do not get punished if the interpretation is wrong.
If we follow Him daily, live in the light of His life, let His life lead and guide us, let Him truly be Lord of our life, and love not our lives unto death, then regardless of how all this works out, we will be in the right place at the right time, and He will carry us through. There is absolute security.
One of my least favorite interpretations is post-tribulation. I do not like the thought of everybody going through the tribulation and then everybody being taken afterward. But I know that if that is the way it works out, we have a place of absolute security and absolute confidence in Him, that He will carry us through victoriously by His life.
Praise God. We do not have to fear that. We may not look forward to it, but we do not have to fear it.
In His great love, He is crying out to us. As we look at these cries to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, in most of them—except for two—there are two sets of people: those who have gone astray and those continuing faithfully.
Who does the cry to overcome, repent, and return go out to? Just those who are pressing on? It goes out to everyone. It goes out to everyone.
You see His great love and mercy. He has not written anybody off. Some of these places were in pretty bad shape, but He had not written them off. He was making a way. No matter how far down the wrong road you had gone, no matter how far off your teaching, doctrine, beliefs, or conduct had become, there was a way to return.
His great love and mercy are manifest in each of these letters. We are not going to examine them in detail, but we are going to consider an overview.
If you look at Ephesus, we are familiar with that little phrase: they had left their first love. They were doing many outwardly religious things. They were very active, doing the right things, going through all the right motions, and having all the right meetings.
But there was a call to overcome the religious life. They had left that place of first love.
It can be a challenge not to fall into becoming religious. That is why I appreciated what Joey said last week about the Lord’s table. Sometimes we can make it routine. It can become a tradition.
What is being religious? It is separating His life from what we are doing. It is disconnecting from His life and going through things on autopilot—tradition, routine, self-interest, and good intentions. He is not Head anymore.
That is religion. At our Lord’s first coming, many Jewish people were very religious. But He found those who knew Him and were faithful unto Him.
The wonderful thing about this call is that He is not focusing upon our outward actions but upon our inward heart—the inward cry of our heart to return to Him. If we have gone away, if we are merely going through religious motions, we are to repent and return to that place of an intimate, personal relationship, that first love with Him.
Those who overcome are lovers of God. Our Lord Jesus overcame because He was a lover of God. Those who overcome are lovers of God. May we stay in that place of first love, keeping it fresh daily within our hearts and lives.
Then you go to Smyrna. The church of Smyrna is not rebuked because they are going through a great deal of persecution. It is a letter of encouragement, urging them to be faithful even unto death, that they would receive the crown of life.
Those who are suffering will not be hurt by the second death. Praise God.
We know there are people in this world undergoing severe persecution right now—the torture, the killing, and various persecutions, such as in Pakistan where people are being enslaved.
It turns out that a brother lives a couple of houses down from us. Stella was talking with him the other day. He is fairly new in the neighborhood, and she was finally able to talk with him. He was from Tunisia, in North Africa, a Muslim country.
He said that when he and his parents became believers, they had to leave Tunisia. Everybody bothered you. You lost your job, your place to live, and everything simply by becoming a believer. They knew that when they became believers, and they were able to migrate to this country.
There is persecution in many places. But we actually encounter persecution every day of our lives in the world we live in. We encounter it at school, at work, among friends, and in families.
Within work environments and socially, there are so many social-justice programs, diversity programs, and inclusion programs. They can force themselves upon you.
In the academic world, if you do not conform to a certain program, you can have difficulty even passing a course.
I know a dear young brother in Houston who works for one of the major accounting firms. His firm celebrates Pride Month in June. On every work email, there is a footer during that month celebrating Pride Month, with wording and a flag.
Any work email he sends has that on it. He said he was trying to send as few emails as possible. He was texting people, calling people, and trying to avoid it in any way possible. But that is the environment you are in. Surely, you have a choice—you can quit. There is always a choice.
We see the challenge of trying to overcome and be faithful right in the midst of certain situations. We can be faced with various pressures and tempted to give in so that we will be accepted.
