Carolina Conference: 2006
Table of Contents
Hebrews 11
Reading
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View of the situation in which we all live. I'd like to suggest with the if the Lord.
Be in mind with it the 11Th chapter of Hebrews, the chapter of faith. We need that in these closing days of this era of our scene here on earth.
I trust I have the Lord's mind in that Hebrews Chapter 11.
Should I make a suggestion, since we've got a problem of lack of seating, that there's two rows up here on the front and lots of our young brother in in the back, maybe are not shy enough that they could occupy those seats?
To give place to somebody in the back or somebody else that you can't sit up here.
00:05:34
Read the whole chapter brother.
We'll probably read the half of it to start with and if we have the opportunity to finish it.
It certainly would be a good.
Breaking point at the.
End of the 22nd verse.
Hebrews Chapter 11 to the 22nd verse.
Give it 11 from 1 to 22 one now fee is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen for bias. The elders obtained a good report through faith. We understand that the world were framed by the word of God.
To the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice and change, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God has defined of his gift, he being dead yet speakers. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found, because God has translated him. For before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him.
For he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them. Diligently seek Him by faith. Noah, being warned of God, of things not seen as yet moved with fear, prepared an art to the savings of his house, by the which he condemned the world, and became the heir of righteousness, which is by faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance.
Obeyed, and he went out, not knowing whether he went by faith. He's adjourned in the in the land of promise, as in a strange country dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same prominence. For he looked for a city which has foundations, whose builders and maker is gone through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive sins, and was delivered of a child which he was past age, because she judged him faithful.
Who had promised Deborah springs there even of one, and him as good as dead. So many of the stars in the sky multitude, and that's the sand which is by the seashore innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.
And truly.
If they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returns.
But now they desire a better country, that is, and heavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be their call, their God, for He hath prepared for them a city by faith. Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that had, and he that had received the promises offered up His only begotten Son, of whom it was said, that in Isaac shall they see. Recall according according accounting, that God was able to raise money even from the dead, from whence also He received them in a figure.
By faith Isaac bless Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, bless both the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaned upon the top of his staff. And by faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandments concerning his phones.
In the day in which we live, there's a propagation throughout the systems of this world that there is no God, that creation is not a historical fact. But here we have true faith. We understand that the world were framed or mended by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
00:10:28
When God created in Genesis 11, it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth He spake and it came forth. And there are some very competent scientists in this world today that have done a lot of research and they have found that what Scripture has said is true. There's no such thing as a Willy nilly situation in this world. There was a creator.
There was a designer and he designed this creation and there are many that believe that. Of course, there are many that don't.
And the reason I think that we have this chapter is to encourage those that are in trial and sorrow. We haven't come to it at the end of the chapter, but as you go through that, you'll notice that everyone had a trial, a sorrow or difficulty, and they overcame it only by one thing, and that was faith for the person of Christ, and they didn't realize it then. That's true. But nevertheless, that's still the case.
And so today we have that same character and we have that same support and we have that same power that is able to keep us through faith.
It's interesting that the word for Genesis, the beginning of Genesis one in the beginning God, that word is a plural word. Its meaning is more than one involved.
In the creation of the whole world, and of course that includes God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
So that the whole creation was conceived in the mind of the Father. It was performed by the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we get that in the first chapter of John's Gospel. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the same was in the beginning with God.
And the 14th verse, all things were made by Him. The Lord Jesus without Him was not His name made. That was made. And the Holy Spirit was the power of it all. It took the free God, free of the Godhead to bring into being the entire creation.
I personally am comfortable more comfortable with a young earth than a ancient earth, but then I have to say, well, I may be wrong there.
We had an interesting experience about five years ago meeting a man from Mongolia who at the time had been, he was actually an evangelist. He had come to know the Lord, but he told us that in his youth, and this goes back to creation. In his youth he was in the communist country and closed tight as no visitors were allowed in and they were taught atheism and they were taught evolution because they didn't want to believe in creation.
But he told us this, He looked around and he said somebody had to make this and somebody is maintaining this. And I just read you Romans 120.
It says for the invisible things of him, God from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.
So that they are without excuse. And I have that verse, but it was interesting to have the experience of meeting someone who actually lived out this verse. It was out the knowledge of the Word of God without anyone telling him. He recognized that there was a creator for this creation and not only did he create it, but he's maintaining it.
There's a wonderful thing, you know, you don't need that to confirm the word of God that it's sure nice to see it work. And so that's what we have here in this chapter. These people couldn't see the end and none of them really achieved what they were waiting for says that, but they had faith and God valued their faith. And so we have faith. We've never seen the Lord. We have never.
00:15:11
You know witnessed the create the truth of crucifixion.
Rid of it and the Scripture, we believe it and it's real to it. Just before we take up these verses and these individuals, it might be helpful to just say that this chapter, which we often refer to as the faith chapter, it brings before us a list of individuals from the Old Testament, men and women and young people who lived by faith. And I was struck when our brother Dave introduced this chapter, suggested this chapter.
As to his exercise, because we find, as we will find as we go down this list, some we have various comments made about them, others are just mentioned in passing, Some later on are just alluded to as to circumstance. Their names aren't given. But all these men and women and young people, brethren, they live by faith against all kinds of odds and difficulties. And I believe one great lesson we learned from this chapter is.
That it's never been easy to live by faith, whether it was able or whether it's right down to our day in 2006, it's never been easy. We're still in a world that is full of the trials and difficulties of life. We're still in a world where Satan is the God and Prince. We still have the flesh. And so God encourages us to go on and to live even in days like we find ourselves through giving us these examples.
And what has encouraged me is to realize that God not only teaches us in His Word by precept, but He teaches us by example. He brings before us these individuals to show that with faith in God, we can go on, no matter how dark the day. And if we get the if, if we have that before our souls in what is taken up in these readings, then we're going to be encouraged, brethren, if the Lord leaves us here.
To go back into our homes, to our work situations, to the little assemblies we come from. And we're going to be encouraged to press on in the path of faith and service. And I'd just like to make a comment about the first statement of this chapter. When it speaks about the faith is the substance of things hoped for. I believe really what the writer is bringing before us by the Spirit is that it was faith that gave substance to their lives. And I think that's something to think about.
If a person is going to have real substance to their lives, then they must live by faith. Faith isn't a leaf in the dark Faith. It always has life. Faith always has something to act upon. It's true. Faith is one step at a time. It's true faith is taking God at His word and acting on that word without seeing what is ahead, or in the case of creation, without having all our curious questions answered, but nevertheless.
Faith, I say, is not a leap in the dark. Faith always has an object before it, and when it does then there's substance to the persons life.
Memorized the sixth verse. Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
For he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. If you don't have faith, you have nothing, nothing of any substance of any value at all. faith in God is the very foundation for our living our life and everything, isn't it? And we do not need confirmation from science, as interesting as it is.
We don't need confirmation from anything else but what God says. True science always confirms his faith. False science denies it. And there's nothing more. Stupid, idiotic, ridiculous. I could go on and on and on. Then evolution it. It just didn't, couldn't happen that way. It doesn't take. I mean, it was said science has come to that conclusion. True science.
I don't care if it's true science or not. A kindergartner.
Can come to that conclusion. I remember having a little walk when I was in second or third grade and we had a deep theological discussion, you know, does God exist or not? And we came to the conclusion, yes, he does. Just a little boy and anyone that looks around and sees it.
00:20:09
And it looks. I always look at the newborn child. We have a lot in our meeting. I always count their fingers.
You know, every little detail is ordered of God. And if you don't, if you think that just happened, it's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. And it's so wonderful to realize that the very foundation of your living and everything you do is faith in him. And faith is based on the word of God. We're we're we're not just talking about believing something without reason. God has spoken.
He told us how he made the world. He's not told us all the details, but he's told us how he spoke and it came to pass. And so it, it's a question of whether you believe God or not what he said. That is faith. Faith lays hold of what God says and believes it and counts it true. This is what we're Speaking of. That's Romans chapter 10. I think I'd be good to read that, Doug, because it's very.
Important to see that faith is not just some fuzzy feeling I have inside.
And that's based on that.
Romans chapter 10 and verse 17.
So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
That is very important, that we have what is written out for us today in black and white, and we have reason to believe that it is the word of God and God is God. One of his attributes is that He is true. He cannot lie, and for as much as I may not understand what he says.
If he says it, I believe it. That is faith that is trusting him because of who he is. And I think that is really good to see. It's not just some idea that popped in my mind that I have faith about that. Sometimes what people think when you talk about faith and somebody has said that the definition of faith we have in John chapter 3.
Do you remember John 330-3333 is a definition of what faith is.
First verse of our chapter is what faith does. It gives substance to life like you say. But let's read John 333. He that hath received his testimony.
Hath set to his seal that God is true. God said it, I believe it. That settles it. That's faith. And we have another verse in.
Two Corinthians chapter 5 that says we walk by faith, not by sight. We are living in a materialistic world and you're taught young people how to guide yourself in a materialistic world by sight. Look where the opportunities are.
Let me tell you.
You and I necessarily are short sighted. We do not see as much as we need to see if we're going to be guided by our sight. But here in the word of God, God has given us his wisdom. And if you base your life not on mere sight doesn't mean we close our eyes when we're walking. No, it means we use whatever faculties we have, but we don't base our lives.
On what we see, we base them on what God has given to us in His Word. That's faith, and we walk on that principle. We have a tremendous example in the Old Testament of two individuals that live together. One was Abraham, the father of the faithful.
And the other was his nephew Lot. Abraham lived by faith. God called him out of his land, his native land, and he went out not knowing whether he went.
In this chapter.
That seems strange. When you go on a trip, don't you know where you're going?
He had the call of God and he obeyed it. He deemed that God was faithful in what he said. But Lot was, even though a real believer as to his sole salvation, a man who looked around and when it came time for Lot and Abraham to part ways because.
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Their substance was too great. Lifted up his eyes and looked.
And he chose according to the sight of his eyes, and he went towards Sodom, and he pitched towards Sodom, and then he was in Sodom.
Lot ended up losing everything. Everything. Even lost his he lost the majority of his family, perhaps in Sodom got out with his wife and his two daughters.
And he lost his wife because her heart was still in silence.
Then he lost his integrity too. I mean, it is sad. It is a tremendous example that's painted for us. Young people, don't live by the sight of your eyes. Live by faith in what God has said in this book. You won't regret it. Tom was suggesting there that not only God made the world by His word, but He also sustains the world by His word.
It says in Hebrews chapter one, sustaining all things by the word of his power. The scientists look at the world and they they look at the laws that allow the planets to stay in orbit and all this is sustained by the word of God. Right now God said something and there it was for the believer. Now through faith God says something and there it should be in our life, the same word, same power and it is effective if you put it in practice in your life.
That third verse? The world's were framed by the word of God.
Just that one verse disproves the theory that the evolutionists have that there was a Big Bang and it produced what we see about us. This says that God is the God of order. He puts everything in proper order. He frames it, so to speak. There's two ways to build a house. You can hire a architect and and then you get the workers together and.
Different to ones that are needed and everything has to go in in its proper place and finally the result is a completed home. Or you can you can have the lumber yard deliver all the material and put sticks of dynamite there and then blow them up and you got a house.
Everyone laughs, everyone laughs. It's it's so ridiculous.
You every time you see anything that's got ordered to it, there's got to be someone that framed it.
Someone that ordered it and that's our I hope everyone can say this, everyone can say this. Can you? That's my God. That's my God. We're talking about my God. Can you say that? Is there anyone in the room that can't say he is my God, my Lord, my savior? She can't say that. You have no faith and you can't please him no matter how hard you may try. In Colossians one, I think it's the 17th verse it says.
You notice Mr. Darby's translation by him. All things not just consist, like it says in the King James, but subsists. The subsist is more than to consist. This chair in front of Maine consists of various commodities, some hardware, some plastic, some upholstery, and so on. But the substance is more than that. The subsist is to work under the direction of another. And so, as our brother said a few moments ago, not only did he frame the word of the the world by his word speak and.
The creation came into existence, but He upholds it by His word. All this creation works under His direction and He keeps all the planets in their orbit. The pull of gravity on the Earth is maintained. Not only that, but bring it right down to ourselves. He give us to all life and breath and all things. As we take one breath after another, as we move our limbs and what whatever we do, do, we realize that He's sustaining the very breath that we breathe.
But I would like to go back for a moment to something that Bob brought up earlier in connection with these ones that live by faith, because I think it's important to get on to these individuals. We're going to be governed by a clock here at these meetings. And it's good to get on to these these individuals for our encouragement. But to notice that, as we said earlier, not only did they have an object, but an eye to the future. If I can illustrate it this way, well, perhaps before I use my illustration.
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I'll just quote a verse in the 29th of Proverbs again in Mr. Darby's translation. It says where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint. And so faith always has vision or an eye to the future. Why would you give up present advantage if you didn't have something in the future ahead of you? Why did Abraham answer the call of God? Why did he live by faith for all those years? Because he looked for a city which has foundation whose builder and maker is God. Later on we're going to take up Moses.
Why did he give up the court of Pharaoh? Why did he give up being the heir apparent to the throne of Egypt? Because he endured as seeing him who is invisible. At the end of the chapter there were those who didn't accept or receive deliverance. They suffered trials of cruel mocking. They were thought asunder. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins and so on. Why did they do it? They looked for a better resurrection. They had an eye to the future.
Sometimes illustrated it this way, a young person may go off to college or university and maybe they give up present advantage. They give up perhaps the advantage of living in their parents home. They get they live on very little. They their rooming conditions aren't exactly what they would like. They live in a small space. They don't go out with their friends when they would like to. They give up certain things. Now why do they do that? Well, they've got an eye to the future.
You talk to that young person, you say why do you drive an old junker of a car? Why do you live in that one room dorm? Why do you eat something out of a can twice a day? All a young person says, I'm looking forward to the day I get my degree and when I graduate and I get a job then things are going to be different.
But if the young person loses sight of the end of the course, why he's not going to be encouraged to study hard. That's going to be encouraged to give up present advantage. And Brownman, what is it that's going to help us or cause us to give up present advantage? What is it that's going to help us to not be like lost and to lift our eyes above the horizons of this bad world? It's to realize that there is something far better ahead. It's to have an object and a goal. It's to have Christ before our souls. It's to have the glory before our souls.
And so everyone of these ones that live by faith, they had an eye to the future. They gave up certain things at the present because they knew that there was a better future ahead. That's the thought of the promise. The promise is always given with an eye for the future.
And we have in God's Word exceeding great and precious promises that we can enjoy by faith, and faith lays hold of these promises and can enjoy them just as though they had already taken place.
And it's a wonderful thing because we have the word of God, and this is that which sustains us and encourages us.
It reveals to us the future, the bright prospects of the believer, how wonderful they are. And I found encouragement in Joshua chapter 23. These are beautiful verses in Joshua chapter 23.
And verse 14, here we have Joshua speaking to the people.
And he says.
He hope this day I am going the way of all the earth, and you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed. All the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed. Early continues to repeat the fact that not one good thing has failed.
What God has promised took place.
Verse 15 Therefore it shall come to pass, that is, all good things are come unto you, which the Lord that God promised you. So shall the Lord bring upon you all evil things, until he have destroyed you from walking. His good land explored to God He has given you, and that took place too.
God is not a man that he should lie. That's another verse. In Numbers 23 and verse 19 it says God is not a man that he should lie, neither the Son of man that he should repent have to study, and shall he not do it?
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Or have you spoken, and shall he not make it good?
One of the great things that these characters that are that are depicted here in the 11Th chapter is that they believe. They believe what God had said. And if if you look at them carefully and we won't be able to do it. We don't have time. But take a look. Enoch. Enoch lived in probably the most violent time this earth has ever seen.
Genesis 6 says that the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually. And that's the time in which Enoch lived. He left just before that the Lord took him. But he walked in a place and in a time that was probably 10 times more difficult than anything we know. And he walked with God. And that's the the secret of Enoch's life. And that can be the secret of your life.
And my life, do we really walk with God? We can we have his word?
We have this direction we can walk with him, go along with what our brother Jim was saying that this chapter could be called the chapter of the great cloud of witnesses. You see if you go to the 12Th shaft in verse one, he says wherefore seeing also we are compass about with so great a cloud of witnesses. Then he goes on great cloud of witnesses are these Old Testament Saints that had walked in the path of faith and had honored God and God had supported them and kept them.
And so in the development of the doctrine of the book, we find that he has really been setting before the the Hebrew Christians that they are heavenly people for the heavenly calling with heavenly hopes and heavenly blessings. And they're called in the end of the 10th chapter, verse 38, to walk by faith. It says the just shall live by faith. And so Romney says that these things are all new to them. One thing is not new. God's ancient people always lived on the principle of faith.
Until he brings up in this 11Th chapter this great cloud of witnesses that have a one girl gone before and have walked the path of faith as a means of encouraging these Hebrew Christians to carry on. And as we look at these various individuals, really what we're seeing is various aspects of faith being exercised in the life of a child of God.
Let's take that as an encouragement for ourselves. If these passes, these, these various individuals should encourage us.
To live by faith, to walk by faith. Someone said the chapter could be divided into three parts. And the 1St 7 verses or so, we see the faith that really draws near to God and escapes the judgment that has become a space that's saved. And then from verse 8, which marks the new paragraph in J and Darby's translation on truth to above verse 22, we have the face that lays hold of the world to come.
And that energizes the sinks to live by, live by strangers and pilgrims in this world. But then in the latter part of the chapter, perhaps from verse 23 on, we have the faith that really overcomes this present world and is willing to suffer. So we have the faith that saves, the faith that sees, and the faith that Supper, these ones all walked in that path and received.
A good report.
And so we should take courage and be willing and ready to walk also in that same path. It is a good path. Reminds me of the the Jeremiah 6 where it says I stand in the way. Yeah, let me turn to that in Jeremiah 6.
And verse, I think it's about verse 16.
Yes, it is. You're on my 616. Let's dance the Lord stand in the waves and see and ask for the old path. That's what we're looking at this morning, some of the old paths.
Where the ancient ones of God had walked, asked for the old path, whereas in a good good way, and walk there in and he shall find rest for your soul. Isn't that beautiful?
It's not that they didn't have failures, but their failures aren't recorded in this chapter. I say that because perhaps you say, well I could never be like many of these Saints of God that are listed here. Tremendous to think of some of the ways that they triumphed against the odds and difficulties of life, the work of the enemy and so on. And you say I could never stand by them. Well, when we go back to the Old Testament of many of them, at least we read of some of their failures. Moses, we read of his failures. He lost his patience with the people of God. He called them rebels. That was a failure in Moses life.
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But what he lists here, as I say, is not their failures, but he lists their faith, showing us that even amidst our failures, brethren, there is a way that you and I can live by faith for God's glory. I want to just jump ahead again to the 12Th chapter that Bruce alluded to to make the point because I don't believe in Scripture. We ever find that our brethren are given to us as the object for faith. We've spoken of the object for faith.
And these ones here that are listed, while they are listed for our encouragement, they are not given as the object for faith. And that's why as soon as the list is completed, then he lifts our eyes, takes our eyes away from that list. He says, therefore your encouragement, but he takes our eyes away from that list and he lifts our eyes by faith into the open heaven. And he says, now I'm going to give you the object for faith.
I'm going to give you the only man whoever walked through this world and began and completed the path of faith in perfection. Nobody else could ever claim to have begun and completed the path of faith and perfection. And that's why he says in verse two of chapter 12, looking at well, let me back up to the end of verse one, he says, and let us run with patience or endurance.
The race that is set before us. We have a race, we have a path of faith, just as all the previous ones, the cloud of witnesses, each had. But what is the object for us? Is it able? Is it Noah, Is it Moses? Is it Abraham? No. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher. It should read not so much of our faith, but of faith, because, as I say, He began and completed the path of faith and perfection.
And having done that, God has set him at his right hand as the object for you and for me as we run the path of faith here. And so let's remember this, brethren, will be preserved in the path of faith, in the race of faith, in the measure in which we have Christ before us as our object. Not only are the ones listed here as an encouragement, but our brethren that we know and love or have known and love, they are an encouragement too.
Paul could even say be followers of Maine, even as I am of Christ. He said that by inspiration.
But nevertheless, is Paul the object for our faith No are the are our brethren that we're sitting here with the object for our faith We just laid to rest our brother Charlie Little if anybody ever encouraged me in the path of faith that was brother little and the trips and the times we had together were tremendous encouragement and I looked back and I'm thankful for it. If someone like that the object for faith. No Christ is the object for our faith a glorified Christ at the right hand of God.
But our brethren, whether they're listed here or brethren we know or have known in our personal lives, they are given to encourage us to press on.
The first verse where it says now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. One way that you have evidence and substance for faith because how can you see it if it's inside your mind and your heart? You can see it when it's lived out. How do others?
See it and be encouraged. Well, if it's given something, because I see in this my face that it's in their life, I see it. I see it in my mother and father. I see it in older ones. I see it in others. Then it has substance. It is something I can look at. I can see, I can lay hold of. That person has faith. And when they say it, they mean it because they live it. It's in their lives. It's lived out of it. It's real. It has substance to it. It's something that's very real. That's the only way that people can see it.
Mr. Faith, one brother read from Romans chapter 20. What if, and I looked at that statement of brother Bob, Tony said, if God says it and I believe it, that settles it. Well, we ought to be that way. And I love that, that saying, but what if you don't believe that God said.
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I tell you the first gospel that many see is the gospel in creation around us, like Romans verse 20, in Romans verse 20 that was read. That's the first gospel that men see. And let me tell you this, there are young people amongst us that aren't sure that God said it. Well, it is important that we point out things. One brother said here today that we don't have to depend upon science to prove the word of God. But I'll tell you this, there are men and women that have come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and their Savior because somebody pointed out to them.
That when true science agrees with the Bible, it's a reason to believe that this book is the truth. Someone asked me once, well, you say all these things and I know you believe what you believe, but why do you think this book is true? Because I can't not believe it now. I have seen too many things in this book come, come to pass, not only in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, but in the life of people that I have grown up with. It works. It's real in people's lives.
That's one reason that you can say and give for why is Christianity that true Christianity? Why is it better than all the other religions that are on the earth? Because it's the only one that works. And when you see the real thing in the lives of men and women that walk on this earth, whether they're young or old, when you see it, you know it and it agrees with this book. So when you you may have opportunity to speak to somebody, the greatest attack of the enemy in the world today is to undermine this book we hold in our hands.
He's attacked that. He's attacking that amongst the Lord's people wherever they're found to question whether God really said that. Did he really say that?
It's the first fly that Satan brought into the garden and he gave God said that attack. There are things that are in creation and things around us that we can point out to people and say it is a reasonable thing to believe that God wrote this book because of this and that. You know, I told somebody once talking to a Jewish fellow, I said, how in the world could your ancient people write things like, how did they know to wash their hands in running water? And it wasn't until science and medicine discovered that it was a good thing to do to get rid of the germs on your hand. How did they know those things?
How did they know that things our scientists know or how do the people who wrote this book know that in Hebrews Chapter 11 verse three, that the very solid things that we sit on like this chair are made out of things we can't see. Science now knows and teaches that there are atoms, there are particles that are small that we can't see. The Bible tells me that that those who wrote this by the inspiration of God knew that. How did they know those things? How did they know to write those things down? If we point that out, if we go to the word and point that out to those that we give the gospel to.
Or those that are being raised up amongst us, if we point those things out, it becomes reasonable to believe that what God has done before, what he has done in the lives of men and women around me, what he has done for the Saints that are in this chapter in the past, that He can do in the lives of us today. And it gives substance to it. But don't, don't forget to point these things out to the young people, to your children, that it is a reasonable thing to believe that this book really is what God has said.
And that we can then believe it and act upon it because it really, really works. This is the only book, religious book of all the false religions in the world, the only book that gives us prophetic utterances of future events that have now been literally fulfilled. The coming of the Lord Jesus. Daniel 9 told us He would come, and He came at the exact time that it says He would come. So the Jews that are still looking for their Messiah.
Have missed it totally because he has come and the Bible is the only book that has fulfilled prophecy hundreds of them fulfilled by the the word of God. And that's a tremendous truth. It's not just that it's reasonable. Some of the things that we have in Hebrews 11 were not reasonable. I mean, Abraham was shown the stars of the heavens. So shall thy seed be the sand that was on the sea so shall thy seed be.
But Sarah was barren. She couldn't have children. How could that be? How could that be? God said it was going to be that way, but the facts were facing him. It's not reasonable. She's barren, but so he so he takes things into his own hands. Sarah does he thinks of well, I'll give you know, you go into my maid Hagar and you can have children with her and then.
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We know that was not God's thought and it happened and Hagar had Ishmael and.
That was not fulfillment of what God had said to Abraham at all. Abraham was the father, but Sarah was not the mother until God gave him, and she was 90 and he was 99.
100 years old when Isaac was born. Unreasonable, but we have to wait God's time. I I like it. It's been said if God says it.
I believe it and that settles it. Well, whether you believe it or not, if God said it, that settles it. You don't have to believe it to make it good. It's good because God said it and it will come to pass in his time. Not what is my time and you it. You said it, Jim. I was just going to bring that out.
Don't get any of their failures in Hebrews 11, but there's plenty of them if you read Genesis. Plenty of failures. Things that are just unreasonable. How can that prophecy that my seed is going to be like the stars of heaven and I can't even have a single child from Sarah? Well, God made it come to pass.
Chuck, just to mention, in the Old Testament, St. Andrews 11.
Romans Chapter 11 I say then have God castaway his people, God forbid. For I also am in this real life of the seat of Abraham, of the tribe of engineers. God hath not castaway as people which he poor knew what you not what the Scripture said, but he lies you how he maketh intercession to God against Israel. So he that was not a good place to have to talk with testimony of what he did at that time, make an intercession against the people of God.
Just want to I just want to add one thing and the first in Hebrews 12 verse one. I want to read that carefully. I'm reading it from Mr. Garvey. Let us also therefore having so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us. That's the Old Testament worthies that are mentioned in the 11Th chapter.
