Aberdeen Conference: 2019
Table of Contents
Numbers 19:1-6
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Romans 13 and verse 11 And that knowing the time that now is high, time to awake out of sleep.
But now is our salvation nearer than when we believe. Let's look to the Lord, my gracious, loving God and Father, how we marvel at such grace and long-suffering that we are here once again.
To be over thy precious word.
And we thank thee that I precious word, can minister for each and everyone's need here Thou knowest our hearts, Thou knowest our weakness.
And we just cast ourselves on the Blessed Lord, we thank you for the land in which we live, that we can come here without any hindrances.
We realize, Lord, that there are so many of thy people.
Who are being persecuted and under such great trials.
Not only.
For their faith in thee, but as through poverty as well.
How rich we are, but we thank for the riches of the grace that we have in thee. Oh, what a marvelous prospect that we have to look forward to, to see the face to face, to hear that voice.
Blessed Lord, may our hearts be filled.
With thyself as we take up thy portion, we commend ourselves to Thee, Lord, and pray this and thy worthy and precious name, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.
Best A somewhat unusual chapter for my brethren's consideration.
Over the past little while.
There have been a number of questions brought up, not just to me, but to others.
Concerning failure and restoration and how it all takes place.
And coupled with that.
How an assembly is to deal with?
Serious failure and restoration.
And we know that although we don't get our principles from the Old Testament.
We often find New Testament principles illustrated for us in the Old Testament.
I was wondering if the brethren would consider our taking up numbers 19.
It's a chapter that brings before us restoration.
After defilement and failure and.
I would suggest there is a very real message in it for our souls today.
Sometimes restoration is poorly understood, sometimes we don't carry it out very well individually.
Sometimes, sad to say, and I speak to my own heart, we don't carry it out very well collectively.
In seeking to restore others.
And I wonder if it would be profitable for us to consider that chapter.
The silence implied consent.
Numbers, Chapter 19.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, and unto Aaron, saying, This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord hath commanded, saying.
Speaking to the children of Israel, that they bring the a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke. And you shall give her unto Eliezer the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face. And Eliezer the priest shall take of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle of her blood directly before the Tabernacle of the congregation 7 times. And one shall burn the heifer in his sight, her skin, and her flesh, and her blood.
With her dung shall shall he burn, and the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop and scarlet cast it unto the midst of the burning of the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh.
In water. And afterwards he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the even. And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the evening. And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place.
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And it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel, for a water of separation. It is a purification for sin.
And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even and it shall be unto the children of Israel, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among them For a statute forever. He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean 7 days he shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the 7th day he shall be clean. But if he purify not himself on the third day, then the 7th day he shall not be clean.
Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defile the Tabernacle of the Lord, and that soul shall be cut off from Israel. Because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is yet upon him. This is the law. When a man dieth in a tent, all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent shall be unclean. 7 days in every open vessel which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean.
And whosoever touches one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man or a grave, shall be unclean 7 days. And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt Hartford. For purification for sin and running water shall be put there unto you in a vessel. And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him the touch of the bone, or one slain, or one dead, or grave.
And a clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day and on the 7th day, And on the 7th day he shall purify himself and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be unclean. And even but the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that shall shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord. The water separation hath not been sprinkled upon him. He is unclean, and it shall be a perpetual statute under them.
That he that sprinkled the water of separation shall wash his clothes.
And he that touches the water separation shall be unclean until even, and whatsoever the unclean person touches shall be unclean, and the soul that touches it shall be unclean until even.
Perhaps we could make a few remarks just to set.
Shall we say this the the?
Scripture in its place here.
We read in the New Testament that.
The Lord Jesus in John 13.
Washed His disciples feet and showed them how that that would be necessary continually throughout their pathway through this world.
Inevitably, we contract defilement by walking through this world.
And also when we get to Ephesians, Paul reminds them of the.
Washing of water by the word.
We know, and at least I trust we know that.
The application of the blood to wash away our sins, if we could say judicially in the sight of God.
Is necessary only once We never read of more than one application of the blood of Christ.
But here the emphasis in this chapter.
Is on purification.
Not in the sense of saving us from the penalty of our sins, but rather restoring us to communion. And so the emphasis here is on.
And we'll go into the details later, but the emphasis here is on the water.
Mixed with the ashes which were applied to the individual that was defiled in order.
That he might be clean.
We know, of course, that self judgment is a necessary thing in each one of our lives, and all of us can go to the Lord.
Hopefully as soon as possible after we sin and get right with him.
But here it anticipates, if we could say it, a more serious situation where the defilement was such that others needed to be involved.
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In applying that water of purification. And so we see here, I believe, the responsibility of others, and we can apply it to the local assembly and to pastors who have the gift from the Lord for that.
To be the ones to be a help in restoring one who has sinned. And so there is so much in this chapter I would suggest that bears on that subject and I believe it can be very profitable for us in going through it and seeing how the various types apply to the time in which you and I are living.
In 38 years, 600,000 people died, didn't they? So it was 40, about 40 deaths a day.
So this was something that needed to be applied every day, didn't it? Touching a dead body.
And the Word of God recognizes, doesn't it, that sometimes that was necessary.
They couldn't avoid it. A man touching a grave or touching a dead body or whatever it might be, even a bone, something that perhaps had been aged for years.
But the point is, wherever the defilement came from, it was there, and it had to be atoned for. I shouldn't say atoned for, but it had to be recognized before God.
And purification applied, didn't it?
But before we get into the details of purification.
What is noticeable at the beginning of the chapter is that they had to provide a red heifer.
And what is important to notice is that it was without spot.
Verse 2 Wherein is no blemish and upon which never came yoke.
What a picture of the Lord Jesus.
He was the only one who ever walked this earth, the only man that ever walked this earth.
Who was absolutely without spot, and wherein was number, blemish, and who was never under the yoke? You and I are under a yoke because of sin.
But here was one who never had to be under that yoke. And as we see the Lord Jesus going through this world, he was the one who could touch the leper without being defiled. He was the one who could touch the dead body without being defiled or touch a grave.
Or put his hand on those who were seriously diseased. If any other had done that, an Israelite had done that.
He would have had to go through this purification, but here was one who came in absolute perfection, who was never under that yoke of sin, and because of who he was, could touch the leper, and say, I will be thou clean.
But the leper typifies the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we find that that heifer had to go into death as the Lord Jesus did.
And I know what's going on here, but it's beautiful to see the type here of the Lord Jesus Christ in all his perfection, and that leper has to be brought out.
Without the camp, that was the place where the sin offering had to be burned. And that leper or that heifer, I should say, had to be brought out there and had to be killed. And it's bloodshed.
Before there could be water purification.
What a picture of the fact that first of all.
That blood had to be shed from a perfect victim, one who was without blemish, one who never came under the yoke, and then after that the water purification could be provided.
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Master, was Matthew 11? Is that a different yoke? Take my yoke upon you.
Yes, I believe so. Tell us the difference.
Well, here I believe the yoke is the result of sin.
With the Lord Jesus, you and I need a yoke to keep us in the pathway of faith. And the Lord Jesus says I have walked that pathway. I know if we could say it reverently, that is what the pathway is like. I know the difficulties of the way because he felt from without.
Every possible.
Effect of sin that a sinless man could feel going through this world and so.
We are in the yoke, as it were, with him, but it's not a yoke in that sense because of sin, although sin ultimately is the reason for the need of it. But rather we are in the yoke with him because he has been through all the difficulties of the pathway down here, and so we walk it with him.
But the yoke in this chapter, I believe, is that which is imposed upon us as a result of sin.
Would you agree with that, Don? Yes, I do. I agree with that.
All fellowship with God.
Has to be.
On the standard of his own nature and character, God can't have any fellowship with us on any standard which is less than what he is himself.
In holiness and in love as well.
And as a result, the matter of restoring has to be done in a manner which is consistent with the character of God.
And that's why Numbers 19 isn't in the beginning of Leviticus. Because in Leviticus it has more to do with the the offerings, our attempt to do with approach to God and war with what we would call atonement. But here it has to do with maintaining the relationship into which God has brought us as His children, applying it to us as believers.
And.
It has to be maintained on the very nature of what God's own holiness and character is. It's important to see that because the world in which we live.
Constantly is adjusting. Its what it expects for fellowship among people downward to accommodate man wanting to have his own will and nature and character.
And so governments constantly give up the practice of maintaining righteousness and truth to accommodate.
Man's will to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and have everybody else accept him on those terms but in.
Very direct and important contrast to that we lose everything really in our fellowship with God if.
We attempt.
To deal with sin on any other foundation than His own holiness and His character of maintaining His love with righteousness and holiness. And so immediately here the red heifer is brought in. Because the work of the Lord Jesus not only is important for atonement, but it is also has aspects to it that are important for maintaining the relationship between our self and God.
Is this a more serious thing than?
Getting your feet dirty. You know, like in in John 13 with just the washing of the feet.
This is it talks about a third day and a 7th day. Is it something more serious?
Than just normal being defiled by walking through the world.
I would suggest that it's the same principle.
But it contemplates a more serious situation.
As I said earlier, and I think we all understand it, self judgment is absolutely necessary, isn't it? If we are going, as Dawn has said, to have fellowship with the Lord in our Christian walk, I constantly must be judging evil thoughts that keep coming to my mind.
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Uh, even if I haven't sinned in the strict sense of the word.
As Dawn was mentioning a moment ago, when we walk through this world and we have to live and move in this world, we're constantly rubbing shoulders with those who are adjusting their standards of right and wrong and adjusting their ideas of morality, which is the same thing, right and wrong, And then pretending that instead of there being absolutes of right and wrong, well, everything's relative.
And times have changed and so on.
And so we get our feet dirty, even if there isn't what we might call over sin.
But here I believe it goes further than that because, as I said a moment ago, they are.
The the situation involves others here who are involved in applying the water of purification which I would suggest is it helps us to understand the process.
Of restoration as it occurs when serious sin has been committed. It may not go that far, but it shows us how it can be dealt with if it does. And so I would suggest that it has a voice not only to the one who has sinned, who has become defiled, but it has a voice to those who are.
Perhaps being used of the Lord in the process of restoration.
And that's an important thing. Very, very important thing.
I hope I don't say this with any degree of.
Pride. I hope it isn't taken the wrong way.
But.
Allow me to say that I have had the privilege, and I do say a privilege of visiting a number of assemblies.
Practically all of them in North America at one time or another, and a good number in different parts of the world.
And I hope I don't go around or any of us that travel and kind of make an assessment of assemblies as to the level of spirituality and all the rest of it. But if I want to know how an assembly is going on before the Lord.
There are two criteria which in my own soul, our spirit, are Scriptural #1. I want to be at the remembrance of the Lord in that Assembly #2, and it applies to what we're taking up. What's their track record in restoring someone who has failed and perhaps has had to be put away from fellowship?
That means far far it chokes me up, but it means far far more.
Then how well the scriptures can be expounded, or even how well the gospel can be preached, important as that is.
How well?
Does the.
Worship ascend to the Lord on Lord's day morning when we remember the Lord.
And how well do we do in seeking to restore one who has urged seriously?
And I just suggest to my own heart and to all of us, we need to take that to heart.
In our daily lives, yes, the holiness of the Lord must be maintained. As Don said, God doesn't.
Consider a fellowship with him on any standard other than his own standard of holiness.
Do we reach it in our personal walk? I don't think any of us would want to stand up and say we do. But God never holds out any other standards short of his beloved Son, And that's why the red heifer is mentioned here. No spot, no blemish. And so on. But then it shows us how God not only.
Brings us into a position.
Where we are without spot before him because of the blood of Christ, but how He maintains us in that fellowship in our Christian pathway through this world?
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The difficulty.
Is.
I think expressed in verse 9 where it says a man that is clean.
If there's defilement of a character that it becomes known. It's not a secret fault in the heart of the individual where there's self judgment that can be applied. But if if we keep using the expression of a more serious character, that requires, as according to this chapter, the involvement of others.
Be it in the home with the parents, with the children perhaps.
Or a husband and a wife relationship?
Or if it be associated in some way with the character of the assembly.
Then the necessity for the work falls on a clean person.
And very often, if my own personal communion and fellowship with the Lord has something in it, that in my heart I know is not clean.
Whether I think about it or not.
There is. You might call it a disqualification of oneself to be involved in the process.
And very often a weakness in an assembly.
Manifests itself because there is not that liberty before the Lord.
Of others to participate in the process of restoration.
The moment something is going on in one's own soul, there is some measure of fear.
And that fear is connected with exposure, and consequently it's a serious matter to maintain God's holiness.
And participating in the maintenance of it in a public way, because often there's a sense in one's own soul of something that I use the expression one feels disqualified from participating. How can I help here when I know I need to judge myself in some way?
And that's why this chapter is.
Very challenging really to try to apply.
But it has to be applied according to God's word.
Would Galatians 6 What would that Would that apply here It says, you, which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, lest thou also be tempted. Wouldn't the man know that he was capable of the very same thing?
It's not so much a sense of self occupation with being capable.
As it is.
With not having something on one's own conscience, that is a hindrance.
If one doesn't have a something on one's own conscience, then there's liberty to be not thinking about self, but being occupied on what's due to the Lord.
And to be occupied with what's the good of another individual. And restoration is always for the good.
Of the individual.
So it isn't that we're taught to examine ourselves before we become involved.
That isn't really the idea, but rather if there's something on my conscience then I don't have liberty before the Lord to be involved with the need that's perceived in the life of another.
I would only say though, Vern and I know Don would agree with this too, and that is the attitude and spirit in which we seek to restore.
Always ought to be that in Galatians 6 and one that is there ought to be the recognition, as you say, that my own heart is capable of just as much or worse, and in that sense.
Just to carry on the thought that Don was bringing out If there's sin on my own conscience.
I may not feel very capable of restoring someone else, but we all know this. But it bears repeating the sad character of the human heart. Naturally, if it knows the sin on its own conscience, is to be able to go on the attack and judge someone else in order to palliate the fact that I'm guilty too, and how many there are who have.
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Sad to say, and I speak, I trust, with tears who have been.
Disqualified from seeking to help restore someone.
But are all too ready to step forward and be quite forthright and vocal in administering discipline because.
It gives my heart somewhat of a sense of satisfaction that someone else.
Possibly is a little worse than I am.
The only other comment too to be made, and this is not original with me. It dates a long way back.
But I remember our brother Harry Hayhoe laying it on to us very forcefully that.
If one is in a sin, such as is named in First Corinthians 5.
That requires the assembly to act in putting him or her away.
It is not the case of one being overtaken in a fault, as it mentions in Galatians 6 and one he made this comment. He said any one of us can be overtaken in a fault. Let's use an example. Supposing I'm out in the world or wherever and someone says something to me or does something to me, and I could speak very sharply to that one and perhaps even.
Use some very rough language because my temper was suddenly aroused.
It would be a good thing if my brethren helped restore me.
But if I get to the point where I do something such as is named in First Corinthians 5, I've had to run a lot of red lights to get there. Not because I'm not capable of it, but I believe the Lord would keep us. But if I fail to judge thoughts, then thoughts translate into actions if I fail to judge.
Sinful actions that perhaps are not so serious than one by one they'll get more serious until I do something that needs assembly intervention. And so I just make that remark. I I think it's important to recognize that.
I've heard that one Gray hair disqualifies this animal.
It has to be read.
But what does red mean?
And that it was a female.
I was hoping someone else could have a thought on that, because I don't.
Well, there's some homework for us, but the important thing is to see here that in verse 4.
The blood had to be shed and sprinkled before the Tabernacle.
Seven times.
How beautiful that is the perfection, 7 being the number of perfection.
The perfection of the work of Christ in bringing us into the position we are in now. This is a type Israel had to repeat that sacrifice.
Not this particular one, but they had to repeat that sacrifice of the shedding of blood over and over and over again. Why?
Because there was only a covering of sin, never a cleansing of sin once and for all, the word atone simply means to cover and properly.
Translated, that word never occurs in the New Testament.
The only time I think it does occur is in Romans 5, and there the Darby reads reconciliation instead of atonement. Atonement means to cover, but it doesn't cleanse and so that blood atoned for sin in the Old Testament. But there came a time when the true sacrifice came in the person of Christ, and that's typified by this blood that is sprinkled 7 times.
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So that that blood never needs to be repeated. How beautiful that is.
And again we emphasize it. May you and I never doubt the perfection of the work that Christ did on Calvary Cross, and the value of the blood of Christ in the sight of God the Father, which has forever cleansed us from all sin, what a place we have been brought into.
And so that comes first.
Because when it comes to you and to me, it was the from the Lord's side there flowed blood and water.
The blood had to be applied first in order that we be cleansed. And then there is that moral cleansing which maintains us before God in a walk that is suitable for him and suitable for fellowship with him and with his beloved Son. But first of all that blood is shed and sprinkled before the Tabernacle seven times.
There always has to be a dealing with God before there can be a dealing with man.
And so we have that principle in this chapter when there's a matter of restoring.
The first activities that are involved have to do with.
Those things that are presented in the presence and sight of God, and in connection with His tent of meeting where man comes into His presence.
And so it is when there is this work to be done.
One involved in it has to be in the presence of God, and brought in one's own soul into the sense of the seriousness to God.
What has taken place and what needs to be made right before him, and of course, the only ground on which anything can ever be made right.
The foundation of it always, even in fellowship, is based on the work of Christ at the cross.
Which provides the foundation on which our fellowship with God.
Can be established.
But also can be maintained, but Even so when it comes to the activity itself.
The first activities before the water of separation is applied to the individual in separation.
There's first those things that are done in the first verses that have to do with bringing the matter before God.
It's not how do I see it, It's not how do you see it. But we have to say, how does God see it?
It's not whether it's good or bad or a little bit bad or something like that in our eyes, but rather God has established in His word the differences we were talking about, differences of things as to their seriousness, seriousness, and so on. And the desire of the heart should be How does God see this? How does He view this, and what does it mean in His sight?
And that's so important, isn't it? Because.
It's anticipating, I know, but when we get down to restoration.
It is important that the sin be viewed.
In the light of God's holiness.
Man, as we know, measures sin.
By comparison with his fellow man, and by its effect on his fellow man.
And so man measures sin by himself.
First Corinthians tells us that those who compare themselves with themselves are not wise.
And so it's important to to recognize that but.
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When it comes down to restoration.
It's important that that sin be repented of not in the sight of man so much, although that enters into it, but in the sight of God. We hasten to say, of course, that.
I don't believe anyone of us this side of the glory will ever have a perfect sense of sin according to God's holiness with an old, sinful, fallen nature. I don't believe that we will ever have a sense of sin in keeping with God's presence down here.
But because we have a new life in Christ, I believe that God would have us to enter into what it was.
For his beloved Son to go to Calvary's cross to shed his blood, to bring us into that position. And we will see a little more of that later on, because the true sense of sin comes when I realize that I have sinned.
In the presence, not only of the holiness of God, but in the presence of the grace and love of God.
There's a difference. It's one thing to sin in the presence of a holy God, and that's important.
But more than that, I have sinned as a believer in the presence of the grace and love of God. And so we will get to that when we talk about purification. But I need to recognize first of all.
What it was for that sinless, spotless one, never under the yoke.
To have been made sin for me, his blood shed, and then what happens to the body of that heifer?
Burned says.
In verse 5.
The heifer burned in his sight, burned there, completely Speaking of the sufferings of Christ at Calvary's Cross. Everything burned there.
Everything burned up the awful fires of the judgment of God.
Felt by our blessed Lord and Savior in a way that you and I, I say it reverently, I don't believe will ever be able to understand what it was for Him to go through that awful judgment at Calvary's cross in those hours of darkness.
We can, in a small measure, understand the sufferings of the hands of man.
And other men have been crucified. Other men have had.
Scourgings done, and mockings and various things that the Lord Jesus had. But in those hours of darkness there was a judgment typified by the burning here that no man I don't believe will ever be able to enter into.
Does that apply?
The question was for those that may have not heard it. Does this have a reference to the first chapter of John's first epistle? Does does that apply here?
I would suggest it does.
In verse six it could read since.
We say we that we have fellowship with him or or rather verse seven could say but I did, I'm wrong verse.
Verse seven could read, but since we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin. That's Christian position.
But then the maintenance of it is in verse 9, isn't it? If we confess our sins?
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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An unbeliever could read that ninth verse and be saved through it. It's a general statement, but I believe it also applies.
To restoration.
Verse 7 is Christian position every believer.
Comes to the Lord Jesus and accepts him.
Is under the shelter of the blood and walks in the light, but then.
What happens? We lose fellowship by sin, and then there's the need to confess it and be restored to communion, isn't it?
Verse four of the chapter.
The first thing that's done after the red heifer is.
Put to death.
And we've already had that before us, the picture of Christ and his death.
And his perfection and his death without spot and blemish. The very first action in the next verse is.
Eliezer the priest takes the blood and sprinkles it directly before the Tabernacle.
Of the congregation or in the new translation, the tent of meeting.
That is, it establishes the principle that holiness becometh thy household Lord forever. This was the place where the children of Israel came to meet the Lord and to come into His presence and come before him.
And so the very first thing was to establish.
That that blood.
Was applied before the tent of meeting.
So that the people would have the consciousness of the one whose presence they were approaching.
And to approach on the ground of the work of Christ and the holiness of God connected with that work. And so if one approaches on any other terms than that.
It is not consistent with what is due to God's honor, God's glory. And so it's the very first thing, even before the individual's case is taken up, that that which is due to God be established and be established, you might say at the door.
The very reason why?
Sometimes.
Someone has to be put away from the Lord's presence, collective presence.
When is for the sin that has come in and the defilement that's come in?
But when it's a matter of restoration and coming back into his presence, there's the need to be reminded of the grounds on which we come into his presence.
And that's first.
Then takes up the matter of the people who do it, and then the individual himself.
And it's noteworthy that one other thing is done.
In connection with the burning of the heifer.
Verse 6 The priest is to take cedar wood.
And hisset and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
I hope it's OK to speak this way, but this has been.
A real voice, if I could say it to my own soul, because throughout the Old Testament cedar, the Cedars of Lebanon, for example, are always a type of man in his greatness.
Man in his greatness.
But Hyssop was a little plant that grew out beside the wall, very, very small.
A very, very little significance.
Man in his weakness.
And Scarlet is always a type of human glory.
And we might ask, why would the priest have to take all those things and throw them into the fire there, Speaking of the cross?
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I believe it would show us.
That if you and I, as Don has been saying.
Recognize the holiness of God, and the character of the one with whom we have to do into whose presence we have been brought.
Into relationship with whom we have been brought.
If we were to go back to Calvary's cross.
And we were to judge ourselves in the light of what went on there.
All human glory, all occupation with self.
Would be dealt with in our own minds and it would be the best preventative from failure that there could be.
You might say, well, I can understand why cedar would have to be thrown in, because after all, man in his greatness, that's nothing but pride. But why Hyssop? Hyssop, you'll remember, was used later in the chapter to apply the water of purification.
It had been used prior to this and most of the children here could tell us this. It was used to apply the blood on the door way back in Egypt.
Speaks of man's weakness.
But the point is this. Satan does not care whether you and I are occupied with ourselves in pride in our greatness or pride in our weakness.
They are. They are flip sides of the same coin.
We sometimes, when I was young, used to speak of people who had an inferiority complex.
Nowadays the term is low self esteem.
What's the difference between low self esteem and high self esteem?
Pride in its flipped form.
Man can be occupied in himself for what he is, in his greatness or what he thinks he is, or can he? He can be occupied with himself in pride, because he isn't what he'd like to be.
And Satan does not care if I'm occupied with myself in my weakness or my greatness, as long as I'm occupied with myself.
And true Christianity is not to be occupied with myself, either in a positive or negative way.
But rather not to be occupied with self at all.
The only time the Spirit of God occupies you and me as believers with ourselves is to judge sin, to judge self, and then to go on and be occupied with an object outside of ourselves, with Christ.
And so the cedar and the hyssop both had to be thrown into the fire, and so did the scarlet. And I just suggest, and I speak to my own heart, that if I did that, if my heart really saw what happened at Calvary's cross.
I would judge those things when my own soul before I needed to have the water.
Excuse me, before I needed to have the water of purification.
Now, does anyone of us do perfectly? No, but I believe that's why these things are mentioned here.
True holiness entails my going back to the cross of Calvary first and foremost, and recognizing not only what.
I am, which is important, but recognizing the awful judgement that was necessary to put that sin away.
And that is the, shall I say, the greatest, if I could use the word stimulus to self judgment that there is to get back to Calvary's cross.
So in Hebrews 13 the verses.
11.
Bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are burned without the camp.
Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.
Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp bearing his reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
00:55:08
How does that connect with our portion?
I've had enough to say for a minute.
You have a thought on that, Don.
I don't think it applies to our chapter.
It's a different thing. That's my simple answer. It it applies to a different it's it's put in Hebrews 13 for a different reason.
To take on a different subject.
And it's it's, I don't think it's intended to be part of the subject of repentance and restoration.
It's setting aside of Judaism.
As a means of approach to God and the Lord Jesus.
Himself.
Within the context of the Jewish system was not accepted.
He was rejected.
In that way, and so in the matter of atonement, it's recognized that.
What he did, even though he was perfect in his life as a Jew, what he did, had to go outside of the system itself. And the Hebrews of to which this book was written, if they were to be identified with him, had to be identified with the place he had been put in, which was outside the camp.
And here, outside the camp, is where the defilement is it.
Where the defiled were outside the camp.
I should say.
And so in that sense, we do see this red heifer taken outside the camp to be burned.
And in that sense, I believe.
You could tie it into the sin offering, but the emphasis here, while it brings in the precious blood of Christ in tight and the terrible judgement that was there, you might say that is brought in and we don't mean in any way to.
I don't like to use the word belittle but the whole.
Thrust of the passage is restoration to communion, and so that is brought in simply to show what was necessary for the approach to God and what was necessary to bring a man into relationship with the Lord in the 1St place. But then the main body of the chapter is connected with.
Purification.
Which was, of course, necessary to keep an Israelite.
In communion with the Lord. And as Don pointed out, that's why this chapter is not in Leviticus. In Leviticus, the thought is approached to God, whereas Numbers is the wilderness book, isn't it? It brings us through the wilderness. And so the wilderness is the place where the temptations occur, where the sin occurs.
Where the difficulties and problems come in and where it's necessary to have that water purification applied, no type is perfect, of course, because here we are talking about Israel, and those sacrifices for the shedding of blood had to be repeated in the wilderness as well, or should have been repeated. How many times they were is open to question, but they should have been repeated. So the type isn't perfect.
But it's in a wilderness book where you get the instruction as to purification along the way to restore to communion.
At a good breaking point.
01:00:34
166.
166.
Free.
Numbers 19:7-10
Reading
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May not have been here yesterday. We were taking up.
Recovery and Restoration as.
Brought before us in type in numbers 19.
So perhaps we could go on with that this morning.
Numbers, Chapter 19.
And I would suggest we're ready for verse 7.
Right.
Numbers, Chapter 19, verse seven. Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, And the priest shall be unclean until the even. And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the even. And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and lay them up without the camp in a clean place.
And it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel, for a water of separation, it is a purification for sin. And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even and it shall be unto the children of Israel, and unto the strangest soldiers among them for a statute forever. He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean 7 days he shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the 7th day he shall be clean, but if he purify not himself the third day.
Then the 7th day he shall not be clean. Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the Tabernacle of the Lord, and that soul shall be cut off from Israel. Because the water separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is yet upon him.
This is the law. When a man dieth in a tent, all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent shall be unclean 7 days In every open vessel which hath no covering bound upon it is unclean. And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man or of a grave, shall be unclean 7 days. And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin and running water shall be put thereunto in a vessel.
And a clean person shall take Hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there and upon him that toucheth a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave. And a clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, on the 7th day, And on the 7th day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean. And even but the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation.
Because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord.
The water separation hath not been sprinkled upon him. He is unclean, and it shall be a perpetual statute unto them. And that he that sprinkleth the water's separation shall wash his clothes. And he that toucheth the water separation shall be unclean until even, And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean, And the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.
00:05:19
If you ask a question, if you should get an answer. So I asked the question, what does it mean for the red heifer? Well, I hope I don't spoil it, but I think it speaks of the humanity of Christ.
Read Really is the the root word is man, and man was made of the earth, and the Lord breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he become a living soul.
He was that was innocent humanity. When man fell, he became fallen humanity. When the Lord Jesus was born, he became holy humanity, but humanity. And so I really speak. It speaks of the Lord I believe as a real human. The Lord was not only deity, he was a real man human.
He was God as though he was not man. He was man as though he was not God united.
Those two natures were united to form one Christ. That's important because there is a doctor and a foot that he just put on humanity like a coat that he was not a real man. He was a real man. There was a man, there was division caused. There was a man's said that where man gets the idea.
That there were two natures united to form one person. I know not. That's heresy.
The Lord was a real man as we speak.
At the right hand of the Father.
Is a real man.
He wears our nature on the throne.
That is so wonderful.
God took the Lord Jesus. The Son of God took humanity into his person. He's identified with us.
A creature. He's not a creature, but he's identified himself with a creature in the sense that he's taken humanity into his person.
There's a man sitting at the right hand of the Father.
In the Godhead too. So I just wanted to bring that out. So when you when the the Jew even today and I heard this not a month ago that if there was one.
Gray hair.
In that red heifer it could not be used.
And there wasn't in the Lord. He was perfect, holy humanity.
So I just wanted to bring that out.
Thank you.
Just let me say this too. It was a heifer. And what does that speak of? It was it was a female and female in scripture speaks of subjection. This is another beautiful truth.
The Lord came of his own volition. Nobody made him come.
And take humanity into his person. He did it because he wanted to fulfill the will of his father.
And so he did it. He didn't have to do it. We're sitting here because of the sovereignty of God. You don't deserve it. You didn't choose him. He chose you.
You don't have a thing to do with it.
God chose you.
And so.
It's a wonderful thing to think that he took.
Our nature into himself. And he did it, you know, and he did it. He subjected himself to the greatest humility.
People called him a drunk, a wine diver. They spit in his face. They hung him on a cross. They pulled. They plucked the the hairs right out of his face.
They smacked him.
