Going All the Way in God’s Will

In Numbers 32, we see the tribes. So, when they are standing in on the brink, they know what time it is and they know what they’re supposed to do in the Lord. And you see a small reaction… you see what happens to a lot of people who know what is to happen then and what should be done and know what is expected. It says: “Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of cattle: and when they saw the land of Jazer, and the land of Gilead, that, behold, the place was a place for cattle.” These two tribes were very rich. They were rich in you might say the things of the world. And they saw something which was not in the land of Canaan that was just great for their things of the world. And they said, well, cattle is very important. You know, you’ve got to have cattle to eat. You’ve got to have this amount of flesh to live.

“The children of Gad and the children of Reuben came and spake unto Moses, and to Eleazar the priest, and unto the princes of the congregation, saying, Ataroth, and Dibon, and Jazer, and Nimrah, and Heshbon, and Elealeh, and Shebam, and Nebo, and Beon, Even the country which the Lord smote before the congregation of Israel, is a land for cattle, and thy servants have cattle.” So they’re looking at a land, which they know the Lord designed, but it’s still [man’s mentality]. They really don’t know what’s in Canaan, but they’ve got cattle and there’s the land. And it’s just like the devil [?]

“Wherefore, said they, if we have found grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan.” They know from the Lord’s promise that it’s a wonderful land. They also see they have to go over the Jordan. And they see something that is pretty good right now, so why go any further; it looks okay here?

“And Moses said unto the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben, Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here? And wherefore discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the Lord hath given them?” And here we see the effect of a person deciding this is a pretty good settle. I mean, not everybody’s invincible, and other people are tempted sometimes in this way also. He says, “Why do you discouraging the people from going all the way with the Lord? You’re going to sit here and you’re not going to do the highest battle there is?”

“Thus did your fathers, when I sent them from Kadeshbarnea to see the land. For when they went up unto the valley of Eshcol, and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, that they should not go into the land which the Lord had given them.” I mean, they learned this lesson once. You know, everybody learned the lesson once, that if you discourage the heart, the flesh moves. Maybe the whole people would fall through; they did the first time. So they know he was sent. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind what’s out there. It’s all flesh. And I don’t know how, and I’m really sure that Reuben and Gad know it, but it’s obvious.

“And the Lord’s anger was kindled the same time, and he sware, saying, Surely none of them that came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; because they have not wholly followed me.” That was all, all the way. So they won’t get it all.

“Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite, and Joshua the son of Nun: for they have wholly followed the Lord. And the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation, that had done evil in the sight of the Lord, was consumed. And, behold, ye are risen up in your fathers’ stead, an increase of sinful men, to augment yet the fierce anger of the Lord toward Israel. For if ye turn away from after him, he will yet again leave them in the wilderness; and ye shall destroy all this people. And they came near unto him, and said, We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle, and cities for our little ones: But we ourselves will go ready armed before the children of Israel, until we have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall dwell in the fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land.” That’s a pretty good plan of the flesh. I will support what you’re doing, I’ll pray for you. I’m going to give you some money. I’ll even do a little work for you. But I won’t go all the way with you. And I won’t be separated with you. If I’ve found grace in your eyes, let me have this.

“We will not return unto our houses, until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance. For we will not inherit with them on yonder side Jordan, or forward; because our inheritance is fallen to us on this side Jordan eastward. And Moses said unto them, If ye will do this thing, if ye will go armed before the Lord to war, And will go all of you armed over Jordan before the Lord, until he hath driven out his enemies from before him, And the land be subdued before the Lord: then afterward ye shall return, and be guiltless before the Lord, and before Israel; and this land shall be your possession before the Lord.” Well, they got what they wanted.

And I was interested to find out, you know, what’s going to happen? Is this really going to come to pass? And if we go into Joshua 22:3, we’ll find out what happened. They fulfilled everything they said they would do. Joshua 22:3: “Ye have not left your brethren these many days unto this day, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the Lord your God. And now the Lord your God hath given rest unto your brethren, as he promised them: therefore now return ye, and get you unto your tents, and unto the land of your possession, which Moses the servant of the Lord gave you on the other side Jordan.”

