Now last Sunday, we looked at Matthew chapter 23, verse 34. And there we read that the Lord said to the Israelites in Matthew 23, verses 34 and 35: "Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town." And we looked at the meaning of these words, "I will send you prophets." And we saw the importance of the prophetic ministry in the church, which has not only partly died out, but totally died out. It has become passe, obsolete, for nearly 2,000 years.
And this fact puzzled us. And we saw that contrary to present practice, the church in fact was meant to have prophets. And this was repeatedly stated, not only in 1 Corinthians 12, but also in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11, where we saw that Paul says that the Lord gave apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers for the purpose of equipping — the word there is "to equip," to train, to prepare his servants, to prepare the saints for the ministry of the church, the ministry of God's servants — that these people are vital for the upbuilding and the ministry of God's people. And that without these people, how is the church to be built up?
Today, the churches, as we saw, are more like a spiritual nursery, in which Christians are forever spiritual infants who never grow up. They simply never grow up. As the writer to the Hebrews says, almost with a sense of frustration, that whereas it was time that you became teachers, you still are not able even to keep yourselves going, let alone teach anyone else. You are still on milk. You are still babes. And Paul, with the same frustration, says to the Corinthians, "I cannot speak to you as men, as grown-up people. I have to speak to you as babes." Forever babes. The churches are a spiritual nursery. And it's hard to find one grown-up person, spiritually speaking, that shows something of the stature and the maturity, the beauty, the power of Christ.
But it is with this kind of problem in view that we have been expounding the Lord's teaching, showing that these problems that we have in the church is because we have not implemented his teaching. Where have the prophets gone to? Not to say, where have the apostles gone to in this generation too? We say these belong only to the first century. And if the first century needed apostles and prophets, how much more desperately do we need them? And yet in the midst of our desperate spiritual need, we do not find the very people that we most need.
And so, we must ask this question: not only where have the prophets gone to, but how do we become prophets? And that is the theme of today's message. How do you and I become prophets? How do prophets come into being at all? Where do they come from? Why don't we have any more prophets?
Now, we are not short on false prophets. The false prophets are not lacking in this generation. But where have the true prophets gone? Joseph Smith of the Mormons calls himself a prophet. And the twelve people who run the Mormon church call themselves apostles. So they have apostles and they have prophets, but they are neither of these. And in the various cults that we have, they are not lacking any prophets. There seems to be no shortage of false prophets as far as the cults are concerned. But where have the true prophets gone?
It seems to be rather like the days of Israel before the exile, before the destruction of Israel as a nation, before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. That as you read in the Old Testament, you realize that there were masses of prophets around — false prophets. But the true prophets were hard to come by. Many people not familiar with the Old Testament think that in the Old Testament, the only prophets were Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Zechariah and all these mighty prophets. Those were the only prophets of the Old Testament. If you think so, you haven't read the Old Testament. These prophets were the barest minority. The multitude of prophets, of which there were hundreds around, were not of this type at all.
And you need only read in Jeremiah and Ezekiel how they constantly denounced the false prophets. There are multitudes of the false prophets. As they said, they preach, as Ezekiel says, the message that comes from their own minds, not from God. They preach whatever message comes to their mind, whichever message suits the likings of the people. They preach to the fancy of the people. They preach interesting little tales and stories, encouragement. They preach to the people the things that the people like to hear. And in this way, they could increase their earnings by increased congregation.
But the true prophets were always unpopular. Let's read the Old Testament. They were unpopular. They were disliked. They were regarded as negative. They were always denouncing something. And when you look in a concordance, you will see how often the phrase "prophesy against" this or that appears in the Old Testament. The prophets prophesied against sin, against corruption, against unfaithfulness to the Lord, against the breach of covenant, against the false prophets, against the leaders and rulers of the land who did not live as the people of God, though they professed to be the people of God. Hypocrites, one and all. But nobody likes to hear this. And therefore, of course, the true prophets were not only disliked, they were severely persecuted. As the Lord said in Matthew, "O Jerusalem, which prophet has not died within your walls? Which prophet was not persecuted when they came, bringing the message to this so-called holy city?"
And we are now much in the same situation. Where are the prophets of God? And then we saw last week the disastrous situation in which the theologians even conspire to tell us that the Church doesn't need any prophets anymore. This is marvelous. Not only do we not have prophets, we are told that we don't need prophets. And what is 1 Corinthians 12-14 doing in the Bible? Since it is what Paul tells us, earnestly to seek the gift of prophecy. And the scholars tell us, don't bother your time seeking the gift of prophecy because prophecy is passe, it is obsolete, we don't need prophets anymore. All you need is Bible scholars like the likes of us, the people like us, who have studied theology.
