Suffering and Our Longing for Heaven (All of Life for God)

Transcript:

I think academically and spiritually, I have always been something of a blue collar preacher. I haven't studied in the great halls of learning, but I received a lesson from the Lord many years ago. I was up speaking about heaven, about the great commission, about the beauties of Christ, about so many things, and a man came to me after the message. He was furious. He was furious and it was a bitterness of soul that created that fury in him. And he said, "You preachers," and I said, "Brother, how have I offended you?" He goes, "You talk of great commissions and glory and the church militant and all these things," he goes, "My wife won't talk to me. My children are a mess. I go to work every day. I'm engulfed in filth and I come in here. You don't even understand what I go through. You hide away in your rooms, but I don't see it."

That was one of the greatest things I think I ever heard. Whenever we talk about a longing for heaven, preaching or writing on a longing for heaven, it's very dangerous. And I'll tell you why. There's two main reasons. First of all, it allows the preacher or the writer, whether he knows it or not, to put his piety on display, his private devotion on display so that everyone looks at him and says, "Oh, how he longs for Christ. What a spectacular man." I remember one time being in a conference and it was several men and we were all talking about marriage and they were asking us questions and I saw it. I looked out and I knew that the Holy Spirit would deal with me severely if I didn't stop it. I saw men, looking up, 3000 men, looking at all of us, sitting on the platform ashamed thinking, "These men are wonderful. And me?" And I saw their wives elbowing them like, "Why can't you be like those men?"

And I knew if I didn't stand up and confess my own struggles as a husband, my own struggles as a father, at times that I failed, that God Himself would deal with me, that He would deal with all of us. And it started a chain reaction in which men started standing and saying "Yes, what we're teaching you is what we seek to live out, but you must understand we are also weak and if we've made any achievement, it is by the grace of God," that nothing differs one man or one woman from another except the grace of God. I remember a man by the name of Brother Puckett. There have been a few men that I've known in my life that had an extraordinary love for their wives. You can see it. They treat their wives like a queen, and he was that way. And his wife preceded him to the gates of glory and he was preaching her funeral.

And what was amazing is he never talked about how much he loved her, how much he cared for her. He actually didn't even show very much emotion. And when he was done, someone challenged him on it and he said, "My wife's funeral is not an opportunity for me to display my spectacular love. Do we really want people walking away from this service saying, 'Oh, how much that man loved his wife?' Or do we want them walking away saying this, 'The grace of God that saves sinners'?" And it's the same way here today. I want you to see this. This is not about the example of one man or certain men and their extraordinary piety and all of you need to fall in line. It's not the case at all. All of us are weak. All of us struggle. All of us have these conflicting competing loyalties. All of us find ourselves going two steps forward and sometimes three steps back. And so we must be very, very careful. There's only one hero in this story and it's our elder brother, Jesus Christ. Other than that, I find nothing else to rejoice in. Another thing that we need to be careful of is in the rapture of the moment, the preacher may speak more than he lives.

There are some times I am so full with zeal in a pulpit I feel like I could rip a car into. Honestly. And I think honestly it's the work of God, but an iron doesn't stay that hot twenty-four hours a day, and we have to be very, very careful that I don't start talking with rapture about heaven and you think, "Oh my, this is the standard. This is how a godly man lives," because this man struggles. Longing for heaven is not proven in the pulpit, but in one's private devotions and their inward demeanor as they walk. Another thing, it is not proven in one's discourse with men. A longing for heaven is proven in one's discourse with God in the night watch. It is not proven as we could say, "Anti hominem," before men. It's proven quorum deo before God. And so I want to be very careful here. Now, regarding the man standing before you, I am the perfect candidate. You couldn't have gotten a better preacher for this topic.

Just so you all know the privilege that you're under today, you couldn't have got a better preacher to talk about the longing for heaven, but it's not for the reasons you think. It's not because I'm like Enoch and I walk so close with God that one day he's going to say to me, "Paul, we're closer to my house than we are yours, so just go home with me." That's not the reason why I'm the perfect candidate to talk about a longing for heaven. Here's why I'm a perfect candidate. Because I'm like, well, what a guru said one time to eat the ale, "Surely I am more brutish than any man and have not the understanding of a man. I have neither learned wisdom nor have the knowledge of the holy." I'm a perfect candidate because I'm like the man that David described in Psalms 32:9.

