Address—Steve Bambauer
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Thank you, Wally for calling out 122. I decided I've decided to follow Jesus because the point here today is.
Character or integrity?
And if you say I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. That is a statement.
A purpose of heart is a statement of purpose of hearts not backing into something. It's not just wading into it, testing the water, wondering if you're going to continue or not. It's a statement of purpose of heart.
I've been asked through the week, did I get a sandwich?
I knew if I took a left turn at that point I'd never get back on the main Rd.
I'd forget where I was.
Uh, actually.
I did that on purpose. I wanted to use that to segue into this address this afternoon.
When I was there in that training situation.
Of course, they turned us all loose. There were about 120 of us.
And there must be 50 acres out there and they turn this loose and kind of sparse trees and vegetation and, and then they would follow us about 3 minutes later. So we ran for it as far as we could go and found some Bush to hide under. And we were easy pickings. And of course, once in a while somebody find a hiding place. One of them found a hiding place. He climbed way up in a tree and nobody thought to look up there for him. And they all went around looking down under the bushes and everything. Never saw him. He got a sandwich.
The rest of us.
Got caught up by the scruff of the neck, hauled off into their wagons, and sent to the mock concentration camp. They're all fenced off. High fence about as high as that wall there.
I was in the F4 community.
I was so lucky. Out of all those 125 or so, I was one of four or five that was chosen by the administration there and known to me to get extra training because I would be more apt to be a prisoner of war, being in combat in a, in a, in a fighter bomber aircraft, flying over enemy territory. A lot of the people in that camp were enlisted men. They were going maybe as a medic over there or maybe in a riverboat, but I would be more vulnerable.
There was myself and about three or four of the guys that we made several trips to the commandant.
And so they would bring us in there.
But call our number, we'd go in there and there's a little room.
About the size of that stage, a little bigger. He was at his desk. He would start asking us questions. We, by a protocol, were to give nothing more than ranks, rank, seal number and name, rank, seal number and date of birth.
Well.
He would ask a question that might go beyond that and we would just say, Sir, we are only required to give name, rank, serial number and date of birth. They have this guy in there that was about four inches taller than I am, about 50 lbs heavier. And he was the, he was the bad cop.
So he had come up to me just face to face and if I answered like that, didn't give the commandant the.
Information he wanted.
Just slapped me across the face like this really hard.
Calming down asked me again. I didn't say much and slap me this way pretty soon after several trips up there and going through that I learned didn't wear glasses in how.
When I saw the hand coming, I go like this. I saw it coming the other way, I go like this.
Well, I was pretty red faced anyway.
And he would continue to ask questions.
The point is, don't sacrifice your integrity under adversity.
And we may face adversity.
Now we had.
We have.
A beautiful example of this.
Of the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane.
Under adversity.
Not my will, but thine.
If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not my will, but mine.
Read that in Luke's Gospel.
He is there, the disciples are asleep. There are none to comfort.
They slept for sorrow, of course.
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It says there that the Son of God fell on his face.
In Gethsemane picture that.
It was such intense.
Contemplation of about.
What was about to happen?
But he didn't turn back.
He did not sacrifice his integrity.
Under adversity.
Sometimes in the Gartley case that I told you about when he was, this was a mock prisoner or condition that I was in. Gartley was over there and it's for real.
You didn't know if those people were going to follow the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention was written and and signed by many nations in 1864 and it is that document which gives.
Some parameters or guidelines?
For conduct.
That is to be allowed or given to prisoners of war.
Not torture. These things. It was a code of conduct for warring nations on how they would treat their prisoners. Major nations signed that. The Chinese had signed it, the Russians had signed it. Vietnam had not signed it.
But the Chinese and the Russians had.
So Lieutenant Gartley was offered a ride home early, and the senior ranking officer said no, we'll let Hegel go with the names in his memory, but that's all. We would not accept something that would not be offered to everybody. That was the protocol. That was the standard in that kind of situation. He was offered something and he took it. Don't sacrifice.
Your integrity for advantage.
Like Lieutenant Gartley did.
