Have we settled down? Is everybody done with page two? Turn it over. It’s duplex; it’s printed on both sides. What’s on the other side? Did you look at the other side? That’s where you take notes.
Let’s just pray.
Lord, we thank You for this chance to be gathered, drawn together. We thank You for the time at Your table, and we don’t take it lightly. We don’t take it for granted.
We just pray You’d give us grace for a few minutes here this morning. In Jesus’ name.
So this really wasn’t the outline I had, but I came up with it over the weekend. But it’s good. The closer we get to the end, the more we need to go back to the beginning.
So, going back to the beginning, it’s not a bad thing. It’s not, “Those old guys are just going back to the old stuff.” It’s not. It’s the beginning. It’s always new, and it’s always fresh.
The more we get to the end, the closer we get to the end, the more we need to go back to the beginning. Who said that? Of course. Is that a Sparks? I couldn’t remember where it was.
You know what? You don’t have to put the verses up, because I’m always tempted to stop and look at the verses, and I forget where I am. Unless there’s something really special. But you can put up one verse, and that’s Bobby’s verse that he opened with.
Timothy, Titus. Right? You got it?
And really, Bobby, it’s a perfect transition to what I wanted to say this morning, if I can find it. These pages stick together.
Everybody have their Bible to follow along? Okay. And if you don’t have a Bible, if you’re going to use your phone, that’s okay. But just promise me one thing: don’t text.
Look up verses, but don’t text. That’s okay.
So, Titus 3, starting in verse 4:
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared,
He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we had done in righteousness,
but according to His great mercy,
by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.
And that’s really back to the beginning.
What we wanted to do today was realize that the fiftieth Christian Family Conference is about to begin—five days from tonight. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—three nights. We have to come back and load the truck.
And I just thought it’s good, as we face this, that it’s always good when we’re doing something—any activity we’re doing—it’s good to stop and think about why we’re doing it. We can just get in habits and just keep doing it, but there’s a purpose behind why we’re having this conference.
I want to reflect on the burden and the spiritual purpose for this conference.
I guess most of you know, in my career—did I have a career? What’s a career? When I had a job—do you have a career, Mort? Had a job.
Anyway, my job was in accounting and finance, and it very frequently had to do with new computer systems—accounting systems based in a computer. The computer people always wanted to start writing stuff. And they just wrote stuff, and then I had to tell them it didn’t work. I couldn’t use it.
We always have to get the big picture. We always have to understand why we’re doing something and where we’re headed. I think we really need to understand where we are and where we’re headed. And that’s the big picture. That was one of my nicknames: Big Picture.
So I wanted today to give you my personal testimony about these conferences—my big picture.
The conferences started in the 1970s. Seventy-two? Seventy-three. The first was in ’73, and then ’74, but those weren’t family conferences. Then came the first family conference.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a big move of the Spirit in our country. And I think a number of us got saved during that period. We were called and washed by the blood, and born again in the Spirit to a living hope. We received a living hope.
And at the same time, this living hope—and that’s really where Bobby started—was with a purpose. I think we began to see that there was a purpose. It wasn’t just for ourselves. God called us for a reason, with a purpose. We were born again into the body of Christ. God saved us into the body of Christ.
I always think of something that Mac and Stella will remember: New Wine magazine. Who remembers New Wine magazine? Pretty good.
This was a group of brothers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that published a magazine. The other thing that was going on was the charismatic movement, and they had a lot of magazines. They’re still online, if you want to look them up.
And they all had short hair, coats and ties, and white shirts. That’s how long ago it was. How many people know how to tie a regular four-in-hand tie? How many people under forty know how to tie a tie? Joe, you’re not—oh, you’re under forty. Yeah, good for you. Oh, you do too? I thought we’d have to have a class.
At that time, that group ministered strongly on the body of Christ: the whole thing that we were born into the body of Christ, and a spiritual expression of Christ through His body. They were very clear, and that encouraged me a lot.
And pretty much during the same time, Stephen Kong would travel to Richmond, Virginia, once a month and share on some of these same things.
