Matthew-111

 

Deliberate leaving out of interpretations

Yesterday, we tried to look at an outline of the events leading up to the Lord Jesus’ coming. Those of you who have spent a bit of time studying this subject will have noticed I made no reference to a lot of things. That was deliberate for various reasons. For example, it is very popular in North America to talk about a passage from Ezekiel as referring to Russia coming down from the north to invade Israel and that general area, and these events are said to be in the near future. Russia is going to be in alliance with countries like Turkey and Syria, perhaps even with Iran and Iraq, and they will attack Israel, and all this is supposed to lead up to the Battle of Armageddon (Rev. 16:16), which will be fought in the plains of Jezreel, according to them.

Any of you who have been to Israel will have had a chance to look at these plains. It is a very impressive sight, especially if you stand on Mount Carmel and look across in the direction of the Lake of Galilee. You cannot see the Lake of Galilee from that direction because it is below sea level, but you will see a vast plain, an ideal place to fight a conventional land battle. In fact, this is the sort of ground on which tank battles would be fought. I am somewhat reserved about these interpretations, because I’m not so sure that this is the way to under­stand these passages, and that is why I left them out. That is the reason why I told you that the details are much harder to sort out than the general picture.

I am even more skeptical about another popular view in North America, which says that China will send an enormous army towards the Middle East, and this is supposed to be an interpretation of Revelation 9:16

It is said that “myriad upon myriad” in the Greek translated as “twice ten thousand times ten thousand.” Therefore an army of 200 million from China will invade the Middle East. That is an enormous figure! Singapore has three-and-a-half million people, so can you imagine an army of 200 million people? What kind of military logistics would be involved in such an operation! I had a little bit of interest in military things, but I wonder if anyone has thought about how you would move this army of 200 million right across two continents, through the Middle East right into Africa. I cannot imagine what a Chinese army wants to do in Africa. Is it to hunt the last of the rhinoceros or elephants?

I’m sorry to say that many of these interpretations begin to border a little bit on the fantasy when we come to the “last days.” From the point of view of the strict principles of exegesis, I think to interpret the Greek words “myriad upon myriad” as literally 200 million, is a possible translation but not at all a certain translation. Anyone who wants to pursue the matter is encouraged to look at the original Greek. I say these things so that you are cautious when coming to the Biblical interpretation of the last days and the coming of the Lord Jesus, and that we don’t make an important subject into something quite “silly” to some of us. I am sorry to put it this way.

Again, you will notice that I avoided referring to the European Union and the 10 states as the New Roman Empire. After all, the European Union has well exceeded 10 nations by now, and lately, even Turkey has been considered for membership. I have lost count as to how many countries there are in the European Union. But in my early days as a Bible student, there was a lot of talk about this New Roman Empire emerging in Europe. And out of this union of 10 states—which are supposed to be the 10 horns in Revelation—comes the Antichrist. I mention these things so that you know that I am fully aware of these subjects.

Furthermore, you will notice that I made no mention of Daniel, particularly Daniel chapter 7 and the calculations based on the 7 years and the 3-1/2 years and so on. I don’t normally speak on any subject that I am not reasonably well acquainted with. I want to let you know that I have deliberately left these things out so that we can concentrate on the clear general outline.

Even in that outline, I would say I have made points which are subject to possible revision when better evidence comes to light. In other words, when we speak of this kind of important subject, it’s not the right place for being dogmatic. We must come with much humility, understanding that no matter how good our knowledge of the Scriptures is, it’s always rather inadequate. And with this same attitude, I would like to proceed to those passages of the Word of God which we can be relatively sure.

 

Do you believe Jesus is coming? Your faith changes you but not the facts

I begin today, by referring to Luke 18:8, where the Lord Jesus says,

He would not say something like this unless he expects that faith will be hard to find. This point is very important for us to start with today because clearly, everything depends on whether or not you believe what we have talked about this far.

If all that we have talked about so far is nothing much more than fairy tales to you, you don’t believe these things are about to happen, you are obviously not going to bother with preparing. So talking about preparing for anything is meaningless unless you believe that these events are going to take place. As you have been in this camp this far, I would like to ask you how much of this do you really believe? Is Jesus really coming? Let us not assume too many things because you might not even really believe this, and so this camp is a complete waste of time! You can just take it as an opportunity to upgrade your standard of playing badminton a little, so that it’s not a total waste. But as for Jesus’ coming, you might think: “Come on! Give us a break! We’re not kids! We’re not talking about Grimm’s Fairy Tales anymore, are we? We are reasonably intelligent people, or so we think anyway, and you are telling us that Jesus—the little baby born in the manger 2,000 years ago—is coming again? You see people celebrating his birth at Christmas, and that’s okay for a bit of fun. But here is a bunch of religious nuts sitting in this room, saying that Jesus is coming again! Come on, we’re not children, we are grown-ups! Do you know what we are?”

Perhaps I am talking out frankly what may be hidden in the heart. You are too polite to say so. I am the kind of person impolite enough to bring this out to the surface. You may be saying, “Do you believe this? There are lots of nuts in the world. But if you want to believe this, okay. Yesterday, this pastor was talking about dying and now about preparing for Jesus’ coming. What is he talking about?” So if there is no faith, then all this talk is a complete waste of time. And if there is only partial faith, you are actually in a jam because you don’t really know whether to believe or not to believe. Maybe you’ll say, “There are a few people who are so serious about this thing, so maybe there is a bit of truth in this. But can it be all true?” You are not very sure to believe or not to believe, right? I’m sure many of you are in that position. Let’s be honest. I think if I were to ask you to raise your hands, how many of you are really not too sure? Maybe some believe 20% to be true, and some believe as much as 80%. But to believe this whole package is a bit much! What happens when you are not sure to believe or not? You are in a jam and you don’t know what to do now. If you believed 80% so far, maybe by the time I finish this message today, you might say, “I don’t want to believe even that. It’s too hard to swallow!”

