The Lord laid a message on my heart which I think will be a blessing to you from the book of Hebrews. Then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Thy will.” He takes away the first (speaking of the first covenant of the Law) in order to establish the second. Hebrews 10:9.
This Scripture became such a principle to me because I could see some things God is doing in our lives right now. He brings us to a deterioration, almost an abhorrence of that which not too long ago we loved and thought was great. The Lord makes it seem obsolete to us, something we cannot abide, in order that He can establish the second.
See what happened in the Scriptures during dispensations past, for instance, during the old days of the Law. The Law must have been superior to the ages before it in many ways, and the people must have felt they were very well-off to be under the Law God had given. In the New Testament, Paul made it very clear that the people were living under the letter of the old Law, but the Spirit could take the Word and make it alive to them. So they saw that God had to take away the first: the old sacrifices, the old ways of worship, the old rituals, and the old regulations in order to bring them into something better. He takes away the first in order that He may establish the second. I do not know whether we understand that God does this, because we tend to glorify whatever we were in.
To this day, you can go into a synagogue and observe the old law of soul reverence. When the Torah is brought into the synagogue or into the temple, just to kiss the tassles on it becomes the objective of many of the old Jews. They reverence it; they love the Torah that says, You shall not make for yourselves idols, nor shall you set up for yourselves an image or a sacred pillar, nor shall you place a figured stone in your land to bow down to it; for I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 26:1. And then they practice sort of a “Toraholatry,” by which they actually worship the physical substance of the Law, while they refuse to keep the letter of it. Many would protest and say they do not believe this, yet what reverence is given to the things that are past! “Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and it was your fathers who killed them.” Luke 11:47.
It is easy to idolize something, and yet if you move with God, He has a way of making what was fresh yesterday turn sour today. Some people say, “Oh, give me the old-time religion,” and they want to go back to it. God is taking it away (although not the fundamental truths), but He is bringing something even more, beyond what we experienced yesterday. Do you ever try to go back to yesterday’s blessings? God never intended that yesterday’s blessings would do today. He wants to take away the first in order to establish the second. Progressively, He intends to bring an unfolding revelation, an unfolding truth, a closer walk, a greater fellowship to you in every step of the way.
“No, I don’t want to change; I don’t like the grain of Canaan; I want the manna.”
Good, we’ll dig out from under the bed, or from someplace, a pot of manna—not too old, just yesterday’s.
“What are those little things wiggling in it?” In the Scriptures they worked to keep the manna from one day to the next. You don’t keep the manna from one day to the next. “Every morning you gather it fresh for eating” (Exodus 16:19–21). Some thought, “Boy, I don’t know about tomorrow, I don’t trust that word,” so they piled up the manna. In the morning in the wilderness, a nice breeze came along and suddenly their nostrils became alive. The people became aware of something. The Scriptures say, “It bred worms and stank” (Exodus 16:20). Yesterday’s manna is not fit for today. The thing that God was using yesterday He is not using today.
We can read church history, and it is very difficult, from the viewpoint of where we are now, to evaluate all of the movements that came down through the years. We could look back at them and say, “My, how could people ever submit to that sort of thing?” It was marvelous then; it was fresh and alive if you had viewed it in the passing scene. Someone could say, “Boy, I look back to what happened in the history of the church and it was glorious! I wish we had those good old days back again.” I don’t. They are not good old days now; they were good old days then. In those good old days we are speaking of, all they could sing was, “In the Sweet By and By”; “When We All Get to Heaven”; “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder”; “Shall We Gather at the River?”; “Going Down the Valley One by One”; and “Day Is Dying in the West.”
Have you noticed how many times we sing about heaven now? Do you wonder why we don’t sing about heaven anymore? Because we don’t have to be sustained by that “pie-in-the-sky” idea that they had then. We can walk with God now. This Walk is not learning to endure, or to grin and bear it, but it is learning to walk with God. It is learning to start something which will never end—coming into the endless Kingdom of the Lord. The old is passing away and He is establishing the new. He has to do this.
There has to be the time that you take away the rattle and give something else to a child. There has to be a challenge—you cannot go back. In fact, isn’t it dreadful when a child always wants to revert to toys he should have outgrown? One of my girls would revert to playing with paper dolls. Some problem would make her want to recede.
