This morning, to Revelation chapter 4, we have interrupted our series on overcoming the devil with our motto text for the new year. That is found in Revelation chapter 4. Let's read the first five verses together so we'll hear God's Word. After this, I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven. The first voice which I heard was, as it were, of a trumpet talking with me, which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone. And there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats. And upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and they had on their heads crowns of gold. And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. Amen. The Lord bless that reading from His Word for His name's sake. Let's bow our head for a moment, please. And simply in the quiet of your seat and heart, ask the Lord to make a way to your soul this morning with His Word. Let's all pray. Father in Heaven, we do pray in Jesus' name that Thou wilt cause the Holy Hush to fall upon our minds and hearts. We pray, Lord, that we will be listening for the still, small voice of the Spirit of God speaking and saying to us from behind, here is the way, walk ye in it. Grant grace to understand the Word that is preached. Enable thy servant to preach the Word succinctly, clearly, with power. We want this day to honor the Lord Jesus Christ It is our desire that our hearts and souls and minds will be turned toward Him. Remove, Lord, the obstacles to that happening. Take away the thoughts that can be so distracting at times. Keep us mindful that we sit at the feet of the Lord Jesus, not at the feet of a man We pray that we will be keenly aware that the Lord is speaking. For we need to hear from heaven. Thou dost know that better than we. We pray that Thou wilt remember mercy today for this congregation and for Thy servant. We pray it in Jesus' name, Amen and Amen. We come back to those words of Christ to John found in verse 1, come up hither, which I want to serve as our motto text for 2012. Come up hither. I'm using those words of Christ to John as the basis for his call to go higher. The call to go higher in our knowledge and experience of God. It is my prayer as the minister of this congregation that every one of us will heed this call to get to higher ground, to come nearer to heavenly holiness, nearer to heaven's joy and to heaven's sun. Certainly, the Lord did not save us just so that we could eke out a miserable existence in this world. He did not suffer the agonies of the cross just so that His people could hobble through life as spiritual cripples and remain as spiritual infants. He came that we might live that we might have life, and that we might have that life more abundantly. More than conquerors, he says that we are. More than. It is the will of God, says Peter in the first chapter of his second letter, that we live such a life That, I quote now, an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That speaks of anything but getting into heaven, that everlasting kingdom. It speaks of anything about getting into heaven just by the skin of our teeth. Or, if you prefer the language of Scripture, I would quote Paul who said the same thing in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 when he spoke of those who are saved, yet so as by fire. They just got in, so to speak. What a contrast that is to having an abundant entrance into heaven. when we die. Peter says that the Christian, if I can put that verse into its context, Peter says that the Christian who gives all diligence to make his calling and election sure by paying heed to what he said in the previous verses about adding to your faith love, diligence, long-suffering, meekness, all those graces, by doing that they will have an abundant entrance into the kingdom of God. How they live their life will determine what kind of an entrance they will have into glory. They will make it into glory if they were careless about those things. That's true, because they're a child of God. But there are obviously abundant entrances and entrances into heaven that are not so abundant. They are not attended with so many riches in the experience of the child of God. Those that will come and have that abundant entrance into heaven are the ones who have paid great heed to this call of Jesus Christ to go higher. That's what Peter is dealing with in the first part of chapter 1, the second epistle. It's all about going higher. It's all about giving all diligence to your spiritual life. And if you do that, an abundant entrance will be ministered unto you in heaven. If that is not done, if there is no heed paid to giving the diligence, to going higher, to being careless about the spiritual life, sort of content with where you are, not looking for, not expecting anything better, anything more of your knowledge of God, you will enter into glory. But you will not die with the mindset that Paul had when he said, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. There is therefore now for me laid up a crown of righteousness, which the righteous judge shall give to me. Do you hear the note of confidence that just rings to that statement? He had an abundant entrance ministered unto him when it came time for him to die. Because for DePaul to live was Christ. He took it seriously. He was always seeking to get to higher ground. He said, my goal in life is to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And that's why at the end of his life, he had no doubt about it. