Well, as I looked out over the lake
this morning, I think I saw some Canadian
geese heading north.
I think they looked a little shocked and
surprised that the temperature would be like this
in Florida.
This confirms in my feeling that people ought
to live south of Daytona Beach and never
get this cold as this in South Florida.
You know that.
And if it did, it would be in
headlines in the Miami Herald.
But Floridians enjoy this special kind of cool
weather, don't they?
Especially after weeks and months of hot, muggy
kind of weather that we get here in
Florida.
So this is an enjoyable and wonderful change.
Now, there's a book in the New Testament
in which I think is unfolded God's marvelous
provision for our new life in Christ Jesus.
And I'm going to ask you to turn
to that book with me for these sessions.
A very familiar book, of course, and I
refer to the book of Ephesians.
Now, you might be saying, what in the
world can there be fresh or new from
that epistle of Ephesians?
We have studied it many, many times before,
and I suppose that of all the portions
of the Bible that are marked, if you
mark your Bible, this book may have more
underlined words and phrases than maybe any other
book in the New Testament.
But perhaps we can find a fresh or
a new approach to the epistle, and I
shall do my best to work that approach
a little bit.
First of all, let me remind you that
here is found probably the highest and the
richest of truths concerning Christian life and experience
to be found anywhere in the New Testament.
There is nothing in this epistle that is
derogatory in terms of faults among the saints.
You know, most of the other letters that
Paul wrote were addressed to some problem or
some situation in the various assemblies that needed
some correction or some attention, and we're aware
of that fact.
That doesn't appear in the Ephesian letter.
He seems to be intent on just doing
one thing, and that is lifting the sight,
the vision, and the hearts of God's people
in that difficult place.
And it was a difficult place.
Ephesus, as you know, was a possession of
the Romans, and we know from ancient history
that they say perhaps as much as 95
% of the Roman populace were slaves.
They had been captured by the Roman Empire,
and that was true at Ephesus.
It was a pagan place.
Recall Paul's experience there when a riot began
as he preached, and it was the headquarters
for the worship of that licentious goddess Diana.
And you remember how in the book of
Acts it records how the crowd shouted by
the space of several hours, "'Great is Diana
of the Ephesians!' And Paul soon discovered that
when he came into a place like Ephesus,
he actually caused a riot almost everywhere he
went as he preached the word of God.
But the people of Ephesus were, for the
most part, slaves, the Romans, and one can
well imagine what life must have been like
as a slave under the Roman Empire.
You were owned body, soul, and spirit, if
you please, by your slave owner.
Life was cheap.
It was possible to buy a man or
a woman much cheaper than it was to
buy some animals in the marketplaces, and one
can well imagine the depths of immorality that
that created, so that the believers at Ephesus
needed a great deal of encouragement.
Now, they must have gotten it under the
ministry of the apostle Paul.
Maybe that's why the book of Ephesians contains
so much high and lofty spiritual truth, because
these people were able to take it in.
They were able to comprehend it.
They were probably more mature than many of
the other saints.
They had enjoyed the ministry of Paul for
a space of three or three and a
half years, and it's difficult to imagine what
it would have been like to have sat
at the feet of a pastor like Paul.
When I first became a pastor as a
young seminary graduate, I came out knowing everything.
The older I get, the less I know,
and at that point, however, I just knew
everything.
In this, my first, well, it was not
really my first church, but it was the
church where I spent so much time of
my life, 33 years as a pastor, I
thought, well, now, on Wednesday evenings, we'll just
run through the book of Acts in a
sort of a running commentary.
That'll eat up 28 weeks anyway, and that
helps.
So, each week we would take a chapter
and we'd read it, and I would make
some comment here and there.
And I recall that when we arrived at
the chapter that tells about those first deacons
or elders of the church, it described them,
men filled with the Spirit and so on,
and I made the stupid remark.
I said, oh, what I would give to
have a board of deacons like this one.
Now, I didn't know, I mean, it came
out, you know, in a way that I
did not intend, and we had a man
in our church who was a former funeral
director from Texas, big tall man, and when
he whispered, it was a booming voice.
