Sion stood outside and blasphemed God. Hezekiah and Isaiah threw the scrolls on the ground and prayed, and 750,000 soldiers were wiped out by the Lord’s host. So anyway, that was Chapter 8.
Then Chapter 9: suddenly, out of the darkness there in the Gentiles, in Galilee, a great light was seen. What was that light?
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon His shoulder:
and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.— Isaiah 9:6
That comes out of this Emmanuel revelation that he saw back there in Isaiah 6.
Then we come down to our section here in Isaiah 11, where a shoot comes from the stem of Jesse. It is the same revelation now, but he is seeing more parts to it: full of the Holy Spirit, He arises to restore Zion a second, final time as the city of His rule in that day.
Then finally, the portion of Emmanuel—the book of Emmanuel—ends with Chapter 12. I just want to read a few verses there.
And in that day thou shalt say, I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord;
for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me.
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid:
for the Lord, even the Lord, is my strength and song;
and He is become my salvation.— Isaiah 12:1-2
There is a day coming, brothers and sisters.
Cry aloud and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion;
for great in the midst of thee is the Holy One of Israel.— Isaiah 12:6
And so the book of Emmanuel ends with this note for us.
The recovery is complete when we see Zion with Christ dwelling in the midst of her. Now, I am just going to take a shortcut and talk about Zion being the church. So here we are.
The millennium comes when Christ possesses His possessions, and Christ’s people possess their possessions of Him. And the rest comes, and those are gathered in, as it is spoken about there on the mount. Zion is glorious.
I wanted to begin tonight by talking about the importance of seeing the sovereign hand that brings recovery. If you notice, when we read Isaiah 11:11, it says:
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord will set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people.
— Isaiah 11:11
With His hand. And I know I am being simple tonight, but I want us to start there.
The Lord’s hand recovers a second time. That tells us that recovery has been coming in stages, right? Of course, you realize the first recovery was when these exiles in Babylon came back to Jerusalem and built the house of God. It was not yet glorious, because He was not in the midst, neither was the Ark of the Covenant at that time. But nevertheless, a recovery had begun.
In stages, you see, recovery takes place. We need to see the hand of God recovering until that day when He finishes what He has begun. The Lord’s hand was in that.
But later, of course, the Romans came, destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and the Jews were scattered all over the earth. You see their names, their different destinations mentioned here. Throughout the world, the Gentiles come and are saved out of the nations; throughout the world, the Jews come back to Zion and are gathered back into this glorious resting place. And it will be glorious, it says.
This full recovery at the end of the age will be accomplished by what is said to be the hand of God—the sovereign hand of God.
Now, it is interesting. Bible teachers and scholars, when they talk about this hand of God, say it is actually the two hands of God. Of course, they are talking about the one hand of the one Triune God, which is the hand of the Father, which is the hand of the Son, which is the hand of the Holy Spirit.
So, when we look at the two hands of God, we see the right hand of God sovereignly bringing recovery. How did He do that? Well, of course, we know the gospel story. This is the right hand of the Messiah. All authority in heaven and earth was given to Him when He was exalted at the Father’s right hand to become the Father’s right hand. All authority was given to Him.
He is Head of the church now, and in His fullness He intercedes now. He is recovering right now. He builds His church right now. He is washing the church with His precious Word. He is gathering up, by resurrection power, these ones and those ones who come to see Him as the Messiah. The right hand of God is the Messiah.
But here is where there needs to be some growing up. My prayer is for younger ones, those who are newer in the Lord, to begin to ascend Zion by seeing a revelation of Jesus Christ, namely, in His left hand.
Now, scholars call the left hand of God the Holy Spirit. I do not know if you know that. There is a right hand and a left hand. They are both involved in this recovery work: the right hand seen and known, the left hand more secretive.
The left hand is that work of the Spirit of God here on earth, but it is the power of the unseen left hand accomplishing all that is desired of the right hand.
