Now, in our seventh session together of our
series in God's Purpose, we have to deal
with consecration in relation to discipleship.
The consecrated believer, very, very important area in
one's life.
If you've ever read much of Andrew Murray,
you probably have, you have noticed that his
attitude is, every subject that he's dealing with
in every book and in any number of
places in each book, he claims that that
specific area is the most important of all
in a Christian's development and his growth.
Each subject that he deals with is the
most important one.
And in a way he's perfectly correct to
have that attitude because every realm of our
development is all-important.
Each one must be entered into correctly on
the basis of the truth and the correct
doctrine.
And each area has its place in our
development.
And all the other areas are affected by
each one.
They are all synchronized, they're all geared together.
And the Holy Spirit alone can lead us
into our healthy development.
And as we approach this subject of consecration,
it's very, very important to have this straight
in our thinking and to know where we
stand as far as being consecrated believers.
And in this matter there are a number
of foundational points that we must touch on.
One is that the believer is never brought
into a healthy spiritual maturity by means of
pressure, by being pushed or dragged, by being
exhorted to make progress and to grow.
And he'll never come into any semblance of
spiritual maturity before he is prepared for it
by the Holy Spirit.
And the way the Holy Spirit prepares the
Christian is through everyday life and through his
study of the Word, these two factors.
And the preparation is governed by God, which
includes, of course, Romans 8, 28 and 29,
of all things working together to this end,
to this purpose, that we might be conformed
to the image of his Son.
Our spiritual maturity is governed by all the
things that he takes us through and all
the things that he shows us in the
Word as we study.
Also, another point is that healthy progress is
based upon our apprehension and understanding and appropriation
of the truths in the Lord Jesus Christ
that make for real growth.
That as we come to know him better
and trust him more fully, there is naturally
going to be healthy progress.
We all, with open face, beholding as in
a glass the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the same image from glory to
glory, even as by the Spirit of the
Lord.
And as we study the Word and get
to know the living Word, the Lord Jesus,
the result will be healthy growth.
But there is no healthy growth apart from
this.
Another point is that the deeper, so-called
deeper truths, the identification truths, are closed.
They are actually a closed subject to all
but the prepared, the needy, the hungry heart.
The Lord does not share these truths easily.
There is too much to them and they
mean too much.
They are far too important to be entered
into lightly or for personal benefit, etc.
The heart has to be prepared.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
There has to be that hunger and that
thirst and that appreciation and that realized need
before the truths of the cross and the
identification truths begin to open up to the
believer.
And until the Christian does become hungry, until
he begins to realize something of his need,
his progress is...
There is not much progress for him.
He remains a babe in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
He remains pretty close to the point of
his birth, which, incidentally, is where most of
our believers are today in our churches.
Babes in Christ, actually.
And until the Christian becomes aware of self
and begins to see his need, he pretty
much stands still in spiritual development.
We think of Hebrews 6.1. Therefore, leaving
the elementary instruction about the Lord Jesus Christ,
let us advance to mature manhood and not
be continually relaying a foundation of repentance from
lifeless works and of faith in God.
And the writer of the Hebrews, most likely
Paul, suggests that the Christian go beyond the
basic elementary truth of justification and not to
be continually going about in a circle at
that point, but to press on, that we
might be in hunger for God's very best,
and to face up to our need, to
realize our need, which, of course, is the
groundwork for advancement.
And another point is that the Christian who
has been brought to a point of decision
to be saved by pressure, that has been
talked into something, he has a very poor
beginning, and it's not too likely that he
will develop and mature because of this poor
beginning.
And that those who do personal work and
seek to lead others to the Lord Jesus
must be very careful and must make sure
that the individual is ready.
Another area where we have a lot of
tragedy is not only with an individual, the
individuals, but with entire congregations, entire churches, where,
for instance, the routine is maintained year in,
year out, where an outside speaker is brought
in once or twice a year for a
week or two of special meetings.
And the usual routine here is pressure, where
someone comes in and seeks to get the
church moving, seeks to get the Christians going,
seeks to get them witnessing, seeks to get
them to grow.
And there is a series of messages and
much exhortation, and usually the meetings are brought
to a focus at the end of the
week, where everyone is expected to make a
decision about being a better Christian or setting
things right with God and with his neighbor,
other church members.