Nor don't sacrifice your integrity under adversity. And what an example we have. And the Lord did not sacrifice his integrity for advantage. Where?
Mark 4.
Good temptation. Thank you. That's exactly what I was thinking.
3 temptations.
And there was no inclination.
There was temptation.
He was tested.
But there was nothing in him that responded to that he would not accept.
What Satan had to offer, he would do his Father's will, and we are here as saved.
And the treasure.
He counts the treasure that he would have in his journey to Calvary.
Through a path of integrity in this life, Unmovable set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem.
Went there.
Bore the sufferings of the cross my sins in his own body on the tree.
To justify God the Father as to the question of evil and sin in this world.
In honor to the Father.
And to have a people for himself, that was more to him.
Then turning back under adversity or accepting anything.
For an advantage.
You and I are the fruit, it says in Isaiah 53 of the travail of his soul.
And you know what he says?
He is satisfied.
He shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.
It was worth it to him. Well, how do we respond two Peter chapter one as we are here to build integrity when we think of our example that we have before us and what it cost him to redeem us.
Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Here is one who is as an apostle with authority, says a servant, a servant, and an apostle of Jesus Christ to them that have obtained like precious faith with us.
Through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ, God is righteous to save. He saves on a righteous basis.
To our Savior he says, Jesus Christ, no other way.
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Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, and that's how grace and peace are multiplied in occupation.
With Christ.
Grace and peace are multiplied. Just a brief briefly, a verse in Psalm 16. If grace and peace are multiplied, as anything else multiplied.
Verse 4.
Their sorrows shall be multiplied, that hasten after another God. Their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.
It's either sorrows multiplied or grace and peace multiplied, and every choice we make in this life goes to constitute the whole of our life, the making up of the whole product, whether we will be in the enjoyment of grace and peace or weeping in the sorrows.
Of deviation.
According as his divine power, this is not.
A course and how to win friends and influence people, or how to get along, or how to be psychologically adjusted. This is not man's course.
That he is giving us here in second Peter chapter one.
Peter, the author.
Writing these words to these Saints.
Under divine instruction, inspiration, we have it today.
Right here, right now, this point in our lives, my age and your age, I haven't arrived.
According as His divine power hath given unto us, we have these things from a transcendent source.
Not something under the sun, not something from the university.
But from a transcendent source, here are the issues of life. He has given unto us all things that pertain unto life, and godliness hasn't left us here destitute without the equipment that we need to get through here. He's given us all things by His grace.
That pertain unto life.
And godliness.
And its abundant life.
Through it's through the knowledge of Him Christ, that hath called us to glory and virtue.
Or integrity.
Steadiness.
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these promises you might be partakers of the divine nature.
He has given us that new nature in new birth that has that appetite for the things of the Lord. It must be coupled with diligence. It's not to make us lazy. We will be faced with trials.
Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Our source is heaven, for the source of our nourishment is from Christ in glory.
Everything down here.
That is in the world.
Is lust.
And of course, there are temptations.
All this bait that is on the different hooks.
Satan has something for everyone.
You'll put the bait on the hook.
And they'll dangle it in front of you until he finds your weak spot.
We're not safe in our own bootstraps. We must be independent upon the Lord and we're not going to make it.
And every time we take that bait, we damage ourselves.
And bring reproach to the Lord. But greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. And great is greater is art advocate.
Than our adversary, and if we sin, we have an advocate and we have a high priest to keep us from sin.
And we've gone through that this week.
And besides this, giving all diligence.
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Now we're going to build a wall.
And a life needs protection.
Our lives need to be protected. We're going to build a wall, and you start with a wall, maybe a rock wall, and you select your rocks and you mix your mortar and you don't just take your wheel barrel out there and screw the rocks along.
And hope that keeps out whatever you need to have kept out.
And you lay the rock in place carefully, and you use the mortar, and you put the next rock on top of that one, and you're building this wall. And so we have some rocks here.
Some things that are for stability and security and defense.
Giving all diligence add to your faith. The 1St is faith.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Add to it virtue.
Moral courage.
