Discovering the Biblical Kingdom of God, Jesus & Holy Spirit America's Choice: Constitutional Republic or Democrat-Socialism? "Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants." (Benjamin Franklin)                    God's Exchange Published in the GOLDEN GRAIN - Volume 21  - Number 9 - December, 1946

A Sermon By Charles S. Price

hen He said, Occupy until I come!", there is no doubt that He had reference to that external coming which will shake the continents one of these days. But have we limited the scope of its meaning to that event, alone. Once again, the external finds its counterpart in the internal. OCCUPY UNTIL I COME! We are to do business until HE COMES, and then He will take over the rule and it will no longer be I, but Christ, that is within us. It is not subscribing to the historic fact of Calvary, even though that subscription be orthodox. It is RECEIVING WITHIN THE CHRIST OF CALVARY! It is dying with Him; being crucified with Him: being buried with Him rising with Him. It is being IDENTIFIED WITH HIM, until the self life moves our and the Divine Life moves in! We find, then, that HE IS OUR LIFE! For He has declared, "I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. He that be lives on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live!" He is showing us that we have to die that we may live. There cannot be the two lives in authority. "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption." I Corinthians 15:50  We recognize Him as our life. Life for body, soul and spirit! This Divine life is manifest commensurate with the extent of our MOVING OUT! As we DECREASE, He will INCREASE! If we refuse to decrease, then we hinder Him in His increase! We are told that Enoch walked with God. He had sweet and blessed communion! Undoubtedly there became less and less of Enoch until the time came when ENOCH WAS NOT! Then God took him. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom. 'The Adamic can never enter the gates. Flesh and self and human reason and understanding of which we have been so proud must capitulate before the flow of the Spirit. He must reign within before we can share in His reign without then, if we allow Him to sit on our throne, He will raise us to sit with Him on HIS THRONE, and we shall reign with Him forever and forever.!  We do not "understand" this life; we BECOME it! It is too infinite for us to understand.  It is too eternal for us to grasp with our finite minds. Can the part contain the whole? Can we encompass God with our reason or embrace Him with our understanding? the world by wisdom has never known Him It is only as we learn to live in the FLOW OF THE DIVINE SPIRIT that God will reveal Himself and open the eyes of our spiritual understanding of Himself, His Word and His Truth, there is no need for us to ask Him to explain. The thing that is happening within is that we are "being become!" this is CREATIVE LIFE and not the child of reason. Faith BECOMES it without understanding! We do not need faith if we have understanding. If reason could embrace it without the illumination of His indwelling, there would be no need then for the imparting of His faith. The faith which He is and which He imparts is not our struggling to believe. It is not the affirmation of the will that we will accept it in spite of every obstacle that impede our way. Faith is there just like light is there when the sun shines. If He dwells within, why prod reason to struggle to believe, when the fact is so overwhelming one does not have to struggle at all to believe it. In fact, it is not believing it, it is BECOMING IT! His Kingdom  "In that day when I set up My Kingdom.. ." That is what Christ, in actuality, is doing! He is SET-TING UP HIS KINGDOM, and we are now coming into the REIGN OF CHRIST, because we are justified by Christ who is our Justifier! It is not through our understanding. It is not that after a period of reading we have accepted certain dogmas and creeds and the church calls us "orthodox." It is because within there has been a REVOLUTION and an abdication and a NEW RULER IS ON THE THRONE! Christ reigns! He conquered! He is victorious! He is getting ready for the setting up of His Kingdom without by setting up His Kingdom within. We are being overcome that we might be overcorners. We are being trained for ruling by allowing Him to rule in us! What we have, ordinarily, called faith has been an incessant struggle on our part to believe things and to accept things which were beyond human reason. The result is that the battle has never been completely won! Such a thing is metaphysical and not spiritual. It is not the faith which is of God. His faith laughs at impossibilities and cries, "IT SHALL BE DONE!" Before such faith, reason cringes and intellect and education bow. The astrologers and the soothsayers have to bow out when God's Daniel walks in! We believe God without understanding! He leads us into and through experiences, and while we do not understand them, we believe God.  Abraham believed God and it was accounted to Him for righteousness. He went and he did not know where he was going. He went BELIEVING GOD! Should we not trust Him? Will He ever lead us astray? Great as are His promises, is He Himself not greater? So, leading us through these places we do not understand, we sometimes see as did one of old, the "hinderparts" of Himself when He has been in such a place. We recognize that HE LED US THROUGH! We see His presence in it! Faith believed Him all the while because it was HIS FAITH. He was on the throne and, whether we understood or not, it was all the  same. We SEE HIM and hear His voice and, know in the Spirit, that He is leading His children through!  