Gooding, David: 3 - The School of Holiness

If you have been following as we have gone through very hurriedly these chapters of our Lord's ministry to his apostles, you will have seen that our Lord is teaching them in the school of his holiness, and he has been teaching them from the elementary and beginning lessons first, gradually increasing the lessons until in our last session, we were coming to our duty as believers in the world outside. We are to bear fruit in our characters. Our lives are to show the graces of the Holy Spirit, that men and women coming in contact with us might discover through our behavior, our care, our concern, our love, our gentleness, our self-control, that we do have the living Savior within us. We are to be, therefore, fruit bearers in the sense of growing the grapes of the Holy Spirit's graces within us. And for that purpose, we heard how the Lord Jesus has made provision. It is not that we have to try hard and worry hard how this is to be done and seek to do it by our own efforts by themselves. Our Lord himself is the vine, and the Father gives himself to this gracious art of making us grow. We have the great comfort and assurance of the Lord Jesus that we may come to the Father in his name and discuss with the Father how the grape growing in our lives is getting on, and talk to him about the cultivation of the grapes, you'll see. Sometimes we do not understand his ways with us, do we? For all I know, you couldn't tell what I next need to grow grapes in my lifetime, my my life, could you? How would you know? Do I need a period of sun for a while, you know, with things going easy and all the lovely joys of life around me to make me a little bit more sunny in disposition and grow some sweeter bra- grapes and bring the sugar up. Is that what I need next? If you were the gardener, what would you do with me? Or do I need a sharp pruning knife and some frosty weather and some gray skies and some heavy rain. How could we know what we really need? We know not what to pray for as we ought, says the holy apostle. But we do know this, that God in his grace and wisdom causes all things to work together for good, to this great purpose, that one day our character will be conformed to the image of his son. And God who controls our circumstances has guaranteed that he will so control them to this end and eventually make them to work to the good, that we be like to the Lord Jesus. Only we're not, uh, automatons, are we? We're not robots. We're not even wooden branches of a vine. We can come and discuss with the Father how the grape growing is getting on in our lives. There is something more still, another lesson to be learned, and a more difficult one maybe. For holiness does not merely consist in growing the grapes of Christian character in our lives. There is a further responsibility we must, in this hostile world, witness to the Lord Jesus. We do not all have to witness in the same way, but according to the different gifts that the Holy Spirit gives us, the Lord will expect us to witness explicitly to the Lord Jesus. Not just to behave in a nice Christian way, but to be ready, as Peter says, to give reason of the hope that is within us. So the next door neighbor knows, or the woman down the street, or the woman that works in the office as your fellow nurse in hospital, or whatever it is, eventually hears from you what is your secret, hears from you your testimony to the Lord Jesus. That too is a part of holiness. Only here, when the Lord Jesus began to speak of our witness, once more he made clear that he's not just looking to us to do the witnessing, trying in our feeble way to witness to the Lord. The Lord himself has made provision for it. And he says, I shall send another comforter. I will send him unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father. He shall bear witness of me. It is the Holy Spirit who carries the tremendous responsibility in this world of witness to the Lord Jesus. And good friends, he's been here some centuries, hasn't he? Getting on for two thousand years now since the Holy Spirit has been around, and what magnificent things he's done, hasn't he? How capable he is. Just you think of the whole array of men and women that he has raised up in the centuries to witness to the Lord Jesus. What powerful men and women, from Dorcas to Priscilla, uh, to Paul, to Peter, to Luther, to, uh, uh, all the others you can think of, right down to our present time, men and women in all kinds of callings that have borne their witness to the Lord Jesus. To us, our Lord offers the opportunity. If the Holy Spirit himself is in charge of the witness, we can be his junior counsel, as they say in the law courts in Britain. He's the chief advocate. He conducts the case. But now and again, the blessed Holy Spirit will call on you to be junior counsel in defense of the Lord Jesus and stand up on your hind legs and speak. Yes. And what a privilege that is. Only now, of course, it will be a battle. So that I must