We thank Thee that Thou hast put the
joy of the Lord in the song within
our hearts.
We thank Thee we've come with expectancy this
morning.
We believe, Lord, that Thou wilt soot out
a word to each heart.
I pray that even now, Lord, in this
quiet moment, there will be that open response
to Thee long within that says, O Lord,
a fresh word from Thyself.
We just believe Thee to do this, Lord.
We thank Thee this morning that You know
each one of us.
Sometimes we can't even put in words the
deepest longing.
We don't know ourselves what our needs are.
But we pray this morning, Lord, that Thou
wilt be pleased to speak, open Thy word.
Give us a clear sense of Thy anointing
and Thy direction.
We give Thee the praise, but we ask
it in Jesus' lovely name.
Amen.
All harnessed up.
Praise the Lord.
Good to see you.
Something we haven't seen for, what, last November
we were here last about?
Here we meet today for the first time.
Since earlier this morning I've been asking, Lord,
what should we share?
There's so many things that are helpful, so
many things that are good.
I remember Dr. Tozer saying years ago that
if there was anything needed in this hour,
it was a prophet.
I don't claim to be one.
I'd sure like to, though.
The thing that he said that was distinguishing
about a prophet was this.
It's not a man who just spoke truth,
however good and helpful it might be, but
he always spoke a word that was relevant
to the moment, to the need.
And I think we all need that today,
a word that's relevant to the need.
How many truths are there in the word
of God from Genesis to Revelation that could
bless us, could help us, quicken us, encourage
us?
But you know a word in season, a
word just for the moment is the thing
that our hearts cry for.
And I believe that we are at some
junctures in our going on with the Lord
at various times when we're sort of treading
water and it just is so necessary that
God give us a special word, a special
word.
Lord, having said that, you'll have to do
it.
I think maybe we'll ask you to turn
this morning to the Gospel of John chapter
11, a very familiar portion, John chapter 11.
You recall in chapter 11 that it is
the raising of Lazarus from the grave.
I believe that Jesus loved to visit one
place called Bethany.
Bethany was a place where he found rest.
A few furlongs out of Jerusalem, he would
get away from the busy crowd.
There he would find some rest apart from
all of the activity.
I never understood this chapter.
It seemed that at a certain point Jesus
was almost cruel.
He didn't act as I thought he should.
Of course, he hasn't many times in the
Scripture.
He's puzzled me and I've had to cry
out, Lord, why is it?
Why is it that so often your action
is so different from the way I would
have reacted, I guess?
But here's a lesson this morning that I
believe will help us move beyond the outward,
the externalities of just being religious to get
to what is the real heart and the
reality.
I believe if this principle, even as we
said last night where we were speaking on,
Jesus said when there were some things they
couldn't understand, he said, I will have mercy
and not sacrifice.
If you understand that, you get to the
very core, the very heart of spiritual reality.
You know, all you have to do is
move around in ministry for a while.
You see all that's going on today and
it would be almost easy to faint if
you didn't know the heart, the very core,
the very center of spiritual reality.
And that's what I'm concerned about these days.
Lord, move us out of our forms, our
outwardness into the heart, the very reality of
what you want.
Somehow I believe that if I can accomplish
that, we'll be able to go on other
places.
God can fulfill and get in us what
he really wants.
Now the situation this morning as we begin
to read in chapter 11, chapter 1, 11,
verse 1.
Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus
of Bethany, the town of Mary, and her
sister Martha.
It was that Mary which anointed the Lord
with ointment, and wiped his feet with her
hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
Therefore his sisters sent unto Jesus, saying, Lord,
behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.
When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness
is not unto death, but for the glory
of God, that the Son of God might
be glorified thereby.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and
Lazarus.
When he heard he was sick, he rushed
immediately to Bethany.
Are you reading?
Wouldn't you?
Huh?
Somebody's sick.
The phone rings.
Hurry, my brother's sick.
And on top of it, Jesus could heal
everyone.
How much more obligated.
Do you follow me?
I don't know how to say this, but
I know that for years I wondered how
Jesus could ever lay his head on a
pillow and rest.
He could solve all the problems.
He could heal.
Lord, if I could do that, I wouldn't.
But you see, the Lord doesn't give that
kind of power until people are ready for
it.
Power and purpose go together.
Power and God's.
What is the answer?
Well, I have to take you back and
cover a little ground as we did last
evening to get to the very heart of
the matter.
I do not believe that we can understand
why Jesus moved with the calmness, the poise,
the way he did unless we realize what
I like to call the tyranny of the
soul that pulls and pulls and pulls.
Now remember, beloved, as we've been saying on
other occasions when we've been with you, God
has uniquely designed man with an empty room
inside.
It's our human spirit.
He made our spirit for himself.
As a place he might come and dwell.
I don't know why I keep insisting, but
it seems like this innermost room that he's
been made for himself can never find its
fullness, its satisfaction, its completeness until it finds
it in the Lord himself.
We are made for God.
And he uniquely designed us with this innermost
room, our spirit we call it.
I said last night, I'll go back over
the ground again, that our spirit, the within,
has been so designed that it can touch
reality.
It can fellowship with God.
I believe in the beginning when God created
man in the garden, man's spirit was like
an open door.
That is, there was a part of his
spirit that had an openness toward God.
God communed.
He fellowshiped.
He talked with Adam in the beginning.
Adam's spirit then, this part that we're referring
to, was like an open door in which
there was contact made.