Whether or not you believe a thing to be true doesn’t change any facts. Faith only changes you, it does not change any facts. If this building were on fire, and someone came in here and shouted, “This building is on fire!” If you don’t believe him, you wouldn’t take the least action. You would say, “Come on, that’s nonsense! I don’t see any fire. I don’t smell any smoke. This guy is a little bit off-balance. It’s no big deal and he’s yelling, ‘Fire! Fire!’” Whether or not you believe this building is on fire only changes the course of action you are going to take in relation to this information, and not the fact that there is a fire. Whether or not you believe there is God, doesn’t change the fact that there is God. So your faith changes you, but it doesn’t change any facts.

 

Jesus is surely coming again! When he comes, will he find faith?

If Jesus is coming, and you don’t believe it, it won’t stop him from coming. The only difference is whether or not you will prepare for his coming. So Jesus says, “When I come again, will I find faith?” That is a rhetorical question which expects the answer, “No.” He knows us very, very well, and he knows that most people believe in a vague sense but not in the way he expects. Are you in that category? If you are in that category, am I wasting my time talking about how to prepare for Jesus’ coming? Maybe I am talking to a very few who really do believe he is coming – the very few that the Lord Jesus expects to be waiting for him when he comes. I am very realistic. I know how the mind works, so I am no dreamer about the reality of these things.

Why would I believe in this amazing event? I share this with you so that you might see a way by which you will also truly believe in his coming. As you will see, I am still by nature, a very skeptical person. I don’t just accept what someone says. I like to be very sure of the truth of anything. How can I be sure of the truth of God? I think those of you who have read my testimony will know that I was very rationalistic even as a very young person. I analyzed everything. That made believing very, very difficult because anyone knows that there are many things in this world that are not accessible to our rational powers. Even in the area of science, there are a lot of things which we still don’t know, may not know for a long time, and may never know. Any scientist worth his salt will humbly acknowledge that what he really knows is very, very little. If this is true in the material world, I can tell you it is far truer in the spiritual world. Spiritual things are not accessible to your rational powers, no matter how great they are. A lot of things have to be made known to you through a process called revelation. Without that, it isn’t possible for you to know.

If you look at the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, there is nothing in that book that could be understood except by revelation. No matter how smart you are, try reading that book and you will be a bit humbler afterwards, because you will soon discover that you cannot understand much of anything in there. So you will see that the only way to understand it is according to the measure that God reveals to you. The same is true of the Lord Jesus’ coming. There is almost nothing on this subject that can be analyzed. It is completely a matter of revelation. For many of us who are used to being rational, understanding the Lord Jesus’ coming is a whole new experience of learning to be taught by God. And is that possible? Of course, it is!

 

Begin with the fundamental in Christian life: Are you led by the Spirit now?

The most basic point of the Christian life can be summed up by Romans 8:14 which says, “For all who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God.” This is a very mysterious statement, isn’t it? It is very mysterious to a rational person, because he doesn’t know what it means to be led by the Spirit. There is nothing you can do with your mind to grasp this statement except to let yourself be led by the Spirit. There is no use saying, “Do I or don’t I believe this statement?” Of course, you can say it, but you wouldn’t get the meaning of Romans 8:14 by that question. If you have been led by the Spirit in your experience, then you will certainly believe the statement. But if you have never been led by the Spirit, you don’t know what that statement means no matter how you analyze it. Have you been led by the Spirit or not?

Someone may refer to some incident here and another incident there and say, “Yes, I think I have had that experience.” You will need a lot more than this kind of vague idea where you think you had an experience of the leading of the Spirit, but you are not very sure. Obviously, the level and strength of your faith will depend on the level and depth of that experience. And the more you are led by the Spirit, the more certain you are of the truth of this statement.

But if you look back at Romans 8:14, you will discover one thing: according to the apostle Paul, this experience and this reality of being led by the Spirit is something basic to every Christian life. He says it is so basic that if you have not had that experience, you are not even a child of God. According to Paul—not according to me—every true disciple, every true Christian knows this ongoing experience of being led by the Spirit. Now by this standard, are you a Christian? We make standards according to what suits us. You are a Christian if you believe in this and that. Or you are a Christian if you are baptized. We are Christians according to these definitions of “Christian.” But I emphasize again, Paul says—and not me—a child of God is one who is led by the Spirit. By that standard and definition of a Christian, are you still a Christian?

Why is being led by the Spirit of God important? If you don’t know what is to be led by the Spirit, obviously, you cannot believe in the reality of God because where do you have any first-hand experience of God except in his leading you? You can believe in God as an intel­lectual idea. Your belief in God will be the belief that a philosopher has: he believes in an idea. There are many Christians today, who believe in God in that sense. They would say, “Yes I believe there is God” but under close examination, it turns out that his belief in God is not based on any experience or fact, but on an idea. The problem with this theoretical kind of belief is that if it is established on theory, it can be destroyed on the basis of theory. In other words, if I can pull your theory apart, your faith collapses. It’s usually not very difficult to pull this kind of theories apart.

For this reason, there are people who even go into a theological seminary for training and lose their faith in the process. The reason is, in one course, we have to study the philosophy of those who disbelieve, or want to prove that God doesn’t exist, and because the students’ faith is not rooted in a living experience of God, they find it difficult to defend their theory. It doesn’t mean that any philosopher can really prove the non-existence of God. In fact, there is no philosophy that can demonstrate the non-existence of God. Some of us who studied philosophy know that philosophy cannot prove the non-existence of God. But what it can do is throw enough doubts into your mind as to leave you as an agnostic, that is, one who doesn’t know whether there is or isn’t God.

Are you in that situation that you are not very sure whether or not God exists? If you don’t have faith, you cannot really go on in the Christian life. That is why I am spending time talking about the basics, never mind the coming of the Lord Jesus. If you don’t believe in Jesus as the one who died and rose again, why waste time talking about his coming again? The only kind of people that has no doubt about the spiritual reality of what we are talking about are those who know what it is to be led by the Spirit day by day. I remind you that according to the apostle Paul, only those are the true Christians. So if you want to prepare for the coming of the Lord Jesus practically, start right here: learn to be led by the Spirit. It’s about time to start if you have not already started to do so!

