Okay, Philippians chapter 3.
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude.
That is a good place to stop right there.
Of course, this would usually be done at twice the speed for young people, but since we are adults here, I do not know why you chose two octogenarians to speak anyway, Dale. What are we doing here, huh? Is there any other octogenarian whose name starts with D? Because you could speak as well, I am sure.
This is the year of the D. I thought when I got here it was the year of the T, because I met about four Tims in a row, and then you throw in some Toms. I am telling you.
Forgetting what lies behind,
Reaching out for the things ahead,
I press on, I press on;
By Your grace, I press on, dear Lord.
Running forward and laying hold
Of the calling You laid on me,
I press on, I press on;
By Your grace, I press on to You.
For I want to be found in You,
With my calling fulfilled and true.
I do not trust in my pride
Or my feelings inside, but You.
Resurrection is the power I choose,
And in suffering, joined with You,
Drawing me toward the prize
Of my calling on high,
I am pressing right into You.
Forgetting what lies behind,
Reaching out for the things ahead,
I press on, I press on;
By Your grace, I press on.
Running forward and laying hold
Of the calling You have laid on me,
I press on, I press on;
By Your grace, I press on.
For I want to be found in You,
With my calling fulfilled and true.
I do not trust in my pride
Or my feelings inside, but You.
Resurrection is the power I choose,
And in suffering, joined with You,
Drawing me toward the prize
Of my calling on high,
I am pressing right into You.
For I want to be found in You,
So there is only one thing to do:
Counting everything loss, I take up my cross.
I am pressing right into You.
Oh, Lord, how we thank You that there are forces beyond our ken pressing us into You. Even as we gather to study Your Word this morning, we realize that Your Spirit is already exciting our hearts and stirring us up.
Oh, we thank You for the young ones here, so vibrant, still the Eveready Bunny. But for us older ones, Lord, oh, by Your Spirit, be that minstrel who strums that song that stirs up our spirit to prophesy of the things of Jesus Christ.
We are so thankful for our gathering together and for precious people who have an earnest desire. So fulfill that desire in our hearts, even this morning as we gather, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Well, here we go. Thank you so much.
Last weekend I got a bad cold, which is still clearing out, and that is one reason I gargled—I warbled more than sang.
The other problem is this: I do not know who C. F. Martin is. He is the man who makes the famous Martin guitar, as we just saw right there. Will plays one. All the greats play them.
But the problem is that C. F. Martin obviously had nimble little fingers—little fingers like James Taylor has. Actually, one finger touches one string. It is an amazing thing.
Will has those old delicate, spider-like fingers. Look at Blair for a while there. Look at those little tiny—yeah, it is perfect. I have pickles. I have ten kosher pickles.
Actually, at home I have a pickled guitar. It is called a fat-finger 00-18 Martin. It is one I had specially constructed.
Anyway, I am glad I got through that, not doing such a good job there. That is the way it is.
We are here to study this wonderful passage: “Come, let us return to the Lord, for He has torn us.” Hosea 6—sorry, Hosea 6:1. We will read a few verses there to start.
Come, let us return to the Lord.
For He has torn us, but He will heal us;
He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
He will revive us after two days;
He will raise us up on the third day,
That we may live before Him.
So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth.
Now, you know that word turn, shuv, in Hebrew is the word we usually translate repent. You catch that, right?
He has torn us; He will heal us. He has wounded us; He will bandage us. He will revive us—praise God—after two days. He will raise us up on the third. Sounds like resurrection there, huh? We may live before Him.
“So let us know. Let us press on to know the Lord.” His going forth is as certain as the dawn. He will come. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth. Praise God.
What a wonderful opportunity to come together for a weekend to press in to know the Lord. It is wonderful to have a Sabbath from media for a weekend.
We have no idea this morning what Trump is doing. Maybe you heard lately that the Dodgers won last night, but leave that alone. No sports. iPhones are off. The media—we are not checking it out. We do not know whether we are closed or open as a government; we just do not know.
We are here to listen, right? Pressing in.
Now, the interesting thing is—and we might as well start right with it now—these theme verses are stuck right in the midst of two starkly contrasting realities.
First is the undying, sacrificial love of God for His people, expressed through Hosea marrying a harlot, having children with the harlot, losing her back into the red-light district, going and finding her, bringing her back, restoring her, keeping her until she was restored, sanctified, and became his only love.
What a story. This is God, right?
Contrasted with that is the severe judgment on Israel for her adulteries and immorality. If you read this in the light of the theme verses, you see that there are two things really happening here.
Only after God severely pressed upon Israel with heavy judgments—read chapters 4 and 5: famine, disaster, defeat in battle—finally Israel says, “Oh, come, let us return to the Lord.”
