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303.
Brethren, I suggest that we take up Second Corinthians Chapter 11.
I believe that it complements what the Lord brought before us this morning in the address.
It brings before us this morning that Christ as manna.
If despised, what did God have? The only anecdote was Christ.
As the crucified one in a different form and the Apostle Paul was.
Concern for his brethren that they not lose their personal.
Individual and collective attachment to the person of the Lord Jesus. And if we lose that, we've lost everything. But if we have Him, then we have all that we need.
That's Second Corinthians 11. Dawn, yes.
Read the whole chapter.
I don't know how long it is, I guess so.
2nd Corinthians.
Would you go if you could bear with me a little in my calling of disease to play with me?
For I am jealous over you with a father's jealousy. For I have 1000 to be one husband, and I represent you as a change of person.
But I see the earth left by any means. Of course the guy would be easier to settle things and tell them why. I mean, it's just a bit of the rest.
For if he that cometh preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit which ye have not received, or another gospel which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
For I suppose I was not a whip behind the very chiefest apostles.
But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge, but we have been thoroughly made manifest among you in all things.
Have I committed an offence in abasing myself, that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely?
I robbed other churches taking wages of them to do you service.
And when I was present with you and wanted, I was chargeable to no man for that which was lacking to me, the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied. And in all things I have kept myself from being burdensome unto you.
And so will I keep myself as the truth of Christ is in me. No man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of IKEA.
Wherefore because I love you not, God knoweth.
But what I do that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them, which desire occasion.
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That wherein they glory they may be found, even as we. For such are faults, apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ, and no marvel.
For Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works.
I say again, Let no man think me a fool, if otherwise, yet as a fool receive me, that I may boast myself a little. That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly in this confidence of boasting.
Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also. For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise. For ye suffer. If a man bring you into ******* if a man devour you, if a man take of you.
If a man exalt himself, if a man smites you on the face, I speak as concerning reproach, as though we had been weak. Howbeit wherein so ever any is bold, I speak foolishly, I am bold also.
Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I? Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I? Are they ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool. I am more in labour's, more abundant in stripes above measure, in prisons, more frequent in deaths OFT of the Jews. Five times received I-40 stripes save one.
Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I have been in the deep, in journeyings often in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by my known countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness.
In watchings, often in hunger and thirst. In fastings, often in cold and nakedness.
Besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches, who is weak and I am not weak, Who is offended and I burn not?
If I must needs glory, I will glory in the things which concern my infirmities.
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed forevermore, knoweth that I lie not.
In Damascus the governor under Aratus, the king, kept the city of Damascus with the Garrison desirous to apprehend me, and through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.
Second verse.
Middle of the verse to me is something of the essence of what's on the heart of the Apostle Paul and redressing his brethren as he did. He said I'm jealous over you, for I have espoused you unto and I'm going to read Mr. Darby's translation onto one man.
God has.
Espoused us.
To one man.
His son, Jesus Christ.
And if anything.
Falsifies the truth as to the one, the man to whom we have been espoused.
Then it corrupts.
And destroys the very foundation of our relationship.
The children of Israel in the wilderness got tired of.
The manna.
But there was no other. That was the pure food of heaven. There was no substitute really for it. The anecdote, that is, what was given for the poison of the snake, was to see Christ crucified, as we had this morning.
Made sin for us. Here we have the Lord Jesus Christ in several different ways in which Satan tries to rob us of him.
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My subtlety as he did in the Garden of Eden as an Angel of light, as we see later in this chapter, and the intense love of the apostle Paul for the Saints. He was willing even to talk about himself as necessary because of his godly jealousy that they not lose the true Christ.
And.
I don't think of this so much as the apostle and his person, but rather what he represents.
God has given us the Apostle Paul as a patterned St. He's given us a person whose life and doctrine went together. He didn't just teach.
But he lived what he taught, and God gives him to us that way as a pattern. And so the apostle Paul is given of God to us, whose ministry draws our souls.