They whipped him, and he took it all. He submitted to it all to have you with him. He hung there, the most modest man in all the world.
Naked before a jeering crowd.
Isn't that beautiful?
00:10:10
And so here in verse seven I would suggest we have.
Something very important brought before us.
There was a priest here that had to be involved in.
Arranging for all of this.
And there was one in verse eight who burned the heifer. There was one in verse 9 and 10 who gathered the ashes of the heifer. And later on in the chapter there was one who administered and sprinkled the water of purification.
All four of them.
Were unclean as a result of that.
What does that teach us? It teaches us that while in the administration of things.
In and translating it into Christian terms in the administration of things in the Assembly.
Dealing with sin is sometimes a necessary thing, but I am defiled by it just the same.
Now, it wasn't the process of recovery that the defiled one had to go through. It took him seven days to be clean.
But the priest and the man that burnt the heifer, the man that gathered the ashes, the man that administered the sprinkling of the water, of purification, all of them, as it says here, had to wash their clothes, bathe in water, and be unclean until the even.
Contact with sin always defiles.
I hope I say this very humbly, but in my experience I have sometimes seen.
Those in local assemblies who were perhaps the least spiritual, wanting to get involved in dealing with actions of discipline and so on.
Even the most spiritual ones in the assembly if they have to deal with sin and in some cases have to deal with some of the.
Sordid details of it in order to be faithful to the Lord.
We all still have an old, sinful nature that responds to that.
And so we need to be on guard. There needs to be that, as it were, washing of our own clothes, bathing ourselves and realizing that that sin.
Even though we have just had to investigate or talk about it as a defiling effect upon us.
One more point, I don't know if others have seen this, but it's certainly very true.
And we say it as a warning.
There are Christian books out there which you can buy, which are often written to detail some of the things that have happened in foreign lands and in various lives of those who have been.
Unbelievers and then who have been brought to the Lord?
And it has saddened me to see how frequently.
Some of the awful details of things that they did and things with which they were involved before they were saved, are printed in those books.
Why do they do that? Because it sells books.
It sells books. People buy that kind of a book because our old sinful self likes to read it.
Even a man of the world commented, And this would be at least.
Oh, probably close to 70 years ago, if not 75 years ago, when he was talking about an individual or a group of individuals who were psychopaths. That's a psychiatric term for those whose conscience in Christian terms, is so seared that it seems to have very little concern for doing some of the worst things.
And the comment was made by a secular individual in one of the big newspapers of the United States.
It might have been the New York Times. It said everybody deplored what those people did, but they said put it all down on paper so that we can read about it.
00:15:03
And his comment was We are all psychopaths at heart.
And so I say that to point out just briefly, not to dwell on it, how that it was very necessary for those who of necessity had contact with sin.
In purifying and helping the individual who needed to be recovered and to re restored.
They too had to recognize the potential defilement from that sin and to deal with that before the Lord.
That's why I say it. And again, not to dwell on it, but in a local assembly, it's far better if as few as possible have to investigate something and be involved with all the sad details because it's defiling.
Excuse me, excuse me?
Should that be taken up in a brothers meeting where you take up the gory details, but it shouldn't never be brought out to?
All the others in the assembly went, how do you do that? Then you take up these things, but you don't bring out all those things if there needs to be some discipline.
And a brother, another thing is a brothers meeting. It's it's become practice to have everybody there who's in in fellowship, young man, who should never be there when something's being discussed that is egregious.
It only defiles them, but then when you have because the brothers meeting has no power to discipline or do anything.
They can only suggest it's the assembly, isn't it that that makes the decision. You have to bring it out to the assembly.
Then what do you do? You don't bring out the gory details, do you? No, but the sin should be stated before the assembly. But the details don't have to be brought out.
What do you say, Don?
Maybe a little repetitive, but I think it's important enough to repeat if necessary.
When I made unclean.
And I have a nature.
In me that loves unclean things.
And if I'm exposed to it, my nature responds to it.
And the consequences? The word I'm defiled by it. And it's important to recognize that we live in a world system designed to appeal to my sinful nature.
And as a result of that, if I'm a young person or I'm an older person, it doesn't matter.
When I pick up my cell phone, when I take my computer and I go online, I'm only one click away from my defilement.
And the even the news manner in which news is presented today is in general in a defiling way.
Even the competition among those who want to tell me what's going in the world today, the very nature of their business is to be the one you want to see and look at and they're very well aware of what makes people use them versus someone else's media and in it is designed to appeal to sinful flesh and.
The consequences it is.
Very, very easy to become defiled.
And as has already been stated in the principle, because I have a fallen sinful nature, the very occupation with what is sinful.
In its nature defiles me.
And that's important to recognize, because there are many things in Scripture.
Set your mind on things which are above.
Not on things which are on the earth. Why? Because you're setting your mind on something that's pure and undefiling and satisfying to not the flesh, but to the new man.
00:20:03
And so I would just suggest.
Before you think you have to see the news, ask the Lord. Do I have a needs be? Is it necessary for me to carry out my life today? Do I need to know?
This, that or the other?
Because it is in general a very ready, willing and able to defile.
And Satan, who knows exactly by experience, doesn't know everything, but he has a whole lot of experience, more than we do, knows how to just make his take that first little step.
Of well, this this is all right.
And so we take the first step.
But then that only opens the door to the next one and the next one, and there is also an addiction.
That is developed in us, where we become under the control of that which we feast on, and so it's a very easy thing in the world in which we live with instant communication.
To be constantly exposed to that which has in its nature defilement connected with it, and here in this chapter, even those who have to deal with.
That which defiles.
Are made unclean because they're dealing with that which their whole nature, their sinful nature responds to. And so I just say.
It more warning to myself perhaps, than to you. It doesn't matter what age we are, we're never exempt because our flesh never changes.
And God has made a a provision.
To be kept.
But it's never.
Involves as it says later in the chapter.
The vessels were to be covered and not open because just to have an open vessel, that which was unclean had access to the vessel and so were to be vessels with lids.
In our in our care, in our activity and we, each one of us need to be conscious as the choices we make and even say, Lord, if I'm occupied with this song.
That activity and so on, am I going to have something which will appeal to my flesh?
And respond to it and cause defilement.
Someone raised the question yesterday between meetings.
Not that he didn't know what the word meant, but he said. I wonder if there are some who are wondering exactly what constitutes defilement.
Because here in this chapter.
What constitutes defilement is connected with death in some way. Isn't it a dead body?
Or even a grave, or a bone or something of that nature and a man that dies in a tent. It all has to do with death.
And I would suggest that in a simple way, we all remember that verse from Romans 6, The Wages.
Of sin is death and God's word connects.
Sin with death, we are dead in trespasses and sins according to Ephesians 2.
And so this, in our chapter concerning death, I believe, is a picture to us of what sin is and what the world is with which we are surrounded. Yes, we live and move in this world. We have to we do get our feet defiled just by walking through it. But what is defilement? It is the allowance in my life.
Of anything.
That is sin.
I can't stop, for example, a wrong thought from a lighting on my mind. I still have an old sinful nature. I have a besetting sin this way or that way, and I suddenly find that my thoughts turn that way. But I don't need to relish that thought. I don't need to turn it over and over in my mind and let it go down this rabbit trail and that rabbit trail. I can immediately act on what we find in Romans 6 and say.
00:25:02
That isn't I anymore.
I have a new life in Christ. That old sinful self has no rights. I don't fight with it. I don't get upset about it. I just turn away from it.
Turn towards something that occupies me with Christ and with something better.
But supposing I let that thought reverberate in my mind, then eventually as man.
Is whether he's saved or lost as men think. So ultimately they act and the thoughts that we allow to mature in our minds and reverberate in our thoughts.
Are eventually going to translate into actions as Don was bringing out maybe small ones at 1St and then larger ones. As time goes on, the world gets involved. We decide that the world isn't as bad as the word of God says it is.
After all, you can have fun out there and there are pleasures in sin for a season and so on. And eventually we are in, as we say over our heads and then we need this chapter, the truth of it. So I would suggest in a simple way that's what defilement is and I am not only to avoid it in my own mind, but I am to avoid as Don has been bringing out.
Contact with it.
As we all pretty much have to have computers today in order to do our work at school in order to communicate pretty well. Necessary. But I don't have to allow everything that pops up on my screen or everything that's there, even the news media, to occupy my mind in such a way that it starts taking me down those wrong paths.
Well, not just.
An honest question. Some of these things go to 14. The 14th verse. It says this is the law when a man dieth in a tent. You can't prevent that.
I just what?
And it says all that come into the tent and all that is in the tent shall be unclean 7 days.
There's other things. The 13th bird whosoever toucheth a dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself to file at the Tabernacle of the Lord.
And that soul shall be cut off from Israel. What we said yesterday, that there was probably 600,000, who knows 38 years who were going to die in the wilderness, he said. All those who had brought back an evil report would die. So let's get out. It averages out to 40 people a day died and somebody had to bury them. What's? What's the difference? We have to be occupied with that. What? What's the difference?
We'll all try to answer that and maybe others have some thoughts, but.
It seems to me that yes, there are occasions in our lives when we are exposed to sin. For example, when I was in university I worked in a big company in the city where I live and some of the men who with whom I worked and some of the bosses that I had.
Use rough language sometimes filthy language.
Times.
You tried to get away from it, but sometimes you were there in the office and you couldn't help but overhear somebody telling a dirty joke on at the next desk or something like that. Things like that we are exposed to in the world in which we live, and I feel for my own soul that.
That is really what is brought out here. That is, there are things to which you and I are exposed all the time.
In our lives.
But I would only say, and this is only the way it comes through to me, the tent seems to me to imply something more. Because people lived in a tent, seldom would it hold one man, and so it implies something more. And I believe it points out what we might call corporate defilement. Where?
If there is, for example, evil in an assembly which is not judged whether doctrinal or moral, evil.
God looks upon everyone in that local assembly as being defiled by it. It's not that they can say, well, I'm not the dead man or I wasn't the man that touched him.
00:30:03
Everybody in that tent was affected by what happened there and it had to be dealt with. There had to be purification. So that this chapter has many different facets to it, dealing with an individual, dealing with contact in the world.
Dealing with what might happen in a local assembly. It covers a wide variety of defilement and I would suggest the application depends on the circumstances, which we're talking about. In the New Testament. That helps, that helps.
Trying to understand it's important to know what death is.
In its character and its nature.
James James Chapter 2 Says the body without the spirit is dead.
And the root thought in death is separation. And so when one spirit is removed from one's body by God, that person is physically dead.
The body without the spirit is dead, and there's a separation between the body and the spirit and the soul at the time of physical death.
The second death, which is a death of judgment, I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened, and those who were not found written in the book of life, were cast into the lake of fire. And it says, this is the second death.
Because it's not the physical death of the separation of the spirit from the body, but it is the eternal separation of a soul.
God.
And that's the worst part of what we call hell or the lake of fire is that eternal separation from God.
But when there is death in the physical sense in this chapter is using it in the physical sense to bring out a moral lessons to us?
When a body is separated from the soul and spirit and there's death, the process.
Of corruption immediately starts when the Lord Jesus was told of the imminent death or the sickness of Lazarus and he came. Lazarus had been dead 4 days and put in the grave and he went there and Martha says to him, but he's been dead for days. The idea was you don't want to open it up because the corruption.
That is started is 4 days alone.
And that's the nature of sin.
When I sin, it separates me.
From fellowship with God.
Not in the eternal sense. If I'm a believer, it's as we use the expression, it's a loss of fellowship, but it is connected with death in that it is a separation.
From my relationship enjoyed with my God.
And consequently, there are certain things that we become occupied with.
Some in this chapter of necessity, but God in himself can have no fellowship with them.
Because of his own holiness.
He abhors sin and in no way does he compromise himself to have an association with it.
And consequently, if I'm identify if I'm occupied with it, it brings in that separation.
That is connected with death and is described in its general sense in this chapter, and in fact I think the most frequently used word in the whole chapter, if you added up all the words, is probably the word unclean. And that makes the unclean has the sense of in that thing I am not fit.
For the presence of God.
I well remember as a child it was a rule.
The rural household that everyone of us as children had to come to the dinner table with our hands clean. We had to have washed before we came and sat down to dinner and sometimes.
My mother would say to us individually, Donald, have you washed your hands? And you know what happened? If I appeared without them washed, I was sent off to do it.
00:35:06
Before I was by my mother, considered clean to sit down and enjoy the fellowship of the meal.
And so it is in coming into the presence of God.
And if you or I come into the presence of God, unclean.
We are defiling his bill at use the application the tent, because the Spirit of God, who will have no fellowship with uncleanness, is hindered in His operations, and instead of being able to occupy with Christ and Himself, there is more the necessity of the occupation of the identification.
Of that which is unsuited to the cleanness of his presence, that it be judged and removed. And that's the principle on which some of these verses, when they speak of death, and why, were unclean in the presence of death.
Can I suggest a couple thoughts as to these ashes? We've talked at length about the uncleanness, but in verse.
Verse 9. The ashes are gathered up and put in a clean place.
And verse 12.
There's the application.
Of these Ashes and I just have enjoyed the thought.
Of the ashes that there's no heat.
And there's no fuel.
And again, that takes us back to the enjoyment of the cross.
All God's wrath against our sins.
Was completely.
Let's put it like this. Somebody said one time that of all the offerings that the fire consumed over the years, the Lord Jesus on the cross was the first offering that consumed the flames.
There is no more heat. There is no more rat against our sins.
And also the thought of the Ashes. There's no more fuel.
God's not dealing with our old nature anymore. It's been set aside at the cross.
If I am defiled or I allow sin, he's dealing with me, the new man. Stop that stuff.
Resist it. Walk with me. He's not dealing with the old man. There's no heat.
And there's no fuel in the Ashes and that is the basis of recovery.
That's where we start, if we've gotten away from the Lord, is to get back to the cross.
Lemoyne Smith told me 50 years ago. He said. It's the cross that saves us. It's the cross that keeps us and it's the cross that restores us.
And it brings in our affections too, doesn't it, Randy? And that's why it's so important.
To get hold of what we have here.
Those ashes were laid up.
As you say, the fire had passed through, the heat was gone, the fuel was gone. But what was left? The memory. The memory. And so you and I have the memory of the sufferings of Christ.
Which the Spirit of God would bring before us when we are to be restored.
We can get into what the third day and the 7th day mean in a moment or two, but.
Those ashes bring before us the memory of the sufferings.
My heart, my affections, must once more be engaged with Christ in order to think that.
Here I am.
And as was expressed in prayer and in what we have had before us.
The Lord Jesus Christ came down into this world, went all the way to Calvary's cross, suffered.
In a way that you and I will never understand, in those hours of darkness and for what reason, to glorify God, as to sin, but then, as far as you and I are concerned, to make us fit for God's presence.
00:40:11
And when I sin, what am I doing?
I am.
You might say.
Adding to those sufferings of Christ.
Now, does that mean Christ has to suffer all over again? No, of course not. Because God with his foreknowledge knew ahead of time that I would commit that sin, and that's why I can be restored. But at the same time, here I am doing that which caused.
Untold pain and suffering to my blessed Savior, and when that gets hold of my soul, that is really what brings me to real repentance.
When I have sinned initially, usually the reaction is what in our English language we call remorse. I am upset about the consequences of it. I'm upset because other people may know about it. I am upset because of what it may have done to my life.
Family or to other people whom I know and love. But I have to get right to rock bottom. And as you say, Randy, go back to Calvary's cross and realize that I have indulged myself in that which ultimately caused the pain and suffering in those three hours of darkness. I believe that's what the ashes would bring before us.
May I take a few minutes?
I not used to doing something like this, but I'd like to talk especially to the children here that they kind of understand the concept of why we're reading this.
I wasn't here yesterday.
But we're going to go through this story kind of rapidly again and then.
Talk about the application we're making.
There was a priest and he was supposed to go and find.
A female, you might say. A cow.
That had never had a baby yet.
An innocent animal and they would take it.
And they would. He would have a person kill that innocent.
Big animal and the blood would come out and they would do things with his blood.
Before the the Tabernacle.
Then another person.
Would take that dead cow and put it on this altar.
And they would burn that whole cow. Everything. The horns, that the skin, even every part of it, would be burned and the smoke would go up.
And all that would be left would be ashes.
And.
Listed all over No, it wasn't over. They would. Another person would come and they'd scoop up the ashes.
And they would save these ashes.
Now everybody, as we've talked about it, everybody that was concerned with this, the priest got defiled, the person that killed the animal got defiled, the person that scooped up the ashes got defiled.
And then what would they do with these ashes?
They were saved for when somebody got defiled.
That they would take some of these ashes and they would put them in water.
And they would sprinkle it on the person that had got defiled. Or we're going to call it sin.
And they would remember that that cow.
Had to die.
So that they could be made clean. The cow didn't have to die again, over and over again. It was just one time. But the person had to keep getting clean over and over again by taking those ashes.
Putting them in the water and.
Verse 12 it says they were supposed to do it themselves and verse 19 says.
00:45:06
A clean.
Person shall sprinkle upon the unclean the third day and the 7th day, and on the 7th day he shall purify himself and wash his clothes and bathe himself, and shall be clean at even like was mentioned the person that got defiled.
It was a process of seven days, but the person that put the sprinkled the ashes, that touched the ashes that put them on, the person that was unclean, they were defiled to until the even.
And the application is.
That we need to remember the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And apply it to ourselves for.
Present.
Feeling clean?
And I'm going to read a couple verses in one John, the application of this.
One, John. One.
And verse 7.
It's talking about fellowship.
With the Father and with the Son in verse 7. And if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.
Now here's the part. And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son. That's God's son cleans us.
From all sin, that is the application of that cow that died. We're going to call it the red heifer. A heifer is a cow that never had a baby yet.
Perfectly clean. The innocent one that died.
Cleanses from all sin.
But if we say that we have no sin.
We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, that's what happens when someone says I've sinned and I need to apply the.
Work of Christ on my life.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
That is, when someone feels completely clean, even if they've sinned, even if they've been defiled, they can say Christ has has died and I can be clean. I can feel comfortable. I can have fellowship.
If we if we say that we have not sinned, we make him, that's God a liar, and his word is not in US.
Now the next verse.
My little children, I hope you children are listening.
These things I write unto you that you sin not.
But, and if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
If we sin there, there is a way to get back, a way to have peace, and it's the application of what Christ has done.
And the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ there on the cross as the fire of God came down on him and burned everything up, and all that's left is the memory that that.
I want to say senesis. What is ashes? What ashes?
We are the ashes.
Mixed with the water.
Applied to our lives.
By ourselves and by other people that even get unclean by helping us out.
00:50:06
There are two things.
Two sets of things.
That get burned up.
In verse 4/5.
We have the heifer.
Now so burn the heifer in his sight. Everything of the heifer. The skin, the flesh, the blood, the Dong Auburn.
That's not all.
Or 6.
These things are cast into the midst of the fire in which the heifer is being burned.
Peter Wood, The Hyssop, the Scarlet.
Cast into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
In verse five, it's as we've had multiple times. It's the Lord Jesus Christ.
The perfect, sinless holy One.
And identified and put into the same fire.
Is everything that we are in the flesh and everything that inspires us to do. What's wrong?
The pride of man and so on. That motivates us to our activities in the flesh.
And both are burned together, and the consequence of the burning of both and commingled in that way is ashes.
And it's important for us when we're judging ourselves.
As is necessary in purification.
God takes the water of the Word.
And brings our souls into the memory.
Of that which took place when I.
In my sinful flesh.
Had to be the Lord Jesus to himself to take my place and to be identified with my sins and with what I am in my nature.
And the consequences of that in death.
And ashes. And so it is that when job.
Was being worked on by the Lord for his blessing to bring out to job something in himself that was not.
Holy and pure before God.
Joe was made by God a righteous man, and because he was a righteous man and he knew it.
He took the credit for it.
Cedar wood.
And he wanted, he said to God, I'm not going to give up my righteousness. And he then charged God and said, you've put me in dust and ashes.
When Job got to his third day, if you will, and his 7th day, he said. Instead of saying God, you put me in dust and ashes.
Or another way of saying it, I don't deserve what's happened to me in my life and so on. He turns it around and he says I abhor myself.
And repent.
In dust and ashes, and that is what the water of the word does in the applying.
To our souls it brings us to that memory and that self judgment. Where we would say with Job, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.
He was a man who had life, that is, life with God. It wasn't the point at which Job was saved, as we would say.
Even though that word doesn't quite apply that way to Joe, but.
The way in which he would say he had life with God.
But he had to judge himself into that which was separating him from fellowship with God.
And so it is with us, we the Lord, when there's something in us that we have done, we not only have to get into the Lords presence, but we have to get into the why.
The reason why we did it not just the thing we did, but why did we do it.
00:55:03
There are people who said in the word of God I've sinned.
But what we have in this purification process goes beyond just the act itself.
I saw a picture of man in the flesh, said to Samuel. I've sinned.
Judas, after he denied the Lord, he said, I have sinned. But in either case was there the flying of the of the ashes, if you will, to the person? Neither one we will find in glory.
But for us, we have to go through a process where God takes his word and we're taken to the Word, and the Spirit of God uses that word.
To bring to us that activity that makes us.
Judge what we've done and what we are that did it.
And then we can again have fellowship with God in purity and truth.
In that connection, it doesn't hurt to repeat what we said yesterday, and that is that if we would remember that the cedar wood Speaking of man in his greatness, the hyssop Speaking of man and his weakness, and the scarlet Speaking of human glory, if we remembered that all of that had been dealt with at the cross.
We would not fall into sin so easily. As Dawn has pointed out, that was burned up too. And if all of those things were kept in mind, it would be the antidote to our getting into the situation where we need the application of the water mixed with the ashes.
And so John 13 would be something that we do a daily, but this actually is.
Unique thing. It's not something that you would think but would be needed daily, but maybe in the life of someone during his lifetime. Is that right? I mean this is not something like John 13 where you you walk through the world and you get your feet dirty and you need them cleansed at night by the word of God.
That's daily, but this is not something daily.
This is something that is kind of unique.
Yes, it's the same principle as we mentioned yesterday, but it carries us all the way so that we would have ministry to know how to deal with very serious sin. And I thought it was very apropos what Brother Dan Brimlow brought out and that is that in verse 12 The individual was to purify himself, but then later on we find it was necessary.
For another to sprinkle the water of purification. And so there are OK, there are sins in our lives that.
We can sprinkle the water of purification on ourselves and in that sense.
It doesn't have to involve somebody else, a happy thing, if that's the case, and there are other things which, as we pointed out yesterday, have to come to the attention of others because.
Speaking in New Testament terms, we are so far away from the Lord that we are not in a fit state to sprinkle the water on ourselves.
And so both can be involved. And of course, even if someone else is involved, I personally am responsible if I am the one that's defiled, to get into the Lord's presence, to look to him and to.
Repent and get back to where I realize how serious that sin is in the sight of the Lord.
And that's really, and I know our time is we only have a few minutes, but that's really what the third day is, I believe.
Scripture brings in the seven days as perfection of restoration.
But combining what we have said in the last half hour.
The third day is if we could make it in a very simple phrase.
The full realization in God's presence of the magnitude of sin in the presence of grace.
01:00:02
Now that is in the presence of holiness as well, but I believe this chapter would take us deeper than that. It's one thing for a man to sin for me to sin against a holy God.
That happened in the Old Testament, but it's another thing for you and for me to sin not merely in the presence of holiness, but in the presence of love and grace.
That is, we have by grace seen all our sins, if we're truly saved, dealt with it Calvary's crops. And we have seen the awfulness of what sin is to God in those three hours of darkness. We have seen the one who went through all of that in order that we could be saved, so that we have sinned, not merely in the presence of holiness.
But in the presence of love and grace. And so the third day is the full realization in God's presence of the magnitude of sin in the presence of grace.
That can take time 3 days as symbolical.
I can well remember, and this dates me a little bit. I can remember our late brother Paul Wilson ministering on this back at a conference and I can nail the date right on. It was in 1962.
And he said I have seen times when it took 15 years before the 3rd day was reached.
Sad to say, I have seen cases where it took longer than that and so.
The third day it may take a shorter while, it may take a longer while, but it does take some time.
We don't recover rapidly from a serious sin. There needs to be time for the Lord to work in our hearts and consciences. There needs to be time for the Lord to bring before us the reality of what we've done in His presence.
And it doesn't happen in a serious sin overnight.
We get a wonderful example of that and Peter, don't we?
Where we all know what Peter did.
As they led the Lord to trial.
He says here in John 22 on Luke 22. Excuse me.
And.
And and verse 60 And Peter said, man, I know not What I'll say is immediately while he's yet spake the crew.
And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. That was the look of love.
And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, and how he had said unto him before the **** crowed, Thou shalt deny me thrice. And what did Peter do? Well, the the heart was engaged then, wasn't it? Because the Lord looked on him with that look of love. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. And that's just what you were talking about, didn't?
He realized the impact.
Of what the Lord was going to go through on his behalf at the cross.
And we see later on the 7th day when.
The Lord after resurrection.
Met with the disciples and he took Peter aside, didn't he?
He says, Love us out, me more than these. And Peter had to confess. Thou knowest all things, thou knowest I love thee. And then he got the Commission, didn't he feed my sheep?
Beautiful example of what you were saying.
I just want to recap something that was already said.
I want everybody to listen.
Everybody knows what I'm talking about. I don't need the graphic. If you have secret sin in your life, I have had secret sins.
The best.
Way to stop having that secret sin is to look at the cross.
And to know that the Lord Jesus suffered for that sin.
That is the best way to stop that sin. I want to read a song.
That many of us know, I think it pretty well says what we need to say.
The name of the song is how deep the father's love for us.
01:05:05
How deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that he should give his only son to make a Wretch his treasure. How great the pain of searing loss. The father turns his face away.
As wounds which mar the Chosen One bring many sons to glory.
This is the verse. Behold the man upon the cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished. I will not boast in anything, no gifts, no power nor wisdom. But I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart. His wounds have paid my ransom. Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer.
But this I know with all my heart. His wounds have paid my ransom.
If you're stuck and you have a secret sin and you confess it.
And you cannot stop and you find yourself doing again. Look to the cross and think the Lord Jesus.
Suffered for that sin.
That is the strongest force of motivation, to look at that cross, to stop what you're doing.
Finn destroys. It destroys families. It destroys barrages. It destroys. You need to be scared of sin. It's like a bomb. If we had a bomb, we'd have a bomb squad in here. Sin destroys. It's terrible. It's volatile. It's serious business. That's what we're talking about here.
Just one final remark, Ted. I think that's excellent. If we would deal before the Lord in His presence with those secret sins that no one knows about, we wouldn't have to have someone else sprinkling the water of purification on us down the road when that sin becomes public, would we?
Maybe we could just say this. Sometimes when we've sinned, we listen to the lie of the devil, that somehow God's mad at us, somehow he doesn't want us anymore. In Proverbs 2813 it says he that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsake at them shall have mercy. And I just want to say, dear beloved brothers and sisters, that mercy starts coming the moment we turn it is true.
Bill, that restoration does take time because as Don was saying and others have said, there's when something like that happens, there's something wrong in us. The sin, it's not just an act, it's it's who we are. It's so important to realize that God loves us and He's on his way in mercy right now. The moment we turn to him, if we confess, if we own it and we're just naked before him, we just say, Lord, you know all about it.
You know all about it. I'm all yours. And justice, That's what Job had to come to.
No defense, no justification, Lord you know, and justice be cast, as it was already shared so beautifully upon him, upon the cross, in mercy.
He comes in for us and it's beautiful. He loves us. He wants us back. Don't listen to the lie of the devil that says God doesn't want you anymore because it's not true. It's a lie.
#71 in the back.
21 with your finger.
Oh my say you're closer.
My name.
Devotedness to Christ and the Love of God
Address—Bill Prost
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Could we begin this meeting by singing a somewhat unusual hymn 332?
332.
To him that is commonly sung in the gospel, and rightfully so.
But it's been adapted for singing by believers.
Notice the change of tense in the 1St 2 verses, just as I was.
For those that like the stories of hymns, you'll look in the back and see that this was written.
Way back in the 1800s by a woman by the name of Charlotte Elliott.
She wasn't saved and she was indulging in the pleasures of this world quite a bit.
And one time when her minister, pastor, whatever you want to call him, try to speak to her about the Lord, she rebuffed him rather pointedly. Excuse me?
Rebuffed him rather pointedly and.
Made it very clear that she didn't want to hear anything about that. But then afterwards, sometime later, she realized that that wasn't really the right thing to do and that she needed to know the Savior. So she went back to him and apologized for her previous behavior and said how do I get saved? What do I do?
And his reply was come to the Lord Jesus.
Just as you are.
What? She said. I come just as I am, Yes, he said. That's the only way to come.
And she did. And as a result of that, she wrote this hymn. But I was particularly interested in the last few verses. The last two verses, I should say.
Just as I am. Thy love I own has broken every barrier down. And then the last verse, just as I am of that free love.
The fullness and the depth to prove.
332, and there's only one tune to it.
Just as I am.
Now I will share.
It.
With you.
00:05:52
Well, now I have to apologize. After calling the attention of the rest of you to the tents of the 1St 2 verses, I started the hymn on autopilot and of course reverted to the gospel hymn. But anyway, we get the point. Let's ask the Lord's help.
Her loving God and our Father, we thank Thee for the precious truth of this hymn we have sung together and for each one here in the room who can sing.
Just as I was. Poor, wretched, blind.
And we thank the 2 Lord that every true believer here can say just as I am.
Thy love I own has broken every barrier down.
We thank Thee, our God and Father, for that love, and we thank the Lord Jesus that that love took thee not only all the way to Calvary's cross.
But also that love goes on with us every step of our Pilgrim journey. And more than that, we will enjoy that love for all eternity.
We look to thee now this afternoon for thy help as we open thy word together.
And our hearts go up to thee for our dear young people.
Who have a most difficult day in which to live for thee, our God.
In which to live for thy glory, Lord Jesus.
And yet we thank the.
That thy word is the same.
Thou art the same. Thy Holy Spirit is still here.
And that everything that thou has given us, our God, is just as much ours as it was in days of in days gone by. So we commend our time to thee and pray for thy help, For we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I want you young people to know that I feel very helpless standing up here.