You've heard of a little child and its
innocence.
No restrictions, no inhibitions.
I'm often embarrassed.
I'm sitting in a home and a little
two-year-old girl run into something.
You know what mommy just did?
I say, no, don't tell me, sweetheart.
You're asked to hear almost anything.
What is it?
It's the innocence.
It's the openness of a little child.
One day when Adam and Eve sinned and
they turned to their own way, this openness,
after they took to the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, this openness changed.
There was an awareness that they had sinned.
A consciousness that something had come in.
I say this open way of innocence and
openness.
It turned.
It changed.
And we have conscience developing with knowledge, c
-o-n, with knowledge.
Conscience came in.
There was a knowing that they had wronged,
that they were somehow no longer open to
God.
And this is why they began to clothe
themselves in fig leaves, you see, drawing back.
It's a movement from innocence to conscience as
we speak of it in the Scripture.
And so our spirit in its initial, as
it was with Adam, open, honest, but now
we put a door knob there, which means
there's a door closed.
God designed then that there should not only
be the openness before him, but there should
be the capacity for fellowship.
It says in the Scripture that God is
spirit.
And of our fellowshipping and our worshipping him
is to be by our spirit, touching the
Lord, contacting him.
A fellowship then through the spirit, the capacity
within.
Not only is there the capacity for the
function for fellowship, but as we know, there
is that power within man for intuition, to
know things directly.
I believe that in man, as God created
the function within his spirit, this openness, this
capacity to touch, to fellowship, to worship the
spiritual, and then to know things in a
direct way, God has designed this in man.
We need more and more to understand the
functioning of our spirit if we are to
understand the difference between outward things and spiritual
reality.
Now remember, when Adam sinned, and it's true
for the whole human race now, the way
by which God begins to restore and make
possible fellowship is first of all that the
blood is applied to our conscience.
This has become conscience.
The consciousness of sin keeps man from boldness
or access to God.
And it is only by the precious blood
that once again we can have boldness to
come before him.
Oh, how thankful we are then for the
precious blood, which gives boldness.
I think this is pictured in many ways
in the Old Testament.
The conscience always is to be purged or
sprinkled by blood.
This gives boldness.
Jesus said in Revelation 3.20, Behold, I
stand at the door and knock.
If any man hear my voice and will
open the door, I will come into him.
And will what?
Supp with him.
I will fellowship with him and he with
me.
This fellowship then is possible only because man
through repentance opens the door and allows.
So what really happens when we are born
again by the Spirit of God then is
that repentance opens the door.
We invite the Lord to come in.
He sets up, as it were, a table
of fellowship in our spirit.
And then this intuition, this capacity to know
things, which has become pretty dead, I believe
that he lights the lamp of our intuition.
And thus it is we are able to
discern.
God is able to reveal.
It says in Proverbs, you know, that the
spirit of man is the what?
It's the lamp of the Lord.
I think man's inner lamp is pretty dull
if there's any light at all.
It is only when we are born of
the Spirit, quickened, you see, in our spirit,
that God lights the lamp and suddenly we
come to know spiritual things.
Why is it then when someone, you see,
gets up from their knees, they have just
come to trust the Lord Jesus, you say,
what's happened?
They say, well, I'm saved.
How do you know?
Well, I know because I know because I
know.
What is it?
That's something your mind can figure out.
It's your knower.
What's your knower?
What is your knower?
It's this quickening.
His spirit witnesses with our spirit that we
are a child of God.
Beyond figuring out.
So we say that in our spirit now,
the conscience is cleansed.
We come into fellowship.
Our intuition, the lamp, so to speak, is
lit.
Oh, the preciousness and the privilege that we
have of knowing this spiritual birth.
You say, I wondered what it was.
This is what it means to be born
again.
Born from above.
I'm using a different approach to it.
Spiritually born.
And note then the Greek word.
His spirit joins my spirit.
Born from above.
Now the tragedy is this, as we're going
to see in our lesson this morning.
The great majority of people have never made
much distinction between their spirit and their soul.
The soul of man, out here, includes the
mind, and the emotions, and the will.
When God planned and designed man in the
garden, I believe that the tree of life,
representing God's own uncreated life, the tree of
life was to be for his spirit.
But what tree did man take from?
The tree of the knowledge.
I used to always think it was the
tree of good and evil.
But it was the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil.
And in partaking of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, he has developed
his soul, his mind, his will, and his
emotions.
And what's happened to the spirit?
That room that should have received the life
of God has become largely dead, dark, empty,
shriveled up.
Dr. Barnhouse used to say that man is
like a three-story building.
And the top story fell into the second.
And so far as most people are concerned,
man's just a two-story building.
He's a body and something inner.
We know the difference.
We know because our spirit has been quickened,
made alive.
His spirit witnesses with our spirit.
That which is born of the spirit, you
see, comes to have a spiritual being within.
I believe we need to understand that when
God comes to join our spirit, we are
made something other, something totally different from what
we were by creation.
He says in 1 Corinthians that man became
a living soul.
What does that mean?
The soul was the dominant functioning part of
Adam.
His spirit was needing something to be complete.
Incomplete.
You see, so many people in even fundamental
circles today think that what man needs is
forgiveness, just to be brought back to God.
He needs forgiveness through the blood.
He needs to be reconciled, but he needs
something else.
He needs a spiritual birth.
