Filled With the Lord of Christ — Bill McLeod

I'll sing in heaven. By the way, I just got some advertising in the mail the other day, and on a CD they have about 4 ,000 Spurgeon sermons, all index and everything, plus all of Calvin's sermons, for $95.

So sell your car and buy it. But I don't have the address with me, I can send that to Harold and you can check with him later on if you'd like to get a hold of that. It would be very, very interesting, I would think, to have all of Spurgeon's printed sermons indexed and all.

And by the way, there's a new book, I just finished reading it, it's called The Case for Christ. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's the best apologetic. Yes? This book, The Case for Christ, the guy was an agnostic and he visited 16 leading New Testament scholars in the United States and had all kinds of curveballs to throw at them, and there are 16 chapters in his book, because he had a recorder with him and recorded the entire conversation, and each chapter revolves around one of these scholars that he dealt with.

And then at the end, because they answered every question he asked, he said, Now what do I do? And he became a Christian. It's a great book. And like I say on apologetics, it's the best I've come across, The Case for Christ.

Christ Dwelling in Believers Through the Spirit

Ephesians 3, verse 14. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might, the word is power, with power, by his Spirit in the inner man.

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fulness of God, now, unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, unto him be glory in the church, by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end.

Amen. In chapter 2, Paul had been talking about time past, when we who are not Jews were outside the kingdom of God. We were called the uncircumcision by the Jews, who were called the circumcision, and it says we had no Christ, we had no God, we had no promises, we had no hope, we had no citizenship in the kingdom of God, we had nothing and we were nothing.

But he says, now, that was time past, now in Christ Jesus, you who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. And he explains how God has knocked down the middle wall that stood between the Jew and the Gentile, and that's gone, and we both, it says, have access by one spirit unto God the Father.

So he says, now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, grows unto a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.

That's how the chapter ends. Then notice in the next chapter, Paul says, for this cause I, Paul, he's talking about what has happened at the Jew and the Gentile, there is no difference now to God, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and he broke down that middle wall of partition, as I said before, that's gone, and so we're no longer strangers, fellow citizens, except just as completely as any Jew would be accepted, because there is no difference.

So Paul is looking back to that, for this cause, but then he digresses for 13 verses and comes back to it again. Notice verse 14, for this cause, there is the phrase again. So he got into something else for 13 verses and came back to it again.

For this cause, the fact that we are being built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit, we don't know exactly what this means except what it says, but the experience will be beyond our comprehension now, I'm sure.

Prayer, Humility, and the Greatness of God

For this cause, I bow my knee. Let's stop there for a moment. What is the proper physical attitude we should assume when we pray? Should we always kneel? Well kneeling is certainly right, because Solomon knelt on a scaffold that he built for that purpose at the dedication of the temple and stretched up his arms to God and prayed a remarkable prayer, so kneeling is fine.

But Christ said, when you stand praying, so praying standing is fine, too. Then David went to the temple and sat before God and prayed, so it's fine to pray when you're seated. And I'm sure when Jonah prayed he was horizontal, and so you can pray when you're in bed.

I've prayed in all of those ways. The physical posture doesn't really matter, but somebody put it this way, they said, but you have to be kneeling in your heart, knowing who God is and who we are. When you stop to think, all nations of the world, everybody ever in the world, from Adam to the last person that's born, put together, the Bible says, are like before God, one drop in a bucket.

If you were carrying an empty bucket walking down a trail and somebody snuck in behind and put a drop of water in, would you feel its weight? Of course you wouldn't. You wouldn't even know it's there.

And God says that about all the nations of the world. He even goes further than that because he says that we as individuals are what he calls a mathematical impossibility. He said we are less than nothing and vanity.

How can you be less than nothing? I know many times in my prayer I say, hey, God, I know you're talking to a hole in the ground. That's what I am, just a hole in the ground, less than nothing and vanity.