I remember sitting in my chair down there, contemplating what I would say.
And two stories come to mind.
One of which has a little humor to it. Many, many years ago, there was an old brother in Christ who stood up to speak to children.
And in trying to make his point across, get his point across to them.
He became choked up and started having tears in his eyes. And this is a true story.
One boy said to the next one. Why is he crying up there?
The other one said if you had as little to say as he did, you'd cry too.
That hit home.
And I feel very helpless for other reasons too, because we all know that the generation gap in this world.
Is getting wider and wider for people in my age bracket, and generations are being defined in smaller and smaller increments.
When I was growing up, a generation was generally around 25 years or maybe even a little more. But now generations are changing so quickly that sometimes 10 or 15 years makes that difference.
And even the language changes.
I learned a new word up at Morning Star Camp a few days ago. Somebody said to me something is really lip really lit.
I had to learn the definition of that, and if others here don't know what it means, you ask some of the young people.
It brought home to me the fact that I was in some ways out of touch and I couldn't have anything to say to you young people except for this precious book.
00:10:05
But in this book we have everything we need.
And I'd like to talk a little to you this afternoon.
About something that has been referred to in the readings that we have had together.
And I trust it comes from the heart when I say I want to speak a little to you about devotedness to Christ and about the love of God.
To start off, let's turn to a couple of verses, the first one in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 24.
Matthew 24.
And verse.
12 Matthew 24 and verse 12.
Never mind for the moment the verses that precede this, but just to read this verse, and because iniquity shall abound.
The love of many.
Shall wax cold.
Now one more verse in John's Gospel, chapter 16.
John 16.
And the last verse in the chapter verse 33.
These things I have spoken unto you that in me might have peace.
In the world notice this, ye shall not might.
But shall have tribulation.
But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.
And one more verse in second Timothy.
Chapter 3.
Second Timothy Chapter 3.
And verse 12.
We might read verse 13 as well, but verse 12 is the one I had before me.
Yeah, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus.
Shall suffer notice the word, shall not might, but shall suffer persecution.
But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
We could read other verses, but these are sufficient for our purposes.
I don't think anyone this afternoon would argue that you and I are living.
In the last days that are described in the beginning of this chapter, Second Timothy 3, and the word of God calls them perilous, perilous, or dangerous times.
And I don't envy you young people growing up in that kind of a world, because as it says here in verse 13.
Evil men and seducers are indeed waxing worse and worse.
That word wax is an old English word, but it's not hard to understand. It means to increase. We speak of the waxing and waning of the moon. Something that's on the wane or waning is getting smaller and smaller. Something that waxes greater and greater is getting bigger and bigger. Again, a word we don't use much in modern English, but that's what it means.
And life is not easy today. Things are happening very rapidly in this world.
Where he read that verse in the prayer meeting this morning that.
This world is getting worse and worse, and men's hearts are failing them for fear for those things that are coming upon the earth.
Now we want to make one thing clear.
The fulfillment of those verses is future.
As is the fulfillment of that verse, we read in Matthew 24, that as the love of many shall whack, or as iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
But the moral principle remains the same. It is happening today.
00:15:00
And when the love of many wax is cold, what happens?
Then, and I speak to my own heart, the tendency is to say, the Lord isn't doing what he should be doing for me.
Does that happen sometimes?
Do we feel in our hearts that the Lord's ways with us are sometimes unfair?
If so, you're not alone.
I don't think there are very many believers here who at times in their lives have asked themselves the question, even if it were not made public.
What did I do to deserve this? Give me a break in modern language.
Did Job ask that question thousands of years ago? Indeed he did.
Job was a good man and things went along well for him. It seems that he had health, he had wealth, he had prosperity in every way. He was looked up to as a man whose advice was sought after.
He had a nice family of ten children.
Wonderful. Everything was going well for Job.
But then calamity struck and we won't go into all the details. And in a very short time he lost all his children. Can you imagine what a blow that would have been all in one day?
He lost practically all his possessions.
Whirlwinds came and took down his barns. The Sabians came and killed his servants and stole his cattle, one thing after another.
And then worse things followed, because then the Lord allowed Satan to take away.
Not merely his possessions, but his health.
And so he thought that God was being unfair.
You and I live in lands of opportunity. I happen to be a Canadian, of course, as most of you know, and there are other Canadians here. Most here are Americans, but we all live, for the most part, in wealthy countries that have not felt much of the effects of war.
And it's true, I can still remember way back in the 1960s when we had a rather lively.
I'm afraid. And one of our professors really gave us a going over once and told us, listen, you fellas, he said our class was largely men, he said. You fellas have never had to go through a depression or a war. Life for you has been nothing but a bowl of cherries, and I hope it stays that way.
But for goodness sakes, behave yourselves in my class.
Yes, he had been through all of that and he was giving us a going over because he knew we hadn't experienced it.
And many of us here in this room have had it pretty good, as they say. But now things are starting to fall apart and we are seeing the beginnings of what God is going to bring upon this world in a coming day. And we are seeing men's hearts fail them for fear, and we are feeling it as well.
The question is.
As we get in John 16.
Am I going to be an overcomer?
I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but I see many today who are not being overcomers.
Who are saying this is too much?
Yes, I know the Lord is my savior, and I'm thankful. I know where I'm going when I leave this world, and I'm thankful for the assurance of my salvation. But beyond that?
Things are just being a little too rough for me.
And what happens then?
The world says just exactly what the Apostle Paul said in First Corinthians 15, almost 2000 years ago. He said evil communications, corrupt good manners. And then he referred to what the logical outcome of that was. The saying let us eat and drink.
For tomorrow we die.
What is that? That's having an outlook that never goes further than the horizon of this world. That is, having an outlook that says I am going to live for today, that says I am going to live it up and enjoy myself in whatever way I would like.
00:20:08
And that, of course, is the attitude of the world around. But I think you and I, if we are honest, have to admit that it has a tendency to spill over into the Church of God. Otherwise Paul wouldn't have said that.
And may I suggest?
And this is not just for young people, but for all of us. Excuse me.
May I suggest?
That perhaps the greatest need today among believers.
And if I, if I may, say it among young people.
Is devotedness.
Yes, it's good to have scriptural knowledge.
I was thankful to hear some comment between the meetings.
On the chapter we are taking up in the readings, and some have said I never really understood that chapter properly. I've read it before, but I'm glad to hear it.
Taken up in a way that I can understand it better. We need that.
Because having intelligence in the scriptures prevents are being carried away, as Ephesians 4 says, carried about with every wind of doctrine. It's necessary.
But all of that by itself will not keep us.
Intelligence in the word of God, wonderful though it is, will not keep us.
Unless, and we had a bit of this morning Star camp, I read the scripture in the right way and it takes me back to the source of it.
Scripture, read properly, will always take me back to the source of it.
And if it doesn't, then I'm going to find that I am using my natural mind to wrap myself around something that I don't understand.
And all it does is puzzle my mind. It reminds me, and I've told this story before, and some will recognize the source of it, of a young brother, probably 150 years ago or so, or maybe more, who wrote to a very well taught older brother with some very serious and difficult questions in the word of God.
Was he reading the word? Indeed he was, and he had questions.
Well, after about the third question, and in those days, it wasn't by e-mail or voicemail or texting or anything. It was by letter mail. After about the 3rd letter, the older brother discerned in that younger brother's letter or letters. Something that he addressed in his third letter when he wrote back and he said to that young brother.
From your questions, I would suspect that you are studying your Bible too much and not reading it enough.
Really. What did he mean?
He meant that he was going at the word of God the way you would go at a physics textbook or some other kind of book where you were saying, no, I have to learn this.
Instead of looking at it as the word of God addressed directly to him from a God who loved and cared for him and wanted to communicate not merely intelligence, but that which has to do with himself.
There is a difference.
And so when we pick up this precious book, it should speak to us.
About the Lord himself. And that's what we want to speak about a little bit this afternoon, because if your affections and mine are not engaged with Christ.
All the intelligence that we might have in the word of God is not going to keep us and we are going to find that when we hit some of the snags in life and they are there.
And when things don't go very well for us and they aren't always going to go well, and when the Lord allows difficulties in our lives.
Then we are not going to know just what to do, and somehow we are going to think that the Lord is not doing right by us.
Two things come to mind.
Both quotations from older brothers who are long since with the Lord.
00:25:02
Number one.
Let us remember.
And this was quoted at Morningstar Camp. I'll repeat it again.
All our failure.
Whether as sinners or as Saints.
Ultimately stems.
From our unbelief of the goodness that is in the heart of God.
Some of us are old enough to remember the brother that said it, thundering those words at us over and over again.
All our failure, whether as sinners or as Saints.
Ultimately stems from our unbelief of the goodness that is in the heart of God.
Young people never doubt the goodness or love of God.
Never.
Never.
This comes from a different brother of the same generation, and it's shorter.
We are never wiser than Scripture.
Sometimes when we read the word of God.
And it hits our consciences. And it does.
If I don't want to follow the word of God.
I will rationalize my way around it. What does that mean?
I will persuade myself that somehow my situation is different from what the Lord is applying that scripture to me. For I will try and get around the scripture by saying, well, it doesn't really mean that. Well, no, but I see it this way, and I think the Lord really means this. And in so doing we twist things around to such a point that effectively we have nullified the word of God.
And said, it doesn't really mean that.
No, I am never wiser than the word of God.
Our brother Verne Clark remarked on it in his prayer. We have it in our hands, the complete word of God, and it says so.
Colossians tells us that Paul completed the word of God.
Don't let anyone tell you that someone can come along hundreds of years later and add to it.
But this word of God is good for all time, all cultures, all nations. No matter where we take it in the world, God doesn't have to rewrite it.
We are never wiser than Scripture.
Well now in the time we have left.
What is the antidote? What is the remedy? What is the treatment for a lack of devotedness to Christ?
We have talked a little bit in our reading meetings about getting away from the Lord. We have talked a little bit of how things go when we allow sin in our lives. We've talked a little bit about what happens when we persuade ourselves that maybe the Lord isn't doing the very best for us. Does He not do the best for us? Indeed he does.
Let's turn to Romans 8 for a verse. I'm going to look at 4 verses. We'll talk about them and I hope we can fit them into the time. Romans 8.
Verse 32.
Verse 32.
It has already told us a little earlier, a few verses earlier.
That all things work together for good to them that love God to them who are the called according to his purpose.
But here it says in Romans 8 and 32 he that spared not his own son.
Delivered him up for us all.
How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
I say to each one of us, the Lord paid too high a price for you.
Not to do the right thing by you.
The Lord paid too much for you.
Not to do right by you.
The Lord loves you too much.
If there's anyone here that isn't saved.
The Lord sent his Son. God sent his Son to die for you. He loves you and wants to bring you to himself.
But for those of us that are believers.
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And let's allow for the fact that maybe there are some in the room.
Excuse me?
Let me get a little disillusioned at times. Say things aren't working out very well for me. I tried to do what was right. I tried to honor the Lord. And now look what happened.
Is the Lord doing the right thing? Indeed he is. He is doing the right thing. But let's look at it from this point of view and we'll get into this a little bit more.
If everything went absolutely smoothly for you and me in this world, what would the world say?
Oh, they'd say. Look at those people. No wonder they're happy. No wonder they always wear a smile. No wonder they can sing. The Lord looks after them. And that's the very thing that Satan threw up to the Lord about Job. Satan said to the Lord, no wonder Job is a good man. No wonder he honors you. Look at all you gave him. Look at everything you do for him.
And the Lord showed Satan that even though he took everything away that Job had in a temporal sense and even his help, Job did not turn against the Lord. The devil said He'll curse you to your face.
And Job didn't do that.
The Lord is using you and me, and the trials and difficulties.
In order to show the world around us how a believer can react.
Under severe difficulties.
And when we read that verse in Second Timothy 3 in the world ye shall have tribulation.
Some of us at lunchtime were discussing the terrible pure persecution that has occurred and is occurring every day in many parts of the world in believers lives.
Thrown into prison?
Beaten.
Separated from their families, their livelihood, taken away from sometimes not only put in prison but in solitary confinement. I can't imagine what that would be like.
Awful things. And I could go on and on. I know at least two people, and I knew them both personally in India who came out boldly for Christ.
One of them was gathered to the Lord's name. The other one didn't get a chance to do that. He'd only been saved 10 days, and he was murdered for his faith by his relatives. And so was the young woman who was gathered to the Lord's name for a year and a half.
And her relatives murdered her because she was a Christian.
Nothing ever happened. Everybody just looked the other way and that was that.
It's going on all the time.
I say to my own soul and to us here in these favored lands, I thank God for the liberty we have, and I trust with all my heart that it continues. But I say, are we going to escape persecution? Is the Lord going to give all of us here in North America an easy ride to glory? Well, he puts those and other lands through terrible persecution.
No, the Lord's going to allow us to feel the difficulties and problems in the way, and sometimes they come from without. Sometimes, sad to say, if I could put it bluntly, they come from within. Some of the worst persecution comes from within the Great House of Christendom. And, sad to say, even among those gathered to the Lord's name, sometimes the going can be pretty rough.
And you know what I'm talking about. Because we are not by any means a perfect company, and things come in that cause sorrow and heartache.
That ought to bring us to our knees, and sometimes it doesn't. But remember the Lord Jesus says here in John 16 Fear not.
I have overcome the world. You can be an overcomer too.
Never doubt the love of God.
Now let's turn back to John's Gospel, Chapter 15.
John's Gospel, chapter 15.
And verse 9.
And 10.
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As the Father.
Hath loved me.
So have I loved you.
Continue ye in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love. Notice it does not say.
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall have a smooth pathway.
And say that.
He shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love.
And then we'll read the next verse. These things have I spoken unto you.
That my joy might remain in you, and that your joy.
Might be full.
It's a wonderful thing.
To abide in someone's love.
I hope it's OK to tell a personal story.
My wife isn't here.
Number of years ago.
We had a particularly hard thing happen, at least to me anyway.
And it was very, very difficult.
For me, anyway.
Very, very difficult. I won't go into the detail of what it was, but I have to tell you that I was pretty broken about it.
And I came home and told my wife, Charlotte about it, told her what had happened.
And it wasn't that I didn't trust the Lord, but at that moment it hardly seemed to be possible to know where things would go, or what I would do, or how I would manage the situation.
And I can still remember what it felt like.
She said, well, what about this person? And what about that person? And I said, no, no, they can't be of any help. Some people would like to help, but they can't. And some people could help, but they don't want to know. I said it's just not going to work.
And she came up, put her arms around me, gave me a big hug and a kiss, and said remember, you've got me.
I think every husband here can relate to that. Maybe wives have had a husband that did the same. You've got me.
She didn't do that just once. She's done it a few times.
Why do I tell that story?
Because it brought, but brings before us the fact that even on the human level, God has provided those who can get close to us and who will be with us even if everyone else forsakes us.
But do we sometimes feel all alone?
When I was growing up, I sometimes did before I was married. Sometimes I didn't feel as if my parents could understand, and nobody else seemed to be able to enter into what I was going through.
Could we say it with all reverence? The Lord Jesus wants to put his arms around you and say.
And I say this reverently.
You have me.
But I don't believe the Lord says it that way.
He says something different.
From his point of view, the Lord says.
I have you.
I have you.
And what the Lord is saying to His disciples here is anticipating the time when He would go to the cross.
And then eventually leave them and go back to heaven.
And he tells them something so wonderful that I can never wrap my mind around.
As the Father has his love to him.
The love of the Father for the Lord Jesus was the same love that he had.
And does have He had for his disciples? And He has for you and for me.
But there is something else. If you keep my commandments, Not that you won't have any trouble, but you shall abide in my love. Oh, there's nothing better than abiding in the sense of his love and what are His commandments. It's not a legalistic thing like the Old Testament law. It's simply doing what He has told us will please him and when we get to know someone.
After a while.
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Get to know what pleases them without their having to tell us, don't we? I've had more than that. More often me rephrase that. I've had many occasions when I've spoken to a wife.
And maybe said something to her and she said without even asking him, Well, my husband wouldn't care for that. Or I've spoken to a husband. He says no, no, let's not do it that way. I know my wife wouldn't go for that.
He didn't have to ask her. She didn't have to ask him. They knew one another well.
The Lord wants you and me to have that kind of a relationship with him, and it's possible. It's possible.
To go to the Lord as you would a dear friend.
But as we've had in our meetings, in our reading meetings, I can't go freely to the Lord. If I have willfully disobeyed and done something which I knew did not please him, can I abide in His love under those circumstances? No, I can't, can I?
We all understand that.
My children couldn't come to me with the freedom and liberty that they wanted to. If they knew very well that they had done something that displeased me, they knew something had to be straightened out first. And thank God. In our chapter in the readings, we see how God wants to straighten it out, and how can he straighten it out because it was already looked after at the cross. Beautiful.
Ye shall abide in my love. And the Lord Jesus puts himself into that position. Isn't that beautiful?
Here was one who never did a single thing. Contrary to the Father's will, never a single sin soiled his pathway. And yet he says.
I kept my father's commandments and I abide in his love. Isn't that beautiful? He's the perfect example for us. He was the perfect dependent man. And in walking that pathway that he walked, we abide in His love.
Does that mean that we won't have rough times? No, it doesn't. But it means that those rough times are only an occasion for the Lord to show more and more of His love and to open things up that we never thought could happen.
And I won't multiply stories explaining that, but it's true.
But we need to go on. Let's go on now. Excuse me for a moment.
This time to.
2nd Corinthians chapter 5.
2nd Corinthians 5.
I was about to turn to another scripture, but this will be a better order in which to take them up, hence the slight hesitancy.
2nd Corinthians 5.
Verse 14.
For the love of Christ constraint us because we thus judge that if one died for all, then we're all dead.
And he died, or that doesn't need to be there, it should read. And he died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.
What does it mean to constrain?
Let me tell a story that will illustrate that, this time from another member of my family.
I can remember when my daughter was about three or four years old, she badly wanted me to do something.
And I wasn't particularly disposed to do it right at that time. I didn't mind doing it, but I had other concerns on my mind and other considerations that seemed more important than satisfying the wishes of a four year old girl.
And fathers here, and grandfathers too can probably relate to that.
And I can still remember her taking me by the hand and looking into my eyes and saying, but Daddy, you she'd learned enough language to get the point across. Daddy, you you you have to.
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And she started pulling me by the hand.
I was finished.
I had to go. No more excuses, no more putting her off. I had to go.
And I'm glad I did.
There was something compelling about those words in that little hand and the look on that little face that couldn't be denied.
Is there something compelling about the Lord Jesus?
The love of Christ constraineth us.
Does that have a tug on my heart?
If it doesn't, there's something wrong with me as a Christian.
If I am living in the enjoyment of that love, that love does constrain me. It doesn't say it should constrain me. It does. It has a pull, just as a magnet has a pull on iron filings.
But if the iron filings were way down there by John Kent and I had a magnet in my hand here, and I'd say, well, something wrong with this magnet, those filings aren't moving. You'd say, well, come on, Bill, did you ever study physics?
The.
Pull of a magnetic field varies as the square of the distance from it and those.
Flattings are so far away for practical purposes, the pull is gone.
That's what happens when I don't keep his commandments. I get further and further away and then I say I don't feel that full.
But it's there. It's there. The love of Christ constraineth us.
And what does the rest of the verse mean? It means as we had in this morning's reading.
That we were all dead.
Dead in trespasses and sins.
Death separated from God as Brother Don was bringing out. That's where we were, and it was only the finished work of Christ that brought us back.
Otherwise, we were doomed to a lost eternity.
Does that love not constrain?
There are children here. May I tell you a story?
This concerns a boy whose name was Tom, who lived many years ago, long before my time or anyone else here back in the 1800s. And he was an orphan.
And you know, in North America today, orphaned children generally are able to be adopted pretty well. There are usually plenty of people who are more than happy to look after them. But in those days, not only were there many more orphans because parents got sick and died of diseases that could be helped today, but also people were in general much poorer and many people didn't have enough money.
To take on an extra person to look after.
And the lady that was looking after Tom didn't care for the job.
She looked after him because she was related to him, and I forget for the moment just how she was related, but it doesn't matter.
But there was worse than that. Tom was crippled, and he couldn't go out and do anything to help earn his living. He couldn't grow up and try and have a career because whatever kind of problem had caused him to be crippled. They didn't have all the things they have today to look after crippled people, and they didn't have prosthetic limbs to put on them and all the things that could be done today. So Tom was pretty much confined to his room.
But he had a good friend. And I'll tell this story a little more quickly because I want to talk about one last verse. But Tom had a good friend, and one day his friend was going to go away to another city and he came to Tom and he said, Tom, I'm leaving, you know that.
But I have something for you. I've saved up because the other boy was just what you'd call a a street boy. He didn't live by his wits. He didn't have parents either, but he managed to, to save what in those days in England, they called a shilling.
A shilling and it would have been worth about 1/4.
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But 1/4?
But of course, money went further in those days. With a shilling you could easily buy a good meal, so it went a lot further than it would today.
Said Tom. I got a shilling for you.
You buy something you really want.
Tom said, listen, I already know what I want and you've got time to go and get it. You go down, there's a store, and Tom told him exactly where it was. He said they sell Bibles there and I want you to find me a Bible.
Wow, the other boy said. Bible. You want a Bible? I want you to buy something really good with this, Tom said. I want that more than anything else. Please get it before they close. So the boy went and got the Bible.
And he was able to pay for it and he came back a little changed because.
He told the man in the store the story and the man assured him he was a believer. He said, Young man, you couldn't be investing this shilling any better.
So the boy brightened up. Well, Tom read the Bible and he got saved.
And he wanted to do something for the Lord Jesus. And I'll skip over some of the details because of time.
But he had no money and he was crippled. What could he do?
He spoke to the lady.
Looked after him and he said, you know, I'd like pencil and paper.
See, I haven't gotten the extra money to give you pencil and paper.
Well, if you cut back and gave me only half the amount of milk you usually give me every day.
Would that be enough to buy a pencil and a little pad of paper? Yeah, I guess so.
So Tom got his pencil and paper for giving up half his milk every day, and he didn't get much. He didn't have the kind of spread that Tony and Becky put on for us at noon today.
And Tom?
Wrote out Bible verses.
On those pieces of paper and folded them nicely and on the outside wrote.
To the passerby, please read.
And he dropped them out his window. He was at an upper Storey window onto the busy St. down below. He lived in a big city in England.
People picked them up.
Some people read them. People got saved.
Some people, of course, just that was littering and they just picked them up and threw them in the nearest trash bin and some people read them and I don't care, but people got saved.
One day, a man picked up that piece of paper.
And he got saved through it.
And he was a wealthy man.
And, he wondered, where did that paper come from?
He walked down that street every day, and he noticed that every day there were pieces of paper dropped there.
And he tried to figure out where do they come from. Hmm.
Why are they always in the same spot?
Knocked on the door, talked to the lady, found out who crippled Tom was, went upstairs and found out that he was the boy that was doing it.
Oh, the man said. I got saved through what you wrote on that paper.
Oh, Tom was overjoyed. He said. That's wonderful.
O, the man said. Look, you're in terrible conditions here, and you're skinny. You're not getting enough to eat. You're not getting proper care. Let me. You come with me. I'll let you live at my house. I'll feed you well. I'll give you lots of pencils and paper, and you can do you can. I'll tell you a way to get these things out.
You know what Tom said.
He said. Thank you, Sir.
That's wonderful.
But you know, if I came with you and got too taken up with all the good things you're offering me.
Might take me a little bit away from the Lord.
If you don't mind, Sir.
I think I'll stay here.
I think I'll stay here and then I won't get taken up with anything but what I can do for the Lord.
Does that illustrate the verse did the love of?
I don't want to do what I said at the beginning of the meeting and start breaking down, but.
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The point is, the love of Christ constrained him.
In such a way that it didn't matter what happened to him.
His heart was so filled with his blessed Lord and master.
Now, God doesn't call all of us to live in poor circumstances like that, and he doesn't call all of us to do that kind of thing. But what I'm pointing out is that if the love of Christ.
Is present in your heart and mind, It will constrain.
And there will not only be the enjoyment of that love, there will be the earnest desire.
To do, but he would have us to do. It may be different for each one of us.
But we will do what he wants us to do. One last verse in the 5 minutes that remain.
John 17.
Brother Don Rule, read this before the prayer meeting this morning, but we'll read it again.
John 17 verse 24.
John 17 and 24.
Father I will.
Here's the Lord expressing his wish to the Father. He's about to do the Father's will.
In a perfect way, but he says.
I will.
But they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.
That they may behold my glory which thou has given me. And here's the phrase.
For thou lovest me before the foundation of the world.
I've never been able to understand that verse perfectly.
The Lord Jesus makes a request to his father.
And I want to say this very reverently.
He makes the request for you and me.
And if I may put it this way, and I hope it isn't reaching overreaching scripture, but he makes the request, I will.
That they also, whom thou has given me be where I am, that they may behold my glory.
Which thou hast given me, And then, if I could say it reverently, he constrains his father by saying.
For thou lovest me before the foundation of the world.
Can anything compare to that love?
The Lord Jesus is Father.
You loved me before the foundation of the world, and now I am here in the world that has turned away from you and is filled with wickedness. And I am on the way to the cross in order to redeem those out of the world whom thou hast given me.
And I make a request based on that love that you have for me.
Before the foundation of the world.
God wants you and me, and this is OK for young people. He wants to take us right out of ourselves to see things from his vantage point.
Isn't that beautiful?
And we're living in a world where everything is me, me, me. I want what I want. And people trample on one another in order to get what they want, in order to have what they think they need. And we've been taught, sad to say in these last 30 years or more, that we are to put ourselves first. Because after all, if you don't look after yourselves, who else will?
Man came over from another country and.
It doesn't mean, I don't mean to implicate the United States because he happened to be here in America. It's not much different where I come from in Canada. But he said I know why America does so well and has so much prosperity. Somebody said to him, why? Well, he said because in America everybody puts him or herself first. That's why America is so prosperous.
Well, he missed the point. That is not true.
That America's prosperous because it's me first.
But the observation wasn't too far wrong.
And if we're not careful, we start looking at Christianity and looking at the Lord. The word that comes to mind is a philanthropist, one who is there to give me things. We look at the Lord as if He's there to give me things.
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After all, isn't he promised to look after us? And doesn't the Lord love me and so can't I go to him with my requests and have him fulfil them? Isn't isn't that the way it goes?
Oh, how wonderful the Lord loves to give us.
But there's something even more wonderful than enjoying what He can give us, and that is to have our hearts taken right outside of ourselves, to see things from His side. And there are many places in Scripture where the Lord Jesus speaks to us in order to show us how He looks at things from His side, and to appreciate that love which existed in this case, between Him and his Father.
Long before this world ever existed. But isn't it beautiful that the Lord makes a request?
For the blessing of you and me, based on that love that existed.
Way back in a past eternity. That's beyond our understanding, isn't it?
We are going to close now. I can't say anymore.
Except to emphasize the fact that what we need more than anything today is a sense of God's love, and to live and move in the enjoyment of that love, to enjoy it. Because living in the enjoyment of that love can't help but produce that devotedness. And that is what is needed more than anything. If the heart is right, everything else will fall into place.
Will I be intelligent in the word? Of course I'll want to be, but.
It has to start with the enjoyment of his love in my heart and the response of my heart to his.
Maybe we have time for part of another hymn.
2 verses may be of #18 in the appendix.
18 in the appendix.
And for the sake of time, we'll sing verses 2.
And three.
O Jesus, Lord, who loved me like to thee.
And in the original hymn there was an exclamation mark after the word work in the second line fruit of thy work.
With thee 2 There to see thy glory, Lord, while endless ages roll.
And yet.
The Lord is not going to take it all and enjoy it all without us. The objects of His love. Verses two and three of #18 in the appendix, and we'll just sing it to the regular tune.
Oh Jesus Lord.
Whole of me like to thee.
Horrible.
Yeah, it must be.
More.
Lower.
Where my name.
No way.
Bless God our Father.
But more can we say in thy presence here this afternoon.
Our love, if we will allow it, washes over us like an ocean.
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And we thank thee that thou hast given us, not only to feel the effect of that love.
Through Calvary's cross. But thou hast enabled us to live in the joy.
In the enjoyment of that love throughout our Christian pathway. And we thank Thee our God, that we will enjoy that love for all eternity. Help us more to live in the good of it, now that we might feel its constraining power, and that we might enter into it more. For we ask it. Lord Jesus, in thy alone, worthy and precious name. Amen.
Numbers 19:11-22
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It would be nice to continue with numbers 19. There is much that we didn't consider.
Would verse 11 be a good place to start? Would that be about right?
Numbers chapter 19 and verse 11.
He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean 7 days He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the 7th day he shall be clean. But if he purify not himself the third day, then the 7th day he shall not be clean. Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defile the Tabernacle of the Lord, and that soul shall be cut off from Israel. Because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is yet upon him.
This is the law. When a man dies in a tent, all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent shall be unclean 7 days. And every open vessel which hath no covering bound upon it is unclean. And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man or a grave, shall be unclean 7 days. And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt effer, for purification, for sin and running water shall be put thereunto in a vessel.
And a clean person shall take Hyssop, and dip it in the water, sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there and upon him that toucheth a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave. And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the 7th day. And on the 7th day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even but the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, That soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord.
The water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him. He is unclean.
And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth the water's separation shall wash his clothes, And he that toucheth of water separation shall be unclean till even, and whatsoever the unclean person touches shall be unclean, and the soul that touches it shall be unclean until even.
00:05:19
Well, as we mentioned in the meeting, excuse me, as we mentioned in the meeting this morning.
The third day, I would suggest, is the full realization of the magnitude of sin in the presence of grace, and it's a very necessary thing in restoration. And that's why the importance of the third day is emphasized here.
The individual who was unclean.
Could not bypass the third day by excusing him or herself, or by pretending that that purification wasn't necessary. And so it is with you and me under Christianity. I can't bypass the third day and pretend that the sin wasn't all that serious or well, after all, I can remember once.
When I reproached a brother for something he had done, and his reply was well, someday you will know the stress and strain I was under at that time.