And a reconsecration, for instance, and a determination
to go out and win souls.
All of this pressure that is applied very,
very hard on a church, very hard on
Christians, does far more damage than good as
a rule through the years.
And so often the challenge is thrown out
that, well, God, the Lord Jesus gave his
all for you, now the least you can
do is to give your all for him.
And one is exhorted to show one's love
for him by living for him and working
for him.
And there is much reliance upon the love
motive, where, well, if you really love him,
you'll live for him.
And that type of attitude.
But actually the love motive is not a
sound basis for Christian walk and Christian service,
shocking as that might seem.
Murray wrote that a superficial acquaintance with God's
plan leads to the view that while justification
is God's work by faith in Christ, sanctification
or growth is our work to be performed
under the influence of the gratitude we feel
for the deliverance we have experienced, and by
the aid of the Holy Spirit.
But the earnest Christian soon finds how little
gratitude can supply the power.
When he thinks that more prayer will supply
it, he finds that indispensable as prayer is,
it is not enough.
Often the believer struggles hopelessly for years until
he listens to the teachings of the Spirit
as he glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ again
and reveals Christ, our sanctification, to be appropriated
by faith alone.
No, the love motive is not sufficient for,
to maintain a Christian walk and fruitful Christian
service at all.
Murray also says that God works to will
and he is ready to work to do.
But alas, many Christians misunderstand this.
They think because they have the will it
is enough and that now they are able
to do.
This is not so.
The new will is a permanent gift, an
attribute of the new nature.
The power to do is not a permanent
gift, but must be each moment received from
the Holy Spirit as a branch receiving from
the vine.
It is the man who is conscious of
his own helplessness as a believer who will
learn that by the Holy Spirit he can
lead a holy life.
And there we are brought back to our
abiding in the Lord Jesus.
And we will not really abide in Him
until there are two factors that we are
aware of.
One, that we cannot live a Christian life
in our own strength.
We cannot serve Him acceptably by our own
doing.
And two, that we have been placed in
the Lord Jesus Christ and that He is
our life and there is a union there
of life.
The Lord Jesus and the Christian are one,
a oneness of nature, and that He stands
ready to live His life in and through
the Christian.
When the Christian ceases from his own efforts
and struggle, when the Christian abides in Him,
rests in Him, and allows Him to be
and do.
And this adds up to the proper motive
and motivation for the Christian life.
And that is the life motive.
The love motive is inadequate.
Certainly love is important.
Certainly love is powerful.
But love is not the motivation for the
Christian life.
Life is the motivation for the Christian life.
Christ, who is our life.
For it is God that worketh in you,
both the will and to do of His
good pleasure, and it's the life of the
Lord Jesus Christ in and through the Christian.
That's the Christian life.
For to me to live is Christ.
Not I, but Christ.
And now we come closer to our subject
of consecration.
And here is the common error in this
realm.
Metcalfe sets it forth very clearly.
He writes that the modern teaching of consecration
which is tantamount to the consecration of the
old man seeks to bypass the death sentence
and therefore only leads to frustration and failure.
When, however, you and I are prepared in
simple humility to make the fact of our
death with Christ our daily basis of life
and service, there is nothing that can prevent
the uprising and outflow of new life and
meet the need of thirsty souls around us.
And this is what happens in our youth
meetings and in our camp meetings and in
our conferences, weekend conferences and all, retreats so
often that a group is together and they
hear a series of messages and they're exhorted
to consecrate themselves or re-consecrate themselves to
God.
And it often happens, of course, in chapel
meetings and Bible schools and Bible colleges, this
excitation for consecration and re-consecration.
And, of course, in the holiness circles this
goes on almost every meeting.
And, of course, in these churches there are
meetings probably five nights out of the week.
At least you have to keep these folks
going somewhere or another.
And there's this constant circle of consecration and
re-consecration, a terrible rut in which to
be.
And all because the Christian is actually seeking
to present his self, present self, his life,
his old life to God.
And, of course, God cannot accept that life
in the first place.
And so the Christian finds that it doesn't
work and that there's no reality and there's
no result from his consecration and he's frustrated
and he seeks to do it over again.