To the man.
And we need that. We need to have.
God by the Spirit draw out our hearts to be attracted and live in the enjoyment of the person, the man Christ Jesus.
Just one more thought and by way of introduction, someone was saying to me something about it's nice to be here and be together with our brethren, and it sure is and we enjoy it.
But in another sense, it's just a short little weekend in a long year, you might say.
We have the privilege of being with our brethren a few times a week. Many of us, at least a few of our brethren in the faith. But what about the rest of the week? The 24/7 if you will. Really the only one that goes with us 24/7 is ourself. And yet that's not it. Because the Lord Jesus the man.
That we need to have a conscious, individual, personal 24/7 enjoyed relationship as a not a doctrine, but as an individual person that is with us and loves us and is our friend and is our Lord and so on. We have to have it with the Lord Jesus and any false anything that comes in that falsifies the truth of what He is to us.
And our relationship with him is extremely dangerous and harmful to our souls, and subtle because we can lose him and not realize it.
Don What is meant then by the simplicity that is in Christ?
We know that in the Word of God there are things that.
Shall we say we can meditate on? And there are heights and depths of truth that are far, far beyond us, so that even if we spend a lifetime in the things of God, we still feel as if we've only scratched the surface. What, what is the expression, the simplicity that is in Christ meant to convey to us then?
Stop listening.
The Apostles.
Let me give a partial answer, but I hope it's not all that's said on that.
When we have a trial in our lives.
Very often it exposes whether we have him.
As a person that's precious to our souls. Or we only have him as a doctrine?
And I say.
Oh well, the Lord is.
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And I quote something about him that I have been taught is true. The Lord is going to be with us in every circumstance. And so on. In other words, my response is a teaching.
But the reality that God wants is the responses. Lord help me.
In other words, there's an immediate connection between my soul and the Lord Jesus, if you will. There is a certain simplicity in my relationship, that is.
Real to my soul, that I.
Exercise with the Lord Jesus, but it is very easy to only know him in a doctrinal way. And if the doctrine is not sound, then I don't even know the doctrine. I don't even know him.
And and it gets complicated.
We see it illustrated.
In the Garden of Eden.
When God's relationship with the children of Israel, I'm not children of Israel, but God's relationship with Adam and Eve had a simplicity to it.
I doubt that Adam and Eve spent much time in the garden going to this one tree for which they were not to eat.
And looking at it and saying, boy, that's beautiful fruit and uh, what's wrong with that tree and why shouldn't I eat it and so on. But Satan, when he came into the garden, started to deceive them and the simplicity as to their relationship with God started to get complicated and confused and falsified because.
He took their eye off the relationship and just.
Simply obedience to it and put it on something and said look at that fruit.
And their eye was on the fruit and was number longer walking in a common simplicity with God. And then it started to get complicated. Did God say this? Did he say that? Could you do this? Could you not do that? Well, can you touch it? Can you not touch it? And and then the not only the deceit and the deception comes into it, but outright lies are introduced into the conversation and the simplicity as to.
The matter was totally lost. And Satan does that to us. He takes our eye off our simple relationship with the Lord Jesus gets our eye on the circumstances themselves and the issues connected with the circumstances, and so on and so forth.
One more little comment. Everybody's preoccupied in the United States, at least today, with the economy and what's going to happen with what Bill called the meltdown. And the moment one thinks about one's bank account or this or that, it gets complicated.
But if yesterday the Lord Jesus was truly looked upon in my heart as the sustainer of my life, spiritually and physically, if the simplicity is there, He's the same today. Nothing changed between yesterday and today, or between pre meltdown and post meltdown.
But the reality sometimes is that circumstances expose whether our hearts are in that simple relationship or we're in relationship with respect to simply doctrine, right, as it necessarily must be, but still not enough.
Well, I think that's very good because in Corinthians, in Corinth, we know that at least for the most part, it was a wealthy city, wasn't it? It was a place that prided itself on its wealth and ultimately on its intellectual attainments too. And it were, it was those things that had gotten in the way of their enjoyment of Christ. And so right at the beginning of his first epistle, the apostle says.