He needs God's spirit joining his own spirit.
And when this happens, you see, the first
Adam was made a living soul.
The last Adam, the Lord Jesus, came as
a quickening spirit.
And when his spirit joins my spirit, a
new creation, a new species develops.
What is it?
Instead of my soul being the dominant part,
now his spirit joining my spirit.
The spirit is to become the leading part.
And it's to bring the whole of the
soul into submission to our spirit.
I believe that this is absolutely fundamental if
we are going to know spiritual reality.
So we're saying this morning that the tragedy
in the religious world today is that people
have developed their mind with doctrine, understanding about
the Bible.
Sometimes they'll even feel very keenly in their
emotions about things, and they'll held their fist
and say, I'm going to be more spiritual.
They try to touch contact.
They try to make contact with God by
their soul.
I did it for years.
Held meetings in Youth for Christ up and
down the West Coast.
Thousands of people.
And then one day, by God's wonderful grace,
he broke in.
Oh, what a change it brought to begin
to realize that spiritual reality is not something
of the soul.
It's of our spirit.
It changed the whole outlook in ministry.
Oh, I believe, brothers and sisters this morning,
if God's people could somehow be awakened to
see how much of their time, their life,
their ministry, their energies are by the powers
of the soul.
The soul can be so religious.
It can get so activated for God.
I think of so many meetings as meetings
that just stoke the boiler.
You know what I mean?
You get all enthused.
Stoke the boiler.
Get everybody enthused.
How long does it last?
Well, maybe till next Sunday, but usually hardly
till Wednesday night.
You stoke up the boilers.
Get people enthused again.
What is it?
Their mind, their emotions.
They say, I will do this.
One dear man told me, he said, we
have committees for everything, including committee to keep
the committees enthused.
Now, the answer is this.
The difference is this.
Once the Holy Spirit begins to activate and
bring our spirit, all incentives, spiritual motivation, I
don't like to use the term, but God's
way is to supply to our spirit day
by day, that which gives quickening.
Paul says, having received this sufficiency, we don't
faint.
I know what it would be like to
faint if I had to just live by
the power of the what?
The soul.
How many of you know, as we were
saying last night, I think it was, I've
been speaking so many days in a row
now, I don't know where I am.
How many of you know what it's like
to look through a page, a chapter in
your Bible?
I know that.
I won't read that.
Yeah, I've read that too.
Nothing new there.
Read that.
You go from page to page.
What is it?
You're depending for spiritual quickening just in the
realm of the soul.
Oh, how blessed, how wonderful, when the Lord
takes a portion that you really know pretty
well.
I mean, you think you do.
And suddenly he shines some light upon it.
And something new and something very fresh.
This is the way of the Lord working
in our spirit.
If we do not have this supply continually,
we faint.
Well, having said all of this now, maybe
we're ready to go to John 11 and
see what really is involved.
When Jesus, in chapter 11, Jesus gets word
that Lazarus is sick.
Verse 4.
When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness
is not unto death, but for the glory
of God, that the Son of God might
be glorified thereby.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and
Lazarus.
When he had heard therefore that he was
sick, he what?
He abode two days still in the same
place where he was.
Lord, why don't you rush to Lazarus?
You know why?
I'd like to call this lesson this morning
the tyranny of the soul.
The tyranny of the soul manifests itself in
different ways.
There is first what we call the tyranny
of the urgent.
How many of you know what urgency is?
Hurry now, hurry, hurry.
Urgency on every hand.
What Jesus knew was that because he was
attuned to the Father in spirit, the Father
was going to work something out for greater
glory in this, that urgency, which is so
much of the soul, this urgency, he knew
his mind could fully grasp all their feelings,
but urgency didn't dominate him.
Oh, I know little what it's like to
walk into my office and everything around me
would jump out with urgency.
Here's an unfinished book.
Here are a dozen letters that need to
be answered.
All these things, and if you have anything
of creativity within you and you're working on
projects and all of it just cries out,
hurry, hurry, hurry, get me done quickly.
The tyranny of the soul can sap your
strength.
It can rule and it can dominate.
I copied down some months ago a statement
from a man, I believe with some discernment.
He said, your greatest danger is letting the
urgent things crowd out the important.
The urgent things that press in keep crowding
out the important.
Someday I'm going to read that good book.
Someday I'm going to really study my Bible.
But in the meantime, the phone rings, the
neighbors come, all the urgency presses in.
What do I do?
I get carried along in the stream like
a little leaf with urgency, urgency.
So he goes on to say, the problem
is that the important thing rarely has to
be done today or even this week.
The urgent tasks are the one that yell
for instant action.
They seem at the moment to be important
and irresistible.
So they devour our energy.
That's where we were last night.
Urgency pressing in.
The tyranny of the soul.
I don't think I need to labor this
anymore.
We're kind of acquainted with it, aren't we?
I think we know what I mean by
urgency.
And yet the loveliness of our lesson is
this.
Even though Jesus had a soul that was
very sensitive to everything around, he did not
walk with the soul ruling over him.
His spirit was attuned.
He abode two days here.
And I tell you, you can't do that
when someone you love is sick unless your
spirit is attuned and you know that God
has something else.
Are you following me?
I do believe, brothers and sisters, that most
of God's children get into the awful bind
all the time because they have not learned
the secret of reality with the Lord.
Lord, I'm to be occupied with you, shut
up with you, alive to you.
There's no other way.