He doesn't feel that God has accepted him.
And there's a pathetic situation to be in.
Some Christians go on this way for years,
wondering what's the matter.
And feeling maybe they're not worthy and God
can't accept them.
All these many things that come up simply
because they do not understand the truth of
consecration.
And many Christians are taken over to Romans
12.1, which is supposed to be the
consecration verse where Paul says, I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Well, this may have a lot to do
with consecration, but it is not the key.
It is not the basis of consecration.
We cannot skip from Romans 3, our justification,
the first part of Romans, our birth truths.
We cannot be taken all the way from
there, clear over to Romans 12, and expect
to be able to consecrate ourselves on the
basis of just being saved.
No.
There is a development and a progression to
the point of consecration.
And, of course, Romans 6 enters into the
picture far, far before Romans 12.
And few believers seem to realize that the
key verse, the key truth, the key principle
of true consecration, true rest in the Lord
Jesus Christ, is set forth in the very
center of Romans 6, the very center of
the area that sets forth the identification truth.
And, of course, true consecration is based upon
identification, and there is no other basis for
it.
And if we think of Romans 6.13,
we can see here what God means by
consecration.
Romans 6.13. Yield yourselves unto God.
How?
As those that are alive from the dead.
In order to truly be consecrated, the Christian
has to see his position in the risen
Lord Jesus Christ.
He has to see that he is dead
and that his life is hid with Christ
in God.
He has to be familiar with the identification
truth.
He has to see his position in the
Lord Jesus in relation to the cross, dead
unto sin and alive unto God.
He has to see that, understand that, and
be resting in that truth before he can
be truly consecrated.
Because God says that he is to yield
himself to him as one that is alive
from the dead.
We have to realize that we are in
the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
We have been brought up out of death,
the death of Calvary, which we shared with
the Lord Jesus at that time.
And it could not be otherwise because our
Father can accept no life other than that
of his Son, his beloved Son.
And the only reason God is able to
accept the Christian is because the Christian is
in the Lord Jesus Christ and that the
Lord Jesus is his life.
That is the basis upon which God is
able to accept us and acknowledge us.
So that we have to realize our position
in him and present ourselves to God on
that foundation, on that basis.
Well, Father, I see that I am alive
in the Lord Jesus Christ, that I am
hid in the Lord Jesus Christ and at
your right hand in him.
I am seated in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus.
And I present myself to thee upon that
basis, that the Lord Jesus is my life.
He is my only...
He is what I have to offer.
I do not offer myself my old life,
but I come in him.
I stand before thee in him.
I bow before thee in him.
And when this is our attitude, when we
realize this and see this and enter into
this in attitude, then we are consecrated
Christians.
A consecration is simply an acknowledgement of what
is already true of us.
But, of course, we have to see that
truth before we can acknowledge it.
A consecration is rest.
A consecrated Christian is a resting Christian, an
abiding Christian.
A consecration doesn't confer ownership.
We are not giving ourselves to God.
We are simply acknowledging that we already belong
to God.
A consecration does not confer ownership.
It presumes it.
We don't consecrate ourselves to God in order
to be his, but we simply yield ourselves
to him because we are his.
We simply take the attitude of a branch
because we see that we're already in the
vine.
We abide because we see where we are.
Abiding isn't getting into the vine.
Abiding is acknowledging that we're already in the
vine.
We've been placed in the vine of God,
i.e., in Christ Jesus.
God has the title of our lives because
we were purchased by the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
He's already in full ownership.
And consecration simply amounts to delivery, yielding, that
which already belongs to him.
So the question is not, do I belong
to Christ, but have I yielded to the
Lord Jesus, that which already belongs to him?
The same principle as abiding.
And that's why it's important that we learn
to abide because we can't really learn about
consecration until we've learned how to abide.
We can't see the truth of consecration until
we see our position.
We can't present ourselves unto God as those
that are alive from the dead until we
know that we are alive from the dead,
until we know that we are alive in
the Lord Jesus Christ risen.
So here we come again to the knowledge
of the facts, the truth and the doctrine
and the principles, that the Christian who knows
where he stands is a Christian who can
respond to these different areas that are set
before him.