Well, I'm not attacking them — I have studied theology too. But I want to look into the Word of God. And I do not like this thing that I see in the churches today. Because they have displaced the Word of God. They tell us that we don't need prophets in the Church anymore. So we can delete Ephesians 4:11. We can delete all of these passages in the Bible that speak about prophets. We can delete Revelation 11 where it speaks about the great prophets of God who are going to come at the end time. And we can delete also the passage we studied last week, Matthew 23:34: "Behold, I send you prophets." Who is he going to send? We don't need prophets anymore. All we need now is wise men and scribes, the last two categories.
It is so difficult in these days to preach the Gospel. I feel almost — and I would like to share this with you — a sense of frustration in my mind. Because I do not wish forever to be saying, "This is not right, that is not right." Just as Jeremiah said, "I don't want to preach this message anymore. But you are, Lord, forcing me to preach this. I don't want to preach to this people, this rebellious people who don't want to listen to me anyway." And God said to Jeremiah, "I'll give you a forehead like bronze, like iron. You are going to preach to them. Even though they don't listen to you, you're going to preach to them." What a ministry. I am forever sorry for Jeremiah. Do you think Jeremiah enjoys preaching this? Do you think I enjoy it? I feel a sense of frustration to forever say, "Look, the Church is not behaving as the New Testament tells us to behave." It's so frustrating to be forever saying this. And yet, what can we do?
After preaching last week concerning the vital importance, the necessity of the prophets in the Church today, I went down to a bookstore and I looked at some books, and I saw some books written even by — of all people — Pentecostals. And what do I see in there? I would have thought that Pentecostals were more charismatic, more thinking on spiritual things. And what do I see in there? To my surprise, I find that even the Pentecostals have so come under the influence of these so-called scholars of the New Testament, and even A.H. Strong, a Baptist theologian, was being quoted there. So much under the influence of these theologians are they that even the Pentecostals are saying, "Yeah, we don't have prophets anymore except in the sense that prophets are preachers." Now, this is wonderful. Now the prophet is reduced to a preacher. So thanks, here I am, a prophet, because I am a preacher, so I am automatically a prophet according to this definition, because any preacher is a prophet. Alas, alas, even our friends, the Pentecostals, not knowing how to stand, have found themselves swept away with this current notion.
Now I want to reply to this. I want to reply to this from the Scriptures. This notion that we can now reduce "prophets," use the word "prophets" in a watered-down sense — prophets today in the New Testament, according to these people, are not prophets in the Old Testament sense of the word "prophet," but that they are prophets in the sense of simply being preachers. In this case, our church is, of course, full of prophets because every pastor is some sort of a preacher, and therefore no lack of prophets around.
Now I want to reply to this. First of all, who gives us the authority to change the meaning of the word "prophet"? Certainly preaching was one aspect of prophecy, but hardly the main or only aspect of prophecy. To say that today prophets are no longer prophets in the Old Testament sense, but merely preachers, preachers of the word, expositors — one even goes so far to say, expositors and exegetes. Well, that I would happily like to see. Where are the expositors today? Because if this is what they want to say, you're going to have a hard time. Like our brother Dennis in South Carolina was saying to me, he went to all the churches of South Carolina — already very many of them. He said, "I couldn't find a single preacher who could be properly described as an expositor or exegete." That is, somebody who expounds the Bible and doesn't just go up there telling news stories, who doesn't go up there talking about some theme that he happens to be interested in, but faithfully expounds what the word of God says, whether it goes with my conviction or against my conviction. Where are such expositors? Frankly, if they're going to define prophets as expositors, then we still don't have expositors today. It's hard to come by.
But if they're going to reduce this still further down to say any preacher is a prophet, then we have really messed around with the word of God. And I would like them to answer before the Lord for this. If the Lord simply wanted to say, "I am going to send you preachers," there are words for "preacher" in Greek and Hebrew. You don't have to use the word "prophet" if that's not what he really meant. If he meant "preacher," don't use the word "prophet." And if Paul simply meant that God has appointed apostles and prophets when he really meant preachers, then why didn't he just use the word "preacher"? Why didn't he just use the word "the one who proclaims the word of God"? There are words for that in Greek and Hebrew. Why use the word "prophet"? We are so dishonest in our understanding and preaching of the word of God.