I am as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with a bit and bridle else they will not come near to thee. Yes, God's providence is in my life, barricading this wild horse and turning my attention to Him when competing loyalties would send me somewhere else. I'm a perfect candidate because I'm like Israel of whom God said in Hosea two, six and seven, "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns and make a wall that she shall not find her paths and she shall follow after her lovers. She shall not overtake them and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then shall she say, 'I will go and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me than now.'" I battle contrary things in my heart and my mind. And I know that if it wasn't for this extraordinary exquisite wisdom of God that comes to me in unconditional love, if it wasn't for his wisdom and putting an obstacle here and a barricade here and a creating a weakness here and a trial here and a pain here and disappointment here, and yes, even allowing me to fail in sin, if it wasn't for all those things, whatever longing I do have, which is meager, would not be there.

I want to preach not this way today. I want to preach this way, as you and I were so much like. Do you think I don't know what you're like? I know what you're like because I'm like you. We're going to reach a point where God is going to orchestrate, He's already done it. He's cleaning the evangelical church. I've heard that forty-some percent of evangelicals are not returning to church. He's doing what all our weak preaching could not do. He's purging His church, and we're going to come a point in time where the people who sit before a pulpit like this, it is because they love the Lord. But when people truly love the Lord, they're always inside. There's this conflict because they know their failure, they know their apathy. They know their two steps forward and three steps back. They know their struggles, they know their disloyalty. They know all these things. And what you need to know before we get started in this, is Jesus Christ did not become a man, humble Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, and suffer what he suffered for you so that the first time you see Him when you cross over into glory, He has a scowl of disappointment on His face.

That's not why He did all of this. The greatest pain of a true preacher is that he knows he's comprehended nothing of the love of God. But the even greater pain is this, that he knows that even what he's comprehended, he cannot communicate because language is weak. I just wish that I could grab you by both sides of your head and drill into you how much He loves you, how unconditionally. Because if you could see it, you would do something like Peter. On that day when the Lord did that great miracle in front of him and he said, basically what's going on there, he says, "Lord, this is wrong. Someone like me should not see this. I should not be privy to this type of thing, Lord, it's wrong. I'm not fit." If you really could see the love of God, that's what you would have a tendency to do. Lord, this is just not right. No one should love me this way.

And so when we talk about suffering and we talk about a longing for heaven, we can somehow take that and make it all about us and our piety and everything else, when that is not what's going on here. It's all about what comes from Him. It's all about what comes from Him. You are so loved if you call upon the name of Christ, if He owns you and you know Him, you are so loved. So the purpose of my sermon is not to display some meager piety. The purpose of my sermon is to tell you that even the greatest saints, even the greatest saints, need the sufferings of this life to create in them an ongoing discontentment with the world and turn their eyes towards heaven. But know this, every suffering is ordained by God, and that ordination is always and forever in the context of His immutable, unconditional love that He has set upon you. Now, before we go on to talk about suffering, I need to lay some groundwork about something, that if you have a longing for heaven, it is the work of God.

Everything comes from Him, through Him, goes to Him. And if you long for Him today, it is the work of regeneration. And I want to talk about that for a moment. Prior to regeneration, what is a man like? Well, in John 3, 19, "And 20, and this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." If you have a longing for God, He created it in you, and He who created it in you will sustain it in you, develop it, cultivate it, and make it grow. He who began a good work in you will finish it. You see, you take a little boy and you take him fishing and you tell him to go out and he needs to get some worms.

And so he goes out, the farm boy, and he throws over a rock or a log. And the moment that rock is lifted and light comes into that darkness, the worms, the insects, the beetles, they drive themselves into the earth farther and farther and farther. Why? To get away from the light. They hate the light. They hate the light. That's us. That was us. We hated light. We hated God. Now, why would anyone hate a good God? Well, they would only hate a good God because they're not good. And so they hate Him. They hate His person, they hate His will and that was us. Now, I want you to think about this saint. He did such a work in you that you are no longer like that. He who can make such a change in you, can He not continue to cultivate that change so that as you go through time, day after day, year after year, you grow in your longing for heaven.