To consecrate himself, for instance, he has to
know the basis for consecration.
We think of Hebrews 4, verse 9.
There remaineth therefore a rest to the people
of God.
For he that is entered into his rest,
he also hath ceased from his own works
as God did from his.
Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that
rest.
Well, we can consider consecration as rest.
That's why when a Christian consecrates the old
life, and of course God can accept that,
consecrates himself, that there's no rest, there's no
peace, there's no fulfillment there, because he's going
at it in the wrong way.
And until he knows the facts, there will
be no rest.
And coming to know the facts, of our
position in the Lord Jesus Christ, involves labor.
Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that
rest.
It's not a labor of a struggle to
get into our position.
It's not even a labor or struggle to
consecrate oneself.
The only time there's labor in consecration is
when one does not know the facts, when
one is seeking to be acceptable to God,
or seeking to submit to God There's where
there is struggle and labor, yes, but actual,
true consecration does not involve any struggle or
labor.
The labor comes long before the time for
consecration, and the labor that is involved is
the labor of finding out the facts, the
study, and what the Lord takes us through
in order to prepare us to see what
we have in the Lord Jesus and what
we don't have in ourselves through failure.
There is where the labor is involved.
Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that
rest.
And once we find out the facts and
see our position through all that He takes
us through and from our study, then we
simply abide.
Then we simply rest.
Then we simply realize that there's nothing else
to do but to effortlessly yield ourselves to
Him, and we're consecrated.
The groundwork must be laid in preparation.
The actual consecration is effortless.
Why should it be hard to simply rest
in His wonderful hands, in His nail-pierced
hands, pierced for us?
Why should there be any labor there?
The labor comes in realizing that those hands
are trustworthy, and knowing that for a fact,
and that we cannot produce in ourselves, then
is the time for quiet rest.
We think of Isaiah 30, 15.
In quietness and in confidence shall be your
strength.
And there's no strength in the Christian life
without quietness, without his being sure of his
position in the Lord Jesus, without being sure
that he's secure in Him.
There can be no confidence in the Lord
Jesus until we really know Him.
You can't place confidence in one you're not
sure of, and you shouldn't.
And the Christian is weak, and he's up
and down day by day.
His life fluctuates, and he's not dependable until
he enters into the rest and abides in
the vine.
There is where the strength is.
In quietness and confidence shall be his strength.
The strong Christian is a resting Christian, because
then the Lord Jesus is his stay, his
anchor, his abiding place, his hiding place, his
strong tower.
And he's strong in Christ, in himself.
He has the Lord Jesus strength.
He has the Lord Jesus confidence.
He has the Lord Jesus quietness.
And he's a stable, dependable believer, simply because
he's hiding in the Lord Jesus.
And another thing that makes consecration sometimes difficult
is the fact that when the Christian is
truly consecrated, he's simply brought
into the position for further development, further growth.
He's on better ground for further growth, further
maturing.
And of course, the principle of growth involves
the cross.
It involves growth.
It involves being taken down.
So many who consecrate themselves feel that now
everything's going to be fine and the Lord
is going to use me.
And I'm going to just simply blossom.
Because now I'm consecrated.
Now I've arrived.
Whereas, of course, it is for this exact
further development.
The branch, the consecrated branch, the branch that
is abiding, the branch that is resting, the
prune.
And he prunes it.
The branch that it might bring forth more
fruit and vines.
And the pruning, of course, has to do
with the old life where the quality cuts
into the old life and realizes the risk
was still.
He can reflect on that because he's a
consecrated Christian who always sees anything that would
be frightful.
Has come to that place on the basis
of feeding his life, feeding the old life.
He's found all by this time that the
old life is something to be shunned, something
to be turned from, something that his life,
hating the old life, he's found out by
this time that the old life is something
to be shunned, something to be turned from,
something that we must allow the Holy Spirit
to crucify and hold in the place of
death.
And then in the process of, the result
of consecration, the pruning, the only area that
is pruned and dealt with and cut is
the area of the old life, certainly not
the new life.
The life of the Lord Jesus doesn't need
any pruning or any trimming.
And if a Christian has come to hate
his own old life through failure and through
seeing himself for what it is, he can
rejoice in the pruning.