Do you see His left hand? The unseen presence empowers the saints to preach the gospel and empowers us to walk in the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. But it also does that hidden work of engineering so essential to His recovery.
What do I mean by that? He uses His tools. The all-wise Holy Spirit uses His tools of providence, circumstances, difficulties, and sufferings to work all things together for good, as we are conformed into the image of His beloved Son.
This is God’s left hand, which often is not seen by people. The right hand is seen, but the left hand is involved, even in the church. The left hand is that agent that recovers holiness to the church that has lost its holiness. It returns that corporate unity in Zion.
How? Through discipline, through conviction of the Spirit, through revelation, through judgments, through comforts, and through that word used throughout the New Testament, thlipsis, which in Greek is translated “pressure.”
Now, why do I say all this? Because obviously we all know these two hands. We know the Lord, the Messiah, the authoritative One. We know the Holy Spirit and His hand at work. Well, it is important that we start out by saying God’s hand has recovered us and is recovering us even right now as we speak tonight.
Just some verses. Just listen to them. You all know these verses. We know that God’s hand is involved in our salvation. John 10:27 says:
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me:
and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish,
and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.— John 10:27-28
There is a promise that His hand will keep us in our salvation.
There is the hand that we see in spreading the gospel. You and I go out with some tracts, or we go out to speak to people on the streets, or we have some kind of gathering or assembly. Is it not wonderful? It says in Acts 11:21:
And the hand of the Lord was with them:
and a great number that believed turned unto the Lord.— Acts 11:21
Wonderful, when we are preaching the gospel, because without that secret left hand of God, well, our preaching is in vain, right?
How about this? God keeps and recovers Zion even though Zion does not realize it. You see, this is where I want us to see that God is doing things that we cannot see. Listen to Isaiah 49:14-15. Here is what Zion said in a difficult time:
But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?
yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee.
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands;
thy walls are continually before Me.— Isaiah 49:14-16
Zion, you see, how many times do you know Christians, when they start getting in trouble and things get really tough, wonder if God loves them? Has God deserted them? Where is God? This is Zion’s complaint. And He says, “I have engraved you on My hand.”
Listen, God may severely discipline us to recover us. We will get to that, Lord willing. But never forget that: His hand is for recovery.
Or how about this: the necessity of a hand to humble us. In 1 Peter 5:6:
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you in due time.— 1 Peter 5:6
You know, brothers and sisters, if we are going to talk about recovery this weekend, we have to start with a reality: we have lost something.
There is a judgment on that, even as He recovers. So it is important to understand that when we start, we start from a position of, “Lord, what do You want to say to me?”
I want us to see this vision of the hand of God in this great, great recovery work. In order to do that, brothers and sisters, we have to climb Mount Zion. There is a spiritual ascension necessary.
Now, we can gain a lot of biblical knowledge from the moment we are saved by studying the Word of God. But revelation comes to those who are climbing.
You know, a revelation is like a picture taken, and you are like the camera. The lens opens, but if you do not have your film in there—if you are not ready, if your heart is not prepared to receive that light—there is no registration. What other people see as a revelation, you might say, “It thundered. I heard the noise. What was the noise?” Meanwhile, Paul is hearing words and revelations.
You see, there needs to be a capacity in brothers and sisters, some capacity of Christ that is growing in there, in order to receive revelation. That is why it is so important. Mount Zion: we have to be stepping up into a heavenly life if we would see what God is doing today.
Many, many saints are running around by trial and error, doing good things with good intentions. Some things work, and some things do not. In tough times, they have no idea what is going on because they cannot see the hand of God.
You cannot see the hand of God just by saying, “What is going on?” No. There has got to be some searching for the hand of God to be revealed.
