Chicago Conference: 2019
Table of Contents
Threefold Work of God for Us as Individuals
Address—Bruce Conrad
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Spray. Well, just to open things up, I would like to read a verse in the book of Ecclesiastes.
The 11Th chapter.
And verse 5.
As thou knowest not, what is the way of the Spirit?
Nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child.
Even so, thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.
I have before me this morning to speak about the work of God.
You just feel.
So inadequate to take up.
Subject like the work of Christ, as you would to take up the subject of the person of Christ.
And sometimes people say, well, we won't touch on this or that forsake of time.
And maybe we will run tight on time, but one can't help but feel that we touch the very tips of the waves and as a brother.
Old brother that was one of my many teachers would say the well is so deep and we're thankful that.
The water is accessible to us at the very top.
And so, with the Lord's help, I'd like to speak about the works of God.
And the aspects I'd like to speak about this morning are the work that God accomplished through his Son on Calvary's cross.
2000 years ago.
And then just speak a little bit about the work of God that's going on in your soul if you're a believer and in mind.
However, long ago that was not that long, relatively speaking. And then thirdly, the work that God is doing today, yesterday, tomorrow, in your life and mine, that will have its transition, perhaps even today.
When the Lord gives that assembling shout and we transition.
And into our heavenly home, our bodies are changed, and we're at full liberty to be who He has intended us to be.
The Apostle Paul at one point could speak about the gospel as the as a mystery, the mystery of the gospel.
But to you and me, it is not a mystery in a certain sense, because though it is kind of a Riddle, it's been unfolded to us.
And then we'd like to speak a little bit about the mystery of life. I'm not sure that expression is used in the Scripture, but I think really the the way God is. It says in this fifth verse, thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child natural life as intelligent as man is and has.
As sophisticated and development as his abilities now are.
To understand natural things. The mystery of natural life is still a mystery to man, let alone spiritual life.
And then, of course, there is that mystery or that wondrous thing of the way of a man with a maid in Proverbs 30. And the way that God weaves the fabric of your life and mine is an immense privilege ongoing in every one of us, though we may not always feel or see His hand.
It's striking, really, as we look around at each other, to know that God has a special individual curriculum.
For each one of us, He knows exactly what He's doing. He's doing it day by day. So let's turn first of all, and get some verses before some expressions from the Scripture to speak about the wonderful work of God on Calvary's cross.
First of all, let's turn to First Timothy, chapter one.
We'll jump around a little bit here at the 1St.
First Timothy one and verse 11.
The glorious Gospel of the blessed God.
Which was committed to my trust. Or we could read it as it is the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.
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I'll turn to 2nd Corinthians chapter four, another expression to have before us.
In 2nd Corinthians 4 and verse 6.
God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And let's turn to John 13 now.
In verse 31.
Therefore, when he was gone out.
Jesus said now is the Son of man glorified and God is glorified in him?
If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself.
And shall straightway or immediately glorify him.
It's a wonderful foundation to get in our souls for those that are younger.
To look at the work of Calvary's cross.
As an exchange between the father and the son.
All are familiar with the beautiful, stunning type in Genesis 22 where Abraham and Isaac and some young men that supported them went on a long journey, I assumed by foot, and it came to a point where the mountain was in view.
And they left the young men there.
And it says the two of them went together alone.
And it's a wonderful thing to ponder, the fact that even though there were all these different players.
Surrounding the Lord Jesus. And that's solemn hour.
There were soldiers, there were mockers, there were scorners, there were religious men.
There were curious people, and all the rest. They looked and stared upon him.
But in another sense.
The two of them went alone.
The disciples overcome with sleep.
Stay the stones cast.
When the Lord.
The reality of the darkness was pressing upon him.
It says in one of the gospels that an Angel it only speaks of one.
Ministered to him. Think of it.
And yet.
If men had eyes to see into the spiritual realm, I believe they could have seen legions of angels.
How do we put it on high alert?
Standing by.
In the ways of God in the Old Testament Scriptures, we see the power that one Angel.
Could execute.
Legions of angels.
When the king of Syria surrounded the city and Elijah was there, and he gets up early in the morning and he sees all kinds of Chariots and horsemen and his servants as master, how shall we do?
And Elijah said, Lord, open his eyes. When his eyes were opened, he saw a mountain full.
Of horses and Chariots of fire.
And to think of this.
Most solemn moment for which the world was made.
Brother told me once we were walking. Older brother, did you see all this out here?
Yeah, it's pretty impressive.
This is This world is a platform for the display of God's glory.
In Christ.
Mr. Darby made the comment in his day over what is it now, 100 and.
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20 or 40 years.
He said if the earth is small in itself.
That which God accomplished on it is not.
How much bigger the world seems today.
With telescopes and all the I don't even know how they do it, but they lookout and out and out and out. The more powerful man is able to see out into the universe. There's just more there.
And it goes on and on and on in the mind of any reasonable person is overwhelmed by the thought of spatial Infinity.
And we look at the rocks I know as a young student, and we take you up to a rock cut.
Where they shoot the rock out to make the road go through and you could see the and.
And you ponder in your mind the ages and eons with which God has done what He has done in natural things.
And I believe that God has given man little man, and that's why man could sense as what is man, what what are we? What am I that are mindful of me? Look at this out here. We look back in time or look ahead into Infinity, all centered and headed up.
In this great, great collision.
That took place in Calvary's cross.
And I just for myself, I just think that angels were standing by, as it were, on high alert.
They shouted for joy when the When the worlds were made, we read in Job.
When the sun came down and took manhood, and was born in Bethlehem, the silence of heaven was allowed to be broken.
And the angels stating the glory of God, what must they have thought standing there?
Knowing what was about to happen.
When the man of such stature with legs like pillars of marble.
Is on his face before his God.
Oh my father, if it be possible.
Let this cup be taken from me.
And he sees and he discerns and he knows that it was not possible that God could be glorified, that the work that he was sent to do could be accomplished in any other way.
And he rises. Then he proceeds.
To the further horrors of Calvary's cross.
In John's Gospel, it's sometimes a wonder as we first start to read the Scriptures, because the Lord Jesus speaks about things as if they already happened.
And as we begin to ponder things more and more, and we think of what eternity is, we say to ourselves, well, eternity doesn't stop. And then time starts.
And then time runs along, and then times over, and eternity starts up again. Because that eternity wouldn't be eternity, would it?
Eternity and time are concurrent, while there's time, it would seem to me.
And the Son of God as he was here.
Inhabiting eternity as God and yet here as a man in time. It's just as if he steps to this side and then steps to that side and inhabits both and speaks from both.
Seems to me is why he could pray and say, I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do, and yet in time it was a little bit from being really fully accomplished in time.
In verse 31 Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him?
The headwaters of the blessing that you and I are going to enjoy for all eternity.
Is in the immense and wonderful love of God.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
And the sun is the scent, one of the Father. But the Spirit of God protects the majesty of his person. And in almost every place in John where it says he was set, it also says he also says I came because it was proper to him to do that. And those verses are usually back-to-back, lest we get a wrong thought. The Spirit of God so jealous.
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Of Him and His glory and careful about our understanding.
And so he came as the sent one to the father, and he accomplished the Father's will.
And he could say, now is the Son of man glorified in God, is glorified in him?
As one who was, as another put it, competent to pass judgment on the value of his life and work, he says that.
When I do work, I'm in the construction business. When we do work, someone else has to come and validate that it was properly done, that it was well done.
But here is one who is competent because of who he is to pronounce assessment, divine assessment of the value of his own work as man. He glorified God on the earth.
And it's as if God looks down. Calvary is the work of Calvary's cross having been accomplished. He laid down his life.
He allowed himself to be taken by wicked hands, and crucified and slain. A soldier pierced his side.
And the blood of Christ came forth in the water.
And he laid himself down in death.
And God looks down and says. What is my proper response to this?
What is my proper response?
Have you ever wondered why it speaks of us being blessed according to the righteousness of God?
Sometimes it seems to me like it should say according to the kindness of God.
But it's quite a subject to ponder. It says the righteousness of God. It's God's righteousness. I know there is a righteousness imputed to you and me on the basis of our faith, and that is different.
But God is consistent with himself and righteously raised the Lord Jesus for among all the rest of the dead.
And gave him glory.
It was proper, it was righteous thing to do. It's beautiful.
God is glorified in Him.
And if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify in himself, and shall straightway or immediately glorify him.
And we could, for the sake of time. Here I went and said it again.
We won't multiply scriptures about the wonderful reality.
That God raised him out from among all the rest of the dead, and gave him glory.
All of our loved ones that we've laid in the grave, they're with Christ.
But their bodies are in the grave. They're awaiting the first resurrection.
The Lord Jesus has already been resurrected. Resurrection has to do with the body, and he has a body. He has a body of a man, a glorified man, and he's the only one. And he's been glorified. And as an overcomer, He's seated on the right hand of the throne of God. He sits on his Father's throne. God has glorified him.
He sits there now and he is in a position.
And God is now, if I could put it reverently, in a position to bless the vilest Sinner and still be blessed, still be right and and just in doing it.
Because in the neighborhood I grew up in, and you start to people here that you're a Christian, he's the last person I thought would ever be a Christian.
And then they said, well, what's fair about that?
There's nothing fair about the gospel.
It's so beyond fair.
What's fair about?
What's fair about the man Christ Jesus taking my place or your place and bearing my sins in his own body on the tree? That's not fair. That's so far beyond fair. It's not even a discussion.
He's positioned himself there, and God is now free in consistency with himself and all that He is in light and holiness to pour out blessing on whosoever will.
And young men, young sisters, it's good to learn the truth of propitiation. It's not a word that you probably got in high school in your spelling test or on the Sats. And it's a little different than the way men and women use it in the world.
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In one John two we read he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world. It's the side of the work that Christ accomplished on Calvary's cross that has been for God.
And he has glorified God. First things first.
I don't want to take the time, but it's, it's, it's just a wonderful subject.
To lay hold of how?
Gloriously. I don't know. Adjectives fail.
That God has vindicated the that's the Son of God has vindicated the majesty of God with respect to the stench of sin.
It's a wonderful subject and we need to move on.
But it is the basis where God can come out in blessing this. We have just touched the tops of the waves.
Of something that you and I believe will be occupied with through all eternity.
And I know you are now and I am now and you 40 years, 50 years, some here 70 years may be known the Lord Jesus Savior. And I'm sure you sit down on a on an evening and you just have to pinch yourself. Is it really true? How could this be? What a you have to pinch yourself, do you not?
That God would reach out and accomplish such a work of love and power and wisdom all combined for the likes of you and me. And the best is yet to come.
Well, that is the work accomplished outside of us, a work we can say was done for us. But now let's turn to John, chapter 3.
And speak a little bit about the work.
That he has to do in.
US.
I'm sure all are familiar.
With the occasion in John chapter 3 where Nicodemus comes to the Lord Jesus by night.
He comes to him as one who has a certain reputation and a sense of his own knowledge and competence, maybe in religious or divine things.
But the Lord has to basically put the brakes on dear Nicodemus. I believe we'll see Nicodemus in heaven.
And the Lord pierces right to the point, and he says in verse 3, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
And then in verse 5.
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
Just as it is essential and later on in this same chapter in verse 14.
The line of things we've already taken up.
As to the Son offering himself on Calvary's cross in verse 14, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
That is the aspect that ties to the truth propitiation.
The righteous claims of God being addressed first.
But there's another must that we've just read in verse seven. Ye must be born again.
The backdrop to the fact, as we read through the Scriptures, of the necessity of being born again or born anew, of having a life from God, is that without that, the gap between the wonderful liberty that God has taken to himself to be able to pour out blessing righteously and fulfill the desire of his love.
Could never be realized.
Because of what man is.
The scriptures could be multiplied in the New Testament.
And pictures are seen in the light of the New Testament in the Old.
For the fact that man has been proven to be without strength, without a will that is capable of desiring divine things.
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The Lord Jesus was plain, and he said, Ye will not come.
Let me just read one Hold your finger in John three, I think over in John chapter 5.
In verse 40, ye will not come to me that she might have life.
Over in John chapter 6 verse 44, No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.
And in our chapter 3 we read the verse The flesh. That which is born of flesh is flesh. And the Lord Jesus explained in another part of John's gospel that the flesh profiteth nothing.
How is this? How is this going? How is the effect, the blessing going to flow out this wonderful work of God that He has accomplished through His Son? How is it going to be realized in the lives of men and women who cannot come, who will not come, who cannot see the Kingdom of God?
It falls back on God being God and God being sovereign. And the God who has shined, as we read in 2nd Corinthians 4, who shined light out of darkness, is the one that said in the darkness of your soul, let there be light, and there was light.
Without the sovereign exercise on God's part of His prerogative.
To do a work inside your soul and mine. The Savior and the Sinner never meet.
And I know some of the young brothers around my one of my boys too.
They find it hard to grasp the truth of election.
They find that a difficult thing.
But for the sovereign action of God.
To do a work.
As we read in Ecclesiastes.
Inside your soul and mind by the Word of God and the Spirit of God together.
There would be no response.
The prophet Isaiah and I know he was in his mind speaking about the nation, the the the the guilty nation of Israel said the whole head is sick and the heart faint and from the sole of the feet to the top of the head it's wounds and bruises and putifying sores.
And we learn from cover to cover in the Scriptures that man in his natural state is altogether vanity.
And God allowed the working out or the manifesting of whether this was true or not in in life. He sent his son. Last of all we read in the parable, He sent his son. What will be the response?
In government, man failed.
In Innocence Manfield.
And the law is given and immediately broken.
And special privileges to a nation that was hedged about and given special privileges. A law broken, a special privilege.
Violated. And last of all, he sent his son.
They will reverence my son.
And we know the result that the sun was not reverenced. They said this is the air. Come, let us kill him.
And that's what they have done. And that is the natural heart of you and me that we were born with.
And I know it is popular. I'm told them it's popular in Christian circles to think that a person is maybe 98% bad, but that 2% kind of rallies itself in order to accept God's offer of salvation and to believe. But my friend, it is not so. That is not what the Scriptures teach.
You and I were on a Broad Rd. Even if you were raised in a Christian home, you're on a Broad Rd.
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A road that leads to destruction. And but for the sovereign work of God to say, you know what, that one is not going down that road.
And you're a brand plucked from the burning.
Is that fair?
It comes down to can God be God?
And as the older brothers were where I was first saved.
As Tim's grandfather used to remind us all the time.
All may.
None would, some shall, and I have not heard a better simple description of the way that those different of the sovereignty of God and man who's responsible and accountable to God, is woven together.
All May is the gospel of the grace of God that goes out to whomsoever will.
And the truth of propitiation that we review says God has been satisfied with the work. He's free to come out and bless the vilest Sinner.
And in love, the Spirit of God goes out to the whosoever wills.
It says com.
Left to ourselves, none of us would have come.
God is free. God could have been free. It was free to just say, you know what? Let's just close up this. This did not workout.
That would have been righteous. A bona fide offer was made.
At tremendous cost and rejected. But God says to himself, as it were, in the counsels of the Godhead. You know what?
Where sin abounded, grace is going to over abound.
And so some shall. The truth of election is not a complicated truth.
And to show that, let's turn briefly to 1St Thessalonians Chapter one.
Because these believers we read in the book of Acts about those from Thessalonica had only had maybe three weeks or four with the apostle Paul who brought the gospel there to their city.
The northeast of Greece, what we call Greece today.
And so they were young in the faith.
Verse 3. Remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father.
Knowing brethren, beloved, your election of God.
Three or four week old Christians and it was something they already knew.
That they had been chosen. Let's turn to 2nd Thessalonians, the 2nd chapter.
And read about this process that God has enacted with you and me.
Verse thirteen of two Thessalonians two. We are bound to give thanks all the way to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord.
Because God hath from the beginning chosen you.
To salvation.
This is elementary Christian truth.
Boys and girls, men and women.
And I can remember first being saved, and the Lord sent an old brother down to me in the dead of winter and giving me the gospel. And I blurted out that I had just gotten saved. And he came and gave me a hug and took me to his house. And.
His wife poured coffee and I sat at his kitchen table and I learned what had happened to me and he unfolded to me.
Started to unfold to me the truths of Paul's doctrine and of John's ministry and what had happened to me, and one of the first things I learned.
Was that yes, you sat there in that house 1.5 miles or 4 miles away from this house and you thought it was all your decision? Because I had told him how I trembled, I did not want to come, and I just felt I had to come and I came and I thought it was all me.
And he says, you know, he says it's like the meeting room down there in Palmyra. He says on the outside, as if you have that verse, gospel verse, come unto me, all ye that labor.
Whosoever will may come and says, you go inside the door, and then you look back over the same door, and what do you see? Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
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And I can remember my jaw-dropping. At least I felt it did. And what does that lead to in the practical experience of your soul? It leads to the question, why me?
And it is important early, early on, to come to that place in your soul where you sit there and the tears will run down your cheeks as you ponder it. Why me?
It's because in Psalm 22 The Son of God said why me?
My God, My God, why?
Why are you forsaking me? Why me?
Men and women of faith down through the ages.
In times of trial and testing have gotten to the place like Job did where he just said why? Why God are you bothering with me? Am I a whale? Am I some big significant creature? I'm just a man of the earth and I just try to go to sleep and then you trouble me with dreams. Why don't you just leave me alone and let me swallow down my spit?
We can get so down.
Which is the next topic.
Under the discipline of the life of faith.
But for you and me, the position we've been brought into, like Mephibosheth, Mephibosheth was brought as one of Jonathan's son in the kindness to Jonathan and in faithfulness to him. David said, Is there yet any of the House of Saul that I might show the kindness of God to him? And there comes Mephibosheth, lame on both his feet.
First, he presents himself as a servant. Maybe you've done that in your life too. I'll be, I'll be your servant.
The prodigal. I'll be one of my father's servants. No, no, you're not going to make a very good servant.
But you're going to come in as one of my sons.
And then Mephibosheth fesses up and he says, What am I? I'm a dead dog. I'm just a dead dog.
And this is the experience that we need to have as children of God, as the sons of God, to take our proper place. And we see the Scriptures.
Account after account after account of God wrestling with a soul to get us into that place where we just have to bow our head and say, why me?
It's because the Lord loved us. And so in verse 13, to move on here of chapter two of two Thessalonians, we are bound to give thanks only to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath chosen you from the beginning to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.
If we were to go in more detail through the passage in John chapter 3, we would see that we were born again.
Through the work, God's work.
Let's just hold our finger there and go back to it and I'll read the exact verse.
John 3.
In verse five, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God that which is born. The end of verse six of the Spirit is Spirit, you and I, by God's sovereign work in our souls.
Are the recipients of a life that takes its character from the one who gave it.
The water God could have said born of the Word and the Spirit, but he uses the word, it's ponderous. He uses the expression water, and we know it speaks to the word of God, but it seems to me it by the use of the word water, it brings in that which it accomplishes in our souls in washing and purification.
And if we read in first Peter or James, and these other passages which speak of this same aspect of the work of Christ in our souls, that has been accomplished, it says of his own will begat he us with the word of truth. And Peter writes, You're born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.
But here it's the water, and it's the Spirit of God applying the water.
And God gives us a nature wonder of wonders. That is the nature and life of His Son.
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He we are made partakers of the divine nature.
And so do we know when we're born again? Not necessarily.
The wind blows where it lists us, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell from whence it came, or withereth goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Just like in Ecclesiastes 11 In natural things, we have to say the same thing in spiritual things. The wondrous way that God works in His soul to communicate life. We'll read in the New Testament the word quickening to give life, which is a slightly different.
Aspect of things.
The new birth, But it brings us a life, a life that is divine.
Eternal life we read about in John and so in 2nd Thessalonians 2.
Chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, which is that work that He has done in you and me.
To give us to lay hold of the word and belief of the truth.
And so if people are prone to think.
That they became born again because they believed it is actually just the opposite. We believe because we are born again and we have life from God. And as someone was quoting in the prayer this morning, or from the hymn, so must it be that glory all belongs to thee. The great work on Calvary's cross.
Is His work the work He has done in your soul to give you life when you are dead in trespasses and sins is His work.
And when that work takes place in our soul, and we have life, that life is is consists of faith and belief of the truth, and the testimony is put before us by the word, and we lay hold of it.
And further to that, in our days since the death of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit, God seals that work that the Spirit does to give us life.
With the Holy Spirit of promise sealed, we read in Ephesians until the day of redemption.
It ends in glory, verse 14, whereunto He called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Lookout upon you and if you're a believer, I know where you're going to end up.
I know what happened to you. Based upon the revelations in this book. I know what happened to you.
And in a general way, we know what's happening to each other now. Lord willing to get to that in a second.
But I know what your destiny is going to be.
You're going to be with Christ. You're going to be like Christ. You're going to be with him forever. And the glories that the man Christ Jesus has won here as a victorious man, wonder wonders. He's going to share them with us.
The obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let's turn for a few minutes to Hebrews.
Chapter 13.
And speak of another, the last aspect I'd like to speak about today this morning.
Hebrews 13 and verse.
20 and 21.
