Being the last occasion upon which we should
all be assembled, I'd like to say how
deeply I have appreciated the great privilege of
being with you, and of sharing with you
some of the wonderful treasures of God's Word
that concern the Lord Jesus, who is not
only our Redeemer, but who has become our
Redeemer, that He might become our very life.
I'd like you to listen carefully, rather than
turn to the relevant passages, as I read
just a few verses at the outset of
our session this morning.
I shall name the passage for the sake
of some who may wish to make a
note, but I just want to gather together
a few verses that express in large measure
what I believe to be the ultimate purpose
of God in you and in me through
His Son, the Lord Jesus.
Ephesians 2.4, that God, so rich is
He in His mercy, because of, and in
order to satisfy, the great and wonderful and
intense love with which He loved us, even
when we were dead, slain by our own
shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive, together
in fellowship and in union with Christ.
He gave us the very life of Christ
Himself, the same new life with which He
quickened Him.
Verse 22, in Him and in fellowship with
one another, you yourselves are being built up
with the rest to form a fixed abode
of God through the Spirit.
Chapter 3, verse 16, may He grant you
out of the rich treasure of His glory,
to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power
in the inner man by the Holy Spirit
Himself.
In dwelling your innermost being and personality, may
Christ through your faith dwell, settle down, abide,
and make His permanent home in your hearts,
rooted deep in love, and founded securely on
love.
Verse 19, that you may really come to
know, practically, through experience, for yourselves, the love
of Christ which far surpasses mere knowledge without
experience.
That you may be filled through all your
being unto all the fullness of God.
That is, may have the richest measure of
the Divine Presence, and become a body wholly
filled and flooded with God Himself.
For God's intention, chapter 4, verse 12, was
the perfecting and the full equipping of the
saints that they should do the work of
ministering toward building up Christ's body, the Church.
That it might develop until we all attain
oneness in the faith, and in the comprehension
of the full and accurate knowledge of the
Son of God.
That we might arrive at really mature manhood.
The completeness of personality, which is nothing less
than the standard height of Christ's own perfection.
The measure of the stature of the fullness
of the Christ, and the completeness found in
Him.
Really mature manhood.
The completeness of personality, which is nothing less
than the standard height of Christ's own perfection.
This is God's Word.
This is the spiritual content of our faith.
Anything less than this, which may be involved
in our profession of the Christian faith, falls
short of the Divine Purpose.
We see, therefore, that if Jesus Christ Himself,
indwelling us by His Holy Spirit, reasserting His
Divine Sovereignty in every area of our human
personality constitutes true manhood and true maturity, then
supremely our commitment is to Him, and to
Him alone.
In order that we might be maturely man,
as God intended man to be.
This is our supreme commitment, and priority number
one.
Our personal spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus
Himself, whose presence within us, alone enables us
to attain to that standard height of His
own perfection.
No matter in what area of activity or
vocation your life may be, it is Christ
Himself alone who will enable you to attain
to really mature manhood.
If you are studying engineering, always bear in
mind that there is only one supreme engineer,
Jesus Christ.
If you are a physicist, remember that the
one who threw the universes into space is
Jesus Christ.
He is the supreme physicist.
And in your study of physics, you are
simply scratching at the surface of that which
He Himself created, that had its origin in
His mind.
If your purpose is to become a physician,
remember this, that Jesus Christ Himself is the
one who designed and fashioned the human body.
If you happen to be training that you
might become a teacher, remember that in His
person dwells all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily, and in Him are hidden all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
So that in any area of vocational activity,
as a scientist, as a teacher, as a
physician, as an engineer, no matter what it
may be, you will find only complete spiritual
maturity and physical maturity as man in the
person who is supremely all these things, in
the absolute sense.
And any commitment to a vocation which is
not dependent upon your commitment to Him means
that you will be mediocre in your area,
in God's terms of reference.