So these two tribes, Reuben and Gad, decided that they didn’t want to go all the way and they would settle at a level. And the Lord gave it to them and apparently blessed them, because it was a land for cattle and they had cattle. They didn’t [try what the Lord wanted].

And we’re in the same position. We’re faced with the same choice. We can go all the way across the river, and we know we fight when we get on the other side. Or, we can say, “Well, Lord, I like the land I’m in now. I like the kind of revelation that I have, and I like sort of knowing what you want all the time, but a lot of times I use my own mind and I like this and I feel okay and everybody around me says that I’m a pretty good Christian.” You can say this. Now, I’m not sure that the Lord will bless that, because I think the times are different.

I think the Lord has decided one way that you either go all the way with him or you don’t. And sadly, we know that when you’re outside of the camp, you’re in a very dangerous position. And now spiritually through deception. When you haven’t gone all the way and if you don’t have all light in you, you have some darkness, and the darkness will overcome the people who decide that “Lord, I like where I am.” And also the people who don’t go all the way—and we might begin to think that—discourage other people. [AB: Yes, very serious.]

And the person who doesn’t, you might say cross over for a victory immediately also discourages other people. This is another consideration. We should think of… I think out of love from among ourselves, for love for each other. If we don’t go all the way, all the time, we’re not only hurting ourselves settling off, but we’re hurting other people who are looking at us or going with us or following us; we’re discouraging them from going all the way.

Like I said, I don’t think the Lord will bless as He blessed Reuben and Gad with land outside of the whole promise. And I think those people will be among those who were willing for a time, and then dropped off. They said, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” and they walked with him no more.

AB: …to attacks, when the attacks came down, that was the first man to go. Because it was on the other… If you look through the history, the land that Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh took on the further side, on the Egypt side of Jordan was the first to go under when the attacks began to come down upon the children of Israel. So they were in an exposed position and did not have nearly the continuing…or the safety of the Jordan. The Jordan was meant there as a safety. The Jordan was put there as a boundary, the Lord’s boundary between His promised land, the inheritance that He had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the world. It was outside of that promise. And that was His boundary, and they were on the wrong side of His boundary and they were not protected. And I imagine if you went through, which I haven’t done but will, and find out the subsequent history of what happened to that land that they’d be the first to go.

JP: They were exposed. We should not look, I think, too carefully upon how this worked for them, because there was a particular silliness here involved. They said, “Take us not across the Jordan. They wanted to stay entirely on what looked like the safe side, the side where they can reside in relative peace and comfort and have what they wanted. “Take us not across the Jordan” was the message and what they wanted. And then the rebuke came, the strongest kind of rebuke: “This is what your fathers said a long time ago to me, and this is why all this came upon them,” and here it is again.

And, you see, they did go across the Jordan; they went into the battle. They suffered all the risk, there was a very high risk to it that point of battle. And yet when that was all over, they went back across the Jordan, up across the boundary protection, out of the place of God’s purpose and had that lower place they wanted. And whether it worked out or not is irrelevant; they could have been in the land. They could have gone across the Jordan with all their possessions, with all their cattle, with all their people and kinsmen. They chose second best by an act of their will and they got it. …

There are promises in the Bible that will never pop up in the promise box after breakfast in the morning. And one of them says this: “He gave them the desires of their heart, but He sent leanness into their soul.” And we’ve heard now at least four times and perhaps six times in the last two months, “Well, can’t I hold back and still keep my salvation? Do I have to go all the way?” And you could almost see people looking through the Bible anxiously to find out, well, what happens to those who go halfway? Do they get saved?

Well, yes, you can go back. You don’t have to go across the Jordan. Gad and the other one were not forced; they were allowed. They did go across, they came back; they were allowed to go back. And you can have the desires of your heart linked to a guaranteed leanness in your soul. And you won’t be ready for the Lord’s battles or the Lord’s time ever.

