Foundation Stones #2: The Lord with the Apostles — Christ Within You

Put this together. I was once young, as difficult as that is to imagine. I was once very young and I was a dreamer, and I know what it’s like to admire someone and look up to someone. And I definitely had a hero in my life, a Christian hero. And I know what it’s like to feel that he’s the most important person in the world, and that he knows more than anyone else knows and that he had something to say that few men have ever had to say, and that I ought to follow him. I’ve had that experience. I know that feeling and I can still feel it, and I know its strength, and I know what it does to you.

I’ve had lesser people in my life that I admired. I once attended a Bible class in Tyler, Texas under a lady whom I admired a great deal. I remember she came to our home one day. I was terribly embarrassed because I was cleaning my car and the front seat of the car was out in the front yard and I wondered how she thought about me. What she thought about me for my car seat out in the front yard.  Well, that’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? But you understand, don’t you? You identify. You really, and you’re very sensitive. Oh boy. Uh, I have been there in spades.

I also know the feeling, uh, two feelings, unworthiness and insecurity. Unworthiness and insecurity. I felt that I was not fit or qualified to be caught up in this great drama. And I felt very insecure in being part of it and felt like for sure, I was going to flunk, and that the demands being made on me were greater than I could handle, and as much because I wanted to make it so bad that I wasn’t going to make it. Anybody who would hope and dream of anything this much, you surely would never get it.

So, you got that stumbling feeling whenever you’re around this person. You feel too sinful and too weak spiritually to be part of the crowd, and you’re just sure you’re going to fail. But tell me, you’ve never had any of those feelings, have you? Well, I’ve had those feelings, and I want you to know what I want you to try to do, but I doubt you can is to try to transfer that to the first century. And it’s almost impossible to do because the men that we speak of are so legendary. But they didn’t start out being legendary. They started out being ordinary people and they were insecure, and they were afraid, and they were all thumbs and they were falling all over themselves. And the more I look at their lives, the more I would say, “Well, you ought to, you dummy.” Because the more I look at the men that the Lord Jesus Christ invited to be with Him, the more I’m impressed with two things. And that is they really were ordinary.

At best, they were ordinary. And the second one is that they were no more qualified than I am. And I can tell you I’m not very qualified. Of course, the third thing that impresses me is the genius of what the Lord did. The absolute and total genius of what He did. And it’s a genius that is in desperate need of being reproduced. And I just want to talk to you a little bit about this. I’m afraid you’re going to get weary. All of you, those of you out, y’all know, you’re going to get weary of me repeating some of this, but I’m certain, I am certain you’re not fully grasping everything I’m saying.

The Lord called some men to Him because He couldn’t help it. The Lord called some men to Him because He couldn’t help it. He had to. You know why He had to? Because He didn’t know anything else. He absolutely was ignorant of any other possibility. He was only acting from the information and experience He had. And that’s where we always act, from our information and our experience. And sometimes, we guess when we get out into the worlds we don’t know. But there was no such thing with Him. The only thing He could do was to do what had been done to Him. He couldn’t do anything else.

And there comes what I consider to be one of the great leaps of divine and human and created and uncreated and visible and invisible history. The leap from God to fallen man, bringing fallen man into the realm of this previous fellowship that we’ve been talking about. Now, hear me. That was an honor. That was an honor. We look at this as being a time when it began. It’s already ancient. As ancient as the ancient of days. It’s been an exclusive thing, this fellowship of the Godhead, and it’s wonderful. It has satisfied God. And now He’s going to allow it to be enlarged. Not for a very long period of either. Just even if you count 2,000 years, not very long, a small little blurp, a little pin prick in the line of eternal history. He is going to enlarge the fellowship. Even if the fellowship is not enlarged, He’s going to put it in a theater, let it be seen, beheld. He going to let somebody look at it and, and I’m awestruck frankly. I mean, I am amazed that He has done this.

Now I want you to know that if He did it, this raises the prospects for you. That raises the prospects for you. I want you to be encouraged with that. You can be even more encouraged when you see who He picked. But I will say it again and again and again. I am overwhelmed that He allowed this exclusive club to open its doors to all things fallen man, and fallen man is going to get a ringside seat at this glorious, indescribable, incomprehensible, inimitable, eternal. I wish I had words. This thing beyond all human glory, beyond all human experience and comprehension, God in eternal fellowship with God is about to have the doors open and let someone in. Can you be impressed? I want you to be impressed. Please be impressed. Try to be impressed and be encouraged.

Notice I haven’t said very much about salvation in all these talks to you so far that I have hardly mentioned being saved. And I’m going to tell you why. This will probably get you hung, Gene. That’s right. It will. This will get you burned at the stake, Gene. Don’t say it, Gene. Just don’t say it. I’m thinking it. I might as well say it. Because salvation’s really not all that important. Well, sure it’s important if you don’t have it. But if you have it, surely it cost the death of my Lord and Savior. I am aware of the penalty He paid for my salvation. But He didn’t do that just to get me saved from eternal damnation. He did it for something He was interested in.

He had a very personal uh stake in this matter. And don’t get sidetracked on this everlasting obsession with getting people saved, and then getting people saved, and then and then getting some more people saved, and then after that getting some more people saved, and then save some more people. And that’s all as far as you ever get. By the way, that’s called a Baptist. That’s what a Baptist is. That’s all he knows and sees. And we always love  when one of these, when a fellow Baptist, I’m one of them, says, “And why did God create the world? He created the world so He might come and save you from your sin.” That’s pretty good. That’s quite a trick, because nobody had sinned when the world was created and no one had fallen. He has to have a reason beyond redeeming us. Redemption was to get us back to where He could go and do the things we’re talking about. And I would, that you would consider this, the mind of God and His heartbeat and the thing that He wants and the fact that we fell was something He had to deal with to get us back to the point He could continue rushing after that which He wanted.

Okay. I’m touched with the fact that the Lord calls some men to live with Him, because I’ve been called. But I want you to look at two or three things you might overlook if you’re not careful. How long had Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, pre-incarnated? How long had the Lord, our Savior, the Lord, been with the Father? Eternally. Would it be fair for me to say from the beginning? From the beginning. Now, you may say, “Well, that’s terribly insignificant, Gene. Of course, He was there from the beginning.” It’s very important in the things of God to be there from the beginning. You got to be there at the beginning. One of the highest and greatest honors that life affords is to be there from the beginning.