How we praise Thee that Thou didst fill
the cup that it might overflow.
We thank Thee this morning that it's not
out of a dry cistern, but it's out
of the well of Thyself that we give
back to Thee.
We crown Thee, we acknowledge Thee as Lord,
we say, Lord Jesus, be pleased in our
midst.
Oh, we thank You that it's been so
good to fellowship with You, Lord, just You
this morning.
Thank You for Your presence.
Thank You for the reality of Your presence.
Thank You, Lord, that You've deigned to be
in our midst.
In Jesus' name we thank You.
Amen.
Romans chapter 12.
We have been speaking about dedication.
The first morning it was our purpose to
define it.
What is dedication?
By the mercies of God we present ourselves
unto Him.
The next morning it was dedication enlightened or
dedication according to renewed knowledge.
God renews our minds, brings us into newness
of understanding that it will not just be
dedication, but it will be an intelligent thing.
How many of you have seen folk with
a dedication, but oh, how it lacked clear
understanding of what dedication was.
They meant well, zeal, but not according to
knowledge.
Yesterday it was dedication proved.
I think there are many folk who want
to present, they want to give, they want
the Lord to have something from their life,
but it's so easy to get stalled midway.
God called Israel, as we said yesterday, He
brought them out of bondage, out of Egypt.
Who doesn't want to get free from their
bondage?
But how long did they wander in the
wilderness?
It was a proving period.
He wanted to bring them in, and in
bringing them in He wanted them to possess
the land.
So it was dedication proved yesterday.
This morning it's my burden, and I pray
the Lord to give us His own special
help.
Dedication focus is the way I call it.
It's always interested me that in this twelfth
chapter of Romans, which is really the very
best picture we have in the New Testament
of dedication, after He speaks of presenting our
body, the renewing of our mind, the proving
of what the will of God is, is
to marvel that immediately He started talking about
the body.
Look at it now.
We'll start with verse 3.
For I say through the grace, chapter 12,
verse 3, For I say through the grace
given unto me to every man that is
among you, not to think of himself more
highly than he ought to think, but to
think soberly, according as God hath dealt to
every man the measure of faith.
For as we have many members in one
body, and all members have not the same
office, so we, being many, are one body
in Christ, and everyone members one of another.
Having then gifts differing according to the grace
that is given unto us, whether prophecy let
us prophesy according to the proportion of faith,
or ministry let us wait in our ministry,
or he that teacheth on teaching, or he
that exhorteth on exhortation, he that giveth let
him do it with simplicity, he that ruleth
with diligence, he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness.
May I say that I believe when our
dedication comes into the right perspective and focus
that God intends, dedication will be in the
body.
It will be something of learning a relatedness
that we have in the Lord with his
people.
It's not just doing anything that seems good,
not just picking up a cause or a
project or something that seems worthwhile, but God
is here in this picture, I believe, giving
us an example of how dedication becomes very
focused to the thing that he wants.
You see, first of all, you look at
the cross, and you remember that the cross
has its vertical.
This is our relatedness to God, the first
aspect of our dedication.
Lord, I am related to you.
One thing the Lord is doing today is
to show us the cross piece, how we
become related to one another in our dedication.
And I just cannot emphasize it too much
this morning, but I believe that dedication is
a related thing.
It's related rightly to God, and that's the
way enlightenment comes, and God proves, and then
it finds its relatedness toward one another.
I just cannot function independently.
I dare not function unrelated.
And so it's a very wonderful thing now
that immediately Paul introduces body life, the fact
that we are members of one body, and
that our relatedness in the body is the
way we learn to function.
I believe dedication gets pretty narrowed down.
And I'm not saying that one can't have
individual dedication.
This is true.
We realize that God brings us, and most
of the religious world today is dedicated.
In a sense, they know the vertical, but
oh, and God begins to bring the cross
piece in, and we see our relatedness to
one another and what this really means.
So I just have to reemphasize, I just
wonder if we can really go on very
far, but what we will see, the dedication
is not an independent thing.
It's not just an individual thing.
We begin to find our relatedness with one
another.
Well, let me go back this morning for
a little bit and pick up what we've
been getting at.
I'd like for us to see that in
a sense, when God begins to work, the
governing law or the law that governs our
related dedication, our functioning in a related way,
is that God does everything by the anointing.
The anointing seems to be so very important
for us to understand.
Let's just go back.
Here we were yesterday.
We spoke of what it meant to be
in Adam.
Here's the family tree of Adam.
We've all been a part of it.
When we were nailed to the cross in
the Lord Jesus in his death, we saw
that we were buried down in the tomb.
We saw that God resurrected, raised us up.
We were saying yesterday, it is God's way
of taking us out of the old and
planting us, or so to speak, positioning us
in the new.
And so, when we look now at what
God has done in taking us out of
the old and planting us into his Son,
we get a little glimpse of what it
means to be in Christ.
I have to remind us that, first of
all, we need to see all that has
taken place in history, that is, from God's
viewpoint.
And here he puts us.
Well, let's just put the body.
Sorry.
He puts us in the body, as it
were.
We come forth out of the grave.
And when we come out, as it were,
out of death, we are planted into Christ.
We are made a member in him, in
his body.
I think it's very wonderful now to remember
that in history there is one Calvary, right?
But when, by simple faith, I come to
the cross and I apprehend and then I
appropriate what took place there in history becomes
very real to me, first of all, in
my apprehension.
I say, Oh, thank you, Lord Jesus.
You died.
You died for me.
I apprehend it.
I understand it.
And by simple faith, I take, I appropriate.
So, what's historical becomes very living and personal.
It's made real, isn't it?
And I don't want to push this too
far, but I think there will come a
day when you'll find yourself really buried.
You'll say that God really nailed to the
cross all the old Adam was.
And because it smelled so, he says, I've
got to cover it over.
He puts it in the tomb.
And we come to a personal seeing and
a personal reality of what that means to
be buried with Christ.
All that the old life is.
Thank God for the day it becomes very
real.
Our crucifixion, our burial.
And as I said yesterday, and I want
to reemphasize it, thank God for the day
that we discover it takes more than the
negative.
I lived so long on this side, I
thought if I could just get people dead,
God would get them alive.
And he does.
But some people have a way of hanging
around the grave.