We were struck two or three weeks ago in a Bible study by the verse in Revelation that says that when Satan is cast out of heaven and he’s lost the battle in that plane at that time, that he comes into the earth…the term is something like “in great haste because he knows that his time is short.” The devil has a sense of timing and apparently a very avid one, but it’s one that has a rush in it because he knows that the time left for his rebellion is limited and also short and, of course, shorter and shorter every day. There’s less time because the hour will come when as it were the whistle will be blown and that will be it, and there will be no more manifestation or expression of his rebellion, except for a season that the Lord will permit.

And have we ever reflected that God’s man in God’s place at God’s time only is really available for God’s purpose?

Now, you’re born again. That means you’re God’s man, or you’re God’s woman, and wherever you are, you’ll be just that. You’ll be God’s man or God’s woman, because He has a work in you. And you can be in His place or out of His place, and you’re still God’s man.

Was Jonah the prophet God’s man? We know he was God’s man. And, you know, he could even bring a testimony and have said that when he went in the opposite direction from the will of God, he was God’s man and God used him to convict the entire ship on which he was fleeing from God, that His God, the God of Israel, was the only true God. And he could come back and say, “Well, you say about the will of God. Well, wonderful things happened: a whole ship was convicted! And they worshipped the God of Israel. How dare you say I was out of God’s will?”

And any person of God can go anywhere any time and come back and say, “Oh, a wonderful thing happened; I met a fellow and he needed the Lord and I testified to him.” And you can make a record. But it just isn’t so that you were God’s man in God’s place at God’s time, totally available for His purposes.

Remember what happened with Noah? There’s an interesting sequence of timings, God’s timing with Noah in Genesis 6:11. We have something about the times in which Noah was living. “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.”

And then God revealed a secret to his man and said, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh.” And then He told him what to do. He told him to set about to make an ark. And, I don’t know, I have heard somewhere that Noah was engaged in this mad business of building this huge ship on dry land for a long time, for perhaps most of a century, long years. Of course, in the face of mocking all the time, because he was the only ship builder on the face of the earth at that time. And there was no need whatever for that ship.

And then we’re told in Genesis 7:6: “Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth.” Now, when did the flood come? Well, look down at verse 11, it was a very particular time: “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life,” even numbers, 600 years, “in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month,” on that day, what God had said—he’s determined to make an end of all flesh of the earth—“all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of heaven were opened. And rain began to fall upon the earth and lasted forty days and forty nights.” On the very same day… on the very same day, Noah and his sons and all the rest of them entered into the ark. And they that entered, male and female of all flesh went in, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in.

The door was shut, he was safe. The flesh [was condemned] as one expositor pointed out. The very waters that rose and covered the earth and condemned all flesh until they could go to the highest hills and couldn’t escape it at the highest place that they had. That very water of judgment [bore Noah up and all?] and all that he had in that ark, because he was in that ark.

Now, which happened here: did God wait for Noah to finish the ark? Or did Noah finish the ark in time? That is unrelated. God came to Noah and said, I have determined to make an end of all flesh upon the earth; make an ark. That was a well-timed day for Noah to get that message and to begin making the ark. Because the Lord knew exactly how long it would take Noah to make an ark, and He knew exactly in what year in what month in what day of Noah’s life that he would do what he determined to do—make an end of all flesh upon the earth.

Now, what if Noah had said, “Well, I am going to do this, but I’m going to do it sort of on my plan”? Would God have held up? Well, you can argue the point. But what we see is perfect timing. Now, what we see really is a coordination between the timing of God and the timing of man. And when there is this coordination, when our timing is tuned, as Hannah Lowe often says “Time the tune”, tuned in with the timing of God, then God’s purposes, saving purposes, or whatever purposes He has, go forth in us according to His plan and under no other conditions do they go forth according to His plan.

Now, we could be very busy, and we can rush over the face of the earth doing God’s work. And if we’re not in God’s places in God’s time, doing exactly what He wants us to do at that time, then we’re missing the boat. We’re doing work or even accomplishing things, but somehow the very perfect place where God would have us is not the place where we’re found. We’re found in all kinds of other places where God is faithful to us—“anywhere with Jesus.” Well, anywhere in His will. Not just any old place with Jesus. But anywhere in His will.

