In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of not skimming over the stories in the Gospels as mere entertainment, but rather seeing them as applicable to our lives. The story of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha is used as a picture of life, the Church, and the individual. The speaker highlights the need to remove hindrances and allow Jesus to speak into our lives, bringing forth new life and unity. The sermon also emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit in leading and guiding us, and the need for a constant dependence on God in all aspects of our being.

Lecture 5A The Resurrection And The Three Degrees Of Glory of God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God, and the the headship, on earth, not in Heaven. Once again this is the earthly order, Jesus' order is different. On earth represents the headship of this family, or let's just say it this way, this human personality which is body, soul, and spirit. Faith is the soul which ties the body and the spirit together. Let's get the right order. Mary is the spirit. Mary worshipped. It's noticeable the emphasis in the story, as you read it, Mary says the next word, "...that was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, wiped his feet with her hair." It was the Mary also which sat at Jesus' feet and was rebuked, whose sister could not understand and whose sister came to the Lord grumbling about her dedicating all her time, all her energy, all her intensity to just do nothing else except sit at Jesus' feet, abide in that position and hear his words. Mary is the worshipper, represents the spirit. Lazarus represents the soul. Martha represents the body. Martha is work. Once again, they started doing these. What do you call those drawings they do in the newspapers? Cartoons? Thank you, thank you. That's a Greek, right? People down in South America still remember, and this happened, let's see, 21 years ago, maybe, when I first went down to South America. There was a girl about 15 years of age, and she had been up in the States for about a year. She came back and she was giving a testimony. Somewhere in the testimony she wanted to share about something she had read in a book. She got to a place and said, Oh, I can't remember, how is that word? Book, book, book. Somebody said, Libro. And everybody still remembers. She couldn't remember, she had been away for almost a full year, and she couldn't remember how you say that word, book. Sometimes it seems to me that I'm just about as bad. Anyway, when they start out with cartoons, I think the first thing is they start drawing with these caricatures. You've seen the drawings from 100 years ago, little bodies, big heads, large noses, everything exaggerated. Sometimes it's done in literature, too, and sometimes I think it's done in the Bible. We get Mary there, the only glimpse of her, I'm sure she had a life apart from the life sitting at Jesus' feet, but the only glimpse we get of her is she's doing that, nothing else. That is her whole life, once again, Martha. We get a glimpse of Martha, the only thing she does is work, work, work, work, work. And between the two of them, once again, between the works and the worship, between the spirit and the body, there must be a soul, and faith is the expression of the soul. There is no life if our body is separated from our spirit. There is no life on this earth, right? If somebody cuts off my head, I'm just about ended. And if the spirit leaves the body, the body leaves the soul, that is the end of it. This is the, once again, let me just underline this again before we start going on, this is the functioning unit. I want to underline it, I feel I need to underline it, because we've got such a lopsided church nowadays, we've got such lopsided teaching. There is no real expression of that which God desires the church to be, or make it personal, your life to be, unless the worship is total, unless there is a total giving of that part of the body which is made for worship to worship. And on the other hand, there is no such thing as a coherent Christian life unless that part of the body which is external works to the limit of its strength. I've said before, most of life is defined through a kind of process of inertia. We sit there as the days and months and years go by, and young people, old people usually get caught up somewhere along the line in a career or marriage or something else, and the callings of God, those things which call for a decision, those things which call for a breaking with the past, a stepping out, this is the only life. Abram was the father of the faithful. It was not, I've said before, I think maybe last week or the week before, it wasn't what didn't just happen, that Abram was called out to walk physically, live in tents, that Isaac lived exactly the same lifestyle, that Jacob lived the same lifestyle. They had no permanent abiding place. Their life was a continual walk behind the revelation of God, or at least it was meant to be. In Abram's case it was, the others, of course, Jacob had his comings and goings, but at the end he ended up in obedience, moving from Canaan down to Egypt in obedience to the word of the Lord. This is the life that God has for all of his children. The Apostle Paul talks about having things and living as though we did