That pressing on took some pressing by the Lord, did it not? You see those things happening: “Come, let us return. He will revive.” Thank God.
Now listen. The situation with the church as a whole—we do not need to touch on it much—but let us thank God for a remnant who says, “Let us come back to our right minds here. Let us return. Let us repent. Let us get right. We have been so far off the track.”
So let us know. Let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is faithful. He comes like the dawn. He comes like the spring rain. I mean, He is so faithful. Thank God for a remnant.
Hosea was an embodiment of the remnant. Why? Because he took that harlot church and loved her and loved her until she was sanctified. That takes a lot—a lot of bearing with unloveliness.
But if you are a remnant and you love the Lord with all your heart, you need to lay hold of every Christian you know. Tell them about the Lord. Tell them how good He is. Show them His mercies.
Because the Lord wants a whole bride, not some little small group. We are waiting for something to happen there.
Thank God for the remnant. But the nation as a whole—that is, Israel as a whole—all they did was give lip service and say, “Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, we will go. We will pursue the Lord.” But listen to what the Lord says, because the very next verse gives it away.
What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
For your lovingkindness is like a morning cloud
And like the dew which goes away early.
Ephraim is another name for Israel. The Lord says their hesed—their mercy, faithfulness, lovingkindness, covenant love—is like a morning cloud and like dew that goes away early. As soon as the sun comes up, pshht, it is gone.
So you say, “Oh, let us pursue the Lord,” and how long does that pursuit last? Oh boy.
I desire hesed. I think you all know that word, hesed, right? It is the great Old Testament word. In the King James Version it is often “mercies,” and in the NASB it is “lovingkindness,” but it is covenant love. In some translations it is loyalty.
For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice,
And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
So you are going to come and give God some lip service. You can offer a few sacrifices to assuage your guilt and continue on in your sinful ways, but it is not good enough.
This is why it became one of the great passages Jesus continually spoke when He addressed the children of Israel in His day: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” What was the other one? “You worship Me with your lips, but your heart is far from Me.” This is what Jesus always responded to those Jews who thought they were so faithful.
Let me give you a little historical context. I assume all of you know the Book of Hosea, but let me say it clearly.
Israel is the northern kingdom that broke away in rebellion from Jerusalem, from the temple, and from a king in the line of Judah. At this point they had a king, Jeroboam II. He was not of the tribe of Judah, and he was not godly.
They had their center in Samaria. By the way, Samaria was a bigger city than Jerusalem, a better city than Jerusalem, a more prosperous city than Jerusalem. What archaeology has shown about Samaria is that it was a tremendous city. It was the center of northern Israel.
Now, prosperous? Oh man. They had to have worship, but they did not want people going down to Jerusalem. So Israel did not go down to Jerusalem. They had their own place in Samaria where they worshiped.
They also worshiped Jehovah—or at least they thought they did. And who was Jehovah? Two bulls: one in northern Dan and one in Bethel. They went and said, “Oh, Jehovah,” while they worshiped golden calves.
Did they ever go to Jerusalem? Oh no. They built their own temple in Samaria.
In Samaria, what they especially worshiped was Jezebel’s Baal and Ashtoreth, the worship Ahab and Jezebel had established in the city. Oh, they loved to worship Baal.
But wait. They thought, “Oh, let us return. Let us come to the Lord. Maybe we should go to the bull and offer a sacrifice.” What does that show us?
They had a priesthood, but they did not have Levites. So they picked people from Manasseh and this tribe and that tribe. They had volunteer priests.
Hosea is the last prophet to speak before they went into captivity under the Assyrians and became the ten lost tribes. He is the last one to speak here: “You are so far off the track.”
It is heartbreaking. The whole thing is heartbreaking because it is a God who loves His people, and His people do not know God. They do not know what God wants. They do not know themselves. They do not know what they are doing. They do not know the right place from the wrong place. They do not know anything.
Yet they think they are Christians. I am just making it contemporary, if you understand.
So the last word that God says is, “Okay, Hosea, go marry a harlot. Let that represent what I am stuck with. You are going to have three kids, Hosea. I know you are going to love her. You are going to know her.”
That is the word, by the way: “Let us press on to know”—to know intimately, as Adam knew Eve. You are going to know her.
She is going to have three children: “I will scatter,” “No mercy,” and “Not My people.” And I am going to throw them out across the earth. The Assyrians are going to do that for Me. They are going to be not My people.
Oh, Israel, He says, what can I do? My heart is crying for you, He says in Hosea 11. “I want to curse you, but I cannot, because I am married to you. Now I am going to bring you back.”
This is a tragic word in which God is saying, “I am sending you away for a while.” It is the most heartbroken story, acted out in the end by the Lord Jesus, who took a harlot to Himself—the sinners of the world—and said, “Let Me do something here. I want to restore them. I want to reclaim them. I want to save them. I want to sanctify them. I want to make them My bride.”
