Lord, in all that we do today, we wish for You to be honored among us—honored in our hearts, honored in our lives, honored in the presentation of Your Word, and in the hearing of Your Word.
Lord, grant to us that we might give the Holy Spirit free rein in our hearts, to speak to us, that the finger of God might be put on our hearts. May we truly be Your people in these last days. Amen.
Amen.
Let me let you know where I’m at: March 24, 2024. The last time I was invited to present or speak to you, it has been a while. It is a rare occasion, but it is a great honor to be able to address you, to speak to you, and to bring you the Word of the Lord. I do count it as a great honor.
This morning I want to share six different points, or lines of argument—however you want to think about it—so that you will know when lunch is about to be served, okay? When I give you one, two, three, four, five, six, you will know.
But I do warn you that the first four points particularly deal with the truth of the Word, and they may not have a great deal of application at first. The last two points, though, I want to spend a little more time on, and I want to talk about the church—and we in the church.
I apologize beforehand, but I am probably going to use quite a few Scriptures. I had an opportunity to hear Bax one time, and he used maybe a hundred Scriptures in a two-hour message. I am not going to do that, okay? It is not even going to get close to that. But he did it all from memory—each verse.
Let us start with Hebrews 1:1.
In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets.
God spoke. Well, that is the first point I want to make: God spoke.
God spoke and gave the law to Israel—to men. The law is broken up into three parts, basically: the commandments, the ordinances, and the statutes.
The law—God spoke—is an expression of God, of Who God is. It is not arbitrary rules and regulations for a people whom He knew were stiff-necked and rebellious, and therefore He built this law for them. No. The law is the expression of God Himself, of His nature. He is revealing His heart to men through the law.
When we see this law, when we see this Word, we see God Himself. He does not separate Himself from His Word.
Look at Genesis 26:5. Abraham has just passed away. Isaac is now the heir apparent—the heir to the inheritance that God has for his family, for His intended nation to be. The passage speaks about the sojourn in the land, the land that they would be given, and so on.
And He says in Genesis 26:5:
Because that Abraham obeyed My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.
How on earth did Abraham ever have the commandments, the statutes, and the laws? Nowhere is it ever recorded in the Scriptures that Abraham ever received those things. But I think it is a foretaste, a foreshadow, of what was given to Moses.
It started with Abraham. God desired to express Himself, to show His heart. And He did it through His voice, as He says: “My voice,” “My charge,” “My commandments,” “My statutes,” and “My laws.”
Then, of course, in Exodus 20:1:
And God spake all these words, saying.
And then He goes into the commandments given to Israel, then the ordinances, and then the statutes. This is what was given to Israel.
We know from the New Testament, in Romans 7:12, a description of the law:
So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good.
The law is good, holy, and just because God Himself is holy, just, and good. Therefore, His Word through the law is also that.
James 1 tells us that the law is a perfect law, because God Himself is perfect. It is just Who He is. It is just what He says. Therefore, that is what it is: perfect.
And James goes on to say that it is a law of liberty. It is totally the opposite of what you think law would be. Law, you think, would be restrictive: “Thou shalt not.”
Let me give you an illustration of what liberty feels like—what it is like. Luann and I lived on an island—or they call it an island; it is actually an isthmus—Coronado, in San Diego.
You are on the 5 Freeway, you get off the exit, and you are on the Coronado Bridge. You are going fifty-five miles an hour on the bridge. You come onto the island, and there is a long avenue that goes right into North Island, so everybody is still going fifty-five miles an hour, going to work at North Island.
As soon as you turn off that main street and get onto the side streets of Coronado: fifteen miles an hour. That is it. Fifteen miles an hour is all you can travel.
You might think that is very restrictive, but in reality, to us, what a relief. We live in a village. What a nice place. Everything is quieted down. Everything is slowed down. Everything is just a small-town atmosphere.
The law of fifteen miles an hour was liberty for the people who lived on that island. It was not a restriction for us. So the law was meant to be liberty for the people of God.
Turn to Acts 7. Stephen says something very telling about the law. Acts 7:37-38:
This is that Moses, who said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me.
This is He that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel that spake to him in the Mount Sinai, and with our fathers: who received living oracles to give unto us.
God’s Word, God’s law, seems to be so set in stone. It was set in stone, actually. But it was living. It was alive.
