I like to paint for you pictures of the stories of what happened in the Word of God, especially in the life and the ministry of Christ.
To have lived through the ministry of Christ upon the earth must have been most memorable—to have witnessed the fantastic thing of miracles, the constant put down when religious enthusiasm would rise (and the Master was constantly putting it down), and the growing hostility of a religious world against Him after the second year when they had received Him so joyfully.
A third year of ministry brought nothing but opposition—the Pharisees plotting to kill him, the sinister presence of devil power and demon possessed men in high religious places in every meeting, every time Christ ministered.
The first year was different—the ministry was a beautiful flow.
People had not heard much about Him, and everything was like the sudden surprise of a meeting with God. Obscurely, silently, He moved from city to city.
The second year brought real popularity,
But in the third year came opposition; persecution. It came from the religious world, until they involved the civil world.
It was in that last year of ministry that something happened to Christ which the disciples could easily observe. They were aware of a change in thinking which left them silent. Read it in Luke 9:51–62.
And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he were going to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and consume them? But he turned, and rebuked them. And they went to another village.
And as they went on the way, a certain man said unto him, I will follow thee withersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But he said unto him, Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but go thou and publish abroad the kingdom of God.
And another also said, I will follow thee, Lord; but first suffer me to bid farewell to them that are at my house. But Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
I would like to present something in the spirit so you could become conditioned in God to a new way of life.
The diligence in your heart to press on must become a way of life. The years pass and we keep feeling, “We’ll come through this trial, over the hill, and the next valley will be beautiful. This will not last long! We’ll soon be out of this one.”
But we are already into another one before the first one ceases. We will not lay the hammer down; we will be building and sacrificing. The presses will not stop rolling; the backlog of work will not cease. There will be a load of ministry to be done, people to be prophesied over
We’re going to be worshipers and we’re going to be Warriors.
We will go on until we become like the old man who stood with David. He smote the Philistines until his hand was weary and clave to the sword (II Samuel 23:10). He had held onto it so long that it was frozen there and he couldn’t get it open. And that’s the way we shall be.
The Scripture that the Lord laid upon my heart was the example of the Lord setting His face—it was something other people could see.
It is one thing for people to do a little skip and fall in line when you are not going anyplace. People love to be followers when there is no destination! Start a church and they will have the froth, the whipped cream. Everybody will trip into it.
But start something like this, with discipleship involved, and see what happens.
It is like the Master, with His face grimly set to go to Jerusalem and accomplish our salvation.
“Follow Me.” “Let me go home first and have a little party … say goodbye to all my friends.”
“Lord, I’ll follow You. I’m ready. Everybody is watching me now! I’m ready to go!” “Fine suit you are wearing there.” “Here we are, ready to go.” “You look beautiful.”
The Lord turned to him and said, “Birds have their nests … the foxes have their holes,” (In those days there were more birds and animals in Palestine, lots of timber and trees and wildlife. Many of our Lord’s illustrations were about that.) “but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
There is not a next verse about that man! I think he slipped off quietly.
He did not have the pilgrim spirit to enable him to sacrifice to do the will of the Lord. Something seemed to hold him back. Something was disturbing in the face of the Lord that was so steadfastly set to do it.
In the days to come we would save time in this church, if, from the beginning, we presented one solid front to everybody who comes in. We would have no playing around on anybody’s part.
We are set here for the Kingdom. “Seek first the Kingdom.” We are set for it!
Nothing could be more disturbing than for people to come into this who are set and determined to walk in the Kingdom, and they look around and find a percentage of the people who are not set, are still playing loosely with it!
Of course, what they do not know is that after those people go down the road a way, they will meet their testing, and they will have to decide what they will do.
What we need is to set our face as a flint, as the Master did. Whatever is before us, let’s face it. There will be no discharge in this warfare!
