Twentieth Meeting
(February 16, 1964 A.M.)
We are
going to read some Scriptures in the Word of God:
"And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey,
and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly
there shone from heaven a great light round about me. And
I fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me,
'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?' And I answered,
'Who art Thou, Lord?' And He said unto me, 'I Am Jesus of
Nazareth, Whom thou persecutest.' And they that were with
me saw indeed the light, and were afraid, but they heard
not the voice of Him that spake to me. And I said, 'What
shall I do, Lord?' And the Lord said unto me, 'Arise, and
go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all
things which are appointed for thee to do.' And when I
could not see for the glory of that light, being led by
the hand of them that were with me, I came into
Damascus" (Acts 22:6-11).
"Whereupon,
O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision" (Acts 26:19).
"For
we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble
which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of
measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even
of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves,
that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which
raiseth the dead; Who delivered us from so great a death,
and doth deliver: in Whom we trust that He will
yet deliver us" (II Cor. 1:8-10).
"Are
they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more;
in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in
prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five
times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I
beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered
shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in
journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of
robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by
the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false
brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings
often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold
and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that
which cometh upon me daily, the care of all
the churches" (II Cor. 11:23-28).
"Brethren,
I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one
thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I
press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling
of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13,14).
"Lord,
what wilt Thou have me to do?"; "This one thing
I do." IN THOSE TWO SHORT WORDS, THE APOSTLE
PAUL SETS THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF HIS LIFE. The
beginning of his Christian life was when he said,
"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" When he
wrote the Letter to the Philippians, he was at the end of
his earthly journey. He was in prison in Rome waiting to
be executed. Right at the end of his life, he was still
saying, "This one thing I do." He began with,
"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" He ended
by saying, "This one thing I do." There were
thirty years between the beginning and the ending of his
Christian journey. And what a tremendous thirty years
they were. All his traveling and all his labors, all his
teaching and his preaching, and then, as we have read,
all his sufferings. How very full his thirty years of
Christian life were. And there was plenty in those thirty
years to bring him to an end. Many of those sufferings
might have brought him to an end. He might have despaired
long ago, he might have said, 'I cannot bear any more,
everything is too much for me, I must give it all up.'
But he went right through to the end. And among his last
words are these, "This one thing I do. I press on
toward the mark of the prize of the of
God."
Now,
what we are concerned with this morning is just this, we
must know the secret of being able to go right on to the
end triumphantly. We may not have all the kinds of
sufferings that the Apostle Paul had. But there will be
enough difficulties in our Christian experience, and
sometimes they will seem to be too big. And we shall
wonder whether we can go on any longer, and perhaps we
shall be tempted just to give up. What we want to know
then is the secret of victory at the end. You know there
are many Christians who do not go right through to the
end. Perhaps you know some, and I know many, who have
given up. They made what looked like a good beginning,
they were full of promise. And then they left the Lord.
They went away from the Savior. And there are very many
in this world like that. They have begun but they have
not gone through. Many, many Christians have gone away
from the Lord. And many have gone away because they found
the way too difficult.
So it is
very important that we know how we are going to be able
to continue unto the end. And the case of the Apostle
Paul has something to teach us on this matter. Everything
depends so much upon our BEGINNING. The end
so often relates to the beginning. In the case of Paul,
it was his beginning that kept him going right to the
end. The Apostle Paul put his beginning into a very short
sentence. He called it "the heavenly
vision." When he was on trial before king
Agrippa, he said, "I was not disobedient unto the
heavenly vision!" And we have read what the heavenly
vision was. The heavenly vision for him was the Lord
Jesus. Paul had not decided to come into Christianity, to
turn from one religion to another. Paul had not decided
to accept certain teaching about Jesus Christ. It was not
because some people had persuaded him to become a
Christian. It was none of those things. And it was none
of the many other things that call some people to become
Christians.
Paul saw
Jesus Christ. For him the beginning was not a religion or
a teaching, it was a Person. Later on, he put it in this
way. "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me"
(Gal. 1:15,16). He had a very personal encounter with
Jesus Christ; it was very personal. Paul, at that time,
or Saul of Tarsus as he was, was one of a crowd. We do
not know how many were going with him to Damascus. But it
is quite evident that there were a number of others with
him. He says that they saw the light, but they did not
hear the voice. He was the only one who met the Lord
Jesus; it was very personal. Jesus knew his name. He
said, "Saul, Saul." Jesus knew exactly where he
was. Jesus knew where to find him. And Jesus knew exactly
what he was doing. You see, Jesus knew all about this
man. And He came down to him on very personal grounds.
This beginning of his Christian life was something very
personal between himself and the Lord. Let us look again
at this beginning.
Oh, let
me say again how important the beginning is. You know if
you are putting up a building, and you want that building
to last a long time, and to stand up against all the
storms of wind and rain, and to carry all the heavy
weight that is going to be put upon it, you must have a
good foundation. Everything for the building depends upon
the foundation. And so it is with the Christian life.