Now the God of peace.
That brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.
Make you perfect in every good work, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever, Amen.
If we were to read back in the previous chapter in Hebrews.
The Spirit of God through I assume it's the apostle for myself, the apostle Paul.
Seeking to encourage Hebrew believers to press on, to not faint, to not turn back in their practical life.
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And he tries to put in context before them that there's an ongoing work.
What we've spoken of as to God's life giving or quickening power in your soul and mind to give us life is a one time occurrence. He sustains the life. It's true that He gave to us, but the giving of it is a one time thing. We know the Lord Jesus died on Calvary's cross once. Once for all. That work has been accomplished for God's glory.
But for you and me now. For you and I now.
There was an ongoing work that he is doing, working in you, that which is well pleasing in his sight. He's the father of spirits.
And it seems, of course, at times to us that maybe our circumstances are a little random.
And we're not quite sure why this happened or why that happened.
But it is important and helpful in practical life to have the understanding.
That God is ordering my circumstances perfectly according to His love and wisdom.
We sometimes sing that hymn that he never causes his child a needless tear.
He's working in us something now that in a little way. And please don't take this wrong. I'm in my 70th, my 7th decade.
I shouldn't say this. It's on tape, probably I just shouldn't say it. But sometimes, I'll be honest, sometimes I sit in the quiet of my study and I wish that I could live another 100 years. I feel like I'm just scratching the surface.
And I have to say my enjoyment of these precious things.
Continues to grow and I remember my older brethren who have long since with the Lord saying.
Things and I understand now more fully what their experience was.
And you just wish you could just spend more time and enjoy more richly the things that have been shown to us.
And the experience that we go through now in this life.
In Second Corinthians we read that the tribulations that we go through work for us in eternal weight of glory.
And so part of Maine just says, Lord, if you didn't come for another while.
I would you put me through more experience. I can't believe I'm saying this. I never said this before, but you know what I mean. There's a side where you appreciate what he does in our present life.
For our spiritual blessing that is going to redound to His glory.
In that day.
Now don't get me wrong, I have sorrow upon sorrow like everyone else with things and the aches and pains and all the rest, and the Spirit of God in me, just like in you says Even so, come Lord Jesus.
And there isn't a.
Work outside a lot and you get outside and you look up on a day and you say, oh, today could be the day. I try. I'm not.
I trust I'm waiting, and I hope I'm watching for the Lord to come, but I think you get my point. There's a rich value to the experiences He puts us through. Now He's working in US that which is well pleasing in His sight. And He's the father of spirits.
And he's a master Craftsman.
And you and I are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
And he's putting he has paid such a price for you and me. Such a price.
And he is devoted and dedicated.
As a master to crafting, you and me, not in these physical bodies, it's not a matter of going to the gym all the time, but morally and in our character.
Working in US ongoingly, that which is well pleasing in His sight.
I heard brother Lundin say once.
00:50:01
He said something like this, he said.
He says. Which do you think?
Was more difficult for God to do.
To make a star or to create worlds.
Or to create an Abraham.
An interesting comment.
He spake and it was so. He made the stars also. That's all we get in that passage. He spake and it was so.
But yet he laborers labored with Abraham all those years.
In circumstances that, like the Potter lifting up the clay and schmoozing it down a little bit, lifting it up again until it was formed in the way that he envisioned it in his mind.
And chapter after chapter he brings us.
Into the observation of his ways with his friend Abraham, and with Jacob, and with others, and with you, and with me.
How he laborers?
And it's not our subject today, but we could see in the Scriptures that the Church of God, that which he is doing in these last days.
Is his masterpiece, as Mr. Lundin has put it, at times his masterpiece. You're part of that masterpiece. You and I have collective blessings that we all enjoy together.
And we have individual blessings. One star will differ from another in glory.
And he's going to be glorified when he displays what he has done in your life and mine.
And if you call an older St. or visit an older St. and they're in like like my dad was and unable to hardly even.
Just hardly even able to move.
This is why does the Lord keep me here.
We know why I was with my dad, but Saints of God that have walked with the Lord for decades and they say, why is the Lord keep me here? Is that, oh, there's a reason the Lord's keeping you here. That was exactly what he's doing. Old age and the weakness that comes upon our dear brethren as they get older is not for the faint of heart.
What they go through.
Are extreme spiritual experiences.
And we take it from the word of God that it will redound to his glory in eternal weight of glory. And so, brethren, we've touched a few tops of a few waves.
The wonderful work of Christ outside of us.
On Calvary's cross, the Father and the Son.
Really. God and the man Christ Jesus.
The work that he has done in your soul to give you life so that you could lay hold.
Of God's testimony to His Son and receive eternal life. The Sinner and the Savior come together, never depart.
And then take courage the ongoing work.
And the clouds and storms that we all experience.
They're going to be unfolding in the coming day for Rich Blessing, so it behooves us all to lift up the hands which hang down.
In the feeble knees. I'd like to sing just part of hymn #43 in the appendix in closing.
The second and third verse.
Of him. 43 in the appendix.
Perhaps someone else could start that please.
As thy notice for.
No, from all eternity.
I chose to love myself.
To the thy mind.
Calling my grace is simply burning.
From his hiding place.
I work thyself reflecting, not a sanctified by truth.
00:55:24
Still the word proceeding.
Be gone, my grace.
Or it just made a dream.
Harder to see my face.
Spray.
Colossians 3:1-4
Shepherding
Open—Bob Thonney
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Before.
It's great.
The last.
Verses that our brother Bruce mentioned in his address in Hebrews 13.
Touched on something that has been on my heart, brethren, and I'd like to just go back there again.
13.
Hebrews 13 verse 20 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 His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Like to speak about the subject of shepherding and how important it is. One of the gifts that is given by an ascended Christ is the gift of shepherds.
And the Lord Jesus is.
In John 10, the Good Shepherd that gives his life for the sheep.
Here in Hebrews 13 he is the great shepherd in resurrection, and in first Peter chapter five He is the chief shepherd in that coming glory.
But I'd like to go back first to a verse in Matthew 26.
To kind of set the.
Tone for what I want to say Matthew chapter 26, something the Lord says here before he goes to the cross in verse 31.
And saith Jesus unto them all, ye shall be offended because of Maine this night. For it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.
Interesting. The smiting of the shepherd resulted in the scattering of the sheep.
Something that's pretty common in our day when you see how many of God's dear redeemed people are scattered.
And I just like to take up briefly 3 different persons that the Lord Jesus shepherded back after his resurrection, The first one we find in John chapter 20.
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It's Mary Magdalene that I want to speak up first. To me, it is extremely beautiful.
This dear lady that had been under the power of demons and the Lord had delivered her.
She was not one of the most intelligent.
In of the Lord's disciples, but.
She her heart, my what a heart. Mary Magdalene, the first one to see the Lord in resurrection, was not a disciple, a man. It was a woman. To me, that speaks volumes.
Let's just read it because I think it's so touching here. First day of the week. This is John 20. Verse one cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark unto the sepulchre.
How many of you ladies like to go to the cemetery alone when it's still dark? I don't think there'd be very many.
But here she was because she wasn't thinking about herself.
She was thinking about the one she loved.
And see if the stone taken away from the sepulchre, Then she runneth and cometh to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved.
Saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.
Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple came to the sepulchre.
So they ran both together, and the other disciple did outrun. Peter came first to the sepulchre.
Not sure why.
John outran Peter, some suggest maybe he was a little younger. Could be the case. But I wonder if poor Peter, his conscience was bothering him because of what he had done in denying the Lord. Maybe for that reason he didn't run quite as fast as John. I don't know.
And he's stooping down and looking in. This is John saw the linen clothes line, yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lying, and the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.
Pretty evident that it was not thieves that took the body.
Because he had simply vacated those grape clothes. Now he was in his resurrection body. And so they just kind of settled down right where they were.
And it's interesting because verse 8 says when he came in, they went in, then went in also that other disciple which came to the sepulchre and saw, and he saw and believed. For as yet He, they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.
Then the disciples went away again into their own home.
They had other reference points.
Mary, didn't she have a place to stay in Jerusalem? We don't really know.
But Mary stays right there, this is the last place you'd seen his body. She doesn't know where to go. Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the sepulchre and see a 2 angels in white sitting one at his head and the other at his feet were the body of Jesus had lain.
And they say unto her, Woman, Why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.
When she had said thus said, she turned herself back.
Often like to ask people if they've ever seen an Angel.
Most people say no.
I really think we probably all have seen angels without realizing that they are angels.
Because they appear as.
People at times, like it did in the case of Abraham, he lifted up his eyes and saw three men standing there. Of course, one was the Lord and the other two were angels.
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I think it'd be pretty interesting to see an Angel.
But I noticed the stories I hear about angels that when they do appear, they generally are gone before people realize that they're an Angel because they don't want the glory. They want God to have the glory. And so they get out the picture before people recognize who they are. Well, Mary must have realized that they were angels. What did she do to them? She turns her back on angels.
And this beautiful brother, the heart of this woman.
She could be satisfied with nothing less than the person of the Lord Jesus.
And when she turned back, she saw Jesus standing. Verse 14.
And knew not that it was Jesus. It's interesting that those that saw the Lord in resurrection.
At first glance did not recognize him to me, maybe gives us to understand that the body and resurrection is different.
Mary knew the Lord Jesus in his life down here pretty well, but she didn't recognize Him.
In Resurrection, she didn't know it was him.
Jesus saith unto her woman, Oh, I weepest thou?
What a story. Didn't he know? Sure he know that part. Part of shepherding brethren, bringing people back.
Is probing their hearts and finding out what's troubling them. And what was it that was troubling her. I think this is so beautiful.
Said She's supposing him to be the gardener. Said unto him, Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
A woman.
Burying a dead body.
Is that possible? I don't know.
But she thought she could take him away.
But notice.
Jesus said unto her.
Mary.
All the beauty of this moment.
When this dear sheep.
That have been scattered.
Recognized not by his physical appearance, but by his voice.
It was he.
Mary she knew immediately who it was, and said unto him, She turned herself. She had turned her back on the gardener. She supposed it was the gardener. She turned her back on it.
Because she couldn't be satisfied with any other but the Lord Jesus.
And so she turns herself, and says unto him, Raboni, Which is to say, Master Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go unto my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your father, and to my God and your God.
You know, I've heard a lot of reasons given why the Lord said don't touch me because.
Later on in Luke's gospel when he appears before the in the midst of the disciples, he says, handle me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me have. Why did he say to Mary, don't touch me?
A brother pointed out a number of years ago and it was a help to me. Second Corinthians chapter 5.
Let me just read it because don't lose this place because come back Second Corinthians chapter 5. This really explains the reason why he said touch me not.
In verse.
16.
Wherefore, henceforth.
Know we no man after the flesh? Yeah, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know he him no more.
So what the Lord Jesus was basically saying to Mary, Mary, you're not going to have me back as you knew me in life. You're going to have me now in a way that's supremely better.
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Oh, brother, and what a beautiful thing, dear Mary.
Her heart was right, but she didn't understand so many things as we don't understand so many things. But the Lord revealed himself to her, and Mary was restored to the Lord. She was the 1St to see Him. She was the one to go to his disciples, and to say, I ascend unto my Father.
And your father into my God and your God. What a privilege to carry that message to the disciples. That's the first one I want to speak about, that the Lord shepherded back of the sheep that were scattered.
In Luke chapter 24 is the next one well known portion that you're all acquainted with I'm sure.
But this involves two people.
Verse 13 Matthew Luke 2413 Behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem, about 3 score furlongs.
That's about 7 miles where I can have calculated it.
And I think you realize that a person can walk approximately 3 miles an hour. So we're talking about a walk of.
Somewhat over.
Two hours walk. That's quite a why, Quite a walk.
And as they are walking, verse 14, they talk together of these things that had which had happened came to pass that while they communed together and reasoned.
Jesus himself drew near and went with them. Like this is so amazingly beautiful.
What? How encouraging these two that were evidently discouraged. One of them was named Cleophus.
Quite a few people think there are two men.
I don't know, I tend to think it must have been a man and a wife, but.
We can't say for sure. The point was that they were discouraged.
Have you ever been discouraged?
I think we all have experienced discouragement.
It's a tough thing to deal with. Things don't go like we had expected.
It's hard. How can you understand that they were reasoning together?
How do we understand it? Brethren? We got to learn that we are limited in our understanding.
Just the other day I was talking to a brother I trust. He's a real believer.
But he's straight.
And he said to me.
You know I believe in God.
I don't think God's fair.
Wow, I said. That's a pretty hard.
Sentence.
I said to him, how much do you think you know of all the information that can be known? What percent do you think you know?
I don't know. So how about you? So you asked me, I said, well, I think I would put it .000001%.
Because I know so very little. In fact, the more you learn, the more you realize how little you really know.
He said, well, I guess I'm about there too. I said, With that amount of knowledge, you think you're in a position to judge God who knows everything?
I would say you are in a pretty precarious position by saying that.
And I think he backed down a bit.
Brethren, we don't know very much. That's why when things don't make sense, we try to reason. What in the world is going on? How are we supposed to understand this? Here's these two. They can't figure out what's going. But here's another.
One that's going along the road and he joins them and they don't know.
That's Jesus. Oh, how often, brethren, we don't realize His presence with us. We think we are justified in taking the conclusions we have taken. We don't realize, brethren, there's another there with us. Their eyes were holding that they should not know them.
00:20:22
And he said unto them, What communications are these, that you have one to another as you walk, and are sad? He could tell that they were sad.
Why did he ask that? Didn't he know? Of course, didn't he know? Sure he knew.
But you know it's important to draw people out sometimes, see what's troubling them in their hearts, and so they begin to tell them. Verse 18. One of them, whose name was Cleopas answering, said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?
And he said unto them, What things?
Do they have to advise him because he didn't know? That's not the point, brethren. I think this is such a beautiful thing and shepherding souls to draw them out.
What things they said unto him concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel. Beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done.
Yeah, and certain women also of our company made us astonished.
Which were early at the sepulchre, and when they found not his body, they came saying that they had seen a vision of angels which said that he was alive. Certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre and found it Even so, as the women had said, but him they saw not. So he listened to them for a good while.
Brother. And in all this story, all this time that they were walking together.
He never said here I am, I'm the Messiah, I'm the Christ. Why are you going this direction? Go back to Jerusalem. Never, Never did he say that to me. That is a tremendous lesson.
He walked with them all that way.
For probably over two hours they were walking along.
Verse 25.
Then he said unto them, O fools.
He's not very.
Easy on them fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. O brethren, how slow of heart we really are to believe all the Scriptures.
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets he expounded?
Unto them all the things concerning himself.
What a exposition that must have been as he went through the scriptures.
I would have loved to have heard some of his explanations of those Old Testament scriptures that spoke of him in his fulfillment of the scriptures.
And they drew near into the village, whether they went. And he made as though he would have gone further. He did not force himself upon them. To me there's another beautiful characteristic of a shepherd. It does not force himself on them.
And.
They constrained him, verse 2529 saying, Abide with us for distorted evening, and the day is far spent, and he went in to tarry with them.
It came to pass, as he sat at table with them, he took bread and and blessed it and brake and gave to them.
And their eyes were opened, and they knew him.
And he vanished out of their sight. Tell me that's so beautiful.
Did he ever say go back to Jerusalem? Never.
00:25:03
Wasn't that the place that she'd remain? Yes, that's what he told them before. Before. But he never tells him to go back.
But they knew exactly where they belonged once they got their eyes opened to him, to who he was. Oh, brethren, that's what's going to be the drawing power so often in our assembly difficulties. I see that.
We present ourselves instead of Christ, brethren, there's so much of that and it doesn't seem to help.
Yes, there are principles of God's Word we must go by cannot neglect, but it's the vision of His person that is the drawing power in restoration and in shepherding.
And it says in verse.
32 They said one to another. Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us, by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
All the while their hearts were burning in them. They were going the wrong direction.
And he never told them to go back. But notice verse 33.
They rose up the same hour and returned to Jerusalem.
I think this is so beautiful. They didn't wait. Even the next day they might have said, well, kind of late tonight, we'll just go tomorrow morning. Nope. They knew where they belonged. And that same hour of the night, another 2 1/2 to 3 hours a walking didn't matter.
And when they got to Jerusalem, they found the 11 gathered together. And then there were with him, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
And it's so beautiful.
Now this the third one I want to talk about in the Lord shepherding is this one Simon, Simon Peter. Of course we know.
This is the only reference I believe we have of this private encounter of the Lord Jesus in resurrection with Simon Peter. We don't know anything more about it.
Because restoration, brethren, on the individual scale, is individual with the Lord, as it says in first John chapter one, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So that personal restoration is an individual thing between ourselves and the Lord.
Poor Peter.
Remember how he had said to the Lord so vehemently, I'll never deny you, not even if I have to deny you, will I deny you?
Not even if I have to die will I deny you.
But Peter didn't know his own heart, and it wasn't too long after, wasn't even before a man, it was before a maid at the door. He said You're one of his disciples. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Poor Peter didn't know his own heart.
And when he denied the third time, Luke's gospel gives it to us that the Lord Jesus turned and looked at Peter.
Oh, that look didn't say anything. I suppose maybe it was across the hall from where Peter was. But he looked at Peter. Peter went out and wept bitterly. He recognized how badly he had failed.
Do we fail, brethren?
We do. I have to confess, brethren, I fail.
Does that mean that God's done with this?
O brethren, this is such a beautiful thing to me and the Lord's workings with dear Peter.
The Lord saw him, I'm sure, when he appeared in the midst of the disciples the end of this chapter, but it doesn't really specifically say that he addressed Peter. I'd like to go over to John chapter 21 to speak about Peter's public restoration because he had.
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Sinned publicly, it was necessary a public.
Restoration.
Chapter 21 of John After these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias.
And on this wise he showed he himself.
There were together Simon Peter.
And Thomas called Didymus.
2 The Nathanael of Cana and Galilee three, and the sons of Zebedee, 4-5 and two other of his disciples. 677 people.
Peter was always kind of a leader.
So verse three said Peter said unto them, I go fishing.
I don't know exactly all that was in Peter's mind when he said this. Perhaps he thought.
I've made such a mess of it.
I think I better just go back to fishing like I used to. I know how to fish.
That's where the Lord found me, so I'll just go back to fishing.
And so he says, I go a fish.
They say we also go with thee rather.
We affect others.
In the decisions we make, like it or not.
Our way of the way we follow the Lord is going to affect others. And so here Peter is a kind of a leader, says I go fishing, they all go with him.
They went there forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night they caught.
Nothing.
Do you hear that? Nothing.
That kind of discouraging.
When the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore.
His disciples knew not that it was Jesus.
Oh brother, this speaks to me so much. How often we don't recognize his presence with us.
Oh, it didn't recognize it was Jesus. Jesus said unto them, Children, have you any meat?
They answered him.
No.
Pretty short answer.
You can almost hear the discouragement in their voices.
No.
Pretty hard to work all night, no results at all.
But that's what's happened.
Verse He said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.
They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.
Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said unto him, said unto Peter, It is the Lord.
This had happened before.
Remember in Luke chapter 5?
The Lord had used Peter's boat to speak to the multitudes on the shore.
And afterwards, I suppose to pay Peter back, he said. Now Peter, lunch out into the deep, and let your Nets down for a haul of fishes and.
Peter probably thought, well, you know, Jesus is a Carpenter. He doesn't really know much about fishing. I'm a fisherman, Lord. We've carried all night and caught nothing, but because of your word, I'll let down the net.
He said let down the Nets.
He says I'll let down the net and what happened? The fish piled into that and that's so much that it broke.
It's because Peter didn't pay attention to what the Lord had said. I think it's so beautiful, brethren. God is a God that wants to fill us with His blessing.
And so they recognized it was the Lord, not from his physical appearance, but from the circumstances that had taken place.
The other disciple.
Excuse me verse 7 Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his Fisher's coat unto him, for he was naked, and did cast himself into the sea.
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The other disciples came in a little ship, for they were not far from land and but as it were 200 cubits dragging the net with fishes. I love this about Peter, even though he had made such a mess of things.
He knew his Lord well enough that he knew he could go straight to him and he said I want to be the first to get to him.
And so he jumps in and gets to the Lord. First of all, the others came behind.
And soon then, as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid there on, and bread, and this beautiful.
He knew that they were hungry, working all night, and before addressing a deeper need, he addressed a simple physical need for food. I think these are so beautiful, beautiful principles of shepherding. Brethren, this is the great shepherd of the sheep shepherding back.
His scattered sheep. Where did the Lord get the fish?
And the bread never says, does it? We don't know.
But he knew of their need. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have not caught. He didn't despise what they had brought in their hall.
Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land full of great fishes, and 150 and three for they and for all. There were so many. It was not the net broken. Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine, none of the disciples. Durst asked him, Who art thou, knowing that it was the Lord?
Jesus then cometh and taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.
This is now the third time that Jesus throwed himself to the disciples. After that he was risen from the dead. It's beautiful.
Now, in the verses that follow, he deals with the question of restoring Peter.
Publicly.
