We've been looking at Ephesians as a manual
on developing your full potential in Christ.
We believe that it is his intention, not
that we should merely be saved somehow, but
triumphantly.
Not that we should just make it through,
but that we should have that which we
can lay at the feet of the Lord
Jesus, to have a crown of rejoicing that
we can cast at his feet.
And therefore, the epistle to the Ephesians, in
my judgment at least, is that handbook.
How to develop your full potential in Christ.
We saw yesterday, as we considered the first
segment, verses 1 through 17, that the Ephesian
believers were partakers of his grace.
How marvelous is that grace.
How wonderful it is to realize that as
Father, God purposed our salvation before the foundation
of the world.
You see that in verses 4 and 5.
He hath chosen us in him before the
foundation of the world that we should be
holy, without blame, before him in love, having
predestinated us under the adoption of children by
Jesus Christ to himself, according to his, the
good pleasure of his will.
So God has purposed, even before he made
the world, our salvation.
And in that purpose, he has anticipated everything
we're going to need.
Everything that's necessary for us to be everything
that he's planned.
Holy and without blame before him in love
implies that there's going to be victory, and
there's going to be strength, and wisdom, and
guidance, and absolutely everything that he anticipated we
would need is in his purpose.
Then the next section, you have verses 7
and 8, have to do with that which
the Son, God the Son provided.
Now he only provided that which the Father
purposed, but everything that the Father purposed.
In whom we have redemption through his blood,
that is the Lord Jesus Christ, the forgiveness
of sins, according to the riches of his
grace, wherein he hath abounded toward us in
all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto
us the mystery of his will, according to
his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in
himself.
Here again, the Lord Jesus Christ provided that
redemption, and everything that we need to be
everything he's planned is included in that redemptive
provision.
But we are now dealing with two factors,
you see.
First, that which before the foundation of the
world the Father purposed, and then that which
in the fullness of time the Son provided.
But we're not left to our devices.
Notice that in the dispensation of the fullness
of time he might gather together in one
all things in Christ, both which are in
heaven and which are on earth, even in
him, in whom also we have obtained an
inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of
him who worketh all things after the counsel
of his own will, that we should be
to the praise of his glory who first
trusted in Christ, in whom he also trusted
after that he heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation, in whom also
after that he believed he were sealed with
that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the
earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of
the purchased possession unto the praise of his
glory.
Now, the Father purposed our salvation, the Son
provided it, and the Holy Spirit, God in
his omnipresence, wants to make real to us
and in us, experientially real, all that the
Father purposed and all that the Son provided.
Now one of the most serious indictments that
you find in the epistle to the Hebrews
is the fact that they would tread under
their feet that which the Father had purposed.
They counted it as having no worth and
no value and not important to them.
What a tragedy it is that people do
get the idea somehow that the whole of
God's intention was to save us from hell.
Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he
shall save his people from hell and take
them to heaven when they die.
Is that what it says?
Well, I must be reading from the reverse
vision.
That often gets in the way, I find,
not only with me but with others.
No, that isn't what he said.
He said thou shalt call his name Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their
sins.
God's purpose is to make us like his
Son.
The Lord Jesus therefore was willing to become
what we were so that we could be
made what he is.
And if we understand that, then we understand
how serious is the indictment to the Hebrews
that they would tread under their feet as
having no worth or meaning or value that
which the Lord Jesus Christ had purchased with
his blood.
They counted it as having no significance.
And we would not be among that number,
certainly if we're wise we don't want to
be so included, rather that we should treasure
for ourselves everything that the Father purposed and
the Son provided.
Then we saw in the 15th verse and
thereafter that the Apostle, having established for the
believer brethren at Ephesus the something of the
nature of his grace, then proceeds to tell
them how they are to avail themselves of
this ministry of the Spirit.
He declared that he prayed for them.
Isn't it interesting that the believers at Ephesus
got onto Paul's prayer list just about the
time people would get off of ours.
And then we say isn't it great God
saved Mary, now let's pray for Bill.
Well that's not the way the Apostle did.
He said we're so pleased to hear that
God has saved you, now we put you
on our prayer list.
Well that isn't just the way we thought
about it, was it?
But it's the way the Lord Jesus does
it.
He says I'm not praying for the world,
I'm praying for them thou has given me
out of the world.