That is what Hosea is. That is what you are looking at when you take the story.
It is even more heartbreaking when you realize that this is pretty much the state of Christianity today. No idea what is going on.
Just this week the Anglican Church has had a major split because they appointed a new Archbishop of Canterbury. I will not go into details, but now the Anglican Church will not even give the details of how many members or churches they have because they have lost so many over the last year.
The Anglican Church in the UK is dying. But there is a remnant there. Believe me, there is a wonderful remnant hidden in little churches out there—in Chichester, here and there. Praise God for that.
But you get the point. It is heartbreaking, because that is what is going on.
Now for the good news. Da, da, da.
God has a way to save, restore, and sanctify His children—these lost tribes of Christianity. It is what I am going to call the Hesed Press.
Listen. This word press in the New Testament—where Paul says, “I press on toward the goal,” and “Let us press on to maturity”—is usually translated persecute.
It is a violent Greek word. “I press on” means, man, I am being violent here. Paul says, “I press on toward the goal.” Basically, he is saying, “I am persecuting myself to get to the goal.”
When Jesus says, “Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” it is the same word. Blessed are they who are oppressed for righteousness. Rejoice, for your reward in heaven is great.
Now here is the truth, ladies and gentlemen. Again, it is going to be good news. Hang on.
The bad news is that you and I do not have the resources within ourselves to press on. So who are you kidding? “Let us know. Let us press on to know the Lord.” Okay, good luck.
We do not have those resources. Fortunately, the Lord has the resources: the Hesed Press. Oh boy. Yes.
We are so spiritually lazy. You like to read the Bible maybe for facts, but really meditating?
Every year in our wonderful little bunch of renegades in Manhattan, on January 1 we start a new reading plan. We are only reading half of the Bible in a year, so we have a two-year read-through-the-whole-Bible plan.
January goes good, but somewhere in February, when we start to get into Leviticus, the folks drop off like flies.
In January: “Let us pursue. Let us press on to know the Lord. I am going to chew the Word. I am going to pray.” By February, the faithful few are down to six.
There are those in Manhattan who are pressed to read it every day. I wonder why. They must be more noble, more spiritual, more righteous. No, they are more needy, and they know it.
Now, we do have some motivation there to press on, I must say. It is true.
That dear woman had no idea what was going to happen to her there in Israel when Solomon jumped off his big white horse, went down there, met that Shulamite woman, gave her a smack on the lips, and said, “I love you,” then jumped back on the horse and took off.
So the Song of Solomon opens with her saying, “I am lovesick. He smacked me on the lips. He gave me a kiss with His mouth. Oh, I am about to faint. Come, maids, wake me up. Oh, I am ravished with love.”
You see, this is what Jesus does to some people. He has smacked them on the mouth with a kiss, and they are caught. They are in love.
That is why the Shulamite woman started chasing after the Shlomo guy—Solomon. Shlomo is Hebrew. At the very end of the Song of Solomon, her name is Shulamite, which is the feminine of Shulam, related to shalom, and the same root as Shlomo. Solomon means peace, and Shulam means peace. She became like Solomon.
It is a story of love, but it all started with the old love smack. It was a surprise.
Do you ever think Jesus was going to love you and kiss you? Maybe you think, “Well, Jesus loves me, so He puts up with me. He died on the cross for me, after all.”
Then one day in your Christian life, somewhere along the line, when you least expect it, He is going to jump off His horse and give you a kiss and say, “You are Mine. I love you with a love you do not understand.”
Now, I have to admit, there are some people pressing forward because of that. It is like the Shulamite woman said, “Draw me, and we will run after You.”
She admits she does not have the motivation in herself. She cannot press, but if You press me, I will press. That is the Hesed Press. Oh, what a wonderful thing. The Lord initiates this thing.
We think we are faithful. We offer some sacrifices to the Lord: “Praise the Lord, hallelujah. Yeah, we really love the Lord.” Then He puts on the Hesed Press.
What is that? Some trouble with health. The job goes away. The marriage is in trouble. One of the kids is a disaster. Things just happen. Dreams are crushed. Problems arise—maybe even tragedy.
We get pressed—pressed to the point where we must have the Lord to survive.
When we get pressed to that point, bingo. That is when you really get to know the Lord.
Now, I know this may initially sound very harsh. I am always accused of being harsh, but that is okay.
If you hold on to the three messages together, maybe you will feel a little more lighthearted from the heaviness you now feel. Right now, what I am telling you is that you have, in your ignorance, entered into the car wash.
Now they have your front wheels hooked, and you are going to go through the Hesed Press whether you want to or not. The rain is coming. The heat is coming. The blow dryers happen.