But if these are prophets, then these are truly false prophets. Not a scrap of evidence is being offered for the statement to say — and this is my second point — not a scrap of evidence is being offered to say that prophecy is obsolete in the New Testament. I would like these scholars to show me one verse in the Bible that tells me this. One plain, clear verse that says prophecy is no more. I mean, give me one verse like that and I'm satisfied. I will close this discussion. I would say last Sunday I preached the wrong message. There are no prophets in the New Testament. The prophetic era has closed and now we are left with preachers. Show me one such verse. Why beat around the bush? There is no such verse in the Bible, of course. There is no statement even equivalent to that in the Scriptures. Not even one remotely equivalent to such a statement. And yet we are told by these preachers and scholars, so-called, of the New Testament that that's what the Bible tells them — prophecy equivalent to preaching, and that prophecy anyway has finished. Maybe preaching has finished too. Or are they going to mess around with the word "prophecy" in two senses? One minute it means preaching — preaching continues. Prophecy is no more and preaching is no more. So which way would they like to have it?
The third point I would like to make is this. If a prophet is equivalent to a preacher or teacher of the Word of God, how does he differ from the scribes? In Matthew 23, verse 34: "Behold, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes." Now scribes were teachers of the Word of God. Scribes were preachers of the Word of God, as we know. Then why is the Lord Jesus repeating himself? If prophet and scribe are fundamentally the same thing, then what is he saying? "I am sending you prophets which are preachers, I will send you wise men, I will send you preachers." What is the statement? What is the Lord saying? Is he saying anything significant at all? By the account of these Bible experts as they profess to be, the Lord has said nothing significant whatsoever.
But fourthly, I would like to say this. A scribe — you don't even have to be a Bible scholar to know — a scribe is a Bible scholar. He is a teacher and an expert in the Word of God. He is, therefore, a preacher of the Word of God based on his learning. Now, the key idea of scribe is learning. But scribe, by definition, is entirely different from a prophet. A prophet does not have to be very learned. He may or may not be a learned man. In some cases, he is a learned man. In some cases, he is not. But learning, unlike the task of a scribe, is not essential, not central to the ministry of a prophet. Because a prophet — if we know anything about prophet — the word "prophet" in the Old Testament means a seer, somebody who sees the message from God, who gets a vision or a spoken word from God, directly from God, and he conveys that word to the people. That's what the whole Old Testament is telling us. We have a very clear understanding of what a prophet does. We know what prophecy is. Prophecy is something that is said on a specific instruction from the Lord, either by vision or by word.
A scribe does not have a vision from God, who does not hear anything from God. He expounds the Bible — in this case the Old Testament. He expounds the Bible. He has great learning in the Bible. Already scribes were learned in the Old Testament. We have New Testament scribes too, as I have already expounded in Matthew chapter 13, verses 51 to 52. I do not in any way despise scholarship — and by this I do not mean scholarship in the wider sense, but scholarship in the word of God. I don't despise this. But I will not have it when the scholar thinks he can displace the prophet. When the scribe thinks he can take over the church and push the prophet out. We will not have this, because that is not what the word of God says.
But fifthly, and very importantly, I would like to stress to you why I put so much weight, as the word of God does, upon the place of the prophet in the church. I will tell you why. You can be an excellent scribe. You can be a great New Testament scholar. You can even be a wonderful preacher — eloquent, learned — without any holiness in your life. Without holiness in your life. Because preaching is a skill. Eloquence can be a natural gift. It has nothing necessarily to do with God at all. There are non-Christians out there who are most eloquent, most entertaining in fact, and even very learned.
I have studied in a theological faculty in London in which all my professors were liberal. That is to say, people who did not stand in a very close relationship with God — they rejected much that is in the word of God. They rejected even the possibility of establishing a close relationship with God. But they were exceedingly learned. They were great scholars. And I admired them for their scholarship, and for their integrity in their scholarship. Because they had no real living experience with God, but at least they were honest in confessing that they did not have such a relationship with God, which I respect as being honest. They did not pretend to have what they did not have. And I say, sometimes evangelicals are not very honest. They profess to be a lot more spiritual than they really are. And sometimes a lot more holy than they really are.
But that is the vital difference I would like to stress between the preacher and the prophet — that is, I am talking about the true prophet. You can be an excellent preacher based on your learning, based on your eloquence. You can be a most effective preacher even, because you know what is called public speaking. You know mass psychology. You know how to speak in such a way as pleases the people. But that is exactly what the false prophets did, as I told you a moment ago. The false prophets were experts in communicating through the likes and dislikes of the people. They could have a feel as to what the people liked to hear and they could put it across to you in a way that you so enjoy. Skillful are the false prophets. That is why Israel could not tell the difference between true and false prophets, because they did not understand that the key difference lay in only one point — the fundamental point: holiness.