And the Apostle said I heard of your
faith in the Lord Jesus, so now I
put you on my prayer list and I'm
praying for you.
What is he praying for?
That the God of our Lord Jesus, the
Father of glory, will give unto them the
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
of Christ.
That their eyes of their understanding may be
open, that they may know.
Now in a sense we begin with our
continued study at this point in the 18th
verse that we may know there are three
things that he cites here that he wants
us to know.
They must be very inclusive.
They must have dimensions far beyond the mere
sequence of words.
There must be a something we he implies
and and we can infer that it corresponds
to what the Father purposed, what the Son
provided, and now that the Spirit of God
is going to illumine to our hearts as
well we trust as he did to the
hearts of the Church at Ephesus.
So notice then in Ephesians 1 beginning with
verse 18.
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened that
you may know what is the hope of
his calling and what the riches of the
glory of his inheritance in the saints and
what is the exceeding greatness of his power
to us were to believe.
Three things and these three things will I
believe give to us some idea of the
scope of God's grace.
That we might know what is the hope.
Now word hope really is expectation.
Hope has been defined by one of the
dictionaries as being an expectation, a valid expectation
based upon and legitimate grounds.
Is it going to be sunshiny today?
Well I hope so.
Well I don't really know anything about it
but I hope so.
Are you going to get a promotion this
year?
Well I hope so.
They don't know anything about but we hope
so.
Now that's not the manner in which the
word is used in the New Testament.
Not here.
Not something that has the prospect of not
happening because it's just wishful thinking.
This is a valid expectation based upon reasonable
grounds.
God had had considerable foundation for his hope.
That hope that we had.
Now notice again it's not only a reasonable
valid expectation based upon reasonable grounds but it
is the hope of his calling.
In most of the commentaries I have on
this portion of Ephesians I find that following
a tendency that's very common to my heart
and I'm sure to that of the commentators
that it sounds something like this.
That we might know what is the hope
that we have been called to.
Well obviously the scripture has a great deal
to say about that and we're very interested
in that.
But just because that's the natural tendency it
doesn't seem quite right that we should twist
the text, the original text, to make it
fit our convenience.
I think the text really says precisely what
the King James from which I'm reading says.
What is it?
The hope of his calling.
Now did the Lord Jesus Christ have a
call?
Of course he did.
Where did it begin?
Well it began before the foundation of the
world, didn't it?
It began back there when God, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, this God who is loved,
yearned for with an eternally, with eternal yearning,
yearned for someone upon whom he, God in
his trinity, could pour his love.
You see in a sense love is incomplete
without an object, without someone that needs it,
that understands it, that can enjoy it, and
can return it in such a way as
to satisfy the heart of the one that's
originally given the love.
Now the only being that the Bible says
that God loves is man.
He made other beings, we don't know a
great deal about them.
He made Lucifer.
The scripture doesn't say God ever loved Lucifer.
He made Cherubim and Seraphim, and I've accumulated
a world of ignorance about both.
I really don't know much about Cherubim or
Seraphim, but I know one thing.
The Bible doesn't say that God loved them,
and it does not say either in what
sense Cherubim and Seraphim differ from man.
But the only being that God has said
that he made in his image and in
his likeness is man.
And the only being that God has said
he loves is man.
And in a sense, perhaps the reason is
that because we can only love that which
is like us.
You know we're accustomed to using the word
love rather loosely, aren't we?
You've heard people say, we love our new
house, or I love that shade of blue,
or well I just love this new car,
or where I come from, I love southern
fried chicken.
You know, chicken and cars and houses and
colors can't understand and appreciate what's being poured
on them.
And they don't need it to be complete,
and they can't return it.
So as a manner of speaking, we have
abused the word love when we so use
it.
And I'd like to rescue the little word,
shake it out of all of this abuse,
and pick it up and leave it so
that it's used only when it's appropriately used.
That's in two directions, to love people who
are like you, and love God in whose
image you are made.
And that's the only time and place to
use the word love.
All these other things, like, enjoy, appreciate.
Some other word, please, let's keep this word
love so that it has some meaning when
we really need it.
Not wear it out in the useless and
the trivial, but so when we come to
want to actually express something, we have a
trite and meaningless symbol.
Now, God had in his heart a great
yearning and longing.
God as father wanted children, and God as
son, as bridegroom yearned for a bride.
Someone with whom he could share all that
he is, and all that he has, and
all that he's doing and wants to do.
