King of the Outsiders

The Gospel and the Epistle today were both concerning the Holy Spirit, the outpouring of God's Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit that can operate in the body, the turning of the water into wine. And all of us experience in our own lives a great thirst for this, an awareness that there is not enough of the grace and power of God's mercy flowing out through us to those crying needs on all sides of us. The tendency, however, is for us to take shortcuts to this, and many shortcuts are being offered at this time, to get, you know, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, in a way that's really cheap, and in a way that doesn't bring you the genuine gift.

Whenever God does a thing, Satan comes around with many counterfeits, and it's important for us to understand that while the gifts and the blessings of the Spirit are available to all, and they're received strictly by faith, it has to be faith in Jesus. Not in any gimmick, not in any system that we devise, but the person of Jesus himself. If we will come to him, he will pour out upon us more than we could ask for a thing of the gifts of his Spirit.

But to come to Jesus and get under the yoke with Jesus really means that we have to leave where we are, we have to come out to him from where we are, and that's what faith is. I don't have any faith in God until I dare to come out of where I am to this rather, at first sight, dangerous and uncertain place where Jesus is. I just want to read a few verses from Hebrews 13.

So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him. For here we have no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come.

All of us who have had any exposure at all to Jesus are familiar with his central teaching, whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life or her life for my sake will find it. Now we're all quite capable of getting the negative application of that teaching. We know how that works.

From our own experience, we have seen it in ourselves and in lives around us, that when we try to make a nice life for ourselves, we end up time after time disappointed. It just doesn't seem to work out the way it does on TV. When you try to carve out a paradise for yourself in this world, by looking out for number one, you will invariably find that paradise crumbling apart, and you will lose it.

But the positive side of Jesus' teaching, this we find more difficult to get hold of and do something about in our own lives. Whoever loses his life or her life for my sake will find it. How do I lose my life for Jesus' sake? Immediately pictures come into our minds, a woman who has a promising career and a wonderful romance going, who throws it all up to go into the Amazon jungle and teach Jesus to a primitive tribe.

Or a man who dies in flames, saving the family of his worst enemy. See, but how does this apply to us exactly where we are right now? We haven't perhaps come upon that dramatic moment when we can offer ourselves up in flames to the glory of Jesus. Or perhaps we missed it when it came.

And we haven't heard that call to go to the Amazon jungle, although some of us may hear such a call yet. But how does it fit where we are at this moment? How can we in truth lose our lives for Jesus? Surely there must be a step which we can take today, followed by step after step, which will enable us to in fact lose our lives for Jesus, be set free from our bondage to ourselves and to take that step. Obviously the first thing we do is look at Jesus himself and observe how he laid down his life, how he lost it.

Notice where Jesus lost his life in death. It happened outside the city of Jerusalem. He was not accorded the privilege or the honor given to most prophets of dying in Jerusalem or perhaps even being stoned to death inside the temple area.

But he was banished from the city as the accursed scapegoat, burying the sins of the nation into the wilderness. And our Lord's life was like his death. The whole thing took place as an outsider.

His ministry from beginning to end was spent as one who was never accepted by the people who held any kind of earthly authority. The baby Jesus is hardly born before King Herod is out to kill him. And the child has to be taken off into Egypt.

At his baptism, the Spirit comes upon him and the first thing the Spirit of God does is drive him into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, the prince of this world. And Satan deals with Jesus as an outsider. Sometime after that he comes to his hometown and teaches in the synagogue.

And by the time he's finished teaching, they're so angry they take him and practically drag him up to the edge of the cliff. And he is about to be thrown off and he's only saved from that by divine intervention. The longer he ministers, the more angry, the more enraged the authorities, the insiders become against him.

Who does he think he is? Search the scriptures and you will see that no prophet is going to come out of Nazareth. The only people who were drawn to Jesus, who were able to appreciate the light that was coming from him, who loved him, were people who were themselves outsiders. The demon-possessed, the publicans, the sinners, the harlots, the very poor, and a few men who seemed to be on the inside but who in fact in their hearts were outsiders.