And even holiness they want to throw out of the churches these days as being non-essential to salvation. Non-essential to salvation. We are told that we are saved by faith, not by works. And according to this definition, holiness is works. Amazing. And so if holiness is works, of course we can throw holiness out as well. Otherwise we are going to be saved by our holiness, by our works, these clever theologians tell us. So holiness goes out and faith is some kind of a profession in God. What is this? What have we come to in this generation?
And this is the reason why I shall not fail to stress holiness in the churches. Because you cannot be a true prophet of God without holiness. Now in our training ministry, when we train people in the Lord's work, I have much experience, at least in this area. I have often looked at the exegetical work of some people as they train to become teachers of the word of God, and some of the exegetical work is excellent. And I know that these people, given the kind of training they have in the full-time training, will become excellent teachers in due time. They will become excellent expositors because their exegetical work is excellent. They know how to expound the Bible, and some of them are not only excellent in terms of their exegetical work, they are also very eloquent. And therefore I know they will become very fine preachers in due time. Many of those in the training teams will become in due time outstanding preachers. Given another few years, you will hear their names in various places. People will soon recognize their skill and their ability as preachers.
But that begins to scare me. That is precisely what begins to scare me. Because you can become an excellent preacher, you can become an excellent pastor, you can become an excellent expositor without any holiness in your life. I would rather have a prophet than a preacher. A true prophet of God, because you cannot — and I emphasize again — you cannot become a prophet without true holiness. There you can see why. How dangerous is the teaching of these so-called scholars of the New Testament. Because in throwing out the prophets, the true prophets of God, you will have thrown out holy ministers of God in the New Testament. You will replace the prophets, the men of God, with scholars. Which, as we saw last week, is what is happening.
Today churches invite pastors on the basis of their academic training. What degree you have, what kind of academic hood you can put over your shoulders. In fact, in England it is common practice for pastors to enter the pulpit with their academic gowns on. I was invited to preach somewhere and they asked me, "What are your degrees?" I refused to tell them. If you invite me, you either invite me as a man of God, or if you invite me on the basis of my academic training, I'm not even coming to preach. Go find somebody else with more degrees maybe than I have. Maybe he can preach to you more academic stuff. But your question to me, what are my degrees, is irrelevant if you are asking me to preach. If I am taking up a secular job, they have a right to know what academic training I have. But in the ministry of God's word, my academic training is irrelevant.
And therefore, but today it is the scholars. When today you look at the preaching list in Christianity Today and who is going to speak at this conference, it is always "so-and-so" and his degrees are listed, or "Doctor so-and-so." Of course, most of these are honorary doctorates, worth nothing. But of course, you still have to put it — it makes the guy sound a lot better if he can say "Doctor so-and-so." What's happened to the church? The prophets have been replaced by the scholars. And these walk around trying to tell us that we don't need prophets.
Now I have stressed this point at considerable length. As I say, unfortunately, I don't like to have to do this. But today if I am going to preach on prophecy, I have to defend my position. Rather than they having to defend their position, I have to defend why we are preaching on prophecy. That's the situation today.
But today let us turn to John chapter 15, when we come to speak of how to become a prophet. John chapter 15. When it comes to speaking about prophecy, the material of the Lord's teaching is to be found everywhere. Everywhere we see that, in fact, the Lord intended to turn every one of his disciples into prophets. That was the point of his disciples' training, when he trained his apostles. They all were to be prophets. And in fact, they were.
If you look at the life of Peter, and look at his ministry, you will see that Peter functioned as nothing less than a prophet. The vision that he had. Paul had visions — many times recorded in Acts and in his letters. These are the marks of a prophet. As we saw, a prophet speaks because of either a vision or a communication from God that he hears. Samuel — how did he know he was to be a prophet? He heard the voice of the Lord calling him. Samuel. He heard. He didn't see the Lord, but he heard the voice. Either vision or voice. Those are the marks of a prophet. How many people today have this kind of contact with the Lord? No wonder, no wonder that so few people have this kind of contact with the Lord that we lower the standards. Since we cannot find people who have closeness with God, let's hand over the ministry to those who can spend their time sitting at books.
