The original five message audios and full transcripts of this message are available at www.biblestudyministriesinc.com and then click onto “Click here to download messages…”
Published by Janet Huhn, 1000 North Schumaker Drive, Salisbury, Md. 21804 Email: janet@biblestudyministriesinc.com 410-543-4577
Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, and the Kings James Bible
“Christ Formed in You” First Edition, August 2024 Second Edition, September 2024
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Ed & Lillian Miller
EDITOR’S NOTES
This book is based on a series of messages taught by Ed Miller at the Family Ministries Hashawha retreat in 2004. The title of the five-part series is “Christ Formed in You”. The exchanged life is a principle that is at the very heart and is foundational to Ed’s teachings – Jesus living His life in us, for us, and through us. This study shows us how the Lord progressively grows in us, just as He grew progressively on the earth two thousand years ago, until he was fully prepared to minister thirty years after His birth.
“If ever a portion of scripture gives a progressive revelation of Christ, it’s these thirty years. He starts off implanted in a person in the womb, and then we see Him as an infant in the manger, and then we see Him as a little boy, and then we see Him as a young adult, growing and maturing and developing until finally He matures, and then His ministry begins. Luke 2:40,
‘The child continued to grow and became strong, increasing in wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him.’”
“Christ was growing; Christ was maturing. As you come to the gospel record, you see a representative man, a perfect representative and our substitute, progressively revealed, until He’s revealed and can carry out His redemptive ministry to all the earth through us.”
“He’s living in us, instead of us as an exchanged life. He comes in to live and do the work now. The way He does it is by being progressively formed in us. We want to see those stages; we want to watch Christ being formed in us, and we’ll be able to see every step. Those stories unfolding won’t just be Christmas stories. It’s God telling how He wants to do now what He did then; as He came, He comes. As He worked, He works. As He was progressively manifested then, He is progressively manifested now in our lives.” (Ed Miller)
I have chosen to maintain, for the most part, the word-by-word transcription of these talks. Minor editing was used to omit redundancy and shorten long sentences. Grammar may be a bit “shaky” but I think Ed’s personality, dry sense of humor and interesting terms of speech shine through by endeavoring to stick to the original transcript. This will also make it easier to follow along with the original audio recording while reading these transcripts, if you choose to do so. The recordings, the transcripts as well as this book can be accessed at: www.biblestudyministriesinc.com
Through the Holy Spirit, the revelation of Jesus’ life in exchange for mine has given me the place to find enduring peace and rest in my heart, as I progressively walk out my salvation in Him centered in His will. I’m daily recapturing that glorious thrill of forty years ago when He first revealed Himself to me and I accepted Him as my life. My prayer is that others may come to live in the ongoing reality of the Lord’s progressive revelation of Himself as their very life. May this little meditation series be an instrument for His doing so!
~ Janet Huhn
CHAPTER 1
Christ Formed in You
Introduction
There’s a principle of Bible study when we come to the word of God that is absolutely indispensable, and that is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. With all of the aids, helps, books and commentaries, the bottom line is that we must come as little children before Him and ask the Holy Spirit to unveil Christ to our hearts.
As I prepared these messages, this verse became very meaningful to me. Isaiah 32:6,
“A fool speaks nonsense…… to keep the hungry person unsatisfied and to withhold drink for the thirsty.”
Anyone hungry and thirsty here? I would be a fool and speak nonsense if I didn’t give you something to satisfy your soul. A fool speaks nonsense if he lets the hungry go out hungry and lets the thirsty go out thirsty. That’s why it’s important that I proclaim Christ, because no other message can satisfy hunger and thirst. I don’t want to be a fool and speak nonsense. You’ll know the difference between straw and grain. Let’s trust God’s word together as we open up His word, and that we come to have our spirits fed to see and behold the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Father, we do praise You this morning, that we have the privilege again to come and wait before You. You have been so faithful, are faithful at this moment, and will be faithful throughout all eternity. We pray now that in a special way we might tap into that great fountain, and that we might drink and imbibe deeply to receive everything that you have for us to receive. We trust You as we look into Your word; minister unto us and show us the Lord Jesus Christ. We did not come for a soul massage but for a revelation of Christ. We ask you, Lord, in Your mercy to give us that. In the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
OUTLINE
Before I begin sharing the burden that’s on my heart for this weekend, let me say something about an introductory lesson. It’s very difficult for me because it’s tedious. I think it’s important to get us looking in the right direction. Please pray that the Lord will assist me in what to proclaim, because I long that He would do that. In an introductory lesson we don’t just have a text. The closest we will come to a text is 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 11 and Genesis 2. I’ll be quoting those verses. I want to give you what the theme is in my heart. Galatians 4:19: you might look at that and say that it’s not a prayer, but I say that it is, because I’m going to pray it! Paul talks about travail in his heart. Travail is prayer. Galatians 4:19:
“My children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.”
That’s my prayer, that Christ be formed in you. I’ve been praying in a special way as we go through this, that Christ would be formed in you. The message that I have on my heart is Christ formed in you and me.
I’ve been going through that portion of scripture that goes through the first forty years of our Lord Jesus and His ministry. You might think that there’s very little information on the first thirty years in the Bible and that those are the obscure years and God doesn’t say much. We won’t be looking to any so-called gospel books outside the Bible to fill in those years. One example of such a book says that when Jesus was four years old, a friend had broken a clay tool, so Jesus killed the child. The parent of the child told Mary, so Jesus kicked him in the ribs, and he came back to life. Can you believe this stuff is in there? Then when He was six years old, somebody bumped into him, and he didn’t like it, and he killed that child. Again, the parents came, and Jesus lifted him up by the ears, and he was alive again. He made some clay animals on the Sabbath day, and some of the religious leaders came into Joseph and Mary and rebuked them that He was making things on the Sabbath day. So, Jesus clapped his hands, and the clay pigeons flew away, and the clay animals ran away.
When we look at the thirty years, we aren’t going to be looking at that kind of thing. We’ll only be getting our information from the Bible. When you take all the infancy stories and take the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus and take the baptism and the temptation in the wilderness, that’s a lot of scripture, and it’s all about those first thirty years. I want God’s heart on those thirty years. I don’t want to just get some facts, that Joseph was a carpenter, and that His family was Godly, and they kept the customs, and He knew three languages, etc. I’m not interested in that. We’re already accustomed to reading these stories in an isolated way. We all know the Christmas story, how Gabriel came and appeared to Mary, the virgin birth, the shepherds, Simeon in the temple, the wise men, Herod destroying the children, the rescue in Egypt, God settling them in Nazareth, and the twelve-year-old Jesus. We’ve all studied them in a detached way. Has God ever dawned on your heart the thirty years in a segment, how Christ is revealed in that period of time, and how all those stories are tied together to give us that revelation of Christ? That’s what we want to look at.
Jesus is representative Man, our substitute – not our example
My son told me to just give my burden. He said that you aren’t interested in my outline or illustrations and how I am going to present it. So, we’re just here to proclaim the Lord. I want you to see three things. First, you have got to see God’s revelation of His Son, how God reveals Jesus. There are many answers to that question, but I think this is the chief answer; He is the representative man. There are other ways that He’s presented; He’s the God-man, He’s the perfect man and all that. I’m not talking about Jesus as the ideal man, man created as God created man to be, the model and specimen of humanity. That’s not the point. We aren’t studying those thirty years so that we can copy and imitate and say that it’s the way we ought to live. If we did, we would miss God’s main point. He did not live on the earth to show us how to live; He didn’t do it first so that we could do it second. If you miss this, you miss those thirty years. He came as our substitute, as our representative; He came to be man in our place and for us. I might be a good example to you but I’m not your representative.
I think thousands of Christians miss this. If you ask the average Christian if Christ is their substitute, their representative, almost without exception they would say, “Yes, He was my substitute and He became sin for me and died for me. He’s my substitute on the cross.” Think about this; when He was in Gethsemane, was He your substitute then? Was He transfigured as Your substitute? His temptation in the wilderness, did He do that as your example so that we’d know how to face temptation? Did He do it first so that we could do it second? He did it once so that we don’t have to do it. He was circumcised. Was He circumcised for you? Colossians 2:11 says that we are circumcised in Christ, with a circumcision not made with hands. I know He died for me. When He died, I died. When He was there, I was there. I’ve never heard anyone stand up and testify that when He was circumcised, I was circumcised with Him. He was not only my substitute in death, but the thirty years shows that He was my substitute in life. He died for me, but He also lived for me. So, we need to look at Christ as our representative.
Jesus obeyed perfectly as our representative/substitute
Let me give a stupid illustration. Picture September 12, 2001, the day after September 11. Let’s assume that somewhere on this earth there is someone who is completely uncivilized, uncultured, as primitive as primitive can be, some aborigine in some deep dark jungle that has never heard of anything, and you lift that person out of his culture, and bring him to America. Let’s say that you bring him to the financial capital of the world, to lower Manhattan. On the way over in the plane you begin to explain to him that he’s going to see the most amazing thing he can ever imagine, the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers. Then you explain that he’ll see buildings 110 stories high, 1,377 feet above the level of the sea. His eyes get big with amazement. You tell him that these buildings house more the 450 businesses and that more than 50,000 people are employed in just those two buildings, and underneath there is a great shopping complex. So, you arrive on September 12 and go to ground zero and say, “There it is!” What does he see? He sees a hundred thousand tons of rubble; he sees a wreck. He doesn’t see a north and south tower looking over a great metropolis. He sees a pile of melted steel, crumbled concrete, and twisted everything, a mass grave. That’s all he sees.
Let me ask you this. As we stood at the pit at ground zero, did I lie to him? That’s the Twin Towers, but the problem is that they’re not there because it’s after the fall. It’s the Twin Towers after the enemy did his monstrous deed. That’s the problem with the study of man today. That’s the problem with anthropology and psychology and psychiatry where some of these educators are trying to study man. They don’t see a man. They are seeing man after the fall; and that’s not man as God intended man to be. The second thing we must see is that the representative Man lived a perfect life; in every obedience to His Father God, every moment of every day, every day of every week, every week of every month, and every month of every year He lived flawlessly. You won’t understand those thirty years unless God gives you a vision of that; He’s not only a representative but One Who obeyed perfectly and satisfied God.
Jesus is progressively revealed to us as representative man
Then there’s a third thing we must see, and it’s sort of self-evident; you’ve got to see that Christ is gradually revealed. If ever a portion of scripture gives a progressive revelation of Christ, it’s these thirty years. He starts off implanted in a person in the womb, and then we see Him as an infant in the manger, and then we see Him as a little boy, and then we see Him as a young adult, growing and maturing and developing until finally He matures, and then His ministry begins. Luke 2:40,
“The child continued to grow and became strong, increasing in wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him.”
Christ was growing; Christ was maturing. As you come to the gospel record, you see a representative man, a perfect representative, progressively revealed, until He’s revealed and can carry out His redemptive ministry to all the earth. God helping me, I will take those three facts and will show you a glorious principle. God has done a most wonderful thing with those thirty years. If we can see that here, we’ll never be the same. So, one by one, let’s go back and look at these three things.
JESUS IS OUR REPRESENTAIVE – NOT OUR EXAMPLE
Only two times, as far as I know, in the history of the world, has God given us a representative man; once is Jesus and the other is Adam. We can’t look at man because that’s the fallen towers, more than 110 stories had fallen. So, we can either look at Adam or the last Adam.
1 Corinthians 15:45-47,
“So also, it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven.”
This is not my bright idea, but God in His word has made a connection between Adam and the Lord Jesus; Adam is called the first man. It tells me that there were none before him. In verse 47, Christ is called the second man. The first man is from the earth, “earthy”, and the second man is from heaven. In verse 47, Christ is called the second man. If Adam is the first man, there is none before him. If Christ is the second man, there’s none between them. Verse 45, Christ is called the Last Adam because He’s a life-giving spirit. Adam is the first Adam because there’s none before him, Christ is the second man and there’s nothing between them, and Christ is the last Adam because there’s nothing after Him. In other words, from God’s viewpoint there are only two men that have ever lived as God intended man to live. They have this in common; they were both representative men. If we’re going to see Christ as the representative, it will help me to see the first representative. So, what I’d like to do is to show you Adam one and then we’ll look at Adam, the last. We’ll drive home this idea of representation.
What did it look like before the tower fell? Before man sinned, let’s turn to 2 Corinthians, because that’s fully developed formed, and we’ll get some insight what it was like before the Fall. 2 Corinthians 11:2,
“I’m jealous over you with a Godly jealousy. I espoused you to one husband, that I present you as a pure virgin to Christ. I fear less by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in His craftiness, your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity of devotion to Christ.”
The New American Standard says, “Led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” King James says, “Corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” Kenneth Wuest in His expanded translation words it this way, “Lest your mind be corrupted from the simplicity, the single-hearted loyalty and purity and uprightness of life which you expressed toward Christ.”
In other words, here was Paul’s concern for the Corinthians; God had used him as the instrument to lead them into wedded union with the Lord and brought them as a virgin into a marriage relationship with God, but as He watched them, he had a concern for them, and it was that Satan would do to them what he did to Eve in the garden before she fell, “As Satan deceived Eve, I’m afraid that Satan is going to deceive you from your simplicity and your devotion to Christ.” What did it look like before man sinned? Life was simple and devoted to the Lord. When we get saved and come back to the Lord, that’s our new life. It’s simple and devoted to Him and lived in union with God. That’s how it was back then. Isaiah has a description of Eden. Isaiah 51:3,
“The garden of the Lord, joy and gladness was found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of a melody.”
That’s what it was like: joy, gladness, thanksgiving, the sound of the melody, man as God intended man to be— simple and related to God and living out a holy and happy life. That was Adam as the representative man; he wasn’t living for himself. Even though Adam didn’t have a family, God looked at Adam and said, “I see your family; I see your grandchildren; I see your grandchildren’s grandchildren; I see your grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren. And He looked at Adam and said, “I see all the nations of the world.” Adam was man, but he wasn’t one man; he was one representative man. As he stood there, the whole race stood there. If we are going to understand the thirty years, you have to see that the first Adam was like the last Adam.
JESUS LIVED IN PERECT OBEDIENCE AS REPRESENTATIVE MAN
Christ is not only the representative man, but He lived in perfect obedience to God. This was true of both representatives. God desired that man live simply and in devotion to Him, but He didn’t want a robot. He didn’t want to force that. So, He made a covenant with Adam. Some theologians say that the first covenant in the Bible is with Abraham and David, and then Moses, but that He never made a covenant with Adam. Well, just because the word “covenant” doesn’t appear, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a covenant. The word “trinity” doesn’t appear, and there is a trinity. The word “rapture” doesn’t appear, and the word “Shekinah” doesn’t appear, but there’s a rapture and a Shekinah glory. The word “substitute” doesn’t appear in your Bible, but there’s a substitute.
Actually, the word “covenant” does appear. Genesis 2:15,
“Jehovah took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep; and Jehovah God commanded the man saying, ‘Of every tree in the garden thou may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.”
See, that’s a covenant. There’s a duty required, and a promise made, and a punishment threatened; that’s a covenant. In fact, Hosea 6:7 in addressing Israel says,
“Like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant.”
Theologians call it the “covenant of works”. Adam was required to obey and live; disobey and he’d die. That’s it. It’s simple.