They say that one reason men work hard,
one of the primary drives of American and
European energies and activities, is so that they
can please the woman in their life, their
wife, or whoever it might be.
But this is one of the primary driving
forces in human experience.
Men work so that they can have that
which will please and satisfy that woman in
their life for whom they're working.
And we understand something of this.
We understand that God made the world as
he beautifully, as he did, so that he
might have something that would please his beloved.
As father, he wanted to have that which
would please his children.
As bridegroom, he wanted to have that which
would please his bride.
And so he made the world, and all
that's in it, in that way, and for
that purpose.
Now, this ancient longing, this ancient call, included
the fact that this one, made in his
image and made in his likeness, had to
be given certain qualities if he was to
be the object of his love.
I remember years ago at the University of
Minnesota, a student said, why did God ever
make man in the first place if he
knew that man was going to do all
the cruel things that he's doing?
This was back in the Second World War,
and word had come of some of the
atrocities that had grown out of that time
of carnage.
He said, why did God ever make man
so that he could sin?
Well, that's not an immature, childish question that
should be passed off with a flip of
the tongue, or the finger, or a toss
of the head.
It's an important question, and it's one that's
involved here in his calling.
After all, what is sin?
I think that we've got two definitions that
fit close together, and we should see them
briefly in this context.
First, what's temptation?
Well, to find out what's temptation, you've got
to find out how God made man.
When he made us, he said of the
man that he had made, it is good.
And we go back and we look at
that creature that he had made in his
image and said was good, and we find
that he gave to that being, to man,
certain drives, or urges, or propensities, or appetites,
you call them what you will.
They're there.
For instance, he knew that we would be
nourished by the repeated intake of food, so
he wired us in such a way that
our computer tells us now and then that
we're hungry.
We call that computer report an appetite.
We call it hunger.
And God put it into us so that
when there's a need for food, our systems
rings a lot of bells and lights go
on, so to speak, and say you better
get some because we're running out down here.
This urge or drive for hunger was the
way God put us together.
It's the way he wired us up.
And then he knew that we learn in
sequence.
We're microcosms of God in his image, but
on a miniature scale.
God is infinite and we're finite, and God
knows everything at simultaneously.
He never learns anything new, and we never,
we don't know simultaneously.
We only learn sequentially or in sequence.
We learn, for instance, one day in school
that two and two makes four.
We think we've mastered arithmetic.
We go back the next day and she
tells us two and three makes five, and
she's thrown us all out of gear and
spoiled our whole relationship to arithmetic.
Because that's how we learn.
One thing one day and another the next,
until we go on and on and on
and either quit or just decide we've learned
all we want to learn.
But whatever we know today, we acquired item
by item and fact by fact.
Now there's a hunger that's in us that
God put there.
It's that hunger that's expressed by usually one
of the first words your child learns.
Why?
Why mommy?
What's this?
Why mommy?
Why?
That is God's little bell ringing in there
in the computer saying there's so much to
know and you've got to learn all you
can as fast as you can.
Mother prays, oh Heavenly Father, I don't want
my child to be dumb and not able
to speak.
But six months later she's saying, Lord, couldn't
you slow him down a little?
It's why all the time he's getting a
little bit, a little bit heavy.
I don't want him to be retarded, but
just retired a few whys.
No, it's not going to work that way.
God wired that little tyke to learn and
put into him a drive for knowledge, a
drive for sex.
God made Adam and Eve and out from
that pair would come this beloved, these children
that would satisfy his father's heart, this bride
that would satisfy the bridegroom's heart.
So he gave to us a drive or
an urge for sex.
Then God had made such a wonderful world
he gave to us an urge or drive
for or hunger for beauty and for pleasure.
He wanted us to enjoy what he had
made.
Then he intended us to serve as the
lords of and rulers of his creation.
So he gave to us this drive to
govern and to take charge and to control.
So for, because he was a protecting, caring
father, he gave to us an appetite for
security.
So with the drive for knowledge and for
hunger and for food and for sex and
for security and for pleasure and for authority,
he looked at the man into whom he'd
put all of these and he said, it
is good.
So don't talk about the appetites being bad.
You malign the creator when you do that.
What happened?
What was the difficulty?
Into the garden came the serpent.
And what was, what did he do?
He tempted Eve.
Now what's temptation?
I've said all of that to say this.