You can put the brake on; you are still going to go. You can put down the top; you are going to get wet. No matter what you do, once He has got you on the thing, the Hesed Press is going to put you through until you are a lover of Jesus Christ one hundred percent.
I have chosen three Old Testament prophets, starting with Hosea, to make three points and reveal how the Lord presses us into coming to know Him.
Now, all three of these things happen at the same time. We will try to make it sequential—first this, then that—but it all happens together because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all coming in and drawing near.
But to make it clear and simple, this is God’s Hesed Press.
Maybe that sounds like bad news to you. Here is Jeremiah 31:3-4. You know this verse so well.
The Lord appeared to him from afar, saying,
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.
Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt,
O virgin of Israel.”
Who is He saying that to in Jeremiah 31? Judah, which was about to go into captivity in Babylon for seventy years.
People love Jeremiah 29:11: “I have plans for you, plans for a future and a hope.” But God speaks that through Jeremiah just before they go into captivity for seventy years. So that is the plan: seventy years.
You get the point. His hesed is going to bring us through. His faithfulness, His loyalty, is what is going to bring us to the place. But hesed is tough stuff.
You could do a whole study on hesed, and perhaps you have. It is a wonderful study. My favorite is Psalm 107.
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary.
In Psalm 107, the writer gives us four Christian rascals whom the Lord presses.
The first guy is a loner. He does not need the church. He does not need the Body of Christ. He has just got his Bible, himself, and the Lord; he has got to pray, you know.
So the guy ends up almost starving to death in the wilderness. He is uncovered; the enemy gets at him; he almost dies. Then, when he is dying and perishing, he cries out to the Lord, and the Lord has mercy on him.
The Lord says, “Now get into the house of God.” That is where he found his food. That is where he found his life. He says, “Give thanks to the Lord. He redeemed me.” That is what hesed does.
The second guy is angry. He is not following the Lord because he is too angry. He is angry about everything. He is in a cage, in a pit of anger, and he cannot get out.
In his desperation he cries out to the Lord. The Lord has mercy and gets him out of the pit, saying, “Now go into the house of God and tell them the great things God has done, because He has redeemed you.”
The third guy spends all his money and wastes all his life on sex, alcohol, and good times until he is ready to die. He has lost his taste for food. He is ready to commit suicide.
The Lord saves him and gives him a purpose in life. “Now tell the people what I have done. I have given you life out of death.”
The fourth guy is one of those big-shot businessmen out on the waters. He is heading out for a big deal in Egypt. The Lord blows on the sea, and the ship pitches up and down.
The guy is crying; he is going to lose his life. He is at his wits’ end, and he cries out. The Lord hears him and says, “Now get back to the church and tell them the good things the Lord has done.”
You see, that is what hesed does. The moral of Psalm 107 is that hesed will turn you upside down—turn your life upside down—to get you to be a lover of God.
That is tough stuff, is it not? I know we like cushy love, but hesed—even the word sounds tough. Tough stuff, man.
You can see what the Book of Hosea is about, right? “I love you, but you are going down. You are going to be lost in the dispersion for years, but I am going to draw you back, because you are Mine.”
“Even though you are not My people, even though I show you no mercy, even though your name is ‘I will scatter,’ I am going to gather you back until you are My people and you are Mine once again.” This is God’s love.
The principle of this pressing down is depicted in two passages in Hebrews. Each day I will connect a little with Hebrews, just to bring us into the New Testament.
Here is the first pressing down that you can clearly see. Turn to Hebrews 12, a very familiar passage.
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily entangles us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith,
who for the joy set before Him endured the cross,
despising the shame,
and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Just think of those children in northern Israel and their ignorance of the Lord. When they said, “Come, let us press on. Let us come to know the Lord,” how would they do that? They did not even know the Law.
Were they going to offer sacrifices to the bull? Probably, because that was what they thought the Lord wanted. Or maybe they would give offerings to some non-Levitical priest so he could offer them in the temple dedicated to Jezebel.
They would offer their sacrifices, say, “Now we have done our service for the Lord,” and then pursue their worldliness. Northern Israel was really a worldly bunch.
Do you think they could ever really come to know a holy God in that condition, so corrupted by everything?
Do you not think that, even as this remnant has said, there should be some repentance? Hebrews 12 speaks of laying aside the weights that prevent us from coming and pursuing the Lord, from running a race after Him.
Could it be that we have to deal with those besetting sins that press us down? The Lord says, “Go,” and we cannot go.
All of that is necessary to know the Lord. How are we going to know a holy God if we are not holy? There is something there, is there not?
To know Him, we have to be like Him a little bit—not merely by contrast. If we only know by contrast, we do not really know Him. We may say, “Oh, He is a holy God. He is a righteous God,” but you do not know the holy God if you are far from Him.