We have that same expression in Hebrews 4: the Word is living and active, because God is living. It is an expression of Himself. So please keep that in mind as we talk about the law: God Himself is revealed in it.
Let us see what the Scripture says about Jesus and the law. Again, Hebrews 1:2:
But in these last days He hath spoken unto us in His Son.
Not “a son,” not “His Son”—that preposition is not there in the Greek. It is this inexpressible thing: God has spoken by Son, by His Son.
Then in Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus says:
Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.
“I have come to fulfill the law.” The word fulfill there is quite interesting. In Strong’s, it has the picture of a net full. I thought of Simon in Luke 5, when Jesus told them to cast out their net. They brought back the net, and it was overflowing, bursting the net.
That is what it means that Jesus fulfilled the law—not merely that He obeyed it, but that He is that law, because the law is God Himself. Therefore, He is the law Himself. He is the picture of it. Let us put it this way: He is the embodiment of the law of God.
Again, put out of your mind this idea that the law is merely restrictions, rules, regulations, binding people up. No. In God’s heart, it was meant to be life to His people. The problem was with the people, not with God and not with the law.
G. Campbell Morgan said about this section of Scripture, when Jesus said this, that the Sermon on the Mount—or the manifesto, whatever you want to call it—is not the gospel. Jesus did not preach the gospel in the Sermon on the Mount.
Nor is it a law for some future kingdom age. How dare you steal the Word of the Lord from any of God’s people by saying something is for some time way in the future, and it is not for you. “So do not even read it. It is not for you.” That is not true, I do not think.
The Lord Jesus presented the Sermon on the Mount in order to show the holiness of God—God’s character. God’s attributes, God’s nature, are holiness. And that is the beginning of the gospel: when you recognize Whom you are dealing with and what your need is.
God, in all His mighty holiness.
The law, and what Jesus is, is like a mirror put in front of man. Man looks at it and sees himself as he is. But the law is that perfect mirror, that perfect life of the Lord presented to His people.
John 5 says that the Scriptures—all the Scriptures—you look at them and seek eternal life, but they bear witness to Me. Of course, when Jesus uses the word Scriptures, there are no New Testament Scriptures. There are no Gospels yet. All there is, is the Old Testament Scriptures. And He says they all bear witness to Me, because it is God expressing Himself.
When I say that Jesus embodies the Word, a good illustration of that is John the Baptist. Luke 3 says that when John was in the wilderness, before his ministry started, the Word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness.
We are never told exactly what that was. Did he have the scrolls? Did he have all the scrolls with him, like maybe Paul did in Arabia, reading the scrolls and studying the Word? I do not think so. But something happened: the Word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness. Boom. It changed his life. It began his ministry. He saw something.
In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they quote Isaiah: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness,” and so on. It is applied to John the Baptist. But interestingly enough, in John 1, John says:
I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
It is no longer merely a word outside of him, talking about him. John is that word. He is what Isaiah said. “I am that voice.” He embodies it. You look at him and say, “That is Isaiah. That is what Isaiah said, right there in that flesh and blood.” He embodied it.
In the same way, Jesus embodies the Word of the Lord and the law.
We have a perfect example when Jesus goes to Nazareth in Luke 4. He quotes the Scriptures:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor:
He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised.
Then He sits down, and they all look at Him. He says:
Today hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears.
He had not done all those things there in the synagogue at Nazareth. But He says, “All of that is here before you now, because I am what Isaiah said.” He embodies it.
At this point, I want to make the distinction that I fully recognize that the Old Testament commandments, ordinances, and statutes were written by the finger of God upon tables of stone. They were there for Israel. They were put in the ark, always before Israel.
But for us, I fully recognize that the Word is no longer written on tables of stone. It is the Spirit of God Who has written that Word upon our hearts.
We become that Word. It is inside of us. It is part of us, of who we are. The Spirit has written it on our hearts with His finger.
I would go on to say that the application of that Word, that law, those ordinances and statutes, are found in Christ as the Spirit speaks to our hearts—not because we read it and want to obey it, but because the Spirit is saying something to us. It is our life, and it is life for us.
Now I want to go back to the law, to the ordinances. I want to emphasize one particular emphasis that God makes, expressing Himself in His ordinances. I want to begin with Exodus 22.