not have them. Whatever we have, not only the physical things but even the spiritual things, we need to hold with our hands wide open. We'll get into that a little bit further along. That was the situation of the Jews. They closed their hands upon something spiritual, they were caught. Once again, the functioning unit. You ask the secret of spiritual life, you ask the secret of successful ministry, you ask the secret of being different than this world which is mediocre. The only way is intensity. This is a prayer meeting tonight. Prayer is not measured by time. Once again, you've heard me say that I used to get so amazed that people would pray 4 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours a day, and anymore I'd say, well, okay, fine, now what do they say and what do they do? Where do they get, what does it do? Prayer is not measured by time, it's measured by intensity. It can be just a heart cry that somehow penetrates beyond a year of normal praying. I think the situation of most people is that those moments of intensity come so few and far between in the journey of life that they remember. I remember 5 years ago when this happened. I remember 10 years ago. I remember 3, 4, 5 times in a lifetime. It's not supposed to be that way. God is a God who reveals himself. Look at the record of Jesus, the things which he saw his Father do, the words which he heard his Father speak, the purpose which his Father revealed on a daily, hourly basis, moment by moment. And so, again, let's underline it again, it's going to be heavily underlined, the body must do. I see a meeting like last week's meeting with Brother Andrews here, and he's doing out all those facts, and it's so easy to say yes. Why, it's hard not to say yes. And yet there's not one person in a thousand, I think, really vitally affected by a meeting like that. I have a friend the Lord used in a revival, and he said, when you see those meetings so hot, don't forget that 9% of that is the external. The essence, the kernel of the whole thing is very small. There will be many people shouting glory and many people saying yes, and many people like Peter and Laura, though all should forsake you, I'm going to be a missionary or I'm going to be a pastor, whatever. We don't know that Peter is always in the moment of crisis, he's always defeated. It's only the Spirit of God that can lead us through. That's why, once again, besides the body, we need the Spirit in that place of adoration constantly, waiting on God. He is our strength, he is our life, he is our salvation, he is everything we need to be. Even later on, Jesus said in this passage, I am the resurrection and the life. Back there in the beginning of the Bible, the book of Exodus, when God for the first time was bringing up people, not just one person. Abram apparently just left his city and went out, but when he was taking the people who were bound, taking the people out of bondage, when there was necessity of deliverance and miracles and a divine intervention, the whole book of Exodus, the ten plagues, the 40 years in the desert, the revelation on Mount Sinai, the sea that rolled in upon the Egyptians, the water that followed them, the manna from heaven, all was built upon one revelation, the word of God to Moses, I AM. It was on the basis of that word that God unveiled the rest of the story. Without that word, without that equipping, without that meeting, there could have been no book of Exodus, there could have been no deliverance, there could have been no miracles, there could have been no provision. I AM. The word, I understand, means he, rather the word Jehovah, which is used thousands of times in the Old Testament, means he who was, he who is, he who will be, and it means he who works. The God who did work, is working, will work. The God who is always active. Jesus said, My Father from the beginning works. Once again, the soul must draw. If I quit breathing, that's the end. The spirit is, if you like, the part of our being which breathes spiritual air. I want to stress this because we're, as I said before, I get tired of the culture shock whenever I come back to our Christian subculture in the United States. We've got it all, we've got it all. We've got a Christian subculture where we've got Christian music, Christian books, Christian TV, Christian films, you name it. We've got it all. And yet this three-fold functioning life, very few people have. So Lazarus was sick. The sister sent to him and said, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick. Jesus loves our faith, something beyond our emotion. He doesn't love our works so much. He doesn't love our knowledge. We love a lot of things that he doesn't love. We get involved in a lot of things that we don't need to get involved in. He loves our faith. He said, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick. Let's hurry on. Jesus came, verse 17, and found he laying four days in the grave. It amazes me how God puts the stories together in the Bible. There are things which maybe are not at first glance at all relevant, which are somehow woven in right in the middle of the story. He has to stop right there and say that Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, near to Jerusalem, about 15 furlongs, about 2 miles away. And many of the Jews came to Martha and to Mary to