Sometimes when I look at the list of degrees that some of our pastors have — I hope I make the excuse to leave myself out of the picture — I wonder how many years did they sit in one school or another school picking up their degrees, because they must have spent no less than eight or ten years. And I wonder how they managed to finance this long and expensive study. How did they have the money to do this? Very interesting. Sometimes we could find out the background. I spent so many years in study myself that once I asked myself, does it really take so many years of study to produce one man of God? And if by studying one can produce men of God, then where are the men of God today? Because when I looked in the school — and through the three different theological and Bible schools that I went to — I wonder where the men of God are, because I don't know that I can mark many of these, or any of these, as men of God in this generation. If that kind of training can produce men of God, then where are they?
Let's turn to John chapter 15. How do we become men of God? Not by spending years and years and years picking up degrees that will inflate our ego and make us more proud and arrogant all the time. But here is the answer. This chapter, if we can implement it into our lives, will make us all prophets of God.
Three distinctive things about the prophets are immediately seen. The first, as you can see, this chapter is divided into three sections. And the first section is from chapter 15, verses 1 to 11, which deals entirely with communion. As I said, the first and essential mark of the prophets is communion — most of all, communion with God. You do not become a prophet without communion with God, but you can become a preacher without communion with God.
I would like to say this. I was reading, glancing through a book by that servant of the Lord, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, under whose ministry I sat in London, and who is hailed as the greatest expositor in the world, if not just in the United Kingdom, of this generation — "Preaching and Preachers." There is one section in which he says that it is essential for a preacher to pray. And then he makes a remark which I find somewhat puzzling. He says, on this subject of prayer, "I don't want to say very much about," and in effect he wanted to say that he was not really qualified to talk about prayer — that was in effect. This remark puzzled me. I've pondered about this remark for quite a while. He felt he was not qualified to speak on prayer. Why? Could it be that he felt he had some problem with his prayer life? Should not a preacher expound on prayer as most essential? Why did this greatest of modern-day preachers hesitate to speak on the subject of prayer?
Now I am very touched by his humility. I am deeply touched by his modesty. But I am made a little bit anxious by that statement. Because it reminds me of this fact again: that you can become a great and indeed even an effective preacher, because what you are preaching is the word of God. And the word of God can accomplish many things quite independently of your own life. Even if your life is not terribly holy, even if your life is not very much saturated in prayer, yet much can be accomplished because the word of God will, as we know from Isaiah 55, accomplish that whereunto it was sent.
Now, let me say again. I would like this thing to be stressed — to be deeply stressed in your mind. And I say this particularly to the training teams. Communion is of the essence of prophecy. And may God help you to become a prophet.
And so, we often read John 15. I don't really know what we get out of this if we don't understand communion. "If you abide in me and I abide in you" — what is all this if this does not mean anything but deepest communion? Deepest communion. And because of that deep communion, the Lord goes on to say, therefore you are bringing forth much fruit. "If you abide in me." Can any of you say that you experience this kind of communion? Have you known the fruitfulness of fellowship with God? Is this something that you have entered into in your personal experience? Let us not just read on. Because communion is not only essential to being fruitful, it is essential to survival. To survive.
Because the Lord goes on to say that if any branch does not abide in him — verse 6 — "If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned." This is referring to the judgment. Fire and burning speaks of the last days. And now I understand what Paul is saying: "Lest when I preach to others, I myself become a castaway." I wonder how many in the day of judgment — how many pastors the Lord will say to them, "Depart from me into eternal condemnation." And they will say, "Lord, Lord, did we not preach in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty works in your name?" And the Lord will say to them, "I don't know who you are. I haven't seen you before." Just read that in Matthew chapter 7. I didn't invent those words. "Not everyone," the Lord says, "who says 'Lord, Lord' to me will enter into eternal life." And Paul is frightened by this very thought, lest I, having preached and preached effectively to others — who preached more effectively than Paul — lest I, having preached, should myself become...
# Obtaining Prophecy (Part 2)
It is a very real possibility, even to Paul, that even as an apostle he may be cast away. Compare that to the shallow self-confidence called "assurance" that we have in the churches today. Assurance, it is called. Communion is of the essence of prophecy. Why do we want every person to be a prophet in the church? Because that would mean that every person is living in close communion with God. Only in the closeness of that communion will the Lord be able to say something to you, give you a vision from himself.
But the second thing in this passage, in verses 12 to 17, is that this communion is based on friendship. Friendship with God. Oh, this speaks much to my heart. Let us read in particular verses 15 and 16. "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." Now notice carefully this matter. "All that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you." Everything the Father has revealed to me, I have revealed to you. Well, that is the essence of prophecy. That is what it says. That is what prophecy is about. Now I would like you to bear this in mind. Prophecy is communion. Prophecy is revelation. And the Lord tells us that everything that he has heard from the Father, he has revealed to us. Now more than that we cannot ask. And it reminds me of the great prophets in the Old Testament, where we read that nothing that God does, he does not reveal to his servants, the prophets.