If he had obeyed and walked the path of obedience, he would have eventually come to the tree of life, and then been sealed in that obedience. He would have passed the test, and everything would have been different. It’s all about obedience. God did not give him any out. There was not one jot, and not one failing was allowed—no latitude in the covenant. Adam couldn’t come back and say, “I tried my best and put my best foot forward and I’m really sorry.” There was no room for repentance in the covenant. It’s a covenant of works; it’s all about God’s will and God’s pleasure and God’s heart and authority. It’s clear when the commandment isn’t a moral issue; “Don’t because I said so.” God said to not eat of that tree. Why? “Because I said so. Instead, you walk in simplicity and devotion to me.”
Some commentaries try to identify Adam’s sin. Some say it’s pride, some say it’s envy, some say it’s selfishness, some say it’s independence, and some say it’s covetousness. My guess is that it was probably all of those things, but God names it. Romans 5:19,
“As through one man’s disobedience many were made sinners…”
It’s a covenant of works. God, in effect, said, “Here’s the deal. I’m going to make a covenant with you. If you live simply and in devotion to me, and the law is written in your heart, and you are happy and holy, everything is wonderful. Here’s the deal. I’m going to let you represent the whole family tree. If you pass the test, they pass the test. If you flunk, they’ll flunk.” That was the whole thing. “When you act, they act; the destiny of the whole world depends on your actions. You are the representative of the entire race.”
You know the story. Adam disobeyed; Adam one sinned. The first representative man went down, and the towers came down, and that’s been the history of society ever since. Man fell from his integrity, and the image of God was ruined. In the middle of the history, God gave us a great mirror, the Law, so they could see how terrible their fall was. Man could not have fallen any more than he fell when he fell in his federal head. That’s when enters the second man, thousands of years ago, Galatians 4:4,
“When the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.”
Enter—the Second Man. Don’t miss this, brothers and sisters in Christ. God is starting over—the last Adam, the second man. It’s like the Garden of Eden all over again. There’s another man on the earth as God intended man to be. God had figured out a way for a person to not only do what Adam didn’t do, but undo everything the first Adam did. In other words, the second man had to live for the whole race. Same deal. If you pass, they pass. If you flunk, they flunk.
We look at the manger and we see a cute little baby. That’s not just a baby; it’s a new start of a new race. It’s a new representative. God is beginning all over again. Right from the start, the issue was the same. The Bible says that Jesus spoke when He was an infant. It’s in Hebrews 10:7,
“Then I said, ‘Lo, I am come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do Thy will, oh God.’ After saying above, ‘Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offering and sacrifices for sin Thou hast not desired, nor hast Thou taken pleasure in them (which are offered according to Law),’ then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Thy will.’”
When He came into the world, He said that He came to do, “Thy will”. That’s what it’s all about.
When the disciples brought Him food to eat because He was tired and hungry in John 4:32-34,
“‘I have meat to eat that you know not of.’ Therefore, the disciples said one to another, ‘Has any man brought Him anything to eat?’ And Jesus said, ‘My meat is to do the will of Him Who sent Me, to finish His work.’”
This is representative man. This is the second man, the Last Adam. “Do or die.” John 6:38,
“Jesus said, ‘I’ve come down from heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him Who sent Me.’”
He claimed in John 8:28-29 not to do or say anything on His own,
“When you’ve lifted up the Son of Man, you shall know that I am He, and that I do nothing by Myself. As My Father has taught Me, I speak these things. He that sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone. I always do those things that please Him.”
So, when you read the record, the second man came to do what the first man wouldn’t do—obey. It’s about obedience. Who can forget Gethsemane? “Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” If you are going to understand these thirty years, you’ve got to see that it’s representative man living life in perfect obedience until finally He could go on the cross and say, “It is finished.” We learn in Hebrews that He learned obedience by the things that He suffered, and He cried out, but was unable to be saved from death. You can never understand the thirty years if you don’t see Jesus as the second man, as The last Adam, as our substitute and representative, doing what the first man didn’t do, and undoing what the first man did.
JESUS IS REVEALED PROGRESSIVELY AS REPRESENTATIVE MAN
How is He revealed in the Bible? The answer is little by little, as He matures before our eyes. God wants us to know the Lord Jesus as our substitute, and as the One who does the work, but according to the thirty years, as He was progressively revealed. Before His life could become redemptive, He had to grow and grow and grow, and then His ministry began. As He came, it’s how He comes. What He did then, He does now. The way He was progressively revealed then is exactly how He is progressively revealed in your heart. Step by step we’ll read those stories and we’ll be amazed. Galatians 4:19 is my prayer, “I’m in labor over you until Christ is formed in you.” It’s not how to grow in Christ. I want to show you how Christ grows in you. That’s my burden, how He is formed in you, because in some of us who may still be a fetus, we’ve got to watch Him grow. In some of us He may be an infant. We’ll look at each of the characteristics of Christ, and after an infant He’ll become a young adult. Then, when finally, we’ve matured to where He can minister, we need to follow that. He desires to be in us now.
Why do we study these thirty years? It’s because I see our substitute who wants to come into my heart to be a substitute, to be a representative. As far as I can follow it back, Hudson Taylor is the first one who ever used the expression, “the exchanged life.” It’s about Christ coming in to live in my place, as my substitute. Christ lived by works and He still does. He’s come into your life to live by works. He did it by works, and gives it to you by grace. It’s His life. We’re so busy trying to live the Christian life. It takes God to be a Christian. There’s only one Person who ever lived the Christian life, and His name is Jesus; and He’s the only one that can live it again. It takes God to be a man, as God intended man to be. It takes God to be a Christian. It’s not your life; it’s Him. He’s the substitute; He does the work, and He’s progressively revealed. As I studied those thirty years, I saw that He comes into my life to be a substitute, to do the work, and He is progressively revealed. As I saw Him as a fetus, and as I saw Him as an infant, and I look at my life, and I see the forming of Christ, this is my prayer, “That Christ be formed in you.”
The other day my wife was watching the Olympics, the swim team and the men’s all-around gymnastics. When I walked in, she looked at me and lit up and said, “We won!” She’s been doing that with the Red Sox lately, too. She didn’t even get wet! She wasn’t in the pool. How could she identify with that? How could she say that we won? Somehow, she was able to identify with that, and it became her team and her athlete, and she began to praise the athletes. It touched me because I had been studying about representative.
I asked her, “If you had read about some athletic team two thousand years ago, before our nation was a nation, that they had represented something called the United States, and they won the gold, would you be dancing around right now?” She said, “No.” I began to think about how we look back at our Lord Jesus, and all that He has done, and we’re told to enter in; to identify with His victory. Two thousand years later we’re trying to appropriate and enter in. Then it hit me. He was my substitute. He IS my substitute. Do you know why she could enter in? It’s because it was now, and it wasn’t then. If we try to walk on a balance beam, we know we are going to fall off. But He’s not. He’s going to be doing flips on the balance beam. It’s Him under those heavy weights; it’s Him tearing down the track—now. It’s not then—it’s now.
If we could see Him as our representative now, how we would cheer on that athlete now! In the hour of temptation we would say, “Run, Jesus, run.” It’s Him. It’s His life. He’s the substitute, He’s the one on the balance beam, and He’s swimming the course, and He’s living the Christian life. It’s Him, if we could see that now He lives in me as my substitute; He’s living in us, instead of us as an exchanged life. He comes in to live and do the work now. The way He does it is by being progressively formed in us. We want to see those stages; we want to watch Christ being formed in us, and we’ll be able to see every step. Those stories unfolding won’t just be Christmas stories. It’s God telling how He wants to do now what He did then; as He came, He comes. As He worked, He works. As He was progressively manifested then; He is progressively manifested now in our lives.
We pray as we look at these wonderful stories, that we’ll see Christ formed, because we’ll see Him being formed in our life to the place where He then begins to minister. This is all preparation for that redemptive ministry where He pours Himself out for the world.
Father, thank You for Your word, not what we think we know about it but all that You know about it. Show us Christ our representative, the worker, and how Christ is formed in us. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
CHAPTER 2
Seed/Fetus
WELCOME AND PRAYER
As we come to the study of God’s word, there’s a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable, a principle that we cannot take for granted, and that is total reliance on God’s Holy Spirit. He gave us the Bible, He inspired it in the first place, He breathed it, and He’s near enough to breathe on it again, and to make it live. He desires to do that, so we can end up with a revelation of the revelation. This is the word of God, and when God breathes on it, we see Him. There’s no process of academics on earth than can press through to the revelation of Christ. We are not glorifying ignorance and saying not to study. We need the human side but, oh, we also need the divine side.
I want to share three verses before we pray together. Ephesians 5:13-14,
“All things become visible when they are exposed by the light. Everything that becomes visible is light; for this reason, awake sleeper and rise from the dead and Christ will dawn on you.”
That’s a wonderful verse; “…awake, sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will dawn on you.” And so, if you are sleeping, the voice of the Son of God that raises the dead, wants to dawn on you. Here’s the other verse. Luke 9:32 (the transfiguration),
“And when they were fully awake, they saw His glory.”
“Awake, sleeper, and Christ will dawn on you.” Rise from the dead, “And when they are fully awake, they will see His glory.” Let’s not only ask the Lord to wake us up but ask Him to make us fully awake to see His glory.
Father, we know it’s a great thing to ask, but we know Thou art a great God. So, we come now to ask it; make us fully awake so that we might see the glory of the Son of God. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
REVIEW
We are looking at the thirty years of preparation of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are looking at those events that took place in the first thirty years, not in an isolated way, but in order that we might see God’s heart, as our Lord Jesus matures from a seed, all the way to a prepared Person who could give redemption to the world and become the perfect Savior and the perfect priest. We’re looking at this section as a whole. We’re not really concerned with all of the different things we can see in those thirty years.
I think the chief revelation of our Lord Jesus during those thirty years is that He came to be the Second Man and He came on earth to be the Last Adam. He came to earth to represent us, to be our substitute and to live in our place, in our stead and in our behalf. He was our representative. The second thing is that our great representative, the Second Man, the Last Adam, lived in our behalf as our substitute, and He completely obeyed and maintained a simplicity and loyalty to His holy Father God, so that at the end of the preparation, the heavens could open and God could say, Matthew 3:17,
“This is My beloved Son; in Him I am well pleased.”
He satisfied God.
The third thing we saw was how God revealed our Lord Jesus in those thirty years. You will not find another segment of scripture, I don’t believe, that gives Christ in the same way. There’s no other block of scripture that presents in a graphic way the progressive revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. In this section we see Jesus maturing and growing. He begins as a seed and then becomes an infant, and then a child, and then a young adult, and so on, all the way to maturity. You can trace it by studying the events in the Bible. God doesn’t tell us everything. This is one of the great illustrations of intentional selection. The Bible is not the record of everything; it’s the record of Jesus, the record of salvation; it’s the story of redemption.
God gives us those things that show us redemption and our Lord Jesus Christ. I tried to find verses that actually said, “This is why I came.” Let me give you a few in machine gun style:
Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.”
John 18:37, “For this cause I was born into this world; to testify of the truth.”
Hebrew 10:5, “I come to do Thy will, oh God.”
Hebrews 2:9, “He came to taste death for every man.”
Hebrews 2:19, “…to render powerless him who had the power of death.”
Hebrews 2:17, “He came and was manifest to be a faithful and merciful high priest.”
John 3:16, “…to give life to those who believe.”
Hebrews 9:26, “He was manifest to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”
1 John 4:14, “…to be the Savior of the world.”
Ephesians 5:27. “…to purify unto Himself a holy people.”
John 10:10, “To give life and give it more abundantly.”
1 John 5:20, “He came that we might know Him who is true.”
Every one of those verses refers to three and a half years – not thirty years. That’s His whole ministry. He came to set us free, to die for us, to be our Redeemer. But before He could start His ministry, He had to grow and grow, and then He finally matured and became a perfect Savior, and then ministry could begin. As He came, He comes. As He matured then, He matures now. We get so excited about being His servants and His ministers. I ministered for Him a long time before He started ministering through me, because sometimes He matures in many different ways.
Our Lord came to be a representative then, to show us that He wants to be a representative now in our lives. He lived a life that pleased the Father then, and He lived a holy life to show us that He does it now, and to please the Father, and bring satisfaction to Him, maintaining our simplicity and devotion to Christ, and to honor Him. He was progressively revealed then, and that’s how He is now. As He came, He comes. As He worked then, He works now. As He was progressively revealed then, in exactly the same way, illustrated by those marvelous familiar Bible stories, He will progressively be manifested in our hearts. This is a prayer I’ve been praying for myself and for all of you for this weekend. In Galatians, the sigh of the Apostle Paul writing to Christians, Galatians 4:19,
“I’m in labor, in travail over you, until Christ be formed in you.”
We’ve talked in the past about the importance of growing in Christ Jesus. This weekend it’s Paul’s sigh, “Christ be formed in you.” That’s not you growing in Christ but Christ growing in you. You know in Genesis, when God laid down all the principles illustrated by nature, and talked about the seed that produces seed after its own kind? Genesis 1:11-12,
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”
An apple tree will always give apples, and a pear tree will always give pears, and grapes will always bring forth grapes. 1 John 3:9 tells us that His seed abides in us,
“… His seed abides in him; …he is born of God.”
What is my hope for being conformed to Christ one day? My hope is that the seed brings forth after its kind; and I have the seed of Christ in me.
Some of you may have loved ones, and your hearts are broken, and you look at their lives and say, “I know they accepted Christ, and things were going right and then they got messed up. They got off the path and off the trail.” You be encouraged because Christ will mature in that one. If that seed is there, it’s going to come. We’re going to look at some of the stages, and we’ll remember how it was when He was a fetus, and when He was an infant, and when He was a young adult in us. This isn’t something that you do, or I do. I speak this boldly but carefully; it’s not even something that you let Him do. He’s going to do it, and He’s going to do it after the pattern of the thirty years. We need to watch that. We need to see that— “…until Christ is formed in you.”
Lillian wanted me to warn you about a problem with this whole approach. The problem is that maybe you’ll try to measure yourself and say, “Is Christ a twelve-year-old in my heart? Is Christ still an infant in my heart?” Don’t go examining that, because at every stage of life, you have every stage. It doesn’t go away. It’s that little stream that flows into the brook that flows into the river and then flows into the sea. Do you remember the last time you recited your ABC’s? I bet you use them every day and in different combinations. We never leave our ABC’s. We don’t recite them anymore, but we still have them. So, you’ll see all of these principles in every stage, but in a special way, you’ll see Jesus as He grows. The way He grows in the gospel record is the way He wants to grow in your life. The way He matured then in His body, is the way He wants to mature again in His body. May God help us as we look at these things!
JESUS’ CONCEPTION
We’ll be starting now with conception; the time when Jesus was in the womb. That’s early; that’s young. We will spend all our time looking at that time, the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy. Have you ever heard a message on Mary’s pregnancy? As you would expect, the principles we share will be closely connected to God’s instrument, Mary. Before we look at this more closely, let me mention this. It’s not an accident that Mary is God’s first picture of the church in the New Testament. There are many pictures of the church: the bride and the groom, the head and the body, the foundation and the superstructure, and the New Jerusalem. There are many pictures of the church in the New Testament, but the first one is this virgin from Nazareth.
What is Mary’s great contribution to the history of redemption? God used her to give Christ to the world. What is the great contribution of the church to the history of redemption? And the answer is to give Christ to the world. How did Mary do it? The answer is that the Holy Spirit formed Christ in her and in the fullness of time she gave Christ to the world. How does the church do it? The answer is, the Holy Spirit forms Christ in her, and in the fullness of time she gives Christ to the world. When the virgin Mary has Christ formed in her, she identified with Jesus in such a way that there was no human explanation. In fact, the opposite was true; and she identified with Him outside the camp. What was true of Mary, a picture of the church, is true of the church. So, in our discussion of Christ as a fetus, Christ in the womb, we can’t leave Mary out because she’s so connected to that picture. And so, we’ll be looking at the principles in terms of that dear instrument of God. There are four stories and each of those stories contains a principle. We aren’t looking at them in an isolated way; we’re trying to see God’s heart in the whole thing. So, I want to show you the big steps, the big principles.