Laying aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, what is that sin? Well, it's the failures of the Saints that didn't walk by faith. They have the example of a cloud of witnesses that believe God. But what is that sin that's so easily entangles us? Is that some of the things that are written in this book? It just doesn't seem reasonable.
When Abraham was told that after he got Isaac, then he's told to put him to death to slay him.
I would have failed that test. Probably you would have, but Abraham had faith that God would bring to pass what he had said and but that's not normal for us. The sin which be so easy if he sets us is not believing God.
Not believing what he said and shame on us but.
It's just not reasonable.
Well, yeah, if God said it, it's going to happen. Faith is not reason, but faith is not unreasonable.
And if God has said it, let's think of who said it. If it was Chuck Hendricks that said it, I might have questions. Good, good, good, Jasmine.
I do trust you, Rusty. I can say the same thing to you.
But when it is God that says it, I believe it.
Who is God? You think of the vastness, the greatness, the understanding, the power.
Of the attributes of God, is it any difficulty to him to speak the universe into existence? Absolutely no difficulty. Why do people deny the creation because they don't know God?
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And that's why it's so important. Faith is not reason, and I think it's important for young people.
Sometimes when you engage people who don't believe in creation, don't be moved away from your faith.
Don't take the ground of reason with them, because they may be smarter than you. And maybe, and I've seen young people that have been totally undone by smart professors and they can prevent present evidence that seems to prove what they say. But who is smarter, that professor or the God of the universe?
Necessarily, that professor has.
Very small percentage of even knowledge. He has no power, but he has some knowledge. He may have more knowledge than you, but he doesn't have the knowledge that God has.
So it makes sense. It is reasonable to believe God. I think it is really important to see that there are two principles entirely different.
Remember when I worked in a hospital in Chicago?
One lunchtime I was having lunch and a Jewish doctor sat down in front of me and he saw a gospel tract in my pocket. And I gave him the gospel tract and he gave a few glances at it and then pushed it back across the table at me. And he said, the problem with you people is you're blind. You believe what you don't understand.
I said excuse me, Doctor, I'd like to ask you a question.
I'm just a normal person, but supposing you have the fame in this hospital of never making a mistake in the diagnosis of a disease and in the.
Treatment of it. And I come to you. I have no knowledge of disease or medicine or of remedies. But I only understand one thing. You don't make a mistake. And so you tell me. I have such and such a disease. And here's the.
A prescription I'll give you to take care of that. And I don't understand anything about that. Am I blind to blind to believe you?
And he said no, I said, neither. Am I blind to believe a God who can't lie?
He gets kind of shuffled his feet and said we'll talk another time about this. But it is the IT is the truth of the matter. It's where we stand. Is God true? If he's true, I can believe him. And like someone that said, I think you said check.
God will answer, but in his own time He doesn't answer in our timeframe. We think he should answer in this time frame, and when he doesn't, we get all upset. And sometimes we think, well, he didn't perform. For me, I think of Abraham walking along with Isaac to Mount Moriah. Isaac says, and they went, both of them together. And Abraham is no doubt thinking this is the child of promise. Whenever I read Genesis 22, I go back to chapter 21.
I forget the verse 12. I think that in Isaac shall thy seed be called, and he knows that this is the promised child and he's not going to have another. It's got to be Isaac. And Isaac shall I see? Because and he's thinking I'm called on by God who miraculously gave me this child. He tells me now I'm to sacrifice him. I'm going to put him to death. I have the knife and I have the fire. And the only way this can work is if God brings him back to life again.
And you can think that out when you read Genesis, but we're not left in doubt because it tells us right here in this chapter he counted.
By faith, Abraham verse 17, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten Son, of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called accounting, that God was able to raise him up even from the dead from once also he received him in a figure. Isn't that marvelous?
To think that he not only trusted God about the child, but he trusted us about putting him to death, that God must raise him again. Because in Isaac shall I seek be called. It's the only way it'll work. And he believed it. Let me give another thought. It's I've often heard it said that God created the worlds out of nothing. There was never nothing. There was always God.
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There was always God. Let's go back to the time when there was nothing else. Now The Big Bang theory requires that there has to be some material there to explode.
There has to be something. Let's go back to the time when only God existed. Nothing else existed. How was he going to make the universe?
The word of God says he's fake and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. He said let there be and there was. How else could he have done? It had to come from himself. It came out of himself. He just had to speak the word. Do you believe in that God? I do, because that's the only way we got here is that he said it and it happened and anything else is.
Unreasonable.
To reason that's the most reasonable thing is that God spoke the world's into existence. There's nothing else that makes any sense.
The wonderful thing about faith is it brings us into relationship with our God and we we've spoken about Abraham and Isaac in the test that they went through and as Abraham obeyed God, going through that experience rather than think of the.
The joy that Abraham can now have in sharing with God, having both of them gone, going through a similar experience. And this is the ingredient that those who do not believe God, that do not obey in faith, miss out on in life. They miss out on relationship with God. They want it that way. They believe this because they want to live their lives without God. And so this has been.
This theory has been concocted in order to give them a reason to live their life without God. Poor souls, they are living a life in a marvelous creation that's made for them and they're missing out on the very purpose that God had in making us because he made us to have a relationship with them. And so our chapter, to me, it's wonderful to see how he begins the chapter with.
How the world was made, the formation of things, that is God's purpose.
He in in starting the whole thing. He tells us here he's the one that started it. But they're made with things which do not appear. Didn't say it's made with nothing. It says it's made with things that do not appear. He didn't tell us what those things were that do not appear. If he'd have told us, I'm afraid we everybody that got hung up on that thing.
And then they would have missed the point again. The point is.
We must have faith and obedience in what he said, and then we reap the good of the the course that God designed there and planned and began in whatever way he began. And so how wonderful it is for us to look at these trials of faith that we our experiences of faith where our faith is tested.
We see it in these ones that are given us as demonstrations and the different aspects. If we look at our experiences then as we go through life as means for God to prove to us brethren, His goodness, His plan, whatever it may be, test whatever way He may test us, as long as we look up to Him in faith, we are going to reap the benefit of the purpose of God.
In His allowing these things that happen to us in our life, believing in Him, in them, as sure as He gives you faith, He's going to test it and you can't imagine.
A more fiery tile of faith than what Abraham went through.
Took Abraham out and showed in the starry heavens, and he said, So shall I see be? What does it say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness.
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Young person, believe God. You will never regret it if you simply believe God. All the outward evidence that you see may be stacked against you. Believe God because he's always true. May not be in our lifetime that we see it happen, but he is always true. You can trust Him. That's the kind of God we have. John the Baptist was the greatest prophet. The Lord says so, doesn't he?
And yet here is in prison.
He was the one that heralded the coming of the Son of God, of behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. And he pointed to him, and he sends messengers to the Lord. Art thou he that should come or look we for another? Come on, John, you know better than that. I wouldn't have done that. Oh, yeah. So would you hear? Everything is going wrong. The Lord was being rejected. He hadn't set up his Kingdom.
And here he, the herald of her, of her, of him, is in prison about to have it head cut off. How can that possibly be? Because because it wasn't God's time, it didn't fit in with his thoughts, didn't fit in with my thoughts or your thoughts. It's got to happen thus and so this way. It didn't happen that way.
God hadn't revealed the fullness of his plan to John the Baptist. God had other plans to bring in the Gentiles and have a heavenly Kingdom, which John didn't know anything about. And so he just looking at it naturally by sight, you could only judge by certain things that he was unaware of. And so there are many things, brethren, in our lives that even though God has come out in the fullness of his plan now, but there are many details that we don't know about. And that's where it's a question of trusting God.
Yeah, I just wanted to read those verses you referred to, Chuck, because I think it's important for young people to get it from the Word of God, and they're in Psalm 33. Let's just read them because it's so important that we get it from God.
Psalm 33 and verse six says.
By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth.
Verse 9.
For he spake, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast. Beautiful.
Beautiful. I got a question brethren, if we compare John the Baptist and Abraham, Abraham had some revelation to to him from God because God spoke to him. He did not have the word of God. John the Baptist had the word of God. He says I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness of fulfillment a part of that word of God. Now the question is in comparing these two, we don't have any revelations from God directly anymore. We do have the book that the brethren, please feel free to comment on that.
I don't think brothers that are approved.
Grounds and thoughts to conclude here towards the end that this chapter we have in front of us is Cloud of Witness.
What is the application of of this faith that we see when we see that we haven't present the proportions of their failures, but if we want to, we can take that up on our own time. But I think it's Fast forward this a little bit here to the first chapter of Peter.
Where we get to see disease instances which we've been reading our chapters applications towards us and the first Peter Chapter 7, then the trial of Georgia that's being us being much more precious than a global terrorist facility trying to fire might be found and see the praise of honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
These folks that we read in our chapter, we're looking for an appearing of this toward Jesus. We have them and we have them. You having not seen you love and whom so now you see him not yet believing that faith that we've been talking about believing.
We rejoice with joy unspeakable in both glory and for my also hands that.
01:10:02
Verse 12 to the Saint Catherine reading, and we're Speaking of this cloud of witness.
The people of the Old Testament, the prophets, unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us.
They did Mr. Things which were recorded unto you, and preached God.
With the holy good, sit down from heaven with the things that ain't guards, Olympians, brothers and God. Wonderful faith. And that is the end of citizens for our employment and our trial and our encouragement. I'd like to answer the question that was just put before the last speaker.
I'd like to answer it. We have the complete word of God more than any of the apostles had, more than any of the worthies of Hebrews 11 We have at the end of the of this present day of grace, we have everything that God is going to redeem command. That's the greatest thing we have. We have the tremendous advantage over anyone else over these that failed. So we have no reason to fail. We have it all.
Written down here. And there are so many fulfilled prophecies. We've already mentioned that. How can we doubt it? And the unfulfilled ones will be fulfilled in time, just as the fulfilled ones were fulfilled in time, Brother Chuck. Does that make us more responsible? Oh, absolutely.
Because not only do we have the complete Word of God, but as Peter brings before us, we have all things that pertain unto life and godliness. We have the Spirit of God as our Teacher. We have divine life. We have the as Chuck has been bringing before us the complete Word of God. Brethren, we have everything we need to live by faith in this world, no matter how dark the day gets. But isn't it a wonderful thing to consider too, in light of what has been said?
That God never tests us or puts a trial before us that's greater than the faith he has given us. I think that's beautiful. If I fail, if God puts a test in my pathway and I fail, can I say I didn't have the resources? No, He's given us the resources. Even the faith to believe is a gift from God. By grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves? It is the gift of God. Now, I'd just like to say this to I don't believe.
It's really an intelligent prayer for a Christian to pray and ask the Lord to increase their faith.
Now our faith does grow, but the disciples said to the Lord, Lord increase our faith. But I believe if you notice what the Lord said to them, he what he taught them was that the way their faith was going to grow was to put it in operation.
You are mentioning, Brother Chuck, about Abraham and when he took Isaac, and what a great test that was. Would I have come up to that? Would you have come up to that? I don't know but what a great test it was. But I don't. I want to be careful in using this illustration, but we'll suppose for a minute that when Abraham was first called out of UR the Chaldees, God had put some great test before him like that. Would Abraham's faith have been up to it? I doubt that his faith would have been up to it.
But as Abraham from day-to-day and year to year proved God in the little things and the everyday circumstances of life, his faith grew day by day. So that when the great test came, his faith was such that he we know from he had faith by what he did in the Old Testament, by his actions. And his brother Tom said, we know he had faith by what he thought given to us here in Hebrews Chapter 11. And so our faith does grow. But young people and all of us.
Our faith is not going to grow if we don't put it in operation.
If you've known me a little while, you might feel you can trust me at least to some degree. But if you've known me for many years and I've never let you down, I'm not saying I would never let you down. But if I never let you down or failed you, then your faith in me grows. You say I want more faith in him than I had when I first met him 10-15 years ago. Your faith has grown because I have proved myself to be worthy of your confidence. Now if that is true in earthly things, isn't he worthy of our confidence? Will he ever fail us? Maybe you have great faith in me because I never failed you for 15 years and then all of a sudden you commit something to my trust.
And I fail, you say, oh, my faith is smashed in Jim Highland. I thought I could trust him in anything. Now my faith is smashed. Will you ever come to that point with the Lord? No. The more you put your confidence in him for every circumstance of life, the more your faith is going to grow. So that when the great difficulties come, then you can say I've got one that I can trust in any circumstance. What do you say about the faith healer that says, well, you prayed and you said you had faith and it didn't come to pass.
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So it didn't come to pass. You were here because you didn't have faith. Now that's trying to make faith a healer. God's the healer. And and they, they always have a way of getting out of it. These faith healers getting out of it by saying, well, you just haven't didn't have enough faith. That's why it didn't happen, right? But Chuck this, go ahead, go ahead. I think you get the answer in the end of this chapter because there were those who didn't accept deliverance, You say, did they have any less faith?
Did the ones that were sawn asunder have less faith than the three Hebrew children who were delivered through the fire? Did the ones that suffered trial of cruel mockings and death? Did they have less faith than Daniel or these ones that are listed previous? It's interesting what it says. These all die in faith, but God has something better for them.
Think it is important to pay attention to exactly.
What God says and when I look at verse four brethren Abel and Cain are focused on they had no written scriptures on what was their faith. What was Ables faith-based on by the communications they did have from God and God had said to Adam and Eve after they had sinned that the ground was cursed.
And He also had clothed them with coats of skins. All those things have significance. When God gives instruction in any way, He gives it and we have His Word, His complete revelation. Now pay attention to it carefully. Sometimes my faith fails because I have based my faith on what I thought, my understanding of Scripture, and I go back and I see what it really says.
Now, Abel, he had heard evidently from his parents, that.
The fruit of the ground was cursed. King brought of the fruit of the ground. He ignored what God had said.
He probably brought beautiful fruit. The earth was in its prime at that time. Even though it had been cursed by sin, it was still probably a lot better than we have it today. And the fruit he brought must have been tremendous. Why wasn't God pleased with that?
Because he did it in putting aside something of what God has said, and God was not pleased with his offering. He put himself instead of God. That's right. And I think that is so important that we.
We pay attention, close attention, to what God says.
Another example, when the Lord Jesus told Peter after he had used his boat to preach from, to cast out the Nets for a haul.
The Lord or Peter probably thought, well, the Lord is a Carpenter, he doesn't understand much about fishing. And I've been fishing all night and I haven't caught anything. But at thy word, Lord, I'll let down the gnat. Lord said, Let down the Nets. He let down one net. And what happened? It filled up so full that it broke.
He didn't pay attention carefully to what the Lord had told him, and that's so important. That's why it's important that you read the scriptures for yourself.
I'm explaining something here. Look at it. Is that what it say? Don't base your thoughts, your faith on what I say about it, based on your faith on what God says in His Word. That's so important. Sometimes young people base their thoughts on what? Oh, that brother said. It must mean that and it must be the truth. But that's not faith. That's not real faith. Get it for yourself. That's why you got your Bibles open in front of you. Look at it.
What it says or are we twisting it? Get it for yourself because we live in a world where your faith is going to be tested. Young people just like OK, something in connection with.
Faith in the Word of God and trust because we've used the word trust. We have faith in the Word of God. We don't trust the word of God. We trust the Lord Jesus. We trust the person. That's the confidence is I'm sure I have confidence in the Word of God, but the two are connected. So we have all the word of God. Now God has given us all the resources. Why is there failure?
01:20:18
The Lord Jesus said without me he can do nothing and.
Even if we have all these resources we can boast of and know and preach about it and expound on, lest we're connected with the person that is spoken of and presented to our souls in this book, we're going to fail. Without me you can do nothing. So we trust the person and it's His word that's brought to us in these pages. We can read the Word of God with our intelligence and know many things, but it's not connected with the Lord. It's not going to be problem.
Reference was made to Peter.
I appreciate what has already been said that.
Along with God's command is always His enablement to fulfill that command. Now, Peter, when he saw the Lord walking on the water, he didn't just step out of the boat instead of the water.
Come to you until come to you on the water well, he recognized that unless the Lord is in the command, humanly speaking is a possibility of water. But when the Lord says calm the daughter.
When the Lord said come to Peter, Peter asked you an obedience, knowing that he would be able to do what the Lord asked him to do, and he steps out of the pole. Of course, he gets his eye off the Lord and he begins to sink.
As we often do, I think difficulties of life sometimes become so overwhelming that we wonder, how do you survive? I'm going to see, but we need to keep your eye on the door. Next chapter, looking unto Jesus, you author and finisher, you are faith now, the Lord said to Peter.
We'll eat little faith. Let's get some cow. You know he didn't rebuke him for leaving the ship because he's supposed to do it. Didn't Peter do something, Wally? When he started to sink, didn't he say something?
Yeah, short prayer wasn't immediately.
But he looked at the wind and the waves, and as long as he kept his eyes on the Lord, he walked on water. Could we sing #184?
I'll tell you what, we're I for 1:00 AM. Thankful that Peter's saying.
I knew what you would think.
Brother, he didn't. He didn't sing. He began to sing. He began to sing.
184.
It sounds like.
You're taking our.
Most we have.
It tells us.
01:25:48
Praise the Savior.
Gladly.
Render to him all we have.
And all.
Jesus, I say, it's a sinus heart.
Hebrews 11
Reading
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Have I enough?
By the Abel offered unto God.
A more excellent sacrifice than faith, by which he has seen witness that he would frighten us.
God testifying of his gift.
We see in this the righteousness of God.
Or without the standing of blood, there is no revision.
The wages of sin is death.
The soul that says he shall die.
In the days of thy English thereof thou shalt surely die.
God.
Then what he said when he said don't eat in the tree in the midst of the garden.
God has.
Serious about what he says regarding the matter of sin.
00:05:07
The wages of sin is death.
The soul is in his denial after this to judgment.
It's a very serious matter.
By this by which he obtained witness that he was righteous people, that is.
When he said in the day that he said I'll tell, surely die.
But death must come in as a result of sin.
We all, all have sinned, come toward the glory of God. Therefore the judgment is on the human race.
All who sin die.
And and with no blood, no light.
So death comes when a man's blood is shedding.
So what? Abel offered.
Was acceptable a lamb?
And that was acceptable because life was given up.
So God was satisfied, was able to sacrifice.
And attain sacrifice. This was the thing that was absent. No blood was dead. No one was given up. The sacrifice of the through the ground was unacceptable.
And Second Chronicles Chapter 7 and verse four and five.
Second Chronicles 7, four and five.
Then the King and all the people offered sacrifices before the Lord, and King Solomon offered a sacrifice of 22,000 options, 120,000 sheep. And there are the end times that increased the most passages that went before us, many many more thousands.
Sacrifices, and one is quaintly said something like this, that could all that blood that was shed by those animals forge a mighty river like the Amazon, it could not take away our sins. Not all the blood of beasts our Jewish altar slains to give the guilty Thompson peace, or wash away at stage, but Christ the heavenly Lamb, took all our killed away, a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they.
When April offered that lamb.
In his place instead, God accepted it because he looked forward.
For the cross, and that's the only reason. In Hebrews 10 verse four, it says that for it is not possible that the blood of Bulger, of goats should ever take away sin. So every sacrifice where blood was shed in the Old Testament was a picture looking forward to the personal sacrifice of Christ and his precious shed blood.
That's why when you go back one generation further with Abel and Adam sinned and Eve sinned, there had to be coats of skin provided for Adam and Eve. And no doubt able understood this at a very young age, how that God had provided for his parents when they had sinned. And to provide coats of skin, although it's not specifically mentioned in Scripture to provide those coats necessitated the death of an innocent victim.
That's what God has always taught His people, that in order for sin to be taken care of, there must be the death of an innocent victim. But I was thinking too, in the 10th chapter of Hebrews, how it says every priest standeth daily, ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices which could never put away sin. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin forever, sat down on the right hand of God.
And so I think as we see the faith of Abel, we go back to the thought that he understood that there had to be the death of an innocent victim. Cain, as we mentioned this morning, he brought the food of the fruit of the ground, the cursed earth. Not only was it the fruit of the cursed earth, but it was the result of the labor of his hands, too. I'm not a gardener, but I watch my wife. She likes to garden, and she spends a great deal of time tending the ground and doing for this and that, putting in fertilizer, planting the seed, watering it, making sure that the temperature are just right, and so on. It's a lot of work to bring forth fruit from out of a curse during the ground of a cursed earth.
00:10:33
And so Cain brought the fruit of his hand of accursed earth and the fruit of his labor, and that was not acceptable to God. But when Cain brought that sacrifice and an innocent victim's blood was shed, I'm sorry. When Abel brought that sacrifice and an innocent victim's blood was shed, God, as has already been said, looked forward to the death of his son and all those sacrifices from Abel, down from Abel through Abraham.
Through the Levitical order of things, all those sacrifices were pale reflections and feeble foreshadows of what was really in the heart of God, the time when His Son would go to the altar and be offered up as that sweet sacrifice, and His blood would be shed.
I got a letter once from a young man and his idea was, I don't know where he learned it, but it was serious error that the Old Testament Saints got saved by keeping the law. The New Testament Saints by by the blood of Christ. And I wrote him back or talked to him and said everyone that was ever saved was saved by the blood of Christ and no one has kept the law except the Lord himself.
No one has kept the law. When they heard it, they said all that the Lord has said we will do and obey. Before Moses came down with the 10 commandments, they had broken the 1St 3.
But man likes that idea because it gives man something to do. I remember once I was explaining in the cottage to my instructor and I was talking about grace. He was a Roman Catholic and he listened to me and I explained grace. And he said I don't like that. I want to do my part. And that's, that's the whole thing. The law gives man something to do in order to gain acceptance with God.
Had he done it, he would have gained it. But he didn't do it, did he? And so God provided a way by which there was certainty in the salvation that he provided, and that's through the death of Christ.
In wanting to help and explain some of these things to the young people in the summer times, I made-up a series of charts. And I know I had one of them showing an altar stones and and a dead animal sort of hanging off of it and blood and pool of blood on the ground. And it wasn't a pretty sight, you know, the flames going up and so on. And then I made one of Cain's offering a basket.
And colorful fruit and vegetables and it looked nice. And This is why people like Canes way It looks nice. It seems acceptable. And it was something they can do for themselves. And the other was, you know, they say it's a it's a bloody religion. It's a horrible thing. Sin is a horrible thing. That's why God uses it. He wants us to know how terrible sin is.
Supported these these these were the first two sacrifices made.
After seeing him come in and it makes it very clear to go back to the very book of Genesis and it was able sacrifice which pointed forward to the shed blood of Christ that did it that he was a he was accounted righteous by that sacrifice came by his sacrifice which glorified himself, which he was very proud of and so on. He was rejected. And so the law principle only can condemn us.
But the grace principle saves us, but it means we're nothing. This man didn't like grace because it gave him nothing to do. Christ did it all.
Well, pride is the greatest of all evils and it's the last thing to die in man, and that's something we all have to deal with. We all have to deal with.
00:15:04
It's interesting that this first example after the creations brings in the question of death.
Abel having offered this sacrifice that was accepted, he took it as the God's witness of his acceptance too. And so when when death could come and threaten him, he didn't have to resist. He he had a secure thing to rely on that would not separate him.
From his God and so he it goes on that he being dead yet speaks speak us so that this witness that he got of God's acceptance of his sacrifice helped him face this issue of death and God took it up and made it a witness to all the rest of us that were able is and that his his faith.
Becomes a testimony to us that death cannot separate us from God.
Because Christianity really begins beyond the cloud or it's really not seen in this life. And so it's important that should death threaten us, brethren, it it, it's it's over already overcome. We have a sacrifice that carries us beyond it. And so that's Christian position.
In that vein, that's interesting, isn't it, that the next one mentioned is Enoch, who is a picture of.
Those that are translated out of this scene before the before the judgment, well 1500 years later, Enoch has mentioned.
Just at the end of the period before the flood. Not too long before the flood.
And he's taken out of this scene, a picture, I believe, of the rapture of all the Saints of God that will be taken out of this scene before the flood hits this world. That future horrible judgment. That's interesting. It follows right after the offering of Abel.
So Abel left this scene through death, was a man of faith. But then Enoch didn't see death. He left this scene by being, shall I say, raptured out of this scene, went to heaven in a whirlwind, a chariot of fire. We said that these three individuals all escaped death, judgment through various means. And so there are those who leave this world through the article of death. They die in faith. They're waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus, when they'll receive glorified bodies and they'll be raptured.
To heaven and those of us who are alive and remain, we're going to receive a change and we're going to be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air. But then there was Noah. Why is Noah brought before us next? Well, we find that Noah is one who is brought through the judgment. He doesn't, he doesn't escape it by death. He isn't translated to heaven. He comes, God brings him through, of course, through the medium of the ark that he built. And he and his family, would they be perhaps a picture of.
The Lord's people in the coming day, the remnant who are going to be brought through the tribulation, they're going to be blessed. They're going to receive a blessing on a cleansed earth, so to speak, but they're going to have an earthly portion. When Noah came out of the ark, he was still here in this world. He was brought through the judgment, but then he came out and there was a promise made to him and the rainbow put in the sky, but he was still here on this earth. And so perhaps we have a picture of those again who escaped through death. And my father is one who's gone ahead through the article of death.
We're waiting here for the coming of the Lord. We're not going to be brought through the judgment. We're going to be taken out before the judgment falls, like Enoch was. And then there are going to be the Lords, earthly people who are brought safely through and are blessed with an earthly blessing. Would that be right, Bruce?
There's a statement about Enoch that is so impressive in Genesis 5I just love to just read it. Enoch in his faith didn't do any tremendous feat like David killing a giant or Daniel being in the lion's den and surviving.
But this is the testimony of Enoch.
00:20:04
And Genesis 5.
It says.
Verse 21 Enoch lives sixty and five years and begat Methuselah, and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah 300 years and begat sons and daughters. I suppose just a normal everyday life.
Nothing spectacular.
But his testimony is that he walked with God.
300 years.
I'm a little over 60.
That's five times.
And he walked with God all that time. What does it mean to walk with God? What does that mean?
It means to consciously realize the presence of our God with us, of our Lord Jesus, and bring Him into the picture in every difficulty, in every circumstance we passed through. Oh, what a wonderful thing it is to walk with God. That was His testimony. No tremendous speaks, just a normal.