Just a group of people met at Llewellyn Miller’s house on Waveney Road—in the basement, in the family room, in the garage. What was it? Every winter, Waveney, right? Oh, you went out, honey? Well, right, she met in our living room that way. But when she moved out here—whatever that is—down the street from the Dorotiches. It’s a house right down the street from you where things started. I can never figure out exactly where it is.
Anyway, the things he was sharing are the things that Paul shared: the summing up of all things in Christ; being His body, a body that is always maturing; becoming the bride of Christ; making way for the marriage supper of the Lamb; and bringing in the kingdom. Way more than small things. Way more.
Paul says, in Ephesians 3:11:
This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He uses the words “eternal purpose.” Anywhere else? A lot of eternity in the Bible. A lot of eternity.
Though these things aren’t old, they’re forever new. And they’re always growing. They’re always growing.
So that was the purpose. The reason for this conference is to share something of God’s purpose—His reason in saving us. These things go from eternity past to eternity future. See, that’s eternal.
And in the middle is time. We’re living in time. This dispensation, the period we live in, is time. So what we’re going to talk about is something about what we’re doing in time.
What are we to be doing in light of God’s eternal purpose? Having eternity in our hearts, what is our relationship to God’s eternal purpose? And I’d finally like to say a few things about Peter’s experience.
You think of Paul in relation to the ministry of the eternal purpose, but Peter, I believe, was right in the middle of it. I can identify with him.
So, eternity past. Anybody ever think about eternity past?
Well, when I was a kid—eleven, twelve, I don’t know—I used to go out in the summer skies. Where I was from, in August, there were shooting stars. Just go out and lay on the ground somewhere and wait.
As soon as you saw one, it was gone. But I would think, “Where does the universe end?” Impossible. I can’t comprehend. So we can’t understand eternity, but we believe that God has put eternity in our hearts.
A couple verses on eternity past: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That is Genesis 1:1—in the beginning.
I think John 1:1-4 is great:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him,
and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
In Him was life,
and the life was the Light of men.
The Lord Jesus has always been with the Father. So, when we talk about eternal purpose, it has always been in the Father’s heart.
And then, in Ephesians 1, Paul says:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.
Think about it. We’re bound up in eternity. If we just think about where we are today and all our problems, we’ve got our perspective off. We need to think about the Lord.
God has an eternal purpose, and that purpose is centered in His Son—not in you and me, not in each one of us.
Okay, eternity future—just a few verses from Revelation. My favorite is Revelation 11:15-16:
Then the seventh angel sounded;
and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ;
and He will reign forever and ever.”
He’ll reign for eternity.
And let’s look at Revelation 21:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
for the first heaven and the first earth passed away,
and there is no longer any sea.
And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
Bringing in eternity.
So, the closer we get to the end, the more we need to go back to the beginning. Can you understand me? Okay. Sometimes my wife can’t understand me. I talk too softly and too fast. That’s okay.
So here we are. This is present time. This is time. This is a dispensation that God has ordained for the bride to make herself ready, for preparing for the Lord’s return.
But I really want to stay on this matter of eternity in the heart of man. Reading from the Amplified—do you have the Amplified on your computer? That’s amplified. They put more explanation right in the text.
Put up Ecclesiastes 3:11. Okay, that’s good. That’s the old Amplified. There’s a new Amplified that did less amplifying.
He has made everything beautiful and appropriate in its time.
He has also planted eternity, a sense of divine purpose, in the human heart—
a mysterious longing which nothing under the sun can satisfy, except God.
Yet man cannot find out, comprehend, or grasp what God has done—
His overall plan from the beginning to the end.
A sense of divine purpose. A sense of divine purpose. Eternity in our hearts. Go home and think about eternity, Daniel.
So here we are: eternity past, eternity future, and here we are in time. And what’s going on in time?
Man has sinned and has been separated from God—lost, lost without hope in this world. But we are thankful, as God’s people, that He has divinely intervened.
Let’s look at Ephesians 2:4-7:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ
(by grace you have been saved),
and raised us up with Him,
and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Saved, washed in the blood.
