Lecture
5A The Resurrection And The Three Degrees Of
Glory of
God, the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the
Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit of
God, and
the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of
Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit
of God, and the Holy Spirit of God,
and the Holy Spirit
of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and
the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and
the Holy Spirit of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and
the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of Holy Spirit of God, and the
Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit
of God, and the Holy Spirit
of God, and the Holy Spirit of God,
and the Holy Spirit of God, and the
Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit of God,
and the Holy Spirit of God, and the
Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and
the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and
the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and
the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and
the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of
God, and the Holy Spirit and the Holy
Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and
the the headship, on earth,
not in Heaven.
Once again this is the earthly order, Jesus'
order is different.
On earth represents the headship of this family,
or let's just say it this way, this
human personality which is body, soul, and spirit.
Faith is the soul which ties the body
and the spirit together.
Let's get the right order.
Mary is the spirit.
Mary worshipped.
It's noticeable the emphasis in the story, as
you read it, Mary says the next word,
"...that was that Mary which anointed the Lord
with ointment, wiped his feet with her hair."
It was the Mary also which sat at
Jesus' feet and was rebuked, whose
sister could not understand and whose sister came
to the Lord grumbling about her dedicating all
her time, all her energy, all her intensity
to just do nothing else except sit at
Jesus' feet, abide in that position and hear
his words.
Mary is the worshipper, represents the spirit.
Lazarus represents the soul.
Martha represents the body.
Martha is work.
Once again, they started doing these.
What do you call those drawings they do
in the newspapers?
Cartoons?
Thank you, thank you.
That's a Greek, right?
People down in South America still remember, and
this happened, let's see, 21 years ago, maybe,
when I first went down to South America.
There was a girl about 15 years of
age, and she had been up in the
States for about a year.
She came back and she was giving a
testimony.
Somewhere in the testimony she wanted to share
about something she had read in a book.
She got to a place and said, Oh,
I can't remember, how is that word?
Book, book, book.
Somebody said, Libro.
And everybody still remembers.
She couldn't remember, she had been away for
almost a full year, and she couldn't remember
how you say that word, book.
Sometimes it seems to me that I'm just
about as bad.
Anyway, when they start out with cartoons, I
think the first thing is they start drawing
with these caricatures.
You've seen the drawings from 100 years ago,
little bodies, big heads, large noses, everything exaggerated.
Sometimes it's done in literature, too, and sometimes
I think it's done in the Bible.
We get Mary there, the only glimpse of
her, I'm sure she had a life apart
from the life sitting at Jesus' feet, but
the only glimpse we get of her is
she's doing that, nothing else.
That is her whole life, once again, Martha.
We get a glimpse of Martha, the only
thing she does is work, work, work, work,
work.
And between the two of them, once again,
between the works and the worship, between the
spirit and the body, there must be a
soul, and faith is the expression of the
soul.
There is no life if our body is
separated from our spirit.
There is no life on this earth, right?
If somebody cuts off my head, I'm just
about ended.
And if the spirit leaves the body, the
body leaves the soul, that is the end
of it.
This is the, once again, let me just
underline this again before we start going on,
this is the functioning unit.
I want to underline it, I feel I
need to underline it, because we've got such
a lopsided church nowadays, we've got such lopsided
teaching.
There is no real expression of that which
God desires the church to be, or make
it personal, your life to be, unless the
worship is total, unless there is a total
giving of that part of the body which
is made for worship to worship.
And on the other hand, there is no
such thing as a coherent Christian life unless
that part of the body which is external
works to the limit of its strength.
I've said before, most of life is defined
through a kind of process of inertia.
We sit there as the days and months
and years go by, and young people, old
people usually get caught up somewhere along the
line in a career or marriage or something
else, and the callings of God, those things
which call for a decision, those things which
call for a breaking with the past, a
stepping out, this is the only life.
Abram was the father of the faithful.
It was not, I've said before, I think
maybe last week or the week before, it
wasn't what didn't just happen, that Abram was
called out to walk physically, live in tents,
that Isaac lived exactly the same lifestyle, that
Jacob lived the same lifestyle.
They had no permanent abiding place.
Their life was a continual walk behind the
revelation of God, or at least it was
meant to be.
In Abram's case it was, the others, of
course, Jacob had his comings and goings, but
at the end he ended up in obedience,
moving from Canaan down to Egypt in obedience
to the word of the Lord.
This is the life that God has for
all of his children.
The Apostle Paul talks about having things and
living as though we did not have them.
Whatever we have, not only the physical things
but even the spiritual things, we need to
hold with our hands wide open.
We'll get into that a little bit further
along.
