Pastor John,
I loved Wednesday night’s message. I think these are the best times, when we walk away feeling like we can see just a little bit more of what God sees, and feel just a little bit more of what God feels. And it always comes with a feeling of “YES!” A feeling of “this is just who I hoped God would be, and who I want to be!”
I did my best this evening to write down things as you were saying them, the way that I was understanding them. And as I wrote, I felt a whole lot like the way a moth looks, when it is fluttering back and forth around a light bulb. He knows that he is near the light, but can’t seem to zero in on it. I feel that way tonight, I can feel a whole lot of light in your message this evening, but standing on my toes, I can’t yet reach exactly what it is that I am feeling. And I can’t express it the way that I want to. I wrote it down, I had to, and I’m hoping I didn’t add too much of myself, so as to ruin what I was feeling from the Lord.
It occurred to me that people who serve the Lord without the Spirit baptism, without the washing away of their sins by the holy Ghost, often speak of God similar to way the way I understood him to be this evening – but it isn’t really the same. If thoughts about the Creator do not come from the Spirit – which those people do not have – then those thoughts are not the truth even if their words sound true because they are not from the Spirit of truth. It takes a tearing down of the old man and the rebirth of a new man by God’s spirit to understand that God’s long-suffering mercy on people is not indifference to their ways. God is still holy while being patient; God is still righteous while showing such love; and God is never blind. The goodness of God that you spoke of Wednesday night, pastor John, cannot be understood as mercy in the hearts of sinful people; they count it as indifference, but God is not indifferent to sin, though He is long-suffering and full of love. A person cannot know the difference without being born of the Spirit and submitting to the mind of Christ.
I started my notes Wednesday night by writing down what you told us many years ago, in Louisville: “The truth isn’t the truth if it isn’t what God is saying right now.” Life, our life, in God seems to always come back to that simple statement. It cuts through everything, and leaves us with a choice: either we have God’s life, or we have no true life within us. And then I added to that statement, to include what you told us tonight: “The truth isn’t the truth if it causes a pure and perfect heart to stumble before the Lord.” And that is true, not because God can’t do it any other way (He can do anything), but because He doesn’t. God isn’t trying to prove to people that He is right; he has an entirely different objective, a different heart, than men have when they talk.
If God judged us on what we know, we would all be damned, for as Paul said, “We know nothing as we ought to know,” and God always knows more than we do!
A pure heart will lead God’s people to an understanding that will lead them to satisfy the Lord before they leave this world. Our job is to have the Truth at the ready, in case God wants to use us to move someone toward that end. In ourselves, we can’t move God’s people forward, not one iota. But God’s loving truth can, and will!
I thought about Joshua, in Zechariah 3.
Zechariah 3
“And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. 2And the LORD said to Satan, The LORD rebuke you, O Satan; even the LORD that has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? 3Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. 4And he answered and spoke to those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And to him he said, Behold, I have caused your iniquity to pass from you, and I will clothe you with change of raiment. 5And I said, Let them set a fair turban on his head. So they set a fair turban on his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the LORD stood by.”
What is God telling us in Zechariah 3, when Israel’s high priest, Joshua, stood before the angel of the Lord in filthy garments, with Satan at the ready to be his Accuser for his transgression. But God accepted Joshua’s desire to do right, his “want to” to please God, and then rejected Satan’s demand to judge him strictly by God’s Law. God then took Joshua’s filthy rags and replaced them with what was perfect and acceptable in God’s sight. God was perfectly able to change Joshua out of his unacceptable garment, when He was ready to do so. Amen!
What was Satan about to accuse Joshua of in heaven’s court? Before the moment God’s angel rebuked Satan and ended the trial, what was Satan using as the plumb-line by which to judge Joshua and prove himself right? As the Law’s prosecutor, he would have been using the truth that had been revealed at that time, the very words that God Himself had commanded as Moses’ Law! But how did God see that “truth” which was in Satan’s mouth right then? He saw that “truth” as insufficient, if not outright wrong!