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I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
That did not mean that Paul did not go beyond the gospel in speaking to them, not by any matter of means. But it meant that he did not get into human wisdom. He didn't digress into all the wise and wherefores of things.
The philosophies of men, all those things that men have brought in to complicate the issue, He simply brought in God's one remedy, one antidote for sin, Christ and him crucified, and that ultimately made nothing of man and everything of Christ.
Well, then the danger was that here they had come to Christ, accepted him as their Savior, but now they were going to live the Christian life in their own strength. They were going to look to human wisdom somehow to.
Add to what God had given in divine revelation and ultimately, as you were saying, Don, it's the same principle as Israel of old. They said the manna is not enough.
Morally and spiritually, in our day, the believer is perhaps prone to say Christ is not enough, and so we need to add something to it, whether it's the wisdom of man, whether it's the things of this world, whatever it might be. But we are prone to say, as Israel said, our soul, lo, that this light bread.
When God made.
The world, he says each day. And it was good.
The enemy corrupted that and said half God said.
And doubted the goodness of it.
The world at Christ time.
Put him to death on a cross and made him look like a criminal.
But to the eye of faith, he's a perfect burnt offering to God.
We need to remember that.
Bill, the question that you asked earlier about the simplicity that is in Christ.
In that sentence.
It's a warning against false teachers and.
He is concerned about their minds.
Lest they should be corrupted.
Paul when he wrote the book of Philippians, he wrote about four different kinds of minds. He wrote about a, uh, a single mind.
He wrote about a submissive mind.
He wrote about a spiritual mind, and he wrote about a secure mind.
And here he is concerned that their minds would become corrupt.
And what he wants them to do.
Stick to.
The purity towards Christ at the end of Philippians in chapter 4 it says in verse 8, finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are good, report. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. He's concerned about the minds that they are stable and secure.
And well grounded.
Impurity about Christ back in verse two when he's speaking about a godly jealousy. It's a holy, holy, fully complete jealousy. I have espoused you to one husband. It's it's similar to a relationship and he compares it to a marriage doesn't he and it's a union with Christ but we want to remember that he's writing to a an assembly a collective assembly and so we see the body of the Saints as in relationship compared to a marriage with Christ in the union there.
The Saints and Corinth were from.
A city.
That, to some extent, was saturated with the philosophies of men.
Very intellectual.
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And.
It is easy to take out the truth of God.
With the mind.
In addition to that.
And that's as Paul Bill has already said, he said I'm I'm determined to know nothing among you who saves Jesus Christ and his crucified. I'm not going to be with you on the grounds of human philosophy and what men have to say with respect to it.
And consequently, as he says here, he was concerned about their minds, as our brothers just mentioned, because Satan easily manipulates the human mind.
With false ideas.
And there is a danger when we even have right thoughts. I'm going to use the expression right doctrine.
There's a certain sense commonly in this room that this room has people who are well taught in the whole of the Christian, the Christianity on earth with the knowledge of right doctrine.
Well, that's essential.
But it is not enough.
And it's essential, but there's a danger in it as well.
And the danger is that we are dependent on the doctrine.
And not on the person and sometimes when difficulty comes.
We may have difficulty even evaluating how to cut the doctrine correctly, how to cut in a straight line the truth, when in reality the difficulty is not the doctrine itself or even our understanding of it. It is that it has been disconnected in our souls from the person of the Lord Jesus, and we've lost, in that way, the truth.
Of the simplicity as to the Christ, we depend on, if you will, our knowledge of the doctrine, rather than depending on the person to be the one that will take care of us in the need. I remember some years ago when a problem came up and a brother said to me, he said about a man, he said he won't understand all the doctrinal issues that are involved, but he'll be all right.
Because he has the person of the Christ that he hangs on to, and he was, I believe, at least my understanding of the truth. He was carried through properly. And Paul was concerned because this was a group of brethren who came behind in no gift, who were full of knowledge.