Everyday life.
But what a statement. He walked with God 300 years. That is a tremendous feat.
And he had this testimony that he pleased God. It says in another place, and I think we need to echo what was alluded to this morning. It was not at a time when things were well on the earth. There was a time before the flood when the wickedness and violence of men's hearts was coming out in a very real way. And God later looks down and he sees that the thought of his heart is only evil continually. Brethren, that is the kind of conditions under which Enoch walked with God and pleased God for all those years, 3 centuries, as you say, that's a that's a long time. None of us here will ever be asked.
To walk with God that long, we just have a few short, a few short years. But rather than to think that he not only walked with God for three centuries, but he did it amidst all the wickedness and darkness, moral darkness, and the violence and corruption that was filling the earth. Now if Enoch with the resources that he had in God at that time, could have that said about him that he walked with God and that he pleased God.
Do we have any less resources? No. We have more resources than Enoch had, and we have no excuse. And I think if you were to ask him, Enoch, how'd you do it?
He would say just a step at a time.
Not even maybe a day at a time. Sometimes difficulties become so difficult we don't know how to take the next step. Just take the Lord into account, brother and sister. He's there, He's with you. Let him.
Walk with you, walk with God, whatever your circumstances are.
Can someone give us a word on what Enoch prophesied? You know, I was thinking about that, something mysterious about what it says here in Hebrews that he was taken, that he should not see death. His father lived to be 962 years old. His son lived 969 years.
And he was only 365. And it's been suggested that what that prophecy brings in is that he made him even have been threatened by the ungodly because he prophesied.
The Lord cometh. Let me read it in Jude chapter 14 of verse 14.
Enoch also the 7th from Adam prophesied of these things. Behold, the Lord cometh with 10 thousands of his Saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed.
Of all their hard speeches, which they which ungodly sinners have spoken against him, there were there was something going on there in Phoenix life. He he was walking with God, but he was also.
00:25:09
Warning the people around him for their way of life, probably, and it was a threat to him. And it's been suggested that the Lord took him out before they murdered him. That's kind of conjecture, but it's a certainly a possibility because of the way he was.
Preaching to them that they would hate, that they don't want that kind of a testimony.
I just put that for it. Maybe isn't it amazing that he knew about something that is still future in our day?
Even before the flood, there were no scriptures to tell them about this. How do you think he knew about it then?
Same way that the prophets prophecy.
I'm sure as he is walking with God, God must have talked to him about it. Don't you think? Shall I hike from Abraham that which I do? You didn't hide it from the Enoch. Hide. No, only men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And it's interesting, I really think, brethren, when we consider the revelation of Jesus Christ that that did that that describes.
The coming of the Lord Jesus at the end of the great tribulation period. It is the moment in the whole course of history that there will be the greatest display of glory and power that ever, ever will be when God introduces his man into this world in power and glory to reign supreme. And that is before the the heart of God. And so he shared that with Enoch. Isn't that wonderful? We walk with God, brethren.
Their secrets.
He can share with us, and this must have been a wonderful encouragement to Enoch as he saw things deteriorate around him. We see things deteriorate in the few years we're here, but imagine all those years, 300 years, things were getting worse and worse. And why do we not read of Enoch rising up and trying to suppress evil and change things? The Lord gave him this special revelation that there was a day when he would take care of it and his Saints would be there.
To with him when righteousness was executed. It's just as if he says, Enoch, you just walk quietly with me through the evil. I'll keep you personally in a path of faith and moral purity and you walk with me no matter how dark the day and remember there's a day coming. That's faith. He looked ahead. He counted on a coming day of glory when things would be set right, not regards to how he felt things should be set right, but regards to how.
The Lord was going to execute righteous judgment. And brethren, if we can keep ahead, if keep in view what's ahead, it's part of our hope. We're looking for the Lord to come, our blessed hope and the glorious appearing. We're looking for the Lord Jesus to come and reign in righteousness and to know that we're going to be with them. And then things are set right. That is going to give us the moral courage to walk in personal communion quietly in the path of faith with the Lord.
And to please the Lord without getting disturbed by what's around us. Not that we're indifferent to what's around us, but if there's that in our souls, that counts on what's ahead. There will be peace in our souls, even amidst the turmoil and darkness of this world. Notice what it says in verse 5.
Thy faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found.
They were looking for him. He probably had told them about what God had told him.
And when we're gone, if the Lord would come right now, this room, I hope would be empty. I hope no one would be left behind. That would be if. Just think it for a moment. If that was you and everyone was gone, but you, wouldn't you be terrified? You would know what had happened? And it says he wasn't found. They were looking for him. He was gone.
They knew how evil their ways were and he rebuked them for it. He prophesied and read that in Jude being prophesied and it happened. He he was taken out. The prophet was taken in. It's interesting, Chuck, I made a mistake earlier in something I said. I said Enoch was taken in a whirlwind, a chariot of fire. It was Elijah later on. But but it's interesting you bring that up because they looked for him as well when he was taken out. But you know what solemn when they when they looked, who was it that looked for Elijah?
00:30:00
It wasn't the general populace in Israel, it was the sons of the prophets. And you know, I often think if the Lord came this afternoon and there were young people and children left in these seats, the sons, shall I say the sons of the prophets, are the sons of Christian parents. They're the ones that are going to look. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that solemn? I think when the Lord rose, they looked for him. If they could only have produced him, all they had to do was to totally destroy Christianity.
Because to find proof that he was.
But he was still here, but his tomb was empty.
It's interesting that we have the character that displays what's going to come yet and then before it goes on to Noah, which is the picture of the.
Earthbound Saints, I should put it in another way, Probably those that are going to be blessed here on earth in Noah, we have verse 6. And that I believe is this interim time that we're in right now, right now, today.
But without faith, it's impossible to please him and so.
We are just about at the point of the the rapture. That's true. Which would be Noah, I mean.
Ina. However, before Noah is brought before us, this verse six is brought before us. But without faith, it's impossible to please him. And that's very, very true.
For every, every single person without faith, there's going to be no salvation. Without faith, you can't please him. And we go back to the second chapter of the book of Ephesians and the eighth verse. For by grace are ye saved. And that's the grace of God by faith. And that's the gift of God, faith. And so you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. God gives you faith.
Your faith has been given, and so how important this verse is. But without faith, it's impossible to please him. You've got to be saved. You must have the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior to have faith.
Well, faith comes by hearing, doesn't it? And so the report goes out.
And that's why the gospel is preached and.
When you get the report, one souls listen. That's what's so important.
By preaching the Word of God, the gospel, it's not what we say. Even in these Bible readings, brethren, sometimes we put a lot of emphasis on what we say about Scripture. What we say about Scripture is not so important. Scripture is important. And if what is said.
Helps you to understand in a clear way the scriptures itself.
Then there is a prophet in her Bible reading like this. But that's the the important thing. It's the Scripture itself. It's the living word of God, and it's by that word that God imparts light to dead souls, says in John five, They that hear the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. Do dead people hear?
Not normally, but when the Son of God speaks, they hear. And so God imparts life through His precious word. Oh, the importance of just speaking it clearly.
That's what God will use to give that faith that you say, isn't it? And through that a soul is saved. It is necessary to use words. I've heard it said I don't like it.
It says just to live Christ, that if necessary use words. Noah used words, He was a preacher of righteousness. Enoch used words. He was a prophet prophesying at the coming day. It's not enough just to be a good person in the eyes of your fellows. They wonder why are you different? Tell them why you're different. Give them the gospel, Talk about the Lord Jesus. It's not enough just to live it, but you've got to talk it as well. Right of all that Jesus began both to do.
And teach there was the life and the words. Faith cometh by hearing, not by looking or seeing. It cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And you got to preach that. Every one of us has to preach that.
00:35:12
That's interesting, isn't it? That 17th verse of Romans 10? Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. It's the Word of God that saves us. We might preach and use all kinds of expressions, but the Word of God is what saves.
As you already said, Bob, it's the word of God that saves, not our voice.
There's a man in his room, I'm not going to mention his name, and that was saved through reading the word of God.
No other way.
He was reading his Bible and they came across a scripture that turned him from darkness to light. And so that's the way everyone in this room got saved really, by the word of God, one way or another, either by hearing it or reading it.
How important that is.
The object of the Word of God is to present Christ to souls, isn't it? And that's why we have assurance as to who He is, what He's done, and the result of it is to the Word of God that our intelligence is visited by the Spirit of God and made good to our soul.
The next one in our list here is Noah. And if I'm not mistaken, Enoch and Noah are the only ones listed in our translation that walked with God. It says that if you go back to the book of Genesis, you'll find that Noah walked with God. Enoch walked with God. It doesn't say that Abraham did. It says Abraham believed God. Friend of God he was, and he was a friend of God. But these two men?
Noah and Enoch, it says they walked with God.
Noah was 500 years when he went into the ark. So Can you imagine that we were talking about enough walking for 500 or 300 years, But Noah walked with God for 500 years, and Noah walked with God in a time that was probably even more wicked than the Enoch's day. It was 300 years or so later. What a terrible scene he went through.
And it didn't deter him. And the reason was probably because he walked with God.
Genesis Chapter 7, I wonder if we can't apply some words there in connection with the flood, but the sufferings of Christ they'll seek for in a moment in Genesis 7 exist and the blood was 40 days per 17 upon year and the waters increased course if I have a baptized victim to be baptized with how I straightened or what they accomplished the waters increased and then in verse 18 it says the waters increased.
Greatly and then verse 19 and the worst prevailed exceedingly. Is that not the sufferings of the Lord Jesus and the garden of Yosemite, when in anticipation of that bitter cup he sweated the word great drops of blood, and then we increased that his his at the hand of man, those sufferings when they took him.
Spin in his face when they mocked Him, and they drowned him with forwards when they scourged his back. All of that was those sufferings. But then that last one of the priests exceedingly, that's those three hours. And the Lord Jesus Christ, he who knew no sin was made for sin for us, and all the judgment and the fury of the holy and righteous God fell upon him. Our substitutes. And God's holy and righteous claims were made in the death of His beloved Son.
It's interesting too with Noah that it says in Genesis he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. I think that's remarkable in connection with Noah here, as we said earlier, being a type of God's earthly people who will be brought through the tribulation and blessed in an earthly way. Because whether it's you and I today who have been the recipients of salvation and we're looking forward to being having a heavenly portion, or whether it's God's earthly people who are blessed in an earthly way.
In a coming day, it's all on the grounds of grace, and I believe that God's earthly people will be passed through such circumstances.
After the church is gone, that it will finally bring them to the point where they realize that if there's going to be blessing for them, it's only going to be through the Lord Jesus on the grounds of grace. When you look at the God's people, the Jew, today, you see that they haven't come to that point yet. They're still trying to work it out through peace pacts and summits and negotiations and lining up with the United States and their allies and all this kind of thing. They're trying to do it through their own intelligence.
00:40:14
And schemes. But I say they will go through such excruciating, excruciating circumstances in the tribulation that they will finally realize that it is only the grace of God and His provision through Christ that is going to bring them through. And so Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. What was it that caused God to provide that remedy, that ark to bring him through? What was it that caused God to bring he and his family safely onto the cleansed earth? It was that he found grace.
Nothing special in Noah. Oh, it's true Noah walked with God. It's true. There were those, those moral attributes amidst the darkness and the ruin that had come in, but it wasn't anything special. It was of grace. Now, brethren, let's apply that to ourselves. Do we have it? Can we claim anything special in ourselves?
We're going to be saved out of the judgment. Is it because of anything special? No, brethren, it's because we found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And I would suggest that this is one thing at least that will motivate us to walk by faith. Amidst all the moral ruin and decay and darkness that we see in our day is the realization that by grace he's picked us up. By grace He preserves us, and it's grace that's going to bring us safely through.
Notice it says in verse 7 by faith Noah being warned of God, of things not seen as yet.
I don't think it had ever rained yet.
Moved with fear.
Prepared an ark to the saving of his house by the which he condemned the world whole world under judgment and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. That's a tremendous verse moved with fear something you've never seen before building an ark when they it had never rained. The fear of judgment was real real before him and I think it's nice to notice how the family the household.
Aspect comes in Tier 2.
That he built an art not just for his own salvation, but for his whole house, and his house, his family, was preserved by that.
Certainly it's been commented how that it was probably a very degenerated, moral degenerated condition in the world at that time. God looked down and describes it.
We are, brethren, living in a similar time now as the days of Noah were getting close to that today. And there is as we look out in the world and view this, we ought to be moved with fear too, of the impending judgment that's going to fall on this world.
And that that judgment, that judgment can take our families too. We need to make a place of provision outside of that world where the judgment is going to fall. We need to make a provision for our families and shelter them from that, keep them from those things that would bring down the judgment of God. That's going to bring down the judgment of God on the wickedness of this world.
The fear of those things ought to cause us to do that. And, and it's to me, it's beautiful here to see this, this judgment or this salvation here was for the whole family. It was a present salvation in the world at the time.
And we see families that get swept away.
Through carelessness.
We need to, brethren, provide a sanctuary, an ark that's that's a picture of Christ. Of course, put them in Christ. There is such a thing as bringing your household under the authority of the Lord Jesus and recognizing that authority of the Lord Jesus over the whole household.
And conducting your household responsibly under his name, under the authority of the Lord, who's coming to judge, coming to save too. Before that we know well, there's a I believe there's a real important principle here. Could it be that Enoch also had a concern for his family? Because I noticed it says here in Genesis 5.
00:45:06
And verse 22 And Enoch walked with God after.
You can get Methuselah 300 years and to get sons and daughters.
So it was after Nakusa arrived.
Family got started that since he walked with God, perhaps he felt the need.
The faith of the son, of the children, Noah's sons, it only speaks of Noah's faith. They evidently had faith because they got on board and they were adult men. They had their wives, so they had faith, evidently. But I think this is important, the principle, like you say, Doug, it's a principle of households.
When God saves somebody, he's not interested in merely the father and mother. He's he's interested in the whole household. He wants them saved. And I think this gives encouragement to us as parents.
Faith is not just saying, oh I believe God, if he wants to save my kids, well he'll do it then. Just crash your arms and sit down.
It's a very active principle and Noah had to get up and work. I mean, that was a big ship. He built 300 cubits long. That's 450 feet long. I mean, that's a football field. And 1/2 That boat was that's that's a big, big ship.
Three stories high.
And there was a lot of work involved in that. And so it's just this something to encourage us. Faith is not just crossing our arms and saying, well, whatever will be, will be. It is striving, it is working. It is, it is praying, it is doing everything that we possibly can. Noah could not save his children, but he could provide the means by which they could be saved.
We cannot save our children. Faith is an individual thing and each one must take that position individually, but we can provide the means by which they can be saved. The only ones I think that we're building was Noah and his family. I don't think he got anyone to help them. It says God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. That's the that's the way the world was at that time.
And had repented the Lord, that he had made man on the earth, that grieved him at his heart said, I will destroy man, destroyed the whole human race except 8 souls.
I'd like to emphasize.
A bit more what Bob was saying, the whole part of preparing and the work that is involved.
You know, I go to work in the morning to do my job or build a business or whatever, but how much effort am I putting in to really build a family and to have something for them?
I do remodeling around the house and I put in a bit of work for that.
How much work do I put in for the family?
You know, be prepared.
I'm not sure that's exactly what the word here, but I think we can use it.
You know you've got to be a step ahead.
The the older I get, the faster I discover that the kids are a lot faster than I am and you know, you got to stay ahead of them.
And there's only one way of staying ahead of them, and that is to be prepared.
It's it's not always an easy chore to be prepared in that way. And there's also.
Stress.
I don't think we can forget that.
I find for myself, and I doubt if I'm alone, that when you have something, you know, you just got to bring up your kids in a prepared kind of way. You hope it's prepared a bit, but it also requires better.
Wet sweat and the underarm sometimes, and to actually go and to speak with them and say, you know, maybe we should look at things a little bit differently.
And it's not.
00:50:03
Work is not easy, those times are not easy, and yet that's part of the building of this art and having a preparation.
And not say something that maybe the young folks will latch on to, but I want to end up by turning it around. You know what? When we grow up, we're all pretty sure we're going to turn out different than our parents.
And lo and behold.
We end up turning out pretty much like our parents.
I'm sorry to disillusion some of you. They are 1718, nineteen years old.
So let's turn that around because as parents, if our kids do turn out like us, how really do we want them to turn out? And we better be prepared in living in a way that we want them to be in 20 years. And you got to do it now. Don't wait till 20 years from now to do it because it's way too late. They would have already turned out like you. They'll wait another 20 minutes.
So there's a lot of practical things in this and I find it nerve wracking myself. And it has its ups and it's down and it stresses let it work and it's preparation and it's not applied by the either pants kind of thing. It's it's an actual building.
We might see that Noah's sons were helping him build the ark.
I don't think Noah done it by himself. I think his son is helping. So they went through their father's exercise and wondering what's going on here.
It's interesting, isn't it, that in the seventh verse God does not tell us?
Nor does he tell us in Genesis.
Who built the ark? But we know that Noah was the one that was involved with the architecture. God gave him the.
The plan for it, and we don't know how long it took either.
I'm sure many have read the North Carpenters. There's a tract out called Noah's Carpenters. Now whether that tract is true or not, I don't know, but nevertheless.
This word prepared says that Noah did it. It says Noah prepared an ark, and so he had.
Active and he actively worked on putting that ark together and whether his and I'm sure his son's probably helped him and whether he had hired carpenters or not, I don't know. But Noah did build that ark. He, the Lord gave him the directions and here's the directions that God's given us right here. And God gave no other directions and he followed them. And that's our responsibility to follow the directions that we have and it as Bob has already said and others.
Takes energy. It takes energy. You don't do it by just folding your hands.
If there were carpenters, they'd say to someone, this man's nuts, but he's my employer and he's paying me for it. When when the flood came, they were outside.
It's interesting, isn't it? It says. And the flood came and took them all away. I think that's one of the most solemn statements in the word of God. The flood came and took them all away. And you know, there must have been children, young people as well as older ones living on the earth.
The judgment, when it came, was indiscriminate. It didn't just take certain ones away. And if there's someone in this room this afternoon and you've listened to these meetings today and you're not saved, you're not sheltered by the blood of Christ, you aren't. You aren't resting in the ark, which speaks of Christ. As someone just said, when the judgment comes, it's going to take you away. You're not going to escape the judgment. We read of those in the coming day. They cry for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them.
And to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb in the face of him that sitteth upon the throne. But just like in Noah's day, they won't find any, any escape. But one thing we know for sure, whoever worked on this arc with Noah, and we're not told, one thing we know for sure is that the building of this ark was a solemn testimony to those around and by which He condemned the world. The very fact that he built this ark was the proof by faith was the proof that judgment was coming. God had said there was judgment coming on the world.
00:55:06
Was God fooling around? God wasn't fooling around. And Noah realizing this, he builds this ark and through the testimony of this ark and, and what he said, he preached righteousness. He was a preacher of righteousness. So what he did and what he said condemned the world and gave ample testimony and warning that judgment was pronounced by God. And when God judges are before God judges. It's a principle with God that he always does two things.
He gives the warning and He makes a way of escape. That is a principle with God. And there will be nobody in a lost eternity that will be able to say they didn't have a warning and they didn't have a way of escape. And how awful it will be to be in a lost eternity with the memory of a warning and the memory of a way of escape. Here's an example. The Lord said the word that I have spoken. The same shall judge Him in the last day.
Have you ever heard John 316? I'm going to quote it right now in case you haven't. 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.
Most, if not all of us have heard that verse many, many times. But imagine remembering that verse in a lost eternity and that verse no longer being relevant to you and applicable as to a point of refuge, but that verse rising in judgment. The word that I have spoken the same will judge him in the last day. You'll remember that verse I've just quoted in a lost eternity if you don't flee to the ark, which typically speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who is the only refuge from the judgment that's coming on this world?
Could somebody tell us what is the plot from the speaks of Noah being a preacher of righteousness? What was his message?
God's going to judge the world for the wickedness. We just read it in the Genesis 6.
He's not going to tolerate it any farther.
And you also, I suppose you pointed your soul's pretty hard, as I saw it there, a place of refuge.
He spoke of what was right. And it's interesting that he was a preacher of righteousness in a righteousness in an unrighteous world. There was so much unrighteousness going on around him, and yet he preached righteousness. And you know, that's a good word for you and for me. You know, we can speak the truth. We can speak what is right. Paul gives us an example too. He he lived in an unrighteous world. In Second Timothy, there was a breakdown of everything in every sphere.
And level of government and society, and amongst the people of God, he said, henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness. Why a crown of righteousness? The crown of, among other things, the crown of righteousness is a reward for living and speaking righteously in an unrighteous world.
You know, it's something else dawns on me too, that there were other people in the world that were related to Noah. He had brothers and sisters. His father was layman and he begat sons and daughters and none of them evidently went into the ark. And they were there. They were hearing their brother. And it makes me think too of how the brothers, half brothers of the Lord Jesus.
They he was a trial to them and they're probably embarrassment to them and they were looking at looking for him and that.
You know that it, it shames them, I guess because of the way he was. And maybe these brothers and sisters of Noah were like that too. No, What's your brother doing? And they would have stood some mockery, but they didn't go in.
And there's another generation before that too, that still we're living as a lot of relatives.
Think of the opportunities that God gives to us.
I remember talking to a young man years back and I was just a young Christian and he was talking about his mother and then he used the Lord's name in vain and I didn't ignore it, I said.
Why don't you talk about someone you know? What do you mean? I know my mother. Oh, I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about that other person you were talking about. Well, I didn't talk about anyone else. I said you used the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in vain. I did. Well, that resulted in an hour and a half talk with that young man. I don't know if I'll meet him in heaven or not, but he heard the gospel. How many times opportunities are given to us.
01:00:09
And we just let him go. And I've been guilty of that, but this was one time I wasn't, and I can be thankful for it. The Lord gives you plenty of opportunities to tell souls.
Somehow, some way about the judgment that's coming and the salvation that has been provided, I'm just going to say that's a preacher of righteousness.
You're upholding God's righteousness before souls and and pointing them to those kind of things, not in a condemning way, but in a way of salvation, and that's preaching righteousness.
We know we're saved by grace. We're not saved by works, but we uphold righteousness, don't we? We uphold that God has to judge it, and He judged it at the cross, or if He doesn't judge it at the cross, He's going to judge it on every individual that's preaching righteousness.
The question was asked, what did Dillard preach?
Genesis 613 says.
And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. That's that's that's the only thing God told him, and that's what he preached. And you know, Noah went through Nineveh. He went in a day's journey in the Nineveh. And he said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be destroyed.
Amazing. That's all he said and nine of the repentant, the whole city of Nineveh repent from the king all the way down to the animals. They put sackcloth and ashes on the animals and the whole city repented on the preaching of Jonah and the Lord Jesus makes that comment. He said Nineveh repented that the preaching of Jonah and a greater than Jonah is here. And so that's what Noah preached that God was going to destroy this world.
I'm going to read again in Jude what Enoch preached. Verse 14. Enoch also the 7th from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with 10 thousands of his Saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their heart speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Those are solemn words, and both Noah and and Enoch preached that way.
Doesn't tell us in first Peter there was a spirit of Christ and Noah. Well, the ark was being built.
319.
I'm sorry, I had my printer. Oh, should I read it? Go ahead.
But for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which by which spirit also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, And he did that through Noah.
Which sometimes were disobedient. When once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was of preparing wearing few, that is 8 souls were saved by water, that proves that there were carpenters there. They didn't get in, they were kept out. It was just Noah, his wife, his three sons and their three wives. They were disobedient or unbelievable. That's right, That's right.
Well, Noah becomes the heir of righteousness. Thinking of what Wally asked earlier.
And so he preached righteousness for all those years he lived righteously in an unrighteous world. And I don't know all that's entailed in this state when he became the heir of righteousness, but I've just thought of it in this simple way. This was the reward God honored Noah, Noah's faithfulness in speaking and living righteously in the situation that he found himself. And isn't that a nice encouragement for us? Reward is not the motivation for our Christian life.
Christ is to be our motivation, but reward is given as an incentive to encourage us to live righteously, to speak the words of truth, to speak that which is right, whether it's to the lost or truth to our brethren, or to speak righteously. We won't always be appreciated. The world may ridicule us for presenting the gospel. Sometimes, perhaps even when the truth of God is presented to fellow believers, we're not appreciated for that. But he says, just go on. Noah did that for all those years, and he became the heir of righteousness. There was a reward.
01:05:08
For living righteously well, again, like Paul, he lived righteously and he said there's a crown of righteousness laid up for me as a reward. Must have been a wonderful thing for the family of Noah to inherit that new pristine earth where there was no sin, when there was no blots of disease and everything that had been here before, and to inherit a new world in that way. Beautiful picture of a coming day when the Lord Jesus is going to make righteousness reign, isn't it?
And so, you know, it's nice to have that to encourage us. You know, it's easy to get down and and tired of all the contamination and all the sinfulness around us and all the evil that we have to deal with. And we long for a time when we'll be free. We can't even go away on vacation and get totally away from all the temptations and results of sin around us. Well, this is what's held out for us, isn't it? The coming day.
When the Lord is going to remove all that we know our part is going to be heavenly, but still air of righteousness. That's that's a great thing to have before us.
It says the sons of Noah verse 18 that went forth to the ark where Shem, Han and Jacob. And from those 3 heads it says now these are the three sons of Noah. And as then was the whole earth over the fridge, so all the nations of the earth.
Came from that. The three sons don't know and I think those who have studied line genealogies and everything, they usually can go all the way back to three heads in the street.
So we know we came from Adam, we know we came from Noah, and I think I came from Jacob.
Can't be sure.
Well, what characterizes the next individual? Abraham was obedient.
And so as he's introduced, it tells us that by faith, when Abraham, by faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed. Now it's good to just stop and meditate on that little word. He answered the call of God by faith, and he's referred to as the father of the faithful. But what characterizes him here, as I say, is not only faith but obedience. And this is a word and a concept that's undermined in the world in which we Live Today.