We like being accepted by people. We do not like being rejected. But our Lord was willing to be rejected. The overcoming life was able to enter into that because He was rejected and despised by men.
The encouraging thing in this letter is that even if we have succumbed to persecution, even if we have succumbed to the temptation not to allow Him to be our sufficiency, He still calls. He says, “There is a way. Repent and come back to Me, and I will carry you through this.”
Praise God. What love. One who overcomes is one who is living a martyr’s life. We talk about how Peter suffered a martyr’s death, and John lived a martyr’s life.
If we are going to overcome in these days, we will have to live a martyr’s life of loving not our self-life unto death. Then we can be those experiencing Him.
You come to that third church, Pergamum. Pergamum means compromise with the world.
Today, Christianity is so entangled by worldliness. It is hard at times to separate the things of the world from the things of Christianity. It is a great challenge for believers and assemblies in this day and time because, in many ways, the world has come in. There is such a lack of separation today.
I think about the music industry. I enjoy listening to Christian music, but sometimes, if I am not familiar with it, I turn on the radio—I still use radio; I am not a Spotify person—and I listen.
It used to be that as soon as music came on, you knew whether it was Christian or non-Christian. Now I have to listen. I am not quite sure. Maybe it is, maybe it is not. It has come in so much like that.
Even the whole thought of fundraising has come in. “We will put an ATM machine out here for you. It will make it a lot easier. Everything will go much smoother.”
One of the things that has come into the church today, sadly, is the whole matter of politics. At times, I think some believers trust politicians more than they trust the Lord.
Politics can come into the church. We need to be faithful in the country we live in, and there is a place for all of that. But its place is not to govern the church and direct the things of the church.
Praise God, even in that cry to Pergamum, where people were fully compromised, there is that loving call: separate yourself back unto Him, and continue on.
Those who overcome are separated unto the Lord—not merely out of the world, but unto Him. They are separated unto Him.
Then we look at Thyatira. This is what is called the apostate church. If you read through that letter, it says they had rejected the Lord and brought in the teaching of Jezebel and Satan.
Sadly, in Christianity today, that is occurring. There are people teaching things totally contrary to the character and nature of our Lord—calling good evil and evil good, devaluing the Word of God, even saying that it is worthless.
Even the precious things God has created are being questioned: marriage, gender identity, how one is saved, and how many ways there are to be saved. We will not go down those roads today.
The enemy has brought in so much. There are so-called churches and groups saying that all of this is okay, that it is wonderful. It is a sign of the end days.
But praise God, even if we have gone down that path, accepted untruth, and accepted false teachings, He says, “I love you so much. I want you to return. It is not too late. You have not gone too far down the path. You can return to Me, and I will return to you. I will strengthen you.”
Those who overcome are those who have a single heart toward the Lord. They are not double-minded or divided in their ways. There is a purity within them—a singleness of heart toward Him.
Now, as you come to Sardis, the characteristic verse is that they appear to be alive, but they are dead. There is a call to wake up.
There is a great wake-up cry going out today among all God’s people. All these natural disasters, everything going on, and the debauchery—it is a cry: “Do you not see what is going on? Wake up in the midst of this.”
Thankfully, it is still a call today, and we have this opportunity to wake up. Where have we been disillusioned? Where have we been disheartened? Where have we been offended? Where have we given up? Where have we fainted?
We can still get back up. He calls us to get up and come back into the race. That is love. That is mercy. His great love and great mercy encourage those who are faithful to keep pressing on. But for those who have been unfaithful, it is under the blood of the Lamb.
How did they overcome? By the blood of the Lamb. They said, “Lord, I was wrong.” Then we continue on.
Those who overcome are those who daily have a living, abiding relationship in Him, just like He had with His Father.
Philadelphia is one of the churches where there is no rebuke at all. They appear to be very faithful. Outwardly, if you looked at Philadelphia, they were somewhat insignificant. But what did they have? They had a little power. They kept His Word and had not denied His name.