I am going to go through five different verses in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, all dealing with the same subject. Again, it is God expressing His heart, not merely rules and regulations.
Exodus 22:21:
And a stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
The word stranger in the Hebrew is synonymous with the words sojourner, foreigner, or a guest among you. A modern word we might use would perhaps be alien among you.
Exodus 23:9:
And a stranger shalt thou not oppress: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Leviticus 19:33-34:
And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong.
The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were sojourners in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
You shall love him as yourself.
Leviticus 19:9-10:
And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest.
And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather the fallen fruit of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the Lord your God.
You are to care for the sojourner, the guest, the alien among you. You shall love him as yourself. He shall be like a native.
Numbers 15 is the last one. This has to do with the statutes dealing with offerings. Numbers 15:14 says:
And if a stranger sojourn with you, or whosoever may be among you throughout your generations, and will offer an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord; as ye do, so he shall do.
Verse 16 says:
One law and one ordinance shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.
God’s heart toward those who were aliens and strangers was: treat him as yourself; treat him as a native. Do not think small of him, like the Pharisees would in Jesus’ day.
Each time—on three of these different occasions—the Lord emphasizes: “Remember, remember, you were strangers. You were in that place at one time.”
Deuteronomy says:
A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.
You began as a wandering Aramean. You were not a Jew. You were not even a Hebrew. You were just a Bedouin out in the wilderness. You sojourned in Egypt, and then you became a mighty nation only because the Lord was with them.
Back to Jesus again, just for a few minutes: how Jesus epitomized this love for the stranger. How many different examples could I show you that you already know about? How many different people did He touch?
Whether it was the stranger, the foreigner, the Samaritans, the Syrophoenician woman, the centurion and his slave, or the many others rejected by Israel as outcasts from society—the lepers, the woman with the flow of blood, the crippled, the blind, and others—Jesus reached out to them. He touched them. He changed their lives. He set them free. He gave them peace. He healed them.
But I think the greatest illustration of Jesus’ attitude toward the foreigner, the alien, the stranger, is found in Luke.
There are three movements of Jesus toward Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke. In my studies, it seems to correspond to the three different feasts celebrated in Jerusalem at that time.
The first is in Luke 9:51. In each of these instances, when Jesus heads toward Jerusalem, look at His first encounter—what He says and does first on His way to Jerusalem, to the feast, while the Jews are celebrating before the Lord.
This is the ultimate expression of their life as God’s people, their enjoyment of the Lord together as one. Yet these are the first things Jesus does on the way.
Luke 9:51 says:
And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that He should be received up, He stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.
He had to go through a Samaritan village. He sent messengers to prepare the way for Him to go through these Samaritan villages. Do not forget, the rule of the day through the Pharisees was that the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. They were outcasts. They were Gentiles. They were unclean.
But Jesus was going to go through the village of the Samaritans. They did not want to receive Him, for whatever reason. James and John, in their zeal—and in the spirit of the Pharisees—say, “Shall we bid fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”
Jesus’ response was:
Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.
For the Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.
The men’s lives He is talking about are the Samaritans. “I came to save the Samaritans. I came to save the strangers, the foreigners, those who are not of your ilk, not of your color, not of your religion. I came for them—to save them.”
Luke 13:22 describes Jesus’ second movement toward Jerusalem:
And He went on His way through cities and villages, teaching, and journeying on unto Jerusalem.
Somebody comes up to Him and asks about salvation: “Who can be saved? How many can be saved? Are there going to be a lot? Are there just a few?”
Jesus answers about striving to enter through the narrow door. Those who seek to enter will not be able to enter, because the door is closed to them.
They say, “But we knew You. You taught in our streets. We did this for You. We did that for You. You are one of us.” Jesus says, “You are workers of iniquity.” Coldhearted Jews who will have nothing to do with Samaritans—you are coldhearted, blind.
Then Jesus says:
And they shall come from the east and west, and from the north and south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.
Those are the Gentiles. Those are the east and west, north and south. From all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, they shall come and sit in the kingdom of heaven.
The last example is Luke 17, on the way to the final Passover. Luke 17:11:
And it came to pass, as they were on their way to Jerusalem, that He was passing along the borders of Samaria and Galilee.