In the Old Testament, God uses Zion as this picture of a mount of discovery, a mount of disclosure, a mount of God’s presence. It says in Isaiah 40:9:
O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain;
O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength;
lift it up, be not afraid;
say unto the cities of Judah, Behold, your God!— Isaiah 40:9
One of the great moments of recovery in the life of the church and among us is when we can get up and stand up in the ascended life and say to the nations around us, “This is your God,” and the testimony of Jesus is real in our lives.
So this is what the Old Testament is talking about in Zion. But, as you know, of course, in the New Testament the writer of Hebrews uses the same spiritual terminology of a Zion, not as the physical place in Jerusalem but as a spiritual place that we have come to.
The writer brings Zion’s vantage point before us in Hebrews 12:22:
But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to innumerable hosts of angels,
to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant,
and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel.— Hebrews 12:22-24
Now, what is he trying to get at? The book of Hebrews is written, first of all, to these Hebrew Christians who are in the midst of a great shaking, and they did not know what was going on. The writer says there is a great shaking that is going to shake everything that is shakable. It is about to come upon us.
What these Jewish Christians did not understand was the shaking. What was going on? So the writer, in the context—you know the story—in Hebrews 12 says, “Stop standing at the foot of Mount Sinai. You are trembling in fear at the foot of a mountain sounding. You no longer belong over there.”
You are in Mount Zion, the city of God, where Jesus, His blood, and the mediation of His new covenant—that is your life. You need to ascend into it.
It is interesting: we could spend a long time going over these different things, but there is a certain kind of ascending order as he describes us going up this mountain. Up this mountain, we see God and we see Christ. We see the saints and we see the angels. It goes up, up. It ends up with Jesus up at the top. Are you ascending that mountain?
At some point in our Christian life, this desire to know Jesus Christ, the center of Zion, needs to lay hold of our Christian lives. Otherwise, we run through life not understanding so much of what is going on.
Ascending into this reality comes to us through progressive revelations of Christ. As King, as we see the King, we begin to understand what the King is doing.
So, what am I saying? Let me stop just to clear the track here. In order to see God’s hand in recovery, it takes more than just teaching. It is more than just Scriptures and doctrines on the subject. Our heart needs to come to the place of consecration and obedience where the Holy Spirit can reveal more.
That left hand wants to reveal all things regarding Christ to us, but you cannot take them now. The Lord says, “I have many more things to say to you. You cannot take them right now.” Now the Holy Spirit is going to come, and He is going to reveal things to you in these increments of recovery.
As you take ground, you are going to receive more. As you take higher ground, you are going to receive more. So, brothers and sisters, and young ones in the Lord, we come to a time where we move from just studying the Scriptures to seeing more of Christ in those Scriptures.
When that revelation begins to happen, like it happened in Isaiah when he saw the Lord high and lifted up, he began to understand what was going on around him.
Throughout God’s people’s history, many times they started out in a vision and lost it along the way. Then they do not know what is going on as God starts to shake them in the present crisis.
Brothers and sisters, I am not going to be a prophet of doom, because I think we are already in a time of shaking. But the question is: do you understand what is going on? Or is it all a great disappointment and a puzzlement? Does it bring doubt into your mind and all that kind of stuff?
We know the right hand of God’s grace through Jesus Christ: the blessing of knowing the Lord Jesus, the blessing of His love. But, you know, the left hand is sanctifying us. We need to see it.
The fact is that God is recovering by His hand. The question is not, “Will you see it?” but, “Do you see it now?” Do you see the Lord’s hand?
What a precious thing, if through the trials and tribulations you can see what the Lord is after. It changes the whole equation of life. It is like the Lord said in Isaiah 43:19:
Behold, I will do a new thing; now shall it spring forth;
shall ye not know it?
I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.— Isaiah 43:19
Here are the children of Israel in the desert and in the wilderness. He says, “Do you not see what I am doing? I am making a way for you in the wilderness. There is going to be a goal on the other end of it. I am returning you to Zion.”
So I want us to climb up a mountain and see something of the revelation of the Lord tonight, because it is through a revelation of the Lord that you begin to see what is going on around you.
