Chicago Conference: 1976
Table of Contents
Now or Never
Gospel—R. Bauman
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General Meetings Wheaton, August 1976. Gospel by Robert Bowman.
Shall we open our meeting tonight by singing hymn #25?
Hymn #25.
Time is gliding swiftly by. Death and judgment both draw nigh to the arms of Jesus. Fly, be in time. Oh, I pray you, count the cost ere the fatal line. Be crossed in your Christless Soul. Be lost, be in time. We'll sing the 1St, 3rd, and 4th stanzas of #25.
Life, at best, is very brief.
The falling of the league like the binding of the chief being heart.
But in the grace but now we have like that I will soon become.
And the pain of life if I am crying, living in time.
And your pride he comes to the end.
I am fighting for everybody and darkness falls from my.
Arms.
I went where is your?
Son.
I will die next day and he will die.
Run your way.
On my side for heaven denied being in Christ.
Before we sing another, I'd like just to emphasize the importance of the thoughts.
And sentiments of this little hymn.
You know there isn't much time left.
For each one of you.
Death, of course, is the cut off, and the grace of God doesn't mean anything. But for all of us, there's another cut off. The Lord himself is coming soon.
And when he does, it's forever too late friendly that are not safe in Christ.
Softly important to be in time. This is a solemn matter. Tonight we're going to talk about.
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A little poem. I like to say a clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power to say just when the hands well stop at late or early hour. To lose one's wealth is sad indeed. Lose one's health is more. But to lose one's soul is such a loss that no one can restore. You have a precious soul, and that's why we're here tonight.
Were concerned, and thank God someone was concerned about my soul until my willful heart was won and I came to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our concern about everyone here that's lost. While I repeated that little poem, 25 souls were ushered into eternity. That's solemn, isn't it? Your next breath. 5 souls are ushered into eternity in every hour. 600 souls are ushered into eternity. I should say 6000 to 144,000 a day.
Souls are ushered into eternity.
Where are you going to spend eternity? Where will you be?
Where would you be 1,000,000 years from tonight? Where will you be?
You know the answer to that is the same place you'll be 1 split second after death, because that settles it. You're either safe in Christ or you're in your sins and you'll have an eternity. That's dreadful. I want to impress upon it. I know I'm taking a little time, but I don't think we can impress enough. As it says in Samuel, as the Lord liveth and as my soul liveth.
There's what one step between me and them and that's the way it is with you.
God knows the step you don't. Your next breath, every breath is in the hand of the Lord. He can close that hand when he desires and wishes you haven't any time you haven't any time you know this meeting. May be you're now or never.
I'm going to take one more minute before we sing a hymn. I remember a track that's sold here in BTP. I love it. It's called Now or Never. It's about a man whose vocation was egg collecting. This man and other men in the village in Europe where they lived along the seacoast, collected rare eggs from a large bird. They're hard to find. And this man and his colleagues, when they found a nest, it would be along the seashore.
In the rocks buried underneath in the Cliff and it was hard to reach.
And they wouldn't try it if the mother bird was around when they did. They worked together in a team.
And they have to. One man on top would guide the rope and make sure it's secure, and the other man would go down and get into that Cliff in the rock or that ledge and collect the eggs. They were rare. One day this man, when he was walking, saw one of these large nests and he was excited. It looked like it could have some very rare eggs and large ones in it. He went to find his associate, but he wasn't to be found.
He went to find someone else, but couldn't find them. He decided to do it alone.
He got his equipment and he went to the cliffs edge. He drove that spike in better than he usually did because he wanted to be sure it was in the crevice of the rock and wouldn't shake loose. He tied the knot of the rope firmer than they usually do. There was nobody on top to watch and he lowered that rope with the platform for him to sit on down to where he thought it was about opposite.
The ledge where the nest was, he lowered himself, got onto the platform, and then with body motion started to swing, and when he had enough momentum, he jumped to the ledge. And as he did, he saw those large eggs, wonderful, rare, precious, and he stood there looking at them in amazement. And just then a shadow crossed and he knew what had happened. He forgot to hang on to the line.
To the platform rope so he could pull it back and be safe. He turned around and the rope had already made a second swing and was out for its third, and every time the distance was lengthened between him and the platform. He looked down thousands of feet and the trees looked like toothpicks. The rocks were were jagged and the water was rough and he knew it was death. No one could find him, and so he got to the edge of that ledge.
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And he went down in the Crouch to spring, and when that rope came back the third time, he shouted something to give himself the willpower, now or never. And he jumped. He meant it. It was now or never. He made it. He grabbed that platform and hung on for dear life.
Friends, that's the way I feel about you tonight. If you're in your sins, this may be your now or never.
Because you have no assurance you'll wake up tomorrow. You'll have no assurance if you go to bed in your sins tonight, you'll wake up tomorrow. Let's sing another hymn #21.
Decides for Christ today and God's salvation seat, yield soul and body, heart and will to him who died for thee decide for Christ today Thyself. Thou canst not save, helpless and guilty, dead and blind no longer. Judgment phrase will Sing 21.
Besides.
Uh-huh.
Let us look to the Lord, ask his blessing and help.
Well, as cold water is to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country. That's what we have tonight. Praise the Lord. It'd be terrible if we had only the truth to give about you and me. It would be dreadful. But we have good news. We have the story of the love of God, the grace of God, and the mercy of God. That's being offered once again tonight to everyone whosoever will have it. It's a wonderful story.
00:15:13
You know the.
In Second King Seven, I think it'd be nice to turn to it just as an introduction in Second Kings the 7th chapter.
We have a situation.
In which Samaria was seized. There was a siege of Samaria.
And they were hemmed in, and the armies were all around.
And things were so bad in Samaria, in Second Kings Seven, that they were starving.
There was famine, there was loss of food, there was loss of water and they were starving and the enemy was awaiting outside the Syrians.
How dreadful the situation. In verse three we see there was 4 leprous men at the entering of that gate and they said why sit we here until we die? If we enter the city, the famine is in the city, we shall die there. If we sit still here we die also a desperate situation. It's just a picture of the situation of every lost Sinner. In this scene there isn't any hope.
It's hopeless desperate because you have to do with a holy God.
We've all sinned and that's our situation, each one of us. And apart from the grace of God, there is no hope. Well, they realize their situation and so they rose. And they said in verse five we will go right into the camp of the Syrians. They said if they kill us in verse four, we shall but die. They save us alive. We live. They just went right into the enemy's land. Well, the grace of God was ahead of them.
If you read on, which we won't take the time, the Lord made the noise as though there was a host of an enemy coming, horses and ***** and all other things, and they fled for their life. The Syrian Army left. And when these four lepers came to that place of the camp, they went into one tent in verse 8, and they ate and drank, and they carried silver and gold and raiment. And what did they do? They went and hit it. They came again, and they entered into another tent.
And they carried away all those wonderful things. They went and hid it. But finally one said to another, we do not well.
This is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace. And that's the way we feel, dear friends. The grace of God, the riches through the blessing of God, which we've tasted by His grace. We would do not well if we held our peace.
I trust if there's any here tonight who hasn't felt that in his soul, the peace that only comes from having the Lord, His Savior, having your sins, forgiving forgiven and all the blessings that go with it, that you will be saved tonight, enter into that wonderful portion. That's why we preach the gospel.
Well, I have a few places of the word of God in which the Lord is looking down from heaven. They're all in the South. The first one is in Psalm 14, and I want to use them as an example of his goodness and grace.
In some in Psalm 14 we have these words, the fool that said in his heart there is no God. They are corrupt, They have done abominable work. There is nothing to do with good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand and see God. They are all gone aside. They are all together become filthy. There is none to do with good, no.
Not one.
If we turn to Romans 3, we find these same words plus other words which describe the state of man, the wickedness of man, the worthlessness of man, the hatred of man towards God, the willfulness of man. It's all true. It's in God's word.
And it is really the biography of everyone here. Our hearts are no different. All of our hearts are the same. We are all sinful creatures. We don't like to hear that. In fact, in Romans 3, we really have the likeness of man, God's picture of what man really and truly is when we have a likeness made, When we go to a photographer or portrait artist to have a likeness made, we're very careful to study the negatives of the proofs. We're very careful to look at them and pick them best one, the one we think that makes us look the best and flatters us most.
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What you know?
Romans 3 gives your likeness. You don't like it if man could take a picture of your heart.
And show it to you. You wouldn't let one friend see it if man could take a picture of what you really are and show it to you in all the wickedness and violence. You wouldn't let your wife see it or your husband. You wouldn't want anybody to see it. But it says here the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see.
The Lord took a look. You know, Does that amaze you, that God, that the Lord would take time to look down upon you and upon me and upon all of us in this scene?
Does it make you feel comfortable to think that he's looking upon you right now with an all seeing eye? He does. Let's look at Genesis One first, because he didn't find anything good here when he looked in Genesis One we have in the first verse. In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth.
In verse nine we have the waters separated from the dry land in verse 10.
God called the dry land earth and the water the seas. And it says God saw.
But it was good. He created, and he looked upon the creation, and he saw.
That it was good. If we'd read on, we'd see that God created the sun, the moon and the stars.
And in verse 18 it says he saw but it was good.
If we read on, we find that he put the birds, the fishes and the animals in this wonderful creation and in verse 26 or in verse 25 at the end we read God saw that it was good. In verse 26 we have God making man. Verse 27 it says he created man in his own image. And finally in verse 31 God saw everything that he had made and behold.
It was very good.
That's what he thought when he created this world. That's what he thought when he made man. We see some of the goodness and the beauty of the creation of God in nature today. In spite of man's pollution, in spite of man's ruination of it, we still see it and enjoy it. But when God created this scene, he saw everything that he made the whole. It was very good.
You know, that's wonderful, isn't it? Because God is good. He can do nothing else. It's all that he could do is good. If you take God out of good, you have nothing left. Take nothing out of good. You have God. God is good. And what he did was good. We read in the next hour, in the in the 18th or 19th Psalm at the heavens declare the glory of God in the firmament show his handiwork. You know we must have this starting point.
Before we can get into the gospel, I know once when I read about Sir Isaac Newton, the scientists who love the Lord, who had accepted the Lord as savior and who loved to tell others about him and read his Bible frequently. But he had a friend who was an astronomer, who loved to study the heavens, who loved to see the perfection of the stars and the constellations and the planet. But he didn't want to talk about a God. He was agnostic.
He didn't think God had anything to do with that. He didn't think he had anything to do with God. If there was a God, and that was a burden on Isaac Newtons heart, one of Isaacs friends made him as a gift a model. This small model was the solar system in perfect movement. All you had to do was turn a little handle and everything in the solar system rotated and moved perfectly.
It was a beautiful little model. So Isaac set that on the table in the middle of his room, and the next time his friend came, he was reading the Bible. His friend came in, he saw him reading the Bible. He scoffed, and then he saw the model.
He turned the handle and he said Isaac, who made it.
Well, Isaac Newton just smiled in red on.
And he turned the handle again. He was amazed at the perfection of it, because everything was going perfectly as it did in the heavens. And he said, Isaac, who made this? Who made this? He's a genius. And Isaac looked up. And he said, friend, no one made it, No one made it. It just happened. He said, I think it's wonderful. I studied. I look at it. I think it's grand. But no one made it, he said. You're joking. Tell me. I have to know who made this. I want to talk to him.
00:25:31
He said no one needs this model. It's just the coincidence that it's the same as the heavens you studied. It just happened that way. I love to look at it just like you love look at the heavens, but there's no maker. And he said there has to be a maker. And Isaac said, you say there doesn't have to be a maker of the wonderful heavens that this is a model of, and yet you say the model has to have a maker. And that was the open door for him to look into God.
The God who were responsible to as the creator, Well, I trust there isn't any here tonight.
Who would say as our Psalm started in Psalm 14, No God. There is a God and you're responsible. He's the creator and all he can do is good, as we've read when he looked down if we turned to Genesis 6 after sin came in.
After all the good that he did when he looked down, let's see what he saw. Verse five in Genesis 6. God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Verse 12 God looked upon the earth and behold.
It was corrupt.
If for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
Well, that's a sad story. That's a sad story for God to look and see. And we've got in this precious sound sound 14 The look of God when he looked down from heaven upon the children of men. He looked down from heaven to see. And what did he see?
But I'll have to tell you, friends, and I think you know it. In your own heart and mind, he saw ruination.
He saw that the creation was ruined by man. He saw that man himself was corrupt and evil. He saw that none of them looked toward him or sought after him at all. He saw that all of them were sinful in their hearts. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand and seek God. They're all gone aside. They are all together, become filthy. There's none to do with good, no?
Not one.
Well, isn't that a bad picture? You know, God looks down and he sees this. And if that was all we had to tell you tonight, it'd be a dreadful story. It'd be the truth, because God gives only the truth and the precious words. And we have this terrible indictment in Romans, the rest of the portion, if we had turned to it, that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, there isn't one that is.
It escapes from that indictment of God.
Everyone of us alike have to fit into that pattern, each one of them. And if we looked at Jeremiah, it would say, if you take you much neither, if you wash you with neither, and take the much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before me, sayeth the Lord.
At the solemn thought, you're going to have to do with the holy God. You're going to have to answer to God for your sins. And we can read also in Jeremiah, Can the Ethiopian change his skin? Can the leper remove his spots? And how can you, which are accustomed to do evil, do good? You can. There isn't anything you can do yourself. And finally, in Jeremiah, if we look at 17 verse nine, we won't take the time.
Will read about your heart because that's the source. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. That's the description of the heart. Well, isn't that something for God to see? But that's what he sees when he looks down. Because we read in the sounds in the 14th Psalms that God the Lord looks down from heaven to sea, and he looked down from heaven to see men. And when he thought he saw nothing.
But ruination? Nothing but ruination. Well, let's turn to another Psalm 102, a place again where the Lord looked down from heaven and Psalm 102.
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And at the end of verse 18, the Lord looked down from the heights of his sanctuary.
From heaven.
Did the Lord behold the earth to hear?
He looked down to hear the groaning of the prisoner to lose those that are appointed to death.
Well, you know, the Lord looks down, and He wants to hear. He wants to hear each one of us repent. He wants to hear each one of us cry out to him for His mercy and grace and repent. He wants to hear every Sinner come to him.
With the true repentance of heart, because he wants to bless and save. It's a wonderful story. First, we have the Lord looking down the sea and we know what He saw. Every one of us in our heart has to confess that the true picture of man. It's a true picture of what man has done and does do. But the Lord looked down from heaven to hear, and what He wants to hear is repentance. What He wants to hear is repentance.
Oh, how wonderful it is when one repents.
You know, the Lord knows our condition, He knows our plight, and he has compassion.
Yes, great. In Exodus 3IN verse seven it says, as the Lord looked upon the children of Israel in Egypt, as the Lord looked upon his children in Egypt, He said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people. I've heard their cry, and I know their sorrow well. What he wanted to do was to bless them, to lead them out, to deliver them.
What he wants to hear from you, dear friend, is repentance. Repentance is merely taking God's side against yourself. Repentance is merely believing what God said in this precious word. So many people don't believe that they're a Sinner law. Many of them will say yes, I've done my share of wrong things, but I'm not lost. God says you're lost, desperately lost. There isn't one thing you can do, and he wants to hear.
A confession from your lips that you need him, that you need him, and he'll save your soul.
Turn to Luke 18. In Luke 18, we have a repentant heart.
And Luke 18, verse 10, Two men went up into the temple to pray.
The 1A Pharisee and the other Republicans. Now, I would say that these two men were at the right place. They were at God's house.
And they went for the right purpose. They went to pray. It's good that been pray.
The Pharisee went the wrong way, and the Republican the right way. The publican prayed a prayer of repentance. Let's read on. The Pharisees stood and prayed thus with himself. God, I thank thee that I'm not as other men are, extortioners, unjust adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week I give tithes of all that I possess.
And the public, and standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes into heaven.
But smote upon his breath, saying, God be merciful to me.
A Sinner.
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. Well, the Pharisee, they were people who were self-righteous. They were people who were religious but full of prize. You know, prize is a word that has a mighty big eye in the middle.
Rise. It is concerned with I, And if you notice, the prayer of the Pharisees I is repeated. It begins almost every thought. I thank thee. I am not as other men. I fast twice in the week I give tithes I possess. He was so absorbed with himself.
He had a long prayer to five times as long as the publicans prayer. The Pharisees loved long prayer.
But the Pharisee did not have any repentance. The Pharisee did not come to the God for anything except to tell him how good he was, the publican said. Be merciful to me a Sinner.
Took his place before a holding God as a Sinner in need. And that's what God looks down to here, you know. God looks down from heaven to here. He wants to hear the repentance of the Sinner. Come to him and God can step in and say this man is justified, justified. It's wonderful in the eyes of God. It's just as if this Sinner is just as if this publican had never sinned.
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God says, that's what I want. I want to hear the repentance soul. I want to hear him come and repent. You know, when sin came in the garden after God's wonderful creation, and Adam and Eve realized that sin had separated really between them and God, you know, a soul has a conscience. And when you realize that sin is separating between you and God, you're afraid. God came down right away into the garden to seek out Adam. He wanted to bless him. He called out Adam where ourselves.
The first recorded utterance of man and the word of God as I was afraid and I hid myself. Why was Adam afraid of God of his sin? Because he did his own will, Because he will disobey God. Because now amnesty was really in his heart against the thrice holy God. And God came down only to bless. He came down to clothing and he did. And you know God has been seeking ever since. They hear, they hear the cry of every Sinner.
To hear the cry of every Sinner repent so he can bless him, well we have in Luke 15.
If we turn to it.
15th chapter of Luke.
A young man who repented. I won't read the story. It's a long story and it's well known, but it's the prodigal son.
And this man, this boy, had left his father's house. He had gone his own way. But in verse 17 he came to himself and he said, I Perry, I perished, dear friend, each one of us, if we're still lost within our sins, have to cry. I perish, because there isn't anything ahead for us except the Paris, except the Paris, eternally into a sinner's hell. There is nothing, nothing ahead but that.
The judgment of a thrice holy God has to come upon us for our sins. Unless the Lord steps in and grace to a repentant Sinner, He says, I will arise and go to my Father, and I will say Father, I've sinned. That's repentance. He meant it from the heart. Father, I have sinned.
And I'm no more worthy. That's what the Lord wants to hear. He looked down from heaven to hear.
Repentance of a Sinner. And you know, we read that he arose and came to his father in verse 20, but when he was yet a great way off.
His father had compassion, ran and fell on his neck, and kept him and the sunset unto his father Father of sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and him no more worthy be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, bring forth the best rule, put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and choose on his feet, and bring hit her the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat and be merry. For this my son was dead, and is alive again.
He was lost in his spouse.
The Lord looked down from heaven to hear, and he's looking down from heaven right now to hear. And what he wants to hear is the repentance Sinner cry out to be saved. Oh, it's wonderful that God is waiting to save. He wants to save. It's the goodness of God that leaves the soul to repentance. It's the goodness of God that finally brought me to repentance. You know, it's the easiest thing in the world to be saved.
Because it's all been done by Jesus Christ and the cross, there isn't anything we have to do.
God sent the Son into the world to save sinners. He sent him here that the world may be saved and the blood of Jesus Christ is enough to cleanse every Sinner here from all your sins you've ever committed her. Well, the blood of Jesus Christ is all that it takes to save and cleanse the Sinner. And God has made full provision. And it's a wonderful thing that all we have to do to be saved is to believe God.
Accept Jesus Christ and the blood on the cross and you're saved just like that. Well, as I say, it's the easiest thing and yet it's the most difficult. It sounds like a paradox, but it's true. The reason is difficult is because of our own willful heart. The reason it's difficult is because of our minds that our identity with God is because of our adversary and enemy, Satan, who is our master until we're saved, who controls our thoughts that our mind and makes a placing out of it.
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It's because of our own stubborn will. That's why it's difficult. That's why it's difficult. It sounds like a paradox. You know, there was a man who was an evangelist, and he visited at a home of his family, some of his children. And when he was there, he was sitting in the Bible on his lap and reading, meditating. And his nephew was there in the room playing. And as he saw him doze off, he went over.
And he grabbed his Bible and he threw it on the floor in the middle of the room.
Just send, the boy's mother came in.
And she said.
You pick that Bible up right now, put it on uncle's lap where you found it.
The little boy looked at her and he shook his head and said no.
Well, he also had his eyes opened and he was watching and.
The mother said Joey, Get that Bible right this moment.
And you put it where you found it.
Well, the boy shook his head and said. No, I won't.
Start to walk away? Well, her voice became more firm and she said, now you're going to pick that Bible up this moment and give a dongle.
Well, the uncle said to himself. She's going to now.
Have to break the spirit of that boy. He's gonna break her heart later on. And he watched.
Little boy stood there because he knew his mother meant it now. And she said go on, pick up that Bible.
He stooped down, he got a hold of it, and he grunted and groaned and lifted his heart as he could. And finally he said, Mommy, it's too heavy.
Too heavy, she said. It wasn't too heavy to take it off. Off was lap. You get it and pick it up now He tried again. He says it's too heavy. Can't figure that she left. He knew what that meant. She came back. She had a switch and she stood there and he reached down and picked up that Bible and put it on the glass.
Well, it wasn't too difficult for him to pick up that Bible. But his stubborn will not in the way, didn't it? It isn't difficult to be saved. It's the easiest thing there is to be saved. Everyone in this room can be saved tonight. Each one of you has the prerequisite for heaven. Everyone here is qualified. You don't have to do a thing except for his pants and tell God I'm a Sinner who's ready. Save me and he'll save you. The Lord Jesus Christ will save you at that. Easy, if any. Leave this room lost and in their sins. It's not God's fault.
It's not the Lord's fault. It's yours. It's your stubborn wills, your stubborn hearts, your minds. Let's say there's some time left. Let's say I'll wait till later. That's all the problem, you know. It says the Lord looks down from heaven to here. He wanted to hear repentance. Oh, I trust he doesn't have to hear it out loud. He knows what's going on. He knows the thoughts before you think them. He knows the intents and the imaginations of your heart before you do.
What he wants to do.
Is here in your heart the fact that you realize your sins are going to force you into hell in a judgment of a thrice holy God unless.
You have Jesus Christ as Savior, God's provision out of love and grace. He wants to hear it. You know, it says in Acts 319, Repent, repent and be converted, that your sins might be blotted out.
No, Jill finally had to be brought to that place. When he said I am or myself, I repent and dust and ashes. Oh, was he ready for a blessing then? Was he ready to be blessed of God? Then he was in the right state when he said that.
Peter finally said to the Lord, Lord, depart from me on the sinful man.
Our Lord didn't depart. He took Peter to himself. Peter was ready. He resented. That's all it takes and acknowledged. But looking at yourself through the eyes of God, realizing that this book is true. It's the word of God, and when it says we're lost in our sins.
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Believe it. Believe it because it says it to bring you to himself so we can save your precious soul. Oh, when the thief from the cross finally said to the other thief, we're getting what we deserve. And he looked upon Jesus hanging between them and said, Lord, have mercy on me. Remember Me when thou cometh into thy Kingdom. Oh how wonderful that is to hear him first say we're getting what we deserve.
Are just do.
I'm a Sinner, but this man's done nothing on this. And he says, Remember Me when thou cometh in thy Kingdom. Well, the Lord said to that thief. This day thou shalt be with me this day. There's no time element involved. There's no lapse. If you repent, if you just look to the Lord as a Sinner and cry out, you'll be saved now in your seat where you are.
And that's wonderful thought. That's what it's about. That's the gospel. Well, the Lord looked down from heaven.
To hear and he wanted to hear repentance, because without repentance.
There's no deliverance. Let's look at one other point in Psalm Psalms numbers.
33.
Psalm 33 verse 13.
The Lord looked down from heaven.
The Lord looked down from heaven.
Let me see.