And so he leaned over to his wife
in the back row and whispered, and oh,
what we would like if we had a
pastor like Paul.
It was a well-deserved rejoinder, let me
tell you.
Well, at any rate, here they are, these
Ephesian believers living under these difficult, difficult circumstances.
And Paul thinks about them from his prison
cell in Rome.
His heart goes out to them, and it
begins to unfold for them some of the
deep and wonderful truths concerning God's purpose and
God's plan in their lives, what God has
planned for them.
And the epistle is intended to lift them
and to encourage them, and so it does.
It encourages the saints and has done so
down through the long centuries since.
Now, someone has said, I do not know
whom or else I would give credit, someone
has said that the book of Ephesians is
the Alps of the New Testament, or the
Switzerland of the Scriptures.
And by that imagery is meant that here
in this book you will find the Matterhorns
and the Jungfrau and the Eiger and the
Mont Blancs, the great high towering peaks of
spiritual truth.
And that is really so.
Perhaps as in no other epistle do you
find that true.
We are on high ground when we are
reading and contemplating and studying this portion of
Scripture.
And it is not intended merely to increase
our apprehension, our comprehension of divine truth, but
these truths are intended to work down into
our daily life, making life in Christ significant,
rich, full, and victorious as well.
And as I've studied this book and what
we'll plan to do in the few sessions
we have together, I would like to select
from each of the chapters.
We're not going to do a verse-by
-verse exposition.
I'll not give you an outline.
I'm merely going to select what I think
is the highest peak in several of the
chapters, inasmuch as we won't have, I think,
six sessions.
We can't cover each chapter.
But in the chapters that we do consider,
I want to select the highest peak in
that chapter.
And we'll call it by, if you please,
one of the names of some of the
mountains of Switzerland.
For instance, in this first chapter I think
we have reached, or we do reach here,
the Matterhorn of the book of Ephesians.
Here is the highest peak of truth, the
highest level of divine truth, I think, to
be found anywhere in the epistle.
Now, some of us may say, oh, that's
great, that's fine, I enjoy hearing that.
But it's really not for me.
I'm an ordinary kind of a person, and
I'm beset by many weaknesses of the flesh.
And I have tried hard over the years
of my life and experience to live the
richer, the fuller, the deeper, the victorious Christian
life.
But, you know, I guess I just have
to be an ordinary kind of a person.
All of this is not really meant for
a person like me.
Now, you've made a great mistake, if that's
what you think, because no matter how high
is the level of truth here expressed, no
matter how tall the mountain peaks may appear,
at the bottom of the mountain, at each
of these great peaks of truth, there is
a sign that assures us that what is
to be gained, what is to be seen,
what is to be obtained from the mountain
peak, is rightfully yours and mine.
This is what the sign reads.
Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ
Jesus.
That's his promise.
That's the guarantee.
That's the sign that assures us that what
is there on the mountain peak is ours.
He hath already blessed us with all these
great spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ
Jesus.
So now, this morning, we are going to
scale one of these peaks.
By the way, don't get worried.
I'm not a mountain climber.
I have been to Switzerland so many times
it seems like my second home, and I
admire and I stand in awe of those
Swiss kids who climb these mountains.
But you know, the average Swiss child is
born with mountain climber boots on his feet
and skis in his hands.
And so, almost from babyhood, they learn to
climb and to ski.
Well, I'm a mountain climber too.
I love mountains, but I like to climb
a mountain a la helicopter.
You know what I mean?
They lift you up there and drop you
off and come back for lunch and take
you down.
That's the easiest, nicest way I know to
climb a mountain.
So, we're going to climb a mountain or
two, but I won't tire you, I hope.
Now, I ask you, therefore, to turn with
me to the latter half of chapter one,
and we're going to look at this great
truth here expressed through the window of Paul's
prayer for the Ephesians as found in the
latter half of this chapter.
I'm going to read it, and I shall
read it probably a little differently than you
have heard it read before, but bear with
me.
And I want to say also that I'm
reading from the King James Version of the
Bible.
