Automatically Generated Transcript
We’ll put Mark’s Gospel in Chapter 3. That Bible reading up on the screen. And what you’ve got there in this Bible passage is not the very first dealings Jesus had with those who became his apostles, and not the final dealings that he had, which we were looking at this morning in the morning message, where he gave the great commission to them at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. But in the middle, there’s a moment when Jesus calls to his disciples, and in verse 13 it says, He went up to a mountain, and he called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.
Now in that particular narrative, what Jesus actually did then was to choose some of the people who were following him. There was quite a large group of folk who were listening to his teaching, but there were some that he had chosen, and he issued a call to them to come and be close to him, and he was going to tell them what he was going to make them to be. And so the word called is used in this spot in the Bible to do with Jesus calling for someone to be something in a special role. And it is about there being a call that you can have to this or that that is what we’re talking about tonight. What is it to have a calling?
Now my sister married to a man who’s an Englishman, and he comes from Liverpool, all of which is irrelevant, but when he was a high school age and went to school, his dad got a call from the school to come on down and to see the principal. And the father went, it’s the father who told me this, went down with trembling to know what trouble his son might have been in. And when he got down there, the principal took him into his office and he opened up the records of the school in terms of the results and found the page where Neil’s class was listed and ran his fingers down. And immediately his dad, Neil’s dad, could see the marks that Neil had. And instead of it being a moment of being told off about his son or trying to get the dad to weave him into action a bit more, he immediately recognised just how well he was doing at school. In fact, he had fantastic results. And there was something special about the man. He has become a scientist. He’s married to my sister. And anyway, he had a calling, and the principal told the dad, look at this, look at this. Your son has a calling. I don’t know the exact words he used, but he pointed out that there was something that was in his humanity that marked him out for a special purpose, which turned out to be in science. He came out to Australia, did his PhD, and he’s worked as a scientist ever since. He has a calling to science. He’s a Christian as well, but if you get talking to him, he’ll tell you about how the Lord led him in one step to get his training and eventually to be operating with CSIRO in West Australia. And this is a calling that is actually to do with the illustration of my brother-in-law. It has to do with your own human nature that you have, that you’ve been given in your genes. Not these ones, but your, you know, things that mark you out for what you can do. And to varying degrees, all of us in our humanity can discover a calling which is there because of the capacities that we have.
It happens in other areas of life as well. There are people who end up doing something which other people cannot do. They end up maybe in sports, and it’s one of the cases with people who do really well in sports that there’s a lot of hard tryers in there, and some of them are better than others. But every now and then there comes somebody who just has something special that they haven’t worked for. And, you know, you find on some of the footballers that there are some who do really well even though their coaches find it hard to get them to come to training because they’re just so good at it that they can somehow succeed even though they’re not very obedient to the coach. Coaches really don’t like that happening, but there are people who have within their humanity just something that marks them out for what they end up being able to do. Not everybody fulfills that calling, but there is a calling that people can have and can know that happens because of the grace of God in what he designed you to be in your human being, whether you’re a Christian or not.
But in this particular case, the calling is coming from Jesus, and the calling has to do not with something that they had in their humanity, but actually something that they would get eventually in what the Bible calls your new humanity. Now, do you know about the new humanity, the humanity that we get when we get converted to Christ? Converted isn’t just a change in who you are in terms of the old humanity, but it is the introduction of the humanity that Jesus brought to the world. It’s amazing how many people in hearing about Christianity and when you’re someone that works at schools, like my wife Michelle does, she bumps into lots of people who have varying opinions as to what is the Christian life. And many of them have got nothing to do with a real understanding of the gospel, but the gospel is about God revealing a substitute humanity, a new humanity, Jesus. And the reason why Jesus came in the first instance is because God had decided that the old humanity had corrupted itself and would never do. But because he loved the world of people, when it says for God to love the world, it’s the world of humanity he’s talking about, he loved that world of humanity that he provided a new humanity for us to be grafted into, for us to be forgiven of the old and given a place in the new. And part of what we learn from the gospels about becoming a Christian is not just that you’re forgiven, but that God makes you new in Christ.