So when we come before the God of the universe, we have to come understanding not only who he is and how great he is, but how little we are. You know, if you got on a rocket and traveled at the speed of light, you could pass the moon in two seconds.

I've read somewhere, I think it's nine minutes to go past the sun. I'm not sure of all these figures, but it's three and a half years, I think, before you come to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, three and a half years at the speed of light.

Now you're talking about millions of miles an hour, and that's the nearest star. The local solar system, the Milky Way constellation, of which our local solar system is a part, the Milky Way is so vast, if you're traveling at the speed of light, it will take you a hundred thousand years to cross it, and this is the God we're dealing with.

And since we're less than nothing, we better size down a little. I think it was Moody that said, humility gets the most from God. It's not wrong sometimes to tell God, you know, you're just a bag of garbage.

All right. I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. To whom shall we pray? God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. If it's wrong to pray to the Spirit, then we have to get rid of some songs.

If it's wrong to pray to Christ, we have to get rid of some songs. You know, my Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine. Other songs we sing that are really prayers. There's no jealousy in the Godhead.

However, having said that, I say this. Jesus said, in that day, he's talking about the day of his resurrection, in that day you shall ask me nothing. Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

Now, I'd say that basically we need to, now don't misunderstand me or misquote me either. I'm not saying it's wrong to pray to Christ in the Holy Spirit. It isn't. I do it myself. But I think basically we need to be praying to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I say that because in some Christian circles, they're always praying and only praying to Jesus. And I don't think it's quite biblical. Let's pass on from there. Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.

God just has one family. He doesn't have a Jewish family and a Gentile family. He has one family. And then keep this in mind. You know, when Jesus comes back, the trumpet blows, and the church is caught up from all around the world to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Thank God. However, keep this in mind, that most of the church is already in heaven. Right? I mean, they've been going over for 19 centuries now. There are millions, most of the church is in heaven already.

That's why the Bible says, those also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. So it's not exactly true to say that the church will be caught up because most of the church will be coming with him. That small part of the church left in the world will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air at that particular time.

God's Sovereign Work and the Riches of His Glory

That he would grant you. And somebody put it this way, if God doesn't do it, it just won't get done. In Ecclesiastes, there's a wonderful verse. It says, whatsoever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it.

And God does it that men should fear before him. Whatever God does. Jesus talked about that in John 15. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain.

We call that abiding fruit. That clicks in with that verse in Ecclesiastes. Whatever God does, it shall be forever. And how do we get abiding fruit? He tells us in the context in John 15, that whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, he will do it for you.

He may do it. That's how we get abiding fruit. We get it through prayer, prayer and faith, believing God. God does it, it's forever, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory. How wealthy, how rich is God?

I read about a city somewhere in the States, I'm not even sure where, San Francisco, I'm not even sure where it was. Anyway, there's a certain area of the city in which providing you are a millionaire, you may live there.

There's another area in the same city where you can live only if you are a multimillionaire. And there's a third section in the city where you can live only if you are a billionaire. And I read that and I thought, what utter nonsense is this?

They wouldn't use million dollar bills to light a fire in heaven. It's not current over there. You know what it says in Proverbs? The rich and the poor, they meet together on the same level. As far as God is concerned.

I read an article in a magazine a while ago and this lady, she said, I absolutely refuse to be poor. She was in this prosperity syndrome thing, you know, and she made a great big case about it. She absolutely refused to be poor because she said, my father is so wealthy and there's no reason why I should be poor.

So I wrote her a letter. And I gave her that verse in James chapter two, how can my beloved brethren, has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith? I'm glad to be able to say that she wrote a sweet letter back, completely humbled, thanked me for my letter.

She said, I'll never make that mistake again. Why are the poor of this world rich in faith? Because they have to be to survive. It's never bad to be poor. When I first went preaching, the church said they'd pay me $30 a month if it came in, which sometimes it didn't.