You need not be intimidated in the presence of those who will lead you astray.
Virtue is moral courage, and use it.
No turning back. No turning back.
Add to virtue, knowledge. Read the scriptures. How much? We've had that this week.
How can we know the tactics of the warfare?
If we haven't read the manual.
If we haven't gone, if we.
Slept through boot camp.
If we didn't listen.
If we weren't interested.
Knowledge.
To knowledge temperance.
You know, there are a lot of things that God gives us in this world for our delight.
And most of them have to be.
Accepted in temperance let your yielding.
Be known to all men.
Temperance.
You know what happened to Saul's men when they fasted a long time under the order of King Saul. He was a hard man.
And they were so hungry they could hardly sustain the battle.
And then they got a victory, and they just rushed upon the unclean things.
That were available to them because they were so hungry.
They rushed without restraint.
And drank the blood and whatever it was that was prohibited.
Not all things are prohibited to us.
But most all things are to be embraced and taken in in temperance.
I suppose that the Lord Jesus.
Drank wine because they called him a wine bibber and he turned water into wine. And I'm not saying you should go out and drink wine if you don't, if you have an exercise about that. I'm just saying this. He condemns drunkenness.
Condemns drunkenness.
Temperance.
He gives the beauties of the intimacy of marriage within the bounds of marriage, and not outside temperance.
He gives us a feast that we had over there.
He condemns gluttony.
Add to knowledge temperance and to temperance temperance, patience. I noticed that some people are pretty much easy going.
And you might think, well, they have a lot of patience and other people are high strung and you might say they don't have much patience. Our personalities differ.
But patience is necessary for us all.
And you have need of patience that after you have done the will of God, you might receive the promise.
Patience with each other. Patients in relationships. Patients in circumstances.
I get really frustrated sometimes.
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My wife hardly ever gets frustrated when things just don't pan out. If I spill a bundle of mail or I put the wrong mail in the box, I get to the next one and I say I just put the wrong mail in the box. I got to back all the way up and fix that.
And it really frustrates me sometimes, especially after I do it a couple times and I'm in a hurry.
I need patience.
Add patience.
And the patience, godliness.
The attitude of representing God here produces godliness, to walk in the presence of God before God.
Produces one that is godly.
To godliness, brotherly kindness.
In our relationships again.
Life is.
Is about relationships, you know.
We're not monastics and we're born right into relationships.
Before we open our eyes, we're in relationships.
On our mother's breasts, we're in a relationship.
Under our father's counsel, as we grow up, we're in a relationship. With our brothers and sisters, we're in a relationship. In the assembly, we're in a relationship.
As a vendor.
To the purchaser, we're in a relationship.
Just a diversity of relationships that we're in here.
You can't trash these things.
With impatience.
With violence.
With harsh words and go away and say probably shouldn't have done that, but you know he'll get over it.
Relationships in Western civilization which is apostate?
Christendom. That's Europe, North and South America and Australia, where the gospel has gone out and bounded and many have been saved. It's apostate.
Well, there are many believers, of course, but we live.
In a sphere of declension where all of these things are given up, and even in the Christian profession, it's greed and avarice.
And sensuality. And we read of these things in the newspaper of those who have a public testimony as being a believer, and then they wind up somehow getting caught with their pants down.
And embarrassed the whole testimony and it gets in the front page of the paper and pundits and and.
Editorialists, they capitalize on this thing. It's such a reproach to Christ. We have seen this recently. We have seen it in the last 20 years, the last 50 years.
And it's not going away.
May it not be part?
Of us, no part in that.
Well, brotherly kindness.
The integrity that sustains relationships is vital to brotherly kindness. Love, charity, love. God is love.
He loved us to give his own son.
Christ loved us to the end. He loves his own. He gave himself for us.
What an example. Love gives, it doesn't demand, it gives.
These are the things that we need, and if these things are in you and they abound there, and they will.
If there's the desire.
And they won't if there is complacency and indifference.
No they won't.
And you will wake up in a bed of tears someday if you don't apply these building stones to your life. We all fail.
