Where Do You Live — Paris Reidhead

The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life

We turn, please, to our scripture for the week, John chapter 10, and I shall read verses 7 through 11. We're using this as an anchor scripture for our thinking. The theme of the week is the Christian's secret of a happy life.

We believe our Lord has tied together by suggestion, by statement, basic principles. So many times in his ministry he would put the matter in seed form to be developed elsewhere, and that's what we've seen here.

As I read, you listen carefully. Then said Jesus unto them, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door, by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture.

The thief cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

Life, Salvation, and Worship

Yesterday morning we considered this matter of life. I am come that they might have life, contrasting it with death, and seeing that it was because he gave himself for us that he became our life, Christ our life.

And then last evening we thought together about this word saved, how broad it is, how big it is, what a wonderful word it is. And this morning we considered that having partaken of his life and experienced his salvation, he said, you shall go in.

And we took the word worship, going into the presence of God in worship. And we'll continue throughout the hours of this very fast-moving week, and aren't all weeks equally fast? It seems to me as though weeks go the way days did when I was a child, months the way weeks did, and years the way months did.

And it'll so soon be over. And it'll be that God has wanted to do so much more for us, perhaps, than we've let him do. So tonight, find yourself in the message. This is for you. I didn't come to preach this week, I want to make that clear.

I'm rather like Charles Spurgeon anyway, I mean Charles Finney. One occasion he said, I don't preach, I just try to explain what other people preach. And perhaps that's what we're doing this week, just sharing together, talking together as friends from the things of Christ, and explaining what I understand some of these truths to mean.

And hopefully they will become of meaning to you. Now taking that expression, they shall go in, I want to press it just a little bit further. We saw that it was to go in this morning as into the holiest of all, there to worship him, that he has called us to himself, seeking us that we might worship him.

God seeketh such to worship him. And I've played upon that expression that you've heard, were saved to serve, and rather suggested that perhaps that's getting the cart before the horse. We're saved to worship, and to the degree to which we become effective worshipers, is the measure of becoming effective in our service.

Entering the Presence of the Good Shepherd

So I would press that just one step further, and take the expression, not for the purpose of expounding it, but relating it to Scriptures and tying it together. They shall go in. In where? Well, into the presence of the Good Shepherd, who's given his life for the sheep.

Where is he? Tonight, where is he? In his resurrection body, where is he? Well, there's only one correct answer, isn't there? He's at the right hand of the Father. There's a man in the glory. Isn't that wonderful?

A man with a resurrection body, a man who lived among us and walked among us, who died for us and who triumphed over death, whom the Father has exalted, giving him a name above every name. And this man, Christ Jesus, God who came into the world as man lived and died and rose again and ascended into heaven, this same one is there, our High Priest, if you please, our Good Shepherd.

Now he said, go in. Go into his presence. In the fifteenth chapter of John, and you might well turn to it, we find our Lord speaking again to his disciples, seeking to share with them truths that have been alluded to, even in such a seed form as this one verse, to go in.

In the fourth verse of John fifteen, he said, abide in me. That means something. It obviously means something more than having life, being saved, because it's a commandment. And the commandments are expected to be obeyed, and it's possible to obey them.

And just because you have life from above through faith in the Son of God, just because you can say I have been saved from the penalty of sin and have the assurance of the gift of eternal life, I don't think you should infer necessarily that you are abiding in him.

Oh, you are trusting in his finished work and resting in the adequacy of his sacrifice. But this word abide means to live. It means to resign. It means to make your home. Now, I'm enjoying the room here at the lodge where I'm staying this week, and I suppose in a very weak sense you could say I'm abiding there.

But, oh, very temporarily, leaving Saturday morning to return again to Washington, D .C. I abide. My home is in Vienna, Virginia. And here, well, this is temporary. And he is saying, I want you to live.

I want you to reside. I want you to deliberately and consciously and conscientiously live in me. And this is something that you do. Not done for you. This is something you do, because you are told to do it, and because you want to do it.

You shall go in, abide in me. Live, reside, make your home. Now let's look at it. That's the commandment. What rises from it? You will find that without abiding in him we cannot bear fruit. So fruit is going to be the result of abiding in him.

And abiding in him is going to result in much fruit. And, of course, then there's this solemn warning in the sixth verse. Branches that don't bear fruit are cut out of the vine and are burned. And in the seventh verse, if you abide in him and his words abide in you, he shall ask what he will, and it shall be done unto you.