Any commitment to any area of life that
is not completely subservient to your personal commitment
spiritually to Jesus Christ may win for you
prowess and recognition in time, but you will
be unrecognized, a spiritual non-entity in eternity.
You may blast your way to the top
in any area of human activity.
You may become as famous as Mussolini himself
and hang like him upside down in the
streets of Milan from a lamppost, jeered at
by those who once worshipped him.
You may conquer a nation and maybe almost
conquer a world, as indeed did Adolf Hitler,
and die like the animal he was, and
beg the scattered remnants of your following to
soak your body with petrol and burn it.
You may conquer commerce and become a multimillionaire
in Los Angeles, and then one night take
a pistol and shoot yourself between the eyes.
One of our greatest English poets died and
was buried on a lonely shore, Mesolongium, in
Greece.
Of him it was said that he followed
the bubble of success until it burst within
his grasp, for he had been flattered by
royalty and by kings.
He had drunk deep of the sparkling pleasures
of this world's Gaietian pomp until it left
him nothing but the bitter, bitter dread.
At his dying there was no mourning, not
one ray of hope to pierce the solveness
of that unhappy seed.
Of his own life he wrote this, the
thorns that I have known are of the
tree I planted.
They have torn me and I bleed.
I should have known what kind of fruit
would spring from such.
My days are in the clear and yellow
leaf.
The fruits and flowers of life are gone.
The worm, the canker, and the grief are
mine alone.
He never became a man because he was
never committed to God.
That is why I have asked you this
week to make no cheap nor shallow commitment.
I have not asked you to rededicate yourself
in a way that you have already dedicated
yourself maybe a dozen or a hundred times
past, to leave you at the last even
more exhausted than at the start.
I have tried step by step and stage
by stage, precept upon precept, to give you
a picture in such a way that you
can make a supreme commitment intelligent.
And it is my purpose this morning so
to propound the proposition that you may make
intelligent participation on a solid basis that will
stand you in good stead for time and
for eternity.
It has been my supreme desire this week
to introduce you to principles that will never
depart from you and to which you may
always return and find it true.
The quality of supreme commitment to Jesus Christ.
There is a commitment to Jesus Christ that
he does not reciprocate.
I'd like you to turn this time to
John's Gospel chapter 2 and the 23rd verse.
John 2 23, Now when he was in
Jerusalem at the Passover in the feast day,
many believed in his name when they saw
the miracles which he did.
There appeared to be popular and enthusiastic acclaim
of Jesus Christ.
A great multitude apparently committed themselves to Jesus
Christ.
And we might, had we known no more
than that, have had legitimate reason to be
highly delighted at the response that had been
solicited.
But it goes on to say in the
24th verse, but Jesus did not commit himself
unto them.
In other words, their commitment to him was
not reciprocated by his commitment to them.
The quality of their commitment somehow fell short
of that quality that he could reciprocate.
Because he knew all men, and he needed
not that any should testify of man, for
he knew what was in man.
And so although there was apparently enthusiastic and
popular applause for what he was doing, he
himself remained strangely reserved and completely unimpressed.
We need to learn this.
For one who had been less than man
as he was might well have been swept
at his feet on the side of what
he considered to be popular acclaim.
But then you see he was man.
And he knew that that which impresses man
may not always impress God.
If only we would learn this, it would
help to reduce us in our own estimation
to our correct side.
For so often we estimate our acceptance in
the presence of God by our acceptance amongst
our fellow men.
This was a commitment which Christ could not
reciprocate.
For in point of fact they were not
committed to him, nor to that purpose for
which he himself had been by the Father
committed.
They were committed only to the things he
did.
They were committed to the sensational.
They were committed to the miracles.
They were committed to a man whom they
thought to be committed to healing their aches
and pains.
But he knew that just so soon as
they would become aware of the true commitment
to which he by the Father had committed
him, by virtue of his committal to the
Father, they would shout, crucify him!
Away with him!
We will not have this man to reign
over us.
And that is why he remained reserved.