And the little word in Christ is speaking about connection to Christ. It’s speaking about the fact that the new humanity that he was born to be was made available for us to be grafted into. So instead of us representing the old humanity which had failed and which God had rejected, we’ll become a part of the new humanity that he had accepted. Now you may be wondering about this mention of the new humanity that God had accepted. When did God demonstrate, this is a smaller number, I can ask you a few questions to see who says what. And there’s Ian there, I might think picking on him. Anyway, he goes to one of the home groups that I go to. And anyway, what is there about Jesus, that he is the new humanity, that is important for us to understand to get into? Now I want to ask a question about the new humanity. How did God show, Ian, show that this humanity, the new humanity would be acceptable? Wherein did he decide to make visible that Jesus and the humanity that he was offering for people to join in with was acceptable to him? This might stretch him, I’ve no idea what he’ll say, and then I’ll move across to Ken if he doesn’t know what to say. Sorry? Okay, you’re saying a correct answer. That’s very true, and we just had communion service about how God arranged for our forgiveness by coming in the person of his son to be a substitute for us. And what happened on the cross was that our sins were laid on him and God punished him as though he were us, and so he has taken our place. Now you’re actually telling us the negative half of the answer to the question, which is correct. I’m not saying you’re not on the money, but it’s correct. But let’s see if Ken can add something to it. Jesus, how has God shown that his humanity that he offers for us to be grafted into will be and has been accepted? Yeah, and you’d be right. That’s the other half of the Easter story is not only how Jesus dispensed with the guilt, our guilt and our wrongness and the fact that we’re failing, but also then he gave a public declaration to his acceptance of the new humanity when he raised him from the dead. For Jesus, having finished with our sins, remember he cried on the cross, it is finished. His punishment, by the way, did not include where he went after he died. And although some of the creeds say he went down to hell, there’s a bit of a mistranslation. He went to Hades, which is the place of the dead. Sheol in Hebrew and Hades in Greek. And where he went amongst the dead, so that in the book of Acts it often talks about the fact that he was raised from amongst the dead, was the place where people were waiting for the decision to be made as to where their future would be handled. And God the Father raised him to life again as a public statement that his sacrifice on the cross has been accepted and his person has been accepted and took him to heaven and made him and his name to be the name above every name. So that the whole of creation knew that God had accepted him and then he, with his death on the cross and his person having been accepted by the Father, is offered to us that if we will come and repent of our sin and trust in him to be our own personal saviour, not only is our sin forgiven, but we and our persons are made acceptable in Christ.
And there’s something absolutely fantastic about having a self-perception that you have been granted the smile of God. You’ve been granted to be accepted. And just as Jesus, when he was baptised, he said, suffer it to be so, for so will fulfil all righteousness, he told John the Baptist. And then a voice from heaven came, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. The smile of God is upon Christ. And when you come to Jesus and you take him as your own personal saviour, then you are accepted in him. You couldn’t be more accepted than being united to Christ. The actual doctrine is called union with Christ, whereby we have salvation. Because of what Jesus has done, getting rid of the guilt of the old, and by the newness of his acceptance, the new man, and the new man in Christ is the humanity God is populating eternity with bit by bit. And when you come to Jesus, you know you’ve been accepted. That’s a fantastic thing. And so the Bible will use the word calling to do with the fact that we’re called to be one of those that belongs to God through Jesus. Now that is not to do with your humanity, the old humanity, because that humanity was rejected. Rejected because of our sinfulness and our connections with the original sin and the fact that though we do our own level of sins, nonetheless, we will never be able to become acceptable in who we are in the natural.