And lastly, abiding in him results in your glorifying the Father as you bear much fruit. So here is something that's commanded, that's filled with promise and with blessing, and with solemn warning. And it's imperative, therefore, that we should understand what it means to go in and there to abide, there to dwell, to reside, to make our home.

Christ’s Ascension and His Place at the Father’s Right Hand

Abide in me. Well, where is he? He's at the right hand of the Father. How did he get there? Well, he ascended into heaven. The disciples saw him go, and the angel said he's going to come back in the same manner that he went away.

Well, how came he to this place where, where he ascended into heaven? Well, you see, he'd been raised from the dead. What do you mean, raised from the dead? Well, he'd been crucified, was dead, and was buried.

Why was he crucified? Well, he was crucified for our sins. In duke time Christ died for the ungodly. Oh, you mean he died for me, for you? Yes, that's exactly what he means. Christ died for you, in your place, in your stead.

Now, have you ever analyzed or thought very much about that scripture that says, The soul that sinneth, it shall surely die. It didn't say the neighbor, it said it shall surely die. The soul that sinneth.

Now, here is Christ dying for you, apparently contradicting the word. Christ isn't you, is he? Christ is the Son of God. God come in the flesh, and you are you. How could the death of Jesus Christ have any effect on you?

Only in the sense that he deliberately reached out to identify with you. He was made to be what you were, by his own choice, so that you could become what he is. He was made to be sin for us, he who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

In other words, Christ identified with you. Now, who is he? He's God. Infinitely holy God. And consequently when he reaches out to you, then he could take you, and you, and you, and me, and all of us, because he's infinite in all of his attributes and nature.

He's God come in the flesh. And he identified with you. So, when the Lord Jesus went to the cross, from the Father's point of view, from heaven, he looked down and saw you on the cross, your substitute, who had identified with you so completely that the scripture that says, The soul that sinneth, it shall surely die.

He related himself to you. Now, Mrs. Morrow sang, Mrs. Rosaboon played the organ for us, but I wasn't supposed to sing. You weren't, were you? You weren't supposed to play the organ, but you were supposed to die.

You understand the difference? She, she, they, they did this for us, for our enjoyment, for our health. You were supposed to die. Your sin had earned the sentence of just condemnation. And so, Jesus Christ had to so relate to you, and so identify with you, that when he went to the cross, the Father could see him as you, and do to you in him what his law required.

Christ wasn't putting on a performance, if you please. Christ was identifying with you, and because he was the infinitely holy Son of God, he could do it perfectly and adequately, so that his identification was complete.

So, when the Father saw his son die, it was as though he'd seen you there on the cross. And when you came to the cross and saw him dying for you, then God, in answer to your faith, brought pardon and forgiveness and the gift of eternal life.

Crucified With Christ and Freedom From Sin

Now he said, abide in me. Abide in me. Where is he? On the cross. Crucified. Well, now, you have seen Christ die for you, and in response to your faith in his dying for you, you were pardoned and you were forgiven.

But we talked Sunday morning about the fact that many times, or perhaps in the case of most of us, after we were forgiven, we discovered we'd carried into the Christian life a traitor that would betray us, ourselves, our habits, our attitudes.

I told you about coming back from the mission field just so depressed by the fact that in that situation I had found out some things about me that I didn't know when I left. I found out, for instance, that I wasn't as spiritual and as effective as I wanted to be, and the only way I could live with myself was to prove nobody else was.

What they thought said they were ought to be, and so I became sarcastic and critical and censorious, and I hated it. But I didn't know how to have victory over it. One time in a conference here in Florida, I heard a preacher say something that was just tremendously dynamic in my life.

And up at this little conference, he said, the trouble with you, after he told everybody there all about me, you know, it was most embarrassing. He'd just waggle his finger right under my nose, and then he told everybody, all of us to know about me.

And I knew everybody knew exactly to whom, of whom he was speaking. And finally he said, the trouble with you is that when you came to Jesus Christ, the only thing you thought you needed was pardon from your past sins.

And so, that's what you believed for, and that's what you got, because that's all you were expecting to get. But after you were a Christian a little while, you discovered that you not only needed pardon from your past sins, but you needed victory over yourself, over temptation, over the, your disposition, and your nature, and your attitudes.

