Episode Transcript
Would you turn to the scripture that has been the theme of this time together? In Revelation chapter twelve and from verse ten.
And I heard a great voice in heaven saying, now is come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony. And they loved not their life, even unto death.
I would like to add to this in the Gospel of Mark and chapter eight.
The Gospel of Mark, chapter eight, from verse 27.
And Jesus went forth and his disciples into the village of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way, he asked his disciples, saying unto them, who do men say that I am? And they told him, saying, John the Baptist, and others, Elijah, but others, one of the prophets.
And he asked them, but who say ye that I am? Peter answereth and saith unto him, thou art the Christ, the Messiah. And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days, rise again. And he spake the saying openly. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him. But he, turning about and seeing the disciples, rebuked Peter, and said, get thee behind me, Satan, for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men. And he called unto him, the multitude, with his disciples, and said unto them, if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it. And whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s shall save it. For what doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what should a man give in exchange for his life?
Should we just have a further word of prayer? Beloved Lord, we thank you that you are here present with us this evening. Lord, we have been worshipping you, praising you and thanking you, giving some expression to the adoration of our hearts for you. Lord, we now ask that you will fill this time with your power and anointing. Thank you, Lord, that you have won for us all this evening an anointing of grace and power through the finished work of our Lord Jesus at Calvary. And you have made that anointing in its fullest extent available to us in the person of the Holy Spirit. We simply, this evening, bow before you. We are nothing in ourselves, Lord, but we thank you that you are everything and all we need is in you. Meet us, Lord, this evening. By your Spirit, confront us, challenge us, meet us, Lord. Where there is unreality, bring reality. Where there is sham, bring the essence, the substance. Lord, bring us into a new, deeper experience of your so-great salvation and of everything that our Lord Jesus so dearly won for us. Into that anointing grace and power we stand now by faith, both for the speaking of your word, for the translating of your word, and for the hearing of it. And we shall be careful, Lord, to give you all the praise and all the glory for answering this our prayer. We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, I have no doubt that you know that the theme of this conference has been “They Overcame”. And my responsibility in it is the last part of the three constituents in overcoming, “and they overcame Satan because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life even unto death.”
Now my responsibility has been the last, the third of those constituents in overcoming, “and they loved not their life, even unto death.” There can be no overcoming of any sort on any level without the losing of our self-life.
Our self-life is the biggest single problem in Christian circles, whether it is in the building of the church, whether it is in the work of God, whether it is in the individual believer's life. If you and I are not prepared to lose our self-life for his sake and the gospel’s, we get no further than conversion. We remain converted, we remain as believers, born of the spirit of God. But no growth, no progress, no advance, nothing.
The fulness that the word of God speaks about, that “in the Lord Jesus was all the fulness of the Godhead in bodily form, and in him you are made complete,” remains a kind of motto without any meaning, without any reality, without any experience, something we believe in, but something that is a fairy tale. The unsearchable riches of Christ, of which the apostle Paul speaks, remains another motto, another sentence of scripture, without any real meaning. We have never discovered the riches, we have never experienced the riches when we have an intact self-life, unbroken, uncrucified, unyielding to the Lordship of Jesus.
It is so simple, so much is ours. God has given us not things — he has given us his Son, and in his Son he has given us everything, unsearchable riches, every blessing, it says in Ephesians chapter one, in heavenly places, not just a few, but innumerable blessings in him. Every need, in Colossians, the apostle Paul by the spirit speaks of it, every need of ours supplied according to God’s riches in the Messiah Jesus. Fathomless fullness, unsearchable riches, every blessing, every need met. But it all remains in the category of doctrine unless you and I are prepared to lay down our self-life.
