From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Most of you will remember that we are dealing with the 12th chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and that we have arrived at verses 11 and 12 in that chapter. Verses 11 and 12 in the 12th chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: "Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer."

You will recall that here the Apostle is giving a whole series of injunctions to these Christian people, the members of the church at Rome. These are injunctions, therefore, for all of us. Having reminded them in the first two verses of the great foundation principles which govern the whole of Christian conduct and behavior, he’s then gone on to apply those principles in two main respects. From verse 3 to verse 8, we saw that he was dealing chiefly with the Christian in the matter of his exercising of the spiritual gifts that are given to God's people in the church. That's the theme of that section.

But then in verse 9, he comes to these more general matters in which he deals with the Christian in his relationship with other people and as he is living the Christian life. And again, let me remind you he has laid down two big principles in the ninth verse. Here again are two things that govern the whole of our conduct as Christian people: love, the principle of love. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Our Lord sums up the whole of the law of Moses in loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves. If we were filled with love, most of the practical problems in relationships and in conduct would automatically be solved.

And the other is that we must not only avoid that which is evil, we must hate it, abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Now, there are the two great principles again. Now he works these out in detail. Be kindly affectioned one to another in brotherly love. In your brotherly relationship, have those feelings and sentiments towards one another as Christian people that you have in a natural sense to those to whom you are related in the flesh. Let your brotherly love manifest this kind of kindly affection. And then he goes on to say that we must be humble in honor preferring one another, giving a lead to one another in that respect.

And then we’ve come to these statements that we are now looking at together. Here he is reminding us of the general spirit of our whole Christian life and living. It’s a marvelous picture this that he gives us of the Christian living out his life in the church and in his relationships to other people. And here he's looking at the Christian life and our whole attitude towards it, our whole approach with respect to it. And what he tells us is, as we saw last Friday, we mustn't be slothful. In zeal, we mustn't be slothful. We've seen the danger of that and how it arises and we've been considering how he tells us to deal with it.

And the two things he does is this: there is a natural way, a general way in which we do this. You pull yourself together, you shake yourself, you refuse to be slothful, you recognize that the devil would have you be such and you resist him. But still more important is fervent in the spirit, which we interpreted, you remember, as meaning this: not natural spirit, not natural fervency. You can't produce that. But he's talking here about Christian people in whom the Holy Spirit dwells.

And what he says is this: let the Spirit that is in you always be at the boil. Make certain that the Spirit that is in you is always glowing. Rekindle the flame, as it were. Keep it alive, maintain the glow, translated as you like. The Spirit is in us, and God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Now, that's the kind of thing he’s saying. Fervency in spirit means that we remove all hindrances to the manifestation of this glow and power of the Holy Spirit that is within us. That's the way you deal with this natural tendency to sloth which is aggravated by the assaults of Satan.

Now, those are the two main things then that we’ve considered so far. But now the Apostle goes on and adds a third element in the way in which we deal with our tendency to slothfulness, and it is this: serving the Lord. And he rises here, of course, to a climax. You start on the natural, general level, you then remember that the Spirit is within you and that you must not allow anything, as it were, to quench the Spirit or to keep the flame of the Spirit burning low, mustn't grieve the Spirit and so on. But then he rises to the highest height, and this is the ultimate antidote to any tendency to slothfulness in the Christian life. And that is that we remind ourselves that we serve the Lord.

Now, this is a most wonderful thought this. It's the key in a sense to everything else, and it certainly is the supreme motive always in Christian living and in Christian service. It's something we're always tending to forget, of course, and it's when we forget this we get into trouble. If we think of these things in terms of ourselves, we'll soon be in trouble. If a preacher is concerned about himself and his own reputation, he'll soon be miserable, he'll soon be unhappy. He'll be jealous or envious or he'll feel that people are not praising him enough and so on. The antidote to that is you're serving the Lord.