So what is He going to do? There is this Hesed Press, this pressing down, which John the Baptist so ably described regarding his own life, as righteous as he was:
He must increase, but I must decrease.
That is going to be a principle we find throughout our lives. It is not going to change. I have been a Christian sixty years, and it does not change.
There are still things hindering, still weights, still besetting sins that prevent me from running after Jesus to a certain degree.
When the Lord said to the disciples, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me,” they had no idea what He was talking about.
But this matter of decrease and increase is what is happening if we are to run this marathon race with the Lord. The Holy Spirit has to strip away things.
Here is the good news: one of the most precious things that happens to you and me is the moment we really come to know the Holy Spirit.
Back in the early days, people were being filled with the Spirit, receiving gifts, and all those wonderful things. I received my share. That is all wonderful. I sensed His power, His gifts, and all these kinds of things.
But knowing the Holy Spirit—you have to be pressed down into His mercy.
Once you really meet the Holy Spirit, you know you have been captured by your best Friend, by Someone who cares for you morning, noon, and night.
He will not leave you, even though you quench Him, even though you grieve Him, because the Lord has said, “Holy Spirit, be like Hosea. Go down into that person, recover them, sanctify them, and make them wholly Mine.”
You have no Friend like the lowly Jesus, who comes in the Holy Spirit to us.
We begin to learn that, right now, to follow the Lord, the Holy Spirit wonderfully convinces us. Is that not great? He convinces us of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Oh, that is a blessing. That is mercy.
Here is what you learn from the Holy Spirit: you have discovered God’s mercy. God’s mercy.
How do you discover God’s mercy? What does it say in James? It is when you meet the jealous Holy Spirit, who is jealous for your spirit.
He gets after you, wrestles with you, and convinces you of sin, righteousness, and judgment until you see that mercy triumphs over judgment.
He was not there to judge you. He was there to bring mercy to you—mercy that presses you to release those things in your life.
There are too many competitors to following the Lord in our lives. Christians can sing choruses like “I am offering up my life in spirit and truth,” but really it may be only lip service from a deceitful, world-soaked heart.
So the Holy Spirit comes as heaven’s Hesed Presser to convince us of things, to pressure us with conviction. Oh, I hope you do not rebuff the convictions of the Holy Spirit.
It is tough in the beginning, is it not? He is administering the Father’s discipline because He wants you to become sons.
Oh my goodness, the things we are weighted down with. The Lord tries to go with us, but we cannot; we are too weighted down with externals.
The media has some people wrapped around its fingers. Kids today are totally addicted. I have some grandchildren.
I remember taking one of my grandsons, a Yankees fan, out to Wilkes-Barre, where there is a minor-league Yankees team. We went to a minor-league ballgame, and they had a couple of Yankees recuperating from injuries, playing in the game.
My grandson lasted about two innings, and the next thing you know, he is on his phone. I said, “Hey, this is the game. This is reality right here.”
He said, “No, no, no. This is reality right here.” I asked, “What are you checking?” He said, “I am checking the averages of the guys.”
I said, “No, no, no. Look. Watch the guy pitch. There is the guy swing. This is baseball out there, not the stats.” He had the stats running up.
So my wife comes like the Hesed Press. When the grandchildren come to our house, she says, “Put away those iPhones. No iPhones allowed. Only talking and loving here.”
The children go—well, like alcoholics, they go to iPhone Anonymous and try to deal with it.
But my goodness, what we are addicted to. In the Body of Christ there is addiction to pornography, addiction to fantasy, addiction to gambling. I am not talking about sinners.
Artificial delusions. These poor kids are committing suicide because they fall in love with an artificial AI guy. What? It is so tragic. Some of them were Christians. You know that is true.
They are weighed down. For most of us, listen: I know some people who are running after Jesus with seemingly no hindrance, and they are rich. But I know many people who are quite poor, not rich at all, who are absolutely weighed down by their stuff.
So rich or poor is not the issue. It is your stuff. Is your stuff weighing you down or not? Many Christians have too much stuff. They are too invested in this stuff.
What is that stuff? It is the Lord we need to go after, but that stuff holds us back and trips us up. The weights.
Can you imagine running a race with heavy weights on your ankles? It is ridiculous. Yet we are weighted down, and the Holy Spirit is saying, “Too much stuff. Too much stuff.”
A young person came to me recently and said, “Dana, would you help me?”
I said, “What is your problem?” He said, “Every time I try to pray, I cannot pray because my mind is out of control. My mind is thinking so much stuff that I get distracted, lose my way, and suddenly remember I started praying.”
“Here I am, ten minutes later, still on my knees, but I am thinking about what I am going to do today, the party tonight, and going out with people for the big Halloween bar scene. My mind is out of control.”