 

Today, a disciple follows Jesus by following the Spirit of God

What does “led by the Spirit” imply? The word “led” implies that someone is leading. The Holy Spirit is leading. Leading also implies that you obey the one who leads, that is, you are following after him. Jesus calls us to follow him to be his disciples, but how do you follow Jesus in this day and age when he is at the right hand of the Father, and we are waiting for him to come? You cannot follow Jesus when he is in heaven. So what discipleship are we talking about? The answer is: To follow Jesus today means following the Holy Spirit of God, who fills Jesus with his fullness, and works unreservedly in Jesus. This is why the Holy Spirit is even called “the Spirit of Jesus” (Ac. 16:7) or “the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:19). The Spirit of God reminds us to follow Jesus’ godly life example and teaching, so that we can await the blessed hope of our full salvation at Jesus’ coming.

It’s no use calling our church “Disciples Church” when no one is following Jesus. I’m afraid the Disciples Church is full of non-disciples. I’m going to be as frank as that, because we have not fully learned to follow the leading of the Spirit of God.

Anyone who experiences following the leading of the Holy Spirit daily, has absolutely no doubt about God’s reality, because his understanding is solidly based on daily experience. You don’t have to be very smart to understand that if there is no Holy Spirit, there is no such thing as being led by the Spirit. And if there is no Holy Spirit to lead you, you will soon discover that there is no leading. A car cannot drive anywhere without a driver. In order to be able to move, there must be someone who not only puts his foot on the accelerator but also actually guides the car forward.

If someone asked me, “How did you get here this morning?” And I said, “I reasoned my way all the way here.” You must think, “This guy is really a nut!” The fact is I followed a person because I don’t know how to get here. A brother led me to the car and drove me here. If you ask me, “Do you really believe that this brother is real? Or is he a figment of your imagination?” The very fact that I am standing here should be all the evidence I need because he brought me here. I don’t need to go into a rational argument to prove this point to you. Now you should be able to see that anyone who has been led by the Spirit knows the reality of the Spirit. I don’t need to invent a piece of philosophy to prove God’s reality to that person. But to someone who has no experience of being led by the Spirit, all this talk is airy-fairy. We are talking on the basic level of being led.

 

Submit to God’s kingship is: Be led by his Spirit regardless the cost

What has to be led by God’s Spirit got to do with God’s kingship? Well, the Spirit of God doesn’t force us to follow him. God doesn’t impose his kingship on us; we accept it voluntarily. In the same way, the brother did not bring me here at gunpoint; I came here happily with him in the car. When you got out of bed this morning, did you suddenly feel an arm grab you at the back of the neck and drag you kicking and shouting out of the room, and suddenly, you end up here in this meeting? Certainly not! You could have refused to come to the meeting.

So to speak of God as king is first of all, to yield our hearts in allegiance to him and to follow his Spirit. Do you live your life mo­ment by moment under his kingship? If not, we need not waste our time to talk about being led by the Spirit. He only leads those who joyfully and humbly yield their lives to his kingship. If you have not even taken that step, no wonder you have no experience of being led by him. But if at some point in your life, you have humbled yourself before God, kneeling before him to say, “God, I repent of all my past rebelliousness and sins, and I yield my life to your kingship to start on the road to being a true Christian from this moment on,” that is a start but only a start.

Then there would be the constant yielding of the will to being led by him. I can tell you that the road gets harder and harder as you go on. I wonder if any of you have already started on this road. If you have, I wonder how advanced you are now. Although many have expe­rienced something of the reality of the leading of the Spirit, the cost of the reality is too much, and they turn back. Therefore the Lord Jesus says, “If any man puts his hand to the plough and turns back, he is not fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk. 9:62). Where are you now?

 

Steps in Preparing for the Lord Jesus’ coming

1. Start being led by his Spirit now: Live under God’s kingship now

The first thing about preparing for the coming of the Lord Jesus, the plenipotentiary of God, is to start living under the kingship of the Holy Spirit of God now. If you are not willing to live under God’s kingship now, I don’t believe a word you say that you are ready to welcome the coming of the Lord Jesus. Stop fooling yourself and don’t fool me. The truth is that you don’t want to see the Lord Jesus at all, never mind prepare for his coming. I can think of one way you could prepare for his coming, and that is, building an atomic bomb-proof shelter under your house and hope that when he comes, you can hide and lock yourself in there, because you don’t want to see his face. As the Scripture says, a large number of Christians will be trying to hide themselves from the face of the Lamb (Rev. 6:16).

At this point, I wonder if it’s even worth continuing with my message, because the more I go on, the less you would like to hear it. Many Christians don’t want to know where the Spirit of God is going to lead them. It’s very interesting that even those who had joined full-time training are like this. I say to them towards the end of the training, “You can now make your proposals as to where you would like to serve God. You can propose but it doesn’t mean you will go there.” Then they start worrying: “I wonder if I’m going to be sent to Iceland, or the jungles of Congo, or somewhere really tough!” We want to be led, but not led too much. We want God to lead us in the way we would particularly like to go, where the weather is quite good, where the people are relatively polite. We can consider this kind of place. But what if the Spirit of God doesn’t want to lead us there? Then we become anxious. You would say, “Surely, those who go to full-time training never worry about such things.” They will tell you honestly that they do.

“Led by the Spirit” sounds wonderful because you can experience the reality of God until you discover that the Holy Spirit might lead you where you don’t want to go. Did you say God is king? Then you think, “Oh! Why did I get myself into this?” Remember the Lord Jesus said to Peter, “Now you go wherever you want to go, but a day is coming where you will be taken to where you don’t want to go” (cf. Jo. 21:18). If you know the Scripture a bit, you might think, “I know where this discussion is going because he is mentioning Peter.” Yes, you understand that Peter was led to where he did not particularly want to go; he was led to be crucified. I wouldn’t expect that all of you will be clapping your hands to say, “Am I really going to be crucified? That’s wonderful!” Do you think you still want to be led by the Spirit of God? Shall we close the discussion at this point?