The difference between conception and birth
Before we begin our look at the first story, Gabriel sent by God to the Virgin Mary, I want to call attention to the difference between conception and birth. There are many months between them, and we all can recite our day of birth. But if I asked you to name the day and the hour and the moment that you were conceived, you might in a general way say, “Nine months before that.” But you couldn’t nail it down or pinpoint the exact moment. Usually when people give their testimony, they say, “I was saved on such and such a day.” For me, I know the day – Feb. 29, 1958. Usually, you are describing the birth and not the conception. Fact is, God began working long before that crisis when you raised your hand or signed the card and came forward.
My wife, Lillian, didn’t have a date for her conversion. She grew up in a Lutheran home, and they were so Bible centered that she just grew up knowing the truth of God. It bothered her. Every time there was an invitation, she would go through it again and again and again, and she got saved over and over. She could get no assurance. Finally, after several years of this, we knelt down together and I started to pray, and I just asked the Lord to give her assurance, and she just kept crying, and there was no assurance. After a long season of prayer, I started singing, “Thank you Lord for saving my soul.” I kept singing it over and over, and she just kept crying, and then she joined in, and when she sang, “Thank you Lord for saving my soul,” a sweet peace came over her heart, and she got assurance because she stopped saying “please” and started saying “thank You”. She then entered into that great assurance.
I tell you that because usually when people give the date, they give the wrong date. When our Lord Jesus was talking to Nicodemus about heavenly things, He gave an illustration of a heavenly thing, and He used the wind as an illustration. And he said, John 3:8,
“The wind blows where it wishes; you’ll hear the sound, but you don’t know from whence it started and where it’s going; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.”
I used to think that was God’s picture of the Holy Spirit. It’s not! Read the text, “So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” It’s not the Holy Spirit; it’s those born of the Holy Spirit. It’s God’s illustration of a Christian. According to that verse, nobody knows when it started and where it’s going. If you don’t have a date, don’t worry. It isn’t when you trusted Christ, it’s are you trusting Him in this moment.
It must be a virgin birth – not by flesh
Luke 1:26,
“Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God into a city in Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came into her and said, ‘Hail, thou art highly favored; the Lord is with thee.’ But she was greatly troubled by the saying and kept pondering what manner of salutation this might be. And the angel said unto her, ‘Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. Behold, thou shalt conceive in thou womb and bring forth a son and thou shalt call his name Jesus and He shall be great and called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His Father David. He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever and of His Kingdom there shall be no end.’ And Mary said unto the angel, ‘How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?’ And the angel answered and said unto her, ‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. Wherefore, also, the Holy One that has been begotten shall be called the Son of God. Behold, Elizabeth, your kinswoman, she also has conceived a son in her old age. This is the sixth month with her that was called barren; for no word of God shall be void of power.’ And Mary said, ‘Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her.”
Let me come to the first principle illustrated by this text that sort of implants the life of Christ into the believer. The very beginning of Christ’s life in Mary, and the very beginning of Christ’s life in those pictured by Mary, is connected with the word “virgin”. The first principle has to do with “virgin”. Luke 1:27, He was sent to a virgin. There can be no life of Christ apart from the principle of virginity. And so, we need to understand that principle. The theologians insist that we must believe in the virgin birth. That’s one of the essentials; it’s fundamental. You’ve got to believe in the deity of Christ, and believe in salvation by grace, and in the bodily resurrection, and in the return of the Jesus Christ. And in that list, they list the virgin birth. So, they have the whole list of essentials.
Theologians give two reasons for the virgin birth. The first one is that they say it enabled Jesus to be born without a sin nature; the sin nature comes through the man and by not having a father. Jesus was free from the sin nature. I’ve never been able to make that my own. I know that he was born without a sin nature, I’m just not sure that it’s because Mary was a virgin. I think it might be because the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and did a mighty miracle. It might just be that simple.
The other reason is because it enabled Jesus to bypass the curse of Jeconiah. When you come to the genealogy of Jesus in the gospel record, there are two of them. Matthew gives one and Luke gives one. They aren’t the same. Matthew chapter 1:1-16 traces the line through Joseph, the stepfather of our Lord Jesus, and he goes all the way back and shows that Joseph is descended from David. Luke traces Mary’s genealogy and goes all the way back and shows that she’s descended from David. You might ask why the genealogy needs to be traced through both Mary and Joseph, and why one wouldn’t do.
David had two lines; one of his descendants went this way through Nathan, and one went another way; it’s this other line that was the royal line. Kings couldn’t come through Nathan. So, when you trace the kingly line, you end up with Joseph. The problem is, just before you get to Joseph, you get to a guy named Jeconiah or Jehoiachin. The point is in Matthew 1:11 is he messed up. Jeremiah 22:30 writes this curse,
“Write this man down childless; a man who will not prosper in his day. No descendant of his will ever sit upon the throne of David.”
So, they’ve got a problem. A king has got to come through this line but here’s a man that’s cursed; so, after him, there’s never to be a king. I bet Satan was rejoicing when Jeconiah got cursed, “I did it; I stopped the Messianic line!”
Could Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus, inherit David’s throne? The answer is no; he’s in the right line but he’s cursed. He had a legal right but that’s all he had. Could the natural sons of Joseph, the brothers of Jesus, have become king? No. Why? It’s because of the curse of Jeconiah. The theologians point out that there was one answer to that; God virgin-birthed on the devil and got around the curse. Christ coming through that line had a legal right to the throne, but because He was not naturally through that line, He by-passed the curse. There was no other answer in the universe for Messiah to come except through the virgin birth. But that misses God’s heart. That’s not why God told us about the virgin birth. Technically that’s true, but there’s a principle, and that’s what I’m after. So, let’s look at the principle of the virgin birth.
I think if you asked the average Christian what the principle is of virginity of the virgin birth, I think nine times out of ten they would say, “purity, holiness, cleanness, piety”. I really don’t think that’s the principle here. Was Mary chosen because she was holy? She was a virgin. There are places that teach the “immaculate conception” and what they mean by that is, not that Jesus was immaculately conceived, but his mother was; Mary was. We’re not talking about holiness here; that misses God’s point. I think the principle of the virgin birth is grace. Mary’s answer to Gabriel was this, Luke 1:34,
“How can this be since I know no man?”
That’s the point. God is going to do something, and man is left out. This has to be done without flesh. Man can’t have any part in it. She asked how that could happen if man is left out of it. Luke 1:35,
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you; the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy child shall be called the Son of God.”
The Holy Spirit will do it; He’ll form Christ in you. As I understand it, that’s the first principle of conception. You look back in your mind when Christ was first formed in you, and somewhere along the way somebody told you or God dawned it on you or you read that man has no part in this; it’s only God’s work. That’s how it begins with the virgin birth; the discovery that it’s not by man but it’s by the Lord. When Isaiah said in a prophecy of a child born and a son given, he adds, Isaiah 9:7,
“The zeal of the Lord will perform this.”
See, it’s got to be a miracle. With Elizabeth it was too late for man because she was old. With Mary it’s too early for man because she’s young.
Mary responds, Luke 1:38,
“Behold the bond slave of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
Notice what she didn’t say. She didn’t say, “Alright, Lord, I’ve understood what the angel said and now I’m ready to do something.” She didn’t say, “What shall I do?” She said, “Be it done unto me.” All our doing is done and that’s why Isaiah, when he saw the Lord, he said, “I’m undone.” So, this is the very beginning of the life of Christ in us. Somewhere along the way we hear that it’s not by flesh; it’s by Spirit; it’s not by works, lest any man should boast; it’s by the Lord. It’s the principle of the virgin birth. In that precious hour, the Holy Spirit forms Christ in us.
Filled with emotional joy
At this stage, when we understand that it’s God, and man has no part in it, and it’s not by works, if you read the record, the only change that takes place in Mary (the Lord is so tiny and can’t yet be seen) is that she is filled with the exuberance of emotional joy. She has a new song in her heart; that’s the “Magnificat” and she begins to sing this song of praise to the Lord because God has written a new song in her heart. It’s at this point that she begins to sing, Luke 1:46-47,
“My soul doth magnify the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.”
At that point when Christ is first formed in you, you don’t know a lot, but you know that it’s not by works; it’s by the Holy Spirit. And all you say is, “Be it done.” All of a sudden, your heart is filled with joy, and you have a song in your heart, a Magnificat, a praise that comes out of your heart. That’s how it is at the beginning. Elizabeth said to Mary in her greeting, which can be said to every virgin who has ever come to God apart from flesh, Luke 1:45,
“Blessed is the one that believed; that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken by the Lord.”
Desire to meet with others with the same experience
Luke 1:36-37,
“And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.For with God nothing shall be impossible.”
Luke 1:39,
“And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah, and entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth.”
What principle is illustrated by the mutual exchange of greetings between Mary and Elizabeth? I’ll tell the story in light of this wonderful principle. At this point Christ has been conceived in Mary. I don’t know if she knows it yet or not. There’s no manifestation of it outwardly. Christ is in her so small, just a seed and there’s no outward manifestation except if you look at her emotional joy and her excitement. We see from reading the record that she does have this wonderful song. The next thing we see is that she has this gravitational pull, this desire to go see someone who has been prepared by the Lord and has had a similar experience. She is inclined to go immediately to Elizabeth.
Do you know how God tells us that John the Baptizer is the forerunner of Christ and how he is the voice in advance and how he got people ready to meet the Lord? Well, here’s the first record of it. God used John the Baptist to prepare Elizabeth and Zacharias. Even though at that time there was a little bit of a work to be done on Zacharias—His mouth and His were ears shut because of unbelief—yet God had begun to do a work, and Mary sensed it. Mary begins to gravitate now to her relative’s house. Has it dawned on you that it’s not by works but by the Holy Spirit? You bow before the Lord, and don’t even know what to pray. “Be it done. You do it.” Remember, He did it!
You came as a virgin, and He met you. In that holy moment you were filled with excitement and joy, and your heart was bubbling over on all sides, and you found yourself strangely attracted to others who had been prepared by God in a similar way, and you began to run to them. It must have been a wonderful time of fellowship that Mary had with Elizabeth and Zacharias. I would have loved to have been there. They were prepared by God. Christ is a fetus in the womb, and someone is about to bring Christ to their door. As Mary brings Christ to Zacharias and Elizabeth, a Christ so small you can’t even begin to see Him, Mary came to the door (I’m not even sure that she knew she was pregnant till she got to the door and Elizabeth addressed her as “mother”, not “mother to be”), “How can the mother of my Lord come here?” She already has Christ in her. What fellowship they must have had for those two months!
There’s an unhealthy attachment to the instrument
Are you ever uncomfortable reading Luke 1:42-43,
“She lifted up her voice with a loud cry and said, ‘Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb; whence is this to me that the mother of the Lord should come to me.”?
I’ll be honest with you, that passage has bothered me. It’s too Mary centered. I speak as a fool; you know that! It’s too instrument centered. Mary seems to be bigger than Christ. Do you know why? Because Mary is bigger than Christ at this stage. The one who brings Christ to your door is sometimes bigger than the Christ they carry as they bring Christ to your door. When I read this, I can understand how some people venerate Mary.
Elizabeth did not say, “How is it that the Lord should come to me?” She said, “How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is describing a very early stage of the development of Christ. When He is young in those early stages, when you can hardly see Him, there’s a tendency to look to the instrument that brings Him to your door, rather than to the Christ that they bring.
My firstborn son, David, sits back there; he was named after the man that brought me to the Lord. He wasn’t named after the David of the Bible. I have nothing against the David of the Bible. The man who brought me to the Lord was David Kraft. I was in high school at the time, and he was the captain of the football team. I was a nerd! He was the valedictorian of our class, the most popular kid in the school. He tutored me in chemistry and took me to church every week. He took me to a Youth for Christ rally in 1958 where I first met the Lord. You better believe that I named my son after him! Was I instrument centered? Sure, I was! How could it be that the captain of the football team would come to my door? That’s how it was! He picked me up in his car; I was somebody in his eyes and he brought me to Christ.
See, at that time I had a very unhealthy attachment. In the Yearbook it said that David was going to be a medical missionary in Africa. Listen to mine—medical missionary in Korea! That’s my high school yearbook! Why did I write something like that? It was because a very precious instrument brought Christ to my door, and at that time I couldn’t see Christ; I only saw the instrument. It’s not bad. I’m not condemning it. It’s just the way it is in those early stages. You become man-centered, instrument-centered, and from there I began to look at many instruments, and I began to follow instruments in books. I began to follow Spurgeon and Watchman Nee and George Mueller.
The real mentor who God used to turn me around was Frank Sells at Columbia Bible College. I was married when I asked that man if I could move in with him! I was serious! I just wanted to follow him around. I wanted to see what he was made of! You might say that it’s unhealthy, but that’s how it is when Christ is a fetus in your life. You don’t know a lot. You know it’s not by works, that it’s by the Spirit of God. You know you’re happy and you like to be around people that have had a similar experience, and you look in an unhealthy way to that precious instrument that God uses to bring Christ to your door. That’s how it is in the beginning.
There’s a problem trying to explain it, but God begins to deal in our loved ones lives
Matthew 1:18,
“Now the birth of Jesus was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child with the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privately. When he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, ‘Joseph, thou Son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife. That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.’”
Matthew 1:23,
“Joseph rose from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took unto him his wife and knew her not until she had brought forth a son and called his name Jesus.”
We saw Mary in relation to God and she’s undone. We saw Mary in relation to those who have been prepared by the Lord, and she gravitates toward them to talk to them; she wants to be with them and spend time with those that have had a similar experience. Now we see her illustrated by Joseph in terms of her loved ones—her family and her fiancé. That’s her husband-to-be. That’s her future. That’s what girls dream about. That’s everything. He represents the closest of all relationships. When Christ was conceived in Mary she was put in a real spot. On the level of earth, there’s no explanation for this. You aren’t going to go home to your fiancé and say, “I’m pregnant; now let me explain.” That’s not going to work. Now, with her identification with the Lord Jesus Christ and by her union with Him, there was a tremendous possibility that she would have to go in another direction, away from her loved ones and her family, and that marriage might never take place.
I call attention to this to illustrate another wonderful principle when Christ is a fetus. When He’s a fetus, you don’t know a lot, but you know that it’s not by works; it’s by the Spirit of God. You know you’re happy and you know you have a Magnificat to sing. You don’t know a lot, but you find yourself gravitating toward those who have been prepared by God who understand you and who you can talk to. You don’t know a lot, but you are thankful for the instrument who brings Christ to your door. You don’t know a lot, but you know you’ve got a problem, and you’ve got to try to explain.
I remember so well after I got saved trying to explain it to my Lutheran mother and my German grandmother, also a Lutheran, and my older sister. I did a lot of damage, really, as I was trying to ramrod the gospel down their throats. They didn’t understand. My mother was angry at me because she said that I was leaving the Lutheran church; that’s all. She didn’t have a clue. A lot of tears were shed at that time.
The Bible doesn’t tell us about Mary. I’m sure she and Joseph talked and had conversations. How do I know that? It’s because the Bible says that she was found to be with child, and he was ready to put her away. Can you hear her trying to explain? I bet she shed a lot of tears. I bet she tried again and again, trying to convince him over and over and over again. In Matthew 1:18-25, what do we learn? The answer is this, that God Himself will deal with our loved ones to show them what has happened in our lives. What a precious thing that happens when Christ is a fetus in our lives! We ramrodded the gospel down my mother; she used to have her little Bible, you know, under the sink. I would take it out and try to put it out in public, and I’d embarrass her, and tell her that she needed to get saved.