And it applies to everybody else in the Christian church and to every aspect and part of our activity. We get into trouble, don't we, because we look at one another instead of looking to Him. We look at ourselves, we look at one another, and all the problems arise from just doing that. And there's only one answer to it: serving the Lord. You don't serve yourself. Now, I read that fourth chapter of Second Corinthians to you at the beginning because this same great Apostle puts it there so wonderfully and so perfectly.

You see, the foolish Corinthian people were indulging in these comparisons and so on, and the Apostle is forced to defend himself. And he writes about himself there something that was very unusual with him, but he says, "We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord." He does everything honestly as in the sight of God. He's not in this preaching business in order to gain anything for himself. He's been called there and put there, and his one desire is not to handle the word of God deceitfully.

And the way he succeeds in doing that, he tells us, is that he is preaching Christ Jesus as Lord. Self doesn't come into this. Of course, he says this in so many other places. But here it is again, put in this kind of summary form. But oh, how vital it is and how foolish we often are in rushing over a statement like this: serving the Lord. The glibness with which we use these terms is really quite alarming and appalling. Serving the Lord. What does it mean? Well, we’ve got to remind ourselves of certain things, and the first that is suggested by this statement surely is this: that after all, we are nothing but slaves.

How often does he say this in different ways? You're not your own, you are bought with a price. Look at the way in which he starts most of his epistles: "Paul, a servant of God or of the Lord Jesus Christ." But what he really wrote was "the bondslave." He's a slave, he's a bondslave. He's been bought out, he's been redeemed, he's been ransomed. He didn't deserve anything. Read his first chapter of his first epistle to Timothy, and there you find him expressing his amazement that he, of everybody, should ever have been put into the ministry who was formerly, he says, a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

Well now, that's his whole attitude. You see, he is the bondslave of Jesus Christ. And a slave doesn't do anything for himself, he does it for his master. He's been bought, he has no right to think of himself or his own interests. He belongs entirely to the other, serving the Lord. Yes, and as a slave and as a bondslave. That's the way in which you start working this out. And then you add to that, of course, something further: that in any case, this isn't our cause, this isn't our business.

That's the trouble, isn't it? People talk about "my church." It's the besetment of ministers. All of us who are in this position, it's a thing we have to fight against: "my church." The thing is so monstrous, it's so ridiculous. You get it in the manifestation of denominational spirit: "my denomination." And so you get rivalries and quarreling and hatred and all that eventuates from that kind of attitude. That is, you see, through regarding it as if it were our own. And the churches which compete with one another, and they carry it even so far that they'll compete in one another even in missionary collections so that they can boast that theirs is always on the top of the list.

You see, the motive is no longer the Lord's work, the motive is purely selfish and personal. It's self-adulation. Look what our church is doing, and you publish the figures and so on. What a terrible thing it is. What a denial of the very essence of Christianity all this is. But how much of that there is, and especially when they do it in a subtle way, as if they were not doing it. They use the term of the politicians, they "leak" the information so that they can pretend they haven't done it.

There's only one answer to that. It's not yours, it's not ours, it doesn't belong to us. You remember that great statement which the Prophet made to Jehoshaphat the King in the Old Testament? God gave him the message: "The battle is not yours, but God's. Stand still, see the salvation of the Lord. The battle is not yours, but God's." And I’ve often pointed out from this pulpit that that is to me one of the most interesting and wonderful things about the life of the early church. You remember that persecution, the first persecution of the early church recorded in the fourth chapter of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.

And the way in which those men, those spiritually minded men responded to it. You remember their prayer. Listen to it. Here it is. "Lord," they said, "Thou art God which hast made heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is, who by the mouth of Thy servant David hast said, ‘Why did the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together’ against whom?" Against us? Not at all. "Against the Lord and against His Christ. For of a truth, against Thy holy child Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together," etc. "And now Lord, behold their threatenings."