“I try to read the Bible, but my mind is out of control.”
The Holy Spirit alone can rein us in and deal with such stuff. But it holds us back. It holds us back from the one thing they really, really want, right?
We have a whole society here in our country, anyway, in which silence is frightening. The television is always on, or at least some background music. People are always getting into something—sports, travel, books, whatever.
The odd thing is, with all those things, I have never seen so many Christians dealing with spiritual depression—depression and anxiety.
Gen Z has this problem, and they got it from us, whatever generation we were. We produced these kids, and they are so anxious.
They bought hook, line, and sinker the whole green scenario. There is a whole generation of kids, like that poor girl in Sweden, who think that by 2026 it is going to be over.
Anxieties: “I cannot get a good job.” They are sitting in the midst of affluence, with their iPad over here, their computer over there, and a digital game going on television. They have got nothing.
No prospects of a good job, no prospects for the future. All of that spiritual depression comes from the lie concerning the value of life.
Think about it. That is just the thing that weighs us down. We are not even talking about besetting sins.
I do not even need to go there, because it is usually a little smaller, besetting thing. There are major ones for some people, and I do not want to belittle these things at all.
But those smaller things—perpetual anger, fear, selfishness, unforgiveness—whoa, man.
Is the writer of Hebrews being too harsh when he says, “Lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets us”? Let us run with patience.
Another Scripture in Hebrews 6 brings us to a second problem that keeps us from really coming to know the Lord until the Holy Spirit presses us down into Himself.
At the beginning of Hebrews 6, you know the familiar passage:
Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity.
Now, how many of you think that is easy?
Then he says, do not lay again the foundation of repentance from dead works, faith, and all this kind of stuff.
It is like the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness who come to the Jordan River. The Promised Land is on the other side, but they say, “I do not know if we want to go on to maturity. How about continually feeding us manna? That is good enough. Tents are not really so bad.”
The Promised Land, filled with milk and honey, is just across the river, but we are afraid to press on to maturity. We want to remain like babes, and many Christians are still in the wilderness.
As a result, they are in the wilderness of perpetual repentance. I have got a bone to pick with perpetual repentance.
I do not know how many of you know who Garrison Keillor is. He had A Prairie Home Companion. One of the things he had in Lake Wobegon was a Catholic church called Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility.
People felt responsible. They had to do this; they had to do that.
So many Christians are in the church, in the wilderness of perpetual repentance.
They are always that publican beating his chest, saying, “Oh, I am a terrible sinner. I am just a terrible sinner.” They are throwing dust on their heads: “Oh, I am a terrible sinner. I repent. I repent. I need to repent. I am unworthy, Lord. Unworthy, unworthy—sinner, sinner, leper, leper.”
They are doing that, you see, and they are still in the wilderness because they have not come through the Jordan into Galatians 2:20.
That publican beating his chest has died. What the Lord is looking for is some sons.
How about those who can testify in faith about something the Lord has done in their lives?
What does the Lord want? He wants somebody who says, “Once I was a sinner, but now I am a son by union with Christ.”
Praise God, we have our dear brothers and sisters here from India. The first time I went to India, it knocked my socks off.
I went to many places where people had very little. I went to small assemblies, poor assemblies, and everybody had an old black Bible.
But the thing I saw there, which I came back home and found almost totally lacking among American Christians, was that they knew Christ was their life.
Christ, my life. Christ dwelling in me, my life.
Now, I know we like to sing, “Only a sinner saved by grace.” Praise God, it is true. But what is our testimony?
So many of our prayers are bogged down with all our unworthiness. Is that really what the Lord wants to hear in a time of worship?
How about saying, “By Your grace, I am garbed with the robes of righteousness and lift up holy hands unto You by Your precious blood. Jesus, I love You with all my soul.” There is a good testimony.
But just coming and saying, “Oh man, I am not worthy to wear shoes in heaven, but I hope You will accept me. I love You so much, but please let me know You are real”—what is that? That is baby talk.
Now it is time to cross the Jordan, which is where we get with Jonah, into a life in Christ, hid in Christ.
I am not saying do not say you are a sinner anymore, because that would be ridiculous. The holy pressing of the Holy Spirit would make anybody realize that is just a lot of hokey.
But listen: if we are still trying to drag that body in Romans 7 around—the body of death Paul speaks of—then we are missing the point.
Paul says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Some people talk about their dead body all the time, and the Lord says, “Cut it loose. You have been crucified with Christ. You no longer live. Forget it—you are dead.”
Yet you live—but not you. Christ lives within you.
There are some strange things here. First of all, we want to get to know the Lord, and one of the brothers last night already told us the first secret.
The Lord wants you to know Him vertically, but there is an algorithm in the Lord’s methods that involves this: you can only get to know the Lord so much vertically. You also get to know the Lord in your brothers and sisters.