Verse 13 The Lord looked down from heaven, and he beholdeth all the sons of men. Verse 18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him upon them that hope in his mercy to deliver their souls from death and to keep them alive in famine.
Yes, the Lord looked down from heaven to deliver redemption.
He wants to save your soul. That's why the gospel is being preached. That's why the Lord looks down at all on this terrible scene that man has ruined. It's because in grace and in love, he wants to deliver. If we had read on in Acts 3 where we were reading in verse 7 when he said I know their sorrows. I hear their cry. It says I am come down to deliver them and to bring them up later on in Exodus. We have those precious words when I see the blood.
Over you, dear friends, there is no deliver, no deliver.
From your sins apart from the blood of Jesus, but with the blood of Jesus.
You could be cleansed from all sins until the Lord looked down from heaven, and the purpose now is to deliver.
How wonderful it is.
He looked down upon men. And if any day I have been.
And it profited Be not we read, he will deliver his soul.
From going down in the 5th and his life shall see the light of life.
How wonderful it is that all it takes to be delivered from hell, from judgment, which we deserve, You deserve, I deserve because of our sins.
Is that crying out to the Lord and he will deliver.
You know we have that precious verse of the Lord Jesus himself. Him that cometh to me. I will in no wise cast out.
The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, and upon them that hope in his mercy to deliver their soul from death.
Oh, it's a wonderful, wonderful story.
And it's true, dear friends. The Lord looked down from heaven.
To deliver He's crying out for you now, just to come. Come as you are. Come in your sins, but confess and repent that you need him. You need him as savior.
There's a wonderful, wonderful example of this because men are so indifferent.
People are so indifferent to the terrible situation they're in. People feel there's a lot of time.
That's why we started with the hymn. We did. Life, at best, is very brief. People think that tomorrow is all right or later is all right.
You know, when the Titanic went down in April 1912, a lot of stories came out of that terrible disaster. But there's one story that touched my heart because it shows more than anything, the grace of God and the deliverance of God for one that really calls out in need. And that's why I think of it when I read this verse and the sounds that the Lord looked down upon men to deliver.
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That's his desire.
Well, there was a man who was saved through that terrible disaster. You know, the Titanic was supposed to be indestructible. A Titanic was 4646 thousand tons of great ships and all its maiden voyage to the United States.
That 2200 people aboard all the prize in that ship.
But it was going through the iceberg infested water and you know an unthinkable ship when it touches one of God's iceberg goes down. Well, there was 15117 souls had perished in the cold waters that time. Some were saved. There was a Scotch lad who was saved and he told his story four years later in Hamilton ON at a meeting.
This Scotts lad told about John Harpin of Glasgow. He wanted to tell about that man who was the means of his getting saved.
This guy's lad said I was on this Titanic. I'm one of the survivors.
He said. I found myself suddenly in that cold, icy, dark water.
And I was pleased to abort just a board that floated and I hung on to it, he said. I was desperate. I was scared. I didn't know if there were sharks in cold water or not, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to hold on long.
I was numb and I was scared, he said. Then suddenly I saw.
A little light, a little beam of light on a wave that came over another.
Clothing piece of board and on it was clinging this man.
He called out. He said, Friends, how are you? Are you all right?
And he told me his name was John Harper, from Glasgow, he said. I told him no. I'm cold and scared.
He said. Well, I didn't mean that, he said. Are you saved? Are you saved? There isn't much time left. Is the Lord your savior? Are you going to be in heaven if you die tonight?
Think of it.
Asking him that question he so I couldn't believe it. Is it at a time like that? Is no time for pretense? I told him no, I'm not saved.
I don't know the Lord as you say, he said. Well, I'm going to tell you, friends.
Call upon the name of the Lord, and thou shalt be saved. It says so right in the word of God. I know it's true. He said, Whosoever shall fall upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. So call upon the name of the Lord, friend, call upon him. And he said, as he was saying Those words to wave took that board he was hanging on to, And John Harper disappeared.
He said. I thought to myself, what a strange thing, but a strange thing. He's concerned about me and he's in the same peril. And he said, as I started to say to myself, how do you call on the name of the Lord? How do you call on the Lord? What does he mean? He said. Then I saw the big wave bring the board back again. And there was John Harper again, he said, I'm so glad to see him. He called our friend. Are you saved yet? Are you saved?
I thought, no, no, I'm not saved yet. I'm not saved, he says. Call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, friends quickly call upon him and he'll save you, He says. There isn't any time left, and the waves took him away.
He said it was a stranger feeling I had. I wanted to see him again. I wanted to see somebody.
I wasn't afraid when he was near, but he was gone. And he said I didn't know what to do. I had heard about the Lord Jesus. I had heard that he came and died for sinners, but I didn't know what to do. And as I was thinking these thoughts, he said, I saw the waves bring that plank over again, and I looked to see my friend John Harper. But he wasn't there just to play. He wasn't clinging to it anymore.
And this Scotch lad said it was right then and there that I cried out to the Lord.
I said, Lord, if you'll have me Sinner as I am, if you'll have me, please save my soul. And he said, I stand here tonight to tell you that I was the last man to see John Harper of Glasgow. But I want to see him again. I want to see him again when I see my savior face to face in glory. And I'm going to thank you. He said he was concerned about my soul. Well, that's one of the stories of the type heading but dear friend.
00:55:21
You're in the same peril, I believe tonight, dear friend. Maybe your now or never.
You know, the Lord Jesus Christ in his goodness brings the gospel to you time and time again in this world.
It's the goodness of God that brings you that point where you realize you're going to perish, where you realize you must just repent to a holy God and say I do need thee to save me, as this Scotch lad did in his terrible flight. Well, he was brought through. Not only was his soul saved, he was saved to tell others about the Lord. And dear friend, I don't think there's much time for you or for me.
You know the Lord's coming, and when he does as I say, it's a cut off, not just death.
Because it's appointed unto men wants to die after death for judgment. But when the Lord comes, that's the great separation. Every one of us who are safe in Christ, every one of us who are saved, every one of us who love the Lord Jesus Christ by His grace, are going to be taken out of this scene.
And those that are left, It's forever too late. It's forever too late.
I'm going to repeat, God would have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, and the Lord is not willing that any parish.
Not willing that any parent. Well then what's the problem? Why is it there could be some in this room tonight still in their sins.
Why is it there could be some in this room tonight. Leave this building, a lot of those doors in that desperate situation that if death should take them, they'll be eternally in hell. It's astounding, isn't it? As I said before, you've got all the prerequisites that's needed.
Forever. God made sure that everyone in this room has the qualifications.
You're a Sinner. You only have to own it. That's the only difference. The Pharisee wouldn't do it. The publican did. That's the only difference. The publican cried out to God and said, I'm the Sinner, have mercy on me. That's all it took. He was justified. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ looked down from heaven to deliver. He looked down 1St to see and you know what He saw. And it's true. He looked down next to here and he wants to hear.
From your lips, from your heart repentance. He wants to hear you confess.
That you're a Sinner, lost, and you need his Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, how wonderful it is. It's just that simple. It's just that easy. It's a pardon, full and free. Everyone that has the Lord and Savior is judgment free. He can walk as a child of God without any fear because that's what the blood of Jesus Christ does. It's a pardon, full and free. And I'd like to say in closing.
The Lord is offering a pardon to everyone in this room, everyone in this area, everyone in the state and in this world can be part of, And we know from the Watergate story recently what a pardon can do and can mean. It can mean you're free from the law, you're free from punishment, you're free from judgment for what you've done. Well, God has a pardon, and the pardons of God is full and free. You know, a pardon is a wonderful thing. I know a lot about pardon being in the law business.
But a pardon is a wonderful thing, and I want to tell you about a man who was pardoned because it gives the example of what happens to you if you're indifferent to God, love and grace. Tonight. This man's name was George Wilson, and it was during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. And George Wilson, in robbing a male, a male train killed the man. He killed a man, and he was tried and convicted.
And the sentence was George Wilson, Thou shalt hang by the neck until thou art dead.
The death penalty. And he was sitting, awaiting for that, and while he was waiting for that, the Marshall opened.
He opened the gate to his cell, the iron bars, and he went in there and handed him a paper. And that paper that was handed to George Wilson was a pardon, a full pardon by President Jackson. George Wilson handed it back and said to the Marshall, I don't accept it, I won't accept it. You'll have to anger me.
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The Marshall couldn't do it. He was in a quandary. He didn't know what to do. So he put the case before the Supreme Court of the United States. It's the first time the issue had come up.
First time the question had come up and Chief Justice Marshall made the decision.
And the decision was the law of the land and is the law of the land and always has been on pardons.
A pardon is an offer. It's a gift. You don't deserve it, but it's an offer.
And an offer is without value unless it's accepted.
Once accepted, it has every bit of efficacy, every bit of value.
Of the full pardon, but if it's not accepted, it's barely a piece of paper.
It has no power at all. It's an unaccepted offer.
Chief Justice Marshall said it's hard to believe that any man sentenced for death would refuse a pardon.
But if he refuses it, if he will not accept it, he must die.
George Wilson must be hanged by the left until he's dead. And he was.
You say? How foolish. How foolish for a man to refuse a pardon when he has to hang till he's dead. Dear friends, God has offered you a pardon. He is offering you a pardon for all the sins that you've committed, all those terrible things we've read. When God looked down to sea and he saw and he sees every moment he knows yet he offered you a pardon. But if you don't accept, like George Wilson, you're going to have to parry eternally in a sinner's health, in the lake of fire forever.
In the blackness of darkness of darkness.
Is solemn to think that anybody would refuse a pardon.
Well, dear friends, I would just say in closing.
But the Lord looked down the sea of his creation, and He saw everything was good.
What ruined it was sin. And we know what sin can do. We know about sin because all of us are sinners by birth and by practice. But the Lord looked down then to see, and he saw this condition of man. He's provided the remedy, and he's looked down to hear repentance. I would say everyone here who will look to the Lord in his heart and try out to be saved, well, be saved. And now the Lord looks down from heaven to deliver.
I know how wonderful it is. Whosoever.
To call upon the lame of the Lord shall be saved. That's the gospel friend. I trust there isn't one in this room.
Who would be so foolish as George Wilson to say I will not.
Received the pardon, I will not receive the grace of God. I will go on in my sins to Perry forever.
Shall we sing hymn #36?
Tomorrow's sun may never rise to bless thy long.
Deluded sites. This is the time will then be wise. Thou would be saved.
Why not tonight? Thou would be saved. Why not tonight?
Oh, do not let the words be far and close thine eyes.
Against the light.
Of the heart.
The Soul
Gospel—P. Geveden
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
General Meetings Wheaton, August 1976. Gospel by Paul Jiverton.
Would you turn to number 19?
#19 on page 4.
Oh Christ in thee, my soul has found.
And found in thee alone the peace.
The joy I sought so long.
The bliss till now unknown.
If that is not true of you.
Then you'll see it as a question.
I sighed. For rest and happiness, I yearn for them, not thee.
But while I passed my Savior by, His love laid hold on me.
I tried the broken cisterns, Lord.
But all the waters failed.
Even as I stoop to drink, they fled and mocked me as I wailed.
The pleasures lost, I sadly mourned, but never wept for thee.
Till grace, the sightless eyes received thy loveliness to see.
Now none but Christ and satisfy.
Another name for me.
There's love and life and lasting joy.
Lord Jesus found in the number 19.
I.
Wondering.
What I will?
All my life I'm glad I stayed. Joy, Lord Jesus.
Has been living.
Needs die.
And are as water spilt upon the ground.
Which cannot be gathered up again.
Neither does God respect any person.
Yet does he devise means?
That is, banished, be not expelled from him.
Aren't we glad to see that God has a remedy for sin?
The brother.
On the first night in the Gospel, message was remarking about to the pronouncement of God's delight in his creation.
Saying after each day's work that it was good.
And finally at the close that it was very good.
But sometimes we observe that there was an omission at the end of the second day and there's no statement like that.
For what was done on that particular day.
For that was the arrangement of the expanse that separated the earth from the heavens.
And.
We know that Satan is the Prince and the power of the air.
And he's the enemy that has brought havoc havoc into the world.
We don't read of those pronouncements. Later on, in fact, the world became so guilty.
That it was necessary for God to destroy this world with the flood.
Judgment is God's strange work.
But it's a necessary work.
And to avoid bringing judgment upon this world so quickly.
Now, for over 2000 years, he's waited in long-suffering that the gospel of the grace of God might be proclaimed to needy souls here in this world of ours.
You know, it's the blessing of our souls that we need.
We read early in the scriptures that the Lord God formed a man of the dust of the ground.
00:10:05
And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
And man became a living soul.
So you can see that life.
And the soul, which is very difficult to define, are closely associated together.
In fact, your dictionary might tell you that the soul.
And that life are two terms that are the same.
Isn't it good to know that we have been treated in direct responsibility to the Lord God?
In the first chapter, Vaughn said.
And God said there too, let us make man in our image after our likeness and so on.
With an indication of the position that he would have in this creation.
But there's a different term used the Lord gone, for he was created man in.
Direct relationship to himself.
Now what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
The soul is priceless.
Just think of the source of your being.
Where did you get the life that you received?
That life.
That you enjoy.
Has been implanted by your maker.
But we know that we've been ruined by sin.
A deadly work has been done.
An enemy has acted.
Is against God.
There are forces of evil at work in this world.
And the origin of those forces you know are linked.
With Satan, the devil, that old serpent, the dragon.
But our God has devised means.
He knew what to do.
And as he was delighted in man, his creature, as he was in the instance in the garden.
There's one that has come into this world in whom he found his supreme delight.
Not well belonged.
And oh, that Blessed One means more to God the Father than Adam could have meant to him.
In the garden and innocency.
Years without end.
Or it is Christ as the Savior of sinners.
He came to seek and to save the lost.
Your soul.
It's priceless.
It's so valuable that.
It hardly, it's impossible, shall we say, to.
Register the value of it.
Its origin is gone.
It's priceless beyond all that this world has to offer.
They were warned, you know, the disciples were.
That they shouldn't be so fearful of those that would kill the body.
00:15:00
And.
Yet to ever so powerful and able to do that.
They could not kill the soul.
The soul is indestructible.
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were still living when the Lord Jesus was here.
The Sadducees tried to puzzle the Lord to trip him in his talk, in his ministry of the pure word of God, and they brought up what was seemingly an impossible situation that he would have no solution to.
But he answered it head on.
You do her not knowing the scriptures.
And not knowing the power of God.
For what is death to him?
The Lord Jesus is the Prince of life.
For we must need to die. Second Samuel, 1414.
And ours water spilt upon the ground.
Beyond recovery?
No means to regain the usefulness of it, to bring it back together.
So that it might minister to our comforts.
It cannot be gathered up again.
Neither does God respect any person.
All of sin.
And everyone needs the same savior.
He became my savior a long time ago.
Perhaps in the year 19 and 14.
And he's been a precious savior to me, all the way down to this present moment.
There's never a regret about having confessed his name.
And about coming into the knowledge of the truth concerning himself.
Oh, it's wonderful.
To know the Lord Jesus as we were singing together in that lovely hymn.
And it will be good for us to meet the writer of that hymn in the coming day and tell him how we enjoyed his words that he put together.
As directed of the Lord.
In response to God's grace.
That saved him from a ruined world.
God wants us brought into his presence. He missed his visiting with Adam in the cool of the day.
And was disappointed that it didn't find him there, ready to enjoy his company when he had sinned and had hidden himself in the garden.
And had to be alerted by a call.
Where art thou?
What is thou done?
What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
You know that comes from the Gospels.
Matthew, Mark and Luke Particularly perhaps those 3.
The quotation is from Matthew 16.
The soul.
And you know we're glad in thee.
Word of the.
Inspired scriptures.
00:20:00
Defined in Second Timothy.
A statement of the fact that our Blessed Lord has gained the victory over death and has brought life.
And immortality to light through the gospel, which really, in a literal translation would indicate that he's brought life for our souls and incorruptibility for our bodies to light through the gospel.
And it's interesting to note that in.
The question that has been quoted and referred to in the three Gospels.
What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
This cushion are embedded.
Between.
A very wonderful announcement of what the Lord would do because of his rejection.
Lord Peter, and upon this rock I'll build my church.
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
That was never mentioned before.
But we were coming to the time of the actual moment when Our Lord would be crucified on the cross.
So towards the end of his ministry he mentions this that he would do.
A very wonderful thing and we've come into the good of it, to the knowledge of it and we enjoy it. And also just shortly after this verse, this question.
He speaks.
All those that will share in a view of the Kingdom.
That would come to them.
So he takes three and he goes upon to the mountain and is transfigured before them. A wonderful scene of glory.
So in the light of this.
The blessing that can come to you through faith in Christ.
Isn't it important that you consider your need as a Sinner?
The soul that sinneth it shall die. It will come under God's judgment. But there's deliverance, for your means have been.
Brought whereby you can be saved.
I.
And the Peter and his epistle begins to tell us.
About the.
Blessings of those that accepted Christ.
And that inheritance.
And that was reserved in heaven for them.
That is described in terms that are unlike anything that we might be able to describe in this world.
For everything here is.
Summed up or put into a column with the topical heading of.
Decay or ruin?
That's what man is.
He's in decay. He's in ruin.
Sin has come in and has done its damage.
And here we read a little of this.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively our living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Do an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, reserve, that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith under salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.
00:25:02
As a comprehensive statement of the blessing of those that have faith in Christ.
And this meant so much to that, People that had lost their wealth in this world.
And that means much and all because those things give us a little comfort while we pass through this journey here. To lose your health is more, but to lose your soul is such a loss that none can restore.
That salvation is ready to be revealed. It's been finished. It's been ready ever since our Lord was here. Nothing else is to be offering.
And if you refuse Christ?
That will be the most costly thing that you've ever done. It will cost you dearly.
It'll cost you dearly. It'll cost you the misery of an unending eternity and outer darkness.
With the doomed.
In despair.
But.
He also speaks in this way, receiving the end of your faith.
The salvation of your souls.
Oh, it's wonderful to have a capacity to enter into the enjoyment of fellowship with God our Father.
Man was made in that way, a capacity that.
Was beyond other things.
The brother handed me this came from the college here.
The story of the Perry Mastodon.
A very huge animal whose remains were found out here.
In Illinois.
And likely this animal lived as suggested here 10 or 12,000 years ago.
You know, there was a time for this kind of thing. There was a time for dinosaurs.
Did you ever thank God for your gasoline that you burn in your car?
He put it in the earth for you a long, long time ago.
And you go to this meeting.
But more than that.
He sent into this world.
His only begotten son.
When the fullness of time was come.
He sent that lovely Lord Jesus born of the Virgin.
And he has brought us the light that we need. He has given us.
That work of redemption, He's provided it for us. God has devised means whereby we might not be expelled from His presence.
So way this matter.
Your soul.
Is so valuable.
Priceless. The source of it is gone, the Lord gone.
These provided for the redemption of it, since sin has affected it in the foulest thing on earth, you know, as a soul stained by sin.
And the cleanest thing on earth is that same soul cleansed with the precious blood of Christ.
We heard that over and over, you know, many times through many years in the Larsen meetings in Kentucky.
It's true.
Oh, the precious blood of Christ that cleanses from all sin.
Do we rejoice in it?
Thank God for it. Praise him for that unspeakable gift.
Our Lord and Savior.
Now in looking again at Matthew 16.
Or perhaps turning to it for the first moment?
What is a man profited verse 26, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
00:30:05
So here's a question of game.
And also a question of loss.
And we're interested in that kind of thing.
But this is the most important kind of gain and loss.
Oh, what will the answer be?
If we gain the world.
And lost the savior.
There's no loss that can be compared to that.
Do you think Peter lost anything? Although he failed, he'll suffer loss of the judgment seat of Christ.
But he gained.
Glad in his soul, and could write of rejoicing with joy, unspeakable and full of glory.
Right down here in this world.
And if the joy could be so great by that apostle, then, and as he expected it to be so great in others, what must it be?
When we are completely beyond all the hindrances that crippled us now, and we enter into the fullness of the joy of the Lord.
No, he gained.
What about the Apostle Paul? He was running around trying to establish his own righteousness, wasn't he?
He wrote that there are others, but he did it himself. That's the reason he could write about it.
But when he came to the Savior? When he was arrested on that road to Damascus.
And that light shone from heaven. All was different.
And we find him counting those things that were gained to him, lost for the Excellency of the knowledge of Christ the Lord.
Those things that were gained to him.
He suffered. He was glad to count them as dumb.
That he might win. Christ, he didn't lose anything.
And do you think Moses lost anything by his action of faith?
We'll take the example of Moses in Hebrews 13.
Hebrews 11.
Verse 23.
Faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents.
Because they saw he's a proper child.
And they were not afraid of the King's commandment.
He was in a protected place.
The faith of his parents was an exercise and you were in a protected place too. It's a privilege to be associated with those that.
Only in the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But he came to years.
And you come to years.
And coming to years the time of responsibility, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.
All he knew.
Where he belong.
He chose. He made a choice. He chose to suffer affliction with God's people that despised and ill treated people that were down in the land of Egypt under ******* whipped by the taskmasters. And God saw them in his pity and in His compassion, and came down to deliver them. And Moses was the instrument.
By faith he kept the Passover.
The sprinkling of the blood.
Because it's sheltered from judgment.
And that's the only means of your deliverance here tonight.
The Precious Blood of Christ.
00:35:03
The work that he has done through the sacrifice of himself, he was willing to do it.
And though it was so heavily upon his heart as he, and lifted his voice.
As he said in John 12 Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour.
But for this cause came I unto this hour.
Father, glorify thy name.
Now is my soul trouble.
The cross was before him.
And he felt it as a man.
But he was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, he wouldn't stop short at all.
He's made full provision for us. We're not occupied with shadows and pictures anymore.
We have the real substance now eternal redemption in Christ.
An eternal inheritance.
A purged conscience.
And an absolutely secure future.
Oh, how good it is.
To know that the work is eternal.
And that we can enjoy it and rest in peace and confidence. Our conscience is being purged.
It is the work of Christ as the foundation for the blessing of our souls, and through it we gain that purge conscience, because he bare our sins in his own body on that tree.
And that being true, they cannot be brought up against us at any other time.
Oh, precious savior.
That bore that storm of judgment.
That we might have.
That peace that we enjoy.
We find some in the Gospels. There's the case of Mary.
Sitting at the feet of Jesus, hearing his word.
What's the word of God that brings satisfaction to you?
She listened to his words. She was in his presence. She had that privilege.
But the same word is left for us, Peace be unto you, he said.
And he said it more than once, he said, Peace be unto you.
To those that were gathered together in that upper room.
Oh, he had a message for them. Peace.
And then he said, as the father sent me Even so send I you.
And the message that they were to deliver was that same message of peace.
And that's my purpose in being here tonight.
Many years ago there was an exercise to do this.
And the Lord said, Go.
And of course, he said, come out too, from among them.
And he also said.
Shepherd.
The floor.
Those 3 scriptures were especially heavy upon my heart, my conscience, my mind, my soul.
And there's no apology for being here tonight to speak in this way.
And this is not my word.
Is his word.
His message to you? There was another, you know, that had the privilege of coming.
Under the power of the Lord's ministry.
Take that man, for instance, in the 5th chapter of Mark.
In the 4th chapter we have the ordinary means of the ministry of the Word.
00:40:04
As it is made known in the world, the soil went forth to so, and some seeds fell by the wayside, other fell on Stony ground, and still other seed among thorns, and there was opposition. Finally we read about that that fell on the good ground, and there were different measures of fruit because of the opposition of the enemy.
But this man had gone so far in this world under Satan's power that he had become demon possessed.
The agents of the enemy of his soul had moved in and taken possession over his life.
And that is growing in this world today. The agents of the enemy is growing in number and in power and increasing, and they're moving in to take possession of men as he approached the end of this godless age.
All these are serious times. And who are you that would expose yourself to those kind of things that turn you inward and want you to meditate on your miserable self?