To do that, we are going to go to the mountain. Jesus climbed the Mount of Transfiguration in Luke 9. If you would, turn to Luke 9, beginning in verse 27. We will see Jesus climbing up the Mount of Transfiguration with His three disciples: Peter, James, and John.
It starts in verse 27, when He says:
But I tell you of a truth, There are some of them that stand here,
who shall in no wise taste of death,
till they see the kingdom of God.— Luke 9:27
Now, of course, that has an apocalyptic meaning about when the coming of the Lord is complete in the millennium, but it also has an application for Peter, James, and John, who are about to see the kingdom of God.
Verse 28 says that some eight days after these sayings, He took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. All the twelve apostles had confessed Jesus on the foothills. You know, the Mount of Transfiguration is probably thought to be much higher, and Caesarea Philippi, where Peter made the confession of Christ, was in the foothills of that mount.
All the disciples were saved. All of them knew that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. But Peter, James, and John had more capacity. They were ready to see something more. So Jesus took them up with Him on the mountain to pray.
Then it says in verse 29:
And as He was praying, the fashion of His countenance was altered,
and His raiment became white and dazzling.— Luke 9:29
Now, we do not know what Jesus was seeing up on the mountain, but I imagine He was seeing the glory of His Father. I imagine that up on that mountain He was seeing the glory of the things that He once had before He came to earth—the glory which He shared with the Father before the foundation of the world.
Seeing that glory, what did it do? It lit Him up like a candle. You know, when someone sees glory, there is the shining on Moses’ face. When somebody sees glory, there is something that happens, because this shining from Jesus came from the inside.
It was not like glory came down on Jesus. Jesus was beholding the face of His Father, and suddenly He effulged with this glory. Something sprang out of Him, which the disciples saw. It is an amazing thing that the disciples saw this thing.
For the joy set before Him, He was seeing things up there just before He went down to Jerusalem and died on Calvary for our sins.
Then it says in verse 30:
And behold, there talked with Him two men, who were Moses and Elijah;
who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease
which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.— Luke 9:30-31
Jesus, of course, not only saw the glory, but He also saw the cross. He saw the exodus that was before Him. That is part of growing up also in our Christian life: not just to see the glory, but to see the cross that was necessary for His life.
Moses and Elijah spoke to Him about these things, but Jesus saw that glimpse of glory. The Lord gave that to Him to encourage Him as He was about to set His face toward Jerusalem.
Now Peter and his companions had been overcome with sleep, but when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men standing with Him.
As these two men were leaving, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not realizing what he was saying.
Well, there you go. They saw His glory. They did not know what to do about it. They saw something, but they did not know how to translate it. The roll of film was not in their camera. They saw the glory. What do we do about it?
You see, when we see revelation, it takes a little while for that revelation to develop into something that makes sense. We see, and we actually know something because the Lord has developed something within us to receive a revelation. We know something, having seen revelation, even though we cannot explain it at the moment.
But, of course, impetuous Peter could not wait for those moments. He immediately said, “Hey, I know just what to do. We are going to build these places, these statues, whatever these things are. We are going to make a monument to this glorious moment.”
Well, of course, it says right here that he did not realize what he was saying. I suppose sometimes, when we see a revelation of the Lord Jesus, we do not know what we are saying. We say all kinds of stuff we do not know. I am sure I have in some messages myself.
While he was saying this, a cloud formed and began to overshadow them. This is Shekinah glory. They were afraid as they entered the cloud. Mark and Matthew tell us that they fell on their faces to the ground. They were terrified of this glory.
And a voice came out of the cloud, saying,
This is My Son, My chosen: hear ye Him.— Luke 9:35
When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone, and they kept silent—including Peter—for the first time, and reported to no one in those days any of the things which they had seen.
The overwhelming Shekinah cloud terrified these men. But in that final moment, they heard something that transformed and changed their lives, as Peter later recounts in his second epistle. What did they do? They heard the Father speak about His Son.