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. You see, that's the test. How do we face old age when all those things that we lived for, that energized us are taken away. We get old. Abilities leave us. We can't do what we used to do. Those things that we took such interest in, we can't do them anymore. The things that we lived for, they're gone. That's why, by the way, doctors have advised elderly people who have come to retirement age, keep active. Keep doing something. Because if you don't, you'll waste away and you'll die. That's the test. What we live for. If we have lived for ourselves, for our pleasures, for enjoyments in life in this world, I will tell you what, when it comes time to die, you will not enjoy this abundant entrance into heaven. Into heaven you will get, no doubt about that. But you'll die differently. I tell you, you will die with a life of regrets. You will lie upon that deathbed and say, I wish this. I wish I had done that. I wish I had done the other thing. And you won't say with Paul, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. I'm headed to glory land. Hallelujah. It all depends on what you and I do with this call to go higher. Last Lord's Day morning, we only considered the reasons Christ calls us to go higher. As I have already pointed out, He did not come into this world and die this death of the cross just to deliver us from everlasting punishment and eternal death. Part of the He came and died in order that you and I might live an abundant Christian life. And so we saw that Christ calls us to come up hither, to rise above the things of this world and set our affections on things above because He loves us. He knows that the death The depths of our happiness, of our joy, of our peace of heart and mind are intimately linked to going higher, to growing in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. He knows that. Because He loves us, He wants us to experience, He has this desire, and so the commands in His Word, the particular form I'm using is the words of Christ to John, come up here, go higher. But they occur in so many different places, in so many different ways. The call upon you, if you say, I'm a child of God, to get beyond where you are spiritually, to make advancement in your experience of Christ, in your knowledge of who He is and of what He has given us in His Word. He loves us, so He calls us to go higher. He calls us higher because Christians are prone to spiritual declension. Every one of us are prone to wander away from Christ. Sin within and the world without is ready to heed the call of Satan to go lower, not higher. There's an opposing force for the voice that calls you higher. The world and Satan says, get lower. Get farther from Christ. Listen to me. That's where you'll find real pleasure. Real satisfaction. Real peace. So the Lord says, come up hither. He knows of our tendency. Christ calls us to go higher because the church needs Christians who are going higher. Because the world needs to see Christians go higher. And the Lord calls upon us to go hither, to come up hither, because if we don't go higher, we place ourselves in a very real dangerous position. Because there's no such thing as treading water in the Christian life. You go higher or you go lower. Like a plane. I think it's Lloyd-Jones who has the illustration. Like a plane. If it's not moving forward, it's dropping. Constantly going, going. Shut off the engines, you drop. Having made that foundation As to the reason for this call, I want to look at the second place this morning, at the road we've got to take to get higher. You'll find three things in verse 1 that are suggestive of the truths which I feel we must believe and the road we must take in order to go higher in our experience of God in 2012 than we did in 2011. We know the call is there. We know the obligation before us. Very clear. No one I trust would deny that the Lord is not calling you to go higher, to come away from where you are spiritually, to get to higher ground. First, you will find there is a heavenward look. After these things I looked, and behold, These words mark John's second vision in Revelation, a vision that is taken up, you'll find in chapters 4 and 5, with the Father, with the Son, and with the Holy Spirit, the triune God. Note the words, I looked. It was as John was looking heavenward that he sees an open door in heaven and he hears Christ call him, come up here! Remember, remember a little historical detail here, please. John is living as a prisoner in exile on the very bleak and lonely isle of Patmos where prisoners were sent to work in the mines for the Roman government. He's an old man, somewhere in his nineties. And he's been shipped off to this place to suffer, as he says, for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You put yourself in his shoes just for