Peter was an instrument that God was going to use.
And even though he had failed so grievously, God still had something for Peter to go do, something that was very important.
Verse 15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon son of Jonas, Lovest thou me more than these?
He had said he'd loved them more than any of the other disciples.
He said unto them, Yeah, Lord.
Thou knowest that I love thee, he saith unto them Him, Feed my lambs, He said to him again the second time, Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He said unto him, Yeah, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee, he saith unto him, Feed my sheep, he said unto him the third time, Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me?
Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
Peter denied the Lord three times.
Three times the Lord Jesus addresses Peter and says Peter or Simon, son of Jonas. It was his name in the flesh.
Doesn't use the name he had given to Peter.
But he says love is thummy. You know, He never said, why did you deny me three times? He never said, never mentioned that maybe that came up in that private encounter. We don't know what came up that was between him and the Lord individually. But here we have his public restoration. And what was it about?
His love to the Lord.
Peter, you said you loved me.
Do you love me?
And when he says it the third time, Peter was grieved. It was probing deep.
00:40:05
And oh, brethren, when there's failure in our life, I really believe it is because.
Of a lack of love in our hearts to Christ. That's the mainspring of Christian life.
It's so beautiful to see it here in Peter.
I think brethren have probably noticed in Mr. Darby's translation it's clarifies it that the Lord in the first two instances in verse 15 and 16 he uses the word agape love.
And Peter responds with phileo love.
Lord, thou knowest all thing. Yeah, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.
That's file love. It's the love of intimacy and communion, and it's more intense. Agape love is the love that is a settled disposition of favor towards a person.
But the third time the Lord asks him in verse 17, he uses the phileo term lovest thou me? And that's probably why Peter was grieved.
And in effect, he said Lord.
I know the way it looks doesn't look like I love you, but you know all things and you know I love you.
And the Lord does know our hearts. Brethren, the point that Peter had to learn is that he could not depend on his own love to the Lord. It had to depend on the Lord's love for him. Oh, how important that is. And so he commenced to them something that is very close to his heart. Notice verse 15.
The last three words feed my lamb.
The end of verse 16. Feed my sheep.
Verse 17 Feed my sheep.
Could he do that when he had failed so grievously? Yes. He had a direct Commission from the Lord Jesus to do it. And brethren, what has impressed me is that what God's people need is good, solid food for their souls. It has impressed me so much.
In my travels in Latin America that there are places where there's not.
Exactly what you would say, a marked gift in brethren and a certain assembly, but they get together and they open the Scriptures and they read them together. And just getting the book open and reading it, there's food for the soul.
I must say, to see them enjoy the scriptures is one of the greatest recompenses for my own heart. Last year we were in the Dominican Republic, Barb and I.
Last year we flew into a town I had never been into. It's called Santiago.
It's a fairly large city and it I'd never visited there, there's about probably 25 to 30 assemblies in the Dominican Republic.
But it was the first time I was there. I'd met some of the brethren, but I hadn't been to that little meeting. And we had a meeting that night. Next day we were to fly out. And then.
It was evident their enjoyment of the scriptures. We just read a short chapter and talked about it together.
Next day on the way to the airport, my brother said to me, you know?
I would have given $1,000,000 for the richness of what we had before us last night.
That is what recompenses my own soul, to see those dear brethren being fed. I don't think I'm the feeder, but to get the Scriptures open and give God's people something of the truth, something about His glorious person. It feeds the soul. It encourages them.
It is what brings them back into line to get their eyes.
On the person of the Lord Jesus.
So the Lord said to him, feed my lambs, feed my sheep. Lambs need special attention, a little bit different than sheep.
00:45:12
Just before I close, I'd like to read what Peter says in his fifth chapter of his first epistle.
First Peter 5.
He's speaking to the elders, which are among you.
Feed verse two. Feed the flock of God which is among you. He doesn't say feed the flock of God which is under your care. No.
Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof not by constraint, but willingly. Not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. Lord help us, brethren. We're living in days where there's a lot of discouragement.
The Lord grant us that we can be instruments in shepherding God's sheep.
Feeding Ourselves
Open—David So
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.
Thought I will share a little bit of a little different thoughts.
We exhausted defeat the lambs and the sheep, and rightly so.
But what I found sometimes is that.
We're not feeding ourselves. First, it is interesting. Some of you may have flown here, perhaps by an airplane.
Have you ever noticed on an airplane before it takes off, they say the same old, same old with the stewardess up there or now they have a videotape showing you how to handle an emergency. Says if something goes wrong, an air mask going to drop down. You know the you know that Joel, But they say you put it on 1St.
Don't try to help the little one because you're no good if you pass out.
Remember that. Notice that.
And I thought for us, you know, we do have to care. We we think of others. I believe we do often, but we often forget to think for ourselves.
To keep ourselves and the love of God.
I really don't know how to express it. I was thinking of Bob's comment earlier off how even our simple thing is to speak to ourselves in hymns. And so let's turn to that verse. I just have that verse before me after that, Ephesians chapter 5. Let's just read that now. There's a lot of thoughts together. It's not just that one verse, but that verse is what's before me. So I will use that. But rightly so, you should really read the verses before and after.
And connect that to your Christian walk. Verse 18. Ephesians 519. I'm sorry, Ephesians 519. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always.
For all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Not my thought here to expand on all these terms here.
But I was thinking years ago, I know for my in my own lives we seem to sing a lot more than what I have noticed in recent years.
We found I don't know what it is. We don't seem to sing.
And even perhaps even in the quietness of our own soul. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just me and the circle I'm around that we don't seem to sing as much as we ought to.
Why is that?
Do you know singing is also a testimony to the world?
You sing, What do we sing?
When we're sad.
No.
He Can Sing tells us that in Psalms there when you're sad, Kenya, we're seeing when we're happy, we're seeing when we rejoice.
I want to encourage you. We often say, what do we sing we have before us?
Lita Flock hymn book.
Sometimes I feel sad when I see people say, well, let's use different inputs. There are different hymn books that have nice melodies and songs, but we have one here. And in fact, I challenged young people. I'm sure some of the older ones have read through the so-called preface. You know, when we read a book, we often read to see what the book is about.
How many? Read the preference here of how?
Why they chose these hymns. Now, if you turn to it, I'm just going to read a little bit about the second paragraph. Perhaps that would help us understand songs. You know, we look at young people sometimes sing, don't sing those songs, the bad songs, because when you sing those things that get into your head and a lot of the lyric in some of the so we call even so-called Christian music scares me.
Now let's just look at that second paragraph. Is that the the the author tells us this three things are needed for hymn book.
But what is it? Three things. A basis of truth and sound doctrine. Wow. So it's not just words that sounds nice. It's not just melodies. It should have a basis of truth and sound doctrine.
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Something, at least of the spirit of poetry, though not poetry itself.
Interesting, huh? Which is objectionable as merely the spirit and imagination of men. And thirdly, the most difficult to find of all, that experimental acquaintance with truth in the affections which enables a person to make his hymn.
The vehicle in sustained thought and language of practical grace and truth, which sets the soul in communion with Christ and rise even to the Father. And yet this is such sword that is not mere individual experience. And so on. Interesting, isn't it? These are the songs. These are the spiritual hymns. We we may reference earlier. You may.
Heard some the remark if you were to look under Mr. Darby's hymns.
His thoughts?
Is above this realm.
He always thanked that that that that bride and blessed seemed.
Just look towards him, it seems long. In fact, if you were to sing, at least I get to the appreciation that his hymns often get 1014 verses in there and because.
Of the descriptions of that heavenly scene were crisis by the time I got the verse 14. Sometimes I feel like, oh, isn't there more? It's interesting, isn't it? So you may say what what you dwell on Mr. Darby, what there are others. There are many others hymn writers in this book and and you can read there's different books describing or talking about the the hymn writers. I think they're very instructive now.
There's one and we only have a few minutes. There's one.
That I often use now remember we are not here to build on a man's knowledge is whose faith we follow because sometimes we follow a hymn writer and then find out later on in life there could be failures but we look at what was written at that time so.
Him 66 in the back. We're not going to sing. I'll just read some of that. Here's one of my favorite when it comes to gospel, we sing this. I'm sure when you look through this you'll recognize this. Him come now. I think in the other hymn book is his old blessed gospel sound. This one says come here the gospel sound. Yet there is room. We know this hymn, don't we?
This is the hymn Ryder, GWGW Fraser.
The story we know, when he was a young lad, he heard there's a revival meeting. He went across the other side of the tracks. When he got there he found out the room was full. He couldn't get in to hear the gospel and as a young lad he found a way. He climbed up the rain gutter to look in and he heard the gospel message and was saved afterwards and there he was able to pan him as such.
Over here the gospel. Come here the gospel sound. Yet there is room.
How wonderful and they can pay in words like though guilty, now draw near, though vile. You, you need not fear with joy you now may hear. Yet there is room wonderful gospel hymns that we can sing, And perhaps as you are singing it.
Others may be listening not Haven't you ever catch yourself that you're singing in the hallway and then somebody happened to be standing there smiling at you?
As a way to present the gospel of his grace. Isn't it that but?
What the thought of this hymn writer? We sang another hymn. Of course someone gave it out hymn #46 He knew the fact that we are saved doesn't exempt us from difficulties of this world. I like Brother Dawn's combat when he asked that question is I'm still alive, that means we're still have that old man within us that we're wrestling against. So he paying another hymn and hymn number.
Six there he says, Have I an object, Lord, below, which would divide my heart with thee?
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Violet question, isn't it? Have we? Is there something that would detract our thoughts, our hearts away from our blessed Lord? Have IA hope, however dear and so on. You know the hymn well, you may say well, he know the gospel. He knows the difficult path that we have left, even though we're short while we're in the scene.
But he knows a lot more than we think. Let's turn to 188.
He painted that. You know, I think this is so precious Tomorrow.
If the Lord still leave us here till tomorrow morning, we have the privilege to remember our blessed Lord Jesus in His death for us, and we're often seeing a few of his hymns as a reminder. Do you remember singing this hymn twice on that night of deepest wall? When darkness rounded, thicken went through deep waters. Thou didst go, And for our sins was stricken.
Thou, Lord, deceit that we should be with grateful hearts remembering Thee. Do you think He understand the importance of remembering our blessed Savior? In fact, he didn't write just that hymn 240.
245 We sing that often too, don't we? What a precious hymn. On that same night, Lord Jesus, when all around the joined to cast his darkest shadow across thy holy mind.
We hear thy voice plus Savior, this do Remember Me with joyful hearts responding. We do remember thee if you understand that, doesn't he. So we often read on Lord's Day morning for us often as he eats this bread and drink this cup. You do show the Lord's death. We're here to show the Lord's death, aren't we, till he come so you look.
Last danza that sometimes I don't know about you, I get tired sometimes in my mind wander after the 2nd or the 3rd stanza, then come to 5th stanza. Read the words carefully. He knows and he realized and remember the Lord's coming. So he put it, Till thou shall come in glory.
Do we value that thought even when we're there remembering our blessed Lord?
Till thou shalt come in glory, and call us hands away to rest.
In the brightness of that unclouded day. Now the next dancer, I find it difficult because I find it hard sometimes and ask myself, do I really Could I sing that we show thy death, Lord Jesus, and here would seek to be. Can we honestly say that?
Or were we just here, as they say, we were at a meeting, or we were there to remember the Lord and here would seek to be more.
To thy death conformeth Wiles we remember thee.
Well, and he doesn't just stop there. The hymn before that reminds us of the Lord's coming to hymn 244. Same hymn writer.
He said that pride and blessed mourn is near. We talk about earlier as another brother take us to the highest sphere as if it were why we're still here. Do we remember and recognize that there is that bright and blessed mourn is near when he, our blessed Lord the Bridegroom, show up here and call us hands away?
Her blessings, then, shall be complete.
That's our blessing, isn't it, when the Lord take us as his bride, when with her Lord, she takes her seat in everlasting day. And of course there's more to the hymns that I'm looking at time and as gravity to to sing that. And that is just one more. He wrote many of them. I just forget a number of the other one. I think it's in deep eternal council.
Before the world was made.
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Him 141 Oh, how precious to think that. Then He takes us back as if it were. Do we recognize God's hand in all things? Him 141 There he could pan in deep eternal counsel. Before the world was made, before its deep foundation on nothingness was laid God.
Purpose us you and I, for blessing.
And we spoke on that election, didn't we, and chose us in His Son to Him to be conformeth when here our cores must run, and then He can end and say that for he who left His glory to die upon the tree, And we call to the remembrance of that.
When soon complete the story and come again.
And we conform to His image as known, be brought to know, and with increasing fervor our ceaseless praise shall flow.
41141.
Indeed, eternal Counselor.
Before risky foundation.
God.
Purpose.
I embrace, which is unchanging.
We sign from day-to-day.
We're screwed by Pilgrim way.
I shall see.
Our right glory.
And breathe. Our breath can be.
Gospel 1
Gospel—Bob Thonney
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I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.
To everyone that believeth, to the Jew 1St, and also to the Greek.
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed.
From heaven, from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness.
Ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth and unrighteousness.
Let's pray. Let's sing number.
23 on our hymn sheet.
Behold.
Behold the Lamb of God.
Behold. Behold.
On the cross. On the cross.
For God's peace time is crushed by.
On the cross.
On the ground.
Being honestly in hindsight.
On the cross.
On the cross.
The last time.
I go. It's just I'd love.
On the cross. On the cross.
Heavy dreams for you.
I'll get your car.
On Wednesday, world Jesus our present for, I said.
On the cross.
On the cross.
I'd like to speak this evening the Gospel from the book of Romans.
Where we already quoted from the first chapter.
I want to say thank you, Bruce, for preaching the Gospel this morning.
He gave us the truth of.
The fact that Christ died for God.
And Christ died for our sins, the two aspects of the work of Christ that are so important to understand.
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Many of you may realize I think it was this last Tuesday. It was the beginning.
Of Yom Kippur.
The great day of atonement for the Jewish people. It was probably one of the most solemn festivals in the Jewish calendar. It's the 6th of the seven feasts of Jehovah, and I'd like to go back there and show from that scripture how God.
Can save and yet righteous be? Let's go back to Leviticus chapter 16.
Where you have the great Day of Atonement.
And it's a long chapter and we cannot speak about it in all its detail.
But I want to read part of it to you because I think it helps to see the complete sufficiency of the work of the Lord Jesus.
Leviticus chapter 16 and verse five. It's speaking about Aaron the priest. He shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a bird offering. And Aaron shall offer his Bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself and for his house.
It's interesting in the case of Aaron.
Who sinned in his life? He had to have a sin offering for himself. The Lord Jesus, in contrast to His our great High Priest, was sinless. There was no need if a sin offering for himself. He was the perfect spotless Lamb of God.
And so Aaron offered the sin, offering for himself and for his house.
But notice verse seven. And he shall take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation. We want to speak about these two goats on the great Day of Atonement. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell.
And offer him for a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat.
Shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him.
And to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.
Now let's drop down to verse 15. Then shall he kill the goat of the sin offering, that is, for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with the blood as he did with the blood of the Bullock, and shall sprinkle it upon the mercy seat and before the mercy seat, and he shall make.
An atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness.
Of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions and all their sins. And so shall he do for the Tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness. And there shall be no man in the Tabernacle of the congregation, when he goeth in to make an atonement in the holy place.
Until he come out and have made an atonement for himself and for his household, and for all the congregation of Israel.
And he shall go out unto the altar that is before the Lord, and make an atonement for it.
And shall take of the blood of the Bullock and of the blood of the goat, and put it upon the horns of the altar round about. And he shall sprinkle of the blood upon it with his finger 7 times, and cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.
And when he has made an end of reconciling the holy Place and the Tabernacle of the Congregation and the altar, he shall bring the Life Goat, and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the Life Goat and confess.
Over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel.
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And all their transgressions, in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited, And he shall let go the goat into the wilderness.
Well, it's kind of complicated and we don't want to make it complicated. We might want to make it clear.
But it's clear that there were two goats in the great Day of Atonement. One was for the Lord and the other was for the scapegoat upon which Aaron put his his hands and confessed all the sins of the children of Israel. Again, I say the two aspects of the work of Christ are figured in this.
First of all, Christ died for God.
All God's holy claims had to be met for God to be able to.
Reach forth and forgive the guilty Sinner God had to be.
Propitiated his holy character had to be vindicated. God was in question because of man's sins. Satan could say look at this creation all.
Your creation, all these human beings are rebellious. It's your creation. So God, there was a question on God's character.
But when the Lord Jesus came into this world, he took up that question. He went into that very place of sin.
And he died not only for us, that's substitution, but he died as a propitiation. He died to vindicate God's holy character in the whole question of sin. And God has not only been satisfied in the work of Christ, he has been glorified by the person of our Lord Jesus. So that's the Lord Jesus.
The propitiation for our sins. Our brother mentioned that this.
In first John chapter 2 and verse one, he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. And it's a beautiful thing to be able to proclaim in this world that God has been propitiated as to the sins of the whole world. So the offer of salvation goes out to.
Whosoever will believe we don't go out and just preach to those who might.
Think that they are the elect. We don't know which ones are, but we go out and preach to all. The command to preach the gospel was going to the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, and he who believes not shall be damned.
Two parts. Where do you stand in that?
So Christ died for God. Wonderful.
Wonderful truth to understand.
That's that first goat that was killed and his blood was caught, and with that blood Aaron entered into the holiest of all, the very presence of God. He could only do it once a year, and nobody else had to be in the whole Tabernacle at the time that he went in, because it was a question of God's holy character that had to be.
Satisfied with the shedding of blood.
So he took that blood in and he sprinkles it on the mercy seat.
You know, in the Holy Place there were three pieces of furniture, but in the holiest of all there was only one piece. It was the Ark of the Covenant, and in that Ark were, amongst other two things, were the tables of the law.
And on top of that ark was a plate.
Of pure gold that speaks of God's righteousness.
Pure gold God is completely righteous. No one can call in question our God.
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He is righteous in his holy character.
And so on top of that mercy seat were two cherubims. Figurative.
Of those angelic beings which executes God's judgment on man and his sin. And as those cherubims, they were made so that their faces were towards the mercy seat, and there they could see as Aaron sprinkle that blood, the blood of a victim has been shed. God's holy character has.
Been vindicated.
Wonderful to realize that the Lord Jesus when he came.
He accomplished eternal redemption for us. That's the work of Christ for us. But then Aaron came out and here was this live goat, and he put his hands on the head of that live goat, and he confessed the sins.
Of the children of Israel.
And this is a figure of Christ, our substitute first goat is Christ, the propitiation for our sins, and the second Christ our substitute. Propitiation and substitution go together. Propitiation is Christ died for God. Substitution is Christ died for our sins. And it's so important.
That he put his hands on the head of that goat, because in doing that he was identifying with that animal that was going to bear away the sins of the children of Israel, and he confessed those sins. So it is necessary for you and me, now that God has been satisfied with the work of Christ, for you to identify with the Lord Jesus as a guilty Sinner.
And to confess your sins and to accept him as your Savior.
So that goat was taken out by the hands of a man into the wilderness, and let go. He bore away the sins of the children of Israel.
You know the word atonement is mentioned the number of times in these chapters.
Atonement is a word that means a covering that blood covered the sins of the children of Israel so that God would his holy character could be satisfied.
But you know, you don't find the word atonement in the New Testament, I should say.
That it's found in.
Romans chapter 5 and it uses the word atonement, but if you look in the margin of your Bible, that is not the proper translation of that word. It's really reconciliation there because in the New Testament, the Lord Jesus and taking up the question of sins did not merely cover sin. No, He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
It's completely gone from the eye of God. Oh, the wonder of the precious blood of Christ that cleanses from all sin. So that was what took place on that great day of atonement. Now let's go to the book of Romans and speak from there a bit because it's so amazingly wonderful to get these truths into our souls. I know that most here are believers in the Lord.
Jesus, I don't know about everybody, but I think when you understand the completeness of the work of Christ, what it does is give you a peace and a security in your soul that is priceless.
So here we have in verse 16 of chapter one. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth to the Jew. 1St and.
Also to the Greek, for therein in the Gospel.
Is the righteousness of God revealed? Is God a righteous God?
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Yes, he is. How do you know? Because the Lord Jesus went to that cross to respond to God for our sins. What a amazingly wonderful thing revealed from faith to faith as it is written.
The just shall live by faith.
Verse 18 says the wrath of God is also revealed. You know what if you do not accept, if you do not identify with the Lord Jesus as the one to take away your sins, you will have to meet up with the Lord Jesus and experience the wrath of God.
You know there's two words in the English.
Language. One is we are going to have it in our reading meetings, but one is anger and another is wrath. And it's interesting to think about the difference between those two words. Anger is an emotion that may be righteous, but wrath includes more than just a feeling of emotion. It includes.
Retribution.
And the great day of God's wrath is coming on this world, and nobody is going to escape God's righteousness. So the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. They hold the truth, yes, but how do they do it?
In unrighteousness.
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto him.
Unto them, For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
Interesting to me.
To see in our American culture here in the United States.