I recall in my own experience a very interesting piece of the timing of God. I was in New Orleans. And I had a job to do and I did not know how to do it. And I got a little panicky, hoping God wouldn’t be quite on time. I made a long distance phone call to a friend and said, “Pray for me, will you?” And within a very short time of that phone call, the Lord did the most spectacular things that I couldn’t have dreamt of or thought of. It just all was happening around me. I wasn’t doing anything but sitting there and watching God in action, providing things for me on the very day that I had to have it done.

In some hymn, it says, “He Himself knew,” I guess from the Bible. “He Himself knew what He would do.” You see, I got a little panicky, but He Himself was already in action, and He knew what He would do. Do you recall Nathan the prophet? When Nathan the prophet thrust forth his finger at David and said, “Thou art the man,” what a piece of timing that was. How available Nathan was to God’s purposes at God’s time. He was right there in the presence of the king to accuse the king of wrong. Just in the nick of time for the king.

Now, bring it up in history and notice the timing of God. We know that the full [matter] of Jesus. John the Baptist was born six months, just a little bit ahead of the coming of Messiah, after all the silent years without the prophets. Then God’s timing was going into place. And then we see Jesus come forth “when in the fullness of time,” Jesus came forth. And the very stars in the sky were timed to move for that event. If anyone who was moving with that event was really in a piece of timing. And, of course, the wise men were moving with that event. And they were beautifully timed to come and give a confirmation, as it were, to those who bore Jesus in despising and shame to them, that this was the King of the earth. They were really timed.

Now, we see today on the face of the earth the phenomenon of a nation called to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth and to bring forth Messiah, a nation that missed its historical timing with God. What was it that was pled? “They knew not the hour of their visitation.” It came. Every prophecy was fulfilled in the fullness of time, in absolutely perfect timing. All they had to do was see it and adopt it, and they would have been in perfect coordination. And they missed their timing.

What has it cost the Jews to miss their timing historically in God’s plan? What it cost in the World War II: the six million, who were wiped out in the most brutal piece of machinery you can imagine to obliterate the Jews. That’s a cost, a cost you can’t begin to calculate or feel or understand or anything. They missed God’s timing.

God is timely. And we can be timely too, if we understand the times and move in the times.

When was it? It was 1858 that the Fulton Street prayer meeting, I believe, was started in New York City. You may have heard the story that two or three men came together in lower New York to begin to pray for revival in the midst of bad conditions. It would have just several days, a few days, there were added more and more and more, until every day at the noon hour, all kinds of people, several hundred people would go into that one place and lift up prayer to God.

And what was the theme of their prayer? One of the main themes of their prayer, day after day, week after week, was “Lord, move in China.” And tremendous things for China began to happen. Not long after, the whole great historic missionary movement to China came by and large after that time, just about a little less than 90 years before God knew that that nation would be taken over by demons. And that they would be teaching such things as the creator of the universe is the [father] of Mao Tse-tung, which is official doctrine in China. This is demon work in a way that you can’t possibly conceive.

Ninety years before, God was at work in lower Manhattan to stir in the hearts of his people to get into China and to do what could be done. And there was a response. It wasn’t too late; it was only too little.

David Livingstone went to Africa in 1838, just a little over a century before Africa was to awaken from centuries and centuries of darkness and to come forth in civilization as God knew.

Someone said that Adoniram Judson, that when he left this country as the first foreign missionary, that no one could say that the timing of the plan of God were nigh in operation. Well, he was going to the far east as the first man from America. And where is our trouble now? Where is it? It’s in the far east, and that’s where our trouble has been coming from for most of a generation, from Japan and Vietnam and Korea, that’s where the trouble is. But he was timed.

I read in a book about Livingstone in Africa, that he was “but just” in time in certain things. He was but just in time. But he was in time.

Now, you know, it isn’t important at all from the standpoint of mere geography where I am or you are in the next, well, let’s say two weeks. (laughing) It isn’t important geographically if you’re at Yale or if you’re here or if you’re home or if you’re in some odd city. What is important? It’s only important that wherever you are be the will of God for that time, because then, you see, you’ll be God’s man in God’s place at God’s time. And only then are you really available for God’s purposes.