I think urgency gets worse.
We were always saying, well, somehow I'll learn
to get on top of it.
Things will get better.
Let me ask you, in the last five
years, how many of you have found it's
gotten any different?
It only gets worse because the soul gets
more possessive and more sticky.
It just gets to know more friends.
It could only.
You have to have God's way out.
It has to be the Lord.
Well, read on with me.
Then, verse 7, Then after that saith he
to his disciples, Let us go into Judea
again.
His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews
of late sought to stone thee, and goest
thou thither again?
Here's another tyranny.
We won't spend any time with it.
It's a tyranny of fear.
His friends are saying, Lord, don't you remember
last time you were there they tried to
stone you?
And if you live in the soul life
where they're dominating, fear grits.
But Jesus didn't allow it.
There's no problem.
It wasn't that outward circumstances.
These things were dominating him.
There's another.
There's another tyranny of the soul besides the
urgency and fear.
And it is what we call the tyranny
of affections.
We've already covered it.
He whom thou lovest is sick.
Oh, how our emotional ties to people, to
loved ones, how it will govern.
I remember when our little boy was about
two.
We were down shopping someplace.
He loved guns.
I remember when he spied a gun on
the shelf and he looked up and he
said, Daddy, buy me that gun.
I said, Son, my parents, his grandparents always
bought him far more guns than I thought
he needed.
I said, Son, you have enough.
He kind of walked away pouting, feeling hurt.
About a minute later he came back and
he looked up and he said, Daddy, if
you really loved me, you'd buy that gun
for me.
You know what I mean by the tyranny
of affections.
The tyranny of those you love, the pulling.
He whom thou lovest is sick.
Could I say to you this morning, we
have to know in our relationships with others
the cross that reaches in and cuts us
loose from all these affections and ties.
If we don't, affection, all of this will
dominate and pull at us until we're victims
all the time in the tyranny of our
affections.
And I know that when I begin to
really love and begin to know people, a
little bit after the flesh, it's very easy
to allow the sword to get a little
dull.
Lord, I don't want to hurt so-and
-so.
After all, they're just growing, they're just a
babe, you know, and you don't want to
allow the sword to touch, to cut.
And the reason we don't is because the
servant of the Lord wields a two-edged
sword.
I'll never let it cut this way unless
I know the cutting this way.
The very place I spare myself, I must
spare you.
You'll discover this with your children.
A boy grows up, and I know there
are things he has to go through to
become a man for God.
There are no shortcuts.
He has to go through it.
But I know the suffering of it.
We like to spare.
We'll spare if we can unless the two
-edged sword...
I was just wondering why.
The two-edged sword, it cuts this way
as well as this way.
It has to be.
It's the work of the cross dealing with
our soul life.
So thank God.
Thank God when he's beginning to do some
cutting work in your life that you might
have a ministry, a spiritual releasing ministry to
others.
So we have these tyrannies of the soul,
urgency, fear, affections.
You never know how deep the cross will
go into a life until it gets into
some of these relationships with one another.
How deep it has to go and how
much affinity, how much inordinate affection the Scripture
speaks of, how much of this there really
is until God begins to put you right
through the testing of it.
Thank God.
He has a gentle knife, but it cuts.
I'm so glad to be in his hands.
He's the surgeon.
It hurts, but it's necessary.
It's the operation that we have to know
and experience if God is going to bring
us into continuing spiritual reality.
So I don't want the dark side.
I look back and I say, thank you,
Lord, for every operation.
Those things are removed where necessary.
Thank you, Lord.
The spiritual reality that comes by the operation
and the working, it's so necessary.
And afterward, it yields the peaceable fruits of
righteousness unto them that are being exercised thereby.
Your heart can only rejoice while you're going
through its grievance.
But afterward, thank God, thank God.
Well, I never understood for a long time
why Jesus in verse 9 breaks in with
something that seems so utterly doesn't fit the
context here.
It's like he's talking about one thing and
he turns around and completely talks about something
else.
It wasn't meaningful to me.
In verse 9, Jesus answered, Are there not
twelve hours in the day?
If any man walk in the day, he
stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of
this world.
In other words, when you walk in the
normal course of the day, you have the
sun, it's outward light that keeps you from
stumbling.
Thank God for outward light.
It fulfills its place and purpose.
But then he introduces something else.
He says, verse 10, But if a man
walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there
is no light in him.
Now, you help me.
Lord, why did you switch the theme so
drastically talking about this?
And suddenly, he switches to talking about the
outer light and the inner light.
What is this?
What does it mean?
I'm not sure, but at least it's been
a satisfying answer to me.
It seems as though the Lord is saying,
The soul walks by its outer light, but
the individual who knows the Lord has an
inner light.
And once we begin to have a transfer
from walking by our soul to walking by
the inner light that God begins to give,
an individual goes through what has been called
by the saints down through the years, the
night of the soul.
Have you ever read about it?
The night of the soul?
What is it?
It is when God takes us, as it
were.
You see, in our early days, as we
are going on in our Christian experience, so
much of it was dependence upon the soul.
But suddenly now, he's going to shift gears
within us.
And instead of walking by the light that's
external, he's bringing us into a walk where
our spirit attuned to his.
You see, this is why we are called,
when the light comes in, the children of
light.
The children of light.
What light was this?
What light is this?
Somebody says, It's all the light I get
in my mind.
I know a lot of people who can
quote practically the whole Bible, but as far
as I'm concerned, they're still stumbling.
