Five Promises 1987

I'd like to begin today by reading from 2 Peter 1, starting at verse 2. May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to light and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these, these promises, you may escape the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and become partakers of the divine nature. All of us here, as believers in Jesus, have one thing in common.

At some point in our past, we were blasted out of our lethargy, and for a while at least, we saw very clearly that there's only one thing in this world worth pursuing, worth living for, and that's the kingdom. Just about all of us here have at least that much. We've in some way known that vision.

We were like the Israelites when this happened, who after years of grinding bondage in Egypt, saw a door fly open by the power of the hand of God, walked through that door into a freedom they had never known, and for a brief time, God was real to them. God was wonderful. God was mighty.

God was powerful. And with great joy, they walked through the parted waters of the sea into the wilderness. They didn't go straight into the promised land.

They went to the wilderness, and that wilderness became a terrible problem for them. Likewise with us. At some point, there was a flash of blinding light from God as Jesus reached into our darkness, broke through it, took us by the hand and said, come on, follow me.

Before we knew it, we were walking on a new road. Old habits were broken. Fears melted away.

And for a season at least, we were very clear about the reality of the lordship of Jesus. God was real to us. Prayers were being answered.

Marvelous things happened. Scripture opened up to us. Boldness came to our hearts and flowed out of our mouths.

We call it the honeymoon period. And I'm pleased to see we have some honeymooners with us right now. We're starting a new tradition here.

If you get married, you get married on a Saturday, you start here on Sunday morning, and then you go on the rest of the day. We call it the honeymoon period, and it's wonderful. And for some people it lasts for months and some for maybe years and for some only days.

But eventually, like the Israelites, we find ourselves hung out of the waters of the Red Sea and faced with the wilderness. The wilderness. Now, these Israelites could have gone through that wilderness in a matter of months, crossed through the Jordan and gone in and taken the promised land.

But there was delay after delay, which they brought upon themselves. And so it took 40 years for the Israelites, as a people, to take on sufficiently of God's nature and God's light and learning enough of his ways so that they were ready as a people to go in and take that promised land. Forty years.

Now, that wilderness time of wandering for them was also a time of sifting, during which God sifted out of the body of Israel all who insisted on carrying Egypt around in their hearts. Then came the day when God said, sifting time is over. Go in and take the land.

And they did. God has also used our sifting time to take that bent, that inclination for Egypt out of our hearts and somehow shape this out of us as a people. But now we too are arriving at a place where we're hearing the spirit of God say in many different ways.

OK, now it's time to leave the wilderness and go in and take the promised land. Go in and take what God has given you, what has been paid for by the blood of the land. Enter into the divine nature.

Don't be wandering around in the wilderness on and on and on and on. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these promises we may escape. You may escape, he says, the corruption that is in the world through lust and become partakers of the divine nature, that through these promises you may escape not only Egypt but also the wilderness and go in and become partakers of the divine nature, which is the promised land.

The same promises that took us out of Egypt are also able to get us out of the wilderness and into the promised land. Now here are five promises from Jesus. And every promise he makes is contained in some way in one of these five.

Jesus says, you come to me, you will have rest. He says, if you continue in my word, you will be free. He says, if you ask for the Holy Spirit, you will receive.

He says, if you gather in my name, I will be there. And he says, if you go and make disciples, I will go with you. By means of these five promises, we move into the promised land, we go into the divine nature, we take it on, not after we die but on in this life.

If you come to me, you will have rest. Reading from Matthew 11, 28, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

The wilderness does not provide rest. The wilderness is a time of restlessness and disturbance and trouble. I mean, God doesn't promise that we won't have trouble on the outside, but he does promise that we will have rest on the inside.

And you don't find that when you're wandering around in the wilderness. But if you come to me and get under my yoke, really get under my yoke, you will find, he says, holy peace, the Sabbath rest of God. Come to me and get under my yoke, which means submit to me, surrender to me, trust me like a child.

Walk with me like Peter walked with me. Walk with me like Mary Magdalene walked with me. Not only when I was here in flesh and blood, but even after Pentecost.

Come to me, not to a doctrinal position, not to a certain kind of worship, not to a certain spiritual experience, not to a certain political agenda, whether of the Christian left or the Christian right, whatever they are. Not even to a certain lifestyle. To me.

Come to me. Get under my yoke and learn and keep learning and you will have rest. Many of us in this gathering right now consider ourselves to be relatively committed, relatively mature, and enlightened Christians.

And yet, we know that our souls are not at rest. There's anxiety, and trouble, and anger, and self-pity, and a million other volcanoes down inside there. Listen to him, he says, I will give you rest.

I will give you rest if you will come to me. Get under my yoke. And so this is the call of the Lord to us now.

Get out of the wilderness and come in under the yoke with me and you can have rest. Beginning today, you can have that. Don't be satisfied until you begin to taste the rest, the Sabbath shalom of God.

If you will continue in my word, you will be free. Reading from John 8, 31, Jesus said to the Jews who had belief in him, If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. And his word is very simple.

The apostles passed it on to us in these four simple tracts, that's what they are, that are at the beginning of our New Testament. And a child can grasp what is in there. And if we take the words of Jesus not as a bunch of rules, but as word fresh from his mouth, deep right out of his heart, they become alive for us.