You see, they had the wisdom and the spiritual perception to see this: that the Jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin, were not against them. Who are they? They're nobodies, ignorant and unlearned men. They realized that these authorities were not against them, they were against God. They're against the church because the church is the church of God. And this is the thing that we so constantly forget, that it's all His, it isn't ours at all. It is against Thy holy child Jesus. It is God's great plan of redemption and His great scheme and purpose with regard to the world. That is the thing that is being emphasized here: serving the Lord. Not yourself nor your own cause nor anyone of these things.

That's the second way in which you work it out: that it belongs to Him and that it's not yours. So you're not serving yourself, you're always serving Him. And then go on and let's add to this in order that it may really grip us and enthuse us. Think of the privilege of being given a part in this work at all. Have we ever thought of that? Now, there in that quotation I gave you from the first epistle of Paul to Timothy, the Apostle brings that out. But let us look at it again. He's amazed at this great privilege of being given a part in this.

And this is something that we must always remind ourselves of: that we are co-workers together with God. Here is something that we can't understand. Men will never understand this. God could have done all this without us, as He could have done everything without us, but He’s chosen to act and to operate through people like ourselves. Now, that's the antidote to self-importance in any church work or in any position in connection with the Christian life. He's given us the honor. He's chosen to do it.

And there is no honor which in any way is comparable to this. We are members, as he's told us earlier, of the body of Christ. We are parts of this mystical body of which He is the head. And there is nothing which is more honorable, no greater honor that can ever come to a human being than to know that he's a part of this body and that he is being used in connection with such a work. There is no honor that in any way is comparable to this: that you belong to Him and that He's given you a share and that you're sharing something of His great work with Him.

Another way in which you work out this same principle, serving the Lord, is this: that it's a very wonderful way for us to show our gratitude to Him. We owe everything to Him. By the grace of God, I am what I am, says the Apostle. Here are these people, I say, misunderstanding and competing and vying in the church at Corinth. I wonder if there's something wrong with these various ladies who are moving about? Could some stewards see to them and help them? If somebody is ill, I think they ought to be helped and attended to.

Now, here I say is this wonderful opportunity of showing our gratitude to the Lord. And this is one of the most noble ways in which we can do this. Consider what He's done for you, consider who He is, and then you work it out like this: He deserves our very best. What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits? The Psalmist cries out like that. You and I should cry out like that even more. For we look back upon the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross on Calvary's hill. That is what He has done for us.

You remember the famous story about Count Zinzendorf, that great experience he had as the result of looking at that picture of the crucified Christ. And this was the statement: "I have done this for thee; what canst thou do for Me?" Now, that's the kind of argument that is here. We are serving the Lord. And the moment we realize that, it rids us of all these things that hinder us and cripple us. And it certainly gets rid of all dejection and slothfulness and all laziness and all tendency to half do our work. We remember that we are serving Him who gave Himself even unto death for us, gave all for us, gave Himself. And we in turn must do this in order to show our gratitude to Him and to please Him in all ways.

But then go on and add another argument to this. You see, this is one of these controlling thoughts, and if we only work it out, we'll see how it's going to influence the whole of our lives. The next thing is that His honor is involved in all this. And here again is a most potent motive and a most potent argument. Whether we like it or not, if we are Christian people and if we are members of the Christian church, we are joined to Him. We are in Christ and Christ is in us, and as I say, we are members of His body in this way. And therefore, He is involved in the life, in the activity, and in everything that happens to the church.

In other words, He is involved in our failures. And we must always pause to realize this. You are not your own, you are bought with a price. No man liveth unto himself, the Apostle says in chapter 14 of this same great epistle. No man liveth unto himself. You can't do that. You can't divorce yourself, you can't act as an individual, you can't isolate yourself. As a Christian, you belong to the community, the people of God. You're a part of the church of God, and He is the head, and He is involved, therefore, in everything that you do and everything that happens to you.