And that is why I haven't been over
-enthusiastic about seeking from you some spontaneous or
soulish emotional response to some challenge that I
might give you, because I know that though
it might impress me and others, it probably
wouldn't impress God.
For there is only one thing that impresses
God, and that is your commitment to Jesus
Christ in such a way that from now
on without reserve, you are committed in him
to all that which he in you is
committed.
Turn with me to the 16th chapter of
Matthew's gospel.
Matthew chapter 16.
You will remember in the 13th verse that
when Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea
Philippi, he asked his disciples saying, Whom do
men say that I, the Son of Man,
am?
For they said, There are many ideas abroad.
Some say John the Baptist, others Elias, others
Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.
He saith unto them, But whom say ye
that I am?
And Peter answered, Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God.
Jesus answered and said, Blessed art thou, Simon
Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which
is in heaven.
That you have discovered my identity is something
which my Father has revealed to you.
And one might well have imagined that at
this stage they were thus so committed to
Jesus Christ that from there on he himself
would be committed to them, but this was
not the case.
For in the 20th verse it says, Then
charged he his disciples that they should tell
no man that he was Jesus the Christ.
Strange that he should call to himself a
company of followers, appoint them to be his
disciples and his apostles, and then to place
a complete and total prohibition that they should
tell no man that he was indeed Jesus
God's Christ.
The reason why he placed this prohibition upon
them was simply that although they had recognized
his identity, they were totally abysmally ignorant of
the purpose for which he had come to
be God's Christ.
That although they had committed themselves to him
as a man, they were not committed to
his purpose as a man.
For the next verse tells us, From that
time forth began Jesus to show unto his
disciples how that he must go into Jerusalem
and suffer many things of the elders, and
chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and
be raised again the third day.
In other words, he gave to them a
preview of that for which he had come
into the world, the program of his messianic
mission, and no sooner had he begun to
enlighten them as to that to which he
was committed as the Christ, than Peter said,
Not so, Lord.
This shall never be.
It can't happen to you.
I am not committed to you for this.
Then said Jesus Christ, I do not reciprocate
your commitment to me.
For if you cannot be committed to me
for that which I am committed by my
Father, I am not committed to you.
And looking into the face of Peter, through
his sincerity, through his personal affection, through his
loyalty, through his zeal, through his enthusiasm, through
all his mock heroics, he said, Get thee
behind me, Satan.
Thou art an offense unto me.
Thou savest not the things that be of
God, but of man.
He was strangely reserved, almost coldly unimpressed, because
God is not interested in our hysterical or
emotional outbursts.
He is interested in the quality of our
commitment.
They wanted to commit Jesus Christ to that
to which the Father had never committed him.
They expected him to play party politics in
the tiny extract of time and space in
which he lived on earth as man.
They were trying to reduce God to man's
size.
They were trying to put God's Christ into
a purely parochial context.
They did not understand him to be the
Lord of all history and the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world, who was
incarnate to serve every preceding generation and every
succeeding generation.
And so they committed him to their own
little aches and pains, and they wanted him
to take sides with the Jews against the
Romans.
And he said, I am not committed to
that commitment.
And if you commit me to this, I
do not reciprocate your commitment to me.
They are not the only guilty generation.
There are some of you right here this
morning who think that God ought to be
a Republican and not a Democrat.
Or you think that Jesus Christ ought to
be a Democrat but not a Republican.
There are some of you who still think
that God ought to fight for America against
the Russians.
There are some in my country who maybe
believe that Jesus Christ ought to be on
the side of the English against the Communists.
I don't see any reason why he should
be.
I don't believe a Russian is any more
sinful than an American.
I don't think there's any more lust, any
less lust, any less greed, any less selfishness,
any less carnality, any less materialism, any less
godlessness, for all you may have on your
coin is in this country, than in Russia.
And if my country is to be judged
by the use that it has made of
the liberty that it has to read its
Bible and obey it, and enter and worship
God in the places of worship that are
available to my countrymen, if my country is
to be judged on the basis of the
use it makes of the liberty that it
claims has its democratic heritage, then my country
is ripe for judgment.