point out to you some of the emphases in these final chapters. In the end of chapter fourteen, the Lord Jesus spoke to his apostles just as they were leaving the upper room, and he said, I will no more speak much with you, for the prince of the world comes, and he has nothing in me. Now, at the end of chapter sixteen, he tells his apostles thus: In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. And through his prayer to his father in chapter seventeen, constantly he prays with his father to keep his people from the evil one. He explains to the father that you've given me these men and women out of the world. Father, he says, they are not of the world, but pray, Father, keep them from the evil one, from the prince of this world. So that now, as we hear ourselves called upon to witness in this world, we should be starry-eyed innocents if we didn't remember that this is going to be a battle, and a very severe battle. As we try to witness to the blessed Lord Jesus, we shall experience what the Lord Jesus says, that in the world, you will have opposition, you will have tribulation. It is not merely that there's a godless world out there, it is behind that world. There is the prince of this world, whose dastardly determination it is to stifle your witness for the world. Blot out the name of Jesus from it if he possibly can. He has some very sophisticated tools that he uses. And I suppose it is not skulduggery and murder and drugs that are his main weapons. They touch some people, of course, but they wouldn't touch the likes of you and me, would they, I suppose? But he's got more cunning weapons. He has the weapon of what is called worldliness, by which he entangles us and stifles and compromises our witness. What then is worldliness, you say? The worldliness that we shall have to fight as we witness for the Lord. Well, according to John's first epistle, and more of that on another occasion in another place, but John will tell us that there are three bits to worldliness. There is the attractive side of this world. One John chapter two. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust, uh, uh, uh, uh, of the flesh, and the pride of life is not of the Father. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. So this is one side of worldliness. It's the, the thing that the Satan uses, the world in all its attractiveness, its apparent loveliness. And Satan will dangle it in front of our hearts so that our hearts go after it. And he'll use not just the nasty things, but the lovely things of this world to draw our hearts away from the Father. I fear there will be more people damned in the lake of fire through the lovely things of life than through the nasty things. You see, the cunningness of Satan is this, that many of these lovely things are not necessarily evil in themselves. They are lovely. And there's the cleverness, the devilish cleverness of it. That Satan will so get those lovely things to fill our hearts that in the end they become a goal in themselves and draw our affections away from the Father. Here's a rich gentleman, and his boy comes twenty young years of age, you'll see, and Father decides he's going to mark the occasion when the lad has comes of age and give him a superlative present. So, with great pride, he comes out of the great stately home onto the lawn and says to the boy, come and see what I've got for you as your birthday present. And there standing, it's a beautiful small jet aeroplane. There you are, my son, proud of you, Twenty one years old, carrying a family name. I'd like to give you this aeroplane. And the boy said, what? Climbs into the sea, starts the old engine going, revs up, leans out and says, bye-bye, dad. Flies off into the sun and never comes back again. What do you suppose the father will think of the aeroplane? Nothing wrong in aeroplanes themselves, but it'll curse the day that boy ever got that aeroplane if the aeroplane's going to take him away, so that he never comes back again. God has a difficulty in being kind sometimes, doesn't he? I used to live amongst the miners in northeast England, and the women used to tell me of the terrible days during the Depression when they scarce had enough food to eat, and they had to get down on their knees every day in order to ask the Lord for food to feed the children with. And they would say to me, David, in those days we lived very near the Lord, you know. And then they'd say, it's different now. Now we're prosperous. Now we have cars, homes, televisions, everything we need. Somehow, we're not as near the Lord as we used to be. The lovely things of life have a way, if we're not careful, of taking us away from the Father. That's worldliness. When we not only enjoy the things that God has given us, but they become our very goal in life. Our ambition is, from Monday morning to Saturday night, to have the goodest car as the next door neighbor, as good as house as the next door neighbor. My son has got to, at any cost, get the best degree he can, the best