And that is why we should always remind ourselves that we are serving Him. If you are doing something entirely on your own, well then if things go wrong, nobody's involved except yourself. But that's never the position of the Christian. And the world is always, of course, very careful to observe this. If a Christian should be arraigned in a court, the newspapers will always point it out. As I’ve often indicated from this pulpit, you'll see this sort of heading: "Sunday School teacher on trial." You read the facts and you find that the man was a Sunday School teacher 20 years before. Doesn't matter, they'll drag it in. Why? Oh, it's a way of attacking Him and His honor.

Now, we are serving the Lord, and He's involved. He's involved in our failures. His name and His cause are brought into disrepute by us. What does the world think of the Christian church today? Well, we know what she thinks of her. The world thinks of the Christian church as something weak, something contemptible, something half-hearted. That most of the people who go there, they say they go there because they're afraid not to or because they haven't enough intelligence to stop doing it. They despise the Christian church.

Yes, but my friends, that is because we are slothful. That is because we make no impact. That is because they're not aware of any power. And He is involved in this. And that is why we must say to ourselves we cannot be slothful any longer. His name is involved. It isn't merely what they think of me, it's what they think of Him and the truth that comes out of Him. That's the reason for rousing myself and making sure that the Spirit is having free play in my life. I am serving the Lord.

And if He's involved in our failures, He is equally involved in what success may come to us. You remember the way in which Peter puts this same argument in the first epistle in the second chapter verses 11 and 12: "Dearly beloved," he says, "dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: why? Well," he says, "that whereas they speak evil of you, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation."

That's it. And our Lord has really said the same thing: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, but glorify your Father which is in heaven." And we do that by reminding ourselves that we are serving the Lord, not ourselves. Well, I’ve often used the illustration: the great message sent out by Lord Nelson on the morning of the Battle of Trafalgar: "England expects that every man this day will do his duty." The honor of England is involved, the honor of the country. You're not fighting a personal fight against the Frenchman, you're fighting for England. England expects. This is the thing that rouses a man. You can't be slothful when you hear such an appeal. You're immediately electrified, as it were, into activity and you're anxious to do your best because of the country. Multiply that by infinity, and we are reminded that we are serving the Lord.

And then another argument is this one: that because we are serving the Lord, that His eye is always upon us. What a salutary thought this is. I use the obvious illustration. Unfortunately, we are all far too familiar with it. You know how a man who's employed with another often behaves: if his master is about, he's working very hard and he's keen and enthusiastic. His master goes away and he slouches. While the master is present, he's doing his best. But then when he goes, I say, he becomes slack again.

Well, we are reminded here that His eye is always upon us. Always in all places and in all situations. He sees us slacking, indolent, slothful. He sees it all. He sees us as His people behaving in that manner. So we remind ourselves of those lines of the hymn: "Still walking in your Captain’s sight and watching unto prayer." His eye is upon you, He sees us, He knows us all. All things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. You are not a private individual.

You may say, "Oh well, I don't feel like it now. I don't think I’ll do this today. I won't go to church on Sunday or I won't read my Bible, I won't pray," and you think it's something purely personal. You may have a bit of concern as to what other people will say about you. But my dear friend, that's not the thing that really matters. This is what really matters: He sees it all. "I know thy works," He said to those churches as recorded in Revelations 2 and 3. "I know thy works." And He does. You cannot get outside the scope and the ambit of His all-seeing eye. The eye of the Captain of our salvation is ever upon us.

And therefore, we remind ourselves of this. He's put us as laborers into the vineyard, and it's His, and it's for His glory and all that is involved. Well, this is a great theme as you know, running right through the Bible. It was the great appeal of all the great prophets of the Old Testament to the children of Israel. This was their cardinal failure, that they kept on forgetting who they were. They would persist in regarding themselves as just one nation amongst the number of nations, and they're always being reminded that they are the people of God, God's own chosen people, that His honor is involved in them. That's the appeal.