And do you know what your trouble is? And I almost broke the silence and said, what? Go ahead. But I held my peace. He said, your trouble is that when you saw Jesus Christ dying for you, you received him as dying for you, you went in through the cross into the Christian life, and there way out in the distance you saw the gates of glory, and you said, back here I was saved, and over there is the reward for which I'm striving, and you headed off.

And you've never turned around and looked at the cross from the inside. And I, what in the world is that fellow talking about? Look at the cross from the inside? What's that mean? Look at the cross from the inside.

Then he explained. He said, you see, since Jesus Christ is on the cross for you as your representative, dying your death, then from the Father's point of view it was as though you were on the cross with Christ.

Now to help you see it, said he, just imagine that the nails that went through the hand of the Son of God were about four inches long on the other side of the board. Overly long nails. And that there's another person on the inside of the cross.

And if you look at it, you'll see it's kind of an empty person, as though it's the form there but nothing in it. You see, that's you, because you've never realized that the day Jesus Christ died for you, you died with him.

You were crucified with Christ. Now, Romans 5 is so clear that when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Oh, how clear Romans 5 is. But Romans 6. Romans 5, Christ died for us.

Romans 6, Christ died as us. Romans 8, Christ lives in us. Now the problem is, so many people have never understood Romans 6. That Christ didn't just die for you, he died as you. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ.

Now, can you understand then what happens in the rest of Romans 6 and 7 when he says, well, he that is, you know, is dead is freed from sin? If you're crucified with Christ, then all those habits and attitudes and dispositions and learned responses that you've had no longer have power.

So if you realize, now this isn't trying to play dead or think dead or act dead. This is knowing something. This is history. And if you can believe that Jesus Christ died for you, then you can believe that you died with Jesus Christ.

It's just as easy to believe one as the other. That if he was on the cross for you in the Father's eyes, you were on the cross with him and in him. And that to help you understand it, visualize yourself as being on the back side of the cross.

Reckoning on the Death of the Old Self

Now he said, abide in me. Crucified with me in order to have victory over yourself. Now this isn't something new. You've been singing it for years. Maybe you didn't know what you were singing like I didn't.

But we sang it. You know what it is. Well, what is it? Moment by moment. Dying with Jesus, by death reckoned mine. Isn't that right? Dying with Jesus, by death reckoned mine. Living with Jesus, a new life divine.

Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine. Moment by moment, O Lord, I'm thine. Now, it's easier to sing than it is to apply. What happens? When you once understand that the day Christ died, you died. And you've seen yourself on the back side of the cross.

Then, the moment that you're tempted to be yourself, and you're never going to be any different than you, you know. That's the unfortunate part of it. But the moment that you're tempted to be you, and that'll come pretty quick.

Father, the part of me that would think this or feel this or want this or say this or do this, that's the part that died the day Christ died. And just now I reckon myself to be dead. Do you know what happens?

If it's done in sincerity and simplicity, it releases the flow of the resurrection life of Christ into your life. Have you ever seen these games that give children with iron filings and a magnet that looks like a pencil?

You put one end down and it pulls the little iron filings, and you turn it over and put the other end, and it pushes them away. Temptation is the pull of you toward satisfying a good appetite in a bad way.

But when you reckon yourself to be dead, you release the resurrection life of Christ into your personality, and it reverses the polarity, and there's a push away. Well, another illustration. You look around here and you see those little switches on the wall.

When they built this auditorium, they knew that sometimes there'd be meetings when it was dark. Now, we have the lights on, but they did not have to wire the auditorium tonight. It was wired when it was built, and all we had to do was to reckon on the electrician, on the electricity, and on the electrician.

And somebody went to the wall and easily flipped the switch and the darkness was dispelled. Now, when I came back from the mission field, I didn't know where the switch was. I didn't know how to have victory.

And I heard that speaker that I told you up here at Crystal Beach, Florida, and I found out where the switch was. Well, I'll never forget. I went home that night, and I drew up a contract. I took a piece of paper, and I wrote down the date and the time and the place, and I filled it out.

I, that I am by nature a proud, arrogant, haughty, selfish, lustful, devout, earnest, sincere, the whole good and bad mixture and mess, you know, do from this time on, as long as I live, reckon and count that I was crucified the day Jesus Christ was, that I died with him.

Well, the next day, someone came on the grounds that didn't like our mission society. I just didn't understand that. And he didn't like me, and I understood that. And he just started to take out after the mission society.