And the very fact that they had gift in the assembly and they had knowledge in the assembly.
He expresses his concern for them that when something false was introduced.
They would be susceptible to it and not know it.
And so he recognized there was false ideas that were creeping in.
To the Corinth and he also saw that it wasn't being discerned and the anecdote was not only correct understanding of doctrine, but Paul, more concerned with Paul was to attach their hearts to the purity of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's our need as well, brethren. We need to be attached in heart and soul.
To the person of the Lord Jesus in our daily lives. And then the Lord can use by the Spirit the doctrine or preserve us from the idea that because we know a lot, we can evaluate anything that's not correct and find the rights and the wrongs of it and we'll be OK if there's a problem. If that's how our mind is working, we're not going to be OK. We are susceptible to Satan as an Angel of light.
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One of the important things to recognize is that.
Ultimately, the truth of God is beyond the human mind to understand completely.
It comes from an infinite God, and as such it is infinite.
In fact, as we've said before, the wonder of Scripture is that God communicates it to us.
In language, and so far that it is human language that we can understand and the words are clear, but what is conveyed is ultimately beyond our understanding.
What then do we do? Well, sad to say, we know that men's minds, even among believers, have picked up the Word of God and have tried to reduce the truth of God to that which man can understand, and in doing so he always falls into error.
What scripture wants us to do and what it does properly, if we are paying attention to it, is drive us back to the source of it. So that, as Dawn has been saying, I can't live and walk in the things of God. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps and so on.
Rather, we have to go to the Lord and say, Lord, I need thee to help me understand and walk in the good of this. And that involves continual dependence at every step of the way.
It's not easy sometimes because.
As Dawn has been saying, it's not that doctrine isn't important. It's not that we brush it aside. It's not that we say all I need is to go to the Lord.
Thank God the Lord does as it says. The Lord preserveth the simple and if I have a very limited understanding of the things of the Lord and going to Him, I can get guidance.
There's nothing wrong with having a full understanding of the things of God, but ultimately I can't apply it practically. I can't walk in the good of it without having the person before me. And that's I hardly agree that's.
Something that the Apostle is very strongly bringing before us in this chapter.
I wonder if we might look at a case of the Lord in John 11 within the day that Lazarus was raised from the dead. And, and I've just enjoyed this, uh, example of how the Lord speaks to Martha. Umm, I trust it's an example of what we're speaking about.
Umm, they didn't know about Lazarus being raised that day. They believed in a general resurrection, that Lazarus would rise and someday in the future. Jesus says in verse umm 23 Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha says unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her.
I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in me, though he were dead.
Yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
Believeth thou this? Now notice her answer. She said unto him, Ye Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. Isn't that the simplicity in Christ of her? She didn't understand all about the truth, the resurrection, but she believed the man that was before her, and that was good enough.
I think it's good to realize that, uh, in the Old Testament, God planted a fruitful vine in Israel. He took a sample batch of man and he said, I'm going to make my blessings revolve around this group of men. And that was man under responsibility and he failed. So in the New Testament, God introduced another man and that man is Christ. And he said, all of my blessings, all fruit is going to be channeled through this one person.
And that's what we need to lay hold hold of in our soul. All blessing, all of our resources, all fruit is going to come through this one person, that's the Lord Jesus.
It's all based upon the fact that He went to the cross and He bore our sins and He gave up His life and He suffered for our sins. He made atonement for God, and now you and I have our life in Him.
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We have life because of Christ and everything that God is looking for, and you and I is going to come through that person. If it doesn't, it's from that old man.
That God condemned and determined wasn't worth looking for fruit from anymore.
So that's something for our souls to get all it's very simple, isn't it?
God blessings for all eternity is going to flow forth from His Son, the Lord Jesus.
The Lord Jesus himself provides us a beautiful example of.
What's needed sometimes for our souls?
I'm referring to the day of his resurrection.
