“The Case for Christ - Christ/Lord in Paul’s Life”

There are a number of Scriptures that I would like to bring to our attention tonight. They are found in Isaiah 26, starting with verse 3. Let me read them quickly to you.

The first, in Isa 26:3, is the effect of the desired relationship with God and the why that desire is filled: ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.’

And, then, Isaiah expressed his inner attitude and longing for this to come about by saying, in v 8: ‘Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to Thy Name, and to the remembrance of Thee.’

In vs 12-13, he was aware of how this would take place: ‘Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for Thou also hast wrought all our works in us....’. 

And, in v 20, the Lord spoke directly in a command that would bring this desire to pass and said: ‘Come, My people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until indignation be overpast.’

Now, let us turn over to Philippians 4:7 to see how Paul applied this in a new sense of Christ: ‘And the peace of God, which transcends all our powers of thought and is deeper than all knowledge, shall guard your hearts and thoughts as they rest in Christ Jesus.’

And in 2 Cor 1:9: ‘...but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead...’.  

Would you agree with me when I say that this peace of heart and mind Paul spoke of is something the world needs more than ever in our day?

Oh, yes, it does! And, more than that - it needs it through the resurrection power of the eternal life in Christ. This is what the mind of God purposes to bring into fruition as His plan unfolds upon the earth. 

What He has in mind is the establishment of Christ’s universal Lordship, and whether men can see it or not in our day, that plan of His is slowly coming to pass.

It is God’s desire that His people be filled with all of the fullness of the knowledge of God. 

Thus, in verse 20 of Isaiah 26 I read earlier, He counseled His people to enter into a place of ‘secret’, shut their doors behind them to separate themselves from all those things that are outside of the mind of God.

‘Come to where it is safe; come to the place that is stable, where there is that perfect peace’, He told them.

But much stood in their way - much was in their inward parts that was outside of the mind of God, outside of His plan for this to happen in them.

But how are we to avoid their mistakes? How can we actually take hold of that kind of peace of heart and mind in which the Lordship of Jesus Christ is real and factual?

Paul gave us the wonderful example in the autobiography of his life. Let us see how this part of God’s plan unfolded through him briefly tonight.

What was the ground on which the Israelites would receive this peace and mind of God?

Read the text again: it tells us: ‘Thou keepest the firmly-established mind in peace, peace: for his confidence rests in Thee.’

Now let us look at what Paul said in 2 Cor 1:9.

2 Cor 1:9: ‘...but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.’

He followed God’s plan in all of his preaching and teaching but, in order to do that, he had to learn a very prime lesson: ‘Yes, it seemed to us as though we had been sentenced to death’, he said, ‘but the purpose of this was to make us lose confidence in ourselves and place it in God...’.

He, too, as Isaiah did, had that inner attitude, that desire to ‘Thy Name and to the remembrance of Thee, O Lord.’

His focus also was on what happens in the life of the one who trusts the Lord, of the one with a ‘fixed’ heart, an ‘established’ heart. (Ps 112:7-8)

Therefore, in Col 1:9-10, he told those people, ‘...we...desire that you be filled with the knowledge of His[God’s] will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that ye walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.’
 
‘But how can that happen in me without everything getting fuzzy and blurry about Christ?’, you may ask?

This is how: when it came to spiritual knowledge, Paul did not trust himself; in fact, he lost all confidence in himself. Is that not strange for such a person as Paul?

After all, look at his credentials: he came from important Hebrew stock; he had a first-class education; he was well- versed and well-read in the law and in the prophets, had studied many of the scrolls and writings of his ancestors. We could probably say, ‘Paul had it all!’

Yet, to gain in spiritual knowledge, all ‘imaginations’, all ‘high things’, all arrogance and pride, everything about Paul that exalted itself against the knowledge of God, had to be dropped - he could not hold on to them!

How did these things fall away from him?

First of all, we know it was not an easy ride. God took him through the most extreme of troubles to keep him. It took afflictions, distresses, anguish, being in dire straits, many toils, many sleepless nights.

It took hunger, thirst, many evil reports and good reports. It took being ignored, being persecuted, being chastised, being in constant danger while traveling, danger from bandits, on city streets, dangers in the desert and on high seas.

It even took dangers from false, unstable Christians and, lastly, it took a difficult physical disability.  

He was pressed out of measure, even despaired of life itself, at least once, if not more times, during this list of his lifetime experiences.

All of them were part of a very sharp knife that was put to Paul’s innermost being. Painfully, he was kept restrained from acting out of himself.

Do you know why?

The Lord dealt mercifully with him so that he would not trust himself in proclaiming the gospel news, that he would not mar the carrying out of the news of Christ’s abode in him.

You see - when God uses such a sharp restriction with one of His own, every Christian must know that there is a powerful and crucial liability connected with it. And that liability needs protection!

‘Christ and Him crucified’ was, and is, the liability: it is a heavy responsibility to announce and carry within for it is priceless! God’s deposit of Christ in man is an infinitely precious treasure to guard! 