Everything for our endurance is going to be a matter of
our foundation. So we look at this foundation again. We
have seen that it was something very personal between the
man and the Lord. It must be like that with every one of
us. We must be able to say, 'The Lord has met me
personally, and I have met the Lord personally. This is
not something that other people told me. This is not
something that I read in a book. This is not something
that was taught me in the Sunday school. This is not
something that I heard the preachers preach about. This
is something very personal between me and the Lord. If
there was not another Christian in the world, I know
where I stand. If I am the only Christian in the world, I
am a Christian because I have met the Lord Himself. I
know the Lord for myself.'
Let me
tell you that this is a very important thing. Although I
have not had all the experiences that the Apostle Paul
had, I have been in the work of the Lord many more years
than Paul was in it. You know sometimes as we look at
Christianity, our hearts sink. We see all the divisions,
we see all the inconsistent Christians. We see so much in
Christians and Christianity that is not the Lord. And we
could easily give it all up and say, 'Well, we have made
a mistake, we are on the wrong road!' What is it that
keeps us going when there are all the false teachings and
the false teachers? You notice that Paul included in his
list of sufferings, false brethren. When there are many
false brethren, oh, how easy it would be for us to wash
our hands of the whole thing. Perhaps you may feel like
that sometimes; you may look at other Christians, and you
may be disappointed. And you may say, 'Well, I am sick of
Christianity, this is not what I expected to find.' What
is it that will keep us going? Only one thing, we know
the Lord for ourselves personally. To us the Lord is very
real. Our foundation is very strong. Our foundation is
not a teaching, a religion, or a society. Our foundation
is a Person. Do remember that as the very first thing and
seek to have that as your foundation.
Then
there was another thing about the beginning of Saul or
Paul. You notice how he spoke to the Lord? Jesus said,
"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Now I do
not think that Saul knew what he was saying when he said
the next sentence. We sometimes say things and we do not
know what we are saying. The next thing that Saul of
Tarsus said, he did not know what he was saying at that
moment; he said, "Who art Thou,
Lord?" And when Jesus said, "I Am Jesus of
Nazareth" (Acts 9:4,5) I wonder if Saul, just for a
moment, said: 'Oh, I did not mean to call You Lord. I am
persecuting Jesus of Nazareth. I had no intention of ever
calling Him Lord.' But Saul did not do that. When he
realized that he had called this terrible Jesus of
Nazareth, Lord, he did not take it back. He did not say,
'I have made a mistake. Oh, I apologize for saying that.'
He doubled it. And said, "What wilt Thou have me to
do, Lord?" To call Jesus of Nazareth 'Lord' twice
was a tremendous thing for this man.
If you
had met Saul when he started out on that journey to
Damascus, with authority from the chief priest to
imprison all that followed Jesus of Nazareth; and as it
says, "Saul, breathing out threatenings and
slaughter against the people of this way" (Lit.
"The Way"). If you had met him when he started
on that journey and said to him, 'Saul, before you finish
this journey, you will be calling Jesus of Nazareth,
Lord.' What do you think Saul would have done? Well, he
would have put you in prison right away. The last thing
in all the world that ever this man intended to do was to
call Jesus of Nazareth, "Lord."
It did represent a tremendous surrender.
In that
word, "Lord," there was the
surrender of everything. That was his beginning. A
complete and absolute surrender to Jesus as Lord. It was
a tremendous thing for him. Notice, "What wilt Thou
have me to do." Here was a young man who had always
decided for himself what he would do. Here was a young
man who had a very strong natural will. No one could
stand against that will. If his parents had pleaded with
him, he would not have listened to them. No matter who
would have urged him to change his mind, he would have
said, 'I will not, I am going to do this. It does not
matter what anybody says, I will do this.' That is the
kind of will that Saul of Tarsus had. And now, here he is
saying, "What wilt Thou have me to do." That
strong self-will was completely surrendered to the
Lordship of Jesus Christ. That was a very deep thing. You
see, that is the kind of beginning that is going to see a
man right through to the end. That was his beginning. He
put everything over into the hands of Jesus Christ as his
Lord. In effect he said, 'It is no longer my will, but
Your will. It is no longer my way, but Your way. It is no
longer my plans for my life, but Your plan for me, Lord.'
That was a foundation which would carry a very heavy
load. You think of all those things that we have read
that came into the thirty years. Just go home and read
them again.
The
thirty years of sufferings, of afflictions, and of trials
prove two things. First, they prove how genuine Paul's
surrender was to the Lord Jesus. Now this man did not
say, 'Lord, I will live for You if You give me an easy
time. I will be a good Christian if only You see that no
troubles come into my life. I will be a Christian and
follow You if only You would just fill my life with
blessings.' He never said anything like that to the Lord.