And I'm not speaking in a discouraging way
of God's Word.
Not at all.
Thank God for those who are rich in
the Word.
But oh, thank God for those who know
the light that comes to our spirit to
be children of light.
Back during the days when England was going
through its awful dark hour, and probably would
have experienced what the French Revolution brought to
France, they say that England escaped the awfulness
of it because of George Fox and how
it went right straight through the nobility within
England.
You read the story of George Fox.
Do you know what he called it all
the way through?
The experience that these folks had?
They called it the inner light.
We today have come to speak of it
as the new birth.
There are various terms that have been used.
New life, new birth.
But there was something of a real quickening
of inner light that came.
Well, I believe that what Jesus is saying
to them probably could not be understood until
and unless they would know what it would
be to know and experience that which comes
to a child of God, the inner light.
You walk by the sun, walk by outward
light, you don't stumble.
But if a man walks in the dark,
and I believe he'll have to interpret it
for us, he stumbleth because there is no
what?
Light in him.
I got a real good illustration of this
the other day.
Someone was sitting by me.
I was, I remember, out in Seattle, I
guess, getting ready for a trip back to
Minneapolis.
And suddenly, as we sat at the airport,
there was sort of a blinking of lights
and everything.
The person nudged me and said, we are
transferring from outward energy to internal source.
I said, thank you, Lord.
That's that blinking, that dark night for a
moment, you know what I mean.
This is what really happens when a life
for years has been walking by the external
light.
The plane was plugged in to the airport.
But suddenly it's got to be released if
it's going to take off.
You follow?
And so all the generators have switched to
operating by the internal power.
And I sat there and I thought, Lord,
this is why people don't take off.
They can't take off.
They're still plugged in to what?
External, not here.
If God could bring us to see that
supply, the resource that we have by His
Spirit to our spirit.
Well, don't take off too far, but if
you know what I mean, I'm speaking of
that supply which God gives to our spirit.
So we read on.
Verse 11, These things said he, and after
that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus
sleepeth, but I go that I may awake
him out of sleep.
Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep
he shall do well.
Howbeit Jesus spake of his death, but they
thought that he had spoken of taking a
rest in sleep.
Then said Jesus unto them, Plainly, Lazarus is
dead, and I'm glad.
I'm glad for your sakes that I was
not there to the intent that you may
believe.
Nevertheless, let us go unto him.
Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto
his fellow disciples, let us also go that
we may die with him.
He's feeling pretty strong in the soul now.
I mean, sympathies.
Then when Jesus came, he found that he
had lain in the grave four days already.
Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen
furlongs off.
And many of the Jews came to Martha
and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother.
Then Martha, as soon as she heard that
Jesus was coming, went and met him.
But Mary sat still in the house.
Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou
hadst been here, my brother had not died.
But I know that even now, whatsoever thou
wilt ask of God, God will give it
thee.
Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise
again.
I want you to notice now, Martha is
well taught.
She's thoroughly orthodox.
She knows all of the teaching, that there
is a last resurrection.
She's a good fundamentalist.
I say that kindly.
She's well taught.
She knows her Bible.
The trouble is, when Jesus speaks, Martha said
unto him, I know that he shall rise
again in the resurrection at the last day.
I know that, Lord.
I'll give you chapter and verse for it.
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection
and the life.
He that believeth in me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live.
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die.
Believest thou this?
And we have a little controversy that's going
to go on.
Yea, Lord, I believe that he shall rise
in the resurrection at the last.
Hallelujah.
I believe the Bible.
Believest thou this?
What is the this?
It brings it into the now.
Who is he that stands as the resurrection
and the life right before her?
Oh, there is a tyranny of closed conceptions
that's very difficult to deal with.
And I've got to be very careful here
because thank God for all that we've been
taught.
Thank God for all the conceptions up here.
Thank God.
We must have them.
But isn't it a tragedy when a life
says, I believe that.
It's always pressing it off into what?
That.
The future.
That.
And he who is the life himself stands
right there.
And he confronts us right now with the
openness, the honesty, the immediacy of a fellowship.
Believest thou this?
This?
How many of you have watched in your
own life how many times when the Lord
would confront you with the nowness, the immediacy
of a thing, say, someday, yes, Lord, I
believe that.
Someday I'm going to really have victory.
Someday, Lord.
Someday.
Manana.
They say in the South.
Oh, oh, what an hour it is.
And it could be this morning right here.
That someone who has always been living in
the future or way in the past is
such a prone to do this.
Someday the children will all be raised and
I'll have more time.
Someday it will be better.
Someday.
Going to have real victory.
Someday.
No, you won't.
This.
What is it?
I believe, beloved.
I believe that God can press us into
something of the experiencing of the now, right
now.
With God.
He doesn't divide it into past, present and
future.
He looks down the corridor and it's now.
And I just somehow believe over and over
again the Lord shuts me up to say
here, this morning, right now enter into the
reality of that experiencing of victory or whatever
is involved right now.
The life supply that's available.
When?
Right now.
Poor fellow who had been laying at the
pool of Siloam all those years.
Every time the angel would come down and
trouble the water the first one who got
in would be healed.
But somebody got in ahead of him.
I don't know.
I'd give up, I think, after about ten
years.
Somebody always got there ahead.
And this day when Jesus is standing there
speaking to him he tells him the same
story.
Somebody always gets there before I do.