My sister was the first one after me to come to the Lord, but before that, I was going crazy because she was engaged to be married to someone she should not be married to. I was beating my head against the wall; I prayed, I cried, and I fasted. She didn’t want to hear it. As her marriage got closer and closer, she got upset one day and said that she was going to do something that she had never done. She didn’t know what that was. We were worried about her. She said, “I think I’ll go horseback riding.” So, she looked up this person who gave horseback riding lessons, and on her first horseback riding lesson, her teacher was a Christian and he led her to Christ. She ran into my arms and now both of us were together to “get” mom. We went after her.
Then one day at a meeting at church, the pastor stood up and took his Bible and said, “We don’t need this. We need more money. We’ve got to build a bigger church so people will come.” And my shy mother stood up in that Lutheran church and said, “You need to be born again.” She came home and realized that she had never done with herself that which she had said to do in church. She got by herself and when we came home, she told us how she had accepted the Lord. That’s what happened to Joseph. That’s what happens when Christ is just a fetus in your life.
When I grew up, I hated my grandmother. I wanted her to die. One time she had a stroke, and I went up into the woods. I didn’t tell anybody. I let her lie on the kitchen floor. I wanted her to die. When I came back, she was still alive, and I was upset. After God began to work in my heart, I wanted to tell her about Christ. How could I? Then she had another stroke, and she was in a coma. I prayed that the Lord would give me one more chance. I went to see my grandmother as she was on her dying bed under an oxygen tent. I said, “Nanny, can you hear me?” She just laid there. “Nanny, can you hear me?” I saw a tear come down her face and I saw her blink. I said, “If you hear me blink twice.” And she blinked twice. I went through the gospel, and she accepted Christ with her eyes. She blinked herself into the kingdom.
That’s how it is when Christ is a fetus. You don’t know a lot, but you know it’s not by works. You know you’re happy in Christ and you want to be with other Christians. You have a very unhealthy relationship with the instruments God has brought because that’s how it is. You can’t explain anything, but God begins to work in your loved ones. That’s how it is when He’s a fetus.
The Lord is guiding the way through circumstances
One more story and we’ll close. Luke 2:1-7,
“It came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to enroll themselves, everyone to their own city. And Joseph also went out from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth and into Judea into the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to enroll himself with Mary with whom she was betrothed to him, being great with child. It came to pass that while they were there, the days were fulfilled that she should be delivered.”
As soon as Christ is conceived in a person, that person automatically lines up with the will of God and the purposes of God and the word of God. But remember, they don’t even know what the word is. At that stage they don’t know anything. When I came to Christ, I didn’t even know there were two testaments in the Bible! I didn’t know anything. Do you think that Mary knew that she had to go to Bethlehem? I doubt that she knew that. When you don’t know the word of God, God uses circumstances. I don’t know why he made that law to tax them at that time. They’re just living and doing their thing; and God is guiding them in His word. That’s how it is when you are a fetus. I don’t worry about new Christians. Some people get all upset, thinking they have to ground them thoroughly so that they don’t go astray. You don’t have to worry about the young Christians; they aren’t going astray, because when Christ is a fetus at that time, He is guiding them in His way. It’s amazing. Look back in your life. How many times has the Lord guided you? You don’t know anything and yet, when you look back you can see what God did to fulfill His work.
When I got saved, the next week at a Youth for Christ rally, they called on me to pray before a thousand people. That was stupid. I didn’t know anything. I asked God at that rally to save Satan! I did! What’s wrong with that? We could save a lot of time! You don’t know anything when Christ comes as a fetus, but you know that it’s not by works. You don’t know much, but you know that there’s a song in your heart. You don’t know much, but you know that if someone else had a similar experience, you’ve got to go talk to them. You don’t know much, but you begin to look to people. You don’t know much, but you begin to see God working in your loved ones and changing them. You can’t explain it. You don’t even know the word of God. The world is controlling things, and you are walking in the path of God. I was a “walking track-rack” within a week. I was the servant of the Lord, and He was a fetus in my heart. Was I prepared for ministry? Not yet. He wasn’t even born yet. I was doing what I thought was a great thing, but He still needs to grow.
Now the fetus needs to become an infant. When we look at Christ as an infant, what does it look like? We’ll look at that together in the next message. Then He matures and becomes a young adult. What does that look like? We’ll see the exact same principle. That’s how it is. And finally, He becomes a mature adult, and now He can begin to minister. That’s what He wants to do in our hearts. May God help us! Let’s pray…
Father, how we praise You that you are going to be formed in us, and that You are going to conform us to Christ, and You are going to come to maturity and minister to Your people. Lord, we don’t want to resist. We don’t want these nine months to take nine years. Help us, Lord, as we see how You develop and mature and we pray again, Lord, to form Christ in us. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
CHAPTER 3
Christ Formed in You
Infant
WELCOME AND PRAYER
As we come to the study of God’s word, there’s a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable. We say that over and over and over again, and I say it every time I come to the word of God, even when I’m alone. I recite that because I don’t want to forget or ever depend upon anything except Him who alone can open the word and open my heart and unveil the Lord Jesus. The bottom line of all Bible study, Matthew 11:28,
“Come unto Me all who labor and are heavy laden, and learn of Me.”
That’s not learn about Me. He’s the teacher, “Learn of Me.” He’s the One Who leads us to Himself and into rest. I want to share a Bible verse before we pray together in 2 Chronicles 16:9,
“The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those that are His.”
What I want to bring attention to is this; that the eyes of the Lord are searching to and fro on the earth, but He is not looking for those who are strong toward Him. That’s not what it says. He’s looking for those to Whom He can be strong. That’s not the same thing. I have an idea that we have a room full of those to whom He can be strong. He’s looking for those who will allow Him to strongly support them. In a special way here, I ask you to pray for me; I need to have the Lord strong toward me; and we all need it.
Let’s pray that God will meet us again. Our Heavenly Father, how glad we are to come to You in the name of our Lord Jesus and to be able to claim and know that it is Your great desire to unveil Christ to our hearts; far more desirous are You to unveil than we are to see. We ask you, Lord, to work in us that child-like attitude of helpless dependence, that we might trust You today as You minister Your word and perform all Your purposes in us. We pray for all the will of God today. Lead us where we are and then take us to where You desire us to be. We ask it the name of Jesus. Amen
REVIEW
We’re looking at these wonderful thirty years of preparation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The record the Bible gives us of those years are God’s record of the progressive revelation of the Lord Jesus. I don’t know of any scripture that more clearly presents the progressive revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ than those thirty years. It’s sad that sometimes the study of those years is neglected by God’s children when He is progressively manifest. Those were preparation years for our Lord Jesus. In Hebrews and other places, He learned obedience by the things that He suffered in those years; in the days of His flesh, Hebrews 5:8
“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”
It says He was made perfect. Indeed, He was perfect, but if you read the context, it says He was made the perfect Savior by those thirty years. It means that those years qualified Him for the redemptive ministry that He did.
The way He came is the way He comes. What He was then, He is now. He’s everlastingly the same, the same yesterday and today and forever. And as He was progressively revealed in the Gospel record, is exactly the way Christ is formed in our hearts now. God in His greatness condescended to give us this wonderful picture. Adam was created an adult. Christ could have come as an adult and just done the work, but in the wisdom of God, He wanted us to see how Christ was progressively formed. So, He gave us this marvelous picture.
As He was first conceived in Mary, He is conceived in us, and as He is formed in her, He is formed in us. In the fullness of time, when she gave Him forth and He was an infant, so there is a stage in our life where He is an infant. As He matured and grew and developed, He matures and grows and develops to a young adult in our life. We’ll follow the record of that progress, of that growth, of that maturing because as He grows and as He matures and as He’s formed, He finally reaches the place where He can begin His ministry. It’s after those stages that He begins His ministry. We are always, from the time we come to know the Lord, ready to roll up our sleeves and wade in and start ministering, and we minister long before He does. He matures and grows in us, but there comes a day when He’ll stand in the water of baptism and in the wilderness where He reaches that maturity, and His ministry begins
.
Galatians 4:19,
“My children with whom I’m again in labor, in travail, until Christ is formed in you.”
Philippians 2:6,
“He Who has begun a good work in You will complete it.”
Has He come into your life? He will mature and grow, and He will use you redemptively. Now, it may be bumpy along the way, but He’s going to mature and He’s going to grow you to those places. We can’t nail it down and say, “Well, that happens eight days later, like it happened in His Life.” But there are seasons. The Lord Jesus was in Mary for nine months in her pregnancy; Jesus was a fetus. When Christ was so small in those early days, almost imperceptible in your heart and life, the facts of the Bible record give us a great principle. When Christ is first conceived in my heart, I don’t know much, but I do know these things. I know that it’s not by man, I know it was not by works but by His Spirit. That’s not a lot but that’s a beginning. That was the introduction of Christ being conceived in your heart.
At that time, I didn’t know much but I knew this; God had written a Magnificat in my heart; there’s a song, a joy. I can’t explain it; it’s just there. I was alive with thanksgiving, and the exuberance of emotional joy was a chief characteristic when Christ was a fetus in my heart. I didn’t know much but I knew there was something in me that was drawing me to be with those who had a similar experience. I found myself gravitating to those who, by His miracle, have also been prepared by God. At that time, I didn’t know much but I knew that God is doing something in the lives of my loved ones because there is no way that I can explain what happened in my life. God began to do miracles in my family and praise God for that!
At that time when Christ is just a fetus, when everything is new and there’s a song in my heart and I’m rejoicing in God’s people, I don’t have a clue about the word of God; but God does. And so, He guides me by circumstances, and He leads me to the “house of bread.” Mary had no clue that she had to arrive in Bethlehem at a certain time and that God used Caesar and all the rest in order to bring her to that place. That’s how it was then, that’s how it is now and it’s how it shall ever be when Christ is a fetus in my heart.
JESUS’ INFANCY
That brings us to the second stage of the maturity of the Lord Jesus, His infancy, His babyhood. He’s in process, and He’s growing and developing and maturing. It’s different from when He was in the womb. At least you can see Him now. He’s born; He’s a baby; He’s an infant. He can be seen and held, hugged, and appreciated and admired and shown off. This section will include all the Christmas stories; the shepherds, going to the temple to have the Lord circumcised and dedicated, the coming of the Magi, and so on. You might also want to include Matthew 2:12-23, with Herod’s wickedness, slaying all the infants of Bethlehem.
Because we are so accustomed to studying these stories in an isolated way, and they are so familiar, you might think we will start with the Shepherd’s story and then go to the temple and look at Simeon, and then go look at the Magi, and all that kind of thing. That’s not how we’ll be sharing this today. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we’re trying to follow this progress as it’s the development of our Lord Jesus. We’re not just looking at Christmas stories, one story after another. We’re going to focus more on the development, the forming of Christ. I’m going to try to read the stories together in order that we might see them all together as one, the story of Christ when He was an infant.
I hope we won’t try to judge one another as we go from stage to stage, i.e. “I know Christ is a fetus in so and so’s life; there’s no question about that.” God hasn’t called us to do that. God has called us to rejoice that Christ is maturing in our lives and He’s going to come to maturity in order that He can minister through each one of us individually and through us corporately as a body. That’s the glory of the whole thing. There are some in whom Christ is still a fetus; they know about grace, and they know it’s not by works and they may gravitate to God’s people, and they aren’t grounded in the word, but God is still guiding them by circumstances. There are some where Christ has only become an infant in their life. The assignment I believe God has given me is to set before you what it looks like when Christ is just an infant.
I want to make an observation before we begin with those principles. The way the Holy Spirit tells the story, although the stories give us clear demarcations concerning the progress and growth of our Lord – these are 9 months, these are eight days and this is two years and then this is twelve years – He marks it off as if to tell us to, “Study this and then study this because this is different than this.” Just so, there are other truths that are observable as you go through the record that are also growing and maturing. We have not enough time now to develop all those refrains. I’ll give you a couple of examples, so you’ll know what I’m talking about.
The purpose, the will of God gets bigger
In each stage of the record there is an emphasis on the word of God. I don’t just mean the Bible; I mean the purpose of God, the will of God. As you go from stage one to stage two, the will of God gets bigger also. For example, when you look at the virgin birth, why was He virgin born? Well, among the many reasons is this, because it was prophesied in Isaiah 7:14 to fulfill the word of God. Why was He born in Bethlehem? Among many reasons, it was to fulfill the word of God. Micah said He would be born in Bethlehem. Why did He come? He said in Hebrews 10:5-7,
“I come to do thy will.”
So, in the beginning we see that it’s about God’s will; it’s fulfilling God’s purpose and fulfilling God’s word.
When they brought Him to the temple in Luke 2:22-23, why did they bring Him there? They said that it was according to the law of Moses, as it is written in the law to fulfill the law. Why did He come out of Egypt? It was to fulfill Hosea 11. It’s about the word of God. Why did He settle in Nazareth? It was so that it would be fulfilled which was written by all the prophets that He would be a rejected person. That’s the principle of the Nazarene. Why did He go to Jerusalem when He was twelve? It was because it was commanded by the word of God that three times a year they would go up to Jerusalem. Luke 2:49,
“He was about His Father’s business.”
There was a growing emphasis on the word of God. When He was baptized by John, there was this little argument, and John didn’t want to do it at first. Why did he finally do it? Matthew 3:15, it was to fulfill all righteousness, to fulfill the word of God.
The cross grows and moves closer
So, I’m suggesting that as Jesus matures, there’s this growing maturity also of the will and purpose of God. In the beginning it was hardly a shadow, and you can hardly see it, but it keeps getting clearer and clearer. Do you know what else is in every story? The cross! You see, He’s moving toward the cross. Every story has the cross hidden, and it gets bigger and bigger, and the cross grows and grows, even in His infancy. Some suggest that the swaddling clothes that He was wrapped in were the same that Lazarus was wrapped in, grave clothes. It wouldn’t surprise me to be so, if His first wrappings and His final wrappings were the same. Some have seen the cross in the offerings of what the Wise Men brought, especially in the Myrrh commonly used for burials. Luke 2:34, Simeon’s word,
“The child is appointed for the rise and fall of many in Israel; a sign to be opposed.”
When He was born, He said, Hebrews 10:7,
When Jesus was twelve years old what’s the whole background of that story? It’s the Passover. Is the cross in there? That’s the whole point of that; it’s the celebration of deliverance through the blood of the Lamb. And when Jesus was eight days old, that’s the first shedding of the blood of the Lord Jesus as He was separated from the flesh. It’s all a picture, and the cross grows and grows and grows! When He stood in Jordan’s stream and identified with hell-serving sinners, and the dove came down and He said that it was the dove of peace, that’s not primarily so. It’s the poor man’s lamb. It’s the cross. As He stood in the water, God anointed Him with the cross, as He stood among those that He came to save.
As we’re following the growing and maturing of Jesus, it’s also the word and purpose of God getting bigger and bigger, and the cross getting bigger and bigger. There are other things, as well, that grow. I’m suggesting that, in proportion to the revelation of Christ in my life and in proportion to the revelation of Christ in your life, so will grow the purpose of God in your life. And so will grow the cross in your life when you see Jesus. We’re going to be looking at the characteristics of Christ as an infant but let’s begin by calling attention to a transition between Christ as a fetus in my heart and Christ as an infant.
