Jack Jurgens's Ministry Library

Ministry on Friday night of the 2022 conference.

[0:02] I want to read some brief readings, please, firstly from the book of Joshua and in the 14th chapter. The 14th chapter of the book of Joshua.

Can I say what a privilege it is to be here this weekend? Very grateful for the invitation to be with you, and we really do trust that the Lord will mightily bless us as we’re gathered together.

Look at Joshua, please, and chapter 14.

And I want to read, please, verse number 12. Joshua 14, 12.

[0:44] And this is Caleb speaking. And he says, you’ll see at the beginning of the verse, give me this mountain.

Now over to chapter 15, please. And we’re going to read some of the words of Aksa, the daughter of Caleb, and verse number 19, she says this, give me a blessing.

And halfway through the verse, give me also springs of water.

And a further reading please in 1 Chronicles and chapter 4.

The first book of Chronicles and chapter 4.

And reading of verse number 10.

[1:50] And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, O that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me.

And God granted him that which he requested. Now, the Lord always blesses to us the reading of his word.

I often wonder why people come to meetings.

[2:31] Why do people come to conference? Why are you here this weekend?

And honest answers only will do in the presence of God. And I suppose that there will be a variety of reasons why we are all here.

There will be primary reasons. reasons and I’m trusting that the primary reason is that which we have been praying about.

And I was heartened to hear the prayers and the direction of the prayers of the brothers, that it might be that the Lord himself would be amongst us and empower that we might hear his word. There’ll be other reasons why you might be here. You might be here to see friends and to make new friends and who knows but maybe long-term friends. I’m sure that people come to the meetings like this for all kinds of reasons.

But I have been praying that will all of us go away different and that we will all of us go away with a prayer burdening our hearts.

The prayer that I would love to burden my heart with, and I trust we all shall, is really the prayer, one of the prayers or requests that we read in Joshua 15, where Axter says, give me also springs of water.

[3:51] Give me also springs of water. Of course, I’m really hoping we’ll pray a kind of a New Testament equivalent of that.

It’s doubtful we’ll go away praying, actually give me also springs of water.

But as we’re going to see in the next little while.

[4:14] There is a New Testament equivalent to this. Give me also springs of water.

Don’t you like the desire that’s expressed in these requests?

Give me this mountain, says Caleb, which he saw as a spy when he entered into the land.

And having seen that mountain, he’s now in the land. the land. To Joshua he says, give me this mountain.

He’s acts as she has a field, she’s asking for a blessing, she says give me also springs of water.

Can you understand in this that there is an appreciation of where they are, but at the same time there is a proper discontent with being just settled and happy, with not having the best that they could have in the land that God had given them.

[5:09] So what they’re saying is, I really want the best. Give me this mountain, says Caleb.

Give me a blessing. Give me also springs of water.

Or in the prayer of Jabez later in 1 Chronicles 4, enlarge my coast.

Lord, let me not be constricted. Let me not be limited.

Let me not be constrained and small and mean in these things.

He’s saying, Lord, enlarge my coast, enlarge my border. Lord, let me be and have more than I have now. And he’s bringing his prayer to God, the God of Israel, that he might be enlarged. It seems to me that would be a good thing, if in the course of this weekend this touched us and that we went away discontented with how we have been. It may be as I speak to you that you have known better days spiritually. I’m kind of long enough in the tooth to know this, that the last sign of, that not the first sign, but the last sign of a backslidden condition is not to be at the meetings.

Plenty of meetings I’ve preached in with backsliders in the meeting.

[6:30] Maybe tonight you look back to better days. Or maybe it is that you come to the conference and you’re in the good of things.

May God grant to us all, whether we’re in the one condition or the other or somewhere in between, that we might go away with holy desires and that those desires might be, to know springs of water in our land, that we be not dry, that we be not arid, that we be not unfruitful in that of which the land speaks, and that it may be that our souls and our spirits will be enlarged, and that it will be that the Lord himself will enlarge us.

[7:15] I love these people.

Of course, they’ve arrived in the land. Joshua begins, you may remember, with the fact that Moses, God’s servant, was dead.

And here is Joshua now, he’s leading them into the land. It’s sometimes said that, Moses is mirrored in Peter in the New Testament, he brought them through the wilderness, but actually Joshua is mirrored in Paul where he brings them into the good of the territory that we have as being in Christ. So let’s just about that for a moment because I wouldn’t want us to miss it. How many times have you sat in the shoes of the firstborn, in the land of Egypt, on the Passover night.

[8:05] And on that night, there’s a dead lamb on the kitchen top, or wherever it was.

I’m not sure they had kitchen tops, but you’ll understand what I’m saying.

And on the doorpost, there’s the sprinkled blood of that lamb.