That was the situation of the Jews.
They closed their hands upon something spiritual, they
were caught.
Once again, the functioning unit.
You ask the secret of spiritual life, you
ask the secret of successful ministry, you ask
the secret of being different than this world
which is mediocre.
The only way is intensity.
This is a prayer meeting tonight.
Prayer is not measured by time.
Once again, you've heard me say that I
used to get so amazed that people would
pray 4 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours, 10
hours a day, and anymore I'd say, well,
okay, fine, now what do they say and
what do they do?
Where do they get, what does it do?
Prayer is not measured by time, it's measured
by intensity.
It can be just a heart cry that
somehow penetrates beyond a year of normal praying.
I think the situation of most people is
that those moments of intensity come so few
and far between in the journey of life
that they remember.
I remember 5 years ago when this happened.
I remember 10 years ago.
I remember 3, 4, 5 times in a
lifetime.
It's not supposed to be that way.
God is a God who reveals himself.
Look at the record of Jesus, the things
which he saw his Father do, the words
which he heard his Father speak, the purpose
which his Father revealed on a daily, hourly
basis, moment by moment.
And so, again, let's underline it again, it's
going to be heavily underlined, the body must
do.
I see a meeting like last week's meeting
with Brother Andrews here, and he's doing out
all those facts, and it's so easy to
say yes.
Why, it's hard not to say yes.
And yet there's not one person in a
thousand, I think, really vitally affected by a
meeting like that.
I have a friend the Lord used in
a revival, and he said, when you see
those meetings so hot, don't forget that 9
% of that is the external.
The essence, the kernel of the whole thing
is very small.
There will be many people shouting glory and
many people saying yes, and many people like
Peter and Laura, though all should forsake you,
I'm going to be a missionary or I'm
going to be a pastor, whatever.
We don't know that Peter is always in
the moment of crisis, he's always defeated.
It's only the Spirit of God that can
lead us through.
That's why, once again, besides the body, we
need the Spirit in that place of adoration
constantly, waiting on God.
He is our strength, he is our life,
he is our salvation, he is everything we
need to be.
Even later on, Jesus said in this passage,
I am the resurrection and the life.
Back there in the beginning of the Bible,
the book of Exodus, when God for the
first time was bringing up people, not just
one person.
Abram apparently just left his city and went
out, but when he was taking the people
who were bound, taking the people out of
bondage, when there was necessity of deliverance and
miracles and a divine intervention, the whole book
of Exodus, the ten plagues, the 40 years
in the desert, the revelation on Mount Sinai,
the sea that rolled in upon the Egyptians,
the water that followed them, the manna from
heaven, all was built upon one revelation, the
word of God to Moses, I AM.
It was on the basis of that word
that God unveiled the rest of the story.
Without that word, without that equipping, without that
meeting, there could have been no book of
Exodus, there could have been no deliverance, there
could have been no miracles, there could have
been no provision.
I AM.
The word, I understand, means he, rather the
word Jehovah, which is used thousands of times
in the Old Testament, means he who was,
he who is, he who will be, and
it means he who works.
The God who did work, is working, will
work.
The God who is always active.
Jesus said, My Father from the beginning works.
Once again, the soul must draw.
If I quit breathing, that's the end.
The spirit is, if you like, the part
of our being which breathes spiritual air.
I want to stress this because we're, as
I said before, I get tired of the
culture shock whenever I come back to our
Christian subculture in the United States.
We've got it all, we've got it all.
We've got a Christian subculture where we've got
Christian music, Christian books, Christian TV, Christian films,
you name it.
We've got it all.
And yet this three-fold functioning life, very
few people have.
So Lazarus was sick.
The sister sent to him and said, Lord,
he whom thou lovest is sick.
Jesus loves our faith, something beyond our emotion.
He doesn't love our works so much.
He doesn't love our knowledge.
We love a lot of things that he
doesn't love.
We get involved in a lot of things
that we don't need to get involved in.
He loves our faith.
He said, Lord, he whom thou lovest is
sick.
Let's hurry on.
Jesus came, verse 17, and found he laying
four days in the grave.
It amazes me how God puts the stories
together in the Bible.
There are things which maybe are not at
first glance at all relevant, which are somehow
woven in right in the middle of the
story.
He has to stop right there and say
that Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, near to
Jerusalem, about 15 furlongs, about 2 miles away.
And many of the Jews came to Martha
and to Mary to comfort them.
Let me say something.
When Lazarus died, Mary died, and Martha died.
The home did not function any more.
The effectiveness of the home was totally destroyed.