And as my brother was saying yesterday afternoon,
you see, we get so caught with the
reality of a thing.
And it's so wonderful.
How many of you know we want to
camp there?
It's one of the tendencies of all of
us.
When a thing's been made real to us,
we cry, hooray, I found it.
Eureka, this is it.
And so we stay there.
And the Lord has difficulty getting us beyond.
And this is why we come finally to
see that it's not enough to see that
he died for us, and we died with
him, and he buried all, and the reality
of that burial is something.
But we come to see that we live
by the life of another.
All the reality of the resurrected Christ.
And I like to say that about this
time, it's very wonderful that we begin to
realize that not only resurrection, but he ascended,
and he was positioned, he was seated at
the right hand of the Father.
What is the proof that Jesus was the
Son of God?
His resurrection.
It was God who raised him from the
dead.
And the fact that he was the Son
of God is proved by the resurrection.
What is the proof now?
What was the proof that this Jesus, who
is the Son of God, has now been
seated up here at the right hand of
the throne?
What's the proof that he's exalted?
The Holy Spirit has been poured out.
Peter says, this which you see, it's the
proof.
Well, they couldn't see up into the heavens,
but he was saying, this is the proof
that he has been exalted.
He's been poured out, you see.
Now, the Holy Spirit is poured out, and
I do believe it's upon the head, and
as we see, it comes down upon the
whole of the body.
The Spirit poured out.
Now, I have to be honest with us,
and just help us to be very careful,
because there's a lot of confusion at this
point.
How many calvaries?
How many burials?
How many resurrections?
How many ascensions?
How many exaltations?
How many outpourings?
Are you sure?
You are determined to miss the parallel.
Start all over again.
How many crucifixions?
I don't need to go on, do I?
In history now, in history there's one.
How many times throughout all these years has
it been personalized?
Many.
How many burials?
How many times has it been personalized?
Now we're on the road, aren't we?
How many resurrections?
How many times has it been?
Many.
How many ascensions and exaltations and outpourings?
One.
How many times has it been?
You see.
It will help us to keep our Scripture
very clear.
Now I know I haven't changed doctrine for
20 years in this.
Believe me, we entered in years ago.
I've had a deep conviction that people have
been prone to call things by the wrong
name.
You can't take their experience away, but what
you have to do is to get adjusted
to the book.
Are you with me?
So when somebody says, well, I had a
baptism, I say, he means he's personalized what
took place up there.
Are you with me now?
There's really only one baptism.
And now that the Spirit has been poured
out, really this is the anointing.
This is the anointing.
A lovely anointing.
I think that the anointing, the anointing is
the basis for all our sin.
I've noticed through the years that when the
anointing comes to an individual, folk can have
heard that Jesus died for years, and then
suddenly the anointing pulls back.
The eyes have come, and they say, oh,
thank you, Lord, for dying for me.
On what basis were they able to see
that he was their substitute?
It's the what?
The anointing.
It's the anointing that reveals.
It's the anointing that breaks the yoke.
It's the anointing that helps somebody to see.
I've had individuals in meetings for years, and
they quote Galatians 2.20, I have been
crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, and I
know it's a verse to them, and that's
all it is.
When does it become a reality to them?
One day the Holy Spirit pulls back, you
see.
I had one of the most lovely examples
of this a number of years ago.
We were on the West Coast, and God
broke into a church, and about 50 young
married couples were saved.
It was just a very sovereign working of
the Lord.
And in those days, our emphasis was so
much on the cross, our look the first
time to see his death, our look the
second time to see our death with him.
And after about ten years, I had gone
back to that particular group many times, but
I was invited by this pastor and his
church to Spokane, Washington, and we were there
in meetings for a couple days.
And one morning, we had the morning session,
the pastor's wife stood and she said, Oh,
I must tell you, and Brother Vern will
hardly believe it, but I had a funeral
last night.
And then she told, she said, my husband
lay in bed and snored away, but oh,
God put a mirror before me.
She said, I've heard all of this for
ten or twelve years, that I died with
Christ.
She said, I learned it in Bible school,
and I've taught it in all of our
ladies' groups.
But she said, guess what happened?
Last night it happened to me.
I'll never forget the tears.
She just opened it.
You know, I'd looked at her as one
of the most lovely pastors' wives I'd ever
met.
Oh, I knew God needed to do more,
but there were so many wonderful things, you
see.
But that night she said, I saw everything.
Her name was Dorothy.
She said, I saw everything Dorothy had ever
done.
The Ladies' Missionary Society, leading the class, leading
the choir, all these things.
She said, oh, what a, I couldn't stand
to look at it.
What did she see?
She saw all that the old life, the
old creation represented in Adam.
And in the desperateness of her heart, she
kept saying, oh, God, no wonder you couldn't
be pleased, you see.
It was something that had escaped the tomb
and was trying to dedicate to God.
We sat there, I suppose, 30, 40 people,
everyone weeping.
She was loved.
Everyone loved her.
She said, I just went through such misery
for about three or four hours, and I
wanted to wake my husband.
The Lord said, this is a private funeral.
She said, I wanted to go knock on
your room, and I knew that wouldn't be
right.
The Lord said, this is a private funeral.
It's one thing you go through all alone.
You know, after I saw what had happened,
I don't take anything for granted in anybody
anymore.
If it could happen to Dorothy, Lord, it
might happen to somebody.
But what is it, really?
What is it?
Now, you see, I'm not implying you have,
whenever you deal with the things that are
subjective, we have a tendency to cause everybody
in the group to wonder, boy, I don't
know if that happened to me.
Are you there?
You know what I mean?
You are wondering, aren't you?
Come on now, aren't you?
Well, I don't know.
But I know what I keep saying.
Dear Lord, if there's something I don't see
as clearly as I ought, let the anointing
pull back.
Let the anointing.
Let it, let it.
Lord, I claim that every bit of what
has really taken place and what I know
positionally and I've claimed positionally, thou wilt make
to be very living and real.
Now we are right where we were yesterday.
Remember we used the word promise and prove
and possess.
And I know that there's such a thing
as apprehending the promise of the thing and
claiming the reality of the promise.
Oh, Lord, that's wonderful.
And then we go through the proving of
it by which the Holy Spirit makes it
into a reality.
We possess the reality of it.
So we say that it's the anointing that's
been poured out.
