Thank the Lord for this time that we have for questions and answers. I just want to thank all of those who have submitted questions.
We had many questions, so there are quite a few that we will not be addressing this morning. The brothers will not be. We really focused on those that were within the theme, and then let the brothers seek the Lord about the rest.
So, for those who are watching this on the recording, or later—for all of us—we really want to be open to what the Lord is sharing with us. With that, we are going to give the time to our brothers. Let us all listen for the Lord as He responds. Thank you.
Morning, brothers and sisters. I had a few questions that did not sync up into my notes, so here I go. Let me dig into the paper. Just give me a second. I am sure I can find it here. All right.
The first one I received is the following. In the most recent message, Lucio said that salvation is like healing. Is the era of miracles over? And is the era of prophecy over?
For a question that was indeed said by way of comparison, I will try to put it in context briefly, and hopefully share something that can address the point, or shed some light on it.
I believe that the context is from the message yesterday morning, when we saw, at least in two passages, that our Lord’s ministry on earth is characterized—if you look in Matthew 9, and in Matthew as a whole—by an endowment of the Holy Spirit, with the word of God, unto healing. Matthew 9 is our basic passage, Matthew 9:35 and the rest of the chapter. I think it makes that clear.
And yet there is something more. You see that same endowment, in chapter 10, being shared, being given to the twelve as representative of the church. And in Acts 2 you have the broader fulfillment of that principle: the church being endued with the Holy Spirit, with the word of God, unto a ministry of healing, just like the Lord Jesus.
I believe that is probably what the question is getting at. If that is the case, what is the nature of this healing? Because it reads, “Salvation is like healing,” and yes, it was said in a message. Is the era of miracles over?
This is my understanding from the word of God. The way I see it is that, primarily, those healings that the Lord Jesus is doing, and is also commissioning the church to do, refer to something spiritual. I think that should be self-evident in some way. Because the more you think about it, if the thing is the physical healing in itself—all those healings that our Lord did—what is the final effect of that?
Here is a paralytic, and something amazing is happening. He is being given the opportunity to walk the rest of his life. He lives another thirty years, and dies, and that is it. If that is the extent of it, it seems that there is something quite incomplete.
Now, I really feel this very strongly. Let me get to the bit about salvation being like healing, because that is what is set in the question, and I think I said something to that effect. I think the answer is yes. In a way, those physical healings that the Lord performed can be seen as a picture of what He does when He saves us.
He takes broken people, in all sorts of ways—certainly spiritual, because we are more than broken; we are dead in sins and trespasses—and He brings us to life. Then He takes our souls, messed up in so many ways, with such baggage from Adam, and the Lord is slowly restoring, slowly making whole. First He gives a salvation that is given at once, and is eternal. Once you believe in the Lord, you rest in that. You are saved. But then there is this: you are being saved. It is part of the wondrous picture that we see.
A passage that I only mentioned in passing can help us understand whether salvation is like healing. I think the question behind the question is probably, “What, then, is the nature of the healing? Because it continues. Is the era of miracles over?”
Let me say up front, and I will repeat what I said: I do not believe that those things have ceased at all. Can the Lord heal today? Oh yes. He could heal yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever. Of course He can. Does He? Of course He does. Physically, yes, He does that. He does that all the time.
Actually, David is very interesting. He says in Psalm 103 that our Lord is the One who forgives all our iniquities, and He heals all our infirmities. So every time you are sick and you are restored—I do not care what the way of your restoration was—He is behind that. Even if you took a Tylenol because of your cold, I do not care. The Lord is the One who heals all our infirmities. That is what David realized at some point.
But to me, the point, when we see in the Gospels and in Acts the ministry of the Lord Jesus now being transferred and given to us, is this: if you stay just on the physical, there is something woefully incomplete, something that would be so limited. He is doing something that is eternal, and those healings are pictures.
So let us take the Gospel of John. That is the bit I just referred to. Think about it with me, whoever you are that asked a very good question.
If the question is aiming at the nature of these healings at the end of the day, think of John’s miracles, which, by the way, he calls signs. They are miracles, and there are eight of them, at least, recorded in the Gospel of John. But he calls them signs. The word sign is very interesting, because by definition it means that the thing itself, the sign, is not merely something in itself. It is more than something in itself. It points beyond itself. That is what a sign means.
So think about the miracles, or signs, in John. There is a pattern there. Usually the Lord is doing something, and it is followed by words that explain what He did. At times He says what it is going to mean right before it. But it is always the same pattern.
He feeds five thousand out of five loaves and two fish. That is wondrous, and the multitude was so excited—so excited that they came the next day hoping that there would be more of the same. Can you imagine? They wanted to anoint Jesus king, by the way. Can you imagine a king like that? Every day, free bread, and so on. And our Lord Jesus uses the occasion to explain what the sign that He did really points to. What does He say?
I am the bread of life.
You get the point? It is as if the Lord is saying, “What I did is just a picture of what I am spiritually. What is the spiritual reality? I want to introduce you to Myself.”
So it is always like that. In that sense, the healings, yes, are a picture of salvation. And it does not mean that the healings have ceased. The healings, the signs, always point to something much, much larger, which is what the Lord is doing in each one of our lives—His wondrous work in us.
The second part of the question has to do with prophecy, and I am going to mention this really briefly. If we wanted to get into the weeds of that, we do not even have the time, but I am going to read a verse from 1 Corinthians 14:3. The apostle Paul is talking about the gift of prophecy exercised in the church, which is something, as I told you, I do not believe has stopped. There are some believers who would say that those signs stopped. Personally, I see them in Scripture. I think they are still here. But here is what he says about the nature of that gift of prophecy:
But one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation.
So every time a brother or a sister stands up, or in a conversation is speaking to somebody else in this character—something for edification, encouragement, or consolation—there is the prophetic gift being exercised. In that sense, no, it is still there. Is the era of prophecy over? No.
In fact, in the book of Acts it is very interesting. Acts 2, the day of Pentecost, was part of our message yesterday. I did not get into this, but when Peter quotes Joel, part of what is happening there is that your sons and your daughters will prophesy. They will receive inspired utterance by the Holy Spirit. And it is part of what is happening unto healing, in the larger sense: there is a spiritual healing that was commissioned to us, and we were enabled by the Holy Spirit and the word of God.
Now, there is one sense in which I think we need to make an observation. Of course, we live in a time, today, since the end of the first century, when the canon of Scripture—the Bible in its totality—was completed, finalized. The revelation the Lord has had to give us in Scripture is given.
So we speak of having a spirit of wisdom and revelation. What does that mean? It is never that you have seen something that has nothing to do with the Bible, and you are getting something totally new. No. That is never what the word of God means by our having, today, a spirit of wisdom and revelation. That spirit means that you are going to see something that was revealed in Scripture, and now you are seeing it for yourself.
In that sense, I want to be careful here. Prophecy in the sense that anyone stands up and says, “Thus says the Lord,” as in the Old Testament, and here comes the message as if the Lord is speaking Himself—I would be very careful about putting that anywhere near the authority that we have in the word of God itself, because that is completed.