You look at when Jesus came, the orders
were totally inverted.
It wasn't Mary that went running out to
meet Jesus, it was Martha.
But before that point it said many of
the Jews came to Martha and to Mary
to comfort them.
This is what always happens when faith dies.
Religion comes in.
Religiousness, religiosity.
A religiousness or religiosity which was represented by
the Jews.
The nation which had taken the revelation of
God and used it as a guidebook to
be analyzed, systematized, to be used to separate
one group from another group, one sect from
another sect.
There is a picture there in the Old
Testament which always hits me with a tremendous
impact in Ezekiel 16.
Maybe if you like, it's a thumbnail sketch
of the Jews.
We could talk for a long time on
that, but let me just pick up a
couple of things here.
Ezekiel said the word of the Lord came
and he said, "...caused Jerusalem to know her
abominations."
Jerusalem is the center, Jerusalem is the essence
of Jewry.
"...Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem, Thy
birth and thy nativity is the land of
Canaan.
Thy father was an Amorite, thy mother was
a Hittite.
As to thy nativity in the day that
thou was born, thy navel was not cut,
neither was thou washed with water to supple
thee.
Thou was not salted at all, nor swaddled
at all.
None eye pitted thee to do any of
these things unto thee, to have compassion upon
thee.
But thou was cast out into the open
fields of the loathing of thy person in
the day that thou was born.
When I passed by thee, I saw thee
polluted in thine own blood, and I said
unto thee, When thou wast in thine own
blood, live.
Yea, I said unto thee, When thou wast
in thine own blood, live."
This is the miracle.
There was nothing to commend Jerusalem.
My mother was a Hittite, my father was
an Amorite.
Every word in the Bible is important, as
we've said before, every name has a significance.
The Amorite speaks of talk, speaks of publicity,
speaks of a height.
My father was pure talk, as they say
in Spanish.
The image which was given a mouth which
spoke great things.
My father was words without end.
My father was expressing a confidence, expressing a
position which was not real.
My mother was a Hittite.
The word means terror.
To be broken down, prostrated through terror, through
fear, through confusion.
He said, This is what you were.
Your life was not worth a thing.
It was cast out onto the open field.
Thy navel was not cut.
There was no separation in him from the
mother.
Thou wast not washed with water to suckle
thee.
There was no cleansing.
Thou wast not swaddled.
There was no containing.
There was no limiting.
There was no restriction.
This was a life just abandoned.
You probably know the story goes on.
The Lord passed by, gave life, said he
grew.
Verse 9, I washed thee with water.
I throughly washed away thy blood from thee.
I anointed thee with oil.
I clothed thee also with broided work, shod
thee with badger's skin, girded thee about with
fine linen, covered thee with silk, decked thee
with ornaments, put bracelets on thy hands, and
a chain upon thy neck, a jewel in
thy forehead, earrings in thy ears, a beautiful
crown upon thy head, and goes on to
say, Thou wast decked with silver and gold,
thy raiment, thou didst eat flour and honey
and oil, and so on and so forth.
That one, as you read the story, turned
from God, turned into fornication, turned into sin,
turned into generosity, turned into utter loathsomeness.
The Lord comes at the end and compares
her to Sodom, and he says, verse 49,
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister
Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, abundance of idleness.
Neither did she strengthen the hand of the
poor and needy, they were haughty.
They committed abomination before me, as
Brother Dave Wilkerson said a few weeks ago.
I'm trying to think if it was in
a meeting.
It wasn't in a meeting, we were talking.
There is such an arrogance in this day
and age, there is such an arrogance in
the Church.
It's easy to lose sight of the fact
that Mary, Martha and Lazarus are the Church,
that in the Old Testament this people under
judgment, this abominable people, is the Church, that
it was the Church, once again it was
the Jews that killed Jesus.
Americans against abortion.
We should have a thing, Christians against spiritual
abortion.
Maybe when they get through with that, they'll
start it.
Christians against spiritual abortion, because there is a
lot going on.
If we get right down to it, I
don't know which is the most important, in
the sight of God.
We spiritualize things so much.
Do you know why God hurts?
The Spirit groans.
The Son of God died on the cross.
It wasn't for a physical thing merely, but
for something far beyond that.
You and I as Christians can be hurting
God more than an abortion.
I can be an apostle as Paul was,
and yet be so close to being cast
away.
There can be groaning and yearning and tearing
apart of the fibers of eternity because of
me.
This is what God is saying to his
people in the Old Testament.
You are like Sodom, not because of the
outward fornication, not because of the sin.