Separation of Jesus from the instrument begins
When I describe Jesus as a fetus, I call attention to the fact that Mary, the instrument of the indwelling Christ, brought Christ to the door of others prepared by God. When Mary brought Christ to Elizabeth’s door, Christ was small; He was so imperceptible that Elizabeth looked in an unhealthy way toward the instrument. Praise God for the Christ but also praise God for the instrument! That’s not unusual, and I’m not saying that it’s wrong at that stage to be thankful for the instrument that brings Christ to your door. The instrument, Mary, and the Christ in the instrument are so united that you can’t really take them apart; they’re one. The instrument is certainly prominent in that fetal stage.
Then watch how this begins to change when the Lord Jesus comes out
of the womb. The first story is about the shepherds. Luke 2:6-20,
“When the glory of the Lord appeared to the shepherds in the field…”
I believe that was the Shekinah glory that had left the earth 600 years before in the days of Ezekiel. Notice that there’s not a word about the human instrument. Luke 1:10,
“And the angels said to them, ‘Be not afraid; I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people, for there is born to you this day in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this is a sign to you; you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.”
And instruments are mentioned but only incidentally. It’s not about them; it’s about Him! “Unto you this day is born a Savior, Christ the Lord.” This time it’s not the instrument indwelt with an unborn Christ gravitating toward those prepared so she can have fellowship; this time the prepared are seeking her out; the shepherds are coming to her. She’s not coming to them. I have an idea that the shepherds would never have gotten the news that night if they waited for Mary to show up in the fields or waited for Joseph to show up and tell them. Mary and Joseph at this time were themselves instruments that were very Christ centered, as any new parent would be. They were focused on their baby. At this point, others are coming to see the baby.
When they arrived in Bethlehem and sought Him out by the sign the angel gave them, did they find the human instruments? The answer, of course, is yes; they found the ones who brought Christ into the world. Mary was there and so was the stepfather of the Lord Jesus. Luke 2:16,
“They came with haste, and they found both Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger.”
The instrument is still there. I want you to notice that there is a separation now. It’s not that the baby is hidden in the instrument so that all you see is the human instrument. Now they see the instrument, but they also see the baby, and there has been a separation of the instrument and the Christ. Mary is still there, and Jesus is still there but now the attention comes off Mary, and they look in the manger and see the Lord Jesus. When the shepherds finished sharing what they had been told, everyone was amazed, including the instruments that brought Him into the world. Luke 2:19,
“Mary kept all these sayings, pondering in her heart.”
The instrument begins to hand off Jesus for others to hold
Let’s go eight days ahead. We come into the temple and there’s another that’s been prepared by God. Luke 2:26,
“It had been revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.”
Truly, this man was a seeker, prepared by God to meet Jesus. The timing is impeccable. Luke 2:27,
“He came in the Spirit into the temple.”
Let me ask you, did he see the human instrument? The answer is yes because she’s carrying the baby. When He was a fetus, was she carrying the baby? Yes, that’s how we express it, “She’s carrying a child.” Is there a difference between carrying a baby and carrying a baby? She was carrying the baby in such a way that all you could see was the instrument. Now she’s carrying the baby in such a way that you can see the instrument, but you can also see the baby. Luke 2:28,
“He received Him into his arms and blessed God.”
Do you see the progress? Elizabeth sees mostly the instrument. The Shepherds see the instrument and Jesus, but He’s sort of lying down “there” in the manger. Simeon, bless the Lord, actually takes Christ from the arms of Mary and embraces Him for himself. Now He’s holding Christ for himself!
I’ll tell you, brothers and sisters in Christ, this is part of the infancy of Christ, but it is a wonderful day in the formation of Christ in our life when as an instrument of God, we learn how to hand Christ to somebody else in such a way that they can embrace Him without embracing us. That’s what took place here. That’s all part of the infancy of Christ. That’s the first observation as we move from Christ as the fetus to Christ as an infant. There is a gradual separation between the instrument and the Savior until finally the instrument is able to hand off the Savior and others can embrace Him.
Seeing salvation as the Person Jesus
Here’s another observation of our Lord Jesus and how He develops as an infant. Let’s go back to the Simeon story. I want to look at the terminal points of the record of the infancy of Christ. As he embraces Jesus, he takes Christ from the instrument and he holds Christ to himself, and as he looks at the Christ, what does he see? According to the testimony, Luke 2:29,
“Now must thy servant depart in peace according to Thine word, for my eyes have seen Thy salvation which Thou hast prepared in the face of all people, a light of revelation to the gentiles and the glory of Thy people, Israel.”
God is giving us an illustration of Christ in His infancy that He is embraced, and now, in a clear way, we look at Christ and we say, “I’ve seen salvation.” Salvation is a Person and His name is Jesus. It’s more than a plan of salvation. It’s a Person. And that’s how it begins when Christ is an infant. Verse 29, he says, in effect, that he’s ready to die, now that he’s found Christ, “Let me depart in peace.” Do you remember when that was about all you knew? Do you remember when you embraced Christ for yourself and all you knew was that I found salvation and I’m ready to die? See, that’s infancy. That’s just when He’s a baby and all you knew was that He was Savior, and you are ready to die. Then you go tearing out into the neighborhood to tell everybody else! “You’ve got to find Him and then you’ll be ready to die!”
We begin to taste of surrender, seeing Jesus as Lord and Savior
It’s beautiful to see Christ as an infant in His children. First, it’s the instrument and then it’s the Person that we pin our hope for all eternity. But that’s not the full story, embracing Him as Savior. At the end of the infant record there’s the story of the Magi. We’re going to pass over all those interesting facts about the amazing star and how many Magi were there, and the relation of the Magi to the Old Testament prophets and astrology, etc. Jesus is now about two years old. We know that from Matthew 2:16,
“When Herod saw that he was mocked by the Wise Men, he was exceedingly wroth and sent forth and slew all the male children that were in Bethlehem and the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time that he had exactly learned of the Wise Men.”
Now it’s about two years and some Gentile seekers came from the East, and they are seeking Him, but notice the difference. God is calling attention to a progress from the Shepherds to Simeon and now to the Magi. What is their vision of Him? Luke 2:2,
“Where is He that is born King of the Jews. We’ve seen His star, and we’ve come to worship Him.”
This is infancy. Mine eyes have seen salvation and I’m ready to die. On the other end, He’s King and He’s Lord and I want to bow down and worship Him. I want to lay my gifts at His feet. Matthew 2:11,
“They came into the house and saw the young child with Mary, His mother, and they fell down and worshipped Him, opening their treasures, offered Him gifts; gold, frankincense and myrrh.”
They bow before the King, and they worship the King, and they lay their gifts before the King.
May I suggest that those are the terminal points of the infancy of Christ! Do you remember in your life when He began to develop? He’s also Lord; He’s my Savior and my Lord! You’ve heard the testimony, “For years I knew Him as Savior and then I knew Him as Lord but finally I’ve come to really know Him as Lord.” Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, I know we speak of Jesus as Savior and Lord, and we are accustomed to think this way; many, many Christians know Him as Savior but not everyone has come to know Him as Lord. And it’s a crisis in our lives when, finally, we see that He’s Lord, and we bow down and worship Him as Lord, and we think that we’re pretty far down the road by that time. That’s part of His infancy. You aren’t very far down the road at all! You haven’t even begun.
When you see Him as Savior and finally as Lord and we begin to worship the Lord, this is the first real taste of surrender. We begin to learn a little bit about laying things down at his feet. That’s all the early stages. That’s all threshold-truth and thank God for threshold-truth! Thank God for the day when we see He’s our Savior and we’re ready to die; He’s our Lord and King and we bow down before Him and lay down all these gifts! That’s an incomplete view of a very complete Savior. Seeing Him as Lord is infancy. He’s only begun to be formed in you when you come that far. It’s true that some have not even come that far.
Surrendering and rededicating to each new revelation of the Lord
Let’s back-track to eight days after He was born. Another characteristic of this period in my life when Christ is being formed in me, when He was a fetus, I knew I wanted to be around God’s people and I was happy, but now I’ve seen Him; it’s a Person, it’s Salvation and I’m ready to die. He’s my King and I fall before Him. Eight days later, according to the record, Luke 1:31, God had told Mary before Jesus was conceived that she would call His name “Jesus”. Matthew 1:21, an angel told Joseph that he would call His name “Jesus”. So, in Luke 2:21, when eight days had passed, before His circumcision, His name was called “Jesus”. They didn’t name the baby when He was born. They named the baby at the dedication, at the circumcision eight days later. I want to call attention to this, in the revelation of Christ in His infancy, one of the big things that will begin to become real in our life is dedication. There will be dedication and rededication and so on.
At this time, we’ve only seen Him as Savior and as Lord. Is that all He is? I looked up some of the titles that were given to Him when He was a baby. These are not for later on; these are for when He was born:
Matthew 1:16, “Messiah, the Christ.” Matthew 1:1, “Son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew 1:23, “Emmanuel, God with Us.” Matthew 2:6, “The Shepherd.” Matthew 2:15 & Luke 1:35, “The Son of God.” Luke 1:69, “The Horn of Salvation.” Luke 1:76, “The Most High.” Luke 2:32, “The Light for the Gentiles.” Luke 2:32, “The Glory of Israel.” John 1:1&14, “The Word made Flesh.” John 1:4, “The Life and the Light of Men.” Malachi 3:1, “The Messenger of the Covenant.” Isaiah 9:6, “Wonderful Councilor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Hebrews 1:10, “The Firstborn from Whom are all Things.” Hebrews 2:10, “The Author of Salvation.” Genesis 3:15, “The Seed of the Woman.” 1 Corinthians 15:45, “The last Adam.” Zechariah 6:12, “The Branch.” Haggai 2:6, “The Desire of the Nations.”
Those are all His infancy titles. When you have a baby and say, “Come look at my baby and let me tell you about him,” how many things can you say? “He’s cute, he’s fat, look at all that hair!” What do we say? “He’s got a dimple.” But Jesus was all of these titles.
They had thought they had arrived when they saw Him as Savior and Lord. They had not yet seen that He’s the Everlasting Father and the Mighty God and the Counselor and Prince of Peace, and the Desire of the Nations. This may be a stupid question but how many angels are there? The Bible doesn’t tell us except 10,000 times 10,000; that’s a hundred million. And in another place, it says “unnumbered hosts”. Do you know that when Jesus was born, God called them all together, every one of them, millions upon millions? The Bible tells us about it. Hebrews 1:6,
“When He brings His firstborn into the world He said, ‘Let all the angels of God worship Him.’”
Every one of them, no exception, worshipped Him. And we think that we’ve seen Him. He’s Savior, He’s Lord; we haven’t begun to see Him. That’s His infancy.
Far more than our dim eyes can see, as He begins to grow, even though we have Him, a million years can go by, and we’ll never have more Christ than we have right now. We’ll see more of Him, but we won’t have more of Him. You have Him! He’s a Person and we have all of Him. He’s going to increase and increase and increase in our seeing Him. Anyway, in this infancy stage, there begins to be a separation of the instrument and the Christ; there’s an incomplete view of a complete Christ. We taste a little bit of worship and a little bit of surrender unto Him, but now there’s this thing in Luke 2:22,
“When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.”
This describes Joseph and Mary when Jesus was an infant, and they dedicated the baby. That’s going to be a big part of the infancy.
I can give so many testimonies. I won’t bore you with it. How many times in His infancy do you dedicate your life? And then you rededicate your life, and you keep surrendering and surrendering. You don’t know at that time that you don’t need more surrendering; you need a greater revelation of Christ to whom you can surrender. We need Him to grow, and then you can surrender to that new revelation. But at this time as He’s an infant, all you know is that He’s your Savior and He’s your Lord, and you want to worship Him, and you want to give Him everything, and you want to dedicate yourself. That’s not wrong. That’s how it is when He’s just an infant, just a baby. There’s more; He wants to grow more. But that’s how it is in those early stages.
While living in Egypt, God is protecting the Christ
One more observation. When Christ was a fetus, I pointed out that even though the instrument didn’t know the word of God, in His great grace, He guided us through circumstances. He protected and He took care of us. The story ends the infancy section with Matthew 2:13-33, God’s supernatural protection of the Christ. That’s a wonderful story which illustrates another characteristic. We’re going to move deeper into the grace of God. This is where Joseph and Mary are sent by God into Egypt, and then later called out of Egypt. It has to do with spiritual warfare. As you would guess, at this stage when Christ is just a baby in your heart, you don’t have a clue about spiritual warfare.
I think I’ve seen a lot because I’ve tasted a little worship and a little surrender, and I’ve seen Him as Savior and seen Him as Lord; I think I know Him. But they are going to come into a big surprise and learn that there is an enemy that hates their guts. There’s an enemy that hates the Christ that is now an infant in their arms. At that time, you don’t know one thing about the devil’s schemes. At that time, you don’t know one thing about His malice. At that time, you don’t have a clue about your armor. At that time, you know nothing about His victory. You don’t know about prayer, and you don’t know about fasting, and you don’t know about “loosing and binding,” and you don’t know about corporate authority. You are vulnerable. And then you read the record.
I love this great illustration with Herod, pictured as the servant of Satan. I’m totally vulnerable (I speak as a fool); Christ is an infant in my life and is unformed in my life; He’s undeveloped in my life. Wouldn’t you think that when Christ was that small in my life, that the devil could come in and pounce all over me and wipe out the Christ in my life? That Satan hates Christ is certainly illustrated by what Herod did to those innocent babies in Bethlehem and the surrounding regions. If history tells the truth, it illustrates the malice of that mad man. He’s so stupid that his edict was to babies two years and under, and he forgot where his child was living, and his own two-year-old was killed. One historian at that time wrote, “It would be better to be a hog of Herod than to be his son.” It will stand forever as a symbol of the futility of any enemy going after Christ. If Satan, when you knew nothing of spiritual warfare, couldn’t get Christ when you were that vulnerable, do you think you are safe now? You are so safe! God is going to protect His Christ!
When God said to go into Egypt, you know what Egypt represents because you’ve read the record; that’s bondage, that’s slavery, that’s oppression. That’s not the place for Him to be protected. At that time, when He’s an infant, I don’t know anything about liberty, I don’t know anything about deliverance from the flesh, and I don’t know anything about victory. I’ve been filled with the principles of the world and by the flesh, and I’m in Egypt. Is He going to send me to Egypt to protect Christ there? Not only to protect Christ there, but in Egypt Christ continues to grow and to live. Herod rots and dies; Christ grows and lives. There will be a day, and this ends the infancy, when we’ll get word, Matthew 2:15,
“Come out of Egypt; out of Egypt I’ve called my Son.”
But not yet. We’re still in the infancy stages. And so, even in Egypt, when we’re in Egypt, Christ comes into our bondage, but He’s protected, and He grows there. Then one day God is going to teach us a new deliverance and He’ll call us out, but not yet. He’s still an infant.
As an infant you can now see the instrument and the Christ being separated, and so much so that the instrument can now hand off the Christ to someone else who can embrace Him as salvation. In the infancy stage we have a very incomplete view of a complete Christ. We think it’s a complete view. We see Him as Savior; we see Him as Lord; we’ve tasted a little bit of worship; we’ve experienced for the first time laying down our gifts before Him. Our lives are marked by dedication after dedication, but we are still living in Egypt. God in His grace is protecting the Christ, and Christ is growing and developing, and we get ready for the next stage, “Out of Egypt I’ve called My Son.” He moves on and takes us forward in the heart knowledge of God. Do you see how He develops? The record of His Life is exactly how it develops in our life! We might think we’re ready for ministry, but not yet when He’s still a baby. Praise God for the revelations, but it’s only His babyhood! He needs to grow and grow and grow, so some day He can have a redemptive ministry through His body and pour His life out for the world. That’s coming. I want you to see these characteristics.