How man has made himself the reference point of his life.
And I have to say about many who judge from themselves as a reference point, they are lost. They don't have a clue of where they stand because they've lost sight of God.
God is supreme, and here it speaks about His eternal power in Godhead.
And it says that man will be in his presence without excuse.
You know, people you hear about say I'm going to tell God a thing or two when I get to His throne in the final judgment. You know what? Nobody is going to tell him a thing or two. It will be so evident, their guilt at that time that their mouths will be shut.
His eternal power in Godhead. And so it speaks about those things which are made. God has given a testimony in the creation in which we live.
It's amazing to think of the complexity of the creation of which we are part of. I know I've spoken of it before, but I find it so amazingly wonderful to talk about the universe in which we live. We are part of the Milky Way Galaxy.
I don't know if I mentioned it here, but.
Some time ago, I was speaking to a young people's group out in California and I mentioned that the scientists think that there are approximately 100 billion stars in the Milky Way universe Galaxy.
And a young man came up to me afterwards and he said, did you know that they really think it's closer to 200 billion?
Wow, I said. That's amazingly wonderful.
You know, last year I was out in California and a friend of mine showed me a video of an astronomer and he said.
It's closer to 300 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, only our Galaxy 300 billion stars.
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And some of the books I've read say that they know that there are probably about 250 billion more galaxies in the known universe. It just is numbers that increase all the time the farther they can look and observe. They find out it's greater than they ever imagined.
Who made it all? It's the God we're talking about.
And I want to say to you, if you think you have something to say to God.
You are without excuse before our God.
Oh, the power that is is in speaking all those mighty stars and galaxies into existence.
And then He made man in his own image and likeness and set him in this world. And then after 4000 years of man's history, the very creator of it all came into this world with a purpose of saving lost mankind.
Oh what a story it is. Brother mentioned it this morning, but it must have been a marvel.
To those angels, those angelic hosts, those spirit beings who are so tremendously powerful, that here was the Creator coming into the world.
And almost nobody.
Recognized his entrance into the world.
When his poor mother came to the inn, there was no room for him.
He had she had to go out into the where the animals are fed and there she gave birth to the creator of the universe. And the angels didn't know, I'm sure what to think. And so they go out into the countryside and there's some shepherds out there in the countryside.
And they say to the shepherds, unto you is born a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And the shepherds came in, and they saw the Lord Jesus.
In swaddling clothes, laying in a Manger.
The Creator of the universe had entered his own creation.
Oh, what a tremendously marvelous thing. So he was virtually unknown on the way to MAS. Those two said to him, art thou a stranger in Jerusalem? And that's not heard the things that have taken place there these days. Yes, he was a stranger here in this world.
He was recognized by some.
Beautiful to see those that recognized him.
John the Baptist's parents, Zacharias and Elizabeth, of course.
Mary, his mother she was, had been told that the one that was to be born of her was to be called the Son of God. Incredible to think about it. And her husband Joseph, I'm sure knew. And there were others, Simeon, who had been told that he would see.
The Lord's Christ. And of course there was Anna who also recognized him. And there were others because Anna spoke of him to all that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. So there were a few that recognized him and that accepted him, but he was virtually unknown in this world, the creator of the universe passing through this world.
He said foxes have holes.
The birds of the air have nests. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
Oh, what a story of the Lord Jesus. At 38 years of age he came to John the Baptist to his baptizing with the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins in the wilderness.
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And he presented himself to John the Baptist to be baptized.
But John the Baptist recognized.
You come to me, I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me.
Of course, he didn't need to be baptized with the baptism of repentance because he had never sinned. Why should he be baptized with the baptism of repentance?
Jesus said suffer it for the time, for so it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness. And so badge on the Baptist baptized him. Some people have a difficulty why was he baptized with that baptism? I like to put it this way because it helps to understand why.
On one side of the group that was there at John the Baptist.
Baptism worthy.
Were the Scribes and the Pharisees and all those that thought.
We're good enough. We don't need to repent. We don't need any baptism. On the other side were the Republicans, the sinners, the prostitutes, all those that were the scum of society, but that recognized their sin and came to John the Baptist to be baptized because they knew they needed to repent for their sins.
Which of those two groups did the Lord Jesus identify with? You know he didn't identify with the.
Scribes and the Pharisees, he had identified with those who knew they were sinners and had repented and that's why he baptized. He was baptized to identify with those. But immediately as he comes out of the water, the heavens open and God wants everybody to know who this person is that was just baptized and the voice comes from heaven. This is.
My beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.
And the Spirit of God comes a descending upon him in the form of a dove.
A dove is a figure of peace.
There is nothing contrary to God in that person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and so he enters into his public ministry and shows on every side the love of God.
Feeding the hungry.
Healing the sick. Preaching the gospel to the poor.
Raising the dead It must have been amazingly wonderful the to witness what the Lord Jesus was doing.
But at the end of his 33 1/2 years in this world.
Those religious people didn't want him any longer and they took him outside the city of Jerusalem and they nailed him to a cross. The hands and the feet nailed to that cross. He was lifted up and for three hours, from 9:00 in the morning till 12 noon.
They passed in front of him and spit on him and insulted him.
They said if he's the Son of God, let God deliver him.
Did God deliver him?
No, why not?
You know why not?
Because he wanted to deliver you from your sins and there was number other way.
And so at 12 noon, something happened that never happens. It got dark, and for three hours there was darkness over the whole land.
In those three hours nobody could see the awfulness of what transpired, but it was in those three hours that God laid on him the iniquity of us all.
God's holy judgment that had to be satisfied that there was going to be forgiveness for lost sinners like ourselves.
That holy judgment fell in all its fury on the head.
Of our Lord Jesus.
There were no complaints from that center cross in those three hours. He bore it all in silence. The waves and pillows of God's judgment roll over him. We'll never understand the awfulness of the judgment that He bore for our sakes. To satisfy God's holy claims, His holy character, and also to put away.
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Our sins.
But at the end of those three hours of darkness, there's an awful cry. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
God forsook his only son.
He forsook the only one who did always his will.
Why did he forsake him? Because he didn't want to forsake you and me in the lost eternity forever.
That's why he firstook his only son.
There was number other way of blessing for lost sinners like us.
No other way.
And then he cried.
It is finished. And he bowed his head.
And gave up his spirit.
And a soldier came up.
With his spear and pierced his side and outflowed blood and water.
Our redemption was paid not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. Oh, the awfulness of the cost of our redemption. We don't grasp it properly.
But it's a full and free redemption.
And now God has shown that he's completely satisfied.
How in that he raised him from the dead.
Three days after he was placed in the tomb.
An Angel came down to the tomb where he was and pushed the stone to one side, not to let the Lord Jesus out, but simply to show that he was no longer there. He had risen from the dead. God raised him from the dead, and God did not quit raising the Lord Jesus until.
He is there in the glory of God.
Far above all principality and power and might and dominion, in every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come.
Oh, what a wonderful story it is too.
Realize there's a man in the glory of God now.
So I'd like to go over to chapter 3 now and speak a little bit about.
This way that God has shown that he is righteous.
Been going through the book of Romans with the men and the Lawrence Correctional Center.
In our County Down in Lawrenceville area and it's been beautiful to see how the men listening.
Have responded to this teaching we have in chapter one, two and three quite a bit said about.
Man's guilty condition before God why does he take so much time in emphasizing that it's because you don't recognize your own completely lost condition before God you will have no appreciation for what God has done for you in the work of Christ so it's important to come to the.
Conclusion that he does in verse 10 of chapter 3 it says.
As it is written, there is none. Righteous. No, not one.
There is none that understand that. There is none that seeketh after God. That's God's judgment as to the sin question. They are all gone out of the way. They are together becoming profitable. There is none that doeth good. No, not one.
Their throat is an open sepulchre. You know how an open sepulchre stinks. When they open their mouths to say something that stinks, their throat is an open sepulchre. Their tongue, They have used deceit. The poison of ASP is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
00:40:07
Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, in the way of peace.
Have they not known there is No Fear of God before their eyes?
Now we know that what those things so ever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law.
That every math may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. There is the sentence, guilty before God, the whole world. There is no exception to this.
Verse 20. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the laws of the knowledge of sin. Verse 21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith.
Of Jesus Christ.
Unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
No difference. Oh yeah, we like to make differences. I know some people that are pretty good.
And so we make our differences, but we don't know that much about other people.
God who knows, said the whole world guilty. It's important that you come to that place. If you don't, if you think there's something good that I can do to please God. And I find that so embedded in the thinking of so many people. Yeah, I know I've sinned, but man, I think I've got a good chance for heaven.
And if it depends on you, you have no chance.
For heaven? Absolutely not.
But notice now verse 24 and here is a wonderful verse.
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Justified freely by His grace. You know what justified means. It means to be declared righteous according to God's standards.
Wonderful. It's not only being forgiven. We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, and that's a wonderful thing. But it's one thing to be a forgiving Sinner. It's another thing that is even more wonderful to realize that that same God that has forgiven my sins has now declared me to be righteous. On what grounds? I said that to the men in the prison. I say, what grounds can he do that?
Said Oh, because we reprinted of our sins.
Say, well, repentance is important, but that's not the grounds on which you can do it. Think again.
Finally, one man said, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, because of that precious blood that was shed on the cross, God's holy character has been satisfied, has been vindicated, and now there is forgiveness of sins and justification.
For the person who simply believes in the Lord Jesus. So it's through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation. And her brother spoke of that this morning. That word could be put a mercy seat.
Because the mercy seat on top of that Ark of the Covenant that played a pure gold which signifies God's holy character.
That was the place where propitiation was made, the mercy seat and so it's related, but it's a little bit different, but it's you set forth to be a mercy seat through faith in his blood to declare notice this, his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God.
In other words, he's talking about the sins that are past the people of the Old Testament times.
For example, David the King committed an awful sin.
In committing adultery with the wife of one of his most faithful.
00:45:05
Soldiers and then he ordered him to be put into the thick of the battle so he would be killed so he could take his wife for himself. It was an awful sin before God. Really, David should have died for his own sin.
But when he recognized his sin and confessed it, I have sinned, he said. The prophet said God has remitted your sins or forgiven your sin. How could God be righteous and forgive such an awful sin because of what Jesus was going to do on the cross?
That's what it means in verse 25 to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins.
That are passed through the forbearance of God. But now notice verse 26 to declare I say at this time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.
I said to the men in the prison supposing in Lawrence County there's a judge and every time they bring a criminal before him for sentencing, he says, OK, we're going to just forgive you. Here comes the guy that's in for rape. We're going to just forgive you. Here's a guy that come in for murder.
We're just going to forgive you. Is that a good judge?
And of course, all those guys, even though they're in prison fulfilling their sentences, said no, that's a bad judge. He's going to be put out of his position of being a judge. Why? I say because he's not righteous. And that's true. Then when God Forgives you and not only forgives you, but declares you to be righteous.
How can that be? How can God be righteous and still?
Justify the guilty Sinner. It's because of the work.
Of the Lord Jesus. It's because of what He did on that cross for you and me.
So that God is righteous and he is just, and he is the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Oh, the wonder of it all. God has been satisfied in the work of the Lord Jesus, so much so that now the Lord Jesus, the one who died for our sins, is at God's right hand. Can there be any question in the.
Heart of a believer in the Lord Jesus about his position before God. I say if you put a question mark on it, then you have to put a question mark on that man in the glory of God. I can't do that. That's my position before God.
Oh, what a wonderful redemption we have in the Lord Jesus. So God is just and the justifier of him that Lee believes in Jesus.
But what about the person who does not want to accept the Lord Jesus?
Who does not identify, does not put his hands on the head of that goat, that substitutionary goat.
Which is figurative of the Lord Jesus. You have not identified with Him, the only Savior of sinners.
What about you?
You're going to have to face God in the day of his wrath.
When I think of what's coming on this world.
You know something of the confusion that is going on in this world, wars, rumors of wars, famines, pestilences, plagues throughout this world, and it's only going to get worse.
This nation that is known such prosperity is going to wake up one day in an awful time of great tribulation after the Lord is taking out his people. And the Lord Jesus says about that time of great tribulation, there was no time before, nor there will there be any time after.
00:50:03
The to compare with the awfulness of the time that is just ahead.
For this world, and you will face that.
I don't think the majority of the population of the world are going to last through the great tribulation. There's going to be such slaughter, such death on every side. But if you do come to the end of that period, that's called great tribulation. The Lord Jesus at the end comes back in power and glory with his Saints, and he sets the throne of his glory in this world.
We have it spoken of in Matthew chapter 25.
And there he sits on the throne of his glory in all nations, all those that are living. This is the judgment of the living. They're going to be gathered before him, and he's going to separate them as a shepherd separates his sheep from the goats and the goats on the left hand he says, depart from me, curse it into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
He does not want you going there.
He did not prepare everlasting fire for mankind, He prepared it for the devil and his angels. But if you reject His offer of salvation, that's where you will end up.
And the sheep are those that here during the great Tribulation period.
The gospel of the Kingdom and accept that message and he's going to say to them, come ye blessed of my father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. That's not we're not included in that part. We're already in the glory, but there will be blessing for people here in this world that have believed the message of the gospel of the Kingdom.
Oh, the wonderful ways of our God.
And we just plead with you, if you have not yet settled accounts, if there is any question, even if those of you who are real believers but have serious doubts at times or questions, there's any way we can help clarify things by opening the scriptures. Don't be afraid to come and talk to me or others too. That can help you with the most.
Glad to help you.
Let's just close our meeting with prayer.
YP Sing
God's Warning and Way of Escape
Children—Bobby Woods
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.
Be neat. Look at your schedule card here. Lord's Day, October 13th. Look at the very first meeting. It's a children's meeting. I think that's really neat.
I think that's really neat that there's a meeting scheduled just for boys and girls. So I was hoping when I got here that there would be folks sitting here on the front row because I want you to help me. And also it's pretty neat because we can talk if you're in the back. It's very difficult to to talk when you're in the back. So I want your help and it's good to see you. So if there's any.
Boys and girls that would like to come up to the front, come come right up to the front.
How about it's a little bit early, but let's let's start singing. Yes, thank you.
3535 somebody please start them for me #35.
Don't want to save you that he died for me.
From combination he had saved.
Us from the Sun's everything.
Whatever was in life.
They're a label.
I say unto you.
Merrily, merrily, message. Never do.
Give us believers on the Sun is true, whatever lasting life.
Oh my iniquities on your birthday.
Oh my God, greatness by him blood.
The Lord, I said.
However lasting life.
Verily, verily, I say unto you.
Verily, verily.
Message ever knew?
I say unto you.
Verily verily message ever do.
You love to live upon the sun is true.
I've everlasting life.
Tremendous.
Yep, here, let me you tell us what it is.
You say it because I want you to hear your voice. Say it. 45 Oh, that's tremendous. 45 Thank you very much.
Oh, that's pretty funny. That's great. That's great. I don't know what 45 is, didn't really know what it is.
You want to sing another one?
Oh, that's tremendous.
Wide. Wide as the ocean.
By Sweet, it's my savior's song.
00:05:20
We have a lot of folks at home that love to sing that, and it's especially because of that last part where we can do this. So thank you. Who else has one? Yes.
Say it again.
#3.
On his blessing.
On Christ the soul, and Christ and all the ground is sinking sun.
All other grounded sinking sand.
The darkness.
Unchanges Grace.
And every time I saw me down, a Sanger holds red in the bell.
On priceless solid rock, Christian all.
Sinking sand.
Eternal business. My name is graven on his hands.
When all around.
My.
Christmas.
Sink inside.
All of your ground in the sinking sand.
It's great. Anybody else have a? Yep.
#32 Great 32.
Nothing but the blood of Jesus, so that not one spot remains. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh, preciousness of oh God makes me white and snow.
No.
No, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
For thy heart, and thus I see nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Or my cleansing this lightly. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh right, makes me light a soul.
No wonder from Dino. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Nothing and poor sins are told nothing but the one of Jesus.
Nothing good that I have done, nothing but the blood on Jesus.
00:10:04
Oh, Christ shall serve.
No other fountain, no nothing but the blood of Jesus.
This is all my whole bank is nothing but the blood of Jesus.
River of my righteousness, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh, preciousness of love.
Makes me white and snow.
I know nothing but the blood.
Jesus.
Listen, if there's somebody that's just gotten here and you want to sit up here on the front, please do you know we said it at the very beginning, it's nice to have a a meeting that's specially set aside for the children, boys and girls. It's really nice, isn't it? So somewhere along the way we're going to count and find out how many we have up here. But let's don't do it until.
Until we get everybody up here. We might even do it after we say our verse. So yes, you have a song.
Say it right here.
33.
I like that song, thank you. Let's sing #33.
Nothing either.
Greater. No, it's a standard.
Yes, it's just sending.
Let's start.
Stage you're doing all the sun.
Go ascending.
And it's a great job.
Sir, this is all you need. Tell me, is it hot?
Go to Jesus, work the way I assemble, OK.
Let me just start everything.
Doing and.
It's just indeed.
Let me start bringing joy.
Say the lessons on your need. Tell me it's in time.
And your daddy doing?
Come down that, Jesus.
See.
Standing in him alone, gloriously, completely.
Let's start now and we'll ask the Lord for his help and then we'll say our verses, OK?
Our God and Father, we thank Thee for this time to be together, and we thank thee, our God and Father, for the plan of salvation. Think of our condition, ruin and undone. Think of how thou didst provide a Savior. And Lord Jesus, we thank Thee for that tremendous work without its due there on Calvary's cross.
00:15:09
As we say our verses and have this time together, we just ask for help and we pray that we might expound on what thou has done our God and Father, in providing a refuge and Lord Jesus and without its due for us there on Calvary's cross. We pray above all that every boy and girl here has accepted thee as their Savior. Lord Jesus, we pray this in thy name.
Jesus, Amen.
So you can say any verse, but the verse that we had today, yes.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10/13. Tremendous.
Who else?
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall we save on Romans 10/13.
Who else?
Who survived their common name of the world of Ronson Hurry. Tremendous.
Woman 1013. Fantastic. Who else? Yeah, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Tremendous. Tremendous.
Means tremendous. Want to say it.
Anybody else?
Yeah, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10/13.
Shall call upon the name of the Lord. Shall be saved. Romans 10/13 Tremendous. Anybody else? Yep. Oh good, this is great.
Who shall ever call my family where she'll be saved?
Romans. Romans.
10101313 Great job who else?
Yep.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall we save. Romans 10/13 Tremendous.
Yep.
And.
Are you saying the one that we had today? No, you had one of your own.
I'm sorry, I don't know which one it is.
Anybody else?
Let's all say it together.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10/13. You know, there's a verse that's very similar to this. It's in Joel. I'd like to go and read that one. It's in Joel two. So if we go to Daniel Hosea.
The reason I want to read this one in Hosea 2.
Send Joel.
232 And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered. You know shall be saved is exactly what shall be delivered. It's a it's another another way of looking at it, and it has a more forceful.
It has a more forceful thought to it. And I'm thinking of an example this verse that we have whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I'd like to go and look at a place in the Old Testament and look at how God acted and it it's a, it's really an example of how God is acting today. And so there's two things that God has done.
00:20:01
Any time that there's judgment.
He's always given a warning and provided a way of escape. And so I wanted to look at a Old Testament, a place in the Old Testament where that's brought out. And I just want you to.
Go through here and justice, take one of these out of here.
So if you were going to guess.
What story do you think we're going to look at?
What story do you think we'd be looking at?
Anybody have an idea?
You can get one too.
So what? Anybody have an idea? Yep, tell me.
You got it. Noah's Ark. That's what I want to look at. So here's the thing, you know what? Do you know what book of the Bible that's in or what book of that you got it? Anybody know what chapter?
Which Genesis?
It's very, very early in the book of the Bible. It's in Genesis chapter 6. You know, it's really remarkable that we don't have to go very far to talk about the subject that we've been talking about. You know, in Romans 3, the statement that's brought out there is all are guilty. And, you know, as we read this.
In Genesis chapter six, look at the very beginning of Genesis chapter 6.
And look at this verse, verse five. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And then look at the next verse. Look at verse 12. And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
You know, it brings out the principle that we were looking at there in Romans 3.
All are guilty. And so look at what happens here in verse 13. And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. You know, it's a reminder. You know, we've been talking about the judgment.
That's coming on this earth and here.
God pronounces judgment on the earth here in Genesis chapter 6. And you know what's really remarkable is God provided a warning and He provided a way of escape. Look at the next verse. This is what he says to Noah in verse 14. Make thee an ark. You know, as we think of the verse that we were quoted today.
Whosoever.
Shall call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved. You know the Lord Jesus is that refuge. Anyone that calls on the name of the Lord, that's the way of escape. You know judgment is coming and we can read about it. Look in the Acts X verse.
X 17. Look at this in Acts 17.
Act 17 and verse 30.
But God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. So here at the very beginning, where in chapter 6 of Genesis, God, God pronounces judgment on this world. You know something I wanted to don't know if we can see this.
And you can move to a spot where you can see this, but I just thought it would be nice to.