The Holy Spirit has been poured out and
he is wanting to make living and real
all these aspects.
I believe, brothers and sisters, that God's not
only trying to get some folk resurrected, but
there comes a day when he shows them
what it is to be related, to be
really planted in the body.
If I understand the word baptized, what it
means in 1 Corinthians, it is that literally
we are planted into a living relationship in
the body.
It's a positional thing primarily.
I'm positioned.
I'm put within, you see.
I'm put within as a member in the
body.
Now, let me go on again and say,
I hear every place I go people saying,
Oh, praise the Lord.
I'm suddenly discovering what it is to be
in the body.
Every place you go there's a new awareness
today.
It's the anointing that gives us a little
bit of that enlarged understanding.
The anointing is awakening, folks, you see.
Mine's not just a private dedication.
Mine isn't just giving myself and seeing something
good and going out to do.
But I begin to function within the body
and recognize what this means.
All this independency that is ruled, and it
has been so evident in much of the
religious work today, is the dissipation of our
energy and our strength.
And there comes a time, I believe, as
we keep holding it before the Lord, that
the anointing that has been poured out, the
anointing makes real.
Oh, thank you, Lord.
You've positioned me in the body.
You've given this as a place, a function,
something in which I am to fulfill.
My dedication is to be sharpened and focused.
This is what you want.
Not just doing good.
And I believe this is why we're introduced
to gifts.
Every spiritual thing that is done is really
by a divine enablement that God gives.
It's the divine enablement that God gives.
You can cut the lawn for the Lord
and trim the trees for the Lord.
You can paint the building for the Lord.
You can do all those things, and that's
fine.
That's like giving a cup of cold water,
and the Lord says, Amen.
But we're talking about building something of spiritual
quality, something that's very sharpened and is focused
for the thing that God really wants.
And once again, you see, God governs the
focus.
He governs our doing.
He governs it because what is done must
be done by what he has given.
It isn't just doing.
He's so restrictive.
It must be done by the divine enablement
that he has given, not wanting to limit
us, but wanting us to come to the
fulfillment, and that's what we see.
Now, you'll notice he says in verse 6,
having then gifts differing according to the grace,
God's grace in giving, he places within my
brother Dan a little rosebud.
It's a divine enablement.
It's hidden there.
Dan may for years not know it's there.
When did it come?
Now, a lot of, I suppose, difference of
opinion here, but I believe that while Dan
didn't know it, the moment he said, Jesus
is Lord, he got planted, and then him
got planted, you see.
God put a little bud in there, and
one day as the anointing begins to work,
the anointing working within my brother is going
to create sort of a burden in his
heart, and the burden begins to help him
discern a need and a longing to meet
that.
So what does he do?
Runs out to get somebody else to do
it.
Now, don't we usually?
We get a burden, and what do we
do?
Huh?
What do we do?
Oh, help me.
We run out to find somebody to do
it.
I have a dear brother, when folk come
and they say, I have a burden, he
says, praise the Lord, that's God emphasizing, do
it.
Can you see how in, we want the
spectacular, but how many of you are beginning
to realize that the spiritual begins to work
in a sort of a very normal unfolding
way?
A bolt of lightning would come out and
say, this is your burden, do this.
So this is that way.
The more spiritual things get, so often, they
have their natural, I don't know if the
word, their normal unfolding, and so it's my
burden.
I thank God when I see a little
rosebud, the anointing working, God's burden coming within.
First thing you know, it begins to, two
petals open up.
Isn't that wonderful?
Two petals.
And what happens?
Those two petals begin to reach out toward
whatever is needed, and the third one opens,
and the fourth one opens.
Then somebody squelches it, night comes, and goes
in for a while.
But God's way of developing in every life
is by the burden that he places within.
Some people have a burden for this, a
burden for this, along you see, and it
begins to unfold.
And when God gives burden in you, the
enablement goes right along with it.
This is what the gift is.
It's to see and the ability within.
So this is why the gift begins to
develop into a function or into a ministry.
Now it talks about gifts here, but it
immediately goes to the seven ministries.
Seven, a complete number here, and I think
that in the average assembly and in the
church at large, so to speak, here you
have the seven things.
It's anointed speaking, verse 6, having then gifts
differing.
How many of you can see that one
who has a burden to speak, let's say
has a burden, and that burden is just
discharged as God gives a quickening to be
able to speak something in an anointed way.
I believe there's all levels of prophecy.
And one of our confusions today is that
we do not see that you've got all
these levels of prophecy as it's working all
the way to the more sure word of
prophecy.
Someone gets up as a little baby and
the first words they list.
As a newborn baby, they list and say,
Lord Jesus saved me so wonderful.
The Spirit witnesses with His Spirit and He
says, Dada, I'm a father.
And what's doing it?
The Spirit.
The testimony of Jesus.
The first testimony you give, if there's any
anointing in it, the Spirit's doing it.
And hear me now.
We have all these levels.
Someone sits in the group and they're exercised
with a burden that a certain three or
four verses over here is just what's fitting.
And of course, the proportion of their faith
is pretty weak.
And according to proportion, they read those three
or four verses and the Spirit anoints, quickens,
and everybody's blessed.
Are you following me?
Of course, you have to do that with
the proportion of faith, don't you?
Because what's happening in your mind all the
time, something's stirring.
Your reasoning are saying, uh-uh, couldn't be,
couldn't be.
Somebody else will do it.
And so you quench, you quench that burden
that's placed within.
Now you see, the more we learn to
be under the control of the anointing of
the Spirit of God, God may actually make
you so rich in the Word that one
day you know those three or four verses
without reading them.
Are you with me now?
And so you just speak them forth.
It's all right there.
You're on safe ground.
It's Scripture.
Praise the Lord.
This is the way it begins to work.
It's anointed speaking.
When the preacher stands up, people say, well,
what is it, preaching or prophesying?
You can't really sharply distinguish.
There have been times when the anointing on
a speaker is so very heavy it has
a very heavy prophetic anointing.
Most preaching isn't very heavy in its anointing.
But I've seen times when the Lord's overwhelmed
and the Lord's anointing, it was so very
real that it reached a higher, higher level.
So we're saying now that if God is
developing His anointing, He has placed a gift
within.
And what makes the gift operated?
The anointing.
I'm wanting us to see that the anointing
governs.