It's still more the appeal that comes to all of us who are Christians in this way. And then there is a final appeal that you'll find often put especially by the Apostle John. You get it in his first epistle more than once. It's here in the writings of the Apostle Paul also. The argument is this: that we must rouse ourselves, never be slothful and so on. What for? Well, here's one great argument: that we may not be ashamed at His coming. For He is going to come, and we are all going to stand before Him.

And we, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, shall all have to give an account of the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad. That's why he says that he preaches as he does. Not merely that the love of Christ constraineth him, but knowing that he will have to stand before the judgment throne of Christ and give an account of the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad. "Therefore knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Christian people, how often do we think of this when we are tempted to this indolence, slothfulness, slackness, half doing things, saying "Oh, I’ll do it again sometime," instead of being always alive and alert, using all our energy, maintaining this glow in the Spirit?

Why? Well, because on top of all the arguments that I’ve adduced and the reasons I’ve put before you, you know that we shall all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. And you'll have to give an account of all this. You saw the world, you'll be told, in the state it was in your time when you were there on earth. You saw godlessness and vice and evil rampant. What did you do about it? Did you just laze back and say that's the job of the preachers? Or did you pray without ceasing? Were you an intercessor? Were you doing everything that you could in order to hold up their hands and enable the gospel to be preached and to be proclaimed? We’ve all got to give an account of this. For we are serving the Lord, not ourselves. He is the Master and we shall all have to render up an account to Him.

Look how He put it Himself in the parable of the talents and in other parables. This is the great teaching that's everywhere. Well now, here it is all summed up for us then. We’ve got to keep our eye even on that, and thus we remind ourselves in all these ways that we are serving the Lord. So when you're tempted to slothfulness, listen to something like this: "From strength to strength go on, wrestle and fight and pray, tread all the powers of darkness down and win the well-fought day." Still let the Spirit cry to all His soldiers, "Come till Christ the Lord descend from high and take His conquerors home." "Whether therefore ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Be all out in everything you do, realizing that you're His servants and that you are serving the Lord and not merely pleasing yourself or men pleasers.

Very well, we leave it at that. You see how vital it is and how crucial in the whole of our attitude towards the life which we are privileged to live as Christian people. But we must hasten on. The next thing he tells us is this: rejoicing in hope. Now, you notice the intimate connection between all these things. As I’ve already indicated on a previous occasion, Paul didn't put these down haphazard, just putting the next one that came to his mind. There's a logical sequence here, there is a connection between each of these things and the others. They're all interrelated and each one tends to lead to the next.

Now here, he is dealing with us rather from the standpoint of our outlook upon our lives as Christians in this life and in this world. Our whole attitude towards it, our whole understanding of it. Now, this is again a most vital matter. I sometimes think that at the present time, it's one of the most vital of all. Of course, you must start with these great principles we've been laying down. But then you go on and you apply it to yourself in this way: rejoicing in hope. What does this mean? Well, I say that the point at which we left off the last statement really opens this out: serving the Lord.

And that has reminded us, you see, of the day when we'll be standing before Him and before His judgment seat. And that leads the Apostle to think, therefore, of the whole condition of the Christian and how he views his life in this present world. And here it is: rejoicing in hope. He’s already dealt with this. He summarizes here in this chapter many of the things that he’s been saying in greater detail. We saw him dealing with this as far back as the fifth chapter in the second verse. You remember that great statement at the beginning of chapter 5?

"Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom," he says, "or by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." That's it. In the eighth chapter verses 18 and following, he's taken it up still more definitely in that resounding statement: "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." He's already dealt with it in the 24th and 25th verses there where he says, "We are saved by hope or in hope; but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it," and so on.

Now, what does this mean: rejoicing in hope? Well, he's not inculcating here a general spirit of cheerfulness and of rejoicing. There's been a great deal of that in the Christian church during this present century. It's been a foolish reaction against a misunderstanding of Puritanism, the cult of cheerfulness and of joyfulness. Nothing is further removed than what the Apostle is dealing with here than that. This isn't something psychological. That's not what he's talking about.