What's temptation?
Well let me give you a definition.
Temptation is the proposition presented to your intellect
to satisfy a good appetite in a bad
way.
Now there wasn't anything wrong with her appetite
for food or pleasure or for even status,
secure authority.
God had given her these.
What was wrong with the whole proposition?
Lucifer was proposing to her that she satisfy
these good appetites in a way that God
had forbidden.
That's temptation.
Now what's sin?
Sin is the decision of the will to
satisfy a good appetite in a bad way.
Now if God had made man so that
he couldn't sin, then he would have had
to have made man without an imagination, because
it's at that level that we're tempted.
Mentally visualizing satisfying good appetite in a bad
way.
And secondly, he would have had to have
made man without the ability to decide to
satisfy a good appetite in a bad way.
And in thus man would have been a
mere automaton, a machine.
Can you imagine a father away as I
was for years as an evangelist and in
Bible teaching ministry coming back to my little
family and seeing my children there now pretty
well grown up.
It's not nearly as appropriate as it once
was, but can you imagine my having to
hypnotize my children until my mind control theirs
and then to give them orders to come
over, stand in front of me, put your
arms around my neck, place your lips upon
my cheek, say I love you daddy.
Can you see the little automatons march over
like robots and go through that motion?
Can you imagine that such a performance for
a moment would satisfy the need in a
lonely daddy's heart?
Nor would it have been worthwhile for God
to have waited from eternity past to have
man turn out to be an automaton, a
machine that marched over and said God I
love you.
No, he had to make man capable of
saying I hate you.
I won't.
So that when he said I love you,
I will.
That love, that obedience had meaning to the
heart of God.
Now anticipating man's action, the Lord Jesus Christ
became the lamb slain from before the foundation
of the world.
He wanted the beloved so much.
He yearned with such an ancient yearning and
longing.
So deep was the desire of the father
for children, of the bridegroom for a bride,
that he was prepared to make man as
he had to make him if he was
to be child and bride to God, even
so that he could sin.
And the Lord Jesus as it were said
father I am prepared to have that bride
and for thou that thou canst have the
children to be to die to become what
they are so that they can truly be
remade in our image and in our likeness.
And so before he ever made man the
Lord Jesus Christ became the lamb slain before
the world was founded.
Now there was an expectation that he had.
There was a in the fullness of time
the Lord Jesus, the one who ruled the
universe, the one who by whose outstretched hand
and scepter the world had been created by
whose spoken word stars had leaped into existence
and found their place and stayed in their
course, this one God the eternal son in
the fullness of time took off the diadem
of his glory and he put it down.
He took off the robes of his majesty
and he folded them up in the scepter
of his power and he laid it by.
And the next moment he answered the call,
the eternal call in the heart of triune
God for a beloved.
What was it?
It was an answer to a call that
had been there from before the world was
made and he was off on that journey.
That journey into time and one cell in
the body of Mary was quickened by the
Holy Ghost who overshadowed her.
God in his omnipresence compressed the eternal son
by whom the world was made to join
one cell invisible saved by a microscope so
that that life which was conceived in Mary
and born of Mary was none other than
Emmanuel, God come in the flesh, who'd taken
upon himself our form and likeness.
He'd made us in his image and now
he was made in our image with a
body like unto our body, with all the
limitations of it, with all the appetites and
urges and drives of it.
As he made it when he said it
was good and that babe which was born
of Mary was truly God man, God come
in the flesh.
The council said he was very God of
very God for there were those who doubted
his deity.
He was very man of very man for
there were those who doubted his humanity.
And then he grew, increased in wisdom and
stature and in favor with God and man
in response to his call, the call of
his heart.
In his ministry he declared, I have no
fear that my coming is in vain.
The Father has told me that if I
will declare what he's given to him, to
me to declare, that all that the Father's
given me shall come unto me.
This wasn't a speculation.
This wasn't just a fantasy trip.
When the Lord Jesus came he knew that
there would be those who would receive his
word and would believe on him.
And so there can be no hope in
this regard because he has been told by
the Father that all that the Father has
given him shall come to him.
But there is another element that's involved in
this text, the hope of his calling, the
reasonable expectation based upon valid grounds.
What is that?
Well, if it is to be established as
a fact that there would be those who
would come, who would repent of their sins,
and who would trust in his name and
would be born into his family through faith
in his finished work and faith in him,
then it must be that this hope of
his calling has to do with the kind
of people that are being written to in
this epistle.