But let's be careful here. Let's not put heaven between us and the throne of God. You grow in your longing for Him. So you need to be encouraged. You need to be encouraged. Also, I want to just go to Ezekiel 36:26, "A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh." Imagine that I had the figure of a man here made in solid stone. What could I do with him? I could pinch him and pluck him and kick him and punch him. And how would he reciprocate? What would be his answer? How would he respond? There would be no response. Why? Stone. Inanimate. Dead. Insensitive to me. And that's the way you were prior to becoming a Christian. But now how are you? He's made you alive. So if I could turn that man who's a solid stone statue into flesh, when I pinch him, he would wince. When I kick him, he would move.

He's flesh, he's living. He can respond. That's what happened to you in conversion if indeed it happened to you, you became alive. But I know you would say, "Brother Paul, you're right, I'm alive. But it sometimes doesn't seem like it." Do you know what I've discovered? I read through the New Testament and I just looked at the two words, hope and encouragement. I have discovered that you could put the greatest challenge in front of me and if I have hope, I can get up every day, even if it's going to take a hundred years to finish that challenge, I can do it. You take away hope and I cannot accomplish even the smallest task. I wither. And what I want you to see, you've heard sermons about how you should long for heaven. You've heard sermons about how Puritans, you read Isaac Ambrose and you read all these things and you marvel at these men and you should read them.

But sometimes you look back and go, "What kind of stuff were they made of? Because I don't appear to be made of the same stuff. How was it that they advanced so when I seem to crawl?" We're going to deal with that in just a little while. But know this, they came from the same stock of Adam as you. They were not cleaner or better. They came from the same stock of Adam as you and they were regenerated by the same Holy Spirit. So there's hope. If you see a saint who seems to exceed others, then know whatever that saint has, has been given to all the children of God. So let's go on. I've had people tell me I'm not a great exposit or a great... I spend most of my time just dealing with souls, evangelism, but I'll hear people say, some of my friends, "We just need to preach Jesus to them." Yeah. But there's a problem, you can preach Jesus all day long, but they don't have any eyes to see.

And you say, "Well, all right, we just need to pray that God will open their eyes," yeah, but that doesn't solve anything that makes matters worse. Why? Because if they see Jesus with the heart they have, they're going to hate Him even more and the more they see Him, the more they're going to hate Him. What has to happen? Just what we read in Ezekiel 36. God has to change the heart. And there's hope that you can go on with God if you'll just go back and look at the work of conversion, regeneration. In modern day evangelicalism born again-ism is just that you pray to prayer, but that's not true Christianity. Being born again is a supernatural work of God that eclipses, I believe, creation itself. Creation came [foreign language 00:20:21], it's out of nothing. But God created, recreated you, a massive fallen humanity. He gave you a new nature. He didn't just tell you to walk a new way. He made you a new creature. He did.

And not only that, because people read 2 Corinthians 5:17 wrongly I believe because they sit there and go, "If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation." Well, that's true, but it means a lot more than that. It's literally if anyone in Christ, new creation, and what it means is this, not only has He changed you ontologically, that you are a new person with a new nature, but you've entered into a new realm of existence. You're now part of the new creation which continues to unfold. It's the idea of the already and the not yet. But make no mistake about it, you have totally and completely moved out. This is Romans five, six and seven continues on in this era, "That you have moved out of this sphere of Adam and you are now in a completely different sphere of existence. Not only are you different, the whole realm of your reality is different before the throne of God." And He did not just save you and now you're trying to make your way

And all this is important to understand before we get to suffering because you need to know, He's orchestrating absolutely everything in your life. You say, "To make me holy," yes, but be careful with that because I have seen a type of holiness that is a morality independent of a love for God, a boasting in one's changes. No, His greatest thing is for you to look to Him. Everything He's doing in your life, and that's one of the true meanings of holiness, is to look to Him, to constantly depend upon Him, to constantly trust in Him. That's what He's doing in your life. Now I realized I've already... I've got several pages. I'm just going to have to choose some things now because I'm going far too slow. Now you know why I got my worst grade in seminary in preaching. Now, where should I go?

Let's stop here. I can't pick one Puritan because I've heard Spurgeon say it, other Puritans say it, and it needs to be said all over. And it's simply this, if your heart has been regenerated, then it has become so enlarged. Now this is something you must believe, it has become so enlarged that if you gained the whole world, it would not satisfy your heart. And if you lost the whole world, it cannot disappoint. You have been made into another creature, for another reality, for another existence. And you must believe that, that if you were to gain everything, every desire and exponentially beyond your desire, you can not be satisfied. Your heart's too big now. Augustine said it this way, "[foreign language 00:24:19]." What does it mean? "You have brought us to you Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." This is what you have to become utterly convinced of, utterly convinced of. And when you see it, it helps you chase away all the little foxes that spoil the vineyard.