If you are not interested in that dimension, you are going to miss out on a lot of things about the Lord, because they come through the flesh and blood of human beings through whom we see the testimony of Jesus.
That is why we have a sharing of all things in common—one another—because we find Christ in one another. Ah, now things have increased, right?
But it is also true in our personal lives. If we want to know the Lord, it is not going to come merely by sitting with our Bible. It is going to come as the Lord takes us through things and presses us down in such a way that we release these baby-talk things.
In my early days, I got saved out of nowhere. My wife was a Baptist, and I got saved as a Baptist. What a wonderful thing. The one thing Baptists did was preach salvation, and I got saved.
Would you know it? I was so stupid I became a Baptist pastor.
I will not say much about it, except many people got saved. I preached a lot of stuff and did my best until the Lord showed me, “I think you are in northern Israel. You are worshiping at the wrong spot.” But that is a long story.
One of the things Baptists had was that every year you had to have a revival. It was always in September or October, and it usually lasted about a week.
That was tough in my first pastorate, out in the country, because it was harvest time. So nobody came to my first revival. But there you go.
Now, in revival, you always preached for salvation. You did not get many people saved because the only people you had were thirty-five Christians who had been Christians thirty-five years.
But you had a second piece of equipment in a Baptist church. It was called the rededicator.
It was like one of those washing-machine things in the old days where you take a piece of cloth, run it through a thing, and squeeze it out.
We had people come up for rededications. Twenty-five people came up: “Oh, we are going to be good this year. We are going to press on to know the Lord. We are going to read our whole Bible in one year.”
Of course, by the next September, I turned on the rededicator, and here came the same twenty-five folks.
It is like the old Pentecostal preacher who said that they gave an invitation for people to come down to receive the power of the Holy Spirit. This lady came down every year for twenty-five years.
Finally, she came down again, and somebody yelled from the back, “Go fill her, Lord. She leaks.”
Something has got to happen. Something has to take us over.
Let us look at some things in Hebrews 12, because I want you to know what the Hesed Press really does.
It convinces us as we strip away things: the weights, the sins that so easily beset us, especially things in that unrenewed mind of baby Christianity that has God all wrong.
When you get pressed down far enough, how far down is far enough? It is down into your spirit, where the Holy Spirit is abiding. He starts to talk to you.
You start to realize, as I said, that He is your best Friend.
Once you have decreased enough, He introduces you to Himself. You find that the Holy Spirit convicts; He does not condemn. He has mercy, not judgment. He is your Friend, not your foe. He is your advocate, not your accuser.
You find that you need the Holy Spirit to lead you, give you wisdom, revelation, health, and insight. You have a Friend. You have a Friend in the Spirit.
I used to sing that James Taylor song—or maybe it was Carly Simon, whoever it was—“You have a friend in the Spirit.” He is your best Friend.
But He is dwelling inside. He is often grieved. He is often silent while your loud soul tries to take care of things.
Your soul has to be worn down through many rededicating machines until you go through these things and realize that it is like a child who has been given the rod of discipline and is crying.
Now the child sits on Daddy’s lap, and Daddy hugs the child. She has never felt so loved. Sometimes it takes that, you know.
Otherwise, we have that distance of guilt that prevents us from coming clear with the Holy Spirit. How wonderful is the Spirit.
Here is what the Spirit says in Hebrews 12. I do not need to preach any of this. Here it is:
My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;
For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines,
And He scourges every son whom He receives.
He loves whom He disciplines in order to make you sons. That is what He is about. That is what Hosea is about.
It is for discipline that you endure. Discipline for the moment does not seem joyful, but in the end it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
Then: strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
The Lord says, “I know that you are weak.” That is the best confession you can make: that you are weak.
You can even say, “Lord, I cannot even repent unless You enable me to repent. Even my tears need to be washed by Your blood. I have a deceitful heart that wants to be Yours.”
He hears that, right?
Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.
Do you not want somebody to see the holiness of the Lord in you?
We think holy is the first name of the Spirit. No. He is the Spirit of holiness. You are going to get to know that Spirit, and you are really going to get to know holiness.
So you want to know the Lord, okay? The first way you are going to meet Him is as a holy God through the Holy Spirit.
What do you learn from a holy God and the Holy Spirit? You learn mercy. You learn that His mercies endure forever. His mercies are new every morning. That hesed is there every day. You can count on it.
Wonderful, wonderful Lord. He is so precious.
A lot of that laying aside of every weight and the sins that so easily beset us is pressing us out of outer knowledge into knowledge within.
It is outer knowledge that is unrenewed. It is outer knowledge that prefers to offer Him sacrifices rather than really become loyal to Him.
“I desire hesed, not sacrifice.” That is what it says in Hosea. “I want some lovingkindness. I want you to step up.”