I've sometimes told this amusing little story to illustrate my point. But I was somewhat taken aback some years ago when my oldest daughter, at five years of age, came home after two weeks in the public school system and announced at the dinner table with a very triumphant look on her face, that, Dad, you're not allowed to spank little girls. And that is really the spirit of the age, isn't it? Disobedience.
Is what characterizes the age when we back up to Noah before the flood, disobedience, I suppose, was at its height. Men were doing their own thing. If we go back to Adam, it's the beginning of man's history of sin. By one man's disobedience, sin entered. But here we have an example brought before us now of a man who obeyed. So we're exhorted to obey the gospel and by grace.
Most of us, if not all of us in this room, can look back to that time when there was the work of the Spirit of God and of the Spirit of God, the Word of God, and the power of the Spirit that caused us to come to a point where we obeyed the gospel. No credit to ourselves, but there's that responsibility side of obeying the gospel. But does obedience end there? No, we're not our own. We're bought with a price. We're not to live for ourselves. And if we're going to walk in the path of faith, brethren, it's not just a path of faith, it's a path of obedience.
And so obedience is being undermined on every level of a society. Rebellion against authority is not just preached today or not just a practice today. It's preached and propagated. Let's go back to this man that the father of the faithful and see how that obedience, the word of God, records that he obeyed.
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So faith and obedience, they always go together. Righteousness too.
Is it correct to say that Sid began in heaven?
What is it correct to say that sin began in heaven?
Began in heaven. You mean with Satan?
Like began there, and of course came into the earth and the needle and so on, and made a second fear.
Well, Abraham didn't know the end of the story when he answered the call and obeyed. You know, it's interesting. We talked this morning at great length about these men and women of faith and the great faith that they had. But, you know, it's even greater in the sense that you have to realize that they didn't know the end of the story.
Abraham went out. Not knowing whether he went. We read the story of Abraham.
And the story of Isaac and the sacrifice and so on. In Genesis 22, we read it with confidence because we know the end of the story. I've heard the end of these stories from the very early days of my childhood. We read the story of Esther with confidence because we know that he held out the golden scepter. But when she went in, she said, if I perish, I perish. She didn't know how the king was going to react. The three Hebrew children didn't know if they were going to be consumed in the fire.
They said God is able, but they didn't know the end of the story. Daniel didn't know the end of the story when he continued to pray three times a day, knowing that the end result would be to be cast into the den of lions. When Abraham took the knife, we mentioned this this morning, but when he took the knife to slay his son.
I believe he had every thought that he was going to have to plunge that knife into the heart of his son. Accounting, as you said this morning, Brother Tom, that God was able to raise him from the dead. But they didn't know the end of the story. And to read these stories of faith with the thought in the back of your mind that they didn't know what was going to be ahead is really something that it really magnifies, accentuates their faith because they acted strictly on what they had at the moment, light from God at the moment.
Not knowing what the next step would be, what we do know, I'll read it.
1St Corinthians 3 verse 21 Therefore let no man glory in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world, or life or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours and your Christ, and Christ is God that is ours. It's just a door of entrance into the glory. We know that, and faith believes it.
That's exactly what faith is.
Acting upon what God says, not knowing the result, That's faith, and that's what Abraham did, and that's what all these faithful in this chapter did. As you say, the three, Daniel, all of them, none of them knew the end result, but they knew God. That was the point. They knew God and they knew that they were in his hands. And as the three young men said to King Nebuchadnezzar.
We're not careful to answer you.
We know that our God is able, but if He doesn't, we're still not going to bow to your image. And so it wasn't a matter of doubt. There was no doubt in their mind. They knew what God was capable of doing. They knew one thing for sure, that if He didn't save them out of that fiery furnace, that didn't make any difference. He was going to save the family. They would be with him.
There are times where may you believe God before you believe him to be saved and you've walked with God up until now.
Something happens where the whole world falls apart. It falls on your head. You don't know what's coming next. But if you know him.
That can be enough. You might. Only thing you might be able to say is I don't know what's going on. I don't like it. I am weeping, I am crushed, I am knocked down, but I trust Him. You may not have a word, you have nothing in front of you or around you, but you know Him and that can be enough. And there are times like that where we don't even know where to turn in the scripture. We don't know what to do. But if we know Him, we can come to that place where we can stay. I know Him, I trust Him. I don't know anything about it. I don't know to understand. I don't know what's going on.
01:15:07
But I trust him. Well, that's what the apostle Paul said. I know in whom I have believed perfect, simple trust. It says of Abraham, he believed God and it was accumulated unto him for righteousness. I believe that can be said of each and everyone. We believe God. It will be a conference unto us for righteousness.
In Isaiah prescriptural authentication.
Isaiah chapter 14 and verse 12, it says Power thought fallen from heaven. O Lucifer, son of the morning, power shall cut down to the ground which excluded the late nation. Without hesitating heart, I will attend unto heaven. I will exalt my throne upon the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mountain of the congregation in the side of the Lord. I will ascend above the height of the cloud. I will be like the Most High. Instead of my statement, sin began there in the person of this.
Satan or Lucifer and all of this exhalation of himself.
#45 #45.
Jesus.
Are healing. Our heart falls.
Are you feeling?
Our joy.
And our eyes.
Hebrews 11
Reading
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I Despair is right.
Would not take crumbles as far.
As the dreaming of Spark.
Horror heart already stays dark.
Hearts where?
Wisdom shall join.
No white grow strong.
With sunshine, what I saw.
And my grace, we raise the sun.
By Grace.
Yeah, yeah, he was 23.
By faith Moses, when he was born, was his three months of his parents, because they saw that he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the King's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was come up to years, refused to be called the son, the Pharaohs daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.
For He had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith He forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king. For He endured as seen Him who is invisible. Through faith He kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, lest he that destroyed the first pointer touched them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea, as by dry land, which the Egyptians are saying to do, were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down.
After they were compassed about seven days by faith, the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believe not, but she had received the spies, when she had received the spies with beasts. And what shall I say more, say, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barrack, and Samson, and Jeffy, and David, and Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, brought righteousness, obtained promises.
Stop the mouths of lions, quench the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant, and fight turned to flight. The armies of the aliens women received their dead rays to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others at trial of cruel mocking and scourgings, Yeah, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment.
00:05:11
They were stoned, they were sawn asunder. We're tempted, we're slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and in caves of the earth.
And these all have been obtained. A good report through faith received, not the promise.
God, having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.
Fred, I'd like to mention something on the word about faith.
You know, sometimes they think faith is some kind of a mystical thing and no one can, you know, have a really define it. But I, I think the word, if we take the word, I believe really is the word for faith. Now I understand in the, in the original language, the word faith faithful and I believe have the same stem.
But in English, we have the noun faith, we have the adjective faithful, and we can use the adverb faithfully, but there's no verb. It doesn't lend itself to a verb. So really the word I believe basically.
Expresses faith to us today, now.
The.
What we believe is important to now these folks that we've been reading about, usually a singular incidence in their life that they exercise that faith about. They've trusted in God and they accomplished something this day and age in which we live.
Faith is important. It's but faith in what? It's faith in the Word of God as being directed from God.
Now.
Many people have faith, so to speak. They they believe in a creator of God. Well, that's not good enough. It tells us in James the Outdoors. Well old man, thou believers in God. The demons believe and tremble. So we know many major religions believe in God. Some of them even believe in that Jesus was deity and they believe in a resurrection.
But this day and age, the substance of true saving faith has to do with the fact that we accept the Word of God as coming from Him now.
The Scriptures is the only book in this world that contains God's acting in human history. Every other religion is based upon the philosophy or some man, but in the word of God.
We have God identifying Himself with the people, what Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the 12 tribes, the nation of Israel. He raised up prophets. God has interwoven Himself in the very history of mankind. The Bible is God's revelation now.
I believe that the faith, that saving faith that we must realize, that has only validity and value in the sight of God, is the faith, The belief that the Bible is the word of God and that Jesus Christ who came into this world was God manifest in the flesh, and that he did a work upon the cross, a finished, completed atonement. These are the two key things that mankind must believe.
Without this, it's impossible to please God without faith, as we have read. But this is the only faith that that that reaches out and brings a person into relationship with the living God. Now I know you, you know too that we, we find people who, for instance, the, the, the big Roman Catholic Church, they believe that Jesus was deity. They believe that that he rose from the dead. They believe that he died for sins.
But they do not believe the complete atonement of Christ. This is the only thing that brings mankind into relationship with God.
And of course, as Christians, it's our belief that God will take care of us.
There's a distinction, isn't there, between believing in God and believing God. So the apostle Paul in Acts chapter 27, he says Acts 27 and verse 25.
00:10:06
Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe God that it shall be, even as it was told me I believe God.
What did God tell you? Well, we have in our hands what God tells us, and we believe God in what he tells us. The Catholic Church believes in God, but doesn't believe what God has told us.
It's interesting in that verse 23, I think it's the word order in the English is rather confusing. It sounds like Moses had faith when he was three months old, but it's really by faith. When Moses was born, his parents hit him for three months. It's the faith of his parents that were in exercise before Moses himself had faith, grew up and had faith of his own. And that's a good thing for parents to have faith in God.
As to their children. And that's what household baptism is about.
Having faith that God will save that child. We don't inherit faith, but it's nice to see the progression here because we first of all, as you say, have the faith of Moses. Parents brought before us. And then we have the faith of Moses, not that he inherited that faith, but what was instilled in him when he was a child eventually developed. And I would like to say this to parents and to my own heart particularly because I believe there's not only an encouragement to parents here in connection with.
Raising children, but an encouragement coupled with patience, you say? What do you mean? Well, it's interesting that as we know, Moses was put in the basket in the ark of bull rushes and then he was drawn out. He was given back to his mother by Pharaohs daughter because through the instrumentality of Miriam, who spoke up and went and got a nurse and so on. And then we know in the course of time he was taken to the court of Pharaoh to be trained in the school of the dead.
To be the son of Pharaoh's daughter and no doubt eventually to be the heir to the to the throne of Egypt. But it's interesting what it says when Stephen recounts this history in the 7th chapter of Acts. It says when he was full 40 years it came to his heart to visit his brethren. That was a long time for his parents to wait to see fruit, wasn't it? It was a long time. Now some of us pray for our children.
And we want to see instantaneous results. We want to see the Lord reach down in their hearts and turn their hearts.
Immediately. And that's natural. As parents, we want to see our children go on for the Lord. We want to see fruit in their lives and blessing because we know that the end of a course of self will is always that we reap what we sow. But these parents waited 40 years to see some fruit, so to speak. But isn't it encouraging to think that as his mother took that baby, her own son, back to the house and began to instill in him the things of God?
And raised him for the Lord. And then had to turn him over. It must have impinged her heart when he finally went to live in the palace. She knew what he was going to face. She knew that many of the things that she had instilled in him and that his father had instilled in him were going to be counteracted. And they were going to try to discredit those things and teach him the wisdom of Egypt, the wisdom of this world. But I have no doubt that those parents just committed him to the Lord.
But I say it took 40 years before it was put in his heart to visit his brethren. And then we see the result of his upbringing. Oh, I think it's an encouragement. I say again in terms, we want to see instant results. May we even pray for for instant results. But let's learn, parents and parents, I can only say to this to my own heart, and I say it particularly for myself this afternoon. Let's learn to wait on God. He has a desire to bless our children.
And if we're faithful with our children, he's him that honoreth me I will honor. But let's learn to waste his time. Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. It may not be to pass as quickly as we had hoped. No doubt Moses parents, they wondered as the years rolled by, 20 years, 30 years, 35 years, they wanted, are we going to see some fruit, some result of what we've instilled in our son when he was a young child and still home with us?
But the day did come, brethren, and I believe that God is faithful even if we're not faithful, and I'll be the first to admit I've made many mistakes as a parent, but even if we're not faithful, he abideth faithful. He cannot deny himself. The Lord said I am the way, the truth and the life. Want to make a comment in connection with our brother's comments on faith? A man who had written a book, he was a Christian, was being interviewed by a woman who was.
00:15:20
Modernist.
She didn't have faith and she said to him, how do I know that what you've written in your book is true?
Said dear Adam, whatever her name was, you can never know if what I've written in my book is true unless you know the truth itself, and you can never know the truth itself unless there is a truth to be known.
There must be that which is absolute.
And Buddha doesn't have the truth, and he's not the truth.
Muhammad is not the truth, all these false prophets are not the truth. The Lord Jesus is the truth and to receive him I I don't like calling faith in Mohammed or Buddha or any of these false gods faith. I just don't like that because.
That kind of that kind of it's a delusion is what it is. That would be a better word. They have a delusion in putting their confidence.
In a false prophet, but we want one who is the truth himself and we have that in the Lord Jesus. That's true faith, isn't it? I think that if we go back to the sixth verse that substantiates that and the well known verse we've already touched on. I don't want to slow us down in this chapter, but it says in the middle of the verse for he that cometh to God must believe that he is. That's one thing and that he is the rewarder of them that.
Diligently seek him. That is the that's the second-half of the equation about faith. He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. God honors faith. It's not. It's never A1 sided issue. Someone believes in him and then he doesn't follow through. He is the rewarder of them that believe him. That couldn't be true of a false God. There's so many that think that if they're just sincere in what they believe.
That, that that's faith. And that's you believe in one thing, I believe in another, and we'll all get there. And I was pumping gas for him, and I handed him a track and we got into a discussion. And he said, by the way, how do I get to Evanston from here? And I said, you really want to get to Evanston? He says, yeah, you're really sincere in that. Yeah, take any road you want, as long as you believe in it, you'll get there. He said, wait a minute, that's not going to work.
I said of course it's not going to work, but that's what you just told me about getting to heaven. As long as you're sincere, you'll get there. Nonsense.
You have to believe in the true God and the one who is the truth himself, the Lord Jesus. And thy word is truth. The Holy Spirit is the truth. The Lord Jesus is the truth. Do you know him? You know that person now? Now you've got a foundation that you can rest your everything on, right?
So faith is not an object in itself. It's who you believe in that is important. And so those people believe in somebody that is false. They may sincerely believe in that, but it's not going to do them any good because the object is not the truth. That's why it's so important to know the revelation of God in Christ. He is the truth.
Faith and trust is similar in that if you're going to climb a ladder.
Trusting each going to hold you up the ladder. It's the same as faith. I have faith that that step in that matters going to hold me. Now we see in Moses family there is faith. We see Moses had faith not to be called the center Phalos daughter. He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches and the treasures of Egypt and he went on faith. Now this chapter has brought up to us because we have wanted to be exercised by faith.
Live by space. We want to walk by faith. Now, young people ourselves, as we grow older, there's going to be times in our life we want to know the will of God in our life. So one of the things we have to know about the will of God is who we have faith now. What are some of the things that we can have to build up or encourage us? Is it according to God's word? Do I have a leading of the Holy Spirit? And here's a question, a hard one that we need and do I have the fellowship of my trip?
00:20:03
Going back to what you said, Jim, about Moses and his parents, and I'm sure when she had him home, she must have told him in those early formative years that they were the people of God and that they had an inheritance in another land that was far more glorious than anything there was in Egypt. But like you say, there was a long time and even when he got to 40 years old.
That's where you see the beginnings of fruit in his life. But then he went out in the desert and it was a whole nother 40 years old. I wonder if Moses parents were probably passed away by the time he became an instrument for God that what an instrument he was and and I don't suppose in the Old Testament there was a mightier man that God used than Moses, but that's the way it started and I think that's a real encouragement.
So their faith hit him for a time.
And then that faith saw he was a proper child. Not to me. That means not just the proper child to them.
Loved and cared for by them, but loved and cared for by God, Jehovah, their God and God loved that child as much as they did. And when they realized that, then they could put that child in the ark picture of Christ he was in. He wasn't just in a, in a, in a.
Bulrushes. He was in God's hands. They put him in God's trust.
And during that time when they couldn't watch out for him. And that's the face that God honors. And I love to thank Doug, that when they put him into the river, they put him right where Pharaoh had commanded him to be put, but in that little arc of Borussia's. And so when Pharaoh's daughter came down to take him out and later on, he was in the court of Pharaoh, if Pharaoh would have said, hey.
What are you doing with that child there? I commanded they put be put in the river. She could say he was in the river. I pulled him out. So Pharaoh's commandment was fulfilled. He couldn't say anything more.
Not only fulfilled that, he used the very family of Pharaoh to sustain and pay for his upbringing and care for him. Exactly. That's God's honoring their faith. There are two sides of the world, I believe, brought out in these two verses that we began with.
And I think they're important to see if I stay two sides of the world, because we find that Egypt, most times in Scripture, when it's brought before us, it's brought before us as a picture of this world. And we find, first of all, in the 23rd verse, they were not afraid of the King's commandment. That is the Pharaoh's side of the world, if I can put it that way. And when we read the history of Pharaoh at that time, it was a history that sought to keep the people of God in *******. Pharaoh is a picture of Satan, Egypt a picture of this world.
Satan is a hard taskmaster. He had the people of God in *******. Satan's not our friend. The way of the transgressor is hard. But when we think of the Pharaoh side of the world, we perhaps think of the more raw side of things, and things that we would recognize very quickly as being part of the world. But there's the Pharaoh's daughter side of the world too, brethren. And I believe that the Pharaoh's daughter's side of the world is a far more subtle side of the world.
Then the Pharaoh side. And so the time came in Moses life when he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. You know when Moses was taken to the palace to be reared as Pharaoh's daughter, it wasn't the raw side of things, it was the nice side of things. I imagine every comfort was provided for him. The best food, the best sleeping accommodations, the best tutors of the day.
This was the nicety side of the world, and I believe that often a Satan uses the nice side of the world to ensnare us and to ensnare our children. We might be exercised as parents to keep our children from the raw side of the world. But in doing that, sometimes, perhaps, brethren, I don't want to point the finger again. I can only point it at my own heart. But sometimes, perhaps even unconsciously, we substitute the nice side of the world. We say, well, we keep them from certain things, and we don't let our children do this and that and the other thing.
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And we substitute it for something that is perhaps in its perhaps more subtle.
Than what we are seeking to keep them from and in the end because it is more subtle.
It has more detriment to them. Let's be very careful, parents, that we seek to keep our children not only from the feral side of the world. Pharaoh's parents did that, but to teach them the subtlety of the Pharaoh's daughter's side of the world. And Moses came to this point in his life. And young people, you're going to have to come to that point in your life where you realize that what the world offers, it may seem very, very nice. It may seem like it's going to add to the ease and comfort of life.
But it is going to take you away from following the Lord and being a blessing to God's people.
If Pharaoh had remained in the palace in Egypt, he could have perhaps been the next Pharaoh in Egypt. A pyramid erected to his memory had all the ease and comfort that Egypt could have offered. But he gave that up. What did he give it up for? Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy, if you notice Mr. Darby's translation, the temporary pleasures of sin.
That which would last for a moment for time, He gave it up in light of that which he knew was for eternity. He endured us seeing him who is invisible. So I think it's very good to be exercised as to both sides of the world, the Pharaoh side, which we see very quickly, but also that which is very insidious, the Pharaoh's daughter side. There's another thought here in verse 24 too, that is good for us.
And that is it says in Mr. Darby's translation by Faith Moses when he was come to yours. Mr. Darby puts it this way. When he has become great, when he had become great, that's what the world did for him, made him, taught him to be a great man. But he was totally useless to be helped amongst God's people in that state. He needed those 40 years in the backside of the desert to learn to be small.
And when he came forth out of God's school, we found that he was the meekest man in all the earth, and God could use him to be a help to his people. And so he did have the marks of the world on him. We know when he did forsake Egypt. Remember the story in Exodus chapter 2 That Pharaoh's rather Zipporah and her sisters, when they reported to their father that an Egyptian had helped them, he thought that doesn't sound like an Egyptian that would do something like that. And why did they say that he was an Egyptian?
Because he had the garb and the marks of the world all over him. And so they took him to be an Egyptian. But he was an Egyptian. He was a child of God that had been in the world.
And so those things had to be taken off. He had to learn to put those things aside in the school of God before he could be helpful. Interesting, isn't it?
That in that same verse 24 says he refused to be called Pharaoh's daughter. Interesting what a position he had. I'm going to read a little scripture in Acts 7 which already has been alluded to and it says of him this and Moses was learned.
In all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words. And indeed Moses was a man of the day. He was the man of the hour. In Egypt there are some.
Ancient.
Writings in regard to what Moses did, and he installed and put together some of the great objects of Egypt that are still panicked.
They're still standing today. He was great, but he refused that greatness you touched on a brother Gordon once said Moses had the 340 year periods of his life and the 1St 40 years he was learning to be great and learning to be somebody. And then he had 40 years learning to be nobody. And then he spent 40 years learning that God was everything and that was.
A a trace of his his faith, it looks like when he.
Refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He made a choice that was going to bring affliction. He was going to suffer for it. And so he he did. We know that he had to flee for his life because he thought he was going to be the judge right away. He didn't realize it wasn't God's time. So when it does say by faith he forsook Egypt, I believe that was after the 2nd 40 years and he was ready to leave. You think that's right, Brother Chuck?
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When he was taking the people out, I was thinking how he.
When he was called upon to lead the people out, he said I'm not eloquent, I can't speak, I can't speak, Get some help. And so finally the Lord.
Exasperated with Moses gave him Aaron. But what's been read in Acts? He was mighty in words and deeds. He learned that in Egypt. So he just didn't. He wanted to get out of it. But that's not in here. That's not in the 11Th chapter. Hebrews. We don't get the failures of the Saints, but we shouldn't.
We shouldn't think that because there's no failures here that they didn't have any. We all have them. But he didn't. He doesn't. That's to me, that is so precious. He doesn't look, I think the judgment seat of Christ. He will not be looking at our failures, but commending what was true faith and true obedience on our part. That's what's valuable to him. He just completely ignores the failures.
But we'll be glad that the wood, hay and stifles burned up. Gone.
When we have the subject kind of which we're a little bit fast and going back of parents and the children, that kind of touches the chord with some of us and.
Thought to be discouraged by this, but, you know, there's certain statistics out in this world, and I don't know how accurate they are, but among evangelicals.
Less than 40% of children race and evangelical homes go on for the Lord.
And those that do have a heart to go on once they hit college.
They usually 60% of those who have gone through four years of college have quote UN quote, lost their faith.
So those are some pretty depressing statistics.
Another statistic that is perhaps helpful, but hopefully not something that we would have to deal with very often at least, and that is divorce rates.
Evangelicals as a whole, the divorce rate is identical to the world. It's one out of two.
One out of two marriages end up with divorce among those that take evangelical stand in this world.
But that proportion goes to one out of 400 if there's three things that are done.
Number one, if you eat meals together.
#2 You go to church as a family and #3.
Get my head together here. You have a family devotion time. Those three things. Change those statistics from one out of two to one out of 400.
Could it be that maybe the statistics concerning our children might change?
Maybe those three things.
Some simple things to think about.
How do we gender faith in our children, faith in God? It's nice if our kids can see that faith in US.
I'm sure it's pretty dim with some of us, but.
Do we commit our ways to the world all by ways acknowledge him? We kind of use that as a young people first. Well, how about as parents first?
Do we see, do our kids see things that maybe go wrong in the family and would go well?
We bear pray about that again, and maybe the Lord is just telling us something else. Acknowledge the Lord in it. Some of us tend to get frustrated when things don't seem to go according to plan. And maybe if our kids thought that he just committed to mourn a little more. That was gender faith. How about asking them questions?
To see things from God's point of view.
So let's say we're riding home from the conference.
This evening and.
What do you think? Do you think that the church is in ruins? How about that for a question for a for an early teen? Why not ask them? Why not?
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And see what what points of view they take well.
You know what kind of answers you might get, and that is, well, let's see.
Isn't the church going to be presented to Christ? And so maybe it's really not ruined.
Well, if you kind of get an answer like that, you're real degenerative, Tremendous amount of faith in that child that God's point of view should be our point of view. Would that be nice?
If somehow we can teach that God's point of view is our point of view, what a tremendous thing. And sometimes those things can simply be taught through some questions and some guidance, of course, in trying to generate an answer, but it's helpful.
To interact and to let the children see Here we talked about failure.
You know, so my kids see my failure. Big deal. What's wrong with that? But can we take that failure to the Lord? Can they see the next step? Well, don't worry, your kids see your failure. Don't let anybody fool you. But can you take that to the Lord? Do they see that as a step in faith, a faith that they can follow?
In the final analysis, it's the grace of God.
And one thing I've had to learn with my young people is that I can't reach down in their hearts and change their hearts. Only the Lord can do that. We have responsibility as it's just been brought out. And them that honor me, I will honor. But when the day comes, I believe when we have to commit them to the Lord and realize that it's only His grace. And if you'll allow me just to make one other comment in the regard to what's been said, Another great lesson I've had to learn, and I can't say I've learned it, but that I have sought to learn. I trust before the Lord.
Motive in desiring our kids to go on, our children to go on for the Lord. Do I want my children to go on for the Lord because it looks good on me and commends my ministry? Or do I want my young people to go on for the Lord for their blessing and the Lord's glory? There's quite a difference, isn't there? And if we really, I believe, have an exercise, brethren, that our young people go on for the Lord's glory and for their blessing and rest on the promises of God.
We've had statistics brought before us, but statistics don't change the promises of God. We can rest on the promises of God. It reads some statistics. They may be accurate, they may not be accurate. They may overwhelm us, They may not overwhelm us. But I believe that our resource is to go back to God and to his word and to rest on that. And it's interesting here too, that Moses parents taught by example as well as precept. I say that because it says of them.
They didn't fear the King's commandment. There was courage, moral courage here to take a stand and to hide their child three months against the King's commandment. And thus this, I believe, though Moses was very young at the time, This I believe then encouraged Moses later on. He forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king. He'd seen the face of his parents in operation. He'd seen it in a practical way. He had seen how that when they had taken a stand.
That God had undertaken for them and that encouraged Moses then to take a stand as well.
I think when we're dealing with Jehovah God of all the earth.
Creator and Sustainer of the whole universe, who before he ever laid a stone in creation, He chose us to be conformed to the image of His Son. God knows what he's doing. He is working all things after the council of his own will.