Now, the third thing, before I look at these points more closely, is this. From verses 18 to 27, we read about persecution. "If the world," in verse 18, "hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you." Does the world hate you? Is this a reality? Or are we landed with another hypothetical statement? The world doesn't hate us. The world treats us fine. As we saw the other day, my friend the pastor — he lives in a 20-room house as a pastor of a state church in Germany. The world doesn't hate him. The world gives him a house with 20 rooms in it. And the world pays him a salary that is well in excess of most people in Germany. "The world hates you." It almost — when you think of the pastors today, especially in the state churches of Europe, and the pastors in North America — all of us are treated with such honor and respect, we wonder if we still understand the Bible right or not. The world doesn't hate us.
But that was the mark of every true prophet in the Old Testament. Look in the Old Testament and see what happened to the prophets of God. They were persecuted. And as we saw a moment ago, the Lord himself said to the Jews that every prophet would find either they were executed or scourged, and had to flee from town to town. So was the mark of every true prophet. If the world treats you too well, you know you're in trouble spiritually.
I still remember how I shared with the first training team when the training began. I said, "There's something wrong. I am so respected in the Chinese churches. I'm invited to preach in conference after conference. I'm so highly regarded. I think there's something wrong with me." And the Lord put it right very fast for me. And how grateful I am since that day that he put it right for me. The mark of a true prophet is that you are rejected. You are persecuted. We don't go out of our way to look for persecution. All you have to do is preach like a prophet and see what will happen to you. Speak as a prophet. Live as a prophet. Walk close to God and see what will happen to you. Mark my words. It won't be long in coming. We don't have to have a persecution complex. We should not have one. For we rejoice in the midst of persecution. We rejoice because we know, as the Lord says in the opening words of the Sermon on the Mount, "So they persecuted the prophets before you."
Now let us look at a few things very quickly before we close. How do we become a prophet? First I'd like you to notice one thing. These precious words in verse 15 of chapter 15: "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends." Let me make a few remarks about this. Because the Lord Jesus does not call us servants, does not mean that we are not servants. We must expound the Scriptures carefully. We always remain servants. Let us remember this. We always have Jesus as Lord and King of our lives. In fact, in verse 20 he goes on right away to say, "Remember the word that I said to you: a servant is not greater than his master." He reminds them immediately that they are still servants. He does not call us servants. That means he does not treat us as servants, but we are servants.
Now this passage is very interesting. He goes on to say, "I do not treat you as servants, but I treat you as friends." Who does he treat as friends? He tells us this in verse 14: "You are my friends if you do what I command you." That is, if you are totally obedient to me, then you are my friends. But who are people who are totally obedient to him? Oh, those are servants. To be totally obedient to him is to be a servant. So put in another way, what the Lord is saying is this: you are my friends if you are truly my servants. If you totally obey whatever I command you to do. Only servants are friends. That is the point we are getting at.
Now, how do we become his friends? By obeying his commands. What are his commands? His commands in verse 12 is this: "This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you." Now notice carefully. He doesn't just say "that you love one another" — that we can swallow. But he goes on to say, "as I have loved you." You are my friends if you love to my standard of loving. Now we begin to see that friendship with the Lord is not that easy. We better stick with scholarship, because scholarship we can manage. It's just a matter of sitting at the desk, and learning day after day, month after month, year after year. But loving becomes rather costly, especially loving to this kind of standard. Because to love means we don't sit at our desk — it means that we go out there and live for others. Exactly what scholars do not like to do. At least most scholars that I know of. They like to lock themselves away in their study, and hammer at the books hour after hour, just as I love to do. I love that too. I love to study. That's my weakness. I just love to study.
And in the midst of this concentrated study, I neglect people. And somebody phones in with a need, I might say, "Oh, I have this study to do. Phone me later when I finish this. I have no time for you right now. Talk to me another time." People become less important. And I justify my study, because I say, "This is the word of God. This is the word of God. Therefore I should study. This is top priority." And so when do I have to love my neighbor? I have no more time for him. Let alone love him to the standard that Christ loves him. You see, scholarship takes a lot of time. And loving people also takes a lot of time. And in this conflict between the two, we have to choose one or the other. Many times I have to lay down my Bible, lay down the studies that I love to do, and go out there and spend time with people. Too precious time. Precious for me, because when I'm studying, I'm getting something. When I'm loving, I'm giving. I'm getting nothing out of this. I'm giving, giving all the time. You see how being a prophet, and being a preacher, comes into conflict again.