Why was there a call for them to overcome? What was the great temptation Philadelphia would face? He told them to hold fast to what they had. What did they have? They had His life. They had His presence.
But He was warning them not to give in to the temptation of pride. The more we have of Christ, pride can easily come forth. It can begin to separate us from Him. So He says, “Hold fast to what you have.”
Remember in 1 Corinthians, there were some saying, “I am of Paul,” some, “I am of Cephas,” and some saying, “Yes, but I am of Christ.” They were not saying that in a humble way. That was proud boasting.
Many groups today, because of a certain teaching or experience, may say, “We are of Christ. We are it.” They may never say that exactly, but that is the message they give.
We need to stay humble before Him. As we look at these dear ones in Philadelphia, who looked so insignificant, what was their key? They were dependent upon the Lord in everything.
They lived a dependent life because He lived a dependent life. He did nothing on His own, only what the Father did.
Then you come to Laodicea. Let us read Revelation 3:21:
He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne,
As I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
What a great call we have here. Laodicea is very much a picture of the days we are living in. It is a church of pride. They say they are rich and have need of nothing.
But we are thankful that the Lord still loves them and calls out to them to return to Him. One thing about Laodicea was that they were not living in spiritual reality. They were living in their own little world, their own imagination. They thought everything was great. They did not know who they were.
It speaks generally of the condition of the church today, and particularly in this country. Compared to many places in the world, we have it pretty good. We are free to gather. We are free to worship. We can study the Bible.
Most people have multiple Bibles. Most of us do not even know how many Bibles we have. How do we select a Bible? We look at the outside cover: “That is a pretty cover. I think I will take that.” All the choices we have, even in colors and various things.
We have good jobs. People have nice homes and comfortable living. The sad thing in this country is that people can appear to have no need of God.
That can get hold even among believers. “I finished college. I have my job. I am married. I have a house. Here we go. I am doing pretty well.” Outwardly, it can look as though there is no need of God.
But His great cry calls out to each and every one: wake up and see the spiritual reality of what He is calling us into.
Those who overcome live in reality, just as He lived in reality.
As we look at these seven cries, we see such mercy in the Lord’s great grace and loving-kindness.
I hesitated to put this slide up because I did not want it to become a checklist: “If I can achieve all of these, I will have overcome. I will be a so-called overcomer.”
What this is, actually, is a picture of the character and nature of Christ. Christ is the lover of God. Christ lived a martyr’s life in addition to dying a martyr’s death. Christ was separated unto the Lord. Christ was single-hearted for Him.
Christ was daily abiding in Him. Christ was living a dependent life. Even though He had so much ability in Himself, He lived that dependent life—not doing anything unless the Father told Him to do it, and not speaking anything apart from the Father.
He lived in reality. It is His very character and nature, not a checklist.
We have been speaking about God’s great love and mercy calling out to us. There are a couple of questions you often get asked.
“If I am a new believer, can I live the overcoming life? What if I have only been saved for a year? What if I am saved as a young person and the Lord returns? Can I be living the overcoming life?” Absolutely.
If you love the Lord and your life is given to Him, it is not a matter of how long you have known the Lord. It is how you know the Lord and how faithfully you walk in the light He has shown you.
You may not have a lot of teaching. You may not have a lot of biblical knowledge as a young believer. But if you know Him and are trusting in Him, that is the overcoming life.
On the other spectrum, some say, “Maybe I am too old. I have known the Lord a long time, but maybe it is too late for me. I have drifted away. I have given up. I have wasted my life. I look back over forty, fifty, or sixty years, and what do I have to show?”
It is not too late. That call goes out to return to Him. Remember what Brother Sparks said: it is how you finish. It is finishing in the will of God.
We can live the remaining days of our life unto Him. That is what He is calling us to. It is a great cry of love.
Christian Chen said, “An overcomer is one who has been overcome by the love of Christ. They now live to serve and please Him. They are bondservants, ones prepared to meet the Lord.”
That overcoming life within us prepares us to meet Him: simply yielding to Him and allowing His life to be lived out through us.
