Life of Christ #5 – The Secret of the Christian Life: Living in Fellowship With God

… how the Father has chosen Him to be prepared for the ministry, to be a worker. Now, those of you watching this on video may not have heard this unless I go back and make a recording just for you, because it wasn’t taped. But we talked about how, at the age of 21, three men were living in Nazareth, and they were all 21 years old. One was Jesus, and I made up the other two. Now tell me their names: Zephan and Laophas. Laophas went to Jerusalem to prepare to be a scribe. Zephan went to Jerusalem to prepare to be a priest. Jesus also spent nine or ten years, as was Jewish custom, preparing to be a worker…the first Christian worker. All three of them went.

Well, today you get saved at 17 or 18 and graduate from high school or college around 20 or 21. When you tell your pastor that you feel like you’ve been called to preach, he’s going to ship you off to a Bible school or a seminary for sure. The difference between a Bible school and a seminary, very generally, is that if you didn’t graduate from college, you go to a Bible school. If you’re a college graduate, you go to seminary. It’s cheaper to go to a Bible school. Of course, it’s not as good as a seminary. Everybody in the seminary gets a doctor’s degree.

Now then, Laophas has gone, at the age of 21, to have the temple experience. Laophas will learn to quote the entire Pentateuch in large sections of what we call the Old Testament. For every passage he memorizes as a scribe, he has to learn every interpretation known concerning that passage, and he has to be able to quote it perfectly. He has to quote it without error, exactly as the interpretation has been written down. He is a walking Bible and a walking Bible commentary. By the time he reaches 30, he will have learned an awful lot. I want you to know something else. He, like anybody who learns a lot and memorizes it, is going to be very proud. You can’t keep from doing that. I remember when I memorized four verses of Scripture; I was already getting proud. You can imagine how I got when I had a thousand.

Zephan is going to study for the priesthood for ten years. He’s going to learn how to dress in a certain regalia. He’s going to learn the meaning of every one of the kinds of clothing he wears, the symbols of it. He’s going to learn all the chants, all the correct words to say, how to stand, what offering to offer up, and at what moment in the chant to say it. He’s going to have to study hundreds of different kinds of offerings, when they are given, what day they are given, what time of day they are to be offered, the morning sacrifice, the evening sacrifice, the music that is to go with it, the trumpets that are blown on certain days, festivals, and the entire Jewish calendar. What time of day for each one of them, what he’s supposed to wear, what has to be slaughtered and killed, where it’s slaughtered and killed, how its organs are to be cut out. He’s got years of study and practice. He’s got to learn certain rituals and motions on certain days at certain hours. He will lift like this. At other times, he will do this. At other times, he will do this. At other times, he will do this. He has to learn when to bow and when to do this and that and the other.

You will be spared of that. I was not spared of that. No, although I am not a Jewish priest, I am a Baptist preacher, and it comes down to about the same thing. You learn how to do these things. Did you know that when I was 20 years old – you’re not going to believe this – when I was 20 years old – and this is everybody in the seminary – I had to work up an entire year’s calendar of ministry. I had to prepare 104 messages according to the Christian calendar. You don’t understand what I’m talking about, do you? There is Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and of course, there were a lot of days in there; I just got to preach whatever I wanted to. I’m not sure, but I think I even had to present an outline of what I would be talking about on Wednesday night. Maybe not. An entire year’s preparation of sermons. So that’s what I did at the age of 21. Actually, I started seminary before 21. I got out at 22. I started pastoring at 20 or 21. Can you imagine how dumb you can be at 21 and be a preacher at the same time?