He's not merely telling us to put on a smiling face. That's carnal rejoicing, something the Apostle never teaches. Neither is he telling us here to cultivate a hopeful outlook. You know there's a great deal of that also. You always get that in a time when there are wars as there have been in this present century: cultivate the cheerful, hopeful outlook, the sanguine temperament. Don't look at the black side, look for the silver lining always in the cloud. Rejoicing in hope, spirit of hopefulness, hopeful outlook. No, no.

Neither is he telling us to expect great things in the future in this world. You know the optimism of the idealists and so on, who feel that we've only got to apply Christian teaching and the world is going to get better and better. So they expect great things in this world and they're full of hope with respect to that. Or hoping to put the world right and so on. Rejoicing in hope, things are going to get better and better. With our learning and knowledge, with the advances of science, the world is going to be marvelous.

Now, that was, of course, so characteristic of the end of the last century. That's what makes those great Victorians, as they're sometimes called, so pathetic, most of them. They were so completely wrong, entirely wrong, and history by now has proved them to be completely and entirely wrong. Now, that isn't what the Apostle is talking about at all. What's he talking about? Well, he's talking about the great New Testament doctrine about the hope. The hope, rejoicing in the hope. What does this mean? Well, let me put it like this.

And you see again, we are finding out that none of these particular injunctions can be understood, still less implemented, unless we are clear about what he teaches in the first two chapters, of first two verses of this chapter. "I beseech you therefore, brethren." The "therefore," which links us with the whole of the doctrine that he’s already been laying down. You cannot rejoice in hope unless you know your doctrine. It's impossible. The only man who rejoices in hope is the man who is clear about the doctrinal teaching of this great epistle and other epistles, of course, in the same way.

What's it mean? Well, here it is: first of all, it means that we must have a right view of this world that we are in. A right view of it. What is that? Well, the view that the Apostle teaches everywhere is this: that this is what he calls "the present evil world." You see, according to the New Testament teaching, a Christian is a man who is saved out of the world, delivered from this present evil world. Of course, if you don't regard the world as a present evil world, you won't know what the Apostle's talking about when he talks about rejoicing in hope.

The whole teaching of the Bible is that this is a fallen world. It's a world under judgment, it is a doomed world. It is a world of evil and of sin and of wrong. And the Bible goes further and says that there is no hope for the world as such. None at all. The world cannot be improved. That is where I say all that idealistic and humanistic optimistic teaching has been made in this century to look so ridiculous. It's a terrible thing, isn't it, that it takes two world wars to make men and women see the truth of what has been taught always in the Bible?

Think of the optimism of a hundred years ago. They saw the coming of the parliament of men and the federation of the world. Knowledge, science, advance, the whole world moving on to its destined goal, going to be better and better and better. The 20th century is the answer to that. The Bible's always said that. You see, you don't begin to understand the New Testament doctrine of the hope until you realize that this present world is under condemnation completely. There is nothing here to suggest that it can ever be improved.

There is quite a lot to suggest the exact opposite: that evil men will wax worse and worse, that there shall be wars and rumors of wars, men's hearts failing them. Our Lord even put this question: "When the Son of Man is come, shall He find the faith on the earth?" And yet they believed, you know, that each generation began with the previous one ended off, and each one was advancing, and the gospel was going to Christianize the world. There has been nothing so fatuous, apart from nothing so unscriptural, as the social gospel that was so popular in the early years of this present century.

It was a complete denial of the basic, central teaching of the New Testament. And as I say, history has by now proved that to be the case. But you’ve got to start with this, you’ve got to realize this: you cannot rejoice in hope while you've got any hope in this world and for this world. Because that's the exact opposite of it. Well then, having been right about this world, the next step is this: you now realize God's purpose with respect to this world.