Well, that's not the kind of talk from someone that's reaching the third day. When we reach the third day, we don't blame anyone but ourselves.
We don't say yes, I've sinned but and start pointing the finger at someone else. Yes, others may have been an aggravating factor. Others may have been wrong too, and God doesn't pass over that either. But the Lord says to you and me, we are dealing with you. At this point every one of us shall give account of himself to God. And so it's very, very important that we get to the third day.
Before we can go on any further and if I try to skip over it or somehow.
Get around it, it says Clearly here he shall not be on the 7th day.
He shall not be clean. God wants to perform a thorough work of restoration, not simply a shallow 1.
And we thank the Lord that there is a 7th day.
And that speaks of perfection.
The third day in Scripture, I would suggest in a general sense, speaks of death and resurrection.
And in that sense, I believe here it is bringing us back to the cross, making us realize that we have, as we mentioned this morning, sinned not merely in the presence of a holy God, but in the presence of His love and grace.
And that we have sinned in spite of the one who went into death and rose from the dead, in order that we might be saved, suffered untold sorrow in the three hours of darkness in order to put away sin.
But we mentioned yesterday.
God never occupies us with sin, except to judge it and then to go on.
The Spirit of God never occupies me with myself except to judge sin, and so God doesn't lead me with that awful sense of sin.
It's necessary. I have to be brought right down to the very bottom where I realized that I was to blame. And I can't start making excuses by blaming others.
But when God gets me to that point.
Then how thankful we should be that from that point upward, from that point on, it's going upward to the 7th day.
What? Does God want me to be occupied with? The fact that I have sinned so seriously? Does he want me to go on the rest of my life groaning under the awful sense of my sin? I believe that's what it means in Second Corinthians when it says.
00:10:05
We are not. In fact, we could turn to it. Second Corinthians. I think it's chapter 2.
2nd Corinthians 2 And it says in verse 10 Paul writing to the Corinthians about a man whom they had been obliged to put away according to his instructions in the first epistle. And here in the second epistle in verse 10 he says.
To whom ye forgive anything I forgive also, For if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ. And here's the verse.
Lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. And up in verse seven he says.
Contrary. Why she ought rather.
Excuse me?
Ought rather to forgive him and comfort him.
Lest perhaps such an one should be swallowed up with over much sorrow.
I can still remember many, many years ago now visiting a 16 year old girl in a home for unwed mothers.
Who's sad to say it had a child out of wedlock?
And her parents were believers, but they wanted nothing to do with her. And I remember having a visit with her, and she was the Lord's. And I remember pointing that verse out to her and saying, Satan will whisper in your ear, You have failed so seriously, You have messed up so badly, you have so disgraced the Christian testimony and dishonor the Lord that you might as well just throw it all up and go out into the world.
What can you do for the Lord? How can you be a testimony anymore? How can you ever get back and enjoy happy fellowship with the Lord and with other believers? And that's what Satan does. He takes an advantage of us in that way. He gets one advantage over us and getting us to sin, and then he gets another advantage by persuading us that there's no restoration. And so I would suggest in simple terms.
That the 7th day is the converse of the third. If the third day is the full realization of the magnitude of sin in the presence of grace, the 7th day is the full realization of the magnitude of God's grace in the presence of our sin. What do we find out on the 7th day? Just what we have in first John 1:00 and 9:00 if we confess our sins?
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
How? Because way back before the cross, the Lord knew that I would commit that sin, and it was all settled at the cross.
And so God can come in and forgive that sin on the basis of the advocacy of Christ. And how can Christ be our advocate? Because he has been our substitute already. And so.
What a blessed thing it is that God does not leave me with the overwhelming thought of how awful the sin is. I need to get to that point. I can't skip it. But then.
Full restoration is a realization that God's grace is far, far greater than my sin.
And the enjoyment of his love and grace is still there, even though I have sinned. It doesn't mean there may not be consequences, because serious sins bring down the government of God. They did in David's time. Of course. For him he was fully restored. But there was the government of God, and the richness and glory of repentance and restoration did not take away the government of consequences of the sin.
But nevertheless, that didn't affect full restoration.
00:15:18
That 12 doors where it says that he shall purify himself.
With it on the third day, That doesn't mean he took the water and put it on himself, just it just means that he repented.
I would see it a little differently. Vern and I stand to be corrected, but.
To me it brings out the fact that while in serious sin, others may need to be involved. Yet I have my responsibility to get before the Lord, and in that sense, even as an individual, I can avail myself of the water of purification.
I can go to the Lord.
And in being in his presence, realize that.
Yes, I can be restored. I may not if I let's.
Put it out in Christian terms. If I have sinned in such a way that I have had to be put away from Christian fellowship and from the partaking of the Lord's table, I don't restore myself to the Lord's table. Others have to do that. It takes their discernment as to whether I have reached the third day and then the 7th day, and the Lord can and does use them to administer that water.
Purification.
But I have appreciated it that it also includes my responsibility to get before the Lord and administer that water too. But.
I speak subject to correction. I've never had this chapter taken up in a conference that I've been at before, and so maybe others have different thoughts.
So his verse 12 Then connected with verse 19.
I would think so, yes, and I wouldn't see myself why both could not go on. If the sin is not too serious, and I shouldn't say too serious, I don't want to let anyone think that sin isn't isn't serious, but God doesn't make every sin alike. He speaks of the greater sin and so on. But.
Ted Sester brought that out this morning that you and I can apply the water of purification to our secret sins before they become public, and so this chapter covers a lot of angles. I would suggest it takes us all the way to something that becomes a public sin, but it also applies to that which may not have gone that far and gives me my responsibility before the Lord.
But even in a very serious sin.
Can't just say, well, I failed so seriously that I guess.
I say that because I heard with my own ears a brother say this.
He said yes, I have sinned seriously and I was put away from the Lord's table, but there's no one in my assembly that's spiritual enough to restore me. So what do I do?
Yeah, that's what he said.
This chapter doesn't let him off the hook like that. He can get before the Lord. He can, in that sense, apply the water to himself. Yes, his brethren may have to be stirred up, and maybe his sense of his brethren spirituality was a little warped by the sin he'd committed. So his judgment may have been a little impaired at the time, and we allow for that. But.
Even if others are not able to sprinkle the water on me, I can't use that as an excuse not to be restored, at least to the Lord, and then trust the Lord to work in the hearts of my brethren.
But I don't like to push it on to you, Brother Don. But what would your thought be on that? And I don't mind if you disagree with me.
I won't address it directly. First I'd like to go to another preface and then come to it.
00:20:01
Psalm 19.
Psalm 19.
And verse 12.
Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse me, cleanse thou me from secret faults.
Beat back thy servant also from presumptuous sins.
Let them not have dominion over me.
Then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
We've talked about being unclean and defilement and secret.
Faults and so on. And then public ones and these. There's four points here that show us the progression of what happens in our own souls.
In need for judgment, self judgment, and restoration.
The first one is who can understand his errors. What David is saying here is a little bit like the apostle Paul, who said I'm not aware of anything in myself.
But that doesn't justify me. In other words, we may be going on with something that we're not aware in the light of the Word of God is is not according to God.
The fact that our conscience isn't at work, nobody said anything. We're not perfect. Personally conscious of something does not mean that our walk is perfect and clean.
And David understood that, as it were, was saying, well, Lord, you're the only one that can look at me perfectly and recognize if there's something of an error in me.
And as we read and feed upon the Lord in the word of God, we should become more sensitive and more aware of what is pleasing to the Lord and what is not.
And we become enlightened by the word of God and may say, come to a scripture someday, we may have been a believer for 10 years.
And we read it and we say, oh, I never realized that before. And we change, we say that I can see the Lord doesn't want that. And that's what's described as the first one, something we're not even aware of. But then the Lord can allow in us, He says, verse 12, Who cleanse thou, me, from secret faults?
These are things that we are aware of.
In our own hearts, in our own thoughts.
The thought of foolishness is sin you. We can sin easily in ourselves without ever saying a word or doing a thing with respect to another person, because our thoughts themselves can be impure and wrong in the sight of God as well as the possibility of something in us that we do that no one else is aware of it.
Nobody knows that, nobody sees it, and in yet our conscience, we're aware of it and our conscience, and we recognize it's not pleasing to the Lord and in that way.
David recognized that in his own personal life and he says cleanse me.
From secret faults.
But what then the progression? If there's not that self judgment in something that is the Lord brings before us and in our conscience that we are aware of, then it says keep thy servant back also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me.
It progresses in US.
That we become willful.
And we purposely do things that we know when we do them.
Are not according to the word and will of God.
It's a presumptuous thing to know God's will, and Kanchi with conscious will be against it.
And do my own thing. What happens? God says.
They get dominion over me, they take control.
00:25:01
I visit.
A detention center.
Every, well, usually twice a week, but every Monday night, particularly when we're interacting and the kids will say.
I made a mistake.
That's why I'm here.
And they don't.
Always call it a sin. Now it's a mistake and.
When then some come to the Lord and been saved and everything changes. But the point I'm trying to make about it is this.
That will say after that, but I made a mistake. But I don't like this place. I'm never coming back here.
In other words, the statement is the. What's being said is I'm not going to do that again.
So I don't come here.
And then a few months later.
We see him and maybe we see him again.
At age 18, that's the oldest stage allowed at the detention center. After that, you go to an adult facility. Some kids will be back every so often until they're 18.
What it is that they've done has control over them.
And if sin is not judged in us, that's where it goes, and it becomes a presumptuous sin. And in God's perfect wisdom, very often He exposes it.
And if others know, and then we have numbers 19, and the activity of others involved in it. The 4th one is I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
And sin can take on a great transgression character.
That puts the consequences of this life to the rest of one's life.
Doesn't mean that the soul is not restored. David committed very, very serious sin in his personal life and.
Yet the Lord worked in David, and he was restored.
In his own soul, although he suffered the consequences both for himself and for his family, and for the Kingdom, as to the consequences of things that David had done.
In that way, but in a little more directly connected with what Bill said, I would like to use Job as an example to try to agree and illustrate the point a little more.
Others recognize something had gone wrong in the life of Job, and they came to comfort him. And they were very.
Real they when they came to Job, they sat seven days with job without saying a word.
There was a real desire to help Job in all that had befallen him, and so they started to converse with Joe about it. And the first three friends, None of them were actually directly a help to Job.
Because they didn't realize.
They tried to help Job from their own perspective, one by experience, another just saying Job, If this happened to you, then you must have done something wrong. And what is it? What is it that you did wrong that God's done this to your life? And so on.
But here's the point. The 4th Elihu worked in a different way.
Here's what Elijah did was he sought to put Job into the presence of God so that God would deal with Job directly.
And even one who seeks to help in the work of purification, the intention of the work is the necessity of seeking to help a soul be brought into the presence of God by the word of God.
To the ashes that the Lord may use that to bring about the self judgment.
You can't make your brother judge anything. You can point out sin, you can say you did wrong, but you can't change the heart. Only God can truly restore a soul, and God does it by His word, by the ashes in in Numbers 19.
00:30:06
And consequently the work is to bring before the soul that which would direct them.
To drill directly with God and see what is done. Not against their brethren, not against the world. That's part of it. But that's only a first step. The real greatest part of the offense is against God and His honor. And it's, I also want to say, part of what the self judgment is, or the application.
One of the friends talked to Job and he started to give an answer before he was done. He was no longer talking to the friend, he was talking to God.
If you if you trace it out, you'll see every time it showed the sincerity of Job to get right with God.
And finally, when Elijah speaks to him and brings him into the presence of God, it's almost hard. You have to be careful to read it to see where it's no longer a lie who's speaking, but it's the Lord speaking directly to John.
And that's the that's the ultimate wonderful work. If one speaking to somebody, they're not after a while listening to what you say to them, but they have been brought to say, the Lord's talking to me, and then you will get the proper judgment in them, God will get the proper judgment in them, and there will be the repentance that comes from it and God's work in restoring them.
Completely and to recognize his grace.
God's proof.
That job had reached, will say, the 7th day.
Was after Job said I abhor myself and repent and dust and ashes. The proof of the grace of God? Was God said to Job. OK, now you pray for your friends.
You pray for your friends.
But what? You know, you're being the ones that set all those nasty things to me and misjudge me and told me this and deal with me that.
No, You said you prayed for your friends. He did. And the Lord blessed him. And if we hold anything against those that the Lord has used in bringing out sin.
It in itself is an evidence that the work is not complete in US.
But when David said against thee, and the only, have I sinned.
Was that the third day?
That was the work of God and his soul, right? And then they could, And then they could, the 19th verse.
That we had a clean person, a sprinkle to the unclean on the third day with that.
Yes, I I think we we have it here in the take it, keep it in the context of the chapter.
When if I can find it quickly, but what you see is.
Um.
Let's go to verse 18. A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water, and sprinkled upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touches the bone, and so on.
What it's saying to us is.
If I sin against God.
There's going to be effects, whether they're aware of it or not.
In others.
It doesn't mean that they're going to nest this and if my own communion with the Lord has been broken.
Death, Separation of the communion at that point.
Then my very presence and conversation and whatever is going to have a negative effect on others, whether they know it or not.
And in that way David was saying to the Lord against thee and thee. Only have I sinned, because he was recognizing that was the root between himself and God, even though we recognize, and he did too, that a lot of others were affected by it. But it starts with.
00:35:03
And it ends with in terms of the need for restoration.
If.
I am restored properly to God.
Then all other effects will take the right place, and I will cease to defile others, and God, in His grace and mercy may work with others, so that the effect of that uncleanness that I have brought into others lives has affected it.
One very simple illustration of it. Suppose I'm a father and I have unjudged sin in my life. Who's who's suffering?
The most immediate ones to suffer is my wife and my children.
They may not know anything about it, but they're suffering.
They're suffering because of the unclean condition of my soul robs me.
Of the mind of the Lord, for the needs of those that I am interacting with and may be dependent upon me.
So what happens if I get to a point in sin in my life and I never get to the third day?
Suppose.
The spirit of God through the word of God doesn't reach my heart.
And.
There's no restoration and I go on.
With this unjudged sin.
How long does the Lord deal with that?
Is it what we get in first, John?
Chapter 5 where it says there is a sin unto death.
And he also says there's a sin not unto death. Does that have a part in the play there? Or where I'm not reached by his grace and I go on without reaching the third day?
I would say so, yes, that it can come to that. And of course that's the Lord's.
Decision, if we could say it reverently, to make that call. The illustration has been used of an ambassador to another country and, if he behaves so badly and so poorly, represents his own country's interests. It is an unusual for the authorities to recall him, and in principle that can happen with a Christian, and it does happen.
Unhappily, of course, there are those who have.
Gone all the way to their deathbeds and reached the third day on their death beds.
And there are those who will not, if I could use the term, reach that day until the judgment seat of Christ. Because of the judgment seat of Christ, when my life is reviewed, I will have his thoughts about what I said and did during my pathway down here. And so everyone will in that sense reach that third day, and there will be the full enjoyment of the grace of God in eternity. But.
I will have to admit it the judgement seat of Christ.
That I that I was I was wrong and I won't have any problem doing it because the old nature will no longer be there and I'll have his thoughts about it.
And so it's sad, but it's sometimes dear believers go to be with the Lord, never having really dealt with sin and.
We just have to leave that where it is.
Well, isn't it true that faithfulness, the Lord's faithfulness to us, will not allow his child to go on?
Indefinitely in this life without some type of government dealing with them.
Or if needs be.
They go.
There's a sin under death and they fall asleep in the north. Rather than have the child of God continue in disobedience, the Lord does take him home. Is that not true? I've seen that myself.
Yeah.
I would only say let's not be quick to pin that label on a brother who's taken home and make the judgment in our own souls that that's why the Lord took him home. Far better to leave it with the Lord.
But it does happen. The Lord said. Many are sick and weak among you, and many sleep. Most definitely. Paul gives us an answer to that question.
One other question arises in connection with the third day and the 7th day and.
In as much as this may be the last reading meeting.
00:40:05
It should be taken up and there have been a lot of questions about this.
In First Corinthians 5, when an individual has to be put away from fellowship with the Saints and from taking part in the Lord's table, the scripture is pretty clear, Paul says.
By inspiration not to keep company, and with such an one know not to eat.
We all recognize that.
The question has arisen.
Let's consider the case of someone who unhappily is in that position. What is our responsibility relative to what we have been taking up in this chapter? How should those in the local assembly react toward that individual, and is there a point at which they can reach out to him, or should they be reaching out to him right from the very beginning?
How should we handle that?
We know, of course, that when a very serious sin has taken place.
Paul, as an apostle, could deliver that individual to Satan.
I would question whether we have that authority today. But the Lord can do it, and what is really being done is for the individual who has chosen in that sense Satan as his master, and who has chosen to act as if he were part of Satan's world.
God says in order to be cured of it, you'll have to be put out there and see what it's really like.
And then we learn through sad experience that the pleasures of sin are only for a season and that Satans world is not so nice after all, and it's meant for our good and for our repentance. But I just asked the question, where do we go from there as to the responsibilities of others? Because we know all too often Saints with the best of intentions take matters into their own hands and say well.
He or she is repentant, so I feel free to socialize and eat with them, and sometimes that causes confusion. How do we deal with that?
Who doesn't that deal with it in the 5th chapter of First Corinthians?
It's.
It says, But now I have written unto you not to keep company. If any man be called a brother, be a fornicator or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer or a drunkard, all of these things are would.
Keep him from fellowship.
Or an extortioner.
With such a one know not to eat. That is no social fellowship.
That doesn't say show them love, it says no show social. What is so? I don't know.
What bothers me is what's so difficult about what that says. It's like somebody said, what don't you understand about No, what don't you understand about no social fellowship, you know?
But sometimes we just want us to see it, so it's difficult to for us to know what it means. No social fellowship.
It's and that's it's really a problem in the day in which we live.
But OK, Verne, now you've been asking questions, let me ask, does it mean no contact with the individual whatsoever?
I think, I think if you if it's an assembly decision that you ought to have the permission of the assembly.
To do it and I so I think that's what it is. I mean, I don't think you should take it on your own. You cannot as an individual.
Resend the, the, the.
Decision of the assembly which is bound in heaven and is bound on earth. The Lord is bounded. The assembly binds it and you as an individual have no authority to unbind it or to meddle with it. That's that's the way I see it.
But.
I mean, I just, this is the word of God and and it's not the way. It's not the way I feel. I feel like I would like to throw my arms around him. And I have to admit that when I was a young man, I love those people. But I knew what the scripture said and what these brothers were telling me, and so I had to act like I was mad at the brother so I wouldn't shake his hand. Well, that was all wrong, of course, but.
00:45:09
Still, I should love him. It shouldn't affect my love for him.
Should it? I think he's a brother. I shouldn't. I should love him, but I circumvent.
The government of God, if I go on my own and show him social fellowship, and that's what turned this man to the Lord.
But if we don't do this, we circumvent God's government in his life.
To bring him to repentance. And that's what the whole the whole thing is not to get rid of him, but to bring him back.
At what point was the Man in Second Corinthians chapter 2, verse 7 next week?
What point in his restoration?
When the assembly brought him back into fellowship, wasn't it?
How do you decide if somebody is repentant enough?
You get 10 different opinions.
What would that be? Would it be in this?
Principle. The 15th verse, I suppose, of the second chapter of First Corinthians. It says. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. So there is spiritual judgment. We're not saying that, you know.
The the brothers in the assembly should have some spiritual judgment to understand when there's repentance in a man's life.
I think the problem today is, is that when a one is disciplined either.
Silenced or put out of an assembly, he really doesn't have the effect that it did in Corinth. At the time when this person was put out of fellowship, he had nowhere else to go and he was really out there alone. But today.
It seems like the discipline that is imposed on one who should be disciplined.
Is so watered down that it really doesn't have the effect anymore that it did then because they have families, they have friends and people say, oh, you've been wrongly treated and where you're going to be your friends and you you can just are they just leave and go to a Church of their choice or whatever it is. Doesn't have the effect anymore because of the condition of what we are in today in the church.
Am I right?
Well, what would it mean then? That God has to write the book again? No, absolutely not. Well then it's just simple. Here it says.
Yet all.
With such a one, no not to eat.
So either that's still good or we have to.
I mean that's that's how I that's how the individuals should act, not what that individual does. But our responsibility is to act upon the plane. And I and I emphasize that on the plane, Word of God.
It doesn't make any difference what you think.
What you think is not important at all. It's what the word of God says. This book that we have in our lap gets what God said. And if it's not, you know, when I was first, when I first heard the gospel of the preacher said, he said, if this is not the word of God, this is one of the most.
Wicked things that was ever perforated on on the on on mankind. Let's throw it out the window. But if it's the word of God, then this is this is what?
This is how you get life. And so it's the same way today. The word of God is not recognized as the word of God. It doesn't have the weight in our life. We read it and then, but I think.
Yes, you hit it.
I think there's a maybe a bigger question for that many of us.
00:50:05
Have to experience and.
You know, this is the word of God.
And and 1St Corinthians 5.
I believe I have to apply that to all Christians. So if I have a man that I'm doing business with and he professes to be a Christian and he's living in sin.
Absolutely. I don't feel that I can eat dinner with them. Absolutely. Because this is the word of God. It doesn't matter what I think about it now, I think.
The Cape, You know what I think doesn't really matter, OK? I get that. Where the difficulty comes in is when someone, I think that there's a room full of people that we want to submit to an assembly decision, OK?
But what happens is a lot of times the person that's under discipline doesn't want to come anymore.
And so they don't frequent the assembly, and maybe they never come back to the assembly meetings. And then three years later, we run into them in the grocery store or we see them at the health club or whatever else. And we're a young person and they're our friend and they're not going on in that anymore and they're going to the church next door. Now, how do I deal with that? Because they're not a fornicator. They have.
You know.
I would hope they have taken care of that with the Lord, but they, for pride or whatever reason or bitterness, have not come back to the assembly. They they.
Just have not made it right with. Never came back to assembly. Don't maybe even think that the Lords in the midst do not think there's any.
Authority there in the assembly to put them out in the first place, and that was between them and the Lord.
So they're not.
Where I where the question is for me and I want to submit myself to the word God is the person was put out for fornication. OK in my example here like in first printing 5, but now they're not going on in that.
They're never going to be received back in their mind because, I mean, they could be, but they don't want to be. So now do I treat them as a fornicator in my example, three years later and they're going on, you know, at the church next door, and I see them every day. Do I keep shunning them?
That's where I myself don't see the scripture on that and.
I would like some help on that. So that's me.
Good question.
If it's a dumb question doesn't have to be answered today, it's a good question.
I'm pretty clear on if they are in the assembly and you know, I I think scripture is very clear on that. But I think more most of the time you know this. What my example is, is generally how it flows out.
Few comments. First Corinthians chapter 5, verse one.
It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you.
This is presumptuous.
Great transgression sin.
For which numbers 19 would apply as to the matter of restoration?
The Saints in Corinth had no revelation, no instruction, no First Corinthians written for them to know what to do.
In the matter that was they were facing.
But Paul, who speaks to them, says in verse two you're puffed up.
And have not rather mourned a right spirit in the presence of God.
Will respect and mourn if there is that which is contrary to the honor of the Lord Jesus.
Even if it doesn't.
Necessarily know what to do about it, and Paul rebukes them for it, he said. You should have mourned.
And you should have mourned that the person that did such a deed was taken away from you, from among you.
00:55:02
They didn't know how to do that, but they should have had an inner sense in their souls that what has been done is a dishonour to the name of the Lord Jesus.
And such a one should not be in his presence.
And to be in the assembly and to sit down in the name of the Lord is to be in his presence and he said.
You should have felt that.
Paul in verse three says.
And I'm not there physically, but in spirit I'm with you, and I have judged concerning this matter, concerning this deed.
That in verse four, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that's the authority, because that's the name in which they were together. It wasn't their own name. They didn't take a name of a church or this or that.
They were specifically identified with the name of the Lord Jesus.
When ye are collectively, ye are not individually, ye are not a few brothers are, but you are all identified with this sin.
That is dishonouring the Lord when ye are together.
And my spirit will be with you. And what is the power for it? The power of our Lord Jesus Christ? For what purpose to deliver such a one unto Satan, that is into Satans power, into Satans realm, outside the protective care of the assembly itself?
For the destruction of the flesh, For what purpose that the Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus?
Not that that's the purpose. That's the reason why the Lord wants that action taken for a good purpose.
And so he says.
Verse six know you not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. That person's presence among you is leavening everything.
Is that making everything unclean is allowing the working of evil, even though it's not overt in everyone else Levin works internally in something without explicitly being seen. Is leavening the whole lump, and so I'm not going to try to go through the whole chapter, but.
When he says in verse after such an action is taken.
He says first of all, verse 9.
Not to keep company with fornicators.
And then he says in verse 11, I've written to you not to keep company.
And with such a one not to eat.
It's important to recognize that there are other ways of having contact with people than having fellowship with people.
And there is the work that the Lord engages souls in, and we see it in numbers 19. And I'll turn to it to connect it to this which is not keeping company with a fornicator when one goes to them.
As directed in a pastoral way from the Lord to seek to bring that soul to repentance or to self judgment.
But having said that, one has to understand these words.
And there's a character of the interaction and if it's social, which eating is the character of that or even other ways not. Oh, I didn't eat with them. We just went to the gym together or something like that. That's fellowship. That is explicitly against what is said here, but before going back to the Old Testament in Second Corinthians chapter 2, where you have the restoration.
You see something else that I think is important and that is.
Verse.
6.
Sufficient to such a man as this punishment which was inflicted of the many, so the contrary wise, you ought to forgive him and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with over much sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you that ye should confirm your love toward him.
01:00:03
Verse 10 To whom ye forgive anything I forgive also. It's very important principle.
You don't individually take up a he's restored with an individual. The assembly collectively does it. And the apostle Paul was saying to whom ye forgive anything. Did he judge the man was right with the Lord? Yes, he did.
In fact, he was speaking to them about the fact that if they didn't act, the man might become overcome with ever over much sorrow. He personally had judged that the man was should be restored to his place in the assembly.
But at the same time he didn't act individually in it. He didn't go to the man and say I know you really love the Lord. He didn't act as a in a pastoral way and tell him he was restored.
But the assembly is just a little slow to get on the same page. No, that's wrong.
That's contrary to what it says here. It says to whom ye forgive anything I forgive. Also, I'd like to also turn to Leviticus or back to numbers.
To our chapter.
Verse 18 A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in water and sprinkle it upon the tent.
An application, The assembly.
Upon the vessels, upon the persons that were there.
We say.
The unjudged evil in an assembly affects the whole. It leavens the hall. There's not only a work in the individual, but there's a needed work in the assembly.
Because the effect that uncleanness and defilement has on everybody here is the application of it to those who are still within as we use the as the expression is used in the New Testament, but it also has another.
Verse 19. And the clean person shall sprinkle it upon the unclaimed.
And that has application to the soul after they have in New Testament been put away from the table of the Lord, There is still a place, without violating the know of social fellowship, to take the word of God.
And apply it to an individual, perhaps first seeking to bring them to judge their sin and repent of it, and have the light of the word and the ashes.
Brought as Elijah did in a wonderful way, bringing Job to where he repents of himself.
And then there's a further instruction in Leviticus.
Chapter.
14.
In chapter 16 we have a character of sin called Leprosy that has its of that character where there's putting away or putting out.
It's another chapter that has to do with some of these same subjects.
The law of the law of the leper and so on. But it says when it comes to the restoration in chapter 4.
And verse two, it says, This shall be the law of the leper. In the day of his cleansing, he shall be brought unto the priest, and the priest shall go forth out of the camp, and the priest shall look. And behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper, there's also a priestly work in judging whether or not.
The work of repentance and restoration is a complete one.
And has actually taken place, and it's a matter often of spiritual discernment. And the priestly function is to if you will go outside the assembly, outside the camp, and when they have been told that such a person has, someone might report this person is really sorry for what they did and so on. There is a place for the priest to go outside and see.
And make a judgment as to that, and if that, judgment.
01:05:02
Is brought to in the New Testament application to the assembly, and it's on the mouth of two or three witnesses to establish it. Then the assembly together can act for the restoration of the person. And so there isn't at all both individual activity. There is things that are only for the assembly, but there is also.
In these principles, there is work that is done outside the context of the outside the assembly itself.
That the Lord uses in His ways of bringing about repentance and then the Restoration.
Our time has pretty well gone Dawn, but could you comment on what?
On the question Ted Sester brought up, what about an individual who perhaps we crossed paths with?
Maybe a couple of years after they've been put away and we know them and it's obvious to us that they're no longer in the sin, but they are not coming back to the local assembly and seeking restoration.
How should we behave in that situation then?
Well, there's two kinds of people we have to deal with in the world and the.
1St.
Question is, is there a profession of Christianity in them?
And if there is not, Paul says if it's a matter of eating.
If I went and ate in the cafeteria with people I worked with at work and there wasn't a matter of of association.
Then it says you'd have to go out of the world.
You would have to leave the world because you can't have interactions with people of this world with that are not. But what changes is if that person has a professed relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now take it not Ted's case, but another one. Suppose I'm having, I'll say as I have experience. I worked in a I worked in an office, and in that office there were numbers of people that said they were believers. And I went to the management and I said, may we use this room at our lunch hour to be together, to have Christian fellowship together.
And they said yes, you may.
And so we had our lunches together, and we enjoyed the Lord together, and read the Word together, and so on. They had no.
Well, eventually some of them did, or a number of them that were also at the Lord's table that worked the same place eventually. But at at that time the question was, and it happened, someone was.
Committed adultery.
Could they continue and be part of it because they weren't associated with the assembly? In my own soul, no.
The same principles apply. They could no longer eat with us.
That was even though it wasn't part of the assembly, the principle still applies.
And its identification with the name of the Lord Jesus.
In that office with that room.
And what went on in that room? And so. But it didn't mean that for that person who had committed adultery that there was no effort made outside the context of that room to seek to bring the word of God to bear upon their conscience, to judge their their adultery.
And I think that there is application to what Ted says.
Without necessarily.
Going to mixing with them, there's still a way to seek to have strengthened them in the Lord.
His point was that suppose someone is part of a local assembly that we would feel is gathered to the Lord's name and we're in fellowship.
And they are put away.