That doesn't mean to depart.
And give up.
We have, I said, an advocate.
If we sin.
Not only that.
You will abound, they will make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful.
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In the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, barren nor unfruitful, everybody has some idea of lifes purpose. You ask yourself that what is this all about? Why am I here? This isn't something that you have to worry about. Don't have to worry about until you're 21, or until you're married, or until you have grandchildren, or until you retire and you'll get around to it someday. Life has a purpose.
Love and obey God and be in submission.
And in Communion. And that's why we're here.
These things can even escape one who is actually a believer if he hasn't taken the diligence to build this wall.
He that lacketh these things is blind, can't see afar off, has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. What a warning.
Give diligence.
And there's that word again. Give diligence to make your calling and election sure. If we do these things, you shall never fail, and there will be an abundant entrance ministered unto you into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And I don't suppose anyone will, but I think of it this way, to have to go in to the presence of the Lord with my head bound because of a lost life, an indifferent life, a careless life.
Susan, what the Lord wants for you, an abundant entrance is reserved for those who mean business. And so he says, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance, not once in a while.
We get these things in the assembly. We get these things in our reading. The word of God just reaches down and rejoices our heart and touches our conscience.
And it's been that way through this week.
Both ways.
You know them.
We put you in remembrance, but you already know them.
It's interesting that my wife wants me to tell her once in a while that I love her.
I told you yesterday.
Didn't remember.
No, she likes to hear that once in a while.
Do you thank the Lord? He'd like to hear your voice we heard earlier. Do you thank the Lord in the breaking of bread? Do you thank the Lord in that ordered, collective way?
If not, why not?
Oh, I'll get around to that someday. That is rank indifference.
Carelessness.
How old do you have to be?
Do you know the Lord as your Savior?
Doesn't it matter?
A young sister that was here quite a while ago.
In conversation in the cabin said that some of the girls said that, you know, I'm not going to ask for my place till I get married because, you know, I haven't. But there's always that possibility that I might be embarrassed and have to be put out of fellowship for moral evil. And, you know, if I just put that off until I'm married, by then I won't have to worry about that.
Well.
I think it made as long as I am in this Tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance. Let's turn to Psalm.
144.
I'm going to read through this and go through it briefly.
The Lord has given us the tools.
His desire is toward us.
You have been raised, most of you, I think.
In a home where there was, there has been order and discipline and it's really been good for you. Whether you like it or not, it's been good for you.
If you come out of your home at 18 or whenever you step out the door as what you think to be a freewheeling Newt and that you are on your own to do what you want to do.
You will soon find and you will soon be singing that song. I can't get no satisfaction. If you are disciplined in your life, Christ will be your portion and you will be happy.
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Psalm 144 Blessed be the Lord, my strength, which teaches my hands to war, and we're in a battle, by the way.
My fingers to fight, but I.
Our warfare is in heavenly places.
We were not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in heavenly places.
And the weapons of our warfare are spiritual, but in the Old Testament, first the natural and then in the New Testament, then the spiritual. And we read these things in the Old Testament. They're beautiful types that we apply God sometimes speaking to us in a bit of the abstract that we stop and meditate about things.
10 commandments are pretty straightforward, but when the heart is engaged.
Sometimes.
The wife would like maybe a box of candy or a little flower, some flower, something sensitive, something tender. A note that wasn't just published by.
Something I got at Walmart.
Maybe something from the heart?
Maybe something that took a little thought.
She doesn't. It doesn't happen very often, but maybe that makes her more pleased when it does.
At least that's what I tell her.
We have then in verse two, my goodness and my fortress, he says, blessed be the Lord, my strength. This is a Psalm of David, but a good example of a man of war. My goodness, how do you know what is goodness good? Master, what shall I do to inherit? Why do you call me good? There's none good but one that's gone.
He brought him into the presence of God. He wanted that man to know where he was, who he was asking.
That it wasn't just a philosophical question asked of a professor with a few letters after his name. That was there as a successor of Aristotle and Plato and those.
But he is the Son of God.