The problem is our self-life. Now, there is not a single person here, no matter what your ethnic group is, there is not a single person here this evening who has not got a self-life. In that body of yours sitting in that chair is an uncrucified, unyielding, unbroken self-life. Maybe in some, others have already yielded to the Lord. They’ve allowed the Holy Spirit to do his work in them and have moved beyond that stage. But for many of us, we have a self-life. That self-life is so powerful it will not allow Jesus to be Lord. Saviour, yes. We’re willing for him to save us, willing for him to bring us to a new birth, willing for us to be brought into the kingdom of God. But beyond that, no. We must be in charge of our own destiny. We must be in charge of the way we do things. We must be in charge of our own lives. It is the self-life. That’s the problem. Sins can be dealt with. As I said last night, there's no problem there. We can confess our sin and he's faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But the self-life, that lies at the root of sin. I first, I last, and I between. My life begins with I, ends with I, and everything in it is an expression of me. That's the self-life.
It's no good saying nice things. That self-life of yours will destroy you. It will see to it that you do not grow in the Lord, that you never entered into all that he died for you to experience. It will make sure that your life is poverty stricken, entangled with sin, with besetting sin and a 1001 other things.
So simple is this matter. They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, the finished work of the Lord Jesus. They overcame him, Satan, because of the word of their testimony. And they loved not their lives, even unto death. Not just the question of martyrdom. It may include that. But more than that, if you are not prepared to lose your self-life, to lay it down, you will never be a martyr. Given a chance, you will squirm out of it. You will somehow or other, save and preserve your life. This is the challenge. Not of the apostle Paul merely, nor of the other apostles, but of the Lord Jesus himself.
It is very interesting, when we look at Mark’s gospel, he records how Jesus asked them, “Who do men say that I am?” And they said, “This one and that one and the other.” “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”. And from then, from that point, for the first time, Jesus began to speak about his crucifixion, his death, his burial and his resurrection. He had not spoken about it before. It therefore came as a great shock to the twelve disciples. It is interesting, just in passing, it is interesting that the Lord Jesus never spoke about his death without coupling it with his resurrection.
Death in itself was not the end, it was resurrection. And that is exactly the same with you. You might think I'm like a Jeremiah sort of keeping on about this self-life being broken and yielded and crucified and saying, can't we have something a bit more cheerful than this kind of message? I mean its very heavy and very dark and "holiness," you know, wearing black, looking dark, looking miserable, afflicted all the time. We must be like that if we're going to be real Christians. No, no, no, that's not what we're talking about. Every time the word of God speaks about being crucified with Christ, it links it with eternal life or with the fullness of life. Listen to this, the apostle Paul's testimony. "I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live." Oh, he's back again.
He just said he was crucified. "I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live." You're back. "And the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." If you count up there, you will find one crucifixion and life, life, life life, life. Live. Life. Christ liveth in me. It's all there. That's what it's all about. God doesn't require you to lay down your self-life to be some miserable morbid believer that goes round in circles all the time thinking about only of his broken self. Not at all.
The Lord's whole purpose is that you shall be filled with resurrection power and resurrection life and the fruit that comes from resurrection life. That's the purpose of the Lord. He wants to swallow up death with life, with the fullness of life.
Thats why the Lord Jesus challenges us in this way. Now Peter was never afraid. You all know that. Of course, it is interesting that he only acted as spokesman to all the rest. It says it once or twice in the, in the gospels, the synoptic gospels, it says, and they all said the same. But it was Peter who always put his foot in it. He always was the first to speak out, be straight, say exactly what he thought. And it says he took Jesus aside. Took him by the arm, I imagine, stopped him from walking. You can't do this. It's impossible for the Messiah to be crucified.
That's not what were looking for.
You cannot do it. And Jesus, looking him straight in the eye said, Get thee behind me, Satan.
For you do not mind the things of God, but the things of this world. I want to just say something very simple here. If I said something to you and then I looked straight into your eye when you came with a problem to me and were trying to sort of get out of this thing, and I said, looking straight in your eye, Get behind me, Satan. You would go straight to the brothers here on the front row and say, never ask that brother to come back and speak again. Do you know what he said to me? He looked straight in my eyes and said, Get behind me, Satan. I mean, I've never been called Satan in my life. I'm a child of God. I'm a convert. I belong to the Lord. I'm born again. I never had anyone call me Satan.