And you might have a calling like my brother-in-law did in terms of his being a scientist, but that doesn’t get you to have this spiritual calling that has to do with the new man and not the old man. He called to him those whom he desired and they came to him. It matched what he was in his humanity with what he was in his new humanity. And God has a way of doing that, of arranging a future for you and for me that has taken into account who we are physically in the natural, but also who he makes us to be in Christ, which is a fantastic thing.
Now in this particular case though, the calling isn’t the same calling that every Christian has in Christ. We all get called to be in Christ and often the Bible uses the language to as many as are called. It uses that talk of how to describe a Christian. If you’re a Christian, you’re a called one. Called to belong to Jesus. I love one of the living translations. I think it translates the verse in some of the letters of Paul. It says we are called to belong to Jesus. You have a calling to be his. There’s something fantastic in that knowledge that where you are in Jesus is what you were called to be. I’ve actually noticed that when people find something, it’s a bit more obvious in some than others, but every now and then you meet someone who has just a particular makeup in their natural and they find what to do in life which fits that and they’re actually happy in it. If you can find your calling, many a person, a wise person has said if you really want to be content, find yourself something to do that you love. If you find yourself doing what you love to do, then you’ll be a happy person. If you’ve got a job and you actually really dislike doing it, then look around for a better job because you’ll be dissatisfied. There’s a lot of jobs that are had by people who it’s the best they can find at the moment and I’m not saying you should look down your nose at that provision, but I am saying that the way to happiness is to find yourself doing what you love to do. It’s interesting if you find your calling that you’re naturally called to have, that’s more easily done. But in the spiritual arena, when you find yourself being in Christ, that is doubly beautiful, doubly wonderful.
There’s a subset of people who are called to be apostles. I’ll say a bit more about that in a moment. But there’s something very interesting in the Bible text just at this point because you see there’s a little bit of an unusual contradiction in the language between the word called and the word apostle. Let’s see, and sometimes in the evenings when the numbers are handleable, I make this a question. Who can tell me the apparent contradiction between what Jesus did with these ones called to be apostles and what the word apostle means? Can anybody want to help me about the word apostle and what it means? And the idea of being called and it says what he called them to be and do. Can you see a contradiction, apparent contradiction, mind you, in those words? And I don’t know who wants to have a go. I can see a smile coming on David Niles’ face.
Well, isn’t the call being brought in with the word apostle being sent out? So you would be an apostle if you were sent with clout. And Jesus appointed twelve because he was going to send them out to be the founders of the church. And they’d have authority, which is what he goes on to say, if you read it carefully in a minute we will. But he appointed twelve whom he named apostles. In other words, there’s right pregnant there in the middle of the language that he’s picked people to be sent out. The very next thing it says is so that they might be with him. And if you read the gospels, you know, that’s exactly what happened. They followed him around the whole 28 chapters worth, as I was talking this morning of Matthew, if you’re dealing with Matthew, they didn’t get to do the going out, the final going out that the Great Commission commissioned them so to do at the end in chapter 28. But they had 28 chapters worth of teaching. And it appears to be a little bit of a contradiction. But in that apparent contradiction is a deep spiritual principle that I want to bring to you tonight. I don’t want you to miss because you can’t be really effectively sent out until you’ve been called in to be with him.
He appointed twelve whom he named apostles so that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. And in that lies the secret to the power of Christian authority. It is in learning first, before you ever set out to be a great, powerful worker for Christ. The secret is to spend time with Him. And only to the degree that you let Him teach you and mold you and frame you and let you practice and give you some little sendings and chances to learn.
And if you read through the Gospels, they’re always being given things by Jesus to do, and then they fail, and He comes back and they haven’t been able to drive out the demon. They say, “How come we couldn’t do it?” Jesus has to demonstrate what it’s all about. Or He has them in the boat, and the storm comes and they’re getting afraid, and He’s asleep in the prow of the boat. And they go and wake Him up and say, “Don’t you care that…” Actually, they get up the back of the boat and sing a chorus, “Carest thou not that we perish?” You won’t laugh at that, but people used to when they knew the chorus. We sang it in Christian Endeavor. But anyway, they came to Jesus and said, “Don’t you care that we’re about to drown?” And so they get Him up, and He stands at the front of the boat and He says, “Peace, be still.”