 

2. Led by the Spirit to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth

Before you get crucified, there are still other things you might not want to do. For example, the Lord Jesus did say, “You are to go into all the world to preach the gospel.” It’s also you, not just me! Do you think the Lord Jesus said those words only to Apostle Peter? Peter is not here to preach the gospel in our 20^th Century. Neither are the 12 apostles nor the 70 disciples around. Who is going to preach today? You will say to me, “You! You are the one who is going to preach.” Well, I’m sorry, my power is a bit limited. I cannot preach to the whole world, at least not yet, at this moment.

The task of bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth is for the church to carry out. Just as the Lord Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” (Mt. 5:14). You are the light that will go out to the whole world, and the “you” is referring to all his disciples. So important is the preaching of the gospel in the Lord Jesus’ teaching that it outranks some of the most important human duties. When a certain person wanted to be the Lord Jesus’ disciple, he said, “Let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” (Lk. 9:60)

Burying a dead parent is one of the most important human duties and responsibilities, and the Lord Jesus would never deny how important it is. But going out to preach the gospel is even more important! This task of preaching the gospel in the light of his return is so urgent that nothing else has precedence. How should we prepare for the coming of the Lord Jesus? Go and preach the gospel! That is what the Lord Jesus says in Matthew 24:14,

This must be accomplished first, and you have that responsibility given to you. According Scriptural teaching and not according to our opinion, although there are important responsibilities such as burying one’s father, and responsibility to one’s family, preaching the gospel takes precedence over everything else in view of the urgency of the present situation.

You can see that this mentality doesn’t exist anymore. Among Christians today, family takes precedence over church – my children, my wife, my family interests are first. If I have any bit of spare time left, I will even give a lot of that to the church, but preaching the gospel is certainly not the priority. Am I mistaken that none of you are involved in preaching the gospel at this point in time? How many of you will have this as a priority, no matter what form it takes, even if it is personal witness? I don’t mean that you don’t witness to someone at your place of work or college, but is this the priority in your thinking and in your life? I think not!

If you are led by the Spirit, wouldn’t you do what God requires? How would the Spirit of God lead you except in accordance with his own instructions and commands? If you dare to let him lead you to witness, who knows where he will lead you? But you may not want to hear this because you are afraid he might send you to Congo or to the North Pole! So you will witness on your terms: “God, I already understand your teaching. You don’t need to lead me to go to Congo, or who knows where that is too far away. You have to be practical. My neighbor also needs the gospel! So you leave it to me and I will take care of this.” Don’t we do this all the time?

So often, I have heard it said, “Why go off elsewhere? My neighbor also needs the gospel.” I am not arguing about the importance of the neighbor. I am not at all denying that he has his needs. We are on the subject of being led by the Spirit. The question is: Are you the right person to witness to your neighbor? Maybe you are the wrong person to do that! The only person who knows who is the right person is the Spirit of God, and he did not appoint you to decide who to witness to or not. In the matter of being led by the Spirit, we don’t experience God because we keep insisting on fulfilling it by our own standards, yet we deceive ourselves to think that is the Scriptural teaching.

Let me summarize the two points I have made so far. The funda­mental point is to be led by the Spirit. And taking us to the second point: When God leads you, he will lead to fulfill his command to us, to bring the gospel to the ends of the world, to let your light shine to the ends of the world. You must be willing to yield your life so that God’s Holy Spirit will lead you to where you are supposed to go.

 

As a student in London, I was led by the Spirit to witness to a stranger

I can tell you exciting stories about how God has led me to witness to people whom I have never known before. We must be so led by the Spirit that you go where he takes you for which there are no human explanations, as in my case when I was a student in London.

I was about half way down into my seat at my study desk when God talked to me, and I still remember his humor. He said, “Get up!”—in other words, “Don’t sit down.”—“I am sending you to the Central YMCA.” I was living in the north of London at that time. I looked at my watch and it seemed to me rather late. If I remember correctly, it was approaching 9:00 p.m. Of course, I started arguing. We are very good at arguing with God. I said, “It’s a bit late, God. I have my studies, and it’s a long way down to Central London. It will take me maybe 50 minutes on my motorcycle. If you count the return trip, it will be more than an hour and a half.” We will soon learn to stop arguing with God, but we always try. Finally, I said, “Okay.” I have been walking with God long enough to know that these arguments are futile, so I got on my motorcycle and off I went.

On the way down, I was saying, “God, who am I supposed to see anyway?” I suddenly realized that I had no idea who I was supposed to see at the YMCA! All the way, this thought was in my mind: “What do I do when I get to the YMCA?” So I started reasoning. Those of us who like to reason too much give ourselves a hard time. I began to think, “We have two or three people from our church living at the YMCA, and maybe one of them is having some kind of spiritual problem, and God wants me to help out.” That was on my mind when I got to the YMCA. When I arrived, I located one of our people who was in and said, “Are you having some spiritual problem?” He said, “No.” And I said, “God, what did you send me here for? Here I am, having ridden all this way down from the north of London into the center of London, and this guy doesn’t even have a problem!”

While I was talking with God, He said to me, “Look to the door.” I turned to the revolving door of the Central YMCA, and someone was walking through it. He said, “Talk to that man.” I have never seen him before, and I am not in the habit of stopping people I don’t know. In fact, I didn’t even know what to say to him. Yet, when God tells you to go, you go. And I said, “God, what am I supposed to say now?” I went up to this man who just came in through the door and said, “Do you need any help?” I thought he would say, “No, I’m fine.” To my surprise, he said, “Yes.” I thought, “Uh-oh! What kind of help does he need?”