A little way church up in the sticks in Northern Canada. And I got married after six months, then two of us had to live on $30 a month. There was no way you could do that because although that's a long while ago, 56, whatever years ago now, you know, men in those days were, I mean, a guy with an average job, he'd be making maybe $100, $125 a month.

So I was considerably short, but you know what? We never went short. We gave the tithe and the offering right from the beginning, did all we could, and God always came through. I remember one time a guy called and he gave us three hams.

We ate hams until we looked like it, you know. Sometimes a sack of turnips, which I didn't particularly care for then, I don't mind them now. But anyway, God has chosen the poor of this world rich in faith.

Let me tell you something, brethren, in case you don't know this. There are 75 countries in the world where the average annual income is 5 of what it is in the United States of America. Seventy-five countries.

My son was in Bangladesh, he said, Dad, you can't believe it, he said, the average annual income in Bangladesh is $85 a year. I talked to some tailors in Madras in southern India and they were making $2 a week.

Not $2 an hour, $2 a week. And a lot of the people in India we met were living on one bowl of rice a day. I don't know how they did it, except by the grace of God. And many of these people were Christian people.

How wealthy is God? He's got everything. He's got anything that you need. You can never have a problem that God can't solve. That is totally impossible. But we have to come to God in God's way. We can't come demanding, we have to come imploring.

Confession, Guilt, and Seeking God Honestly

We have to be honest and we have to stop blaming our wives, or our kids, or our job, or our neighbor, or someone else. That all started in the Garden of Eden. You know, my oldest daughter, Judy, when she was about 10 maybe, and my next daughter-in-law was about 7, we were at a place called Pine Falls, Manitoba, for Christmas.

My in-laws lived there and we were having a great time. Snow like this, you know. I happened to look out the window just in time to see Judy grab Lois from behind and push her head first into a big snow bag.

And she turned, blowing snow, and came in the house crying, Judy, push me in the snow. So I called Judy in, you know. And that rascal, she stood there like this and she said, Daddy, I didn't do it. You know, I have a voice reserved for occasions like that.

And I went like this, Judith Lynn McLeod, don't you lie to me. I was looking out the window and I saw you do it. Well, Daddy, I really didn't do it. This little hand did it. Where'd she get that from?

She got it from me, I guess. And I got it from my dad and he got it from his dad, all the way back to Adam, you know. That's where it started. Adam blamed Eve, she blamed the devil. The devil had more honor than both of them, never said anything.

You know, a game warden in Canada told me one time, it wasn't hunting season, he heard a big rifle blast in a park, one of our national parks, there's thousands of elk in there, you know. So he went to look, being a game warden, and he comes to a little clearing, the guy didn't see him, the guy was kneeling by the carcass of the elk, he's got a knife in his hand, he's got blood on his hand, his rifle is leaning against the tree, and suddenly he sees the game warden coming, and what does he say?

I didn't do it. That's what he said. This game warden told me. Dear people, that's why we don't get anymore with God. You did do it. Tell God. Lord, I'm guilty. I did this. I thought this. I failed you.

Be honest with God, and God will be honest and direct with you, as long as we fool around and blame it on something else. You know what it says in Hosea chapter 5, that's Israel, they shall go to their flocks with their herds to seek the Lord, but they won't find him.

He has withdrawn himself from them. So I say to myself, now wait a minute, these people mean business? They're going with animals to sacrifice to God, and God's walking away? Why is he doing that? Well, read the last verse of the same chapter.

God said, I will go and return to my place until they acknowledge their offense and seek my face. So they were seeking the face of God, but they were not admitting their sin. The marginal reading says, that the Hebrew language says, until they be guilty.

Until we're guilty, it's not much use to come before God. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no not one. None is good save one, that's God, Jesus. You need to accept that.

So he would grant you, God has, as I said before, dear people, don't ever listen to the devil's lies that God can't help you. He can. And all he asks, you know, read James 4, about 8 to 10, I call it God's recipe for personal revival.