And I do not expect Jesus Christ to
be on our side.
But then I don't expect him to play
party politics anyway.
I expect him to be what he is,
the eternal God, in the eternal context of
what he is, the everlasting present.
God demands of you and he demands of
me a quality of commitment to him that
does not commit Jesus Christ to what you
think he ought to be committed to, but
that commits you to Jesus Christ in such
a way that you are now committed in
him to all that which he in you
is committed, no matter what that may be.
Peter said to all men for safety, I
won't, I'll go to jail for you.
If need be, I'll die for you.
And no doubt that sounded good to all
the others who were listening, but it didn't
sound good to Jesus Christ.
No doubt if Peter had been then standing
in some missionary throng, challenged to dedicate their
lives to missionary service on some foreign field,
he would have been the first to come
to the front.
But Christ would have been as unimpressed and
as reserved under those circumstances as he was
then.
He said, Peter, I am not committed to
your commitment, because the quality of your commitment
is totally inadequate.
The quality of your commitment is still related
to what you can be for me.
The quality of your commitment is not related
to what I can be for you.
And before the cock is crowned twice, you
will have denied me three times.
That is why I do not commit myself
to you, because I know what is in
a man.
I am not impressed.
Was he unkind?
No, he was just God, who is a
complete realist, and who knows your thoughts as
he knows mine.
That is why I am not interested today
in any other quality of commitment than that,
other than that to which he himself can
reciprocate his commitment.
But what I want to tell you is
this, that this quality of commitment is supreme.
It is the supreme greater that comprehends all
the lesser.
That is why I would be deceiving myself
if I imagined this morning that you would
all be prepared for this quality of commitment.
It would be extremely unlikely, because if you
were prepared to commit yourself in this way
to Jesus Christ, it would be calculated completely
to revolutionize your future.
It might completely liquidate your plans as preconceived
for days to come, as once over thirty
years ago it completely liquidated mine when I
was training in London University, studying medicine to
go as a doctor, as a missionary to
Africa.
I did not know in the night that
in tears of self-discovery, in the bitterness
of my own despair, I discovered the adequacy
of Christ and the nature of true commitment
that giveth myself to him, not to do
what I think he ought to do in
me, but to do through me that to
which by the Father he has been committed
in me.
I did not know that night that it
would mean within five weeks that I would
leave the university where I was studying.
But having come to this place of supreme
commitment, that issue had already been settled, and
I did not have to face the issue
again.
You see, you are not supremely committed to
anything but Christ.
You are not committed to the mission field.
You are not committed to a task, or
a need, or a church, or an organization.
You are not even committed to your own
country, not if you are a Christian.
You are not committed to Christian education.
You are supremely committed only to Jesus Christ
and all that to which Jesus Christ in
you is committed.
If you make a mistake at this point,
you will make nonsense of your life and
everybody else's with whom you have to deal.
And if you are committed only to Christian
education, and not committed to Christ and to
that which he in you is committed in
education, then the likelihood is that you will
make nonsense of the Bible you teach.
Because there is only one teacher who can
take you through the word of God in
such a way that your heart burns with
him.
And if you don't have him, then your
Old Testament will become just a bunch of
fables and myths of no historical value.
But you'll neither know God yourself, nor will
you be capable of teaching anybody else about
God in such a way that they know
him too.
You will become a cold, impersonal academician whose
letter of the law kills.
That is why this is a quality of
commitment that will either spell life or death
in every area of your activity.
What was the nature of Christ's commitment to
the Father?
His commitment to the Father was such that
he was committed only to that which the
Father in him was committed.
That is why again and again he says
the Son can do how much?
Nothing.
Apart from the Father.
He said, I'm not committed to do my
best for my Father.
I'm committed to my Father that my Father
may do his best through me.
That was the nature of his commitment.