If he'd only said, Satan is troubling your mind, I could have accepted it. If he'd said, you're thinking negative thoughts, I would have accepted it.
But to look into my eyes and say, Get behind me, Satan. It's too much. How could he do such a thing? I have a reputation. I have rights. It's not right for someone to go around calling me Satan. I don't think I am like Satan. So important was this matter that Jesus called the whole multitude together with the disciples.
No longer was it just the twelve disciples. No longer was it just within the circle of those that were close to him. Now he brought the whole multitude together and then he said, if any man follow me, let him deny himself. Take up his cross and follow me. And then he said, for whosoever would save his life shall lose it.
And whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. It’s interesting because here the Lord has issued a challenge. It is all to do with the gospel. It is nothing deeper teaching. It is not something you younger ones can put off a little for a few years and enjoy yourselves down here, especially your self-life while you're young and happy. There will come a time when you'll have to start living properly. And then when that happens, that's the time to start thinking about giving up your self-life. That's not it. Here Jesus was saying, this is something to do with the gospel. This is something to do with the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It was as if the Lord Jesus was saying, you see, by that death and by that burial and by that resurrection, I have saved you with a tremendous salvation. But you will never know its outworking,
you will never know the full power of it, the fullness of it, if you hold on to that self-life. It is utter simplicity. Listen, two words. Follow. Follow me. Follow me. In between those two words comes this: deny yourself, take up your cross. In other words, what the Lord Jesus was saying to the whole crowd was simply this, if you want to follow me, there is no other way than the denial of your self-life and the taking up of the cross. It couldn't be simpler. If any man follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. So there is no following of the Lord Jesus. You can be a convert and like Lot's wife, become a memorial to something that happened. Dead. No growth, no advance, no progress, no fullness. Following the Lord speaks of progress. Following the Lord speaks of advance. Following the Lord speaks of service. Following the Lord speaks of his work. There can be no following of the Lord without the losing of your self-life. Now let me come back again. I am sorry to speak so boldly, but this is the theme that was given to me. I can't get away from it. I would prefer to speak about the blood of the Lamb or the word of our testimony because its much more positive. But the brothers gave me this constituent in overcoming and I have to keep to it, can't get away from it.
So if you don't die, I shall be very unhappy. Listen again. If any man follow me and follow me, what is there between those two words? Follow. Listen carefully. Deny himself. We live in a world of rights. This word is a very interesting word in the Greek.
It means renounce yourself, disavow yourself, disown yourself, give up all right to yourself. Very interesting.
We live in a world of rights. Everything has rights. Trees have rights, plants have rights. Flowers have rights. Animals have rights. Birds have rights. Fish have rights. Women have rights. Only men have not rights in this world.
All rights. Everything is rights. National rights. Political rights. Ethnic rights. Rights. We are mollycoddled with this word rights, our rights. I'm not going to have anyone walk over me. I'm not going to have anyone somehow control me or be lord over me, master over me. I have rights. But Jesus said, there is no way that the fullness of your salvation can become your experience without giving up right to yourself. What did he mean? He meant that he has to be Lord of your self. Until you yield the lordship to him, the mastery to him, there is a blockage in your spiritual life.
You can only advance in knowledge, you can only advance in teaching. You can only advance in those kind of academic things, mentally appreciated matters.