And a word from heaven for God said, when I see the blood, I will pass over you.

How many times have you sat, maybe in gospel meetings or in your own sanctuary at home, in the presence of God, And you have been glad, as it were, for blood sprinkled on your doorposts and on your lintel.

And to hear the word of God again, when I see the blood, I will pass over you.

What a happy place to be in.

That when the destroyer was coming through the land at the midnight hour, the Lord himself would hover over to prevent the destroyer destroying in the homes of the people of God, with blood there on the doorposts.

And aren’t we glad that Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us, and that by that precious blood, we have known redemption greater far than Israel ever knew.

[9:19] I love to see the people of God as they’re leaving in the strength of the food that they ate, the lamb roast.

That was the strangest meal you were ever at. Well, you were never at it, but it would be the strangest meal that we would ever have been at.

Where on the table is a whole lamb, whole lamb.

The head, the legs, the inwards, all there on the table. I’ve had some strange meals in my lifetime, but I have never seen a whole roast lamb on the table, nor people sitting at the table with a staff in their hand, their shoes on their feet and garments all girded for the journey that they were going to take in haste, and strengthened by that land.

They’re gonna make the journey to the Red Sea.

And as they’re at the Red Sea, God is gonna open it, you know the story well, and he’s gonna open it to let them out of the land of Egypt.

And he goes through the sea and they’re in the wilderness and the sea is closed.

[10:26] I heard a brother many years ago say a simple thing, which was this, that God opened the sea to let them out, and he closed it again to keep them out, because God never wants us to go back to the world from which we have been delivered, from which we have been redeemed. He’s brought us out into the wilderness.

And here we are tonight, truly in a wilderness. This world is a wilderness wide. Mr Darby wrote that lovely hymn. This world is a wilderness wide. I did it. There’s nothing to sustain us, except that which comes from heaven. They’re in the wilderness and singing. Don’t tell the brethren, but there’s a women’s meeting in Exodus 15. By the way, the only one in the Bible. You don’t get any more. And there they are. And Moses is singing and the people of God are singing and and Miriam is singing and the women with her at the end of Exodus 15.

[11:23] In Exodus 12, the first blood of sacrifice in your Bible. In Exodus 15, the first song in the Bible.

The Lord had done great things for them, whereof they’re glad.

He’s brought them out now through the sea and into the wilderness.

And ultimately, he’s going to get them through the Jordan, as big a miracle as the Red Sea.

And he’s going to bring them in on dry land, even as he brought them out on dry land, because the great purpose of God was this, that they’d come into the land that God had promised them all of those years before in the Abrahamic covenant, the Palestinic covenant.

He’s gonna bring them in to the land that he had.

I want you to watch this carefully because I haven’t got long to say it in, and I need to say it quickly, so you need to grasp it. so you’ll need to be awake.

I’m the one with the excuse for sleeping in this meeting.

With that jet lag from yesterday, still not out of my system. I hope he’s out by tomorrow.

So follow this very carefully, be alert for this.

When I see the people go through the Red Sea, I remember this, that Christ died for me.

[12:37] In the language of Galatians 1 and 5, he gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world. I see the Red Sea that Christ died for me. He delivered them by blood and by power, by blood in Exodus 12, by power in Exodus 14, and he’s now, I see this, he died for me. But when I get to the Jordan there’s another thing I see, and it isn’t now that he died for me. So much as at the Jordan what I learn is this, that I died with him, and that it’s only in the power of my death with him and my resurrection with him that I will ever be in the good of the land into which God has brought me, now I do want you to follow this carefully you see you see when you were saved, whatever that was, and you became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[13:45] Wonderful things happened. I expect that when you came to Christ it was for one thing in particular. When I was saved, it was because I knew that I was going to hell, and the Spirit of God really, really wrote this deeply in my heart, that I I knew I was lost and I didn’t want to be there.

I did want to be in heaven.

And my wife, she got saved at Sunday school like I did and she realized that she had an unclean heart and she wanted a clean heart.

Other people I’ve met come because they know the Lord’s coming and they don’t want to miss out.

All sorts of different reasons why people come to the Lord, usually for one main thing.

And then you say, well, praise God, I’m saved.

I’ve got the thing I came for. And then you start reading your Bible. I hope you do.

Then you start reading your Bible and you do discover this, that actually the moment that you were saved, You are blessed with every spiritual blessing.

[14:53] I saw once on some online thing where people were trying to list and enumerate all the blessings that they had in Christ. I think that was a long list and difficult to have it complete, but I’ll just tell you this, that the moment that you got saved, you were blessed with every single spiritual blessing that God had to give you, and the sphere in which he blessed us was in Christ.