You know what He does next? He tells them, He says, “Why did you doubt?” If Jesus is asleep in your boat, you are so safe. If it’s Jesus, if He’s there in your boat, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Because He is the Prince of Peace. And so He stood up in the front and said, “Peace, be still.” I would really love to be able to be conveyed somehow to see that moment of this terrible, boisterous storm and Him raising His hands and saying, “Peace, be still,” and just see the whole of the vigor of the storm just dropped down. The boat was still, because the commander of the seas and the waves told them what to do.
Now that experience would have stood those disciples well in the future. It’s part of the sort of thing He wanted them to go through in order for them eventually to be able to go out, some to various places in the world, some to get crucified, some to have all sorts of difficulties happen, but to know the rest of what happened in the Great Commission where Jesus says, “Lo, I’ll be with you always, even unto the end of the age.”
So Jesus gave a calling to the twelve apostles, and it’s a specific calling, and in the morning service, I asked the people to answer the question as to who exactly got this call. And it’s answered in an earlier verse that says Jesus, about the apostles, the eleven of them, not Judas, who had killed himself by them, and there was only eleven left, and they went to the mountain that Jesus had appointed for them to meet Him, right up in Galilee.
So it was a specific set of people who got the calling to be an apostle. The Bible actually tells us the qualities that make a person eligible to be an apostle. It’s found in the first few chapters of the Book of Acts, and those characteristics that make you qualified to be an apostle are that you were with Jesus before His crucifixion, you saw Him alive in the flesh, and you saw Him after His resurrection. That limits it to people from that generation back then, so if you meet someone who says, “I’m a modern-day apostle,” don’t believe them. There are no other apostles who don’t fit the characteristic of having seen Jesus. They are actually the hinge people, the apostles are, between His coming in the Incarnation and the ongoing Church afterwards. They’re the hinge of people who saw Him come and who saw His miracles and who testified to how He died on the cross and rose again, who saw Him after His resurrection and could give a witness that He really did rise from the dead. That’s what makes you qualified to be an apostle.
You need to be aware of the fact that the word apostle is also used of people not the ones chosen here, not the ones who were sent in the Great Commission to be the founders of the Church. Remembering Ephesians 2 verse 20 says that the Church was founded upon the apostles and the prophets, and they’re the ones who gave us our New Testament. But there are other people who are called apostles of the churches. It’s really interesting the Bible translators are fully aware of what I’m now saying to you, because they will translate that in your English Bibles as messengers of the churches, so it is the same apostolic word, which means sent out with authority, but the authority they were sent with was the authority of these other ones of the churches. And there are people who qualify to be in that characteristic these days. You know, we use the word missionaries, and the same is true about missionaries. Listen to me. The Latin word, which is the equivalent to apostello in Greek, but the Latin word is missio. And missio means sent out. And a missionary is someone sent out. But the question is not so much what goes with the word apostle or missio, whether you’re speaking Greek or Latin. What counts is who did the sending. And the sending by Jesus is the far greater one with greater authority. So when someone is sent by the churches, they can be a missionary and have the power of being sent by the churches, but it’s not the same as being sent by Jesus to be the original apostles.
And so check up later on when you get home, look up Ephesians 2:20 about how the church was founded upon the apostles and the prophets. They’re the apostles that Jesus chose. Here they are. We’re just looking at. Now, the principle nonetheless is true. And I don’t think that you’re a very wise missionary who gets sent by the churches but doesn’t take a good experience of church life. And I’m rather proud of our Baptist denomination in the sense that we have one of the characteristics, one of the qualifications to become an apostle from Baptist churches. The ABMS used to be how they called themselves, GIA or something more recently. I’m not up with the latest terms, but the ABMS was Australian Baptist Mission Service. And for those to do that, you have to have been trained to know how to be in a church. And I think that’s a very smart thing to have done because it is the knowledge of being in a church that makes you someone who can be a good missionary to take the church somewhere else. There are a lot of people who want to have a go with their idea of what it is to be someone that’s doing well and starting churches. But if you’ve not really had the experience of being in one, you don’t really qualify.