And then we meet them two years down the road and they are no longer going on with that sin. They, in our conversation with them, it's fairly clear to us that they are no longer involved in that sin. But as Ted said, they're going to the church next door or something like that, and they have no intention of returning to the local assembly to be restored to fellowship.
01:10:11
What then?
I'll answer it two ways, Bill. I'll take Harry Hayhoe's statement sometimes, he said. If you suppose yourself into a situation, you have to suppose yourself out.
But having having said that been in it though, I I understand. But but having said that, I think I would go back in that case to 2nd Corinthians chapter 2.
And say.
That I'm sorry, First Corinthians chapter 5.
First Corinthians chapter five, I would go back and say.
To in verse four deliver such a one unto Satan that for the destruction of the fest to be safe. I don't think if a person has been gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I believe personally by my own faith, that's where the Lord is present in the midst, I can ever stop short of seeking that person's restoration to that place.
But the moment I take the position that they have no interest, I have changed that.
If I want to take up a relationship that stops short of what is, I believe in the heart of the Lord Jesus. And if I actually believe the Lord Jesus wants that person sitting in his presence to remember him in his death, and I take any activity without that as the end.
Objective I stop part short of the heart of the Lord.
So whether it's two years, five years, 25 years.
So would it be right though for that individual? I know we're going overtime a minute or two, but this is important. Would it be right to encourage that individual to go back to the local assembly and at least?
Bring their repentance before them and to.
Let them know that they're no longer continuing in that sin.
I think we are going to end up keeping going maybe longer than we should.
I remember a case in which a girl got away from the Lord, got away from her parents she had been.
In fellowship.
Later on, she started to write some letters.
Of repentance.
And those letters of repentance.
But she start she joined the church and some I think spiritual man in the church that was trying to mentor her or help her on in her spiritual life recognize that she.
Was.
He believed she owned her past life. She owned her sin.
And she could realize that she couldn't find peace.
Because of not having been.
Recognized her own judgment that was placed upon her by the assembly, and so he communicated and said, Is there any way?
That she can be set free.
In her soul.
And I just say I don't have a verse that specifically supports it, but what happened was.
There was.
A judgment made that there was repentance.
And the repentance was communicate that fact that that judgment was made.
Was communicated to her, even though in it she did not ask and was not asking to be restored collectively.
I say this with tears.
That's almost 20 years ago.
And she and her husband are presently he never had any association with the assembly.
That was before she was married.
01:15:01
Her husband and she have gone to the parents and reconfessed in the last year, in fact in the last few months.
She's and they're not content where they are and though I believe the Lord has been working on her for 20 years to bring her back to the Assembly.
238.
238.
We are.
So long he remains free, breathing the House of Lords with all the sleep for my life.
Gospel 1
Gospel—Dave Whitaker
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Good evening. Welcome to the Gospel Meeting.
Take us to sing together. You would please #21 in the Little Flock hymn book in the back of the book. 21 In the back of the book. Oh, what a savior.
Is Jesus the Lord well? Might his name by his Saints be adored? He's redeemed them from hell by his blood, save them forever, and brought them to God.
Now in the glory he waits to impart.
Peace to the conscience, joy to the heart.
Waits to be gracious, to pardon, heal.
All who their sin and their wretchedness feel.
Thousands have fled to his spear pierced side. Welcome the Albin. None are denied. We're in laden. They all have been blessed joyfully now. And the Savior They rest. Could we sing #21?
What a sailor is Jesus?
Lord.
By his blood.
Save and forever and prompt them to God.
Why not my instinct, my insane spirit?
Love is the glory of the difference.
He needs to climb on the control.
Well, my destiny, my destiny's nearly alone.
His favorite pierced in his eye.
Welcome down.
Oh body has made your mistakes as the Lord well, my dear, staying by his name.
He helped, Lord.
Shall we ask God's help together?
Gracious God, we bless thee for this gospel we have.
We think of this Bible as was stated we have in our laps and.
Some of us in our hearts, and what a blessing it is, divine light from heaven. So we thank you for the gospel array of blessedness for poor lost souls tonight.
Helped the speaker in his weakness. We pray for any child here or older one that is outside.
We just ask for blessing and help. Lord Jesus, precious Savior, we need thee and thy wonderful name. We pray. Amen.
In the meeting we had earlier.
It got deeper and deeper.
Yeah, well, you walked out of here and you thought, my, what has shin wrought? Sin has cut terrible grooves in this world.
It's broken homes, it's broken hearts, it's ruined nations even.
And what I'm going to do tonight is take you even deeper.
00:05:00
We're going to go down deeper in the scriptures and see what's down there.
You know, before we do, though, I'm going to give you the cure of the remedy in case the Lord comes before the meeting is over.
Look please at John 336.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.
He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. We have a very serious, serious subject here tonight.
It's a blessed subject, and you get both of it. Both of those thoughts in this one verse. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. That's a life that.
Is the life like the life of the Lord Jesus?
It's everlasting, it's full and you know it's free for you tonight.
But the other side of that verse, and there's a lot of them, you have the positive and the negative. We'll look at a couple of them.
He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.
We know, John 316 There you have it again. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. There you have the negative and the positive. God has been faithful.
And there's so many verses like that. And tonight we think two of the positive and the negative.
As Peter spoke about the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.
But as I was saying.
We're we're going to take you down.
Deeper than the subject we had this afternoon which was very deep and consulting.
And I'll start off by talking about a man nailing down his roof on his house.
We could picture this.
He's way up there and he's nailing his roof down and running the hammer into those nails and.
He sees his neighbor drive by. His name is Joe.
He hates Joe with a passion he can't even. He sees red when he sees Joe, that neighbor that did him wrong.
And so he keeps nailing down his roof shingles, and he slips and he smashes his thumb. Does he use Joe's name in vain?
No, he doesn't. So what we're going to do, we're going to go down deep into the heart of man and reminds me a little story.
I worked with a guy. His name was Kenny Nelson. He bought an old, old house.
And he was there a while. Lo and behold, some plumbing or something went wrong in the house.
And he needed to go in the crawl space.
And so he opened up the Hatch, or whatever it was there. He looked down in there. And you know, you can find out our way. You can find opossums. You can find rats, snakes.
Mice, raccoons, spiders all down there in that crawl space.
Now, Kenny's kind of a timid guy. You knew him, you'd love him. So he goes down in there and he thinks, well, I don't like this, I don't like this. So what did he do? He has his favorite dog, Choco. He says, Jocko, come here. You're going to go down there with me. And he talks Jocko into going on there to face whatever he may come up with.
Well, you know.
The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord searching the innermost parts of the belly. So what we're going to talk about tonight a little bit? Well, there's a good side to it. We're going to get to that. Thank God. Thank God.
But you go down deep in the heart of man, you'll find out he's an enemy by wicked work. She's an enemy of the God that loves him no less.
How'd that come about?
Well, that happened in the garden years and years ago.
Adam and Eve listened to the serpent, and they inherited a broken, fallen nature.
There was a brother on the East Coast I think is maybe it might have been Reeb.
He was riding along on the train, sitting next to a Roman Catholic priest.
00:10:01
And they got in conversation and his brother said to the Roman Catholic priest, he says, you know, there are two things that the Roman Catholic Church denies or what is that?
He says. The utter depravity of man.
And the all sufficiency of Christ.
That priest said. You know, you're right.
So God, in his faithfulness, he lets us down into that crawl space of your heart, not children. If you're 1011 years old, you don't even know this.
There is a fixed principle.
Locked in in the crawl space of your heart, all the way down.
And it's so bad.
That God had to condemn it. He had to take it off the record altogether at the cross. But it has fruit now that fruit the sins that we.
So easily commit.
And that's what God in his mercy and his grace.
Has seen fit to do on our behalf what a loving gift that was.
We now can stand.
In the presence of a holy God at ease. How so? Because the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin, having forgiven you all trespasses, and he's done it in such a way that he brings glory to himself. It's not so much a question. Can you be saved? Yes, you can. But the end result is He brings glory to himself, honored to God the Father by saving your soul.
Now there's lots of young people here.
Lots of them. And I had a little.
Question I had a little girl came by. Maybe she's 1110, eleven years old, I said. I'm not going to tell you her name. I got it written down here somewhere, but I promised her I wouldn't bring her name up. I said, How old are you? She said. I'm about 11.
And I said, when did you get saved or She said that was about four or five. Well, what? What?
What worked in your heart to make you want to get saved? Well, she said. I was afraid.
Well, what were you afraid of? Well, she said I was sick and I was eating spaghetti.
And I threw up and I thought my insides were coming out, so I better get saved. She thought she was going to die.
That's quite a story. I probably will forget that for a while.
And, you know, different ones. And there was a boy, he was seven years of age, and he was stealing empty pop bottles.
Those pop bottles didn't belong to him.
They belong to a concession and there was bleachers. Underneath the bleachers were these empty pop bottles. In those days they were worth $0.02 apiece.
And these two boys ones name was John and the others name was David.
And they went over there with a shoe box and they picking up these pop bottles and they put them in the box and this guy David had.
Maybe 5 empty bottles. That's worth how much? That's worth $0.10.
So this 10 cent Sinner, he got back to the house and there's something going on, the candle of the Lord.
Was lit.
Inside of his conscience, his heart, his conscience was working.
And the candle of the Lords? Candice Man's candle. God uses it and he goes down. He searches that crawl space. But what does he find He finds. I'll read it to you in a few minutes from Isaiah, chapter one.
So this boy, John.
He said, What's the matter, David? The David said. I'm, I'm worried, something wrong.
Well, what is it?
He said this isn't right.
I feel bad.
The candle of the Lord can search A5 year old.
Girl or a 7 year old boy. And there's lots of them in this room here. I know. I watched them running them back and forth.
The candle of the Lord. A candle, man's spirited is the candle, and the Lord takes that candle. He lets you discover what's deep down in your heart. And you know what you'll find is in the Isaiah chapter one. Let's look at it.
I think it's chapter one or chapter 2.
00:15:10
Yes, chapter one. Here we find.
Condition of man.
We're going down into that basement, that crawl space.
You find out what's down there.
Verse five Isaiah 15. Why should he be stricken anymore? Will revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick.
The whole heart is faint from the sole of the foot even to the head. There is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores have not been closed, neither bound up or mollified with ointment.
That's the condition of your heart, young person. And you know something. You may not even know it, as a matter of fact.
What you are.
Is far worse than anything you've ever done.
Well.
Is that possible?
Yes, that fallen, broken nature that you have.
You inherited from Adam.
Can do all kinds of evil things. We know a man of history. We don't need to bring up their names. Terrible things, horrible things. And that's going on today.
But you might say, don't tell me I've got that kind of a heart. Well, the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Did you hear that? Desperately wicked. Who can know it?
So God wants to tell you about somebody else.
We read about wounds and bruises from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot.
Please with me turn with me please to Solomon. Solomon.
In Isaiah we find out the Song of Solomon chapter 5.
Here we in Isaiah we found out that.
The whole head is sick. The whole heart is faint.
Sole of the foot, even unto the head. There's no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.
That have not been closed either. Bound up your month either mollified with ointment. Now turn with me please to Song of Solomon.
And verse chapter 5 and verse 11.
His head Who's that?
His head is as most fine gold.
Beautiful.
14.
His hands.
Or as gold.
His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold.
His countenance is Lebanon excellent.
As the Cedars, his mouth is most sweet. Yeah, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved. This is my friend. Oh daughters of Jerusalem.
As we read.
Isaiah.
All of you know what a cider press is. A home cider press. You put the apples in a bucket. You come down on the handle like that and put the pressure on. What do you get? You get apple juice.
Well, when you put man in the press, what do you get? You get cursing and bitterness.
Cursing bitterness.
When you put the Lord Jesus.
Christ in the press.
What do you get?
You get sweetness.
Beautiful fragrance.
And that's who we have to present to you tonight, in spite of all the misery.
That man has shown himself.
In this world.
Poor broken man, and you are part of it now.
There's a Mama sheep, Mama sheep she.
Leaves the fold. Where she go. She goes out in the wilderness, wandering, looking for something. Maybe greener fields, I don't know.
00:20:05
Over Hill and Dale.
Time goes on and that mother's sheep gets lost.
How sad that is.
And while she's out there, she has a little baby lamb.
That lamb is born lost.
Now there's a little girl in this meeting. She's, I think she's about five months old.
And her name is Melody Blake. Sweet little child probably redefines the name Cute.
And that little baby, if that little baby were to pass away for some reason, forbid the thought.
That little baby goes to be with the Lord Jesus. You know why? Because.
Lord Jesus came into the world to save that which was lost, babies lost.
Doesn't need to be sought.
Why hadn't gone astray? Had that nature, but didn't know anything about one way or another? But you get over to the story of Zacchaeus. Here you have a responsible adult.
I'd like to ask you 7 year olds what a responsible adult is.
Zacchaeus. He's a responsible adult. What does it say about him?
The Son of Man has come to seek.
And to say that which was lost. So Zacchaeus is come on down, I want to build your house. Beautiful. He was a short man and wealthy. I know a few folk like that.
So you can be one.
That.
Can be found tonight. And how do you get that? You just let the candle of the Lord the can't just you're the the. I got to turn it up. I think it's. I can't figure. Maybe it's Psalm 129 of them works out. Let's see. Maybe somebody can help me.
Can't find it.
Spirit of man, the candle of the Lord searching the innermost parts of the belly. Can someone come up with that real quick?
Proverbs 2027 No one revives in the Song of soul.
Look at that.
Proverbs 2027.
The Spirit of the Lord is the candle of the man searching the inward parts of the belly.
That's God looking down to that poor fallen broken.
Sinful, Godless.
Nature that you inherited.
That's what you inherited. You lost. But you don't have to stay lost. There's remedy. We're going to get to that short. Peep.
To have the Spirit of God awaken you to your lost condition is such a blessing. Such a blessing because then.
You can have that righteousness that God provides.
Wonderful.
Gift of God, Psalm, Chapter 32.
You know, there's something to go together here.
That is confession and praise.
Confession and praise. You find that in Davidde life when he had it all out in the presence of God.
Confession. Then there was praise. And there can be praise to you from you to God the Father tonight by confession. And what's more than that of all the gods that are out there in the world that people claim to have?
00:25:00
There's only one true God that you can be honest with. You can be completely honest, right, Dan?
He gave me that thought. You can be completely honest with this God.
Come and you could tell them, Here I am. Lord, my life is a mess. I'm broken. I'm done for.
And judge, God has judged you in view of condemnation, but you're not condemned. We speak about a man, He's condemned, but he needs to be saved. Not so. He's judged.
But he not condemned. There's a time when he is condemned, when he rejects Christ as a savior and he says no.
Bill Brockmeyer tells this story.
There was a man that he knew that was a believer that.
Had this friend that was a parachute guy loved parachuting.
That was his deal. And so when this man told him about the Lord Jesus, he said, well, I'll take care of that, you know, at the end of my life.
Well, they were out the parachuting field and he jumped out of the plane. 2 parachutes, safety and regular. They both failed him.
And they could hear him cursing God.
As you went into the earth.
Horrible story.
You can't make fun of these things, children.
You're coming. You're coming.
To a point in your life that I'm talking to the 7 to 1112 year olds, in 5-6 years you will have made a choice.
It's a fork in the road.
And if there is such a thing as a conference here, 7-8 years from now, you'll be one or two places generalizing, Of course you'll be sitting there.
Rejoicing in the Lord, or you be off paths of sin.
That's what happens when you reject Christ.
In James it says he that Darby translation.
He that will be a friend of the world is constituted enemy of God.
What if you want to know if you're an enemy of God this evening? Are you a friend of the world? But what is the world if this world is what they take up with and shut God out whatever it is?
We don't need God.
Fool has said in his heart there is no God, and so this world.
Now, I might say this before I go on.
God has made beautiful things in this world.
Turn to Psalm 111.
I love this verse.
Psalm 111.
Verse 2.
The works of the Lord are great, and so there's many things we can enjoy in creation.
Mountain streams, lakes, valleys, relationships and.
Song, music, singing, all this God-given.
These are the works of God, and they're to be remembered. It says the next works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure. They're in your children like to go to the mountains, you know. The Lord Jesus said, come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while. He didn't say go.
He'll go with you so you can enjoy what God has created in this world. You can enjoy it when you take him with you.
Oh, what a difference that makes instead of going on your own.
His work is honorable, glorious.
And his righteousness and earth forever. Now look at this verse four. He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered.
Floors are gracious and full of compassion.
Well, tonight we'll take you to the cross, The cross of Calvary, That's where it took place.
That wonderful transaction, it's to be remembered tomorrow, 11:00.
We have the privilege of sitting here in a circle and giving him thanks.
And you know, there might be a minute or two or maybe 3 when there's silence.
Can you sit quietly in the presence of God?
I think some places where they claim to worship the Lord, if there was a 3 minute silence, they would be looking for the guy running the audio. Or they call the police or something really serious is going on. No, But can you sit quietly in the presence of God and think about what he's done for you?
00:30:06
Imperfection.
My God, it's great.
Well, we're going to get out of the crawl space. Hallelujah.
We're going to consider what he's done there to Cross.
No, Lord Jesus, he suffered as a martyr those first three hours.
He suffered A martyrs death, it says.
Tom, the flowers plowed upon my back.
They made long their furrows.
They saw to it.
Like the farmer, he cuts the sod.
Plows, He turns it over.
They sought to.
They power to pull it back.
That didn't save your soul. There's other men that have had the back plowed with the whip.
But then he went to the cross while he was there on the cross.
Before that, they whipped him. They crowned him with a crown of thorns.
And Matthew? He's the king.
What'd they do with him?
They crowned him with a crown of thorns and Mark, he's a servant.
They bound his hands.
And Luke? He's the son of man.
Walking through this world.
They nailed his feet.
John Affections.
They ran a spear from sight.
Terrible.
That's the basement of your life, your heart, and yes, you'd have been there.
You couldn't say no, it's not me.
People just like you and me were standing there.
Crying out, you know, it says crucify him, crucify him. You take the italics out of there.
It's just crucified crucify the no doubt of who it was. Get rid of him.
Oh my.
So tonight, children.
Think about it.
Where will you spend eternity?
Will you be with the lost, or will you be with the redeemed? And here you have the salvation?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. You can have it as free.
It's full and if you want to bring anything older one.
Of so many people, you ask them. You know how to get to heaven. Well, you got to be good. I heard it 100 times. You have to.
You want to perform and God will weigh out the balance well.
Not so, no. That doesn't put away sin. It's the precious blood of Christ that puts away sin can cleanse you from.
Poor simple condition.
Maybe there's a young person here tonight they're thinking about am I saved or am I not saved? Well, you know something? Tonight you can be saved. You can take God at His word, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
So there he was. They took, and they nailed him to a cross of wood that backed it laid open.
A rugged cross like they sing.
And then?
They crucified him between 2 Thieves.
That one that restored that which he took not away.
Oh my. They took him to a place of a skull.
What's that?
Empty head. You know what God has given you tonight as a believer on the Lord Jesus? He's given you the mind of Christ.
You can call God now your father.
You can call the Lord Jesus Christ your Savior.
You can call the Spirit of God your comforter, the one that comes alongside and.
And helps you through this poor broken world.
You can call the Bible.
Your guidebook.
You can call God's people.
Your companions.
Heaven is your home.
And the Lord's coming is what you're waiting for.
Analyze your life. Let that candle.
Search you. Take the spirit of God, take the candle of your conscience.
00:35:06
And let it search your heart. Where are you? Where do you stand tonight? With God?
Especially when Mercies gate is wide open.
If you want to bring something to God of your own works, adult.
He's got nothing for you 0.
If you want to come.
Financially.
He got nothing for you.
But if you come in a broken, lost condition, he's got Christ. And when you have Christ, you have everything. Your eternity is secured for you because it was secured with an uncorruptible blood.
You know, we're not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold.
Received by tradition from the elders, but with a precious blood of Christ. What does that say? People say you know the Lord Jesus. He he didn't sin. No, no, he didn't sin. But he could have.
Know when he was little? Boy, he was just like the rest of us.
Oh no.
It says uncorruptible.
You know, there's two parts to Velcro A&B.
A is what has the grabbers.
In B is what the opposite is, and you put A to B in the Velcro.
But you know something.
The Lord Jesus he had.
Some other.
Yeah, the divine nature and you could throw sin at him and it just wouldn't stick at all.
Like throwing a piece of Velcro against a piece of glass.
It wouldn't stick at all. That's just to show you holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.
Made higher than the heavens.
Beautiful savior that we have.
We'll go on.
Toby a girl, 17, maybe 18 years of age at the school where my wife taught.
And justice out of the clear blue sky with a couple girls standing there.
Toby said.
Do you think hell is full with all the people going to it?
Where this thought come out of, you know something, there's thoughts going on in the hearts of young people, old people, and you do not know what they are. So what's the story? Preach the word.
Preach the Gospel.
The instant in season, out of season.
Neglect not the gift that is in you.
Toby said.
You think hell would be full with all the people going there?
And then my wife said.
No, hell is destruction or never full. Hell and destruction are never full, oh, she said. Don't have a chance.
She said. You have a wonderful chance.
You can be saved, said to a Christian girl standing there. Is that right? Yes, that's right. You can be saved tonight.
The chance the gate is wide open.
You just need to walk through faith. Tell him you're a Sinner.
Tell him you're lost.
Don't bring anything but your sins.
He'll save your soul.
That is so beautiful. That's good news.
Now we're going to turn to Luke Chapter 14.
And we're going to talk about that for a few minutes.
Here's a certain man, I take it that's a real person.
And.
1416 Certain men.
The picture of the Lord Jesus God.
Made a great supper bad. Many sent a servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden. Come now. That's what the Spirit of God is saying to you tonight. Come, children. Come. Come on in.
Join the Happy Band.
Then what?
Come, for all things are now ready. Oh, the sacrifice has been.
00:40:01
The preparedness, it's already Lord Jesus has given his life, He shed his blood. The sacrifices there prepared, ready for you. And they all with one consent they meant could begin to make excuse for down a different part of the earth talking to somebody. And they said this little illustration here where I bought a piece of ground.
And I and I bought 5 yoke boxing and I married a wife. That's that's nothing to do with it. What they're saying you stupid went on any years. Whatever you got to offer, we ain't gone no part of it.
So it's saying.
He had a wife. He could have brought his wife alone.
Servant came and showed his Lord these things, the master of the house being angry, Oh.
Said to his servant, go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city.
Well, that's the business part. Life, streets and lanes of the city, bringing ahead of the poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind.
If you fit in that category, you're poor. You've got nothing for God.
You're blind. You can't see life.
Mane.
Servant said, Lord is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.
There's room tonight, there's room.
For you and then it says.
The Lord said unto his servant, Go out into the highways, and the hedges compel them to come in.
All children. I see young people on the highway and they're headed out of town.
Away from God.
On their Rd. that leads to destruction.
Why not instead of running away from God, why don't you turn around and hide in God?
You can hide in him tonight.
And then it says.
Hedges. Oh, they're in the shade. They don't want to come out into the light. They love their sins.
They love their sins.
I see that my house may be filled. Oh, there's going to heaven is going to be filled hell. Hell isn't going to be filled, but in destruction. But heaven is going to be filled, and it's going to be filled to the glory of God.
Oh, that's so beautiful. Will you be there? I'll be there. Why? Well.
That little 7 year old boy.
That the candle went in searching out, found out is the guy to stand here today. Seven years of age, I realized that I was lost.
And old Johnny, I think his last name was Noah. His last name was Grace, believe it or not.
A fellow thief.
I'll stop here and tell a story. Shouldn't have done this, but I did.
A lady taking her home, Older lady and God talking about the Lord and back and forth. They're probably talking about her goodness and being so kind and so on.
You ever tell lies? Well, yeah, when your kid, you know, you tell lies. Well, then I said. Then you're a liar.
Oh, and so she let me know later on when she came to pick up her car, that she didn't appreciate that.
But if you tell the lies, If you tell lies, you're a liar. Or if you've taken something that isn't yours.
Your feet. Your feet.
And so this little 7 year old boy, he was told by the 10 year old boy John, who was a fellow thief. He said. What's the matter?
I'm. I'm. I'm lost. I need to get saved. Well, are you not saved?
No. So he said, well, do you want to get saved? I said, yeah.
Because my conscience was working.
So he said, well, let's get down here. I remember much about it, don't remember much about it, but there was no grass just there in the dirt.
We got down our knees and I said I don't want the praises you pray after me.
And I suspect suspect this 10 year old boy who had.
Good training.
He probably.
Tell God you're a Sinner. God be merciful to me, a Sinner.
And he'll save your soul. You accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior.
Now tonight.
You can sit right down on the sinner's bench.
There's just room for two.
Just room for two, you and who else?
00:45:01
Your mother, Noah can't help you.
Your brother, sister can't help you. Who's going to be on that bench with you?
It's the Lord Jesus. He was made sin. He took the responsibility of your sins in his own body on the tree.
And you know when he hands you a salvation, children that can't be taken away. And I've had men say to me, matter of fact, one of the men I work with Do you mean to say now you you got that salvation and you can go out now and have a party and do anything you want and still be saved That came right out of the.
The crawl space, that's where they came from. That is the lowest unredeemable thought you can imagine. What about this, Now that you're saved and you can't be lost? You can turn yourself over to God, and you can praise Him. You can thank him. You can glorify God for the salvation that you wrought on your behalf, Sinner.
Why not? Why not?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and Thou shalt be saved. Our times up. Your time will be up someday. Don't be like that parachute guy. I'll take these issues when I get to the end of the trail. A fool. A fool. Shall we pray?
God and loving Father, we thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank Thee for salvation offered free. We thank Thee for the home above prepared for us at such a cost.
Lord, we could use another hour to speak of the beauties of what I, dear son, what he's done, what he's done.
And we're going to see them, Lord Jesus.
Father's house forever. We thank thee. Now, Father, if there's some young one here, maybe there's an old one that's slipped off the path, as it were, and needs restoration.
Maybe confession and a joy that comes with praise that comes with it. We pray if there's a little one here tonight. If I go to their mommy and daddy, tell them I want to be safe tonight.
So we just asked his Father in Jesus precious name. Amen.
Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent God
Children—Josh Costron
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
For the sake of time, I think we're going to stop there for the songs for now. And I'd like to take some memory verses of anybody who would like to volunteer and say their verse. And if you're shy, that's OK you don't have to say it, but.
Little boy here.
The Butterfly's Race.
His son cleanses us more than first time They didn't know 1/7.
Anybody else?
I don't that's OK. That's Okay. Just raise your hand if you have one to share it.
You know that we are not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but by the precious blood of Christ.
First Peter 118.
You know that you were not redeemed with collectible things as silver and gold.
But with the pressure, but with the Precious Blood of God first, Peter 1/18/19 hold on.
Whatsoever you do, do it heartily, ask the Lord, and not unto men knowing that of the Lord, ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance Colossians 323 and 24 Thank you anybody else over here, this little guy here.
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
Acts 1631 Wonderful verse. Anybody else?
I can't have written it with my own hand. I will.
I pull.
Going to come back to you, you want to look it up just to no, it's alright. I, Paul, have written it with my own hand. Therefore I will repay it, albeit I do not say yeah.
Brother, let me have joined me.
Into the Gourd by Lehman.
19 and 20. What's up, David? Do you want to try again? No. You're good. OK. Anybody else? No.
No. OK, let's pray. Let's close our eyes and we'll ask the Lord's help. OK. My loving God and Father, we just thank thee for this beautiful morning, another Lord's day. And we thank you for the little time that we have here this morning to open up thy word with the children.
And we just look to thee for help, as we would consider a few verses and thy truth, and we pray that we would take it into our hearts and might be made good to us.
Lord, we look to thee for clarity of thought. Pray that the message might be simple and clear, and we look to thee for thy help. We ask this all in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, as you can see, I've got a couple things here that I'd like to show you.
And before I do.
My, my son had.
Brought up a question the other day when we were in our family Bible reading. And you know, I really appreciate the questions of you little children because it tells us parents, that you kids are thinking about what we're trying to teach you from the word of God and what it had to do with was the greatness of God.
And how God can be everywhere at any given time, no matter where it is.
That's a pretty big thing to wrap our minds around.
And I dare say that none of us can truly understand it, but we believe it by faith because.
God is God and he is everywhere.
And so my son was struggling with this wonderful truth, and it LED us into a nice little conversation about how God is everywhere now. There are three things that we need to understand about God as it relates to his divinity.
00:05:03
And there's three big words that I'm not going to use, but I'm going to use them, I think, in kid language that we can all understand one that God is all powerful.
God is all powerful. God can do anything because he is God.
Do you know that the creation, the world, everything you see out in the world, in the universe?
Was created by God. It says that by his word he spake things into existence, he commanded.
And it stood fast.
By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. And it says of the Lord Jesus that without him was not anything made that was made.
He made it all.
And he spake it into existence just like that.
Incredibly powerful.
Wonderful to think about the power of God. So that's number one.
#2
is that God knows everything.
He's all knowing.
There is not one thing that the Lord Jesus Christ does not know.
He is infinitely wise.
He knows everything that there is to know.
He is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.
And then the last thing #3.
Is that he's, as I said at the start of this meeting, he's everywhere.
At any given time, no matter where it is.
He is here.
He is everywhere.
And I would like to dwell a little bit maybe on more so on the last point.
That our God.
Is with us at all times.
And it reminds me of.
What a brother. I remember standing. Well, I wasn't at the meeting, I heard it recorded, but he stood at a podium like this.
And he was recalling when his when he was a little boy and he'd go off to school. And his mother would say this to him, he said. Now remember.
That the Lord Jesus is watching you and he's listening.
To what you're saying?
That's some pretty good advice.
You know, that's good advice not only for a child but also for us adults to keep that in mind.
He's always watching us now.
I'm going to show you something and then I'm going to read some verses here.
Just bear with me here as I get this out.
Does anybody know what this is?
What is it?
You know what this is?
A. What the haggle?
I didn't quite get that but.
A telescope. close Yeah. This is a microscope.
This is a microscope and you can see some pretty incredible things with this microscope and we plot these things in here.
And then we can look at things under these lenses.
That magnify things that you and I can't see with our naked eye.