That is in the man at God’s right hand who has entered into death and risen and is ascended and is at God’s right hand. That’s where our blessings are. They’re in Christ. You see, and the idea is this, that our blessings now are not like the blessings of the Israelites long ago where there were blessings connected with the land and connected with Zion and the anticipation of Messiah reigning.

Our blessings now are present, they’re heavenly, they’re connected with that sphere, they’re in that sphere of Christ at God’s right hand.

And so the idea now is this, that the Bible is not teaching a health and wealth gospel.

That’s a terrible thing when people preach a health and wealth gospel.

It’s a funny thing this, but they all die and they all take nothing with them.

[16:16] Very, really odd, just a moment’s thought and you see that how crazy that is to preach a health and wealth gospel.

But what we have is every blessing in Christ in the heavenly places, spiritual blessings, not material, but spiritual blessings.

You see, and Canaan represents that.

Canaan is heavenly territory in picture.

Where it is that we are in Canaan, that’s in New Testament, in Ephesians language, that’s where we are now.

So they come over the Jordan, or through the Jordan, and they get to Gilgal, and in the good of Gilgal, they enter into the land. So these people that we’ve been reading about, they’ve entered into the land.

They’ve got their feet on the territory.

But by the way, I hope you have got your feet on the territory.

Like it’s one thing to sit at home or in a meeting and to study or to read your Bible or to listen to preaching and the brother’s taking you through Ephesians or you’re studying Ephesians for yourself and you come away with your head stuffed full of knowledge, of Ephesians territory and church truth in the large thing.

And it’s possible to be stuffed full of information and to be as cold as Christmas and as hard as nails and to be distant from the enjoyment of what we actually have in Christ.

[17:45] Because these people only enjoyed the land in the measure in which they put their feet on the territory. Wasn’t that what the Lord said to them?

Every part of that land that the sole of their foot would tread on would be theirs.

And if you didn’t get to the gold mine, you’d never dig out the gold.

[18:06] And if you never got to the hills, you’d never get the benefit and you’d never get the milk and the honey.

Unless you got your feet on the territory. These people have done that.

They’re in the possession that God gave them, but they have now a proper, holy discontent, in the sense that they didn’t just want to be there, but they wanted to be in the enjoyment of what they had and God had given them in the land.

Do you get the point?

So Caleb says, give me this mountain.

Give me a blessing, says Axel.

Give me springs of water also. Let not my field be dry.

Let it not be unfruitful. Let it be irrigated.

Let my land here, this field that I have, let it be productive.

Don’t let me just live dry here, unfruitful, barren, arid.

She’s really saying, no, give me also springs of water.

[19:15] Do you know what Midland Park needs?

Or wherever you may come from, where I come from on the south coast of England, do you know what it is that we need?

In our assemblies, we need people in the good of and in the enjoyment of the heavenly position that we have in Christ.

To be living above the level of the street, no more than that.

To be living in the good of heavenly things, of Christ in glory, ourselves feeding on Him there, taken up with Him, forget social media, be done with all the drivel that people are taken up with, the transient, passing things.

Brothers and sisters, we are connected to the eternal.

Let us live as if it’s true.

Let us be in the good of it. Give me also springs of water. Maybe that would be a cry tonight from a dried up soul, from a worldly mind.

The cry that comes for the dismissal of a carnal attitude.

Lord, let me live in the good of all that I have, In thee, at God’s right hand.

[20:38] Let me live as belonging to heaven. Let me live out, Lord, the life of heaven on earth, like at Philippi.” Brother was quoting from Philippians 3.

There’s Philippi, the colony of Rome. The life of Rome was lived out in Philippi.

Paul writes to them, he says this, live out the life of heaven in Philippi.

The general population of the city would live out the life of Rome. It had the registers of Rome, the fashions of Rome, the clothes of Rome, the language of Rome, the manners of Rome. In Philippi, if you’ve been to Rome and then you went to Philippi, you’d think this is déjà vu. I’ve been here before, even if you haven’t.

[21:21] To spalls of the Philippians, live out the life of heaven. Let this one thing be before you, that I might know him, the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death.

Let Christ be my life.

Let Christ be all.

All that this might be the outcome of our meetings this weekend.

Give me also springs of water.

The water, of course, in the Bible will speak of the Holy Spirit.

Well, water speaks of different things, but certainly this kind of thing would speak of the Holy Spirit.

The Lord Jesus said in John 7, he that believeth in me out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living waters.

This speak he of the Spirit.

Oh, may it be that filled with the Spirit and with the Spirit of God, ungrieved in our life, that we might all desire to live in the good and enjoyment of what we’ve been brought into in Christ.

And may our conference meetings help us to that end.

Filed under: Conf Ministry, Conferences, jackson-ian