comfort them. Let me say something. When Lazarus died, Mary died, and Martha died. The home did not function any more. The effectiveness of the home was totally destroyed. You look at when Jesus came, the orders were totally inverted. It wasn't Mary that went running out to meet Jesus, it was Martha. But before that point it said many of the Jews came to Martha and to Mary to comfort them. This is what always happens when faith dies. Religion comes in. Religiousness, religiosity. A religiousness or religiosity which was represented by the Jews. The nation which had taken the revelation of God and used it as a guidebook to be analyzed, systematized, to be used to separate one group from another group, one sect from another sect. There is a picture there in the Old Testament which always hits me with a tremendous impact in Ezekiel 16. Maybe if you like, it's a thumbnail sketch of the Jews. We could talk for a long time on that, but let me just pick up a couple of things here. Ezekiel said the word of the Lord came and he said, "...caused Jerusalem to know her abominations." Jerusalem is the center, Jerusalem is the essence of Jewry. "...Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy nativity is the land of Canaan. Thy father was an Amorite, thy mother was a Hittite. As to thy nativity in the day that thou was born, thy navel was not cut, neither was thou washed with water to supple thee. Thou was not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitted thee to do any of these things unto thee, to have compassion upon thee. But thou was cast out into the open fields of the loathing of thy person in the day that thou was born. When I passed by thee, I saw thee polluted in thine own blood, and I said unto thee, When thou wast in thine own blood, live. Yea, I said unto thee, When thou wast in thine own blood, live." This is the miracle. There was nothing to commend Jerusalem. My mother was a Hittite, my father was an Amorite. Every word in the Bible is important, as we've said before, every name has a significance. The Amorite speaks of talk, speaks of publicity, speaks of a height. My father was pure talk, as they say in Spanish. The image which was given a mouth which spoke great things. My father was words without end. My father was expressing a confidence, expressing a position which was not real. My mother was a Hittite. The word means terror. To be broken down, prostrated through terror, through fear, through confusion. He said, This is what you were. Your life was not worth a thing. It was cast out onto the open field. Thy navel was not cut. There was no separation in him from the mother. Thou wast not washed with water to suckle thee. There was no cleansing. Thou wast not swaddled. There was no containing. There was no limiting. There was no restriction. This was a life just abandoned. You probably know the story goes on. The Lord passed by, gave life, said he grew. Verse 9, I washed thee with water. I throughly washed away thy blood from thee. I anointed thee with oil. I clothed thee also with broided work, shod thee with badger's skin, girded thee about with fine linen, covered thee with silk, decked thee with ornaments, put bracelets on thy hands, and a chain upon thy neck, a jewel in thy forehead, earrings in thy ears, a beautiful crown upon thy head, and goes on to say, Thou wast decked with silver and gold, thy raiment, thou didst eat flour and honey and oil, and so on and so forth. That one, as you read the story, turned from God, turned into fornication, turned into sin, turned into generosity, turned into utter loathsomeness. The Lord comes at the end and compares her to Sodom, and he says, verse 49, Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, abundance of idleness. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy, they were haughty. They committed abomination before me, as Brother Dave Wilkerson said a few weeks ago. I'm trying to think if it was in a meeting. It wasn't in a meeting, we were talking. There is such an arrogance in this day and age, there is such an arrogance in the Church. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that Mary, Martha and Lazarus are the Church, that in the Old Testament this people under judgment, this abominable people, is the Church, that it was the Church, once again it was the Jews that killed Jesus. Americans against abortion. We should have a thing, Christians against spiritual abortion. Maybe when they get through with that, they'll start it. Christians against spiritual abortion, because there is a lot going on. If we get right down to it, I don't know which is the most important, in the sight of God. We spiritualize things so much. Do you know why God hurts? The Spirit groans. The Son of God died on the cross. It wasn't for a physical thing merely, but for something far beyond that. You and I as Christians can be hurting God more than an abortion. I can be an apostle as Paul was, and yet be so close to being cast away. There can be groaning and yearning and tearing apart of the fibers of eternity because of me. This is what God is saying to his people in the Old Testament. You are like Sodom, not because of the outward fornication, not because of the sin. Once again, you remember, I think we talked about the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, the list that