I put up here being wrong books were here he was asleep with loud the rabbit there at the very beginning and even today our daughter is ruled in providing a royal estate. So here at the very beginning as we will because.
00:25:01
No one in verse 14 might make me hard.
This is the Rohingya. I think it's really convenient experience and it's going to put this.
So we are with the way of the Skype. The Wythens were gone forever.
OK, so look at, look at what he's saying like VNR.
And take down the wind, and all that way that is equally together for me. It shall be paid for thee and for them. And it appears to verse 22.
Thus it cannot work according to all that God communities so did he looks tremendous because over there was no one was lost, and the principle of you and I are blessed.
The way that our truck is finished work for the one week and we come to the north and flying to the north. He will fight us and we are trusting in the fast work of Lord Jesus. So we are blessed in the principle of faith. That's what happened in our world. Noah, it says here thus did Noah according to all that God community and then.
When we get to work for.
Run a genital 7 and virtual thank you. We got to Chapter 7 chapter 6 the very beginning in Genesis. Now look, isn't this wonderful what God says here? Look at Genesis Chapter 7 and verse one and the Lord said unto Noah come.
In that tremendous It's really what God is saying today, isn't it?
God is saying our verse, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. So it's tremendous that there in the very beginning we see the same theme, don't we, that all are guilty. But God gave warning and a way of escape, and that was through the ark and so.
Noah and his family and all of the animals that went into the ark.
Had a place of refuge. So so isn't that wonderful that God saw that there was a a way of escape, He provided a way of escape and the ark was the refuge. And so today it's the same God has provided a way to bless all that coming to the Lord Jesus.
And so he says here in the in Chapter 7 verse one. And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all of thy house into the ark.
And so look at verse.
Look at verse.
Seven and Noah went in and his sons and his wife and his sons wives with him into the ark because the waters of the flood. So isn't it tremendous that God gave ample warning? He provided an ark, a refuge, a way of escape, and that's the same today. The Lord Jesus is the way of escape. God is as we read there in Acts, God has been.
Commandeth all men everywhere to repent. And you know there's coming a day, and we talked about it yesterday, the day of the Lord. Look at this in Second Thessalonians, look at Second Thessalonians.
Chapter One.
It talks about the day of the Lord, the judgment that's going to fall on this world. Look at Two Thessalonians chapter one.
And look at verse seven, at the toward the middle of the verse, the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power? You know, what's really tremendous is God is offering a refuge, and that's the Lord Jesus. You know, let's go to to John 3.
00:30:08
Where we were yesterday.
Let's look at John 3.
Look at verse 14 and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.
Even so, must the Son of Man be lifted up? You know, as we think about the Lord Jesus going to the cross and dying, you know this is something.
The answer I think is so wonderful. This must The next verse answers why?
This has to be.
This must we think about the Lord Jesus having to go to Calvary's cross and die. We could say why the next verse, verse 15 that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever eternal life in that tremendous The answer is, is so that you and I.
Wouldn't have to die a refuge the finished work on Calvary's cross. This is the reason that the Lord Jesus had to die. And so then it it gives us the next verse that we know so well for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. You know it's so tremendous every one of those.
Animals that went into the ark. Noah and his family went into the ark and let's read it. There's another place besides the Old Testament. Look at this.
There's one in First Peter 320. Let's look at First Peter 320.
We'll read in verse 19 by which also he Noah went and preached into the spirits in prison, which sometimes were disobedient when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing for in few that his eight souls were saved by water. So isn't it tremendous the long-suffering of God in Noah's day while the ark was preparing.
And so really it shows that God gave ample warning of judgment that was to come. And you know to day is the same. The Lord Jesus is going to come back and take us home. And it's a reminder when we think of the year that we live in in 2019, the long-suffering of God, not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance. Isn't it tremendous? God has provided.
Way. And it's so tremendous to think of the word whosoever. You know, when I was a little boy, I didn't know what that word meant.
I just knew if you would have asked me when I was a little boy what that word meant, I would have said it's the longest word in the Bible. Whosoever in Methuselah to me were the longest words in the Bible. You know, I looked it up in Isaiah 81.
That is the longest word in the Bible. I can't pronounce it, but if any of you want to go, you can look up that word. That is the longest word in the Bible. But when I was a little boy and I would say that verse, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be so. I always thought that that was the longest word in the Bible, that in Methuselah. Here's the thing that that we can say.
That word means everybody.
It means anyone.
It means all. You know, it's really tremendous that we said yesterday and we can say this, the finished work on Calvary's cross with the Lord Jesus did dying there. That work was so great that every soul from Adam to now if they called on the name of the Lord.
That work is sufficient for every single soul. That tremendous.
The real blessing in this word is that we put our name in that word that we personally accept the Lord Jesus as our Savior. You know, when it says this, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord, you know, let's just, let's just go through each one and you, you can tell me your name and, and count, let's count how many of us there are here on the front row. So just tell me.
00:35:13
Name and say we're going to count off 123, so say your name and we'll do a count.
Evan.
You're #1.
Michaela too.
Logan 3.
Marcus 4.
Julia 5.
Rebecca 8.
7.
You got it. You're saying your name.
Feel 8.
Abigail.
At least 10.
Page 11.
Lion 5.
Llamo 13.
Joy 14 Bob 15 so we isn't that tremendous. You know the reason I want you to do that, because when we say whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, I want you to think of it as yourself. You know the verse that says.
The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. You know, as I was growing up, I told you that I really didn't know what that word, whosoever went.
Meant, but you know.
I realized that that word meant me. And you know, it's one of the reasons that I wanted to go around and you say your name because I'd like you to know that this way of salvation is for you individually. This word, whosoever, when you think of it, I want you to think of yourself. I want to tell you something as a parent.
If there was a way.
If there were something that a parent could do when a child was born that we could save our children, we would immediately. That would be the very first thing. If there was a requirement that a parent had to do that would save their children as soon as they're born, we would do it. You know, it's not it's an individual thing. And so I love this verse. Not only does this first.
Whosoever, as in anyone or everybody, but it means you individually. And so that's what I'd really like you to you know, if you've never called on the name of the Lord.
You need to do that and you're really caught by faith and you're putting your trust in the finished work that the Lord Jesus did there on Calvary's cross and you will be safe. You know, the Lord provided an ark for Noah and he said come. And Noah obeyed. And you know, we can read the verse in Hebrews 11.
It's really tremendous.
To read this in Hebrews 11 and what it says about Noah.
Hebrews 11.
And verse 7 by faith, Noah being warned of God, of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house by the which he condemned the world and became the heir of righteousness, which is by faith. You know, it's so tremendous. The writer of Hebrews, we're talking to Jewish believers.
And he was saying in in Hebrews 11, God always blessed.
On the principle of faith. And you know, we can see indeed that.
God bless there in the very beginning in Genesis chapter 6.
It shows us there in Hebrews 11 That.
Noah was blessed by faith when God said that it was going to rain, that judgment was coming. He's told Noah to to make an ark. Noah did it. It had never rained. And so you and I were blessed on that same principle. We're putting our trust in the name of the Lord.
And the work that the Lord has accomplished on Calvary's cross.
So we could say as we read there in John 3.
00:40:04
The Son of Man must be lifted up. Why? So that everybody that believes won't perish. We're putting our faith in the work of another. We're being blessed on the work that the Lord Jesus did on our behalf. And so as we come to this, this word, whosoever.
It's for us, each one individually. And so you put your trust in the Lord Jesus.
You'll be safe and there.
The verse that we read in Joel, you'll be delivered from judgment. And you know, it's a tremendous thing to know that.
With confidence, we don't fear the judgment that's coming. Now we can say there's another verse that's very solemn. It's in Revelation. It's those that don't. So look at this and it's interesting how it puts it. Look at in Revelations 20 and verse 15.
We can say that every single soul, you and I included, that have put our trust in the Lord Jesus and that finished work.
On Calvary's cross, that where whosoever will, here are those that reject, here are those that that don't accept. Look at what it says in Revelations 20 and verse 15, and whosoever was not found written in the book of Life was cast into the Lake of fire.
What a solemn thing. So for all of those that don't call on the name of them, that's.
In the very end, not only will there be destruction, but they'll be cast into the lake of fire. You know another thing I want to tell you about this that I think is so wonderful.
There's something that I want to read to you. Our time is just about gone, but look at this and Isaiah 59.
Look at Isaiah 59 and verse one. This is really tremendous. Behold, the Lords hand is not shortened that it cannot say neither it heavy that it cannot. You know what's what's really wonderful. We say this reverently, but if every single one of you all were to call on the name of the Lord.
He would hear you and he could save you, you know, if every one of you were to call on me.
If we I said let's get one more hymn and everybody called at the same time, my ear would be heavy. I wouldn't be able to answer. But it's not that way with our God. If every single soul in this world alive to day were to call on God, he would hear him and save him.
His ear is not heavy, his hand is not shortened in that tremendous to know with assurance that if you call on the name of the Lord, He will hear you, and He will save you. Now there's one other verse.
That I don't want to read to you. It's in John 6.
I remember as a little boy too. This is something that I always wondered about. This verse was a really a comfort to me and I want to read it to you. Look at John.
John VI, 37.
And it's at the very end him that cometh to me.
I will in no wise cast out. You know, this is something I used to wonder about if I were to come.
Would the Lord accept me?
We already said that yes, he would, but this is a verse that I always put my finger on as proof that I know when I go that he's not going to say no. That tremendous. So we can say that God is able, God is willing.
00:45:04
He'll, if you trust him, he'll save you in that tremendous and really that's what the word, the verse that we have to day. Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. You know, there's one last verse I want to read. It's in our chapter. I think this is really tremendous. Look at this in Romans. The writer of this book is the apostle Paul. Look at what he says.
At the very first of this chapter.
I think we can apply it to to everybody here and so as we as we pray, this is what we're going to look at what he says brethren, hearts desire and prayer to God for they might be saved. You know that's that's our prayer for you. Every single one of us that know the Lord Jesus as our Savior as we pray today. That's our prayer that every single one of you that we've gone through and named by name.
Bet you would be saved. That's our prayer. So let's just commit ourselves to Him.
Apostrophizing
Address—Michel Payette
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Start a meeting this evening this afternoon by singing a number 77, just the last two stanzas of 77 in the back of the book.
Number 77 stands as four and five in the appendix.
I saw one. I stand upon his turn.
I know you're not saying Christian.
Goddess.
The question I had on my heart, your ones was.
From Song of Solomon chapter 5, rather referred to it yesterday and.
Several comments were made that encouraged me that this was a portion that the Lord would have us take up this afternoon before I do.
I would like to take up a very simple subject.
And it's it's right in the first line of that Fort stanza.
It's the apostrophe.
Pretty Little simple sign apostrophe. We have it in French too, but the English language.
Has a very special use for the apostrophe.
And I would like to.
Suggest to my brethren.
That we become.
Apostrophizers.
What I mentioned seven things.
Won't turn to them because of.
For the sake of time.
The first three.
You're probably familiar with them and maybe not, and so the first one is the cross of Christ.
And the second one is the death of Christ.
And the third one.
Is the blood of Christ.
The cross of Christ.
Took care of what you deserved.
And what I deserved.
He was made a curse for you and me.
He received on the cross.
The judgment that you and I deserve.
There was judgment in the past, you know, on this planet. It was a flood.
Judgment by water.
And when the Lord was on the cross, he went through the depths of the waters.
There must have been a lot of water on the face of this planet during the flood.
But the waters that the Lord Jesus went through were more than that.
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There's future judgment.
For this planet.
The computer tells us that the present heaven and earth are going to be destroyed by fire.
And the Lord, when he was on the cross, he suffered.
Eternal fire.
For you and me, so you wouldn't have it.
So when we speak of the cross of Christ, it means something to us, doesn't it?
What about the death of Christ?
Well, you know, we had that yesterday. Colossians Chapter 3.
The debt of Christ took care of what you are.
You do not exist before God in what you are.
You exist before God in a new position because when Christ died.
You died with him.
The blood of Christ.
The blood of Christ took care.
Of what you did.
The cross took care of the consequences, the deck took care of what you were, and the blood took care of what you did.
We have three more.
We have the word of Christ.
We have the life of Christ.
We have the Spirit of Christ.
My.
But you have to have seven.
The person of Christ.
The cross of Christ. The death of Christ. The blood of Christ, The word of Christ, The life of Christ, the Spirit of Christ.
Christ himself.
Wonderful.
Now we apostrophize.
The Lord's cross apostrophe S.
The Lord's death apostrophe S.
The Lord's blood apostrophe.
Yes, the Lord's word apostrophe S.
The Lord's life apostrophe S, the Lord's spirit apostrophe S, and the Lord's person.
Apostrophe S you know, in French we we cannot do that. We can't express it in any other way than saying the death of the Lord Lamar de Sanjay la muerte de senor nuest possible. We can't do it any other way.
Not that I'm jealous, but it's a privilege to have apostrophes in English.
That you can connect all these things with a person.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the problems that we have, I believe in our minds.
Is because we disconnect things from the person of the Lord.
We do not apostrophe S because when we apostrophize, we connect.
The person and the thing, and it connects the heart with the mind.
This morning we showed Was it the death of the Lord?
Or the Lord's death.
It was not the fact.
It was the person and we cannot measure what he went through.
So I just want to remind you, brother and sister, to benefit from the English language apostrophe S.
Connect those things with the Lord Himself.
And it takes on a more precious aspect or hearts and souls.
The disciples on the way to Emmaus the brother was speaking about yesterday. Did not our hearts burn within us?
They had burning hearts and I believe apostrophes. They do that. They make our hearts burn. But before we go to Song of Solomon chapter 5, I'd like to go to Revelation chapter 3.
In verse 19.
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As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him, and will Sup with him, and he with me.
You know.
I believe.
At the Lord's Table.
Is about the Lord's Son.
The Lord's Table.
Is about the Lord's Shepherd.
The Lord's Supper is not about the Lord's Table. The Lord's Table is about.
The Lord's Supper.
He says here we're going to suck together. That's not what he says.
We're going to have a supper together. We could say that, but he doesn't refer to it that way. He says I will come in and I will Sup with him.
And here with me.
I believe there's mutual enjoyment and appreciation of that supper that's being shared with the Lord.
I'm sure, brethren, we.
I have no doubt that we appreciate it this morning.
Something with him?
What about his appreciation?
Of stopping with us.
You know the Apostle Paul.
He wasn't part of the 12 apostles. He's called out of that aspect of God's administration with Israel.
And God reveals to him mysteries that were hidden him before the foundation of the world.
I said the person of the Lord, things connected with him, blessings connected with that, heavenly blessings.
And a very, very special intimate relationship.
Which saved sinners through his finished work on the cross.
A relationship of intimacy nobody else can enjoy.
But we can enjoy.
And he can enjoy.
So let's go to Solomon chapter 5.
Chapter 5 of Song of Solomon in verse 2.
You'll allow me without a fence? Please? I I always read my Bible in French and so I have.
The words that I sometimes are different in King James, but.
Please bear with me.
I sleep. I was sleeping.
But my heart was awake.
It's the voice of my beloved that knock it.
Just like we hadn't.
Revelation chapter 3.
He knocks with his voice.
He has us here, His voice.
It is the voice of my beloved that knock it saying open to me.
My sister, my lover, my friend, my dove, my undefiled or my perfect.
You know in Bene Africa and maybe other countries too, they the houses, a lot of them don't have doors. Sometimes you just have a little curtain or something. And so if you come and you try and knock on a curtain.
Nobody's gonna hear.
So you go and you say tuck, tuck, tuck.
And they know there's somebody there.
Well, the Lord doesn't say talk, talk, talk. He has so much information to communicate to us.
He says words full of meaning. He's knocking with these words, he says.
Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled.
You know, I believe.
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And in much of Christianity Today.
There isn't much for the Lord, you know.
Lots of activity and lots to entertain people and keeping going to church and fund ministries and it's all very good.
But perhaps it isn't very much for him.
Brother yesterday was speaking about the hymns that we sing.
Or the hymns that we sing are filled.
With the enjoyment of relationship and glories and things that God wants us to know and enjoy.
And I think much of Christianity is not enjoying that.
Brother, we're speaking about the top of the wave. You know, I think they're just, you know, maybe wet a little bit. They're not enjoying the water very much.
To think.
That millions of believers entertain a thought that they might lose their salvation.
How can you unresistate and undie with Christ I mean.
What do we how can, what book are they reading, you know?
These wonderful truths, they just establish our souls and we rest.
And him and his finished work.
And I trust everybody here is resting and that finished work.
By Christ's cross, and Christ's death, and Christ's blood.
What rest?
And you know.
God is so satisfied with him.
And he wants us, I believe, to be comfortable in its presence.
A thrice holy God wants us comfortable in his presence. Talking at lunchtime. We're talking about calling God ABBA. That's Papa.
Your neighbor runs up to me and says Papa, I say I'm not your dad, you know?
But I come to the father, and I say to him, Papa.
Think he's happy. I think he's delighted, he's delighted. It cost him so much.
For you to be one of His children, that when you appropriate by faith what He's given you through him.
My children run up to me and my grandchildren.
You jump in your arms. Why would they do that? You know, the enjoyment of the relationship. And so our God in heaven, our Father in heaven.
He delights for us to come in confidence and to address Him of a Father, just like our Lord Jesus did.
But he's outside, you know, here. And she was sleeping.
I have a question for us.
Is it possible?
For us.
Who say that we gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Now we're asleep.
Why'd she fall asleep?
I believe she must have been distracted.
Something distracted her.
And when he was at the master of distractions, you know he has the world busy with distractions, and he can also have the Saints busy with distractions.
And I would tell my brother this afternoon.
In love, really.
Let's make sure we apostrophize everything with the Lord.
And we will not be distracted from him.
Because it's all about him.
We're going to look at our dear bridegroom's face.
When we get to glory, we're not going to shake out the furniture. Where's my room? Hug, showers. Nothing like that.
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It's him.
We're going to see the one who loved you so much, loved me so much.
He did all those things for us to his cross, dead in blood.
Think about it.
On yesterday I said, wait, what's the Lord gonna say when we're gonna be in his presence? You know, I did it to him. I said Donnie.
You're gonna be happy to see you in glory.
Will he ever?
Happy to see you here this morning. I'm sure he was.
The meeting this morning, did you apostrophize it with the Lord, his presence who comes and says, Do you have anything from you this morning?
Beloved, have you anything to eat?
Have anything for him this morning when you came in your heart?
My God is so good we can come with lukewarm hearts.
And then we sing a hymn. What? Wow.
These thought, he said, kindling in your heart and said, well.
God has not provided distractions for this meeting this morning.
No music, no nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No Hallelujah, praise the Lord, nothing like that.
Quiet. Real quiet.
So you could hear his voice.
Remember, as a new believer and.
Enjoying the scriptures and learning so many things and you know, and as many things to compose with and your doubts and everything. And I remember sitting in my living room, I said before we had kids even.
And I asked the Lord. I said Lord.
I want to hear your voice. Not that you know, you audibly, you know, have to take pills for that.
I asked him. I want to hear your voice, Lord. And I sat quietly, and it came. You know what he said.
He said.
I love you.
That's what he said.
Say the same to you, I'm sure. Perhaps you've heard him say that to you.
He proved his love for you.
It was there on Cowboys cross.
But she closed the door. She was asleep. She'd been distracted and sometimes were like that. We're distracted. We fall asleep.
He calls her by all the beautiful names and then he adds.
On my head.
Is filled with dew.
And my locks with the drops of the night.
He was out in the night.
That's what happened when they got up, John 13. When they got out there, it says it was night.
It was a very dark night.
I don't use ever been a night so dark.
As the night and was always betrayed.
And a knight that he spent on the cross, going through the waters.
Now the beloved here, he says. My head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night. He must have been cold and wet and you know.
She should have had compassion.
For this beloved who?
Was in need of coming in and getting warmed up.
She says in verse 3.
I put off my coat.
How shall I put it on?
I have washed my feet.
How shall I defile them?
Outside cold water.
I have to get up, get dressed.
Got her off my feet again because I'm going to walk.
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She hesitated.
Why did she hesitate?
Distracted.
Distracted by our own comfort, perhaps?
What she'd been doing.
You know we had yesterday in Colossians 3.
Things to put on.
She put it off.
I believe the energy of love for the Lord.
We'll put you to work.
Keep you busy.
I think love keeps you busy. Mum who loves her children and she gets up early in the morning, goes to bed late at night and she gets busy all day.
Not looking for any reward. Doesn't get a paycheck at the end of the week.
He does that out of love for her children.
And if we love the Lord.
We're going to be busy.
Now we can really be busy.
We're not loving the Lord.
And we're really busy when love is not the motive.
Were occupied with what we're doing.
I think God wants us to be occupied, what He has done for us, what He's made us to be, and in the appreciation of our hearts. Those two disciples, yesterday, their hearts were burning.
They walked back for, you know, miles and miles and miles. It was late. It was so late that they didn't want the Lord to continue, so they'd come in. It's too late. When the love was kindled in their hearts, it wasn't matter how far it was. That's what they had to do.