Most of us know pretty much what Jesus has to say about living by faith, walking in forgiveness, serving God instead of money, sexual purity, showing mercy, living in prayer, clear simple things. We know what he says and he says, Now if you take this and you will walk in that, continue in it, you will be free. Most religious people of Jesus' day were not free.

They were bound and enslaved to religious legalism. They were neurotic as all get out. And most religious people of Christendom today are not free.

Bound also to religious legalism, self-righteousness, fear of man, all kinds of neuroses weaving around us like vines. All of us know something about that bondage. We know how hard that bondage can be.

You become enslaved when you begin to try to live by the letter instead of by the living word. But if we will take the words that Jesus speaks to us, alive and fresh, and even though we know we just don't have the strength, begin to walk in them, move in them, Lord, I don't know how, but here I go. I'm going to try again.

We will experience freedom. Don't be satisfied with anything else, anything less than that freedom. You know, it's the world looks at us and they say, These guys, they're a bunch of neurotics.

I mean, you know, they're always afraid they might do something wrong. They're always worried. They don't seem to have any liberty.

What's the matter with that? They see right through us. Our Lord says, you continue in my word. You won't be like that.

You will be free. Don't satisfy yourself with anything less than that freedom. Get out of the wilderness.

Come on into the promised land. If you ask for the Holy Spirit, you will receive from Luke chapter 11, verse 11. What father among you? If his son asks for a loaf, we'll give him a stone.

Or if he asks for a fish, we'll, instead of a fish, give him a serpent. Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask it? See, and you ask for the Holy Spirit, and you receive the Holy Spirit, not just once and done.

Now I got him. I got the Holy Ghost. I'm all set.

Any more than a child asks his father for a loaf, eats the loaf, and then lives the rest of his life on the strength of that one loaf, we ask and we receive the Spirit all the time. Lord, Your Spirit is my life. Your Spirit is the air I breathe.

Your Spirit is my direction. Your Spirit is my healing. Your Spirit is everything.

Without Your Spirit, I flounder and I die. In the Lord's Prayer we pray, Give us this day our daily bread. But before we pray that, we first say, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, which means more than come back, Lord Jesus, at the end.

It does mean that, but it also means send Your Spirit into my heart right now so that Your kingdom is in me, so that I'm able to live for Your kingdom, so that I, by the power of the Spirit, can do Your will on earth as it is being done in heaven. Many of us are still trying to live on the strength of an experience we had with the Holy Spirit 10 years ago, 15 years ago. It absolutely won't work.

We need fresh life from God all the time. And the promise is, if you ask for the life of God, you will receive. Stop trying to chomp on that stale bread.

Get something fresh that's there. Let's move from the wilderness into the promised land. He says, You gather in My name, I will be there.

From Matthew chapter 18, verse 18, Truly I say to you, Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it shall be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.

The most powerful, life-giving manifestation of the Lordship of the resurrected Jesus is in the gathered body. When we come together in unity, in agreement around Him, tearing down every wall between us so that He can live among us, He comes. He's here.

When, by sloth, or indifference, or bitterness, I draw back from the unity that God put me into with my brothers and sisters, and I come back from that, then I die. I dry up. I wither away.

I cannot live without the body. We cannot live without the body. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth.

And one way of walking in darkness is to go off on a tangent by myself, away from these hypocrites, sick and tired of these hypocrites. You know, I'm going to start my own church and I'm not going to let anybody else in it so it can be pure. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, and come in mercy and the asking of forgiveness together with my brothers and sisters, and we all struggle together, then we have fellowship with one another.

And the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Let's get out of the wilderness, stumbling and bumbling, and let's get into the promised land where there is unity around Jesus. And the best contribution that any of us can make to that unity is to just live it ourselves in the body.

Mercy, forgiveness, God help us. Finally, He says, if you will go and make disciples, I will go with you. From Matthew 28, 16, Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.

When they saw Him, they worshipped Him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority on earth and in heaven has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and law I am with you always, to the close of the age.

Any believer and any fellowship of believers that takes that promise seriously even if we feel that we really don't know how to make disciples, even if we feel totally inadequate to baptize and teach, we stumble and we bungle it in a thousand ways, but we do it, we experience the presence of a risen Lord. But when we stop making disciples, when we quit scouring the city looking for that one lost sheep, when the highways and hedges no longer find us out there compelling them to come to the banquet, then we dry up and become one more insipid religious club. It's in seeking the lost sheep, making disciples, going out, going out, going out, that we experience the fellowship, presence and power of the risen Lord.

So we need to get out of the wilderness here too and experience the joy and the power and the life of the promised land, the nature of God, by obeying that command, even if we feel totally inadequate. Who feels adequate to that? His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. We can do it.

Through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these promises we may escape the corruption that is in the world because of lust and become partakers of the divine nature. Most of us came out of Egypt a long time ago, but most of us have yet to get out of the wilderness. The Lord is saying, come on, let's move out of the wilderness and get into the promised land.

Five promises that will help us do it. If you come to me, you will have rest. If you continue in my word, you will be free.

If you ask for the Spirit, you will receive. If you gather in my name, I will be there. If you go and make disciples, I will go with you.

With these promises, we become partakers of the divine nature, not after we die, but right here, beginning at this hour. May God help us to do it. Let's just take a little time in silence and let the Spirit speak to us.