Well, the amazing thing was he came to God the next day. He was a much older person than myself, and I saw that I was not the right person to help him, but I was the right person to put him in touch with the person who could help him. After our conversation that night, I realized that what he needed was something spiritual. So I introduced him to the pastor of our Chinese church, who was a Chinese from Taiwan. This man was also a Chinese from Taiwan, and he came to God! He was on his way to the United Nations in Geneva stopping over in London for those two days, so the timing had to be absolutely perfect! Had I not listened to the leading of the Spirit, how would he have come to God? When I told him how I had come to the YMCA, he said, “I know. God prepared all this for me to come to him.” Two days later, he went off to Geneva, rejoicing in God. If I had not been led by the Spirit, and he had not been saved, what would be the outcome for me for having disobeyed God? Have you ever thought how many people may not have come to God because you were not listening to the leading of his Spirit?

 

I am led by the Spirit, and God is certainly real to me!

I can go on with these kinds of examples not because I am some kind of super Christian. It’s nothing more than the common experience of being led by the Spirit in Romans 8:14. When you listen to what I am sharing with you, it reminds you of how the Ethiopian eunuch was brought to God in Acts 8:26-40, doesn’t it? For someone who finds the experience of being led by the Spirit as being normal, don’t you think God is real to him? Of course, God is real to me! I could never deny this! If one day, someone holds a gun to my head and says, “Do you believe in Yahweh God? Is he real to you? I’m going to pull this trigger if you say that he is real to you!” I would still have to say, “Go ahead. Pull the trigger because I cannot deny who I know to be true.” In other words, I am ready to stake my life on it because I have experienced God to be true over and over again.

I am serving God today, not because I thought it was such a great and well-paid job. When I served God in Liverpool, in England for five years, I preached without receiving one cent in salary because I refused to accept it, not because the church did not want to give it. In fact, most of the people in the church didn’t even know I was not accepting a salary. Some people gave freewill offerings, but most did not because they realized that the money they put into the offering did not come to me.

Initially, I had to teach in order to sustain my family and myself, because the church was just a handful of people at the beginning. But as the church grew, I still kept the situation as it was. There were some freewill gifts, as I said, but I took no salary. Five years later, when I left to go to a new work in Canada, some of them discovered that I never received a salary.

When I went to Canada, I had hoped to continue not accepting a salary, but it couldn’t be done because I was an immigrant, and I had to be paid by law. So I received minimum wage, that is, the lowest wage possible. To me, that was my glory because I want to preach the gospel not for any profit. Why do we do these things? Because God is real to us! If God is not real to you, you wouldn’t do these kinds of things.

So the second point is to go out to preach the gospel wherever God’s Spirit leads, not according to the way we want to do it.

 

3. Led by the Spirit to build up God’s church

The third thing that we are led to do by the Spirit is to build up his church in preparation for the coming of the Lord Jesus. We are all involved in building up his church, not just full-time workers. So in 1 Corinthians chapters 12 to 14 in particular, Paul has a lot to say to the Corinthian Church about how to build up one another, that is, how to build up God’s church. It’s a wonderful mission entrusted to us! If you go out somewhere to preach the gospel, a church will start to form. Then, you need to build it up person by person, and you have to encourage them to build each other up. It’s not just the pastor’s job. Every Christian is involved in this because you are part of that church. Are you involved in this?

I am not talking about various activities in the church when I say build up the church. All those activities are useful and valuable. I heard that some of you in Singapore are wonderful cooks. You can cook beautiful meals for special occasions. That does a lot of good to various people in more than one way, I suppose. But when Paul speaks about the gifts for building up the church, he did not say that you should become excellent cooks. The problem with Paul is that he was too otherworldly; he doesn’t think about food. You might say, “Paul is at a higher level. Apparently, he doesn’t think about food. But food is very important for us. How come he doesn’t mention cooking among the gifts of the Spirit? To me, cooking is very important.”

 

Learn to encourage others

I don’t think that even Paul will deny the value of cooking even though he doesn’t mention it, but what we need to learn is to build up one another spiritually, to encourage the other when he is down, to provide him with friendship and counsel where it is possible. We are to build up the church until it shines as a light. What a beautiful goal! But that requires giving our time to others to care for them physically, but above all, spiritually. So often, we just compromise and say, “I don’t know how to help someone spiritually, so I’ll just give him some presents.” That is also good but not enough. You have to learn how to build the other person up spiritually, and one of the things most needed in the spiritual life is encouragement. The road is so difficult, and we are very poor at this ministry of encouraging. Try to learn to encourage. You don’t have to be a Bible expert to encourage anyone. Even if he doesn’t look so depressed externally, you would be surprised what is in his heart.

 

4. Led by the Spirit to remain single – in view of the present crisis

So far, I have kept to the more acceptable subjects of being led by the Spirit. With much hesitation, I go to the less acceptable subjects, so my popularity will go further and further down as I go on in this message. But I have to tell you what God says – the kind of thing that few preachers want to talk about. Do you really want to hear about how to prepare for the Lord Jesus’ coming? I’m not so sure, as I said from the beginning. Maybe some brave souls here will say, “Yes! I am ready to hear!” But by the time I get through the points, they will say, “Sorry, I spoke too fast.”

Most of you are quite young, and marriage means something to you. You may say, “Talk about every aspect of life, but let’s leave marriage out!” If you are serious about preaching the gospel to the ends of the earth that I have talked about, then marriage is part of the subject. You would say, “Oh yes, I need a good wife (or a good husband). Then, we can go and preach the gospel together.” Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. That is not the Scriptural statement. We like to be led by God provided that we can make our own conditions along the way. It’s so reasonable, isn’t it? Two are better than one, right? How many wedding messages have I heard that say, “One will chase a thousand and two will chase ten thousand”! (Deut. 32:30) I’m not quite sure what is the “ten thousand” that they are chasing. Sometimes, they seem to have chased the wrong objectives.