And the two that were on their way to Emmaus.
They said to him as he conversed with them and they didn't know it was himself.
He said we try. They said we trusted it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.
They had a certain perception of the Lord Jesus.
They were true followers of the Lord.
They did have.
A false expectation of what was going to take place at that time, even though doctrinally he is the one who will redeem Israel or has redeemed it and will redeem it in the future.
But they're discouraged because what they saw him to be didn't happen.
They consequently were heading the opposite direction. And that discouragement they were going home.
They hired him, but they didn't really enter in at that moment into.
What their hearts needed. So the Lord Jesus, He goes with them. He attaches himself to them.
And he presents what himself, no matter what, that's what we need. We need himself. And so he presents himself. How in as the Scriptures present him. That's the only way we want to present him. We don't.
Get apart from the Word of God. It's essential, but the person of the Lord Jesus is presented to a soul according to the word of God.
And it makes him real.
It opens him up to the soul. And they were then as a result attracted to himself and to his person. And when?
He reveals himself to them and then disappears from their eyes and they go back to Jerusalem immediately. It wasn't to talk about all the Old Testament scriptures and an increase in understanding of prophetic things and what was going to happen.
Those they knew they enjoyed we should know and enjoy, but preeminent in their souls is they now had himself.
As they hadn't had an hour or two before. And when we leave this place, if the Lord leaves us here through the weekend, we want to leave it with a conscious, personal, individual sense of going out the door.
With the Lord Jesus with us.
As we go forward.
And if we don't, if it's only the doctrinal side of it or certain truths as there are, it's not fully what Paul was desiring, that they be a spouse to that man in a pure way.
That's important too. An uncorrupted Jesus.
They needed to have. We need an uncorrupted Jesus or we will not be able to lock.
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What, what I think would be good if we said something on the chase virgin to Christ. Uh, if you have a thought on that, on, uh, I'll interject, uh, what you're thinking about it. Uh, you've mentioned about those two on the way to Emmaus and how they, they had a false hope. They expected Israel to be established here on earth and the Lord was in resurrection. He was about also to ascend up into heaven.
And he was going to gather people to himself there. And I believe that's that connects with the chase Virgin to Christ. That is, we're called to be the heavenly bride. We're not called to be reigning here on earth as earthly people. Our earthly time today until the Lord comes is a stranger's and pilgrims. And then the Lord's going to take us into his home, the Father's house.
And that's when we are going to then enter into the full enjoyment in the presence physically of the Lord there.
Uh, that is the simplicity of the relation, our relationship, what we're called to be that chase virgin.
Nothing in this world is pure.
As a world system, nothing, absolutely everything that we interact with every day bears the corruption of sin.
And no matter what a person sets before them as a goal or an object in their life, and scripture uses and I'll use the example of money.
Money as an object is a corrupted thing.
And as a consequence, it's the mammon of unrighteousness, and it can be properly used. But when it is an object of the heart, it will bring a man to all evil. There's nothing he won't do if he lusts after it sufficiently is an object to his soul. There is absolutely nothing for the human heart to be attracted to in this world.
That is pure nothing.
Any measure in which our hearts are drawn to something in this world system that is set up in sin, it is impure. Some things are more impure than others.
But Paul recognized that you take on the character you become formed by.
What your object is.
And every single one of us, to the extent to which something in this world is drawing us, is corrupted by it because it's impure. And yet it does form us. It forms our lives. And as a consequence, Paul said, God has given to us one and only one thing that is a pure object.
To the heart.
And that will form us after that object, and that is his son Christ.
Example Bill used this morning the manna.
And it's very Scripture is very, very careful to show us that the manna.
Was pure.
Because it never touched the ground, all the food of Egypt is characterized as coming from or on the ground.
And consequently it bore the odor and the taste of.
What it came from?
And it's a picture of impurity. But the manna came down on the dew, and it came down on the dew because it was to be that which was pure and undefiled by the earth itself. And so it was their food.