And it's a wonderful thing, you know, for the Lord to give us. But through his love, do you believe him back?
And to be kept.
From this ingrained little defect that we have, which is called pride.
Pride and activity.
Well, just go on.
My beloved pushed his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him. I rose up to open to my beloved, and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelly myrrh upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my Beloved, But my Beloved hath withdrawn himself and was gone.
And so there was an effect with her of hearing the Lord's voice and how he called. Even she didn't respond right away. She felt something for him. She was awakened.
And how gracious of the Lord to wake up our affections for Him. He feeds them with the manifestation of his love and His glory, and he awakes them. And then we come to a point where they say, I have to tell him.
Thank you. I love you, Lord. You do it in your own words, you know.
Not in a formula way.
The apostle says groanings, we cannot be others.
To be so loved, what can I say?
Just say it to be so loud. What can I say? You just said that you appreciate his love. No words will suffice to describe it. Eternity will not suffice to exhaust the appreciation of it. It's infinite.
I'm going to get to glory. We're going to see a lamb as it had been slain.
In French it says it's like if he's on the altar.
Dying right there, suffering right there. We're never going to forget. Never, ever, ever.
Going to forget.
He doesn't want us to forget, He has us remembering him from week to week.
And when we come in this presence, like we did this morning, it happens.
Everything gets in the right perspective. He becomes.
The one to which we had all these apostrophes.
It's all about him and when he's done what we have in him.
Well, she runs into some difficulties there.
I opened verse 6 to my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn himself and he was gone. My soul faileth when he spake. I sought him, but I could not find him. I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchman that went about the city found me. They smoked me, they wounded me. The keepers of the walls took away.
My veil from me.
Beautiful thoughts yesterday brought up by Brother Bob about the shepherds you know.
00:30:04
Restoration Shepherds caring for the sheep and.
Here we have officials.
Watchmen keepers. There's the same word there. They're both guards. I have in French. The guards went about the city, found me. They smoked me, they wounded me. The guards of the wall took away my veil from me.
At Bruce, we read in Revelation 3.
About the Lord rebuking and chastening those that he loves.
Would he have?
Would the Lord have?
Things.
They would put before us.
I'm sure he has. We're all family creatures and.
But if he did, If he does.
How would we react?
Well, he says, open the door.
We're going to Sup together.
And in the presence of the Lord, I believe we see things more clearly.
We see things from his perspective.
The Lord's people, the Lord's sheep.
The ones for whom the Lord died.
It gets way beyond this room, doesn't it?
And we need to have large hearts.
To walk in a narrow pathway. We don't want to compromise with the Word of God. We don't want to lose this wonderful privilege. It'd be wonderful if many other brothers and sisters were in the enjoyment.
Of showing the Lord's death till he comes.
You know when we have a celebration of the Lord's death.
We don't tolerate debt for us. It is for us. Of course, when I take the emblems and say he died for me.
But it's showing the Lord's death we had yesterday for the Father.
For the church, for you, for me, for us.
But it's him and his death.
Telecoms, well, the guards there, they wounded her and they took up, they took off her veil.
From her I think it was, I believe it was a veil. Like it wasn't a veil on her head. It was a veil across her face that virgins wore. I think in the Middle East. I can be corrected on that.
And they took it away.
If you go to Two Corinthians 11.
Verse two, second eleven. Verse two. If I'm jealous over you with godly jealousy.
For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste version.
To Christ.
I believe that there's this aspect of truth that God has revealed to us now.
And what we are to the Lord Jesus.
Espoused to him.
Is bright. We're going to be married to him. Heaven is going to be filled with Saints from the Old Testament and probably from the great Tribulation from you. Get saved there.
But it can be a company of people.
Which are special to his heart.
And that's the church.
And God has chosen.
To reveal that to us now.
Isaiah 53 says.
We esteem them not.
The Jews are saying that when they convert to see the Lord, they realize they didn't estimate.
The world in Wanam, his people didn't want them. What God says you don't want them?
I'm going to give him.
To lost sinners.
In grace on the basis of calling upon the name of Lord.
Who can bolster that? There's no boasting there. It's all his work as person and you say Lord?
Me. That's what the thief said on the cross. Lord Remember Me to say, forgive my sins. No formula.
00:35:05
There was a look to him and call upon him, says, Lord, Remember Me without Comeston thy canvas. I didn't say take me to heaven. He got a lot more than he asked for. He called upon the name of the war.
And now those who call upon the name of the Lord, now they become part of this.
Special company of which every believer in Christ is part of, even if he ignores it.
And God the Father has chosen to share with you and me the delight He has found.
And as if the Father this morning in our midst would say, This is my beloved son.
Do you esteem him?
N.
We esteemed him enough to say, well, we're going to give him. He asked us to remember him.
So we're doing what he asked us to do.
Write a commentary before and it was, it kind of broke my heart. Leading Brother wasn't with us, but he said, you know, the Lord, you know, we get on with it and then we can go to ministry.
I don't want memoir ministry after I remember the Lord.
I want to just enjoy.
It's like being in heaven, you know, when we get to heaven and we need more ministry, there's going to be enjoying him forever.
I enjoy ministry. I mean, there's a place for it and everything, but there's this intimacy and and fellowship and communion with the heart of the Father and the Son by the Spirit.
Wes.
I don't know of any comparable privilege.
But they took her veil off.
No, no, you can't say that, Michelle misunderstanding, you know, God, a lot of people believe that the church replaces Israel on the earth. You know, just that the church is the Israel of God. They just kind of.
Get down, back down to losing your salvation Kingdom gospel, you know, you know the Lord Jesus and March gospel. He preached the gospel to the Kingdom. Repent and believe the gospel that wasn't the gospel of the grace of God.
Had gone to the cross yet hadn't died and shed his blood. It wasn't not available to be preached.
But once it was done.
And once God offered it to Israel, and once they stoned Stephen, God said OK.
You won't have them. I'm going to give them freely to those who don't deserve them. They have absolutely no right to him. I'm going to offer him to them and those that believe they're going to get it all.
Christ is all we have, the Colossians, Chapter 3 you have him.
You have everything. You don't have him, you don't have anything.
Well, they took the veil offer and I thought of that as removing the present hope that we have and what belongs to us in Christ. There's going to be a marriage supper in heaven. Marriage supper of the.
The marriage supper of the Lord Jesus, of course.
Right supper than that.
And we're going to be there.
A lot of people are going to be invited there. We're not part of the guests.
We have a.
We're not right.
And the bride eyes, not her garments. I'm sure you girls got married at I would assume that when you've got the dress, you know.
You must have spent a few moments looking in the mirror. I mean, you must have. How could you not? Of course we're human.
But when we see him.
We're not going to be looking at each other for a while.
They took that away from her.
And so verse 80 says I charge you or daughter to choose them. If you find my beloved that you tell him.
I am sick of love, but really sick with love.
It's a wonderful sickness to have, isn't it?
Are you sick with love, dear ones?
I hope you're sick with love.
She's sick with love or she wants him.
That's Mary, she said. Where have you laid him? Are you speaking about? There was nobody else she cared for than him.
00:40:03
And then they ask her, What is thy beloved more than another beloved, who thou fairest among women? What is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost charge us? And then she will start describing him.
This is the Old Testament, you know.
What the Spirit of God wrote the Old Testament?
And I think the Spirit of God, when he was writing Old Testament through the writers, he had apostrophe. It was all about him, it was about Christ. And so we apostrophe in here said it's about the Lord.
She says.
My beloved is white and Ruddy, the chiefest among 10,000, she said before his banner over me is loved. Chieftain is the banner bearer. He's the banner bearer of love.
Is Banner over me the cheapest of 10,000? When you're running for 10,000 in scripture, it really means a great number. You know Paul says you have 10,000 masters in Christ, you have not many fathers.
Human. Doesn't matter how many he had, he only had one who really cared for you as a father. It was the Apostle Paul.
And it didn't matter how many men there were, there was one there.
That loves her and there's one who loves you. And so she says. My beloved is white and Ruddy. Ruddy I believe is in French is better. May It's a color of blood, really. Here's this one who partook.
Of flesh and blood.
Who's this one that left the courts of glory? The Creator of the universe, a brother read this morning. Psalm 33, he said. And it was.
He said. And it was let there be light.
Evolutionists. They don't. They don't get it. Yeah.
They need numbers, billions and billions and billions and zillions of years. And so you know, he just there it is. Let there be like there was like it doesn't say like became.
It said in the past it's.
Let there be light and there was light, not light became people say, oh, it started shining in the universe and went on for thousands of light years. No, no, as soon as he says it, there it is. So you can talk about the present. It's in the past tense. When did it happen? There was no time requirement. The power of God doesn't need time to do things. He can just speak things and there they are. Psalm 33, he said and there was.
And that one said?
Before Pilot didn't answer anything, didn't answer as a lamb before it shears his dumb quiet mute.
He opened up his mouth.
You could have said that's it, destroy the universe. You could that's that's that person.
Father.
Forgive them.
Well, they don't know what they do and then.
That solemn cry we sing about, and we can.
Can't get over it. You lie. You lie. I must survive tonight. My God. My God. Why hast thou forsaken me?
Because I'm never going to be Forsaken. Neither will you. Because he was Forsaken in our stead.
A solemn cry of the Son of God on thy shameful cross, being made a curse for you and me.
And some people say he felt forsaken. No, he didn't just feel forsaken, he was.
Or sick.
He was infinitely alone.
It was infinitely dark.
Infinitely cold, infinitely deep. The fire was infinite. And its seriousness.
My beloved is white. He partook of flesh and blood. What kind of man was he?
Well, it's surprising as she describes him. If we look carefully, we will find that there are 7 references to white.
The first one is verse 10.
My beloved is white.
00:45:00
His eyes Verse 12 Ours The eyes of dove doves are white rivers of waters washed with milk.
Is white. His cheeks are a bit of spices, sweet flowers. His lips are like droppings and sweet smelling MERS lilies. Lilies are white. That's four. His band, his hands are golden rings, but the barrel. His belly is bright ivory. That's five overlaid with sapphire. His legs are just pillars of marble. And here you have to forgive me because in French it says white marble. Mr. Darden, you'll let it go. And Mr. Darby said it was white marble. So who's going to argue? Mr. Garvey? He called it white marble.
And then the last one is verse 15 is as Lebanon and Lebanon means very white. There are 7 references here to whiteness.
There was never, never, ever a man.
Has awaited him.
Not talking about color of his skin, what he wasn't himself.
Not a thought, not a word, not an action displeasing to God.
In any way?
Beautiful. We're going to walk with him in garments white.
He says that to lowly say that to Biometer. You have garments. White men have white garments like his white garments going to appear in His glory with him. We're not white in ourselves, but to think of that whiteness when he appears on the Mount of Transfiguration, white as snow, it says white as light, white as lightning. It's just white. It's all white.
But then it goes into verse 11.
His head is at most fine gold, his locks are bushy or free flowing. That's what I have in French and black as a Raven.
When they really say.
OK, what's, what's the thought there, you know?
Black as a revenue. Some birds they had, they're black but they have red on their top of their wings or yellow or stuff but Raven and one tip to the other or black.
Not a spot awake.
And I've enjoyed the thought, you know, because his locks were free flowing. He was a Nazarite consecrated to his God.
Voluntarily.
He says, here am I sending me. He volunteered to come for you and me. And sometimes you might volunteer, you might be a volunteer and you might like to do something and say I'm a volunteer there. It is occupied with self. You know, I have it. It's ingrained. You know, it's not only in the French, you know, it's ingrained in everybody. You know, we have pride. It's it's just kind of seeps out here or there.
But in the case of the Lord, you know in the leper when they looked at the.
The wound and the leper there and the.
I'm not sure it goes in English, but if there was a white hair, he was declared unclean. It was a white hair unclean.
When you look at the Lord.
Not one white hair, nothing unclean in any way. Couldn't be.
A perfect man, actually, I believe the Lord could just go back to heaven. Nothing to keep him from going into heaven.
He didn't go to heaven.
He went into death.
You have enjoyed the thought and Matthew's Gospel that when he dies the earthquakes, and when he raises again the earthquakes again.
And I thought of that never happened before, because the Lord Jesus had borne our sins in his own body on the tree.
When he died and shed his precious blood, the sin question was settled forever. The proof of it is his resurrection.
But here's a man entering into death without sin.
Never happened before.
And he takes up his life three days after he comes out of that. That has not power over him. I have power to lay down my life. I have power to take it up again. He didn't do that by himself. This commandment I received with my father, he's a perfect man. He has the power to do it, but he won't do it unless the father says you go ahead and do it and he did it.
So his locks are free flowing or bookie bushy his eyes are the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters watch was milked and fitly self. You know in Psalm 119 it says rivers of water flow from my eyes because they keep it not dialogue.
We're not under a contract with God to keep the commandments. We have a life that delights in doing His will, you know.
00:50:03
You that robbed, let him work with his hands. You have to be able to give now. He doesn't rob anymore, he gives.
Here's the law being the righteousness of the Lord should say, accomplish in those that walk by the Spirit. And so if you walk by the Spirit, everything to be in order.
You're not checking the commandments to see if you're performing well. You just walk in fellowship with the Lord, gazing on him, and things will take care of themselves. You'll be behaving properly. And when you come into situations where you don't know what to do, God is going to give you a discernment. Say we're talking about cases at lunchtime. Sometimes the same action by one person was fine and the same action was somebody else was wrong. So it's getting discernment from the Lord. He does that when a fellowship with Him.
They were washed with milk. His thoughts were based on the Word of God too. A perfect model for us.
I want to get to his hands.
His hands are as golden rings.
You know, the Ark of the Covenant, the table of Showbread, Elder of Incense.
Altar of burnt offerings.
They all had four rings.
And they were carried on two pieces of wood.
Two parts of wood, All the furniture and the Tabernacle was carried by the hanging of four rings on two pieces of wood.
Everything connected with the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
You know Princeton, knees in his hands, golden rings. His feet were feast on two pieces of wood on the cross of Christ.
Beautiful to consider.
Bring everything in connection with him.
Won't understand everything, but I believe everything comes to be precious becomes precious.
Verse 15 His legs are as pillars of marble, white marble.
Set upon sockets.
Of fine gold.
Somebody referred to that I think was brother Bruce yesterday. It was his legs.
The stability.
On the sockets.
You know, in the Tabernacle, the boards themselves, the boards of the Tabernacle, which I believe are pictures of the believers. They're also set on two sockets. Same word, not of gold, though there are sockets of silver.
I say this similar standing, you know, it's not on gold, it's divine righteousness here in the Lord himself. But for the believer, 2 sockets of silver and silver in the scripture speaks of redemption.
Every believer in Christ.
Who is called upon the name of the Lord?
Has this double redemption?
Two aspects to redemption, the redemption of my soul and the redemption of my body.
And when you put your trust in the Lord Jesus, you have both.
Hasn't happened to your body yet. It will happen when the Lord comes, but you now have redemption of your soul and the assurance. The absolute base for the redemption of your body is His work on the cross of Calorie and when He comes from heaven.
There's no such thing as partial rapture.
All that are his, he's going to take.
Because he redeemed them with his precious blood.
And So what a standing we have, dear ones, when we put our faith in the Lord Jesus. Somebody was noticing too that the sockets themselves in the Tabernacle, they had a place for the tenants from the boards, you know, and.
The thought that his hands were pierced and also his feet were pierced.
And so his legs are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of gold. His countenance is as Lebanon excellent as the cedar. His mouth is most sweet. Yeah, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved. This is my friend. Oh, daughters of Jerusalem.
Old Testament written for our enjoyment to see.
I'm sure if you go back, you meditate.
You'll enjoy fresh thoughts for yourself that the Lord chose you about Himself.
00:55:05
I've thought of the cheeks, you know, I said, well, what about the cheeks and all that? Well, they, they spit in his face. You know, they pulled the hair out of his cheeks and.
To be enjoyed.
By the Spirit of God I shall the person of the Lord Jesus, the Lord's person and the Lord's work, the Lord's Table and the Lord's Supper, the Lord's people and the Lord's sheep and Lord's words, the Lord's spirit.
That's the last word with the Lord's Spirit.
What spirit do we manifest?
That's whose spirit we have. We have the Lord's Spirit.
His person is connected with us, and He lives in us by His spirit.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, love.
Brethren.
I would confess before you I'm sick with love.
I hope your sick would love to.
But you long to see him.
Face to face and as we wait for him from heaven. This is a sure thing. We're going home, maybe tonight, tomorrow, next week, I don't know. We're going home to be with him forever and as we wait for him from heaven.
May He help us, each one, to manifest the apostrophe, Christ's character, and our personal behavior, and our family behavior, and our school behavior, and in the assembly where we gather around himself, that it may be in every one of us the manifestation of Christ's character. Let's pray.
Colossians 3:5-14
Reading
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And 14214 How blessed is our portion when we looked upward within the veil? Our life is there in 214.
How blessed is our portion when we love?
All we're with in the mail, our life is there.
Our names are written in the lands on board.
Our grace has made.
All stories which by right belong.
To the emperor's worthiness is something eternal song.
We have a Father in the heavens above.
With our heartbreak, Oh, prefer my heart.
We have a stranger.
We'll be surprising, love.
American contacting for our sins to die.
He didn't order much more.
Of.
That by the same case you start and bring us safely home.
Yeah, slice there again.
Or.
The world began.
Yes, I wanna hear it. Long sovereign, and pray.
All of us are simple. There's some dying.
Blessings against.
Priceless love our hearts from sin and quality one.
Reading in Colossians chapter 3.
Start with.
Verse 8 But now ye also put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.
And have put on the Newman, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all and in all. Put on therefore, as the elective God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another.
If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts to the which also ye are called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
And whatsoever you do in Word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
00:05:07
Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with I service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance. For ye serve the Lord Christ, but he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done. And there was no respect of persons.
It was brought out.
And when we were in this chapter the last time?
That in verse five we're told to mortify and verse eight put off and in verse.
Ten put on and or have put on.
But there was a verse, a word, one word in verse five that we kind of overlooked. That's the word Therefore mortify. Therefore, in other words, what is in verses 5 through?
Oh 15 depends on the verse versus one through.
Four, therefore.
It means that God has given us the means to do it.
When God says therefore, it means he's already given us the means to do these things.
And that means is encompassed in the 1St 4 verses. Set your minds on things above. There's been an illustration that's been helpful to me.
And that's kind of helped keep things in my mind.
The British had a famous aviator during the 1930s, similar to his probably was to Britain what Charles Lindbergh was to the United States.
And his name was Hanley Page.
And he was flying over India one day.
And.
He realized he could hear an animal running around underneath his feet.
And he was afraid it was. He'd probably picked up one of the rats common to the plains of India, and the rat could chew through a wire or a hose or some kind of a cable. He didn't know what the rat damage the rat might do that might cause him a problem.
And he was concerned about it.
Just as we are sometimes concerned with the things we discover in our lives.
So what did Hanley Page do? Well, there was number place to land and get rid of the rat. He was over the mountains, so he ascended. He went up high because he knew the rats that lived in the plains did not live in the mountains because they couldn't deal with rarefied air. So he went as high as he could go and stayed there until the ratty noises quit.
And when he got to his destination, he descended, landed and discovered the rat dead. He had mortified that rat by going where the rat couldn't survive. And we need to do the same to enjoy what is our portion. And it gets rid. It effectively eliminates.
Things from our lives that shouldn't be there.
Thank you.
Few more comments on verse 4, even though we started a little past there.
Christ, our life.
We have we use the expression Christ is everything, Christ is all Christ our life and I want to.
Comment on the importance of the expression because it's more than Christ as an object, it is an object Christ as our life becomes the object of our lives that's true, and that's very important but here while it includes that, it's more than that and the more than that is quite important in understanding the exhortations that are given for what we mortify and.
00:10:20
What we put on.
As it says in verse nine it speaks of the old man, and in verse 10 it speaks of the new man.
All of us were born as children of Adam's race, and all of us inherited the characteristics of the race.
That race is sinful.
And we inherited that sinfulness from our parents, who did it from their parents and so on. And that it refers to what's called here the old man.
And the old man has a certain character of life, it has a certain nature connected with that life. And there is a certain, if I could put it this way, type of power that animates and directs the activities of that life.
God condemned it.
And said there's no fruit for me in that life, there's no fruit that will come to me through that, the activity of that nature or that manner of life. And So what Colossians brings out for us is that God who is done with the old creation as far as producing anything of pleasure for himself.
Has introduced a new creation.
That begins with his Son and his work, and so the Lord Jesus.
Died for us and as we've already had in previous readings, in the previous chapter it says if you be dead with Christ, we are dead with Christ. And it introduces the F. And so if you are dead, then here's the consequences. But as far as God is concerned, we're dead with Christ.
And as far as we're concerned, I trust we recognize the truth of it, and so are we as dead with Christ. But.
Christ raised from the dead, and Christ being risen from the dead, now God imparts to us the life of Christ.
Say it again. It's important. It's the life of Christ that we have.
Each of us was born with an individual life.