He's not going to be afraid that everything's
gone wrong and he's being mistreated.
No.
He realizes that the life that must be
dealt with is being dealt with.
And he can rejoice in the midst of
his processing.
And it's the same with the picture of
the Christian being a corn of wheat.
That the consecrated Christian, the Christian who has
turned himself fully over to the Lord Jesus'
hands is going to be buried.
He's going to be sown so that there
might be a harvest.
And this, of course, involves daily death, hardship,
suffering, misunderstanding, all of these different things that
have to do with the cross.
But this is the method, of course, that
brings forth a harvester.
Except the corn of wheat falling to the
ground and dying at a bite of the
loam.
But if it dies, it brings forth much
fruit.
And this is the result of a consecrated
heart, consecrated life, that is going to be
simply taken deeper into this processing.
Because God has a goal for each one
of us, and that is that we might
be conformed to the image of his Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And as far as service is concerned, God
is preparing each consecrated believer for a specific
service.
It doesn't necessarily have to be formal ministry
or foreign mission, or anything.
It doesn't necessarily have to be that, to
be in his service.
Every Christian should be in the service of
the Lord in one realm or another, whichever
he has for them.
I think the finest and most important service
today, far beyond pastor or even missionary, I
feel is the mother in the Christian home,
the Christian mother in the Christian home, to
raise a family and take care of her
husband.
I don't think there is a more important
ministry than that today.
God honors the home.
God wants the Christian home.
And if the entire home is not Christian
and the mother is Christian, that's the basis
upon which he works.
And for a mother to raise her children
in the fear and the nurture of the
Lord faithfully, and for a mother to be
faithful to her husband and to help him,
be a real helpmeet to him, if he's
unsaved, to be faithful in her witness to
him and her patience with him and her
care of him and to bring him, to
win him, not drive him, but win him
to the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is no ministry like this that I
know of.
There is no more important ministry.
I remember in Wheaton, I at one time
had a Bible class consisting of wives of
seminary students at Wheaton, probably 30 of them,
most of them mothers, young mothers.
And we talked along this line at one
time, and a number of these mothers were,
well, you know, they're seeking to help put
their husband to a seminary.
They have one, two or three children sometimes,
and it's extremely difficult in every way, financially
and physically and mentally and spiritually to carry
on in this way until the husband is
out of school and established.
And a number of them were, most of
them were college grads themselves, and they felt
so frustrated.
And if they could only get into the
Lord's work, they were here, they were tied
to this sink and their diapers and their
late hours and all that's involved, felt that
they were completely out of it.
And their husbands were studying and advancing in
their preparation for the ministry or the mission
field or whatever it was.
And we had to help them to see
that they were in the key position as
a mother.
Oh, what a privilege.
What a position to be in.
As a branch and as a seed that
God would prepare them and to deal with
them and to make them a better Christian
mother.
The finest ministry of all.
And another, a number of them saw this,
and I noticed a great difference in their
attitudes from then on during the meetings, that
they seemed to quiet down and settle down
to what, where God had placed them.
And they began to rejoice in the privilege.
A complete turnabout of attitude.
How important.
Because God is dealing with a consecrated Christian
not only for his growth and development, but
he's dealing with him for service.
He's fashioning him for a specific work, whether
it's a mother or a husband or a
pastor or a missionary, whatever it might be.
He has that work all laid out, and
he fashions his instrument.
So this is going on in all this
process.
In the shadow of his hand has he
hid me and made me a polished shaft.
In his quiver has he hid me.
And the Christian is not only a branch,
he's not only a seed, but he's an
arrow or he's a spear, he's a polished
shaft to be used by God at his
discretion and in any way he wishes.
And it may involve being hidden in his
quiver for many a year, waiting for that
thrust of God that will be effective and
bring forth fruit.
So it's obvious that a consecrated Christian first
has to be prepared.
He first has to know the facts before
he can enter into this realm and rest
there and to realize what's going on and
to not struggle and not seek to push
away God's hand and not seek to do
it himself or do it his way, the
way he wants it.
No, but to rest, to be consecrated, to
be confident in quietness and in confidence shall
be your strength.