Be afflicted and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. It's great. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

That's verse 8. And he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Men come to be afflicted and mourn and weep. That he would grant you, according to his riches and glory, to be strengthened with might, with power, by his Spirit in their inner man.

Being Strengthened by the Spirit So Christ Feels at Home

It's as if Paul is praying for the Christians at Ephesus, indeed for us today, that we might be filled with God's Spirit in a new way, the power of God in my life. But notice what he has in mind, why he's praying this.

This was for years a puzzle to me. I could never quite figure it out. He's praying that we might be strengthened with power by the Spirit of God so that Christ might dwell in our heart by faith. And I thought, now wait a minute.

Christ already dwells in my heart by faith? This happened years ago. Why is Paul praying that it might happen again? Did Christ leave me? Is that what he means? I don't think he meant that at all. But I puzzled over it.

I remember reading something Moody said one time. He said, I read the Bible the way I eat fish. If I come across a bone, I don't quit eating fish. I lay the bone on the side of the plate and I go right on eating fish.

And I do the same in the Bible. If I come across something I don't understand, I set it aside, I ask God to tell me what it means, and somewhere down the road he's going to do that. And I did the same.

I said, God, I don't understand this, but someday you're going to show me. Kenneth Weiss has done a New Testament, he's a Greek scholar, and I happen to have this. And I was reading one day and came across this verse, and a light went on.

He translated it this way, that Christ may settle down and feel at home in your heart by faith. Jesus Christ cannot feel at home in a heart that's filled with pride. I mean, how can he? We have been joined to the Lord, it says, he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

We have become one with Christ. The relationship is so close. You know, I preached and logged and cast for four and a half years with Shantyman's Christian Association up in Canada, and many times I stayed in little, well, board-trapped hotels.

You could hear everything going on all around, down below and up above and on both sides and ends. And the wickedness in some of those places was awful. I rarely felt at home. One time I had a room right over the beer parlor.

And you know, Saturday night, you can imagine what's going on down below in the beer parlor. The hollering and the shouting and sometimes the fighting and the screaming and all the rest of it, you know, did I feel at home?

I never felt at home. I wanted to get out of there, but I couldn't. I had to stay there. I had nowhere else to go. And Christ likewise, dear people, he's called, even the demons call him the Holy One of God.

That's what he is. You can sit down and think evil. You can do it even on the platform before you go to the pulpit. And nobody knows but God. Well, it shouldn't matter that nobody knows but God. It shouldn't matter that God knows.

And Christ cannot settle down and feel at home in a heart that does that. Or if you have bitterness in your heart, you can't forgive somebody for something or other. You think Christ feels at home in that kind of a heart where there's bitterness when he said that all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor would be put away with all malice and be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you.

Since God has freely forgiven you all trespasses, you must forgive also. I was called in the middle of the night one time to go to a home. I got there, and then I found out what had happened. It was 2 o 'clock in the morning, I guess.

She was sitting over here, mad as a person can be. He was sitting over here in a chair, and he was crying. He'd been in the meetings, got his life straightened out, and went to his wife and confessed he had been guilty of adultery.

He'd fallen into it just once, but he committed adultery, and he asked her forgiveness, and she'd ordered him out, and he wanted me to help the situation. So I finally got her attention, and I said, now, sister, do you mind if I say something that Jesus said in Matthew?

She nodded her head slightly, and so I said, now, here's a person, I said, I'm going to put it in Canadian dollars, and so he owed $50 ,000, and in those days, you could be thrown in jail, in a debtor's jail.

There are countries where they still do that, you know. You can be thrown in jail if you can't pay your debts. It's the most stupid thing I've ever heard of. How are you going to earn money to pay your debt if you're in jail, you know?

Doesn't make any sense at all, but then a lot of things don't make sense in some countries. And so he couldn't pay, and he said to his creditor, have mercy, have patience, and I'll pay it all. And it says the guy was moved with compassion, and said, hey, wait a minute, chum, why don't we just write it off?