Why did the Lord ever come into it? Why did He live and die and do all that He did? And the answer is this: He has come to redeem it. But His method of redemption is not one of gradual improvement. The program is this: that in this present age, people are being gathered out of the world, saved out of it, delivered out of it as individuals, and are being put into this new kingdom of God. The kingdom that is the continuation of the children of Israel, there it was in its Old Testament form, here it is in the New Testament form, the church.

Our Lord said Himself the kingdom shall be taken from you and given to a nation bearing forth the fruits thereof. This is the present form of the kingdom. And what is happening is that people are being gathered out. Well, we've seen it all in chapter 11: Jews, Gentiles, all brought in together. There is no difference into this one olive tree. And this is going on and on and on until a given point. Nobody knows when. Many people have tried to determine when, but they're always wrong and always will be right because we're not supposed to be concerned about the times and seasons.

But what we do know is this: that this world is not going to be progressively Christianized. But these people are to be called out and put into this new kingdom. They're being prepared for this great event which is coming, which is this: the return of the Son of God again into this world. As the angels told those disciples on Mount Olivet, "This same Jesus as you have seen so departing shall in like manner come." Every eye shall see Him. It'll be visible. He will return. He will return to judge the world in righteousness. He will destroy all His enemies. He will purge the cosmos of evil and all its effects.

There shall be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. It'll be a cataclysmic event, not a gradual improvement. No, no, no. There'll be a great crisis when He's least expected, He'll come. Far from everything leading up to it, as it were, in an optimistic sense, it'll be the exact opposite. Men's heart will be failing them. Even the elect will be in trouble. Then He will come. He'll do this, and He will set up His eternal kingdom of glory.

Now then, what the Apostle is saying is this: rejoice in that. That's the thing you’ve got to keep your eye on. Our Lord had taught the same thing: "In the world ye shall have tribulations, but fear not, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Now, this, according to the teaching of the whole of the New Testament, is the thing in which we are to rejoice. You take now, for instance, as it's set out in that chapter we read at the beginning. There is a typical and a glorious Christian statement.

Here is this great Apostle, passing through a period of terrible trial and tribulation. Did you notice what he said? This is Christianity, my friends, not the world getting better and better and liking us because we are Christian. It's the exact opposite. He puts it like this, you remember: he says we have this treasure in earthen vessels. And we're not promised that there'll be anything better than earthen vessels in this world. The body is dead because of sin, he’s already told us in the eighth chapter of this epistle to the Romans. The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit of life because of righteousness.

And while we're in this world, the body will be as it is: it'll be frail, subject to diseases, it'll be subject to decay, and this will go on. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels." And then he adds to this list statements like this: "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." In the body, remember. "That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in and through our mortal, in our body. We which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake," and so on.

He's surrounded by trials and troubles and tribulations. The Apostle had a hard and a difficult life: sickness, illness, persecution, disappointed in friends. What a category, what a list, catalog of of trials and troubles and tribulations. And yet you see this is the marvelous thing: he rejoices in the midst of it all. Not rejoicing in this world, rejoicing in hope. And so he sums it up at the end of that fourth chapter of Second Corinthians, and here is the exposition of this phrase that we're looking at here, "rejoicing in hope."

Listen to it. He's given us the list of all the trials and troubles and tribulations. He then looks at them all and says, "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment." What's he mean by "but for a moment"? Does he mean he's pulling out a chronometer and measuring a moment? Not at all. He's measuring time in terms of eternity. He's not saying "I'm going to die tomorrow." He says, "No, no, it doesn't matter how long I’m in this life, it's only a moment."

How does he say that? Well, you see, if you put your life in this world into the category of eternity, it is nothing but a moment. If you measure your life in this world in times of minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years, oh, oh, how long it seems. But the Christian doesn't do this. The Christian knows that this is a passing life, a temporary life, a passing phase.