CHAPTER 4
Christ Formed in You
Young Adult
WELCOME AND OPENING PRAYER
As we come to look in God’s word, I remind you of that wonderful principle that we call “the indispensable principle”, to drive home the truth that we cannot live without this principle. If you are serious about knowing the Lord, and serious about God opening His word to your heart and dawning the living Spirit on your spirit, then you must embrace that principle. We must come as a little child before the Lord and cry out to Him who waits to be wanted, and who wants to be sought.
In Proverbs 2, I want you to see how God piles up these words and they all mean the same thing— hunger, seek, desire, thirst. Proverbs 2:1
“My son, if you will receive My word and treasure My commandments within you and make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding, if you cry for discernment and lift up your voice to understanding, if you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures, then you will discern the fear of the Lord, and you will discover the knowledge of God.”
He waits to be wanted. Let’s bow and commit our time to Him…
Our Father, how glad we are that You have called us to desire You and to know You. How glad we are for Your revelation and Your word and how much You desire to make Yourself known unto us. And so, Lord, we want to come in simple child-like faith, not in some attempt to overcome Your reluctance, but in simple child-like faith to lay hold of Your infinite willingness to unveil the Lord Jesus to our hearts. We thank You for these simple Bible stories and we pray, as we meditate together, that you would minister to each one of us individually. We wait upon You and want to thank You in advance that You are going to meet with us, because we claim it in the all-prevailing name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
REVIEW
We’re looking at this wonderful segment of scripture, the thirty years of preparation of our Lord Jesus, the first thirty years of the life of the Lord Jesus as it’s recorded in the Bible. In this, His life on the earth, I know of no other section of scripture that gives us in a more distinct way the progressive revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. If any passage of scripture shows the development of Christ, it is this passage that covers these wonderful thirty years, because before our eyes He is growing and increasing and maturing, and He is being formed. He became a seed sent from heaven. He became a baby, an infant. He became a little child and grew in stature and wisdom and favor with God and man, and He became a young adult, a teenager, and an adolescent. He grew and developed, and finally, according to Hebrews 5, He became qualified to be the perfect Savior and the perfect High Priest to pour out His life in redemptive ministry.
As He came, He comes; what was true then, is true now. God has just given us a picture of it, which is exactly the same stages that are outlined for us in the gospel record and that we experience in our life when He is formed in us. He comes in as a seed; He grows in us. My prayer is from Galatians 4:19,
“My children, with whom I am again in labor pains and travail until Christ be formed in you.”
As He grew, we are surely going to grow in the Lord, too. This weekend we are looking at the development and maturing of Christ in you. If Christ is in you, He’s going to grow. These seasons that are outlined in the Bible are the same seasons He’s going to mature through you. I believe God has given us these four stages of the development of Christ: Christ as a fetus in my heart, Christ as an infant in my heart, and this evening we’ll see Him as a young adult. In most Christians, young adult is probably the longest experience. As far as the gospel record for Jesus, it was about eighteen years. I have found in my life when it seems like I’ve moved on to another stage and I go back to an earlier stage, it’s usually experiencing Jesus again as a twelve-year-old.
Let me give a quick review. The characteristics of life when Christ first comes in, we first learn that it’s not by man; it’s a virgin birth. Man has no part in it, and we discover that it’s all by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit forms life in us, and in that moment, we have a song written in our heart, and our hearts are filled with emotional joy. We begin to gravitate almost immediately toward those who have been prepared by God, and who have had a similar miracle in their own lives. When we arrive with the almost imperceptible Christ to their door, they are not able to discern the difference between the one that brings the blessing and the blesser, the instrument and the treasure within. It’s at that stage, also, when they are in complete ignorance and darkness to the word of God. God, in His great grace, guides that fetus, Christ, into his paths, even though they don’t know it. He uses circumstances.
The next stage Is Christ as an infant in our hearts. At this point there is a separation between the instrument and the treasure, Christ Himself, so much so that the instrument is able to hand the treasure to another. At that point, illustrated by Simeon, they now embrace Christ and He’s Salvation, and we’re ready to die. We then see Him as Lord and then, as the wise men, we see Him as King and bow down before Him and give Him our gifts. We taste a little worship but not much, a little surrender but not much, from knowing Him as Savior and knowing Him as Lord and having that incomplete view of a complete Savior; and then we make our way to the temple for dedication. Dedication becomes a big part of that experience when Christ is an infant in our lives.
When we knew nothing about the enemy or warfare, and we discover that there is an enemy, and we’re on our own, so to speak, illustrated by going down into Egypt, it’s at that point that God shows us that when Christ is just an infant, and we are so ignorant, and all of hell makes an attack to destroy the Christ within, we are at that time as safe as a baby in its mother’s arms. God protects the Christ within. Even though at that time our thinking and knowledge and world is Egypt, God delivered us and sent us to Egypt to illustrate that even in Egypt He is going to protect His Christ, and not only protect Him but Christ will grow and mature. Then He will call me out of Egypt to a place called Nazareth, the place of rejection. Matthew 2:23,
“And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”
We begin to see the cross more and more. Christ is beginning to mature. That’s some of Christ as an infant.
CHRIST AS A YOUNG ADULT
The third stage of the Lord Jesus, as a young adult in my heart, is illustrated by the story when Jesus was twelve years old. Luke 2:41-52,
“His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover and when He was twelve years old, they went up, after the custom of the feast; and when they fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem and His parents knew it not. Supposing Him to be in the caravan, they went a day’s journey, and they sought for Him among their kinsfolk and their acquaintances. When they found Him not, they returned to Jerusalem seeking for Him. It came to pass after three days, they found Him in the temple sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them and asking them questions. All that heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. When they saw Him, they were astonished. His mother said unto Him, ‘Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? Behold, your father and I sought Thee sorrowing.’ And He said unto them, ‘How is it that you sought Me? Know ye not that I must be in My Father’s house?’ And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them, and He went down with them, and came to Nazareth and He was subject unto Him, and His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom, in stature and in favor with God and man.”
I would like to share four characteristics from this of Christ as a young adult illustrated by this story. Some of these are so closely related that there is some overlapping. I’m deliberately making a point of each because there is a nuance in each, and I want to make sure that we take hold of that. We’re not going to try to understand this text in its context and all that. This time we are looking at Christ as He develops. So, we’ll jump over a lot of things that you might want to dwell on, but I want to get the heart of God as we look at Christ being formed.
It becomes a habit to gather with the people of God
The first characteristic of Christ as a young adult in this record is this; it’s a time when there’s a new desire to be with the people of God and to celebrate redemption. It’s more than a desire. It’s become a habit. It’s become a custom as Christ develops this much. Luke 2:41-42,
“His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Passover. They went up according to the custom.”
Every year it had become a custom; it had become a habit. Gathering with the saints was now the thing to do when Jesus was a young adult. They had three annual festivals that they went to. In the Spring they had Passover; that was the end of March or early April. In the summer they had the Feast of Pentecost. That was in early June or the end of May. In the Fall they had the Feast of Tabernacles. Those three annual festivals actually included all of the feasts—the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the First Fruits of the Barley Harvest, and then in the summer it included the First Fruits of the Wheat Harvest, and Tabernacle included the Feast of Tabernacles and the Day of Atonement. It had become the custom, the habit, to gather with the people of God.
Now, the illustration that God gives us is Passover. We don’t really enter into how really wonderful this was. We have conferences, and we have retreats, and we have church fellowship and gatherings together. Quite honestly, those are nothing like this. Whole families would gather together, and whole villages and towns would gather and make like a pilgrimage. For Mary and her family, it was about eighty miles that they travelled, and it took them four or five days. As they travelled, they would be joined by other saints and would travel together in a big caravan. According to Josephus, the Jewish historian, he tells us that the Passover gathered over a million people to crowd into the Holy City. This was the saints getting together, a wonderful thing, and as they made their way toward the city of peace, we are told that they were singing the great Halel, Psalm 114 – 118. The closer they got, the louder they would sing. It was a glorious time.
We learn from history that more than a quarter of a million lambs were sacrificed during the Passover at that time. This was a spiritual time for them—the rejoicing, the fellowship, seeing old friends, praying together, hearing about heartaches and troubles, hearing about blessings, reading the word of God, studying the word of God, praise, worship and Bible study. It was wonderful. That became a habit. And when Christ is a young adult, it becomes the habit to come be with the people of God. When they gathered, He wanted to be there. And when they gathered to worship, He wanted to be there. When they gathered for prayer, He wanted to be there. If there is a conference or retreat or a social occasion, He wanted to be there. That’s part of the maturing of Christ. As He grows, there’s this desire to be at all the feasts and festivals in fellowship with God’s people and be there as a family. At this point in the formation of Christ, this kind of thing has become a custom. That’s what they do. See, this is a big step from Mary to Elizabeth’s house; that was the beginning that God planted in them. But now it’s become a habit. Now it has become the life of the people of God; that is the stage when Jesus is a young adult.
There’s a tendency to take your eyes off of Jesus
The second principle is this; not only at this stage do the people of God have this desire to be with God’s people, and to celebrate redemption at every occasion, and that has become a habit, but at this stage of Christ forming, it’s also a time, because everything has become routine and custom, for there to be a tendency to take the presence of Christ for granted; there’s a tendency to take your eyes off Jesus. Because I’ve experienced Him in His fetal state, and because I’ve experienced Him in His infant stage, I become accustomed to His presence. From the story, we see at this stage that those who are related to Him have formed certain expectations of Him, and expect Him to respond in a certain way, and when their expectations are disappointed, “What right does He have to change my direction? I was going in a certain direction and expected Him to be going in that certain direction I was going in.”
This is a wonderful time in the formation of Christ, because the people of God are involved with the people of God, and they are involved with the Book of God, and they are celebrating redemption together. It’s a wonderful time of fellowship and uniting, but it’s at this stage where there is this tendency to take their eyes off Christ, to get frustrated and to wonder what’s going on, and then to go back in the search, and on the third day they find Him in the temple (He’s always in the temple). Over and over again this is repeated. This is all illustrated in Luke 2:41-52. No doubt, they got so involved with the festivities and the blessings, they forgot about the Blesser; they took their eyes off the Lord. They thought for sure He would be in the caravan. They thought that He would leave when they left. He would be there. The sad record is that they left the Bible conference talking about how great it was, what great testimonies there were, what great singing there was and how wonderful it was to see everyone, and then all of a sudden, they say, “Where’s Jesus?” Wouldn’t it be a shame to leave Jesus at a gathering and to go back talking about what a wonderful time you had, and how you looked in the word of God and sang praises and worshipped, and had a baptism and broke bread?
We’re not so surprised, on the level of earth, to see Mary so upset. Luke 2:48,
“When they saw Him, they were astonished. His mother said, ‘Son, why hast Thou dealt with us this way? Thy Father and I sought Thee sorrowing.”
After all, Mary was the mother and Joseph was the stepfather. They had a relationship with Him and based on that relationship they expected certain behavior out of Him. Jesus did something that disappointed them. At this stage He’s constantly disappointing our expectations. We’ve taken Him for granted, and then He disappoints us (and this is all done on purpose). This all pictures the church because they also have a relationship with Him. We think that sometimes, based on that relationship, He ought to act a certain way. We expect things from Him. We’re His children. I expect that He will protect me, and He will provide for me, and He will heal me, and he will deliver me. If He doesn’t do that, I get anxious and start asking Him what He is doing. Because we are related, I expect Him to behave. That’s how it is when Jesus is a young adult. I expect Him to make me prosperous. If He doesn’t do that, I get confused. I expect Him to be in the caravan and going in the direction that I’m going in.
Then we panic and get anxious and go into a wide search for Him, and then we find Him, and that’s how it is when Jesus is a young adult. As He develops in us, now our life is filled with the people of God, celebrating the redemption of Christ on every occasion, and it’s become a custom, a habit. But there’s a tendency, because of our relationship with Him, to take His presence for granted and get so involved in all these precious things that, somehow, we leave Jesus back there, and then we see Him again. Has that ever happened to you, that you’ve been so blessed that you look at the blessings and take your eyes off the Lord? I’ll tell you; I’ve learned. I’ll never take my eyes off the Lord again, until tomorrow! We get our eyes off of Him, start getting anxious, ask what’s going on, and then we remember and come back to Him.
Jesus must be about His Father’s business, but He submits to us
The third principle is that when Jesus is a young adult and He begins to grow, Luke 2:49-50,
“He said unto them, ‘How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s house?’ And they understood not the saying that He spoke to them.”
He’s going to lay down a principle, and God tells us right away that they are not understanding. At this point He’s going to give us a principle that we won’t understand. We’ll hold it in our heart, but we aren’t going to understand it. We think we do, and so we begin to act upon it. Here’s the principle in King James, “I must be about my Father’s business.”
At this point there’s a new step; the will of God. We didn’t see this when we were a fetus. We saw some shadows and some hints. We didn’t see it when He was an infant. Now, for the first time, Jesus states it as a principle. He tells them that there’s something new. He had to be about His Father’s business. New American Standard says, “…about My Father’s house”, and another translation says, “I must be about My Father’s interests”, and another says, “I must be about my Father’s concern”, andanother translation says, “I must be about My Father’s affairs.” How come they don’t all agree? It’s because in the Greek there’s no noun. So, the translators are trying to help you. Here’s what the Greek says, “Do you not know that I must be about my Father’s”. My Father’s what? It’s my Father’s everything: His business, His house, His purpose, His will, His pleasure, His interests, His people, His temple and His everything.
It’s at this stage in the maturity of Christ, when you talk to young people, you’ll see it all the time, the word of God becomes the great issue. God has now introduced into this forming of Christ my Father’s business, and we begin to say that we need to do my Father’s will. The will of God becomes so great, the importance of the Father’s everything. We hear Christians saying, “What does Christ want me to do? Where should I go to school? What should I study? Who should I marry? What does He have me to become? Is He calling me here or is He calling me there? All of a sudden, the will of God is introduced into this formation of Christ in your life. None of these stages are wrong. They are all right and they are all good. At first when He’s a fetus, and you don’t know anything, the Guide is guiding you. Then when He becomes an infant under God’s protection, you still don’t know too much, but you are involved in all of the ceremonies and festivities, and you identify with the people of God, and it’s your custom and habit to be with them. Every now and then you forget Jesus. And now you want the will of God, and it becomes everything.
When Jesus is a young adult in my life, He lays down that great principle of passion; I just want to do His will. We’ve come through that He’s my Savior, He’s my Lord, and the dedications; that’s when we’re a baby. Now our heart is saying that we want to see His will, the Father’s business and pleasure. There’s a fourth characteristic and I think this is the chief one. Luke 2:51,
“He went down with them and came to Nazareth; and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”
When Mary and Joseph returned looking for the missing Jesus, Luke 2:46,
“After three days they found Him in the temple…”
I don’t know how to understand those three days. I know it was one day’s journey going and maybe another day back, and then perhaps they found Him on the third day. Some think they went back and searched for three days. I’m not sure how that was, but when they arrived and found Him in the temple, either way, they were in a panic. Of course, they were blaming Him, too. Quite honestly, they did reprimand Him; He had disappointed them. In their minds he had violated their relationship. He acted in a way they didn’t think He should act. Let me paraphrase the conversation. It’s as if Jesus said, “Mom and Dad, how is it that you sought Me? Why did you suppose that I would be in your company? You chose a certain direction to go in and went that way. Why did you presume that I would be going in the direction that you were going in? Because you happened to be there, did you think I had to be where you were?”