Jesus gives there in Luke 17, because they sought their own, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, they did all these things. It gives seven aspects of the human life, and it doesn't even mention their degeneracy. Here in the Old Testament you are like your sister Sodom. What was her problem? Her problem was pride. You know, one thing that pride produces, one of the first things, is a don't-touch-me attitude that I know. I don't know if you all sense it, living in this blessed country. But allow me to say it, I notice it coming from outside. I've been to churches, I've traveled around, I've had meetings here and there. I'm not talking about anybody here or anybody in this whole zone, just in case anybody thinks I am. But I've been to churches and I see such a self-sufficiency. Little man, little, tiny, so neatly, you know, that's the American Testament too, so neatly combed. I don't know if they spend an hour before the meal, before they get out in the morning. I don't, but you can tell. So neatly groomed, everything so perfect, everything so nice, so committed. This is the way the Jews were. When Lazarus died, when the living faith died, the Jews came right in. From out of Jerusalem, they gathered like a bunch of, I don't know, I'm going to use a bad figure, I better not use that in church, but anyway, like a bunch of bees after the honey. I was going to say a bunch of something else. You know what I mean? A bunch of crows coming down to a dead body. They gathered automatically. There is such a thing as spiritual affinity. You can be in a meeting, you can have a congregation, you can have one bitter person, and amazingly enough, some other person who is totally unbittered will come, and the next thing you know, they are closest friends. How does it happen? There is far more power in an atmosphere than what there is in teaching. You've heard me say before about kids learning language. You remember that? You all heard it, right? Well, this man has. Have you heard that? No? Okay. Yes. Okay. Briefly. In the first five years of life, they discovered that children, this is a study on bilingual learning processes, but it applies to one language. Children pick up in the first five years of life the equivalent amount of language learning ability, which would take ten linguists ten years to program into a computer. In other words, in five years, that child absorbed a hundred man years of language. Language handling, language using ability. Okay, in the first five years, you know, we can't very well count the first months, because a lot of times the kid is crying at night, and he needs his sleep during the day, and he's getting it all together emotionally, he's learning to move his hands, and he's learning to put his tongue out, and he's learning to do a whole lot of things, and then he has to have potty training, and all the rest of those wonderful things. In the first five years of life, and what I'm trying to say is, in those first five years when he's totally unprepared, without any basis, once again, emotionally, physically, in a state of flux and growing, in those five years, when his mother's not looking at night, he goes to bed and he says, I am, she is, he is, we are, they are, and how do I say that past tense? He doesn't do that, does he? I was, I were. He doesn't do that. He absorbs it. Once again, let me go back. That's why worship is important. I read of a person in a time of pressure, a time of crisis, all of a sudden the Spirit spoke and said, You know more than what you know. We know more than what we know if we would get it in the center. I can have a complete picture over here, but if I'm not looking over here, I'm not going to see it. If I focus on it, I'm going to see. That's the way it is with a lot of the spiritual life. We don't need more teaching. We don't need excuses. All we need, once again, is concentration. All we need is intensity. But let's get back to the Jews. So Lazarus died. Once again, that living faith died. The unit stopped functioning and the Jews came in. They came to comfort. Actually, the word is more like our word, relate. They came to relate to Mary and Martha. They came to share what they had to share. They came to put their atmosphere round about Mary and Martha as a source of comfort. The living relationship had died and they brought in the dead relationship. I wish we could understand how God hates religion. I think I said before, I don't know what I said before, but anyway, the word religion means bondage. The word itself means bondage. God hates religion. The Jews had no relationship, they had a religion. They had no life, they had no faith. They were already on the way to crucifixion as far as Jesus is concerned. They had already separated themselves from it. But when Jesus steps out of the picture, they come into the picture. It's true. It's always true of spiritual life. When I lose Jesus, I start getting Jewish. I hope I'm not going to offend somebody. You've got to be real careful here with the ethnic things. What I mean is I get religious. When I lose Jesus, I start being dogmatic. I start basing my relationship on knowledge. I start being intolerant, I start being inflexible. Look sometimes at the Jews with whom Jesus had encounters. I don't remember them now, but I remember one man there who has a list of seven different classes, the Scribes and the Pharisees and the Herodians and all the rest of them. The Pharisees were those who had taken the law and carried it on and interpreted it, and interpreted the interpretation of the interpretation of the interpretation and ultimately they got so far out. And because of this, we're always in difficulty, we're always in problems, when the means becomes the end. And they had taken the form of religion and so then it had become religion. The way had become the goal. The lifestyle had become everything. They judged everybody by how they were relating to this lifestyle which the Pharisees had set up. Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. Once again, as I said before, the order is being reversed. It wasn't Mary that was hearing, it wasn't the Spirit that was hearing, it was the body that was hearing. It's the external that's becoming aware. Mary is not even aware. Martha goes out. The Spirit stops and the body goes on, which we could talk a lot about that also, but we won't. Martha goes out and says to Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here. A lot of people have said, Lord, I've looked at this passage and I guess I've heard it and I guess I've absorbed the thinking, too. Why did he die? What was the deal here? Mary and Martha didn't have any problem knowing why he died. They both said the same identical words. Mary and Martha in verse 21, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. Verse 32, Mary, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. The same identical words. They knew what the problem was. Once again, we're looking at this as a spiritual allegory. When Jesus, when the communion, when the contact of being reemplaced with something else, faith dies. Faith cannot live without the presence of God. Faith cannot live outside the presence of God. Paul says, he always leadeth us in victory. If he doesn't lead, then I'm not in victory. Once again, I can go through the forms, I can crystallize and set up my religion until it's totally inflexible. But unless he is there, there is no living faith. Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. It's interesting, as Jesus speaks to her, he gives her instructions. He doesn't give any instructions in this passage to Mary. There's something physical, there's something external that God puts before each one of us, which opens the way into the spiritual. I've got to start from the world in which I live. It's a cop-out to relegate everything to spiritual realm. Say I have a functioning relationship with God here, but not here. You can't have a functioning relationship up here if it doesn't function down there. I think the emphasis is rather the other way. You get it functioning down here, and then you'll know it's functioning up there, because you cannot know anything up there. It's so limited to subjective things. You hear people talk about miracles, and you hear people talk about visions. I could only see a vision. You know, a vision is not the deepest thing. A vision is not in the spirit. A vision is in the soul. A vision is so subject to my own conscious and unconscious influences. God calls us to something beyond that, a more sure word of prophecy, that which we have seen and handled of the word of life. Paul appeals to the Church. He says, "...you know that in your midst the signs and wonders and miracles have been wrought." He says, "...the signs of an apostle have been wrought." What were they? He says, "...in all patience..." 2 Corinthians 12.12. Let me read it and get it right here. "...truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds." This is ministry. There is a mark of the heavenly upon the earthly. If we'd have to judge the Churches and if we'd have to judge our lives by that standard, it might hurt, but it brings us a lot closer to reality. A lot closer to reality. What sign is there that God is upon my life? What miracle, and I'm not talking about just the healing of the sick, I'm talking about something which would not, could not, ever happen on this earth. What has God done over, above and beyond the laws of this world around me? What wonders have been done to show his greatness, to show his power? This is what Jesus, not only the apostles, he sent them all to do that. Going through all the world he said if you raise the sick, heal the dead, I mean heal the dead, raise the sick, where are we at? Raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out demons. These signs shall follow them that believe. You and me, if we don't have them, we don't have it either. We don't have the belief, we don't have the faith. Right? I mean, 2 plus 2, is it or isn't it? If he says these signs shall follow them that believe, then the only reason I'm not going to have them is because of unbelief. This is a whole passage, it's how many verses, 40, 45 verses, given to the relating of this incident, because it's important. The lesson is important, right here in the middle of John, right in the middle of the book. The faith on which everything depends, on which everything else is based. The words of Jesus, she said, Lord, I believe. I believe in that abstract, undefined, ambiguous, someday, somewhere, somehow, resurrection. They tell us nobody ever believes that they're going to die. We all say, of course I