What is of interest to him is this life which is to come, this glory which is to come, this world to come of which we speak, as the author of the epistle to the Hebrews puts it in the second chapter in verse five. That's the thing. And so Paul puts it here by saying, "Our light affliction," light. Look at the list. He says, "But it's only light." Why? Well, you see, he's putting it all into another context. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh, produces for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

Where? Here and now? Not at all. Well, where then? Oh, he says, "While, as long as, we look not at the things which are seen, not at this life, not at this present world, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; the things which are not seen are eternal." He's looking to the glory that is coming. That's the thing. The hope, this is the blessed hope that all the New Testament is looking forward to.

And he says, whatever may be happening to me in the here and now, it doesn't get me down. Why? Well, because I know that that is coming for certain, and I’m rejoicing at the thought of that and the anticipation of that. It's going to be so marvelous. Language fails him. "Worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Somebody says it should be translated "worketh for us an exceeding, exceedingly abundant weight of glory." Quite right. You can get all the superlatives in the world and they'll be inadequate to describe this weight of glory to which we are going and for which we are being prepared.

Now, that's the teaching. That's what you rejoice in. You can't rejoice in the present world. Look at it. Who can rejoice in it? And you mustn't sort of isolate yourself and say, "I'm not concerned what's happening outside as long as I’m happy." That's the antithesis of Christianity. No, no. You recognize what sin has done to the world, you realize what God's plan and purpose for the world is. You know that that's certain. So you rejoice in that, and that's the thing that's more than enough to keep you going.

The Apostle is, of course, endlessly saying this same thing. Listen to it in a great exhortation again at the beginning of the third chapter of the epistle to the Colossians: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." That's the thing you look to. Not on earth, there: things above, not things which are on earth.

And he says exactly the same thing in writing to Titus: "The grace of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ." That's the statement, that's the outlook of the whole of the New Testament. That's why they were ready to be martyred. They thanked God even as they were being martyred. The hope that was set before them. This is the thing: not this world, but the world to come and the glory that awaits us there.

Peter has the same teaching exactly in his second epistle and third chapter: "Hasting unto," he says, "looking to it, hasting the coming of this great kingdom that it may come." "He that hath this hope in him," says John, "purifieth himself even as He is pure." What's he talking about? The improvement of this world? The Christianization of civilization? My dear friends, where have people read the New Testament? What are they talking about?

This is what he's talking about: "Beloved, behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not," and it'll never know us. The world will always be the world. And the Christian is a man who's taken out of it, saved from it though he's still in it. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as He is pure."

And so the Bible ends, the last chapter of Revelation, looking forward and saying, "Even so come, Lord Jesus." It's the only hope for us. That's the thing to which we should be looking forward. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God, in anticipation of it. And you can do that whatever the world may be like and whatever it may be doing unto you.

And this is to be the permanent condition of the Christian. He reminds himself that he is serving the Lord, this Lord who is seated at the right hand of God in the glory everlasting, who is waiting until His enemies shall be made His footstool, and who will most surely come and take His captives home. And we shall see Him as He is, be made like Him, and we shall share in His glory forever and forever.

These are the antidotes to sloth, to laziness, half-heartedness, pessimism, being frightened by modern infidels and their writings. My dear friend, read your scriptures. Consider the plan of God. Look unto your Captain, keep your eye there: looking unto Jesus, the Author and the Finisher of our faith. Look what He has done, look what He is doing, look what He is yet going to do. There'll be no sloth then.

Oh Lord our God, we pray Thee to open our eyes to these things. Forgive us that we are so self-centered, so introspective, so interested in ourselves and concerned about our little selves. Oh God, open our eyes to the glory of our position and all that Thou hast purposed for us and through us. Oh, have mercy upon Thy people and give us such a glimpse of these great and glorious and wonderful things that we shall know what it is to rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. By Thy blessed Spirit, we pray Thee shed Thy love abroad in our hearts and illumine our minds and our understandings.

We ask it to Thy glory and to Thy praise. And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now through throughout the remainder of this our short, uncertain, earthly life and pilgrimage and evermore. Amen.