You cannot get to know him. You cannot come to know him deeply, more fully. Deny yourself. And then again, here is yet another matter. Take up his cross. Oh, my word. What we've done in Christian circles over this is incredible. Some people's rheumatic pains are their cross. Other people have migraines. That's their cross. Other people have something else. Some people have a husband. They say that's their cross. Some have wives, they say that's their cross. Some have children, that's their cross. It's incredible to me how we have taken this word of our Lord Jesus and devalued it of its meaning. The cross is the cross. Its not just an ache here or a pain there, or a difficult person or a difficult relationship. It may lead you to the cross. The cross is the cross. Jesus was crucified on that tree. How can we devalue such a thing? To be in an ache or a pain or a headache or a difficult relationship, its impossible to do it. His cross. From much historical research, archaeological as well, we have discovered that, generally speaking, certainly in Jerusalem, the stake of the cross was generally in place. The persons sentenced to death carried a notice round their neck with their crimes written on it, and they bore on their shoulders the cross beam, and they were led to the place of crucifixion. This is what the apostle Paul said when in II Corinthians chapter one, he spoke of having the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. It's another wonderful picture of death — life. God, who raiseth the dead. Where there is a death, there will be a resurrection. Where you're prepared to lay down your self-life, you will receive it again under new management. You lose your self-life to save it, and the poison in it has been taken out. Think, I said last night about the cross, that some people have this kind of ecstatic, or think of it as an ecstatic experience. Anyone who's had an ecstatic experience of being crucified with Christ, I can tell you straight away, it's demonic. Nothing to do with reality. To be crucified with Christ is exactly what it says. You are nailed to the cross. In him, you died. He died as you. And when that becomes a living experience and reality, it is the gateway to resurrection life and resurrection power. I wish I could make it more clear than the way I'm saying it, but it is very simple, really, because if you note carefully when you receive the sentence of death, Paul said, we have received the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raiseth the dead. We should not trust in ourselves. You receive the sentence of death, and you're on your way to the crucifixion place. So once you see this matter and are prepared to yield your self-life, the mastery and ownership of your self-life, to the Lord Jesus, once you're prepared, the Holy Spirit will lead you to the place of crucifixion.
In practice, it can be anything. It can be at work. It can be at home. It can be in the church. But it will happen. As sure as I stand here tonight, it will happen. You have accepted a sentence of death upon your self-life. And in that moment, the journey begins. Think for a moment. This word, as I said yesterday evening, translated in my American Standard Version as life. There are two words for life in Greek. One that we use for spiritual life, for eternal life, and the other we use for soul life or self-life. This word here is all to do with your self-life. If any man follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever would save his soul life, his self-life, will lose it. And whosoever will lose his self-life, for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall find it. You lose it to find it. It is amazing what the Lord can give back to you once it is under his management. Some things never come back.
When I was a little boy, I had an obsession with scissors. It must seem very strange to all of you seeing me here this evening, to think that I had an obsession with scissors. But I loved scissors. Kitchen scissors, my mother's cosmetic scissors, shears for cutting plants. And I was all the time trying to get hold of scissors. I don't know why, I have no idea. But I would toddle around with these scissors, clasped my bosom as if they were priceless. Even when I could get hold of shears, I kept them so close to myself, as if they were gold, made of gold. And my mother would go round saying, (she called me Lala) Lala, she said, give me those scissors. And I would say, No. And she, would say, Give me those scissors! No. And she would pull them out. I thought she was a witch. I thought to myself, my mother is an absolute witch, that she should take something. Why, what's wrong with scissors? Scissors? They're everywhere in the house. That did not mean, my mother knew it very well, I would never use scissors or never use shears. What it meant was that it could destroy or injure me at that stage in my life. And that's what happens with the Lord when we lose our self-life. I remember for years I never went to a cinema, a movie house. I never saw a film. I even thought television was a little bit sort of spicy and a little bit not not one for habit and so on. It's amazing.
Why did the Lord say to me so early in my Christian life, give me this?
I gave it to him. My sister also. My mother used to say, I have a monk and a nun as son and daughter.
They are so pure. Little did she know. But still, that's what she thought. The fact of the matter was, of course we grew up. The Lord gave us back certain things. Some things he never gives back, some things he does. Its a question of growth. But the great point is, there is one who died for you, who loved you so much that he died for you. And in dying for you, he wants everything that's good for you, everything that will be a blessing, everything that will be spiritually useful. He wants everything for you. And when he asks you to give up certain things, a relationship, a friendship, something in the world or something else, I don't know what. It could be anything. It is because he is testing you as to whether he really is Lord. Dear folks, this challenge of the Lord Jesus is quite extraordinary because then he goes on as if it is just the gospel. What shall a man give in exchange for his soul, for his life? What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? This challenge of the Lord, it is tremendous. No person can follow the Lord Jesus very far before in his or her path stands the cross, bloody, inescapable.