do. But they say that nobody ever, ever really believes that they're going to die right now. Even if you're sick in bed and for sure you're going to die, you know, well, it won't be right this minute, it won't be this hour. We never get it down to confront it. The same thing with life and the same thing with the things of the Spirit of God. I believe. Lord, yes, Lord, I, you know, I believe there's a resurrection, it'll be the last day, everything will be ended, there will be just one thing, life from out the dead. I believe that. Jesus comes and says, I, he's standing right before her, right here, right now, I am. The same revelation that was given to Moses, I am. Somebody said it's like a blank check, you can fill in what you need after the I am. In this case it's resurrection, it's life. This is the power of God. This is the power once again in Ezekiel 16, which had brought the Jews into life, into existence. God had passed by in the midst of their death when they were exposed, in the midst of the earth, he says, live. He speaks that word of authority, live. They cannot die, they will not die, he has spoken. So Jesus comes and he says to her, I am the resurrection. I am the life. Life is not an object, life is not a substance, life is not something which is given to people. I am. I am the life. Somehow there's an impartation beyond our understanding. I am the life. He that believeth, though he were dead yet shall he live. He that believeth and believeth shall never die. Then he asked her, believest thou? Once again he's not speaking to the spirit, he's speaking to the body. I can believe in the spirit, I can believe in the resurrection at the last day, but can I believe here and now? It's always hard to tie things down. As I said before about that meeting last week, we can have a thousand people in a meeting like that, or ten thousand people in a meeting like that, and everybody will be touched, but very few people will see it right here, right now, God is speaking to me, and I've got to decide yes or no, as though I'd heard an audible voice, I was seeing his form, his person. Believest thou? Some people think it's kind of a cop-out what she said, yes, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ. I don't think so. What she's saying, Lord, I believe that thou art the anointed one, the one who bears upon his shoulders all the fullness of heavenly authority and heavenly power, that in your person there is all the resources of God. Lord, I believe that you have come as was promised, that in this world, you notice her words there? I was talking about this situation and somebody died, and the man that was telling me, quite an educated man, a doctor, he was telling me, he said, Paul, in that place there was nothing. There was no priest, there was no pastor. Somehow, he said, as I went there to that grave, he said there was just such a sense of total, he didn't know how to explain, total desolation, sense of total emptiness, would maybe be the better word. Nobody had anything to give, nobody had any answers. Life had ended, they had to lower him into the grave. There was no hope. There was an emptiness which throbbed with pain over the family, over the children, over the whole of that little town where the man came from. He gave us an invitation, come over there, he said, we're totally without any resources spiritually. There's nobody cares for us. Remember that verse in Psalms, no man cared for my soul. No man cared for my soul. In effect, he said, Paul, come, nobody cares. We're alone. There's something which you can feel all around. There are places like that. This is the way it was at Lazarus too. She had belief, she had worship, but this time all she could do was weep. Not tears of adoration now. You know, there's a lot of things we think we have until the time of testing. There's going to come a day when every work will be made manifest, when the fire will try everything. God help us all. If the apostle trembled, if the prophet seeing God fell down totally devoid of strength, unable to rise again, then all that I hear around me and all this easy, easy Christian road is not the true thing. I was reading a tract today and it's talking about the broad way and the narrow way. He said, you look at the passage and all through that passage, and I forget exactly where it is now, but all the examples are talking about the religious is over against the true essence of things. And the way of the Jews is over against the way of God. And the way of the Spirit is over against that which was man's own. All the way through and in the middle it's talking about broad and narrow way. And he said, we say it means salvation and perdition. He says it doesn't. And I believe he's right. It doesn't mean salvation and perdition. It's talking about the church. He said those who are going to go on with God are going to come into a narrow, and he goes into the Greek there, a place which is of intense limitation, of hurt, of straining, of stress, of an extending energy. And very many are going that way and very few are going this way. I remind you, these are the religious people all gathered around. I read a book by a missionary to Tibet a number of years ago. He came to a crisis in his life and he said, when you reach that crisis moment, how little that which you know of God affects