It was at this point that He laid down the great principle; “I have to be about My Father’s business.” It has to do with His will and not your way. Jesus informs them that His body is now at His Father’s disposal and not at their disposal. Are you sure your will is My Father’s will? This is the manifestation of Christ as a young adult and here’s the principle; this is the crux of it. Jesus said that He must be about His Father’s business. He didn’t face this when He was a fetus, and He didn’t face this when He was an infant, but now He said, “I am ever going to be about My Father’s business. Don’t presume because you go in one direction that I’m going to be there, and where you go, I’ll be.” Then He did this (this is so amazing to me). This explains so much of what we see in our lives and in the lives of others. He lays down the principle that, “I’ve got to be about My Father’s business,” and then He submits to them.
Do you realize the burden He’s put on them? It’s an amazing thing. I’ve got to be about My Father’s business, but now I’m going to submit to you, now that you know the principle. So now it’s up to you to find out what My Father’s business is. It’s all about Him forming Himself in us, and this is when He’s a young adult. He said that He would submit to them, and you must decide My Father’s business, “Every time you act and every time you move, you’ll remember this little conversation we’ve had that I must be about My Father’s business.” So, at this time He is subject to Mary. You talk about condescension and the grace of God; He limits Himself to her choices.
One of the main results of when Christ is a young adult in your heart, I don’t want to be irreverent, is when He takes instructions from us and submits unto us. So, we begin to drag Jesus everywhere because He submits to us. So, we say, “Okay, Jesus, we’re going to the prison,” and off we go to the prison. And then we go off to the nursing home, and then we go off on a mission trip. Then we decide to go off to a pastorate. He just keeps submitting to us. These are times in the Christian’s life, but as far as the record goes, at this time He has not yet begun His ministry. Many, many Christians come this far in the Christian life, all involved in the festivities, and they keep taking their eyes off Christ, and then coming back again. Christ submits unto them in order to have them decide what His will is. I’ve tasted some of this, going public before He went public. Many, many Christians might be in full time ministry and might be famous and have a great ministry and be invited to big conferences, and they might be known as great missionaries, but His ministry hasn’t begun yet.
We begin to submit to Jesus
Brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s good news for me to tell you that this will not go on forever. Do you know why? It’s because Christ is being formed in you. There’s another stage. We’ve been following this principle in terms of Mary. So, it’s interesting for me as I went through and kept looking for Mary, John 2:1,
“On the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus was also invited with His disciples to the marriage. And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to Him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said unto her, ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?’”
Don’t read that “la, la, la.” For eighteen years He had been subject to her, and she’s used to that, “Okay, Jesus, let’s do this and that,” and He just follows. Then He says, “Woman, what have I to do with you?” She turned to the servants, and she saw the principle in a flash, saying, “Whatever He says, do it.” “He’s not subject to me anymore and now I am subject to Him.” Then His ministry began.
That was the hour of glory, when He turned the water into wine and a life of miracles began. That day is coming. As He’s formed in us, there’s this glorious revelation that it won’t always be that He’ll be subject unto us. Mary’s idea was that where she was, there He would be also. Is that what He said? He said it the other way around. Not where Mary is will He be, but where He is, “…there will My servant be, also.” John 12:26,
“Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am, my servant also will be.”
That was right after He gave that grain of wheat illustration. That was the hour of His glory.
At this critical crossroad of the formation of Christ, strange things happen. When Christ begins to dawn on them, I’ve literally seen people walk away from their ministry and wait for His ministry. They leave churches, and people think they are backslidden. Christ is being formed in them, and they’ve learned a great secret, that He is no longer subject to them; now they are subject to Him. You’ve heard me say many times on this topic of the will of God, just seek the Lord and do anything; He can go here and there. That’s what it’s like when you are twelve years old. He’s being formed in me and you. We’re changing. These are things that occur when Jesus is just a young adult in my heart.
Don’t be discouraged in your walk with the Lord if Christ is just a fetus. He’s being formed in you. Enjoy your joy! Live in that revelation where He is. By and by He’s going to develop, and you are going to learn what it is to embrace Him as Savior and as Lord, and worship Him and surrender and dedicate yourself to Him. That’s all part of the package. You are going to get involved with the people of God. Sometimes you are going to take your eyes off Christ; you’ll have expectations, and He’ll disappoint you, but He’s going to come back and show you. The will of God is going to become everything to you. Then He’ll submit to you, and you’ll be dragging Him with you, but that won’t be forever. We’ll be looking in the next message about what it is like when Christ comes to full maturity and is prepared to live His Redemptive Life.
Heavenly Father, we thank You so much for Your working in our lives, for these wonderful stages as You develop and grow, and for Your great patience in us, how You work in us, and how You change and conform us to Yourself. We know Your heart, and it’s Your desire to become qualified to minister and bring redemption to the earth. Mature in us, we pray, so that you can work Your redemptive ministry through us. Thank you that You are doing it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
CHAPTER 5
Christ Formed in You
Mature Adult
WELCOME AND OPENING PRAYER
I remind you of that indispensable principle of Bible study which is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. It’s only as we trust Him that He opens up His precious page to our hearts. There are two mysteries that the Bible talks about. When the Bible uses the word “mystery”, it doesn’t mean mysterious; it means that it’s something that needs to be revealed by God. There’s no way we are going to see it in any other way until He shows us. Then, it’s not a mystery anymore.
Two times in the New Testament Paul asks for special prayer before He spoke. Both times had to do with a mystery. He said, “God has called me to speak the mystery of the gospel: the good news, and the New Covenant.” There’s no way that the New Covenant can be known unless God reveals it. So, he called it a “mystery”. He said that he was also called to preach the mystery of Christ, and that there’s no way to know Christ except that he is revealed. These are interesting verses, and only two times in the New Testament do we have the expression “as I ought to speak”. So, I want to speak as I ought to speak, and Paul wanted to speak “as I ought to speak”. So, he asked for prayer. He said, “Will you pray for me that I speak as I ought to speak?” Ephesians 6:19,
“Pray for me as I preach the mystery of the gospel that I might speak as I ought to speak,” and then he added this, “boldly.”
Pray that as I handle the mystery of the gospel that I might preach as I ought to preach boldly.
Then in Colossians 4:34,
“Pray for me as I preach the mystery of Christ, that I might preach as I ought to preach,” and then he added this, “clearly,”(simply).
So, I come to the Bible, and I know how I ought to speak. I ought to speak boldly, and I ought to speak simply, but because it’s a mystery, because you can’t know it until He reveals it, pray for me that I might speak as I ought to speak the mystery of the gospel boldly and the mystery of Christ clearly. So, let’s pray…
Our Father, how we praise You, that You have not left us on our own when we come to this precious book, that You have given us Your Holy Spirit and have promised that You would unveil the Lord Jesus to the hungry heart. So, create in us a desire and a hunger, and fill that desire, we pray. By Your grace we are going to open our mouths wide, and by Your grace fill us. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
REVIEW
We come now to the end of our look at the thirty years. I hope it means more to you now than when you first came. It’s those preparation years. As I understand it, there are no other scriptures that give us the progressive revelation of Christ more than these thirty years. It’s clear by now that the track we’ve been following—that as He came, He comes—God has given us a record of the progressive unveiling of Christ. He began as a seed, and then as a fetus, and then as an infant, and then He grew and became a child/young adult and so on. As He once came, He comes. Exactly the same principles that were true when He came on the earth are true now. He comes and is conceived in us as a seed by the Holy Spirit. He is formed in us and He grows in us. There’s a stage when He’s a fetus in our hearts, and a stage when He’s an infant in our hearts, and a stage when He’s a young adult in our hearts. As He’s being formed, it’s toward the end that He might be perfected to be the perfect Savior and the perfect priest—preparation for ministry. We’ve been following as a prayer Galatians 4:19,
“I’m in travail for you and labor for you until Christ is formed in you.”
As we have the gospel record, He’s formed in us, individually and corporately.
Our last message was on Christ as a young adult, illustrated by twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem. What does it look like when Christ is formed that much in my life? At that stage there will be a great involvement with the things of God and the word of God and the people of God; it’s so much so that it has become a custom, a habit which is illustrated by the Passover with God’s people, as a custom, getting together. But those are also the days where there is the temptation, because we’ve been so used to the presence of God and taking His presence for granted, that we become so involved in the festivities (fellowship, praise and things connected with the Lord, celebrating) that it’s very easy to get our eyes off the Lord Jesus. We have a growing, but limited view of what He is; we don’t yet see Him in every way. So, we sometimes have expectations of Him; we expect Him to do things a certain way. When He disappoints our expectations, then we get into a frenzy and become anxious, and sometimes we even blame Him.
It’s at this stage that He lays out that principle, the will of God, “I must be about My Father’s everything,” His will, His pleasure, His purpose, His interests, His House, His temple, His people. It’s about His will. For the first time, you begin to see that it’s not my will but His will, and I’ve got to be about my Father’s business. It’s also at this stage where He does a very unique thing. He says that it’s all about My Father’s will, and then He turns around and submits Himself to His parents. He lays on us a great burden, because now it’s God’s will, but you must find out what that is. It’s during this time that we drag Jesus here and there, and He submits; He comes! But He doesn’t do that forever.
For eighteen years He was submitted to her. She would say that this is what Jesus will do and He’d do it. But then one day they ran out of wine, and He said, “Woman, what do I have to do with you?” It sounds so harsh on the level of earth. Mary learned in that moment, because God gave her light, and she knew right away what it was, that He was no longer subject to her; now she was subject to Him. She was not going to take Him on her mission trip. He’s going to take her on His mission trip. She was subject to Him now. That’s Christ as a young adult.
THE BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF CHRIST
That brings us to the climax with two stories that wrap up the preparation years. One is the baptism of our Lord Jesus, and the other is the temptation. That’s the end of the preparation time. Some take the temptation of Christ as not the end of His preparation but the first step in His ministry, where His ministry begins. Humor me, please, at least for now. There are reasons that make me think that it’s the end of His preparation, not the least of which is Matthew 4:10,
“And Jesus said to Satan, ‘Be gone and depart.”
I think that here the last Adam has the victory that the first Adam did not win. With that “Satan, be gone”, He’s prepared and then His ministry begins.
What will my life look like when Christ is a fetus in my heart? What will my heart look like when Christ is an infant in my heart? What will my heart look like when Christ is a young adult in my heart? Now what will it look like when He’s matured and ready for ministry, to be a perfect Savior and pour Himself out redemptively? I know it’s true of me, and perhaps it’s true of you, now that we’re going to touch on the maturity of Christ, who can consider that they have arrived? You know, if I look at some of this, I feel like I’m looking in a window, longing for that day when He’s conformed. Don’t try to mature yourself. That’s His business. He’s maturing. He will be formed in you. That which He has begun, He will complete until the end.
Let me suggest some principles. What will it look like when Christ is mature, illustrated by the baptism and by the temptation? Notice that God has linked these two together. Matthew 4 begins with the word “then”. Right after the baptism, without intermission, “then” Jesus was led to the wilderness. It’s almost like they aren’t two stories: it’s like one story. Luke 4:1 gives the same idea,
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led in Spirit in the wilderness.”
Mark in his characteristic way uses the word “straight away”. Mark 1:12, “And straight away, the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness.” Kenneth Wuest in his expanded translation says it this way, “And immediately the Spirit thrusts Him into the uninhabited place.” My point in paying attention to this is to show you that they are one story; the baptism, and then immediately after the temptation are connected.
I believe that these two stories graphically illustrate the whole reality of the thirty years. The thirty years are now coming to a climax. The whole point of the thirty years that we called attention to in the introduction lesson is that Christ has come to become the representative man and to obey God; to live perfectly. All thirty years our Lord Jesus lived a sinless life. As we come through these stories it gets clearer and clearer. In the story of Jesus when He was twelve years old, he submitted to His parents. He also said that He must be about His Father’s business. When He submitted to His parents, He illustrated that He was rightly related to man. When He said that He had to be about His Father’s business, He was declaring that He was rightly related to God. That’s the two tables of the law; to be rightly related to man and to be rightly related to God.
God doesn’t tell us everything about the thirty years, but He tells us all we need to know, that He was rightly related to man and He was rightly related to God, every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year throughout that whole period. Just so, I believe these last two stories give exactly the same thing. The baptism illustrates that He’s rightly related to man. His victory over the devil illustrates that He’s rightly related to God. It’s a wonderful climax of the thirty years because, as we come to the end, we see that He is rightly related to man and rightly related to God, that He has perfectly obeyed and passed the test as the representative man, and now His ministry can begin.
As you know, if you take a section of scripture, like His baptism and like the temptation, there’s too much material to cover it all. I’d love to be able to discuss with you when John the Baptizer resisted baptizing, and Jesus had one attitude toward him, and later Peter resisted the cross and Jesus had another attitude toward Peter. It would be interesting to compare those two things. I’d love to be able to discuss John 1:33. John says that he was given a sign, and that he wouldn’t know the Messiah until a dove descended upon Him. But then when Jesus came to be baptized and before the dove descended, He resisted. It looks like He knew Him already. What’s that all about? Matthew 3:15, “Permit this to fulfill all righteousness.” What does that mean? And the baptism of fire, what is that all about and how does it relate to Luke 12:49-50? There’s so much we could talk about. When you come into the temptation, there are a thousand directions we could go. In fact, as I was studying it, my head was swimming in so many different directions.
Was He impeccable? Could He have sinned? What is temptation? And what was it that Jesus was tempted in all points as we are? Is that illustrated in the temptation in the wilderness? Was it literal or was it figurative? When He went out into the wilderness, did He then leave the wilderness and go up a mountain? Did He leave a mountain and actually go into a city? How did He get there? Did God allow Satan to carry Him through the air? Did it happen in His imagination? What does it mean when Satan shows Him all the kingdoms and all the glory of all kingdoms in a moment of time? What form did Satan take? Why does Mark tell us that He was with the wild beasts when He was in that temptation? Was it a complete test? Was it bread and any kind of liquid? Is there significance in the forty days? What’s the ministry of angels when someone is being tempted? We don’t have time to look at all of that. Every one of those things are so instructive and so rich and so full of manna for your spirit.
This morning, I want to step way back and look at those two events in order to see Christ as He matures. We’ll have to jump over so much. But if we can lay hold of the essence of what it is like when Christ is mature, that’s what I’d like us to look at, and what our lives will look like if He grows that much in me. May God help us! Turn to Matthew 3 and we’ll pick up the reading in the middle of Matthew’s record. Matthew 3:13,
“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized of him. But John inhibited Him by saying, ‘I need to be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou to me?’ And Jesus answering said unto him, ‘Suffer it now, for thus it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness.’ And he suffered Him and Jesus was baptized and went straight up from the water; and the heavens were open unto Him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove coming upon Him; and, lo, a voice out of the heaven saying, ‘This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.’”
The gospel of Mark records pretty much the same thing. Luke 3:21 adds a detail that the others don’t give. When Jesus was in the water, He was praying. There were other people in the water at the same time and they weren’t praying; they were repenting; they were confessing. Jesus didn’t have to repent or confess. So, He was standing in the midst of a bunch of people who were confessing their sins, and while they were confessing, He was praying to His Father God. The Apostle John tells us that the coming of the dove was God’s signal to John the Baptizer that this was Messiah. John 1:33,
“I knew Him not but He Who sent me to baptize Him in water said to me, ‘Whomever you see the Spirit descending and abiding, the same is He that baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ And I’ve seen and born witness that this is the Son of God.”
This is Christ at the end of His preparation, Christ in His maturity. In order to make it practical, let me give three of the facts and answer the question of what it would look like when Christ is mature.