It helps you to chase away all the others clamoring for your love, to know that no matter who calls on you in this world, no matter what they offer you, they can do you no good. They can simply do you no good. They cannot make you happy. Let me say it another way, I hear people say, "Your wife completes you or your husband completes you," if your wife can complete you, you're not born again. Now, there is a way that you can say that biblically, but I'm saying this for shock value. If your wife can fill you, complete you, satisfy everything for you, then you don't know Him. If your husband is all you ever need, well then your heart has not been enlarged. And matter of fact, that's caused a lot of problems in marriage because people will look at their wife or a wife will look at her husband and go, "He doesn't fill me to my fullest. This must be wrong." What you need to understand is that if you belong to him, there's going to be discontentment everywhere you look horizontally, and the only place you're going to find satisfaction is vertically in him.

And I would borrow from Isaiah, "Why do you run?" Why are you just banging your head constantly against the wall? Why are you going to all these lovers all the time who do nothing but disappoint, who ruin you, who hurt you? Why are you looking horizontally for what you can only find vertically in God? Stop doing it. It's of no benefit and you know it, don't you? You know it. No matter what you accomplish, no matter what you gain, no matter what pleasure or notoriety or advancements you make, That it turns out to be nothing more than sawdust in your mouth and rot in your gut. You're only going to find satisfaction in Him.

Now, I want us to go to Genesis 3:16-19 for a moment, "Unto the woman, He said, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow, thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.' And unto Adam, He said, 'Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife and has eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake and sorrow. Thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face, thou shalt eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art and unto dust, thou shalt return.'"

Now what's going on here? A lot of people who do a trite reading of this text are unbelievers who use this text to try to show the absurdity of what's going on. It was a piece of fruit. And just think about it for a moment. It was a piece of fruit and the entire cosmos, the created order, the universe was thrown into chaos, was brought into judgment, was brought into condemnation. It's a piece of fruit. No, here's what you need to understand. It was atheism. It was a direct attack upon God. And you go, "Well, how so?" Remember two nights ago I preached and I mentioned Abraham and I said, so Abraham, he's told he's going to have a son. He looks at his body, he examines his body, he's looking at himself. There is absolutely no evidence. There's no reason to believe, looking at his own body, he's going to have a son. He looks at his wife. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever. There's no evidence in her that he's going to have a son.

Zero. What must he do? There's only one thing. He is confined to one thing. He must trust in the word of God. And what does that mean? Far more than that. He must trust in the nature of God, all that God is. In his mind now, it has to be decided, Abraham, what do you believe about God? It's the same way with Adam and Eve. He says, "You eat of that tree, you die." They look at the tree. There was nothing in that tree that would tell them they would die. It was obviously beautiful. It was obviously pleasing to the eye. There was nothing about that tree that showed any evidence whatsoever that they would die. As a matter of fact, all the evidence was to the contrary. Everything in the garden was good and that tree looked more splendid than all of it. So what's going on here? There was only one reason to believe that that would bring death, because God said it would. And when you say "Yes, they had to believe God," but there's simply no way to speak of how profound that idea truly is.

When they took that fruit, it was a direct attack upon the godness of God. It was a direct attack upon His character, His nature, and they had to believe Him. It was a heinous crime. It was an unspeakable crime that goes far beyond anything the mind of a man or even an archangel can conceive. And so the whole world is cast into judgment, and now you see, it is a proper judgment. But now here's something I want to point out to you that is so often the case with God. This is one of the, if not the terrible judgment of judgments that fall upon mankind. It's as Babylon as the mother of all harlotry. So an idolatry. So this is the mother of every pain and sorrow in this world, but even in this judgment, there is mercy. Because the effects of this continue till today, is that not true? Everything that He says about Eve and He says about Adam, it continues till today.