I don't know what version you may have
on your knee, and I appreciate all these
other paraphrases and versions and whatever, but I'm
just old-fashioned enough to still love and
work with the King James Version.
No matter what help I find in the
others, this is the tool that I'm accustomed
to using.
In fact, I'm trying to teach Christians all
around the country new words to an old
hymn.
My hope is built on nothing less than
Ryrie's notes and moody press.
I dare not trust the NIV, but wholly
lean on KJV.
Now, that's an interesting new slant on an
old hymn.
If you don't have the KJV with you
this morning, this reading will not seem quite
so significant, but I am reading now from
the KJV, beginning with verse 15.
Wherefore I also, after I heard of your
faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto
all the saints, cease not to give thanks
for you, making mention of you in my
prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto
you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in
the knowledge of Him.
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 who believe, according to the working
of His mighty power, which He wrought in
Christ, when He raised Him from the dead,
and set Him at His own right hand
in the heavenly places, far above all principality,
and power, and might, and dominion, and every
name that is named, not only in this
world, but also in that which is to
come, and hath put all things under His
feet, and gave Him to be the head
over all things to the church, which is
His body, the fullness of Him that filleth
all in all periods."
Now, you may be saying to yourself, what's
that all about?
Why all that?
Well, at least I hope you caught this.
This is one sentence, one single sentence.
It has in it 199 English words by
actual count, before you strike a period.
Now, that seems to me to be somewhat
significant.
First of all, it is a complicated sentence.
Can you remember back in your school days,
if there are some former school teachers, if
you tortured kids like this for shame?
You remember when we used to have to
go to the blackboard and diagram a sentence?
You would draw a line and cut it
in half, and everything on the left side
was the subject, and everything on the right
side was the predicate, and then you got
all the clauses, dependent, independence, and all those
clauses, and built them like staircases.
Oh, that was the bane of my existence
as a kid.
I always wound up with a dozen words
left over, wondering where should they go, and
feeling foolish at that point before the whole
class.
Then she would call on another student, usually
a girl, who'd come up and take a
piece of chalk, and when she was finished,
there wasn't a and, an if, a but,
or a is left over.
She had every word exactly where it belonged.
I've often thought about that teacher, and I'm
sure she's dead now, but if she were
alive, I would like to have sent her
this sentence and said, do what you can
with that.
I want to see what it looks like.
Diagram, 199 words.
Well, beyond that, that's a mere peccadillo of
thought, but beyond that, there's something else here.
When this man begins to pray, when he
reaches out to touch God on behalf of
these, his dear children in Christ, it seems
to me as though all the fountains of
his soul are broken open.
It's like turning on a faucet, and he
doesn't bother too much about turning it off.
Let it gush, let it flow.
And if diction, or grammar, or whatever gets
in the way, that's just too bad.
He's pouring out the intensity of his desire
on behalf of these believers.
Now, when you analyze the prayer a little
bit more carefully than this, you will notice
that really and truly there is but one
request, out of which grows three lesser requests.
That one request seems to be here, in
verse 17, that God, the God of our
Lord Jesus Christ, Father of Glory, might give
to them the spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of him, the eyes of
their understanding being enlightened.
That's the great request.
Oh, that God would give to you the
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
of him.
Theology is, in Greek, you know, it's the
combination of two words.
Logos, the Greek word for word, or science,
or knowledge.
There are other words for knowledge.
And theos, the word for God.
Theology is the science, or the knowledge, about
God.
And it used to be called, by the
old divines, the queen of the sciences.
And so it is.
The knowledge of God.
There is nothing more important than knowing God.
Mark Twain, it is said, once, in a
world around the world trip, he had his
little girl with him, and they had met
all the royalty of a dozen nations in
Europe, and the little girl said, Papa, we've
met everybody in the world.
There's nobody we don't know, except God.
And, you know, really, if you don't know
God, you don't know, you don't know, really,
anything.
The knowledge of God is the most important
knowledge of all.
The pursuit of God, the knowledge of Him,
it begins here in the kindergarten of life.