So Paul, in realizing that, had no confidence in himself, in his own mind, concerning the true knowledge of God in Christ. 

He could have boasted in many of his achievements, but he counted them all as ‘dung’ - they were of no special significance to him. His desire was to be ‘in perfect peace’ with a mind stayed on one thing - the work of God wrought in him to make him a fit vessel for carrying Christ.

When we look at statements like: ‘I, yet not I, but Christ Who lives in me’, and ‘...but the grace of God which was with me...’, and ‘...by the grace of God, I am what I am’, then we are looking at one who is honestly saying, ‘I have no confidence in myself; in spiritual things, I cannot trust myself; I trust only God...’.

Let me ask you this question: if his wonderful education, if his logical mind, if his fervent spirit, if his intense committment, if his many deep and cutting experiences could not justify him to trust himself, what folly is it on our part to think we can trust ourselves to such a sacred liability?   

He well knew that the resurrection power of Jesus Christ was what he needed more than any of these wonderful attributes of his. So - it was not for naught when he declared of Christ: ‘...that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection...’.

Listen to what he said: ‘...but what was once gain to me...I reckon as pure loss for the sake of the exceeding value of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake, I have lost everything and count it rubbish in order that I can have Christ, and be actually in union with Him, no longer counting on being saved by being good enough or by obeying God’s law but by the righteousness which comes through faith in Christ. For my determined purpose is that I may know Him and experience the power outflowing from His resurrection.’

This is such a crucial point of the life of Christ that he gave up everything in order to gain more fully, more completely the ‘mind’ of Christ.  

‘I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in Him...’. 

‘...win Christ’? Did Paul not have Christ yet?

Oh, yes he did. He received Christ at the moment of his conversion. And He received Him as ‘Lord’, for that is what Christ is. 

But his experience all through the years was a growing relationship in which there was an enjoyment of Him in the present. 

Yet, there was an excitement about the increasing understanding of Christ in the ongoing personal fellowship of His Lordship. So the riches yet to come in that continuing mind of ‘staying’ upon Christ was all ‘gain’. It was going to be all increase, advancement!

His desire was to ‘know’ Him with all the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and in all spiritual understanding’ and that would take a lifetime and more.

In the meantime, the Lord arranged many things to happen to him that would keep him from wandering into self-help, self-trust, self-deceit. That is what helped Paul experience what he had locked in his heart and mind about the increasing spiritual understanding of Christ.

So what was happening to him was all for the reason that he would become sick of himself but grow deeper and deeper into Christ. 

Now - this has nothing to do with the world’s desire to keep the natural self happy, peaceful, and contented, as though those features are our most cherished belongings. We all would like more of that, I am sure.

But for the Christian’s real peace of heart and mind, God’s intent is to disturb self and make us so sick and so ashamed of self that we will stop thinking about it, until something of the self-forgetful disposition of Christ, of His humility, replaces all of that. 

Do you know there is no one more miserable than a Christian stuck on himself? To overcome that miserable condition of pride and arrogance, we have need of the same kind of spiritual education in Christ! 

We can always depend upon Him to be faithful in setting this kind of spiritual food before us so that we can know the joy of that life-giving power of His resurrection. We just need to give it the freedom to nourish us. Hold on to that truth!

Many of us use the phrase ‘onward and upward’ quite often, do we not? What do we mean by that?

That is a good slogan for we Christians since growth ought never to stop in us. Progress is a healthy condition of the Christian. 

In it, we realize that ‘growing in grace’ adds to our faith ‘virtue’, and, notice, ‘virtue’ is what adds to knowledge.

We ‘follow on to know the Lord’, and, in that way, are daily receiving grace upon grace out of the fullness of the resurrection power of Christ in us.

We go from strength to strength, from glory to glory, heaping grace upon grace. That is how we focus upon the one desire of our souls toward God. We keep pressing on in just that way.

The Lordship of Christ becomes well established as we follow this plan of God in Christ. Three different times, Paul quoted in his letters: ‘Jesus is Lord’. (Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; Phil 2:10-11)

Christ had come to exercise a constraining power of Lordship in Paul, a new sense of God’s rule that had not been fully known yet by the prophet, Isaiah.

It contradicted everything religious and secular. And it will continue contradicting everything that tries to remove all trust in the knowledge of God in Christ. It is going to get rid of everything that can be a rival to that total trust in Him. 

That day is coming - and it may be coming sooner than we think - when all things will join Christ’s church on earth in submitting to Christ. His Lordship will be universal.
 
And it is not going to depend on what anyone thinks or says about Him. What it will depend upon is the simple fact that at the end of time, no one is going to be able to show us any power other than ‘His resurrection power’. 

He will be so exalted that He will have a name that is above every other name. He will be acknowledged as supreme.

And He will ordain ‘peace’ and keep in perfect peace the desire of our souls to that name of Christ - you can count on that!  Amen!

Lord willing, we will continue with this next week. In the meantime, let the Lord work these thoughts deep into our hearts and let His life flow out from our hearts in perfect peace and communion with Him, in spite of the pressing needs and problems of our day!

So be it! Let us pray.