a second. You're ninety-some years old, sent off to an island to work the mines. But those very unwanted, and unpleasant circumstances did not prevent John from setting his heart upon heavenly things. And that's an important statement for every child of God. His circumstances in life did not prevent him from setting his heart upon heavenly matters. John says, he could say back in chapter 1, that in spite of this deep affliction, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. He makes note that it was the Lord's day. He was keeping track. Earliest reference. The Lord's day. The day of worship. the day when the Lord's people would give that day wholly to the Lord, setting their mind upon spiritual things, upon heavenly things. He wasn't able to meet with the Lord's people in the normal place of worship and in the normal way of worship because he was in exile. But that did not prevent him from sanctifying that day unto the Lord and setting his mind upon the Lord. And as he seeks the Lord, on the Lord's day, he finds himself in the Spirit. In other words, he was lifted up by the Holy Spirit to a very high experience and enjoyment of God. Even though he's in exile, he keeps the day holy. He sets his mind to worship God. And God comes to meet him and heightens his awareness of heavenly things. His mind was upon heavenward things. And as John has his mind upon God, as he looks and desires our things toward heaven, he hears this voice saying, come up here. That's the context. The simple point of application I want to make in all of this is that if we as a congregation are going to go higher this year, if our love for Christ is going to deepen, if our faith in Him and His Word is going to increase, thus stabilizing our lives so that we're not tossed about by circumstances. If our likeness to Jesus Christ is going to become more apparent even to those whom we live with, if our desire for an exercise of earnest prayer is going to broaden, if our compassion for the lost is going to abound whereby it moves us to speak to them about their souls, if our knowledge of God's Word is going to deepen in such a way where it affects deeply how we live, Then the Lord is calling upon you and me to be like John, to set our mind upon heavenly things, not only on the Lord's day, that's a given, but every day of the week. The Lord is calling us to, if I can take what He said in Matthew chapter 6, to seek first, first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. It's going to have to happen. It's a road. If I can just weave together a few portions of Scripture that are saying the same thing. To seek those things which are above, and set our affection on things above, not on things on the earth. As Paul says, to be spiritually minded. To live as strangers and pilgrims on the earth because we seek a better country. Living as strangers and pilgrims, as tent dwellers, because the world is not our home. That we're not living as if this is all of what life is about. That this present world is what matters so much to us. The wrong response to that call is going off to a nunnery or a monastery and think that's how you do it. That is not what the Word of God is telling us to do. It is telling us in the very midst of the life that we live in this world, at home, at work, at play, wherever we are, we must cultivate continually a heavenly mindedness. I picked up a book in preparation. I didn't use it, by the way. I might, somewhere along the line. Henry Scudder, On Walking With God, The Devotional Life. John Owen said, as he wrote his foreword to it, I read this 30 years ago, but I haven't picked it up in 30 years, but it has not left me the impact this book had upon my life. Scudder talks about when you get up to dress in the morning, putting your clothes on, you have your mind upon heavenly things, and he begins to go into detail about how you're supposed to even be dressing. He gets to the nitty-gritty. That's the road to getting higher. The more we look heavenward, the higher we go in heavenliness. So, to get more grace, look up. To experience more growth, Look up. To enjoy life as the Lord intended that you enjoy life. And all the things He's given us to enjoy them. Look up. Because if you try to enjoy the things of life apart from looking up, you will not live the abundant life. And you will not go higher. You'll find those things pull you down. They draw you away from the Lord. You will get caught up with the gifts and forget all about the giver. You'll get caught up with the blessings and forget about the blesser. Going higher, the road is looking up. Heavenward look. Secondly, you will find an open door. And behold, a door was opened in heaven. Now, the way it was translated, it gives to you the picture that a door was open, physically taking place. That's not what it's saying. But John says, I saw a door standing open. Open. Not shut. Open. When John saw the book, if I can compare this to what happens later on, when John saw the book that was closed and sealed with seven seals, he wept. Because no man could open it until the lion of the tribe of Judah prevailed to open the book. Then his tears stopped. As John is