It will not change, because this is the end-time conflict. Nothing in the Scripture leads you to believe that you are going to go around the bend and suddenly find everything is fine and beautiful, with no pressure. Now you can just march along at a leisurely pace on into the Kingdom! It is not going to be that way. This is the upheaval of all things. It is a disturbance and a change in people’s lives. God is dealing with you and permitting the pressures and satanic attacks to come against you, to teach you the discipline of that end-time army and to condition you that you are going to live that way! You are going to be that kind of a person! You are not going to draw back from it.
I do not think there will be any change. There will be battle, a lot of labor, and as soon as one church is established, another one will come up! And because there is an urgency about ministering to people and ministering to the churches, and seeing the churches started, there must not be any letup on sacrifice. There will not be any. It is not going to get any better or easier. Don’t start prophesying that this is the year everyone gets a five bedroom house. That is not the way it will be. Don’t even start thinking in that direction. You had better start thinking about what is loose and not nailed down so you can sell it to give to the Lord. The Lord said to people, “Sell what you have, give alms and have your treasures in heaven” (Mark 10:21). No generation except the one in which He spoke it and the generation in which He will return can understand what He meant. No generation has practiced that so much as that first generation, and as we shall too. Have a garage sale—do something to get rid of your junk. Be like the woman who made her testimony: “I saw that all my lovely evening gowns were pulling my soul down to perdition so I gave them to my sister.” You wonder what the sister did with them!
There are some Scriptures that are the picture of our perseverance under difficulties. It just boils down to this: gone are the days that we dare to blow hot or cold, to put our hand to the plow and look back. The days of the Kingdom are coming. We can no longer afford to be led by our emotions; we must have a dedication that we are going to live under an existing circumstance through the rest of this age and through the dawn of a new one. We must be prepared! We are not in some fluke thing that causes the pressures and the troubles. But we are in something that is going to last! It is going to go on! There will not be less pressure; there will be more! There will not be less battle; there will be more! We are going to face false christs and false prophets and the signs and wonders wrought by them. The earth is going to be shaken with the signs and wonders. You have never seen the things that are going to happen—the judgments of God in the earth, the persecutions upon you, walking as the offscouring of the earth. You will be Christians of God again. That is the way you are going to live day after day, week after week, month after month, as long as He tarries.
“I’m waiting for things to change and the Lord to give me a blessing.” Snatch your blessing in the midst of battle. “I’m so weary.” Take your spear and thrust it into the honeycomb like Jonathan while you’re pursuing after the Philistines (I Samuel 14:27). It is a day of victory. You cannot stop. Snag yourself some honeycomb and keep moving. Let your eyes be enlightened and your spirit refreshed within you. Learn to come to the house of God and prophesy to strengthen one another’s hands. Go back into the battle. Learn faithfulness until you do the thing God calls you to do. Be faithful to do the work God called you to do. Have the vision! Have the dedication and put it ahead of every personal interest you have.
You say, “That doesn’t apply to me! I never could be that!” You’d better be, because you won’t last if you are not. It has to become a way of thinking, a way of feeling about things. Now, this does not mean that we accept defeat. It doesn’t mean that we get under pressure and say, “It is going to be the same today, and tomorrow, and the next day; I might as well give up!” No, no, no! Or just lie down and groan? No! Keep battling. Tomorrow there will be another kind of battle and the next day, another kind. Be resigned to it because you have become instruments for the putting down of Satan. You have become instruments of God to turn the tide. The word of God is going to be in the earth and you will be hated for it. Jesus said, “If they kept My word, they will keep your word also; if they rejected My word they’ll reject your word also. The servant is not greater than his master” (John 15:20). People will not think greater of you than they thought of the Lord. Where they are trying to chop down the Lord, they’ll chop down everything that comes along.
I talked to a man lately who said, “One just cannot find the word of God in the churches anymore. I’ve looked everywhere!” Well, that is why we are going to have it rough, and that is also why we are going to prevail. The word of God is going to have free course and it is going to prevail over everything.