I am not going to go into whether that could happen or not. I will put it like this. If it ever happens, you have to judge it by the word of God, first of all, and you can never put that anywhere close to the authoritative word of God, which is finalized and closed.
I hope this clarifies a bit of the question. Let me move on. I have about half an hour, and I have four questions, or five—I do not know. You see, it is part of what I have to learn: to be concise. Oh boy, I am far from that. But anyway.
Here is the second one. How could a leading brother who works full time, and has many duties to take care of, practice compassion to brothers and sisters? There are just so many needs in the flock.
Of course, when one reads this, our heart goes out to whoever is writing it. We can feel the pain, and to a degree we feel something similar, I think, in our own experience. It is so true. And yet a few observations, and we trust that the Lord can use this for encouragement and for enlightenment.
The wording here is, “How can I practice compassion?” I do not know if it is even fair to mention this. It is probably not what the person meant, but we have to mention it in case there is something of the sort. Compassion, as we see it in Scripture, is not necessarily something discrete that you can put on your schedule: “I am going to practice it for two hours on Tuesday.” There is that aspect people imagine. I am not saying that whoever wrote this—brother or sister—is saying that. Not at all. But in case there is that kind of notion, no, it is not quite like that. It is far more a matter of the spirit in which we live.
That spirit will express itself: the Spirit of Christ. See Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit. The first of those nine enumerations of that fruit, the first characteristic, if you will, is love. Of course, love and compassion—they are related. I would put compassion under love. I think I heard Dana one time putting love as an umbrella, an umbrella for a family of words that belong to it. Then you have grace, you have mercy, and compassion is one of them. It is not identical, and I think our brother explained that very well. But in a way I want to point you back, to remind you, that this whole matter—compassion, love, being gracious, whatever way you want to put it—is a fruit. It is something that the Spirit will produce.
The wonderful thing is that it does not really matter how busy we are. If we are living in that Spirit, there will be something that enables that Spirit to be manifested, in the midst of a busy schedule, in the midst of whatever we are going through. That is the first thing.
Personally, oh, how much comfort that idea gives me. Because, of course, naturally speaking, I am like this: if I am overwhelmed, usually I panic. Oh, you get rattled, and whatever. And it is very easy to lose sight of what really, really matters.
Let me just say this before we move on. I will point you to something that was shared regarding the parable of the good Samaritan, the way it ends. You remember that after the Lord tells the whole story—the law being somehow summed up—and our Lord Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan, that story should remind that man: “Listen, if you think that you can comply with that standard, I want to remind you who you are in yourself. Are you that able and capable? You need someone to have compassion on you.” And the true good Samaritan, of course, is the Lord Jesus.
He ends the story saying, “Go and do likewise.” Honestly, the more you read the parable, the more you think on what the law is. I am not talking about the law as a principle by which you are trying to earn your salvation. No. I mean the law of God that expresses who He is. He is love, and that requirement is an expression of what He is: love Him with all our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves. We do not quite measure up.
I think when we are really busy, as the background of the question suggests, our inadequacy, our limitation, comes before our eyes so clearly. But to me, the wonderful thing in that story is probably the sequence of that “Go and do likewise,” and then you have the story of Martha and Mary.
As it was suggested in our sharing, why does Luke, inspired by the Holy Spirit, place that story right there? Could it be that there is the secret of how you can ever possibly go and do likewise—something that is beyond you? If you think about it, you will be overwhelmed if you try to take it up in yourself. Impossible. It cannot happen.
And then you have the story of that sister, perhaps pointing to what the attitude is of someone who has received such compassion, who was captured by that love. Could it be that that is what the stories say? If you are touched, if you receive that compassion, if you understand that, oh, our lives are going to be lived with joy and delight, occupied with the Lord Jesus.
Perhaps right there, in that occupation with Him—sitting at His feet at all times, in His word—there is the secret. When I say “at all times,” I am not saying you quit your job or something like that. In your spirit you are occupied with Him, whatever you are doing. And out of that there is a power, something that enables you to live in that same spirit, as you are occupied with your Lord.
Remember, the Holy Spirit is responsible to conform you to that image. To me, that is the key of practicing compassion. If you are conformed to the image of that compassionate Lord, you see, that is our only hope, brothers and sisters. Thank God that is the only hope. I would not have it any other way. What a privilege, to be conformed to Him.
Of course, Martha, I think, in some way also comes into the question here, because there is a danger. There is a risk, a warning, in the story of the two sisters placed side by side. Here you have Martha, overwhelmed, doing very good things. You remember the story. Jesus comes, and He is a guest, with who knows how many people in His company. There were the twelve for sure, but usually there were more than that. Somehow they are coming and staying with Martha. Out of a dutiful heart, certainly, a desire to receive the Lord properly, here she is, busy with so many things, to the point that she becomes overwhelmed by those things. And then she misses the main thing, the one thing that is necessary.
Remember how the story goes, when the Lord says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried about so many things, but only one thing is necessary.” Obviously He is pointing to Mary’s attitude: to be with Him, to listen to Him, to live at His feet.
So there is a warning for all of us. I am not saying that we should be careless about the duties the Lord has put in our hands. Of course, that is never the point. But even in the midst of a busy life, the main thing, the one thing that is necessary, is still what Mary has chosen. And it is wonderful. The Lord says something that should give us courage. He says that she chose that, and it cannot be taken away from her. Is that not wonderful?
Whatever you go through—circumstances, business, whatever it is—if you choose that, and are occupied with your Lord, it is yours. It is His grace. So I hope these thoughts can be of help.
Let me go to the third one. It is a little longer. Let me see.
The question starts by quoting two verses. The verses are 1 Corinthians 5:12, “What have I to do with judging outsiders?” Paul is talking in a context where there was a need to exercise discipline in the church at Corinth. I am not going to go into the details. He poses this kind of rhetorical question, which has an answer, of course:
What have I to do with judging outsiders?
He is saying, “That is not my business.” But then he says:
Do you not judge those who are within the church?
That is another rhetorical question that also has an answer. Of course the answer is that it should be so. Yes. There should be judgment, in some situations, inside the church. That is the first verse that our brother or sister quotes.
The second is Matthew 7:1, “Do not judge,” our Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, of course, “so that you will not be judged.” Put them side by side, and there seems to be a contradiction. Paul is saying, “Do you not judge those who are within the church?” which requires an affirmative: it should be so. And our Lord Jesus is saying, “No, no, no, do not judge.”
So the question is raised. You spoke of needing compassion within the church, and of the dangers of having a critical spirit. I believe that was said in the context, again, of the story of Martha and Mary. Because Martha, when she gets into that situation—you remember—almost without notice, the critical spirit comes out. She is overwhelmed. She is occupied. “Lord, what about my sister? Do You not care? I am doing all this, and the Lord is wrong as well. Are You not going to ask her to do something?” So I think that is the background.
Sometimes we know we should love, but we see things that are not quite right in God’s house, and it becomes easy to develop a critical and disheartened spirit. How do we reconcile those two verses? How do we balance the desire to stand for righteousness in God’s house with acting in compassion, and guarding our hearts from a critical spirit?