It will proceed even into eternity, where we
may even enjoy some postgraduate courses in the
knowledge of God, ever increasing in the knowledge
of Him.
So his prayer is that you may grow
in the knowledge of God, and that the
eyes of your understanding may be opened, enlightened,
so that you will understand three things.
And those three things are indicated by the
word, what.
Notice it?
That you may know, first, what is the
hope of His calling?
And, secondly, what the riches of the glory
of His inheritance in the saints.
And, thirdly, what is the exceeding greatness of
His power to usward who believe?
In other words, there are three things that
he wants them to enjoy or understand.
He talks about something that will, first of
all, enhearten them, that they may know the
hope of His calling to us.
In the second place, he wants them to
understand and enjoy something that will enrich them.
So, he wants them to understand what are
the riches of God's inheritance in us.
And then, he wants them to enjoy and
experience something that will energize them, so that
they will understand the greatness of His power
toward usward who believe.
Now, let's consider those three lesser requests that
grow out of this main request of the
apostle.
First of all, he wants them to enjoy
or to understand the hope of His calling.
The eyes of your understanding be enlightened that
you may know what is the hope of
His calling.
Now, it's a great and wonderful truth.
I used to think in earlier days that
the Bible words, predestination, foreknowledge, election, calling, I
used to think they were Presbyterian words.
You couldn't understand them unless you were a
Presbyterian.
And I was a Baptist, and so I
gave up.
I said, I guess they're not meant for
me.
They're Calvinistic words.
If you're not a Calvinist in your theological
bent, well, then these are beyond your ken.
No, they're neither Presbyterian words nor Calvinistic words.
They happen to be biblical words.
They are biblical truths, and we ought to
find great solace and great comfort in understanding
what they say to us and what they
mean.
Take this question of the calling of God.
Do you know, this morning, I said, no,
K-N-O-W, do you know that
you're one of God's called ones?
If you have any doubt about that, if
there's the slightest doubt about your election and
calling, then you ought to get it settled
before this day has ended, if possible, before
the hour is first.
There is nothing so comforting, so assuring as
to know for a fact that you are
one of God's elect, that you're one of
his called ones.
It's great to know that.
Peter says we ought to make our calling
and election sure.
It's a wonderful thing to know that we
are called of God, and that this action
on God's part occurred before any of us
were born, even before that, before the foundation
of the world.
Can you imagine the excitement and the thrill
of a miner who would be digging into
the bowels of the earth, a half to
three quarters, even to a mile below the
surface of the earth, and pursuing a virgin
vein of ore, whatever, of whatever kind, and
there in the bowels of the earth where
no human had ever been before, he pecks
away at the ore to get it out,
and by the flickering light of his miner's
cap, he suddenly discovers that his axe has
struck a rock, a fair-sized one, and
he recognizes that he'll have to perhaps use
explosives to get it out, and yet as
he smooths it a little bit and gets
the dirt and whatever around, he suddenly notices
something, for there on that rock buried in
the bowels of the earth are, of all
things, letters, neatly chiseled letters, not just scratched
in a clumsy fashion, but neatly chiseled, and
upon further investigation he discovers that the letters
spell out his full name, first name, middle
name, last name.
I want to tell you, if he has
any hair on his head, it was standing
straight up by then, because he would recognize
the fact that his name had been chiseled
by the finger of God in the rocks
and buried in the bowels of the earth
when the earth was made.
No less is the thrilling, exciting truth that
before the foundation of the world, we were
chosen in him, in love.
I don't know how to explain it, I
really don't, but I believe it.
I know it's true that thou shouldst love
a wretch like me and be the God
thou art.
Is darkness to my intellect, but sunshine to
my heart?
I don't know how to explain it, but
I know that I'm one of God's called
ones, and it's an exciting thing to know
that.
But, wait a minute, is the burden of
Paul's prayer for these believers that they should
be able to comprehend the mystery of God's
sovereign election and selection of them?
Nope.
A little closer examination of the prayer you
will notice reveals this.