But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
And in Matthew 27:50-52—I think somebody prayed this this morning:
And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom;
and the earth shook and the rocks were split.
The tombs were opened,
and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
So what happened at the cross? The way has been made—the way back to the presence of God, the way that was lost at the fall. We were without hope and not able to communicate with God. We dare not stand afar off.
But we’ve been brought near by the blood of Jesus. And also, what was lost was a capacity to communicate with God.
We were meant to communicate with God in spirit, and that capacity was lost. Our spirits became inactive, unable to communicate with God, cut off.
But God. If you think about the Lord Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus, what was His big point? Nicodemus came and said, “You’re a great teacher. Can I meet with You? I want to get schooled on this teaching You’re doing. Give me some of that teaching.” He was a Pharisee, right?
And what did the Lord say to Nicodemus? “You must be born again. You must be born again. You must be born again.”
The things we’re talking about require us to be born again. The things we’re talking about can only be done in spirit.
Jesus answered and said to Nicodemus,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh,
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
How many people can remember getting born again? You remember that day? You remember that time?
I have one testimony about being born again: “Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul.” You know that song? Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul. It happened.
When Paul said, in Ephesians 1:18—we all know this—that apprehending things in the spirit, God’s eternal purpose, the purpose for this conference, can only be apprehended in our spirits. And we’ve been born again. Exercise our spirits.
And then, in the famous verse—Jeffrey always says “a famous verse,” doesn’t he?—this famous verse, Ephesians 1:18:
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened,
so that you will know what is the hope of His calling,
what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.
Epignosis, right? Spiritual knowledge of Him.
So these things are spiritual. “Give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation.” He doesn’t give you a mind and a will to exercise yourself and study and study and study. He says, “Exercise your spirit.” And I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.
What are the eyes of our heart? They’re spiritual eyes. They’re spiritual eyes—the eyes of our spirit. Thanks, Mort. Spiritual eyes.
So, in the midst of declaring all these things so strongly in Ephesians 1, Paul couldn’t help but say, “I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened.”
Let me just say, I found this quote by Brother Kong, which I think is really good—understanding what happened in our spirits when we were born again.
When we believe in the Lord Jesus, something happens in us. Glory filled our soul when we knew the Spirit was in us. Our spirit is resurrected to new life, and the Holy Spirit of God comes and dwells in our spirit. We are born from above. We are children of God.
And because we have this new life in us—life in the Spirit—God dwells in our spirit. God dwells in our spirit. Eternal life dwells in our spirit.
So that begins our entry into God’s eternal purpose. Something to see God’s eternal purpose is born in us in our spirit when we are born again. You must be born again.
Now I want to talk for a few minutes about Acts 2. Remember what went on in Acts 2? It was the Day of Pentecost—the pouring forth of the Spirit.
And Peter stood and preached the most wonderful thing. Every time I read that, after being saved for fifty years, I just marvel. Oh, wow—Peter, the fisherman that the Lord loved, was patient with, and brought along. The Spirit fell on Peter, and he had such a marvelous sermon. You’ve got to go read Peter’s sermon.
Anyway, that’s part of my testimony. But then I want to look at what is the fruit of Peter’s message.
This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.
Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God,
and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit,
He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.
For it was not David who ascended into heaven,
but he himself says:
“The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at My right hand,
until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.’”
Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain
that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—
this Jesus whom you crucified.
That might be the high point of that sermon.
We often think the outpouring of the Spirit is for us. How much teaching is there on speaking in tongues? I don’t think speaking in tongues is wrong or bad. It is supposed to be done in order, Paul says. But so often we hear teaching on this. There was something bigger that happened. I don’t know if it could be bigger, but something else happened here.
So let’s see what happened at the close of Peter’s message, continuing in the second chapter of Acts.
Just after Peter said to the Jews, “God made Him both Lord and Christ,” now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”
If you’re convicted, what shall we do?
Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ
for the forgiveness of your sins;
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
I think that goes along with Bobby’s verses this morning. Repent, and then you receive the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off,
as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.