I am committed to my Father in such
a way that I am committed to all
that which my Father in me is committed.
But I have a supreme confidence that the
Father who dwells within me and who does
the work, John 14 10, is supremely confident
for that to which he in me is
committed.
Now that is why the Lord Jesus was
never panicked.
He was never taken off his guard.
He was never dismayed or shocked by any
circumstance that ever arose.
Because he had a supreme confidence that the
one to whom he had presented his body
in total commitment, in him was adequate.
How do we measure the nature of his
commitment to the Father?
You can measure the nature of his commitment
to the Father by the measure of the
Father's commitment to him.
Because he was so totally committed to the
Father and to all that to which the
Father in him was committed, the Father was
totally committed to all that he did and
all that he said, because all he did
and all he said all he was was
in complete and absolute harmony with the eternal
purpose of God that he came to implement.
I do only always those things that meet
them.
That was the nature of his perfect standard
height of Christ's perfection.
Therefore, if you want to know the measure
of your commitment in its quality to Jesus
Christ, the measure is the measure of his
commitment to you.
Now, you may engage in every kind of
Christian activity so-called, but if Christ isn't
committed to what you're doing, you're wasting both
his time and yours.
This does not mean that you may not
be sincere at what you're doing.
You may be making the supreme mistake that
Abraham made.
For when God said to Abraham, in thy
seed all the families of the earth should
be blessed, Abraham made the mistake of committing
himself to the will of God instead of
to the God whose will it was.
And that's a very subtle thing.
For Abraham immediately had heard God speak, dismissed
God, and said, now I will get on
with the job of doing God's will.
But I'll do God's will insofar as I'm
dedicated to it Abraham's way.
After all, God has told me that in
my seed all the families of the earth
should be blessed.
Right, the first thing I've got to decide
then in order to do God's will is
to discover how I, a man, can have
seed in whom all the families of the
earth should be blessed.
Well, there's one thing perfectly certain.
Sarah's too old, she's never born, she's barren,
therefore I must think of a means whereby
I can do God's will.
Very subtle.
So he has a committee meeting with Sarah
and they decide to have Hagar in, the
bondwoman, and they bear Ishmael.
And for 15 years Ishmael epitomizes God's will
Abraham's way.
And God says, no, I am not committed
to your commitment to me because I have
said Sarah shall bear a son.
That is my will and that is my
way of doing my will and I do
not ask you to be committed to my
will your way.
And that's why the Jewish nation today in
Palestine is surrounded by Arab nations.
That is why Nasser was in the United
Nations in New York two weeks ago because
of a sincere man who was committed to
God's will, but not to God's will it
was.
And God was not committed to his commitment.
There came a time when in utter despair,
having failed to squeeze one ounce of blessing
out of his Ishmael whom he had nurtured
for so long, he repudiated what God had
repudiated and cast him out.
And God gave him Isaac.
Then God said, now take Isaac and slay
him.
For you are not even to be committed
to what I do.
You are to be committed only to what
I am.
Slay him.
You are not even to be committed to
your blessings.
You are to be committed only to the
blesser.
And Abraham had learned his lesson and he
went up into the presence of God and
said, God, thank you for the lesson that
I've learned.
Out of the bitterness of 16 years trying
to make my Ishmael a blessing for you,
I see now that you are the only
one who matters.
And if you are committed to slaying Isaac
himself, now I am committed to you and
to all that to which you in me
are committed.
And I will slay him, believing if need
be that you can raise him from the
dead.
God said, thank you, Abraham.
That's all I was able to do to
find him in the thicket, caught by his
horse.
And Abraham, for the first time, learned the
principle of faith and became the friend of
God.
What are you committed to?
Are you committed to Jesus Christ, Supreme?
Is this a passivity that robs you of
your personality and being, of course?
Was this commitment of Jesus Christ to the
Father such that left him with nothing to
do on earth except sit in an armchair
with his feet in the mantle seat?