It states not that you might understand the
fact of your calling, not that you might
be able to explain it, not even that
you might hope that you're one of God's
called ones.
No, but that you might understand what is
the hope of his calling.
Whose hope do you think?
The believers' hope here?
No, God's hope.
What was it God hoped for when he
called us out of darkness into his marvelous
light?
Well, maybe it's not as clearly expressed in
the Ephesian letter as it is in the
Colossian epistle, where he says this, that you
might know the riches of the glory of
this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ
in you, the hope of glory.
What is it God is hoping for in
your life and mine in this very short
span of time, loaned to us and invaded
in our experience by the sovereign grace of
God that called us out of our darkness
of sin and blindness and brought us to
Christ, and now we have just a little
time between now and eternity?
What is God hoping for in your life
and mine?
It seems to me it's all summed up
in just one thing.
He wants to form in us something that
will reveal the likeness, the very image of
his own beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what God's after.
That's what God's hoping for.
Any of you who are parents, you know
how you puff up with a little pride
when somebody comes to you and we use
certain expressions?
We say, do you know John will never
be dead as long as Bill's alive?
What do they mean by that?
The boy is so much like his father,
he betrays his father's characteristics, he walks like
him, talks like him, thinks like him, dresses
like him in such a fashion that he
reminds everybody of his father who may well
have gone home to heaven.
I was born in a very poor family
in a very tough neighborhood and we had
different kinds of expressions.
They're not so nice.
We used to speak about somebody being the
spitting image of his father.
Now, I don't know what that really means,
but we used it constantly and it meant
merely that this boy is just like his
father.
That's what God wants.
He hopes for this.
This is the hope of his calling to
us, that Christ might be formed in us
now.
Now, he will be one day.
It does not yet appear what we shall
be, but we know that when he shall
appear we'll be just like him, for we'll
see him as he is.
But God is now perfecting, trying to perfect
in your life and mine something of the
image and likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do people see it in you?
Do they now, honestly?
Are you a nice neighbor to live with
or are you a kind of a cantankerous,
mean-ornery cuss?
They're glad that you're home and not out
in the street.
Do people detect that you're his child?
Well, that's what he's saying.
Do you dare to climb to this part
of the first peak and see what is
the hope of his calling to you?
Now he goes on, and furthermore he says,
And what are the riches of the glory
of his inheritance in the saints?
We are God's purchased property, and the price
which has been paid is a staggering and
awful one.
We are his inheritance.
Now, it's nice to think about our inheritance
in Christ.
I mentioned just a moment ago that I
was born into a very poor family.
We knew many times, in the early days
of my boyhood, we would often go to
bed without having full stomachs, and I knew
that, and we had a shabby kind of
a life.
We lived in a very poor neighborhood.
They called them now ghettos.
I didn't know what the word meant then.
And that's why, you see, I have such
a warped personality now, because I was deprived
of all those things.
It surprises me how we ever grew up
and made it somehow.
But anyway, my father used to tell us,
you can detect from my name, Anderson, that
I'm Scandinavian in background.
My grandfather was born in Sweden.
And so my father used to tell us
over and over again about an uncle we
had that was very rich over in Sweden,
and he had no other relatives but us,
and when he died, he was going to
leave all of his money to us.
Now, as a boy, I began to dream
about that.
I want to tell you, I dreamed about
when all that money would come.
When we'd get a letter from overseas, I
used to say, Oh, I hope Uncle Olaf
is alive or something.
Or something.
And a little disappointed when he was still
alive.
I found out that those old Scandinavians live
a long time.
They're tough.
And when I was contemplating what I would
do with the money, I'll tell you, in
my time, I once owned 18 houses.
That's a fact.
There were mansions, too.
I spent my money like a prodigal.
I bought the most silly things and expensive
things.
In fact, once upon a time, I built
a house of my own.
I wanted it just my way.
This house had several features in it.
For instance, in my bedroom, whenever I opened
the closet door, I would be knocked down
by a whole torrent of pennies.
I don't know why I chose pennies, but
they came out, just thousands of them, and
knocked me down.