I can die and you can live. You can die and I can live. Our lives are separate and independent of each other. But the life that I now have in Christ, the only way I could lose it is if he lost it. It's his life in me. And that is very significant in terms of understanding.
What nature do? What do I have in that life? I have his nature.
I participate in the very same nature that the Lord Jesus has in the life that He lives in resurrection.
That life has power associated with it. What is the power? It's the power of the Spirit of God working in that life.
That's my life, that's your life. And consequently, when it says put something to death here, it's from that perspective. It's not the old man saying I'm dead and I shouldn't do this, that and the other anymore. Rather, it's the very life of Christ that says that stuff, if you will, that nature that comes out in the activities of what's to be mortified.
I'm done with it.
Yesterday the word heiress tense was used. That is, I recognize that life is gone and all the nature that manifests itself in that life is done with, and I'm not living in that life anymore. I have a new life, the life of Christ, the Spirit of God, to give the power to that life and the nature of the life is a perfect nature.
00:15:02
It loves its kind, it's forgiving and so on. And so he's saying in the exhortation, you're done with that, so leave it alone. Don't go there. Go ahead and live the life that's been given to you in resurrection life with Christ. And likewise things like anger and wrath and malice and so on.
Do they have anything to do with the Newman? Nothing.
They have to do with the old man and in myself. I didn't get rid of the old man, God did. I didn't introduce to myself a power that's greater than what was in the old man. God did. And he says furthermore.
Back to Christ, our life as an object, he says, and I've given you an object, and if you, my spirit working in you is going to focus on that object, and when you're occupied with your object, then your life and nature is going to display itself in your everyday activity. And where does it all end and where you get the life fully developed and it's teaching and John's epistle.
He says.
When we see them, we shall be like him. In other words, the end result when I get to glory and you get to glory and we see the Lord Jesus God is going to be so satisfied because.
Now we're just like Christ.
We don't have the flesh in us anymore of that old life. That flesh of the old life is still in US and still a problem. But when we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And as Brother Clem Buchanan used to say in gatherings like this, God is so pleased with what the Lord Jesus is. He wants heaven to be filled with those that are just like him. And when you get to heaven, God's going to be so pleased with you because.
You're just like Christ.
All the character of him, his nature, will be displayed in you. And what does the exhortation of John's epistle in the next verse says? He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure. In other words, it's a shortened version of the exhortations of this chapter. And it says, if that's what you really believe, and if that's what you really are, then.
You are going to desire to be more like Christ every day and put aside anything that hinders you from the fellowship with the Father and the Son.
We only look at certain truths that we are familiar with, and most of us are familiar with, say, the line of things we get in Romans or Galatians, that we have the flesh and the spirit, and the flesh warth against the spirit. And sometimes it almost seems like we have the impression that we are now like some sort of empty shell with the flesh in us, but we have this divine.
Person indwelling us which?
Believers understand.
But I just enjoy this line of things you've brought out. And I think it's it's especially brought out in Colossians that we now have the life of Christ in us. We don't have two divine persons in us. We have the Spirit of God in us, but we have the life of Christ in us, not the person. And so that's that's I'm new in that sense. I have a life I never had.
War and it's done, it's brought out. So mostly it's it's the life of Christ and and that kind of elevates me. And it's not just I'm either in the flesh or someone else has responsibility, namely the Spirit of God, but I have this new life. It has all these.
Properties, characteristics that are proper to it as displayed in Christ Himself.
And that's who we are now we've put on the new.
For all of us as believers, we all have it, but do we walk in the good of it and show the difference and sometimes the result? We see the walk. I was thinking of Daniel of old. It's reported that he had the purpose of heart not to be defiled by the King's meat. So in his case food was an important because he know the Lord will take care of him.
00:20:10
He declined to have all those good and juicy food and the King could have offered and chose to have water and hose. So he was blessed because of his purpose apart. He know that he wasn't living for the present who was living for something that is eternal and then we can go on to with his friends. It was a bit different. So it wasn't just for the food that in their case is the faith they were faced to be cast into the fire refurnished.
And they have to learn that they have to trust, trust that. And they would be able to tell the king that, well, we know we're going to be delivered from, from your hand. But then they also go, well, if by chance that the Lord didn't deliver us from you and we still won't bow to you. So sometimes we, our walk would reflect where our heart is if our thought is earthy.
Actions become earthy. Why do people want to save the whales when they can't even and when they don't even recognize the fact they need to save their own soul. First we need to think of spiritual. So here we're reminded if he be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where prices.
What might be helpful to look at an example in Joshua 10?
Of the five kings that were slain by Joshua and his instruction to the men of Israel.
In Joshua chapter 10.
We'll just start with verse 24.
And it came to pass, when they brought out these those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto the captains of the men of war which went with him, Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings. And they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them. And Joshua said unto them, Fear not, nor be dismayed.
Be strong and of good courage, for thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against whom ye fight. It's been mentioned to us of the power of the life of Christ in US. And so Joshua gave a commandment here, an order.
For the men to put into practice. And so they came near and obedience, and it was a testimony and it was a power that they had a power, a life that was.
Capable of overcoming.
What these 5 Kings represented and so are in our chapter we're told to put off.
And to put on where does that come from? It's from the Lord.
And he asked us to do something that he gives us that life and power to do.
I think there's a contrast to that occasion in the book of Judges and you read in chapter one, verse six and seven what might sound very good on the surface, but it's not when they were fighting a king add on a basic says, but the king add on Ibiza fled and they pursued after him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his great toes and had on a visa said three score and 10 kings having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table as I have done.
So God hath requited me and they brought him to Jerusalem and there he died. Well, you think that sounds good? They conquered this guy, cut off his thumbs and his toes, and then he died in captivity. And I think that kind of speaks of people who fight against the flesh and carnal strength and just subdue it. But they're still making provision for it. They've not wrecking the flesh is dead. And so this what sounds like a victory in Joshua one was actually a defeat because they were making a provision for this man to stay alive and be mutilated.
Rather than to totally have it him mortified. And I think that's kind of a lesson to us that we're not to to just torture the flesh or torment it or subdue it, but to consider it wrecking his dead and and to put it in the place of death.
00:25:31
A practical example of.
Just taken from daily experience and in how that looks when it's acted on.
We walk by faith, not by sight, and I think it's important to Faith goes by the word of God and.
Sight looks at things around us and we're we tend to form judgments upon what we see around and sometimes what we feel.
And sometimes I've heard young people say, well, I don't feel that dead.
I'm dead. I don't feel that. I feel those impulses in me.
It's not a matter of feeling, it's a matter of fact and God says ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ and God. So it's interesting this what we were mentioning about it, the heiress is that the it's to have it done. So every time there is that impulse in me to respond to some fleshly temptation.
Is to say that's not what I am now. I now have a life that delights to please God. And so it's just putting that into effect, like it says in Romans chapter six. Yeah, I better read it just to get it straight there.
It's been a help to me that.
To overcome those impulses that come up in our life. In verse 11, it says likewise.
Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. Reckon means to think that way.
Scriptures told us very clearly we're dead and our life is hid with Christ and God.
OK, now here comes these fleshly impulses.
What are they going to do, think that you are truly dead? That's what God says, and that's faith. We don't go by our feelings. Feelings are very real, and I can't deny that we have those feelings, but feelings are very changeable.
Remember a sister in the Lord saying to me when she had some temptation? She says I just don't feel right. I says, do your feelings ever change?
Yeah, they do. Does the word of God change? No. What would be better, to trust your feelings or what God says in His word?
I guess it'd be better to trust God. Yeah, I think you're right, I said. And so it is. We have to go by God's Word to recognize that it has been done already. It's interesting. You go back in the book of Ephesians, you have the same thing in chapter 4. I'm going to read it, Mr. Darby's translation, because it's the same thought. I think it is helpful to see in Ephesians 4, verse 22.
Namely.
Your having put off, according to the former conversation, the old man which corrupts itself according to the deceitful lust, and being renewed in the spirit of your mind, and your having put on the Newman, which according to God is created in truthful righteousness and holiness.
So it's something that has been done.
That's what God has done for us and now it is for us to train our thinking to think that way. Don't give place to just any thought that comes helter skelter into your mind. Think God's thoughts later on in this chapter in Colossians. I love what it says here about let the word of Christ.
00:30:22
Dwell in you richly, O brethren, if we would absorb God's word, God's thoughts, it doesn't say, now I want you to be reading the Word of Christ, the word of Christ. No, let it dwell in you richly. There's something so full about that. And so it's not merely just reading it, it's letting it dwell. Let it be a part of us.
Maybe others can help better more.
Mr. Garvey in French state he uses.
Word I translate renounce, but not renounce also all these things. And that's really saying no to that isn't when it comes up in our hearts, we can't keep it from coming up, but we can refuse it when it comes up. We can say no. It's very short word, but so powerful, no.
I found another thing that has been helpful to me and I just like to suggest especially for our younger brother. If you look in Romans chapter 8.
You get our position.
Explained in verse eight it says this. So then they that are in the flesh.
Cannot please God.
Are we in the flesh?
Look at verse 9. But ye are not in the flesh.
But in the Spirit, and so the flesh is in US.
But we are not in the flesh, and that's something to think about. We are in the Spirit. If so, be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. The Spirit of God is the power of that new life in Christ that we have. So think about that, young people. The flesh is in US, yes, but we are not in the flesh, so we are not to obey it.
Verse in the Old Testament.
Have a ****.
I think it's chapter 2, verse four. The just shall live by faith. It's repeated three times in the New Testament.
And.
Repeated. It was in the gospel that Bob gave in Romans one the just shall live by faith.
And there the emphasis in which it's used is the word just.
It's repeated in Galatians when it's a matter of living.
And in Hebrews, when it's a matter of the faith itself, in Hebrews chapter 10, I want to apply that verse to the comments about practical experience and the matter of the flesh in US, and so on.
Everyone of us who knows the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior.
Ultimately, perhaps imperfectly at first, but eventually at least, as the truth was presented to us, came to the point where we recognized that we could not save ourselves.
What that we needed saving? That we were guilty and there were consequences to our guilt?
And.
The end result was ultimately we stopped looking at ourselves.
And we look to the Lord Jesus as Savior.
It may have taken a while after that before that truth or before the doubts that sometimes come with people came into it, and we had to, whatever scripture God used, God used to bring us to peace that God was satisfied with the work of His Son, and so we had every reason to be satisfied as well.
00:35:01
The second part of the verse is shall live.
We're now in that phase of our lives. We're in the living part. We already know what it is to be just with God if we've enjoyed the gospel messages that have been given at this conference.
But there is inevitably in most lives struggle with the living and there's difficulties, practically speaking, with a chapter like this one because.
The new man in US wants to please God, it wants to do right, and it's confused and upset when it does otherwise.
And very often there's the failure.
There's the acknowledgement of it to the Lord. There is in some measure judging of self that this is not to be and this is not appropriate and this is not the new man, and so on and so forth.
And.
I'll just be bold and dare say there are people in this room that have done that 100 and 200 and 300 times in their lives and gone through that experience.
But this to me, brethren, is the very practical.
And from a personal standpoint, incredibly helpful.
Sometime in your life.
You may come to the point where you say I give up.
I give up.
I can't do it.
In the matter of being just with God, there had to come a point when you said.
I can't do it.
And you turned away from yourself to the one who could.
In a practical sense, sometimes there's the need to come to the point where there's an honesty with the Lord between your own soul and the Lord.
When you say to him, Lord, I can't do it.
In it, there's Deliverance.
Himself.
Because at that point.
You begin to see the Lord Jesus as your daily Savior.
Saving you each day with himself as the object of your soul.
That no longer turns back to self for that deliverance.
But is truly occupied with himself and can get up in the morning and say Lord, you saved my soul. You're my savior today and I need you today to save me every bit as much as I needed the work that you did for me on the cross. That's always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. And so I just present that to you. I don't know if you've experienced that in your life or not, but.
There is a point sometimes where the true deliverance of the soul comes. When there is, you get to the end of self and say, Lord, I can't do it.
And then you're free to see him as your savior.
To live the life of faith as you were made just by that same faith.
A dead man doesn't struggle, does he?
He's dead, huh?
To accept the fact of our total ruin and and then the second step is to.
Accept that the power of Christ is more powerful than the enemy they were resisting and to be able to walk and so we need to I it's been helpful to me or enlightening to me in in going to prisons to see.
How men struggle against temptation and one of the things they fear is when they get out.
They will be confronted with those temptations that brought them down in the beginning, and they're afraid.
Until they lay hold of what Don was speaking about, trusting in themselves.
When they give that up and then learn to take that step of faith and obey the word of God and trust the Lord to give them that strength and power, and that's the victory.
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They put off those things. It's not confidence in self, it's confidence in the Lord. When Joshua told them, put your feet on the necks of these kings, they had to obey that. It must have given them some assurance. We're on the victor side. We can win this battle.
I'm talking about practically putting it into effect daily. Take that step of faith.
Probably someone has used this example.
Somebody has a drinking problem, we get into therapy and.
Gets back his job and so when he goes back home.
He goes on the street, he walks back home and he goes by this drinking place.
And every time he goes back there, he's having a real struggle.
And in the summer, his buddies are out there and they're hey, come on over and.
What if he has done with his drinking and he is conscious that he's so weak he can't take that street anymore to go home?
It takes another street where there's no, there's no bars and he gets home and he hasn't been tempted and he didn't didn't have struggles. And so we need to be simple concerning that which is evil. And if we think we're strong in allowing ourselves to be exposed to temptation, we're wrong. And we're going to find out that sin is stronger than you and me and the devil is stronger than you and me. The Lord is strong, but he will give us simple hearts to say, oh, just take another St.
Don't hang out with these people.
You know, and that's a simple solution and it might not be the one that you chose, but it's the one that's safe.
I had a relative with a serious drinking problem and his wife told me that when it was really bad that he was afraid that drinking buddies would come by and knock on the door and have a bottle. And so he said, please, please, if you see one of my old buddies come to the house, please you be the one to answer the door because I don't have the strength to say no. Please answer the door for me and say he's not here. Well, a better example, the Christian life, the Lord Jesus is abiding in our hearts.
Stopping with him and our life is His dwelling place. And we tell him when temptation comes, you answer the door. And what he would say is to the devil or to the sinful temptation, he's dead. He went with me to the cross. He's dead, He's gone. Now you deal with me. And that's the thing that we do is we turn her over to the Lord Jesus. The old man is gone. He is our life. And let him be the one to answer the door when temptation knocks. But we have to be abiding in Him.
You've got to be communion with him if we're away from him, if we're a day's distance away. In the chapter, knocks at the door.
Than the one who has no strength is going to lose the battle.
Probably sometimes have is called pride.
I know what you're saying is true, but I know in my own heart, often I think that there is one more thing I can try, just one more thing, and I can solve the problem. There's one more word I can add on. There's one more this. And when we get down to the bottom, we'll always say I think there's one more thing I can do instead of as what we've been exalted to do is to commit it out to the Lord.
Unbelief, even though we know, we say we believe, unbelief sets into our hearts too, doesn't it, that we don't have to trust that the Lord would deal with the problem. When we think we can fix whatever problem. What we're really seeing is, Lord, I don't need you. I can solve this problem. And we need to acknowledge that we can't. We can't. And the other thing to us, we are not, I don't believe we're we're not here to solve.
This world's problem.
We're not here to do that, but we are here to follow to listen what he would have us to do So even when we pray, we we think of the the the the Lord's Prayer. So call it really is how the Lord taught the disciples to pray. What did he say to them? They have to learn that thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Do we believe that the Lord is in control of all situations.
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Even though on the surface they look dim and it looks like he needs my help, but really he is in control and sometimes he let things go a little longer but there's a reason and we don't know his purpose, but we can trust in him that he will take care of it.
It's a real help to souls that struggle.
In seeking to keep your focus on the Lord Jesus.
And that's why in the first verses of the chapter it's.
Christ is our life, so it's outside of us. It's looking up to that man in the glory of God. That's my life. I find so often that people start looking in and boy, I got all these struggles and this filthy stuff in there and I can't figure out why it's still rolling around in there. Don't be occupied with what you are be occupied with.
Who you are in Christ.
That's so important in the Christian life. It's keeping the right focus. So in verse eight, it's having put off.
Verse nine, it's that ye have put off the old man with his deeds. Verse 10 and having put on the Newman, which is renewed in the knowledge after the image of him that created him.
And verse 12 put on, therefore having put on as the elect of God.
Holy and beloved bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another. So it's having done these things. And the focus is in verse 11, where there is neither Greek nor Jew. There's no distinctions of nationality, circumcision or uncircumcision, religious distinctions.
Barbarians.
Bond nor free, but Christ is everything and in all that's what's to be before us, that glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if we keep that focus in mind it it really does help us in putting off in recognizing that we have put off and recognizing that in Christ we have put on.
C2 and verse 12. The first thing is holy. If we don't speak much of holiness anymore, we are in a world that defilement is throughout, and often we don't even recognize defilement. The Word of God must stand still. If the action or the activities of the things they do do not stand up to the Word of God, well, that's not holy, is it? Holiness must come first, and then I'll let other comments on the rest of it.
I.
In action with the practical side of these things, I'd like to turn for us to notice for a moment of verse in Romans chapter 12.
Romans chapter 12 and verse one. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove that which is good and acceptable and that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. I'll read the new translation. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
We've talked about the old man and the new man.
And.
We'll talk about it. Supposed person that this afternoon came into this room as an old man, accepted the message of the gospel given to the children this morning and all of us this morning and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior.
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And is now a Newman in Christ Jesus with a new life, a new nature and a new power.
They enjoy fellowship during the course of the day and now, as the day starts to go on, it's time to go home.
They go out the door.
Is there anything more that's needed? Yes, there is. They went out the door with the same mind that they came in.
The mind itself is not identified with the nature that we have. It is a part of our being.
And consequently, part of the difficulty that in practice, in the practical sense of it, long after we may have learned the doctrine of it and can explain the doctrine of the matter, there's the matter of our mind, the mind.
And everyone of us has accumulated over a period of time thought patterns.
And the mind goes back to those patterns of thought even after we're saved. The man that had his habit to go down the street to the local bar, when he walks down the street, if that habit was formed over a period of 10 years, he's got 10 years.
Of thought pattern embedded in his mind. And that's a problem.
It's a problem to the soul because unbidden hated. Use whatever words you want. Those thoughts come back because they're part of the memory, they're part of the mind. And not only that, as part of the mind there are lots of things that we do almost by habit without making a conscious choice. Everybody probably here got up in the morning and by long formed habits of mind, you put your clothes on and your shoes on and.
Your socks on and so on. And part of that process, you weren't even thinking about it. It was just a part of your mind and the pattern of your mind and how you do things. That's why Romans 12 Says.
Being renewed.
In the spirit of your mind means you have to form new thought patterns.
The patterns of thought that are embedded in you need to be removed, or shall I say replaced with a different set of patterns of thought.
And I want to suggest this.
What's the best place? What's the best way to have those patterns of thoughts changed? It's the word of God.
You never in your life have opened the Word of God and received from it a single thought that would tempt you to lust. Not one. It's an absolutely pure source of proper thought.
And we need to develop the pattern of daily life, of going to the source of pure thought.
We're told in this chapter put on certain things and goodness long-suffering.
Kindness. Humbleness.
Where can you get?
A thought pattern that puts that in your mind to practice it.
Go to John 4.
Read The compassion, the humbleness.
Of the way in which the man went to psycho as well.
Sit down and be an observer when Nicodemus comes by night in John Three to talk to the man.
And justice absorb the thought pattern.
And God will take care of the rest of taking the life that He's given you, which is that life, and bringing it into practice. But brethren, sometimes.
You can fight and fight and fight against wrong thoughts and not be delivered.
But what's necessary for practical deliverance is to be occupied in your thoughts with that which is pure. And God will transform, as He says, the mind, so that those patterns of the old man's thoughts drop off and are replaced by those patterns of thought and practice which are consistent with your object, the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:55:26
So in Matthew 11.
Verse.
When the Lord has refused.
His remark is verse 26. Is Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.
All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
Think of accept your repent and becomes a little children.
See. Is it the Kingdom of God? Here's here's the dependent, blessed Lord Jesus the Son, looking up to the Father.
In this time then he says, Come unto me, all ye that labor.
And their heavy laden. Now we often use this for the gospel, but I think in this that we've been.
Here is our blessed object.
And he is.
Giving himself.
As the one to look to.
All ye that labor, are you laboring with bad thought patterns?
And are heavy laden. I'll give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you. Think of that yoke between father and son.
And.
Here is the place to learn. Learn of me.
For I am meek.
Lowly in heart.
And you shall find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
So this.
Humbleness of mind in our chapter and the meekness.
Here we have the chief example.
Hebrews, chapter 10.
The third time that it says the just shall live by faith.
That is the introductory verse to the 11Th chapter where we have all the examples of people who lived by faith is referred to in the case of Noah this morning in the Sunday School, and Abraham is referred to at these meetings. These were people who are given to us as examples of the life of faith.
But then in chapter 12.
It goes beyond that.