But now notice this. What is the standard of his love? Verse 13: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends." If I lay down my life for my friend, I can't study anymore. And what happens to my studies? Let alone the pursuit of my degrees. We can almost say, no man can love two masters. You either love your books, or you love your brother. And I think those of us who are, whether we like it or not, intellectuals, have often been forced into this choice. To spend more time with my books, or to spend more time with my brothers. What's your choice? I confess to you immediately, that I have often lost in the choice. I made the wrong choice. I love my books more.
But then if I do this, how will I be his friend? Because to be his friend — the friend of Jesus — I must put the choice right. I must put my brothers first. And in that choice, only in that choice, will he be able to say, "Whatever I have heard from the Father, I will reveal to you." That is why I said, to be a preacher, to be an effective preacher, you need to some extent to be a scholar. You need to be. At least, if you are not one of those evangelists who always repeat the same message. In this case, of course, you don't have to study much in the Bible, because there are preachers who have five or six basic messages, and they are forever preaching the same messages in one form or another. But if you are going to be an effective preacher, you have to study deep into the word of God. You have to become a scholar. You have to be a scribe.
But if you are going to be a prophet, you have to spend much time in communion with God. But there is one thing beautiful about communion with God: you can commune with God in the presence of other people. I find a wonderful passage in Scripture where the Lord is doing exactly that. Even the apostles around about him, the Lord is in the midst of communion with God. You can commune with God in any situation, whether it is bus or train, it doesn't matter. Even when somebody is talking with you, your heart can still be communing with the Lord. This is the wonderful thing. That is why prophets do not have to be scholars. They may be, but they don't have to be.
But now, as I look at this, I find something also very sweet about this. Friend of Jesus. How much would you give to be a friend of Jesus? You do not become a friend of Jesus by spending a lot of time in scholarship alone. And I stress again, I do not despise scholarship. After all, I have spent enough years of my life in that too. But I am learning. I am learning that if I want to be a friend of Jesus, I am not going to be able to spend all that much time in books at the cost of — at the expense of — my communion with the Lord and my communion with my brothers and sisters.
Now, in the Old Testament, there are only two people who are called the friends of the Lord. Only two people. I am rather struck by that too. And these two people are: one is Abraham and the other is Moses. Abraham is called a friend of God — 2 Chronicles 20, verse 7; Isaiah 41, verse 8. Moses, of course, we know very well, who is called a friend of God in Exodus 33:11 and many such passages. Only two people in the entire Old Testament are called friends of God. And Jesus is offering us this friendship of his, if only we would commune with him. So how can we be friends if we don't talk with him? It is hypocritical to say that so-and-so is my friend but I have no time to talk with him. You delight to be with a friend, whether it's a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever it is. Because they are friends, the very fact that they are friends means they mean something precious to you, and you would like to spend as much time as possible with them.
I had a dear friend in my days even before I was a Christian. We could never spend enough time together, he and myself. Whatever I was doing, whenever he called me, I dropped everything I was doing to be with my friend. Because he meant more to me than whatever it was I was doing. Friendship, so precious, so sweet. One day he left and I lost a very dear friend because the Communists came and he had to run for his life, and he disappeared into northwest China and I never heard from him again. But I never forget this friend. Friendship is something so strong, so sweet. And Jesus offers us this kind of friendship.
But judge from the time you spend in communion with God every day, and you will know how much of a friend you are to Jesus and how much a friend he is to you. How much time did you spend in communion with the Lord last week, or even today, or last night? Be honest with yourself. That is why we don't have prophets, don't you see? We don't have prophets because we don't have people who commune with the Lord, who delight to commune with the Lord, who delight in the friendship of the Lord. Only two people were granted that privilege in the Old Testament. All of us are granted this privilege in the New Testament, and we don't grab the chance with both hands, not to say with both feet as well. You're going to throw away this privilege. And let me tell you, one day when you and I stand before the Lord, I doubt not that the thing that we will regret most is that we could have been in the league of Abraham and Moses, because Jesus offered us his friendship, and we spend our time with the TV, and we spend our time with our books. We spend our time even with Christian books at the expense of — by all means, read Christian books; by all means, spend much time in the Bible — but not at the expense of communing with the Lord. Have you ever learned to study the Bible, communing with the Lord as you study the Bible, so that the one does not compete with the other? Have you tried that? That is why we don't have prophets.