First of all, I am very glad that the question was asked, because I only touched on one side of the story. That is often the case when we are considering one theme. But it is really crucial, I think. I am glad that whoever—the brother or sister—asked it. I think it is an excellent question, and I think it should always be our pursuit, as we consider any matter, not just to look at some aspects of what the word of God has to say about something, but to look at what the word of God has to say in its totality about that matter.
What is being pointed out is very true. In the story of Martha there seems to be a warning against the risk of becoming critical or judgmental. Paul says, at some point, that you should judge those in the church. Our Lord Jesus says, “Do not judge.” How do you reconcile those things? It is a very good question, as far as I am concerned.
Let me start by saying the following. Exercising judgment is not the same as having a judgmental spirit. I think it is very important that we make a wide distinction. You see it? Exercising judgment is not the same as having a judgmental spirit. There is a difference between those two.
The verses, actually, command what Paul is saying. He is commanding us to do so. And of course there cannot be a contradiction in the word of God. So how do you reconcile them?
I want to point you back to the words of the Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. In those verses, in the larger context, at the same time that the Lord says, “Do not judge,” it is implied that the Lord is also saying you should judge. The two things are going on side by side. Now we need to read it, otherwise I am being as unscriptural as it gets.
If you go to Matthew 7 again:
Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
It is a wonderful little similitude that our Lord is making here. But here is the question. How are you ever going to notice a speck in your brother’s eye? You have to exercise some sort of observation, some sort of discernment. Of course there is a metaphor here, but you are seeing that there is something not quite right with my brother, with my sister. That is the speck.
How are you ever going to notice that if you are not exercising some degree of judgment? So it would seem that what our Lord Jesus is getting at when He says, “Do not judge,” is not an absolute rule that there cannot be any judgment. Otherwise Paul is contradicting Him, and that cannot be the case.
However, our Lord is certainly getting at this: you should not have a critical spirit. That is the real problem. The critical spirit, in this little similitude, or parable, or whatever it is, is the log in your eye. When you try to help a brother or sister, when you try to approach someone in whom you perceive a problem, and you try to address the problem while you have a critical spirit in your own heart—oh, that is a log. The Lord is saying you have a much bigger problem than this speck. In comparison, whatever the problem of your brother or sister may be, compared with what is in your heart, it is nothing.
However, do you think the Lord is trying to say, “Oh, it is all right, let the speck remain there”? Of course not.
It is very interesting that our Lord Jesus is using, in this passage, the eye, and that is at the core. It has been noticed that the eye is probably the most sensitive part of our bodies. I have a doctor here, so I have to be careful with whatever I say. He is a dermatologist, so maybe I am fine. Not an ophthalmologist.
The eye is probably the most sensitive part of our bodies. Listen: if I have a speck in my eye, and I see a brother or sister coming to me with the screwdriver and the wrench, I do not think I am going to feel comfortable at all. Would you? “Let me help you,” and there they come with the wrench.
So it is amazing that our Lord is not saying, “Let the speck be.” Oh, you need to use every sort of care and tenderness. You are going to deal with an eye, are you not? Is that not the case?
That is precisely the principle when it comes to the house of God. When you see a brother or sister who may be in some sort of sin, on some path that is leading the wrong way, or causing some sort of problem in the house of God—there is something that is not right. But listen, the real question is, what is our heart toward that person, toward that brother or sister? Are we approaching them with a critical spirit, or do we have the same heart as our Lord Jesus?
Of course, it does not mean we ignore the matter. Let us go back to Paul. He is saying there was a problem in Corinth with a believer who was living in sin, and he takes it for granted: “You should judge this matter. You cannot let it go. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” That is such a warning. He said, if you let that go, it is going to produce corruption that will spread inside the assembly. How can you let that go?
However, the question is, in which spirit the correction is being applied. A good test, I feel, in that area is the following. I think a brother mentioned this in one of his sharings. Have you mourned for your brother or sister in your heart before you approach them? Are you praying earnestly to the Lord for their deliverance, for their eyes to be opened, to see the problem, for the speck to be removed?
Oftentimes we have to say that we see the problem, and our reaction is not, “How can this be?”—the critical spirit. I want to say something that I believe is important, crucial in a way, in this matter.
I think it can be a very dangerous mistake if we just take the leading of the Holy Spirit, the still small voice, and make that the final matter, as if the course of action is defined by what my sense of the leading of the Holy Spirit is in a certain situation. Do not get me wrong. The still small voice is absolutely essential. It is always there in the word of God. We have to learn how to be guided by the Spirit.
However, the Spirit will always use the word of God. Did you see how those things are paired in Scripture, everywhere? We just saw one pair yesterday, in the ministry of the Lord: the Spirit and the word of God. The word of God is called the sword of the Spirit. He uses it. He operates through the word of God.
If I have a sense of how I should deal with this brother or sister, and I believe this is from the Holy Spirit, I think the test should be: what does the word of God have to say about this situation? If what I believe to be the sense of the Holy Spirit within is something that contradicts one portion of the word of God, perhaps what you think is the leading of the Holy Spirit is not necessarily so.
Remember, it is very easy for us to confuse our own inclinations, our own personality, and mistake that for the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is always the other way around. It is the word of God that should be used for us to assess: is that sense that I have really from the Holy Spirit? And when you see that, yes, the word of God says that, that confirms it. Yes, that is the leading indeed.
So in a matter such as this, we can never make just our sense the final word. “Let us use compassion. We need to be compassionate. There is someone in sin.” I have no idea if the Corinthians were doing that. Most likely not, because they were not in a great spiritual condition. But they were not willing to take action, when clearly there was the need to take action, to do something.
So we can never use simply a sense, a sweet feeling that we have within, and make that the final criterion for how we are going to act. It is the word of God that has to be that final judge, and that is going to shed light on whether the sense I have within is really from the Holy Spirit, or whether it is just me.
I hope this clarifies the question a little. Okay?
I turn to the last one. It is very short, and in a way it is the hardest, and I am already out of time. But I will try to compress it as much as I can. It is a very good question again.
It says: how do you know if it is the Holy Spirit doing the work, and not your own efforts?
I agree with the premise of the question. There is indeed an overlap between those two, or they can at least be very easily confused. If that is part of our being in the Lord, having received His Spirit and being united to Him, oh, it is essential that we learn what that difference is.
Perhaps a clarification would help up front. Living by the Holy Spirit, or in the Spirit, does not mean that there is no effort from our side whatsoever required. It may sound a little surprising to some. Somebody will say, “Hold on. The word of God speaks about the fruit of the Spirit, and we know that the picture is very clear. The fruit is something produced spontaneously out of life.” Very true. That is the basic principle.
But again, when you look at the totality of the word of God, at what the whole of the word of God has to say, it is very, very clear that living by the Spirit, in the Spirit, is not something that necessarily eliminates every kind of effort from our part. Perhaps the real question should be: what is the source of that effort? Is it something coming from myself, or coming from dependence on Him, from submission, from being led by Him? I think that gets at the core of it.
Since I am saying that you have to look at the totality of the word of God, just a few passages can help us in this matter. There are so many. Let us see if I can read two or three.
He reads what is 1 Timothy 4:8–10:
For bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.