So we see that the revelation we are looking for is to understand who the Son is. The Father says, “This is My Son.” I guarantee it: Peter, James, and John had never heard a voice from heaven before.
As a matter of fact, Peter later says in his second epistle, “This is a life-changing moment in my life. When I witnessed the majestic glory of my Lord, I knew He was Messiah. I confessed Him as the Son of God, but when I saw Him there, something happened. Something changed.”
The point of this is this: if we can see the Lord in His glory, see the Lord in revelation, He becomes the lens of our eyes to understand what is going on.
You know, it is not like some people think the book of Revelation is a revelation of the woes, a revelation of the trumpet, and a revelation—no, no, no. It is eight revelations of Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation. All that other stuff is gathered around it to be a backdrop.
It is when you see those eight revelations of Jesus described in the book of Revelation that you make sense of those things that are going on around you. This is the basis of revelation.
Without a vision, as soon as trouble comes, we begin to grumble under the weight of recovery, under the weight of discipline, under the weight of being shaken.
Many who, in previous history in the church, came into some recovery and some vision eventually lost it. What did they do? When they lost the vision, they made a shrine, like Peter suggested.
So we have shrines all over the place. What they are, really, is a testament to the time when, back 100 years ago or 200 years ago, we really saw the Lord, and everything made sense through Him. But now we do not see the Lord anymore, and so we build a shrine.
“This is our shrine of 1627. This is our shrine of 1727,” or whatever the date may be where something used to happen. Now, is that where we are at? Are we building a shrine to something we saw years ago?
It is possible to come into that kind of place. But that is not what the Lord wants, because the Lord is sovereignly moving with His hand right now. He wants us to see and understand.
There is so much talk in charismatic circles about prophecy. In the last number of years, prophecy has become so—well, may I say—abused that the church hardly wants to talk about it anymore.
But, you know, in these last days, one of the most important things we need is a prophetic church that understands what is going on, that hears what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
All these prophecies prophesying about politics, or prophesying about some doomsday this or that, or some kind of moral issue—the prophecies in the Bible were prophecies written for the children of God to understand what was going on. They were not to prophesy politics and things like that. Things have been taken way out.
But the Lord wants to recover a prophetic assembly. Would it not be wonderful if we could come before the Lord on a prayer-meeting night, say, “We have some problems here,” and then say, “Now, Lord, we come to You. What is Your perspective on these things?”
Rather than just kind of coming up with Band-Aids or requests that we make out of the goodness of our heart, a prophetic assembly would be a powerful prayer meeting. We could actually be inquiring, asking the Lord, and the Lord could be speaking to us. But it is because we would see this.
Again, let me take it back another step. We come to that wonderful prayer of Paul in Ephesians 1, which was repeated, I think, even tonight. Candy mentioned it once again. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians—how much did they see of the Lord? An awful lot. But what did Paul pray?
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him;
having the eyes of your heart enlightened.— Ephesians 1:17-18
That word, when he says, “I pray that you might receive a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,” is a special word. Now, you older folks all know about this. For younger people, I say: the Greek word there is epignosis. Gnosis means knowledge. Epi means upon.
What he is saying is, “I pray that you might receive a spirit of wisdom and revelation with a knowledge surpassing knowledge, a knowledge upon knowledge, a knowledge that exceeds knowledge.” Not only to know the Lord, but to know the Lord.
Now, this comes by experience of the Lord. But through a revelation, it opens the door to experiencing this epignosis, this wonderful recovery of knowledge upon knowledge, where we begin to see more of what is going on with the Lord. Knowing beyond knowledge—how about that as a translation?
Again, my burden is this: if we leave Mount Randolph-Macon with a notebook full of teaching on recovery, and the Lord has not opened our eyes to how He is recovering us, then we may have missed why we should be here.