Now what kind of people are they?
Saints at Ephesus, faithful in Christ Jesus, of
whose faith the apostle could say he gave
thanks, for he saw it certified with a
hallmark of genuineness that couldn't be counterfeited, love
unto all the saints.
So the hope of his calling must have
to do with believers.
It must be therefore something that a believer,
someone that is in Christ, can do.
Privilege of importance.
So we see something of the place.
Now we need to get a little look
at the people.
What kind of people is he talking about?
Oh, some might say he's talking about Jews
that have a heritage in Israel and are
the first generation.
You can't mean me, because he says, and
so are you.
So he is saying this, look, nothing of
your past is going to interfere with my
plan for your future.
Isn't that great?
Isn't it wonderful to know that somebody loves
you when he knew the worst about you?
You know, if most of our friends knew
about us what God and we know, we
wouldn't have many friends.
The only thing is that if we knew
about them what they and God know, they
wouldn't have us as friends either, because, or
we'd all be friends because the way it
ought to be, because we would know we
were woven on the same loom.
Maybe the wolf was a little different, but
boy, the wolf is the same.
I know you, friend.
You can't kid me.
I know you, because I know me.
And I know that we were dead in
trespasses and sins, and you who were.
So he's talking about folks just like us,
who walk according to the course of this
world, according to the prince and the power
of the air, that very same spirit that
now works in the children of disobedience.
That's who we were.
And those are the very people that we're
going to witness to and minister to and
see brought out of the bondage of Satan
into the liberty of the children of God.
Now do you see why it's so important
for us to understand that the way he
wants to work is for us to present
our bodies to him so he can live
in us, and that the reason that he
wants to work is so through us he
can bring these that are still in satanic
bondage, and every lost person is, into that
place where they're part of this inheritance for
Christ, his inheritance in the saints, and that
the power is the very power that raised
up Christ from the dead, and our position
is seated with Christ?
You see, once we were dead in our
sins, we walked according to the course of
this world.
So we know the plight of these that
are unsaved.
We know the power of darkness.
We also know that any effectiveness is not
because we were better than others, not that
because we live differently than do others.
No, not at all.
We know that there was nothing good in
us, nothing that called forth his love, that
God had to love us when we were
utterly unlovely, and had nothing to commend us
to him, and he had to be willing
to accept us when he knew the worst
about us.
You know, I'm always surprised what I find
out about me.
I'm kind of surprised what I find out
about you too.
Shouldn't be, but I am, because it's, you
know, it's a little hard to get the
idea, thinking we've been around so long, that
maybe somehow the warp is a little different.
Then God lets a circumstance come, and we
get a good glimpse under the cover, you
know, and see that the seed of every
sin that anyone's ever committed is, and there's
nothing that anyone has ever done that we
weren't capable of doing, students still would be,
but for his grace, and that there's no
one worse than we are, or could have
been, and the only reason we didn't do
what others have done is because we didn't
have incentive.
We certainly had capacity.
Now, if you understand yourself, if you've ever
seen yourself the way God sees you, then
you're going to identify with these people to
whom God is speaking, and he's saying, now
listen, don't kid yourself.
Don't fool yourself.
I know you.
I know all about you.
There's nothing you'll ever find out about yourself
that'll surprise me.
I've loved you when I knew the worst
about you.
There's nothing that you'll ever find out about
yourself that's going to make me change my,
the fact that I love you.
I just don't want any pride around here.
I just don't want any confidence in the
flesh.
I just don't want you to think you're
better than anybody else.
I just don't, I want you to know
that if you are, it's only because of
me and not because of you.
Is that hard to take?
Is it pretty hard for us to say,
looking forward for these 27 years out in
New Guinea, oh, look at the things they
did.
Yeah, but the only reason you weren't doing
them is because an accident made you born
here instead of there, but you've got all
the capacity they have and nothing they've done
you couldn't have done.
And it doesn't take any more of God's
grace to save one of those people than
it does to save you.
That's the astounding thing.
That's the amazing thing.
So what he is saying is this, let's
be done with this idea.
You know, I can't do that.
I've never done it.
Oh, no one like me to do that.
The Lord Jesus, you think he really wants
to live in need?
Oh, if you knew what kind of a
life I lived before.