If you're not prepared for it, you remain a convert and never become a disciple. I mentioned a little about Peter because Peter is the great illustration of this. Peter had a massive self-life.
He wasn't afraid of it. He never hid it. He was never one of these timid, modest people. He said exactly what he thought. He was a rugged fisherman.
And he said exactly what he thought. His Christianity was self manufactured. He had walked with the Lord for three years and he thought that he was the chief disciple and felt that his position was quite clear. He was the one who put into words what the others thought. It was a self manufactured Christianity. When Jesus looked into his eyes and said, get thee behind me, Satan, actually he was saying the truth.
You see in your self-life, in my self-life is the poison of hell, the poison of Satan, the poison of the serpent. It is right there in your self-life. That's the fall.
That's the result of the fall.
That poison in you and me will destroy fellowship with other believers, cause division, cause faction.
It will make me difficult to be built with other believers.
That kind of poison within my self-life destroys marriages, wrecks families, brings all kinds of problems into being. Do you remember when Moses met the Lord in the burning bush? That bush that burnt with fire. It was something Moses had seen many times. Like thorn bushes dried up, they suddenly, spontaneously ignited by the sun. When I did guard duty in the RAF, we saw it again and again. And I would say to the Bedouin who was with me, what's that, that flash of fire? They would say, Oh, it's a thorn bush. Moses saw this bush burning and said, it's a thorn bush gone up in fire. A few minutes later he looked back and he thought, still burning. Half an hour later he looked back and said, good gracious, that bush is still burning. One hour later he said I have to go across and see this thing. What kind of thorn bush could this be that it burned for an hour? And when he came near to the thorn bush, God spoke from the ground up to Moses and said, take your shoes off your feet, the ground whereon you stand is holy. Then the Lord spoke to him, revealing his great name, the I Am that I Am. And he told Moses that he had to go to Pharaoh and Moses said, I stutter. Which was of course nonsense. That's self-life for you. He said, I stutter. And the Lord said to him, with great humour, then take Aaron, he'll do the speaking. And Aaron never did the speaking. Moses did all the speaking, but the Lord was not going to stand and argue. Then he said to Moses, when Moses said, show me, give me a sign. And the Lord said, what is that in your hand? He said, oh, that's my rod. What do you do with that rod? Well I sort of prod the sheep and goats and camels. I use it sometimes to fawd off wild animals that attack us in the night. And its really a symbol of authority. Then the Lord said, throw it on the ground. And in that moment it became a sand viper. In Hebrew it's a sand viper. That is the most venomous snake in the Sinai desert. And Moses fled. He knew, he'd been 40 years shepherding sheep, goats, camels and donkeys. He knew very well what a sand viper was. He fled. It was a terrible shock to him. You mean that rod I've had beside me when I go to sleep has got a sand viper right inside of it? How is that possible? And then the Lord said, Moses, come back, take up that sand viper by the tail. And I can imagine Moses looking at the Lord and saying, did I hear you rightly? I'm getting old at 80. I think you mean — take him up by the tail. Lord, we all know you never take a sand viper up by the tail. But he took him up by the tail and it became a rod. That rod was the rod that split the Red Sea. That rod brought water out of rock. That rod did miracle after miracle after miracle before Pharaoh and right through the life of Moses, 40 years before he went to be with the Lord. What is the picture? Very simple. That rod was the symbol of his divine service. That rod was the symbol of his authority, of his very being, of the person he was. There was a serpent in it with the venom and poison of a serpent, and he didn't know it. Dear child of God, in your self-life, unyielded, unbroken, uncrucified, there is the serpent. It is Satan with the poison of Satan. That poison will destroy your fellowship. That poison will destroy your ministry. That poison will destroy your service. That poison will destroy your marriage. That poison will destroy your home, that poison, unless you let it go. It was faith that enabled Moses to pick up the serpent by the tail and it became the rod. Dear, dear Peter, come back to Peter. The Lord Jesus said, get behind me, Satan. The Lord Jesus knew exactly what he was saying. There was within the self manufactured