Does that surprise you? Here is Paul realizing that godliness is something eternal. The benefit is forever. And he is saying, for that purpose we labor. We strive. It is a very strong word. It is not that he is sitting passively there, saying, “Okay, I am saved by grace, the Holy Spirit is in me, let us just go with the flow.” No. There is a putting of your heart into that. But what is the source of that? Is it your own effort? No, no, no. That is the thing. It is something that is because of the Lord in you.
Let me read another verse. There are a slew of them, but here is 1 Corinthians 15:10:
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.
Even more than all of them—the other apostles. Is that not amazing? Here is this apostle confessing, “I work really hard,” and then he says, “Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” So it is a matter of what the source is. But it does not mean that there is not going to be effort involved.
Even in the ministry of our Lord Jesus, we saw that. The good Samaritan—He is there, tired from the trip, sitting really exhausted. Or you see the Lord, after preaching those parables in the Gospel of Mark, get into the boat, go to the other side, and He is sleeping so deeply that the great storm does not awake Him. He must have been tired, humanly, because He is a human being, one hundred percent, as He is one hundred percent God, but one hundred percent a human being. Tired. In our labor for the Lord there is going to be tiredness.
So I think the first important thing to realize is that they are not mutually exclusive.
I will just finish with this. Perhaps there are a few tests that we can apply in our lives, to see whether this is my own effort, with the source in myself, or whether the source is the Holy Spirit. Here are two tests that I will leave with you.
The first is from Galatians 5. I just have to give you a little of the context. Remember how the Galatians started in the Spirit. They believed in the Lord Jesus. And at a certain point they were being persuaded, very mistakenly, that now it was on them. Now they had to obey the law. They had to do their own thing to be sanctified, to grow in the Lord. Paul comes to a point where he has to say to them, in chapter 3, I believe: how is it that you began in the Spirit, and now you are being perfected in the flesh? By “the flesh” he means that they are doing it in their own effort.
Now, very interestingly, it is to these believers, under those circumstances, that, when you get toward the end of the epistle, you start seeing certain things cropping up among them. Let me read a few verses in chapter 5. In verse 14 he says, in effect, that they were trying to be sanctified or justified by the law, and he says that the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
There is something profoundly ironic in what Paul is saying here. Because these believers, who now are trying to do it on their own, by their efforts, the result of that was that they were getting into all sorts of trouble with one another, biting and devouring. That is a test we can apply. Very often, when we are doing it on our own, that will manifest in some sort of impatience, irritability, biting and devouring.
He goes on, in the rest of chapter 5, as you know, to contrast the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. In the context of the whole epistle that he is wrapping up, it almost points to the fact that those works of the flesh were starting to be seen among those believers. Some of them are very obvious, are they not? Idolatry, sexual immorality, drunkenness—all that is pretty heavy. And then, in the same list of the works of the flesh, he adds jealousy, and not dealing rightly with one another. Remember?
That is it, brothers and sisters. When we are doing it in our own effort, very often that is what we are going to reap. He ends in chapter 6 by saying that whatever we sow, we are going to reap.
There is a second test that I will leave with you, and I will finish here. It is the test of your failure: how you react when you realize that you did not measure up to the standard you are called to.
Let me just say this. In case this is not a problem for you—“No, I am measuring up pretty well”—I would ask you, with all respect: are you measuring yourself against the right standard? Because the standard is a Person. It is the Lord Jesus. Does anyone measure up? We do not. And sooner or later we realize that.
Here is the point. When we are trying to live by our own effort, and we realize that, we get to despair. We despair. Actually, Paul in Romans 7 is one who describes the tension of someone living in his own effort, and not by the Spirit. You remember the despair, the agony of that chapter.
But, brothers and sisters, it is a wonderful chapter in some ways. Do not despise it. It is a necessary lesson for us throughout our Christian life, because that will pave the way for you to enter into the deliverance, which is what he discovers at the end. When he realizes, “Oh, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” then his eyes are opened. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.” You see, it is not myself. The whole of chapter 7 is “I.” “I am trying. The good that I want to do, I cannot. The evil that I am trying to avoid, I do. I, I, I.” It is his own effort. At the end he realizes, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.” You see, all that led to the solution.
Of course, it leads to the chapter of the Spirit of life, life in the Holy Spirit, but we cannot go into that. I am sorry, because I am way past the time I should have used. I hope this helps.
We were reminded, before we started, that Brother Kong used to mention during these times that the Lord really does have all the answers, and that the questions, which are so good, many of them cannot be completely addressed during our brief time. They ought to be brought before the Lord, who really is the One who has the answers, and who can scrape away some of the barnacles of the world that have collected on us, and that cause some of the questions to be hard to answer. I think we just want to be reminded of that.
The other thing is that, for my questions, I did not get that many Bible or conference technical questions, with Bible verses. There were more questions about life, which is great. But as a result, there is not always one particular Bible verse that will answer the question. So in cases like that, I prayed, and I hope that the answers can be helpful. But obviously, when they are not directly from the Bible, you can take them or leave them at times. They may not be right. But I have tried to be faithful to search the word.
I had nine questions, so I combined them into four. It may not be a perfect reflection of the question that you asked. The first is: how can I show compassion to a friend who never learns from their poor choices? Am I lacking? And a corollary: how can I show godly compassion and love to a friend struggling with sin, without affirming their mistakes? And a third: how can we encourage saints at our church whose spiritual life may be dead, and who are not pursuing the Lord actively?
So, the first: how can I show compassion to a friend who never learns from their poor choices? Am I lacking?
I think the first thing that is so important, whenever we come to a moment of discerning, as our brother already mentioned, is that we need to search our own heart, to make sure that the intention and the motivation of our interaction is good. This happens, of course, to so many of us, so frequently, that it is important for us to be reminded to examine our own hearts.
When this happens for me, there is a psalm we are familiar with, Psalm 139, and at the end of it David writes:
Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
There is a song, and I actually sing it when something like this happens. There is only one line that I sing, the third one, and it goes like this: “And see if there be any wicked way in me.” I sing it because there are moments when you know that there is something that is not right. But the motivation in our heart may actually, at times, make it worse if we are not thoughtful about that. So I just plant that there, because we need to have a good heart.
The second thing, linked to it, is that we need to be praying. We need to pray for those whom we are led to help. Honestly, at times there may be some frustration, and it can creep in. So we ought to pray, because the praying is a purifying of the interaction and of the friendship.
Then the third part is what the question writes: what about their poor choices? This is important, because the urgency of the moment can be proportional to the degree of the poor choices. If they are eating too much cholesterol, well, that may not be so urgent. But there are times when it is really urgent. That may mean that you put all things at risk—and your heart is good—and you need to go in there and speak the truth, because you love them.
So again, when it reads “their poor choices,” there is a variety of poor choices. We need to be able to have the Holy Spirit’s wisdom to gauge when it is wrong.
My wife was sharing with me a story of a sister who was spending time too frequently with another man, not her husband. Some felt that they should go and speak to them. You can imagine, this is more of an urgent moment, if there is something that could go wrong. And even then they asked themselves, “Have I earnestly prayed for this person?” As I understand it, the situation actually resolved itself before the friends came to intervene.