He cannot deny himself. His purposes will be accomplished in the end. We fail, it's true. We fail. We are not zealous. We are far more Laodicean than we are.
Elsa Philadelphian And what what we do is not what we necessarily should do, but what God is doing, he's doing to his own honor and glory.
We will accomplish.
The purposes that he has ordained from the very beginning.
What my responsibility is to bow low at His feet as one who is totally dependent upon Him and His Word and His ways in the leading of the Holy Spirit. He wants fruit in my life.
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Lives He wants us to be truly satisfied, but more than that, devoted to Him. How important it is to seek the honor and glory through the Word of God and the power of the Spirit of God to be just like the Lord Jesus Christ.
The The parents of Moses acted in faith in putting him in the basket and in the river.
God rewarded their faith by having the Princess see him and then get Moses mother to take care of him and she taught him, she taught him the fear of God and that that came out later. But I want to say a word to the young people.
We had Noah before us and his wife isn't mentioned much. I don't know if she's ever mentioned anyway. And the the children were there. They saw the fate of their father and they valued that.
And he taught them, no doubt, but he knew of God. They came out of the ark. And then Noah ate of some of the vineyard and he got drunk.
And one of the boys, Ham, looked on the nakedness of their father, of his father. The other two, Shem and Japheth, they went backwards and covered their father's nakedness. Now, young people, there's no one that knows better than you do the failures of your father and mother. You know them better than anyone else.
Keep it within the family.
Cover the nakedness.
Of your father.
I have a lot of nakedness.
He wasn't a good father.
Don't expose that to others.
Ham did.
But not Shem Jacob.
Shield your parents.
And you'll be rewarded for it.
The detriment to in that case fell on him, not necessarily directly on the Father, only in a second hand way. And if we if we brethren unholy.
Respect.
Do these things, we will be the ones who suffer first hand.
Another thing I like to think about in the judgment seat of Christ has been mentioned.
And it will be for rewards and there will be such a thing as suffering loss. But I think, brethren, what's going to stand out there above all else is the grace of God. And how if there's anything that there can be, He can say well done in my life. It's His grace that worked it. There's nothing that we're going to be able to glory of in ourselves.
That's what's going to stand out in that day.
We won't really. We won't really feel we're unprofitable servants. We've only done that, which is our duty to do. If we can say this. That's the scriptural answer, I think.
I was thinking also though about the parents of Moses and we've talked about parenthood, what other things the Lord lays on your heart as a parent and exercise for your children. Maybe it's to home school, maybe it's to send them to public school. Both take faith folks, good faith. Just seek to answer the Lord to exercise feelings onto your heart for your children. See before him without it. We see too here that the titanium came in Moses life when he had to make a conscious choice.
And I just want to say this too, to those who are younger, don't look at the failure of your parents. There's plenty of failure in us. But don't look at the failure of your parents and blame it for some course that you want to go on yourself. Because while parents are held responsible, I'll be held very responsible for how I raised my girls. But the other side of it is they will be held responsible for the choices that they made. So there's two sides of it.
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And I think some, there's a great system that sometimes even comes under the banner of Christianity where people will sit others down and take them back through their past and pinpoint something that their parents did or didn't do and say, well, your failure now or the course you're on now is because of something your parents didn't or did or didn't do. I had a cousin, I really believe she's the Lords, and she went to one of these counselors and he turned her completely bitter against her, her parents.
I know her parents no doubt had many failures, didn't do everything right, but he turned her completely bitter against them and said the reason you've had two divorces and that you're on this course now is because of the way that they raised you. Each one of us are going to stand responsible at the judgment seat of Christ where I'm going to have to give an account for myself. You're going to have to yourself, you're going to all have to give an account for my failure. My children will have to give an account for their reaction to that failure. I don't say that to excuse anything.
But the day came in Moses life when he chose. And what did he choose? He was one in Scripture who made a good choice. You know, with Lot, who I think we mentioned the other day, he made a choice too. There was a strife amongst brethren between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle and Locke's cattle and Locke made a choice, but he made a very poor choice. It was a choice that dragged him down. He didn't lose his soul, but he lost his discernment, his testimony and to a great extent his family.
But Moses made a choice too, and I have no doubt it was a very difficult choice. Imagine having the world at your doorstep, everything. To be one of the greatest men in the world and to choose. And what did he choose? To suffer affliction. That's quite a contrast, isn't it? To choose to leave the palace of Pharaoh, the greatest king of his day, of the day, and to go out and to identify with a company of people and suffer affliction. But you know, there was a reward and he had the reward in view, as is brought out in these verses.
And I think of fear of Moses in a future and in a future day to what we read up here.
What? Where was he? He was on the Mount of Transfiguration with the Lord. You jump ahead from him, suffering affliction with the people of God, and you see him there. He could have had a pyramid to his honor. But you say to Moses, would you have traded being on the Mount of Transfiguration to having a flash of glory in this world, in Egypt? Oh, he'd say, not for one moment when I see Moses as we are gathered around the Lord Jesus in the coming day.
Say to a Moses, was it really worth it? They hated it. They spoke against you, they wanted to stone you, they provoked your spirit. They wouldn't listen to your messages that you've conveyed from Jehovah as his mouthpiece. Was it really worth it? Oh, he'll say yes indeed, because our light affliction is but for a moment, but it worketh more exceeding and eternal way to glory. And brethren, if we can just keep that in view. It's not easy. We we exhort our young people to follow the Lord.
To identify with the people of God, to leave the pleasures of this world. Do we tell them it's easy? No. Was it easy for Moses? No, it was not easy. But it was worth it all. And he had that view at the end of his life of the land. He didn't get to go in, but he had a view of it. And then he was on the Mount of Transfiguration. And then he'll be there in that coming day of glory when the Lord Jesus is going to have his rightful place.
I'd like to say a little bit more for the help of our young people in connection with education.
Moses Here Moses nor his parents chose the course of his education. Moses was put in the in the hands of the Lord, and the Lord chose the destiny of where he was going to be raised, when and how, both with his parents and in the in the with Pharaoh's daughter, where he was educated according to a education.
Of that land, and we've had it referred to that he became learned and all the wisdom. What's the other word for the Egyptians of the power and learning, Learning of learning of Egypt? That was not a course of greatness that Moses chose on of himself.
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But it was of God to prepare him for a work that God had. And so I believe it's helpful if we can put in the hands of the Lord what he wants us to take up as far as education of the world. And it doesn't say that he forsook the education of the world. It says he forsook the relationship with Pharaoh's daughter.
That is the part that he gave up. He gave that up. The world will educate us for its own motives and reasons, for their benefit. Young people don't get an education for that reason. If you, if you cannot break that relationship with the world, then it's detrimental. But Moses did.
He gave that up that relationship and God used him. I have. This has been helpful for me.
I know there's parents that.
Discourage higher education. And there are parents that encourage it. I'm I don't want to make pronouncements about that because I don't know whether they do it for the Lord or they do it for other reasons. The important thing is not so much well, first of all, to do it for greatness, for self is wrong.
And I think this teaches us that. But it's in the Lord's hands this what he would have for everyone and the and that makes it right or wrong.
Back to our chapter, is this thinking we got halfway through verse 27?
Where by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king. But the second part of that verse says, for he endured as seeing him who was invisible, so he could forsake the visible part of Egypt because he had his trust. And when he could not see. Wasn't that true of us? We, we trust one we who's invisible to us, and that's what will sustain us. And that's what brought him on the right course.
I'd like to say a word to those contemplating marriage.
What's the greatest gift you can give to your children when you have children?
Fathers love your wives. Husbands love your wives.
They should see that they should see.
The daddy loves mommy.
And the woman be subject to your husband's, they should see that she obeys him and she's subject to him. I remember being in a house and this young husband said.
I don't know how I ever could have lived to it without her.
My wife and she said to me.
He just loves me so much.
Children see that.
When the children see that, that's going to solve a lot of problems.
Don't ever speak against your husband or your wife in front of the children.
They should see the opposite. Daddy loves Mommy and she loves him.
Satan knows that that's the thing that will destroy families.
And that's what he's trying to do, destroy families.
Well, he endured as you say, Brother Tom, and I think this is a word to all of our hearts wherever we are in the path of faith because the path of faith is a path of endurance. And in the next chapter he says let us run with it, should read endurance. The race that is set before us could substitute the word to perseverance. And so that is what the path of faith is. We've spoken at great length of the 1St 40 years, the first two segments of 40 years.
In the life of Moses. But now there's another 40 years and it was a lot. It was a path of endurance. It was a long time. 40 years was a long time to lead the people of God and especially the especially a congregation of people who, as we've already said, were stiff necked and rebellious, didn't always appreciate Moses. You know, we often speak about Moses losing his patience with the people of God and.
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It wasn't right, and it kept him out of the land. He called them rebels, and he spoke unadvisedly. And I say just once in 40 years. Now, to me, that was a pretty good record. It was once too many, of course. But to think that for 40 years he endured as seeing him who is invisible, You know, Moses had to get up every day and face these people. And there were fresh trials. There were physical trials. They faced being in a wilderness. There were moral circumstances that arose, all these things. He had to face these things.
Day by day and year by year for 40 long years. But how did he endure? He had the end in view. He endured us seeing him who is invisible. You know, it's interesting. We won't take time to turn back to it. But in, I think it's the 16th of, or perhaps it's the 15th of Exodus, either one. You can look it up sometime. You find that as soon as they're in the wilderness, they begin to murmur and complain and Moses cries to the Lord. And what does the Lord tell Moses to do?
He tells him to tell the children of Israel to turn around. They were looking back to Egypt. They were looking in the wrong direction. And when they turned around and looked out over the wilderness, what did they see? They saw the glory of the Lord in the cloud. They in some way Jehovah was pleased to reveal himself to them. And with that glory, that revelation, that vision before their souls, they could press on. They often lost sight of it.
But I wonder if Moses, if that wasn't what kept Moses going, he endured as seeing him who is invisible.
And so we're running a path of a race of endurance, but we'll only endure from hour to hour, day-to-day, and year to year, in the measure in which we have the glory of the Lord before our souls.
That's excellent. I really appreciate that they turned around from facing the world Egypt to facing the glory go to go on toward the land of Canaan. And that's what we're doing. We're on the way to the glory to see the face of him who loved us and gave himself for us and and if we turn and face the world instead.
We are losers by all matters and so turn around and and and face the Lord.
In his ways, he did want to go back a number of times. Didn't they raise up a captain and they're just looking at the next verse by faith? They passed through the Red Sea, and when you read, it doesn't sound like they had much faith. They were trapped by the mountains and by the Egyptian army coming up behind them in the Red Sea.
Raging before them and they didn't know what was going to happen, but that was faith to walk into it and find it parted and go through on dry land as on dry land. And when you see see up where we are, there's some pretty high tides and when the tide goes out it looks like it's dry land. It's sandy looking. But if you've walked out there, you'd go into your knees and look.
They didn't go into their knees and muck. They walked on dry land. God didn't just remove the water. He, he dried the land. It was a miracle. And so they went across. They were they, they survived that. And then when the Egyptians came through, it said that they were drowned. And you can understand if the water seeped into that mud once again, that the Chariots would drive hard and they were trapped. They couldn't go back and they couldn't go forward.
And that's how God destroyed them. But it was by the faith that they went through the Red Sea positionally. They never got back into Egypt. It does say that they were in their hearts. They returned into Egypt. Thank God, once they were delivered, they never got back there. That was a complete deliverance enacted by the power of God, and they never got back there. But the danger is, brethren, in our hearts, we can return into Egypt. We'll never be part of this world again, positionally.
But let's be careful that we don't return there in our hearts.
The girl was sitting on a park bench reading the Bible. A man sat beside her and said, what are you reading? Oh, I'm reading about the children of Israel going through the Red Sea and how that the sea opened up and all that was a place where it was only this deep and they could walk through it all. She said, praise the Lord. Now what are you praising the Lord for while all the armies of the Egyptians drowned in three feet of water.
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There's a scripture in Acts 28 I'd just like to call you attention to. It seems to me like this might sum up what faith is I? I kind of call it faith in action. Acts 28 when Paul was shipwrecked.
Verse 25.
When everything was seemed to be in disorder and threatening their lives. Verse 25 wherefore serves be of good cheer for I believe God that it shall be even as it was told me this is faith in action. I believe God tax 27 Oh I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, Acts 2725, where Paul says that you know, I believe God, that it should be even as it was told me. So when you have faith, you can have faith in an unstable person. I've read where people have faith in con men and they lost a fortune. Faith is simply who you believe and what you believe. And so Paul gives it gives us here in the face that action. I believe God.
And so that's where our faith has to center, and that's what I believe. All of these were these in this acts around Hebrews 11. They believe God. They put their faith and trust in him regardless of what the circumstances are. In fact, someone has said that when we can't trace His hand, we can always trust His heart. And so that that helps them to persevere in that path of faith and belief.
Hi, we read also verse 24 saying Fear not all, thou must be brought before Caesar. Oh God hath giving thee all them that sail with me. His faith asked for all them sailing with him. All didn't just ask for himself, he asked for all into the sailing that they were investing.
Bob, I don't think we're going to understand grace until after the judgment seat of Christ, because there we'll see exactly what we were. Talk a little louder, brother.
There, we'll see exactly what we were. And he loved us in spite of it.
And we'll find out more about the Lord, won't we? About His love and His appreciation. So much greatness of his heart.
So we won't be occupied with ourselves.
Through faith, he kept the Passover. That's an interesting statement there, isn't it? And I, I think it simply means that.
Moses being who he was, a great leader that he was, it wasn't any other instruction for him than for all the other of the children of Israel. He had to take God at His word as well. And that's what faith does. Irrespective of who you are or who you think you are, it is.
Taking God at His Word, He kept the Passover in the sprinkling of the blood. The sprinkling is the application of these things on a personal level.
On a household level, really in Egypt, but it, it, it is very important to apply these things, not just talk about them. Here it's easy to talk about them, but to apply them.
It was very essential.
They apply that blood according to what God's instruction was and it if we go back and look at it, they were not to go out once that blood was applied, they were not to go out of the door. And so they were under the shelter of the blood. They wouldn't have been under the shelter of the blood even if they had applied it had they gone out into the street. So God says stay inside where the protection is.
It's interesting that we can do that for our family.
We can apply the blood.
And trust God for the results. You know, everyone that was inside that door was safe. Everyone didn't make any difference what they had been in the past inside that door, they were safe. It's interesting. It says that he kept the Passover. You know, he wasn't the first born. He wouldn't have been slave.
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But he had a first born. But he had a first born.
And as the destroying Angel went through Egypt, there was only one question asked.
Is there blood on the door? He didn't say is there nice people living here or there, bad people living here? That wasn't the question. Is there blood on the door? That's the only basis on which God can pass over a house. And inside that home there was a feast. That's not brought out here. But you know, as we, I think what Dave said is very helpful, but we need to be careful to what we bring into our homes. We keep, we have our families there.
We claim the promises of God for our household, but what do we bring into our homes? Do we bring those things in that would feed?
Ourselves and our families with that which is of Christ, they had a feast and what did they feast on? They feasted on the roast lamb and those things that spoke of the person and work of Christ. Is that what we're feeding on ourselves and for our children or brethren? Do we bring into our homes those things that feed us with the lusts of this world? We need to be very, very careful. I know I've told this little story before, but I'm going to repeat it because it spoke to me.
As a father and so on, many years ago, there was a certain commodity being propagated on the market, just coming on the market. And in my hometown of Smiths Falls, there was a salesman going from door to door and he came to the door of Brother Albert Hayhoe. And he was determined to sell Brother Hayhoe this commodity that was becoming very popular in many homes. And finally in desperation he said to Albert, Hey ho. He said, if you buy this certain commodity.
You can bring the world right into your home, Brother Hale said. That's the very thing I'm trying to keep out, and you know what I'm talking about. And there are other things, too. In this modern day of technology in which we live, our homes, really, brethren, are the only sanctuary that's left against the world. The assembly, to a certain extent. But David said I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. Just being with the people of God doesn't preserve us. But fathers, mothers, what we need to be exercised about is yes.
To bring our children under the promises of God, to claim for ourselves and for our household.
But we also then have responsibility as we bring our children into the homes, so to speak, that we keep out those things that are going to be a detriment in the work of the Spirit of God in our lives and in the lives of our children for blessing not only.
Is the instrument you spoke of. We all know what it is, television, but there is another one that has come that will do the same thing that the television will do, has done, and that's the computer. It must be kept under control. There's a tremendous advantage to having a computer in the home, and there perhaps is some advantage to a television. I have raised five children without one and I've never had one. But that's.
Neither here nor there. What we need to know is.
There what you said we are the supervisors of a sanctuary.
Where the children are guided, plus or minus, for or against. And frankly, one of the main reasons I never brought one into my home was because I personally am a weak Christian and I know what the flesh in me would like to see. And in a moment of weakness, I might.
Feed my soul.
That sort of thing. Well, I'll tell you, you can do what you like in this country, but to bring.
These instruments into your home and give liberty to the children to see, to watch what they want to watch is a tragedy.
That Moses parents hid him three months, they kept him hidden from the influences of the world. And I think there's a principle there, like you say, Jim, that the home should be a sanctuary in which children can be hidden from the influences of the world. Then later on when Moses came to years or became great, it says he first took Egypt.
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He came to that conclusion on himself, that this is something I don't want.
He first took it Egypt, like you were mentioned before, Jim, that is a picture of this world.
Egypt was sustained and I suppose is today still by a river. They had their own source of supply for their for their need. They didn't depend on reigns from heaven. Canaan was a land that depended on God reigns from heaven. And it's a real principle. The world is a vast system where people can be in some measure.
Content or they try to make themselves that way without God and Moses said I don't want that for myself. And I think young people, you have to come to a point where you say do I want to satisfy my soul in what this world has to offer? Is that where my satisfaction is going to be? Moses forsook Egypt.
Moses's mother had a choice.
When she took that ark, prepared it, put that little baby in it and went down to the river, she could have put her little ark in the in the river there and then taking her foot and give it a good hard shove out of the river. But it speaks about flags twice.
She laid it among the flags by the river's brink, not very far out. You have to take our children out of this world with. Please don't take them very far. We have to, in a way.
Right by the river's brink, where the child could be watched. And you might notice that when you go down to the river next time, look at the river rink, the water flowing in the opposite direction sometimes.
So there's little eddies there. The Lord can control those streams at the Kenny. That's very good. And it's interesting too, Brother Dave, that when he came up out of the river and was handed back to her, she was given a dual responsibility. The first thing was to take this child away. She was to take him away. Away from what? Away from that which represented this world. And that is a responsibility to fathers too. But it's interesting that it's a responsibility there given to the mother.
I'm thankful for a mother when I was growing up who created a godly atmosphere in the home, who took us away from the world. Yes, she sent us out the door every morning to the school bus. But when we came home, we were removed. We were taken away from the influences of the world. We left those things outside. And then she was also given a responsibility, Moses, mother, and that was to nurse this child.
To take him away and nurse him for me. And if I could just simply say this in connection with what perhaps we learned from that, is that a mother when she is nursing a child is very careful what she takes in herself. And then repeat that a mother when she nurses a child is very careful what she takes in herself. So not to excuse the responsibility of fathers, because there are plenty of scriptures to exercise those of us who are fathers, but I believe the mother has a special.
Responsibility and a special privilege in creating in the home that sanctuary against the world, a godly atmosphere by keeping the world out and bringing before her children those things that are of God.
Brother Bruce, I think you've mentioned the three parts to this. Would you go over those three things? The the group general groupings here that we've read, there's two that are in the part that we read. Could you go over that?
Well, the 1St.
7 verses or so give us.
The faith that would draw near to God and escape judgment. You'll see the examples are to do with that. And then from verse 8 on to 22, we see the kind of faith that would.
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See the world to come and to lay hold of it and live for it.
You see that in particularly in which is 1313 and 14, but all those examples in that middle section are to that end. And then in verse 23, where we began reading today through to the end of the chapter, we have.
The kind of examples of faith that overcomes this present world. And so you see the great example of Moses overcoming.
The present evil world. So let me say that again, it's really the.
The faith that saves, and then examples of faith that sees the world to come.
And then lastly, the examples of faith that's willing to suffer.
Because there's something better and that really gives us to overcome this world.
And if in the latter part here, if we could go on, I think it might be nice if we touched on the last verses of the chapter here. We notice as the list goes on here that towards the end, people aren't delivered from what they they sought after. That is, they actually died or they perished it and so forth. And yet they did not miss that or they are not going to miss out on what they hoped for, what they had faith in.
And so there are those who trusted God and God did deliver them and they're, as the list goes on, then the group, they do not receive deliverance. They actually perished, martyred or whatever. And so even that does not hit keep them from the object that they trust they sought after. And God is going to give it to them, but he's not going to give it to them.
Until also we are brought in and through the Lord Jesus and we're all going to receive it at the same time.
It's a very interesting parenthesis in verse 38.
It says of those that were tormented, you know, and that suffered of whom the world was not worthy. The world wasn't worthy of them. To have such a person of faith that was living in faith and it was put to death. The world wasn't worthy of them and amazing. I mean, they were so godly. I mean it, it stood out for God so much that he took them away. The world wasn't worthy to have such a person.
To be graced with such a person, I know how I'm saying it just come across right the of whom the world was not worthy.
Wasn't worthy to have such a decent person in the world. It sounds to me like God is placing the Saints above the whole world. That's exactly.
What we learned from these ones in this last section, too, is that faith doesn't necessarily deliver us from circumstances, but it will deliver us through circumstances. You see it with the three Hebrew children, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Who are no doubt alluded to in the expression in 34 quenched the violence of fire. And you say, well, what about them? Well, it's interesting that the Lord didn't deliver them from the fiery furnace, but he did deliver them through the fiery furnace. They came out, of course, without the smell of smoke on them. But then you go on and you say, well, what about those who burned at the stake? God didn't seem like God even delivered them through the circumstances. But we sometimes sing that hymn, the worst that can come.
But shortens the journey and hastens us home. And it's interesting what the three Hebrew children said to the king when they knew the consequence, learned the consequence of bowing down or not bowing down to the image. They said that our God is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace. They didn't say he would, but they knew he was able. And then they said, And he will deliver us from thy hand, O King, because they knew whether they came through the furnace.
And came out alive, or whether they perished in the furnace, either way they were going to experience a deliverance. Those who were burned at the stake, they didn't accept deliverance. As far as this world goes, as far as the quenching of flames here, no, they gave their lives as martyrs, but they were delivered from their persecutors and their tormentors to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. And that's how they could do it. You say, how could they rejoice in the flames? How could they encourage one another and sing as the flames licked at their flesh?
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Oh, they had something better. They had the glory before them. This world paled.
Not that they didn't feel it, brethren, I don't want to take away from it. They suffered and they suffered awful. But what gave them the grace and the strength to go through it victoriously was that they had the next World in view. They knew where they were going and what was ahead.
Jesus said don't fear those that can kill you and after that have no more than they can do. I'm paraphrasing but fear him that after he has killed his power to cast into hell. So.
They were.
If they had perished in the fire, they were out of Murphy Kanazar's hand. He could do no more. But I want to make this one last statement before you give out that hymn, Brother Dave. And that is, and I think I made it the other day, but I want to echo it, and that is that these ones who?
Perish in various ways. It wasn't that they had less faith. Men who died at the state didn't have less faith than Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. No, they all, they all obtained a good report through faith that says here.
And so just because you might see a Saint of God and they pray that they'd be cured from cancer or some disease, or they're going through some real fiery trial and they never seem to get deliverance, does that mean that that person has less faith than somebody that was cured or delivered from a circumstance? No, not necessarily. But as I say, God doesn't always faith doesn't always deliver us from the circumstance, but it brings us through with the end, with the glory in view.
It says they receive not the promise. So God's answer is not necessarily here. We like to see those who get great results here in this world, but that doesn't mean like you say that there any last faith in them. God's answer is the other side and I like this. Just like to say in this verse 40. You mentioned it Doug, but I asked the brother some time ago. I say how do we know?
That the believers of the Old Testament are going to be raptured at the same time we are. And this is the verse he gave, verse 40. And I thought it was a very good one. God having provided some better thing for us that they, that's the Old Testament believers we've been talking about without us should not be made perfect. So it's nice to think of this as an answer to what John the Baptist felt.
When he said to the Lord he was in prison, he said art thou he that should come or look we for another. The Lord couldn't unfold the true answer at that point. Here he answers that question. He says that they God having provided some.
A better thing for us, God was going to bring in the heavenly calling.
The whole dispensation that we live in and he wanted to usher that in and fill heaven first.
That's why he didn't come in and give deliverance to those who were suffering on Earth. John the Baptist really felt it.
But God is going to answer John the Baptist and he's going to have part in heaven too, because the Lord is going to bring them into in blessing. And so this ought to make us appreciate this interval that we're living in, brethren, what God had postponed a lot of things, as it were of a need to take place to set the Old Testament Saints in in the right what they deserve or what God chooses to give them.
He hasn't done it because he wanted to fulfill something at this time too.
And it's the heavenly calling of which we are a part of Indiana. Fact. He's even going to bring them.
Into that Part 2, M 116.
All render thanks to God above the fountain of eternal love, Whose mercy firm through ages past has stood and duck forever last, 116.
Oh, render, thanks to God.
Whose merchandise?
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I can't train, no.
I'm not saying that our souls from now.
Translate the blood creature.
Open Mtg.
Open
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Oh re lost.
We're a different series of us.
Oh yeah.
It's rain here in your heart. You're still glad. Stars.
Oh really love?
Our lives delighted to hear.
The story.
Again.
Why you just cause corn?
Oh wow.
John 15.
Starting at verse 12.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You're my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you henceforth I call you not servants, but the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. But I have called you friends for all things that I have heard of my father I have made known unto you.
As for his help, Lord Jesus, it is easy for us to see thee as being a friend to us when we think of all the comfort and health and the way Thou didst give thyself for us in Calvary. But.