Once again, you remember, I think we talked
about the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, the
list that Jesus gives there in Luke 17,
because they sought their own, they bought, they
sold, they planted, they builded, they did all
these things.
It gives seven aspects of the human life,
and it doesn't even mention their degeneracy.
Here in the Old Testament you are like
your sister Sodom.
What was her problem?
Her problem was pride.
You know, one thing that pride produces, one
of the first things, is a don't-touch
-me attitude that I know.
I don't know if you all sense it,
living in this blessed country.
But allow me to say it, I notice
it coming from outside.
I've been to churches, I've traveled around, I've
had meetings here and there.
I'm not talking about anybody here or anybody
in this whole zone, just in case anybody
thinks I am.
But I've been to churches and I see
such a self-sufficiency.
Little man, little, tiny, so neatly, you know,
that's the American Testament too, so neatly combed.
I don't know if they spend an hour
before the meal, before they get out in
the morning.
I don't, but you can tell.
So neatly groomed, everything so perfect, everything so
nice, so committed.
This is the way the Jews were.
When Lazarus died, when the living faith died,
the Jews came right in.
From out of Jerusalem, they gathered like a
bunch of, I don't know, I'm going to
use a bad figure, I better not use
that in church, but anyway, like a bunch
of bees after the honey.
I was going to say a bunch of
something else.
You know what I mean?
A bunch of crows coming down to a
dead body.
They gathered automatically.
There is such a thing as spiritual affinity.
You can be in a meeting, you can
have a congregation, you can have one bitter
person, and amazingly enough, some other person who
is totally unbittered will come, and the next
thing you know, they are closest friends.
How does it happen?
There is far more power in an atmosphere
than what there is in teaching.
You've heard me say before about kids learning
language.
You remember that?
You all heard it, right?
Well, this man has.
Have you heard that?
No?
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
Briefly.
In the first five years of life, they
discovered that children, this is a study on
bilingual learning processes, but it applies to one
language.
Children pick up in the first five years
of life the equivalent amount of language learning
ability, which would take ten linguists ten years
to program into a computer.
In other words, in five years, that child
absorbed a hundred man years of language.
Language handling, language using ability.
Okay, in the first five years, you know,
we can't very well count the first months,
because a lot of times the kid is
crying at night, and he needs his sleep
during the day, and he's getting it all
together emotionally, he's learning to move his hands,
and he's learning to put his tongue out,
and he's learning to do a whole lot
of things, and then he has to have
potty training, and all the rest of those
wonderful things.
In the first five years of life, and
what I'm trying to say is, in those
first five years when he's totally unprepared, without
any basis, once again, emotionally, physically, in a
state of flux and growing, in those five
years, when his mother's not looking at night,
he goes to bed and he says, I
am, she is, he is, we are, they
are, and how do I say that past
tense?
He doesn't do that, does he?
I was, I were.
He doesn't do that.
He absorbs it.
Once again, let me go back.
That's why worship is important.
I read of a person in a time
of pressure, a time of crisis, all of
a sudden the Spirit spoke and said, You
know more than what you know.
We know more than what we know if
we would get it in the center.
I can have a complete picture over here,
but if I'm not looking over here, I'm
not going to see it.
If I focus on it, I'm going to
see.
That's the way it is with a lot
of the spiritual life.
We don't need more teaching.
We don't need excuses.
All we need, once again, is concentration.
All we need is intensity.
But let's get back to the Jews.
So Lazarus died.
Once again, that living faith died.
The unit stopped functioning and the Jews came
in.
They came to comfort.
Actually, the word is more like our word,
relate.
They came to relate to Mary and Martha.
They came to share what they had to
share.
They came to put their atmosphere round about
Mary and Martha as a source of comfort.
The living relationship had died and they brought
in the dead relationship.
I wish we could understand how God hates
religion.
I think I said before, I don't know
what I said before, but anyway, the word
religion means bondage.
The word itself means bondage.
God hates religion.
The Jews had no relationship, they had a
religion.
They had no life, they had no faith.
They were already on the way to crucifixion
as far as Jesus is concerned.
They had already separated themselves from it.
But when Jesus steps out of the picture,
they come into the picture.
It's true.
It's always true of spiritual life.
When I lose Jesus, I start getting Jewish.
I hope I'm not going to offend somebody.
You've got to be real careful here with
the ethnic things.
What I mean is I get religious.
When I lose Jesus, I start being dogmatic.
I start basing my relationship on knowledge.
I start being intolerant, I start being inflexible.
Look sometimes at the Jews with whom Jesus
had encounters.
I don't remember them now, but I remember
one man there who has a list of
seven different classes, the Scribes and the Pharisees
and the Herodians and all the rest of
them.
