Living with Him   (27:55)

I Thessalonians 5:9.  For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:29.  For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

I Thessalonians 5:23.  And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

…by appointment.  We heard that word a while ago: appointed.  And that verse is a marvelous, marvelous verse, where God says, “God hath not appointed”—and that has to be emphasized—“us to wrath.”  The Bible talks about men and women who are appointed to wrath, appointed vessels to destruction.  What a terrible appointment! 

I saw one time how the farmers raise sugar beets.  I was on the farm, and here there were thousands of little plants coming up out of the ground, and the farmer went up and he kicked out, oh, maybe ninety-nine out of a hundred—just threw them out, couldn’t use them.  And he kept one out of a hundred here and one there, out of a hundred, and another one there.  I said, “What are you doing?  Why do you throw all these out?”

“Well, they amount to nothing.  They’ll never grow into the sugar beets that will go on the market.” And he knew by looking at these little plants which would fulfill. 

And God says, “Whom He did foreknow before the foundation of the world…”  God has a great and wonderful call and a marvelous appointment and “He has not appointed us...”  That’s important.  I’ve got to know whether I’ve been one of God’s appointed ones, and whether He has appointed me for this most marvelous salvation.  God knows who’s going to fulfill.  God knew that before the foundation of the world.

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And how wonderful to know that “God has not appointed us to wrath.” What did He do with those whom He foreknew?  “Them He also did predestinate.”  He made His selection before the foundation of the world.  He said, “Now, that boy will fulfill.  That girl will fulfill.  I want that man.  I want that child.  I want that boy.  I’m going to get him.”  He “did predestinate” to be what He wants them to be: “to be confomed to the image of His Son.”

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He said, “The God of peace santify you—” a little bit so that you’ll at least act like Baptists?  Like good Methodists?  So that you at least go to church two or three times a week and take communion on Good Friday night, or you act like a Pentecostal saint when you’re in meeting and like the devil when you’re at home?  No!  “I pray the God of peace…”  Oh, this God of peace is my God, is your God, Hallelujah.  And He will “sanctify you wholly.”

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If He drops me, it’ll never happen.  And if I forsake Him, it’ll never happen.  And if I don’t cooperate with Him “with fear and trembling,” it’ll never happen.  But that’s why the Holy Spirit has come all the way out of heaven to this earth.  No preacher can do it, no prophet can do it, no Elijah, no Jeremiah, no Moses.  “My servant Moses is dead,” He said…  Moses couldn’t do it, Joshua couldn’t do it.  It takes the Holy Spirit in the name and power of the risen Son of God to work me through, to pull me through.

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I may be very satisfied with myself, and that’s what’s the matter with us: as soon as we have a little blessing, off we go like a chicken when it’s found a worm—puts it in his mouth and off he goes for fear some other chicken will steal it.  And then we start a new church, and we start a new fanaticism somewhere.  The world is full of it.  When we came to Germany, they told us, “We don’t want you here.  We’ve got 56 different factions of Pentecostal churches that want to get into Germany, and they all fight one another.”  Do you think they’ll ever get to heaven?   No sir!  No sir! 

Jesus Christ has called us into fellowship with Himself, and if God has His way, He’ll deliver you of all that fanaticism, and He’ll deliver you of all that self-love, and He’ll make your heart to burn with love for God and for all of humanity.

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What is the matter with the world today?  What’s the matter with worldly churches today?  Beloved, “God has given them over to a reprobate mind” and the devil is running off into hell with them.  That’s what it is.  Don’t you fool yourself.  We talk about offenses that must come.  “See that you offend not one of these little ones that believe in Me.”  I wonder how many of our children are being offended by your television shows and by your talk at the table.  I’ve been in Christian homes, in Pentecostal homes, where children have been defiled by the talk of their parents over the table.

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Beloved, this is salvation to which we’re all called: to live!  Not just to go to church, not just to make a holy face in church, not just to have a profession, but really to have a life of union with Jesus Christ.

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“For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of the flesh is as the flower of the field.  The grass withereth.”  Oh, don’t you see the grass withering when today Protestant ministers get together and they say, “Now, we’re glad we’re without God.  We have a religion and we don’t need God anymore.”  Beloved, they don’t have to be lost, they’re lost already.  They don’t have to go to hell, they’re already in hell.  “The god of this world has already blinded their minds which believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them.”  And Paul says, “They perish.”  “But God has not appointed us to wrath.”

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God’s made His choice of you.  He wants you, and if He can have you, I tell you, He’ll put you through the fire.  “I’ve chosen you in the furnace of affliction.”  He’s not going to leave you in your flesh and in your fleshly appetites; He’s going to boil that out of you.  He’s going to crucify that man “with its affections and lusts.”  And that’s what Jesus Christ offers me.

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Oh, “God has not appointed us to wrath;”  He has appointed us, though, “to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us, that whether we wake or whether we sleep, we should live together with Him.”

Now, dear Lord, I’d like to stop and say, “Don’t worry that anybody is going to take this to heart.”

A vision of the unholy tongues of Christians that had to be removed at the gates of heaven.  “The angel said, ‘Those are the tongues of the saints that couldn’t behave on earth.  They had to be cut out before they could get into heaven.’”    (from 4:41)

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