00:05:09
We marvel to see the occurring to us as friends and bringing us into Thy counsels about Thy purposes for now and the future. We thank Thee for Thy word. We ask Thee for help as we purpose to have things brought before us that that would give something that is needful for our state at this time. We pray in Lord Jesus, my most worthy and precious name, Amen.
Let the prophet speak two or three, and let the other judge, if anything be revealed to another, that to the file at the first hold of peace. Or he may all prophecy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the Saints. It's our desire, brethren, to have two or three perfectly 3 but at least two feet, please. Thank you.
Let's go to first John chapter.
Four and verse 19.
John's in his epistles gives what is characteristic.
Of the life of God that we have received as members of the family of God. This is God's character. God is light and God is love.
But in thinking about this question of his love, brethren.
I think love is one of the hardest words in the English language to define. I like to ask people to explain it.
And I think it is one of the hardest words to define. People say well it's seeking the good of someone else, but every explanation seems to fall short. But this verse came to mind.
In chapter four of one John.
Verse 19.
We love him.
Because He first loved us. And I think in the new translation it leaves out to Him we love because He first loved us. So we are not the source of love, God.
Is the source of all love.
And the love that the Scripture uses, the word, the agape word is the love, that is a love that loves not because of what the object is, it loves because of the source. We go to youth village in our area to preach the gospel to the kids and I like to ask them, why does God love you?
And they get a lot of different answers that are more or less true. I suppose sometimes they say because we're his creatures or because we're his children. I said, well, you're not a child of God until you accept the Lord Jesus. And yet he loves you. Why does he love you? And they're always looking for some explanation in themselves. And I say there's a very easy and simple answer. God loves you because God is love. And that's the best answer there is. God loves you because.
Of who he is, not because of who we are.
Now, if we understand that's the kind of love that He loves us with, it makes it easier to love as well when it comes to loving one another. But I'd like to go to speak a little bit more of the love of Christ. I want to touch on the practical side of our love to one another as well, but I want to turn to Ephesians chapter 3, the Apostles prayer for the Ephesian believers.
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He prays twice in the book of Ephesians, once in the first chapter.
And once in the third chapter and in the third chapter, it's more that which is inward.
Let's read a bit here verse 16 that he would grant you that is God according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit and the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love.
Maybe able to comprehend with All Saints what is.
The breadth and length and depth and height and to know.
The love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.
Notice, I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that verse 17 says we've been rooted and grounded in love. What's going to make you steady in the things of God is not knowledge merely.
Knowledge is important, but it is the enjoyment of the love of Christ in your soul. That's what's going to captivate you. That's what's going to make you steady rooted. A root system is that which goes down deep into the earth. And I understand in a normal tree the root system is about the same as what you see above the ground. I don't suppose that's the case in every tree.
Down in South America we have had avocado trees and.
We get big wins and it would flop those trees over and you could see their root system is all superficial.
You know, God allows the winds of adversity to blow in our lives sometimes so that those roots go deeper and we prove.
How real is his love? And I like to say because we live in a world of trial and trouble and problems.
That it is that which makes the roots go deep.
And to prove that you have something.
Worthwhile the love of Christ.
In the jungles of South America, the brethren that I used to live amongst down there in Bolivia had this slash and burn technology. They go in and shut down a piece of jungle and they would let it dry and burn it, and then they would plant their crops in there.
And they often said a big tree, it was too much trouble to cut it down. They would just leave it in the midst of a stretch of jungle.
But they often found that after a while, that big tree that had been surrounded by a lot of other trees.
When it didn't have those trees around, the wind would knock it down shortly because it wasn't that well rooted standing amongst the other trees of the forest. And when it was standing alone, it wasn't well enough rooted. You know, sometimes you say it's so nice to be amongst believers here in the conference. Why do we have to go home when there's just so few and we have to stand on our own?
Because the Lord knows that you need affliction in your life. We need it.
It drives the roots deeper into the ground so that when affliction comes, you will be able to stand. If we have our brethren around us all the time, that's not going to be the case. So being rooted and grounded in love is important. But I want to say this too about the love of God. It's a love of sacrifice, for God so loved the world that He gave.
His only begotten Son, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. So the love that we're talking about is a love of sacrifice. That's important. When we are those who are called on to love, we need to remember it's easy to say I love you.
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But do we know what it means to sacrifice practically?
That's the proof of real love, and it has exercised me, brethren, that the Scriptures command us in John's writings. We have seven times no less, that John commands us to love one another. Now, you're not going to be able to love if you don't enjoy the love of Christ in your soul. That's what's first of all.
And that's why it's so important to come to the Breaking of Bread meeting.
Where we go back to Calvary, that is the vastest display that there will ever be in time and eternity of the love of God is the cross of Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Son of God, the Creator of the universe, hanging on a cross.
Battered his body by human instruments.
And there, hanging in the dark of those three hours.
Satisfying and glorifying God about the question of sin.
Oh, what a thing. And for all eternity there will be never a display like that of the love of God. May the Lord help us, brethren. We need to get back each Lord's day to remember Him and His death if we don't.
Who knows how far we'll go, but I'd like to just run over in John's writings those seven times we are commanded to love, you know, the commands of the New Testament.
Are interesting. They're not the commands of the Old Testament I remember.
AC Brown used to explain the difference between the commands of the Old Testament and the commands of the New Testament in this way.
He said the commands of the Old Testament were do this and you will live.
Commands of the New Testament are live and you'll do this. That was a real helpful statement to me. In the Old Testament, man did not have a nature to do the commands of God and he couldn't. But in the New Testament, God gives us first the nature and a life that desires to do the will of God, and then he gives us the commands and they are directives to that new life that you and I have in Christ.
So the first one is in John chapter 13.
Let's read it in verse 34 and 35.
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if you have love one to another.
A new commandment didn't the Old Testament command.
To love your neighbor as yourself.
And I like to think that this is a new commandment because it has a completely different reference point.
In the Old Testament, the reference point was myself.
How I loved myself. I should love my neighbor.
But now we have a totally different reference point.
New commandment that ye love one another as I have loved you. How much did you love? Oh brethren, the cross is how much he loved, and that's the measure, you and I.
Can we ever love that much? I don't suppose we'll ever get to that. But that's the standard, to love as He has loved us. And this is what is characteristic of Christians, they love.
Doesn't mean that we Passover the failures of one another. There is a way that we should deal with that the Lord Jesus in the first verse of this chapter 13 says having loved those that were his in this world. He loved them unto the end and then what does he do he gets up from that Last Supper and he gets.
A bowl of water and a towel and he girds himself with a towel and he gets down at the disciples feet to wash their feet.
That's not easy work, but love will do it. And when we see something that needs attention in each other's lives, I thank God for brethren that have washed my feet.
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Brethren, let's not have a standoffish attitude. Let's do something about it before things go further.
He got down. This is the Lord of glory and this is the disciples that were sitting there and he gets down.
He lays aside his garments. The garments is what you're known for in light. You can tell a policeman by his garments. You can tell a doctor by his garments. You have to lay that aside. You can't be a policeman to do this work. You can't be a doctor to do this work. You've got to lay aside those things. Got to get down.
Remember Brother Paul Wilson speaking about this chapter and he said.
Sometimes we like to use a long handled brush to wash our brethren steep.
And sometimes we use scalding water.
And sometimes we use freezing water.
Those are not techniques that the Lord Jesus used.
And he had a towel.
And after you've worshipped their feet, he left them feeling comfortable.
Brethren, do we know how to be a help to our brethren in that way? That's part of love too. Just like to read before we go on in Psalm 141 what it says. It's such a beautiful little statement.
Psalm 141, verse 5.
Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness, and let him reprove me. It shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head, for yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities.
Oh, how we need help from our brethren. So it takes getting down if we see something that needs attention in each other. May the Lord help us to know what it means to really, truly love in this way.
Love isn't something that will Passover things that need attention. It will truly address them, but in a way that doesn't leave the person feeling uncomfortable. The next time we're commanded to love is in the 15th chapter. I think Brother Dan read that at the beginning of this meeting, verse 12. This is my commandment.
That ye love one another.
As I have loved you.
Down in verse 17.
These things I command you, that ye love one another. Isn't that interesting? Do we not get the point? Why is it that He has to command us time and time again? Don't we have a nature that loves? Yes we do, but we need to be reminded about this, brethren, to let the love flow in our lives.
You know Scripture says in another place, provoke unto love and to good works.
Sometimes we provoke in the wrong direction. Is there a way to provoke to love?
Yes, I believe there is what provokes love in another.
Love provokes love. It's like these old pumps. I don't see them around anymore, but I think there are a few around. Start pumping and you have to have a pitcher of water in one hand and you pour that water into the top of that pump and then you pump and that makes the water start to come out of that well.
Somebody not loving you like you think this should?
Oh brethren, pour in some love yourself.
You know, that's the kind of love that God loves us with, and that's the kind of love that you have in yourself.
And when I hear somebody complaining, there's not very much love in this meeting.
I say the first person responsible is the person that's talking.
00:25:06
Because the kind of love we're talking about is love that loves when there's nothing lovable.
So if there's no love in that meeting, you'd better start loving.
That's.
What we have in Scripture, brother, may the Lord help us to make that a practical reality. There are so many little acts of kindness that we can do. You see a brother or a sister and there's some practical need. Consider him. The Scripture says, provoke unto love and to good works.
Now let's go over to John's epistle.
And we'll see the.
Three in the first epistle and the last one in the.
2nd Epistle.
I, John. Chapter 3.
In verse 11.
He's contrasting here the children of God and the children of the devil.
And that they make themselves manifest.
Verse 11 Says this is the message.
My Bible and the command in the margin it says this is the commandment.
That ye heard from the beginning that we should love one another.
Not as king, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother, and wherefore slew he him, because his own works were evil, and his brothers righteous.
So here's another command. Go down to the end of the chapter.
Verse.
23 This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment.
Now over to Chapter 4.
And verse 19 we already read. Let's keep on with verse 20. If a man say I love God and hated his brother, he is a liar.
John speaks in blacks and whites. No Shades of Grey here.
He is a liar, for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, How can he love God whom he hath not seen? Verse 21. And this commandment.
Have we from him that he who loveth God?
Love his brother. Also there's the 6th time dimensions and then let's just read the 7th in second John.
Where John as the elder is addressing the Elect Lady and her children.
Let's read from verse 4I Rejoice greatly that I found thy children walking in truth.
As we have received a commandment from the Father. And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I had wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk after His commandments. This is the commandment that, as you have heard from the beginning, He should walk in it. May the Lord help us, brethren. I don't want to take any more time when I leave time for others.
But I just sincerely want to encourage us in our expressions, in our relationships, one with another, what characterizes the people of God. And to me, it is a real joy. The maze of the Lord gives me to travel amongst the Lord's people in this country and into the South everywhere I go. You know, when you're traveling in areas, you got to be really careful of people whom.
Mean evil for you. They will take your baggage off you in a moment's time without you realizing it, but as soon as you get amongst the Lord's dear people.
Just changes.
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What a beautiful experience to find.
Those bonds of love doesn't matter the nationality.
Or the country you're in. Or the social position.
In February, some of us were privileged to be down at Oaxaca conference.
And you know, sometimes you have to sleep on the ground in those places. But I must say I was thankful this time that somebody gave up their bed and I had a nice.
Foam rubber bed to sleep on. What nice love. Somebody didn't have a comfortable bed because they gave it to Lemoyne and me to sleep in. He let he slept with his head on one end and I slept with my head on the other end. But that was all right. We could sleep well that way. But practical love, that's what characterizes the people of God.
Lord help us.
Perhaps we could have a little more on the subject of love and John's Gospel chapter 3.
Beginning with verse 34.
I would like to go over in the Gospel of John the seven times that it mentions the love that the Father had for the Son. And certainly there is something for us in that. This is the first John's Gospel, chapter 3, beginning with verse 34. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.
For God give us not his Spirit by measure unto him. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.
Can't help but think of a contrast to this when.
Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden.
And.
It was suggested that God had withheld something from man by the tempter.
Sadly, they fell for it.
Here you have a man, Christ Jesus.
God's son, too. Who?
Perfectly confides.
The Spirit is not given by measure.
There never came a time in the life of the Lord Jesus when God didn't have sufficient provision so that He should turn somewhere else for help.
Never doubt God's love.
Never doubt it.
God give us not his Spirit by measure. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hands. So the Lord begins his ministry in this way, as it were.
Perfectly confident.
That the Father always loved him. Chapter 5.
Verse 19.
Then answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you.
The Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do. For what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son. Likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth, and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.
Well, these two verses, we've often spoken to them as a couplet, a perfect combination.
Were it in verse 19.
The Things That Make for Peace
Address—B. Anstey
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I thought, they're clapping for me. Wow.
Let's take #169.
169.
No more to view thy chosen few.
In selfish strife divided, but drinking peace, the living grace that gave them hearts united Lord haste, that day of cloudless ray, that prospect bright, unfailing, where God shall shine in light, divine, in glory ever fading 169.
Lord, we can see.
Where?
You can understand.
And soul may be alive.
Love dreams.
Are always.
In grace.
I created my heart and giving heart.
Wherever God.
Says God's blessing on His word, our God and our Father. We look up to thee this afternoon and thank thee for the prospect that's bright and unfailing.
Blessed Lord Jesus, we long and wait for that moment our God, but until he does come, we just pray that that would preserve and keep us close to Him. We look to Thee now our God, as we would open the Scriptures this afternoon, and would desire to be fed from Thy precious word and exhorted. And we pray indeed, that thou would have a voice to each one of us as we read these things together. And we pray above all our God, that we would have the glory of our Lord Jesus before us.
And we pray that each one of us would be desiring to give him that rightful place. And now we just thank thee for the happy spirit that we have had thus far in these meetings. We thank thee for one another and for fellowship. We ask you that thou would preserve it to us, our God, though we do not deserve it. We look to thee now and ask thy help in leading and guidance, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
00:05:28
Let's look at an opening verse in Romans 14.
Romans 14.
Verse 19.
Let us therefore follow after the things that make for peace.
And things were with one may edify another.
And then turn on to Ephesians chapter 4 for a couple of verses.
Ephesians chapter 4 and verse one.
I therefore the prisoner of the Lord, or in the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you ye are called.
With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another, in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, or in the uniting bond of peace, there is one body.
I like to speak this afternoon on the subject of, as we had there in Romans 14, the the things that would make for peace. And I've read this passage here in Ephesians chapter 4 because it brings before us our first and greatest responsibility as the Church, and that is to manifest what we are in this world. You see, I would assume that most of us here know that the Epistle to the Ephesians has a division and the first three chapters it brings out what we are in Christ as His body.
And in the last three chapters, beginning at Chapter 4, where I began reading, we had the practical exhortations that are based on the doctrine that has been laid down in the first part of the Epistle. And it's very interesting and significant that the very first exhortation that would come in is that which I have read. And it speaks to us of the first responsibility we have, being that we as the body of Christ should give expression to that fact in this world.
In a uniting bond of peace.
This is our first collective responsibility as being part of the Body of Christ.
We as the Church, unfortunately have miserably failed in this. The Church is in a divided state, as we all know, and we have contributed it to it ourselves. But nevertheless, this is the first great responsibility of the Church, that is, to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace. God is never committed to us.
The responsibility of keeping the unity of the body, that is something that he keeps intact by his power, and no force of evil or man can ever break that, for that bond is unbreakable. But the unity of the Spirit is something that he has given to us to keep.
And that we would, it really speaks to us of a practical unity that we are responsible to keep, as he says here. And we might ask the question at the beginning, what exactly is the unity of the Spirit? Well, someone gave this definition and I liked it. It is that which the Spirit is forming to give expression to the truth that we are one body.
Isn't that beautiful, that which the spirit is forming in this earth to give expression to the truth of the one body? Mr. Patterson wrote a booklet on this subject, and he had a definition that I liked too, And he said it is to keep in practice what is true in fact. And then he went on to say, well, what is true in fact? Well, as the passage goes on, as I read there in verse four, what is true in fact is that we are one body, and we are to express that visibly in the earth. Now, as I said.
The Church has miserably failed in this, and we have to lay our hand upon our own hearts. And when we think of how that we have contributed to it, those gathered to the Lord's name cannot be exempt from this failure. We have a history of divisions that lay behind us, that ought to humble us when we think of all that has been given to us in grace, and the privileges that have been granted to those who have been gathered to the Lord's name, and we think of how poorly we have.
00:10:14
Uh, handle ourselves in the last 150 years or so.
You know, I was talking to a man who was with the OR was with the Raven Fellowship. That is just one of the divisions that have broken off. And he came from Australia and he was in the gathering in that division in Australia in Sydney. And he told me that when he was there in the 1960s that he said that the Sydney gathering alone had 5200 people. He said the neighboring gathering which was Melbourne.
It had 2700 people.
And you think this is just one division that has broken off and have departed from the?
Path of all upholding all the truth of God, What have we if we had not divided? What a wonderful.
Fellowship there would have been had there not been the enemy working to divide the Saints, and I'm concerned about that because I don't think we have got the learned the lesson.
Even though we have been tested time and time again, I had put down on a paper years ago.
The various divisions, I know a number of brothers have done that. It's not a healthy thing to necessarily look into, but we do learn some humbling lessons. And anyway, I had put down the various divisions in the time frames and so on. And then I took my calculator and I divided how many divisions over a certain many years and I came up with an interesting fact.
And that is that there is a division amongst God's people approximately every 22 years, which is roughly a generation. And I take from that that every generation is going to be tested with regard to the truth that has been committed to it and how miserably we have failed ourselves. We know very well that we have not behaved in the way we ought to. Well, what should we do? Should we just give up and say, well, it's true, I know, and go moping about? I don't think the Lord would have us to do that.
No, I think that he would have us to be exercised about it. And so the question might come, what is it that we could do to promote unity and peace amongst God's people? One brother put it this way. He said that we should draw a circle around ourselves and then start inside that circle, asking ourselves what it is that we can do to promote the unity and the peace amongst God's people. I read at the very beginning that verse in Romans 14.
That we may follow after the things that make for peace. The apostle doesn't go into what those things are. He simply lays it for us to be exercised about it, Follow after the things that would make for peace. And so I might ask this question here for us this afternoon. What would those things be? What would those things might be that we should follow after? That we might promote peace and unity amongst God's people? Well, I like to look into various passages of the word of God.
For the answers to that, and the 1St place I'd like to turn is to an incident in the life and ministry of our blessed Lord Jesus Himself. There was a time, as you know, when His own disciples were threatened. That is, the unity of the disciples was threatened, and there was dissension among them, and the Lord knew that, and He gave special instruction for them to meet that. And I think we should begin there. So let's turn to Mark's Gospel, Chapter 9.
Mark's Gospel, Chapter 9. We're going to read a few verses together, verse 33 beginning.
And he that's Lord Jesus came to Capernaum, And being in the house, he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? But they held their peace, For by the way they had disputed among themselves who should be the greatest? And he sat down, and called the 12 and said unto them, If any man desired to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them. And when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children?
My name receiveth me, and whosoever shall receive me receiveth not me but him that sent me. And John answered them, saying, Master, We saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we fought, and he followed not us, and we forbade him, because he followed not us. But Jesus said, forbid him not, For there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name that can lightly speak evil of me, for he is not against me, against us.
00:15:11
Is on our part. For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, He shall not lose his reward. But whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off. For it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell.
Into the fire that is never shall be quenched. I understand verse 44 and verse 46 are not in the original text manuscripts, or at least there is doubtful.
Because it comes up again in verse 48, verse 45. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having 2 feet to be cast into hell into the fire that shall never be quenched. Verse 47 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. It is better for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God.
With one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell. Fire, where their worm dieth not in the fire is not quenched. For everyone shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good, but if salt is lost is saltiness, wherewith will ye season it. Have salt in yourselves, and have peace, one with another. Those closing words have peace, one with another. Show that this whole teaching of our Lord Jesus.
Is connected with the dispute that was going on among the disciples. And he gives some very interesting, very helpful and significant lessons for us with regard to the maintenance of peace and unity. And I'd like to look at him here this afternoon before we look at some other passages. The Lord Jesus, here, he lays down three things, three main reasons why there is these disruptions of unity amongst his people. First of all, as I read, we have the idea or the wanting to be great.
The second thing we have is having a critical spirit, and the third is giving offense in Word or in deed. These things very definitely are destructive to the health of any company of Christians, and we need to hear the Lord's words here and be helped by his his remarks.
Now prior to this, the Lord had taken the disciples up to the Mount of Transfiguration, and they saw him in His official Kingdom, glory. And this of course brought thoughts to their minds about the coming Kingdom that it was at hand. And this led to them having thoughts about who's going to have this place or that place in the Kingdom, and who should be greatest and what happened as a result of them starting to think about what place they might have. It produced a disruption in their happy unity. We find here that they disputed among themselves.
And the Lord knew all about it. And with the Lord immediately goes about to.
Correct this and address this problem, you know.
The wanting to be great can be traced to an awful lot of difficulties that there are amongst the Lord's people. Even to this very day it may not come out in such and such words that we want to play, so we want to be great.
But subsequent actions and words that come out of us and attitudes make it very clear that we've got a problem. We want to be heard, we want to be seen, we want to rule, we want to be great. And all these things do not promote unity amongst the Lord's people. Let me quote Mr. Kohler. I never met the man, but he came out of New York, I believe, and served the Lord for a number of years. And he said that before he was saved in the world, he wanted to be a great person, he wanted to be a great man, he wanted to make a mark for himself there.
But when he got saved he came amongst the Lords people and he said he wanted to make a mark for himself amongst the Lord people. And he said I had to find out that both were wrong, both were wrong. And surely that's true, isn't it? That to try to gain the ascendancy over our brethren, for whatever reason that we may have is only going to stir up trouble and difficulty? It's one of the proverbs. I think it's in chapter 28. It says he that is of a proud heart. Stirreth up Strife.
And so Pride is really at the root of a lot of this wanting to be great. And we have to be on guard about that, don't we?
00:20:01
My brother Cam Wilkins was in our home just a few weeks ago and he gave me some nice tidbits of thoughts that he'd picked up from his older brother. And I always like to get near to some of my older brother and listen to what they have to say from their older brother from another generation. It's always helpful. So I asked him some things about that and he said, well, he remembered one brother named Miller. I don't know who he is and he said that he gave him some very helpful things. I said like what brother?
Well, he said I can't know if I could just put my hand on it now. And he thought about it for a while and after a while he said, I'll tell you, he said to me one day, Cameron, stay small. Those who get big usually get taken away, he said that was good for me. And I've used, I've drawn upon that many times in my 50 years or so that he's been gathered. Isn't that a good word, Bruce? Stay small. Those that get big get taken away. Well, isn't that helpful, You know, I think of Jeremiah.
He told Barrick, Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not whether it's in the world or amongst the Lord's people. It's something that should have no place.
You know when business and our business that we're in, we're into the wholesale business of craft and art supplies. Anyway, my father had the business before we did and he used to tell us stories of a man that he used to meet in a in a competitor's company wholesale and his name was Morley Brown.
I never met the man, but I desired dearly to meet this man or to see him, because his reputation went before him. He was a man that was full of himself.
From what I've heard, and he was full of importance and wherever he went, he left awake behind him of people complaining and he was quite a person and although I never in all my years in sales with the business, I never did run into this man. But anyway.
What happened was his business after my father left the business and my brother and I and my other brother took over the business.
The, the business that the competitors business that morally worked for went bankrupt. And so we heard about that. We heard from the receiver. So we went over and bought up their inventory at 2530 cents on the dollar. So it was really great for us. And they left with the receiver, the head shipper of the business there. So I thought, here's my chance. I'm going to ask this man what he thought of Morty Brown. So he said Morty Brown, You know him well? No, but his reputation goes before him. Tell me about him morally Brown, he said we all hated him.
His name was Marty Brown. He said, you know, we had a name for him, a nickname for him. We never told it to him, to his face, though. But he said we used to call him Big Fat, Big Shot Brown. When he would go through the place, you know, we'd sit behind his back, there's Big Fat Big Shot Brown. And this man would go through thinking he could be a help of the shipping department. He come walking in and offer some advice that was completely outdated and a way off and they had to just look the other way. And he told me some interesting stories about this Big Shot Brown.
You know, I thought about that. Could we be that way among our brethren, walking amongst the Lord's people, thinking there were something? And we think we're laying a blessing on people and we don't know from behind us. They're going there. It goes big shots. So and so. Oh, brethren, could it be true? We can very often carry ourselves in such a way that it becomes evident that we're looking for some place? What does the Lord do? He sits down to teach them. Isn't that striking and significant? He takes a low place to start with. He takes the most diminutive of the human race. He takes a child in his hands.
And he sets out an object lesson of humility, and he puts this child here in his hands, in his arms, And he begins to instruct them and say, you know, if you would just receive a little child like this, you'd be receiving me. And this would be something that would mean a lot to God the Father. The lesson here, of course, is that.
Humility and the need for binding on humility the Apostle Peter, he says in his epistle.
Yeah, all of you bind on humility. Now you might wonder, why would he say bind on humility? Well, I guess it's because it's something that very easily can come off and we need to put a little energy into binding on humility. And so the Lord gives a lesson here, as I say, on humility, and he says here, receive one of these children.
What I would take from this is that the Lord is saying don't try to do something great that would bring you into the public eye so you get noticed and so on.
00:25:03
Wouldn't it be better to do some insignificant work? For him to be happy to do some small work like receiving a child is not going to bring you into the public eye. People who may not even notice it, but God the Father will notice it. And that is the way in which we will indeed bring pleasure to God our Father. And there will be reward in a place in the Kingdom for those who are happy to do that kind of a work. But very often we don't like to do that kind of work.
You know what I mean?
When the Saints get together for perhaps some work, maybe even to put on a conference, we know. I know what I'm talking about. We've had one. It's striking and very interesting to me to see the various individuals, what kind of work they like to volunteer for.
Very interesting.
Oh brethren, is it possible that we want a place?
A place that would make us notice. The Lord shows here that that's one of the roots.
Of causing dissension amongst his people while he goes on. And he says in verse 38 that there's another thing and that is having a critical spirit. Here is a man that John points out we don't have his name, but he was casting out devils in the Lord's name, and the disciples were exceedingly critical about that because he wasn't falling with them and they were jealous for the Lord and wanted to be.