The anointing governs.
Here we are, hand, foot, eye, various parts
within the body.
And God seems to keep, God seems to
keep the whole of this under His control
simply by the what?
The anointing.
I have to be very honest.
We travel throughout many places these days.
And when people get idea of body life,
their first concept is, praise the Lord, this
is my opportunity.
And so many places where I get into
what they call body life is anarchy.
Every man is doing that which is right
in his own eyes.
Preachers set him down so long, now he's
got a chance.
Or whatever it is, you see.
And I have to remind us that we
are members in the body, but all these
members are under the control of the?
And so you see, there is real headship.
There is real leadership, but it's by the
what?
The anointing.
It's by the anointing.
It's the anointing that governs.
The anointing that gives unveiling to see.
It's the anointing that gives the registration within
our spirit that this we know needs to
be done.
And all, all of the gift that's working,
whether it's faith, it's word of wisdom, it's
knowledge, it's discernment, whatever it is, it's the
spirit that's working within and we need, we
need to have the deep sense within of
how to cooperate.
Oh, it's a blessed thing.
Now you see, our problem is that when,
when God planted us into the body, he
gave us position.
Position.
Really, the planting in is positioning.
Positioning according to need.
It's a positioning thing.
But if I move only from position, praise
the Lord, I'm a hand.
And this little word, ministering here, it says
in verse 7, our ministry, let us wait
in our ministering.
That's an unfortunate translation.
It really is deaconing.
Serving.
Deaconing.
Servening.
The diaconate.
It's the serving, you see.
The serving.
How many of you have through the years,
you've seen someone in a very hidden, but
a very wonderful way, grow up and have
the ability to serve?
Brothers, sisters.
They do it out of great sense of
the need that they see, and it develops.
The deaconing, the serving.
It's an unfortunate translation.
That's what it really means.
The deaconing, the serving ministry.
A hand.
And the hand learns to serve.
Out of burden.
And out of anointing.
All right.
Then it says, teaching.
Let us wait on our serving, or let
us wait on our teaching.
If God begins to develop within you ability
to distinguish things that differ, and you see
that the problem with most folk is that
they generalize.
Make a generalization.
This is the difficulty.
All teaching just boils down to distinguishing things
that differ.
A little boy, remember when he was growing
up, we'd go along the highway?
Everything that had four legs in the pasture
was a hearse.
People read the Bible that way.
They read the word sanctification, and it's got
four legs, and it's all alike.
How many of you came to the place
where you saw one day that there was
a sanctification in Christ set apart in him?
That was very different from possessing your vessel
in sanctification, your sanctified walk.
One of the great difficulties is that in
immaturity, in the body, most folk do a
generalization.
One word seems to cover everything.
But the teacher then begins to have the
burden to say, oh, you must see that
there's a difference between my being sanctified in
Christ the moment I'm saved and learning to
walk after the Spirit, my walk possessing the
vessel.
You see, it's a difference.
So when you learn to wait on your
teaching, and this gift of discerning and the
word comes to be able to distinguish between
positional and the walk of sanctification, when this
begins to develop, you're waiting for new ways
to explain things that will bring people out
of confusion.
How many of you get that burden?
Well, we all have it in a general
way, don't we?
But when the burden gets intense and you
start to cry out, Lord, this thing can't
go on.
And the more intense it gets, you keep
waiting and waiting and looking and longing before
the Lord for a way to help distinguish
and to make things more clear.
Everybody's apt to teach, but not everybody's prepared
to teach.
And it's according to the what?
The burden in waiting.
The burden in waiting, you see.
I think you learn to wait before the
Lord on how to serve.
You can do it from position.
Somebody said, if they just appoint people to
open the windows when it gets hot and
point people to meet folks at the door,
and I believe that it's necessary to have
position.
But how many of you know that you
can put somebody in position and they really
don't function very good?
They get so wrapped up in the meeting,
they go to sleep with everybody else and
the windows need to be opened.
So the brother who learns to wait in
his beaconing is always very sensitive to the
needs of all the what?
People are nodding.
I'd better get the windows open.
Somebody new has come into the meeting and
I, just in case nobody else really loves
them and sufficiently shows them, I'd better do
it.
What is it?
Oh, the burden.
You say, oh, you're doing things too natural.
I want to be more spiritual.
Can I let you in on something this
morning?
God keeps saying to me week after week
after week, Vern, Frankie, I want you to
get more practical.
And I say, what did you say, Lord?
But when you get practical, you step on
toes.
You get so close.
But spirituality really finally gets its sharpness of
dedication in practicality.
Real practicality.
So here we are.
It's by the anointing.
But if I move out of position, if
I move out of position, then I have
a smugness and I say, well, praise the
Lord, Brother Dan's been selected to meet these
folks at the door and Brother Pete's going
to open the windows when the time comes
and it's a good thing to do all
of that.
But they won't fulfill their position the way
they ought to unless they have the what.
So I must not only have position, but
the position must also be governed by the
sense of anointing.
Oh, let's see if we can take an
illustration of the Old Testament.
Turn to 1 Chronicles 20.
1 Chronicles 20.
No, 2 Chronicles 20.
Here's a very desperate emergency that has come
up.
The Moabites and the Ammonites are coming in
as a great horde and they're about to
swallow up the Lord's people.
What an hour of emergency.
And so in verse 3 we read, and
Jehoshaphat, who is he?
He's the king, isn't he?
And the king feared and set himself to
seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout
all Judah.
Now, here is one who is king and
he's moving from position.
Moving from position.
He's in leadership.
God ordains it in this particular case.
We see what he does.
He sets himself and he proclaims a fast
and they all gather themselves together to ask
help of the Lord.
Even out of all the cities of Judah
they came to seek the Lord.
And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah
and Jerusalem in the house of the Lord
before the new court and said, O Lord
God of our fathers, art not thou God
in heaven and rulest not thou over all
the kingdoms of the heathen?
And in thine hand there is not power
and might so that none is able to
withstand thee.
Art not thou our God who didst drive
out the inhabitants and so on?
And in the midst of this, verse 11,
behold I say how they reward us to
come to cast out of thy possession which
thou hast given us to inherit.
O our God, wilt thou not judge them?
For we have no might against this great
company that cometh against us.
Neither know we what to do but our
eyes are upon the multitude who are about
to swallow us up.