As He entered a village, there were ten lepers: nine Jewish lepers and one Samaritan leper. We know the story well. One comes back.
Do you know where the nine went? They went to the priests, so that it would be recognized that they were cleansed and could enter back into society—to Jewish society, where the Jews had no dealings with Samaritans.
But the Samaritan—where did he have to go? He had no priest to go to. He had no society to enter back into. So he returned to the Lord Jesus, fell before Him, and worshiped Him.
Jesus says:
Were there none found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger?
And He said to him:
Arise, and go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.
Jesus’ heart was for the foreigner.
Now I would like to spend the last twenty-five minutes talking about the church. We are the church.
In God’s eyes, there is no distinction between the church universal and the church local. We are the church. When the Word speaks to the church, He is speaking to us as part of that church.
As I talk about a couple of things here, they may be, as Harry Foster once said to us, “a bit near the bone.” He came to Puente Valley and gave a message that was very pointed and direct. He said, “That’s a bit near the bone, you know.” This word might be a bit near the bone for some of us. But we need to hear it.
I am going to do something to protect myself, okay? I am a coward.
A. W. Tozer—we all know him. Steve mentioned him quite often, as I understand. He was a prophet to the church. He began his public ministry in 1919, but he died in 1962. The bulk of his ministry was during the 1940s and 1950s in this country and Canada.
If you read anything by Tozer, you know how biting, how direct, how much of a sword he was—dividing between soul and spirit in his criticisms and charges against the church.
That was in the 1940s and 1950s. When we think about it, those were innocent times compared to what we have today. You can only imagine what Tozer would say today about the church, especially about worship. He was so against the forms of worship back in the 1940s and 1950s. Imagine what he would say today about worship in some of these churches.
Well, I am going to hide myself. I am going to cloak myself and take up his mantle, okay? Get mad at his spirit. Do not get mad at my spirit.
There are some in the church today—I do not know what the percentage would be, but it seems to be growing—who have an idea. I disagree with the very premise of it, but that is not for today to discuss.
Their premise is that the church is on earth, in this country, in order to reform the government and establish a Judeo-Christian value system that the government might display and convey.
If that is your position, then fine. My only point is this: if that is your position—that the church is supposed to reform the government—then do not cherry-pick Judeo-Christian values.
You take one, two, three, maybe four things that need to be reformed in the government. What about the rest of the Judeo-Christian values? What about the stranger in our land?
How many of us have adopted the popular propaganda that they are nothing more than criminal, illegal aliens? “They do not belong here.” But what does the Lord say? What is the Lord’s heart? What is Jesus’ heart toward the stranger, toward the alien?
Love them as yourself.
Think about that for a while.
I was really glad to hear Lucio say last summer that Ephesians and Colossians are sister epistles. Colossians mirrors Ephesians, but it is a denser version. It is the same message, to the grown-ups, to mature Christians, to believers who have pressed on to the full counsel of God and the greater truths of the Scriptures—the body of Christ and all of that.
I want you to read something in Colossians 4. Colossians 4:15-16:
Salute the brethren that are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church that is in his house.
And when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also read the epistle from Laodicea.
Ephesus, Colossae, and Laodicea were all of that same measure of Christ. They had received the greater truths. They knew the greater truths.
Of course, you know where I am going now: Revelation 3. How far the Laodiceans had fallen.
I realized something while looking at this. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard that we are in the Laodicean age. I would be a rich man right now. I think it is all true—we are.
But you know what? We are not in the Laodicean age. We are the Laodicean church.
We are that church Jesus is talking to. The church is one in His sight and in His heart. Therefore, we are this church, and He speaks to us.
I used to always read it as them and us. But no—it is us He speaks to. I want to emphasize not merely the charge, but also the Lord’s graciousness, His great love, mercy, and compassion for all His people. He gives us the remedy. He gives us the antidote to the disease so prevalent among us as the Laodicean church.
Revelation 3:17 says:
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing.
“I am rich. I have prospered. I need nothing.” Notice that it does not say we. The Laodicean church says, “I am rich.” It is all individually oriented. Nothing of the corporate remains. The corporate has been lost to them. They no longer see the body of Christ. Now it is just “I.”
“I am rich.” I wonder what He meant by that. Two things come to mind.
They think they are rich materially. Boy, do we think we are rich materially in this country, do we not? We have all the luxuries that probably no age before us has ever experienced. All the luxuries have been given to us.