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As the old corn of the land, we have the Lord Jesus in heaven as a man, and in John 17 he set before us, he said, I sanctify myself.
To the Father in that prayer, what he's saying is, when he went back to heaven, his presence in heaven.
They're separated from the ur as the object of our hearts gives us an object outside of the pollution of the world.
It also implies the relationship of love, that we would be attracted to Him there. And if my heart is with Him where he is this afternoon, truly with Him as He is sanctified at the right hand of God, then I have.
Something pure and chaste to keep me.
But if that's not the object, or there's a mixed object, then to the extent to which something else is drawing me, to that extent I'm subject to corruption and pollution.
To make it practical, we all understand.
What it means to see a young couple who are engaged, don't we? The joy on their faces, the pleasure the girl has in showing others her ring, the best wishes and congratulations that are given, maybe some gifts, and all the rest of it.
But what would we think if?
Some days later we heard or saw that girl out with another boy.
Keeping company with someone else.
Oh, we would say, what is going on? Something is seriously wrong here.
We know that God did not institute engagements. They were something that man brought in. But God recognizes them. God honored them. God gives instruction concerning them in the law, and here He uses them as an illustration of our relationship to Christ.
What a wonderful relationship that is. The marriage in that sense has not taken place yet, but there is a commitment there, if we could use that expression.
A commitment on his part. There ought to be a commitment on our part. And Paul says, as it were, I want you to be 100% for Christ, not for anything else. I want your heart to be 100% for him.
And his brother Dawn has pointed out that will keep us in problems and difficulties. Some of us have to hang our heads when we look back on our lives and remember when it wasn't so.
But I can remember.
And I don't think it hurts to mention it because it was certainly not said privately, but our late brother Armstead Barry, who has been with the Lord for more than 30 years now. So quite a few here would not remember him. But I will remember his telling us how that he almost went off the rails at the time of the Tunbridge Wells difficulty. That was almost 100 years ago. And he recalled how that there were various things being said at that time.
And comments being made about this brother and that brother and how he would deal with the problem and how this one would deal with the problem.
But I never forgot what he related to us.
He said someone said concerning an older brother at that time.
Brother JB Dunlop, he said someone mentioned and Mr. Dunlop, what do you think he'll do?
Mr. Dunlop at that time was probably.
About 70.
And he had been through a good many difficulties in his lifetime and someone intending it as a somewhat derogatory comment said.
Oh, he'll just pray his way through it as usual.
But in saying that, he paid him, shall I say, the highest compliment he could have paid.
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How did that dear man, we don't wish to eulogize anybody, but how did he survive all of those difficulties?
Not by his knowledge of Scripture, not by his understanding of right doctrine, Important though it is, we please understand we don't minimize it.
But he went the right way and chose the right path because his eye was on the person and he recognized his need for dependence. He recognized that human wisdom, even in spiritual things, would not find the right way that he needed the person.
Speaks about another Jesus.
He the cometh.
Preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached.
There's only one.
And when we have them and when we receive them.
It doesn't change.
Well, doctrinally, we all recognize that.
But what we have to realize is we live in the United States.
In 2008.
And we live in a society that we tend to be influenced by more than we may realize.
In which nobody.
Stay satisfied with anything very long.
Everybody gets.
The work board.
Was used this morning and so.
And there is a constant driven system.
To have something new every day and.
And there is no tendency or even teaching to be satisfied with anything.
And consequently, when we get influenced and affected by that, there is an unconscious tendency to have to add to embellish change.
Unconsciously, not intentionally, but introduce another Jesus.
That is more exciting. That is more relevant, that is more.
Uh, satisfying whatever it is.
And it's true whenever what governs connects itself with the mind, particularly because.
The Lord Jesus that we know, we know in our minds, yes.
But the truth as to his person?
God has given us minds for that purpose, but the problem with the mind is it likes to judge and evaluate. So God has given us a conscience that we can't use to judge and evaluate. It just doesn't.