The Pharisees were those who had taken the
law and carried it on and interpreted it,
and interpreted the interpretation of the interpretation of
the interpretation and ultimately they got so far
out.
And because of this, we're always in difficulty,
we're always in problems, when the means becomes
the end.
And they had taken the form of religion
and so then it had become religion.
The way had become the goal.
The lifestyle had become everything.
They judged everybody by how they were relating
to this lifestyle which the Pharisees had set
up.
Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went
to meet him.
Once again, as I said before, the order
is being reversed.
It wasn't Mary that was hearing, it wasn't
the Spirit that was hearing, it was the
body that was hearing.
It's the external that's becoming aware.
Mary is not even aware.
Martha goes out.
The Spirit stops and the body goes on,
which we could talk a lot about that
also, but we won't.
Martha goes out and says to Jesus, Lord,
if thou hadst been here.
A lot of people have said, Lord, I've
looked at this passage and I guess I've
heard it and I guess I've absorbed the
thinking, too.
Why did he die?
What was the deal here?
Mary and Martha didn't have any problem knowing
why he died.
They both said the same identical words.
Mary and Martha in verse 21, Lord, if
thou hadst been here, my brother had not
died.
Verse 32, Mary, Lord, if thou hadst been
here, my brother had not died.
The same identical words.
They knew what the problem was.
Once again, we're looking at this as a
spiritual allegory.
When Jesus, when the communion, when the contact
of being reemplaced with something else, faith dies.
Faith cannot live without the presence of God.
Faith cannot live outside the presence of God.
Paul says, he always leadeth us in victory.
If he doesn't lead, then I'm not in
victory.
Once again, I can go through the forms,
I can crystallize and set up my religion
until it's totally inflexible.
But unless he is there, there is no
living faith.
Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother
had not died.
It's interesting, as Jesus speaks to her, he
gives her instructions.
He doesn't give any instructions in this passage
to Mary.
There's something physical, there's something external that God
puts before each one of us, which opens
the way into the spiritual.
I've got to start from the world in
which I live.
It's a cop-out to relegate everything to
spiritual realm.
Say I have a functioning relationship with God
here, but not here.
You can't have a functioning relationship up here
if it doesn't function down there.
I think the emphasis is rather the other
way.
You get it functioning down here, and then
you'll know it's functioning up there, because you
cannot know anything up there.
It's so limited to subjective things.
You hear people talk about miracles, and you
hear people talk about visions.
I could only see a vision.
You know, a vision is not the deepest
thing.
A vision is not in the spirit.
A vision is in the soul.
A vision is so subject to my own
conscious and unconscious influences.
God calls us to something beyond that, a
more sure word of prophecy, that which we
have seen and handled of the word of
life.
Paul appeals to the Church.
He says, "...you know that in your midst
the signs and wonders and miracles have been
wrought."
He says, "...the signs of an apostle have
been wrought."
What were they?
He says, "...in all patience..." 2 Corinthians 12
.12. Let me read it and get it
right here.
"...truly the signs of an apostle were wrought
among you in all patience, in signs and
wonders and mighty deeds."
This is ministry.
There is a mark of the heavenly upon
the earthly.
If we'd have to judge the Churches and
if we'd have to judge our lives by
that standard, it might hurt, but it brings
us a lot closer to reality.
A lot closer to reality.
What sign is there that God is upon
my life?
What miracle, and I'm not talking about just
the healing of the sick, I'm talking about
something which would not, could not, ever happen
on this earth.
What has God done over, above and beyond
the laws of this world around me?
What wonders have been done to show his
greatness, to show his power?
This is what Jesus, not only the apostles,
he sent them all to do that.
Going through all the world he said if
you raise the sick, heal the dead, I
mean heal the dead, raise the sick, where
are we at?
Raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out
demons.
These signs shall follow them that believe.
You and me, if we don't have them,
we don't have it either.
We don't have the belief, we don't have
the faith.
Right?
I mean, 2 plus 2, is it or
isn't it?
If he says these signs shall follow them
that believe, then the only reason I'm not
going to have them is because of unbelief.
This is a whole passage, it's how many
verses, 40, 45 verses, given to the
relating of this incident, because it's important.
The lesson is important, right here in the
middle of John, right in the middle of
the book.
The faith on which everything depends, on which
everything else is based.
The words of Jesus, she said, Lord, I
believe.
I believe in that abstract, undefined, ambiguous, someday,
somewhere, somehow, resurrection.
They tell us nobody ever believes that they're
going to die.
We all say, of course I do.