job, the best ocean-going yacht, be in the best golf club. And it becomes a goal for the satisfying of which we pay any price, including the love of the Father. Or there's that other side of the world, when the world is hostile to us. Marvel not if the world hates you, it hated me before it hated you, says our Lord. Witnessing to a world that is hostile can be a very daunting thing, can it not? If we lived in Eastern Europe as they used to, we should know more what that meant. And then there's the other side of the world, says John. That is, the world acts as a sheer dead weight that makes it difficult to do the commandments of the Lord. It's not necessary that the world is against us, they couldn't care less, but the world isn't organized to make it easy to keep the commandments of the Lord. I expect you've noticed that. And if you set your heart to do the commandments of the Lord, you'll find the world outside like a ton weight, which you'll have to overcome so that you can do the commandments of the Lord. That is the world. The Bible gives us another illustration of what the world is. Allow me to remind you of it. In the book of Exodus, we read the story of Moses delivering Israel from Egypt, don't we? The story how Pharaoh took the Israelites and made slaves of them. From morning to night they had to work, and that's all they knew. Working, sleeping, eating, working, sleeping, eating, eating, sleeping, working, a little game of football, and that's all they had. And God sent Moses into that Egypt to deliver his people from this terrible taskmaster who made their life such a terrible prison house. And he went into Pharaoh and he said, in the name of God, Pharaoh, let my people go. For the God of our fathers appeared to me and has pointed out that he has a great inheritance ahead for my people Israel. Let my people go that they may worship me and enter their great inheritance. Pharaoh said, don't talk like a fool, Moses. What do you say? God of your fathers appeared to Abraham or somebody? Who was he? You don't suppose we're going to believe that stuff, do you? And your f- your Israelites have got, have they? Oh, how interesting. They've got an inheritance out there somewhere, did you say? Out in the blue somewhere across the desert, flowing with milk and honey. Get that nonsense out of your head, do, man. There isn't any inheritance, or at least there's not going to be for you. Get this into your head, that as far as you and the Israelites are concerned, life is eating, sleeping, working, working, sleeping, eating, eating, sleeping, working. That's what it is. All this talk of inheritance is moonshine, Moses. And if ever Moses was going to get Israel out of that bondage, he had to convince them, didn't he? One, that he had been sent from God into Egypt to deliver them, and two, that there was an inheritance out there in the blue to go to, in spite of all that Pharaoh said. And he'd got to get them to believe the living God and to believe those great promises made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And because they believed them and believed in the great inheritance ahead, they were prepared to defy Pharaoh and leave Egypt. Ladies, you know the great prince of Egypt, Pharaoh, has a greater prince. That is his satanic majesty. He tells the same old lie to our modern generation as he spoke to the Israelites, doesn't he? We should be innocent if we forgot it. I tell you what they're telling your boy in the physics department of your university. I can tell you what they're telling him, and more often it's the theologians, the modern theologians are telling him too. They're telling your young folks that there is no heaven. That's a childish dream. There's no inheritance. This world is all there is. If you like to pre- sing a few Sunday school stories to them, so you may, but that's all Red Riding Hood stuff. What your young folks are have drilled into them is that this world is all there is. There's no God. There's no heaven. Life is eating, drinking, sleeping, working, with a career somewhere so you get a Cadillac and a nice home, and your children, and they grow up eating, drinking, sleeping, working. What? What is that? How will you break that kind of worldliness? The more we move to the end of this age, the more will the battle be on. And we shall have to stand up and be counted. That this world is not all there is. There is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us. How shall we preach it, and with what power shall we convict people that that is true? First of all, we want to get it straight. At the end of John sixteen, our Lord briefed his apostles the last time before he went to Calvary. Now, gentlemen, he said, have you really got it in your heart? What is this whole business about? Let me sum it up for you. He says, I came forth from the Father and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and I go to the Father. Now, have you got it, gentlemen, says he? Have you really got it? There's more