I was reminded that we need to keep hoping and keep praying for them, and also to realize that improvement for our brothers and sisters may be different from what we see. What I mean by this is that there was a sister once, whom I remember from when I was a young person. She was very wealthy. She drove—for those of you who know—a Mercedes S-Class. It was a nice car. And she was convicted that she ought not to have such a car. So she went out and bought a BMW 3 Series.
Now, to many of us, we might think, “What is the big deal? You went from a Mercedes S-Class to a BMW 3 Series.” But for those of us who know cars, you know that her sacrifice was not insignificant. You have to know that, to you, it may not be that big an improvement, but to her, oh my goodness, it was a huge improvement.
There is a brother in San Diego who used to tell us that, for those people who have a hard time with patience, to have just a little bit of improvement is really dramatic on the measuring stick of the Lord. The Lord will say, “You really did well.” But for the people who are maybe blessed with extra patience, it would not seem that different. So we have to see as the Lord sees, and to pray, and to have a heart of love. That is the first.
The second is similar: encouraging saints who are spiritually dead. Again, “See if there be any wicked way in me.” That is really important, to know where we are coming from. That is the first thing.
There are things in the world that will cause our spirit to die. The Bible tells us not to love the world. Which one of us can honestly raise our hand and say that we do not love the world? And again, the things that we love, other people may not stumble over, and the things that cause them to stumble may not be what causes us to stumble. But we have to understand that we are all bound together in this. So: do not love the world.
If we stop meeting together, this can cause our spirit to die. Or if we stop meeting among the Lord’s people—it does not have to be with us. If we are influenced by the wrong people. If we have become bitter. There are Bible verses for these things: being unforgiving rather than forgiving, or sin. Maybe it is worth reading one. Let us turn to Isaiah 59, the first couple of verses. I am sorry—verse 2:
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.
And then, of those who have gone on in their sins:
They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web. He who eats of their eggs dies, And from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth.
So there are times when small sins creep into our life, and they become bigger and bigger, and they separate us from God, and they cause our spirits to die—so much so that the production of our life, these eggs, the eggs of our life, actually cause harm to other people.
There are these variables that can cause our spirits to die. I think that some of them are very modifiable, and that can happen without even any large degree of confrontation, because you are not speaking about the person. You are speaking about something that the person has gotten into that is dangerous. So it is a good opportunity, when something like this comes up, to separate the person, whom the Lord and we love so much, from a circumstance that may have trapped them, and to focus on the circumstance rather than on the person. Because if we start to judge the person, we miss an opportunity.
Search for the thing that may be causing the difficulty, and try to find a way to help. Sometimes we can meet together with them in a non-spiritual way, really—to go to a ball game, or to find something in common and do that together, and gradually bring our brothers and sisters back.
But the most important danger to avoid is this: search our own heart, to make sure that there is nothing wicked in our heart.
These are all three questions, and at the end of it was, “Am I lacking?” The question was, “How can I show compassion to a friend who never learns from their poor choices? Am I lacking?” The answer to that is yes. And welcome to the club. We are all in the same boat with that. We need the Lord to help us so that we can have a heart that loves those around us.
I will mention one quote, and then I will move to my final two questions. The quote is from Amy Carmichael. She wrote a series of poems I really like, and this one I have always remembered. It is called “If,” and maybe you are familiar with it. I think I bought the book here. In it she says, in substance, that if she can wound another by speaking faithfully, without much preparation of spirit, and without hurting herself far more than she hurts that other, then she knows nothing of Calvary love. Hopefully that is of help.
That was two questions I could combine into one, and I have two more. This one comes from the high school group, so obviously it is very precious to me, and then another. They are about evangelism.
What are some practical ways we can go about fulfilling the Great Commission? And this one has a corollary: how do you evangelize in the workplace when it is against the rules? Can you give some examples?
The first part: some practical ways that we can go about pursuing the Great Commission. I will refer back to what our brother was sharing, for just a moment. What our brother was sharing is that at the end of Matthew, when we receive what we traditionally call the Great Commission, there was a vantage point that is global. It is big. The Lord has a heart for the world. Even though we believers, in the Lord’s wisdom, have been gathered together in these pockets here and there, we are connected to our brothers and sisters, and to our Lord’s heart for the world.
For me, the remarkable thing is that when we are connected to the world, our local communities become more real. The two are linked. This was a word spoken to a group who were to have in their hearts the calling of apostles, missionaries, and evangelists. They had that view of the Lord’s charge for His world of people. And the important part that our brother mentioned was that we need to pray. We need to pray continuously for those who are going out to share the good news, and for those who will hear. Prayer is the secret.
Many of us have experienced that in our lives. When we had a loved one, or a friend, who did not know the Lord, and we prayed for so long—my wife and I prayed for her sisters for so long—and when they were saved, it was one of the best days of our life. Prayer is so important.
Our brother was also mentioning that we need to be ready for what may come next. That is, when someone does accept the Lord, we know immediately that the work of the enemy will come in to snatch away what we have deposited, or what we have planted—a little seed in good soil that needs to be nurtured. So we need to be ready to protect, to nurture, and to help them grow. That means that in our places of gathering we have to be shining the light of the Bible, speaking, encouraging, and guarding our brothers and sisters. These are things that were mentioned in the meeting.
I do think, though, that your question may have more to do with the overall question of practical ways to tell the gospel. Just a couple of thoughts.
Number one: when I was in high school, our brother Dana asked, “Think about your best friend.” You know already, once he asks that, we are all in trouble. So I was thinking about my really good friend. And then he said, “When you go home, find a way to tell him the gospel.”
This is sometimes really challenging. One of the empowering parts of telling the gospel, of course, is when you really love somebody, because you know that the Lord is so important. When you love someone, you have a drawing to tell them. There are different kinds of ways to tell the gospel. There is what we would call contact evangelism: you go out and talk to someone on the street. There are gospel meetings at church, when people get invited, and so on. And then there is this: telling the people you love about the Lord, if they do not know Him yet.
I would say, pick someone you love, and find a way to tell them about the best thing that you have. That will give you a propulsion and a motivation to do it. And also know what you are going to say. Think about it. At times you can even write it down. What would I say? What are the things that are meaningful to me? Have a little of what the Bible says, and have a little of what the Bible has said to you—something personal in there. When those things come together, you have the chance to talk about it and to be engaging. But the most important thing, of course, is to have that love when you get started. It is so important.
One last point: just decide to do it. What our brother was mentioning about the Holy Spirit being manifested is so real.
This friend, whom I thought of that day when I was in high school, and about going and telling him—I went home, called him up, and while we were talking he tripped over the phone cord and pulled the phone out of the jack. I thought he had hung up on me. He called me back. I finished telling him my bumbling version of the gospel. Then he said, “Well, listen, tomorrow I am going to come over to your house, and maybe we can do something.” I said, “Well, I have rented these CDs”—which I guess are coming back now; I do not know—“and I have to return them to the library. So let us go to the library.”
That afternoon I went and bought him a Bible, and I put his name on the Bible, and I put the CDs on top. The next day he came to pick me up, and I decided, before I got in the car, “I am not going to give him the Bible. I am just going to hide the Bible, return the CDs, and then take the Bible with me,” because I had chickened out. So I was holding the Bible like this, and the CDs were sitting on top.