heavenly minded, he sees in heaven a door that is open. It's not a door that is closed. The door, before he hears the voice, He sees a door that is open, and that open door told him, this is accessible to you. This is attainable. It's open to you, John. You can come up here and get close to me. It's not a shut door that makes me inaccessible, says Christ. Here's a truth that you must believe, convinced of, if you're going to go higher. Going higher, you see, is something that you can experience. You can. I would love to be able right now to speak to each one of you privately. Honestly, look you in the eye and for you to honestly answer me as I ask the question, do you honestly believe that you can go higher? That that is open to you. As best I can, I'm asking you that now. Do you believe that 2012 you can go higher in your spiritual life than you have ever been before. That you can experience a very deep spiritual life. That you can experience a deep relationship with God. A prayer life that is not only consistent But that brings you to pray with boldness, with faith, with confidence, with absolute assurance that you've got the ear of God. And that brings down the answers. Alive, do you believe that You can live a life of childlike faith that simply takes the Lord at His Word and that believes the Lord over all the suggestions of your unbelief, of your carnal flesh, and of the devil and of the world. And that you will smile in the face of the storm and say, Jesus does all things well. Do you believe? that you can live a life above fear of the future because of childlike faith in God. Do you believe that you can know such a love for Jesus Christ that it excels and supersedes any other love of anybody else, that it is so real to you That it controls how you think, how you act, what you say. That you won't just read, he's altogether lovely. But you will know and feel that in your own soul. The Christian call to go higher. A life of deep joy. Deep joy. no matter what the circumstances are, regardless of opposition, regardless of clouds, adverse circumstances, joy that is not determined by how your day is going. Being clearly led into the will of God. Knowing, not sitting in consternation, trying to figure it all out, but being clearly and simply led by the will of God, into the will of God. I am afraid and I believe it is a fear that is well grounded that many, many Christians have bought into the devil's lie that the door to this kind of life is not open to them. They can believe it's open to somebody else, but not to them. Just because you have suffered many setbacks spiritually, just because you have tried and failed many times regarding any of these areas, and you have made so many resolutions to go higher that you've stopped counting them because they've been broken every time, just because you have besetting sins And just because you have difficult circumstances in life, does not mean that a deep and close relationship with the Lord is impossible. You must believe, if you're going to go higher, that door is open for you, right where you are. And the Lord is calling you, come up here. You don't have to stay where you are. It does not have to be like this. I did not die to leave you in that kind of an existence. Come up here. Have you forgotten that you were saved by grace alone? And the grace alone that saves you is also the grace that sanctifies you. Have you forgotten that nothing is impossible with God? Have you lost sight of the truth that God specializes in things thought impossible? He does the things others cannot do. Even you cannot do. Here's an open door. I don't think for a moment I am pushing the symbolism of revelation too far when I say that here is a picture of Jesus Christ who calls himself the door. The door into heaven. The door to a higher place. Christ is the way of access to God. Christ is the door to higher ground. It is through Christ, through this door, that you and I will find the grace to overcome the setting sin that we perhaps think now we're just beat and we'll never beat it. As to believe a lie of hell, it contradicts the Scripture. No sin too hard for God. I don't care how many years it's beset you. Is your sin too hard for God? It's gotten you so down, so depressed, so discouraged. Because you've prayed over it a long time. You've brought the same sin to the Lord again and again and again. And so Satan has convinced you, forget it. You're just confined to a mediocre Christian life. You're not going to get to higher ground. That's all fairy tale that preachers like to talk about. No, it's not. But you see, if you don't believe this, this is the road. If you don't believe this truth, you'll not get to higher ground. It is through Christ, the door. That we obtain faith to overcome our unbelief. The old father understood that as his son was wallowing in the dirt possessed by a demon. Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. You help my unbelief. That was his prayer. And guess what? Jesus helped his unbelief. It was through Jesus. It is through Christ that we have access at all times into the most holy place. That command to come boldly to the throne of grace was not given to only the spiritual elite in the church. It was given to every one of the Lord's people. Because we have a great high priest, we can come. The door is always open to the throne room. We can come just as we are. And we can pray. We have access to God. We have access to higher ground. That you must believe. Because if you don't believe that, You won't even seek to get to higher ground. You won't even try. Forget about giving all diligence to it. You won't lift the first finger. You will wrap your arms around the chains that bind you. You will embrace them. You will lock the windows that stay shut if you don't believe. I've got access to higher ground because Christ is my open door. Why do we give in? Why do we give in to Satan's suggestion that we're consigned because of our circumstances, because of our personality, because of a thousand and one reasons, that we're consigned to live a mediocre Christian life, whereby we just get through the day. We just get through another week. Or the minister just gets through another Sunday sermon. when God Almighty has called us to come higher and to soar in the heavenlies. Why do we buy the lie of the devil and say, in essence, oh, that all sounds so nice. I wish it was true of me, but I'm just afraid it will never happen. I'm not going to get any higher. I've tried this before and it just never works. You see? You have prophesied your own destiny. I'm afraid that much of the reason that we buy into that and adopt that very unchristlike mentality is because our mind, our look is too much earthward and not heavenward. It's all determined by how we think. And our mind, what we fill our mind with is going to have a direct impact upon whether or not We're going to believe that this door is open to me. Earthly mindedness will never enable you to believe wholeheartedly, I can go higher. Never. Having said that, let me point out that John is not the one who opened the door into heaven. It was Christ. John had no power to open this door. Christ is the one who is seeking out John. Christ is the one who is calling John to come up hither. Be certain of one thing, before a man can ever and will ever seek to go higher, Christ must first seek the man. It won't happen if the Lord will not seek him. The reason that any of us will ever go higher is because the Lord first comes to us. The Lord first calls us to come up hither. I sought the Lord, but afterward I knew. He moved my soul to seek Him seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior, true. No, I was found of Thee. That's the order. Christ must open the door. Christ must give the call. He must seek us to go higher. And yet, that parallel truth in Scripture is that we must seek the Lord. That we must pursue holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. And while it is true that God works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure, it is equally true that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and with trembling. It doesn't mean you're saved by works. It means you work out what the Lord has worked in your life. You seek to live out the Christian life, to manifest the life of Christ. They run side by side with no contradiction. Every child of God will one day cross the finish line In this race of faith, you might not feel that way at times, but you will cross the finish line. Because Christ is the author and the finisher. The word means completer of your faith. He always finishes what He starts. And if He started you believing, He's going to complete you as a believer. You will be a believing believer when you die. Having said that, it is also true that we must, we must lay aside the sin that doth so easily beset us and run with patience the race that is fixed before us. I've got that responsibility. So it is Christ who must first call us to go higher and instill in us a desire to go higher. It is Christ who must afford us the grace to go higher. But don't you see, if you have sat there this morning and even lamented for a second, I'm not going higher but I wish I was. Don't you understand that is Christ calling you higher? If there is never any desire to go higher, I've got some serious questions about whether you know the Lord. Christ calls His people higher and even the longing in the midst of the feeling of defeat about not being higher is the call of the Lord. Why do you feel that way? Because I want to go higher. I don't want to live like I'm living. I believe there's higher country. There's higher ground to get to. There's a clearer view of Christ that I've never had before. Third and finally, there's a speaking voice. Heaven would look An open door, a speaking voice. The first voice which I heard was, as it were, of a trumpet talking with me, John says. The third element that brought John higher was this voice. Because immediately he says after this, and I was in the Spirit, and I was higher. He calls it the first voice. He does not mean that this was the first among other voices he was going to hear. It means that it was the same voice that he heard at the first, back in chapter 1. That voice, you read in chapter 1, sounded to him like a trumpet. The same thing