Jesus chose to stand with sinners in the place of death
This first fact is the dove. We’ve got to get away from that notion of the “dove of peace” or back to Noah and the dove with the olive leaf in its mouth, and it’s not about the comment of Jesus that we are to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. That’s not what’s going on here. In the gospel of Luke, when Mary and Joseph brought the Lord Jesus for dedication, they came with doves because they knew that in Leviticus 5:7,
“If you can’t afford a lamb, you can bring the substitute for the lamb; doves.”
The lamb was the substitute for the sinner and the dove was the substitute for the lamb. In fact, there was another substitute. If you were too poor to bring a dove, you could bring a pinch of flour, and the flour would be a picture of the dove, and the dove would be a picture of the lamb. God was saying that nobody has an excuse; all could come. That’s the grace of God.
When our Lord Jesus identified with sinners, He didn’t have to. John makes that clear. Jesus came to a place in His maturity that He knew that He didn’t have to, but He wanted to, to stand and identify with sinners. “I don’t have to do it.” There’s a double symbolism in the dove. It’s not only a picture of the lamb of death and the cross and dying, but it’s linked to the Holy Spirit. It’s a picture of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended like a dove. And it’s a picture of death. I’m suggesting that in that hour when He is mature, one of the first characteristics will be death and the cross; how selfless He was in that moment. He didn’t have to do that. He wanted to do it.
And so, He deliberately identified, and yet was separate from them, but He stands with the sinner. He pours His life out, and the Holy Spirit enables Him to die, and anoints Him with death. That’s one of the main characteristics of the mature Christ. Now, it’s no longer about me dragging Him here, and where is He going to take me, and my will and His will. That’s all done. Now it’s just a pouring out of His life, and He stands with sinners in the water, and gives up His life and His own ambitions, and lets the Holy Spirit come down on Him with death.
Jesus spoke to His Father under an open heaven
The second characteristic illustrates the open heavens. As He stood there in the water identified with sinners, willingly having chosen it by the power of the Holy Spirit, the heavens were opened. You’ve heard the expression, “Living under an open heaven.” Under that open heaven He was praying, and God spoke from heaven. The open heaven is a two-way conversation. There’s a fellowship there. Do you want to know what it’s like when Christ is mature in your life? You are going to let the Holy Spirit bring death on your life and you’re going to live under an open heaven. You’re going to communicate with Him; He’s going to communicate with me. That’s what it looks like.
That’s why sometimes I think that I’m just outside looking in the window. I long that God would work that in my heart; I long for Christ to be so conformed that I can choose to stand with the world that He came to save and allow the Holy Spirit to bring me into death, and not try to kill myself or die to self but allow the Holy Spirit to anoint me with death. What a precious thing, isn’t it, to live under an open heaven?
God is satisfied
And then the third principle, a voice out of heaven. Matthew 3:17,
“This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.”
God is satisfied and happy. When Christ is mature, He stands in death, under an open heaven and God is pleased. That’s the sign of maturity; a precious, precious place to be. That’s when He stands before man.
THE WILDERNESS
Let’s see when He stands before the Lord. Luke 4:1-13,
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness; and for forty days was being tempted by the devil. He did eat nothing during those days. When the day had ended, He became hungry and the devil said to Him, ‘If Thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it become bread.’ And Jesus answered unto him, ‘It is written that man shall not live by bread alone.’ He led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and the devil said to Him, ‘To Thee I’ll give all this authority and the glory of them for it has been delivered unto me and I’ll give to whomsoever I will. If Thou, therefore, will worship before me, it shall all be Thine.’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘It is written that thou shall worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve.’ And he led Him to Jerusalem and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple and said unto Him, ‘If you are the Son of God, cast Yourself down from thence, for it is written that it is the angels’ charge to guard Thee, and on their hands they will bear Thee up, lest haply Thou shalt dash Thy foot against a stone.’ Jesus answering said to him, ‘It is said that thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’ And when the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from Him for a season.”
You’ll notice that Matthew’s and Luke’s order of the temptation are not the same. Some think that Matthew’s is probably the correct order because of the words, “Be gone Satan!” I think that Luke’s order is the spiritual order. So, we’ll follow here Luke’s order. The fact that God gives us two different orders, at least tells us that we aren’t to argue about which order is correct in fact; it doesn’t matter because God has given us both. In Luke’s order He’s tempted in the wilderness, He’s tempted on the mountain, and He’s tempted in the temple. No doubt you’ve had wilderness experiences in your life. He’s tempted in the wilderness and He’s victorious. No doubt you’ve had mountain experiences in your life, and He’s victorious as the representative man. No doubt you’ve had temple experiences in your life, and He was victorious as the representative man.
Almost all who study this portion of scripture point out how those three temptations are representative temptations. There is no doubt that Jesus was tempted these three times but also before this. Hebrews 5:7-8 tells us that He was tempted all of His life. Luke 4:2 tells us that He was tempted all forty days. Verse 13 says that after this, Satan left Him until an opportune time. He was tempted after this, too. He was tempted all of His life and all forty days, and He was tempted after this. But God says that He wants you to see this. So, God focuses in on these three representative temptations. Some say that it’s the same as Genesis 3:6, the three areas where Eve saw that it was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and the desire to make man wise. Some say it’s 1 John 2:16, “All that’s in the world; the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life.” They believe it’s the same three. I don’t know if it is or not. Some say it’s three temptations because it’s body, soul and spirit. Another says it’s mind, emotion and will. Another says it’s the three natural desires: the desire to enjoy, the desire to acquire and the desire to achieve. I don’t know about all of that, but I don’t think that’s the bottom line. It misses the point.
Satan tempts Jesus to doubt His Father’s love
In our introduction lesson, I quoted 2 Corinthians 11, and I tried to show you how Paul was so concerned for the Corinthians because He was afraid Satan would do to them what He did to Eve. Then he labels it and calls it, “Losing the simplicity and devotion to the Lord.” It’s all about the Lord. All these temptations, whatever else we can see in them, Satan was concerned that Jesus was in fellowship with His Father. That’s what he was after. On the level of earth, if we are talking about temptations, this is a little different. Have you ever been tempted to turn a stone into bread? Satan isn’t tempting Christ to chase skirts or to be addicted to a substance that would hold Him in bondage. That’s not what this is about. He’s not trying to get Him caught up in some shady deal or some fraud or something like that. He’s not trying to get Him discouraged so that He’ll throw Himself off the temple to kill Himself. It’s deeper than that.
Jesus was walking in simplicity and devotion to His Father, and Satan wanted to destroy that. Do you know why? It’s because that’s the sign of maturity, but nothing is going to destroy this. I’ll give you what I think is God’s heart on each temptation. What’s true of the Head, is true of the members. I don’t really think that Satan’s concerned if you run away with your secretary, either. He’s after your relationship with the Lord. That’s what he wants and that’s what he’s trying to get. He takes you up to the temple just to cast you down. That’s what it’s all about.
Let me make this practical and give the heart of each one. I believe the first temptation in Luke’s order is this; Satan tried to get Jesus to doubt God’s love, to doubt the Father’s love. Our Lord Jesus had just stood under the open heavens, the Father had just anointed Him with death, and He was standing before man as God created man to stand before men, in love and willing to identify with them and pour Himself out for them, and He heard a voice, “This is My beloved Son.” Immediately He goes into the wilderness fasting, and Satan begins in verse 3, “If You are the Son of God…,” implying that Jesus had reason to doubt that; “Look at where you are – in an uninhabited wilderness. If God loved you, would He allow that? You’re in a dry place, a barren place, a waste place. If He loved You, would He allow that? You are all alone. It’s very lonely out here, Jesus. He’s Your Father and He allows that?” See, the angels didn’t come until the end. “There’s a lot of wild beasts around you, huh, Jesus? I thought you were His child! Would He allow that? My, You look tired, Jesus. You look run down and hungry. Would He allow You to get tired and run down and hungry?”
That’s the power of Satan’s temptation; “If God loved you, would He do that? Let me rescue You to provide Your needs. Why are You waiting for Him? Why are You waiting for Your Father?” There’s such a destructive element in this suggestion that if God loves me, He’ll deliver me, and if He doesn’t deliver me, He must not love me.
I knew a dear saint; how we prayed and wept with her and how we cried over her. She was suicidal. When she was normal, we could talk, but then she’d get into these deep depressions. She had rheumatoid arthritis like I’ve never seen. Her joints were so swollen and massive. Somebody told her that if you are truly God’s child, He will heal you, and if He doesn’t heal you, you are not God’s child. She was convinced that she was not God’s child. We were able to save her the first time from the coat hanger in the closet as she tried to kill herself. We prayed and longed for her, and she finally took her own life.
Satan whispered the same temptation into the ear of our Lord Jesus as He hung on the cross, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” If He delights in Him, then deliver Him. So, there’s that idea that if He doesn’t deliver, He doesn’t delight. Satan would love you to judge God’s love by your circumstances. He would love me to judge God’s love in my life by my circumstances—when the bread fails, and the strength fails, and the health fails and when the opportunities dry up. Satan doesn’t want us to believe that the problem is love; he wants us to doubt God’s love, and he chooses those tracks. He waits until you are in the wilderness to come after you on that. He waits until you are alone.
You single men and single women, widows and widowers who are alone, there is a special temptation for those who are alone and lonely to be vulnerable to his attack, as Jesus was when He was so tired from doing God’s will. He’ll come to question you, “Does He really love you?” Adam and Eve fell before food, and they weren’t even hungry. Our Lord Jesus was victorious after this fast. Do you have beasts coming against you? We all have our little set of hyenas and jackals. Your beast may not be my beast, but I’ll tell you that it’s all the same. Bottom line—God loves you. Do you want to know what it looks like when God is fully mature? He loves me, and I don’t care what happens. That’s a mature Christ.
Jeremiah 31:2-3,
“Thus says the Lord, ‘The people found grace in the wilderness. Israel, when it went to find rest, the Lord appeared to him from afar saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”’”
They found grace in the wilderness. Brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t ever doubt God’s love for you. Whatever circumstance you are in, whatever the wilderness or however alone you might be or however many beasts come at you or however tired you are, however hungry you are, don’t doubt for a moment that He loves you with an everlasting love, and that there is grace in the wilderness.
Satan tempted Jesus by suggesting His Father was not enough
In Luke 4:5-8, Christ as our representative had this temptation in the extreme; all the glories of all the kingdoms were offered to Him in a moment of time. At best, we’ll be offered probably a wedge of gold and a seat of honor and our own glory, and that will be it. He was offered everything. What’s the bottom line of that? You see, to the Lord Jesus, His Father was everything; His Father was sufficient, and His Father was enough. In His Father He was satisfied and happy and content, and when Satan dangled all that before Him it was for this one purpose—to say, “God is not enough. There must be something here that you can desire and want because God is not enough.” He’s going after His relationship with God. If he can get Him to believe that God doesn’t love Him, it’s over. If he can get Him to believe that God is not enough, it’s finished and over. That’s what this temptation is all about.
In the wilderness we almost automatically run to Jesus. On the mountaintop, that’s where we get this temptation where we think that maybe He’s not enough, maybe we can have some of these other things. David said in Psalm 30:6-7,
“I said in my prosperity I’ll never be moved; Thou hast made my mountain to stand strong; Thou didst hide Thou face, and I was dismayed.”
When the world is laid out for us in all of its vain glory, when some opportunity of authority and Lordship is put before us, is He enough? He came to see that in a moment of time. The closest that I came to that is daydreaming. Do you ever daydream? Sometimes in a moment of time you can get all these grandeur ideas about what I can be and what I can have and what would happen. Is He enough when you are daydreaming? Satan would love you to doubt God’s love; he’d love for you to doubt His sufficiency.
Satan tempted Jesus by doubting the faithfulness of God
Luke 4:9-12, what was the devil trying to accomplish by inviting Him to the temple, the spiritual place to throw Himself from the pinnacle of the temple? I think this is the most subtle of all because it’s the most spiritual; it takes place in the temple. Once again, the target is the same; it’s His relationship to God. Satan thinks, “If I can’t get Him to think that God doesn’t love Him, and I can’t get Him to doubt the sufficiency of God, maybe I can get Him to doubt the faithfulness of God.” It’s so clever; he quotes a promise from Psalm 21, that, “God promised He would be with You and give You angels as charge over You and watch over You, so much so that You won’t even stub Your foot against the rock. He’ll watch over You.” Here’s the temptation; “Jesus, Your Father has given a promise. You trust Him. Is He faithful? Will He do it? There’s only one way that you will find out, Jesus. You are going to have to take Your eyes off His faithfulness and put them on Your faith.” Do you see what he did? How subtle is that! If he can get Him to take His eyes off the faithfulness of God and put them on His own faith, He’s done.
Can I suggest to you what it looks like when Christ is mature in your life? When He’s mature in your life, by an act of your will, and you don’t have to do this, but you want to pour your life out, and you will identify with them. You’ll step in the water, you’ll be separate and different, but you are going to allow God in His Holy Spirit to allow you to die. And you’ll live under an open heaven and talk to Him, and God is going to be happy and satisfied and pleased. And nothing is going to shake you from your union in Him and your walk with Him, no matter what circumstance comes into your life. It doesn’t matter what wilderness or what spiritual temple or what mountain comes into your life, you will never doubt that He loves you. You will never doubt that He is enough and never doubt that He is faithful. You see, at that point you are ready for ministry. When God can bring you to that place where before men you are dead, but before God you are alive, that nothing will make you doubt His love or sufficiency, and nothing will make you look to your own faith rather than His faithfulness, and you know He’s enough and that He’s faithful, He’s ready then to begin His ministry.
Maturity is the Lord and us being one – the exchanged Life
We’ve talked about the fact that He’s a representative man, and so I don’t want you to get confused. He’s come into your life to do it again. He was not tempted as your example, to be tempted first to show you how to be tempted second. He did it once so that you don’t have to. And now He’s come in to live it again. When you are in the wilderness, it is Christ Who rests in the Father’s love. There’s not a chance that we aren’t going to make it. I’m going to look at the wilderness and the beasts and that hyena that’s coming at me, and I’m tired and weak, and I’m not going to make it, but He IS!! He’s the representative man and He’s the substitute Life. It takes God to be a Christian; it’s the Lord Himself that’s going to trust the Father’s love. It’s God Himself Who will trust the Father’s sufficiency. It’s the Lord who is going to constantly show that He’s the One maturing. When He comes that far in Your life, then He begins to live through you.
It’s not a surprise to me that when I come to the end of this, that I just see Jesus living in devotion and simplicity. That’s how it’s got to end. Maturity is not confusing; it’s you and the Lord being one, the exchanged Life, and nothing is going to change that—ever! That’s how simple it is! Here’s a Bible verse from the New Testament, Romans 7:18,
“I know in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”
For years I thought that verse said, “In me dwelleth no good thing,” but it doesn’t say, “In me dwelleth no good thing.” It says that I know in me dwelleth no good thing. Happy is the man who knows it! Happy is the woman who knows it. It’s true of all of us. There’s no good thing in us, but happy is the person who knows that I know in me dwells no good thing, because then He can live. He wants to be formed in you. Honestly, probably not to the intensity that it is in Paul, God has begun to put it in my heart. I labor and travail until Christ is formed in you. Let’s pray…
Our Father, we thank You so much for this little look at such a great thing. We just pray that as You continue to mature and grow and develop to the place that You can finally minister through us, maturing in us to grow into our part and our willingness, that we would not hinder Your growth or maturity. We know You want to live redemptively through us. We know that means death for us and Life for them. Work it in us, we pray. For those who are in some wilderness or on some mountain or find themselves in some spiritual pinnacle, will You be victorious in them? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.