Let me clarify once again what I am talking about: this whole matter of Jesus being the lens of our revelation. We all know that wonderful section in Hebrews 12 where we are told to run the race looking unto Jesus, right? Everybody knows that one.
We lay aside our weights, put aside the sin that so easily besets us, and run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. Now, anybody who sets aside those weights and those sins and starts pursuing, looking to Jesus, is going to be blessed in his running, is he not?
But that is not really what the writer of Hebrews is saying. You have to read the whole sentence in the Greek:
Looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.— Hebrews 12:2
Now, that is the whole sentence. So what is he saying? Our goal is not to look unto Jesus, full stop. It is to look unto Jesus until He gives us the eyesight to see His eyesight—the eyesight that kept Him going for the joy that was before Him as He endured the cross and the problems that lay ahead.
You see, He was doing that to recover us, but He could see that thing before Him. The writer is saying, “Look unto Jesus until you see with His eyes what is going on in your life, and for the joy that is on the other end of what He is after, you can run faithfully just like Him.”
You have to look at the Lord, but then through the Lord say, “Ah, I see the goal there. I see the joy there. I see the end there.” It helps you as you run the race.
When we look at these kinds of things, I suppose the first thing we have to come to when we read the Scriptures about recovery is this: we first need to see that the Lord’s hand must recover us.
As a matter of fact, because of His sovereignty, the Lord’s hand is recovering us. That left hand, which you often do not understand—that left hand that is squeezing you in situations—that left hand is working out all things together for good. That left hand is at work recovering you and me.
When you look at that left hand, let me put it two ways. Number one: when you look at His hand, you see that the left hand of God, the Holy Spirit, is wearing a glove. You know what it says? It says, “Recovery of us.”
You and I are what He is recovering. So this is not about how we are going to go out there and recover everybody else. It first starts with us being recovered, right?
The Holy Spirit has got to be tough, but He is like the repo man. You know what a repo man is? Some guy gets a fancy car. This happens a lot in New York City. They have full-time repo men. They are going around with wrecking trucks all the time because guys buy Mercedes-Benzes, and it only costs $985 a month for the lease.
They lease it for three months and stop making payments. So the repo man comes about midnight, hikes the guy’s Mercedes, and takes it off. That is the repo man. He repossesses, right?
Well, unfortunately, we are like that too. The Holy Spirit, the left hand of God, is our repo man who repossesses our possessions until Christ becomes our possession. What a trade.
But there is stuff He has got to repossess before we can possess Christ. So there is some recovery work that needs to be done. What a mighty hand is recovering us.
How big do you think the boundaries of His recovery work are? Let us see. How about this one?
I am the Alpha and the Omega.
— Revelation 1:8
Well, now, that takes care of just about everything, does it not? He is recovering everything.
How about seeing that vision John saw? John was a human being like the rest of us. Being on the Isle of Patmos, he was going through it. He did not know why, but he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. He was a prepared film. “Okay, Lord, open the lens. Let me see.”
Of course, the center of all those eight revelations was the Lamb of God taking the scroll of the history and destiny of the universe, and He is pulling it open toward the end.
Now, what have we got to worry about if the Lord Jesus has the destiny of the world in His hands and He is unraveling it? He unravels this thing, all these problems happen, they say fire comes down and all of this. “Oh, it is terrible.” Then you look—oh, that is wonderful.
There is a goal in all those tribulations and things in the book of Revelation, because it is the Lamb who has been given authority to open the scroll of man’s history and bring it to its proper end in God’s eternal purpose.
This is an amazing revelation to see when you see it. We look again in Colossians 1, where we see that the scope of Christ’s recovery work is to reconcile and make peace with all things under His preeminence.
For it was the good pleasure of the Father
that in Him should all the fulness dwell;
and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself,
having made peace through the blood of His cross;
through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.— Colossians 1:19-20
How big is the recovery and reconciliation of all things? Things in heaven, things on earth, all being gathered together under His preeminence. He has done that by His precious blood. He has done that because He has been given that position above all things.