When the challenge of life hits us, we want to withdraw; we want to recede. This is what we all do. We want to go back to something, but the Lord takes away the old. He makes the worms eat the manna of yesterday. There is no way to renew it. Only a few things can ever be revitalized—certainly not yesterday’s blessings. Nothing smells worse than a service in which someone who had a beautiful experience with the Lord stands up to say, “Forty years ago I had a vision of Jesus…” and continues on and on. You want to say, “What is the Lord doing for you now?”
“Well, not much. I have been so busy chasing the neighbor’s dogs away, yelling at the children in the neighborhood, and calling the police with complaints that I haven’t had time to wait on the Lord.” He turned into a cranky old man, yet forty years ago God met him. What happened to his pot of manna? It stinks.
I am wondering if this can happen in this walk, too. We could start out with something fresh and think, “Oh, this is so wonderful that we are going to hang onto it.” I do not think that attitude will work. Something goes bad in it, and you have to relinquish it and realize the fact that the Lord will give you, and He urges His ministers to give you, meat in due season—what you are ready to receive (Luke 12:42, 43). The thing that you move into should always be a challenge to you. Reach into something higher. Do not be satisfied with where you have been.
I have followed all the things that one of the churches has been through, and the last few services a deep quiet worship reached into the Lord and was much more profound. That level may be only a passing phase; maybe they will reach another. There may be many different expressions. All we know is that we cannot cling to everything that was past or we will make a rut out of it; it becomes something that sours. We must desire the sincere unadulterated milk of the Word, but remember, that is not yesterday’s milk or even from the day before. You cannot let milk sit too long before you drink it. You must drink it fresh.
You must be progressive, not liberal, in the way you walk with the Lord—progressive, inasmuch as you believe there is something more for you today, and tomorrow, and the next day. I have tried to accommodate myself to the changing scene, and I do not know whether I have made many mistakes or few. I do not know whether I have done many things right or only a few things right. All I do know is that, to the best of my ability each day, I try to follow the leading of the Lord. There is such a thing as making a god out of consistency. Some say, “This becomes a rule by which I live; I’m going to be consistent,” but I do not intend to be, because I think the passing scene requires a certain kind of inconsistency.
There was a man of God long ago who was told to make a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole. When the serpents were biting and destroying the people, everyone who looked on it would live (Numbers 21:9). Along came another man who saw what God was doing and said, “Isn’t that marvelous. We’ll put this serpent of bronze where everyone can look at it; maybe we’ll add something to it, and when they bow down God will meet them again.” Maybe He did meet a few. Another man of God came along, years later, and saw that the people made an idol out of the serpent of bronze so he had to destroy it (II Kings 18:4).
God can be inconsistent but it is because the time changes, people change, and situations change that even God Himself changes. You can say, “Well there’s no shadow of turning with Him” (James 1:17). That is true. Technically He doesn’t change, but the situation changes. He wanted Nineveh to receive a word, so He sent Jonah with this word, “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed.” Then they all repented, and after forty days He did not destroy Nineveh. How inconsistent of God.
You may feel, “If someone is going to say something, then he should back it up. A man ought to have integrity in his word, and if someone says something, then he should be true to it.” However, I do not expect to be consistent, because when situations change I want to change with them. If God is in this place today, I will worship here today. If something happens and we rebel against God, and God goes against this place, I will stand and curse it if God says to curse it. I Will bless it today, but I will curse it tomorrow if that is God’s will. I will give my life to build a church today if it is being built in the will of God. If I see that it is not in the will of God, I will work just as hard to bring it down.
Look at all the denominations that God was in that we now call Babylon. In those days we blessed and prayed for God to be with them. The day finally arrived when they became completely Babylon, so we now stand and cry, “Come out of her.” And they yell, “You’re trying to split churches, you’re devisive.” We are divisive because we try to pull people away from the thing that God turns His back on.
Consistency is not the issue, nor should it be with you. You may find yourself looking back at what was once a blessing to you and saying, “This has become a religious bondage to me; this has become an oppression; this I must leave behind.” So you rebel against it with all your heart. What was a blessing yesterday may have turned sour today because God intended it to be so.