No, our eyes are what?
Oh, I love the leadership here.
I love Jehoshaphat's acknowledging, I believe he's one
of the unusual kings of Judah.
Our eyes are upon thee.
It's a desperate emergency, isn't it?
They all stood before the Lord with their
little ones, their wives and their children.
And what does God do?
It's very interesting, isn't it?
I would have assumed that because such a
godly king such a leader was before the
Lord that the Lord would take the next
step and he would give to Jehoshaphat the
direction as to what there to do.
But what does he do?
Position can go so far sometimes.
Then it says, in the midst of the
congregation, the spirit came upon a little Levite
by the name of Jehoshaphat.
He was of the family of Asaph.
He was one of those who I suppose
had his position to sing and to minister
before the Lord.
And where does the anointing come?
Where does it fall?
Jehoshaphat.
Who is governing this whole situation?
God is.
And listen to what Jehoshaphat says.
Verse 14, Then upon Jehoshaphat, the son of
Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of
Jeiel, the son of Mathaniah, a Levite of
the sons of Asaph, came the spirit of
the Lord in the midst of the congregation.
And he said, Hearken ye all Judah and
ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou King Jehoshaphat,
thus saith the Lord unto you, be not
afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great
multitude, for the battle is not yours but
God's.
Praise the Lord.
Why didn't the spirit come on Jehoshaphat?
Who can tell me?
Why didn't the spirit come?
Here's the leader.
Why didn't he come upon Jehoshaphat?
I don't have the answer.
I'm asking you.
All right.
I think that's very well said.
His position went so far.
He turns them to the Lord.
At least emergency turns them.
Or the crisis situation.
And his words are pretty good.
Our eyes are upon thee, Lord.
That sounds like the Lord, doesn't it?
But it goes so far.
I'm trying to say to us that God
has a way of governing by the what?
The anointing.
And in our fellowships and in our groups,
there's a place for the leaders, the Jehoshaphat,
to point the people.
There's a place.
But always there is the governing element.
Heaven reigns.
God rules.
The anointing comes.
And if I could...
I've pondered this.
I'll be very honest.
I've pondered it many times.
Why did he come upon Jehoshaphat?
Was Jehoshaphat a little more sensitive?
Was Jehoshaphat sitting there saying, Oh, Lord, I'll
be the cup.
I'll be the vessel.
What do you want?
We don't know.
But I believe Jehoshaphat, when God delegated...
Remember where we were the first morning?
God delegated to him.
He received what had been delegated.
And he stood to represent the voice and
to speak for it.
And it seems to me that as we
learn to keep our ear turned to the
Lord, we'll not all have the same burden
or the same sensitivity because God has given
different.
But those who have this must learn to
function according to the gift that becomes a
function, a place where I minister or where
my dedication unto the Lord is for the
needs of his people.
I have to be honest.
I've been waiting for months and actually several
years as to how to bring people more
and more.
I keep...
If we're having any longing to teach, it's
to wait for a way somehow to express
to folk that when they have that inner
urge, that registration, that sense of burden, whatever
it is, to dare to follow it.
Dare to follow it according to the proportion
of the measure of whatever you see.
And don't run around and try to find
somebody who will help you.
You'll get cut off.
It's good to counsel.
It's good to fellowship.
You might find somebody else who has a
similar burden.
But even then, if there is not the
same awareness in the Lord, this is one
of these places where the developing of the
burden and the anointing that's within begins to
bring one.
And a man's gift maketh room for him
and brings him before a great man eventually.
I mean, that's the hope.
It'll eventually blossom.
It'll eventually blossom from a little rosebud into
a full-blossomed flower.
How many of you can sense a little
bit of what I'm trying to say?
Do you sense it?
I have to say this.
I'm not just impelled by spirit, but I
believe the Lord wants me to encourage you,
brothers and sisters, if the anointing governs, if
the anointing governs and the anointing pulls back
the eyes and the anointing brings burden and
the anointing breaks yoke, what more of God's
children need to claim then is a personalizing
of what this anointing really means in their
life.
We're very precious folk, and I've known some
of you for seven or eight years.
But I've met some folk who've come into
anointing who are way ahead of you.
They haven't been on the way so long.
It's the anointing, folks.
You know I love you.
I wouldn't speak that way.
It's the anointing.
I'm afraid of just getting into rigid position
and saying, well, we'll position so-and-so
to be a responsible brother or an elder,
and so-and-so to be a responsible
brother and an elder, and he has the
position, and all of that, because Jehoshaphats and
elders and brothers are needed.
But if they who have been, as it
were, given position by anointing, they do not
recognize and do not know the anointing that
makes them to function, you're worse off.
You're worse off.
I wrote down, let me see, I was
burdened yesterday, and I'm afraid I'd forget it.
Let's see if I can find what I
wrote.
I'm just so keenly convinced that when God
plants us in, He gives position, then the
anointing awakens us to the position we have.
But just because I got a position or
God made me a hand or God made
me an eye does not mean that I
can move out from position.
What I wanted to say was the anointing
gives position, but the anointing actuates me in
the position.
Do you see that?
It actuates me.
You can have a position and sit down
sound asleep in the meeting.
I'm holding the fork.
Holding the fork.
It's a positional thing planted into, given.
Oh, when we know the way of livingness
and we know the way of the anointing
of the Lord, we are always open and
sensitive how to bring the meeting, keep the
meeting or keep everything functioning in life by
the Lord, not merely by position.
So, I think I see in this that
the little principle of the Lord and speaking
through Jehaziel to the group.
Be not afraid, nor dismayed, for the battle
is not yours, but God's.
And what does He do?
He doesn't give them the whole blueprint for
how they're going to win the battle the
next day.
The anointing delivers us into moment by moment
dependence.
We always think if I had the anointing,
it'd give me the vision of how to
do it without God.
God gives the direction, but He says just
this, tomorrow when you go out by the
cliff of Ziz.
We ought to read it, I guess.
Verse 16.
Tomorrow you go down against them.
Behold, they come up by the cliff of
Ziz, and ye shall find them at the
end of the brook before the wilderness of
Jeruel.
Ye shall not need to fight in the
battle.
Set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the
salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah
and Jerusalem.
Fear not, nor be dismayed.
Tomorrow go out against them, for the Lord
will be with you.