He was waiting for what?
The time?
And someone to help him?
And he didn't realize who was standing there.
I believe this is so true so much
of the time.
Oh, Lord.
I've heard the angels are going to come
and trouble the water if I can just
get in.
And here he stands right before him.
Right before him.
If God can press us to the fact
that while our soul is always living in
time our spirit this morning can partake right
now of the reality.
Whatever God wants to make real.
So, here are closed conceptions.
I have to say to my friends it
was the Pharisees, it was the thoroughgoing fundamentalists
of that day that just somehow couldn't fit
Jesus into the way things were all figured
out.
They nailed him to a cross.
And I have to say it kindly.
They're doing it again.
Our closed conceptions.
We're just sure we know exactly how he's
going to do it.
What it's all going to be like.
I get really afraid when I see a
whole pile of books and a whole lot
of men who've got it all figured out
saying, this is it.
Because you know what?
I'd like to believe they had the answer
and I don't think that many are going
to be that bold about it.
His ways.
His ways are different.
The tyranny of the soul.
Oh, the struggle that lives go through when
God is trying to readjust some of the
conceptions and enlarge and bring us into the
experiencing of some of the reality of it.
When?
Right now.
The quickening, the experiencing of some of this.
Why?
Because I can participate in him.
And the lights apply right now.
Well, you know the rest of the story.
Believest thou this?
She saith unto him, Yea, Lord, I believe
that thou art the Christ, the Son of
God, which should come into the world.
And when she had so said, she went
away and called Mary her sister, secretly saying,
The Master is come and calleth for thee.
I think he was getting awful close.
And so, she sent for Mary.
As soon as she heard that, she rose
quickly and came unto him.
Now Jesus was not yet come into the
town, but was in that place where Martha
met him.
The Jews then, which were with her in
the house, and comforted her when they saw
Mary that she rose up hastily, and went
out, followed her saying, She goeth unto the
grave to weep there.
Then when Mary was come where Jesus was
and saw him, she fell down at his
feet saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst
been here, my brother had not died.
Now, I would have sort of expected that
Martha could marry the same.
You know, the difference is that Mary's the
one who's been sitting at the feet of
the Lord Jesus, occupied with him.
But the humanity of both of them is
very, very evident.
Their brother has passed on.
If thou hadst been here, my brother had
not died.
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the
Jews also weeping, which came with her, he
what?
He groaned in the Spirit and was troubled,
and said, Where have you laid him?
They said unto him, Lord, come and see.
Jesus wept.
I like this, because I'm not implying this
morning that when God begins to enlarge and
quicken us more in our spirit, that our
soul, which is brought into submission to our
spirit, that we don't have a soul.
We have a soul, but it is not
operating independently.
See, for most people, the spirit is so
dead, shriveled up, and the soul is the
dominating part of their life.
It is proper for our spirit to express
itself through the soul.
It's the only way it can.
Jesus groaned in his spirit.
Where did it start?
And then it says, Jesus what?
Wept.
I've been through this at times, and I
thought, Oh, Frank, if God just hadn't given
me a soul, I'd be alright.
If I could just be all spirit.
Oh, no.
No, no, you can't take spirit, soul, and
body apart that easy.
They're far more interrelated than we realize.
Your spirit uses the soul to express itself,
and the spirit and soul use the body.
Thank God we are one in that sense.
And he groaned in spirit, but he wept.
I've met some folk who somehow thought, well,
there shouldn't be any weeping.
You don't become less human.
It's not our humanity that's changed.
It's just brought in line.
I think probably there'll be more weeping.
But it won't just be self-pity.
It won't just be the soul independently doing
it.
It's always from another source.
Vows of mercies.
The spirit.
Travail.
Compassion, you see.
And it will express itself.
I'd like to believe that when we come
to know the life and the spirit, there'll
be more joy.
Joy in the spirit and a release through
our soul.
I'm meeting folk, and I think I'm having
to readjust some of this in helping them
realize that there is a time when you
say within you, soul, rejoice in the Lord.
Why are you so disquieted?
Soul, hope thou in God.
You've been cast out long enough to speak
to your own soul and say, soul, quit
dragging your feet now.
If we don't have this, we're going to
have deadness on our hands.
There is time.
There is place for my spirit to be
released through a soul.
But thank God, it isn't someone who comes
in and starts with the soul.
It's by the spirit that is released, you
see.
So, Jesus groaned in spirit, and then it
says he wept.
Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved
him.
And some of them said, Could not this
man, which opened the eyes of the blind,
have caused that even this man should not
have died?
Jesus therefore again groaning in himself, cometh to
the grave.
It was a cave, and a stone lay
upon it.
Jesus said, Take ye away the stone.
Martha, the sister of him that was dead,
saith unto him, Lord, by this time he
stinketh, for he hath been dead four days.
Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto
thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst
see the glory of God.
Then they took away the stone from the
place where the dead was laid.
And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said,
Father, O I love this.
Can you see all the way through?
His spirit has been moving in touch with
the Father.
This is the spiritual reality that God has
to bring us to.
For we do nothing just out from ourselves,
but from the supply, the touch, the contact
that he has with our spirit.
This is not something extra special, or the
deeper life, or the super spiritual life.
This is to be the normal life of
God's children.
The normal spiritual life.
I am absolutely convinced, beloved.
It seems like these days, more and more,
God just keeps shutting me up.
We've been speaking about this long enough.