He is gathering right now all things—things in heaven, things on earth—all being gathered together by His great work. Just look at the scope of what He is doing now. He is working recovery in our life.
When we read the Scriptures and have a vision of Christ, with our ears open and our eyes open, everything begins to speak of recovery.
Let me give you another verse. You can see the principle behind the Lord’s recovery work by listening to 2 Corinthians 5, those familiar verses in verses 16 through 18. Let me read those. I know you know them already.
Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh:
even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more.
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature:
the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.
But all things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ.— 2 Corinthians 5:16-18
What is Paul saying immediately? He says, “Now I want to talk to you about the body of Christ. I do not regard anybody according to the flesh anymore.” Why? Because I looked at Christ, and He does not regard anybody according to the flesh. He gave me a new perspective on this new creation.
Now, you know, we have different translations. I remember when I was a brand-new Christian, I only had a King James Version, and I believed it was the only Bible that was right. It says, “You are a new creature in Christ.” So here I was, born again, now as a new creature in Christ. Well, it is good to know that.
Or you have to think, “I am a new creation in Christ.” But it is not talking about us running around as individual new creatures. No, he says, “If anyone is in Christ, I want you to see something: there is the new creation.”
This brother, that brother, in Christ—if anyone, this brother, that brother—it is no longer me just running around like a new creature. I am part of something bigger, a new creation, and its name is in Christ. I am in Christ. You are in Christ. So here we are.
Therefore, he says, “That is why I am saying, be reconciled to this. Stop fighting with one another. Do you not see? You are looking at one another according to the flesh. No, no, no, no, no. You are in Christ as a new creation. I see you after the Spirit and not the flesh.”
What a change of perspective that is for us. How do we view one another? This is a challenge for us, I am sure.
What He is doing is, He has got us together in this new creation called Christ. As God has us together, He is recovering our point of view, like Paul—not seeing people after the flesh anymore. He is recovering our minds with the mind of Christ.
So now we gather in a prayer meeting saying, “Lord, what is Your mind on this matter?” Not, “What do we think we should do?” No, no. “What is Your mind, Lord?” That new creation can find the mind of Christ. That new creation is reconciling all things among us in this new creation. Oh, there is a lot of work that has got to go on there.
Everywhere in Scripture, when you look at it, you see God’s great recovery work.
That is a couple more things, and then we will—I know you are all tired tonight. Old guys like me do not stay up much past nine o’clock, you know, which is just when the young people get started, by the way.
Julie and I found that out. We had a Bible study in our home for a few months this spring. I tried to end by quarter to nine, and then the people decided to start going around 9:30 or quarter to 10. Young people like to hang out. Well, anyway, just a couple more things.
When you look at the Gospels, of course they are written to show Jesus Christ as the Son of God so that we might be saved. But now, to the new creation, what do the Gospels speak to us? Think of this recovery work.
The Gospel of Matthew speaks about the restoration of the kingdom of heaven to earth. Now, that is a recovery. Earth and heaven used to be united. God spoke; Adam and Eve spoke in the garden. Sin separated heaven and earth.
The kingdom of heaven, as Jesus came, is to connect heaven and earth once again: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” What a recovery work. Just think about it. Grasp the greatness of that, and you can understand the work that He must do in our midst.
Or you take the Gospel of Mark. What is that? How about this one simple thing? The center of the Gospel of Mark is when Jesus says:
For verily the Son of man also came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.— Mark 10:45
The Lord has given us the most amazing gospel of Jesus, the immediate Servant of God, so that He could raise up some people who do not want to be served but want to serve, for the sake of the Lord whom they serve.
There are so many servants of God who are that in name only, who want to be served. But no, the Lord is raising up a generation of those who truly would serve.
How about the Gospel of Luke? Is that not a cry, a present cry, for the gospel to be recovered in such a way that we could seek and save that which was lost by the power of the Holy Spirit?