What he meant was, blessing or no blessing, You are my
Lord, and I am Your bondservant. And for thirty years,
that kind of surrender was tested by all these
trials. He said, "Three times I was beaten with
rods." "Of the Jews five times received I forty
stripes except one" (II Corinthians 11:25,24). Why
did he say except one? Because the fortieth stroke was
always regarded as the fatal stroke. Thirty-nine strokes
and the next one, you are dead. Three times that happened
with him. Don't you think the devil said to him when that
thirty-ninth stroke came on him, 'Now, do you still
surrender to the Lord? Do you still call Him Lord? If you
would like to stop calling Him Lord, you can stop having
all these strokes. A whole situation can change for you
for the better, if only you will stop this surrender to
Jesus Christ.' I expect Satan often spoke to him like
that. And as the strokes were coming on him, Satan would
say, 'You are still going to call Him Lord?' But there
was very much more than three times with thirty-nine
strokes. There were the imprisonments. Once he was stoned
and left for dead, then he was in the shipwrecks at sea,
and all these other things. There was plenty in all that
kind of thing to make him reconsider his surrender to the
Lord Jesus. But those troubles were only proving that his
surrender was genuine. This was not just some artificial
thing. This was something more than the man himself.
That
leads us to the second thing that the thirty years were
proving. All these thirty years of difficulty and trial
were just proving how great the Lord Jesus is. The Lord
Jesus is greater than all the imprisonments. He is
greater than all these many kinds of sufferings. The Lord
could bring a man through all that, and often at the end,
saying, 'I am still going on.' Paul used the phrase in
one of his later letters. He spoke of, "according to
the power that worketh in us!" It was the power of
the Lord working in him.
Now here
is a thing that we must all remember. The mighty power of
the Lord may be working in us and we may not be conscious
of it at the time. Appearances may argue that Satan is
having it all his way. Things may seem to say that Jesus
is not Lord, but circumstances are Lord. But what is it
that decides whether the power has been working in us? It
is not that we are conscious of that power at the time of
trouble. It is that that power brings us through the
trouble. That mighty power of the Lord Jesus working in
Paul brought him through all those troubles to the place
where at the end he said, "This one thing I
do." So the troubles were necessary in
order for Paul to discover what a great Lord had come
into his life. If everything was easy, we could never
discover how great the Lord is.
Now you
come over to this letter to the Philippians. In chapter
three, from which we have taken that little fragment, the
Apostle Paul is telling of all the worldly advantages
which were his before he met the Lord Jesus. He says, 'If
any man thinketh that he can boast, I can go beyond any
man. Any man thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I
have much more than any man. Circumcised the eighth day,
that made me a true child of Abraham, and that is a big
thing. Of the stock of Israel, I come right up out of the
root, I am not something that has put on the outside. I
belong to the tribe of Benjamin. And Benjamin produced
the first king of Israel. I belong to the tribe of
Benjamin. I am a Hebrew of Hebrew parents, there is no
mixed blood in me. As touching the law, a Pharisee. A
proud, self-sufficient Pharisee. As touching zeal,
persecuting the church. As touching the righteousness
which is in the law, blameless.' What does a man want in
all the world more than that? Here is a young man who has
got to the top of his profession. He is a great success
in this world. Now what does he say? 'The things which
were gain to me, I have counted it loss for Christ. Yea,
I count all things but refuse for the knowledge, the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.
There is nothing that all this world desires for fame and
success which can compare with the Lord Jesus.' How the
Lord Jesus had captured this man's life. He said Jesus is
Superior to all these things.
Well, we
must hurry to the close now. There is a lot more that we
could say, but we just close with one thing. When Paul
wrote this letter to the Philippians, he wrote it from
his prison. As we have said, he was waiting the sentence
of death. He was no longer able to travel about the world
preaching. He was no longer able to visit his beloved
people in all parts of the world. A lot of his friends
had left him. There was not much that he could do in a
public way now. All that is at an end. So that it was not
the churches and it was not the works; it was the Lord
Jesus. Paul's life was not just his work. It was not just
his traveling about all over the world preaching. When
all those things were taken away, he says, 'I am still
going on.' 'This one thing I do, I press on. Take away my
work, I am going on with the Lord. Take away my friends,
I am going on with the Lord. Take away my liberty, I am
still going on with the Lord.' How great a Lord He must
be.
Well,
when the Lord Jesus is like that to us, we will go right
through to the end. Paul started with saying, "What
wilt Thou have me to do, Lord." He finished by
saying, "This one thing I do." One thing, how
important it is to have a single eye. Not one eye looking
this way, and the other eye looking that way, not two
hearts divided, but one eye, or both eyes on one object.
I have but one interest in life, and that interest is the
Lord Jesus. In my business, it is the Lord Jesus. In my
college, it is the Lord Jesus. In my home, it is the Lord
Jesus. Among my friends, it is the Lord Jesus. In all
things in this life, I have but one interest, that is,
that my Lord Jesus may have all that He ought to have in
my life. I say, if it is like that, while many others
will fall out by the way, we shall go through to the end.