Well, normally, I'd have just been bursting at the seams to wait till I could get in there and give him as good as he gave, because that was my nature. I had a very, very low blow-off point, you see.

And I was just busting to get even, get there. And all of a sudden I realized that something amazing had happened. He stopped talking about the mission, and he started to tell me all that was the matter with me.

And I looked at him, and I know I smiled, because I was smiling inside. It was marvelous. Instead of being resentful and sarcastic and wanting to... something had happened. And it was as though I were looking through the wrong end of a binocular as at a stage, and it was happening, but there was a great element of distance, and I wasn't emotionally involved.

And then I said, You're going to have to forgive me. I've got to leave. Something wonderful has just happened. And then in addition to all the other things, he thought I'd lost my mind as I walked off.

But that was the first time I'd ever known what it was to be released from the pressure and the drive of my disposition, my personality. This is what we're taught. He said, Go in. Go in in union with me, crucified with me, to have victory over yourself.

Burial With Christ and Victory Over the World

Well, that isn't where he stayed, is it? He's there, but not all there. That's not all. April 1965, I and Mrs. Reedhead and two friends from the Tabernacle of New York were at the Garden Tomb at the six o 'clock service.

And we had a few minutes before, and so we were able to go in to the tomb. There in the dim early morning light, I saw, as many of you have seen, that couch of stone where very possibly our Lord lay, and that unfinished couch.

Now he said, Go in. Go in where? Well, in the fourth verse of Romans 6 he said, Therefore we are buried with him, by baptism into death. Buried with him. Well, you remember we had three enemies. The first was the flesh, crucified with Christ to have victory over ourselves, buried with him to have victory over the world, because the second enemy is the world.

And if you're going to, if you're going to live a happy life, you've somehow got to get insulation from the world. Now all that's in the world is the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, nothing else.

And yet that has been enough to lure to destruction most of earth's family. And you're going to have to go back into the world, just as a diver goes down into the bottom of the filthy East River in New York Harbor, so you have to go down into the filth of the world.

How can you do it? Well, there's only one way, to keep your own environment with you. And so, he said, we are to abide in him, buried with him. Buried with him. What's the picture? Why, the picture is just going in and staying there.

You know, a man may enjoy having a new car every year or so, and probably has good reasons to have it as well. I must admit that when you're driving on the highway, a good car is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

The reason I say that, I'm driving a little foreign car, and I'm beginning to convince more and more every day that it is. Well, at any rate, that big car has its place and its merits and its reason, but if you've had one every year or two years or three years, and then you die.

That automobile salesman that counted on your buying a car from him every couple or three years, just is not going to go out to the cemetery and stand there at the headstone and tell you how beautiful the new models are.

You know why? Because you've lost interest in them. You just don't care any longer. You're buried. You're buried. You're living in an entirely new and glorious environment, and transportation isn't so laborious and so hazardous where you are.

And so you've lost interest. And so he said, abide in me, buried with me. Why? To insulate us against the world. To be able to go back in it and walk in it and be free from its hold that can't find any place in us.

Oh, how wonderful it is that he knew that he was going to send us back, and so he said, you go in. You go in, abide in me, crucified with me to have victory over yourself, and buried with me to have victory over the world.

Raised and Seated With Christ in the Heavenlies

But we don't stay there, do we? Christ was quickened. He was raised up from the dead. You said, yeah, yes he was. And we were raised up together with him. In Ephesians, the second chapter we read, we are quickened together with Christ.

By grace are you saved and raised up together. So he said, abide in me, quickened with me, and raised with me. Have you ever sung that song, I'm Going Higher Someday? Well, I have news for you. If you'll just stay with me, it'll be today.

Seated together in the heavenlies in Christ. Seated in the heavenlies. Where is Christ? He's at the right hand of the Father. Go in. They shall go in. Go in where? Go in where he is, where the good shepherd is.

And where is he? At the right hand of the Father. Now go back to Ephesians 1, 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ.

Now, do you consciously, do you follow what I'm saying? You have a problem, you. If you don't think so, ask your children and your neighbors. They'll tell you the truth, perhaps. If not, ask the Lord.

He certainly will. You have a problem. Well, how are we going to get victory over it? You can't be happy. I wasn't happy, as I told you, when I came back from the mission field, knowing that my life had been tyrannized by these attitudes.

Great distress of spirit. Oh, what release there was. And believe me, I'm not suggesting for a moment that I'm not in daily need of understanding this truth and infrequent failure of appropriating it.