But they say that nobody ever, ever really
believes that they're going to die right now.
Even if you're sick in bed and for
sure you're going to die, you know, well,
it won't be right this minute, it won't
be this hour.
We never get it down to confront it.
The same thing with life and the same
thing with the things of the Spirit of
God.
I believe.
Lord, yes, Lord, I, you know, I believe
there's a resurrection, it'll be the last day,
everything will be ended, there will be just
one thing, life from out the dead.
I believe that.
Jesus comes and says, I, he's standing right
before her, right here, right now, I am.
The same revelation that was given to Moses,
I am.
Somebody said it's like a blank check, you
can fill in what you need after the
I am.
In this case it's resurrection, it's life.
This is the power of God.
This is the power once again in Ezekiel
16, which had brought the Jews into life,
into existence.
God had passed by in the midst of
their death when they were exposed, in the
midst of the earth, he says, live.
He speaks that word of authority, live.
They cannot die, they will not die, he
has spoken.
So Jesus comes and he says to her,
I am the resurrection.
I am the life.
Life is not an object, life is not
a substance, life is not something which is
given to people.
I am.
I am the life.
Somehow there's an impartation beyond our understanding.
I am the life.
He that believeth, though he were dead yet
shall he live.
He that believeth and believeth shall never die.
Then he asked her, believest thou?
Once again he's not speaking to the spirit,
he's speaking to the body.
I can believe in the spirit, I can
believe in the resurrection at the last day,
but can I believe here and now?
It's always hard to tie things down.
As I said before about that meeting last
week, we can have a thousand people in
a meeting like that, or ten thousand people
in a meeting like that, and everybody will
be touched, but very few people will see
it right here, right now, God is speaking
to me, and I've got to decide yes
or no, as though I'd heard an audible
voice, I was seeing his form, his person.
Believest thou?
Some people think it's kind of a cop
-out what she said, yes, Lord, I believe
that thou art the Christ.
I don't think so.
What she's saying, Lord, I believe that thou
art the anointed one, the one who bears
upon his shoulders all the fullness of heavenly
authority and heavenly power, that in your person
there is all the resources of God.
Lord, I believe that you have come as
was promised, that in this world, you notice
her words there?
I was talking about
this situation and somebody died, and the man
that was telling me, quite an educated man,
a doctor, he was telling me, he said,
Paul, in that place there was nothing.
There was no priest, there was no pastor.
Somehow, he said, as I went there to
that grave, he said there was just such
a sense of total, he didn't know how
to explain, total desolation, sense of total emptiness,
would maybe be the better word.
Nobody had anything to give, nobody had any
answers.
Life had ended, they had to lower him
into the grave.
There was no hope.
There was an emptiness which throbbed with pain
over the family, over the children, over the
whole of that little town where the man
came from.
He gave us an invitation, come over there,
he said, we're totally without any resources spiritually.
There's nobody cares for us.
Remember that verse in Psalms, no man cared
for my soul.
No man cared for my soul.
In effect, he said, Paul, come, nobody cares.
We're alone.
There's something which you can feel all around.
There are places like that.
This is the way it was at Lazarus
too.
She had belief, she had worship, but this
time all she could do was weep.
Not tears of adoration now.
You know, there's a lot of things we
think we have until the time of testing.
There's going to come a day when every
work will be made manifest, when the fire
will try everything.
God help us all.
If the apostle trembled, if the prophet seeing
God fell down totally devoid of strength, unable
to rise again, then all that I hear
around me and all this easy, easy Christian
road is not the true thing.
I was reading a tract today and it's
talking about the broad way and the narrow
way.
He said, you look at the passage and
all through that passage, and I forget exactly
where it is now, but all the examples
are talking about the religious is over against
the true essence of things.
And the way of the Jews is over
against the way of God.
And the way of the Spirit is over
against that which was man's own.
All the way through and in the middle
it's talking about broad and narrow way.
And he said, we say it means salvation
and perdition.
He says it doesn't.
And I believe he's right.
It doesn't mean salvation and perdition.
It's talking about the church.
He said those who are going to go
on with God are going to come into
a narrow, and he goes into the Greek
there, a place which is of intense limitation,
of hurt, of straining, of stress, of an
extending energy.
And very many are going that way and
very few are going this way.
I remind you, these are the religious people
all gathered around.
I read a book by a missionary to
Tibet a number of years ago.
He came to a crisis in his life
and he said, when you reach that crisis
moment, how little that which you know of
God affects your decision.
You know, when it's a matter of life
and death, who makes the decision?
We're going to wait for God?
I mean, really?