Many times we go through experiences and it is not until we reach the other side that He gives us under standing. Afterwards, we say, "God was in this place." We are like Jacob at Bethel who, because he was not as fully yielded and surrendered as was Abraham, did not understand that God was with him in his dilemma, and in the midst of his trial. Once again, it was not while Jacob was struggling to believe, but while he was asleep that the vision came! In these days, we would say it was when he let and LET GOD! When he was had the experience, he saw the Lord! He saw the Lord had been in it all the time! His difficulty was that he thought, erroneously . He had not yet discovered that the thoughts of God are higher than our thoughts and His ways are higher than our ways.  When we are overcome, we enter into the experience of the overcomer! The overcomer's mental faculties and natural understanding have been superseded by the FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD! We can never develop that faith. It is the faith of the Son of God and no man can have it who does not possess the Son! We look to Him and BEHOLD, WE LIVE! There is LIFE FOR A LOOK AT THE CRUCIFIED ONE! We behold Him and WE are eliminated! We are called upon to DEAL WITH GOD and to deal with Him alone. The apostle Paul counted everything bunt dung! All of the things he thought he knew, all of his past experiences, his prestige, his position as an educated man and as a Pharisee, all these became loss that HE MIGHT WIN CHRIST! He threw everything overboard that he might make room for the reign of the One within who was willing to take over the government of his life. It was the Christ whom he had persecuted, Who led him into the deserts of Arabia and there he began to know the love of God which passes knowledge. He began to understand things which cannot be understood. He experienced the unfolding of mysteries in the Spirit! Is it any wonder that he came out from that experience, having seen and met God, and thundered his declaration that the "world by wisdom cannot know God." From that moment on, he was dealing with God alone. The True Fruit  We must not forget the man who looked around at his possessions. Bursting with the pride of the self- life, and exulting in the amount of his possessions, he declared, "I will pull down my barns and build greater." But he never got a chance to build. The Voice from Heaven cried, "O, thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee." Are men not foolish when they insist on building on the sinking sand of their Adam-like nature Can the Christ life be built or manifested in temples which are still dedicated to the pursuits of the flesh? Can pure and sweet waters flow from the same fountain? Was not that the burning truth that Christ gave to His disciples on His way to the Garden, when He preached to them the sermon on the Vine and the branches. The branch could not bear fruit of itself it was the LIFE OF THE VINE, that went into the branch. It is the life of Christ which flows in us and through us which is the only fruit-bearer! It is not enthusiasm It is not zeal. These cannot bear DIVINE FRUIT It is not service, apart from the presence and the energizing power of our Lord. It is not doing for Him but it is He doing through us. We must learn to DEAL WITH GOD and with God alone Like the man who built his barns and then decided to build greater, the Adamic nature has been continually engaged in the process of "getting." We have been struggling to get this and to get that. Now some of this may have been in Divine order, but we may have failed to GET UNDERSTANDING! "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom and WITH ALL THY GET TING, GET UNDERSTANDING!" Proverbs 4:7 But that is DIVINE UNDERSTANDING! As we become surrendered to the Lord, and we relinquish our human understanding, the Divine understanding of God takes over. If we will let Him, the Spirit of the Lord will reveal to us that truth. He has told us that we are not to lean to our own under.. standing. Shall we sacrilegiously put the revelation of His truth through the mills of our human reason? Modern religion is the human mind trying to understand God. but the Salvation our lord, is GOD REVEALING HIMSELF TO A YIELDED AND SURRENDERED MAN. "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated; full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy." James 3:17 His Command  It was this insistence upon the use of our own understanding and our determination to put all revelation through the mills of our intellect that made God choose the weak things of the world to confound the mighty No flesh should glory in His presence! Not even educated flesh Not even cultured flesh! No matter how you dress it up it is still flesh! It has to go He must reign and rule within. If we are justified, it is because the Justifier takes over. We are accepted, bought and redeemed! HE PURCHASED US! We belong to Him! Why should we not come then, and in acknowledgment of our weakness, and, indeed, the helplessness of our.. selves without Him and say, "Lord, I am yours! With all my lack and with all my failures, I surrender to Thee! I am Thine, 0 Lord! Reign and rule within!" Then, by His grace, the EXCHANGE is made. It is our limitation for His illimitable supply! Our will for His will. Our way for His way. Our life for His life. Christ becomes ALL AND IN ALL! The world may wonder why we do not accept invitations when such surrender has been made. We no longer move at the invitations of men. We move at the COMMAND OF THE LORD! Where He leads us, we follow. To go without His leading means defeat. No matter what enthusiasm we put into it; no matter how much it may seem right so to do it is defeat. We cannot conquer, for He is the only Conqueror! Before He can conquer through us, He must first conquer us! What a glorious exchange this is in the development of His eternal plan.  