And it was manifested already to that man's experience as he saw a number of miracles, even the raising from the dead, even the giving of sight, even the restoration of hearing, even the feeding of the 5000 and the 4000 and all of these things and his words, not just.
A show like somebody at the carnival.
Doing magic.
But his words were of truth and grace, and they were moral, and they Burrow right down into the heart and conscience. He brought this fellow into the presence of God. My goodness.
If we take God out of the out of the equation.
Forget ethics unless it's just something that is ordered by government to keep the nation afloat. You might call it pragmatism. And God does give government because not everybody is a Christian following the Lord in humility.
And if we didn't have government?
We would tear each other apart as human beings and so, he says, submit to the powers that be.
We don't call the politicians names, we don't denigrate them. We pray for them.
That is, our first responsibility in politics is to pray for the powers that be that we might continue to live a quiet and obedient life in all simplicity.
My goodness, my fortress. He's he's our protection, My high tower. He gives us perspective. The higher you get, the farther you can see. And the poor man, dabbling in all his own imaginations can't see past his feet.
My high tower, we have an eternal perspective that we have.
From that perspective of being in Christ and my deliverer, He delivers us.
How often had he delivered David when he walked in the path of the Lord? How many times did he preserve him? He was haunted like a Partridge.
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How many times did he preserve him from King Saul? My shield, protection from the arrows. People at school fire their darts of agnosticism and atheism and criticism and skepticism and pluralism and all of these things.
Christ is our shield.
Against the fiery darts.
He in whom somebody ought to trust David makes it his own.
I trust who subdued my people under me. Lord, what is man?
This question is asked a number of times in the Scriptures Psalm 8.
Psalm 144 Hebrews 2A number of times. And what a question it is.
And I don't think that we could ever know the answer by looking at ourselves.
We have to know our origin, where we came from, what our purpose is and what our destiny is before we can even think about answering such a serious.
Heavy question.
What is man? The first thing we see is thou take us knowledge of Him. He takes knowledge of you and me. He knows each one of us.
Man is like to vanity. His days are as a shadow that passeth away.
That's it.
Bow the heavens, O Lord, and come down. Touch the mountains and they shall smoke. Cast forth lightning and scatter them. Shoot out thine arrows and destroy them. Send thine hand from above rid me and deliver me. Now in this passage here from 4 through 8, he's talking about the reprobate, the apostate. Send thine hand from above, rid me. This is his attitude. He's speaking for God. This is God. This is the Lord's perspective of those who go out.
Heavier condemnation is for the apostate and reprobate than anybody else, much more than those that didn't know.
To whom much is given, much is required.
Read me, deliver me out of great waters from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity.
And their right hand is the right hand of falsehood.
Emptiness and lies fill their lives.
You don't want to go there.
We have the tools to keep us from there.
Christ, our Savior and our High Priest, the Word of God for our instruction, our brethren for our fellowship.
All of these things, the Spirit for strength to indwell us, a new nature for appetite. He has given us all these things that pertain to life and godliness. He doesn't set us down here in a hostile scene, unprepared.
And unequipped.
I will sing a new song unto thee, O God upon us all. Tree in an instrument of 10 strings will I sing praises unto thee. How intricate the human condition we are as an instrument of 10 strings.
And you watch these people play a piano and all of this comes out of there. It's beautiful.
Beethoven says there's nothing to playing the piano. All you do is hit the right key at the right time. The piano just plays itself.
Nothing to it.
Who is playing?
This machine.
Who is bringing music out of this unit?
An instrument of 10 strings that gives praise and worship.
Verse 12.
That our sons may be as plants, grown up in their youth.
Here's a word to the young man.
Plants grown up in their youth.
Fruitful.
Sturdy.
Abel, then, as they mature, to withstand the drought, the storm, the floods, the fires.
Oh, I looked at some Redwood trees down in Southern California this last year. We drove down through there.
And how sturdy they are.
They live to be 1000 years old, some more than that.
It's hard to bring them down.
They sustained forest fires. They sustained drought.
And we live in a land.
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Dry and thirsty.