It's judgment, but also I want you to see in your own life, it is mercy. In a sense, in that curse is a mixture of gospel proclamation. You go, "Yes, the Proto Evangelical in Genesis 3:15." No, here. In what way? In what way? Every time Eve suffered in giving birth, God was crying out to her, "Fallen, fallen, fallen. Broken, broken, broken. Return to me, return to me, return to me." Every time her relationship with Adam became convoluted, distorted, dislocated. Every time he was harsh, every time she was rebellious, all of it. And she looked there and she sat in the night and she wondered, "What is all this?" It was God going, "Fallen, fallen, fallen. Turn to me, turn to me, turn to me." Every time Adam plowed a field and it brought forth no fruit. Every time he made his way back to his home wore out, it was God going, "Fallen, fallen, fallen. Broken, broken, broken. Return to me, return to me. Look to me, look to me."

But how shall we return? Genesis 3:15. That's how you shall return. It's the same way with you, saint. It's the same way with you. You've got to understand this. I know I get up in the morning, I go to the office, we pray. Every day I'm met by godly men and women and we sit and we pray and the prayers go on and on and on. Maybe I do a devotion. Then we go on to do missions or the men go to study passages that they're going to have to teach in Myanmar or wherever they're going. We get together at lunch and we're talking about winning the nations and we're doing all these things and where are you going to preach tonight and what are you going to do and how are we going to work with these believers in a certain area? It's like, think about it, in a sense, a bubble, but you, many of you, it's off to the tool and die shop.

It's off to go with the contractor. It's to go to the secular school. It's to go to the hospital in labor. It's to go to your janitor closet. Or it's to go with a group of men, not to pray, but you have to pray before you meet them because of what will come out of their mouth, the wickedness that you're going to have to deal with every day, every day, every day. You know what I'm talking about, you know how it grinds you down. Allow that to be the catalyst. You need to realize, you need to walk in there and you need to go, "This is not who I am. No one sees it because they don't see Him. I am a child of God and this providence that I'm in, that seems to be so discouraging, in fact, God is protecting me. He's not allowing me to draw satisfaction from anything in this world but Him. He loves me so much to the point of a zeal, of a jealousy, that He hems me in, around and about me and He keeps me looking up."

That's what's going on. As you live in this world and you're going, "Why can't things go right? Why is everything so difficult?" It is Him still crying out to you, "Look up to me, look up to me, look up to me." Every vile thing said in the shop, every vile image, every vile conversation, every difficult relationship, it's Him saying, "Son, look to me. Look to me. I am your hope. I am your hope. I am your hope. I am your hope." Paul said it this way, "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God, for the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, and not only they but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption to it, the redemption of our body."

How did Adam fail? He did not believe God, because everything pointed to the contrary. You're being put to the same test. You go to church and you're told you are a child of God. You're a member of the kingdom of heaven. You go back into the world and now you're given an opportunity to glorify God in a far greater way than any minister or missionary. You're going to go into that world of yours and you're going to go into that tool and die shop and that factory and you're going to go work construction and you're going to go to the mechanic shop and you're going to go to all these places and everything is screaming at you, "There's no reason to believe anything you heard on Sunday. Anything." All the world lies in the power of the evil one and it seems to grow darker every day.

But you can do something in the power of the Holy Spirit. You can bring such glory to God wherever you are. The darker, the more difficult. You can say, "Though I see nothing, though I hear nothing, I will believe the word that was spoken to me." People will sometimes come to me and they'll say, "Brother Paul, your life and missions, what an opportunity. You get to work in missions, advance the kingdom." Oh dear Saint, I would be lying from this pulpit if I tried to flatter you, I would betray the mantle, but I'm not flattering you. It's not like that. There are no spiritual elites. Ministers are not spiritual elites. In our core values and heart cry, which I had to write and rewrite over and over again, one of the parts is on [foreign language 00:41:10], we are servants of God. But it just... No, it's too distracted. It's too separated. We are servants of the servants of God. And on that day, please don't ever in my presence use this kind of conversation, "Oh, there's RC Sproul or there's Charles Spurgeon or there's these men and they'll be so close to the throne. I'll never see them."

Really? That's why he did all this so that all that hierarchy and all those other things could just continue. And as you were a little person here, you'll be a little person there, really? Is that what he did all this for? No, that's of the old world. That's of Adam. You will receive a grand welcome, stand fast. When you leave here, when you go into your workplace Monday or when you're there as a stay-at-home mom and it seems like its just laundry and all these other things, know that all these wonderful things said about you in this conference with regard to being a child of God, you look around, you see nothing of it, believe it, stand on it. Know who you are, know what's prepared for you and rejoice in it and know that nothing greater is prepared for someone in this pulpit than what's prepared for the smallest saint. I'm finished with all this stuff. There's only one hero in this story. There will always only be one hero. All of us have failed always in everything. Only our elder brother triumphed and He triumphed for every one of us.