Why don't we just write it off? You don't owe me anything. And the same guy goes out in the street, and he finds the guy that owes him five bucks, and he gets him by the throat, and he shakes him until his teeth rattle, and he said, pay me what you owe.

And he said the same thing, but he said to his creditor, have patience, have mercy, I'll pay you all. And he wouldn't do it, it says, but he threw him in jail. So I said to this gal now, the 50 ,000 represents your sins, my sins, against God.

The five represents your husband's sin against you. What did Jesus say? I said to her, what did Jesus say to the man who refused to forgive? She said, I don't know. And I pointed right at him and said, he said, you wicked servant, you wicked servant.

And you know what happened? She just collapsed. She looked at her husband and smiled, and he flew across the room and fell on his knees, by her knees, and she ran her hands through his hair, and it was all over.

And 15 years later, they're still walking with God. So you can't forgive. Watch it, brethren, watch it. God has forgiven us freely, it says, everything. You've got to forgive others no matter what they did.

Forgiving Those Who Have Caused Great Harm

I read a book called China. It was a wonderful story, and in there there's one story I want to share. This gal, you know when the Cultural Revolution was on, and the young people, they called them Red Guards, they were allowed to go anywhere in China and kill people.

They were to target religious people, intellectuals, and wealthy people, and they killed tens of thousands of people all through China. And one day, a bunch of these Red Guards broke into her house and bludgeoned everybody to death.

She happened to recover. They didn't know that. They left her for dead. All her family were gone. Then this Cultural Revolution fell into disrepute with the authorities, and they stopped it. And then some years later, she discovered that the fellow who led that group into her house that night was living only two blocks from her house.

How would you handle a thing like that? How did she handle it? She started praying for him that he might become a Christian. And then she heard they had a son that wasn't well, and he had no money, and couldn't get any medical help, so she went down.

She didn't say a thing about what had happened to her family. He didn't recognize her, of course. And she offered to nurse his boy back to health for nothing. And she did that. It took several weeks. And when she brought the child back to him, he didn't know what to say.

He said, well, how can I pay you? I have no money. She said, I don't want any money. But she said, you might be interested to know that you killed my husband and all my children with clubs one night. And she reminded him.

You know what happened, people? He fell on the floor and started to cry, and he got saved before he got to his feet. But how could she do that? She could do that because she was filled with the love of God.

And she knew that God had forgiven her all her trespasses. And we have to do the same. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. There's a tension that Paul talks about in Galatians chapter 5. The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.

And these are contrary. They're opponents. They're adversaries. They're one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. You get to be immobilized. You can't do anything for God because you haven't resolved this conflict, this inner conflict.

Dying to Self Rather Than Merely Managing Sin

The problem is not sin. The problem is self. Self is the factory that manufactures the sin. You can deal with a sin over and over and over again. What about the self problem? I say, self manufactures the sin.

So instead of asking God to deal with a finished product called sin, why don't we ask God to bomb the factory? I mean, that's what's needed. Some of you may have heard me relate this story, not at this conference, but perhaps when I was here before.

But I had a fellow in one of my churches, and he was a high school teacher, great singer, and he could preach like you wouldn't believe. You could turn him loose to 2 ,000 people, he'd do a great job.

Very sharp intellect. He eventually became a university professor. But I never knew that in the classroom, sometimes he told dirty stories. If I had known that, he would never have been a deacon in my church.

But I never knew that. And long after he had moved away, a lady from my church told me about her daughter who had been attending the church, and then she quit and turned her back on God. Because one day she was in the classroom when this guy, and she knew he was a deacon in my church, he told a dirty story in the classroom, and it so turned that unsaved girl away, and she never came back to our church again, and turned her back on God, and the mother said I can't do a thing with her.

I preached at Three Hills Bible College, and I told the story, but I told it in such a way that nobody could guess who this guy was except the person. But you know, when God's in business, it gets scary.