Well, if it was anything different or worse
than the dear people up at Ephesus, I'll
be surprised because if they hadn't done it,
it just wasn't, just couldn't be done.
That's all.
They did it, they went through from A
to Z and they did it backwards as
well as forwards.
And he's saying about them, listen, your past
is not going to interfere with my plan.
There's nothing you've ever done that's going to
keep you from fulfilling what I have purposed
for you.
I want to live in you, dear child.
I want you to present yourself to me
so that I can live in you.
I want to use you to bring the
loss to myself.
I want the very power that raised me
from the dead to flow through your personality
so that you can be an instrument in
my hands to see people brought out of
death into life.
That's what I want from you.
I want you to just let me live
my life in you.
And if you'll do that, then it's going
to be possible for you to labor with
me and share with me in enforcing my
victory over a defeated foe, over all the
forces of darkness that I've defeated.
Now, isn't it interesting that what he has
put here in germ form in this first
chapter and the second, he's enlarged on elsewhere?
Let's go, for instance, shall we?
I've taken you to the verses here, the
second part of this first chapter, put it
far above all principality.
Let's go over to chapter six for just
a minute and see the implications of it
in chapter six and verse ten.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord
and in the power of his might.
Put on the whole armor of God.
Well, he already said your position is seated
with him in the heavens.
Now he said you're in earth.
So you're to put on the armor.
Put on the, when you're down here in
time, and we live in two places at
once, you know, seated in the heavenlies in
Christ and Christ living in us here.
Now he says put on the whole armor
of God so that you may be able
to stand.
And I'm always amused and gratified when I
realize that that word stand is that, you
know, you know Greek.
It's amazing how much you know.
Have you ever heard the word antihistamine?
That's the very word from the Greek text
here, antihistamine.
Exactly, just picked right up out of the
text.
And having done all antihistamine, come against so
as to cause it to stop.
And having done all to stand, stand therefore,
having your loins girded about with truth, having
on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet
shod with the preparation of the gospel of
peace, and above all taking the shield of
faith wherewith you shall be able to quench
all the fiery dark of the wicked.
Well, we're seated above principalities and powers, aren't
we?
And taking the helmet of salvation and the
sword of the spirit which is the word
of God.
So here he's telling us that we're engaged
in a warfare.
Back in verse 12, we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this
world, against wicked spirit in high places.
So, verses 20, 21, 22 tie in with
Ephesians 6, 10 through 18.
It's one, the germ of the one is
fulfilled in the other.
Now let's look for a moment at the
implications.
Some weeks before coming here, Dr. Nathan Bailey
wrote a letter to all the assigned speakers
in the Lyons summer camp meetings such as
this, and asked that if in the course
of our ministry, we would definitely bear in
mind the need for workers, the need for
workers.
And as I thought of that, and in
preparation for this ministry, my heart went back
to that time I told you about the
other night when I was at the seminary
and took spiritual inventory.
I started to study the word, and I
said, Lord, from here on it has to
be real.
And I was felt led to take that
verse in Matthew 9, pray the Lord of
the harvest that he will thrust out laborers
into the harvest field.
And I started to parse it in Greek.
I tried to take every word and get
the meaning of it, and the construction, and
the form of it.
And this is what I found out there
in Matthew 9, where it says, pray the
Lord of the harvest that he will thrust
out laborers.
I found out that the construction there in
the original is so that you would have
to translate it this way, pray ye the
Lord of the harvest in order that he
will be able to thrust out laborers.
And I was astounded, and I couldn't trust
my own exegesis.
So I went to a seminary professor, a
man whose father worked with my father in
West Palm Beach, and I said, Doctor, I've
done this study, and would you please look
at it and tell me whether it's correct?
So a couple of days later, I went
back to his office and picked it up,
and he said, it's correct, but I wouldn't
touch it with a 10-foot pole, because
the implications of it are something I don't
even want to find out about.
But now listen, pray ye the Lord of
the harvest in order that he may be
able to thrust out laborers.
I remember going into a village on the
Sudan-Ethiopian border, and there was a witch
doctor at the edge of the village, and
he had a woman about 16, I suppose,
and going through part of the adult initiation
rites, and her back was being cicatrized.
In this tribe, they had elaborate diagrams that
were put on the back, and on the
front, on the breasts, and so on, of
the women at each stage in their development,
and acceptance into the tribal life.