your decision. You know, when it's a matter of life and death, who makes the decision? We're going to wait for God? I mean, really? When it's a matter of urgency, when it's a matter of irreparable loss, if time gets out of our hands, the situation escapes our control, who's going to make the decision? How much is it real to us that the guidance, the endowment, the empowering, the direction of the Spirit of God? So Jesus saw her weeping and he saw the Jews weeping, and it was all they could do. They had no words, they had nothing. They didn't even have what Martha had. They were weeping, and he grew on in the Spirit, and he was troubled. He was troubled. He was troubled. Well, if he was troubled then, I'm sure he's troubled now. With all reverence, I'm sure he's troubled now as he looks down at the church. Because there was nobody so sure, there was nobody so absolutely convinced that they were right as the Jews. There was nobody who could ignore the opinion of the world. There was no one like the Jews. And if we reflect on it, how like the church. We know, and if the conviction of the Spirit comes, and maybe that's one of the reasons God can't send us a revival. If the conviction of the Spirit comes, it will always help him, or him, or her. Because I'm doing the best I can within the light I have, and God knows. That's one thing about the Roman Catholic religion in South America. In a sense, very much like the Jewish religion. They lose the essence, and so they go into candles and sacraments and pilgrimages and elaborate forms of ceremony. There's one thing about it, it always makes excuses for the flesh. And God knows that we stumble and fall, and so we go and we confess, and okay, that's taken care of, and we keep on going, we keep on sinning. There's no way out. Almost like the Mohammedans that we heard about last year, the balance is always going to be so heavy on this side, there's nothing we can do about it. Just trust that God's good and he's going to forgive us somehow. There's no understanding of salvation, the power of God, the life of faith. Jesus said, where have you laid him? Where did you lose him? Where has he gone? He's not here, where is he? What happened to your faith? We could talk a long time about that in our time's up. But many times it's a place of disobedience, a place where audibly or inaudibly we say no. I remember a young lady, she told me, you know, God always comes in his grace, and it was in the time of the moving of the Spirit of God. She said, God always comes in his grace, but I know what he wants, but I'm not going to give him. And where's he at today, 10, 15 years later? Where's he at today? Where are we going to be at 10, 15 years after our decisions? Where have you laid him? Where did you lose him? Because you've got to go back to that place. Even if it's dead, there's no life in it, you've got to go back to that place. Okay, let's hurry up. He came to the grave, he said it was a cave and a stone lay on it. There's a lot of caves where we hide out. The caves are always graves. They always end up getting a stone put on top of them. And whatever's inside, let's stick with the baptismal, always rots. Four days, still had the form of Lazarus. That was all it had. Jesus comes and says, take away the stone. This was their place. Take away the stone. Get him out of there. Get him out of there. People in South America tend to be very cynical. I heard somebody talking about somebody else, and he said, you know, somebody was saying if he had to straighten things out, he'd have to start way back, and they say in Spanish, way back at kilometer zero. And this other man said, you know, for some people to get to kilometer zero is not way back, that's coming way up. Many times we think, you know, I'm going on, I've got something going, I got a plan, I got a project, I got... And the Lord says, go back. We think it's going back, it's going ahead. It's going ahead. We get up to kilometer zero, we're going ahead. You take the stone away. No, Lord. Raise him, blow the stone away, have an angel come. You get in there and take the stone away. Here's Martha again, it's not Mary speaking. Lord, he's dead. Lord, he stinks. Lord. Jesus once again goes over the lesson, said, didn't I tell you? Didn't I tell you? I am the resurrection. Life comes through the word of God. In the beginning, the world was created by his word. In us, life is created by his word. There's a lot of people who never hear his word. I mean, really. They hear about him, read about him, study about him, systematize it. When I came back to the States a number of years ago, there was a friend who'd been a missionary for many years in Argentina. He said, you know, there are three great enemies to the United States that are really tremendous destructive forces. What are they? This was a number of years ago, maybe things are not quite as strong in these realms today, but he said the first thing is the discipleship movement. That intense discipleship, that hierarchical thing, bringing people into bondage, telling them what to do, what not to do, go and consult with whoever's over you, do only what they can do. No liberty, no direct contact. The second thing he said, prosperity. That prosperity teaching, which presents earthly things instead of heavenly things, which puts earthly things