How does God feel about how we use the truth that we know? Would God consider something that causes His people to stumble in their pure desire to please Him, something that wounds them in their sincerity, even when they are serving God incorrectly and in ignorance, to be no better than the words in Satan’s mouth, as he played the part of the accuser of Joshua, who stood before the Lord in filthy garments?
Are the words we call “the truth” just an accusation against God’s precious children if those words aren’t delivered in God’s time and Spirit? Whether we call it “the truth”, is it what God wants spoken at that moment? If not, it is not the truth! The Truth of God is a Who, not a what, and that Truth, the Son of the living God, always speaks the words of God in God’s perfect time. If the truth isn’t delivered in God’s time when we speak to God’s children, we are speaking to them with another spirit, not the Spirit of Truth, no matter what we call it.
No wonder Jesus said not to worry about what you will say “on that day”. Matthew 10:19-20 – “But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.”
Jesus didn’t say too much, according to the scriptures. He waited on God. God’s presence in his mouth gave his words value. That’s what having the Spirit means to men; having God – even in thy mouth.
Satan, called “the Accuser of our brethren” in heaven, was telling the truth, according to God’s commandments to Israel, when he stood and accused Joshua in heaven’s court, and yet, God rebuked him. We do not want to stand in his place.
What did Jesus do when Satan came to him quoting to him the “truth” from a Psalm (Psalm 91), in the wilderness? Did Jesus submit to that, since it was a scripture from the holy Bible, or did he follow the Spirit of God? He followed the Spirit, not the letter of the biblical text. Paul later said, “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life!” Jesus knew that first.
Can you imagine if God called our efforts to communicate the truth “slander” or “accusations”, as he did to Satan, who actually was right when he charged Joshua with sin? Joshua had really done wrong, and it was God’s stern law that Satan was using to condemn him, but God didn’t call what Satan was saying “the Law” or “the Truth” because what Satan was after wasn’t in God’s heart. Satan was about to slander the love of God for Israel in the heart of Joshua, and everyone else who was in that court that day. God’s words, used outside of God’s time, slander God in the hearts of spiritually weak people.
The spirit you are under is more important than the words you say! We have to wait on God or we can hurt somebody. God loves his people, everywhere.
We have the power to do good if we will be patient.
When Satan quoted scripture to Jesus in the wilderness, it was “the truth”. Who would say otherwise? But without God’s timing, what did God call it? What did Jesus call Satan’s words that day? The books of Mathew, Mark and Luke refer to Satan’s truth in the wilderness as Temptation. But a temptation to do what? Disobey God, for God did not want Jesus to do what Satan was trying to get him to do, using holy Scripture to get him to do it. Once, Jesus even called Peter’s efforts to rescue Jesus from the cross the work of Satan (Mt. 16). If it is not God’s time to do a thing, it is sin, no matter how right it appears to be. It is frightening to think of what God thinks of our words when we speak without an unction from him?
I thought about the wisdom of your father’s words, pastor John, at the end of his life, when you asked him what he would like you to say at his coming funeral. He responded, “Whatever won’t embarrass anyone.” I bet Preacher Clark would have said “Amen” if one had added to that statement, “Whatever won’t wound a heart that is tender toward God; whatever won’t confuse someone’s honest efforts; whatever won’t make them sin against their conscience in the Lord or cause them to back up from what from God they do have.”
What about, “Whatever doesn’t sidetrack them from wherever God has them, that He is satisfied with, until He moves them?”
God wasn’t concerned with Joshua’s filthy garment, in Zechariah 3, but with the heart that was beneath that garment. Then, God rewarded that heart with an acceptable garment! It was easy for Him to do. We can’t move God’s people forward; we can just be available, and even then, we are truly available to God only if we are walking in the Spirit.
I’ve heard testimonies from years past in which brother Murray would point out, “If you get to somebody before God does, you are wasting your time.” I now wonder if it goes even deeper than that? “Wasting time” may be the best that we can do in those cases. What God calls it may be far worse. Jesus wouldn’t even speak to people before God got to them. He waited on the Truth.
The intent of your heart is going to determine where you spend eternity.
Jerry
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I felt like I could breathe again. Like everything slowed down and the stillness of Jesus took over. It has not left me since.
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