Christian life, I put it in those words, of Peter, the poison of the serpent. He even tried to stop Jesus from going to the cross. Yes, he wanted the best for Jesus. That's why in one of the other gospels, this same passage is recorded with this extra statement,
You are a stumbling block to me. Get thee behind me, Satan. Do you think that you could be a stumbling block to the Lord? Do you think that in some way or other the very thing you wish and he wishes you could be the destroyer of? I knew a certain lady, I won't say where, lest your minds get to work, but on this North American continent. And she never talked about anything else but about the church. But we all knew she was the destroyer of any possibility of the church in the place where she lived. She was taken up with it completely. Could give you a whole message on it. But the poison was there. What did Jesus say? He said this, Simon, Simon, Satan hath obtained you by request that he might sift you as wheat. It was that incredible time when Jesus was betrayed and they all fled. And Peter, the Lord said, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times. And Peter with all his self manufactured Christianity, he had denied the Lord with oaths three times before even a little slip of a serving girl, a waitress. In that moment the Holy Spirit swept away everything on the surface in Peter's life like a nuclear explosion. It blasted everything to nothing. And Peter wept. And then Jesus, and this is the amazing thing, Jesus never said a word. He just looked. And in that moment Peter's eyes and the eyes of Jesus met, he was restored. This time another kind of life. He had lost his self-life and found it. Now Peter could become the chief of the apostles. It was Peter who ushered in the coming, as it were, of the Holy Spirit with those wonderful words that we have in Acts 2. It was Peter who ushered in the Samaritans to the kingdom of God. It was Peter who ushered in the Gentiles in that drawing room in Caesarea filled with Gentile officers and their men. Peter, it cost him everything. Satan was the agent. I remember C. T. Studd once said, and got a lot of trouble over it from Christians, Satan is God's greatest servant. For everything he ever does, God uses it to glory. Satan sifted him. Satan got the chaff. God got the wheat. Now dear folks, we must finish. In spite of being told that we've ended more early on some nights and being allowed to go our full length. The fact of the matter is this: you and I have a self-life. What are you going to do about it? You young people, what are you going to do about this self-life? It'll be your ruination if you don't do something.
Somewhere or other you've got to face up to this whole question. You can't avoid it. You can't pretend it's not there, ignore it as if somehow or other by so doing you will get out of this problem. You cannot get out of it. You cannot follow the Lord Jesus unless you disavow and disown your self-life and take up his cross. We want reality, don't we? We want above everything else to be in a real genuine experience of the Lord Jesus. You can never be too young. Just one word to you young ones. I was twelve and a half when I gave myself to the Lord. It was a few years later, I was devoted to the Lord, but it was two, three years later that I said to the Lord, Here are the keys to my life. Take it and do with me what you will. You can never start too early. If you will only start right now. God will take in hand your education, your training, your discipline, till you become a disciple. And, of course, we never end being disciples. We are always learning more, always experiencing more of the Lord. If any man follow me, let him deny himself. Give up all right to himself. Take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever shall lose his self-life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall find it. And they overcame Satan because they loved not their lives, even unto death. What are you going to do about this matter? May God reach every heart.
Shall we pray? Lord, reach every heart this evening. Not only the old, but the young. Help us all, Lord. We want to know that, Lord, you will have dealings with us this night. Help us, Lord, to be real, to be honest, to be truthful in this matter. None of us want to sacrifice our self-life. None of us want someone else to be master of our lives. But, Lord, there is no other way. And you have our best interests at heart, our joy, our fulfilment, the fullness of life and power. You have it all in mind. You have glory in mind. Lord, challenge us and meet us. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