Now.
These things here.
Our slides.
That we can put under the microscope and magnify and see some very incredible minute details.
As I said, things that we cannot normally see now.
I'm going to show you some photos here.
Let's see here.
First off.
What do you think this is?
00:10:01
You see that?
You see that?
If.
This was sitting on a white table such as that one over there.
We might just dismiss this as maybe a little hair or something like that.
Right. You know what this is.
Does anybody have a guess as to what this might be?
Anybody have a guess? Jack? Do you want to guess?
A Peacock feather? Well, not quite.
Let me show you something.
This is blown up. Now I granted these photos are not super high quality because when you put things under the microscope you can see various levels of the the subject in question, the thing that we're looking at. So if you had a higher powered camera lens, you can see more detail, but this is it.
This is it that's magnified into a somewhat distorted picture.
Nope, not an eyelash. This is a butterfly antenna. Did you know that?
It's a butterfly antenna.
All right, I'm going to show you another one here.
Similar. Does anybody know what this might be?
Nope. No.
It's close.
It's a leg of something.
This is a butterfly leg. Sorry.
All right.
Show you another thing here.
What is this? I'm going to start over here.
You guys might know.
You guys see this?
It's hard to see.
See that? Any guesses what this might be?
You know, if we put it under this microscope, it would tell us some interesting things about this.
This is Dandelion Fuzz.
Look at this.
Dandelion fuzz, you think would be quite soft, but look, that's what those strands look like. See the hooks on those things?
And you wonder why? How weeds propagate?
And they just tend to cling to things. Look at this one.
It doesn't look that fuzzy right now, does it?
That's what Dandelion fuzz looks like when you put it under the microscope.
Pretty neat.
Pretty neat.
All right. I'm just going to show you a couple more here and then we're going to read something this ones really neat.
Let me grab the slide this one I think you could pick out figure it out.
At a quick glance, what do you think that is? What does it look like?
We're having to move a bit quick here.
Anything that looks like anybody?
I'm sure you could probably guess.
This is the wing of your common house fly.
Do you want to see? Do you want to see a picture to see what that looks like?
Look at that. This is the edge, just the edge of that wing.
That's what it looks like.
You see those little hairs and I mean, you would never think that that was the edge of the wing of a family that we swat in our homes.
00:15:08
Commonly throughout the summer months, but that's what it looks like.
You and I, our eyes would never have known that. We could never pick that up.
It almost looks hairy, doesn't it?
Amazing.
Maybe let me show you.
Umm, one more here for the sake of time.
This picture here. Anybody know you guys could probably guess this one?
Jude.
Close. Kinda.
It's a feather. This is when you get right up close to those little soft.
Parts of the feather, That's what the feather looks like. I have a couple here in here. One was a little soft one, this, this one here. It's actually this feather here, believe it or not.
Well, those are a few photos, these slides, and there's many more slides here of various things that you and I couldn't would never see. So for example, let me just show you this last one.
This is not that spectacular, but.
You see this?
You know, there's something in there.
You would never see this.
You see anything in there?
You know what's in here is a cluster of frog eggs.
Do you know that there's a cluster of frog eggs? I've got the photo there, but again, we don't have much whole ton of time here. I want to get through some verses.
Frog eggs can't see it unless you really.
Looked into the sunlight, You'll see a little reflection in there. OK, let's read a verse in Psalm 139.
Actually, we're going to read some verses, not just one.
O Lord, Thou has searched me and known me.
Thou knowest my down, sitting in mine uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off. This tells us that when you went to bed last night.
God watched you go to bed.
And he watched you get up. And in fact, he watched you all night.
And also that he understands my thoughts afar off.
This means that he knows your thoughts, everyone of them.
The very thing that you think and that I can't hear and that you can't hear what's going on in your mind, God knows.
He understands. He hears all those things.
And then in verse three it says, Thou compass my path and my lying down, and aren't acquainted with all my ways.
God is aware of everything that we're doing.
And this is for there is not a word in my tongue, But, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
The Lord Jesus hears every word we speak.
And not one word, even when we whisper it to our friend next to us, those secrets that we tell each other.
He hears clearly clear as day.
And since thou hast beset me behind him before, and laid thine hand upon me, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain unto it.
Now notice this. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I send up into heaven, thou art there.
If I make my bed in Shields where it should read, Behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea even there.
Shall they?
Shall thy hand lead me in thy right hand shall hold me.
He says in verse 11. If I say, surely that darkness shall cover me.
00:20:00
Even the night.
Shall be light about me. Have you guys ever played hide and go seek? We've all played hide and go seek and it's a lot of fun, isn't it?
And it's most effective when you do it in the dark.
But you know what? There's one game of hide and go seek that we can't play and we cannot play it with God.
Because God.
Sees perfectly, even in the night.
The night shines as the day to him.
It says in verse 13, For thou hast possessed my reigns. Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right. Well, my substance was not hid from thee.
When I was made in secret.
Our framework, our bones he watched and he formed in your mother's womb.
Look at this.
This frog egg cluster of frog eggs that you and I can't see.
When you were just that in your mother's tummy.
He was forming you.
It says that my substance was not hid from the God did not overlook you because he was forming you in your mother's womb.
When you were just the speck.
It says that thine eyes.
Did see my substance yet being unperfect, and in my book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them? If I should count them? They are more in number than the sand.
When I awake, I am still with thee.
We've all been to the beach.
And you know, if we took one of those tiny particles and put it underneath this microscope, I'm sure we would see some pretty amazing things. They probably look like boulders.
God created that.
And God's thoughts to you and to me are more than the sand.
That we find on planet Earth.
That's what Scripture says. So that tells us something that tells us that God is thinking about you and me constantly.
Not for a second does he take his thoughts or his eyes off of you and me.
This tells us something else.
That if he is that interested in you and me, that means that he loves us.
We read that the Lord Jesus said.
That all our hairs are numbered.
So when I woke up this morning, I lost a few hairs.
It's been happening for a few years now.
And he recounted all of them. He knows the number. He doesn't even need to count them. He just knows.
Lose one more hair, he resets that number. He knows exactly what number of hairs are on my head and on yours. You know why he loves you. He's interested in you. Sometimes we want to be somebody else. Let me tell you, dear children.
That.
You are unique.
And there is nobody else like you on the face of the planet.
You are one-of-a-kind, and God made you.
And God loves you.
There's something that God sees.
We've looked at a lot of things at the minute level to show how God can see things that you and I cannot.
And that he is interested in his creation. That God made all of this and all the details, and if we had a higher powered microscope and camera, we'd go deeper and deeper to the molecular level and just see things that would blow our minds.
00:25:01
And he sees it all, and he put it all together. He made it. He created it. It's his.
He's interested in it.
But there's something that no microscope can see.
No telescope could see.
And that's sin.
God can.
If you're in your sins today or not.
And God knows if you belong to him and if you've accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior.
He can look down into our hearts.
And you know, we read about it in the 19 Psalm yesterday about those secret sins.
I dare say we've all had them and have had to deal with them before God, But if you haven't come to the Savior today.
It's just not one or two secret sins.
But it's sin and sins all.
Before God, and he sees every single one of them. He knows your thoughts, He knows where you are constantly. He's seen everything that you've done.
And before him, if you don't know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, he sees you in your sins today.
And he sees those sins on your heart.
And you know if those sins are sitting on your heart.
And you die.
You're not going to heaven.
Going to hell.
That's the truth of God. But the Lord Jesus came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost.
He came.
To seek you, to save you.
Let's read another verse in John. A couple verses actually in John chapter one.
John chapter one and verse 43 The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.
And Jesus was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathaniel, and saith unto him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph.
And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
Well, Phillips said that he found the Lord, but in reality the Lord found him.
And the invitation was to come and see. There are things we've talked about that God can see, and if you're in your sins, he can see your sins before him.
But there's something that God wants you to see.
And that's his beloved son.
He wants you to have.
A look of faith this morning.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
We see Jesus, who is made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.
Have you looked to the Lord? We sing that gospel hymn sometimes. Look, look, look and live. There is life in a look at the crucified one. There is life at this moment for thee. Another is put it this way, and I've enjoyed the quote very much in my own heart. That one look to Jesus saves the soul, but every afterlook is the power of Christian living. All you need is that look of faith. Come and see.
The Lord Jesus says, Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
He wants you to come and see him by faith as your Savior, as the one that died at the cross, who took all your sins upon him who died, who went into the grave and rose again the 3rd day, and who lives today, as Brother Verne reminded us the other day, a real man in heaven.
And inviting you to come, he wants to bring you to heaven, but that can only be if your sins are gone.
That's the only way.
Let's read.
In Exodus 12 to close.
00:30:08
Exodus chapter 12 and verse 12.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night.
And will smite.
All the first born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.
And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you.
And the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite.
The land of Egypt.
This world is condemned. It's under judgment.
And if you're in your sins.
You as I said before.
Die You pass into a lost eternity. You will be judged for your sins for all of eternity.
And so the invitation to come and see.
Is going out to you from God this morning.
And if you.
Make that look of faith and that decision, and repent of your sins and come.
And accept the Lord Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.
God then sees something.
He sees something else.
He sees the blood of his son washing your sins away.
And he sees you.
As clean.
And is righteous.
And acceptable before him.
And fit for heaven because the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin.
I can lookout amongst everybody here.
And everybody looks pretty good.
And everybody might say that, yeah, I'm a Christian.
But there's one thing I can't see and you can't see. I cannot see your heart.
And God can see who has been sheltered by that precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and who?
Has their sins washed away?
It's often been said that you can fool Ming, you can fool your parents.
You can fool your friends. You cannot fool God.
Again, going back to what we said at the start of this meeting.
That he knows your thoughts.
He sees your every waking moment and watches you constantly.
And before before him, nothing is hid.
And this just magnifies the greatness of our God, his power.
His ability to be everywhere at the same time, His all knowing mind. He knows everything about us.
And so we need to just get right with God this morning, if you're not right already.
By accepting the Lord Jesus as your personal savior and Lord.
OK, I'm going to close in prayer.
Come and grab your Sunday school paper.
And I have little magnifying glasses for you, so you can kind of look at things in a different light. There's different colors here and there's some girl colors and some boy colors, so I'll be happy to to pass them out. All I ask is that you they, they have little, they're in packages. So please put your packages in the garbage, OK?
When you come and get one.
And if you want to look at some of these photos a little bit closer, come and see me, that'd be great. OK, let's just close in prayer. We're loving God and our Father. We thank thee that thou dost love us. And we thank thee for the gift of thy beloved Son, that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. We thank the Lord Jesus for coming into this world to be a sacrifice for sin and to give thy life as a ransom for many.
And we just pray that if there's any here lost in their sins, be it a young child or older one too, that they might close in on that offer of salvation and be saved this very day, we ask for blessing now and thy worthy name, Lord Jesus, Amen.
The Lord's Prayer for You, John 17
Address—Don Rule
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
327.
We'll need a starter.
Our sins are.
Going.
To be.
Crystal and.
Hiding.
Love all God hurts you all right?
Don't fight with anything.
All Sandra now.
Anymore relocation?
With me?
And soon shall follow.
The hack for real estate?
We'll see you in the tower of my life.
Grow Thou shalt you want more. Great wherever God was the best of life.
Spray.
Lord Jesus.
We do desire, as we are here together this afternoon, that thou would feed us and give us from thyself that which is for our good and our benefit.
We do desire, Lord Jesus, that.
We each one may be able to know thy heart a little better.
To enter a little more, Lord Jesus, into thy wonderful love.
00:05:03
For each one of us. And so we ask as we open Thy Word.
That thou would direct our hearts and our thoughts.
To thyself.
And that thou would bless thy word to us. And so we ask Lord Jesus in thy precious name.
Amen.
So I lookout at you.
I think.
This way, what if the Lord Jesus was standing here looking out at you?
What is in his heart?
Or you this afternoon.
You know, when you talk about the human heart.
When you stop and think about it.
It's actually a lot easier to understand his heart.
Than your own.
You and I have a heart that, naturally speaking, is deceitful.
And in itself wicked.
And so God says, who can know it?
But when we look at the heart of the Lord Jesus, it's pure.
There's no deceit in it.
What he says is a perfect reflection of his heart.
And so in that way we're going to look.
This afternoon.
At a prayer.
That he made.
That God has recorded.
For this audience this afternoon.
Not possible this amount of time later. Yes it is.
Because the Lord Jesus.
Probably most know about what's called the Lord's Prayer.
And maybe many of us memorized it.
Actually, in truth it would probably be better described as the disciples prayer.
But what I think of as a better for us prayer that the Lord Jesus made.
Near the end of his life, and he made it for your benefit and mine as well as others.
Is found in John's Gospel.
And when I get there, I'll give you a place.
John 17.
It's a wonderful thing.
That God has chosen.
To record a prayer.
Of the Lord Jesus.
That includes you in it.
And me in it.
Many of us are used to.
Asking for prayer from someone else.
Won't you pray for me? And then we tell them something about a need that we see in our own lives.
And here we have a prayer of the Lord Jesus.
Just before, right at the end of his life here on earth, and he prays.
First of all, for the disciples that had been with him, and he was now going to be separated from them by death and by resurrection.
And so he prays this prayer for them.
But he also in his prayer says in verse 20 of John 17.
Neither pray I for those alone.
But for them also which shall believe on me.
And so you're in that class, and I'm in that class. This prayer is for us.
That are in this room and it is a prayer, a personal prayer of the Lord Jesus for you this afternoon.
Sometimes.
I'll say we shouldn't necessarily, but we appreciate a little more when we know a particular person that we think is near. The Lord is praying for us because we think that they may better and more intelligently know how to ask the Lord or come before the Lord on our behalf.
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And here we have the Lord Jesus.
Coming before his father.
For you and for me.
It's a good person to know. It's good to know his prayers for us.
So, he says.
These words spake Jesus.
And lifted up his eyes to heaven.
And said father.
The hours come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.
Sometimes we need to pray about ourselves.
And what we're going to go through.
And that's wrong. That's not wrong, that's right. But as we see how the Lord Jesus here prays, actually he begins talking to the Father about himself and the Father 1St, and then he brings others in us into His prayer.
And so he says, The hours Come, glorify thy Son, but thy Son also may glorify thee.
Right after this he goes to the cross, and at the cross he glorifies the Father.
And he is so united in heart and thought with the Father, that he also can say to the Father, glorify the Son.
Thou hast given him power that's you have given me.
The sun power over all flesh.
That.
I should give eternal life.
To as many as thou hast given him.
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God.
And Jesus Christ from thou ascent.
Maybe a feeble illustration of something that?
Why is internal life so important? Is it important so that we can last a long time?
Is that the intent or purpose of God in eternal life? Not really.
God wants to have eternal fellowship with us.
And he gave to his son.
To give that life to us.
So that you and I might have the enjoyment.
Of common enjoyment with God the Father and God the Son forever.
So he says this is life eternal, that they might know thee.
The only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent.
Feeble illustration, but.
When I was a boy, we had a dog.
Named Bell.
Colleague.
Full name was Anita Bell of Rules Roost.
From Lassie Belle of rural Haven.
Who is a purebred dog? Had a pedigree and all that.
It was a wonderful dog. We had it for 1516 years.
We love to play with Bell. We loved his children.
But there were limits.
There are lots of things that Bell didn't understand that we couldn't communicate to it.
There were lots of things that Bell probably was trying to communicate with us that we didn't very well understand. We learned some.
You know when it jumped up on your lap?
When it barked at you in certain ways that it was its manner of communicating.
I'm sure that Bell understood.
Something of our care of it, when it was fed and when it was played with and all the rest of it, but it was very limited.
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And.
Yeah, eternal life.
The Lord says here to his father for us.
I want them. You want them.
To have a life that we together can share with one another. That's the desire of the Lord Jesus.
That's his personal.
Prayer.
Connection with you he wants you and I to enjoy.
Himself and his Father for eternity.
And so he has given us a life and a nature.
That enables us to know one another.
In a very personal.
A very intimate way.
We might say Bell loved us, but who knows what that meant to the dog?
But when we speak of eternal life.
It's a wonderfully different thing.
Because there's only one eternal life.
I look at you this afternoon and there's a lot of lives that I'm looking at. There's just as many lives as there are people in this room.
But there's only one eternal life.
The life of Christ. And it's that very life that has been imparted to you and I to share in and to have and to enjoy. And what is the result?
Were able.
To have the same feelings.
We are able to experience the same character of love.
We are able to have holy.
Feelings and thoughts because we share in one common life.
And so the Lord says you've given.
To me.
That I should give eternal life.
To whom?
To whom?
He says to the father.
As many as thou hast given me.
I'll make it very personal.
Pick on one brother and sister.
To do it, but it makes it come home a little more personal.
Father.
You've given me Virgil.
As a gift.
And I want Virgil.
And you've given me Anne as a gift.
And I want Virgil and Anne to share.
With me in a common life.
Is that love?
Does that satisfies?
Here you set this afternoon in your seat, and I speak to you as a believer.
And the Lord Jesus in very personal way and in personal terms.
To the Father in this prayer.
As expressing.
That you what you mean to him is you are a gift.
Of his father to himself.
Is that satisfying to the heart?
Does that encourage?
It's his statement. It's not something I'm stating. It's not something I'm making up. It is a statement about himself.
And what is the consequence, verse three, that they may know thee?
May know thee.
Now there are lots of things that we don't understand.
There are things about other people.
That we hear about, but because of our own background or because of our lack of understanding of the profession they're in or something like that.
We don't understand.
I know one I've often used as illustration. Some of you sisters could have answered differently than I, but I never said to my wife when she was pregnant and delivered a child. I know just how you feel.
I never experienced that.
I couldn't honestly and truly say that I could understand fully what she went through during.
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The process of delivery of the child and the pain associated with it.
I didn't think Felicia ever say, well, I understand just how you feel because I didn't.
But the Lord Jesus has communicated in love.
That the Father has given you to him.
And in addition to that has given.
The place to give you his life, share his life with you in a way that.
You can understand him.
Not as a divine person completely, but you can enter into an understanding.
An enjoyment of the same things with a common feeling.
Yes, his person goes beyond human understanding, but in many respects there is that communication.
And.
It satisfies his heart.
Just comes to mind. I was sharing it with somebody yesterday I guess, and so it's a little bit fresh.
I used to think when I got to heaven, I wouldn't cry anymore.
Heaven is perfect.
Wonderful sin is gone.
Everything is just. Whatever one could imagine is wonderful.
But I believe I will cry in heaven. Why?
Because I expect to see the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have in Genesis the picture of the Lord Jesus in the restoration of his fellowship to his earthly brethren in Joseph and his brethren. And there I don't remember how many five or six or so times in which Jesus goes apart and weeps during that restoration process.
That's a picture of what's going to happen in the future when the Lord Jesus is restored to his earthly people.
And that's after you and I are with them in glory.
In those seven years of tribulation.
Are you going to watch him cry?
Without compassion, without entering into his heart.
I say it's impossible.
Having his.
You will enter in in a way.
That will.
Go through it seeing what he's going through. And as he cries, I think you will too.
But here, he says.
Verse 4.
His life. I'll just make the comment in this chapter. He hasn't actually died physically. Chronologically we still have the cross ahead. But this prayer is from him as the Son of God and in as Son of God he could speak about things future as if they had already happened.
And so some of those things in this chapter have that character, so he says.
I glorified thee on the earth, Speaking of his life and to the Father, he says. I finished the work.
Which you gave me to do.
And he's speaking as the Sun.
Even though what we would call the work of the Cross hadn't in time actually yet taken place, but he's Speaking of it as if it had, and he's praying in anticipation of returning to the Father.
And looking back over the life that he had here while he was on earth and what he's going to ask for for you.
While he's not here.
And for me?
I finished the work which thou gavest me to do, and that's the work of the cross.
It's finished. There's nothing more to be done.
The intactial fact when he was on the cross, said those words in time. It is finished. And when he had said that, he bowed his head and dismissed his own life.
A wonderful fact in itself. He dismissed his own life.
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God didn't have to.
Do that.
Man, in fact, in truth, couldn't really do that, although he's responsible for the crucifixion.
But the Lord Jesus, the divine person, dismisses his own spirit and bows his head in death.
So he says first in relationship between himself and his Father, before we're brought in. He says Now, Father, glorify thou me with thine, own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
And so he is going to return to the heavenly.
Place where he and the Father.
Had had glory together from eternity.
And he's going to return to that place of honor in his father's presence.
But he presents it to the Father as something the Father is to do.
And the Father does.
So he says in verse 6.
I've manifested.
Made known thy name unto the men which thou gavest me.
Out of the world.
That's something that he says to the father about you.
And about a.
You can say father.
I have presented you.
To those that are gathered this Lord's day.
And Pocatello ID. I mean Idaho.
I've done that.
To reach 1.
And they were thine.
And thou gavest them to me.
It's a wonderful thing to enjoy that you are a present.
Of the Father, to the Son, and it's precious to the heart of the Lord Jesus.
In such a way that he talks about it.
To his father, he appreciated that you were given to him as a gift.
And in that he also says.
They have kept thy word.
And they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me, are of thee.
And so he expresses.
What he has.
And the results of it.
As it were I value the present.
That you've given me.
And I'm going to do everything necessary to see that it's not lost.
Sometimes we get presents of one sort and another, and they don't last very long.
We're not able to keep them. Something happens to them and they're lost.
You are a gift of the father to the Son, and as such.
He's going to be sure that you're never lost.
If you could be lost.
It would be because he doesn't have the power to keep you while he wants to.
He says he's going to do that.
And so your security.
Isn't.
Really dependent in any real way on yourself.
It is his power by the Spirit to keep.
What the Father gave him.
Does that give you peace, Confidence.
I hope so.
He also says.
Verse eight I have given unto them the words which thou gave us me.
You have.
Words from the Word of God.
Where they're recorded for us?
That the Father gave to the Son to give to you.
You know, there are all kinds of places where words come from and all kinds of thoughts.
Some of them we'd be better off having nothing to do with.
Or even being occupied with.
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But here's the father.
According to what's in his own heart for you and I, giving them to his son to give to us.
Does that make them important?
To us, you know, sometimes when someone says so and so said this.
And they wanted me to pass it on. We evaluate the value or the importance of it, according to the person that said it.
As to whether we think it's important or not, but here it said, I've given unto them the words which thou gavest me.
And.
Blessed be the Lord, the next 3 words.
They have received them.
They have received.
The Lord knows.
May go beyond some of our capacity to say, well, I don't know that I've always received everything I should receive.
But the Lord can say they have received them.
And in receiving them, they know the source of them that I came out from the.
And they have believed that thou did send me.
I would believe that everyone of you that knows the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior.
No. And appreciate the truth of what the Lord says about you here.
That.
He came from the Father.
The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, and the Father in sending his Son to be the Savior of the world.
Is something that you have received and believed.
And accepting him.
So, he says.
I pray for them.
You probably prayed for some people today.
Hope so.
And I would assume so.
There are probably some that you pray for every day.
We all have limits as to the number of people we pray for each day.
Maybe you pray for five or ten or a couple 100.
But there's a limit.
In the number that you pray for.
Here the Lord Jesus says, I pray for them.
The Lord Jesus today.
Brought you.
Before his father.
Is not limited in the same way that we are, but he values you as a gift from the father.
And today, the Lord Jesus.
Brought you.
Before his father.
I pray for them.
For them which thou hast given me.
Sometimes.
We're at a table. Maybe you've been at a table at this conference and there's been some exchanges.
And somebody's being talked about I I've experienced it at this conference table.
There's some conversations going on and there are multiple people at the table and somebody's name is brought up.
And you can kind of tell some at the table are thinking at that point about something else.
Maybe they don't know the person involved.
Maybe they're distracted by something else, and so they kind of lose touch with the conversation of what's being said and who it's being said to.
Lord Jesus says and when he's praying for us.
You've given him to me.
And they are thine.
Let's try to illustrate it this way.
Suppose you're a mom or a dad. Or you're a child.
And if your mom and dad and somebody at the table starts to talk about one of your kids?
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Is that enough to get your attention? If it's on something else, I'm sure it is.
If you're a child and you're talking to somebody else, and your mom or dad's name comes into the conversation, but you stop thinking about what was being talked about.
I'm confident that your ears perk up and you start to connect.
And have interest in what's being said.
Here, when the Lord's talking, he says.
I They're yours and they're mine.
I hope it didn't happen very often when a husband or a wife will say a wife starts to talk to her husband about one of the children.
And the husband doesn't say, oh, honey, I'm busy right now.
Not a good idea if you've been in that relationship, but it's not necessarily very common thing to happen and it's the normal is that the moment somebody that you have a close relationship to?
Is involved. You pay attention, you care, you listen, and you participate.
Here the Lord Jesus is bringing you before his Father, and in bringing you before his Father, he's doing so that Father you gave.
Him or her to me?
You gave Ralph to me.
You gave Lois to me?
And so on. It's a very personal and individual thing, and perhaps in my heart more than anything else.
Is the desire that when the Lord Jesus speaks in the Word.
That we take it personally.
I had pleading thoughts of actually starting this meeting with Jesus loves me.
Why? Because it's very personal.
We visit a detention center on a regular basis and speak to the kids about the Lord Jesus, and thankfully one of the songs that's a favorite is Jesus Loves Me.
And we often say to them it's not going to benefit you at all unless you take it personally.
And it's that.
We each need to have a personal, individual, conscious relationship with the Lord Jesus.
You ate table a little while ago.
There were people at the table with you.
Was there any conscious sense that the Lord Jesus was listening to the conversation?
It's important.
To us, to develop if we haven't.
When we.
We sang 327.
Were you conscious when you started singing that, that you were addressing the Lord Jesus?
Did you consciously?
Lord Jesus.
Are we one with thee?
It's important when we sing, when we sing out of the little flock. Some are spiritual songs.
But some are direct addresses to God, to the Father, to the Lord Jesus.
I encourage you to pay attention, if you haven't to that, and when you are singing conscientiously recognize that you are.
Addressing or stinging words to the Lord Jesus.
And that the sentiments while written by someone else should come as your personal sentiments or thoughts when you so sing or speak.
When you pay attention to that, you find some of The Sims. You have to pay attention all the way.
That's what happens to say, Lord Jesus.
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And.
All the verses are addressed to him. There are others where it's mixed. Sometimes some verses are about spiritual things and right in the middle he gets addressed.
Christianity and a relationship with the Lord Jesus should develop into an intensely personal moment by moment experience.
So he says here.
I pray for them.
Well, in its context here it was the disciples that had been with him at that time, but later on, as we read, were included.
He says. I pray not for the world.
But for them which thou has given me, for they are thine.
Just comes to mind. I'll repeat it. Maybe there's some that haven't heard it. Prayer is based on the immense privilege of having common thoughts with God.
Prayer is based on the immense privilege of having common thoughts with God.
That is, the things that God is interested in, you are.
The things that you are interested in, God is, and so there is a communication. Prayer is a form of communication of speaking one to another, and it is based on the very assumption that there is common interest in what's being communicated.
Someone's sick and you pray for them. Is God interested?
Yes, he is. You know he is.
And it is well.
For us to have a conscious sense that everything we do every day.
God has a common interest in it.
In the sense of can have fellowship with it.
And if there is something that I get occupied with and I do that, the Lord Jesus wouldn't be. Let's put it this way, I wouldn't be comfortable if the Lord Jesus was visibly right there beside me when I'm doing it, or looking over my shoulder when I'm at my computer terminal.
It's time to say goodbye to it.
Because he wants.
And this prayer expresses his desires.
In his with his father in respect to his relationships with you.
I make.
When he talked to the father about us.
Do you think God said. Well, son, I'm not really interested in that particular person.
Can you imagine that you can?
You cannot imagine that when the Lord Jesus brings your name before God, God says I'm kind of busy right now.
I have some other more important things to do.
So I really don't right now have time to talk about Mary or John or Jim and so on.
No.
I pray for them. I pray not for the world.
And verse 10.
All mine are thine and thine are mine.
To me, that's. I appreciate that.
We're addressing the levers.
You'll never find the Lord Jesus speaking to God about a person in the way that's described here. And have the Father say, well, they're yours, but they're not mine.
That's that's not part of my life, not part of my people.
There are other things that we have in life that we don't share in common.
You may have your place to live, and I don't.
I live somewhere else.
You may have one kind of work and I have another. And so there are lots of things in our lives that are not truly common.
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But here?
When its people and interest in the lives of those people, it's wonderful to me to say, Lord, I'm yours.
On the Father.
And thank you both.
For your common loving care and interests in me.
Verse 11 The Lord's Prayer for us changes a little.
It's bringing into the fact that he was returning to heaven.
Those that were his were going to still be on earth, and so in that way there was going to be a physical separation as to place He in heaven with the Father to whom He was returning, and they still here on earth, but more than the earth.
Important word is the world.
The world.
The world that's that system of things in which we live, It's government.
It's entertainment, it's interests. All those things together make up what is called the world.
And the Lord Jesus.
Notice what the world is.
Well, I could say a whole lot better than we do.
And he was returning to the father while he was here. He could nurture them by being physically with them, and can I say by the activities they did together, keep them separate.
From the world because they were with Him as His disciples.
So, he says.
Verse 11 I'm no more in the world.
But these are in the world.
I come to thee.
Notice how he addressed as the father at this point.
He adds a word he doesn't just say, Father.
He says, Holy Father.
Why?
The world is an unholy place.
The world is presently a filthy place.
The interests, the ambitions, the activities of the world system.
Are against.
What God wants?
Why Just a passing comment?
Because.
When the Lord Jesus was before Pilate.
Pilate presented to the people representing the people of the world at that time, a choice.
Do you want Jesus?
Or do you want Barabbas?
And the choice was we want Barabbas.
And the world is characterized by that choice.
We want Parabus.
Rabbis, that, you know, was a murder.
The Prince of Life was cast out.
A murderer was chosen.
And the world system? Perfectly, really perfectly. I don't like that word exactly, but.
Is characterized by that choice. And so here, when he wants those of his own that are in the world, he says Holy Father.
Holiness and separation from evil and filth.
That characterizes the world, he says. Keep.
Keep.
We appreciate this prayer.
Make it personal.
To enter into the Lord Jesus praying for you.