By itself we can't change how it works. God tells us it has to have the right enlightenment. We have to have the truth that it will work on.
But at the same time.
What really governs our lives?
Is our hearts.
And if we live in this society, which in some ways the heart is, man may crave what his heart is, but he tends to be constantly drawn to something new through the mind.
And it's a particular I speak to young people. The world is changing every day and it's changing in a way that tends to create within you and us that were older too.
But it ends, especially when our minds are young and life change.
You get old enough and you don't like change, but when you're young you like it and the IT is also a time that it's easy to be susceptible to a different Jesus.
That is Christianity and the truth related to his person having to be improperly adapted in such a way that it's no longer the truth. And Paul saw in Corinth that danger, especially because of the mind, and he was concerned for his brethren. And he said, if I preach a different gospel, then don't accept it even if I do.
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If an Angel does, it doesn't matter. There is only one, and when you have it, you have it. Don't give it up.
And don't seek another.
Failed to see where the blessing comes from and failed to connect our Christianity with the person of the Lord Jesus and it become a mind. That's when we change it to another Jesus, if you please, by going back to the illustration of the manna.
If the children of Israel had constantly associated that manner with the Jehovah that had brought them out of Egypt and that had told them he was going to take them into the land of Canaan, if they'd have kept that before their souls as a living reality, they wouldn't have needed to take that manner and pound it and to make it and get occupied with making it more.
Palatable to the taste buds.
Because they'd associated it with what it spoke of.
It seems to me here it's not the taste buds, but it's the person of Christ and so people make Jesus.
What they think will satisfy them, and it's their minds that do it, and they destroy the real one.
There is a difference too, and I know.
Our brethren would agree with this between something new and something fresh.
The Manor had to be fresh every day, didn't it?
Only on the day before the Sabbath could they take a nap for two days.
And have it stay in a state that it could be eaten if they tried it any other day. It bred worms and stank. It couldn't be done. And so the Word of God never brings before us anything new in that sense. It doesn't bring before us that which is beyond Christ. It doesn't bring before us things that are innovative or that kind of thing. But it does, I believe, present Christ.
In that freshness, which is always something that appeals to us. It's not if I could say it very reverently, it's never the thought of having leftovers served up to us. It's always that which is fresh. Is that possible? Yes. There is more in Christ than you and I will exhaust for all eternity.
And surely there is more in Him than you and I can ever enjoy and assimilate in our wilderness pathway down here. So let's not mistake the lack of newness, for, shall we say, that which is flat, or that which is old, or that which has no freshness to it? Far be the thought. I believe the way the manna was given brings that out. As Dawn says, it never was on the ground. It fell on the dew, and it had to be collected every morning.
There was energy involved, but there was always that freshness with it. And as Doug says, had they recognized with whom it was in relation and how God had LED them out, they would not have, as Doug says, tried to.
Mix it and bake it and do all kinds of different things with it. God didn't in that way rebuke them for it, as far as I understand from Scripture, but it shows the beginnings of a heart that wasn't satisfied with God's provision.
Really would link it closely to the source and that makes it fresh, isn't it? And so it's that close link of where it came from that makes it fresh, isn't it?
And also it's food.
Nobody's planning to go without food. In fact, you can't.
And the Lord Jesus is the food of our spiritual life.
01:05:05
Not only on Earth.
He will be the food.
Of our lives throughout eternity.
And when we talk about food, we don't talk about the intellect. We sometimes someone says, oh, that's good. How do you make it so that it can be reproduced as food by someone else? But for most of us, that and all of us, and to even if we're the ones that prepare it, we take it in not as an intellectual exercise. We take it in because we need it. We live by it. We can't live without it.
And the Lord Jesus is presented to us as the food of the new man, not only while we're here on earth, but he will be the food. We have eternal life, yes, but that life will be sustained in us by having forever food, which is the person of the Lord Jesus. And as Bill said, we will never exhaust.
His person we will never get properly in heaven anyways. We'll never get dissatisfied with the quality of the food.