How nice that is, to be able to
open your closet door, and every time you
did, you were knocked down by an avalanche
of pennies.
Now, I never worried about who put them
all back, but when you've got that much
money, you never worry.
There's always somebody you can hire to do
it.
And then the bathroom that I built, it
was something else.
The bathtub was made out of chocolate.
I filled it with soda.
When I took a bath, I drank the
soda and ate the tub.
But now, if you were as rich as
I, would you not have done some things
just as silly as that?
Then one day, one awful day, awful day,
there came the bad news.
No uncle, no inheritance, no riches, and I
came back to life in its grim reality
with a thump, with a terrible day of
disappointment.
Never inherited a thing, never had any inheritance,
nobody ever left anything to me.
But I'll tell you something, when I found
Jesus Christ, I found, to my utter amazement,
not only that I had been forgiven of
my sins, justified in the eyes of God,
given eternal life, and the assurance of eternity
to be spent with him, but I also
came in, I was an heir, and I
had come into a rich inheritance.
And that inheritance is in Christ Jesus.
It is reserved and kept in heaven for
us, and we're kept for it.
Isn't that wonderful to know that?
So you Ephesians, life is tough, and you're
poor, and you're slaves, and your master is
a tough taskmaster, but that's all right.
Just remember that when you die, you're going
to come into your inheritance, and life will
be different then.
Is that what he's saying?
Because if he is, it's not a very
practical truth.
I like to think about my inheritance in
heaven, but I wish now and again, when
things get a little grim, that I could
get a little drawdown from some of that,
you know, and be able to pay a
couple of bills down around here with the
interest, at least.
Just to think, oh, don't worry.
When you die, you won't have any more
bills.
Isn't that nice?
I know, but between now and then, those
bills bother me.
So to know that we have an inheritance
in heaven is a delightful, delectable thought, but
really it's not too practical.
Is that what he's praying that they may
experience?
No.
Please, no.
Look at it once again a little more
carefully.
And what are the riches of the glory?
Not of your inheritance in him, but his
inheritance in the saints.
Did you ever realize that you are God's
purchased possession?
You're his inheritance?
He's invested something in you.
Right after the war, my plane landed on
a little Pacific atoll, and the pilot said,
We're going to refuel here.
Don't walk too far.
Don't be gone too long.
Well, he was telling the truth.
A quarter of a mile in any direction,
you're in the Pacific Ocean.
But I took a little walk nonetheless, and
I got about as far as I could
get away from where we landed, and there
I saw, right on the beach, the remains
of a plane, an airplane.
It was rusted, and the waves would come
up and sweep over it and bring it
farther up on the beach.
And so I climbed over that broken fuselage
and I found something interesting.
I'd been on a campaign in Japan with
the Pocket Testament League for three months on
my way home on this occasion.
But there I found lodged up underneath that
fuselage this water log now swollen four or
five times its original size, a New Testament.
I still have it at home.
I don't know whether that pilot was alive
or dead.
I don't know whether he was a Christian
or no.
I only know that somebody on that plane
was carrying God's Word with him.
And it was a delightful thing.
I stood that day and I said, Oh
God, this little piece of atoll here, this
worthless chunk of real estate out here, what
did we have to pay to get it?
Rich, warm, young American blood.
How many died in order to buy that
island?
I do not know.
And maybe it isn't worth a thing.
We could have bought it with surplus money
from the United States Treasury.
Instead, we paid a horrible price to buy
it in human blood.
And though it may be a worthless piece
of real estate, perhaps our nation thinks it's
worthwhile, and the price was worth it, someday
it may be vital to the defense of
our nation there in the Pacific.
At any rate, the price they paid makes
them feel that it's a worthwhile piece of
real estate.
Now, we're not worth much in ourselves.
The longer you live, the more you realize
how worthless you really are.
Martin Luther said, I never knew how sinful
I was until I became justified in Christ.
How true.
We're not worth much in our eyes or
anybody else's.
But in God's eyes we are.
He paid a tremendous price to purchase you
and me.
He's made an investment in us.
We are his inheritance in Christ.