God and His grace has provided the object that should be the subject of our entire meditation.
This is the word that He's given us and our meditation should be from it, and we'll find happiness in our souls and joys are known that we've never known before.
And we realized a little of these joys and being together here in these three days.
And we thank God for them.
That man was so under the power of the enemy that he had a terrible existence, a miserable life, dwelling among the tombs, and running against the stones, and cutting himself and doing damage, no use to himself and no good to anyone else. And remedies had been tried in the world has tried its remedies, too. It still has its prescriptions, but they never cure the trouble.
The best prescription ever written is the one that is pinned under the inspiration of the Spirit of God by the beloved position, Luke.
That's secure.
And this man realized.
That Jesus had come.
And he explains.
And wonders the demons were.
So entwined with his inner being, and they recognize.
Is the power that had come among them, and the Lord delivered him.
Then we find that dear man.
That had LED such a miserable existence.
Sitting.
Clothed.
And in his right mind.
In the presence of the Lord Jesus, That's what the gospel does.
Does what the power of God's grace can do for the soul. Your case is not extreme.
Maybe it isn't about you or exposed to that danger. You certainly need the forgiveness of your sins.
And we know that that's the message in the gospel, that God has provided a way for your salvation. That man was sitting.
He wasn't plunging through the regions of the dead anymore.
He was sitting.
Oh, there was.
Relaxment.
And he was clothed, made suitable to the presence of that Blessed One that had delivered him of that power that possessed him, and had driven the swine into the sea, and they were choked in the water.
Sitting, and he was clothed.
And he was happy.
Being in his right mind.
00:45:04
Would you dare say that you're in your right mind if you're risking your precious soul?
And the damnation that will come to it in your rejection of Christ.
Can you be in your right mind if you reject this message of God's grace from above?
Oh, tonight, why don't you?
Come to thy blessed savior.
He wants you to come. He came for you.
He's calling.
The invitation you heard before.
And really, it shouldn't be necessary for you to hear that invitation again tonight. You should have already responded. Time is running out.
And you know our brother.
In the prayer.
Spoke.
Of the nearness of the coming of our blessed Lord.
That will close the day of grace that we know now.
You say that's an unreasonable thing for the Lord to come into the air and call his people away.
It's no more unreasonable than trying to probe Mars.
Why is the most wonderful place to meet him?
Chicago wouldn't be big enough place to meet, would it? Always coming down.
Without shout the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God dead in Christ, shall rise 1St, and then we which are live and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
So shall we ever be with the Lord.
Oh, isn't it important to believe if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, Even so them also asleep in Jesus will God bring with him? Oh what a glad day that will be the moment someone has said for which all other moments have been made.
When we were brought into the presence of our Blessed Lord and instantly conformed to His image and to be with Him forever.
To be in his likeness. Oh, Amazing Grace.
That God has come down to us in the person of his Son, and has gone to the cross to divorce, and not only to divorce, He rolls for us, and he lives for us, and he will come again to receive us unto Himself.
But that's the glad point of it, the coming of the Lord for his people.
Is not associated with judgment.
That is connected with his appearing in this world when he returns with us.
When he left his rightful place.
And then you'll be forced to acknowledge Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
That you should do now.
And come into the enjoyment of the fact that your judgment has been borne by that blessed savior who's willing to die for you.
There at the cross.
All believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And thou shalt be saved.
It's a faithful saying. It's worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And Paul added, of whom I'm chief, he was religious man.
The worst type of Sinner.
Because he believed so much in himself.
He was believing in the wrong one, and he found out that Jesus was Lord, and he said, Lord, what will thou have me to do? Oh, what shall it profit you?
If he should gain everything that you wish in this world or your hearts content, and not have Christ.
Or you'll be the loser.
But why not?
Turned to that blessed Lord who wants you as his very own.
00:50:03
Near to himself.
Cleanse from all your sins.
To shine in his likeness.
And be in the gladness.
Of the presence of the Lord throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity.
Can you find that in any book except this one?
This is the word.
Believe it. Believe the word.
Believe God, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And thou should be saved. Now we'll sing because of.
The brothers prayer that confirmed the use of this hymn #8.
Shall we gather this coming?
Yes we will gather it is coming is glorious, is glorious coming gather with the Saints that is coming if washed in the Saviors blood.
#8
Heart and praying to know.
It's in our settings and sailing and.
You know, whatever I know.
Yes, will gather.
It's gone. Nation is bothering us. It's bothering us.
Heb. 13:1-7
Reading
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General Meetings Wheaton, August 1976. First reading Meeting.
Of our hearts where?
Allah.
Let's pray.
Life will bring us all.
Hebrews, chapter 13.
That brotherly love continue.
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.
Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them, and then with several adversity.
As being yourselves also in the body.
Marriage is honorable and all, and to bed undefiled, but ************ and adulterers God will judge.
Let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as you have for he has said.
I will never leave thee, nor for safety.
We may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.
Remember them which have a rule over you, who has spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation, Jesus Christ the same, yesterday and today and forever.
Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines, for it is a good thing that their heart be established with grace, not with me which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.
We have an order where, if they have no right to eat, we serve the Tabernacle for the bodies of those beasts with it, brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are burned without the camp.
Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, and suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp bearing his reproach.
For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
By him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.
But to do good and to communicate, forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Obey them and have the rule over you, and submit yourselves for their watch, for your souls, as they that must give account.
But they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you.
Favor us, for we trust we have a good conscience in all things, willing to live honestly.
But I beseech you there rather to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner.
Now the God of peace had brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do as well, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
And I beseech your brethren suffer the word of excitation, For I have written a letter unto you, and few words.
00:10:00
Know ye that our brother Timothy have said at liberty, with whom have become shortly I will see you.
Salute all them that have the rule over you and all the Saints they have Italy. Salute you. Grace be with you all. Amen.
Known as we were commenting about Grace.
And also the comment was made by a brother in connection with the fact that God is holy.
And the thought came before 1 brethren that we have both brought before us in this chapter. We.
That there is a moral order that becomes the Saints of God.
We find that the hardest established with grace.
And we also find, as our brother mentioned in his prayer at the beginning of this meeting, that the Lord Jesus is set before us in a very special way. Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever, and the one who becomes the object that attracts our hearts outside the camps.
That a chapter that.
That's before us almost every phase of light for Christians.
Both as to temporal things and also as to his.
Place in the body of Christ so so that isn't the subject, but yet he has.
Ways and connection with the Assembly of God and then the Lord. Care is a great shepherd.
But that chapter was so much instruction, so needful, so important to begin with, let brotherly love continue as though there was a danger in seeking to go on and to walk in the truth to forget.
This important word from the Spirit of God.
Let brotherly love continue, and as you were saying, brother.
About holiness, that it's never at the cost of holiness, but it's never to be disregarded even in our in the effort to maintain what is holy and right in the sight of God.
Only this is especially connected to the grace of God.
The legal aspect of things.
Always turns 1 inward as he judges others.
But where grace is at work, then holiness is free to act.
I was thinking of a passage in the Old Testament.
In the second Kings 5.
We're so apartment to put a.
The commandment upon someone.
Whereas if Grace were active, it would bring holiness. Now in this passage we find Naaman. The Syrian was healed and, he asked makes a request.
In the 17th verse of the 5th chapter, second Kings and Naaman said, Shall there not? Then I pray thee, be given to thy servant 2 Mules, burden of earth. For thy servant will henceforth offer neither offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord.
In this thing the Lord pardoned thy servant, that when my master goes into the House of Raymond to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the House of Raymond. When I bow down myself in the House of Bremen, the Lord pardon my servant in this thing. And he said unto him, go in peace.
There was number commandment here for him to not go into the House of Raymond. He didn't say, Oh no, you can't do into the House of Rimmen the false God. But he says go in peace.
But we never hear of name and again.
00:15:02
We suppose that Naaman.
Acted on this expression, this word given him for his conscience to go in peace, Because when the armies come forth in a later chapter, a name, and being captain of the host, he's missing, and it could be very well that the word went home to his conscience and produced that holiness.
Which led him away from the House of Remnant. And of course that brought persecution, if it were so.
So it's a good thing for the heart to be established in grace, it says in our chapter. I was thinking too in this chapter how we have the exhortations based upon the Spirit of God removing.
All ordinances.
All outward manifestations of approach to God that were set up in Israel, and rightly so at one time.
And the heart is directed, and the eye is directed to Christ alone.
And so these expectations are based on this, that the believer now is following a path that only grace can lead him in. He has nothing visible to rest upon. He has only a person before him, and that's Christ.
Christ is the one now that is the object in Hebrews.
And the only means of approach to God. And so these expectations.
Are based on this now brotherly love is there because we have a new nature.
But we can.
Hinder it by our actions.
And so the expectation is let brotherly love continue.
Do we get the same thought with perhaps the same control? In first Peter chapter one see that he loved one another with a pure heart, fervently.
That is, it should be natural to us to love the people of God, and if there is any hindrance to the display of that love, we should feel it very, very much. We should long to be able to show fervent love toward all the Lord's people.
And if with a pure heart, at times it has to be restrained, we should really feel.
This very much and long to be able to show love to all our brethren. See that he loved one another with a pure heart fervently.
John, we get four things there that are very important concerning this matter.
We have.
First of all, the keeping of his word. Verse 5. The keeping of his word.
And then in verse 6 to walk even as he walked.
And then in verse nine we get the question of love to.
Our brother love he that loveth his brother.
It says abideth in the life.
And there is none occasion of stumbling in him.
These then of course we have in verse 15.
Another aspect which would prove whether we are walking in communion or not. Present love, not the world.
Not this created world, but this diabolical spirit that perverts, perverts everything in it.
But here is the question of loving our brethren.
Surely we can love everyone who belongs to Christ.
But brethren, we have still to learn one little thing and that we can't walk with them all.
We are failing in this.
We just cannot work with all of God's dear people if they walk not according to the truth.
00:20:04
This is important.
And this is where holiness comes in. Not holier than thou, ideally at all, but holiness really is the exclusion of everything from our life and testimony that would be contrary to God's mind and to God's nature, contrary to the book.
Don't you think, President, that herein we are liable to fail?
To exclude everything country to the world.
Contrary to this blessed truth.
This is what we are called in what is called in the Scriptures, perfectly holiness in the fear of God.
Excluding everything.
From my life and testimony, that would be country to God's mind and to God's nature. For God is life.
Very important, isn't it, Brother Smith? There is none occasion of stumbling, That is one walking in the light, in the fear of the Lord and with the true desire for his brother, and seeking only.
What is right and what would restore or what would be for his goods and blessings?
In that.
Walk of the believer. There's none occasion of stumbling him, and that's something we have to guard against that even in our desire to help our brother, that there might be a spirit, perhaps carefully realized, that might be a stumbling.
To one of God's dear children.
Previous chapter the end of the 12Th chapter in the 28th verse, where it says, whereby we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire. One has construction meditating on this to think that perhaps could we say it, perhaps we have been writing it. We might very well have said let us have zeal.
Let us have zeal whereby we may serve God acceptably with reference and godly fear. But the word of God says grace. Grace is needed. Grace is the only way in which any service can be acceptable before God if it isn't in the spirit of grace. Realizing, brethren, that we ourselves are the recipients of grace, that we've already been given forgiven, been forgiven, the 10,000 talents, the great debt that was owed. And so it says.
Grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. And then it has struck one, and noticing how that it's under those very circumstances when perhaps we might feel that we are seeking to act for God, and seeking to be faithful, and perhaps acknowledging God's grace in it.
That we may feel well, love has to stop. We have to act for God. So love has to stop. But it's not so in the word of God. It's at the very time when he speaks of serving God with reverence and godly fear, and God being a consuming fire, that he makes mention of the need for brotherly love to abide. And so even in circumstances where faithfulness is needed, where there is the the requirement, the need to act for God.
With reverence and with godly fear, grace must be connected with it, and brotherly love must still abide, no matter what is required.
Love still must be active and seen there if it's going to be acceptable before God. I I wonder sometimes if perhaps if there isn't the the warning here about Peter. You know how Peter drew his sword and perhaps there was the zeal.
But there wasn't the grace, and perhaps there was the activity, but there wasn't the brotherly love, continuing as it were, and the reminder. And it has struck ones own soul to notice that the very ear that Peter cut off, whose ear was it? Why, it was the servant of the high priest And brethren, whenever we act or do anything for evening, acting for God's glory, we want to be ever conscious that those that we are having to do with.
00:25:07
Are the servants of the High Priest.
Fire. What's up for a believer is that it consumes everything that pertains to the flesh or the old nature. And though he may be very zealous for the Lord, and yet if it's self will is in any way involved in it and our desire to have our own way and do not acknowledge the feelings of our brother.
There is something there that God isn't pleased with, and our God is a consuming fire. It hasn't to do here, I don't think, especially with the unbeliever where all that is.
A fallen man is going to come under the eternal judgment of a righteous God, but here for the believer.
The holiness of God consumes everything of the old nature, so we're to be on our guard and not allow anything that would.
Give way to the desires of the flesh, or so easy even then, seeking to help another, Maybe even to get a little.
Raise our voice and say things in their way that only offend. Remember Brother Gill warning us about that? But the same thing might be said in a different tone of voice.
That would produce an entirely different result, so the old nature can appear even in connection with doing what is right.
You're so subtle, so easy to present itself. So let's remember, brethren, that word, our God is a consuming fire.
He is a God of infinite love, but he is also a God of of.
Of righteousness and holiness, and nothing that contrary to His nature, will endure in His presence.
Is that I? Is there a stretch?
The Seraphim that say they're burners, I do not. It's God's holiness in the seraphim and what happens through Isaiah when he started, he says I am a man of unclean lips and I live among the people of unclean lips woes unto me.
But God's holiness shown out.
And it hatches it first upon the servant of God, didn't it? It was in connection with the dealings to Israel. But still it had a depressed when I was there too, didn't it?
Say, did he not hear, am I send me, And the result of the grace working in his heart with a sense of God's holiness could use him for blessing to his people, and he was used mightily.
In connection with Israel.
I was thinking too in In the day, like we're living, how much wisdom and grace is needed both individually and in each assembly, because of the multitude of problems that arise now, those two things and many others we do not have, we absolutely have no grace or wisdom in ourselves.
It all must come as a result of asking being in the presence of God.
Peter says you mentioned Peter, but in his epistle he said he giveth more grace. In other words, if there's grace needed, he'll give as much as needed because there's no other supply. But that's also true of wisdom.
We do not have any wisdom. We can't rely on the flesh for any wisdom.
If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and afraid of not, and it shall be given him. But I'm afraid too often we we feel that we have perhaps gained something and we're relying on something we've gained, rather than simply going back and casting ourselves on the Lord and saying, like Solomon, we have no wisdom.
00:30:11
Or grace?
I was thinking of that in the Book of Titus in connection with Grace.
In Titus chapter 2.
Verse 11 It tells us for the grace of God that bringeth salvation.
Hath appeared to all men teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world? Well, it's grace that teaches us this, isn't it? Not judgment. The time will come when when God's judgments roll over this scene and man will learn righteousness then because of judgment. But now it's great, isn't it?
And I was thinking, as our brother mentioned, that verse at the end of Hebrews 12 let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably and with reverence and godly fear. And in the connection with that in Titus, it's soberly.
That's righteously and godly first itself, isn't it? It has. It has that which concerns myself soberly, righteously toward others.
And godly in this present world. Well, grace has taught us this, hasn't it?
And we should exercise that grace toward those that we feel perhaps have.
Heard somewhere in the pathway.
First, it brings salvation. And if anyone is in this company that's not saved, the first work of grace for your soul is a work that brings to your feel the need of a savior. And when you've accepted Christ as your savior and Lord, why then grace begins to teach you?
But first of all needs is to know Christ as your Savior. And if you don't know that Christ is your savior, that he suffered on the cross for your sins, and if you've never taken your place before God as the lost guilty Sinner, it's the time to act.
And to take that place, and then God in his wondrous love brings to your soul.
The certainty of a full and perfect and completed salvation which was accomplished forced by our blessing Savior on the cross, and now having accepted Him. Then grace begins to teach the One who has accepted the Savior, just as our brother Little has been sitting before us, the three things there soberly, righteously, and godly. And it's not in the world when Paul was living. It's in this present world of the world in which.
Living today.
And then the blessed hope, of course comes in chill looking for that blessed hope, and then the glorious appearing when the Lord will take his Kingdom and reign over the sea.
Big Brother.
This chapter is intensely practical because it enters into the daily life of the believers.
And one subject that introduced in the second verse is hospitality. Well, I'm sure the your Saints here are given to hospitality and it shows in the Christian life that it has a great bearing on the various.
Subjects that are brought before us because.
A lack of hospitality in mirrors the affection of the heart towards Leathers. Of course the Lord knows the circumstances, He knows the weakness of the sisters who have the duties and provide for hospitality. But there surely is a real reward in viewers, as it told us here.
00:35:12
I for receiving angels unawares, is when three men came to Abraham's door.
Tells us three men. And one of those men I'm sure was the Lord Jesus, because Abraham addresses him as Lord shall not the judge of all the earth to write, but who is the judge of all the earth but the Lord Jesus Christ? Just think of Abraham there that day in the heat of the day, and the extreme men who are also spoken of as angels come and visit him.
12 years walking in the path of separation.
And that's where we can maintain all that have brought before us in connection with the practical phase of life.
Some dimensions that difference between Abraham and village and Abraham.
Gas, that was. He was not only involved himself.
What it was his wife and the servants had pardoned with lost. There was no dimension. What Lord, only was it and there and entertaining.
So it shows the readiness of the home. There was everything in harmony.
The home was ready for entertainment.
Then we have a tenderness towards any that are.
In Bombs, there should be real sympathy towards any of the suffering among God's children.
Shepherd the Great Shepherd.
I remember.
A brother rebuking another concerning shepherding the flock, which always takes a great deal of grace, of course.
This brother.
Said that he had a lot of sheep.
And he had six stars that were trained to care for those sheep.
But one of the dogs bit the sheep.
And so he was destroyed. So he said, Brother, this is a lesson for us all. We are to be shepherd of the sheep, but we are not to bite the sheep.
So let us be very careful in shepherding the flowers.
We can be good shepherds, but not shepherd dogs that bite the sheep. So it was a lesson in those early days of my life.
When he brought our attention to that.
The great shepherd of the sheep. All How much grace is needed today, beloved?
To shepherd the sheep, to shepherd them to really and truly be a faithful shepherd.
We are liable to smooth over.
Little faults and problems because of parental affection. It is then we need grace and wisdom to be granted to deal with the problem. Now there are many problems not only in this land, but there are problems everywhere, and there are problems among the Latin believers too.
How much grace is needed there to shepherd the floor?
Will he give us more grace?
Someone asked what is Grace?
Well, we often hear is explained as on marriage in favor. And I suppose the first one of the first verses we put into the ink of tongue was in Ephesians 254. By grace are ye saved through faith?
And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
Not of works, lest any man should boast.
I wondered what the Lord would have me put on the tombstone of my beloved late wife, which would arrest the attention of the Roman Catholic folk who really and truly loved her. So I put that verse there.
00:40:16
On the bit of stone at the head of the grave. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and let not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
You know, many souls have been one to Christ reading that little verse, many songs, and I was so happy that Norman when he was home there. I know my dear wife won't mind me mentioning this.
That her grave is still cared for.
And she went to be with the Lord in 1933.
They still someone still keeps the grave clean and keeps that little verse.
Please. It's on a piece of of plate, plate glass.
For my grace, are you saved? Oh, we are just poor souls, Malone. How much he loves us, And how wonderful is the grace of God toward us.
The older we get, the more we thank him for such wondrous grace in picking up poor lost things such as we are saving us by sovereign grace Here my brother Jackson used to always say, Brother Smith, it's pure sovereign grace.
We are what we are by Jewish sovereign base. Well, I mentioned that, by the way, our late brother Brown.
Statement along that line. And he said, the older I get, the more I retreat into the sovereign grace of God.
Well, what do we have in ourselves? Nothing. What are we in ourselves? Nothing. What have we done? Worse than nothing. We've offended God.
God shows us his.
Unfounded favor.
He shows us his unbounded favor, and we haven't merited it at all. We have worse than not marriage. It is where sin abounded. Grace did much more abound. That's gone, and you can't find it anywhere else but in God.
Important the instruction has brought before us things that maybe are not very often spoken of. But preserving the sanctity of marriage is very important because in the world today morals are are being lowered, so that the morals of our of our parents grandparents is is being undermined.
Don't look at things in the same way. And it's almost being in some places, given up has all. It had no importance whatever. Isn't it wonderful, important, beloved, that the word of God doesn't have to be revised, It stands in all its purity and holiness and what was said 2000 years ago, or three or 4000 years ago.
Maybe not. That far is just as true and serious and important.
And so we surely need a word like this in a day when there's so much looseness in connection with morals that we see in this world that those who confess the Lord need the warning that we get here and get God's solemn.
Statement about anything outside of the marriage relationship.
And so we need to remember this. And young men can consider this too, that I think it's in Timothy that there's a verse that should be we should be reminded of.
00:45:02
It says the in the second verse.
1St we might read the first verse, rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father, and the younger men as brethren, the elder women as mothers, the younger as sisters with all purity. How many?
Sad Four would have been spared a brother who was truly the Lord had he treated the those that he was acquainted with, until he saw that the Lord had definitely set aside someone for him to be his wife.
As a sister with all purity, now these things, you know, I have our ancient but they're the word of God to be remembered and to be respected and to preserve us in this day when there is such a terrible departure and getting away from the solemnity of the relationship that God set up when.
Before man and woman, and put them in the garden of Eden. Therefore shall a man forsake his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be 1 flesh. Al solemn, that is, and how it starts out at the very beginning of man's history.
So I've been struck by the 16th chapter of Luke where we have.
As I see of seven important things in order and right in the midst we have.
The Law in the 16th verse of the 16th of Luke, the law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the Kingdom of God is preached.
And every man presseth into it. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one title of the law to fail.
Whosoever puteth away his wife and Marieth another committeth adultery, and whosoever married her that has put away from her husband, committeth adultery.
Now it's remarkable that the subject is changed. It seems so abruptly here.
But we find the Spirit of God is calling attention to the fact that even though there has been a change when the Lord Jesus came introducing the Kingdom in its present and future aspects, the original institutions must still be maintained.
They are not to be changed.
And so that just because Christianity has been introduced, that's no sign for letting down the bars, in fact.
Under Christianity, we find holiness is brought out in a very special way now.
It's been said that in Ephesians and Colossians we're given the Councils of God.
And our own blessings. But it's been said that the book of Proverbs teaches us how to walk in them down here, and we find in the book of Proverbs detailed instruction.
Which should be read in every family continually as to relationships in the home and among brethren.
And among the people of God, detailed instructions and the warnings for those who would disregard these instructions. And so there's no excuse, brethren, for our trifling.
With so serious a matter as we have in this verse in our chapter.
Marriage is honorable and all and the bed undefiled, but for mongers and adulterers, God will judge.
We have this brought out, especially in the Book of Revelation, as a special judgment upon those who violate the sanctity of marriage.
Apostle Paul in in First Corinthians chapter seven. Since this subject has come up, perhaps we could just look at that verse.
00:50:07
In the First Corinthians Chapter 7.
And verse one now concerning the things were off, he wrote unto me, It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
But notice the second verse Nevertheless. To avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. God.
This has been ordained of God according to nature, and when man goes contrary to it, or if he avoids it, then it leads him into sin. And so the result is that there's much going on that is very displeasing to the Lord.
Connection by just going aside or avoiding that which God established in nature. Don't you think this is so, brother?
So I think it's a very important verse.
My father little there is such a thing as a as a brother being called to a higher calling, where he may be called upon to walk alone in the service of God, are those the word of God speaks of, who are units for the Kingdom of God's sake. And perhaps someone like the Apostle Paul was such a man who was called to a special path, and their special grace is given for it.