And so we see that Jesus' ministry with his motley little crew as kind of an outsider, and not a revolutionary who wants to take over and become an insider, but an outsider all the way, is the prophetic fulfillment of that phase of King David's life, when he and his little motley band have to roam the wilderness to stay alive. David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.

And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented, gathered to him, and he became captain over them. And David remained an outsider until the death of King Saul. And so until the appointed hour, the King of Israel, the Messiah of the world, remains outside in the wilderness, and those who want to follow him and live with him and serve him have to go out there and join him as outsiders.

So, to lose your life for Jesus now, in this world, as it now is and as you now are, simply means that you are now willing to go out to Jesus and join him at the cave of Adullam. And everything that that means. And for many of us this is a threatening and a frightening thought.

And yet when you do it, when you leave where you are and you truly go out to him, you begin to experience tremendous comfort. In fact, only when we finally settle it in our hearts that we are willing to spend the remainder of our days in this world as outsiders with Jesus, do we truly begin to live. Picture a man and his wife and three children during the reign of King Saul, living perhaps in Jerusalem, who knows where.

One day this man comes to his senses and says, What am I doing here? I don't belong here. There is no satisfaction for my soul in this situation. And he begins to hear in his heart the call to go out into the wilderness to the cave of Adullam and join David.

And so in the middle of the night, he and his family throw their belongings in a few sacks, find some horses or some kind of animal, and out they go toward David. And as the sun rises over the wilderness, this man and his wife begin to experience peace like they have never known. And they say to themselves, This is where we belong.

If we spend the rest of our lives out here with David, what better life could there be than this? And exactly this kind of pull is beginning to be felt by the heart of many of us, if we haven't already responded to it, and I think we have to truly respond to it every day, the pull of the Spirit on our hearts to get out to where Jesus is, outside the gate, outside the camp, bearing his reproach. And to leave Saul's kingdom. Here we have no continuing city.

The king of the city that we belong to waits for us outside the camp. And if we want to serve him, we have to get out there and be with him out there. Take a step.

Dare to do it. And only when we respond to that, only when we begin to act on that, do we have peace. Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

Therefore, let us go forth to him, outside the camp, bearing abuse for him. For here we have no lasting city, but seek one which is to come. Now we could go the rest of the day probably and pinpoint specific things that we could be doing.

But let's just think of a couple. We are being called by the Spirit to leave the kingdom of pride and to go out to him who is meek and lowly of heart and learn where we'll find 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.

Pride is not just something that goes on inside your head. A lot of us think this, but it's more than that. Pride is a whole system.

It's an atmosphere. It's a game we play. It's a city we belong to.

Sometimes we'll be sitting in church praying or we'll be alone with our thoughts and we begin to think that we have finally come free from ourselves and we're delivered from this self-centeredness and our pride. And then we go back into the rack race among our friends or our relatives or our brothers and sisters in the faith and before we know it, the same vain ambitions, the same grudges, the same ridiculous thoughts get hold of us and we're back in it again. And the only way we'll come out of that is with a decision of our own wills that we're going to come forth out of the whole setup of pride.

And everything this means, even if we have to lose our seniority, see what happens is, the body of the professing Christian church, the body of Christ professing, is full of an abundance of people who beneath their flowery expressions of devotion to Jesus and the desire to follow Him, truly in their heart of hearts, want more than anything else to be insiders. But Jesus calls us to do the opposite. He calls us to be outsiders.

And the beginning of this is to get out of this kingdom of pride. The longing in most of us, in our nature, in all of us, is to be known, to have some place of status, to get some recognition from our brothers and sisters, at least to have somebody recognize me as the most humble person in the Sunday school class. Something.

Give me something. And to do that is nothing other than the desire to save my own life. So I have to leave that.

We are being called by the Spirit to leave the safe, comfortable, familiar and go out to him who walks by faith and will teach us to walk by faith. A scribe came up and said to him, Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

Another of the disciples said to him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. But Jesus said to him, Follow me and let the dead to bury their own dead. Leave the dead to bury their own dead.