But it's wonderful to know there's victory. And so he said, you go in. Go in and abide in me, crucified with me, buried with me, quickened with me, raised with me, seated with me in the heavenlies. That's where we're to stay.

That's our place from which we pray. That's our place from which we view the world, from which we view the circumstances. You see, we have another enemy. We not only have the flesh, self, I, and the world, we also have the devil.

And we've got to recognize we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but principality and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this age. And so from what place do we meet them? Seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

Go in. They shall be saved and they shall go in where the shepherd is, in the fold, in this place. And so if somehow tonight before you go to bed, you can make this yours by mentally picturing it. See the Lord Jesus on the cross.

Visualize the way you've seen it in picture or in drama, or however it may have been presented to your mind. Visualize yourself on the back side of the cross. Put the hands of your heart up and say, Father, I'm going to stay here.

Ask him to clench the nails so that from today on, this is where you're going to view you, crucified with Christ. And then picture in your mind the tomb, and see Christ lying on one coal bench of stone, and see yourself there in the tomb with him, buried with him.

Then see him quicken, and realize that the life that raised up Christ from the dead was the very life that made you alive. It took just as much of God's power to save you from your sin as it did to raise his Son from the dead.

The resurrection life of God's dear Son. And so it is. Visualize yourself quickened with him, and then raised with him. And then see him ascend into heaven, and realize that you're seated together in the heavenlies in Christ.

And when you've pictured that in your mind, then from that place, as though you were just next to the Lord Jesus in the heavens, in the holiest of all, talk to your wonderful Lord. Talk to your heavenly Father.

Talk about your family back here on earth. Talk about the needs at Keswick, and the burdens of your life. From there, and watch what happens. Watch what's going to take place. So many times we're by our bedside, praying toward some distant spot way out in the sky, instead of seeing ourselves by faith's eye with him.

He's blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly. He said, go in. They shall be saved, and they shall go in. And there, in faith's eye, with the heart, with the spirit, understand that he's invited you right into the holiest of all.

The veil has been rent from the top to the bottom, and he's bid you come where he is. And it's from that point that you pray, not from here toward some distant place, but you're talking to your wonderful Lord, and through him to your heavenly Father.

The Christian Life of Going In and Going Out

And something's going to happen. Well, what's going to happen? Well, there's going to be happiness and joy. You see, the Christian secret of a happy life is learning to go in. In worship, to go in in union, to go in in a relationship with the Son of God.

And what happens then is this, that all of a sudden you begin to realize, what we're going to start talking about at ten o 'clock in the morning, what it means to go out. I'll give you a clue. If you're going to stay on the back of the cross, crucified with Christ, and buried with him and seated with him, then you can say, Lord Jesus, there's my body.

There's my brain. You can use it to think your thoughts. There's my eyes. You can use it to see the loss. There's my ears. You can use it to hear their cry. There's my feet. You can use them to go, my hands to serve, my lips, Lord Jesus.

You can use them to speak. And I'll stay here with you, and you just live your life in me. Now, isn't that what the Apostle said? I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

He said, we shall be saved, and we shall go in and go out. But oh, it's so important, where you go when you go in, and how you go when you go out. Father, the truth we've been talking about tonight is not deep or perplexing or confusing.

It's no harder for us to appropriate than we died with him, and were crucified with him, and buried with him, and quickened with him, and raised with him, and seated with him. It's no harder for us to grasp that, if thou wilt quicken our hearts, than that he died for us, and was buried for us, and quickened for us, and raised for us, and seated for us.

And if we can believe the one, by thy grace we can believe the other. And we had to believe that to be saved. But thy son said, we shall be saved, and we shall go in. Oh, granted, Father, we'll understand in a new way what it means to live in this union with thy dear son, of which the apostles spoke and took it so for granted, saying to that church at Rome, knowing this, as though they certainly knew it, might it be true, not just in word and verse, but in experience, in the lives of the dear friends that are here tonight, and as they think of their homes and their families and their needs and their loved ones and their country and all the concerns of their heart, might they bear these burdens and share them with thee, because they've gone in to thy presence.

So make the truth real. Help us to meditate upon it until it becomes ours, not just to listen, but to appropriate and to experience. And now may the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that gray shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make us perfect in every good work to do his will, working in us that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be the glory now and forever.

Amen.