And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying,
“Be saved from this perverse generation!”
So then, those who had received his word were baptized;
and that day there were added about three thousand souls.
And what’s the next verse? Everybody that has their Bibles open, what’s the next verse? I couldn’t hear you. Jerry and Madhu are up here. Madhu has his Bible open, and Jerry has his Bible on his phone—or he’s texting a lot. I’m not sure.
They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
The church was born. The result of their being caught by the Lord was that the church was born.
All these people repented, were baptized, were cleansed by the blood, and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. They were soundly saved.
And this is a key point in my personal testimony: they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
There’s something done when we are born again that causes us to want to be with the saints, to share Christ together, to be built up with one another.
We may not understand what happened, but we can sense in our spirits that God has done something.
These weren’t things to be copied. Have you ever heard of people wanting to get together and set up a New Testament church? What do you have to do to be a New Testament church? Get some teaching, have some ministry times, fellowship.
Fellowship is sharing Christ. It’s not friendship. Through the breaking of bread, prayer, and fellowship, we become best friends. But the goal is fellowship; the fruit is friendship.
Drawn together, gathered, and assembled in His name.
So our gathering together is a testimony to the world.
Somebody said the other day that we’re concerned about the gospel, but we’re sharing the gospel every Sunday right here. And if you’ve really got care for someone, maybe you can bring them to weekly gospel meetings when we break bread. It’s a real testimony.
So we have to understand that the church is spiritual. It’s not something of man’s plans.
This experience of being born again in our spirits, wanting to be built up with the saints, and gathering together assembled in His name—that is spiritual.
And this vision of Christ and His church is not something that we see one day and then we are done. It’s not something we graduate from. It’s not something they teach in seminary. It’s not something we can study and study.
Obviously, we read our Word. It witnesses to us about these things. But we don’t graduate. We never graduate from this matter of God’s eternal purpose. We are learning, moving on in fullness, our whole lives.
I often hear people say, “Have you seen the church? Have you seen God’s eternal purpose?” Like it could be done at a point in time. Well, our hearts might be touched.
Paul was touched. Peter was touched. But they spent the rest of their lives gaining Christ and fulfilling God’s eternal purpose. So we’re always moving on.
Let’s talk about Peter.
Peter had a lifelong experience of Christ. And where did Peter start? He started as he was called by the Sea of Galilee.
Now as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee,
He saw two brothers, Simon who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother,
casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.
And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.
Peter followed the Lord and gave up his worldly pursuits.
As he went on, they followed Him. They didn’t just follow Him casually. If you look at the book of John, when the Lord was moving around and Peter was with Him, Peter saw these things.
So he could say, in Matthew 16, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Some said John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. “But who do you say that I am?”
Ask ourselves that question: Who do you say I am?
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona,
because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you,
but My Father who is in heaven.
I also say to you that you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build My church;
and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”
The rock here isn’t Peter. We just got a new pope. They talked all the time about Peter—who’s the new Peter here? The rock was not Peter; it was Christ. Upon this rock, upon this revelation of Christ, that’s where the church is built. That’s where we can have a church, an assembly.
And then Peter also committed himself to the Lord. In John 6, remember the Lord’s message about eating His flesh and drinking His blood? Many left. They all went, “Oh my gosh, what is this? I’m out of here.”
But Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you want to leave too?” Simon Peter answered Him and said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter made another commitment to follow the Lord.
So Peter saw the Lord and was given to Him. And the Lord saw something in Peter that He could use, that He appreciated. He patiently, patiently worked with Peter. Then He was able to use him mightily.
Peter was most prominent in the early church. If you’re reading Acts, he was at the center of things. But after Acts 15, he disappeared. Maybe that’s because Luke was writing it, and he was Paul’s doctor and didn’t want to write anything about Peter anymore.
But anyway, we don’t know exactly where Peter was. I did a little research, and none of it was worth mentioning. But the book of 1 Peter tells you where he was.