It's Him. It's all of Him. It's all Him. It's always Him. It's nothing but Him. He's the hero. And sometimes I hate preaching. I hate words because they just don't work, when you begin to talk about how much God loves what even the church would consider the smallest, weakest saint. You're dearly loved. So all this is intended to turn your eyes toward Him, but some of you can't. Do you know why you can't? Because you're not convinced of the love of God. You look at this world and you go, "Yeah, there's nothing here for me. But then again, I look in the mirror of God's word and I see how failing I am and how backward I am and how apathetic. So when I look to heaven, I'm sure they don't want me there either." Don't do that. Don't do that. He will be happier to see you than you will be to see Him because you are the works of His hand and He will make you stand. He will make you stand.

I would love right now just to throw this whole thing aside and preach through the whole Song of Solomon because some of you need to hear you are altogether beautiful, my darling. Altogether beautiful. Never forget, it's a greater than Joseph here. Joseph's brothers were angry with him because of his coat of many colors, but Christ is greater than Joseph. Because he took his coat of many colors and he dressed us all, he dressed us all. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait to rejoice with you, to sing, to dance, to run, to be with you there, all of us. It's a world of glory. Now let's go on. Not only is the fallenness of this age meant to turn you vertically to Him, but also the wicked are. Yes, the wicked have a purpose. Oh, God is big. I mean, He's big. Even the wicked have a purpose. I want to read a passage that's not often applied this way, but in 2 Peter 2:7-8 about Lot.

It says, "Lot was vexed." The word literally means he was wore down. He was exhausted. The word can mean he was almost like he was ground to powder. It says, "Lot was vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, for that righteous man dwelling among them in seeing and hearing vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds." First of all, let me point out to you something. I'm sure you know something about the history of Lot. I mean if there were bad choices in that man, yes, vexed in his righteous soul, that we can see that even Sodom was used. And it's the same way every time you go out there into the world, every time you're tempted to chase the things that unbelievers chase, every time you hear the vulgarities, every time you turn on the news and wonder what in the world has happened to the west. Again, it's to turn your eyes toward heaven. The nineties were far more dangerous than what we're going through now. Why? Well, it was all about Christianity in America and flags and parades and prosperity and so many things we could accomplish without God in God's name.

He put an end to all of it, didn't He? He put an end to it. Now you go out there, even where I live, there are Christians that are fearing for the loss of their job if they're just asked one question and they answer incorrectly. So even the wicked, God is using. Even when you turn on the news and go, "Why? Why? Why? Why?" You want the answer? He won't share you with anyone, not even with a country. You belong to Him. You belong to heaven. And this is extremely, extremely important. Now, I want to go on with another thing that this is especially true, is that our remaining inward corruption, our battle with sin compels us to long for heaven.

Paul says in Romans 7:18, "For I know that in me that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would, not that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord." I've often and so have many other people asked the question, why did God sanctify us entirely immediately after conversion?

Because what is this whole salvation thing about? The holiest among us wins? I mean, what is this really all about? The great purpose of God is not even that we would be holy and satisfied in our holiness. And holiness is so very important, don't get me wrong. But the real purpose is that we would look to Him, that we would always look to Him, that we would find in Him everything that we would appreciate. Christ, I hate my sin. I fight against sin. I mourn sin. Yet at the same time, I know this about myself, I have one good day. I get up in the morning, I have a devotional that lasts what, thirty-five hours and I witness to everybody and I do all these things and I mean everything is going perfect. And about 12 o'clock, I can't figure out why everyone else can't get right like me.

I remember there was a time when an extraordinary time of prayer that went on for more than a few years and to pray was to breathe, but then a malady happened and I was like, "Why are people so prayerless? Why can't they pray? I mean, why don't they?" And then I couldn't pray and I had to be taught. What do you have that you have not received? And if you have received it, why do you boast? When they couldn't cast out the demon, he says, "This kind comes out by prayer." Have you ever wondered what's going on there? Well, what I believe is going on there is this. They had been given authority and they thought that authority was inherent in them now. You are always going to be a branch. You must always be connected to the vine. It must always be communion. It must always be flowing from Him. It must always be that. Now, let me give you an example.