Are those blessings from God, or are those deceptive gifts given by the enemy to us? Sometimes I think we in this country are in far greater bondage to the enemy than any Christian in an Islamic, Buddhist, or whatever country.
There is a subtle bondage that has taken hold of the American church. Materialism has become such a part of its being that, if it were taken away in any way, I wonder how many people would still be faithful to the Lord.
I remind you of what the devil said to Jesus on the Mount of Temptation. In a moment of time, he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. I do not know how it happened, how he could do it as a finite being, but personally, I think it was all the kingdoms—past, present, and future—that the devil showed Jesus.
I think the enemy was so undone by being before the Son of God that he revealed something he did not intend to reveal. He said, “All the authority and all the glory of all the kingdoms of the world are mine to give to You.”
Material wealth, material goods—who do they belong to?
“I am rich” spiritually. “I am enlightened. We are enlightened. We have tasted of the heavenly gift. We are partakers of the Holy Spirit. We have tasted of the goodness of the Word of God. We have tasted of the powers of the age to come. We are rich.”
But we are Laodicean Christians. We prosper. “I have prospered.” I am prospering, ever increasing. The “I” is ever increasing, ever growing richer. Good capitalists—that is what we are, Christians.
Good Christians, pressing on. But so much of what we have is head knowledge. How much of it is being worked out in our lives? So rich, needing nothing.
“I am satisfied. I am satisfied where I am at. We have received all the great truths in the RRs.”
But I do not want to leave it there. It is easy to point the finger and say these things. What is the antidote the Lord gives us? Revelation 3:18:
I counsel thee to buy of Me.
Buy from Me? In order to buy, you have to sell. In order to buy these most precious things that Jesus offers the Laodicean church—offers to us—we have to sell everything. Then we can buy from the Lord.
It reminds us of the parables in Matthew 13: the field which the man wanted to purchase, and the pearl of great price which the merchant wanted to purchase.
You can look at that as the Lord giving Himself fully, selling all so He could purchase the church. But you can also read it as the Christian. In order to obtain the most precious thing, I have to sell everything.
Now, that does not mean literal selling of everything. That would be ridiculous to say. But in our hearts, can I say, “Lord, I am willing to sell everything in order to buy what You have to sell to me—to give to me. I will do whatever it takes. I just want that which is most precious.”
And I will sell everything.
Revelation 3:19 goes on:
As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
What a delightful phrase that must have been to the Laodiceans after what Jesus had just said to them: “Those whom I love.”
“I reprove and chasten.” So be zealous, okay? Get real. Be zealous.
What does that mean? It means like Caleb. Numbers 14:24 says:
But My servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed Me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went.
That is what the Lord is asking. How many times did Jesus repeat that phrase: “Follow Me”? Follow Me fully. Sell what you have to sell. Do whatever it takes in your heart to shed yourself of the things that so easily beset us, and follow Me fully. Be zealous.
Laodiceans, fellow Laodiceans: be zealous. Follow Me.
Then finally, He says, “Repent.”
As Jim knows, I do not put much stock in repentance as merely feeling bad for what we have done, or what our attitude has been. We feel bad, make amends, make promises that we are going to change.
But 2 Corinthians 7 tells us very clearly that repentance comes from godly grief. Let God’s grief be a part of us. Let us see things and feel things from God’s perspective—how He views these things, how He views hardheartedness against the aliens and against those different from us.
Those who live on Cherry Street, you know—those other people, them and us. That is not the attitude in God’s heart.
If you believe that God is dealing with the nations, and that nations are important to the Lord, then look at Matthew 25.
Jesus, the Son of Man, returns to earth. Thank goodness, He is finally back. He comes with His angels, sits on His glorious throne, and is declared King. He brings the nations before Him. He brings the United States before Him, okay, if that is what you want to believe.
But what did Jesus say? What is the standard? Matthew 25:43:
I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in.
And He goes on: “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto Me.”
I cannot get away from it.
Please, let us lose that attitude of us and them. We are the church.
This is my sixth point, and final point. It is so easy to point the finger, judge, accuse, and say these things. But what shall the overcomer in the Laodicean church do? What shall the overcomer in this fellowship do with all of this around us—with all that has caused our hearts to be hard, our blindness to be such that we do not even see the pressures and that which has beset us and robbed us of the riches of the heart of the Lord, of God’s character?