Would you say to them not only?
Was this original institution continued even though, as our brother pointed out, that the Law and the prophets were until John? But would you not say that there was something very, very special and precious and beautiful about this relationship that was really unknown in the Old Testament that now is developed in the New? When we see Adam and Eve there in the Old Testament, it's a very, very beautiful picture.
But when we turn to the closing of the Word of God and see our Lord Jesus Christ and his blood bought pride to see what that picture was really all about. And so in Christianity not only were these things maintained, but it seems to me they become that much more precious and beautiful when we see what we find in Ephesians 5. Husbands, love your wives.
Because this was the original pattern. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for us.
And then that important to as you refer there to the fifth chapter of Ephesians, where he says in the 31St verse. For this call shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one place. But he immediately says, This is a great mystery. But I speak concerning Christ and the Church.
Beautiful, as you said. Show that now in Christianity we have the marriage relationship as a type of Christ and his bride, the church. But nevertheless he says in the next verse, let every one of you in particular. So love his wife even as himself and the wife see that she reverence her husband. Enduring the how they are tight and getting these wonderful views of the type. We mustn't get away from the fact.
It has this instruction has its practical bearing on our daily life.
That is, we don't want to become so occupied with heavenly truth that we neglect our duties and responsibilities down here. Something like the case of of a man that made shoes and he was so spiritual that when the time came this I believe in the old country and they were quartering soldiers in the town and the wife was very anxious.
To have one of the soldiers quartered at their house because it brings a little money into their home. And they asked her, what about your husband? What does he think about it? Well, she says he lives in heaven. She says he makes a pair of shoes and then he goes up to him. He wouldn't be interested in it. Well, some people might think that that was a high state of spirituality, but I think this verse here settles that nevertheless.
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Let's be very practical about these things and bring things right down to earth. So a man's love for his wife and her reverence for her husband hasn't changed, their altered in any way by our getting high into the enjoyment of the higher truth in connection with the spiritual life.
Two records for a happy married life.
And one is subjection on the part of the way.
And affection on the part of the husband.
And I believe, beloved, that the onus is on the man.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. Yes, the onus is on the man there.
Where we get a beautiful picture of submission from the part of Rebecca. That's Genesis 24.
Here we find.
Rebecca lifting up her eyes in verse 64 of chapter 24 of Genesis.
And she she says to the servant who's a type of the spirit of God.
Who notice in verse 64, Rebecca lifted up her eyes and when she saw Isaac, the type of Christ, she lighted off the camel. Which we may may do today. Beloved, may we be ready. The Lord is coming. We're going to light off the camel very soon.
For she had said unto the servant, What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant had said, It is my master.
Therefore, she took a vision and covered herself. That's the most beautiful picture of submission of the part of the woman.
And Isaac brought well, I said. The servant told Isaac all things that he had done.
Isaac brought her into the mouth, her mouth, his mother, Sarah's tent and took Rebecca and she became his wife and he loved her. Isn't that lovely? And he loved her. Beloved, the onus is on the man.
And I've yet these long years that I've tried to serve the Lord among different classes of people.
I've still to find a woman.
A wife who wouldn't run to do the bidding of her husband if he would fulfill what we have here, if he would really love her. I've still to find one among the hundreds of Latins among whom I've lived so long as you know.
Still, to find one who wouldn't run the do his bidding if he loved her.
As it is here in this book.
Loved the church and gave himself for what a wonderful picture.
Of that relationship between the man and his wife.
And the better transportation for the fifth verse.
If it was read something like this, let your manner of life be without love of money and be content with your present circumstances. For he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. Conversation in scriptures, I'm sure we know means more than our talk. It's our whole manner of life and.
The word here is let it be without covetousness or love of money.
So many dear Saints have fallen into.
The idea that every effort should be made to accumulate money, get a job where they can make more money, or whether they where they can be more successful in getting ahead in this world.
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Well, that's a very subtle danger.
And they're warned against it here.
And then it's be content with such things as you have or your present circumstances.
Sometimes many a dear child of God, really loving the Lord, but has had ambitions to have more than the Lord has provided. They like to have as nice a home as well furnished a home as someone else. Perhaps the Lord has given another family another brother.
A better job and he's been able to provide a better home.
And provide better furniture for his form? Well, that's not the pattern for all the large people. The Lord may be pleased to see another family go on with little in this world and yet contented with what He has provided.
How simple these things are. And even if we take it in the way it's translated here.
Such things as he have, the Lord may not give us a lucrative position, He may allow crop failures for farmers, and he may allow losses in many ways to come in to one's life but be satisfied.
Another passage. I think it's First Timothy 6 where it says godliness with contentment.
Is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world, and is certain we can take nothing out. And having food in Raymond, let us therewith be content.
How important these verses are in a day when there's so much ambition and efforts to get on in this life.
And if the Lord gives a better job, he gives a better crop on the farm.
What's 1 in better circumstances? Nowhere to thank, import and receive it with Thanksgiving.
But if the Lord is pleased to send a drought there, to send canker worms or some other cause of loss, where to accept that from? The Lords hand and profit in whatever way it is. And thus, after all, the real happy life of condensement in among God's children is to accept their circumstances from the Lord.
As oh Brother Hale used to say, except your circumstances from the Lord and take your difficulties to the Lord.
This would be very, very difficult to carry out, would it not, if it were only the first half of the verse? Sometimes we quote the first half and ask who can finish the verse. It's quite surprising how seldom does anyone remember the latter part of the verse.
It says let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as he have. Well, now that's all that the verse said. It would really be very, very difficult. We'd say, well, the Bible says I ought to, so I'll try, But it surely is difficult. Because when I look around and see these things that are so attractive, and as my father used to say, all the advertising in the world is directed toward making you discontent with what you already possess. And that surely is true.
And then the Bible comes along and tells me, well, I should be content. It's really difficult. In fact, I think it's impossible but for the last half of the verse. And isn't it beautiful? Be content with your present circumstances, for he has said.
I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. Oh, how different it all becomes now.
We have the presence of the Lord Jesus and the promise that that presence is ours continually. Contentment comes easily when we have that sense in our souls. I remember one time or even I were in the village of El Fruitillo in Oaxaca.
And when we arrived at that village, a dear brother, Juan Sanchez, he offered us the use of his home while we were there, said we could have the whole home to ourselves. He moved out, so we went to his little home. I suppose it was about 8 by 12.
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4 rows of crooked sticks with a cornstalk roof and nothing in it. No table, no chair, no bed, no furniture of any kind. No windows and no door. Just an opening.
Well, brethren, I can truly say I thank God for it. We were more than content because the company of our dear brothers and sisters in that place so filled our souls with the joy of the Lord that there was real happiness there. And I took a little picture of that home, and in February of this year I showed it to that brother, and I suppose he had not looked at his little home with other eyes and his own. He looked at that picture for a long time.
And he looked up with a big, bright smile, and he said pobre, Carol, we contento poor, but very content. I wish I could have taken a picture of that man as he uttered those words, because it just shone in his face. Poor but very content, brethren. I don't say that I know anything about it, but I've seen it. I've really seen it. Godliness with contentment is great game, and I know that it's true.
That it's quite possible to be content with present circumstances when the latter part of the verse is enjoyed in the soul. For he has said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
Well, I looked at it in the new translation, and I thought it was so delightful, so that taking courage, we may say the Lord is my helper and I will not be afraid.
What will man do unto me?
Isn't that lovely? There again, it's the presence of the Lord Jesus, his continual care and power to protect us, that gives us this confidence in this joy. And we look around at all the scheming of man, and we say, what can man do unto me?
I brought back to this country an income brother.
Well, he never did get over that visit to this country.
It says here in verse nine of chapter six of First Timothy, but they that will be rich.
Fall into temptation? Well, he had one thought.
To own a home such as he had seen in this country.
He's an Indian, of course, and he longed for a home like he had been in and he longed for a piece of land that he had seen in this country.
Well, he never got over it. He went back to Bolivia.
And for one year and a bit more, he was very faithful. But then it ended into his heart.
This love of money.
Francisco persisted in that and even had a passport, ready to come back to this country with his three sons to finish to go to college.
Will I stop that through the minister of government, whom I knew and stopped his return? I don't think he ever forgave me for that. But he became a lost dynamic from that time on and God had to put him on his back three years.
To learn his lesson.
Well, there was one who would have something extra, and he fell into the temptation of the snare many foolish and hurtful lots that drown men in destruction and tradition. How very solemn. He's he. He did repent of it, but he's a lost dynamic today, beloved. He has no power for God at all.
How very sad.
Better translation to the 7th verse also.
Remember your leaders.
Which have the rule over you who have spoken at you, the word of God.
Whose faith follow? Considering the end of their conversation. Remember your leaders. There are those who have been leaders among God's people.
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Our Bishop or elder as we get in Timothy might not necessarily be a leader, because a Bishop must be a married man and have a family so he can be wise and assembly first. But Paul was surely a leader and yet he wasn't a married man. God has raised up men, both married men and unmarried men.
To have.
Have definitely sought to guide God's people, and I feel this I'm willing for a correction. It seemed to me that when the truth was recovered that God definitely raised up leaders to bring out the present truth. The truth of the church was restored.
The truth of the present embassy of the Lord's coming was restored, and so much valuable truth was restored at that time, and I feel that we need to be careful that we do not adopt.
Some more popular leaders today that may be put things in a little more attractive way.
I I doubt if this was a subject before us here, but I'm just making a reference to that because when the apostle was writing, there had been leaders there in Jerusalem. Perhaps this this was written to the Hebrew Saints at Jerusalem that had been godly leaders among them, and they were to remember them, not their faults.
It says, Remember your leaders who have spoken unto you the word of God.
Whose faith far? And what was the character of their walk and their faith?
Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever. That was the end. The object of their manner of life was Christ himself. So as we think of our dear brethren, many of that have gone on.
Before, let's remember that about them. Where in simplicity and humility they sought to keep us occupied with Christ, that blessed One who is the same yesterday and today and forever. There's none of God's dear servants that haven't failed and made mistakes, and we could get occupied with those mistakes. That would be a loss and a hindrance to our going on.
But if we are occupied with that faith that made Christ everything to them, why? It would surely be a blessing to our souls.
I briefed God raised up these guides or leaders that we're Speaking of.
And it was God by his Spirit, working through them, speaking through them, teaching through them. And that's why it's so important to pay attention to the word of God that they spoke.
We must remember that it's not mere men speaking, but it's God using them and speaking through them. So it's the truth of God that is spoken through these guides or leaders, and we're not to get occupied with the vessel.
But remember that is God using the vessel. And this is important, I believe, for us to remember, because we're so prone to get occupied with the vessels that God uses. But let us bow to the word that God uses them to give.
Do we not find brethren that there's as time goes on and as the years go by, that it's very possible for the problems that face the Saints of God to change? That is we we sometimes hear, it's spoken of or mentioned that we should imitate the the faith of our brethren of a past generation and and they face problems and we have problems today. But then the suggestion will be made that the problems that we face today are different.
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That we see problems arising today that haven't arisen amongst the Lord's people before. They may be personal. They may be in the assembly, they may be in the family, whatever they may be. But the fact remains that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. And when we imitate their faith, that is it's that faith that looked to Jesus, that occupied the heart with him, that directed the eye to him. And when they spoke, they spoke the word of God.
It wasn't a matter simply of saying, well, I think, but it was a matter of bringing the word of God before the conscience. And so it is today. We still have the Word of God, and we still have those that we could look back upon and recognize that what they did in their ministry from the word of God was to point us to the one who doesn't change. He's the same yesterday and today and forever. I I could also make one other comment in connection with what we've already had before us.
And I say this to our young people particularly. It seems to me that there's a very lovely encouragement given to young people, and particularly to young married couples, to use your home to entertain the Saints of God. The reason I say this to me is I have been struck in meditating on this chapter to notice how it says let brotherly love continue. And then it says be given to hospitality or neglect, not hospitality.
And I fear sometimes young people perhaps hesitate to have Saints in their home because they fear that perhaps they can't lay out for them the same as others can. Or perhaps their homes aren't just quite as attractive as brothers, so and souls is. But I can tell you from experience in my own soul and visiting amongst the Lord's people, what a real blessing it has been to my soul to visit dear beloved Saints of God, where love and contentment was what was served up in the hole.
What a lovely, lovely blessing it has been. And I would also say we we. Not that I would point to myself as any example of it, but to me there's a very special encouragement in that little word. Entertaining Angels unawares, Dear young people, You invite the Lorde people into your home and you will find that the time will arise, that it won't be what you give, but what you get. You'll find that there's a real blessing to your own soul and having them there in your home.
Even so much that you'll find yourself saying sometimes, as we have felt when we've had some brethren like I'll mention one name our dear brother, Stanley Baylor, this man known to some of us here. We have felt when we've had him in our home, when he's gone back again, we felt that we've entertained an Angel.
Heb. 13:8-13
Reading
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General Meetings Wheaton, August 1976. Second reading meeting.
So we are.
Hungry.
Oh my God.
Before we read our Art thou gracious master gone for us a mansion to prepare.
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300 and no.
2/26.
And forever.
Microsoft.
Dot com.
Yeah.
I want.
To go.
Inside.
00:10:37
Hebrews 13 was at verse 9.
Nice to read the eighth verse first.
April Chapter 13, verse 8.
Jesus Christ the same, yesterday and the day and forever.
We're not carried above of divers and strange doctrines. Or is a good thing that the heart be established with grace, not with meats, which have not profited them, that have been occupied there yet?
We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat. We serve the Tabernacle, for the bodies of those beasts with blood is brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest, for sin are burned without the camp.
Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.
Let us go forth, ever unto him, without the camp bearing his ripped throat.
For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
By him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name, what to do good and to communicate. Forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourself, for they watch for your souls as they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not with greed.
Well, that is unprofitable for you.
Pray for us where we trust we have a good conscience in all things, willing to live honestly.
I beseech you the rather to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner.
Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make it perfect in every good work to do with will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
And I beseech your brethren, suffer the word of exhortation, for I have written a letter unto you in few words.
Know you that our brother Timothy have said at liberty, with whom, if he comes shortly, I will see you.
Salute all them that had the rule over you and all the Saints.
Italy salute you. Grace be with you all. Amen.
One reason I ask that the eighth verse be raised, I know it was commented on last Saturday in our reading CDN, but it has seemed to me that that.
Verse is something of connection.
Between the seventh verse and the ninth verse.
Has to the ninth verse, Speaking of those who who your leaders, who have spoken unto you, the word of God.
Whose faith, father? Considering the end of their conversation, their manner of life, what was the real issue? What was really before?
Those of whom he speaks, it was Jesus Christ.
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Doesn't speak about following their failures, for every servant of Christ has failed but to follow their faith. And what was their faith occupied with?
It was Jesus Christ, and there we have fullness as to his.
Person.
So we have the same yesterday that takes us.
Into the past.
Today, for he's in glory, living for us.
And forever for His coming for us, and we are to spend eternity in His company.
I just make this connection that in the next verse be not carried away with divers and strange doctrines.
All that first, the eighth verse, is the protection for us from being carried away with divers and strange doctrines.
For the one who is enjoying Christ and satisfied with Christ is not seeking something new, some strange doctrine to occupy his poor stupid mind.
I understand that that works same in places. Is perhaps a name.
Of the Lord is it?
Yes, I believe that's right. It's one of his titles, the same. That's wonderful to think of that here we have one that has that title. Not only that he acts the same, but he is the same, always the same. That's what he is in his person, the same. Unchangeable.
I was thinking of X1 present.
We have there an interesting portion.
X1.
And.
Verse nine, We do remember that this epistle to the Hebrews. It was written to Christian Hebrews.
And so the apostle is drawing their attention to this blessed one, in contrast to the Judaism.
Problems that confronted them. But here we have a wonderful verse.
While they beheld and when he had spoken these things.
While they beheld, he was taken up.
And the cloud received him out of their sight, while they looked steadfastly toward heaven.
As he went up, behold, 2 men stood by them in white apparel, which also said, Ye men of Galilee, while standing gazing up into heaven.
This same Jesus. Well, that's wonderful. This same Jesus.
Which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven. Beloved, we have a glorified man in heaven.
He's taken that form. He will be always.
That and we're going to be like him.
And so the disciples, while they watched him go, they were sad, they were afflicted, and they were assured that this same Jesus.
Whom you've seen going to heaven will come again like manner.
And we are going to be like him.
Like him?
These bodies of humiliation are going to be changed, and the bodies of glory and fashion like his own glorious body.
Just think of it, beloved, A glorified man in heaven.
And we're going to be like him.
I often think of that verse 64th hymn by J&D like Jesus in that place of light and Love Supreme.
One span of sorrows full of grace, heavens bless and endless theme. Well, there's a wonderful theme for us. Heavens, blessed and endless theme.
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In connection there as gifted with every grace, is he not and every gift and also.
He now has all power as we have in Hebrews 2.
So that it's a man in the glory.
In that position.
Full of power, gifted with every gift, and in the place of the highest glory, we had read to us from Philippians yesterday.
There's no place higher than the place that Jesus has a man in the glory.
But our core hearts are slow to take these things in. We're going to be like him and we're going to be with him and.
In Thessalonians, it says we're going to live together with him. These are all very precious thoughts, and these are the thoughts that should occupy us because we're so near that moment when these things will be realized.
In connection with the thought of.
In our chapter be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines and thinking of the of the Lord Jesus being always the same. I was wondering about of thinking about a verse in the book of Malachi and also another verse in the Book of Proverbs, which would be good for a little admonition concerning this.
I was thinking in the Malachi chapter 3 and verse 6 where the he says I am the Lord. I change not, I change not. There's no change with him. He's the same, isn't he? And we're warned. We're admonished not to be carried about with every wind of doctrine and slight of men and there's much of it today. So he says I am the Lord, I change not.
Men's change, We change.
Views change, ideas change, but there's no change with him. Then I was thinking in the book of Proverbs, chapter 24.
And verse 21.
My son.
Fear thou the Lord and king, and.
Metal knots with them that are given to change.
I think this is a very precious verse to exhort us, isn't it? To cause us to be exercised about things that we see that are changes, men like innovations and something new? Well, the Lord is the one who does not change. He's the same. And we're told here in the book of Proverbs, which is God's wisdom for us down here in the pathway, isn't it?
Metal knot with them that are given to change.
Have nothing to do with them.
The Lord Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Hebrews is a wilderness book, isn't it?
Good heart be established with grace, not with meats. Meats would suggest what's refined in Judaism, where there was forms and ceremonies that had to do with a religious system that was adapted to the natural man.
Well now instead of being occupied with Forbes and ceremonies and just having a a ritual so pleasing and satisfying to the place.
And the natural man we're to be established with grace.
And what a theme or a subject grace is, for it's by grace ye are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God.
It's God's unmerited favor and then we get the standing of the believer is in grace. You get that in the 5th of Romans.
The Gray square in ye stand. What a comforting verse that is for the believer, because we fail so often, and might be fearful and doubtless to.
00:25:11
Our salvation. But when we think that while God doesn't in any way count as what's wrong, yet he goes around with us in grace, and in grace he restores the wanderer and brings him back into fellowship and enjoyment of his love again, we need to hold truth in its connection and place, For there is the government of God for the believer in this scene. But that's not what we're considering.
At the moment and being established in grace, no God goes on with us in grace all through the journey here below. And then Peter speaks of the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So it carries us on, and that the revelation of when the rewards are given, then we will see that it was all of grace.
Whatever crown there is.
It's just crowned to be cast at his blessed feet. Instead of saying we are worthy, we are faithful and therefore we have a crown. Now up there we'll just cast it at his feet and say Thou art worthy or whatever is gained in connection with Christian walk and testimony is nothing but the result of his faithfulness and His grace in bearing with us because if he had.
Exercise his.
Here there are.
His ways of.
Holding us upon us, he could have set us aside so that we would not have had the privileges that we're enjoying.
So everything is fruit of His grace, and what a theme for us to be established in that. And it makes little itself, It makes much of Christ, doesn't it?
This first makes me think of the Gospel of Luke.
Because I believe that in the Gospel of Luke we have.
Grace predominantly before us, and it also reminds me of the time when in the 21St of First Chronicles.
When David had numbered the people and the plague broke out, and Arnon Aruna the Jebusite offered David his threshing floor.
For the sacrifice that the plague might be stayed.
And he also offered him.
Animals for a bird offering.
But David said that is not enough.
I'll have to have some for peace offerings and I want to buy them too.
And so he he not only offered bird offerings.
Offered peace offerings. That's the Gospel of Luke. That's the 15th chapter of Luke where the prodigal comes back and not only is he forgiven the sins that he has confessed, but now he has full liberty.
And that's what we have with Grace here.
The the one who is established in grace, even though he may fail. Like David, when he's restored, he's reminded of his true position. And that is the peace offering. It really. It puts us in the place of full liberty with God, not simply that we have had our sins forgiven, which is a very, very precious thing.
But that the whole work is accomplished and we are entitled to the enjoyment of the whole thing. And so we get grace brought before as much in the Gospel of Luke, and it's really liberty is it now? And communion as well as worship.
Another little sidelight of grace too, perhaps, I think, in connection with that which Arona gave to King David. It is said that King David repaid him in full for all that which he gave, and then, having repaid him in full, the scripture says all these things Did Arona as a king give unto King David.
00:30:19
So that even though he was fully repaid, yet it's listed in scripture as a gift. Isn't that a wonderful evidence of the very great grace of God? You and I know very well that if in our lives, by His wonderful grace.
There has been any privilege of service granted. Has he not fully and bountifully repaid us? And in the 1St place, where did the opportunity, the energy, the courage, the ability, or anything come from? It all together came from him in the 1St place. And then, after having done any little thing for him, he abundantly repays us with joy and gladness, and often with much more too.
And we look back by the grace of God in our lives and justice feel the abundant repayment already received. And yet he records what Arona got paid for as a gift, what wonderful grace in the heart of God that already delights to repay any little effort of service, and tells us it's all written down up above and it will be reviewed in that day as a gift.
Greatly appreciated.
I remember being at a conference in Montreal a few years ago, and a dear sister came up to be after one of the meetings, and the comments she made was she said. What amazes me is that I find myself sitting here and hearing the very same ministry that I heard 40 years ago, and I thought how lovely that was. It says that Timothy, that which thou hast heard of me, among many witnesses, the same.
Commit thou the faithful man who will be able to teach others also. And so here we sit today, and we're hearing the very same ministry that has been ministered amongst us for so long by God's one disgrace, the same ministry. And is it not lovely, friend, to realize that it's the same ministry given us to us of God that occupies us with the same person who never changes the Lord Jesus? I was thinking of this verse where it says.
Afford it as good than the heart be established with grace, not with beats. Is it not true that the history of the church has proven the need for this very kind of admonition, this very kind of mourning, because it is so natural to the human heart to want to turn back to meats, To want to turn back to some kind of form or ceremony or something that the eye can see something that the flesh can find some kind of acceptance in?
Something that the flesh can see and find some kind of delight in. It's perhaps something that they feel bolsters themselves, gives them some kind of a position in the eyes of the world. And it's been the very history of the church to do this very thing to see it says at the end of that ninth verse, which have not profited them, that have been occupied therein. The whole system of meets of forms and ceremonies and buildings and priesthoods and all this kind of thing.
Has been tried and it didn't work. It didn't produce any fruit for God. It didn't produce anything that God could find delight in at all. In the 11Th chapter of Mark, I believe it is. We find the Lord Jesus. It says of him there that he went to Jerusalem, into the temple, and having looked all about he will act and went out to Bethany. And I thought how lovely he could look over that whole system of things that had been originally established of God.
And find nothing there to satisfy his heart. And he would go out to be where there were those who loved him and where he could feel at home. Well, it's so with us. God has revealed to us by His oneness, grace, the oneness privilege of what grace has done and what grace has wrought. But we have to be constantly on guard, because there's ever the tendency of our hearts to turn back to something that has a form.