You don't learn to walk by faith where everything is cut and dried, safe, comfortable, familiar, all set up, secure. We only learn to walk by faith when we are surrounded by a certain amount at least of uncertainty. See, and the whole setup of this Saul's kingdom, the kingdom of this world, is the opposite.

The object of life in this world is to find yourself a routine that works for you and then settle down and enjoy it. And don't overtax yourself. Don't commit yourself.

Get your adventure on television and make sure that you don't let yourself get pinned down to anything that's too inconvenient, too demanding. Now, we're all very good at judging our brothers and sisters in these areas. Uh-huh, he's playing it safe.

You know, she wouldn't take a chance if it killed her. See, but it's not our problem to decide what our brothers and sisters are doing or not doing. All we can possibly handle is to make sure we're getting out of where we are and getting off to the cave of Adullam.

And very often when we think we've sized up our sister, the truth of the matter is that that person has already taken risks we wouldn't even believe. It doesn't matter what our age is or what our sex may be or what our physical or mental condition we think may be. We are required, it's necessary for us, constantly, daily, to ask ourselves, Am I playing it too safe? Not, Is Jack playing it too safe? Am I playing it too safe? Or am I truly moving off into the unfamiliar, breaking new territory, following Jesus into that wilderness where I don't know exactly what's going to happen next.

We are being called by the Spirit of God to leave the circle of the polite, grateful, decent people who know how to say thank you and get out there with Yeshua and his motley crew where they're continuously pouring out their lives, where Jesus himself is pouring out his life totally for people who are forever ungrateful. If you love those who love you, what credit is it to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much again. But love your enemies. Do good and lend, expecting nothing in return.

And your reward will be great. And you will be sons of the Most High. For he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.

Be merciful even as your father is merciful. In Saul's kingdom, people do wonderful things for their friends and they even do wonderful things to those who at least will have enough sense to say thank you. But out there in the wilderness where Jesus is, there's a ministry going on constantly to people who are so mixed up, so tangled up in themselves, they don't know how to say thank you and they never will until they're healed.

The nine lepers who never said thank you were nevertheless healed. And consider how patient, how merciful, how long-suffering God has been with us. Bearing with us, hanging on to us, healing us, teaching us, speaking to us, long before we ever began to ever even think thank you.

His ministry to us has been a ministry basically to the ungrateful. That's what we are. Now that we get a glimpse of it, we are to become incarnations of that kind of mercy where we spend the bulk of our time and strength serving people who will never respond to us or to God so that we are the means along with brothers and sisters of God's flooding this desolate race with mercy before the midnight hour strikes.

Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go forth to him, outside the camp, bearing abuse for him. For here we have no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come.

One day, the king will be seated on his glorious throne and before him will be gathered all the nations. And then he will be the insider. And then he will welcome into his kingdom of mercy those who have lived mercy, received it, lived it.

But for now, he's an outsider. That's all he is. Anyone who seriously wants to walk with him has to be an outsider with him.

Now God will show us exactly how to do that if we want to. The issue is, and it's laid upon each one of us, are we willing to spend what's left of our time in this life of flesh and blood with the accursed scapegoat of Israel, with the rejected land. Now there's nothing morbid about that at all.

It's the most satisfying, the most fulfilling life that we can possibly live. For whoever would save his life or her life will lose it. But whoever loses his or her life for me will find it.

God help us to find it. Let's pray. Help us again this hour, right now, Lord, to get our eyes and our thoughts off brother so-and-so or sister so-and-so who we have felt has been falling short and to get our eyes on you and on where we stand in the light of your glory.

Help us even this day, Lord Jesus, to break our tie with whatever it may be that distracts us and hinders us from freely walking with you. Take away from us the fear of man, the consciousness of self, and enable us to just break out and do that thing, that one thing you require of us this day. And as we do, we just pray that you'll fill us with your peace and enable us truly to begin to experience the power and the grace, the goodness of your Holy Spirit.

Should there be any among us, Lord Jesus, right now, who are still standing outside the kingdom, we pray that those hearts will hear and receive such a welcome that they'll just get up and come before this service ends. We ask it for your mercy's sake. Amen.