It's time to live with our spirit more
and more alive, attuned, and expect that God
will make it more and more real.
I got up from the other afternoon.
I needed a little walk from being penned
up in the hotel and just having meetings.
As I walked down the street, just fellowshipping
with the Lord, singing unto Him.
It seemed like the Lord said, I'm going
to bring somebody along.
Who, Lord?
Who are you going to bring someone along?
You know, your spirit keeps saying.
As I walked down, I was coming back,
saw a young fellow sitting on a stone
or a brick retaining wall quite a distance
off.
I saw he had a red book by
his side.
Something in my spirit just went out.
Here he is.
I don't lie.
You know, I'm timid.
You might not believe it.
But I've been very backward and very reserved
through the years.
And I just said, Lord, you open the
door.
Open the door.
God does it so often, we ask Him.
Open the door.
Just as I got before him, I noticed
it was a red Bible.
Well, that'd been easy, you know, for him
to take it and say, praise the Lord,
that's a good book.
And I was about to.
And just at that moment, the fellow looked
over and he said, say, could you tell
me what time it is?
I passed 50 people on the street.
Not one of them asked me that before.
But he did.
I walked over.
He said, say, I like the book you
have there.
He said, do you know the one who's
talking about?
His face lit up.
He said, yes, sir, I do.
Well, he had a good time, the fellow
said.
I don't know, brother, sister, but I'd just
like to encourage you not to get into
the, what do I call it, the, I'd
like to have you believe God more and
more to help your spirit to be attuned,
to walk with Him and expect God, the
expectancy that takes you out of the humdrum,
the monotony of life.
God delights to do it.
He has put within us a radio system
that for most people, the antenna's in and
they've gone dead.
What is it?
Right here.
And if we don't have that interlight, we
have to walk by the what?
The soul.
Well, I was tempted to go on to
chapter 12, but it is 12.
And we'll leave it with this this morning.
Let me press this home to you.
Do you see what I'm trying to say?
Spiritual reality is the thing that people are
crying for.
How many of you have gone to a
service?
You've gone to church?
You got some doctrine?
Even your emotions got lifted up?
You walked out saying, I will do it.
You can do all of that by the
power of the soul and not be particularly
spiritual at all.
Sometimes you can go into a meeting and
your mind can't get a hold of much,
but your spirit is fed.
You fellowship.
You go out.
What did I learn?
Probably nothing.
But your spirit has come to feed.
This is what we find.
I've been hearing so many of the brothers
and sisters say, how much more wonderful the
Lord's table is every Sunday morning when we
gather.
At the beginning, everybody tries to feel their
way into worship.
They try to think their way in to
conceptions.
And sometimes even will worship.
They try to will themselves into an experiencing
of all that Jesus has been through.
I don't wonder that the Lord's table, the
remembrance, doesn't mean much.
But once you come to touch spiritual reality
and your spirit begins to openly go out
toward the Lord to fellowship with him, all
the difference it makes, the fellowship that one
has with him.
Brothers, sisters, we have to know the difference
between that which is of our soul and
that which is of our spirit or we're
going to be continually confused in the realm
of spiritual reality.
And believe me, the soul can build up
some pretty spiritual atmospheres.
Your soul's got a pretty good, it can
really, you know, you can get into a
meeting where everything is so reverent, so quiet,
and you'd think it was spiritual.
Not necessarily.
It isn't the outward atmosphere.
It isn't the things that some souls don't
feel like, let's say stained glass windows in
Oregon and quietness, don't feel like they can
worship.
It has nothing to do with it.
Whether you're in a cave, wherever you are,
if your spirit is alive, sensitive, has come
to know reality, that's the difference.
Oh, we have to press through to know
what it is, to know the Lord, more
and more, to fellowship with him.
Reality then is by the spirit.
I'm going to do something.
I've read this before to you, but I'll
take you to Psalm 42, and I want
to show you what so many folk go
through.
Psalm 42.
Probably read it here before.
If I didn't, surprising.
Psalm 42.
As the heart panteth after the water brooks,
so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Our soul, the whole of it, it longs
for reality, too.
It longs for God.
My mind, my emotion, my will, the whole
of my soul, like the little deer pants.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living
God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
Here's his emotion now.
My tears have been by me day and
night, while they continually say unto me, Where
is thy God?
Seems like when I get quite tearful in
the emotion, I ought to get closer to
the Lord.
But even in the midst of my tears,
they say back to me, What?
Where is God in all this?
How many of you know that a lot
of people get a release emotionally, and they
think it's spiritual?
I've had to deal with folk at altars
who go there, they get a little release
in their emotions, and they think it's spiritual.
Not necessarily.
This is a part of the problem that
we have to deal with.
People get so conditioned and oriented, with certain
things.
My tears have been by me day and
night, while they continually say unto me, Where
is thy God?
When I remember these things, I poured out
my soul in me.
For I had gone with the multitude, I
went with them to the house of God,
with the voice of joy and praise, with
the multitude that kept holy day.
You see, my soul is longing for something.
And it even says, I think I'll go
to church.
Here's Sunday.
I'll go.
Why?
Because I might just get lifted up.
I'll get something of the overflow of someone
else.
This is what most people get in church.
They get a lift.
Their soul gets some help from the overflow.
Their emotions, their feelings are lifted.
He went with the crowd to holy day.
But he finally says, coming back, Why art
thou cast down, O my soul?