We were seventeen years old. He makes a super-hard turn to the right, and the CDs fly off the Bible, and I am sitting there holding a Bible with his name on it. He looked at me and said, “What is that?”
You begin to find out, in those moments, how real the Lord is. And boy, it changes your life. I know I have shared this story before, because someone asked me this exact question before. It changes your life. All right, so that is that.
The last question that I have is: how do you evangelize in the workplace when it is against the rules?
I do not think it is against the rules. But there are subordinate rules, I suppose, in every place of work. Obviously it differs by what part of the country you might be in. There are rules of professionalism and other rules of etiquette that we follow, or feel ought to be there.
I think the first challenge for us is always ourselves, in an environment like that, because it is obviously an environment where the Lord is not necessarily valued. It is one little part of a bigger culture, and it is sometimes petrifying to be there. The greatest obstacle is not really the rules. It is our fear of how we will be perceived. So we need to pray for that. We like to think, maybe, that it is the rules that cause us to be held back, but it is usually the rules and something much, much bigger. We need to be praying about that.
But regarding the workplace, there are different ways to share our faith. I am the sponsor—or I was, until last year. I think I was kicked out. I have been the sponsor of the Christian group in the school. I was dropped because I did not go for a period of time; I had clinic on that day. But I have been the sponsor there, and it is publicized.
One time I took the opportunity to share my testimony, when I was invited by a Christian group at lunchtime, and the invitation was sent to the entire company, the entire university. I did not intend for that to happen, but the Lord showed me mercy.
It is important for our colleagues to know what we believe, and who we are. You do not have to do it in some great way. The Lord will, in His grace, raise many opportunities to say who we are.
Do not use profanity. It is striking when we refuse to say certain words, and trade other words for them, that people will ask, and the answer is, “Yes, I am.”
It is always awkward to talk about yourself, because the Lord will lead each one of us differently. But I have a little Bible verse on my desk—not prominent, not this big. No, it is just this little thing underneath my computer, that people have seen.
But the most important thing, I think, is that when people know who you are, your actions need to be consistent with what you say. That means that you take the last shift. You pick your vacation week last, or you offer it to someone else. You do not keep score when everything is not equal. Do not cheat. Do not gossip.
It is important, when we are at work, that our actions speak of our testimony. The truth is, our Boss is the Lord. We are with Him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If He asks us to be at work an hour longer, then we ought to be at work—technically, at our workplace—an hour longer, for the sake of His testimony. So we need not always look for the shortest, quickest way out.
I will just share this honestly. One of my close colleagues, one of the department chairs, his mother passed away about a year ago. He knew I was a Christian, so he asked me about his mother passing away. She was a believer. She lived here in New York City. Then he asked me, “Do you know anyone who can help us with her ceremony?” and all of this. I do not know what the Holy Spirit did; I just said, “Well, if you want, I can do it.” So I officiated at her memorial, and I got to pray and speak in front of colleagues about our wonderful Lord.
There are times when we will have our chances. It does not need to be overt, but it has to be real, and we need to overcome our own fear of it. Those are my questions.
I have one last comment, if I may. Many of the questions that we received, and could not get to, are very personal, very honest, very burdened. We could tell. We do not have enough time to cover all of them. But I have just a thought, and that is this: the Lord’s house is His beloved. He loves His house. He loves His bride.
We who are still here on earth are not perfect. There are many places where we meet that are constituted by imperfect people, who, of course, all believe in a perfect Lord. When we gather together, there will be a manifestation of human weakness. It will come. What we need to do is look to Him. We need to pray, and learn to be like Him.
In the church in Philippi there were two sisters who did not get along. In Philippians 2, Paul gave them a very wonderful instruction: use the Lord Jesus as our example. We want to be of the same mind, to have the encouragement and consolation of love. We need to look to the Lord as our example, to see how we can be patient with one another, as He has been patient with us.
There were several questions that included some strain in that space. Hopefully that will be an encouragement, that we can read Philippians 2 and learn how to bear one another’s burdens.
Oh, I am sorry. My last question was: where does Barricade rank in the hierarchy of Transformers? I only know the first generation of Transformers. Thank you.
It is really a precious thing to hear practical sharing. I think what we are seeing is how the Lord perfects His bride. We as brothers and sisters need to be willing to be accountable to our brothers and sisters. And brothers and sisters also need to be merciful and compassionate as we account for one another.
I think these things are very precious. You know, there are a lot of assemblies and gatherings where nobody is accountable. You come and you leave. But that is not the way the Lord builds His church, is it, doing all these wonderful things? Okay. Anyway, so my questions. There you go.
There are actually two sorts of themes that recur, so I will read two questions that refer to the same kind of thing. It says: please explain who comprises the ripe fields referred to in John 4:35. Is it unbelievers, whose hearts have been prepared to hear and receive the gospel, or is it believers who have grown up and matured, like wheat, which matures and ripens and becomes white? Which harvest is it? And then somebody asks: can you explain a little more why we are the harvest? We usually think of ourselves as the laborers. Thanks.
Well, the question comes from John 4. This is a very simple thing. They got all the hard questions. I got the easy ones. John 4:35 was read several times:
Do you not say, “There are still four months, and then comes the harvest”? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.
Harvest was a term used in Jesus’ parables quite often, which speak of two kinds of harvest, actually: a harvest unto salvation, and a harvest unto the kingdom, which, in a way, are two different things, as we will explain in a minute.
This particular context, where Jesus is speaking, was proven out, as John always does. After Jesus makes such a statement, then we discover what He means when He says, “Look up. This field is white unto harvest.” Right after He said that, what happened? All the people came from the village. They all said, “Now we believe, because we have heard You, and not just because of the woman.” Whatever they were saying about the woman, what they were showing was that this whole town was white for salvation.
So primarily, what Jesus is saying is: if you will open your eyes and let the Holy Spirit show you, there are people ready for the picking, ready for salvation. As a reality in life, as I said last night, just for a moment: when you go out, even in cold witnessing—that means just going out in contact witnessing—it is quite wonderful how the Lord has somebody walking through that park who is ripe to be gathered into the kingdom. So that is the first and primary meaning here. It is the gospel being harvested among unbelievers who hear and respond to the Lord. It is great.
Of course, the wonderful thing behind it is this: how precious is the Holy Spirit, who has been planting seeds, who has been bringing about conviction in people’s lives before you ever arrived.
I remember one time we lived upstairs in an apartment building, and there was a fellow downstairs. I would go by and see him, and he would smile at me, and we did not talk very much. One day I told my wife, “I have got to go down and talk to this man.” We were getting ready to move, actually. “I had better talk to him about the Lord.” I went downstairs, knocked on the door. He opened the door and said, “I have been waiting for you to talk to me.” Because the Lord had been working, you know?