And as I came in, here was this
girl sitting there with no anesthesia at all,
just sitting there, and he had a spear
blade, just a dirty old spear blade that
had been worn down and sharpened.
And the witch doctor had taken all out
the shaft, and he held it, and he
sharpened the point.
There was a stone there, and he would
wipe the off on, the blood off on
his thigh or on the ground, and then
he would take this, and she'd just sit
there, and he'd carve into the back, and
then he'd open up the crack, the cut,
and reach over and take soot off of
a cooking pot, and put it in, and
close it, because that was going to make
it heal with a scar if she didn't
die of infection.
And it was just as though that place
was charged with evil.
Charged with evil.
The old chief had come out.
Our vice sent a boy on in, and
the old chief came out to see me.
And as he came, he said, why have
you been so long?
Why?
Why didn't you come sooner?
I said, what did you mean?
Why?
He said, when I was a little boy
like this, and we always measure this way,
when I was a little boy like this,
my father took me over to the town
where the sun sets, where the government is,
Malachal in upper Nile province.
And there he said, I heard a man
like you.
I've never seen one with face like yours
since then.
And I heard him talk the sweetest talk.
And it spoke to my heart just like
honey, about God, about God who made the
world, about God who loved us, and God.
And he said he'd come and tell my
people.
My father died, and I became chief, and
now look at me.
And there was a man on each side
as he moved with a stick, and they
held him up as he came out to
see me.
Why have you been so long?
We've waited for you.
He said, now you're here.
And we walked by, and he said, this
is one of my people.
And there was the witch doctor carving not
just like, just evil, was evil, was tangible.
You could feel it.
And in my eyes, it was almost as
though Satan could be seen.
Oh, there was the witch doctor, there was
the girl, there was I, but it was
almost as though you could see the prince
of darkness laughing into the face of Jesus
Christ, saying you made her.
You made her in your image.
You made her in your likeness.
You told your church to pray.
You told your church to care.
You told them that you'd live in them.
You told them that you're seated with them,
and they don't care.
And I could cut her, and mark her,
and scar her, and brand her.
She's mine.
No, she knows you, but she doesn't accept
you.
You can't get your people to care.
He's waited.
So as I was studying this verse, pray
you the Lord of the harvest, in order
that he may be able to thrust out
labors.
All I could see was someone coming and
standing, as it were, at that village, and
saying, Father, I was once one of Satan's
servants.
I was once bound in darkness.
I was once dead in trespasses.
I walked according to the course of this
world.
I was like this.
And your grace found me, and your grace
saved me.
And I'm washed in the blood of your
Son, and I'm born into your family.
And now, Father, I plead for this, my
sister.
I plead for these, my brethren.
And I ask you in the name of
your Son, who conquered this defeated foe, to
send in permission.
Send the witness.
This is the implication.
Pray ye the Lord of the harvest.
How?
From what position?
Though we once were dead in trespasses and
sins, we once walked according to the course
of this world.
But now our risen Lord, with whom we've
been raised and seated, who's living in us,
has put us here to enforce his victory
over that defeated foe, to get the laborers
in and to get the people released.
Do you see it?
I was in a little church down in
Dalton, Georgia.
The pastor had heard me speak at Chattanooga,
and he'd asked me to come for a
week's missionary conference, which is what we did
in those days.
And as the week went on with the
morning study, something like this, and then the
evening study, one morning I felt led of
the Lord, just asked the people, saying, tomorrow
when you come we're going to stay through
the noon hour and fast and pray for
the week that God wants to do here.
And I'd been talking about this to some
degree.
And the pastor said with tears in his
eyes, I have been pastor here for seven
years.
This church has been here for 50 years,
and there's never been one missionary go from
it.
There's never been one to carry the gospel
of Christ to the ends of the earth.
It's a missionary Baptist church.
But not one life has been from this
church, though the word has been preached, to
carry the gospel.
And he said, could it be, could it
be that Satan has bound the young people
in this church and bound the families, should
we not pray this way for our people?
Well, that's what I'd been yearning for and
longing for in teaching, that we should stand
on the victory of Calvary for the release
of the young life around which the web
had been woven of selfish ambition and parental
plans outside the will of God, that we
should stand on the victory of Calvary for
the release of these young people.
And so we went to prayer.
And it was astounding the way the truth
had captured these hearts.