Why art thou disquieted in me?
Hope thou in God, for I shall yet
praise him for the help of his countenance.
So help is very wonderful.
And when you go to the service or
you go to a meeting, and there's something
of joy and life, your soul gets some
help because it's the overflow from who?
Someone else.
Maybe help that comes from the Lord.
I'm after something.
I hope we see it.
So he finally says, verse 6, O my
God, my soul is cast down within me.
So on.
But then verse 7, Deep calleth unto deep.
What is the deep?
It's the spirit, isn't it?
Do you know something?
Our spirit has been so made that it
calls to the deep within God.
And I believe that the deep within God
calls back to our spirit.
The spirit of man is like a big
empty room that's been made for God.
You can put things within, they roll around,
they never satisfy.
Only God by His spirit can satisfy the
deep within our spirit.
I like the translation that puts it this
way.
Deep calleth unto deep at the call of
the fountainhead.
What is the fountainhead of all things?
God does the first calling.
His spirit calls for a place to dwell.
Deep calleth unto deep.
Well, jump down with me now to verse
11.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
Sounds the same.
Why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God.
For I shall yet praise Him who is
the health of my countenance.
What is the difference between verse 5 and
verse 11?
Right.
Help.
Help from His countenance.
It's something that comes from outside.
Health.
I shall yet praise Him for He is
the health of what?
My countenance.
And I think the difference is this.
The soul, the soul gets its help, the
overflow from God from others.
Something external that's coming.
They looked unto Him and their faces were
lightened.
It's help that comes this way.
What is health?
It's when my own spirit has come to
know the continuous supply.
And from within, He begins to change the
countenance that I might be some help to
some others.
Can I use an illustration I must have
used here before?
My wife doesn't like it, so I guess
I can use it.
She isn't here.
I believe that most people live with a
milkman.
You know what I'm going to say now,
don't you?
Every day the milkman comes and brings them
a quart of milk.
Thank God for a milkman.
They get help.
Is there something better than having a milkman?
Having your own cow.
We've been trying to get one cow for
30 years.
Now you've got the answer.
Your own cow.
Oh, how many people live by the help,
the overflow.
Somebody's milkman all the time.
They go to the meeting with their little
bucket.
Praise the Lord.
I got some help today.
Isn't that wonderful?
I hope it lasts till Wednesday and I
can go back and get some more help.
I have a milkman.
See what I'm trying to say is this.
I believe that God develops within us His
own cow.
That's pretty crudely put.
It's the supply of the Spirit to our
own spirit that brings help.
I don't want to be misunderstood, but I
think I can tell the difference in lives
when they discover the livingness of the supply
of the Lord in their own spirit.
It's wonderful to run off with your little
milk bucket to get help.
But oh, what God, what He's wanting to
do is to bring us into the supply
of the Spirit through our own spirit.
Then we're not half so ready to run.
Guess what might actually happen?
You might have some people coming to you
to get some help.
This is what God needs to do.
Why?
We found Him as the supply.
Help to our countenance that others might have
help.
Let's pray, shall we?
Lord, we don't want more knowledge this morning.
We don't want even some just illumination for
our mind.
We want, we long, that Thou will bring
Thy people into the experiencing of reality with
Thee.
And Lord, I pray, oh, I do pray,
that for every brother and sister here, Thou
will bring us, Lord Jesus, to the inwardness,
first of all, of honesty and openness with
Thee.
Oh, so many of your children do not
know fellowship daily.
The livingness of the supply with Thee, the
reason is Lord.
Some place, the door, a thin veil, something
has come and they're not open.
We claim, Lord Jesus, that honesty this morning.
I don't know what you'd put your finger
on or what you would touch.
But dear Lord, if you've been bringing, taking
us out of all our doings and our
activity and all the souls trying to somehow
find its satisfaction in mere things, thank you
for the drought you brought.
Thank you for crowding us to yourself.
Thank you for bringing us to the place.
It's just so simple this morning.
You want honesty.
You want openness.
A transparency.
I believe you to do it, Lord.
Don't let us squirm away.
The thing you'd touch, the thing you'd point
out that keeps coming back whenever we really
come close to thee.
Oh, let it be dealt with.
Thank you for your blood that cleanses.
Thank you, Lord, for the obedience that purifies
the soul.
The things that need to be.
Thank you, Lord.
We walk in the light as he is
in the light.
We have fellowship in the blood of Jesus
Christ.
Keeps right on continually cleansing from all sin.
Make it to be real, we pray.
Lord, you deal with each heart, each one,
according to that thing.
And we'll give you the praise, the honor,
the glory.
So we ask it in Jesus' lovely name.
Amen.
Thank you for bringing us to the place.
It's just so simple this morning.
You want honesty.
You want openness.
A transparency.
I believe you can do it, Lord.
Don't let us squirm away.
The thing you'd touch, the thing you'd point
out that keeps coming back whenever we really
come close to thee.
Oh, let it be dealt with.
Thank you for your blood that cleanses.
Thank you, Lord, for the obedience that purifies
the soul.
The things that need to be.
Thank you, Lord.
We walk in the light as he is
in the light.
We have fellowship in the blood of Jesus
Christ.
Keeps right on continually cleansing from all sin.
Make it to be real, we pray.
Lord, you deal with each heart, each one,
according to that thing.
And we give thee the praise, the honor,
the glory.
We ask it in Jesus' lovely name.
Amen.