Let me start quoting Scripture, 1 Corinthians 7:26-27, so as not to lose entirely what little popularity I have left:

Don’t seek a wife?! I knew I came to the wrong camp! I thought I came here to seek a wife (or a husband), and the preacher says, ‘Don’t seek a wife’!” Sorry, I didn’t say it. Remember, it was Paul who said it. How come Paul’s thinking is so different from our wisdom? It’s so reasonable to have two working together, because it’s more effective.

What does Paul say? “In view of the present crisis.” What “present crisis”? It’s the crisis of this present age that is in rebellion against God. Most Christians are not even aware that there is some kind of crisis spiritually. We are not sensitive to the spiritual realities of this age. We live as though we live in perfectly normal times. The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 24:37 that before his coming, it will be as in the days of Noah. People were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage as though these were very normal times. We don’t understand that we are not living in normal times, spiritually speaking.

You will remember that among the long list of things that I did not mention yesterday, I also did not mention earthquakes, famines, wars and rumors of wars. I did not mention any of them not because I was not aware of the Scriptural teaching of these things, but first, because the Lord Jesus says that these kinds of things are normal in this present period of time. These are crises external to us, and these earthquakes and famines will increase in intensity. But we cannot confidently use these as a measure for the conclusion of our present age because we don’t know at what point the intensity has reached the level that indicates the Lord Jesus’ coming is near. For example, in the 1970’s, there was a massive earthquake in Tangshan, in China. It was just an amazing destruction, and there were more than 400,000 casualties, including those who were seriously wounded. But then, more recently, there were earthquakes in Taiwan and Turkey and elsewhere, but not of the same magnitude. There is a war being fought in Chechnya at the moment. Wars have been going on for a long time in this present age, and so have famines. But the Lord Jesus says that these are just the beginning. All they do is remind us that we live in the present age.

I also did not make much reference to the signs in the heavens, the sun will be darkened (become black), the moon will not give its light (turn blood color), stars will fall from heaven and so forth because in the exegesis of these verses (Mt. 24:29, Rev. 6:12), I am not so sure whether these are to be treated as physical phenomena, or figurative for spiritual occurrences. I am more inclined to think that these are figurative of very serious spiritual occurrences in the heavenly places. You remember that there was a time when all the planets lined up in one line, and everyone got very excited, but the event passed and nothing much happened. They thought there would be high tides and things like that. There might have been a somewhat higher tide, but nothing too significant.

 

Pervasive spiritual blindness has engulfed the church and the world

The crisis Paul refers to is spiritual. For those who have eyes to see, the present spiritual crisis is of the most astonishing proportions. One of the most significant is the almost pervasive spiritual blind­ness that has engulfed the world, and that includes the church. I look around in the church and I see a level of spiritual blindness that is absolutely astonishing: total inability to see spiritual things! That is the crisis that we are talking about because this is an eternal life-and-death matter. The devotion to God is at so low a level that it is absolutely pitiful! And Paul doesn’t want anything to affect that already very minimal devotion to God.

Unfortunately, marriage is one of those things that could affect it. If we think of evangelism as some kind of human effort, and so we organize teams, or even husband-and-wife teams, we do this our way. Humanly speaking, that makes sense. But God’s way is very different from ours. What Paul is saying is this: if you get married, your focus on God will probably be affected to a significant level. Paul says that the person who is single focuses his whole devotion on God alone, but the married person must also think about pleasing his wife or her husband, so that the low level of devotion is further weakened.

He goes on to make other astonishing statements in this passage. He in no way suggests that you should dismiss your wife or leave your husband if you are married. But he says if you are not married, then just stay free. And he goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 7:29,

The Lord Jesus’ coming is near. This whole passage is actually concerned about the coming of the Lord Jesus. Then in verse 31 he says,

Can you swallow any of these? Do you really want me to go on talking about the coming of the Lord Jesus? Have you not had enough by now? This is hard to swallow! To marry is the natural desire or need, but Paul says, “No, I prefer you don’t do that.”

He also says in verse 28b,

Or “troubles in this life”, or “distress in the flesh” in various English translations. If you marry and have a child or perhaps more than one child, that is again normal, isn’t it? But any of you taking care of children, especially babies, will understand that you have to get up every 3 or 4 hours in the night to feed the baby. Your whole life and energy revolves around looking after your dear little ones. Is there anything wrong with that? Of course not! It’s natural. But in view of the present distress, how should we spend our energy? Many people have spent a large part of their lives bringing up the family. Humanly speaking, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s a question of priorities. Paul is not talking about whether it is right or wrong, but about your priorities.

 

Are you willing to be led by the Spirit to remain single?

Are you willing to be led by the Spirit if God says, “I want you to remain single”? You see this beautiful girl and the Spirit says, “No, you just remain single.” Ah, it is so hard to be a Christian!

I have heard many sisters say to me, “I’ll make a vow to serve God as a single person.” I said, “Sister, please don’t make any vows.” Then I’d say, “Are you sure?” She says, “Yes, I am sure.” Again I’d say, “Fine, if you are sure you want to remain single, and you are sure you are led by the Spirit. But you don’t need to make a vow. Nobody asked you to make a vow.” Yet, some of these sisters go on and make a vow anyway. That is foolishness. I am sorry to say this so plainly. When they cannot keep the vow afterwards, they live in a sense of guilt for the rest of their lives. So I am certain that God never led them to make any vow. It was human dedication of the moment.

God may want you to remain single now, but it doesn’t mean he wants you to remain single for the rest of your life. Maybe later on, he wants you to get married for some reason as you might discover. One very obvious reason is if finally, you have to lead a church, and it isn’t appropriate for a single person to be the leader of a church, because there are sisters there. Therefore, it’s often not only impor­tant, but also necessary for a church leader to be married, so that there will be someone to help the sisters. So, even if initially, his Holy Spirit might not lead you to be married, there comes a time when he may say, “Now is the time to get married.” The point is simply that we must be willing to be led by the Spirit, whether to be married or not. And in view of the present crisis, it is likely—not absolutely—that he leads you to remain single.