If I have a seven-year-old daughter, and if I walk across the parking lot at Walmart, I hold her hand and I take her all the way across. But it would look rather ridiculous if I was doing that with my grown son whose six foot five. But that's not Christianity. Christianity is not that you grow so mature that little by little, you become more and more independent of Hm. Stand on your own now. That analogy doesn't cross over in Christianity. No. As you grow in Christ, what God is doing is He's working greater and greater weakness in you, greater and greater distrust in you so that you cling to him and cling to him and cling to him more deeply, more deeply. That's true, Christianity. It's not the opposite.

It's not the opposite. Now I want to show you something that I wish I could actually had a graph or something here. So let's just pretend that we have one. When I first became a Christian and I read Leonard Ravenhill and Ian Bounds and Praying Hide and the autobiography of George Mueller and Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret and all these different books, I had in my mind that... Well, I thought that I would've made far more progress in sanctification than I've made. I thought that by this stage I would be a lot better than I am. But I've come to discover, this didn't come to me. I've heard it in a few different places, but I have sat and meditated upon it and looked through scripture. I want you to look at sanctification in two different ways. So imagine I have a graph, a line graph. I thought that from this point, my sanctification would do this. And I thought I'd be somewhere way up there by now. But I found that my sanctification did something like this, and it just didn't go as far as I had hoped. I thought I would be less selfish by now. I thought... I just thought a whole lot of things. So this hasn't been that spectacular.

But there is one aspect of sanctification that has become quite spectacular. As a matter of fact, it's grown like this and it's grown like this because this has been rather disappointing. And what is this aspect of sanctification that has grown like a rocket as the result of all my other failures? The recognition of my need of Him, that all I have is Christ. If you asked me as a new believer, "Paul is Jesus everything?" Yes, yes, He is. Now? "Paul, do you have anything other than Jesus?" No. Righteousness, no. Holiness, no, no, no. Nothing but Jesus. A young guy came to me one time after hearing me preach. He goes, "You're right, Brother Paul. Jesus is all we need." I said, "Jesus. Son, Jesus is all we have. We don't have anything else." He's everything. He's everything. No, no, you're not hearing me. He is everything. Everything, everything. He is. He's absolutely everything. Now, let me show you. Let me show you the Christian life and it's found in quite an unexpected place.

In Mark 1:14, this is what we read. "Now, after that, John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, 'The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye and believe the gospel. This is the whole of the Christian life.'" And you say, "How can that be?" Well, repent and believe are both in present tense imperatives. We could maybe say it this way. Now, the kingdom of God is at hand, spend the rest of your life repenting and believing. So how does that work itself out? Well, let me show you. So here I am. I'm an unbeliever and I hear the gospel and I see God and His holiness, His righteousness as I have never seen Him before. And in that light, I see my sin in a way that I have never seen it before. And I have a brokenness and a sorrow over sin that previously was unknown to me, but it's not a brokenness unto death because in that same gospel, I see God's provision in Christ as I have never seen Him before.

And my brokenness gives way to joy. First day of Christianity. But then as I begin to grow in the word, as I read books of other men that have gone before me, as I hear preaching. So the very next day from all of that, from those means of grace that were called upon to use, oh, I thought I saw it all back yesterday. No, there's more. I see His holiness and His righteousness in a way that I didn't see it yesterday. I see more of my sin now. Even though I've already grown a bit in sanctification, I see more sin and my sorrow is even deeper than it was yesterday. But then I see the provision in a greater way than I saw Him yesterday and my joy is greater, and then it's the next day and the next year. So that one day as an old man, I have been transformed, but I see His holiness and His righteousness in a way that I never saw it 40 years ago. And even though I've changed, I see my sin closer to the light, deeper roots.

I see my sin like I have never seen it before and my brokenness is far greater than it was when I was even first converted. And I would be fractured to the point of utter despair. But then I see Him, I see Him. Oh, bless God for the son, my righteousness, Jehovah my righteousness. I see Him. And so these old men that are walking contradiction, their sorrow is so great, their joy is so great but in that, there is a transaction that occurs also for as a young man, I saw my worth in how much I prayed and read my Bible and how much I preached on the streets. But as time goes by, I'm done with all that. I find no joy there. I find no hope. All of that hope that was once deposited, maybe in those things unknowingly, it's gone now and it's deposited there. He is everything. Everything. As I said on my tombstone, I contributed nothing to my salvation but my sin and nothing to my ministry but my weakness.