in Christianity than just being nice to your neighbor next door, you know. Have you got it, gentlemen? The battle turns on this, that there is a heaven. I have come down from that other world into this world. And now I'm going to leave this world and go back to the Father, for there is that other world. That's the issue at stake. You believe it? Oh, ah, said Peter, ah, ah, ah, what do you, I mean, we've always believed that. Oh Lord, he said, yeah, we course we believe it. Do you really believe it, said Christ. It won't be a few hours now, Peter, before you'll see me hanging on a tree. And what will you do then? You'll run away home to your own little comfortable home to get out of the battle. That's what you'll do. This then is the battle. What evidence shall we bring that will convince people's heart that this other world is real? There's the Lord Jesus now first get it, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit, and when he has come, he will convict the world of sin, of righteousness and judgment. Of sin, not simply because they murder their mother-in-laws and things like that, they're bad things to do, I gather, but the Lord wasn't thinking of that. Of sin because they believe not on me, the cardinal sin. The world's refusal to believe that Jesus is God's son come down from heaven. When the Holy Spirit has come, he will convict them of this sin in not believing on me, and he will convict them of righteousness, meaning what? Well, simply that Jesus is right and the world is wrong. For that Jesus is risen and gone into heaven, which proves that he is right. He is the Son of God, as he said he was. And sadly, he will witness to the fact that the prince of this world has been judged. For you see, if Jesus is risen from the dead, that spells coming judgment, doesn't it? As Paul put it to the Athenians, there's coming a day in which God will judge this world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof God has given assurance to all men in that he has raised him from the dead. Spells coming judgment. This is our message to the world, isn't it? To call upon men and women, therefore, to repent. The situation is urgent, says Paul. God now commands all men everywhere to repent, because that day is fast coming. We must be prepared to add our voice to the Holy Spirit and let him use us in witnessing to the blessed Lord Jesus, now in glory and soon coming again. And then the Holy Spirit has a delightful witness to the believer, hasn't he? Says the Lord Jesus, he shall glorify me, for he shall take of the things of mine and show them to you. Now, now, says our Lord, let me explain. When I says that, uh, the Holy Spirit will take of the things that are mine and show them to you, I- I- what I mean is this, you see, all that the Father has is mine. That's what I meant when I said the Holy Spirit shall take of, of my things and show them to you. Just you imagine it, here was standing a man whom the world thought was merely the carpenter of Nazareth, and he's telling the apostles that everything the Father has is his. And when the Holy Spirit in- inspired the apostles to write their epistles, he did just what the Lord said, didn't he? He began to open our eyes to who Jesus is. Listen to Paul. We have redemption through his blood, who is the firstborn of all creation, for in him were all things made. The great galaxies that roam in space, he made them. The marvels of the atom, the marvels of electromagnetism, the marvels of the strong atomic force and the weak atomic force. The Lord Jesus made them. And we have the answer, don't we, to the puzzles of physics of what this universe is all about. It's his universe. And dear mother, don't be content just to treat your boy, teach your boy little Red Riding Hood. To go out to face a world where the very existence of God is denied. Where sometimes modern physics and modern engineering and modern chemistry and modern biology and modern psychology are used to try and prove to young folks that there is no God. That's where the battle is. We need to gear our church meetings, we need to gear our Bible classes to preparing our young folks to go out into that world. And I who have seen generations of young people come up to secular universities and seen those that have stood gloriously for the Lord and have admired them, and seen others who have gone under. I shudder at some church programs that merely entertain their young folks, don't equip them to deal with this modern, sophisticated, grown up, but often atheistic world. It's a battle. We have to let ourselves be used by the Holy Spirit, don't we? To instill into young folks the glory and the grandeur of who Jesus Christ is. Ask your teenager whether he thinks Jesus Christ knows about physics and see what answer you'll get. Of course he knows about physics. Very Lord of the universe, is he not? And oh, how lovely when the Holy Spirit takes the things that are Christ and shows them to us. Our Lord Jesus, son of Mary, the carpenter from Nazareth