In the old days the motion picture industry had the silent films when one just saw the picture. Next it produced pictures one could hear, and they were called “talkies.” Maybe some day they will produce pictures one could feel! You would be watching somebody come out and hit another guy and you would feel it! The Bible has a way, at different levels, of doing the same thing. Look at it and it is like something apart from you. But after awhile, you look at it, and it starts talking to you. Then, you read it again and you start feeling it, like you were living in it. That is what the Lord does with the word to your heart. He makes you experience it. These sermons are not just “talkies”; you participate in them.
The anointing of the Lord comes to open the Word of God to our hearts so that we begin to feel it, participate in it, and live in it. That implanted word becomes so real to us, we look up and confess it is written on the tablets of our heart (I Corinthians 3:3). That is what God is doing for each of us now. Just determine: you can’t turn away from the word! You can’t turn away from the things that are happening. Open your spirit and say, “This is going to be a way of life. I will live this way, day after day, month after month. This is going to be a way of life to me! I am not going to sit here bracing myself—hoping I get through this next month.” Just rejoice! You will be among those who receive grace to endure to the end. And God talks a lot about that enduring to the end.
But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak: for God is not unrighteous to forget your work and the love which ye show toward his name, in that ye ministered unto the saints, (God will never forget what we are doing for the saints of God.) and still do minister. And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope even to the end: (Diligently, just shove on!) that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Hebrews 6:9–12. In other words, just stay with it. Keep right on going, and through faith and patience you will inherit all the things God has spoken.
In all the testings, the reverses and the problems Satan has brought, I have not a wavering of faith, but an assurance. Satan is battling me, and it doesn’t matter much to me whether it ends tonight, tomorrow morning, the next day, or when it ends! I know this—I am in what God prophesied. He said I had it and I have it! I’m in it, that is where I am! So I endure and I persevere. The form and the shape of it may change, but I keep walking and the days keep passing. Sometimes I’ll be walking in the night, sometimes I’ll be walking in a dawn, sometimes I’ll be walking in the blazing heat of the midday sun, but I’m walking on under constant changing circumstance, changing scene, and changing battle. All of it is going to be difficult and rough. We are pressing right on in, to everything God has for us in the Kingdom. That determination has to be there. And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Galatians 6:9.
The last paragraph of I Corinthians 15 tells us about the Kingdom of God and how we are all going to be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible. Verse 52. Now, this is part of my faith. At the last trump, we’ll all be changed. It is all going to happen. What do we do until the last trump sounds? How about all that time before that last trump? We haven’t even heard the first, have we? But methinks that I can almost see the angels puckering their lips—the trumpet sounds are ready to come. They are ready to come and it behooves every one of us to say, “Yes, Lord, we’re waiting for that last trump.” In the meantime, we just keep right on, steadfast, and immovable. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Verse 58.
This is our way of life, and it should be understood more than anything else. You must realize that what God is doing is bringing forth the apostles and prophets in submission to divine order. This is more than, “Oh, hallelujah, we’ll prophesy and move in gifts.” It goes beyond that. This is a divine order. It is an army that does not break ranks, that does not thrust one another through (Joel 2:7, 8). It is an army where they will all see eye to eye when the Lord brings again Zion (Isaiah 52:8). It is something coming of unity. We are beginning to feel it here as a family, where we are not going to let people go, even when there are problems. We realize they get chastened but they pop back up in the service, I smile at them, they smile back, and I know God’s dealing with them. We are a big family, but everyone is to take his medicine and no one is to baby him along.
Some of you may feel once in awhile that you need a new brand of ministry. We’ll line you up here. “Bend over and grab your ankles.” We’ll give it to you! Have you ever felt like you needed that kind of a ministry? “Lord, give me a good swat at one end to impress the other because I’m determined that my spirit must be chastened before the Lord to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.”
“Be not sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Let’s believe the Lord for everything He has for us. I wanted you to feel this. Get it in your spirit. This is the way we are going to walk. You would not want to be back playing church anymore, would you? It’s one thing to be in a church where they talk about it but nothing ever happens. Here we talk about the end-time conflict and we can believe it—we are right in it! We talk about warfare, and we are in it. Look around. Everybody is whistling, marching down the road—they are soldiers.