And I long for heaven because He made me long for heaven. He orchestrated it. And I want to say a few last things here, I know I've gone... I try to teach this almost everywhere I go now, so many people come to me and they say, "Brother Paul, I love God, but I lament that I do not love God as I ought." And that's the biggest thing they say. I say, "Do you love God?" And I never hardly ever see anyone go, "Yes, yes I do." I see people go, "Not as I ought to." I want you to think about something for a moment. How do we work on that? How do we work on that? So I use this illustration, if I were laying on this platform on my back and I had both hands grabbing a hold of my belt and I was pulling with all my might, and you came up to me and you looked down and you said, "Brother Paul, what are you doing?" I said, "Well, isn't it obvious? I'm trying to get up." And you said to me, "You've never really studied physics, have you? To get up in that way, you must be acted upon by an outside force."

And this is what I want you to see as the secret of many of the missionaries and biographies and people that you admire. This is the secret right here. Remember that story? I say this often, you see a man who just loves his wife, loves his wife, loves his wife. I mean, he's just crazy about his wife. And what do you automatically do? You go, "What an amazing man." Maybe he's a brute of a man. Maybe he's not amazing at all. Maybe it's his wife. That's amazing. And her virtue and beauty draws out his affection, even though he's just a rock. You see someone who seems to have an extraordinary love for Jesus, and you go, "What an amazing man. What an amazing woman." Maybe they're not amazing at all. Maybe they've just seen more of something than you've seen. So that guy trying to get up by pulling in his belt, he can't do that. He has to be acted upon by an outside force to get that way. Someone has to pull him up. What does the church need above everything else?

A greater and greater vision of the love of God in Christ. A greater and greater vision of this spectacular person. If your heart has been truly regenerate, the more you see of Him, the more you see of His love, then the more He's going to draw out your affections. And in the end, what will you say? Will you boast? "I love Him." Yes, but you won't stop there because that seems a bit proud and idolatrous. What will you do? "Yes, Brother Paul. I love Him because He first loved me. I love him. I am compelled by the love of Christ. I'm not compelled by my love for Christ, but I'm compelled by Christ's love for me." I've seen bigger pictures, and this is also the job of the preacher. This is the job of the preacher. This is why he hides away.

Because well, you see what you need to understand, if you're a preacher here today, you're not just studying for you. You're studying for the mechanic who works 12 hours a day and can only get in about a half an hour of Bible study. You're studying for the homemaker, the homeschool mom. You're studying for the... You're studying for them. And you go into your study and you stay there and you read the scriptures and you're on your knees and you're reading good books. And what you're doing is Job 28, you're the minor who goes in where no one else can go. You turn mountains over at their base. You dam up streams. You dig through rock. You do whatever you can to bring out these pictures, these words about Christ, and then give them to His bride. That's the job of preaching. That's the job of preaching.

Yes, we must teach principle. Yes, we must teach wisdom, but nothing is taught apart from Christ and exalting Christ and making much of Christ. Christ, Christ, Christ. The preacher is Abraham's servant. Abraham says, "Go fetch a bride for my son." And so that servant goes and he finds the bride. He's bringing her back. It's a long journey. She's never seen her spouse. As she leaves her home, she looks back and the servant sees I, she's worried. He reaches into his bag and he pulls out a gold bracelet and he says, "Look here. He'll be worth it. Don't look back. He'll be worth it." And they're going along and they come to a well.

And some fine young men appear, muscular and young and handsome. They move the stone and that servant watches that bride. And all of a sudden her eyes cut to the right, and he reaches into his bag again. And he goes, "No, no, no. Look here, look here. Another jewel. Don't get distracted. These, they're nothing. Wait for Him. Wait for Him." That's the job of the preacher every Sunday. You've been distracted, I know. You're out there in a terrible, terrible world. Things are laid before you. No, no, no. Look this way, look this way. Keep going. We're almost there. We're almost there. He'll be worth it. He'll be worth it. Oh, He will. He's worth it. His beauty is so great that if you were to catch the smallest glimpse of the smallest glimpse of the back part and most extended part of His train, it would fracture your mind, the beauty of it, in a thousand pieces that you'll have to be strengthened and changed and transformed even to stand in His presence. To saints, He's worth it. And everything in this fallen world is screaming at you. And it's Him calling to you through it, "Look to me, look to me. Look to me."