who died on a tree, the architect of the whole universe, the one who shall be the heir of the whole universe, in whom and for whom all things were made. Let that be then the Holy Spirit's major witness in the church to the person of the Lord Jesus, that he is the heir of all things and the son of the Father. You'll find what begins to happen is this, that as the Holy Spirit begins to convince us of who Jesus is, and we see his glory, the attractiveness of the world begins to disappear. Now we come finally to the prayer of the Lord Jesus. For he had taught his people the lessons of holiness. Now he must leave them. But in leaving them, he's not abandoning them, is he? No, he's putting himself aside, he says, so that he might intercede for them. What a lovely observation. For the last method the Lord has of getting us home to glory is this: he is in process of praying us home to glory. And day by day, as I go about my task, he's praying for me, that I come through the next steps on the way of holiness. And as night comes and I lay my weary head upon the pillow and can learn nothing more, the living Son of God prays for me. Praise. Praise me through the next bit, and will pray me the whole way home to glory. Listen to him discussing your case with the Father. He says, I don't pray merely for these apostles, I pray for those that shall believe on me through their word. He's discussing you now with the Father. He says, Father, you know, I have made known to them thy name. Now glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world was. You'll see, when Moses went to Egypt, to get the folks out of Egypt, he had to do two things, didn't he? He had to convince them that they had a past. Life didn't begin in Egypt. He said, you know, centuries ago, God appeared to your parents, your great patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac, and he announced he had a purpose for you, Israelites, that one day, after you had been in Egypt, he would bring you out and bring you to your inheritance. Long before you came into Egypt, God had a purpose for you. And now he's going to fulfill you, fill it and take you there. Listen to the Lord Jesus discussing your case. Father, he says, I, I made known your name to them, and I want you to glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world was. And we begin to see the wonder. Long before you came into this world, friend. Long before there was any world for you to be on. God had purposes of grace for you. All the wonder of it. And the scheme was that you would come temporarily into this temporary planet, discover the Savior, be related to him, and when life's preparation is finished, be taken off this plan- temporary planet to the great inheritance ahead. Oh, what a wonder you are. Who have been the subject of God's scheming and purposes and planning from all eternity past. You believe it? This world isn't all there is, you know. When life's planning is done, when one life's experience is done, there is an inheritance way beyond that was always the goal. Father, says he, I've spoken your name, and now they've got it in their hearts. They know I came forth from you, and they've discovered there is a world out there. And I've come out of that world, and I've met them. That's marvelous, he said. Now, Father, I want them, I want you to keep them all the way through so they don't lose their way and wander off beam. But there's one other thing I should like, he says. Father, I will that they whom thou has given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. For you loved me before the very foundation of the world. And now he's thinking of the end, isn't he? The great purpose of God in the eternity past, now brought finally to fruition, and the Lord Jesus comes and takes you home to glory, and you discover who Jesus Christ really is. Just imagine the infinite love and of unlimited God, and God has been planning that eternity from all the ages. You loved me before the foundation of the world. Oh, God has had time enough to plan for that great event, and just you imagine what God has planned in his love for his son. Almighty love and almighty power and almighty wisdom convi- combined to plan the great eternity for God's own son. And here is the Lord Jesus praying right this minute, praying that the Father one day will come and take you home so that you can see how much God loved his son, and therefore how much God loves you. Antidote to worldliness. The Holy Spirit makes the other world real, fires our hearts and fires our imaginations with the reality and the glory of the world from which Christ came and to which he has gone, and to which as a goal he proposes to take us. As the Holy Spirit therefore witnesses to us, God give us the great privilege that he will deign to use us in our little way to convey that great vision of glory to our contemporaries, that they may not be lost in a perishing world, but may lay hold of eternal life and end up in glory. For Christ's name's sake, amen.