I myself was very happy to remain single, but when you become the pastor of a church, it turns out that it’s not suitable to remain single because all kinds of problems could arise. Therefore, it becomes necessary to marry, to keep your witness pure, and to have someone who can help the sisters when it isn’t appropriate for you, a brother, to help them.

 

5. Led by the Spirit to sell all you have

Let us come to the last point which is equally unpalatable, and I almost hesitate to mention it: Go and sell all you have. “Uh-oh! Here we go! We have heard a little bit about this in Commitment Training or somewhere else, but it was put in a less radical manner.” This even bothers people who don’t have anything to sell. Perhaps they are thinking, “One day, I’m going to inherit a million dollars or a great amount of property, and I have to dispose of it all!”

Do you want to call God king? Who said, “Go and sell”? Not me! The Lord Jesus said so reflecting his Father and God’s command. He said it more than once, so that we don’t think it was just a slip of the tongue at the moment. (Mt. 19:21; Lk. 12:33, 18:22)

You can look at a passage in Luke 12:32-40. This passage is interest­ing because the words “come” or “coming” occur many times, so it is very relevant to our camp theme: “Prepare for Jesus’ Coming.” The word erchomai in Greek translated as “come” or “coming” occurs 6 times in this passage (verses 36, 37, 38, 38 39, 40). The Lord Jesus says, “Do not be afraid” in verse 32. It really means do not be anxious about your material needs because God wants to give you the king­dom. He said, “You are going to get the kingdom,” and that sounds very good. But before you get too happy, look at the next verse, verse 33:

The point is quite simple: Let go of all your earthly possessions, and translate them into spiritual treasures. Put away the treasures that are going to pass away, the kind that will wear out, rust, and be eaten up by worms. Under the leading of the Spirit—and it is very important that I stress again, under the leading of the Spirit—are you willing to dispose of earthly possessions and turn them into eternal ones? I come back to the key words, “led by the Spirit.” This selling of possessions must not be an act of fanaticism. It must not be an act of some rash and foolish decision, “OK, we will do it!” It must be a calm, carefully-considered, well-planned move under the leading of the Spirit of God. To say that God is king of our lives is absolute hypocrisy unless we are prepared to let the kingship of God apply to our possessions. If I said, “God, you are king of my life, but don’t touch my bank account,” we will be condemned as hypocrites on that Day when we meet the Lord Jesus. He will say, “Did you say that God is the king of your life? But you never let him touch your bank account. What kind of hypocrite are you?” That is the point. God tests us at the point where it hurts.

 

Finance your preaching the gospel

Selling of possessions has nothing to do with just throwing away your possessions, so that you have no more money and have to become a beggar sitting by the side of the street. There are so many “holy beggars” in India because it seems to be particularly holy to be able to beg. That would hardly be honoring God, would it? What is behind this command to sell? There are several things involved.

 

Finance your missions and services

The first is that if you are going to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel, presumably you have to finance these missions and other services you want to offer to God.

 

Increase your mobility

Our possessions (house, land, investment, car) cut our mobility. In order to preach the gospel wherever the Spirit of God sends you, you have to be completely mobile. If you are tied down by all your pos­sessions, you are totally immobile. That is the reason why so many brothers and sisters are not able to go anywhere, and therefore be­gin to rationalize and justify themselves by saying, “I’ll just preach to the neighbor,” as though God has sent them to the neighbor. Are you going to spend the rest of your life preaching to your neighbor? At what point in time have you finished preaching to your neighbor? It will be interesting to check on the people who talk about preaching to the neighbor, whether they ever did preach to the neighbor, and if so, how frequently. We are truly good at fooling ourselves!

 

Sell in response to the crisis of the Lord Jesus’ return

Again, the rationale behind selling one’s possessions has to do with this present age and the crisis in it. When Hong Kong was about to be taken over by the Communists in 1997, do you know what happened in the years preceding the takeover? Multitudes of Hong Kong people were selling their possessions. Jesus did not have to tell them to do that. They were selling their houses and lands in a hurry. You would have thought they became his disciples all of a sudden. Many of them had big houses, beautiful cars and lands and so forth. They sold all this in order to go to Canada in particular, because according to the United Nations, it was the number one country with the best living conditions in the world, for six years in a row.

You can also get rid of your possessions in this place and move to a new world, a new life! Canada only required that a new immigrant bring in a quarter of a million dollars, provided you use the money for business, and many Hong Kong people could afford a lot more than that. They were going to Canada in droves because of the crisis.

But of course, like so many Christians, they wanted to have the best of both worlds. What if their worst fears come true? It’s still good to keep a foothold in Hong Kong. So they keep a business there, or at least, a smaller apartment. The big money has gone over to Canada, and the small money stays in Hong Kong. This sounds familiar to most of us. We want to have a portion in the kingdom of God, but we also want to make sure that our foot remains on solid ground in this world. We can see how we still function, not according to the leading of the Spirit, but according to our worldly wisdom.

Notice the connection of selling your possessions with the coming of the Lord Jesus. You cannot take it out of the context of Scripture. Selling your possessions is in Luke 12:33—which precedes the Lord Jesus’ coming in verse 36—and he goes on to say in verse 35, “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home.” He tells us that waiting for him, the master, God’s plenipotentiary, is the reason to sell! Do you want to wait for the Lord Jesus’ return? He tells you how to do it.

Are you willing to listen to the leading of the Spirit of God? Are you sure you want to listen? Are you willing to say, “God, all my possessions are yours, and I’m waiting for you to tell me what to do with them”? You might discover that he doesn’t tell you a thing for one or two years. And you will say, “God, the money is still in my bank account. What do you want me to do?” Then one day, he suddenly tells you, “I want part of this money to go there, and some of that money to go here.” God doesn’t necessarily tell you to dispose all your money at one go when you sell your possessions.