When it's a matter of urgency, when it's
a matter of irreparable loss, if time gets
out of our hands, the situation escapes our
control, who's going to make the decision?
How much is it real to us that
the guidance, the endowment, the empowering, the direction
of the Spirit of God?
So Jesus saw her weeping and he saw
the Jews weeping, and it was all they
could do.
They had no words, they had nothing.
They didn't even have what Martha had.
They were weeping, and he grew on in
the Spirit, and he was troubled.
He was troubled.
Well, if he was troubled then, I'm sure
he's troubled now.
With all reverence, I'm sure he's troubled now
as he looks down at the church.
Because there was nobody so sure, there was
nobody so absolutely convinced that they were right
as the Jews.
There was nobody who could ignore the opinion
of the world.
There was no one like the Jews.
And if we reflect on it, how like
the church.
We know, and if the conviction of the
Spirit comes, and maybe that's one of the
reasons God can't send us a revival.
If the conviction of the Spirit comes, it
will always help him, or him, or her.
Because I'm doing the best I can within
the light I have, and God knows.
That's one thing about the Roman Catholic religion
in South America.
In a sense, very much like the Jewish
religion.
They lose the essence, and so they go
into candles and sacraments and pilgrimages and elaborate
forms of ceremony.
There's one thing about it, it always makes
excuses for the flesh.
And God knows that we stumble and fall,
and so we go and we confess, and
okay, that's taken care of, and we keep
on going, we keep on sinning.
There's no way out.
Almost like the Mohammedans that we heard about
last year, the balance is always going to
be so heavy on this side, there's nothing
we can do about it.
Just trust that God's good and he's going
to forgive us somehow.
There's no understanding of salvation, the power of
God, the life of faith.
Jesus said, where have you laid him?
Where did you lose him?
Where has he gone?
He's not here, where is he?
What happened to your faith?
We could talk a long time about that
in our time's up.
But many times it's a place of disobedience,
a place where audibly or inaudibly we say
no.
I remember a young lady, she told me,
you know, God always comes in his grace,
and it was in the time of the
moving of the Spirit of God.
She said, God always comes in his grace,
but I know what he wants, but I'm
not going to give him.
And where's he at today, 10, 15 years
later?
Where's he at today?
Where are we going to be at 10,
15 years after our decisions?
Where have you laid him?
Where did you lose him?
Because you've got to go back to that
place.
Even if it's dead, there's no life in
it, you've got to go back to that
place.
Okay, let's hurry up.
He came to the grave, he said it
was a cave and a stone lay on
it.
There's a lot of caves where we hide
out.
The caves are always graves.
They always end up getting a stone put
on top of them.
And whatever's inside, let's stick with the baptismal,
always rots.
Four days, still had the form of Lazarus.
That was all it had.
Jesus comes and says, take away the stone.
This was their place.
Take away the stone.
Get him out of there.
People in South America tend to be very
cynical.
I heard somebody talking about somebody else, and
he said, you know, somebody was saying if
he had to straighten things out, he'd have
to start way back, and they say in
Spanish, way back at kilometer zero.
And this other man said, you know, for
some people to get to kilometer zero is
not way back, that's coming way up.
Many times we think, you know, I'm going
on, I've got something going, I got a
plan, I got a project, I got...
And the Lord says, go back.
We think it's going back, it's going ahead.
It's going ahead.
We get up to kilometer zero, we're going
ahead.
You take the stone away.
No, Lord.
Raise him, blow the stone away, have an
angel come.
You get in there and take the stone
away.
Here's Martha again, it's not Mary speaking.
Lord, he's dead.
Lord, he stinks.
Lord.
Jesus once again goes over the lesson, said,
didn't I tell you?
Didn't I tell you?
I am the resurrection.
Life comes through the word of God.
In the beginning, the world was created by
his word.
In us, life is created by his word.
There's a lot of people who never hear
his word.
I mean, really.
They hear about him, read about him, study
about him, systematize it.
When I came back to the States a
number of years ago, there was a friend
who'd been a missionary for many years in
Argentina.
He said, you know, there are three great
enemies to the United States that are really
tremendous destructive forces.
What are they?
This was a number of years ago, maybe
things are not quite as strong in these
realms today, but he said the first thing
is the discipleship movement.
That intense discipleship, that hierarchical thing, bringing people
into bondage, telling them what to do, what
not to do, go and consult with whoever's
over you, do only what they can do.
No liberty, no direct contact.
The second thing he said, prosperity.
That prosperity teaching, which presents earthly things instead
of heavenly things, which puts earthly things closer
and more important than the vision of the
things of God.