closer and more important than the vision of the things of God. And what's the third thing? Well, I won't mention the name. He mentioned the name. He said so-and-so's ministry. But he mentioned one of the most respected teaching ministries in the United States, ministry which has extended throughout the nation. He said that because it's taken people and it's reduced it down to a formula and it's not all right. And some of the conclusions, once again, like the Roman Catholic Church, as you look into it, their belief, which is formulated, it's based on a process of reasoning rather than a process of divine revelation. And he said we get this teaching ministry and we get people once again in bondage because we find a place for everything, we find a place for God. And he's one more thing. He's one more thing. He's not absolute. And his power's not over every power and his word's not absolute. When he speaks to a heart, you obey him if the conditions are right. There's none of let's obey God rather than man. There's none of that. And so we get people cut off from the mission field. We get people cut off from obedience. We get people think they're serving God by coming in under a stretcher. We got to go back to where we lose him. We got to put God above everything. Said I not? You ever heard him say that to you? When things had come up, maybe you lost him a month ago, maybe you lost him a week ago, maybe you lost him yesterday, maybe it's been years. There comes a time he says, said I not? There's only one thing we're responsible for. When we stand before almighty God, there's only one thing that we're going to be answerable for. That's the word of God. The reason we don't hear it daily down the road is that we've stopped listening, we stopped obeying. Once we stop obeying, God has no obligation to speak to us ever again. My sheep hear my voice, I'm followed. Once again in Revelation, who are these? This multitude. Said these are they who follow the Lord with us wherever he goes. They got one aim, they got one goal, their hearts are sealed, marked with one end. So he says take away the stone, take away every hindrance. Then he does the thing which only he can do, he speaks. Lazarus comes forth and you know the story Lazarus comes forth. Once again the family is brought together, once again the sign, the miracle, the testimony. We read right away, many of the Jews which came to Mary had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him. The Jews, they saw the emptiness of it all, saw the futility of it all, saw the bitterness of it all, saw life, saw one who could give life. They came to him, they believed on him. The things of God are not difficult to understand, just difficult to put into practice. Our lack is not a lack of knowledge and mental ability, a lack of gut level obedience and honesty, and a killing, as I said at the beginning. So we come before God daily as you pray on your own, Lord what wouldst thou have me to do? You remember the words of God to Paul there when he fell on the road, said Paul what are you doing? And Paul said Lord what would you have me to do? And from that point on his life was a fulfillment of the surrender and the obedience which was implicit in that. Lord what wouldst thou have me to do? It's not complicated, it just demands everything we've got. We sing a little bit at different times, different places as we're moving in the Spirit of God. I remember we went to one place and the Spirit of God was moving. You know it hurts, I don't care who it is, it hurts when the Spirit of God comes to a place because he's going to put his finger on things in life. It hurts when God strips off the natural because that natural is me. You can't strip it off anymore than you can strip my skin off without hurting. The only thing it'll carry you through is a vision of something superior and something beyond. The only thing it'll bring you out of is religiosity. And we can get out of one religious camp to get into another religious camp and we are free here because we believe this way. Yet man cannot get out of it any more than man can jump and break out of this atmosphere and land on the moon. Only God can take us out of it, only God. And our part is to give ourselves body, soul and spirit. That our body would do anything, go anywhere, be anything that he tells us to do. That our soul would live dependent on him day and night. That there'd be a longing, that there'd be a cry. That reminds you again of the Psalms, look at the cry, look at the depth, look at David crying, Lord, when wilt thou come unto me, my soul longer fainter? Lord, the waters have gone over me, the billows the waves. Lord, when the cry of triumph coming through, seeing, knowing. As Paul says in the New Testament, I am persuaded that he's able. I know in whom my heart is. This is the only viable, only authentic Christian life. Lord, if thou has been here, he's promised to be here. If there's any lack for us, it's not his fault. He's promised. The only separation is on our side. Let's pray. Lord, help us to see and understand beyond the words. Lord, there's a life, there's a way, there's a process of your Spirit, Lord. Your life, and you will teach us the way of life. You will show us, as the Psalmist said, the way of life. Lord, lead us, body, soul, and spirit. In Jesus' name, amen.