We can never possess our vessels in patience until the Author of patience walks within us. Come, blessed Lord Jesus, come with Thy scepter and reign and rule within our hearts! Make us Thine obedient subjects! Breathe into us and through us the revelation of Thy will! Infuse us with that faith that does not ask the reason why but is that identical faith that the Son had in the Father and the Father had in the Son. Then the faith He gives to us and puts in us is the faith we place in Him. When it seemed that death was near a child of God prayed, "Yes, I am willing to die if You will come and get me but I am not turning this body over to the devil. This is your temple!" That is it! We are the temples of God! The Father's purpose is to indwell us! Having made us clean by the washing of regeneration, through the death of His Son, so united do we become in Him and He in us that when the Father looks at us, He sees only His Son! We are clothed upon with His righteousness. We are the possessors of His faith.  Perhaps, in the past we have come to the Lord, as if He were on the outside, importuning Him to reach forward and touch us and we have said, "Lord, heal this body." When the fullness of the manifestation comes, it will be the recognition that WE ARE HIS BODY. The Resurrection life of our Lord operating from within will be more than sufficient to cover every need of body and of soul and of spirit. Nothing can stand in the HEALING WAVE of that flow Divine. This is more than Divine Healing; it is DIVINE HEALTH! It is more than being "repaired," it is being "kept in constant repair!" It is more than asking for His life to come and patch the breaks and the infirmities in our lives. It is the recognition of the constant flow of His life in us and through us that. will bring us the victory. Remember the "all things." "I can do ALL THINGS through Christ which strengthens me." That is the secret. THROUGH CHRIST! But when we say we can do all things through Christ, we mean, in reality, that Christ can do all things though us.  The viper bit Paul and the barbarians standing around saw the venomous beast hang on his hand. They said, "No doubt this man is a murderer whom, though he has escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffers not to live." But Paul shook off the viper into the fire and felt no harm. "Howbeit they looked, WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE SWOLLEN, or fallen down dead suddenly.. ." But the thing that they were looking for did not happen. His hand did not swell and he did not die! He was living, moving, thinking, under the reign of Christ! That rulership was in authority and no external influences or powers could overcome it or overthrow it. No wonder that he said that he was persuaded that NOTHING, here or hereafter, things present or things to come;  human principalities or human powers; no, not even life nor death, should be able to separate him from that burning, flaming love that was abiding within. Christ was on the throne! All else was subservient to Him! The River   How we have robbed God! Robbed Him in more than tithes and offerings! We can give Him ten percent and rob Him! We can give Him twenty percent and withhold from Him that which belongs to Him. We can give Him ninety percent; or ninety-nine percent and still we rob Him. He is asking now for the one hundred percent surrender! Not one hundred percent perfection, but one hundred percent surrender. Not one hundred percent attainment, but one hundred percent yielding. Not one hundred percent possessing but a one hundred percent giving up. When we are willing to do the giving up, He will attend to the possessing part. When we have Him, we have all, for Christ is all and in all. We can triumphantly sing, "We have all things in Christ."  Are we not robbing Him when we keep His purchased possession from Him? Did He not die to redeem us? We are not our own. Why then should we insist upon keeping ourselves. Are we not robbing Him when we yield our members in obedience to others than He? When He calls us, He does not say, "Give me your time or give me some of your service." He says, "GIVE ME THINE HEART!" And the heart represents all that we have and all that we are. When we surrender that and we yield completely, He moves in and takes possession. How sweet the sound of His voice ! How wonderful the consciousness of that Divine indwelling! When we hear Him speak, we do not hear from the head or the understanding but we reach out to God from our inner being When we hear others speak, in the Spirit, and we know their lives are hidden with Christ in God, we be come like sponges absorbing the Divine life which flows from within. We cannot have that flow without unless we first receive that flow with in! The river comes from beneath the Throne. But only when He is on it. When He is not there, the river ceases. There is a sense in which the river does not flow from Him because He is the river. He is the life. He is the way. He is the truth. And in that flow Divine, we become permeated with the power of His Resurrection!  Listen to His sweet voice! Yield to Him today! My son, my daughter, give Me your heart! Let Me rule! Let Me reign! Turn it all over to Me! You have failed, You are empty. Let Me come with all My radiant full ness and live and reign within! Then, in Me, you will live and move and have your being !