How do we become a prophet? It is also interesting that Abraham and Moses have this combination of all three names. They are friends. They are called servants of the Lord. And they are called prophets of the Lord. All three names are granted to these two people.
Let us close very quickly with these remarks. Let me come quickly to this. How do we become prophets? Fundamentally, as we have already seen, communing with the Lord. But the second problem is this: do we really desire this communion with the Lord? We know it is a privilege available to us. We can enter into the Holy of Holies, granted only to the high priest once a year. But whatever is open to us, we don't bother with.
You know, I lived in Montreal now for something like six years. And I think that any tourist knows Montreal better than I do. And I wonder why. They have gone to Man and His World, they have gone to the flower show, Flora Lee, they have gone to this, that, and the other thing. I haven't been to any of these places. I haven't been there. Why? Because I say to myself, "Oh, I can go there anytime." And because I can go there anytime, I never go. And I wonder whether this is the problem with us Christians. "Oh yes, I have access to the Lord's presence anytime. I can go anytime." Therefore I never go. But the tourist knows that he has only got one day, he's only got two days, so he runs here and to Flora Lee and everywhere, every place. And he has seen more in one day than I have seen in six years. And that is why, of course, when our hour is up and we are about to die — Lord, we suddenly become saints. We rush into his presence to pray. All day we pray for the whole of our last 25 minutes. But because we have all our life to live, to enter into God's presence, to be friends with him — "Tomorrow, tomorrow I pray. Tomorrow I'll be friends with him." And every tomorrow brings us nearer to the day when there will be no more tomorrows.
We do not have — and this is the point that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 1 and verse 39 — "Earnestly desire that you may prophesy." Earnestly desire. The word is zeloo, from which the English word "zeal" comes from. And the word doesn't just mean "to desire" — it means to strive, to exert oneself in order to obtain. To have a desire is often all that we have. You listen to the message and you say, "Oh yes, yes, so I really desire being friends with the Lord." And then we go down to the refreshments and the nice Black Forest cake, and we forgot everything about communion and becoming prophets and all the like. Everything's gone. We don't have this earnest desire, this striving, this vision: "I will become, by the grace of God, a prophet of God." I would like you today, if by the grace of God you can say, "I shall not cease to strive and exert myself until, by the grace of God, I become a prophet, that I may serve him and build up his church." That is spiritual ambition.
But in this heading, the second thing is this: not only must we have this desire, but we must have constancy. And this is another thing I don't find among the Lord's people. We have a desire for a little while and then the desire goes weaker and weaker, and by tomorrow we've forgotten what was our desire. The consistent pressing forward. Notice here, for those of you who know some Greek, that we have all present tenses in 1 Corinthians 14, verses 1 and verse 39. All present tenses. "Earnestly strive" — that means continuing to strive. There's a present tense in Greek, there's a continuous tense. Keep on striving until you get the gift of prophecy. Not one burst of energy, but a continuing steady persistence until you obtain. Just as in the Lord's parables — the constant banging on the door. Never give up until you get it. That's what we need.
And yet the third thing is so simple that we never do it: ask. Ask for it. You don't ask for it, you won't get it. But furthermore, the other thing is this: to become a prophet of God, you must learn to meditate deeply in the word of God. This we find in John 15, verse 7: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you." Ask whatever you will. Those are challenging words. So ask for the gift of prophecy and it will be done for you. Is it not? "If you abide in me" — communing with him — "and my words abide in you" — meditating in his teaching. Every prophet of God is marked by a deep spiritual — not necessarily academic — but deep spiritual understanding and perception of God's word. Meditate day and night in his word, because that is part of communing with the Lord.
And fourthly, cultivate friendship with one another. You may be surprised that this has anything to do with prophecy, but it has. On that principle of 1 John chapter 4, verse 20: "If you do not love your brother whom you can see, how can you love God whom you do not see?" If you do not cultivate friendship with your brother whom you see, how can you cultivate friendship with God whom you do not see? The spiritual is always related to the practical living. Being spiritual does not mean being unpractical. Anyone who is unpractical doesn't know what being spiritual is about. As we saw last week, the prophets lived in communities, and that's for a very good reason, because in the community of the prophets, they learned this very thing of commitment to one another. And in this church, you are given every chance to learn this commitment to one another in all the training teams. This is why you are training in teams. It is so essential to be able to learn this commitment, this friendship to one another.
And so we must close and our time is gone. May it be that God will grant to us that each one of us will become a prophet of God in this generation. Let us be quiet before God in prayer. Amen.