 

Write your will

There is one final, important reason for this teaching. What does a person do when he knows that he is about to die? He writes his will to dispose of all his possessions, because he knows that he cannot take them with him, so he might as well dispose of them. I have told you that preparing for the Lord Jesus’ coming involves being prepared to die. Every lawyer knows the kind of risks involved if you die and have not written your will. You must get your will ready. The Lord Jesus is basically telling us, “Write your will because anyone who wants to be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross—the instrument of his own death—then follow me.”

Are you prepared to write your will to say how you are going to dispose of all your possessions as led by the Spirit? A lawyer will say it is wise for you to write your will. Don’t think you are so young that you are not going to die for another 50 years. I remember the shock on the face of my doctor in Canada when he said to Helen and myself, “My friend was only 36 years old, and he dropped dead of a heart attack! He was fine and in good shape one day, and the next day, he was dead!” What happens if you don’t write your will?

In preparing for Christ Jesus’ coming, let us get our will ready. Let the Spirit of God lead us as to how to dispose of our possessions. It doesn’t matter if it’s not a vast amount of possessions. The question is, are you prepared to dispose of them? The widow had only 2 mites (Mk. 12:43; Lk. 21:3); they were her total possessions, and she offered all to God. And Jesus said, “She has given more than all those rich people put together, because they gave of their surplus, but she gave of her substance.”

The call to sell is the call to give of our substance; and I stress again, it’s not as an act of fanaticism, but a calm and calculated move that is led by the Spirit.

 

Be prepared to die at the hands of the unfaithful

Finally, since we are talking about writing our wills, we are talking about dying. I counted that the word “blood” occurs 17 times in the book of Revelation, which is more than anywhere else in the New Testament, if I am not mistaken.

Let us look at just one example of this, so that you will see the point. Look carefully at Revelation 17:5-6.

Did you hear the message of the Revelation? The blood in Revelation in these instances refer to the blood of the believers. Someone has observed that the only Christians that the book of Revelation knows are the martyrs, those who have died for Christ. Every true believer in Revelation appears to be a martyr.

What you see in this verse is Babylon. Babylon is a picture of the world, like Egypt. Babylon is portrayed here as being utterly drunk with the blood of the saints, drunk also with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. How much blood must the world drink before it is drunk?

Write your will if you want to prepare for the coming of the Christ, the plenipotentiary of God. Babylon is going to drink our blood. We don’t say this as a matter of drama, but simply stating a cool fact of reality, that the world will hate you.

The Lord Jesus says in John 7:7,

He says something totally different in John 15:18-19. He says to the disciples after they have learned to follow him for some time, “The world will hate you because it hates me.”

The apostle John also reminds us:

Does the world hate you? Probably not! If you are one of them, why should they hate you? They only hate you if you are no longer one of them. Only at that point in time will you know what it means that the world will hate you to the extent that it will kill you.

Please don’t think that the world refers to non-Christians exclusive­ly. Did you notice what it says concerning Babylon? Look carefully. It doesn’t say that Babylon is the world in the sense that it is a secular state. Revelation 17:5 says, “Babylon the great, mother of prosti­tutes.” Do you know what that means? If you are somewhat familiar with the Old Testament, you will know what that means. When Israel became unfaithful to God, it was declared to be an adulteress and a prostitute. In other words—and this is the shocking part of it—Babylon is scarcely the world in Revelation; it is the people of God who have turned unfaithful to God. Those are going to be our enemies.

Who crucified Jesus? Who persecuted him to the end? Who persuaded the Romans to have him crucified because they did not have the power to crucify him under Roman law? The chosen people of God, the Israelites! We don’t say this as an act of anti-Semitism. As Christians, we are not anti-Semitic. I love the Jews. I study their writings. I am reasonably familiar with Judaism even in the modern days. We love them. At the end of the age, they are not going to be our enemies, but it is those Christians who refuse to live under the kingship of God. These “Christians” give lip service to God and his Christ as king, but whose lives are a denial of everything Christ taught. Watch and see. They are the ones who will persecute you.

 

Prepare for Jesus’ coming: Be led by the Spirit to be faithful unto death

I hope that these points are clear to you. We have a very high calling – to be faithful to God unto death, as Revelation 2:10 says,

Are we prepared for the coming of the Christ of God? Let us begin with being led by the Spirit. You don’t even have to worry about all the rest for now. Learn day by day, moment by moment, to listen to the Spirit of God, to be sensitive to God’s voice, and you will discover whether or not he is real. Until you have settled that point, you need not even concern yourself about all the other four points I men­tioned.

By the time God is truly real to you because of your being led by his Spirit, whether you are married or not doesn’t bother you anymore. By that time, you won’t even find it burdensome when he tells you to sell everything. Also by that time, you won’t find it terrifying when you can lay down your life for him.

 

Wang Ming Dao, led by the Spirit all his life, was faithful unto death

I heard Wang Ming Dao preaching in Beijing when I was a young Christian, and it left a very deep impression on my mind. He knew the Communists were about to arrest him back in 1955. He knew his time was going to be very short, and he was not mistaken. Two weeks later, he was arrested and he was not seen again, as he was in prison for about 25 years. I remember him standing on the platform saying this: “I consider it the highest honor if I am granted the privilege to suffer for God.” To suffer for God sounds so terrible to someone who doesn’t know God, who is not led by his Spirit. But it was a sheer privilege for his servants, like Wang Ming Dao!

It was a privilege for me as a very young believer, to see this man of great spiritual stature speak forth the Word. Helen and I were also granted the privilege to visit him in his home in Shanghai in 1990, and to see that at 90 years old, his faithfulness and commitment to God had neither changed nor wavered in the least. He died the following year. But at 90, his mind was sharp and clear. He was a person who had known what is to be led by the Spirit all his life, and remained faithful unto death.

I pray that you may also have this experience of the reality of God, in being led by his Spirit. Pursue this first and foremost, and all the other steps will follow naturally by the leading of the Spirit. Then you will be prepared for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ whom God sent!