And the same theory that I’m giving you about being an apostle of Christ also applies to being an apostle or a missionary of the churches, sent out by the churches. Well, anyway, the point that I’m moving towards is that there is a principle, a spiritual principle about a calling when it has to do with the spiritual side because of what you are in Christ. And it is that you’ve spent time with Christ. So you’ve picked up on what He wants you to know under His authority and you take that with you.
There are other gifts that people have in the body of Christ. And so there is a difference between one person and how they’re sent and another person who has another gift. And the thing is to discover where your gift is that Jesus has given. And He has given to the church various gifts. And when you know who you are gift-wise, then you know how to go and be that person sent by Christ.
Well, it tells us the ones who are chosen and includes Judas who betrayed Him. But the principle has nonetheless been set that you have to be a person who’s spent time with Jesus. Now, where I learned all this was when I was a young person in the Gibson family in Adelaide when my dad was working at the Baptist College in Adelaide. And we had students come from all over. And I used to watch the students, very curious to know how they were when they came. And there were various types of students who some of them came who were very strong Christians and they dressed properly and they knew how to say all the right words. And yet when I watched them, some of the ones who were the ones I would say were going to make good ministers didn’t have any punch, didn’t have any power. They came because they weren’t actually called. And some of them would later say, “I’ve come here because it’s a good idea to go to college. I respected becoming, being trained to be a minister, but nothing happened.” I’ve been to speak at camps of churches where the pastor actually came and spoke to me and said he was not going to continue trying to be a pastor because God didn’t do anything through him. And I think he was just, that man came from a church in Adelaide which I knew and later on I visited his home church and he confirmed to me that he’d made the right decision not to continue to be a pastor because in his attempt coming up, came up to our college and being trained, he was put in a church and nothing happened. Because Jesus chooses what is your gift. And if He doesn’t give you the gift to do this or that, then it won’t occur. You might have other personality gifts and humanly people might say you look like you can do it and I noticed that. Some of the nicest personalities didn’t necessarily turn out to have the goods to be what they were hoping to be. There was no loss for them to discover that is one of the purposes of college is to give the opportunity for the whole Baptist denomination to discover who has the gifts and should be there and who shouldn’t. There’s nothing wrong with getting an education, it’s just that if you build yourself up to have a hope to be something that you’re not called to, it’s only going to form a misfunction in the church.
So there is a sense of calling where it’s something that needs to be tested and tested by whether or not God, by the Holy Spirit, does things through you to show that that is indeed your calling. There is a committee to do in the Baptist Union and I can’t always say that people who sit on the committee understand it quite the same as I do. And so they won’t necessarily, if you were to go and talk to them, have all the same things to say, but generally speaking, I think this is the case. And a part of what the committee is to do is to interview the ones who are wanting to go into the ministry to see whether the evidence of ministry things is turning up through them. And eventually, their choice to say yes you’re accepted toward the work of the ministry and eventually for the person to be ordained is given to those whose demonstration by the Spirit shows that they’ve been called by Christ to it. None of those callings includes being an apostle because those apostles were a limited set who saw Jesus before His crucifixion and after His resurrection. But they had other things that they did as apostles, one of which was being the ones that God used to give us the foundation for the church which is the New Testament and that doesn’t need to be repeated.