And I suppose if Jehoshaphat had been any
other kind of a king, he'd have held
it.
Who is this young upstart?
I'm the elder.
I'm the one positioned in this.
I'm the king.
I'll tell you, leadership really, really has to
be wrought on by God.
Leadership, wonderful, but it is that leadership has
to know and sense God's position and the
anointing.
He knew it was a word from the
Lord.
I don't think it was just the desperateness
of the emergency.
He knew that God was speaking, and it
says he bowed his head to the ground.
And all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem
fell before the Lord, worshipping the Lord.
And the Levites and the children of the
Kohathites and of the children of the Korhites
stood up to praise the Lord God of
Israel with a voice, a loud voice on
high.
What are they going to do?
Well, we don't know.
It's delivered into dependence, the best way I
know to say it.
Tomorrow when they go out, he puts the
choir out in the very front line, taking
volunteers for the choir.
Imagine the cliff here of Ziz.
When you come out here, you're going to
look over now into all the lowlands and
the valley.
He's going to put the choir right out
in the front.
The army's back here.
That's deliverance into dependence upon the Lord.
But Lord, what are you going to do?
Put the choir in front.
Wait and see.
Shall not need to fight.
Not going to have to war in this
battle.
Just stand still and see the Lord work.
And so we realize they rose early in
the morning and went forth into the wilderness
of Tekoa.
And as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and
said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants
of Jerusalem.
Believe in the Lord your God, so shall
ye be established.
Believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper.
And when he had consulted with the people,
he appointed singers unto the Lord, and that
should praise the beauty of holiness, as they
went out before the army and to say,
Praise the Lord, for his mercy endures forever.
Now it shifts back to who?
And I hear Jehoshaphat saying, All I had
to say was, Stand fast, shall not need
to fight.
Now the Spirit of the Lord is giving
the direction to who?
Jehoshaphat.
And the choir stands out singing praises to
the Lord.
And when they began to sing and to
praise, the Lord said, Ambushments.
I've done a lot of imagining at this
point.
Can't you see this silly choir, this lovely
choir, standing right out on the cliff edge
praising the Lord?
What wonderful targets they are.
Good thing they didn't have rifles in those
days.
Well, it didn't make any difference really because
God was in it all.
Standing right out of the cliff praising the
Lord.
Delivered into dependence.
Lord, I don't know what you're going to
do, but you're worthy of praise.
Hallelujah.
And I expect the Moabites and the Ammonites
began to argue.
Careful now, this is a trick.
We've heard about these people before.
They always have something up their sleeve.
And they began to argue among themselves.
And the argument got so intense that they
devoured one another.
They ended up that day by finishing off
one another.
And God's people standing up here, I don't
think they even yet knew what was taking
place.
Just praising the Lord.
Finally they went down and they picked up
all the spoil.
Took three days.
It was so great.
It's the anointing that governs.
God keeps ruling.
I thank God for body ministry.
I thank God that He's wakened us to
the fact that the elders go so far.
Jehaziel comes in.
He goes so far.
Jehoshaphat comes back.
He gets the Word from the Lord.
The whole choir has their place.
But it's all governed by what?
The anointing.
How far can we go?
No further than God gives us an eye
or an ear to hear and to see.
The anointing that governs.
Take one more picture.
Go over to the New Testament.
The book of Acts, chapter 13.
Here's a well-known portion beginning with verse
1.
Now there were in the church at Antioch
certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas, and it
names all of them.
Verse 2, it says, "...and as they ministered
to the Lord."
I do believe that if God has any
one way of making real to us that
the Holy Spirit has been poured out, ours
now is by the Spirit that's been given
that we minister back to the Lord.
Ours is primarily a ministry unto Him.
I don't know that this was the whole
church.
Apparently, the leading ministries there, the prophets and
the teachers, you have the main.
They were ministering to the Lord.
And once again, you sense something of the
anointing that begins to work.
In ministering to the Lord, the Holy Spirit
says, "...as they ministered and fasted, the Holy
Ghost said, Separate me, Barnabas and Saul, for
the work whereunto I have called them.
When they had fasted and prayed and laid
their hands on them, they sent them away.
So they being sent forth by the preachers
and prophets."
So they being sent forth by the what?
Holy Ghost departed.
The anointing governs.
In the midst of the group that day,
the Spirit spoke.
I don't know how it came about, but
I believe one of them, by the anointing
of the Spirit, said in prophecy, Separate me,
Barnabas and Saul, for the work.
I have to say to us this morning,
beloved, that the more we are alive to
the need for the anointing of the Lord,
the more we realize that it is God
who governs.
Body life, the attempt to put the chairs
in a circle and call it a New
Testament church or a New Testament function.
I have been in them.
We started this back in 1947 in Missouri.
But I have to tell you, it's the
deadest thing I know without the anointing.
I'd rather be in most denominational churches I
know.
At least they flap the wings a little
bit.
You know what I mean.
I have to say it honestly.
We wondered why folk who hear, Oh, there's
a special meeting.
The Lord's calling out a group of people.
We hear it's something, and so they come
in, join the circle.
But they stay one week or two weeks.
And you never see them again.
What is it that's necessary?
There must be a measure of life.
You can put the chairs in a circle
and throw the songbook away and get rid
of preachers and everything else and say this
is body life, this is body ministry.
It doesn't mean a thing.
I've seen it all over the country.
We've experienced some of it.
What is it that we have to have?
The anointing that governs.
It isn't that leadership's wrong.
It isn't that folk in position are wrong.
It's that those who are positioned or whatever
it is, we have to know how to
be sensitive to the anointing, the anointing governs.
All right.
That brings us to this in closing then.
If my dedication, if my dedication gets sharpened
and focused and God says that I can
come to the fulfillment of this dedication in
the midst of the body, in the place
that God's ordained, and so I begin to
realize that I need to have body life,
what do I do?
Lord, I've endured this as long as I
can.
I know I must, but I can't stand
the death.
I can't stand the lack of livingness or
whatever it is.
I'm stretching it this morning if I can,
beloved.
We've got to see that God's body is
a little bit bigger than we thought, first
of all.
It doesn't mean that the body just represents
the people that meet at 3rd Street and
4th Corner where so-and-so lives.
It's a little bit bigger than that, first
of all.