To his father and saying Holy Father keep.
Does that motivate you to want to be kept?
To desire to be proper in your response.
Through his prayer for you.
Here he says, Holy Father, keep through thine own name, those whom thou hast given me.
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You're his. He was going back to the glory.
But the Father, he prays to the Father to keep you, because he loves you because you're his, the gift of the Father to himself. And so he says.
Keep.
It says.
Verse.
The end of the verse.
That they may be one.
As we are.
Figuratively speaking.
There's more in it than this, but it's a feeble way of trying to illustrate something.
If the Father and the Son.
Or to lock down.
The street of Pocatello.
Wouldn't you enjoy being the third one?
To walk down the street together.
In perfect harmony.
With perfect interests, with oneness of heart and mind and thought.
Lord Jesus.
Praise this for you.
Perhaps every day.
There's that expression of his desire and his love for you to have this kind of fellowship with you on a daily basis.
Hope we value it. I think we do in our measure.
So he says verse 12. While I was with them in the world, I kept them.
While I was here, I kept each one of them, Father.
Except the son of perdition, Judas.
Being a different case.
Then he says, verse 13. Now I come to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy.
Fulfilled in themselves.
Just ask you the question.
Are you enjoying?
Today, have you enjoyed today his joy?
Do the same things that gave him joy as a man here on earth. Are they the same things that today are giving you joy?
Do you enjoy?
As you pass through today the love of the Father.
He did.
He enjoyed the love of his father each day.
Just a little more challenging 1.
He says.
And the Psalm about him.
I'm determined.
To do thy will.
About that a minute.
The Lord Jesus.
Found joy.
In being.
Enjoying what God provided.
That's where he found joy.
He found joy in dependence upon his father.
He found joy in being obedient.
To his father.
He wants us to have the same joy. He prays for it.
But my joy.
That those things that brought joy to his own heart and his life here on earth would be the same things. He praised this for you and for me. That they would be the same things in which we find our joy.
I delight.
To do thy will. Oh my God, that was a joy to his heart.
I think it could properly be said he would rather.
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Die than disobey.
There was that intense.
Joy in him.
With respect to his relationship and walk with his father.
Do we share it?
He prays that we do.
It's his desire and his prayer to the Father that we would air in and find our joy.
In the same things that he finds his.
And partly, what enables that to be true?
Is he's given us a life.
And nature.
What we read about in the beginning eternal life. It is a life and nature that enjoys the very same things he enjoys.
Perfectly.
So we can't say, well, I'm this or I'm that or I I don't have the what's necessary.
No, he's given you a life in nature that enjoys exactly what he enjoys.
And he wants us to enjoy it.
He wants us to be happy.
He wants us to have fellowship with himself.
And he will, if we enjoy the same things that he does.
I've been even at this conference, sat at the dinner table and by a little bit of observation, seeing 234 people talking together and one person gets on a certain subject and some of the others.
Lose a little bit of interest.
Maybe stop their part of the conversation and talk to each other because they've lost common interest.
In the same thing that's being said. And I'm not condemning that, I'm just trying to illustrate something and that is.
Don't you desire?
I'm sure you do.
That if the Lord Jesus were sitting at the dinner table with you today.
That every single part of the conversation he could enter into with you.
And enjoy with you.
Or have a burden if it's a burden with you in that.
Or would there be something in the conversation that he couldn't share in with you in?
So, he says.
Verse 12 While I was with them, I kept them.
And so.
He did. He kept them. I have to look at my time and it says 315 and I see it's 315.
You enjoy the rest of the chapter.
Go ahead and read it and enjoy what the Lord Jesus.
Specifically, is praying for you about.
And be sure God's hearing his prayer for you.
And may we enter in more fully.
Into it.
And enjoy it with them.
We will perfectly when we're at home in the glory.
But the Lord doesn't want us to have to wait before we get to have conversations together and enjoy and share and the same things.
That he enjoys.
Let's pray.
Our God, our Father, we.
Give thanks to thee for giving thy son.
We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for so willingly coming for the Father.
For us.
We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, that as we are here this afternoon, that we know that.
24 hours a day that thou art before the Father on our behalf.
We thank thee for thy high priestly present work for us, Lord Jesus.
And we would just desire that each one of us might grow a little in the enjoyment of moment by moment fellowship with Thyself, Lord Jesus, and Thy love.
And that each one of us would put aside from our lives anything that hinders thee from.
Being able to enjoy the activities of life with us in spirit.
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Or we with thee.
So we thank you for thy love, Lord Jesus.
And we thank you for thy present work on our behalf, and we look forward, Lord.
To the moment when.
What we now need will be perfectly realized.
When we are with thee and like thee.
And see thee as thou art.
We look forward to it, Lord.
With anticipation and thankful hearts.
Thy precious name. Amen.
Precious Cargo
Open—Randy Tysor
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Glory. Glory.
To God.
I'm sorry. I'm still alive for the great soul.
Oh, wow.
You.
This one.
Before we turn to.
Acts 27 for five verses.
What a, what a subject we've had before us yesterday and the day before. The thought of.
Restoration and recovery.
And I've enjoyed it so much.
And I as I look around and talk to different ones, there are so many from different assemblies that I feel are just like those four men that would go after a soul that.
Has gotten defiled, gotten distressed, and would minister the spirit of God to him. And I'd sure like to encourage those that have that that heart in their local assemblies. Turn with me for five verses five or six. I believe in Acts 27.
I think we're all familiar with this.
Many have. It's the ship that's in the hurricane for two weeks.
Many have enjoyed and likened this as to the ship of testimony.
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2000 years of of the testimony going through this world.
Buffeted by waves. Satan.
Umm, evil doctrines, all kinds of things.
That have sought to sink the ship.
But I just want to call your attention.
To we'll start with verse.
33 While the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat, saying, This day is the 14th day, that ye have tarried and continued fasting.
Having taken nothing. Nothing.
Wherefore, I pray you to take some meat, for this is for your health, for there shall not and hair fall from the head of any of you. When he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to God in presence of them all. And when he had broken it, he began to eat. Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took some meat.
Verse 38 And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship.
And cast out the wheat into the sea.
As I mentioned, some have seen this as kind of a prophetic outline of the the Church.
And when I read this.
Some years ago.
And came to the point where they they threw the wheat out of the ship I got.
Quite distressed.
Lord, is this what we're going to do?
Wheat, wheat.
In scripture and wheat here I think, speaks of good sound doctrine.
And we have those that labor in worden doctrine. Amongst this, as I have my daily reading, I have Bruce Ansys doctrinal definitions close by. So I make sure that then you know young people.
It says I believe in John Seven. It says if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.
Be familiar with good doctrine, good sound doctrine. And sometimes the best time to look into those things is when questions come up in your assembly about things. And there's sometimes we that are a little older and not real sure, that's a good time to dig into it for yourself. You can repeat what somebody else has said, but when you've dugout some of these things by yourself.
They become your own.
And as much as I appreciate good sound doctrine, I'm going to say this. Nobody ever sat down. I said this one time, and I got contradicted. Very few people sit down to a bowl of wheat and milk.
Sound doctrine is what it takes to make food for people.
I run into a young man.
Last year that had grown up in the neighborhood with my my kids and he was in his mid 30s and he said he remembered a day when they were playing with my kids and my wife took five loaves of bread out of the oven and wrapped four of them and turned one over to the to the kids to cut the big thick one inch slices and.
Slather the butter and jam and there's just nothing like.
Good bread and I appreciate. I appreciate those that can take sound doctrine and turn it into food.
And that's why it just bothered me so much when I read this, that here they took the wheat they had eaten.
I think this is a picture of Paul's ministry being restored in the early 1800s.
And they ate and were encouraged and strengthened, and they started to throw the wheat overboard. And I just was distressed. And I said, Lord, please.
Preserve.
Sound doctrine to us in the last days.
Don't let us get careless. Those that dig these things out for us, encourage them.
But then I noticed another verse, and I jumped over it here when I read it, verse 37. And this was the key to the whole thing. And we were in all in the ship, 203 score and 16 souls. 276 souls in the ship. And this was what gave me great comfort that the wheat was not the cargo of the ship.
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The souls of men.
Were the cargo of the ship and I hope this is something that we remember and especially as we took up.
The portion that we had about in Numbers 19 that souls, precious souls, their souls here.
Perhaps not known to everybody that are struggling, they've had hard times, they're.
You know, like I began, it just would encourage those that have a heart for souls. That is the cargo of the ship in the last days, 276 precious souls there.
Eating the Sin Offering
Open—Bill Prost
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I hesitate to get up again, but I trust it's of the Lord.
Randy mentioned how that we had had before us numbers 19, which pretty well everyone here knows.
And I very much appreciated the truth that was brought out for my own soul, although I was generally familiar with it. But we all learned something when we go over scripture again.
However.
Last night at supper.
A brother said to me.
Why do you think?
That in some cases.
There is very little restoration.
After serious failure, which of course may well lead to someone's being put away from fellowship and from the Lord's table.
Why are there so few in some cases now? Not all cases? We thank God that.
In many cases people are restored, but in some cases it seems there is very little restoration.
Let's turn over to Leviticus, where I believe we would find at least part of the answer.
Leviticus, chapter 6.
We get the offerings brought before us in the earlier chapters of Leviticus, starting with chapter one and four main offerings, and then perhaps the trespass offering being.
You might say a subset of the sin offering.
But notice then afterward we get some additional additional instructions for those offerings, and notice what it says here concerning the sin offering in Leviticus 6.
And verse 24.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron, and to his son, saying, This is the law of the sin offering.
In the place where the burnt offering is killed, shall the sin offering be killed before the Lord it is most holy.
And now notice this which is not mentioned in the 4th chapter where the sin offering is introduced.
The priest that offereth it for sin shall eat it.
In the Holy place shall it be eaten in the court of the Tabernacle of the congregation.
We could read the rest of it here, because there were.
Some sin offerings that were burned without the camp and they were not to be eaten, but others were to be eaten by the priest.
What does that bring before us?
It brings before us the fact that when serious sin occurs.
Especially if it is something that comes to the attention.
In transposing it to New Testament truth to the attention of the local assembly.
It's necessary for those in that local assembly.
Especially those who take the leadership whose priestly discernment is valued.
It's necessary.
To eat the sin offering.
Why would that be?
The priest had not sinned.
The priest had not become defiled and in that sense was not guilty of sin. He was in that sense the one administering the remedy for the sin.
But he had to eat that sin offering.
That brings before us the fact that when God allows serious sin.
In an assembly, each one in that assembly, and especially those in a position of responsibility and leadership.
Need to recognize that the Lord is speaking to them.
And I say that applying it most of all to my own soul.
How necessary to recognize?
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That the Lord is speaking to us.
And I would suggest that there are two things that the Lord would say to us.
We don't need to dwell at length on them. The first one that comes to mind is what we have already been reminded of in Galatians 6 and one.
If a man be overtaken in fault.
And don't make One Corinthians 5 directly correlate with that, but the spirit of it is the same.
Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.
Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted, the first thing is that we have to recognize that our own hearts are no better. We have to recognize that we could have been the one to commit that sin, had the Lord not kept us.
Now, does that take away of the from the responsibility of the individual? No, it does not.
As we said yesterday, for me to commit a sin which has to come to the attention of the assembly, I have morally to run a number of red lights before I hit somebody, before something happens that is serious. And that was brought out I believe, in the last meeting yesterday where Psalm 19 was referred to and we saw there a progression from thoughts.
To actions, to presumptuous sins, to their having dominion over me.
And finally, the great transgression.
Very important.
But I have to recognize that I could have committed that sin.
Secondly, we have to recognize that the Lord is speaking to each one of us.
With some kind of a message.
By allowing that sin in our midst.
If we were to turn to Leviticus 14, we would see where the Lord says.
When I put the plague of leprosy in a house.
The Lord allows sometimes that sin to stir us all up.
And may I go as far as to say that restoration?
Often depends, at least to some extent and probably to a large extent.
On how much I eat that sin offering.
I have been.
In different assemblies during my lifetime.
And more than once, I have had to be.
In the unhappy situation.
Where someone's name had to be announced.
Because of serious sin in his or her life, and that they were no longer considered in fellowship with us and able to partake at the Lord's table.
And as a young brother, I can remember being impressed at least twice and maybe three times.
With how the brother who had the responsibility of standing up and making that announcement.
Pardon me for choking up in the memory of it.
Oh, that brother with tears running down his face.
Announce that fact and others in the assembly had tears running down their faces, too.
As that brother, yes, he was faithful. He spoke the individual's name.
He told the sin of which they were guilty, and that is necessary.
Didn't go into all the details, but he mentioned the sin.
But then, in some cases, and I'm not going to go over the various wording, but they reminded us of how solemnly the Lord was speaking to us, and how our own hearts needed to be stirred up, because there was doubtless that in our own hearts which the Lord was wanting us to deal with.
May be secret sins.
That had not yet become public. But the Lord knew about them, and we knew about. And that we ourselves as individuals who were guilty of those secrets, sins, knew about them. Or maybe it was simply a matter of getting away from the Lord and worldliness, being overly occupied with the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches, which is like the good life we enjoy here in North America, whatever it might be, there is a necessity to eat that sin offering.
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And if we are eating that sin offering, what will happen?
First of all.
God is going to.
Make it felt, not only in that assembly, but ultimately by the individual that has to be put away.
An old brother used to remind us more than once that what comes from the heart.
Goes to the heart.
And what breaks a soul down, perhaps more than anything else, is the realization that others are in brokenness and heartache and sorrow because of what has happened.
It has an effect.
It has an effect on us and it has an effect on the one who has had to be dealt with.
How important that is?
Sad to say.
And again I speak to my own heart. There is sometimes the attitude, and I have heard it. I have heard it said. I remember well, many years ago, where a dear brother was put away from the Lord's table, a relatively young brother.
And a sister whom I knew well, older than I, and who ought to have known better, made the statement to me, she said. Well, Bill?
I'm thankful that your mind and mind don't run along those channels, do we?
Do they?
Your mind and mind don't run along those channels referring to the sin of which that young brother was guilty.
I said to her, addressing her by name, because I'd known her pretty much all my life. I said I'm afraid I know my own heart only too well to realize that it is capable of any sin that has ever been committed.
Well, she didn't say anymore.
But I have to. I have to realize that that's true.
And if we take the attitude, when sin occurs, serious sin, and someone has to be put away, that in the manner of speaking it is simply good riddance to bad rubbish, Oh, may the Lord preserve us from that attitude, because the Lord will have to bring down upon your life and mine His government to make us realize.
That our hearts are no better and that more than anything else, that attitude and spirit.
Will hinder.
First of all, our own dealing with what the Lord is saying to us, but secondly it will hinder.
The restoration of that one.
Does that excuse them if they go away? If they say I don't feel welcome here, I don't feel very happy here. I'm going to go down the street where I know they don't meet according to scripture, but at least they'll throw their arms around me and make me feel welcome. Does that excuse someone for taking that attitude? Assuredly not. Oh no. Every one of us shall give account of himself to God and I am responsible before the Lord.
If I deliberately and willfully walk away from that which I know to be the truth of God.
But on the other hand, how many souls have been alienated by a wrong attitude and spirit because of not eating the sin offering?
It was necessary for the priests to do it.
But did he always do it?
Let's go to the 10th chapter to see where the priests failed in this, and I would suggest there is a lesson again for us here in Leviticus 10.
I want to leave room because the scripture says as we read earlier, two or three. So we won't go into all the detail but we notice in the beginning of this chapter Leviticus 10 verse one.
And Nadab, and by you the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer. That was a kind of a silver dish in which they could carry things.
And put fire therein. That is hot coals.
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But in sense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord.
Which he commanded them not, that is, and take instead of taking those coals off the altar, they got them somewhere else.
And verse two says there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. Oh how solemn.
Then Moses said unto Aaron. This is it that the Lord speaks, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified.
And Aaron held his peace.
Poor Aaron.
His two oldest sons cut off in a moment.
For offering strange fire before the Lord, the priesthood was scarcely established before there was serious failure.
Unless we pat ourselves on the back and think that in the church we are any better. If we look at the history of the church, we see that very early on.
Serious failure came in.
And so poor Aaron holds his peace.
Why did Aaron have nothing to say? Oh, poor Aaron.
It hadn't been that long before.
When Moses, we remember, went up into the mount to receive what we commonly call the 10 commandments written on those tablets of stone, and he was gone for an extended period of time, 40 days.
And during that time, the people of Israel became restless.
And they said, As for this Moses, we know not what is, we don't know what's become of them.
Aaron, you're now in charge. You up? Make us gods.
And poor Aaron.
Goes and asks for all the golden earrings that they had gotten from the Egyptians and makes a golden calf.
And the people begin to worship it.
And poor Aaron, when Moses comes down from the mount and confronts Aaron with that and says whatever, Aaron, what did this people do to you? What does Aaron do?
Oh, poor Aaron, but our hearts are no better, Aaron says. Well, the people persuaded me, and I collected all their earrings and put them into the fire, and out came this calf.
Even the children here would laugh at that explanation and say, come on, Aaron.
Out came this calf. Is that what happened?
That's just about the way the theory of evolution works.
An explosion in a printing press shop will produce a perfect dictionary.
Utterly ridiculous. Poor Aaron.
And now here his two boys cut off air and held his peace.
But oh, look at the end of the chapter.
Moses told Aaron and the remaining two sons to carry on. He said. Don't go into mourning over this.
You have a responsibility.
And I believe that would speak to our own hearts, because sometimes the awfulness of events in our own lives can cause us to slacken our responsibilities toward the Lord. And Moses reminds Aaron and his sons that they have a responsibility.
And notice what happens here at the end of the chapter and beginning in verse 16.
Offerings had been offered, things had been done, but something had been omitted, and Moses takes note of it.
Verse 16. And Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering.
And behold, it was burnt.
And he was angry with Eliezer and Ithemar, the sons of Aaron. That was the they were the remaining two sons, because Aaron had four sons.
And he was angry with Eliezer and Ethamar, the sons of Aaron, which were left alive saying.
Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place?
Seeing it as Most holy, and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord.
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Behold, the blood of it was not brought in within the holy Place.
That is, there were some offerings where the blood was brought into the holy place.
Two of the sin offerings that happened. Two, it didn't happen.
And Moses makes that distinction. Now that distinction isn't critical for what we're saying, We just mentioned why Moses puts it in. Here you can read about the sin offering in the 4th of Leviticus and the two first ones. The blood was brought in and sprinkled before the Tabernacle.
The bodies of those beasts had to be totally burnt. The priest didn't eat that sin offering, but the final two. The blood was not sprinkled in the Tabernacle.
The priest was to eat that sin offering.
And so Moses says in the latter half of verse 18 he should indeed have eaten it in the Holy Place, as I command.
Sometimes there's failure.
Sometimes we don't eat the sin offering the way we should. It happens, doesn't it?
Sometimes various and sundry things come into our minds and into our hearts.
Perhaps when an individual has to be put away from the Lord's table.
The sin that has committed, let's be blunt about it, maybe it has affected me and my family.
And a little bit of that good riddance to bad rubbish can get into my mind.
Or perhaps I am away from the Lord.
And even though perhaps I am in that local assembly.
I am scarcely in a fit moral state to eat the sin offering the way I should.
We could go on and on. Various things can affect my state of soul where I fail in my responsibilities before the Lord.
And here we find Eliezer and Itamar failing.
Their two older brothers had just been cut off in a moment like that.
You can imagine from a human point of view, the effect of that.
And instead of eating that sin offering.
They burn it.
They burn it up.
What happens? Is everything lost?
Here is a very important point, and I say it for the benefit of all of us.
When you are reading the Old Testament.
And you read about Aaron and his sons.
When Aaron and his sons are mentioned collectively.
Almost always, in fact, I can't at the moment think of an exception.
They represent the church.
Christ and the Church, but they represent Christ and the Church.
When Aaron is mentioned alone.
He is typical of Christ himself in his character as our great High Priest in our intercessor.
Keep those two things separate and it helps us to understand the types in the Old Testament concerning the priesthood. Aaron and his sons together bring the forest. Christ in the church. Aaron alone Christ is our great High Priest.
And what happens here?
Moses addresses Leather Eliezer and Ethan Mart, but who answers?
Verse 19 And Aaron said unto Moses, Oh, how beautiful. He's a type of Christ.
Christ intercedes for the failure of those who should have been acting in their character as priests, but it failed. He intercedes.
Before Moses.
Who's the type of the Lord himself?
No type is perfect. We can't bring out perfection in types. They all fall short. But who answers? Aaron does.
And he says.
Verse 19 Behold this day have they offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord.
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And such things have befallen me.
And if I had eaten that sin offering today, should it have been accepted in the sight of the Lord?
Aaron is of the Great High Priest.
Intercedes for his son Speaking of you and me.
And he points out on the one hand what had happened and how human weakness had responded to it.
And how perhaps those sons were not in a fit state to eat the sin offering.
I don't. Excuse me.
I don't want to read into scripture what isn't there, but is it possible that Eliezer and Ethan are?
Were so overwhelmed by the loss of their two brothers that maybe, just maybe, they felt that this was perhaps unduly severe and unduly harsh that such a thing would have happened. After all, did they deliberately offer that strange fire? Did they make a mistake and?
I don't know. I merely suggest the possibility.
But when human infirmity and weakness comes in, our great High Priest answers the situation.
And what happens?
It said in verse 20 and when Moses heard that, he was content.
Sometimes in your life and mine.
We may be faced with the need to eat the sin offered.
And we can't excuse ourselves for not eating it.
I believe, as we said earlier, that restoration is perhaps.
In the human sense, more dependent on that than anything else.
And that our attitude and spirit.
Is perhaps the reason.
Why more who are set aside and have to be set aside?
Are not happily and brightly restored. The Lord has a controversy with us, and in some cases it may have nothing to do directly with the sin that brought about the discipline. But the Lord knows my heart. He knows your heart, and if He allows that in my local assembly I better bow my head and say Lord.
No, don't look at that brother across the room and say, well, he sure has something to learn from this or that sister over there. Her attitude needs to change or something like that. No, let me look at my own heart.
And Solomon recognized this. You'll remember the prayer, the dedication of the temple. He talked about the Lord allowing a a blight on the land or Caterpillar or famine or anything like that.
And he said.
That, among other things, when every man shall know the plague of his own heart.
Yes, there may have been a need to be humbled collectively and that's always good when that happens. And I have known situations where brethren collectively got together and shed tears and said Lord.
Please show us what we need to learn and restore that one.
Who has had to be set aside to?
We have to be before the Lord as individuals.
But if there is failure, if there is failure, oh how wonderful that our great High Priest up there comes in.
And when, as it were, God says, why didn't you eat the sin offering the Lord Jesus intercedes for us.
Not because of sin, but because of infirmity and human weakness.
But what does then the Lord look for Ohio? He looks.
For that priesthood to be restored. And they were. They were.
Eliezer and Ethamar were outstanding as time went on in the priesthood. I believed they learned from the SAD.
Events of that day when their two brothers were cut off, and they were exemplary priests in the days that followed, and their posterity after them.
Well, may the Lord use all this to exercise our souls.
Numbers 19 does not refer to this, but.
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You will pardon me if I add that thought to what we had before us yesterday and the day before.
Because I believe it is so, so necessary in.
Helping and promoting real repentance and restoration.
Qualifications for a Restorer
Open—Andy Klassen
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
I trust my brethren will bear with me. I did not intend to get up.
But the subject that our brother Randy and our brother Bill have brought before us as touched my heart.
I remember when.
My youngest son was born.
I spent some time at home with my wife helping her.
And in the process of some down time, I read a book and I'm not going to mention the name of the book and I'm not going to mention the author.
Because I don't want to be liable. It's a book that's well known among us, but I do not want to be responsible for encouraging anyone to read something that could stumble them.
It nearly stumbled me.
It was written by a man who spent some time among Brethren.
And he later went on.
To be very much used of God as an evangelist, and I'll leave it at that.
But as one who knows the inner workings of any particular company.
He had once been among brethren.
And he very skillfully pointed out their defects and their weaknesses on this very subject that we're Speaking of.
When I read that book by the time I was done.
I asked myself, what am I connected with?
I was struck.
When our brother Don Rule made the comment that I hadn't noticed it before in Numbers 19 as to a clean man.
And I would like, with the Lord's help, to just briefly look at.
Circumstances that could come into anyone of our lives that could render us incapable of participating in this work.
Of restoration, recovery, and repentance.
With that said, let's turn to Genesis.
Genesis Chapter 44.
Rely somewhat.
Your acquaintance with.
This passage of Scripture.
Josephs Brethren had sold him into Egypt.
And time had gone on, and Joseph was cast into prison.
Unjustly so he was framed up, and I want to say this at this point that.
There are several in this room that are aware.
That I have been touched in a very personal way.
As to these matters.
And I'm not standing up here to make any defense of anyone. I want to clear the air on that account.
But rather to just simply look at.
The things that can disqualify us in this most valuable work of restoration.
Joseph was in prison.
The day came when Pharaoh had some dreams.
And there was a man who also had been in prison, and he said there's a man that can interpret your dreams.
And so Joseph is brought out of the prison house.
And he interprets.
Pharaoh's dreams.
But before he interprets them.
He makes the most notable statement.
That is so valuable that I believe it's perhaps something he learned.
That is valuable for us, that if the Lord is going to use us, it's the recognition of humility and he says.
Pharaoh, it's not in me.
And if you and I feel that we have the assessment of any given situation and we can just nail it and we know what all the issues are.
We may very well be disqualified from God being able to use us.
But rather when these most delicate situations arise.
That we recognize that there is wisdom that comes from only one.
And that is God himself.
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And Joseph recognized that. So the first one would be humility.
Of brokenness and the recognition that I don't.
Know this thing inside and out?
The second one is and I trust we'll see it as this unfolds because we can imagine it.
Joseph was sold by his brothers.
It's the closest Thai. It's the family Thai.
And you and I know that when things go wrong.
And family connections.
There's nothing that hurts like that.
Nothing.
Joseph is now in a position where he's dealing with his brethren.
And it's going to become evident if there is something that he is harboring in his heart.
That this is the day of vengeance.
This is the day to even the score.
You know, it's remarkable. Well, let's just read it.
Genesis Chapter 44.
And the minute left Joseph's house.
To go back home to their father.
And Joseph's cup was in Benjamin SAC, and they're overtaken by.
The Lord of Joseph's house in verse 12 of Genesis 44 and he searched and began at the eldest and left at the youngest and the cup was found in Benjamin SAC.
Then they rent their clothes and laid it. Every man is asked and returned to the city.
And Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house, for he was yet there. And they fell before him on the ground. And Joseph said unto them, What deed is this that ye have done? What ye not this, such a man as I can certainly divine?
And Judah said, What shall we say unto my Lord?
What shall we speak?
Or how shall we clear ourselves?
God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants. Behold, we are My Lord's servants, both we and He also with whom the cup is found.
And he said, God forbid that I should do so. But the man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant. And As for you?
Get you up in peace unto your Father.
I would just say this to anyone here.
Maybe is?
Struggling with something in your life that we've been Speaking of? Maybe serious sin?
That maybe no one else is aware of.
And maybe.
It's in the past quite a ways.
And you're hoping with the passage of time that.
Somehow will be taken care of.
What's interesting here?
As Joseph is a type of Christ.
That he brings things around to the identical circumstance in which these men had failed before. The players are slightly different. Granted, it's now Benjamin. It's not Joseph.
But what's interesting is that in this case, the brethren can if they want.
Step away and go back to Dad.
And legitimately say we didn't think Benjamin would take the cup, but he did because it was found in his sack.
Here is an opportunity. If there is if this matter of jealousy that they had had toward Joseph is also directed toward Benjamin, they can act on it, but they can do so legitimately.
And they can go back.
Supposedly with a clear conscience.
But here's the test.
Has God wrought? He has.
Now I'm not going to read it for the sake of time.
But we know that Judah had been through.
A tremendous amount between the time that Joseph was sold in this moment.
And Judah steps forward.
And he makes a statement that I want to focus on that I think will illustrate the point of how Joseph was a clean man. It's this.
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Verse 18 Then Judah came near unto him, and said, O my Lord, let thy servant I pray thee, speak a word in my Lord's ears, and let not thine anger burn against thy servant.
For thou are even as Pharaoh.
My Lord? Asked his servants, saying, Have ye a father?
Or a brother.
And we said unto my Lord, we have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one.
And his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loveth him.
Judah at this point does not know who he is actually speaking to.
He assumes it's still a ruler of Egypt. He doesn't realize it's his own brother.
And he says to him, he says, You've asked us about two things.
You've asked us about our father.
And you asked about a brother.
I want to say this at this point.
You will never read.
In the scriptural account.
That Josephs Brethren ever apologized to him for what they did to him.
That was not a prerequisite with Joseph.
I would say this brethren, and I want to make this entreaty.
When we deal with one another.
If we deal from the basis.
Of personal issues.
Of unresolved personal issues.
We have disqualified ourselves.
Was Joseph.
Going to say, as I said before, was this the day of vengeance?
Or was he looking beyond the personal issue of himself because it's apparent in the next chapter he was completely free. He looked at what had happened to him as God's sovereign ways, and he was freed from any personal bitterness.
And what he wants to know is this lie that has been lived in relation to their father.
In this matter of jealousy.
Had those things been faced?
And if we approach discipline issues from the vantage point of Maine.
And myself and what's been done to me, it's going to make us petty and small minded.
But when we can step outside of ourselves and realize that God is working and reaching for roots in the soul of which I may be a symptom, of those roots that need to be judged, that if I deal with the symptom.
I will not be able to effectively be used of God to bring conviction to the soul as to the real issues that are at stake.
I'm no different than anyone here. I want to make that clear. I too can be offended.
And I can operate on that basis.
But I can say as I read that book.
By that man.
I thought, wow.
What a mess.
What a mess.
And brethren.
We have a history.
That's humbling.
I believe by the grace of God that we could deal with these things.
In a much different way than we have.
But we have to be set free.
From what we feel is owed to.
And look at these things from God's standpoint.
That's when there will be light, that's when there will be clarity.
To bring conviction and health deliverance.
Recovery.
And restoration.
Just to end on a.
A happy and positive note. Let's go into Chapter 45.