So when we’re talking about callings you could include in the idea of calling if there is knowledge of a specific gift and some people have a gift to be a pastor in the sense of with people. And in the different churches that I’ve had to do with, my dad moved around and so our family did as well, so I got baptized in one church in Adelaide and I became a member in another church because he shifted to where he was doing his work. And in that second one in Adelaide there was a pastor. Every church that he was given grew to over 400 people. And it’s a bit of a phenomenon that those who saw other churches and the people in the Baptist unions ended up noticing and ended up making him the person who was the superintendent of the whole denomination. But why is it that every church that he got grew to over 400? Now when you’re a young person and you’re going into the ministry that’s a pretty big question to know an answer to. And he actually had no children and they had prayed hard for children and probably wanted to have four and they felt led. I think this is how the story runs that God will give them people in the church to be like their children. So every place he went to minister to a church there were 400 children. And he was a man who had specific abilities that came out in the way he did pastoring. He wasn’t much of a preacher, I might say, but he was a very, very good pastor with people. And it’s something that we’ve just noticed that of the different people who are in the ministry, they are often very different as to how they skin the cat and with what they have that God has given them which has the work of Christ coming through them. And you don’t expect to necessarily be the same as everybody else who’s in the ministry.
So there is a calling and sometimes that calling has notification of what is the particular thing that you’re meant to do. And there are some of my friends who went into the ministry who have gifts to be church planters. And sure enough, when just recently I was invited to a recognition of one of those persons, some of the people who had been involved in the churches that he planted all came together. And there was such a crowd you could hardly hear yourself speak in the tables that you’re at. As they all were there to recognize that God had used him in a church that they had been a part of. And so there are differences in the callings and the Bible speaks about the gifts of the Spirit, that there are many different gifts. But it also says there are many different administrations or management or callings. And so your task is to discover what God has given you the gift for. So whereas in the realm of the natural there may be things that make you able to do things, in the realm of the spiritual there are also differences in the gifts that people have.
In all of these things, you need to be a person who is able to understand the principle I’m talking about. That before you go to do, you need to spend time with Jesus. And one of the students at the college in Adelaide where I was beginning to tell you how I got to learn what I’m telling you tonight was a man, a New Zealander, and he came over to be in our college because Dad was there, I think. And he wanted to be taught, but he was only a baby Christian. And then I caught notice of him because he used to go out and talk to people in the streets. And at one stage, he’d spend all his spare time just witnessing on the streets. And usually when he did it full time on the streets, he’d have about 10 conversions every week. And he used to go street fishing. I’ve told the church previously he’s the person that took me to the Adelaide railway station and got me to learn how to copy him in terms of street fishing on the Adelaide railway station. But this particular fellow I used to go with and he also would go around to the churches when he got opportunities to preach. And a lot of the students would often let me tag along. I was so curious as to how they were getting on. And I got taken by a difference of the students to their churches and I could hear them speak. Some of them would give their first sermons. And it’s a thrilling thing to watch people who are seeking to find what God has led them to do. And when this fellow, this New Zealander, when he went there were always dramatic things that happened. I’d be sitting back somewhere in the church and he’d come to the end of his sermon and someone would start weeping. Or give a call for people to come to the front and some people would fall into the aisles. And I was very surprised because that’s quite rare. And he was someone that somehow God had His hand on and I wanted to know why. And how did he discover that it was God’s will for him?
But he had a story to tell and I’m going to tell you the story. He got converted in New Zealand because there’s a Bible college over there. The Bible College of New Zealand it once was called. This is probably going back now. I don’t know if it’s got the same name, I don’t know. But anyway, he was walking through some country fields as a total non-Christian taking a shortcut when he saw an old man who was digging a trench. He was a bit curious about this old man throwing the dirt out. So he came close and got talking to him, and the old man witnessed to him because the old man was the principal of that Bible college and this was his own territory. And he witnessed to him and led him to Christ. And then he asked him, “What are you doing?” He didn’t have anything he was really doing, going from one little job to another. He had nothing really about how to spend his life. So the principal man said, “Well look, you’ve just become a Christian, you need to be taught. Come and be one of my students.” So he enrolled as a student in the college in order to learn.