I don't care how much truth they have,
how much more clearly they may see, and
how much more they may stand for.
The enemy has trained all his targets on
the people who are dedicated to bring something
for God, and he's out to thwart and
hinder, disrupt, and destroy.
I know why, because it's there that God,
that God is going to bring something into
fullness, and he trains every target there.
This is what's happening all over the country.
Folk are crying out for things, but Lord.
And I just feel like all I can
say this morning is that we have to
be delivered into the dependence of the fact
that Lord, it's the anointing we need to
learn to recognize and be open to it
and honor what that anointing means in the
midst.
Oh, look back again.
You've been through Calvary.
You've been buried.
You've been resurrected.
You may even know you're seated with Christ
in heavenly places as a positional thing.
You may know about the body, but it's
upon this body that he pours out the
anointing, and it's there that the blessing, it's
there that God gives his working and his
approval.
Turn with me to Psalm 133 now.
Let's see if we can.
Psalm 133.
Verse 1.
Do you know, of course, that what we're
referring to here is that this outpouring, the
promise of the Father, the anointing of the
head, the Lord Jesus, and that which falls
down over the whole of the garment of
Aaron, pictured in the Old Testament, actually had
something of its reality in the history of
it that day when the Holy Spirit was
poured out.
And that's a once thing, you see.
So far as history is concerned, in God's
viewpoint, but now the personal entering into it
and all that it means, making it a
very personalized thing.
Someone says, have you received the baptism?
One person who knows this doctrine said, praise
God.
The moment I trusted Jesus, I was baptized
into the body.
I got it all at once.
You ever meet anybody like that?
And they're right, aren't they?
From a historical positional standpoint, you can spend
all your time arguing with them to no
end.
See, it's two sides of a coin again.
I know because I've been with them.
Then you meet another whole group who don't
know much about the position.
All they know about is their own little
personal baptism, which probably ought to be called
an anointing.
The teachers whom God's raising up are beginning
to use that term because they're finding that
it's far more scripturally appropriate.
Really.
I've been amazed the last two or three
months to see things coming out in the
magazines, the anointing.
It'd be far better.
But if somebody wants to talk about his
own little baptism, praise the Lord, they don't
argue.
But we're wanting to somehow get through to
us the fact that the important thing is
not just the historical aspect of it, but
to know the what?
The reality of this anointing.
I've been amazed to see some folks who
God has brought an unveiling.
The ISAB has been applied and the prejudices
and some of this has been broken.
They've entered into the reality of an anointing.
And shackles, things begin to fall away.
God will give you as much as he
can, as much reality as he can, but
he'll not impose against any prejudices we keep.
We say, okay, I'll go as far as
I can.
Isn't that wonderful?
He doesn't allow our prejudices.
Sometimes he overwhelms, we don't understand, but he
goes as far with us as he can.
But oh, one day the anointing will break
the yoke, the prejudices and the bondages.
And I just plead with us this morning
that if I see in a new way
what this represents, God is doing a far
bigger thing, a far bigger thing than we
realize.
And our promise has been to say, well,
we've got to meet over at such and
such a place because surely there's where the
place is or that's where the body is.
I'm not so sure.
You want to see what I believe?
Well, here we are, Psalm 133.
Behold how good and how pleasant it is
for brethren to meet at 33rd Street and
J Corner.
Because they've got the truth.
They've taken something, not necessarily.
What's the reality of it?
For brethren to dwell together in a doctrine,
not necessarily.
Unity of what?
Spirit.
Isn't that wonderful?
We've been here three, four days and we've
had no problems yet.
And the Lord's blessing and the Lord's working
has been, thank God, brethren dwell together in
unity.
It is like the precious ointment upon the
head that ran down upon the beard, even
Aaron's beard that went down to the skirts
of his garments as the dew of Hermon
and as the dew that descended upon the
mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord commanded the blessing even
life forevermore.
There He commanded the blessing.
There where people are what?
Not just congregated, but dwelling.
There the Lord commanded the blessing.
Oh, God's had a hard time with me.
You can get so strong in your conceptions
and you get invited over to such and
such a place where you see the Spirit
of the Lord bringing some people to dwell
together and He commands the blessing.
You say, Lord, you can't do it.
That's not right.
They don't believe right.
They're not clear.
They don't understand.
Lord, you can't do it.
But He does it.
He does it.
And I've had to throw up my hands
and say, Lord, You're God.
You're God.
And I back up and I say, Lord,
that's even more than other places I've seen.
You can't do it.
There He commands the blessing.
I believe God's in the shaking business today.
And the shaking that's going on is shaking
the things we didn't expect would get shaken.
We thought He was going to shake everybody
else, but not us.
Not our little conception.
Not our little interpretation.
God's going to reconstitute.
He's going to build something of His own
doing and His own working.
Lord, I don't know what it is, but
I long to just keep in tune with
You.
I'm aware.
I'm aware of certain things.
I just say in closing now, go back
to Deuteronomy a little bit.
We picked up where we were yesterday.
What is the place?
Some of you weren't here, but I will
try and bring you up.
Remember we were saying in Deuteronomy 6 that
He brought them out.
What was the promise?
I will bring you in.
He brought them out to bring them in,
but not only to bring them in, but
to possess.
Oh, let's see.
Pick it up.
Deuteronomy 8.
We'll start there.
All the commandments, verse 1, which I commanded
thee this day shall ye observe to do,
that ye may live and multiply and go
in and possess the land which the Lord
sware unto your fathers.
Now, I just believe, you see, that here
we have the promise that we were speaking
of yesterday.
Here is Egypt, and as they come out,
the promise is that He will take them
in to possess.
But they went through a place here that
we called the proving, didn't we?
What was this proving ground?
It was the wilderness.
He brought them through it, the proving.
How long do you have to be proved?
Well, I've read different folks.
Some say that they could have gone straight
across in 40 days.
I like the 40 number because that's the
number of testing.
Forty days, right?
They could have gone through.
I'd like to believe that God has 40
-day testing, but you know what happened.
They came up to Kadesh Barnea.
They looked over.
They listened to all the reports of those
who came back, and they wandered around.
Instead of 40 days, it was 40 years.
How long?
One of my friends keeps saying they looked
over.
They failed to dare to go, and at
one point he says, take another lap around
the mountain.
Take another lap, Vern.