When you think about your own life, was the Lord not planting seeds and bringing about conviction before you ever heard the gospel? Now, some of you grew up under the gospel. Not me at all. But little things happened in my life, where I said, “Wow, maybe there is a God.” Things that changed the plot in the course of my life. I was supposed to go to Harvard, because my dad is a Harvard man. But I went down to a rather ordinary college in Florida instead, so I could be near the beach. Why on earth did I do that? Well, I met a girl named Julia. When I got saved—only after I got saved did I find out she was part of a Christian family. Can you believe it? She was not shining too brightly. But her Christian family—how did I ever get into this? People were preaching the gospel. They were dropping seeds all over me. What did I think? That I was a bird? And within a year I got saved.
Well, listen: the Lord is guiding the pathway of unbelievers as well. Your loved ones as well. Some of you are so glad that when you were a child, your grandmother was praying for you. You know what I am saying? The Holy Spirit comes to convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment. So that is what surprised the disciples. “Who was planting seeds here in Samaria?” The Holy Spirit. Is that not wonderful?
But, you see, harvest also has to do with future judgment. What Jesus says is, “Now you may think you are in the kingdom. But when the harvest comes, there will be a separation in that harvest,” because harvest always speaks of judgment. There is the gathering in of that which is precious, and there is the blowing away of that which is chaff.
As an example, in Matthew 13:30 He is talking about the wheat and the tares, and He says, in effect:
Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to burn, but collect the wheat into my barn.”
So we see that. Even in Revelation 14 we see that there comes a time when the angels harvest for the kingdom. There are some who are ready, and some who are not. I am not going to go into the controversy of the fact that some who are Christians may not be ready for that millennial kingdom. But I think it is pretty obvious, in many of Jesus’ parables, that there will be some Christians very surprised that they have not been harvested for the kingdom when it comes.
Now this is apart from salvation. Salvation is not spoken of as a harvest in that term. This is talking about the kingdom, the coming thousand years. Who is going to be enjoying that? You know there is a whole teaching of Jesus about rewards and corrections, and a case for our being faithful in this lifetime, looking forward to that harvest. Even the exhortation to Timothy by Paul, which we heard last night, in 2 Timothy 4, has to do with a harvest and the appearing of the Lord Jesus. Our faithfulness today is looking toward that harvest and His coming. Okay. So much for that.
Now I have two questions here regarding trials, pain, and difficulty. Let me read those.
Why does God sometimes allow trials to become greater, even after we have endured so much and learned to trust Him? How can we continue to endure with joy? Oh, that is a tough one.
And here is another. How do you get from the place of personal suffering or failure to a place of showing compassion and reaching the Lord’s harvest? Is it organic, or is there a deliberate action—to take up the suffering, find others who are suffering in a similar way, and reach them with the compassion of Christ?
The second one actually has to do with this matter of enduring through the trials we go through. How we can endure suffering with joy comes from James, who tells us at the beginning of his epistle:
Consider it all joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials.
Probably a large percentage of the Bible deals with this question of going through trial. There is simply the place where Paul tells the young Christians he had brought to the Lord that through many tribulations we enter the kingdom. The fact that we live in a fallen world, a world full of corruption, means that every one of us is going to suffer in some way.
There are so many levels of suffering, and so many possibilities. Some suffer in their health, some suffer in their business, some suffer in their families, some suffer in their emotions. There are all kinds of suffering that, in a sense, are part of our human situation.
I am not going to get into the long attempt to explain how a God of love could allow suffering. This is a big question that comes up in Job. But let us just say a couple of things. I hope it helps in some way.
Our biggest problem with suffering, I think, in the end, as Christians, is that we blame ourselves. Especially when it endures. You know what I mean? All right, I have a bad hip. That is one thing. But when, as in these questions, there is suffering that even gets worse with time, the great temptation is for us to blame ourselves. “I have done something. Something God does not like, and He has dropped this down on me.”
Now, that is the devil’s workshop. He loves to bring condemnation to God’s children. It is not that we should not examine ourselves when things come our way. But listen: this condemnation from the devil starts because we think we are in control of our lives. So if things are going right, it is because I am doing right things. Things going wrong? Uh-oh. I must have done something wrong.
I think what endurance really involves is that we keep denying that self-condemnatory person, and we come back and say, “Lord, I believe that You have saved me by Your grace and compassion. You still love me. You are caring for me, even in the midst of my trials.” That is the basis of endurance.
So what happened to Job after all of his friends tried to deal with the problem of sin? When he saw God, there was no more question. That is a strange thing, because he did not get an answer. But let Him be the answer to all our questionings—and that song that we sang. There is something about God showing up that is enough.
Even in your present suffering, I think we could have so many testimonies here this morning of people who are in physical trouble and trials, who could testify how many times the presence of the Lord came upon them and gave them grace and rest.
You can imagine Paul, so busy serving, and then getting that thorn in the flesh. He must have wrestled with that thing. “Is it my fault, Lord? What have I done wrong?” Everything, right? And he said, “Lord, if You would just heal me, I could get around so much better, but now I am pretty much crippled.” And the Lord said, “Wait, wait, wait. This is not something I am doing because I do not like you anymore. You had some visions that got you pretty heady. But you see, as soon as this thorn pierced your flesh, I am your healing.”
I am your healing.
I still love the testimony of A. B. Simpson, this young man who was the most promising preacher in New York City. But he came there broken physically. He had what you call it when you are always exhausted. He was continually exhausted. He would speak on a Sunday and have to rest for two weeks to speak again. Every word he spoke was like gold. He was a tremendous preacher. All the Presbyterians in New York City flocked to him whenever he spoke. He was so tired, and he prayed to God for healing. He went up to see that man in Massachusetts who had a healing ministry. It did not happen.
Anyway, long story short, God said, “I am not going to heal you. I am going to be your healing.” And the man was, in effect, upheld for the rest of his life, and worked like a workhorse to start the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He found the presence of God as his healing.
All I want to say is this: there is so much involved in these mysteries, but two things. One, endurance is a very important aspect. You remember in Hebrews 10, the writer is saying, “Now you remember in the early days how you suffered trials, and you went through them all right. But now times are tougher. You are beginning to doubt.” You see? Almost the whole of James 1 is dealing with doubt when you are in trial, because that is when we get double-minded. “Oh, I believe God. I believe God loves me. I do believe. But I wonder why He is doing this to me.” Double-minded.
The key to endurance is coming back, time and again. As it says in Hebrews, you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God you may receive what was promised. And God says, in effect, “For yet a very little while, the coming One will come and will not delay. My righteous one shall live by faith.”
So why does James say, “Count it all joy when you endure various trials”? He is not saying, “Love the trials.” He is saying, “Realize the end.” God uses all things together for good, to produce in you a Christlike person. And one of the aspects of becoming like Christ is when you suffer as Christ suffered. We enter into the fellowship of His sufferings.
Which means, I guarantee, when finally your own striving has ceased—which is always the difficulty—you find that Christ comes very near. I would venture to say that many of you could testify that the moments of greatest trial in your lives were the moments when Christ came the closest to you. He wants fellowship with you in your suffering, because that suffering produces something which one of these questions alluded to, and it is this.
This whole work of the cross in our life is to break our self-reliance. In suffering, and in relationship to the Lord, when He finally gets us to stop striving, stop blaming ourselves, and just walk with Him through it, that is when that compassion gets released in our earthen vessels. Because then you realize, everybody has a story. I know that person says they are going through emotional difficulties. I do not understand why, looking at them from the outside. But that person is connected to me.