is happening now in chapter 4. And I heard that first voice I heard before, and it sounded like a trumpet. Therefore, this voice is the voice of Christ. The road to higher ground must always come through hearing the Word of God. It won't happen apart from that. There can be no spiritual growth in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ apart from being alone with the Lord and hearing Him speak to you through His Word. Study His Word for doctrine, you must. Read His Word for direction. To know the will of God, to make decisions, you must. But above and beyond that, if you and I are going to go higher and get closer, then we must hear His Word speak to us in devotion. We can study our Bibles for doctrine and study our Bibles for direction, but we must come to them and get alone with God that they might speak to us in devotion. Preachers have this danger. They can come to the Word of God because they've got to preach from it every week. They can come and study it clinically, getting a word for a sermon for the next Sunday, and fail to remember that they have a desperate need like every other child of God to come and hear the Lord speak to them personally, devotionally. John knew the Lord was speaking to him personally. Come up here, John. There's something I want you to see. Something I want you to know. The road to going higher is marked by the voice of Christ, the King. John says it was like a trumpet. That means it came with absolute clarity. He understood. He understood the words. He knew what the Lord was saying to him, no doubt in his mind. It came with great authority. It was the voice of the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. It was the voice of the King. The first thing John sees when he is brought up higher is a throne that came with desire. Christ was saying to him, John, I want you up here. I want you with me. That same voice is speaking to you this morning. What I have said all my life is, I am just a messenger delivering a message. It's all that I am. I have not come to preach my own words. I am an ambassador. I dare not come with my message as an ambassador. I must come with the message of the King. And the message that the King has told me to bring to you is go higher. I want you up here. It's not my message. It's my desire. But the same King that speaks to you is speaking to me. He's saying, John, come up, Heather. There's higher ground for you. He's speaking very personally to you. Don't just view this as a sermon, but the Lord Jesus' word to you. Come up here. Have done with lesser things. Have done with lower things. And come up here. It is the voice of your God. The voice of your King. that speaks to you with divine authority. It is not a command for you to consider, but a command to obey. There is no wiggle room here. There is no negotiation. The king says, come up. And the voice of Christ is calling you to come higher because He wants you near Him, because He wants you to see more of His glory. He wants you to see more of His sovereign power and more of His wise and loving plans for His people, for you. Because that's what John saw. John saw the great, wise and loving plan that God had for his people. Oh yes, the world. But particularly, it was what the Lord was going to do for and with and through his people. You know, that's what's behind the door. A vision. of God's greatness, of His glory, a vision of His eternal purpose and plans for your life, what you're really here for, what happens when we don't go higher, when we don't come through that door, we get all messed up as to why we're really here in this world. what we're really supposed to be living for. We lose sight of this great plan that He has for us to live for Him. It doesn't become important to us. What John sees so clearly when he goes up higher is that all that happens on earth is decreed in heaven. by the one who sits on the throne. He sees that. The great lesson that John will learn, particularly in chapters 4 and 5, is that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Let the earth tremble. The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Let His people rejoice. All is well. To know more of that, to experience more of that truth, to see more of it, you and I must take the road to higher ground. The King has spoken. My message is done. It's now what happens after the Amen that really matters. Go higher. You can. Higher than you ever dreamed possible. Because we're dealing with the King. Rather, the King is dealing with us. God read His Word upon our hearts for His name's sake. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's all pray. Our gracious God and Father, we thank Thee for tarrying with us today. It has been good for us to be here. Lord, embrace all of Thy truth set before us this day. We have no fight with Thee. We have a fight with the devil and with the flesh and with this world, but Lord, we have no fight with Thee. We thank Thee for speaking to us. Lord, as we close this meeting, it is especially our petition that Thou wilt give us the grace to be not mere hearers of the Word, but doers. For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen and Amen.