But it will always be the same person.
And we will enjoy it, perhaps in a growth sort of a way, but it's still the same. That's the point. Paul was concerned that a true Jesus would become a false Jesus, and not real food at all, but something else that fed the old man and not the new. And so it was no longer the truth as it is in Jesus.
They just take a moment to point out a point that's been helpful.
Here we have verse 4.
For, uh, Speaking of the preaching of Jesus, and that's the son of God in his humiliation. And we have that contrast in Philippians chapter one, just one, a sample expression.
Philippians chapter one.
Where verse 18 the doctor Paul mentions the preaching of Christ.
That's the Son of God and his exaltation.
And, uh, they're both precious to us, but the Corinthians needed to understand that they didn't reign with Christ. They were down with. They were here to represent one who had suffered and been rejected. And so the needed food for them was the Lord Jesus in his rejection and suffering. And that's why I believe we have the preaching of Jesus brought before us here.
Nsnoise.
Well, it's beautiful to see. We don't need to spend a lot of time on it. But the apostle here speaks about what he is going to bring before them as a little folly.
Why does he say that? Because he was going to have to speak about himself.
And it was because of their condition that he had to do it. And that's why he says in the end of verse 4.
Ye might well bear with it. Shouldn't be him there, it's really it.
Referring back to the folly that he mentions in the first verse, Paul didn't want to speak about himself. He would much rather speak about Christ.
And he does minister Christ, but in meeting the things on which they were having difficulty, if we could use the expression, he is compelled to come down to their level. There were those in Corinth who were trying to take over. There were those who were at least in a subtle way, trying to bring in another Jesus and another gospel, to put a slant on things which instead of ministering to the new man.
Ministered to the old man, which brought Christianity ultimately down to the level of this world.
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And Paul, in seeking to combat that, is compelled to sink down. I shouldn't say sink down, but to come down to that level and to speak about himself in order to show them how far away they were. We wouldn't know much about the sufferings of Paul if it weren't for this chapter. Most of the things that are mentioned later in this chapter are not recorded anywhere else in the Word of God.
Some of them are, but most of them are not. Most of the occasions that are mentioned in the latter part of this chapter we do not know the details about, but He mentioned to them, I believe, to show that He had suffered for Christ. If they were trying to be exalted, if they were trying to take a place of pride, if they were trying to abuse human wisdom to supplement the things of the Lord, what had the apostle done?
He had followed a pathway of rejection and suffering even to the point of being made nothing of. They said, Paul, your bodily presence is weak in your speech, contemptible. Paul says, well so be it. I didn't want you to look at me anyway. Brethren, if that's the way it has to be, that Christ may be exalted, then that's alright. And so he used every opportunity to minister Christ. But he comes down to their level in talking about himself.
And so it ought to be with you and me. God doesn't want to occupy us with ourselves. He doesn't want us to occupy others with ourselves. He wants us to be taken up with the person of Christ. But here the apostle is compelled to come down to that level and to point out to them where they had failed. Not an order that they would be taken up with it. Not in order that they would make a big thing about it, but in order that they might judge where they were and what was hindering their full enjoyment of Christ.
I wonder how our time is is gone. I believe we've spoken much about the simplicity which is in Christ and I wonder if I put one verse.
Maybe as a simple description of that in the The Lord's Prayer to the Father in John 17.
And the last verse.
And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it.
That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them.
And I in them.
Isn't that?
The simplicity of Christ, what the Lord desires of us, he's declared unto us the Father, and he wants, He seeks to dwell on us, that that love which the Father had for his Son may be in US, and that he might dwell in US.
Time is up. I'd just like to say trust will be fresh exercises to the next reading meeting. I'm not personally suggesting that we need to go farther in this chapter, but.
Umm, as the Lord directs, there might be other subjects or aspects to take up in other readings.
Shall we sing again the last three verses of Hymn 303?
His word of light before us, spread by which our past is seen. His love a banner, or our heads from harm preserves us free stands as 4-5 and six.