The compassion of Jesus was that He, as a human being, came to the place where He was connected to all the sons of Adam. He knew we were all human beings. And He was able to come down to them on the same level, which, in a way, is the key to evangelism, which was mentioned earlier. What is it? There is a mighty magnet: Christ’s life in you. That is the secret of your witness, whether you stumble through some little testimony, as was implied, or however you want to witness to people. It is Christ in your life that does the work. You just speak to somebody about the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is going to come around afterward and give that person a hard time until they get saved. But it is because of the mighty magnet. You turned on the mighty magnet, and that person begins to be drawn to the Lord. Well, those are some of the thoughts.
Now I just have two final questions, and I will share briefly on them.
How do we ensure that our outreach is actually bringing people into the kingdom, rather than just doing generic gospel work? Now, I have never heard of generic gospel work before. But I think I understand what they mean. You know, we can go through the routine of having gospel meetings, people getting saved, and all that kind of thing, and you really wonder, “Are people really getting saved? Is this kingdom work? Are people being brought into the kingdom?”
Okay, well, here we go. The kingdom work is what? Make disciples. Do not just save them. You know, they used to say—I was a Baptist preacher, and I did a lot of gospel preaching—they used to say, “Ah, you Baptists are all alike. You get somebody saved, you baptize them, and you hang them up on a line to dry until Jesus comes back.”
But when somebody gets saved, they have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now it is time to make a disciple. When you start having somebody come, study the Bible, start praying, do all these disciplines, you find out pretty soon whether that person is genuine. Some people do respond because they have been asked to pray the sinner’s prayer, but there does not seem to have been any life within them. Well, sometimes with time that life begins to bud. We do not all instantly turn into a Jesus fanatic. But if we will disciple them, and pray for them, and answer their questions, and walk with them a little while, you will see: harvest them into the kingdom. You will bring them on the way to maturity and fullness of life.
The last question. I am just hesitating for a moment about sharing it, but let us hear it, because it is common.
Jesus gave us a mission to do what He did. Just as in the time of the apostles, we also had the power to heal and to be anointed by the Holy Spirit. Can we still do these things today? Because I cannot feel the power of the anointing of the Holy Spirit in my church. Is it because the church has too much religion and theological content, which hinders the work of the Holy Spirit?
Now, I have no way of getting into your church to find out what is going on. Neither would I be able to say for certain. Some churches have become a lonesome tree, as I alluded to in my first message. But here is the real question. If you are filled with the Spirit, how are you influencing the church that you are in?
Suppose the church is a little sleepy, maybe heavy on doctrine, and needs more of the Holy Spirit. You are like a refreshing breeze when you come in there full of the Holy Spirit. They are all sitting on their hands, and there you are with your hands raised, praising God. Now, that can be infectious, or they can ask you to leave. If they ask you to leave, that is your answer. You do not belong there anymore.
I am not saying be divisive, or do things on purpose—being an exhibitionist, speaking in tongues in the middle of the prayer meeting, things like that. No, no, no. But if you are saying, “I do not feel it because my church is not feeling it,” well, why do you not feel it first? And then maybe the church will begin to feel it.
I have often been in churches that seem to be the church of Sardis, truly, you might say, but fully asleep. And I found that within that Sardis church there are actually Spirit-filled overcomers, just wishing that they could shine like a light a little more. You find, as I suspected, someone who is full of the Spirit, just by the way she carries on when she prays. So there probably is, if it is the church the Lord wants you in, some good kingdom work to do there, is there not?
Well, brothers and sisters, come alive in the Lord. Show by your example what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit and with the fruit of the Spirit. I do not think the question is ours to judge the church, as to what the church should do about it, although, brothers, the church needs to be alive today. We have a generation right now that is looking for life, not empty talk. They need a living church: a living expression of love for God, living worship, living Bible study, living prayer. Oh, Lord, recover the church—Spirit-filled living reality, a new wineskin holding the new wine, the kingdom of God. So, there we are.
Wonderful to hear the answers of my brothers. Lucio, you know, I talked about Matthew being a scribe. Lucio is one of those scribes. He has so many points. He says, “Now, before I get to that point, let me tell you about this point.” What? Lucio is a scribe. And of course, you know what? I have to tell you, there is another man in here who has not spoken this week, but his name is Daniel Chen. Talk about a scribe. He spoke in our assembly last weekend, speaking about the Lord building His church. By the time I got through, I felt I knew the whole Bible. He started in Genesis and got to Revelation, and the whole thing connected, this and that.
And you know what? The fruit did not fall far from the tree. The scribe of scribes was our dear brother Christian Chen. He had more connections in the Bible than the Bible has. I mean, he connected the table of contents with the book of Revelation. He was the scribe of scribes. Do you not love scribes? They have so much knowledge. You are just writing, moving a line over here, and then you have gone off on that topic, and there is a whole page on the side, and then he comes back to the regular topic.
Praise God for my dear brothers, with whom we have spent this weekend. God bless you.
So we are coming to the end of our conference, and we do want to thank the Lord for speaking to us, especially concerning this matter of His harvest and His charge. I think this weekend we have seen His heart, a compassion for the multitudes, and His desire also that we would see that harvest as He sees it.
So, as an encouragement, even as we fulfill this charge, as we go back to our assemblies, we thank the Lord that we do not have to do it in our own strength. We thank the Lord, as we were reminded, that we are united with Him, that we have been empowered by His Holy Spirit, and that each of us is part of His body. We thank the Lord for that.
So when we do return to our homes, when we do return to our workplaces, where we are obviously not able to spend four days as we just have, maybe we can truly allow His compassion and life to flow through us, as we have been so encouraged this weekend.
I mentioned this morning, during prayer time, that the conference may be ending, but the Lord’s charge continues. May we be willing vessels in His hands.
I was thinking of a hymn to end with. Actually, we sang several of her hymns this weekend: Frances Havergal. In Christ and Song there is a little section on her. It says that the prolific English hymn writer Frances Havergal wrote the hymn “Take My Life, and Let It Be” in 1874. She had spent five days visiting a home where ten unconverted, or indifferent, persons were present. She prayed, “Lord, give me all in this house.” Before departing, everyone received the happy blessing of being fully yielded to the Lord. During the last night of the visit, her heart was too joyful for sleep, and she passed most of the night in worship, praise, and renewal of her own consecration. Then twelve poetic couplets of consecration formed themselves, all beginning with the word “take.” Pairs of rhymes found a melody in her heart, culminating in, “Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.”
So maybe, as we conclude, we could, as a response together, sing this hymn.
Take my life, and let it be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take my moments and my days; Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move At the impulse of Thy love. Take my feet, and let them be Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me sing Always, only, for my King. Take my lips, and let them be Filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold; Not a mite would I withhold. Take my intellect, and use Every power as Thou shalt choose.
Take my will, and make it Thine; It shall be no longer mine. Take my heart, it is Thine own; It shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour At Thy feet its treasure store. Take myself, and I will be Ever, only, all for Thee.
Amen. May this be our prayer. May God bless you as you travel back, until we meet again.