This was a big problem I just noticed. Here we're told what to be occupied with and what we should not be occupied with.
00:35:11
In the eighth verse, we find what we should be occupied with, and thus Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever. How wonderful, beloved, if we are truly occupied with Christ, there's nothing that takes the place of that.
It's really why forms ones Christian life is what preserves the mind from air and from.
What hinders a real spiritual growth in the soul? And it's something we have to cultivate because it doesn't come natural to us. But off times, in quiet moments in the night, maybe if we start thinking of a scripture and going over it.
While we're lying in quietness and get our minds on Christ or, I often find that to go through one of the Gospels and just follow the large pathway through chapter after chapter and it becomes a real way of getting the mine occupied where that blessed one because.
It's a natural to us to have a mind just traveling through things maybe that are.
Have no profit, or maybe get us out of communion and get us unhappy in our souls, But oh, what a precious thing it is, What a needful thing it is to be occupied with that blessed one. And then he tells us here that things are not to be occupied with and.
That in the next verse, which have not profited them, which have been occupied therein.
That is the mere empty form of religion if we're just occupied with going on and there is a danger even among those gathered the Lords name just to be occupied with with getting regularly to meetings and with little thought of why we're gathered together, what the purpose is so.
Get the mind on Christ himself found that will preserve us from the whole system of what is spoken up there as neat.
Not profited, as you say. It's really the whole system of forms that just satisfy the conscience and the natural man in a religious way. This is what the apostle was very earnestly trying to get these Hebrew Christians to see.
They were very much attached to the temple and its customs, of course, as we know.
And consequently.
They were to learn that God had set this all aside.
Beloved Christianity is not an adjunct of Hebrew, of Hebrews, Hebrews not at all. This is the great scene of today with its specimens.
And it's paraphernalia.
We tend to go back to that, so the Lord.
The Apostle Paul, undoubtedly the author of this portion of this epistle. He wants to get these Hebrew Christians to see that those old customs had nothing really to do any longer. That Christianity was not an adjunct to Hebrews, Hebrews it was just.
To put them into ******* again, and not to let them see the joy and the privilege of what grace would affect.
How grace would affect their lives? Well, I've often thought of that in this sense.
That we do tend to go back to the the these things that belong to the to the Hebrew conception of things instead. Take, for instance, the vestments that we use in sectarianism.
And the paraphernalia that goes along with it, this is all taken from the old system. And so here is the apostle speaking to Hebrew Christians those who've been saved for the grace of God, and he wanted them to go to back.
00:40:17
Not to the old things that they had been used to, but to see that Christianity was something different. It was based on divine grace. Our brother Barry was Speaking of lying awake at night and then Speaking of.
How we can be occupied with the scriptures? The Lord Himself and I got to thinking about something that's often said that if we lie awake at night, count sheep.
But then I ran across a little saying that said, well, instead of counting sheep, talk to the shepherd.
So sometimes, even in the waking hours, we can be occupied with the wrong thing.
We need to be occupied with Christ talking to him, and I believe that will put us to sleep faster than anything else I I remember.
Over in the Congo.
And in the Congo, there were evil spirits all around.
The Africans themselves were afraid of evil spirits. They were aware of them too, and that's why they were sacrificing.
To idols, and those are sacrificed. To idols, they are worshipping demons. So I suppose the sacrificing to idols was to keep the demons quiet.
But we as being there were aware of these demons or evil spirits all around.
And you feel it really more there than you do here. But I'm beginning to feel it more here, too, because I believe demons and evil spirits are more active in this country than they have been.
It's the enemy of our souls behind it. But one night when I was out in the villages, going from village to village preaching the gospel.
My wife was left back at the mission station.
And we had a native that was supposed to sit guard during the night, but I'm sure he fell asleep most of the time.
And this one night.
My wife was awakened.
And she saw some objects passing back and forth in the other room.
And the first thought she had was, well, there were evil spirits. Later on we learned about angels.
And we feel that there were angels there guarding my wife.
And she just looked to the Lord.
And she quietly went back to sleep again.
Well, when we are troubled, we can look to the Lord and commit everything to Him, and He does give his beloved sleep.
Dear Brother, Father made a suggestion that has been very helpful to me. He said in the early hours of the morning. Repeat to yourselves the 20th chapter of John's Gospel. Well, I got the thought, and I suppose for 60 years perhaps I've been repeating the 20th chapter of John. Wake up early and go over that.
Wonderful chapter.
Miriam has to be the first.
Early the first day of the week.
There at the 7th curve, Jesus and going on in that beautiful chapter, learn it by heart. I didn't have to learn by heart. I'd read it so many times. I just remembered it without.
Without learning it.
Verse by verse.
It isn't that a helpful way to start out the Lord's day? To just go over that first day of the week when the Lord rose from the dead?
Well, maybe some young people will act on that and practice it through life.
But the precious blood of Christ, brother bearing? I do know something of that, having lived so long in the foreign land.
How often sleep would leave one because of the presence of demons everywhere. Demon possessed both, and I would mention the precious blood of Christ.
00:45:05
And go into a sweet sleep, the precious blood of Christ. Now we get This is very important.
Demon possession is very common.
Everywhere.
And you get it in the 6th of Ephesians.
But also in the fault of Ephesians. You get good angels there, and they read in us the manifold wisdom of God.
Huh. This Brother Dasser, of whom I've often spoken, Brethren, he was immediately.
And God saved that man. I used to feel uncomfortable when he came into the meeting. He was a professor in the university and a very respected one. And he came to the meeting and he would sit there and glare at me right through the whole hour, and I felt uncomfortable. One night the Lord saved that man, and he was gathered happily to the Lord's name. But this is something that's very, very terrible.
You know, sometimes walking along the street, that man would be thrown down on the street.
He always dressed immaculately and he was thrown violently to the street and he would pick himself up and say to me, Brother Smith.
Demons can never enter the heart of a believer, but they certainly can harish one. They can harass them, and that was his very words. They can Harris one, but isn't that a comfort in that other chapter?
That the they read in the church in US in chapter 4 of Ephesians, the manifold wisdom of God. In the Greek it's the many colored wisdom of God. They read enough and how often we've said in their meetings.
Angels don't sing, but they say. And I wonder what they do say, beloved, when they see young Christians.
Absorbed with the beggarly elements of the world instead of instead of being absorbed with the person of Christ and his precious words, What do they say?
Do they say concerning our behavior? That's the meaning of conversation in First Timothy 4:00 and 12:00.
The word of the Apostle Paul to Timothy was Be thou an example of the believer in Word, in conversational behavior, in love, in spirit, and in purity.
Oh, how very necessary that is. But the angels read in US, beloved the many colored wisdom of God.
What do they say when we don't walk accordingly? Well, these these Hebrew Christians needed the excitation to forget Judaism, that Christianity was not an adjunct of Judaism at all. They had super abounding grace instead of the law and Judaism.
Is that right?
What are the questions altered? It says here we have an altar whereof they have no right to eat, which served the Tabernacle. So it's rather astonishing to think of Christians so far removed from Judaism who had the older?
Of great importance of all their history. And yet we've we've left all that system and it's been set aside as we have in the verse.
Just considered, but here we're definitely reminded that we have an altar.
On a very Doesn't it speak of the way of approach to God?
I know that.
In Genesis 26.
That Isaac build an altar and call on the name of the Lord.
00:50:05
Usually associate the altar with sacrifices, as we have it in the rest of this chapter.
But we do find there, and in other cases, that it wasn't an approach to God where we can draw nigh to God.
That he also would speak of that, wouldn't it?
I'm glad you brought that out, because in Genesis, the orders that Abraham built and Jacob Bader built, it seems they were had more to do with worship than sacrifice. Don't you think it as you say it was the approach.
To come into the presence of the Lord.
Does not Christ replace everything?
That's otherwise visible to the Jew in his day. We find that in the beginning of Hebrews.
First of all, the angels were set aside in the second chapter, and in the next chapter Moses was set aside and Christ replaced him as the spokesman for us. And then Aaron was set aside.
And as we go through, we find there's another sanctuary.
The old one was set aside, and the priest, we have such a high priest, it's Christ. And as we go through Hebrews we find that man loses everything that belongs to an earthly religion. And there's nothing like the book of Hebrews to establish the soul not only in present grace, but in the true.
Approach to God, as our brother has stated.
Because Christ is the one that the Spirit of God sets before us as the object.
Now in commenting in general on these verses, we were Speaking of grace and.
You'll pardon me going back just for a moment, because it's such a great subject.
I believe that it's well to mention a few more things about grace that the heart be established in grace.
If Israel had learned their lessons.
And if we learn ours, Israel would have been ready for the Lord Jesus.
As a nation.
Because although Israel was under the law.
If God had dealt with them according to the law, they would have been completely set aside and destroyed. But at every turn we find God dealing with Israel on the ground of sovereignty.
Now this goes back even to the time of the beginning, before Israel was a nation.
When man sinned in the third chapter of Genesis.
Why immediately God has the promise ready not to man, but for the woman seed That was grace, was it not?
And after the flood.
We find that man receives meat to eat, which he did not have before his table was spread richer than before.
And in the comments that were made about Aruna and the threshing floor.
We find that Aruna was a Jebusite and God couldn't stop that plague in Israel because Israel had sinned.
And so in his sovereignty.
He stops that plague.
Outside of Israel, on the threshing floor of Aruna, the Jebusite, and by the way, Brethren, Speaking of the marvelous grace of God, which is beyond mercy, because mercy meets the need, wonderful as it is.
Why? That place where David offered that sacrifice was the very sight of the temple.
Mount Moriah, brethren, we cannot in any way reach to that marvelous grace of God. It meets us on every hand. And if we stop just for a moment to look back one day, and we, as sometimes we sing, count our blessings, we can't but.
00:55:04
To to think of the marvelous grace of God that meets us at every turn, not mercy.
That's true indeed. But think of grace. What right have we, brethren, to be called as have a part of the to be a part of the Bride of Christ? What right have we?
Now, mercy would put away all our sins, but to think that we have been called to the fellowship of God and His own Son. Now this is great, this goes far beyond mercy, and that we're going to dwell together with Him. We're going to be like Him when we see Him.
We'll be like him and as far as grace is provided.
As he is, we're already in this world that is, as we have in the Epistle of John.
So are we as he is, that is God, and his counsels has already placed us in that position that only grace could put us in. So I believe the subject of grace is a vast theme and something that we should meditate on that would draw our hearts away.
From all that which is visible in a religious way and would attach us to the earth. Because remember all of these things mentioned for Israel attach them religiously to the earth and that's why the apostle says in the 6th chapter of Hebrews, let us go on to perfection.
Leaving the beginnings of the Christ, that is, all those things that led up to this. Now we have the substance. And to go on to perfection in Hebrews is to be occupied with that one who is the forerunner who has already entered. And that's the object for our hearts. Now we're a heavenly people, as our brother Little told us. This is a wilderness.
Book, but we're going on to the rest that remains for the people of God.
And we have an object and the forerunner is already entered.
13 times over the words better.
Is mentioned in this epistle.
I hope I've counted them properly. 13 times the word better appears and it's most instructive to read.
The words that accompany that word better in this epistle.
So then that.
My brother London has said truly Christ is our altar.
So that.
Having Christ as our altar, now those who were connected with Judaism, they had no right to that altar while going on with an altar that God had set aside in Judaism.
We find, I'm sure, in going through the book of Hebrews.
That Paul has learned lessons from the time he went to Jerusalem and he took a vow. They were to offer certain sacrifices. The result was, as we know, he was made a prisoner and taken eventually to Rome. Well, they're a prisoner in Rome, I'm sure.
He'd gone over many things that he had not fully broken and separated from, because there was still a willingness to agree with that system to in order to keep peace with his brother. But he surely is completely and finally done with the whole system, because as he brings before us here, that Christ now is our altar, and that for those who.
Went on with another altar. They had no right to that altar. The Christians now was that.
01:00:11
This is without the campus.
Now there's been a great deal of of question as to what the camp is, but it's really that which keeps the heart occupied with an earthly religion is that which keeps the soul away from the the real object.
That the Spirit of God has for us in the New Testament the camp. It may be religious, all right, and it may have a great deal of truth connected with it, but to be with the person.
He was outside the camp, and were to go on to him. Without the camp. All that belongs to the earth and an earthy religion, and that which man is set up in contrast to that which.
God has provided for us as an object, a way of approach to God.
And a place of worship.
Yeah, very clear illustration of what he's talking about here.
Because, he said, the body of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary.
Are burned without the camp, You know, like the great day of atonement. The blood of the first Bullock and then of the goat for the sins of the people, was carried by the high priests, and sprinkled on and before the mercy seat. But what about the body of that beast that was whose blood was carried?
Into the innermost sanctuary, that bird, that blood was burned outside the camp, so he takes up the illustration. There He said that Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood.
That is, separate the people now for himself.
That he pictures the Lord going out.
Of that gate of Jerusalem.
That cross below are there to Calvary's Hill, where he was crucified.
And the one that we now follow, the one that we worship, has been crucified outside of the whole religious system of Judaism. And if you bring in any religious system, why we find ourselves outside of that system.
So Christ up there, who is now on high in the glory above, is there because man has rejected him and given him nothing but the shameful cross. So his place up there marks our place out down here. We're outside of everything that the natural man would leave to as a religious system down here.
You know Diva, What is the camp?
Well, we do remember that the Tabernacle was in the midst of the 12 tribes around about it, and that area around it was called the camp.
The meeting place or the meeting was moved away from the.
The camp outside and in Exodus 33 and verse seven it was a power off prophet. Why? Because there was sin there. There was idolatry there.
Well, what is the camp thing today?
We are to go forth unto the Lord Jesus without the camp.
Bearing his reproach.
The camp today is this conglomeration of religious.
System rather than we've got to remember that continually.
There never was such a conglomeration of religious systems in the history of this world as today.
And.
Yet we sometimes are drawn in.
To this because of some gifted speaker.
There's plenty of gift among those who are in the camp. Plenty of gifts.
01:05:04
But they don't speak all the truth, and some young Christians are LED away.
Because of the oddity of some of these men who are real orators, they tickle the ears. They get this, they get the people interested. Let me illustrate 1 case.
A very godly sister requested another sister to listen to.
One of the preachers over the radio.
And.
She said. Oh, you should hear that wonderful preacher.
And no doubt he was a fundamental preacher as far as the people would think.
But the other sister was had more discernment than this particular sister, and she said I wouldn't listen anymore to that man. Oh, she said. Why? He's one of the most wonderful preachers of this great region. But.
The sister said. Did you ever hear him teach that the church would go through the Tribulation?
No, she said. I'd never heard that. Well, she said. That's what he said this morning.
Now this is the we ought to go forth unto Christ outside this camp, brethren.
Going to cost some of you young people something to do it.
Oh, may the Lord so fix our hearts affection upon Christ and and give us discernment.
To discern that which is according to the Word. For we can easily be LED away by certain orators who do not teach the Word of God in its purity.
God has given us the very great joy of being gathered unto the Lord's name.
I like that word unto there. And it was that who drew my attention. It's a little Greek word, the EIS, that means unto.
And we are gathered, beloved, unto the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And that word there in the original would exclude every other name, whether you believe it or not.
That word would exclude every other name but the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That may seem a little.
To some perhaps, but it has that meaning.
It puts us outside of everything.
But that blessed name now one day a young missionary from a certain institute here in Oak Park, I should say rather in Oak Park, presented himself to one of our brethren who's been saved 40 years. And he said, why don't you come over with us?
He said You are just a few here, but we are hundreds in the States we are hundreds.
And of course, the Matthew looked at this young man, the metro, 71 years of age.
He's 40 years the Lord. And he said, young man, can you have any more of the Lord Jesus with your hundreds than we can have with two? The twos, the three? And he quoted that verse from Matthew 1820 for where two or three are gathered together unto my name.
There am I in the midst of them. Needless to say, the young man had nothing to say. He.
Never came back again. Oh beloved, do we? Really and truly.
Know what it means to be really gathered to the precious name of Christ.
It's the most wonderful truth.
In God's book.
Concerning the gathering center, gathered to that alone worthy name.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ.
01:10:01
That's all right, I've said.
Going to say there were two things that exercised my heart.
And the one was.
When I was in system.
That the Lord Jesus Christ wasn't getting his rightful place. Man had usurped the place of the Lord Jesus.
And then another thing. The Holy Spirit was not given his place. Man was usurping the place of the Holy Spirit, making himself the chairman of meetings instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to be the guide and leader in the meetings.
That system.
And we don't want to go back into it.
May God keep us.
Would it be possible to read what you referred to in the 33rd of Exodus, Brother Smith?
You mentioned the chapter and the verse of seven.
Verse 7 And roses took the Tabernacle and finished it without the camp. A far off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass that everyone which sought the Lord went out under the Tabernacle of the congregation.
Which was without the camp. And it came to pass, when Moses went out under the Tabernacle, that all the people rose and stood every nine and extent door, and looked after Moses until he was gone into the Tabernacle.
And it came to pass as Moses entered into the Tabernacle. Well, I didn't want to go so much into that, it says.
The 10th person, all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the Tabernacle door. All the people rose up and worship and then we get.
Read the 11 First Brother, Mary and Yes.
Well, the verse I was thinking about, Brother Sunbeam, was where everyone that inquired after the Lord went under that Tabernacle that Moses had pitched outside the camp.
Yesterday there was a remark made by a brother as to the successor to Moses and who was chosen.
And why he was chosen, and I think it's a point that's very important and we have it in the 11Th verse.
It says, And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp. But his servant Joshua the son of Nan, a young man, departed not out of the Tabernacle.
Now the one who was chosen to succeed Moses.
The one who was to lead the people of God into the inheritance which speaks of our present enjoyment of heaven before we get there as a heavenly people. I believe that's the type.
He was one brother who departed not from the Tabernacle. He was the one who dwelt there. That was Joshua. He dwelt there, and that was the way that God prepared his servant to take up this work, to lead the people of God into, shall we say, in tight heavenly things.
Now, it's one thing to know a little bit about the truth, but it's another thing to be in the enjoyment of it. And how can one be in the enjoyment of the truth unless he dwells and abides in it? And we have that word abide often in the epistles of John and in the Gospel too, like we had the 15th chapter mentioned to us, the word abide. And that's so important, this young man abode.
He lived, he dwelt. He departed not from this Tabernacle. This was the center. This was the divine center. This was the place where they sought the Lord outside of the camp.
01:15:10
Would it not be an obligation, and merely an obligation, rather difficult to accept simply to be called outside the camp? Because after all, the camp is a place where man is honored and certain recognition is given to man.
And to step outside of all that would merely be a difficult obligation, where it not for the fact that it is unto him outside the camp. Oh, what a difference that makes. What a difference in fact, the way in which it's worded here seems to me to be so very touching. Let us go forth therefore unto him.
Every time I read this, I think of the language of the 19th of John.
Where we find picture to us the Lord Jesus in pilots judgment hall, crowned with thorns and bearing the cross, and the Spirit of God chooses to use these very words. He bearing his cross went forth. And you pause when you read those words and you see the one who loved us and died to redeem us.
Turning from pilots judgment hall, and going forth, Why did he do it? He knew what was before him, but in willing obedience to his Father's bidding, and in love to you and me that never can be fathomed, he went forth.
Now I believe he turns to us, and perhaps he would even say, I went forth for you. Will you come forth for me?
Oh, what a difference it makes. It's not hard to come outside the camp when we hear him calling us. When we hear him saying, let us go forth therefore unto him without the camps bearing his reproach. Yes, even though this is a so-called Christian land, it's remarkable what reproach there is associated with the person and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ alone.
To bear the names that Christianity or Christendom, shall I say the camp delights to honor, will gain us recognition and acceptance. But the?
The name of the Lord Jesus Christ alone still brings reproach. So I I would really just like to say to everyone here this morning who is redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, You know, and you are glad to know that he went forth for you. Someday you're going to see him and thank him that he did it.
And are you going to be able to remember when you do see him and when you thank him for going forth for you? Are you going to be able to have that glad eternal memory?
His Grace, you responded and went forth for him. It wouldn't be hard to bear the reproach. At the same time we rejoiced in spirit, and we bore his worthy name.
Wouldn't that be helpful to especially for the young who might have difficulty to see that Christendom today is the camp to elaborate a little more.
On what characterizes the camp.
And we find in the book of Hebrews all these various points.
And has been dealt with.
Human being could be the priest instead of the Lord Jesus.
The clerical system is today in Christendom, the principles that once were dominating Judaism.
Are now fine. Found in Christendom. There is an earthly sanctuary, while Christianity has a heavenly sanctuary we are worshipping.
Within the holiest of all yet outside the camp, beautiful thoughts. And so throughout this book we have the principles brought out which characterized Judah is the brother Smith already dwelt on it, so we had a clerical system is upheld. There is the character of the camp where there is a sanctuary.
01:20:22
And how often do you hear these terms in connection with a certain corner in a church at the sanctuary, then when they have a sacrifice other than the Lord Jesus, where the so-called Lord Supper is taken for the forgiveness of sin?
Again, that is going back to offering again and is going back to Judaism. And so one could elaborate, this is what will help any exercise. So to know where the camp is today, where the principles are found that once were in Judaism, and where they are upheld, they might be upheld to a greater or smaller degree.
Depending on how sound the Christians are. Yet it is nevertheless the principles of the camp. This will be helpful for anyone who is exercised. Perhaps about where is the camp. Well then, when you clearly see that these things that now dominate Christendom have no value anymore and are copied from Judaism, you have no difficulty to see it is your application.
To step outside that camp onto the one who was rejected and still is rejected, and sharing his reproach, it is our privilege today to do so.
I wanted to hear that side of things brought out. I thank you for bringing it out to because there are those that say, well, that just belonged to the days when this festival was written, where there was a Jewish system, where there was a temple and the priesthood and so on. And he doesn't refer to the time in which we're living that you brought out very clearly that it does refer to the time which we live in because.
Person Dumb has just copied Judaism and formed a system.
Like you'll find me and in the Jewish system and those days when this vessel was written.
No 1.
Heb. 13:14-16
Reading
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General Meetings Wheaton, August 1976. Third reading meeting.
I'm alive again.
132.
#133.
They also say #133.
Let things on earth.
Grateful. It was great.
They will swing and pray the Lord Christmas.
So.
00:05:35
Start with verse 14.
In touch on Earth 14, did we?
Chapter 13.
Verse 14.
For here have we no continuing city?
But we seek one to come.
By him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.
What did you go into? Communicate. Forget not or with such sacrifices, God is well pleased.
Obey them and have the rule over you, and submit yourselves, For they watch for your souls, as they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you.
Pray for us, for we trust we have a good conscience and all things willing to live honestly.
But I beseech you the rather to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner.
Now the God of peace have brought again to the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make a perfection. Every good work to do with will, working in your language, is well pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
And I beseech your brethren, suffer the word of exhortation, for I have written a letter unto you, and few words.
No, either our brother Timothy instead of Liberty, with whom, if he comes shortly, I will see you.
Salute them that have a rule over you and all the Saints. They have Italy. Salute you. Grace be with you all. Amen.
Connection with the comments that our brother Brickman made at the end of the meeting this morning.
I would like to turn for just a moment to Hebrews Chapter 9.
I take it that in connection with our brothers comments, if we have here the the scriptures that support what our brother was referring to.
It says in the first verse, then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service.
And a worldly sanctuary, for there was a Tabernacle made.
And then when we come down to the sixth verse, it says, Now, when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first Tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God.
And then in the ninth verse it says, which was a figure for the time then present, and which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience. So it seems we have the three things here.
And our brother was referring to We have the worldly sanctuary, that which man sees and attaches value to. We have the priesthood ordained, where man is set between God and the people. And we lastly have the gifts and sacrifices that are offered with a view of in some way meriting the favor of God by doing so.