Daniel 9. It is not what Daniel prayed for that spoke to my heart, but how Daniel prayed. This is what the church should do. This is what the overcomers should do.
Daniel 9:8-10 gives us this pattern. Daniel prays along with the rest of the exiles, though Daniel was not of the same character or heart as those exiles. But Daniel identifies himself with them.
We identify ourselves with the Laodicean church.
O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against Thee.
To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness; for we have rebelled against Him;
Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in His laws, which He set before us by His servants the prophets.
“To us, O Lord”—us, not them. To us belongs confusion of face, because we have sinned against Thee. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness. Oh, how marvelous that word is.
We are all in this boat together, okay?
Pray. We need to pray. We need to pray intercessory prayer—not that they, but that we, we would come to a place of repentance, of zeal, of selling all and buying from the Lord.
I would define intercessory prayer this way. I used to think it meant taking the burden or grief of another person upon yourself, becoming one with the one for whom you were praying.
But now I see it as taking the Lord’s burden, the Lord’s grief—godly grief. We take His burden upon ourselves and pray with His heart.
Did not Dana tell us that we should see things as the Lord sees, being on Mount Zion and seeing things as He sees them? How does the Lord see us—the Laodicean church in this country?
Finally, a great promise has been given to us in Isaiah 61. Again, these are verses Dana shared a little on last summer. Interestingly, it is the same passage Jesus quoted in the synagogue at Nazareth.
Isaiah 61:1 says:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me.
Then He goes on to say: to bring good tidings, to proclaim liberty, to proclaim the year of the Lord. Then Jesus stops.
But Isaiah 61 continues. The Lord and His ministry—Who He is—did these things during His days on earth. But this is what He does now:
To comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion;
To give unto them a garland for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
Then Isaiah 61:4 says:
And they shall build the old wastes,
They shall raise up the former desolations,
And they shall repair the waste cities,
The desolations of many generations.
Those who mourn in Zion.
Did Dana not say that we are to be ascending Zion in these days? The overcomers in Laodicea are those ascending Zion and seeing things as the Lord sees them.
Yet you are in the heights of glory, in the heights of what the Lord intended for you, and yet there is a mourning heart for our brothers and sisters—for those living with hard hearts and blindness.
Let me use an illustration of being blind. I grew up in a city called West Covina, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. We lived in a little valley outside Los Angeles.
It just happened that what they called an inversion layer would sit over our little valley, the San Gabriel Valley. All the emissions from the cars and everything else would just stew in that cauldron, because the inversion layer would sit on us. It would just churn in that little valley with nowhere to go. It could not blow east, west, north, or south. It just churned—absolutely horrible.
We lived six miles from the base of the San Gabriel Mountains—beautiful mountains, six or seven thousand feet high, right next to us, six miles away.
During the summertime, we could never see the mountains. They were right there in front of us, but you could not see them. There was a smog upon us.
I think for a lot of us, we are in the smog. May the Lord open our eyes. Open our hearts.
The only reason the Lord would tell us these things is because He has such love for us, such a desire for us to go on and break loose from the Laodicean illness. He has given us the remedy. He has given us the solution.
I look forward to talking to you again in four years.
Let us look to the Lord in a word of prayer.
Lord, as I prayed at the beginning, it is only the Holy Spirit Who can speak to our hearts. Who is this little runt up in front trying to tell me, or tell us, something—or trying to act like A. W. Tozer?
Lord, You know I am not going to convince anybody of anything. But, Lord, I leave it in Your hands. I stood on Your Word. I stood on what You had me to share.
Lord, Your Holy Spirit is sovereign in our lives and our hearts. I thank You that every brother and sister in this room has the fullness of the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of them.
Thank You that You desire to sow desires not to wallow in the Laodicean atmosphere, but, Lord, to mount up, as it were, with wings of eagles. Lord, to ascend Mount Zion and take up the burden for the rest of our brothers and sisters who are laboring under false pretenses.
Lord, thank You. Again, thank You for Your great love. Thank You for Your mercy and Your grace, that You do speak to Your people.
Truly, Lord, Your brothers and sisters here are Your precious people, Your flock. Amen.