You're not ready to go in.
Take another lap.
You see, it's a strange thing, but this
thing of God proving the heart and God
bringing a life to the place.
When I used to hire some teachers back
in school, I'd have someone come and say,
well, I've had 15 years of experience, and
after a while, I got pretty pointed with
folk, and I'd say, I hope that's true.
I wonder if you might have had one
year's experience 15 times.
You know what I mean?
I'm afraid that's true of most people.
They just make another lap.
Same thing all over again.
Never learning and never coming to the knowledge
of the truth.
Another lap.
Forty years.
Forty times.
And it could have all been learned in
what?
Forty days.
Read on.
And thou shalt remember all the way which
the Lord thy God led thee these forty
years in the wilderness to humble thee and
to prove thee to know what was in
thine heart whether thou wouldest keep his commandments
or no.
And he humbled thee and suffered thee to
hunger and fed thee with manna which thou
knewest not.
Neither did thy fathers know that he might
make thee know that man does not live
by bread alone but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord
doth man live.
Well, you go on into the ninth chapter
and he talks about going into possess.
And finally we get over to chapter 12.
I believe that this thing of the proving
of hearts, all of this that's going on
when we look back at Calvary and God
begins to work, but there finally comes a
time when we see that it's in Christ
and Christ here represents all the Canaan in
the land.
It's in the land.
It's when I come to see that I
am in Christ, I'm positioned in him.
He brought the men, now the possessing and
the making real of all that's involved in
the land and in Christ.
And so you'll notice in chapter 12 we
read, These are the statutes and judgments which
ye shall observe to do in the land,
which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth
thee to possess it all the days that
ye live upon the earth.
Verse 4, And ye shall not do so
unto the Lord your God, but unto the
place which the Lord your God shall choose
out of all your tribes to put his
name there, even unto his habitation shall ye
seek, and thither thou shalt come.
Now read verse 8.
I'm trying to go through quickly.
And ye shall not do after all the
things that we do here this day every
man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.
You come into the land, you can't just
say, Oh, goody, this is wonderful.
I'll take this.
Another says, This is my mountain.
Another says, I like this river.
I'm going to plow this for God.
Another says, I'm dedicated to this city.
How many of you have ever seen people
in their dedication, they say, Oh, there's so
much to do.
Where will I start?
Roll up the sleeves and away they go.
This is the typical sort of dedication because
the need constitutes the burden and all that
they see.
And so we begin to see that once
we're in Christ, we come into a very
restricting kind of a dedication.
Once they get into the land, once I'm
positioned in the body, I find my place.
And in functioning, I don't come in and
lead the whole service, sing five songs, pray
five prayers, conduct the whole thing while all
the people sit back and say amen.
You follow what I'm trying to say?
And the principle that is governed, and here
you get this little verse, Every man whatsoever
is right in his own eyes.
For ye are not yet, as yet come
to the rest and to the inheritance which
the Lord your God giveth you.
So on.
But when ye go over Jordan and dwell
in the land which the Lord your God
giveth you to inherit, and when he giveth
you rest from all your enemies round about
so that ye dwell in safety, then there
shall be a place which the Lord your
God shall choose to cause his name to
dwell there.
Oh.
He's gotten us into Christ.
He's finding us that we are, we are
in Canaan and all of this represents, so
many people have thought Canaan was getting to
heaven.
And of course we've known now that Canaan
doesn't speak of heaven.
I hope they know battle and war in
heaven like they did in Canaan.
They've moved into the land.
They're beginning, they're in, they're beginning to possess.
We've moved into Christ.
Positioned there.
But now we get a glimpse, you see,
of all that this dedication means when it's
sharpened.
All right, take verse 13.
Take heed to thyself, that thou offer not
thy burnt offerings in every place that thou
seest.
What is the burnt offering?
The burnt offering is the offering of dedication.
Tomorrow we get into this whole principle of
our dedication.
What is the burnt offering?
Well, from the beginning it was the giving
of my whole self and burning up for
God.
So he says, now, don't dedicate.
Don't offer your burnt offering just in every
place.
But, verse 14, in the place which the
Lord shall choose.
I'm covering too much and I know you're
reading all that's involved and I'm just trying
the Lord to give us a little spiritual
picture.
How much our dedication then needs to be
rightly defined.
What is it?
According to your mercy, Lord.
You open my ear.
You apply the blood.
But over the blood, there was always the
what?
The oil that was applied.
It is one thing to have a redeemed
ear.
It's another thing to have an anointed ear.
One thing to have redeemed hands.
It's another thing to have the gift that
works within develop into an anointed doing and
an anointed going.
Well, you see, we've got such a big
subject.
You just have to see the Lord's thread
all the way through.
Enlightened dedication, proved dedication, focused dedication.
I've been caught for some years with this,
folks.
You just can't give yourselves to everything.
Strangers devour and dissipate our strength.
Enemy knows how to do all of this.
But when our dedication gets focused, we say,
oh God, you placed me in the body.
You want me to function in the body
to learn that it's by the spiritual, the
enablement that you give.
Lord, here's a need in someone.
And the burden begins to grow.
You develop an ability to show mercy.
Some of you dear sisters, God's burdening, you're
showing mercy.
And each time he quickens it to you
in a new way, and you see something
happening, it brings a new cheerfulness in showing
mercy.
God burdens the brother.
How to begin to rule, help bring things
in order.
Some men would never see it in a
thousand years.
But some men can't go into any situation.
But what something within them says, oh God,
there's a new order.
Things have to be done right.
What is it?
The burden of the Lord.
Hollow it.
Let God blossom.
Let the anointing come upon the little bud
and let it blossom.
Some of you get a burden for someone.
And you see that they're headed a little
bit the wrong way.
And in taking some wrong steps, the burden
of the Lord comes and you feel you
just must go and speak to them.
And you exhort them by the Lord.
Brother, I've been that way.
I've been that way.
I just want to share a word of
counsel with you.
You learn to exhort by the anointing.
It's the burden that works within.
It's a normal, sort of a natural outflow.
But it's the anointing as we learn to
walk with the Lord.
The anointing governs.
Anointing works.
Oh, does it come in a whole group?
Where does it come?
Oh, it'll come personally when I'm one with
the Lord, union with Him, or wherever He
can get a few people together in unity.
He says it's safe there.