And it seems to one's own soul that this, this helps us, as our brother mentioned this morning, to very clearly and simply identify the camp. Whenever we see that which attaches a value to a building, it's the camp.
Whenever we see that which puts any man between the people and God, ordains him, or gives him any kind of a special position, it's the camp. Whenever we see any kind of form or service or ritual established with a view to meriting with a view, to ordering, with a view to establishing some kind of procedure to make it acceptable to God, it's the camp.
00:10:26
And this way, this is the very thing that we're called to separate from, but it also seemed to me in thinking about it this morning.
That there can be, and if I'm wrong, I hope my breath will correct me. There can be very well such a thing as being outside the camp but not gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus.
There can be those who have left these three things. They have seen the error of them.
And abandoned these three particular characteristics of the camp and left them behind. But Hebrews 13 adds a further thought, and that is unto him. Without the camp, it isn't simply a matter. As for Israel, for instance, in Exodus 33, it wasn't simply a matter of acknowledging that there was evil in the camp and leaving it. It was a question of going to where the Tabernacle had been pitched without the camp. And as our brother referred to this morning, that's where Joshua remained.
Where the Tabernacle of what had been pitched without the camp.
And so today, if we're going to be faithful to the one who suffered without the gate for us, if we're going to go forth to the one who went forth for us, it's going to be not simply to leave the camp, not only simply to recognize the the error of the camp and to separate ourselves from it, but to seek by God's grace to ensure that in leaving the camp we have gone to where He is without the camp. Is that correct?
Yes, it is indeed, Brother Smith mentioned in his and this morning.
About there being that expression 13 times, let us well, when we come to what we had before us at the end of our reading this morning, let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp. So it's just as though, and as he so nicely brought before Sabrina's brother Smith, or was it brother not the power doesn't make any difference.
The truth anyway, that the spirit of God substitutes everything that.
An Israelite clung to in the old system as he brought before us that we are to leave angels. They had an importance in the old system, but now they're set aside. He hasn't committed the world come to angels since so often.
And then?
Christ is taking the place of.
Angelica Then we have Moses in the third chapter. He was only a servant. Now we have the son he takes the place of.
Moses and you find in the 4th chapter that he takes the place of Joshua. Joshua only led the people into.
Rest down here.
Our Joshua leads us into the rest to come and then then the in the 5th chapter he takes the place of Aaron who was God's high priest. We have God's high priest. We have a great high priest that has gone into the heavens and then all the systems he takes the place of the Tabernacle and one thing after another he just prepares.
A people there at that time, those Hebrews, for the last word that is going to bring a blessing result. And that is you see as though just as always said, you see, Christ takes the place of everything. Now let's leave the whole system go out unto him.
See that whole camp behind? You've got Christ. Leave it all and go on to him.
But you'll bear his reproach.
And as you say, Brother Graviton, that one could be outside the camp, see the air and the inconsistencies into the systems that man has set up, and be wandering around without any definite place.
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To to continue in and to be.
Maintaining the truth of God. So it's the importance of what we have here is let us go there for hunter him, oh, when we get the person of Christ.
Before us? Why then everything else?
As in his place.
What a person to be gathered to.
It's it's it's history throat. Sometimes if we don't behave ourselves we can fall into reproach like Peter speaks of.
He says in verse 14, chapter four, First Peter.
If he be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye For the Spirit of glory of God rested upon you on their part. The evil spoken of, but on your part he's glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busy body in other men's matters. Yet of any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed. Let him glorify God on this behind.
So we have to be sure that it's the reproach of Christ for which we're suffering, not our our own foolishness and mistakes and and sin.
Mornings in Exodus 33, verse 11, the gospel remained in the camp and harmonized with the carbonite didn't return to the camp.
Now.
Did he miss the mind of the Lord or did he have the Lord mind?
I couldn't answer that question. I know that. I know that there were those who prophesied in the camp.
Said Eldad. And me dad. I don't remember the names and there were some who complained about that, but he said he would that all the.
People of God would prophecy, but as to Moses, I don't know Moses and is in a special place. And I couldn't answer your question, brother. I'm sorry. Would it be because Moses is the one that's especially connected with the the giving of the law, the old order of things?
And he's spoken of as a servant. But Joshua is different. He's the type of the Lord Jesus Christ leading us into the heavenlies. And so Joshua in that characters, that kind of a type, he stays outside the camp.
With that tremendous hour.
Thank the state of my servant, it said. And then they crossed the Jordan, and entered into the land that would show what it not the distinction between the position that Moses occupied and the position that Joshua occupied. Is that so?
Our brother Philip Dennis. His ministry brings out a lovely thought about Bill, Dad and me Dad.
Prophesying in the camp and.
Joshua said, my Lord, he was jealous of Moses position. And Moses could have accepted the flattery that Joshua expressed by having these men silenced, that were prophesied that he was something like John the Baptist, when there was came a rivalry between him and Christ. And some came and said, where the one that was really beyond Jordan, behold all he baptizes and all men come unto him.
And he says just like there were two vessels put in rivalry with each other. And he says what does John do? He just smashes 1 vessel entirely to pieces so as to leave the one vessel where the display what the glory of God and that was himself. He smashes himself to pieces. And so he says instead of Moses being flattered by Joshua's suggestion why he goes into the camp.
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To get some benefit from these that were prophesied, I just give that as the ministry of of a brother whose whose teaching we greatly value, brother.
Connection with dad and me dad.
I suppose that can apply to those gospel preachers in the camp and systems that that our preachings are gospel, that exalts Christ the Savior, where we can be thankful for that. But we wouldn't think about going in there and having fellowship with them in it, would we?
So Brother Philip makes that remark just to bring out how he how he was absolutely opposed anything that would exhaust self. He just makes that remark whether we don't want to follow it out into suggesting that we should go into the camp and take part. I know that someone asked Brother Brown at one meeting years ago, he said. Suppose one of these.
Popular evangelists.
Ten pitch to 10, say right across the street from where you live. Would you go to hear him?
Mr. Brown said, I think what I do that I go in my in my home and to my room and get down and pray the Lord to bless his preaching of the gospel. But he said it'd be another thing for me to go and have fellowship with.
What is not the testimony that he was connected with?
I have thought of this too, in connection with Eldad and me dad, that perhaps Moses recognized in this the evidence of his own failure. That is, when he came out of Egypt, the Lord promised him the wisdom and the strength to carry these people all the way across the wilderness.
But along came his father-in-law, death row, and said, Moses, you have far too much to do.
You should have this responsibility shared by others. So Moses, lacking in the faith that he really should have had, puts this proposal to the Lord. And the Lord recognizing, I believe, his lack of full confidence. Accept this, and 70 elders are chosen, And the Lord took of the spirit that was upon Moses, and divided it among the 70 elders.
As Brother Watson of Ottawa used to say, he had more machinery, but no more power, took the spirit that was upon Moses and divided it among the 70. Well, it was two of those very elders, Eldad and me Dad, who prophesied in the camp. And I have wondered if when the news came to Moses, maybe he hung his head and said, this is the result of my own unfaithfulness of these two men.
Appointed are now prophesying in the camp. And you know, brethren, is it not true that when we hear of those who are perhaps thoroughly part of the camp preaching Christ crucified, what do we do? Can we not hang our heads and admit our own failure, our own indifference, our own coldness toward our privileged responsibility in the gospel?
And God is using that which you and I, I believe, cannot thoroughly condone as far as method or positions. But yet we can thank God. I believe, shall I put it plainly, that a God who could use balaam *** could use any instrument he chooses.
But I don't believe it's for us to condone or to go along with the position for the methods. But I believe we do well to hang our heads and recognize that our own failure is reflected in that which we see around us in the activity of the camps.
Brother.
Reading I've translated what on this point from the Spanish into English.
And if you'll bear with me a moment, I'll read what is said by our writers.
Says the pretensions, and this is from the Spanish.
The pretensions and energy of man are strongly manifesting themselves.
But to learn in a day of grace to be still and know that God is God, is completely above the education of the flesh.
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The spirit of the age affects many Christians who labor to restore old things, the service of God, instead of being broken before him by the sense of their downfall.
To confess openly that which we are in the presence of that which God is.
Is always the way to peace and blessing, even when only two or three are together before God.
You could be thus with them. There will be no disappointment nor deluded hopes. The word for the remnant is sanctified, the Lord God in your hearts.
Holy Spirit does not gather Saints around mere view, however true they may be, upon which the Church is, upon that which it has been, or that which it may be on the earth, But He always gathers them around that blessed person who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Where two or three are gathered together unto my name.
There am I in the midst of them.
Well, that seemed to satisfy our Latin brother on that point.
But may we May I be permitted to turn to Second Timothy 2 for a moment?
Concerning the camp.
Verse 20.
Second Timothy 2 verse 20.
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also wood and earth, of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonour.
If a man therefore purge himself from thee.
He shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
Flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, love, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart, brethren.
Are we forgetting that the camp?
We are just dealing with this.
Condition of the camp.
And we humble ourselves to think that we are forgetting.
That the camp today.
Is we are to purge ourselves from vessels there onto disarmament.
There are vessels of gold and of silver, that which glorifies him and which speaks of redemption, but there are also vessels.
And to dishonour.
What are we going to do, beloved, in these these days of ruins? If any man purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor sanctified. Meet for the masters use, and we'll put in thoroughly there thoroughly prepared.
Unto every good work.
We are not to make any.
False decisions about the camp.
It's a miserable affair, brethren, and we hang our heads in shame because we are part of it.
We are part of the room.
But the foundation of God's standards? Sure. Beloved.
And let everyone that name of the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.
This is where we need by in meekness to stress the truth in these days of.
Looseness in days of self will in.
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Days of the confusion.
Now I know that some, possibly some of my brethren, might go along with this, but if there is anything to please the Lord in that old land of Bolivia and Peru, it is because the Saints hold firmly to this.
That the camp is this religious conglomeration.
And we ought to purge ourselves from it. We know what that means.
We love God's dear people. That would be strange if we didn't love them. Indeed, we do. We love them.
But we cannot go along.
With anything that belongs to the camp, we just can't do it.
We are getting fewer and fewer.
And we shall become pure and true if we don't make a real stand.
For God. For truth.
But there will be a corporate testimony maintained in this world. Beloved, until the Lord comes, He will see to us, and may we be found among the few.
Who hold fast and stand fast until we see his blessed faith.
To emphasize, this is not presumptive.
But it is faithfulness, as I see it below, to God.
That 20 second verse is very important too. Is it not Brother Smith?
There we have the positive calling on the Lord.
With those.
Is it not important?
Who God will maintain.
Faithful to the very end, there will be Brother, a corporate testament.
And we thank God for those of his dear people who are faithful men.
Who stand by that blessed, this blessed.
Now my right, brother Smith, in saying that the word of God calls upon us to leave the camp, but we cannot leave the house. Is that correct? There's a there's a distinction there, but it comes in under the same heading, brother, the same thing, the vessels of honor and vessels of dishonour there.
There there's gold and silver, wood and.
Earth and the Apostle says, There are vessels unto honor and vessels unto this honor. What are we going to do about it?
If any man purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel to honor, sanctify need for the master's use, and thoroughly prepare unto every good work. I appreciate, dear brother, what you're saying.
But I wouldn't dare separate the thing these these, these important methods. We know that there is this, this distinction.
But all, let us be very careful.
As we go back for a moment to the question of the Moses, I'm not happy. It seems to me that we leave Moses under a cloud here.
It seems to me that when Moses comes to Tabernacle and pitched it.
Outside the cast, he recognized and vindicated the glory of the Lord.
Is it not, Let me not think, that when he went back in the camp, that was in grace.
And then he wouldn't dissociate himself with the people. I just bring that over here. Well, there is a there is something there that I think is.
In types that we we can't always.
Force a type to stand on every.
As one has said on every leg, remember that.
Moses said, A prophet shall God raise up like unto me Him shall ye hear? And I believe that Moses is spoken of in John's gospel.
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Very specially because he was a type of the Lord Jesus in that sense that he was the one who had led the people, that is, he didn't go all the way but his the purpose was to lead the people into the good land.
But the Lord Jesus was the one who was to lead his people really into heaven. And so there is a type there. But I believe the distinction that was made by Brother Anderson was very good because.
Here we see.
The contrast between Joshua, who actually did in this type lead the people into the land where Moses.
Really represented the law and so we cannot hold a type too closely. We can get benefit from both of them, I believe. And Moses really was a man of God, but he never entered the land.
If we're talking about trade, even though the children of Israel were under law, don't we see God dealing with them in grace time and again?
Well, this, because that's God's heart.
The law just brings him under judgment, and judgment has got strange work and he couldn't be happy to leave it there. He must be gracious to them.
And we counted that first.
Here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
I doubt not that Paul had to learn that lesson himself. He gave a certain importance to Jerusalem. He wanted to go up there at that time of attending at Pentecost, because there would be many of them, the Jews, together.
But after all his imprisonment, what he passed through.
First in Caesarea and then in Rome. He can say now there that God hasn't any.
Continuing city there's no religious Center for.
For God's people now as it was in the days of old. But the city where for which we seek is a city that's to come and is there not a warning for for us at this time. We don't want to make anything of the truth that we have to build up something that.
That looks fair.
Even in the eyes of men, I believe whenever there is any importance given to the place where the Spirit of God has gathered us to Christ the center, the Lord will always blow upon it.
And it was a bit of pride in the history that Andrew Miller wrote about.
So-called brethren right after that One division happened after another.
God is not going to allow pride, and if we put up one meeting above any other meeting and to hold some special importance, you must go to this meeting to get certain things settled. God is not going to permit that in some way he will bring.
He'll bring.
A very definite, in a very definite way to see that that has not his approval.
We're just a poor company gathered to the Lord's name and we don't want to make anything of our position.
But it's wonderful to think we seek a heavenly city. We seek one to come.
Another American you basically marked a little while ago about those who were in between.
They hadn't, like Joshua, come to abide. I was thinking of the 10 lepers.
In Luke's Gospel.
We find that.
They were in a special place because they had discovered that they were leopards.
And that's the man who has really, in a way, discovered his need. And and Jesus, of course, sends them on their way.
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For healing. But there was one who returned to give him thanks, and it seems to me that it's a picture of one who went all the way now. A leopard. You know, in Israel.
He was to go outside of the of the city or the camp, and he was to hold his hand over his lips and cry Unclean, unclean, unclean. He'd lost all his privileges in the city he was outside.
But in this picture we have in Luke where we have the Lord Jesus before us, this one goes all the way and he returns to give him thanks. I believe he's a little picture to us.
Of the one who didn't stay outside like the 9, where are the 9:00? But he went in, as it were, to that Tabernacle that is pitched without the camp, which is really the person of Christ to us, not simply a place, as our brother Barry has been telling us that some make much of the place, but it is the person. We do actually go to a place to meet, but it's the person.
That we go to where two or three are gathered now in John One. Where was that place where they met with Jesus? I don't know, I don't know the address, but they were in His presence and I believe that's in John. One really gives us the picture. It was being with Jesus. And you know, it's a wonderful thing when we're gathered together to remember the Lord that our minds would be occupied with.
Nothing but the person.
Now this this isn't true of us, I know, because there are many things that occupies. But this is what it should be. Not a place, not circumstances, but the person.
Christ is everything. In the presence of the Father, we can rest their beloved.
Christ is everything in God's presence. Is He that.
For us.
I made one more requirement in this connection. It has been said as to those who would would go part way but they will not take the place.
Outside of the camp, that is to him. They might go outside of the camp, but not to him. It has been said by another that either we go on with the people of God as we find them.
In all the weakness and other things that may distress or we'll be in a wilderness.
A spiritual wilderness alone.
And this will never profit us to go on alone in the spiritual wilderness, because the Christian, who has known the truth of separation by the Spirit of God and refuses to walk in the path, will not prosper. He will not go ahead in his soul. It'll be a wilderness to him unless he takes that last step.
And John's Gospel Chapter one.
In verse 38.
We read of somebody that was following the Lord.
Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, Wat seek ye?
They said unto him, Rabbi, which is to say, he interpreted Master, where dwellest thou?
Where dwellers thou? They didn't say. Where's the place where dwellest thou?
Unto them Come and see, come and see. They came, and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day.
Well, they found the person. They found him, they followed him, and they got to the place where he dwelt, where he was at home. Well, we read something else in John's Gospel, chapter 12.
Verse 26 The Lord says, If any man serve me.
Let him follow me.
And where I am, there shall also my servant be.
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So it's a matter of following the person, going where he is, coming to the place where he is. There's no place without him being there. He makes the place.
I wondered if perhaps the same picture is faithfully seen in those who followed Gideon. There seems to.
Free company there. There were 22,000.
Who were fearful and afraid and didn't come out.
There were 9700 who failed the test when they were brought down to the water. And that's a real test. Bring them down to the water, thy will try them for thee there. And it shall be of whomsoever I say of this shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee. So there were 22,000 in one place, 9700 who started but didn't go all the way.
And 300 who were found, according to scripture, with Gideon, with their eyes upon Gideon. Oh, I do trust, brethren, as these words are uttered.
That we may hang our heads and realize that it is only, it is only the sovereign grace of God.
Notice those words. It shall be that whomsoever I say unto thee, this shall go with thee. Picture Gideon looking at those two companies. And until the last moment he doesn't know which one is going to be the company that shall be associated with him. 9700 here.
300 There I suppose, he said to himself, I hope it's going to be this company. But finally the Lord said, the Lord said, These are the ones who are to be with thee and brethren, if by the very wonderful and matchless grace of God we share in the happy and precious privilege of being gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, when us bow and Thanksgiving to the sovereign and wonderful grace of God, and keep our heads bowed down too.
Chronicles Brother.
Chapter 12.
And verse 32.
And the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do.
The heads of them were 200, and all their brethren were at their commandments. And then it goes on, Zebulun, such as went forth to battle expert in war with all instruments of war, 50,000 which could keep rank, which could keep rank. They were not of a double heart.
Now in verse 38 all these men of war that could keep rain came with a perfect heart to Hebrew to make David king over all Israel and all the rest also of Israel were of one heart to make David king. Now in verse 18 we have something that's very important.
Then the spirit came upon MSI, who was chief of the captains.
Well, he was on the opposing side. He was one who followed Saul.
And he said, Mine are we, David?
Oh, that's wonderful. Thine are we, David? And on thy side thou son of Jesse.
Peace. Peace be unto thee, and peace be to thy helpers for thy God Helpeth thee. Then David received them, and made them captains of the Band.
This was during a crisis, of course, in the history of Israel. While all types do fail to explain exactly that, they are very, very, very solemn and very important.
Here's a group come over on the side of David mine. Are we David?
God's man type of Christ.
And on thy side thou son of Jesse, peace.
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These were men who kept rank, who had an understanding of the times that never was a time in the history of our God, still people as today, to understand the times in which we are living.
These kept rain.
They manifested the perfect heart. They manifested one heart.
And they were not of a double heart.
And they.
Sin thine are we, David?
Oh, beloved, with all our failures, it's wonderful to say thine are we blessed Savior.
We cannot fail.
If we keep our eyes there.
On that Blessed One, thine are we there.
And all thy side Thou son of justice, peace, peace beyond thee, and peace be to thy helpers.
For thy God help us things.
As their dear brother mentioned, it is of time to hang our heads in shame.
To get into the faces in the dust. But we can never say, beloved, there'll be a little testimony for God.
In this scene, a corporate one too, until the very end. Do we believe that?
Yes, there will be. God will see to it.
You know here, as we've already stated.
What was in?
In Israel to find.
What is substituted for that which they had gone on with in connection with the temple and the altar, and to sacrifice it isn't that precious here that we get now an older.
Israel had to all her next one with the Tabernacle and the temple, the brazen altar. So Christ is the altar and we're to go out unto him. Well, the next thing that we would consider what kind of a sacrifice or sacrifices are to be offered on this altar that the Spirit of God is bringing before us.
And so we get that in the 15th verse and also the 16th verse by him. Therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. You read in one place in the minor prophets about offering. I believe it's Hosea, the calves of our lips.
They are for cows. They were among the highest offerings to Jehovah. Now the believer offers the calves of his lips. That is, instead of bringing a lamb or a goat.
Why we bring a sacrifice to CAS of our lips, but it's offering the sacrifice of praise unto him that is the character of the sacrifice.
That the believer today is to offer. And then we have another.
Sacrifice too, but to do good and to communicate, Forget not, for with the sacrifices see, it's in the plural. God is well pleased.
I I know in some meetings they don't like to have the basket on the table where the bread and the wine are placed.
But I believe it's very consistent to have the basket there for the collection because the giving is a part of our worship and to put it under the table or hide it somewhere and bring it out the last minute. We don't want to be legal about those things and some gatherings that fall them into certain habits that it's a little hard to break. But I believe if we're consistent and follow the.
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Instructions we have here. We'll place it on the table along with the bread and the wine.
These sacrifice, first we get the sacrifice of praise and then we get the sacrifice of giving.
And with these sacrifices God is well pleased.
And would we learn a lesson brethren, from?
The 26th of.
Deuteronomy, I'll not turn to it. We all, I think many of us are familiar with the portion that.
They were to fill a basket with the first fruits of the land, and then they were to come to the place. You'll notice there's importance in connection with the place, the place where the Lord would put his name, and they were to put that basket before the priest.
And then they owned Syrian ready to perish with my father and how the Lord brought him out and now he presents this and what is the the basket of first fruits Who is the first fruit? It says. But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slip Oh it's Christ that glorified one and.
The basket is to be filled with this.
Fruit and then presented.
Before the Lord, in the place where he put his name.
So maybe we could see in that instruction for us, or if our hearts are to be filled with praise to the one in whose name we meet, there should be an occupation with himself that is preparing the soul for that offering of that first fruits in the place where the Lord would have us and that.
Applies to sisters as well as the brothers.
It isn't just a brother that gets up and offers Thanksgiving and praise in the morning meeting that.
Is in view, but it's all dear Saints and I have noticed this in times past where a real spiritual reminded sister was present. Her quiet demeanor and her looks and her actions really.
Added to the worship of the assembly, the brother who offers praise is only the mouthpiece of the whole assembly.
I wonder too if perhaps in Deuteronomy 12, without turning to it, we see the very same connection that you have just spoken of here, the sacrifice of praise and the sacrifice of communicating mentioned in consecutive verses.
The Deuteronomy 12, where we are again reminded of the place and the privilege of coming. There we are told, and thither thou shalt bring thy burnt offerings. Isn't that beautiful? That's the first thing mentioned. And sacrifices, and tides and free will, offerings, and so on. They're all brought together in one verse as being the privilege of the Israelites when he goes to that place appointed by the Lord.
Burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, free will offerings all brought together in one verse as being the privilege of the Israelites as he comes into the presence of the Lord. So I do agree with what you suggest from these consecutive verses, and I think it's found in the Old Testament too.
Brother hell.
I was only speaking about the morning meeting, but we couldn't confine this scripture to just the.
The morning meeting or the Lords, the morning meeting.
Called the Worship Meeting, but continually it should be really the the the way one is enjoying the Lord all through the week before we meet and gather in a special way to give praise to one whose death is set before us in the bread and the wine.
When you think of Mary.
Who brought the ointment as an example of perhaps a year's wages to prepare that ointment?
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It isn't a question of hurrying up on Saturday night or early Sunday morning to to get prepared for the meeting. There's no such thought in in this, is there? The thought here is that one who is in communion, He's in the spirit of this all during the week and what breaks communion is self will, is it not? And if we allow that, which we've been warned about this afternoon earlier.
That there are those things that that break community.
So if it does, we're not prepared with our baskets. But Mary had the object of Christ before her continually, and she had this ointment prepared. And when she broke the box, I understand the expression breaking the box was really the seal. It was sealed because it was alabaster. It was a stone box, and the seal was broken and the fragrance came out, but it had been stored up.