To do things right. And so as a result, they they rebuked this man for doing that. And they wanted to tell the Lord because he thought that he was going to get a pat on the back. He thought the Lord was going to say very good, My son, that was well done. I'm glad you did that. But the Lord didn't do that. He rebukes there in a very subtle and very gentle way.
Their critical spirit of this man. And so we find here that the Lord teaches us the need for judging.
The critical spirit. You know, brethren, I believe this too is a cause of dissension and disunity amongst the Lorde people. You'll see here in that 38th verse that the disciples had completely lost sight of the center of their gathering, which was the Lord Jesus themselves, Lord Jesus himself, and they got to speaking about themselves. Notice how many times they say we saw one and he followed, not us. And we forgot him because he followed, not us.
They had lost sight of Christ being their center, and they saw themselves at the center and anybody who was not with them while they were ready to read the riot act on them because they didn't see that he was falling with them. What a dangerous spirit. And this was particularly embarrassing for them, you know, because they heard just back up in the chapter a little bit, There was a man that came to the disciples and his son had a dumb spirit, and they besought the disciples to cast out the dumb spirit, and they couldn't do it, it says.
Verse 18. And now they come across a man who could do it, and he wasn't falling with them.
They didn't like this idea, and we have to be careful ourselves of those who may be seeking to do a work for the Lord, who may not walk in the same path that we do. You'll notice that the Lord, though he gently rebukes them with regard to this, He does not tell them to go and join this man. They had further a greater light than this man, and the path for them was to follow the Lord, to take up the cross and follow him, as we had earlier elsewhere in the Gospels.
But nevertheless, he told them to leave this man alone in his work, and God would deal with him and work with him and lead him on. And this is a danger, you know, of us getting at the center of all the actions that we see that should take place here in the earth. We see ourselves at the center as dangerous. In fact, you'll see, and you'll find throughout Scripture that whenever God's people got occupied with themselves.
And themselves being the right ones and so on. God took away what privileges he had. Vote safe to them. Isn't that interesting?
If you turn back to Samuel first Samuel 4 and you'll see. Just hold your finger where we are. We're not going to we haven't finished in Mark's Gospel. But in First Samuel 4 you'll find that there was a battle against the Philistines and the children of Israel thought what we should do is bring the ark. And so it says in verse 3 the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the Lord Smith us this day before the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us.
00:30:06
Notice that that it when it cometh among us, notice it shall save us out of the hand of the of our enemies. And then a little further on, when they they did get the ark, they brought it. There was a great show among them, and they were as much crying as yes, we have the ark, we're the people with the ark, we have it. And it was right at that time that God stepped in and took it away from them.
Because they were occupied with themselves and what they had, rather than what was, pertained to the glory.
Of the Lord. Then another one that comes to mind is in Micah.
Chapter 3.
Micah chapter 3, verse 11. We'll pick it up. Verse 10. They build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge root for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money. So it's a pretty poor condition of things going on at that time. Yet they will lean upon the Lord and say is not the Lord among us. Notice that.
None evil can come upon us.
Therefore shall Zion, for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps in the mountain of the House of the high places of the forest. See, the Lord was about to take his people away from Jerusalem, because they had got occupied with the fact that they were at the divine center. Now I'm not in any way speaking that we should despise or not regard the truth of the divine center of gathering. Those of you who know me personally know how I hold that dear.
A wonderful truth.
But what I'm saying is if we get occupied with ourselves rather than the Lord that is in the midst.
The Lord is not going to be happy as we find it. Another place comes to mind, the Laodicean Church they could occupy with what they had, and the Lord took the whole testimony away.
He spewed it out of his mouth. We know that the Laodicean Church is the last that depicts the last Christian testimony in the face of the earth, and So what we find is at the end of the Church's history, it would be occupied with itself rather than what pertains to the Lord's glory. Could this happen amongst us, brethren? Can we be so naive to think that it wouldn't?
Do we not have, perhaps at times, the center of the gathering as ourselves? Oh, brethren, I lay my hand upon my own heart when I say this. Those of you that know that we do need to be careful that we do not.
Displace the Lord in that place in the midst, and be critical of others who are serving the Lord up to the light that they have. Well, we find here that the Lord says.
Forbid him not he that is not against us.
Is on our part. But we have to be careful, as I say, even in our local assemblies and even in our private dealings, we draw that circle around ourselves, so to speak. And we need to be careful that we don't have a critical spirit of our brethren. It reminds me of the prophet Isaiah. You know prophet Isaiah. Before he was sent to be a help to the Lord's people, he had to go through some adjustment in chapter 5 of Isaiah we find.
That he has a number of complaints that he sees amongst the Lord's people, and I'm not for a minute suggesting that they were not there, that he was fabricating them. Isaiah in chapter 5 is like a man who was living in a chamber that had six windows in it, and he looks out one window and he sees things amongst the Lord's people. In verse eight he says woe to them that join house to house and lay field to field, till there be no place that they should.
Be placed alone in the midst of the earth. What he was seeing was the monopolist. He saw ones who were buying up all the land so that there was number place for the poor to live. He hooks up that window. He sees the monopolist. He says whoa. And then he looks out another window. Down in verse 11 he sees the drunkard and he says whoa. Then in verse 18 he looks out another window and he sees the profligate and he says woe again. Then in verse 20 he sees the hypocrite and he says woe again.
He looks out a fifth window and sees the philosopher are satisfied with his reasoning and his wisdom.
And again, he says, whoa.
He looks out a 6th window in verse 22 and he sees the unjust rulers amongst God's people. And again he says whoa whoa whoa whoa, He saw things that were wrong amongst God's people.
00:35:08
But then those windows closed, and a window at the top of his chamber, so to speak, opens and light comes streaming down from heaven. In chapter six we find that the Lord's glorious scene, and it shines right into his very dwelling.
And for all at once he sees himself in the light of the Lord. And then he says, Whoa, is me No longer is he saying, woe is my brethren. He says, woe is me. He saw himself in the light of God, and he realized that he too had come short.
Verse five of chapter six, he says. Then I said, Woe is me, for I am undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. He had spoken unvisedly, unadvisedly with his lips, and he acknowledges it. It is only then what we find, that the Lord cleanses him and then makes him fit so that he can go.
To be a help to his people. And then verse eight it says, I heard a voice of the Lord saying whom shall I send, who will go for us. Then said I, here am I send me. We make an application there with the Lord Jesus very often in the Lord's day morning. But this is really referring to Isaiah being sent in his mission, a prophecy. But notice he's not sent until he's able to lay his hand on his own heart and say, woe is me. And sometimes when I hear brethren being critical of others and I'm not saying that what they're pointing out is necessarily wrong. It's right. What they see is things are inconsistent.
But I have said this before, and I said it this afternoon, But, brethren, have we come to the 7th? Woe have we got to the point where we've laid our hand on our own heart? Because we'll never be a help to anybody if we can just see what's wrong amongst the Lord's people. Are we able to see ourselves in the light of the Lord and then be able to bring something positive that could be a help? Well, we find here that Isaiah goes through this exercise and his focus is adjusted. He sees himself, and then the Lord says, no, I can use you.
And the Lord does want to use us to be a help amongst His people, but we cannot be helped be a help until we come to that point where we see.
Ourselves in his presence. You know the Apostle Paul is an example of one who lived like the Lord Jesus taught here.
He said about those who were preaching the gospel when he was in prison. I think it's in Philippians chapter one. He says whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached and I rejoice. And that's the spirit we need to have when we hear of others that are preaching and they are not necessarily walking with us in the path. I say again though, just to be on guard Here we find that the Lord does not encourage them to join this man in that path, but rather to leave him.
With the Lord. Well, let's go on. Then We have in the latter part of the chapter some principles with regard to another problem, and that is giving offense in Word or in deed. And he lays down the principle and it's broad enough to be applied with regard to lost people, and it's broad enough to be applied to the Lords own people.
To give offense in Word or in deed, and how careful we have to be above this. Very often we open our mouths and we let fly with things that can be offensive and can hurt people and we're not careful. But the Lord Jesus said that he was the meek and the lowly one and you know what it is to mean what it means to be meek and to be lowly. Well, I've enjoyed this thought that lowliness keeps self down meekness.
Gives place to others. Isn't that nice? Meekness gives place to others. Loneliness that I have been told is a character. Whereas meekness is more of a manner. It's a carefulness toward others. That's why we often say that a meek person is one who will not give offense. He's careful not to to just flash off anything that comes to mind or do anything.
Meekness does not give offense, but loneliness does not take offense.
If someone was to act in an Unmeak way, we have the spirit of loneliness. We can take it and we leave it with the Lord. And so that's the attitude that we need to have. We find here that the Lord speaks about those who would give offense, and he speaks about the hand and the foot and so on that could give offense. And what he's showing here is if there's anything that we may be doing or where we're walking that would give offense to others, hinder or stumble them in the path that we need to cut it off.
Not literally, of course, but to cut off that activity, to cut off what we may be doing, that we would not give offense to anyone causing them to stumble. And so it's not just with our mouths, but it's also with our deep. So it's in Word or in deed, I was saying not too long ago at a meeting I bear repeating, I believe that each one of us, as we get older, come into adulthood, we get, God gives us a, shall we say, a screen.
00:40:22
Or a filter in our minds whereby we can weigh our thoughts before we open our mouths and speak them, and God wants us to use that filter. Some of us, perhaps don't do that very often, and I have to lay my hand upon my own heart when I say that. And it does tell us some proverbs. 13 He that openeth his mouth wide shall have destruction, and so we can very often with our mouths, tear down our brethren.
And even destroy our own testimony as well. Let's be careful what we say by weighing our thoughts in the sanctuary of the Lords presence. Before we would open our mouths we could give offense. And the Lord concludes the whole issue here in verse 50 by saying salt is good. And if salt has lost its saltiness, wherewith will you be seizing it? Have salt in yourselves and have peace one with another. The solution?
The remedy for these conditions is very interesting, He says. Have salt in yourselves. The Lord is speaking symbolically here. He's speaking in a way that would teach us the remedy. Now the question is, what does salt represent in Scripture? Well, I believe that salt represents the energy of inward devotedness to the Lord. At least that's what older brethren have taught me. And I've compared it with other scriptures. And I like that the energy of inward devotedness to the Lord.
So he says, if you have salt in yourselves, you'll have peace among yourselves, peace among one another. Now isn't that good? If there is that energy of inward devotedness to the Lord in my personal life, I'm going to be at peace with my brother, and vice versa. If I am not walking at peace with the Lord and happy communion with Him, I'm going to be a problem to my brother. I'm going to be trouble to my brother crawling 1 woe after another like Isaiah or finding fault and criticizing or wanting to be great or something.
But if I'm going on with the Lord, there is that salt in my life of inward devotedness to the Lord.
I'm going to find that I'll be able to go on with my brethren as well, and that is 1 great way in which we can promote peace and unity amongst the Lord's people. Now how about it?
Do we take time to be in the presence of the Lord, to give them our heart? You know, it says in Proverbs 23, My son, give me thine heart. I remember a brother once said after he got saved, what does the Lord want? I'm saved, you know, I've come to him and I've got saved. And an older brother said he wants your heart, he's taken your sins away, but now he wants your heart. And if our hearts were taken up in devotion to him more, I believe that there would be a lot more peace amongst the Lord's people.
Having salt in ourselves will lead to peace among one another. Now let's turn on to another passage. First, Thessalonians Chapter 5. We'll just touch on a few more points.
First Thessalonians chapter 5.
Verse 12.
We beseech you, brethren.
To know them which labor among you and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you to esteem them very highly in love for their work sake, and be at peace among yourselves, and be at peace among yourselves. Now why would he put this?
Expression at the end of the exhortation to give respect and honor and esteem to those who are over us in the Lord. Well, I believe it's connected. It's very much connected. Now those that are over us in the Lord that He's Speaking of here could better be translated them that take the lead among you and it's talking about local administrative leadership. This is not talking about the exercise of gift necessarily amongst the Lord's people, but those that God would raise up.
To care for the flock in the localities from where we come.
God has given them a work to do, and we need to recognize that and to submit ourselves to all such.
Carry on that service for the Lord, and to give them that place, that of esteem and love, And when there is, there will be that acquiescing to them. There will be that desire to be to walk and step with them, and there will be peace among ourselves. There has been much difficulty amongst God's people by younger generations rising up and thinking they know better than their older brother.
00:45:22
And I have to learn, may learn the hard way too, that we're not wiser than our older brethren 99% of the time. I'm not saying that the older brethren are exempt from failure, John the Apostle tells us there in first John chapter two he said brother. He says little children. But that word little shouldn't be there because it gives you the idea of just the younger ones in the family of God, he says children, if anyone among you sin, we have an advocate with the father showing that even the older brethren can sin and fail.
I'm not looking at that side of things here right now. I'm just talking about the normal order of things that God raises up, generally older ones, to carry on that oversight. And we need to give them that respect in our local gatherings. And there will be peace. Very often there will be younger ones, as one brother put an excuse me for saying this, but one brother put it this way, he said the ones that give the most difficulty in gatherings often are those who are what he called the adolescent elders. I thought, what do you mean by that?
Then I thought, I know what you mean. And then he explained anyway, he said, You know the ones about 40 years of age, They've raised a family somewhat. They seem to get a little bit happy with how they've done and now they're going to throw their weight around, they're going to tell their brethren they're 65, a few things.
Oh.
Rather than they're not following this expectation that we have here. You know, the older brethren, we may not think that they have wisdom for certain cases and so on, but I think it's our naivety that would bring us to think that the older brethren have been around. They know and they've seen a lot more than we have as far as human behavior and so on. And more than that, I believe that the Lord identifies himself with those.
Just as you have in Revelation, there is interesting that the stars are in the hand of the Lord. They're kind of an extension of His authority. It doesn't mean that they do everything right. I'm not saying that.
But this is 1 definite way in which we can help promote peace. And so if we could just go back over these things now what we have in the teachings of our Lord Jesus, we need to bind on humility. We need to judge our critical spirit. We need to be careful not to give offense in Word or deed. And now we have here we need to walk in submission to our older brother. You know what Mark those men of Issachar years ago and at First Chronicles chapter 12, it says that they were men that knew the sign of the times and they also.
It says they could keep rank with their brethren. What does that mean? It means they knew how to keep in step with their brethren.
Do we keep in step with our brethren? Are we ones that get out of step with our brother every time they see something this way, we see it a different way. Speaking of a certain particular individual, I remember an older brother saying every time we have a care meeting, the brother sees something different than we do. We want to paint the fence green, he wants to paint it orange. We want to paint the building this way, everything. Is that the way we are amongst the Lord's people? I hope it isn't. You know, it says about Asher that he dipped his foot in oil and he was acceptable to his brother.
What's the foot speak to us of our walk? What does oil speak to us of the Holy Spirit. If we're walking in the Spirit, that's the type of that.
We're going to be acceptable to our brethren. We'll know how to walk with them, keep in peace, keep in step with them. You know, some of us are like instead of one particular individual he always likes a good argument. Is that true of us? Oh brother.
Well, to challenge the older brethren with a spirit of defiance will never have the Lord's backing. But to walk with them and to give them to see that we do support them, There may be a time coming when they do make a mistake and we can draw alongside to them and say, well, brother, you know thus and thus, and they're going to hear us because they know that we are seeking.
The welfare of the Lord's people. But if we have a character, we have a history of always seeing everything different all the time.
What can you expect? They are going to not take our word for it. Well, let's look on at another passage because we're coming.
Along in the time that's allotted to us. First Corinthians chapter 14.
First Corinthians chapter 14. Here we have another way in which we can promote peace.
In the Assembly, 1St Corinthians, 1426. How is it then, brethren?
00:50:02
When you come together, everyone of you hath A Psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath A revelation half an interpretation, that all things be done unto edifying. If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let him let it be by two, or at most by three, and that by course, or that separately in order in turn, and let 1 interpret. And if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church.
And let him speak to himself and to God. Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the others judge. And if anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace for it. For ye may all prophecy one by one, that ye may all learn, and all may be comforted, and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, And all the churches or assemblies of the Saints notice those last words.
He's not the author of confusion, but the author of peace and all the assemblies of the Saints. And so he's showing here another way in which we can have peace in our assemblies and that is to exercise self-control in public ministry. And this is good for us. What the Corinthians were having a problem with was that their meetings were filled with disunity. And what he's saying in verse 26 is that everybody wanted to say something.
They all had something to contribute, even though it was not necessarily connected with the other thing.
One had a Psalm, one had a doctrine, one had a revelation. And what happened? It was confusion. And he sought to set this right by telling him that everything needs to be done decently and in order. I know some people have thought that verse 26, he was commending them saying, that's good, you should all come with something. Well, that's true. We should come with things in our heart. But what he's saying here is that this is confusion, brethren. Everybody's got something and it's not necessarily connected with one another.
As one brother put it, he's as much as saying if you want to paraphrase it, he's saying How is it then, brethren, that your meetings are like a free for all?
And we don't want to have our meetings like a free for all where everybody just has to speak, has to be heard from.
No. He goes about to set that right, that there might be peace, and if there isn't, it's going to create division amongst the Lord's people in a locality, as it was the case here in Corinth. You read back to the 1St and 3rd chapters. We know that there was division there, and you can just see why when they had this kind of a condition of things. Just like everybody's saying, well, me, me, me, I want to talk next, I want to say something.
And what he says has got nothing to do with what he said. And the next person, he's got nothing to do with what he said.
That confusion, brother, and it fosters.
A a condition of competition. And that's what there was at the problem in Corinth. Now to set this right, we find that the apostles speaks of three things. First of all, he says, let all things be done unto edifying, and you'll notice as you go down. Through the passages I read he uses the word left over and over and over again. This is a veiled reference to the leading of the Spirit of God, though the Spirit is not mentioned here.
I say it again. It is a veiled reference to letting the Spirit of God lead in the midst of the Lord's people.
And this is so very important that we would give place to the leading of the Spirit of God in ministry. In fact, wherever you get the word let in the New Testament is a Christian exhortation. What it's really referring to is that we are responsible to allow the Spirit of God and the new nature in us to do what is natural to them. And we're responsible to get out of the way, so to speak, to let the Spirit of God do what he would through us. Our problem is that we get in the way.
And we want to do what we want to do.
So he's saying here, well, I'll give you an example in Hebrews 13. One it says, let brotherly love continue. Well, we can hinder that, but the new nature is our brethren and the Spirit of God would certainly lead us to express our love to them. But we're responsible to get out of the way and let the Spirit of God flow through us and express that love in a genuine way.
And so here we have, let's mention twelve times in a few short verses. This is, as I said, is a reference to the giving place to the leading of the spirit of God. That is one way in which ministry and the assembly can be regulated. Now a second one, verse 32, the prophets were to exercise self-control. Verse 32 Says the spirits of the prophets are to be subject to the prophets.
00:55:12
Now, when he's talking about the Spirit here, he's not talking about the Holy Spirit. He's talking about the Spirit that that is our God, conscious, intelligent, part of our being, our human spirit. We should be intelligent enough to see that maybe what we have today is not necessarily connected with what is being said, that maybe I should back off and let us another speak. And so the spirit of the Prophet should be subject to the Prophet. That is, we should learn to control ourselves and not just let anything that comes to mind come out.
In public ministry.
This will promote peace.
However, it's very difficult for some of us. Some of us don't know how to hold our peace. This was one of the primary lessons that the prophets had to learn. If you go to Ezekiel, you'll find that in his education to be a prophet that he had to learn to go and to keep quiet. He had to learn to be dumb for a certain period of time, and then he had to know how to open his mouth at a certain period of time. You find with the property of Elijah that he had to know how to be in quiet, in secret for a period before he would speak.
And it's very interesting that we must learn how to.
Hold our peace and we need to learn when to speak.
A third way in which ministry should be regulated in the assembly is in verse 29. Let the prophets speak two or three and let the others judge. This is a reference to the assembly having administrative authority.
To stop the mouth of a prophet if he fails to submit himself to the leading of the spirit of God and will not be subject to his own human spirit and exercising self-control if a person will not do that.
There is a recourse that the assembly has that we can ask that person to be silent.
We can, or rather tell that person to be solemn, and that is an administrative function that the assembly can lay if need be. But brethren, if there was divine love, there would never need to have that excitation. We would know what it is to.
Give way to the leading of the Spirit and to be happy to hear another minister the word rather than ourselves. That's nice. You know that we would listen to another. Well, I don't have time. I'll just because the time is over. But I'll just turn you in my mind to Romans chapter 12. And there it says as much as life within you live peaceably with all men. And then he goes on to say don't have vengeance on.
Those who do you wrong, but rather heap coals of fire on their head. And so doing that you'll overcome evil with good. So here you have another way in which peace can be.
Strived for, and that is by seeking to take those who are offensive and those who are one who may have something against us. Take their away from them, their hatred by acts of kindness given and done toward them, whereby they will be ashamed of their evil intentions and malice that they have towards you, and they will be LED to repentance.
And thereby peace will be had, and there will also be the.
Overcoming of good with evil. Mr. Darby put it this way, He said. If my bad temper gets you in a bad temper, then you have been overcome with evil. Another brother said. I am not going to let any man's hatred of me spoil my relationship and love for the Lord and his people. We are responsible to not let that happen. And so, by acts of kindness done towards those who may not appreciate us will diffuse the malice and the hatred that they might have in their heart and they'll be ashamed.
And there will be a change. You know Mr. Hayhoe Senior. Hey ho, I never met him. There are some here that did. And I'm talking about Gordon and Albert's father. He I heard on a tape one time that.
He had overheard some brethren speaking about him in the coat room where they were putting on their coat rack and it was very offensive. It hurt him. It went right to his heart. They were staying above.
Gospel
Gospel—M. Payette
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Could we open a meeting this evening by seeing together #66 in the back of the book?
Come hear the gospel sound, yet there is room it tells to all around, yet there is room. No guilty now drawn here, though vile You need not fear with joy you now may hear, Yet there is room number 66 in the back of the book.
I've never heard of his brother.
Is right.
Draw near, Lord, your dear heart here.
Red Cross, you're always here. I'm a hero.
He's crying your sculptures face.
Oh no, I'm hearing.
No, because I'm curious.
Oh, dreams are rashes. Come here. I hear this Christmas crush. Christian have some. Yeah.
Before we open the Word of God, let's have a word of prayer.
Our God and our Father, we thank you this evening once again for the privilege and opportunity of.
Telling forth the good news of salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus. Father, we would thank you again for the gift of thy Son. And we thank you, Lord Jesus, for thy finished work. And we thank thee for the glorious message of the gospel. And we commend our time to thee, Father tonight. Owning our weakness, our dependence, but confident in thy desire to save tonight.
Anyone in this room without Christ. So we pray to you tonight that Thou would help us, and as we turn to Thy word, that Thou wouldst would bring us to mind the Scriptures, the thoughts that would come from Thee to stir us up and to reach our hearts and consciences. Father, we thank Eda has done this for so many of us and we're thankful. We pray that there might be a miracle of grace tonight in someone's soul. We ask it, Father, in the blessed name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
00:05:04
I have some verses on my heart from the first chapter of Romans.
Romans chapter one.
But before we read from Romans chapter one.
As I was sitting quietly before the meeting, I brought to mind.
Some of the subjects we had this afternoon, thinking of Noah and the ark, you know.
And a little while back I made a little model at home. I took the measures from the scripture and I used ropes and pieces of wood for the corners. And I drilled holes. And I made according to the measure of the arc, a little model that I could just pull out and roll out and you would get dimensions there. And I made it to go along with a little plastic horse my daughter had. So I figured that this horse might have been six feet or something. And so I took that as my.
Measure, you might say, and I just multiplied everything to have this arc spread out and to put this little horse in there, you know, and our brother, I think Bob Tony was referring to the length of that arc and close to 500 feet. You know, there were three stories plus the, the basement of it, the recall, the underlying, the underlying of the ship there. And if you just looked at those proportions, you would see that was a huge ship and I'm sure literally thousands.
Thousands of creatures were in there.
But only 8 human beings.
There was lots of.
There was lots of room for many, many human beings in that boat.
The creator of the universe would have much rather saved human beings than just preserve some creatures to save the species.
And I was thinking of.
You know, Noah was 500 years old or something when he started bailing that boat, and he was 600 when the flood came.
And he had three sons, and Cam and Japheth, and they were married.
I don't know if they had any children.
I don't know if they had any young people.
I don't know.
Maybe they didn't. I hope they didn't.
But maybe they did.
That's nice.
We'll get it in a minute.
Imagine that they walked up to the ark before the door was closed and.
I hope you didn't have any children.
They might have had neighbors.
And people they worked with.
And I hope that the Spirit of Christ that worked in Noah worked in their souls too, and they had a good conscience, their testimony of telling others about impending judgment.
Because there was room when the door was shut.
And all those that were left behind, women, children, young people.
They all perished.
Now that ark had a limited space, you wouldn't fit millions of people in there.
But the salvation that God offers us in Christ.
There's room for all of mankind in there. There's room for everyone in this room and for everyone in this world.
If you'll have them. So let's read in Romans chapter one.
Verse 15.
So as much as in as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also, if I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. Where is the power of God into salvation? To everyone that believeth, To the Jew 1St, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth.
In unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God that showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made even in eternal power in Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
Excuse me?
00:10:00
Verse 21.
Because.
That when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncomfortable God into an image made like unto the corruptible man, and to birds, and four footed beasts and creeping.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness.
To the rest of their own arts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. We change the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and serve the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this God. For this cause God gave them up and verse 28.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to rip a bit mind.
Well.
It's the beginning of Paul's exposition on the gospel.
And he is writing to believers, but he's expounding in his beginning chapters the condition of man before God.
You know, we're talking about the tier of evolution before there in the first meeting, I believe and you know.
The story of man, It starts with God.
Adam knew God, and so did he.
And so disable and chain their sons hear about God directly.
We spoke of Noah and his sons.
They were witnesses of the flood and the warnings of God and the building of the ark, and they came out.
In relationship with God when God smelt that sweet savor from the offerings at Noah Brock.