Within a couple of years of his death, Peter was ministering among the churches in Asia Minor. It seems to be the area where he ended up serving.
He was encouraging and exhorting the saints who were under great persecution. He was living out God’s eternal purpose toward the end of his life. Peter did not retire.
We can’t retire from working with the Lord’s saints.
There are many things Peter said to them in this book, and this is part of my testimony. I just want to mention three of them. They have really spoken to me over the years.
The first one is 1 Peter, where he started out. Could someone bring me a bottle of water? That’s not what I said. Tim, can you get me a water? Oh, thank you. My tongue’s sticking to my mouth. How to make everybody glad, huh?
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away,
reserved in heaven for you,
who are protected by the power of God through faith
for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
So Peter was still under that same Spirit that he had in Acts 2. That’s a strong, strong statement.
And these people were under persecution. What would you tell somebody that was being persecuted? “Be warm and filled. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be okay.” No. He says, “Remember Jesus Christ.” What a powerful thing to tell them.
In all our trials, we need to remember Jesus Christ and what he shared in this passage.
There are two more things he shared there, based on seeing Jesus Christ—the One who has all authority over His church.
Peter was still sharing Christ, but now he had something more of God’s purpose in seeing the church.
And coming to Him as to a living stone
which has been rejected by men,
but is choice and precious in the sight of God,
you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house
for a holy priesthood,
to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
He would say the same thing to us. We are living stones.
And that is a furtherance of what we see in Matthew 16, where the Lord said, “Blessed are you. Upon this rock I will build My church.”
So there is a question we have to answer ourselves. He is building up the holy house, a holy habitation in our midst, and we are all living stones, born again as living stones.
So I think we can ask ourselves, “Where do you fit?” Are you a stone? Where do you fit among the house?
In that house, this spiritual house testifies of Jesus Christ, of God reigning and ruling. There is a specific place for each one of us.
And the third thing: I see 1 Peter continuing in that same spirit, ministering to the local churches. He says, in 1 Peter 2:9-10:
But you are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation,
a people for God’s own possession,
so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him
who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
for you once were not a people,
but now you are the people of God;
you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.
How powerful is that? That same anointed Spirit that started in Acts 2.
But we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that we may be a testimony of Him who has called us out of darkness into light.
It registers in heaven. The fact that we’re the body of Christ, a royal priesthood, a house of God, registers in heaven, and it registers on earth.
So, as we look forward to this conference, we need to stop and think why we have this conference. Not just, “It’s good to be together. It’s good to be with one another for a week, and to eat too much, and enjoy the heat.”
It’s going to be 103 degrees this week. Pray. We’ve got to pray for the weather.
But anyway, we’ve been called. We’ve been called to be a testimony of Jesus. We’ve been called to be the body of Christ, the bride of Christ—holy people for God’s own possession.
These are the things that we need to be thinking about as we look forward to this conference. We need to be engaged, not because we are stuck here, but because we want to serve the Lord in the context of His eternal purpose.
We need to prepare our hearts. God’s perspective is eternal: eternity past, eternity future. But man’s perspective is limited. We just think of the cradle to the grave, and that’s it. How discouraging.
Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 15, if that’s our perspective as believers, how pitiful. How pitiful. But God has intervened and saved us.
He has saved us, washed us with the blood, and caused us to be born again. We are new creatures in Christ. We have a new perspective in our new life in Christ.
We have been born again to be part of His body until He returns. The mystery is great, but it is Christ and His church.
God’s will is to sum up all things in Christ, and also to prepare the bride for His return.
We are called and born into these things in spirit, and we are meant to live our lives on earth in light of all these things—looking for and hastening the coming day of God, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God.
So let’s just be encouraged.
We thank You, Lord, for calling this assembling together, this convocation next week. We pray You’d give us Your heart and Your burden as we prepare.
We pray You’d be meeting us in practical things. We pray You’d be meeting those who are serving and teaching. But we also pray that each one of us would be caught by Christ and His church.
Lord, we pray You would quicken us to be excited and to anticipate what we might hear at this upcoming conference. In Jesus’ name.