The preaching of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit is needed for the recovery and the gathering in, because God’s heart is bigger than just a few people. He loves everybody He has created and does not want anyone to perish, but to come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Now, there is a recovery work for us, brothers and sisters.
Fourth, the Gospel of John presents the cry for recovery of the essential union between Christ, the I Am, and those born of God who are trying to live the Christian life by external things.
Everywhere you look in the Gospel of John, it is talking about this. We are not talking about this mountain or that mountain now. We are talking about worshiping in spirit. We are talking about a spiritual union with Jesus and us, where life comes out of us.
That is why He is the Light, He is the Bread, and He is the Life. We need to touch Him. We are not recovered as long as we are doing a bunch of stuff.
John was written at the end of the first century, and the church was already going into shrines, already going into deeds, already going into, “I have got to do this to be a good Christian.” They lost the I Am.
Can you believe Christians could lose the I Am? He is our I Am, the all-sufficient I Am. How could we lose that? How could we lose that?
No wonder the things we do are so weak. No wonder our attempts in trying to do things fail. It is all part of God’s recovery hand. He says, “No, no, no, My cross is not going to let you do things by your own flesh. Until you do them by the I Am, it is not going to work out.”
What a tremendous recovery work. What a recovery the Lord is doing.
I want those of you who are serious about the Lord and progressive, again, to ask the Lord to reveal Himself to you. I want young people not to be confused by the things going on around them today.
Man, it is chaos, what they are going through at this present time. But recovery would enable them to understand that the Lord is doing all of this to gather people for Himself. This Zion is His goal.
So we know one thing for sure about recovery, which we will take up at a somewhat later point, and that is this:
For the time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God.
— 1 Peter 4:17
What is judgment? You know, we look at judgment—that is the negative word. We like happy words. Judgment is actually a neutral word. Judgment can mean reward, or judgment can mean discipline.
So judgment must come. When you read the Scriptures, when it talks about the coming of the millennium and the coming of the Lord, there is always judgment coming before the day of the Lord, is there not? It cleans house, prepares the way of the Lord, and then the Lord comes in all of His glory.
Brothers and sisters, I say this to the most precious saints that I know—you guys. There is some judgment that He wants us to humble ourselves about. Acknowledge that we may know a lot about the doctrines of recovery, but is the Lord recovering us?
I am getting to be kind of an old guy. Can the Lord still recover me? Is there still more that I can learn? Am I looking at the Lord and seeing His perspective on things around me?
Can you be a counselor to those ones around you who are so insecure, so neurotic and fearful, and discouraged? Can you give them perspective out of a knowledge of the Lord and His ways?
Oh, the Lord is looking to pass on the torch to a younger generation that understands the left hand of God as well as the right hand of God, and can understand that He is bringing us in, gathering us according to a great purpose in that day.
When the root of Jesse gathers together all these Gentiles and all these Jews together to Mount Zion, it will be glorious. May the Lord have His way. Let us pray.
Lord, we come, and there is so much we could say, so many doctrines we could speak about. But, Lord, what I am asking is that You would reveal Yourself to us by Your left hand as well as the right.
Oh, how we love Your grace and mercy. Oh, how we fear Your left hand. But, Lord, every time You deal with us, You bring us to higher ground. We take another step and progress up Mount Zion.
We see more clearly the things that You have chosen and purposed for us in our lives, and we are set free from some of the weights of this world as we are joined more closely to You.
O Lord, do let us see You in Your glory. Do let us see, even though Peter, James, and John had no idea what to do about it. Lord, show us Your glory on the mount, that we might see and hear the voice from heaven that recovers.
Lord, we thank You so much for Your mercy upon us through these years. We pray that, as our dear brothers open the Word to us, we will continue to see how we might possess our possessions, but always remembering that first You are going to repossess our possessions in the process.
Thank You, Lord, for Your kindness to us. O Lord, in Thy wrath remember mercy. We pray in Jesus’ precious name.