Now, brothers, listen to me, because this is important. Is anyone in this room 21? Alright, we have two brothers who are 21. You have a choice to make about what you’re going to do at age 21. Whether you’re going to be a worker or not, that’s irrelevant right now. All of us, as we’re young, have to choose how we are going to relate to our God now. We have over here, sitting on this side of the room, people who have passed their prime. That’s right? Wow, can you see the sparks fly? There’s no one over here 21, or if so, they’re aging fast. Let’s say they got converted at 19, 20, or 21. The chances are you would have gone to a convention; you would have gone to a retreat, another convention, and another retreat. When you came out of there, you would have been given definite direction. The direction you would have been given was that you must master the Scripture. You must study the Bible, must pray every day, and I want you to know the kind of prayer you were taught would have been…

I believe in prayer. I do believe in prayer. I really, really believe in prayer, but I tell you, I wouldn’t give you two cents for almost all the prayer being prayed today by us Christians. It’s pretty peaked. God bless mama. God bless daddy. God bless Uncle Joe. God bless Aunt Nellie. God bless my little puppy. Take care of all the boys who are in the armed services and protect them from the Ayatollah and all those other pagans over there. And God, take care of our presidents, and Aunt Jane, and all of our missionaries everywhere in the whole world. Bless mommy, and God bless daddy, and God bless Uncle Joe and Aunt Nellie, the servicemen. That’s not far from the kind of prayer we got armed with. Is that not true? Is that not prayer more or less for most of us? Thank you. Susan is saying, ” Definitely, that’s true.” Well, I press this point.

The Lord is setting a pattern for you and for me in Nazareth. Zephan has chosen the temple experience. Jesus has chosen the Nazareth experience. I encourage you to look at the Nazareth experience, because He is going to duplicate it with a group of 12 or 20 people. And you’re going to find out…I’ll call that the Galilean experience. There is virtually no difference between the Nazareth experience of the Lord between the ages of 21 and 30, and the experience in Galilee that the Lord more or less introduced to those 12 disciples. I’m going to call them 12 disciples, but there were really about 20 people. Is it okay if, every time I say 12 disciples, you think 20 people? There were five or six sisters, and there were at least 15 men present. So 20, 21, 22. He is going to have an experience with those 20 people in Galilee, almost identical to the experience in Nazareth. The difference being the Nazareth experience was between God the Father and God the Son. Galilean experience is between God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – I’m sorry, I left Him out – and 20 people.

Do you remember what I said? A pattern is being established here. I want to press the point. There is a distinct pattern developing. I’m going to go through it again. In the Godhead, fellowship of the Father. The eternal Father, the eternal Son, and the eternal Spirit. The Son is beholding the Father. He is hearing the Father. He is responding to the Father. The Father is loving Him. He is loving the Father back with the love wherewith He Himself was loved by the Father. He is obeying the Father. Most of all, in all of this, I would say, He is living His life by the life of the Father. He is living His life by the life of God. He comes into time and into space in Bethlehem. He moves to Nazareth. As a little boy, He begins to learn to rebuild that relationship as a human being. By the time He has reached 12, He is keenly aware of a past relationship He had with the Father in eternity.

By the time He is 21, He is now being prepared to be a Christian, a member of the church, as a human being. He’s being prepared to be a worker, and to do this, He goes to Nazareth to be a carpenter; the two other brothers go to the temple for professional training. I don’t doubt they will know more Bible than He knows. Maybe I’m wrong. By the time they reach 30…the three of them reach 30 at the same time, John the Baptist is out in the wilderness causing all sorts of a stink with his wild preaching and eating unclean food. Jews can’t eat locusts. Hebrews are not allowed to wear a camel skin. It’s an unclean animal. You don’t touch it. Here he’s got it for his tuxedo.

Your Lord is about to call 20 disciples to live very closely with Him. What has He got to offer them? You remember the other night? I told you the first thing He offered them was incredible humanity. An incredible humanity. By having the Nazareth experience, He was able to give an example of an incredible humanity. You and I were not born with a living spirit; He was. We were not born with a body that knew no sin; He was. Therefore, as He grew up, He grew up truly spiritual. As He matured physically, He matured spiritually. As He matured humanly, He matured divinely. They were all growing up together. But I want you to look at how God views a Christian, a member of the church, and a worker. Here’s the pattern. Here’s the organic way God does things. I am overwhelmed with the fact that God, in preparing the first Christian worker… God’s been a Christian for all eternity; it’s been mostly a history in the realms that are invisible. God has broken into time and space. He’s about to introduce the Christian life, the church, which He’s had for all eternity, and the worker whom He’s been preparing for all eternity.