That type of Christian, that's the only consecration
there is where we realize that the life
of the Lord Jesus is being developed in
us so that we're really consecrating the new
life.
We're just saying, well, Lord Jesus, I just
leave my Christian life, my new life in
thy hands.
I realize that thou art the one that
works in me both to will and to
do of thy good pleasure.
Thou art the source of my life.
The Lord Jesus is the true vine of
my life and I can afford to rest
and rely upon him.
It won't make me inactive.
It won't make me, leave me out of
the picture because he's my very life.
There is a union there of nature and
I'm activated more than ever.
But the source and motivation comes from his
life.
I don't have to produce the strength and
produce all the necessities from my own tainted,
inadequate resources of the old life.
Never.
Sinful resources.
Never.
But simply to abide in him and he
will perform.
He will do.
He will be because he's my life.
And we have to say it again.
This all takes time.
This all takes years.
And this is where so often the re
-consecration comes into the picture that a Christian
may have consecrated himself and nothing seems to
happen.
Or everything seems to happen negatively and downwards.
And he doesn't seem to be gaining his
crown.
There's a cross in the way here where
he doesn't realize that the cross comes before
the crown.
And there's so much time involved and so
little seeming progress made that the temptation is
for the Christian to seek to re-consecrate
himself.
And maybe he didn't mean business.
Maybe God didn't accept his consecration.
And all of these all this frustrating circle
that the Christian gets into because he doesn't
realize the time involved and all that God
has to do.
And he's not able to rest and wait
because he's not sure.
It all comes from a lack of knowledge.
A lack of seeing the facts.
That his life now is the Lord Jesus.
And the Father is sovereign and he knows
what he's doing and he has his plan
all made out.
He has his purpose in mind.
And the Christian can afford to give him
a free hand and he can afford to
wait.
And for the Christian to wait upon God
it may take years.
But the result of those years will get
much more accomplished in a very brief time
than as though the Christian tried to be
busy all those years and tried to produce
much more.
And God never wastes any time.
How important this principle of time is that
God is not in a hurry and he
doesn't have to be in a hurry to
accomplish his eternal work.
God could have created the universe in an
instant and the world and but he did
take six days.
He doesn't he doesn't hurry.
And he hasn't the Lord Jesus hasn't returned
yet and it's been thousands of years.
God a day with God is as a
thousand years and yet a thousand years with
God is as a day.
God is working in and from eternity.
And it's good for us to have that
attitude the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ
to see things from God's viewpoint.
Well, we can't do that until we get
to know God and to look at things
through his eyes.
Then there's rest then there's peace then there's
quietness then there's confidence then there's strength then
there's stability then there is consistent testimony in
this matter of consecration once the Christian really
begins to abide which is the same as
consecration actually.
All things are working together for God's purpose
every day all day everything and the the
results may not seem to be forthcoming but
they're all working deep within the Christian's life
far below the realm of consciousness in his
spirit not in his soul necessarily but deep
in his spirit and finally things begin to
fit together very swiftly and there is establishment
but it comes as a result of years
of accumulation and dealing while the Christian rests
and waits and trusts.
I remember a crude illustration would be I
used to be a ball player in pitching
and I played on this same team for
many years and I did fairly well but
I was learning and we didn't have a
really efficient coaching we learned by doing we
learned by failing but I remember years and
years of this constant experience and learning where
one day one day all this seemed to
fall in place and fit together and I
knew what I was doing I was able
to produce and it was a complete change
of attitude in my ball playing a confidence
and a rest and a strength and an
ability that came from the accumulation and the
waiting of the years previous and it's the
same with the Christian walk and Christian service
this development deep within and it finally begins
to come forth as we wait and as
we look to him and as we rest
in him all based upon the facts all
based upon our realization of the truth so
we still are brought back to that word
study study our Father we do wait upon
thee we wait upon thee in confidence which
is the only waiting that can mean anything
when we wait upon thee one must be
confident in thee because thou art trustworthy thou
art able so we wait upon thee patiently
as thou dost deal deep within our hearts
faithfully we look unto the Lord Jesus and
we abide in him knowing so well that
he which hath begun a good work in
us will perform it until the very day
of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ
and on into eternity and we do thank
thee for this Father in Jesus name Amen.