How much do we overcome? Do we just overcome a little bit? I love Romans 8:37:
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
That little phrase, overwhelmingly conquer—some translations say more than conquerors—is a compound word in Greek: hyper-nike. You are hyped up. You are super-overcoming. That is how much we overcome.
It is like some scores in ball games, particularly the first couple of weeks of college football. There are all these mismatches: 66 to nothing, 74 to 6. It is overwhelmingly conquering.
He does not bring us an overcoming life just to simply conquer something, but to overwhelmingly conquer. He loves to come in and eliminate every excuse: “I cannot do this because of this. I cannot because of that.”
No, we overwhelmingly conquer. But the key is that it is through Him. Look at that verse. It is not that we conquer. It is in Him, through Him. His life within us overwhelmingly conquers and makes provision for us in this day and time. Praise God for that.
As we conclude, I want to conclude with some questions—things we have touched on.
Do we desire all that God has prepared for us, or have we become content with only a little of what we have experienced? There are unsearchable riches of Christ that He has prepared for us, and He wants us to experience more and more.
Do we believe that, through His victorious life, we can overcome? Lord, help my unbelief.
I believe all of us, at times, face situations. I am not going to stand up here and say I do not. When a situation or a circumstance hits you, immediately there can be a moment of panic: “Oh my gosh, what is that? How is this ever going to clear up?”
I remember a few years back in business when one of my clients sued me. My first reaction was not overcoming. I was panicky. But thank the Lord, just because our initial reaction may be panic or fear—and that is understandable—it does not have to stay that way.
We can say, “Yes, Lord, in myself this is too much. I cannot handle it. I cannot handle this physical condition. I cannot handle this relationship with this brother or sister. I cannot handle this work situation. I cannot handle this school situation, having to deal with all these things.”
“I cannot—but Your overcoming life in me can enable me by faith to go through.” That is what He is looking for. That is what He is looking for.
We have a life in us that is desiring to burst forth and prove to us and to everybody else how great He is. Help our unbelief.
Do we know the absolute necessity of the Word of God? That can sound so redundant, but we have to get to know the Word of God in a fuller and greater way in these last days.
False teachings, deception, and lies always come in with a small element of truth. We say, “Oh, yes, that says that in the Bible,” but we do not know the rest. We can be caught up in it just like that and led astray.
Do we desire to be disentangled from the world? We are in this world, but the Lord does not want us to be of it. Do we even have a desire to be disentangled? Are we comfortable in the world? Are we comfortable with our life?
May the eyes of our hearts be opened to see and to be disentangled. Do we allow His life in us to keep us from being overwhelmed by the circumstances of life?
Do we believe we can overcome right where we are, even if nothing ever changes? Do we believe that? Do we believe His overcoming life is all-sufficient for us right in the midst of the circumstances, no matter how hard and evil they are, even if they never change?
It is His life. He is the all-sufficient One. The days are becoming more and more evil, and we are going to have to enter into the reality of that in a greater way.
Because in Him, the answer to each of these questions is yes, yes, and amen. Not just a little, but overwhelmingly conquer in each one of them—more than conquerors. Praise God. It is so vital in these days.
May the Lord help us with this. Whenever you start thinking about the overcoming life, my fear today is that the only thing I have done is complicate it. You try to bring it down so it is more approachable, and you end up complicating it.
But I trust the Holy Spirit to take what we have shared and use it in our hearts and lives, that we could be those surrendering to Him and allowing that overcoming life to come forth—not only individually, but together as His people.
Let us pray.
Lord, we are thankful for all that You have prepared for us. We are thankful for this life that You have given to us. We are thankful for the price that You paid.
Lord, we come, and we have many “but, God, I cannot do this” thoughts. Many things come to mind. But Lord, help us to see and to look up, for our redemption draws near.
You are our salvation. You are our way through. You are the One who has the victory, and You are the One who has overcome.
By Your grace, through our faith in You, we can be those overcoming these daily situations in our lives. In Your name we pray, amen.