And what's the third thing?
Well, I won't mention the name.
He mentioned the name.
He said so-and-so's ministry.
But he mentioned one of the most respected
teaching ministries in the United States, ministry which
has extended throughout the nation.
He said that because it's taken people and
it's reduced it down to a formula and
it's not all right.
And some of the conclusions, once again, like
the Roman Catholic Church, as you look into
it, their belief, which is formulated, it's based
on a process of reasoning rather than a
process of divine revelation.
And he said we get this teaching ministry
and we get people once again in bondage
because we find a place for everything, we
find a place for God.
And he's one more thing.
He's one more thing.
He's not absolute.
And his power's not over every power and
his word's not absolute.
When he speaks to a heart, you obey
him if the conditions are right.
There's none of let's obey God rather than
man.
There's none of that.
And so we get people cut off from
the mission field.
We get people cut off from obedience.
We get people think they're serving God by
coming in under a stretcher.
We got to go back to where we
lose him.
We got to put God above everything.
Said I not?
You ever heard him say that to you?
When things had come up, maybe you lost
him a month ago, maybe you lost him
a week ago, maybe you lost him yesterday,
maybe it's been years.
There comes a time he says, said I
not?
There's only one thing we're responsible for.
When we stand before almighty God, there's only
one thing that we're going to be answerable
for.
That's the word of God.
The reason we don't hear it daily down
the road is that we've stopped listening, we
stopped obeying.
Once we stop obeying, God has no obligation
to speak to us ever again.
My sheep hear my voice, I'm followed.
Once again in Revelation, who are these?
This multitude.
Said these are they who follow the Lord
with us wherever he goes.
They got one aim, they got one goal,
their hearts are sealed, marked with one end.
So he says take away the stone, take
away every hindrance.
Then he does the thing which only he
can do, he speaks.
Lazarus comes forth and you know the story
Lazarus comes forth.
Once again the family is brought together, once
again the sign, the miracle, the testimony.
We read right away, many of the Jews
which came to Mary had seen the things
which Jesus did, believed on him.
The Jews, they saw the emptiness of it
all, saw the futility of it all, saw
the bitterness of it all, saw life, saw
one who could give life.
They came to him, they believed on him.
The things of God are not difficult to
understand, just difficult to put into practice.
Our lack is not a lack of knowledge
and mental ability, a lack of gut level
obedience and honesty, and a killing, as I
said at the beginning.
So we come before God daily as you
pray on your own, Lord what wouldst thou
have me to do?
You remember the words of God to Paul
there when he fell on the road, said
Paul what are you doing?
And Paul said Lord what would you have
me to do?
And from that point on his life was
a fulfillment of the surrender and the obedience
which was implicit in that.
Lord what wouldst thou have me to do?
It's not complicated, it just demands everything we've
got.
We sing a little bit at different times,
different places as we're moving in the Spirit
of God.
I remember we went to one place and
the Spirit of God was moving.
You know it hurts, I don't care who
it is, it hurts when the Spirit of
God comes to a place because he's going
to put his finger on things in life.
It hurts when God strips off the natural
because that natural is me.
You can't strip it off anymore than you
can strip my skin off without hurting.
The only thing it'll carry you through is
a vision of something superior and something beyond.
The only thing it'll bring you out of
is religiosity.
And we can get out of one religious
camp to get into another religious camp and
we are free here because we believe this
way.
Yet man cannot get out of it any
more than man can jump and break out
of this atmosphere and land on the moon.
Only God can take us out of it,
only God.
And our part is to give ourselves body,
soul and spirit.
That our body would do anything, go anywhere,
be anything that he tells us to do.
That our soul would live dependent on him
day and night.
That there'd be a longing, that there'd be
a cry.
That reminds you again of the Psalms, look
at the cry, look at the depth, look
at David crying, Lord, when wilt thou come
unto me, my soul longer fainter?
Lord, the waters have gone over me, the
billows the waves.
Lord, when the cry of triumph coming through,
seeing, knowing.
As Paul says in the New Testament, I
am persuaded that he's able.
I know in whom my heart is.
This is the only viable, only authentic Christian
life.
Lord, if thou has been here, he's promised
to be here.
If there's any lack for us, it's not
his fault.
He's promised.
The only separation is on our side.
Let's pray.
Lord, help us to see and understand beyond
the words.
Lord, there's a life, there's a way, there's
a process of your Spirit, Lord.
Your life, and you will teach us the
way of life.
You will show us, as the Psalmist said,
the way of life.
Lord, lead us, body, soul, and spirit.
In Jesus' name, amen.