They were fresh and new.
They hadn't heard everything and become calloused with
truth.
They were eager and open and excited at
the implications of it.
And there was a blending as we stood
on the victory of Calvary and together we
resisted every effort of a defeated foe to
continue to hold these young men and women.
And we released them into the will of
God and into the purpose of God.
And it was almost as though a black
cloud was being lifted up and pushed away
and the light was beginning to come in.
And that Sunday morning the invitation was given
and there were several that came.
And again that night and subsequently there were
many young men and women that went out
from that church as missionaries for Jesus Christ.
And I believe that if it had not
been for an intelligent and deliberate and purposeful
use of the Scripture, those young people would
have stayed there as their fathers and grandfathers
had done and never gone into that which
was closest to the heart of God.
So what we're talking about here does not
any little matter.
That's why the Scripture says that we're not
ignorant of his devices.
We are at times.
We behave as though we did.
We are.
We feel sometimes that it's just emotion and
appeal and excitement and information, but it's more
than that.
There's a spiritual battle going on.
And our weapons are not carnal, but mighty
to the tearing down of strongholds.
It's so imperative, therefore, that we should understand
that what the Apostle is giving here is
no light and no little matter.
But it's an Emancipation Proclamation and it's an
enlistment and it's the high and holy privilege
of being laborers together with God in the
most important work in the world.
And if he could use Ephesian believers that
had no background, no history, no education, nothing
at all to commend them except that they
were heirs of the grace of God through
faith in Christ, then he can use us.
Debauched they had been, injured by their years
of sin, and yet God was able to
heal them of the scars of their sin
and release them from the bondage of their
iniquity and bring them into the place where
they were effectual laborers together with him.
His workmanship created in Christ Jesus under good
works which God had before ordained they should
walk in.
So I'm submitting to you this morning that
this text, that we have the eyes of
our understanding open.
Oh, can you see how important it is
to see what his plan is to live
in us, what his purpose is to build
is that inheritance, that heir, that body, that
bride.
What the power is, the resurrection life of
Christ, what the place is seated with Christ
in the heavenly, what the position is to
enforce the victory of Calvary over a defeated
foe, and who the people are, people just
like us who had been dead in our
trespasses and sin have been made alive in
Christ.
Everyone here, every home here, has a tragedy
in it, close to it, so enormous and
so hopeless that only the power of almighty
God is enough to solve the problem.
And here is the answer, and yet you
can treat it as another sermon, you can
treat it as just another lecture, you can
treat it as a bible study, but to
your own heart.
But if you cry out, oh God, father
of Jesus, open the eyes of my understanding
that this truth is not just a text
that I've read in a chapter I've studied,
but it becomes part of the equipment that
I use in my service for the Lord
Jesus Christ.
That's the cry of my heart today.
Shall we bow together in prayer?
With our heads bowed and our eyes closed,
I'm not going to ask us to sing
in just a moment, we're going to pray,
and then we're going to have the benediction.
You know singing this morning, but if you're
here and God has spoken to your heart
and you sense a know a need, why
while we're praying right now, get up from
where you are and come and kneel here.
We'll join you and we'll pray with you,
and if you don't, we're going to assume
that you can wait till another time, but
if you can't wait, you've come.
But I want you to think for a
moment with me.
And this invitation is open, you won't interfere,
if you just have a burden on your
heart to seek and offer a prayer, you
come.
But I want you to think over the
grounds we've come.
Jesus Christ invites you to present your body
to him, that's the hope of his call.
He wants to use you to be with,
to part with him in bringing men out
of death into life.
The power is the resurrection power, the power
that raised up Christ from the dead.
The place is seated with him in the
heavenlies.
The position is as his feet over principality
and power.
And the people, just you, once dead in
sins, you, are you willing to say, Lord
Jesus, I want this desperately.
Open the eyes of my understanding.
Help me to see, help me to understand,
to experience, to be a laborer together with
you in a new dimension of effectiveness for
Christ.
That's the cry of our hearts.
We're going to take 60 seconds by the
clock for disciplined silence.
And during that silence, I want you to
go over the ground I've just reviewed with
you, find where you are, and ask God
to make the truth real, operatively, experientially real.
Then we're going to stand for prayer, and
we're going to be dismissed.
But 60 seconds of disciplined silence.
Shall we stand together?
Brother Jones, would you dismiss us with prayer?