And somebody taped my sermons and mailed them to this professor who was an Eastern candidate in a university there. And he told me later on what happened. He was working in the garden, and he said, it was like you heard a voice saying, go in the house and see what Lilloo's doing.

That was his wife. So he dropped the rake and ran in the house. Guess what she was doing when he walked in the door? She was listening to one of my tapes. Guess which tape she was listening to? Guess where the tape was when he walked in the door?

I had just started to tell the story, but the high school teacher had told the dirty story in the classroom. You know how God works. So I was holding meetings down in the Maritimes, and he drove 400 miles to meet with me, and he told me what had happened.

And he said, when you told that story, he said, Pastor, I didn't know if you were talking about me, and since he didn't ask me, I didn't have to tell him. But he said, when you told that story, God flung a spear into my heart.

He said, for three weeks, my wife and I would have been confessing our sins. We dealt with absolutely everything God had shown us, but that's not the problem. He said, how in the world do you deal with this big rotten cell?

That's my problem. I said, the cross. I explained that as best I could. And then we went to prayer, just the two of us there. And people, you know, he prayed just like he had both hands on the throne of God.

He was thundering to God, and his prayer was not too biblical or theological. It went like this, dear God, kill me, kill me now, kill me dead, he said, kill me dead now. I want to be slain forever so I can live to your glory.

And it went on and on and on, and all of a sudden, I heard him say, oh, what peace. He was flooded with the peace of God. Then what happened? He had been a high school teacher and a professor for 25 years, and in 25 years, he told me he had never once led a soul to Christ.

He never really once ever tried to win a soul to Christ. But no student ever came to him, although he was known to be a Christian professor or whatever. Nobody ever came to him, asked any questions about God.

The next Sunday after we prayed together and he met with God, he was preaching in a Baptist church in the Maritimes in Canada. And halfway through his message, a lady got up and she said, sir, can you quit preaching?

I've got to come to the altar to meet with my God. So he kept preaching, gave an invitation, and half the church wound up at the altar on their faces before God, and a revival broke. And he wrote me 18 months, a phone, I'm not sure which, but 18 months later, he let me know what was going on.

He said, I've now counseled and prayed with 400 different people. Some were people he led to Christ. Some were Christians he led into the full Christian life. People again, he didn't read a book on how to do it.

That's not what we need. We need to have a meeting, an honest, humble meeting with God. So it's not the sin problem. That is a problem, but beyond that, it's a self-problem. Let me lose my life and find it, Lord, in thee.

May all self be slain. My friends see only thee. Though it cost me grief and pain, I shall find my life again. If I lose my life, I'll find it, Lord, in thee. And Jesus taught us that. The Bible teaches us that plainly.

You try and save your life, you'll lose it. Lose your life for his sake and you'll find it. We have to die. You know that book is called To the Golden Shore, Life Story of Adoniram Johnson. I asked my son, Tim, he was about 10, I said, Tim, I want you to read this book.

So he read the book and he brought it back. So what did you think? He wouldn't look at me. He just said, Dad, it's a heartbreaker. And it's a heartbreaker, but what a picture of a person who died to himself.

Trusting God Through Suffering and Service

How would you like to be stuck in a prison where every night they brought, all the prison had to come and lay. There was a big kind of a post about this size. They all had to come and lay on their backs with their feet against the post.

And the jailers came and they tied your ankles together. And then they had a crank here and they cranked you up off the floor and you lay all night, just your shoulders touching the floor, all night long, every night.

That's how you stayed. And then one day they came with a line, a huge line and a cage. And they rattled it up in front of the jail. And they let the prisoners know, we're gonna starve them for about three weeks.

Then we're turning them inside the jail and you guys are gonna get it. What do you do in a case like that? You call on God and they call on God. You know what happened? The line died of starvation. So, but they didn't know that was gonna happen.