And he's expecting some dividends from his investment.
Are you yielding them?
Are we giving them to him?
Is he satisfied with it?
Oh, how this must have encouraged those believers,
and heartened them, and enriched them.
Now, one last thing.
And, furthermore, I pray that you may understand
what is the exceeding greatness of his power
to us who believe according to the working
of his mighty power.
Friend, let me tell you that in that
one single verse, 19 of Ephesians 1, is
jammed nearly all the words found in the
Greek language for power.
There are four distinct different words indicating some
phase of energy or power.
It's as if when Paul was trying to
say what he wanted to say to these
Ephesians, you need energizing, you need empowerment, you
need strength.
Let's see.
How can I express what God now provides
for you?
And I can just envision him reaching into
the bins of words.
Here they are, all tucked away neatly in
their little cubby holes.
He reaches into the power bin and seizes
upon a whole handful of words and jams
them down into this verse in order to
somehow expand our understanding of what God has
provided for us in Christ Jesus.
We hear a great deal these days about
people needing counseling.
The whole business of psychology and psychiatry has
become a very expansive business.
Some people even brag about the fact, oh,
I see my psychiatrist twice a week.
Oh, well, I need to see mine three
times a week.
Oh, when I'm getting better, I only have
to go once a week, as if we
ought to be bragging about that.
I can understand.
I really can understand unconverted people who have
no hope in Christ needing desperately expert counseling
and advice on how to get life back
together again somehow.
I can understand a little bit of that.
It is very difficult for me, however, to
understand why a believer in Christ must have
expert counseling and help and guidance when God
has provided so much for us.
Now, I don't totally eliminate it, but I'm
saying that all that you need for living,
for living day by day, what you need
is here provided in Christ Jesus.
God places at our disposal power, energy, strength,
might in order that we might be able
to live above and beyond the ordinary.
There were two men who made a great
impression upon my life and my early Christian
experience.
One was Isaac Page of the then China
Inland Mission.
A little short man, bald as he could
be, very humorous, but a very effective communicator.
And one day at America's Keswick, I saw
him as one of the main speakers, and
another man from Britain, Captain Reginald Wallace, who
was the exact opposite physically of Isaac Page.
He was tall, military in bearing, handsome, and
they were talking to each other on the
path.
I wish I had had a camera.
Here was Captain Wallace looking down at Isaac
Page earnestly, and Isaac Page was looking up
just as earnestly.
And right about then, a little boy came
along, and he tugged on the coattail of
Isaac Page, and Page was so absorbed in
his conversation with Captain Wallace that the boy
had to pull two or three times, and
finally Isaac Page, in his characteristic manner, whirled
about and said, What do you want?
And the boy said, Please, sir, I've lost
my Bible.
What's the name?
And the kid said, Holy Bible Illustrated, sir.
That night we got a magnificent message on
the need of the world is for holy
Bibles illustrated by victorious Christian living.
It was great.
And that's what the world needs.
That's what it's looking for now.
Can you live it?
Can I live it?
Is it a life within our reach?
Oh, yes.
This mountain peak of truth is accessible to
every believer because blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who have
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ
Jesus.
What's there?
An appreciation of the hope of his calling
to us, the thrill and wonder of the
fact that we are his inheritance in Christ,
and that place at our disposal is all
that we need by way of strength and
power and might and resource to live for
him.
It's all ours.
That's why I think Amy Carmichael's prayer is
so significant when she says, from prayer that
asks that I may be sheltered from winds
that beat on thee, from fearing when I
should aspire, from faltering when I should climb
higher, from silken self, O Captain, free thy
soldier who would follow thee, from subtle love
of softening things, from easy choices weakening, not
thus are spirits fortified, not this way went
the crucified, from all that dims thy calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
the faith that nothing can dismay, the hope
no disappointments tire, the passion that will burn
like fire, let me not sink to be
a cloud, make me thy fuel, O Flame
of God.
Can't pray for anything, I think, more significant
than that.
Let's pray.
We thank thee, Savior, for all that is
in thy heart toward us this morning, and
we want to enter into it.