Our fluid comes from heaven.
Our nourishment comes from heaven. He sustains us through all the trials, all the vicissitudes, all the disappointments, life and death.
Trials failures.
May our sons be grown up as plants, grown plants, grown up in their youth. Don't wait, it says. In their youth, in your youth.
You must be occupied with these things daily and make it your habit.
Because you sow a deed, you reap a habit, you know.
You sow a habit, you reap a character.
You sell a character, you reap a destiny.
It's the little things that mount up to make you who you are.
Not all. Someday I'll just turn around and it'll all be just.
Smooth sailing after that.
In their youth.
That our daughters may be as cornerstones. Here is this Stonewall I was talking about a cornerstone.
Polished after the similitude of a palace.
I went to Hearst Castle. It's been a long, long time ago. It's in San Simeon, Southern California. Randolph Hurst, the newspaper man spent an awful lot of money building that.
Quite a while ago.
And there's stuff there that's imported from Europe and it's exquisite.
And they take tours through there.
And I didn't see any place where it says don't litter or don't spit.
And I went through this palace and it shines.
And I looked around, didn't see anybody spitting on on the palace, on the stones, the polished stones, the monuments.
There's a museum in there. There are expensive things in there.
That our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of the palace.
If you dress cheaply, you'll be treated cheaply.
In this world.
If you act cheaply, you'll be treated cheaply.
That are garners, you know, the future if we're left here.
Is dependent upon you.
May be full.
You will be the ones to take up the charge.
For fruitfulness in the testimony.
Verse 13.
Have a full garner where no ox is. The crib is clean.
Where nobody labor's there's no corn, there's nothing to eat.
There's something that each one of us can do.
And don't wait to do something that you think is startling and it's going to be in lights. Most of us do menial things that count, that add up to be great things.
One person didn't build a pyramid. There were a lot of people working on that.
A lot of people working on that, each one doing their part. There were some in supervision, there were some in oversight, there were some laborers, there were some who cut the stones and brought them. Same with Solomons Temple as these things were cut out of the quarry. Everybody had their job to do, not somebody else's job to do.
He may have thought he wasn't doing very much.
That our garners may be full affording all manner of store, That our sheep may bring forth thousands and 10 thousands. These are These sheep are prolific.
They are not sterile. The flock increases. There is wool for the clothing, there is the food for the table.
Wealth increases, and I'm talking about not money in the bank. I'm talking about spiritual things that really count now.
I have I have one minute ago to stop.
I want to read just.
Couple of passages.
Psalm.
Now let's go to.
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First Chronicles chapter 23 and verse 27.
And we are taking this story from the beginning to the end and building on a life that is productive for the Lord, adding these things, these things that He gives us.
The tools that were given.
And the Word of God that we have for instruction. And the last words of David in verse 27 of First Chronicles 23, the last words of David.
The Levites were numbered from 20 years old and above. There are things to do under that.
But here, because their office was to go over to verse 30, to stand every morning and to thank and praise the Lord, and likewise and even to thank and praise the Lord, Go to Psalm 113, we get a similar thought. This is one of those Hallelujah psalms. Psalm 113. Praise ye the Lord, praise all ye servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord.
Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.
From the rising of the sun, the beginning of your life to the end of your life, the beginning of your day to the end of your day.
Under the going down of the same the Lords name is to be praised.
And a soul occupied with the Lord.
Doesn't have to manufacture praise. It's the fruit of the overfilled heart. The Lord is high above all nations, in his glory above the heavens. Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, who humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth. He raises up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill.
If I had continued in my life as I started, I wouldn't be here.
Rejoicing in passages like this, he looked down and saw me, and he tracked me down.
And turned me around, tears and all, sorrow and all, and headed me toward the light.
Gave me life, saved me from my sins.
From a life of folly.
He raises the poor out of the dust and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill. When he tracks you down, are you willing?
As he tracked you down, has he spoken to you that he may set him with Princess, even the Princess of his people, he maketh the barren woman to keep house.
And to be a joyful mother of children, productive, fruitful, praise ye the Lord.