We all come from Noah and his sons.
That started with the knowledge of God.
There was a relationship with God.
Man wants to deny that.
But the history of man starts with God.
How does the story end?
Well, tell us some proverbs you know.
The fool say it in his heart.
There is no God.
Well, as long as he only says it in his heart. You and I don't know who the fools are.
But when they open their mouths and boldly say there is no God, you and I know they're fools.
It doesn't matter how humanly intelligent they are.
They are fools. According to God, there is a God. Man's history starts with God. God made man.
And man wants to deny his creator.
Well, God hasn't given up on us.
And he's given us the Lord Jesus. He came himself.
To prove who he was and to manifest his love to us and to offer us again reconciliation to himself. Now not by works of righteousness what we could do, but by the word performed by the Lord Jesus on that cross. When the apostle Paul says here verse 15, I'm ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.
This is surprising to me as I consider that as a young person in our family, I was brought up a Roman Catholic and my teaching all comes from Rome. It's from Rome and the teachings of Rome that I heard about the Lord Jesus. Not in a clear sense, as I accepted him as my Savior and I was 27, but I knew about him. I knew who he was as Bert and Bethlehem. But you know, even though I've been educated in Rome, if you like the picture, I needed to hear.
The Gospel.
A few years ago, before we had children, my wife and I, we had it, We bought a big dog from a breeder in Hemingford, Quebec. They were raising Saint Bernard dogs. And I had, I had a little truck and on my truck I had a little, a little verse in the window. It said what actually was Jesus saves. Are you saved? Wasn't a verse, but it was something to suggest a discussion, you know, or a question. And, and the lady there, Mrs. Lumson was her name. She's probably gone now. She looked at that.
And she was startled and she looked at me says that's a funny what it does to you. You know, Jesus saves. Are you saved? So I said to her, are you saved? Plus I'm a Baptist.
00:15:02
I said. You say I'm a Baptist. I tried three times. I'm a Baptist. I gave up.
But I don't believe she was saved. But she was a Baptist.
Montreal Many years ago that brethren had a permit to preach on a street corner and we used to go down and Saint Catherine St. a busy St. Quite a few of us give out tracks and the brother after another would give out the Gospel message.
I wasn't always wise and when I did that, but the Sunday evenings was a wise time to go but.
And that night I was on the corner and I would preach this French, but most of them were English speaking and I would preach in French. So my turn came and I started preaching the gospel. This man came along and he stopped and he listened and I, I finished what I had to say and I stepped aside and another brother came along and he said, I enjoyed what you said. You know, he says I'm a cutie. He was a priest from the Catholic Church. I said, oh, I said, do you know the Lord Jesus your savior says I'm a Curie from the Catholic priest. I'm a Catholic Church. I'm a priest. I said, do you know the Lord Jesus as your savior? I'm a Catholic priest.
He was a Catholic priest, but he wasn't saved.
And you know.
I hope that during their stay on the earth, these people, they met up with literature, contacts, people to stir them up, that the Spirit of God worked with them to bring them to faith in the Lord Jesus.
And I was thinking tonight, you know, preaching the gospel. So those that are at Rome, I was thinking tonight at this Bible conference, we were enjoying the Scriptures. And since this morning and looking at all these verses and most of you have Christian moms and dads and families and been exposed to the gospel many a time. Do you need to hear the gospel again?
If I ask you tonight, are you saved? Do you know the Lord Jesus your Savior?
Let me see, my mom and dad are in the meeting.
Do you know the Lord Jesus your Savior? I can tell you John 316 by heart and I'm seeing other verses.
You know the Lord Jesus, your Savior. I'm at the Lord's table. I break bread.
Nobody answers the question that way, you know.
Hasn't been working in the bookstore a few years ago or many years ago now. And I got on the phone with a customer phone. He was looking for a book or something. And I, he was a French fellow and I said, you know, Lord Jesus your savior. He says, brother, I'm going to spend the 1St 10,000 years in eternity kissing his feet.
So he knew the Lord Jesus, and we rejoice talking about Him, you know.
But you know, there's nothing I can say that I can do to make you believe in the Lord Jesus.
Only the Lord can do that. But as we read from the Scriptures, as you sit in these meetings, we just pray all of us who know him that you are known to, and it's not because mom and Dad are saved. You're brought up in a meeting. It's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful privilege. And praise the Lord all He's preserved you from.
But you need personal faith in the Lord Jesus.
How about I check this afternoon? Said at referring to a little expression. God says it, I believe it, and that sells it. And he said we could say God says it and that sells it. And that's true, you know.
But that would leave me out if I was an unbeliever and God would not have you being left out tonight.
Says it and he says it. So you would believe it and be saved, and you would have it settled with God. God would have it settled right now.
There's room tonight.
And when the door is shut?
Probably will be some room still, but there will be no more time, no more time. And I feel in my soul, as many do, that the time is short. This might be the very last conference, the very last gospel meeting. The door of grace is soon coming to a close. God is so patient. He's describing in this chapter the behavior of Pagan men, and it now corresponds to what we see in Christian apostasized nations.
It's right there in our face.
Giving up the knowledge of God.
Adams descendant did.
You know, Cain, God mark Cain in mercy in Genesis chapter five or four is it he marked them in mercy. So he wouldn't he wouldn't be. It wouldn't be vengeance for the killing of Abel, but you read of Lamech.
00:20:00
Genesis chapter 4.
Verse 23. I believe he's the 7th from Cain.
Verse 23 And Lamech said unto his wives, he was polygamous. Ada and Zillah, hear my voice. Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech, for I have slain a man to my wounded, my wounding.
And a young man to my heart.
King shall be Avenged Sevenfold truly. Lamech 70 and sevenfold.
Bruce said. We turn out of times to be like our parents, you know?
Let him make the seven from Cain.
He was a polygamous murderer. He was a bold polygamist murderer.
You listen to the news in this world.
There are bold polygamous murderers and they would kill in the name of God and say if they if they will be avenged if anybody touches them. This is on the earth that God has made. Be so patient.
But his patience has limits.
He's bearing with mankind.
Because of his long-suffering.
Because he cares. Because he cares for you tonight in this room.
The descendants of Noah, what did they do?
They lost the knowledge of God and they fell into idolatry, and God called Abraham to reveal himself to him.
We sit under the sound of God's Word.
We've had it for centuries, America, Canada and Europe.
Was noticing to some of the brethren this is a Christian facility. I haven't seen one verse of scripture on the walls here. I haven't seen one.
This is a Christian meeting place.
I should be shocked. You should be too.
So even the ones that roam, they need to hear the gospel, and the Baptists need to hear the gospel, and the brethren need to hear the gospel too. We need to hear about the Lord Jesus and you need to put your trust in Him. You can go to all the conferences you want.
But until you open your heart and believe what the Lord Jesus did for you on the cross, you're not going to be saved because he loves you. He loves me so much. He loves you so much that he became a man to die for you to shed his blood. So this free gift could be offered to you tonight, as it's been many times before perhaps. And she would say, Lord Jesus, I want you as my personal Savior.
We were driving down this young brother got two young brothers with me and that one of them had a little sort of a GPS device and he was putting it on a dashboard in the back and checking on his computer. He could tell us how many hours we had left and for the next turn and wonderful little devices. He said these satellites in heaven, they watch these little secure devices on the earth. They say, oh, there he is just going over there. Well, God, he knows where you are every moment of your life. And not only that.
He knows what you're thinking, he knows your behavior, and he knows tonight if you're one of his or not. I don't know.
We can all have nice outsides and know all the right answers and say the right things, but you can see right into your heart tonight. He doesn't need a GPS device.
And he liked to see tonight that in your heart you have the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior.
I like these initials. GPS, you know, God's perfect salvation.
God's personal salvation.
But I have a sorrowful one for you. A very sorrowful one for you is very solemn. I don't call it God's past salvation when the doors shut.
Just before meeting before supper, I was sitting here and there was just one little girl left in this room.
Just one little girl left. I'm happy she was just left behind because she was. Maybe she'd had supper already or something. And.
And a young child, I'm sure the younger ones the Lord's going to take, you know.
But there's an age of responsibility where you need to believe for yourself, you know?
And that's what we have in the verse here. It says verse 16. But I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone.
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That believe?
God is our powerful to save anyone, but you have to believe.
Imagine one of Noah's son. He looks at that boat and he says, boy, I spoke.
Nice work there. Like I did that part over there that's very nice here. And you just look at this boat, it's going to float, you know, and it doesn't matter how much rain comes, this thing is going to float.
And then the rain comes and he stayed outside.
It's going to float, all right, but he's going to drown.
It doesn't matter how much you know, you need to believe. You need to believe and receive the Lord as your own personal Savior.
Now you know, when we preach the gospel, we have to use words and we are failing creatures. We, you know, we have so much such limits. I don't know what words the Lord wants you to to hear. I'm just going to do my best. Here come the scripture to tell you about the Lord Jesus. But I would want to ask you tonight before you leave this room, don't leave this room tonight, please. I plead with you, if you're not saved, talk to somebody else, Ask questions, get persuaded.
And receive the Lord tonight.
I don't know how much time we have left, but I believe the Lord is coming so very soon and God is all power to save everyone.
How many are going to believe?
Well.
I have 3 little words I used sometimes as a gospel in an explanation.
One word is none and the other word is all, and the third word is many.
There is none righteous. No, not one. That's #0.
Nobody can meet God's standard and deserve entrance into heaven on the basis of His works. None at 0.
One man lived perfectly, and that's the Lord Jesus alone.
God manifest in flesh there's none righteous no, not 10 qualified for heaven.
The other verse says Romans 323.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. None are qualified to go to heaven. All are qualified for eternal punishment.
But many, many, many, many. How many is many? Well, I hope there will be more manis tonight.
Many can be any number. How many people are living on the face of this earth right now? 6 billion as many? Well, there's room for 6 billion people in the work of the Lord Jesus. There's room for 120 million people. There's no limit to how many people the Lord can save. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Many are going to be saved, and they're all going to be saved the same way.
By believing. By putting their trust in the Lord Jesus.
Well, it says to the Jew 1St and also to the Greek, as it says here to the Greek it really means those that were not Jews to the Gentiles.
And therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. Or we could read this this way. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed on the principle of faith for faith. God now has this wonderful salvation to anyone who believes. And you'll declare righteous any unrighteous one that comes to him through Christ on the basis of their faith in what the Lord Jesus has done.
On the cross of Calvary.
It's wonderful news.
We get these three in the book of Romans. Justified by faith, justified by grace.
And justified by blood.
Justified by grace.
Comes from the heart of God. Why would God care about these wicked creatures that curse his name and disobey Him and take pleasure in unrighteousness?
Is not because of what we are, what we are would provoke him to anger and wrath, but because of who he is in Greece. He offers reconciliation to himself. He offers to consider you and me righteous before him as if we'd never sinned. Anyone in this room tonight could have this standing before God. It's offered by his grace doesn't cost anything.
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Justified by grace.
And then it says in the Romans chapter 5 being justified by His blood. Well, this is the basis of a righteous God to offer everyone here in this world to be reconciled to Him by the death of the Son, the value of the blood of the Lord Jesus that was shed on the cross of Calvary. He did shed His blood and God is satisfied with Jesus, and He would have you and me be satisfied too.
But in Romans 5 verse one says therefore being justified by faith.
That's how it comes to you and me. It's offered by God's grace. It's paid and merited for us by the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross.
But it's only yours if you believe it.
And if you do not believe it, you're making God powerless to save your soul. There is no other way. There is salvation in no other. God has no second offer for you. And if you will not believe the truth tonight, and you're left behind when the Lord comes, be sure you're going to believe. You're going to believe, but you're going to believe a lie.
You're going to believe that which is not true and bring unto you eternal damnation.
We're so responsible, you know.
Mankind is so responsible, Christian nations were so responsible for what God has committed to us, for what He's given us to know and that we have now chosen to forsake and to listen to lies. And that we don't have a major we just happen to become what we are because of billions and billions of years of little worms working in mud puddles and growing feet and finding how to talk and all these ridiculous ideas.
Makes nothing of God.
And man is a sum of creation. Not creation, but evolution. We're so smart. We evolved to say there's no God. We made ourselves out of little worms.
I got news for you, when you dial, the little worms come back.
And it's not a happy sight. It's a terrible thing. God will remind you and I, in the end you have to beat him. And if you're without Christ or what a terrible thing, well, it tells us here.
The righteousness of God revealed from faith on the principle of faith. For faith as it is written that just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God had showed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. You know, we can say, well, I know, I can understand Adam and Eve, they knew about God with the children. They decided that they didn't want to hear about it. And then their descendants, they just forgot about the knowledge of God.
Have my great great grandfather was no, he was in the art, but their sons, they just forgot about God and I never heard about God. We have all sorts of excuses like that, but this verse says doesn't matter that history doesn't matter because as you consider the things that are made, you're made responsible.
To consider in creation that this creation has a creator has another.
Are you computer fans? You know you work on these computers and you?
Oh, this is based on a little cold. It works wonders. You know, man is intelligent creature. He just thinks, and he got this computer code and he's worked at it for years. Now he's on the Internet and he does all sorts of pictures and video and incredible.
Rings during meetings too. They just, they're all over the place.
And they look at creation and the scientists will tell you about the genetic code. That's God's code to make the creatures work and the species and reproduce. Abbott It's wonderful. It just happened like that.
It's just that's a lie and we're fools enough to believe lies like that. There is no God and all this happened by chance is ridiculous. Well it says here they are without excuse.
A young person tonight, you see the trees, the birds, you see other human beings, you see the animals.
You are without excuse.
But more than this, you heard John 316 from my brother here this afternoon. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
You are without excuse.
We are offering you tonight, you know, to look at the Lord Jesus on the cross, this man sent from heaven.
To prove who He was, to walk on this earth, to bless mankind with his mercies, deliver them from sickness, even death. And we spit in his face, and we hit him with our fish, and we denied we knew him.
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We sold them for 30 pieces of silver. We all fled.
You see, I wasn't there. Had you been there, you would have been one of them, one of the traitors or the denier, or we would play a role.
As men far from God.
Who would have played our role there?
To mercy of God. I wasn't there. I would have done something stupid.
So you know, John 316, you're responsible.
We sit in these meetings, dear ones.
Little company of.
Weak human beings visited by God's grace, who know the Lord Jesus. And we open this book and you hear from it wonders and wonders and wonders of revelation.
What's going to be your excuse? Do you have an excuse tonight?
What are you going to tell God when you stand before Him?
If you ever stand before him without Christ.
What is going to be your plea?
It says without it I didn't know, I didn't understand, it wasn't in my language. He spoke too fast. The mic was off. What is going to be your excuse? There is no excuse. You will know all those things that were said that were true, those things that we could not show you because they're invisible. They can only be received by faith. They're all true and they're all going to come to pass. The Lord Jesus says the heaven and the earth will pass away, but my word shall not pass away.
These things that we speak about are sure and the ground that we stand on.
Let's read a verse in Acts chapter 4.
Verse 12.
We'll read 11 and 12/10. 11:12 be it known.
Unto you all X4 and 10, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom He crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him, that this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation.
Any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
We must be saved. You must be saved. It doesn't matter.
Where you're from, what your life has been, what you know, it does not matter. You must be safe. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And tonight you can be a forgiven Sinner if you receive the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
It says the enrollments that the wrath of God.
Is revealed from heaven.
There's one thing I'd like you to understand.
About the wrath of God.
That you would consider.
That after men.
Had mistreated the Lord Jesus, had hit him with their fists and scourged him and whipped Him, crowned him with a crown of thorns and crucified Him.
And derided him. And they watched him on the cross.
It tells us in the Scriptures that there were three hours of darkness, the end of which the Lord cried.
My God, my God, why Estelle forsaken me?
This was the very Son of God, the very same one who could walk on water, who could feed crowds of 5000 with five loaves and two fishes, could raise the dead. You could just say a word and that the armies would fall on their backs. This very same one, he's hanging there between heaven and earth.
And there was darkness over all the earth, and the wrath of God.
Against sin fell upon him who bore our sins in his own body on the tree He went through the forsaking of gods for your soul and mine.
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Are you indifferent to that tonight?
You want to put that off receiving a gift of God for you? You want to put that off for another 5 minutes. It says in Hebrews. How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
This is what God has to offer us is the work of His Son to satisfy His righteousness to deal with this sin question. He led him there on the cross. He forsook the Lord Jesus for you and me.
And are you going to answer him?
I'm going to think about it.
Is that a satisfactory answer for God?
Not even I'll pray about it.
You should run right now into the arms of the Lord Jesus before, before the wrath of God that you would have been spared from because of His work for you falls on this guilty earth.
As I said before, we don't know how much time we have left. We have a little time this evening, but there's room.
There is room.
You know it says.
In First Thessalonians chapter 4, the Lord shall descend from heaven.
With a shout. And I was thinking of that, you know, thinking of the cry of the Lord Jesus on the cross when he said, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Well, momentarily he's going to come from heaven with a shout and it's going to be, I believe, a shout of joy and victory because he's going to come to fetch, to get to take to himself. How dose he paid for that he suffered for that he died for, that he shed his precious blood for he's going to have them all to himself forever and enjoy their enjoyment of all that he's done and all that he is. Oh, is there going to be a shout? Well, it might just be right now.
A shot from heaven and this room is going to be, I pray it's going to be empty.
That none will be left behind.
That all will be going to heaven because of the Lord Jesus and His finished work on the cross.
Because the wrath of God fell on him for me and for you and for you and for you and for all of us. Well, you have to answer that in your heart. I can't see in your heart tonight, but we're going to hear the shout any moment now. You know, God spoke the world into existence. Men don't believe that that's what happened. God said, and it was there. And when the very God that became man comes from heaven and he says the Word, it's going to happen.
Just like.
The dead in Christ are going to rise 1St and we that are living and remain. We are going to be changed and caught up to meet the Lord in the air.
Scientists would tell you that cannot happen physically.
Their satellites would tell you that heaven is so wide and it's got so many places and millions of kilometers and light years, and that's never going to happen.
Well, this little book here, which is the word of God says it's going to happen, and it says how it's going to happen and it's going to happen.
It's going to happen. The Lord is going to come from heaven and he's going to give that shout.
And I'm going.
Are you going?
Dear young people.
Full of energy.
Your minds developing, you go to school, you learn about mathematics and science and physics and you can work these computers. You know, my daughters do that all the time. Hardly can get on my keyboard. Can I have my computer please? There, there and chatting with these guys in Vancouver and overall their place, you know, just having a great time.
What do you think about what Mom and Dad have told you about the Lord Jesus?
You're growing up. You're becoming men and women. You want to think for yourselves.
You're going to go out there in the world and listen to what they have to say.
But they don't believe in the Lord Jesus, and most of them don't believe even there's a God. They don't believe it's going to happen like this.
But it is, and you have to decide, you know, you have to decide. And I trust you decide tonight. Who are you going to put your trust in that you would put tonight your trust in the Lord Jesus. Not because mom and dad believe in the Lord Jesus or most of your family believes in the Lord Jesus because you have a sound mind.
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Have realized that you've thought, acted, said, and done things that are contrary to God's mind.
You might even be going on in your life now with things that are just pleasing to God. And maybe you're planning. Yeah, you've got to set these things right.
There's good intentions, you know.
Proverb in French says the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The devil is not going to let you put that into practice. You know good intentions. You're going to be distracted, you're going to have friends, you're going to have other people around you to keep you away from deciding for Christ tonight.
And making him Lord of your life.
You wonder what the world looked like when Noah built the ark, you know, been 1800 years or something and I'd have to check if 1600 years of human development, you know.
Men were not less intelligent. Perhaps they had less means and less, perhaps they had all sorts of other things, you know.
They had been applying their minds and God-given intelligence to better their environment, but they were going into more and more wickedness.
And maybe someone knows young people, you know?
I don't know.
Quite interesting.
In the world of those days.
You know how Lord? His wife turned around, and she looked at the desolation she was changing to a statue of salt.
It happened. A flood came.
And it took the mall away.
All these pleasures that are offered you.
All this false happiness and joy, it's all going to disappear, you know?
And you're going to be left without happiness.
Into a lost eternity if you neglect God's salvation.
Don't be like that, dear ones.
You can be a man tonight, you say. I'm going to decide for myself.
I'm going to decide for Christ tonight. I'm going to believe in a man who died on Caravan because he loved me. Nobody ever loved me like that, but he does love me like that, and he loves you just like he loves me. There's no limit to his love.
And he's worth living for. He thought you were worth dying for. And he's worth living for.
Well, just a few more verses.
First Timothy, Chapter One.
Verse 15.
This is all we can do. You know in Gospel meetings is present the Lord Jesus and scriptures that refer to that wonderful salvation God is offering you.
It's your decision. It's your heart, it's your conscience, it's your soul, it's your eternity. Who would want you to be less than happy forever? But it's your decision tonight. You know, first Timothy, chapter one, verse 15, here's a man saying this. The apostle Paul, he was a terrible man, you know.
Not that he was ungodly and moral sin or anything like that. He was a religious fanatic.
He was, and he wanted to kill the Christians. He wanted men, women, older, it didn't matter, brought to Jerusalem and punished. He wanted them dead because they trusted in Christ and God in his mercy, visited that man, stopped them in his tracks on the way to Damascus.
And Paul became a believer in the Lord Jesus and rather than take believers life, he would spend the rest of his life and give his own life if he could for those very believers. He was persecuted. God did that for the apostle Paul. Verse 15. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation.
That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I can tell you there are many, many, many sinners who have been saved because the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.
But you know, all of mankind is qualified, we're all sinners, and He could save by His work all the sinners in the world, if they would all believe individually. God says it, that settles it. But I'm not going to get the blessing unless I believe it myself.
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And your parcel, Paul says right there he came into the world to save sinners. Of who am I am, chief?
We could think and he said I'm a living example.
I was a real Sinner and he saved me.
And he loved the Lord Jesus back. He would say, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Can you say that tonight? What I can tell you, the Lord Jesus loves you.
And he gave himself for you, but when you believe, you can say it for yourself.
The Son of God who loved me. Why? This is a good question.
Why would he love you?
Why would he love me?
Why would you love the Apostle Paul?
What was there in the apostle Paul that drew the love of the Lord Jesus to him?
Did the Lord look from heaven and say, oh, he's such a conscientious man?
Persecuting those Christians, Oh, God didn't take pleasure. Now he did touch it. He touches.
My eye and the other word goes in English but the inside of his eyes, like if you put his finger in God's eye.
Was there anything in the apostle Paul to draw God's love? No.
Was there anything in me? No.
Anything in you? Nope.
God is.
And he sheds his love, offers his love, gives out his love. God so love the world. Everybody's included. He's so loved the world.
Want him to prove it? He's proven it already. God commends or proves his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners.
Christ died for us.
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
The Epistles of the Hebrews is a man there It says chapter 10. I believe it says he that despise it. The law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
There's a man in numbers.
You went out in the morning.
Maybe you wanted to have your eggs for breakfast or something, so he gathered some wood on the Sabbath day.
And he brought that home and he got caught gathering wood on the Sabbath day. And they brought him to Moses says we caught this guy not allowed to carry wood on the Sabbath day. The law said you can do that, what do we do? But Moses didn't know what to do. He inquired of the Lord.
There were two or three witnesses. He had broken the law. You know what God said to do to this man who picked up pieces of wood on the Sabbath day? Maybe he had kids. Maybe that's why he got the wood for the kids and the wife so she could make the breakfast. He had neighbors and friends.
Maybe he was in his twenty or something, I don't know.
But God said to Moses that are the congregation of Israel was to stone this man.
And he was stomped.
Why he was stoned?
Because he picked up some sticks.
On a Sabbath day and God said no.
But then in Hebrews, the apostle goes on, it says, let's read that verse Hebrews chapter 10.
Verse 28.
He that despise it, Moses Law.
Died without mercy under two or three witnesses.
You think the guy robbed the bank, he murdered his neighbor, or he committed adultery?
Say hey, he got stoned for that.
Well, the law also said not to work on the Sabbath day.
And he was stoned.
For disobeying the law of God on the deposition, disposition or the testimony of two or three witnesses, Let's go on and says how much?
Punishments suppose ye, shall he be the worthy who had trodden under foot?
The Son of God.
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The very Son of God.
Who became a man specifically to die and specifically to die for you, and specifically to offer you to trust in him and be forgiven your sins.
What will be the sore punishment?
Be castaway from God forever.
We've been waiting and gnashing Antique.
I should have listened.
I should have believed.
I should have stopped thinking of my friend and what people are going to say and the consequences in my life. I should have received the Lord as my Savior is too late. It's not too late tonight there. Once our time is almost up tonight you can bow your head in prayer. Ask him in your own words, ask Him to be your Savior, say Lord Jesus.
I believe you're the Son of God. You came to thine cross to save sinners. I'm a Sinner.
And I want you to see me when you do that tonight. Will you receive Him as your Savior? That's what He wants. He's not expecting anything else from you. God has given up the Reformation of human mankind. He's given up on mankind, hasn't given up on individuals, but He's given up on mankind. It's not going to come to a happy ending. It's going to fall under God's judgment. But God is looking for individuals tonight, individuals who will believe the good news that He has paid so much at such a price to offer you to the death of His Son.
Will you have him tonight or we plead with you? Don't leave this room unless you have Christ as your personal Savior. Let's bow our heads.
Our God and Father, we just thank you once again. We just own the weaknesses of our words, but we just thank you for Thy word above all, for the Lord Jesus and for his finished work on the cross, and for thy long-suffering and patience over this world with each one of us. We thank thee for those of us who come to know Thee, Lord Jesus, and how does this work in our lives and have us hear the gospel and bring us to thyself. We just thank you for this. And we would long tonight, our Father, that all in this room that any of us without Christ might be stirred in his Spirit, might talk to someone, might address a prayer to Thee tonight.
Dear Lord Jesus, and ask you to become their own personal Savior. So we ask thee, Father, these things with confidence. Thank you for Thy precious word and for the liberty we have to speak of these things in this land. And we commend ourselves and each one to thee, Father, and the blessed and precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.