I would just make this comment that at least 13 times in Judah's discourse, in chapter 44, he mentions his father.
And he ends by saying I can't go back.
And face my father.
And continue to live a lie. I can't do it. Here was a man who was repentant.
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A man who?
Was wide open. But this is what's beautiful in verse one of chapter 45, and Joseph could not control himself before all them that stood by him. And he cried.
Sorry, I have a parallel edition, verse one of 45. Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him. And he cried, 'cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.
And he wept aloud in the Egyptians, in the House of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him, for they were troubled at his presence. And Joseph said unto his brother, and come near to me, I pray you.
And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom he sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that you sold me, hit her, for God did send me before you to preserve life.
Verse seven God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me. Hit her, but God, and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
We'll close their.
Who May God grant us the help and the honesty one with another?
That if we're acting on these issues on a personal level.
That we would be faithful with one another and encourage one another.
To let them go.
That we might be used of God for the good and blessing of our brother.
Gospel 2
Gospel—Gordon Sester
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Welcome to the Gospel Meeting.
I heard of him mentioned this afternoon in the address and I'd like to sing it. And that's Jesus loves me.
It's got a message of its own #40 on your hymn sheet.
Jesus loves me this.
Is.
So.
Tells me so.
Minecraft.
And he was still making me cry.
Wasteful.
It's it's safe from everyone.
You don't see just my skin.
Sing a song, please.
So Jesus loves me.
So when are we going to be?
Everywhere.
On this side in all my life.
You will watch me where I lie.
To you.
Bless me, you have to be something for me.
The Bible tells me so.
Jesus loves me, he will say, close beside me all the way.
If I trust each other, I die. He will hate me all night.
Yes, please. I want to see.
You so much.
You want me to see one particular tells me so.
Let's just close our eyes and ask for God's blessing, our God and our loving Father. We thank thee tonight that one more time we have the opportunity to sound forth the gospel the good news.
That meets us in our very need. We thank Thee, our God and Father without its sin, the Lord Jesus down to be a Savior. And so we'd ask tonight for clarity of thought that thy precious word might reap fruit for thine eternal glory. And so we look to Thee that our hearts might be soft to hear the Spirit of God working.
Whether it's St. or Sinner.
That we might be touched by the story of Thy love our God and Father. So we'd ask this with Thanksgiving and the Lord Jesus precious name. Amen.
I'd like to tell you a story about the second verse of this hymn. Many years ago I was a young boy and my parents visited an assembly.
I don't know if brother Al Coleman was here. He'd relate to this. It's in.
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Lady Smith on the Island of Vancouver and in this home were two brothers, Leafy and Iris Smith.
And they broke bread there. There was a little testimony there. And, you know, I didn't learn this till afterward, but when? When we were there, of course, I noticed there was an iron fence around their yard. And they had a testimony in that town in the gospel, especially with children.
But there was a family that visited there. Some may know this story. I won't say their name, but when that family left.
One of those brothers, said Danny.
Don't ever forget that the Lord Jesus went to the cross of Calvary, that the gate of heaven could be open. I don't know just what the words were, but that was the gist of it, that that gate. And I never forgot that. It says Jesus loves me, He who died heaven's gate to open wide. So this afternoon the gospel can go forth because the Lord Jesus.
Went to the cross of Calvary. That the gate of heaven is open. You know there's a clock on the wall.
And I remember my father saying, you know, the Lord God has his finger on that clock and he's holding back. One day he's going to come again and he's going to take his finger off that clock. But right now is a day of his grace. He's holding back, mercies going out. His grace is going forth someday he's coming. And you know, that's really the situation.
The Lord Jesus is coming again, and that's why it's so solemn to be under the sound of God's precious word, because everyone in this room has a never dying soul.
You know, I'd like to just talk a little about the first chapter of John's Gospel, if we could turn to that and read the first few verses.
We'll read the 1St.
We'll read down to verse 14. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him. Without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth in not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.
That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh.
But ere the will of man but of God, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.
With glory as the only begotten of the father. Full of grace and truth, you know, in the beginning, God, that's the first words in this precious book. Now I want to tell you, I look around the room. I don't know everyone personally, but you know, last. It's been a couple weeks ago, we met a girl, young woman, a mother.
She didn't grow up in this country. She grew up in China.
And we thought we'd give her a little calendar with John 316, but she didn't know what that was.
She had no idea.
I said, do you not have a Bible? No, she said. I've never had a Bible.
We had the wonderful privilege.
A week ago today.
To give that girl.
Bible.
Brother John Kaiser found a Bible with the New English or New Chinese and we were able to find that verse John 316 and underline it. And there's a lady who for the first time in her life had the word of God in her hands, was able to look at that verse and read it.
Is there anybody here who's never had a Bible in their hand?
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I don't think so. I don't know you all.
We have. I'm looking. I have confidence that I'm looking at the most privileged people on the face of this earth. Those that know the Lord Jesus is savior. We've had 2 1/2 days over this precious book. We've enjoyed hearing about the Lord Jesus.
Why do we have a Gospel meeting?
You know, I was thinking this afternoon. I don't have any idea.
How many gospel meanings I've been in? I don't know how many conferences I've attended, but I'll tell you one thing.
There were gospel meetings that I attended and I went home and I wasn't saved.
And that may be the case with someone here tonight.
I'm thankful. One thing I've really noticed, it's so encouraging at this conference is to see little families.
Children.
Whose parents have been on their knees for those little ones, those dear little children. You know, everyone that's born into this world.
It's sole.
Life has started. It's going to go on for all eternity.
And I see parents who pray for their children. They're interceding for them.
They want you to be saved.
But you know, there's a couple words, maybe a little bit old-fashioned in this world. I've heard it in this conference, though.
To know the Lord Jesus as your own personal savior.
Sometimes I talk to people and they don't know what that means. They have to have it explained that it has to be your very own. Like I just spoke to a man here in the hour or two ago and.
Oh, yes, he said. I know, John 316. I said, do you believe it? Yeah, I believe it. And I don't know him, but you know what we really desire. I said, you really need to know him as your own personal savior. You have to make it your very own. Now, I'd just like to go over a few things. You know, I'm coming down here. My wife and I, we never took so long to get to Aberdeen. We started Monday about lunchtime and we saw a lot of things.
And that were very nice. We saw some wonders of creation. We saw some painted hills.
And we saw dear brother Al Olson. That was encouraging.
We saw some. We stayed in a place called Fossil. We saw some fossils, little pictures of leaves imprinted. We saw a falls that most of you live in Idaho have seen down here near Twin Falls, Beautiful falls. We saw craters of the moon. You know, God is great.
He made everything.
But you know.
Think of a hymn that says. But the wonder of us all is that he sent the Lord Jesus down into this world to be a savior. God has revealed, fully revealed himself. I've thought about it, you know.
Who is he?
I heard it read this morning. He's the brightness of his eternal glory. I'm going to read that in Hebrews, so I don't miscoat it.
He's the full expression of God.
Hebrews chapter one we had that read in the morning meeting.
Who being the brightness of his glory, the express image of his person upholding all things by the word of his power.
Just think of this. And when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down.
A finished work. That's what we have to present to you.
So one thing we see here.
All things are made by him.
The Light shineth in the darkness, but the Darkness comprehendeth it not.
You know, you and I, if we were to turn over, we would see something about our own hearts. Our own dark hearts, naturally.
You know these hearts are deceitful.
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Let's turn to Jeremiah, 17. We'll read a little bit of that and then we're going to come back to that in a little bit. You know, there's something about trees there, and I'd like to read that before we close, but right now I'd like to read a little about the condition, the dark condition of our heart.
Jeremiah 17.
Verse 9.
Later, I hope we have time. We'll go back up to the fifth verse. But now let's read the ninth verse. The heart.
My heart, your heart, everyone. Naturally.
The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
Who can know it? What's the answer to that?
I, the Lord, search for.
Oh yes. He searches the heart that might shines down into these dark hearts of ours. Now let's turn over to Acts Chapter 26. Let's see what that light can do.
Acts chapter 26 and verse 18.
You know, you and I need our eyes open.
And Acts 26 And verse 18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inherent things among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me.
You know, the Apostle Paul was there recounting.
What happened to him on that Damascus Rd. God turned him from darkness to light. Is there someone here who's in their sins? Maybe a boy or girl? And you've never really owned the Lord Jesus as your personal savior, you know?
Our time is short. We're not here very long. In this scene, the Lord Jesus is the coming.
Eternity is so real.
There's a verse says as a tree fall, so shall it lie?
We heard about the parachute jumper. You take care of matters later.
You did?
There wasn't this afternoon. If you're die in your sins.
The Lord Jesus says, Whither I go, ye cannot come.
Eternal separation from God.
Lost eternity in hell.
I was.
Struck by the plainness, the message in the Sunday School.
Oh, the children were told faithfully.
You're bound for either heaven or hell.
You have a never dying soul.
But, you know, we learned a little bit.
This afternoon about one that loves us. He loves you.
He doesn't want you to go to a lost eternity.
Just want to read.
Just a hymn we sang this morning, but I just want to read one verse that struck me. It's 105 in the Little Flock. While we tell the wondrous story of the Savior's cross and shame. Sing the everlasting glory be to God and to the Lamb. Hallelujah.
Give you glory to his name.
You know.
We'll go on now in John's Gospel there a little bit. Some other thoughts.
And.
You know, I worked in a hospital. We'll go on later in that chapter, but there was a verse.
In Emanuel Hospital in Portland in 1962. Big gold letters across the lobby.
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin, the world.
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Not there anymore.
But the verse is true.
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
You know, back in Genesis 22.
Abraham told Isaac.
God will provide.
Himself a lamb.
Oh yes, dear ones, He has provided a Lamb, and I was thinking of the testimony.
I won't read it, but in John Five I noticed the testimony of John.
The Father, one of the things is the Lord Jesus told them search the scriptures.
Well, what scriptures did they have? They had the Old Testament.
Search the Scriptures. What do we find in the Old Testament?
Oh, I think.
Luke 24 And I've often thought, Wouldn't you have liked to been there?
He opened unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself, and he began at Moses.
Do we get the gospel there? Indeed we do.
I also heard that today.
I think it was this morning.
He heard their groanings and he came down to deliver.
You know, as I look around, there's groanings.
There is groanings in this.
But I wonder if somebody here tonight is groaning under the load of their sins and they know they've never bowed their knee to the Lord Jesus. And I want to stress how important it is. You know what tells us.
With the heart man believeth to righteousness. With the mouth confession is made unto salvation. And I want to tell you a story. I have a cousin of mine.
He was a bit older and I didn't know him very well. One thing I did know.
That he went to Sunday school.
He went to meeting like you.
When he was young, like you and I, he heard the gospel, but you know he grew up and there came a time he died.
And it was a life.
That you couldn't look at the life and know if there was life.
If he was alive to Christ. If he was saved.
And so different ones got on the phone. Have you ever heard?
His name is Alfred. Have you ever heard Alfred confess the Lord Jesus?
And one and another called Nobody. Nobody could ever remember that Alfred had ever confessed the Lord Jesus.
And I just say to you.
Is there somebody in this room?
That if I was to go to your funeral.
Would somebody be able to stay? I know that he's confessed the Lord Jesus as savior.
You know, I just encourage you, especially children, you know, What a delight.
For a child to come and tell their parents, you know I have just accepted the Lord Jesus as my Savior.
I know him as my savior. Oh, what a delight. You know we visit nursing homes a couple times a month.
And there was someone I hadn't met before.
And I asked the question I didn't have to prod very much.
To hear these this words, I know the Lord Jesus as my Saviour, and I said, and what are you looking for? She said. I'm looking for his coming.
What more do you want? Are you looking for his coming?
What a delight.
What a delight. Do you know him?
Have you told anyone?
When I think of other places in the Old Testament.
I wrote down a few. We won't turn to them.
Places that tell us of a coming, one of a coming savior. Deuteronomy and in Genesis 49 in Isaiah, chapter nine, well known.
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And Isaiah 32.
In Isaiah 53.
When that was read this morning.
You know, I thought about it.
How simple the word of God is that even the smallest child?
Can understand it. God in his wisdom has.
Used things to help us understand spiritual things.
All we like sheep have gone astray and I've often said to the children, nobody looks like a sheep. But you got the message, all we like sheep have gone astray.
We've turned everyone to his own way.
Is that true? Is there any parent in this room would like to stand up and say I never. I never had. I didn't have to teach. I had to. I had to teach my children to be naughty. No, you didn't have to teach them that.
They were born with a nature.
That wants to disobey. You had to teach them to obey.
But we say by nature and by practice.
For.
So very far from God.
And yet he sent.
His son. He's fully revealed his heart of love. He sent his son down into this world.
To go to the cross of Calvary, to suffer there the just one, for we the unjust.
Did he deserve it?
No.
It's going down.
To that second.
Statement. It's not quite the same though.
Verse 36.
And looking upon Jesus.
As he walked.
He said. Behold the Lamb of God.
That adds something as he walked, oh, as he walked through this scene, he revealed. You say you want to know who God is. He manifested God's heart in every step of his pathway through this scene.
And you know one thing I thought of.
He met individuals.
That's why we say he needs to be your own personal savior.
All through the Gospels he met individuals. He met a woman at the well.
Always think about that.
Just this.
He told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?
Would anybody in this room?
Like to have everything that ever you've done.
I wouldn't want to see my life displayed for you.
But only the Lord Jesus would attract 1.
And say he knows all about me.
And I'm attracted to him. He loves me.
He loves you, we learned this morning.
God knows everything.
Knows every detail.
He knows your thoughts.
He's everywhere.
Indeed he is.
But I'm thinking of how important it is.
Huh.
That you make it your very own.
You know.
As we visit the care centers.
I'm struck by a question that often is asked, and the answer in fact. I met a We met a lady.
On the way up here to Aberdeen.
And. I asked her.
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I forgot what it was, but we had a ticket for something we were doing and I asked her if she knew.
The ticket to heaven. And she said, yeah, that's you just do the best you can. I said, Oh no, no. But often we hear that and is that possible that even boys and girls and men and women and think, you know, as.
I feel pretty comfortable.
And I would say that I'm glad you do. I'm glad you feel comfortable here at the conference. I'm glad you feel comfortable in your local assembly and all your Christian friends.
But you know what? That's not the ticket to heaven.
It's a it's a responsibility. It's a privilege. But you gotta you have to make it your very, very own.
And you know what a savior he is? You know, he wants not only to save you and I. I want to tell you something, brother, Al Olson told me. Some of you know who he is, he said, Brother, don't just use the word saved.
Oh well, what's wrong with that? He says. No, use the word saved from the wrath to come.
What's important? There's judgment coming on this world.
And he's made a way of escape.
He made it so you can have life and light and a happy pathway. He wants you to be happy.
You know, we enjoyed singing the other night, didn't we?
Enjoyed that? That was nice. You have something to sing about.
And you know, we talk about the Lord's coming. It's wonderful.
Kind of interesting. It says the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up.
Together. That's interesting. I don't know for sure why it says the dead in Christ should rise first, but I have an idea.
Some have gone before.
What? You're going to rise first. I don't suppose time will make any difference, will it? There will be no measurable time, but we're going to be caught up together.
You know the Lord Jesus and what a portion we have.
And then?
You know it won't be very much longer. The Lord Jesus is going to come also.
He's going to come back to this world and he's going to take his rightful place and I'm going to be with him.
And I'm looking into the faces of those that are going to be associated with him when he comes back.
Is this just some fantasy I thought of? No, It's in the precious word of God.
God's going to bring them with him.
Is that real?
Or is it just something we've heard and?
I was just listening.
To someone.
And you know, they're with the Lord, they've been with the Lord a long time. But I heard them say we were listening to a meeting in the car.
I'm looking at the generation that's going to be here when the Lord Jesus comes.
And I believe that.
Oh yes, he is.
And we learned a little bit about it. Dark clouds are going on the scene. God is long-suffering, not when he willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Always long-suffering to us word.
You prayed for those.
Relatives, you prayed for those children? I heard a mother tell me, she said. I don't know if God's ever going to answer my prayer. I prayed for my son. All said. I said he answers prayer might not be in your lifetime.
Yes, God answers prayer and he wants to intercede. You know, I thought of something that Abraham interceded, judgment was coming on Sodom and Abraham interceded.
There's Many in this room are interceding for others. Someday the last intercession is going to go up, and we're going to hear the shout.
00:35:09
When the last intercession goes up, the last soul and God's house is going to be filled.
If you hear the shout tonight and I fully anticipate it.
Will there be anybody left in their chair?
And if there is, you will be the very one.
That can tell those around that are lost. You can tell them what happened. That's a solemn thought. A very solemn thought. I remember going home from gospel meetings. I called it Blue Monday.
I heard the gospel.
When I went home, I knew I was lost.
Thank God, I bowed my knee. Well, you know.
Our time is going.
I want to turn over now to Jeremiah 17. I'm going to turn back there.
And got two thoughts in closing.
Jeremiah 17 I want to talk about trees. Some of you know we grow trees. And you know, I've enjoyed God in his precious word, has used things of nature to teach us spiritual things.
And I find three things connected. The first one has to do with Joseph.
And it says he's a fruitful bow, that hungover, the wall. And that's why you and I are here.
He was a fruitful bow. He's a type of the Lord Jesus, and you and I are brought in as Gentiles, and I believe that's a thought.
Let's turn to Jeremiah 7. Again. We have Psalms one, but here it's Jeremiah 17. I'd like to read those verses.
This is what he wants you to be.
He shall be.
Let's start with verse 5. Thus saith the Lord cursed be the man that trusteth in man.
And maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth.
From the Lord.
He shall be like a heath in the desert, shall not see you in good cometh, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness in a salt land, and not inhabit it.
But all this is the portion of every believer in the room, and if you're not saved, it can be your portion. Bless it is the man that trusteth in the Lord. Have you put your trust in him? He's a wonderful savior, and whose hope the Lord is.
He shall be as a tree.
Planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river shall not see when he cometh, but her leaf also shall be green, and shall not be careful in the year of drought neither shall cease from yielding fruit. You know, we've been in our little local assembly. We've been talking a little bit last couple weeks about fruit.
And.
You know the tree.
What does it mean?
It's planted by water.
Feed upon this precious book, the water.
You want to grow.
You know, sometimes I see trees. I saw some out there and craters of the moon. They didn't look very big, They didn't look very healthy.
They didn't grow much.
But.
You need you need water.
Spreads out her roots by the river.
You know, there's more of a tree under the ground than what's on top on the ones we grow. Many of them.
And there's more to your life and mind that we don't see.
As we look at one another.
The roots kind of roots you got.
What are you feeding on?
He read God's precious word feed upon it.
I don't want to be hard on you, brethren. Do you have a Bible reading with your family?
I'll tell you a funny story. I went to buy a.
Well, first of all, we wanted to sell a dining room table.
We were having an estate sale for one of our brethren and a man came and he to evaluate everything and he said you'll never sell that table.
00:40:03
What? What? Why would you never sell the table all? He said. There's no market for tables anymore.
That's funny because people don't eat together.
That's funny. So I called a furniture company. I bought some furniture from. You know what they told me? We quit making tables. Kitchen tables.
There's no market for them anymore.
I'm not saying we all need kitchen tables, but what I'm saying is.
Do you sit down with your family? Do you read God's precious word?
Do you feed them on this book?
Are we too busy?
I do remember a time in our home when there were three different buses and three different schedules, and I understand that in the morning wasn't easy in the morning.
My wife and I, even the one or just the two of us at home, you know what we found out. If we don't read before we leave the table, we don't get the reading done.
Read God's precious word with your family.
Will there be drought come? Yes, there will.
Are there times hard times? Yes, there are.
There's groanings. We live in a groaning creation.
We feel it.
How are you going to survive?
You won't be careful.
You'll go through that time of drought because you've fed on that water. The roots have gone out.
And you won't cease from yielding fruit.
You know, it's something interesting in raising trees. I don't know if my boys, I think they'd back me up on this, but I noticed that.
And I don't fault you if you plant a tree, but I noticed people plant trees and they put guy wires on them.
Can't move. We don't do that.
We put a flexible stake on them. You know why? They've got to feel the wind and they develop roots, dear ones, in your life and mine, there's going to be trials.
And those are the times when the Lord Jesus will be the most precious to us.
There are times of learning.
In a school of God.
We let that tree feel and it develops roots. We want roots. We want to survive those troubles times. We want to go through them with the Lord. Well, I just. I won't take you. I know people are tired.
We're going home.
More than one sense, dear ones. We're going home.
We often bring that up in the nursing home home. You know, a lot of those people there, they'll never return to their natural home here and they like to hear about home, but there's a home.
God has prepared a home and he wants to have you there. We had it this afternoon. His desire is to have you with him where he is.
And he doesn't want to wait.
He wants your company now.
And then he wants to take you home.
Boy or girl, perhaps an adult here. I don't know your heart.
Maybe somebody here, you know, God knows your heart.
You know, kids have that term. Get real. Well, that's what God wants. He wants us to get real, be real, come into his presence. Let the light shine.
Let the Lord Jesus. He wants you to be. Not only does He want you to have your sins forgiven.
He wants you to be a happy Christian on your way home. Now we're just going to close our eyes. We're going to thank him, our God and our loving Father. We thank thee for the Lord Jesus. We thank thee that thou has provided A savior, that thou art a savior God.
We think of each one of us as we leave this conference.
That has been asked.
That we would go home another way. We'd go home with our hearts encouraged.
00:45:00
As if the load is lifted.
And we're casting all our care upon thee.
And we thank thee, we can look to thee for those.
Who may not be in there have never taken the Lord Jesus as savior, and we're afraid to say that, but it may be true.
We know it was true of some of us. We pray that they might be saved, and they'd be saved tonight about their need of Thee, Lord Jesus. So we thank thee in thy precious and thy worthy name. Amen.
RPMs Reading, Praying, Meditating
YP Talk—Drew Baden
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Joy, joy, joy.
We need to shut it down here. We're going to run out of daylight, so.
Good. Sounds good. You guys. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you and you.
We're going to have a little word here by.
Right there.
Yeah, maybe, Which is the answer?
I want to miss you.
Test.
Hello. Hello.
Test test, test.
Testing you think here.
Right.
Toast. Toast. Toast. Toast.
00:05:00
I test, test, test, test.
Is your amp still on?
Thanks. Thanks.
Working on here Hello.
Test.
I think you got your limiter up or something.
Test, test, test, test test.
I don't know what to say.
Hello.
Here it is.
OK, is this good? Can everybody?
Hear me OK in the back. It's good. OK? Why don't why don't we just start and ask for God's help?
Our Godfather, we give you thanks for this opportunity for this group to come together and thank you for this time of these songs that we can sing, this fellowship that we can have with each other. And we just ask for your help now on this little talk that it might touch our hearts, the hearts of the speaker and and the hearts of those listening as well. And so we just ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
OK, so tonight I wanted to talk a little bit about food.
Physical food and spiritual food. Physical food. I've been thinking of this lately is is absolutely amazing to me that we can eat something.
And it goes into our body and it becomes a part of us. I mean, when we're little, we eat and we grow green beans and hamburger becomes the cells that make up our body and grow our bones, our liver, all those things that that's absolutely amazing to me, that we take things in and becomes a part of us. And we it's an absolute necessity.
For survival in our life.
Lived. I think most of us here have never experienced starvation. We've all been hungry and know what that feels like, but we've never felt starvation. There's a man named Robert Falcon Scott. He was a British explorer a little over 100 years ago. He was trying to be the first to reach the South Pole.
And he had been to the South or or to Antarctica.
On a few occasions.
And.
Knew. Thought He knew what it would take to get there and back.
And so the race was on, He was trying to get to the South Pole, and he and A and a crew, a large crew, but it ended up just being five of them.
Went and accomplished what they wanted to do. They got to the South Pole, but unfortunately the Norwegians had planted a flag there about a month before.
So they were defeated in a certain way and they, I think took a few scientific example or samples, snapped a few photos and had 800 miles to walk back to get to their ship.
Now on the way back, they encountered some health problems with some of the men, and one of the men in particular, he died on the way back. And so they had less men to haul their fuel and food. They had laid out caches of food along the route so that they would have things to eat along the way. And when things were starting to get pretty bad that they were really needing to get to the next cache and a Blizzard blew and they were about 11 miles away.
They set up a camp.
And tried to weather it out, and the days went by and the Blizzard never stopped. The men started dying. And we believe that Robert, according to his journals that he kept through the whole time, was the last one to go. They all died of starvation. They were 11 miles away from food and they couldn't make it. And so without food there is no life.
And this can be a applied to us spiritually. And there's a verse those of you have bibles can turn. If not, that's OK John, Chapter 6.
And verse 48.
The Lord Jesus said I am the Bread of life, that some of the verses that follow are a little bit interesting.
00:10:08
Where he talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. That doesn't that, that doesn't. That doesn't sound right to us when we hear it. But the Lord is not Speaking of what we eat with our mouths from day-to-day to sustain our physical bodies.
He's talking about spiritually.
And have we? Have each one of you fed on Christ? Have you taken him as your savior? Spiritual Wellness and make it a part of you? Have you taken the Lord as your savior? That's important. That's very important. The most important spiritual food that you could eat. The Lord Jesus, his flesh and his blood, as these verses say and verse 53 says.
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. So just like those those guys in Scott's party, no food, no life. It's the same with us spiritually. We don't have Christ, we don't have life.
I trust, and I hope that that most, if not all of you have taken that step and accepted the Lord as your savior.
And if we have.
The story doesn't stop there. We don't stop eating there. We need to continue eating to sustain our spiritual lives.
And you know how? How? How do we do this? How do we do this practically? How do we feed on the Lord Jesus, his flesh and his blood? How do we feed on this daily to sustain our spiritual lives? And I I just have a few suggestions of things I've heard from other people.
The RPMS of Scripture.
R would be reading.
If we're to have faith that just live by faith. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. So reading is important. P Prayer.
We, the Lord Jesus, wants to have a relationship with us. He wants us to talk with him on a daily basis. He wants us not just to ask for the things that we we want, although he he does care about that very much, but he wants us to talk about.
You know our feelings, what how we feel about him and thank him for what all that he's done. He wants. He wants to hear that from us. That's that's another thing to sustain our spiritual lives. And M would be.
Maybe meditation and that that might entail. You know when we eat food, it's it's it's a it's a physical thing, it goes into our stomach, but then it becomes a part of us. And maybe that's what meditation on the scriptures would speak of. We just read the scriptures. That's good. That's great. But if we.
Really, really ponder something and make it our own. That's that's really important too. And so I'd encourage each of you to read and pray.
And meditate each day.
And that would be tremendously helpful in our spiritual lives. And here's an exercise.
I heard this originally with with Don Lamb in Vancouver, WA and I heard it and I I didn't apply it right of way. It was years later that I actually went ahead with this exercise and it was very helpful to me and I hope I can.
Help some of you out with this too. But he said take take a piece of paper or a spreadsheet, whatever, whatever you want, and line out your day.
Midnight to midnight.
And write down all the things that you have to do from a day. You got to sleep, all right. Some people need more than others, 8 hours. So you block out eight hours of your day. There you go. There's there's sleep. We have to eat. We have to go to school. We have to go to work. There's a lot of obligations in life.
You see right out your whole day all those obligations.
And and then go back and review that and see how much time.
During that day is spent on the Lord's things, spiritual things. He wants our time and it's it's very healthy for us to have some time in there. We all have obligations in life. We can't read the Bible 24 hours a day. We we have to work. We have to go to school. We have a lot of those things to do, but but we can.
Make time. We're extremely busy.
In our society.
And so it's good to line out these things. When I did that, I thought, wow.
There's not maybe not a whole lot of time that I've put on there for the Lord's things. So then I thought, well, what? What can I do?
00:15:04
What can I do to try to rearrange a little bit to adjust that schedule And that's going to be different for everyone of you, but I encourage you to to do that exercise to line out your day and.
And it's a personal thing. You don't need to share it with others. But it's a it's a good exercise. And another thing, Speaking of the busyness of life, there was a there was a Tim Roach had a talk several years back that a profound effect on my life and he was talking about the subtleties of Satan and how Satan works.
He's he does missionary work in Africa.
And the way Satan works over there is much different than the way Satan works.
In our lives here in these favorite countries.
Satan over there is much more in your face the enemy.
Witch doctors and seances, these things are out in the open. These these demonic.
Rituals and things like that. It scares the people they're scared into, into into following.
Satan because they they think if they don't do certain things then they're they're going to fall under certain powers and things like that.
I'm not getting that quite right, but that that's the gist of it. Satan is very in your face. In those countries wherein here we don't, we don't really see things like that. The media maybe maybe takes those things and makes movies out of them and and it it's an entertainment thing here in our country, it's a very real thing. But what Satan wants to do with us is to take our time. He wants to make us so busy that we have no time for the Lord he wants to be.
You know, you all know how many distractions we have in our lives. I don't need to point them out. I have a ton of distractions. We all have a ton of distractions. But when Tim was saying that, I I just had a lot of thoughts about, wow, how how much has Satan crept into my life with with certain things, just certain things that I thought were little that became bigger things that just robbed me of time with the Lord and.
That was an eye opening.
There was an eye opening talk for me and so I just reiterate a couple of those things to you.
Feed your spiritual lives reading, prayer, meditation. Maybe take some time to lay out your day. See how maybe we could better arrange things to give the Lord a little more time and and to maybe think about how how it has has Satan been subtle?
In your lives and letting things creep in that you don't maybe even know are there.
Those are, those are good things to think of. So anyway, I appreciate all of you listening for this little bit and let's just give thanks. We'll give thanks. Looks like there's some refreshments as well and and then we'll we'll be done. OK.
Our God and Father we we give thee thanks for.
This little time that we could have, we thank thee for giving us spiritual food.
In the Lord Jesus we thank you that we can feed on him his work and what he's done for us and how much we appreciate these things and we just pray that you would have an effect on each one here young and old and that has been said many times this conference that we might go home another way and so we just give you thanks to for.
These snacks that we can have now.
That we can enjoy these friendships and fellowships that are being formed here as well. We give the thanks for all you've done and we thank thee in Jesus name. Amen.
RPMs, Reading, Praying, Meditating