And now?
On that one occasion, it was just for him. And so if the heart is taken up with a person of Christ, I'm sure there will be a time when at verse four. And whether it's whether it's everyone else hears it or not, he will hear it and he'll know it.
By him, by him.
The beginning of the verse by him, therefore.
Perhaps you have something for us?
But I thought of in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises that they sit in here.
Lord Jesus is in the mid.
To lead the praises of these people.
And this is most precious.
When we come together that we can count on His presence to lead and guide even into worship that we bring to the Father and to Himself.
I think brother, you have property for us. An important thought there. I may not just be following entirely in the line of that you had in a few.
But there is this to remember that the Lord Jesus is head of his body, the Church.
And the Holy Spirit is down here dwelling in the believer and the the Lord Jesus has the hidden glory.
Guides has to worship through by the spirit to the end, the heart of the believer.
So that the praise is produced that goes up as sweet incense to him. I say that because I think there is a danger and it's found a lot in Christendom that the spirit moves you and some groups, you know, they sit and wait and say the spirit's going to move them. Well, we, we don't want to get occupied with.
Whether the Spirit is moving us, but what we do want to be occupied with is the glorified man.
Who directs by the Spirit? And if we're sitting quietly waiting?
In his presence, if we are occupied with Christ instead of occupied with some something within that's going to produce something, we're occupied with him, then by the Spirit he he directs. Maybe a hymn, maybe.
Scripture it may be.
A word of praise and Thanksgiving, but it all comes from the glorified head. We want to be careful, and I think you're introducing us to a thought.
That is important. By Him. Therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise, giving thanks to his name.
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Doesn't merely mean that one particular one is praising. He's offering praise for them all, isn't he?
And I was thinking in Deuteronomy. There brother mentioned the 12Th of Deuteronomy, verse 18. But thou must eat them. These are the offerings before the Lord thy God, in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, thou and thy son.
And thy daughter, and my manservant, and my maidservant, and the Levite that is within my gates now shall rejoice before the Lord. Now in another place, it says, Thou shalt greatly rejoice. Well, here they're all rejoicing. One may be the mouthpiece for them, but they all rejoice. Isn't that lovely, that all whether the sisters?
Silently they can rejoice too.
It's a wonderful place to be brought into to remember the Lord Jesus that all can.
Rejoice. And it says There they greatly rejoice.
Before the law.
That's a wonderful thing, isn't it? That the sisters don't have any say. They, they hope, be silent in the church, in the assembly, but they can rejoice. And what can? What could we do without their sisters? They're a powerful God.
In Amazon they can rejoice too.
But there will be 1 who'll be the mouthpiece. I was just thinking that you mentioned that they all rejoice. Well here we have them all rejoicing, and there they greatly rejoice before the Lord.
We wish sometimes, pardon me, I'm just going to say we wish sometimes there were more mouthpieces.
I was going to ask the question about that in the 16th chapter of Deuteronomy, where they were to appear before the Lord three times a year.
The expression at the verse 16 of Deuteronomy 16 Three times in a year shall all thy mails appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Tabernacles.
And this is the clause I was thinking about. And they shall not appear before the Lord empty, wondering if someone had a thought on that. Following that, of course, is the in the 17th verse. Every man shall give as he is able, or according to his gift.
To the blessing, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God, which he hath given thee.
Just wondered about that clause. They shall not appear before the Lord, empty as thinking. Your brother mentioned that sometimes.
There are long silences and we wonder, you know.
There has been a thought suggested that.
There was preparation in the sense that communion was maintained continually, and so that it isn't a preparation that's made by the flesh, it's that which the Spirit produces in the life of the believer, day by day, so that when that time comes, there is.
The basket filled, and so that seems to me that if we are in communion.
There is a basket full. Now what was mentioned also about the the eating they were to eat this in their own whatever is set there, the scripture, they were all to eat of it.
Do we not have the very same food?
To feed upon as God himself feeds upon.
And so.
By thee, O God invited, we look unto the sun.
A brother yesterday. You may not have remembered it, but he mentioned the.
4th The 4th chapter of Second Kings.
Where the man brings an offering of 20 barley loaves and ears of corn in the husk thereof.
01:10:11
And he brings it to the priest. But the priest says give to the people that they may eat.
Now this ties in with what our brother Anderson brought before us. In the first chapter of John, we find the Lord bringing his disciples into a place of communion.
In the third verse of the First Epistle of John in the first chapter.
Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Now I believe this is connected, is it not, with worship? It's true that we come to remember the Lord. We don't come to worship, we come to remember the Lord. But as the Spirit of God, directed by the Lord Himself, fills our hearts with the person of Christ, it produces worship.
Or it should produce worship with us as a result, and so one who is in communion?
There will be a basket full, and there will be not only that which God has, but which He returns to his people to feed upon the very same thing that He feeds upon they enjoy.
I think Brother Anderson was speaking about sometimes he feel the lack of mouth open to praise the Lord when we're together and it is often an exercise that maybe in a meeting.
The offering thanks is left to just a very few, and they're the ones time after time, meeting after meeting that.
Let offer the praise, and it should be something to exercise, one and all, and the United States of those who are hesitating to take part, if the Lord definitely lays something on your heart, either to read the scripture or to offer thanks, and you don't.
Respond. You sit there and let the time go by. You are really.
Robbing the assembly of what the Lord would offer.
Offer and the Praise your, so to speak, robbing the Lord what is delightful to him. And you're robbing your brethren too. Let's look at it just that way. And then, for those who take much part, there needs to be off times exercise. They shouldn't eat what and wait.
Are not always. Just keep the meeting moving.
Keep it going on as though it's something that she mustn't allow to slow down at all. It can be that danger too. But yeah, there was things should exercise. And I believe that there's a getting before the Lord of times, those things where some meetings get in the habit of just letting the Pew go ahead. Meeting after meeting might be remedied.
That are often painful at times, but I was singing to brethren and considering this line of things.
What a marvelous thing it is to be in a place where the blessed Lord Jesus is the leader in the assembly.
And the 22nd Psalm, as soon as you get the Lord's sufferings on the cross completed.
Says in the midst of the congregation. Will I praise thee? And then?
The inspired writer in the second of Hebrews, in the midst of the assembly, will I praise thee. Spirit of God had a perfect right to change the word from congregation to assembly, which fits the present dispensation well. Just think of it to be in a place where the blessed glorified man on high can direct the offering of praise.
And Justice. Think of what has been left in the campus at work where they have one man to go ahead and to officiate, to take charge of all their prayers and and.
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Whoever goes ahead and there's anything said, why it's through him, think of putting a man up in the place of the glorified Christ.
And the one who leaves all that system and goes out to Christ the center. Then he finds that there is that wonderful.
Truth to enjoy that Christ is there himself in the midst, and he is the leader. Even of the hymns we sometimes sing, that little hymn join the singing which he leaded.
Mouth to God our praises, Bring it. That's absolutely scriptural, because that verse I was quoting in the midst of the assembly will last sing praises unto Him, rather than what a marvelous thing that the Spirit of God has gathered us in a place where we have.
Such a center and such a leader in our praises. May we never be discouraged in going on if there is much weakness and there is much weakness. And 1St for young people who may get discouraged by long pauses, don't get discouraged.
Wait on the Lord. Remember He's there and that He's in the midst. Get your mind and your heart on Christ, and the Lord will give you a deep enjoyment of His sense of His love and His presence.
These things will be questioned as to their to their force and truth.
I don't want to take a lot of time, but at at home, where we are a little assembly there, we visited out in a little town nearby and met a man there by the name of the Reverend Camp, a strange name for the man man in the camp. But when he found out that I was gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, he said well.
Or you're one of the Brethren. You're a curio. We wanted to. He wanted to know. Now he said, tell me, how do you meet? Just how do you do? He says. I've been a long time. I've wanted to know about this.
Told him, I said We meet on Lord's Day morning, waiting upon the Spirit of God to guide gather to the name of the Lord Jesus.
Well, he said. How many are there at your little church?
Always said, perhaps 35 or 40.
Oh, well, he says that's all right for 35 or 40. But he said you couldn't do that up in And Spencer, where our little, where our church is. He says there's 250 in our congregation. He says we need some order there. We couldn't. You couldn't do that, he said. You mean you have no man leading? And I said no. The spirit of God leads what we had just been to Detroit prior to that time. It was about 750. There sat down on Lord's Day morning to remember the Lord.
And so I told him, I said Mr. Camp.
Just recently last week we were in Detroit and I believe there was 750 or 800 that sat down on Lords Day morning with the loaf on the table and the cup. We remembered the Lord Jesus without any leadership of man in the same way that we do at Vessel with the 40.
That was the end of our conversation. He had nothing more to say. I said you wouldn't attribute. Oh, he said that? I said you wouldn't attribute confusion to the spirit of God. Would you? Oh, no. Well, I said. You just did.
Hear the comments that by some perhaps that they came to the meeting and didn't get anything but the.
And our brother little referred to before, doesn't it rather suggest to us that what we should be more exercised about is what we bring, rather than what we get as a question of whether we come with baskets full the the verse that was referred to in connection with the alabaster box of ointment. She says of her that against the day of Liberian has she kept this It had been laid up in store, and she brought it and she was able to open it.
And the result was that there was blessing. The house was filled with the order of the ointment which he brought it. And so if I could say it to the dear young people, but perhaps to all our hearts, if I come to the meeting and I have to say, well, I didn't get anything, the first exercise I should have has been about my own state of soul and coming.
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Did I bring an alabaster Boston one when I came?
Good. We give in, worship the Word, do we not? We give. Giving. We don't come there to ask, We give.
They brought their baskets first fruit and they rejoiced before the law. So that's it.
I was just for himself alone, for the parents that that box was opened and in the 30th.
Exodus. There are certain spices and certain.
Other perfumes are they?
Ointments and they were to be used on none other than the Lord. And I believe that's an important point too, because if if it's a person of Christ before us, then this will be just for him. But if it's a question of of serving, that's occupies us on such occasion.
Why? It's a different thing, isn't it, If we're there to remember the Lord himself.
Not coming to do something like make ourselves prominent, but this is just for him, just for him alone. And all those spices ointments were never to be used on any other.
The concurrent for no supply perhaps?
Not able to adequately express praise and worship.
The worst came to my mind in verse 2 of 114.
Of the Him book, here we have this beautiful expression to all our prayers and praises.
Cry and his sweet perfume, and he descends the races.
These orders to consume.
It's beautiful to see that that everything, may it ever be so weak, if it is indeed from a thankful heart that goes to God through the hand, as it were, of our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus, He adds his sweet perfume. So don't be afraid that you might feebly utter anything in Thanksgiving and praise.
That's what we have the Lord Jesus in the midst for as a high priest, and it only goes to the Father in perfection.
What is the number of 114?
Regards to the elastic bill, nothing spent above the size of that.
The important thing is is about this book, a small basket.
Another thought I had was that we never go away from the Rep remembrance of the Lord without our path is overflowing. There's no possibility of having an empty basket from occupies of the Lord.
The only thing we have to offer him is our praises to him.
He filled our hearts and still doing it.
Through our health customers.
Heb. 13:17-52
Reading
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General Meetings Wheaton, August 1976 Last Reading Meeting.
I lost my heart. I'm sorry.
Woe sunshine.
13 and 17.
Gabriel, Chapter 13.
Verse 17.
Obey them that have the rule over you.
And submit yourself.
For the watch for your souls, and say they must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you.
Pray for us.
For we trust we have a good conscience in all things, willing to live honestly.
But I beseech you the rather to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner.
Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do with will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom the glory forever and ever. Amen.
And obviously your brethren suffer the word of exhortation, for I have written a letter unto you, and few words.
Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty.
He comes shortly. I will see you.
Salute all them that have the rule over you and all the same.
Italy salute you. Grace be with you all. Amen.
There's a very definite connection between what we've been having.
As to the altar and this verse that we have begun with.
This morning.
I'd like to call attention to.
00:05:03
A scripture to in the Old Testament that I believe would be helpful.
It's in the Psalm 84.
The.
How amiable are thy tabernacles, oh Lord of Hosts?
Yeah, my soul longest. Yeah, even fainted for the courts of the Lord.
My heart and my flesh cries out for the living God.
Yeah, the Sparrow have found in house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young. Even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.
Now the eleven first.
For the Lord God is the Son and shield the Lord will give grace.
And glory.
No good thing will he withhold from them that walk.
Uprightly.
I believe it's very important for us to notice.
That God has.
Provided down here for The Believer.
A place where you can.
Rest assured.
That he can bring his family up in the fear of God and under the precious truth.
And guarded and guided. And that's what we have in this verse in Hebrews.
But we must remember that first it's to be at the altar now. We spoke of that as being Christ himself. But he has provided a place where his people might be together with the Spirit of God is free to minister Christ to our hearts.
And so that we have a place of protection.
And you know, it's it's a sad thing to see.
A young family starting out and neglecting this protection that God has provided.
Because.
How precious it is that this swallow, which is a worthless creature, you know.
Believers likened to the Swallow, or the Sparrow, I should say, and the Swallow, a restless creature. And we realized that this is what we are.
Now we have a place, and where is that place even Thine all hurt. God has provided for us, so that we might have a place not only for ourselves, but for our children, where they might be protected and guarded and preserved.
I think this is very important and when we think of this, we think also that 11Th verse.
That the Lord will give grace.
And glory.
And no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
Now, another verse I'd like to call attention to is in the Song of Solomon.
And.
Again, we have similar thoughts in the Song of Solomon, the 4th chapter.
It says in six verse until the Daybreak.
And the shadows flee away. I will get me to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.
Thou art all fair, my love. There's no spot in thee. Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse with me from Lebanon. Look from the top of the Manor.
From the top of.
Sheena and Herman from the lions, den from the mountains of the leopards.
I believe we have an order here that.
The Lord finds His delight in the midst of His people as they gather for that one purpose to remember Him in His death. That's the sixth verse. This is His delight.
00:10:13
And it's their beloved that we discover His love for us because it's at the cross of Christ as we remember that love that brought Him down to meet our need. It draws out our affections, and that's what produces praise and worship, but at the same time.
In this very same place.
We have that which would guard us.
Someone would say what's wrong with Lebanon and what's wrong with Amana and Sheena and Herman. Nothing. Lebanon was worthy. Tall, strong trees grew that they used for the Timbers of the temple.
Yes, and from the stone cap peaks of these mountains we find the water coming down to fill the Jordan.
But notice the rest of the birds.
From the lion's den, from the mountains of the leopards.
All that which is high and lofty in this world, and it might be of a religious character.
Which this really was to Israel.
This we have to guard against.
I remember when I was a little boy.
My father, on a holiday, would take the children out and sometimes we came to places that were dangerous.
And he would hold our hand and he would say, come with me. Now that's the thought we have here. The Lord is holding our hand. But he says come with me from these places.
Come with me. And he has a hold of our hand. Now in the next chapter we won't go into it, but you'll find that there was a turning away on the part of the bride.
And so the watchman found her.
Now that's our verse that we're considering. The Watchmen obey them. Which have which are your guides? The Watchmen found her.
And so they smote her. And we have had this experience, I'm sure, most of us, when the Watchmen found us. And thank God for the Watchmen.
Correction is the way of life.
But what was the result? And here we have grace coming in again, even in our failures. And that is the result was the daughters of Jerusalem. Say to her, what is thy beloved more than another beloved? She's awakened as a result of this discipline. Oh, she says he's the chiefest of 10,000.
He's all together. Lovely. Well, that's the purpose then, of the Watchmen.
And that's the purpose of the connection of these two verses, that although we are in that place of the altar, and he does hold our hand, sometimes we become willful, and the watchman has to come and speak to us. It might be a brother, it might be a sister.
When I was very young, I had companions that I shouldn't have had.
And a sister who had been my son's school teacher said to me, do you think you should go around with those young men?
That was a watchman.
I mentioned these things because I think they're very important today. Come with me from Lebanon and so on. Come with me in communion, yes, but to be guarded by those that God has set up in the assembly.
To warn us, to teach us, and to keep us in the enjoyment of our position at the altar that he's brought us to.
I thought it might be helpful to call attention to the difference between verse 17.
And verse 7.
In verse seven we went over that.
00:15:03
On Saturday, remember them which have the rule over that over you, or remember your rulers who have spoken on you, the word of God.
That is, as those that have gone before serve the Lord and left their instructions and their testimonies, that we might be guided by them, but in the verse before us, the 17th verse, its present present thought.
Brother Lundin spoke of your leaders, I believe.
Obey them.
Which have the rule or your leaders?
Or real and submit yourself, or they watch for your souls. And so on. The Lord does have among His dear people leaders.
I know it's a it's a responsibility that anyone who seeks to help God's children is in a very responsible position. The Lord holds him responsible.
As to his care over his sheep, because he loves his flock, he laid down his life as a Good Shepherd to save them. But it is a high and holy privilege, and Brother Gandin has spoken even of a sister giving instructions to one who is in need of instruction now in this case.
I suppose especially brothers who are leaders among God's children.
There were in the early days the elders or bishops who were to be married men.
Man couldn't be a Bishop unless he had a wife and had a family, not just one child, because the children are training to.
Have a leader.
So that him I had to understand the.
Needs in the assembly because he's had experience in household affairs, but it's not necessary that the leaders are always elders or bishops. A leader might be like Brother or Brother Clown Chicago, who was definitely a leader and a very valuable leader, but he was a bachelor.
Cecilia was the leader.
And we have some helpful instructions, it says, for they watch for your souls as they that must give an account. No, don't get the thought that they're going to tell the Lord. Oh, you're that dear brother, that dear sister walking so badly. I have to tell you about it, Lord.
And tell you how wrong their course is. That isn't a thought here at all.
It says for the watch for your souls that they may give an account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief. Instead of the leader going and telling the Lord how badly some of his children are walking, he goes to the Lord and tells him how sad it is that he has failed so.
In his service he has to go to the Lord with grief and a broken heart.
About his lack and his.
Shortcomings in not having shepherded the flock in the more helpful way, so they would not have been this state of things among his people, that he may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you.
For for one who is sitting to help God's people to have to go and confess.
Lord, I have failed in my service. I bow before the yes to it. Well, that's humble for the one who is called upon to go to the Lord in that way. And it should be humbling to the Saints that it's necessary for one who seeks to serve the Lord among his people to have to go in that humble way and make such a confession.
Thought then, is that they're not to give account of the sheep, but of their own conduct toward them.
How they have either helped them or not helped them and the exercise about that.
00:20:11
There's a great deal of difference in following a leader and following the faith.
Brethren, there's a great deal of difference.
When we look back over the testimony of God's dear people.
It's when a man has become a leader.
Instead of a guide, he's become a leader.
And people have followed the leader, but not the faith.
There we have.
A great deal of trouble, even to this day.
Now it was my privilege to sit under the Ministry of Mr. Scott.
And HP Barker.
Mace Syndrome and others.
Those.
Men whose writings we enjoy to this day.
Yet they became leaders.
Of their brethren.
And faith was not followed. May we be careful, beloved, in this.
To follow a leader. We love his dear people and we thank God for them.
But one of the saddest things in my Christian life.
Is that all those whose ministry I enjoyed so deeply in those early days?
There's a sadness, sadness with it.
Could we follow them as leaders? No.
Oh, how very subtle the enemy is.
This is something we have to watch out, isn't it? So, Brother Barry? Yeah. Don't you think that we could sum up the whole subject that you also helpfully brought before us to what the Apostle Paul says? While only even as I also follow Christ, and on one occasion he's writing to the Galatians. He says though we are an Angel from heaven.
Preach any other gospel unto you than that which we, he's really speaking, especially of himself, have preached unto you. Let him be accursed, Paul says. If I divert, or I depart in the least from what I have presented to you, don't accept me at all. Reject me and refuse me. Of course that was something serious that was vital, but I believe in principle that it's also true that.
There are those who Ministry would have preserved themselves if they'd really followed it. Take terpenes, writings, some of the clearest.
Instruction on the place and the privileges of those gathered to the Lords name.
And yet he went astray at the time of the Raven Division, wouldn't take a stand and ended up Anglican preacher. Gave up all the truth he'd held. Well, it failed, one says. Well, Brother Turpin is such a godly man, such a wonderful teacher, such a great leader. I'm going to follow him where he is going. Where would you be?
To follow a man, you're going to go astray, but only Paul says as I follow Christ. Of course I do think that Paul was the pattern St. and there's no one that has ever filled his place, because the only one of God's servants that we have in the instruction of the New Testament that ever faded himself as the following needs was the apostle Paul.
Peter doesn't say that. John doesn't say that, but the one who could say.
So follow me was the man who had seen Christ and glory and the love of us. The only one that we can follow is the man who has seen Christ in glory. But he wouldn't even instruct others that they should follow him if he urged in the least from the path the Lord had given for him to follow in his service.
00:25:11
This is very, very serious then, for all of us it is not.
That is, we realize the blessing from the Lord that we owe to those who have ministered the Word to us and walked in the truth before us, And we thank the Lord for this. But I think we all are aware that our lives have been influenced by others, and as we realize this, we can't help but realize that our life and testimony is at this very moment.
Influencing others and this is very, very serious and very, very challenging. Your presence and My presence and manner, devotedness or lack of it at this very time, I believe in having its effect upon others.
I think of two verses that stand in remarkable contrast in that connection. One, we shall not turn to it, but Song of Solomon chapter one. Draw me. It is personal. This is individual, and the verse goes on to say.
We will run after thee, draw me, We will run after thee. And in rather sad contrast to it, we see the language of Peter. I go a fishing. We also go with sea and beloved brethren, young and old, brothers and sisters. I believe it's true to say that right now, where you and I stand, we are having either one or the other of these effects.
Upon our dear brothers and sisters, either your light and mine is in some degree.
Expressed in those words, draw me. And the result will be by the grace of God, we will run after thee, the same one whom you and I may by the grace of God, be following the one who would love to draw others to follow him too. But in the testimony of our life is I go a fishing that also is going to have its effect. There will be others who will say we also go with thee.
I never knew a division among the Lords gathered Saints where there wasn't some prominent teacher or leader that they were following my parents before they before my day. They went through the same thing and all that went off in division had much the same story to tell. They didn't treat dear brother so and so right.
He shouldn't have been disciplined and.
They defend some leaders. It's always some leader that they Saints that have turned aside from the pure truth of the word of being gathered to the Lords name alone. They're always following some now and it's a solemn warning to any who seek to help or instruct God's people.
That the more gifted a brother is in giving instruction and expounding the word, the better instrument he is for the enemy to use to divide the people of God. Because they have listened to his teaching, they value it. They esteem him as a teacher and so that the enemy comes in and if you can get one leader to turn aside from the path where he has.
A champion.
To turn God's children from following the Lord in the past, that the truth marks out for them, and that will be on to the end. And we're not at the end of the journey yet. And doubtless, just as Paul warned the visions in his days, he says that men of your own selves are rising to lead others astray.
Your own selves, that is, they were real believers, and yet the enemy comes in. For he says, After my departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. But that isn't all. But of your own selves shall men arise? That is to me. The wolf get in and suddenly mislead the people of God with his subtle.
00:30:06
Christ dishonouring Teacher.
Or there may be some leader that wants the place himself, and rather than to to own his mistake and to humble himself, he'd rather divide the people of God and scatter the flock.
Lovely interest to see that this the apparently the Apostle Paul writing this to the Hebrews. He he says, pray for us. He was, as has been remarked, the most remarkable guide and leader. But the expression here is pray for us, for we trust we have a good conscience in all things, willing to live honestly. That's a sincere desire on the part of a leader, isn't it?
Pray for us. We desire the prayers of the Saints thinking to in connection with the Trust. We have a good conscience in First Timothy.
In chapter one verse 19.
While verse 18 First Timothy 118 this charge I commit unto thee son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them.
Midas War, a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience.