And he spent some time there, but what he discovered was that amongst the student body, most of the people who came and went to that college were because they were already listening to me in receipt of a call. They went there because they knew God, they felt God was calling them and they were wanting to train for it. And so he listened in to the other students and one said, “I know God’s called me to be a missionary.” And some of them even knew where they had to go. And here he is hearing about all the other students and they all seem to know or at least have an opinion as to what was God’s will for them. But he hadn’t even heard that there was a will of God. And so he went to his room and he was quite upset and he got down and began to pray.
“Lord, they all know what your will is for them. Why, what do you want me to do?” He didn’t know. And it was like what he told me was, it was like God said to him, “I almost don’t care what you do, but as long as you learn to be with me.” And God showed him this passage, he later showed me. That God appointed the twelve so that they might be with him. And the Lord let him understand that if he pays attention to learning to be with Christ, spend time with him, be someone who’s close, the Lord would look after all the other issues. Who he should marry, he didn’t know who to marry back then. The Lord would look after whether it be a minister in a church or someone that keeps talking to people in the streets. His task was to learn to be with him. And that’s what God wants us to understand. That if you really want to be someone that finds the will of God and finds what it is to be called of God, start with learning to be with him. Come closer to Jesus.
And actually, there’s a relief in letting him find what he wants you to do. You can just trust that to him and he’ll make it plain. And I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I was 14 when all this was happening. But I just followed the advice to take time to be with Jesus. And God led thereafter. It happened to me. I found out where I was meant to go. Without having any big search, it wasn’t really a big deal. But learn to be with him. And that he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. Whatever is the case he wants for you and it won’t necessarily be an apostle. In fact, I can guarantee you might be a missionary in the sense of a missionary of the churches, sent by the churches. But not necessarily an apostle. Because they’ve already done their job and they’ve given us the scriptures. And I’ve got that in the Bible. I know that’s right. So whenever I meet someone and they say, “Oh, I’m a prophet. Or I’m a new modern-day apostle,” I have a smile to myself. Sometimes they only mean by that that they’re someone who’s gotten older and can give advice to others. But if they really think they’re getting revelation, they’re kidding themselves. Because the type of revelation that makes our Bible is something God has already given and it still is working. Sometimes I have people say, “How come you don’t have all the gifts of the Spirit in Ephesians 4? They’re found, apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher.” You seem to only have a few of them operating. I say, “No, I don’t. They’re all operating.” How come they ask and I pass them a Bible? God hasn’t. Doesn’t need to have any more word of God. He’s already got that and they’ve founded the church. And the church isn’t being changed. It’s founded on the apostles and the prophets. And you don’t have to worry about all that question as to whether you’ll listen to some modern-day apostle who will tell you everything is different from what you suppose. Just go to the scriptures and let the apostles and prophets minister to you there.
Well, that’s the message tonight. If you really want to find the will of God, learn to be with Him. It’s the secret to Him leading you and using you. And it’s also the secret of the authority you have to speak for Him. It’s because when you’ve been with Him, somehow when you speak of Him, He turns up in the equation. And He’s the authority that you need. Let’s have a moment of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the scriptures and for this passage in Mark. Thank you, Lord, in the morning service. We’re looking at the Great Commission in Matthew 28. But here is the forerunner to it. That Jesus chose them. They knew they were chosen, these ones. And that He wanted them to learn to be with Him. And they had 28 chapters worth, Matthew-wise, in order to be with Jesus. And to have the ammunition to use when eventually they were sent out to form churches and to do different things. Father, I pray that from tonight, you might have for yourself ones that you are able to really show a calling. Lord, there’s a calling to happen because of what we are in our humanity. Lord, there’s a calling of what we are in the new humanity. And that there’s a gift that you give to every Christian person who’s a part of being in Christ. And I pray for everybody here tonight, that they’ll discover who they are in Christ. And that you’ll lead them as to where you want them to be. That we ask in the Saviour’s name. Amen.