For Believers, the knowledge of what
we have as our inheritance is the motivator to endure the pressures of this
present time. As Paul writes, “For I
reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy
to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
“If you understand your sonship
position in Christ, and the fact that you’ve been made an heir of God--but not
just that, a joint-heir with Christ—you know everything that belongs to Him
belongs to you,” says Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org). “That’s what’s
called ‘co-per stirpes’ in legal jargon. It’s to have equal shares. Everything
that Jesus Christ inherited from God the Father, we inherit. Whee, doggy!
Occupy your mind with that! Be stabilized by that.
“Paul is saying, ‘Your understanding
NOW of your sonship position isn’t just all this pie-in-the-sky-bye- and-bye,
that life is yours right now and it affects your walk right now.
“Do you know if you go out and serve
the Lord what’s going to happen? ‘Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ You begin to
get rebuffs, Satan comes against you, the religious system comes against you,
the world system, your friends, your relatives, your neighbors.
“Everybody comes against you and
tries to make you feel ashamed and dirty for serving the Lord; for not being
under the law system, not being under the legalism.
“He says, ‘Hey, that’s no big deal.’
In the passage here, you begin to suffer pain, you get sick, your old body
wears out. What do you begin to do? Are you going to begin to cry and moan and
squall? That’s what the average Believer does.
“Listen, God Almighty expects you
and me to live in light of who we are! And Paul says when you begin to realize
just who you are, he said, ‘For I reckon that the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in
us.’
“That’s a mental-attitude dynamic. I
have a mental attitude. He said, ‘Hey, man, I understand some things about who
God’s made me in Christ!’
“Paul says, ‘Here’s the way I look
at it. When you keep that eternal glory out there in front of yourself, and
that privilege of sonship position and joint-heirship with Christ, here’s what
it does. It lets you look at this over here and you say, ‘This light affliction
is but for a moment. And it works a far more exceeding and eternal weight of
glory.’ He said, ‘This thing down here it isn’t even worth talking about! Let’s
talk about that up there! We don’t want to talk about this and that in the same
breath!’
“You listen to me, God Almighty
wants tough sons. You write that down, would you please. God Almighty expects
us to be tough and He’s fixed it so we can be!
“Hey, folks, it doesn’t mean that
when you stump your toe and you go crying to the Lord, it doesn’t mean He’s mad
at you. It doesn’t mean He won’t listen. But God has equipped us to be grown-up
Believers. Recognize who it is God’s made you, and who you are, and live
consistent with that.
“Endure hardness. He didn’t say it’s
all going to be lace pants and sunshine. He said, in order to get the job done
that I put you here for in that Body of Christ, be tough! Endure hardness as a
good soldier of Jesus Christ.
“You know what a soldier does? When
the ol’ enemy comes along and takes a pot shot at him does he go squalling back
to the battalion leader? Why somebody would kick him in the seat of the pants
or lock him up on a Section 8. What does he do? He shoots back! You expect a
soldier to be able to endure hardness.
“Talk’s cheap, gentlemen. Talk’s
cheap. Easy to say that and ain’t so easy to do it and live it and walk in it
unless you’re strong in the grace that’s in Christ Jesus.
“How do you do it? Well, here’s an
example. Hebrews 12: ‘Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily
beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.’
“You know something, fellows, in
your ministry, you don’t have to fear poverty, you don’t have to fear war, you
don’t’ have to fear the government, you don’t have to fear the congregation,
you don’t have to fear relatives and in-laws. You don’t have to fear but one
thing and that’s sin.
“The only thing you need to fear is
sin. I hope that will sink into your head. ‘The sin which doth so easily beset
us.’ That’s the one that comes along so innocently looking like it might be so
easy.
“You can’t run with patience with
that sin out there. You see, it messes you up. What you’re doing is you’re
messing yourself up.
“If you want to endure the
sufferings you do what Christ did. He kept some information in His mind at all
times that allowed Him, and helped Him, and motivated Him and empowered Him to
endure.
“Romans 8:19: ‘For the earnest
expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.’
“The idea there is it’s like a kid
with his head stuck out the window looking for his daddy to come home. He’s
eagerly anticipating. In other words, creation out here is waiting for what?
Man, it’s waiting for the time the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and we’re put
in the heavenly positions up there . . . He comes back to the earth, sets up
His kingdom on the earth and then the whole shooting match out here is brought
under the headship of Jesus Christ and is liberated.
“The globe out here, the whole
universe, is waiting for the time the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and take up
His inheritance which, as you recall from Hebrews 1, has to do with universal
dominion over the heavens and the earth.”
*****
Watching an introduction session to Grace School of the Bible,
Jordan said, “The issue in the ministry is to present every person you minister
to as perfect. It’s to bring them to the place of being thoroughly and
completely equipped to function as a member of the Body of Christ.
“The Bible’s got a lot to say about
growing and becoming established in the faith. Eph. 4:11 says, ‘And he gave
some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors
and teachers.’
“How else is the Body of Christ going to
be built up and edified? It’s through the work of the ministry. How’s it going
to be carried on? By perfected saints. It’s the only way.
“The Word saturates you. It produces
growth. Ministry comes as the result of spiritual growth. You know what happens
when you grow? You begin to move.
“I remember down in Alabama we’d sit out
on a hot August evening on an 80-acre field, out front of the farm house we
lived in, and my wife and I would just relax out there. It’d be hot and we’d be
fanning and trying to get cool in the evening.
“About every third year, Mr. Adams on that
farm, he planted corn and I always hated it when he did. You ever heard corn
grow? You’d sit out there in the August night heat and hear it pop. It sounded
like popcorn going off. It was those stalks expanding. You were literally
hearing it grow as it stretched.
“When you grow there’s movement. As you
grow spiritually, momentum and movement follows and it increases. The way to
get people to go do the work of the ministry is to get them to grow up because
that movement and activity and work will be a natural byproduct.
“Romans 15: 14 is my heart’s desire, to be
able to say this about myself and about those people to whom and with whom I
minister, and if I had a verse I wanted to say about you coming out of the
School it would be Romans 15:14.
“We’ve made a commitment to follow Paul.
If I want the work of the ministry to be done, I’ve got to produce some
perfected saints who the doctrine then goes and motivates to do the work of the
ministry.
*****
“Back in the early ’70s I sat down in a
little farmhouse out in the Autauga County, Ala. (it wasn’t even a city) out in
the middle of nowhere, 17 miles from the nearest town. I’d been through high
school and college and been through Bible school, and then I went up in those
woods in that territory and started a church and got involved with a local
ministry.
“I lived in a house trailer on the farm
with my wife. All three of my kids were born there. We had enough money to go
to town three times a week. Two of them were on Sunday. One of them was on
Monday to buy $10 worth of groceries for the week and any of the rest of the
time I wanted to go in I had to hitchhike. I went back and forth many times
just that way.
“But I had a lot of time to study. And
after about six months of that out there in those woods I realized I didn’t
know what in the world I was doing! I said, ‘Lord, I’ve been to school, I’ve
learned everything they taught me in school. I read all the time. I’m just
taking stuff in and I don’t have any idea what I’m doing! I can tell you what
every theologian said that’s been published, and I know what all the
Neo-orthodox’s say and Neo-evangelicals; I know what they all say, but I don’t
know what to do!’
“And I said, ‘Paul said perfected saints
do the work of the ministry. I desperately want to know how to be a perfected
saint.’
“That’s when I began to find the design in
Paul’s epistles for it. I spent seven years of my life working this stuff
through.”
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