Some, having put away concerning faith, have made shipwreck. I was just thinking of this holding faith and a good conscience. Well, isn't it true that holding faith would be bringing God into everything in every circumstance? Holding faith and then a good conscience would be that which would be quick to judge everything and to keep sin out. So we need both, don't we, Holding faith?
The truth of God and in exercise bringing God into every circumstance.
Bringing him in and then?
Walking in such a way as to judge that which is evil, to keep it out, having a good conscience.
Not and if you'll read in that preceding verse in First Timothy.
One it says in the 16th verse.
How be it for this cause I obtain mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to ever to life everlasting?
Paul realized that he was in a place not only of special blessing, but of special danger. And he, he adds in another place I think was quoted already. Follow me as I follow Christ, and it's true that God has.
Said in the Assembly those who may be a help to their brethren.
But there's always the danger.
But there was a special danger with the apostle, and he realized it. But he had a special calling to be.
His life would be like an outline for the believer, those who would afterward believe. But I think this expression in the in the 17th verse submit yourselves, is very important.
This is something that nature does not like to do.
And I'm sure that most of us have to confess that this is the hard part if we if we're not walking really in communion.
We will not submit ourselves and sometimes we'll submit ourselves just partially, you know, and not really.
Wholeheartedly take our true place. And not only should we submit ourselves to those who are, who may be guides for us, we should submit ourselves to one another too. And we should always have the spirit of submission with one another in the assembly so that we're ready to receive instruction and help.
From anyone that the Lord may choose to help us.
Remember a very.
Of promising young man that was carrying on a book room seemed to be much use of the Lord, but there were difficulties in the meeting where he lived.
00:35:04
And a dear old brother that was quite people went down to where he worked and calling him by name, he says, I have one word for you submit.
And he walked off. That brother didn't. He wouldn't submit.
And his history has been very sad, feel away from the face, never been restored.
That one word that he would not accept from the promenade brother who loved him and wanted to seek his good and his blessing at one word. Submit. Submit to your brethren, even sometimes when you're not clear if you're right, is to their decisions.
But that word where where those difficulties come in, could often many things be corrected and not grow into proportions, where they bring much sorrow and trouble.
In translating the Scriptures concerning the Word Moderation.
I remember spending all one day over that to find something that would.
The according to the Incas way of looking at things.
And we found the word yielding this.
Yielding this, let your yielding Ness be known to all men. Let your moderation.
Well, self willed, beloved. We know that It's just pure pride, nothing else.
I have no right to exert myself will if my brother corrects me. I have to listen and take it. And thank God for my brother who loves me enough to point out my ways. This is the joy of a reading meeting, too.
Let your yieldingness be known to all men.
Well, that doesn't mean that you give up.
A doctrine? The doctrine? No, it has nothing to do with that.
It's concerning the this pride that doesn't let you submit to what you're being told.
Oh, I think that's a good word, brother Barry.
To submit. Oh, it's such a such a a wonderful thing to have humility to submit.
Well, you, dear one who have the joys of bringing up families, I'm sure you understand more than I do, because I've never had a child to bless.
But submission.
Is so essential in the assembly.
Sub measure.
What about discipline?
About discipline.
The question was asked to brother does it hold? Does it hold?
And he says, of course it doesn't.
That's our dear brother, Ch Brown.
He says in whole. Well, you might not go along with it. Leave it to the Lord below us. That's what Brother Chapter Brown said to me one day. I went to see him before he he was got a little bit perturbed in his mind. I went to see him. He was forgetful. I could see he was failing. But that's what he said. Leave it to the Lord, Brother Eric. Leave it. Let the Lord work it out.
Well, that was a good word. Good work.
And to that mean we should remember.
In connection with assembly discipline, that no assembly is infallible, but their authority is the authority of Christ in the midst, and that's the only reason that it has any importance, because it's done in His name.
And that name to which we are gathered. But any assembly can make a mistake and we don't have to be insisting that they were right.
Maybe. Maybe they may have heard, maybe they have been too hasty or something. But if they have acted before the Lord, it's something that's binding. Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and so that the only path for those who.
00:40:13
Have to do with the place and the hot concerns about they're concerned about is to submit to that authority.
We we were told when we were young by these old teachers that the assembly is not the truth.
I used to listen to these old brothers.
And they said, you know, the assembly is not the truth. And I thought, well, I wonder if that brother is right.
Now he said, the word of God is the truth.
All that straightened it out for my soul. The word of God, the truth.
Isn't that right? The word of God is the truth.
But the assembly, the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in our midst.
There's the authority there to be maintained and his glory and his honor.
His authority, which that must these excellencies, must be maintained there.
But I have always remembered that the assembly is not the truth, the word of God's the truth.
I believe that in the Assembly there's a responsibility with each individual, as we have in the second and third chapters of Revelation.
And.
Yet we have this expression here. Submit now if a matter comes up in an assembly that we may not feel that we can agree with.
Our responsibility is to present the word of God to our brethren and leave it with them.
We are responsible to present what we feel to be the mind of God.
But to go further than that, and to press it may cause a division is not the mind of God. We're to yield to our brethren, but we are responsible to present the word of God to them. For the conscience is that right?
They impressed me so much in Bolivia.
A brother was put away.
From the table.
Of being guilty of fornication.
Well, considerable time was taken concerning that verdict and he was put away.
That dear brother.
He never said a word. He sat back. He never missed a meeting. He was there at the prayer meeting.
Mouth was closed. He was there when the brave, when they bring the breaking of bread. He was back there in that seat.
And he never missed the meeting.
Which impressed everybody.
The humility of that man.
One year and a half afterwards, a brother got up After a reading on 1St Corinthians 5. He gets up and says I am the guilty one, That brother is innocent.
Well, there was a case where there was a of what we call in Spanish of failure of failure there. But what did that brother do?
He never mentioned one word to his brother, never let on that he was even procured. He just was took his place at the table again and never complained against his brother anything. All he did was to pray for what? There was grace. That was wonderful. That was really a lesson for us, Greece.
Yes, but a fairy. Would you please elaborate and explain what constitutes an attempt reaction?
00:45:05
Is it only the brothers?
Or what is an assembly action?
Well, the only scripture that I think of where we get to assembly action in connection with sin.
Is in the.
5th chapter of First Corinthians is very familiar with where a wicked man that was living with his father and wife was breaking bread and they're told put away from among you that wicked person.
I know dear brother, Harry Hale told me at one time that he said. We we haven't a book of rules, We have a book of principles.
And you can't lay down any rule as to just what course or what action should be taken, but after years of following various cases.
Although it's done, discipline is done in much weakness.
But if an assembly as an assembly exercises discipline.
It's assembly action, and we should bow to it, even though we may not be clear as to have a right or the wrong, or perhaps mistake, perhaps wrong spirit has been manifested. The best thing is to bow to that action. The only reason I'm gathered here at this time with those who we feel are gathered to the Lord's name alone.
Is because I acted on the principle of bowing to assembly action.
At the time of the Tunbridge Wells trouble, my father was acquainted with Mr. Lowe of England and esteemed him highly as a valuable brother, a leader, a teacher, And he almost thought that Brother Lo couldn't make a mistake.
Well.
Our father and I were about ready to go with those who rejected the action.
Of the putting away at Tumridge Wells of Mr. Wester. Strange as it was, it wasn't really an assembly action that they were. The meeting was in a divided state. Well, I went to see a dear brother Armand in Saint Louis at that time, and Brother Potter was there and the matter came up and.
What Brother Armet said to me, he said you bow to the action of the assembly and leave the matter with the Lord. Well, I came back and told my father what these brothers said and we decided that was the only course for us to take well inside of about two years.
Those who supported Mr. Strange turned around and put him away at a brother's meeting.
Well, those who went off at that time.
Followed rejected the principle of bowing to an assembly action, and time proved that it was an assembly action. And very often when there's confusion in these things, we better do just what Brother Armet told me. You bow to the assembly action and wait on the Lord to clear things up. Well, the Lord preserved us.
Just in that way again, it was simply a matter of following Mr. Lowe and not following the word of God.
That's kept us from making.
Us A mistake that might have landed us in the place of division the rest of our days.
I don't know if that helped you, brother Greg. Run.
Thank you, but it's possible that actions are taken where the sisters who form part of the assembly are never.
Brought into.
The action or the exercise?
00:50:00
The whole assembly is to act, not brothers like you referred to Cambridge Well and explained, Mr. Strange was put out.
By a broader meeting that really didn't have any authority to act, the brother tweeting as such, but an assembly head which includes not only the brothers, brothers and sisters as well. Is that correct?
Well, I can't hear too good brother, but I doubt not that you're writing as well as I could gather your thoughts. There's something that I don't know if I'm just bringing out what you have in mind.
But.
You'll find it in the 10th chapter of Second Corinthians.
As I was saying that, we must turn to the fifth chapter of First Corinthians to get the assembly action.
And there the assembly was to come together. They had Paul's as an apostle as to his instruction, which we haven't today. But the assembly had acted, and they had put away that wicked person. But if you turn to the second chapter.
And it says in the sixth verse a second Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 6.
And having in readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. That is, there were those that were opposed to the action of the assembly in the 5th chapter of First Corinthians and those who opposed it were brought under were to be brought under discipline themselves for opposing the action of the assembly.
I think that's definitely what that means.
As he says there to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled, that is, when the assembly has acted in faithfulness to the Lord, those who oppose it really become the subjects of discipline themselves. Is that right?
Your brother Mary, I remember my father speaking to us of the same occasion that you speak of.
That you and your father faced together and.
As they saw this decision approaching and realized that there was number avoiding it, he apparently turned to a brother, an older and respected brother, in the assembly in Toronto, and said to him, Brother, what stand will you be taking in this matter? The older brother turned to him and said Brother, I hope I may keep close enough to the Lord that I'll know the shepherd's voice when the time comes.
And he passed that on to us, and I believe it's something very, very good for us to remember. There are certainly infallible guidelines in the word of God. But there are times when we are faced with situations that I believe can only be resolved by nearness to the Lord Jesus and hearing His voice in the midst of the contradictory evidence that we might hear.
And if it did require a complete file of information.
Lawyer to go through it all, where would that leave the most of us? I believe that with the light and wisdom and guidelines of the Word of God and nearness to the Lord Jesus, that we may hear that precious voice in the midst of the confusion, that we will not be misguided. I remember there was a time when our dearly beloved brethren in the West Indies were faced with.
A very very trying situation.
Someone was on their way down there to visit them, to try to lead them astray, And I knew it. And I thought, oh, I must write to them and try to instruct them as to the danger that lies ahead for them. And then I thought, no, I'm just going to get down on my knees and pray that in spite of what they're going to hear from this man, they may hear the shepherd's voice above it all.
00:55:01
And after a while I got some very interesting letters back. They said, brother, so and so has been here and has told us some very, very strange things, but it didn't sound to us like the shepherd's voice. And we told him to please leave us, that we'd promised to pray for him. Not one of them was turned aside. And I thank God for that. And I believe, brethren, if we keep close to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The one who has given us this precious book with all its light and wisdoms, our footsteps will not be LED astray.
Someone speaking about him and what is this division? We think it was this division. Someone said what do you think about Brother Dunmark? What do you think how he will go? All the answer was he'll pray himself through.
That he of his brand self into the right course.
And I think, Brother Hale, what you said is very important. There's always the moral or the spiritual side of things. If we just get things technically correct, we may go sadly astray. But if there is that brokenness and humility before the Lord, that is the real guidance that we should have.
There's always the danger of the mind entering in and trying to decide things as they're not. I recall a time when a brother came to me who had left because of difficulties. Sometime later I met him and he wanted to have a talk with me at his home. When I got there, he had a box full of letters that he had secured from various parts of Europe.
And he wanted me to go through these letters to determine the rightness of the decisions that were made.
I said, brother, I think I'll be going, I said.
You're just throwing dust in the air. You were not there when those decisions were made. You don't even know the parties that made them.
What? He said. What would you suggest? I would suggest that we sit down with the word of God.
And we did sit down. And the brother was restored, but he wasn't restored through going through all of those letters that had been written and that he had secured to try to decide his course. That's the mind at work. That's not the voice of the shepherd. But you get the voice of the shepherd here from the word of God. And that's the only place we'll get it.
Word brethren in Acts 20.
And verse 28.
It reads, Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock.
Over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, notice all the flower over the which the Holy Ghost have made you overseers to.
Feed the Church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood.
The Apostles speaks to this little group gathered to him.
Round him before he went on. I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, and sparing the floor, not sparing the flock also of your own self shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch and remember that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn everyone.
Night and day with tears. Now verse 32 and now, brethren, I commend you to God.
And to the world of His grace, is it not remarkable that the apostle couldn't commend anyone?
But he could commend these few there to God and the word of his grace. Oh, that is wonderful to God and the world of his grace, when my dear father was dying, he said to his daughter.
I don't know who'll even bury me.
01:00:00
I'm on. I'm ready to depart. I don't know who'll even bury me, so great is the ruin. But he said write a note to Eric and tell him that the God and the word of his grace.
These this fact will keep him, will keep him. And with that he was gone. God and the word of his grace. Isn't that wonderful? We can't go wrong there, brethren.
In connection with the question that our brother Brinkman raised a few minutes ago, do we not get wisdom and connection with that in Acts chapter 15?
We find in Acts chapter 15 the question who had been brought to Jerusalem a very important question, a question concerning circumcision and its connection with salvation. And we find that when the question was brought in the sixth verse of Acts 15, it says, and the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter, and we find that there was much discussion.
Investigation, consideration, statements made by by Paul and by Peter. And then when we come to the 22nd verse, it says then pleased that the apostles and elders with the whole church or the whole assembly to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch. And in the 25th verse they say it seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord.
To send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul.
And then the decision is given that they were not compelled to be circumcised.
It seems to me that we have here the very important question that the principle that our brother Brinkman raised, and that is that when it becomes a matter of investigation and consideration in an assembly, it is in order scripturally for the apostles and elders, that is, those who are the responsible brothers in the assembly to investigate, to consider. It would not be orderly to be bringing all the details connected with.
The problems, perhaps moral problems or or.
Doctrinal problems to have all the investigation carried out by the Assembly. But before any decision is rendered, before it becomes an assembly decision, the Assembly must meet. And we find here that it is the assembly that they have all come together with the whole assembly in order that the decision might be rendered. And it is there. As our brother Barry pointed out to us a few minutes ago, it's the Lord's authority, it's his presence in the midst.
That gives authority to what the assembly does. And if the brothers meeting has simply met and the brothers meeting has decided something, and the brothers meeting has carried it out, if it's matters such as what we're considering, then they cannot claim the Lords authority for what they have done because.
Put very simply, the Lord is not in the midst of the brothers meeting, but he is in the midst of the assembly as it meets as the assembly, and consequently what they do as an assembly meeting together with one accord, brothers and sisters, it carries the Lords authority. Is that right?
The assembly is not an investigation body. The assembly.
Is whereas the body where the authority.
Exercise, and that's important to understand matters of discipline.
Yeah, it shouldn't be decided in an assembly meeting. It should be decided before and then when it's decided what has to be done and how it's to be stated, the how the action is to be presented, while then it's brought before the assembly, not to be discussed, but to be acted upon.
And then the assembly bowing to it, why it becomes an assembly action?
And should be submitted to. Of course, in our great weakness, brother, we do find many problems, and many times that things are not carried out in the order that.
Was best. And sometimes we have been puzzled, you know, because there has been feelings and and things done in maybe a disorderly way, but it seems to me.
01:05:02
Through the years that I have observed these matters that the Lord does in some way that is simply beyond man come in and the there is a authority that becomes manifest, that the Lord is acting, and we need to be very careful to oppose anything that really is the carried out by the assembly, though in much weakness and feebleness, and often in.
Maybe in a state that isn't what we would desire most to see.
It's also true, isn't it? That's because the Lord is there in the midst and there is the authority of the Lord there. We have to be very careful what we bind on earth, because it says what service shall bind on earth is bound in heaven.
And of course binding on all others.
So when we realize, and I hope I trust we realize how important it is have the Lord in the midst and to have His authority vested in the assembly, that we we think of that and we act carefully because we're doing in the in the presence of the Lord, and it should be done according to His word. I think you are very right because we have to consider this.
That is not just a local.
Decision that's being made is being made for, as it were, the whole Church of God, or, if we're gathered in His name, on the ground of the one body, where it should function as the one body, just as though there were no divisions, as though it was the same as in in the days of the apostles, we act on the principles of the one body.
And it affects all those who are are gathered in that way.
So that there should be very much exercise, very much humility on getting before the Lord and not just hastily making a decision because it may become a source of much sorrow.
I think that's important because of the in the 5th chapter of First Corinthians. First Corinthians 5 I was thinking they speak about.
Well, there's so much failure that how can they judge evil? Well, I believe the apostle, before he brought their the the action or stirred them up as to their need of judging, this thing at Corinth was in a very sad condition, a very immoral state, they will say. A very sad condition. Well, normally speaking they could have said. He could have said, well, you're in such a condition. I don't think you can judge evil.
Well, I was thinking of the of the, the verses, a verse in the 5th chapter and the.
Well, fourth third verse for I I'm reading in the new translation, Absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged as present to deliver in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ye and my spirit being gathered together.
With the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Him that has so wrought this to deliver him, I say so. It's not the the that the assembly is is doing this as a being so perfect themselves. It's because of the presence of the Lord in the midst. They were gathered together in his name, and by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so there was power there to judge that evil, and it was the whole assembly. It was the assembly that was an exercise. The apostle brought it before them as an assembly.
Very good. You see all we have only 10 minutes to for a reading that it would be.
A precious conclusion to our meeting if we looked at the following subjects, beginning with the 20th verse. Now the God of peace had brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep.
Through the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom the glory forever and ever. Amen.
01:10:10
I remember a brother Ayres when bringing his before us one time.
That going outside the camp to a rejected Christ.
I might look, you know, as we were just left hopeless, helpless.
No one to care for us. We have left all that belongs to a system that religiously looks after our needs. I remember years ago we were having tent meetings in Arlington, KY, and it was all something entirely new, that being gathered to Lord's name, some of the people there remarkable. What are we going to do if we act on this one? Who's going to preach her funerals when we die? Where are we going to leave all the rest we've gone on with and go out to something we know so little about?
Well, it seems to me that when we act on the truth of going outside to a rejected Christ, that the Spirit of God doesn't leave us as it were in a helpless situation, for we have the care.
All that great shepherd of the sheep. What a lovely way to think of being provided for.
As we go on in the seeking to walk in the truth, but have been brought before us, that there is one who cares for us, and who could be looked up to as that one who gave his life as a Good Shepherd for the sheep, and now in resurrection, seated on high as the great shepherd to keep us.
Until it we're at the end of the journey.
Someone has said that this is the greatest miracle.
Take the sheep across the desert all the way home.
I.
We need to remember that he's put us on his shoulders and he'll carry us safely home.
We might struggle. You can imagine that sheep struggling when he's on the shepherd's shoulders.
And he might struggle so much that he would get a foot or two loose, and it wouldn't help him one bit. If he just relax and submit and let the shepherd carry him, he gets safely home.
A lot of the subject here is a subject of peace.
God is not God, of confusion is he. And God is never frustrated by all the happenings in this world.
We dread sometimes to see the progress of communism is making. God isn't frustrated whether Russia gets more and more hold on the people of this country.
He goes peacefully on working out his own counsels and purposes.
And so he would bring you and me into the same piece where we're not disturbed by things around.
15 There's no brother Baron. There is the God of peace, and he's the God of hope, fill you with all joy and peace and believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. And he's also the God of patience and comfort in that one chapter. And the last verse is the God of peace. What a God we have to do with.
And there's something there that the God of peace bringing us into that peace in which he abides, never frustrated by things that are happening. But he's not only bringing us into that how that peace that passes all understanding that he has given one who can sustain us in that pathway.
Thus the great shepherd of the sheep. And in order to occupy that place, it's he shed his blood there on the cross to the blood of the everlasting covenant, not just the covenant that Israel was given in the wilderness, but this is something that goes on through the ages that are ahead of us.
01:15:20
And then we get that keeping grace.
That follows what we've been considering.
That the peace of God in Philippians is connected with our circumstances and.
The leaving them all in his hands, whereas the God of peace in the same chapters, connected with obedience, is it not? And so the apostle speaks of these things. Do, and the God of peace shall be with you.
And I believe that's connected here as well, following the 17th, 1St that we started with closing the chapter because we have the same principle in the 17th, Is that the 17th or the 18th of John? The 17th I believe?
Where we have the safety of the believer with.
The Holy Father, It's the Holy Father. And so it's a question then.
The Father is the one who disciplines his children. So we have the principal then of walking in obedience, and the God of peace being with us. It's one thing for this to be a truth and another thing for us to enjoy it. But we will enjoy this truth of the 20th verse if we walk in obedience.
In the 21St verse, make you perfect in every good work to do his will.
So often our own wills come in to interfere with the Lord's will, so it shows that there is a need of humility and brokenness in His presence. And if we discover in any way that matter is the exercise of our own wills.
Well then we need to judge it. We need to be guarded all the time, because it's easy to even deceive ourselves and thinking we're doing the will of the Lord, when in reality we're just doing our own will because we're unyielding and we're.
We're just not willing to submit.
I have enjoyed connecting this verse here with what we have in the 37th chapter of Ezekiel. It says there in the.
Ezekiel, chapter 37 and verse 29. I'm sorry, verse 26.
Says, moreover, I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them.
And I will place them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them forevermore. My Tabernacle also shall be with them. Yeah, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. What I have enjoyed in in connecting it up with this is the fact that here these Hebrews were being called upon to go out. They were being called upon to leave all that was connected with the camp and.
The promise in Ezekiel was that there would be eventually for them a covenant of peace, and now they were being called upon to, as it were, leave the hopes of Israel, and then identify themselves with a rejected Christ. But while they don't have the covenant of peace, they have the God of peace. While they don't immediately have the everlasting covenant, it through the blood of the everlasting covenant that they've brought into this place of blessing and favor. And while they don't immediately have the Lord's a sanctuary, as it were in their midst in Jerusalem.
What they do have is the Lord's presence outside of it all. They go forth unto him without the camp.
And Christ and glory and fraud, it is just.
In the world.
We are.
Him is an example of the very thing that we have just been Speaking of, the peace that the author of this hymn enjoyed, Lord Cecil. About 10 days ago we were going through the magnificent halls of his ancestral home. It is just something that can never be forgotten, an absolute palace there that is now one of the renowned tourist landmarks of England.
And as we went through the halls of Lord Cecil's ancestral home, and the guide showed us the magnificence of that home, and all the wealth and the honor that over the centuries have been known in that home, the kings and Queens and statesman of the world that have been entertained in that home, I asked them, as they mentioned this and that renowned ancestor.
Do you know anything about Lord Adelbert Percival Cecil? Who was he?
Well, he came to Canada. Well, whatever did he leave this place and go to Canada for? Well, he came to preach the gospel. Oh, did he leave the established Church of his ancestors? Well, yes, he did. Well, I guess that would put him in considerable disfavor. And we know nothing about him. And, brethren, I think, as I sing this hymn from the pen and heart of Lord Cecil, that here is an example of the peace and the joy of one who was part of the very thing from which I believe.
01:25:25
The word of God would call us forth to leave all the honors.
That he once knew in that land to come forth and know the wonderful joy of being gathered around the person and under the precious name of a rejected savior. Was it a disappointment to Him? I think, brethren, this Him is the answer.
Number 13.
Lord.
So I do. I can help everything stay in the sun.
Something so good.
I am very fast.
Spirit well.
Gone from.
Breakthrough the Glory.
Our life and.
Drink my friends.
It has changed our name. God's right. I love God. I've been delighted.
The Two Sauls
Remember Me
The Perfect Servant
Comfort in the Face of What Troubles Us
For Me to Live Is Christ
Now!