The Apostle Paul said, “I build the thing that I once tore down” (Galatians 2:18), and he was sincere. You look back to the denominational structure and say, “It wasn’t so bad.” But try to sit through a service and there is death, nothing reaches your spirit. You may not be called upon to curse it, but you may say, “The Lord takes away the first in order that He may establish the second.” You may be in the middle of things the Lord will have to take away from you. You may be leaning on something that once served a purpose and no longer exists. Are you ready for the next step?
Do not believe that we have made all the progress that we are going to make. How many more things do you think the Lord will set before us this year? The Lord pointed out the very tendency that people have. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better. Luke 5:39. And it is. Who wants the new wine? Who wants the problem of trying to build new ways of teaching, ways of ministering with a completely different approach? Who wants to adapt themselves to all the unusual things that God is showing us?
Of course you could run back to the old order and buy your quarterlies, your teacher’s manuals, go to conventions, and learn how to give away free bicycles to the “reds” or the “blues”—all these things work. Can you remember how much excitement you had, but remember how consistently you ended up staying away? I think you understand what I mean—it went sour.
He has something better, just reach into it. Do not be afraid to let go of the old things. Don’t build them up in your mind.
Twice a year I go to the places where I used to live that I would tend to build up in my mind as really being something. I remember the trees I used to climb, the fruit I used to pick in the neighborhood, the forts I used to build, and the hills I walked selling magazines. I remember delivering ice. The big tall staircases were the ones they gave to me—young legs could make it, you know. Now I could glamorize those places, so twice a year I go by them and think, “What a dump.” The places I remembered fondly I would not keep chickens in.
Lest you begin to idealize and glamorize the past, it is good for you to take another look at yesterday’s manna. It has worms in it! It only served the purpose of launching you into something progressive and unfolding, and it is all going to pass away. The only thing that counts is when God gets someone to walk with Him step by step, from glory to glory, on into the next thing. I do not think you believe enough, I do not think you have experienced enough, I do not think you have come far enough to say, “All of these things that have happened to me have made me; I have arrived; I have spiritual perfection.” If they worked on you and nudged you on the way, that is good, but there is much more yet to come.
What is the meaning of this passage in the Old Testament? Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount… Deuteronomy 1:6. When the children of Israel moved, they finally found a good place to dwell (Mount Horeb). It had plenty of water and other good things. They would have stayed there longer, but people cannot circle around a mountain forever.
Would you like to take another step with God? Do you feel as if there is something more the Lord would do for your heart? Then what is the next step? It is to somehow cut loose from your old ways of thinking and say, “I wonder what God can do for me this year; I wonder how I can turn away from the old things.” I think some people are such slaves of the past.
Have you been around people who will eat only certain foods? I dislike children saying, “Ah, I don’t like it.” And when you ask, “Have you ever tasted it?” they say, “I never tried it; I don’t want it; I don’t like it!” If you would stick it in their mouths, they would probably throw it up right at the table. How do you know you will not like something? Are there foods which all your life you have refused to eat? You can learn to like them.
Some foods look unappetizing but taste delicious. The Lord wants us to be open to say, “Lord, make me hungry for the next step,” even though it may not look appetizing yet. “No matter how something is going to appear to me at first, I’m going to be prepared to move on in the Lord.” The Lord has put me through some things which were very unappetizing, but I’ve learned to delight myself in the Lord, and I think that you have to do the same. Good things are going to be ours.
Learn to open your spirit even more to the Lord; look up and believe God for every wall and every restraint in your spirit to be removed. Minister to yourself. Reject in the name of the Lord any barriers, any walls, any anger, any prejudice. Believe to have bigger blessings and to handle bigger difficulties than before. Believe for something better than the best you have ever known, to walk in things greater and to put forth efforts bigger.
This will take labor, faith, persistence, and openness of spirit. You will have to change your ruts. For a while you may become bored. Those ruts feel comfortable. You are not going to sit in the same easy chair and watch the same television programs. Change your ways of eating, drinking, exercise and thinking. Read different kinds of books—all spiritual ones; each of a little different nature. Get ready. Say in your heart, “I’m going to change, I’m going to take a step. I cannot remain in a rut; the old is passing away. I have worms in my manna. I’m getting ready for something more, Lord.”