This commitment of Jesus Christ to the Father
in such a way that he was committed
to all, the Father was committed to him,
kept him busy for 33 years.
It stood him underneath the tree where Zacchaeus
was hiding.
It stopped him by the well where the
woman had come out from Samaria.
It raised Nazareth from the dead.
It preached the Sermon on the Mount for
33 years until in obedience to the supreme
commitment of his Father, he was obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross.
But how did he walk this way?
When he had to feed the 5,000,
he simply said, Father, I am committed to
you, to all that to which you in
me are committed, and I am supremely confident
you are competent for that to which you
in me are committed.
Here are 5,000 men plus their women
and children.
We have five fishes and two loaves, but
this is not my responsibility, Father.
It is yours.
Thank you.
And then he fed the others.
And standing before the tomb where Nazareth sank,
he said, Father, I am committed to you
and to all that to which you in
me are committed.
If you are committed in me to raising
this man from the dead, I want you
to know he's sinned, but you're adequate.
Thank you, Father.
And when on the very threshold of hell
itself, where he was to be made sin
and accept in his sinless person all the
inevitable consequences of being made sin for you
and for me, Jesus Christ, in this last
supreme act of obedience, looked into his Father's
face and took the bread in his hands,
spoke of his body so soon to be
broken, and took the wine that spoke of
his blood so soon to be shed, and
said, Father, I want you to know that
this piece of bread that represents my body,
this wine that represents my blood so soon
to be broken and to be shed, I
want you to know that I step into
this situation in supreme confidence that that to
which I am committed in you, because you're
committed to it in me to redeem a
damned humanity, it is something for which you
are gloriously adequate, even if I have to
step into the mouth of hell itself.
Thank you.
That's how he lives, by faith.
That's how you are to live, by faith.
For as the Father has sent me, so
have I sent you.
As I have lived by my living Father,
so you are to live by me.
Once you've come to this place of supreme
commitment, nothing can frighten you.
Nothing.
It's not hell itself, because you take every
step in the same attitude of dependence and
say, Father, I'm committed to you, and to
all that which you and me are committed,
and you're adequate.
Thank you.
Is that the quality of your commitment?
Supposing I were to come to you after
this quality of commitment and say, Are you
prepared to give your life to the mission
to feed you?
Say, Please don't be childish.
Please don't ask me stupid questions.
I am already committed to Jesus Christ and
to all that which he in me is
committed.
If he happens to me, if he happens
to be committed in me to go to
some mission field in the world, that has
already been settled.
That is an issue that is already behind
me.
Don't ask me stupid questions.
I am committed to all that to which
he is committed.
Ask Jesus Christ, then, if he is willing
to go to the mission field.
Don't ask me.
Because I am now identified with all that
to which he is committed.
If I were to say to you, Are
you prepared to give your last step that
you have in the bank, in the service
of Jesus Christ?
You would say to me, Don't ask me
stupid questions.
Don't be childish.
I am committed to Jesus Christ and to
all that which he in me is committed.
And if he happens to be in me
committed to using the last step that I
have in my bank balance, that is an
issue that is already settled.
It's behind me.
Ask him.
Don't ask me.
Because it happens to be his mantra.
If I were to ask you, Are you
prepared to be an engineer in the service
of Jesus Christ or a teacher?
Are you prepared to die?
You would say, All these lesser, lesser issues
have been supremely comprehended in the greater.
To me, to live is not what Christ
gives me or the help he can give
me.
To me, to live is Jesus Christ.
And furthermore, I am supremely confident that he
in me is competent for that to which
he in me is committed, to which I
am committed now and forever in him.
That, I believe, is the only quality of
commitment to which he commits himself.
It is the only quality of commitment that
I'm interested in.
It is the only quality of commitment that
I believe I have a right or a
mandate from the word of God to present
to you.
This is the proposition.
I invite your participation.
But I want you to do so intelligently,
recognizing that from this moment on, you have
absolutely no jurisdiction whatever over your own future.