What was the biggest problem of the Hebrew Christians? They were holding on to the outer stuff. They were still holding on to sacrifices. They hoped the temple would be around forever. They still believed in the holy place, the sacrifices, the lampstand, and all this stuff.
The writer of Hebrews says, “In two years, the whole thing is going to be gone.” The Romans came in, destroyed the temple and everything, and the Jews had no more outer stuff.
He says, “I want you to get to the inner. I want you to come with boldness into the holy place, before the throne of grace, where you can meet the Father directly through Jesus, the High Priest.”
Now you have come into something that is going to last.
We have been pressed through into a knowledge of the Holy Spirit, where we truly know something of the Lord.
It is interesting. I will read two verses from the very end of the Book of Hosea. After all the torment of Hosea—his going back, finding that harlot, and bringing her back—here is the final word.
I do not want to belittle sin. I do not want to do that. But I want you to know that God’s mercy is greater than your sins.
Listen to what Hosea 14 says. Hosea 14 is full of love and mercy.
Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
For you have stumbled because of your iniquity.
He considers it stumbling. How many of you know that sinning is stumbling, if you get made right?
Then verse 9:
Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;
Whoever is discerning, let him know them.
For the ways of the Lord are right,
And the righteous will walk in them,
But transgressors will stumble in them.
Here are people with weak limbs and hips out of joint. The Holy Spirit is going to rehabilitate us and change our stumblings to righteousness.
Who can do that but the Lord God? The Holy Spirit is the Creator Spirit. God thought, Jesus spoke, and the Holy Spirit made this whole thing. He made you.
He can recreate you into the image of Christ if you will put yourself into the Spirit’s hands.
Where the Lord is the Spirit, there is liberty. You can look as in a mirror, see the Lord as you look in the Word, and be transformed into that same image—conformed into the image of Christ.
This is spiritual progress. This is pressing on to come and know the Lord.
He is waiting for intimate love. He is waiting for dialogue. Oh, the Spirit of God—He is the most wonderful dialoguer in the world.
That is why John is so precious to us. Just before Jesus went to Calvary, He shared the secrets He gave His disciples just before He departed.
He said, “Look, I have been your babysitter, and I am going away. But I am sending the Spirit to dwell within you, and He is Me. I will not leave you as an orphan. I am coming to you in the Spirit.”
That Spirit is going to lead you into all truth. He is going to teach you all things. He is going to sanctify and convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment. He is going to bring you into My fullness.
Which is what happens in Jonah. So I must leave you in suspense.
Oh, blessed Lord. Blessed Lord. Praise the Lord: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, distributed to us in ways that we can apprehend in the simplicity of our lives.
Oh, Lord, we wish we could say, “Oh yeah, we are going to press on,” but only those who have been pressed become pressers. Only those who have truly known God’s mercy can come to know God’s holiness.
Oh, how wonderful that mercy triumphs over judgment when we meet the Holy Spirit.
Oh, how wonderful when we come to the end of ourselves, our baby ways, our self-pity parties, all of our weights, all of our distractions, and all of our foolishness.
Oh, how wonderful when the Holy Spirit lays hold of us and says, “I am going to make you His.”
Oh, what a great trainer we have. What a great tutor we have. What a great One who does not speak of Himself, but keeps speaking to us about the Son, this One who has saved us and with whom we have to do.
Oh, we are so thankful when the Word of God comes and divides asunder soul and spirit, revealing the very joints and marrow of our being. It is with Him that we have to do.
So we come to You, O precious Lord, and say, “We want to press on to know the Lord. Your going forth is as faithful as the dawn. There is no doubt about Your faithfulness, Lord.”
Draw us, and we will run after You. Press us, and we will press after You.
We thank You, Lord, for these beginning lessons in life. We learn them in the midst of the great compromise that exists all around us—people who have been saved, perhaps, or think they have been saved by some confession, but there is no walk, no life, no holiness, and no testimony.
They are laden with such worldliness that the world cannot tell they are Christians. Oh, Lord, at least strip essential things from us in order that we may be able to run after Solomon.
Oh, Lord, You have kissed us with the kisses of Your lips, and we are lovesick.
You have loved us and drawn us through many waters, yet we have not drowned; through the fire, yet we have not burned. It is Your mercy that keeps taking us through, taking us through.
Oh, recover Your work, dear Lord. Recover Your work, beginning in us.
Lord, I do not know how You are going to fix this whole church. It is so out of whack right now, with golden bulls of human leaders and all kinds of stuff going on. But forget about it.
We listen for the Holy Spirit’s voice. We want to hear His voice and follow You by the help of the Holy Spirit.
Blessed be God, our Father, and His Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is even working these things according to His precious Word. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Let us just return.