And presents the Lord Jesus to us as the perfect model of a life that is lived by faith.
And so we are taken on in the 12Th chapter looking on under Jesus, the author and finisher of that life of faith. It's not his atonement that's being brought out there in chapter 12. It's his life and the character of how he lived it. He lived it by faith. You're speaking a few minutes ago about the Word of God. How did he live his life with respect to the word he says he opened?
Somebody may have to quote it for me more accurately, but.
The morning by morning, he opened my ear to hear the fear of the learned. In other words, I'm not quoting it quite right, but the thought in it is every morning he got up.
To listen to the word of God for his life for that day.
And he had the ear of the learned. Did God give him impure words, impure thoughts?
Abomination to even think so. No, he began his day before his father is God with the perfect.
01:00:01
Mind.
Food for his soul for that day.
And as he went through his day whenever there was a matter that required, What shall I do now? We find him as a man of prayer, because prayer is the true expression of dependence.
I can do it. We our hearts tell us we can't. And so we have to come to where we acknowledge it, recognize that I can't do it. But when we learn what prayer is, we recognize it is the expression of our confidence and one that can do it. And so instead of depending on ourselves for wisdom and knowledge and power, we turn to one and say.
As it were, Lord, you know what's needed and you know how to do it. And very often the answer is stand still and see.
The salvation of the Lord.
And sometimes the very best activity is standing still and seeing the salvation of the Lord. At other times Lord says do, and there's an act of obedience that is in keeping with His will for us, and so on. But still, it's the perfect pattern of the life that overcame is given to us in Hebrews 12.
In the person of the Lord Jesus.
And we do well to go to the Word of God and daily meditate on that person and his life. And it has a transforming effect on our own thoughts, and God uses it to transform our lives in practice.
There are times that we have, we feel that we have the mind of the Lord and we go on and do something and then we find that perhaps our brethren doesn't understand why we do this and we find that others may be opposing to it. But yet we feel we have the mind of the Lord and we insist on it. And I believe this portion give us a few more tests to see if we truly have the Lord's mind, doesn't it? So we go on and tell us more things to hear that.
Do those things show?
Whatever it is kindness, that's a test, isn't it? It's kindness in that action that we feel were so right is humbleness of mine. Meek suffer meekness and long-suffering and then even go on and say forbearing one another we're so right in everyone else is so wrong.
Are we answering some of these tests here for bearing one another and so on, and even having florals with others?
Instruction to you for us to isn't there that we need to truly seek what the Lord want us to do and above all we if we do have our heart and mindset and heavenly things, He will guide and direct us to the right things.
So give us all a little homework.
Each one of us can have the.
Read the Word of God and find an example of every one of these things in verse 12 in the life of the Lord Jesus.
Open the word.
And.
See From the Word of God an example of mercy.
Kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering.
See if you can find it in the record of God and the person of the perfect man. Live the perfect life.
Enjoy it and let God do the transforming.
I just want to give one example. I enjoyed it and even in saying it, it says verse 13 forgiving one another.
Perhaps the most supreme example of all eternity of those words are the words on the way to the cross.
And the man Christ Jesus said.
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Said Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Never find a more perfect example of that expression. I don't think that you will find.
As the Lord Jesus walked from pilots judgment hall to the cross and passed those people and said those words.
And if you think of the flesh, you can think of how impossible it would have been in the flesh to feel that way.
Have that attitude of heart toward them.
Disciples asked the Lord, how often do I need to forgive my brothers?
We know the answer from that right 70 * 7 times that's.
490 And we think about that, how Israel were forgiven in many ways, because for 490 years they didn't wrest the land, and they were sent into captivity for 70 years.
What we would think of that as punishment, which it is, but that is the grace of God, that they were not forsaken, they were still going to be brought back into a blessing.
On the 11Th verse, we find that there were many differences that could be identified between these believers.
But in the 15th verse that the peace of Christ I have an infringement to which you were called into one body rule in your hearts.
That collected piece isn't it, that we should be enjoying together as we are all different, of course. Yet in Christ we've been made one body, and that peace of Christ should be presiding over us. That should keep us from putting forward.
Unless it was for really the glory of the Lord putting forward something that would trouble that peace among the Saints.
That word rule.
If I remember correctly it's it's got the thought of a referee.
So if the peace of Christ is ruling in our hearts.
But the referee does. When something is done that shouldn't be part of the game, it just blows the whistle and it stops it.
So we should.
Signal of the Spirit of God when we're involved with something, when the referee says, well, this is not going to bring peace but discord among the Saints.
Verse 14 is extremely important too. I like to think of it after all the things that are we're told to put on.
Here is the overcoat.
Put on charity or love, which is the bond?
Of perfectness.
This is the Agape lab.
Put it on and it's interesting, brethren. And John's Gospel and John's epistles. I think you can find 7 times when we are told to love one another.
It's a command. He doesn't say if you can do it. No, do it. This is what characterizes Christianity. Love doesn't overlook those principles that need to be addressed. But this love is sacrificial of and I I think so often we tend to think that it is something.
That's connected with our emotions. There is a lot of emotion and love, but it's not that.
It's the settled disposition of favor. That's what this love is. It's it's a command. And so we are commanded to love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples. If you have love one to another. It's the bond of perfectness. That's that's so beautiful. And I like to think of it as the overcoat above all these things put on charity.
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Erlab, which is the bond of perfectness, O brethren.
Here we need to listen to scripture and to seek to whatever wake we can to sacrifice ourselves.
So that we can fulfill this command.
We might say, we might ask, well, how is it the bond of perfectness?
But we're talking agape love, which is a love of commitment.
And so we're committed to one another. It's a bond of perfectness.
3/28.
Lord Jesus, to tell of thy love.
For Jesus to tell.
Forever.
He like.
Glory.
Of love and praise us by day and by night.
When I wherever we love.
Which was stronger than death?
Lord without limit and free.
Descending from glory on ice weighs.
Shame the resources on the cross.
All the way. Not for something slow.
And out the world's glory, but lost.
Gospel 2
Gospel—Steve Hallowell
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Welcome to the Gospel meeting and thank you for giving me some of your time. And maybe we can start by singing #17 in our hymn sheets. If somebody could start that for me.
Have you any room for cheese?
In your life, all of us will.
I've seen our senses admission.
What pleasure of.
Business.
Long before Christine.
My not a place that we can.
Turn.
In the heart for which you live.
Lord gorgeous US Lord of Lords.
Sway the heart, soar widely hold and.
When you enter while you may.
Hear when it's unforgettable.
Sway barks are widely old and.
Light can enter while you may.
Well, I'd like to.
Start, perhaps, with an unusual passage. It's in First Corinthians. We can turn there. First Corinthians, chapter one.
One Corinthians chapter one and verse 18.
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God.
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching, or the preaching, in other words, what's preached to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.
But we preach Christ crucified under the Jews, a stumbling block.
And under the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
And I'd like to turn over to one other verse in Acts chapter 20.
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Acts Chapter 20 and.
Verse 21 And this is the apostle Paul speaking. He's talking about what he preached, says, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith.
Toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
And you might say, well, why did you read those passages To start a gospel meeting?
Well, you know, we live in a society that is.
Generally speaking, there are.
We're encouraged to believe that we know so much now that we don't need to learn anything from the past.
And there's just not much point listening to your parents anymore because.
They didn't know much.
But I want to tell you that these Greeks that we read about.
Actually, 2500 years ago they did most of the thinking. That's the basis of our society today.
They are the ones that started us down the road, the higher mathematics that worked into computer science and various things. They're the ones who are the great philosophers. They're the ones who developed the democratic political system. They were ones that were always looking for some new thing, just like we are today.
And they were the ones who thought that they were very.
Wise and all, they'd kind of tolerate a message like we might have tonight. But.
It was just like what they said to the Apostle Paul. What will this babbler say? You know, I think there's probably some people that come to these gospel meetings and that's what they think.
And that's fine by me because, you know, I don't have a great deal of knowledge or ability to to set people straight. I just have Jesus.
And.
You know the purpose of my talk today is.
Admittedly.
It sounds foolish.
And.
I'm going to ask you.
To bow to a man and entrust him with your life who lived 2000 years ago.
In a little country far away.
For justice, 33 years.
His own people rejected him. They nailed him to a cross which.
In our day, that would be perhaps compared to being sent to the electric chair.
And.
And as far as this world is concerned, that was the end of them.
And I'm asking you to bow to him.
And to follow him.
To entrust your whole life to Him, your eternal future to Him.
Not only that.
But as I read my Bible, I find that following him.
It involves a lot of things. That also sounds foolish.
That I am promised that I am going to have tribulation.
I'm promised that I'm going to have persecution.
I promised that.
I'm going to have divisions in my family.
I promise that I'm not going to escape sickness.
Her other poverty, nakedness, whatever.
All the problems of everyday life, if you're going to follow Jesus in order to get away from those things, I'm going to tell you something. It's not going to work.
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Not only that.
We're told that God our Father is a husbandman and He's going to do pruning in our lives. Just when we think we've grown so well, he's going to cut us off.
So we can produce more fruit and he's going to chasten us.
He's going to there's going to be judgment in the House of God.
There's going to be rebuke, there's going to be correction. You're going to have to learn, be instructed.
None of those things sound like much fun, do they?
And yet it's all.
What I'm up here to ask you to do.
Now doesn't that sound foolish?
You know.
The very strange thing about it is that there's many people in this room and there's millions of people all over the world that have done just that.
Isn't that a?
Isn't that a strange thing?
That I want to.
I want to mention a man in the Bible.
The Apostle Paul.
We're not going to turn to a bunch of verses, right? Because I'm just going to mention them because I don't want to take a lot of time and.
But you know, he was a he was a great scholar. It says I profited in the Jews religion above many my equals.
And he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He had everything going for him. He could have been a really impressive guy.
He said. I counted all lost.
Rama no Christ.
Wait a minute. So he must have had it pretty good, right?
No, he didn't.
I could read you the list. He, it's not even a complete list because he wrote it a long time before. I know he went through another shipwreck and whatnot, but he suffered everywhere. He went three times with he got 40 stripes, saved one. You know, he was in prison, he was in danger, he was in trouble.
For following Jesus.
He says.
Well, I can read you the last letter he wrote. Want to read you some of his own language?
Second Timothy, chapter one and verse 12. And I'll just read it on for the witch, 'cause I also suffer these things. Nevertheless I'm not ashamed, but I know whom I believed, and I'm persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.
Another verse.
Chapter 4 and verse seven I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.
Which the Lord the righteous Judge shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all them.
Also that love is appearing. Here was a man on the verge of death. He lived his whole life.
He thought it was worth it.
Why?
I'd like to look at another man, the Apostle Peter.
In John chapter 6 I believe.
Verse 667 Then said Jesus unto the 12 Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou is the words of eternal life.
And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ.
The Son of the living God.
Perhaps there's a little secret there.
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Why so many people follow Jesus?
Because he has the words of.
The words of eternal life and we believe in our sure.
That he's the Christ, the Son of the living God.
If you're following him so that everything is going to go good in your life.
You may as well stop.
Because he promises it's not going to, but I want to tell you something.
That doesn't make it not worth it.
In fact.
He promises a lot of things that are wonderful things. I want to give you some of his own words. John 316.
For God this is. Jesus spoke this. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
You know.
We would never know God if Jesus hadn't come.
The God who made us. I know they try and reason it away from you, but.
I want you to just look around.
Sometimes they make everybody stay indoors so they can't see what God made.
But it's pretty wonderful and, you know.
That God.
He loves you. He not only loves you.
He loves you enough to give his son.
How did he give his son?
He sent him here to bear the judgment for your sins.
He went to the cross.
And at the very time when people just like us were taking him.
They were laughing at him. They were slapping him on the face. They were taking a whip and turning his back into just a bleeding look, like furrows. They pulled out the hair on his cheeks, they say.
Covered his face and slugged them and they said prophecy who did it?
They took him and they nailed him to a cross.
And they made fun of him while he was up there.
And at that time.
He died not just for their sins, but for our sins.
Tonight.
There was three hours in our time.
That he took those sins, somebody said to me.
Anybody can take anything for three hours.
But you know God says.
Today is with the Lord is 1000 years.
And 1000 years is one day.
We often say, well the Lord is coming quickly and it's just 1000 years.
Like one day.
But what about the other part? A day? This is 1000 years.
We have no idea how much passed between.
God and his Son that day.
We have no way to measure. Time is nothing to God. For us it was three hours.
For him, we don't know.
We don't know how much he suffered, we think.
We think of being in hell for eternity. We think of the billions of people being in hell for eternity, and it never takes away one sin.
00:20:05
What did Jesus bear for you?
To take away your sin.
I'm not here to tell you I don't know.
But you know God gave his Son so that whosoever.
We have that word this morning.
Whosoever.
Believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
He has the words of eternal life.
Do you want them?
Or does that just not matter to you?
But you know.
There's much more to it.
It says in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. And you know, you sort of lump all those sort of things together. But you know, it's one thing to to escape Hellfire. It's another thing to be forgiven.
Furthermore.
We're justified by his blood that that means that God looks at you and anyone who trusts in Jesus, and he doesn't see anything wrong with you.
And he never will, because he sees you in Jesus.
And you know, there's, there's so much more.
That Jesus is she.
He wants to be your companion. He wants to be, he says. I'll never leave you or forsake you.
He wants to be sympathized with you and your troubles.
In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us why we glory and trouble also tribulation also.
Why not? Because we like trouble.
But because we get to know his love in the middle of it.
You know he understands that tells us he remembers that we're but dust.
You know there is nothing like having a person who loves you, who understands you, who cares about your problems, who never ever will give up on you.
Maybe that's why.
Paul thought it was worth it. Maybe that's why Peter thought it was worth it.
I'll go a little more modern.
There was a man by the name of Eric Little.
Back though it was a little while ago, it was almost 100 years ago now. He was a famous runner, he.
He refused to run a race on Sunday because he felt it was the Lord's Day and in the Olympics it was his own time and distance and.
So he ran a much longer race that he never trained for.
A couple of days later.
I don't know what the Lord did, but he won that race.
And he was. They made over him. They were, they were.
Excited about it. It was a great victory for England.
But you know what? They don't so much talk about what happened next. He turned his back on his great sports career and he went and he served in the poorest part of China.
Reaching out to souls with the Gospel.
He ended up in a Japanese prison camp in World War 2.
And he gave his life helping others in that prison camp.
What do you think?
It was worth it.
I want to ask you, do you think it's worth it to follow Jesus?
00:25:03
Everyone of us is going to be tested on that, but I especially wanted to ask those who have never accepted him as savior because.
You know you cannot have a relationship with Jesus except it's coming to him as a Sinner.
That's the only way that you can start even following Jesus. And you said, but I don't know, I'm not that much of A Sinner. I'm better than the kids at school. I don't do such and such.
You know, I go to the jail and I talk to the guys there. I often ask them.
Jesus was asked one time.
What's the greatest commandment?
And I said, what do you think? He said. What do you think is the greatest commandment?
More often than not.
They tell me, Well, probably thou shalt not.
Shouldn't murder thou shalt not kill?
That's a nice comfortable one when we haven't done it yet.
And we would think that's a very logical 1 to my mind too.
But that's not what the Lord Jesus said.
You know.
I'm a.
I'm a janitorial contractor and I get.
I go into businesses and ioffer to clean their buildings and if they hire me, there's usually one or two things that.
Are really, really important and if I don't keep up on those things, I'm going to be out of there.
Now, there might be other things that I can get by with if I don't do them just right, but here's the the one or two things at the top you'd better take care of.
You know.
What are the two most important things?
To God.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
I'm not sure if I get it quite right, but they all thy strength, mind.
I'm not getting that quite right, maybe somebody could help me?
At any rate, it's close.
And then the seconds like it.
You shall love your neighbors yourself.
If these are the, these aren't just some commandments, these are the number one and #2.
They're more important than thou shalt not kill. They're more important than thou shalt not commit adultery. They're more important than all the others.
How have you done? You know, I was talking to a young man on the plane on the way here.
I asked him.
You ever read this?
He said no, I haven't.
I said well, well, what's your philosophy of life?
He said.
Well, I guess just live a good life.
Do do good things.
And I said.
Well, how have you done with that?
He said. Well, I guess I think I've done pretty well.
Then he asked me about something out the window.
As far as he wanted to go with that one.
You know, that's the way we often are.
God brings something to our attention.
And we want to change the subject.
Let's not change the subject here. Let's think about that commandment, that first commandment.
You say, but I love God.
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I want to tell you I love God.
But if I stand up next to that commandment.
I'm down here.
And it's way up here.
I have never a day in my life.
Kept that commandment.
Never.
Maybe somebody here has. I cannot stand next to that commandment and tell you.
That I'm not a Sinner.
Here it is. It is the most important thing that one that God cares about the most. How do you fare when you stand next to it?
Look at the next one. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
I live on a dead end, fire engine turns down my street and I'm coming home from work, sirens blaring.
Do I say?
Hope that's not my neighbor's house.
You know, that might be funny, except that it's important.
If that's what God made me to be, that's not what I am.
I need a savior.
Maybe you could come to that conclusion tonight, too.
You know I'll never be justified that way. I will never be justified by the law.
I only have Jesus.
Do you have Jesus?
Do you want to follow Jesus?
You know.
He gave his life for you and if you well, I'm going to turn to you to another verse you all know.
So you don't probably have to turn to it. It's Romans 10/9 that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus or Jesus is Lord.
You know that's not as easy as it sounds.
That means saying he has the right to tell me.
What to do?
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth, Jesus is Lord, and shall believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead.
Thou shalt be saved.
You know when God raised him from the dead?
That just proved that God actually accepted what he paid. It's just like when you get a receipt when you go to buy something at the store that proves that it's paid for.
Do you believe God accepted what Jesus did?
God's given you proof and God says if you do this.
You're going to be saved.
It's not because you managed to keep the first commandment to the second one.
It's because you bowed to Jesus Christ and you put your trust in what he did.
I hope you will.
You know though, there is a verse that's one of the last verses that the Lord Jesus ever spoke before the Upper Room ministry.
The last, you might say, he had one more opportunity to speak to the multitude.
It's in John chapter 12.
John chapter 12 and verse.
47.
You know, I skipped some things, now I'm going to go back because I want you to hear them. I want you to hear what Jesus says before I tell you. Read you this verse.
It's a.
There's some wonderful things Jesus said, and I'm not going to explain them because I'm only learning them myself.
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I just want you to hear them.
From John chapter 4.
He's talking to the woman at the well.
In verse 13, Jesus answered and said unto her.
Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst but the water that I shall give him.
Shall be in him a well of water springing up in everlasting life.
Chapter 5.
Verse 39.
Search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and there are they which testify of me, and you will not come to me that you might have life.
By implication, if you would come to him, you would have life.
John, Chapter 6.
Verse 35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life, He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Matthew, Chapter 11.
Come unto me, verse 28 all ye that labor, nor heavy laden.
And I will give you rest.
I could read some more, I'm going to stop there.
Does that sound like something you need?
Something I need?
But look, now we'll read that verse again in John chapter 12 and verse 47.
If any man hear my words.
And believe not, I judge him not, for I came not to judge the world.
But to save the world.
He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him.
The word that I have spoken the same shall judge him in the last day.
You know, supposing you're here. Supposing you say that's just not for me.
That's just not important enough to me. I've got some money to make. I've got some stuff to do. I really don't want Jesus telling me what to do.
You know what he says.
I'm not judging you.
I'm here to save you.
But I want to warn you.
That this word that I'm speaking, it is going to judge you in the last day.
Jesus has no interest in judging you.
But it's still going to happen sometime.
If you reject them.
You know, you say, oh, well that was 2000 years ago and he has never come all this time they I've heard people talking about.
His coming and he is just not coming. Everything is continuing the same way it ever was.
You know, it talks about people saying things like that in the last days.
And I think it's probably gone through a few hearts.
But you know what he's waiting for.
It tells us what he's waiting for. He's long-suffering. He's not willing that any should perish. You know, I used to be a little bit impatient with the Lord Jesus.
I thought he ought to hurry up and get here. I thought he ought to. I wanted to go home to heaven. I wanted Jesus to come.
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Still do.
He's allowed a few circumstances in my life.
For I know I wait.
I've got four boys. They sat in meetings like this.
I thought they were all saved. I don't know if any of them are.
And I'm thankful that the Lord's waiting, but maybe he's waiting for you.
You know.
Pardon me.
I want to.
I want to use the rest of the time.
To look at a family in the Bible.
The family that had a lot of privileges.
That God worked with, perhaps more intensely than.
Any family in the Bible. He spends 15 chapters of his word talking about this family.
And he did more miracles for them. He gave them more deliverance as he gave them warnings. He gave them. He gave them everything, just like he's doing for you. That's why you're hearing a gospel meeting tonight, because he is reaching for your soul. And, and I would say that most of the people here have been in lots of these meetings.
And if you don't know Jesus, if you're one of these people.
That reject him and receive not his words.
I want you to take notice of what happened with this family.
Since Second Kings, excuse me, First Kings starts there, it goes into Second Kings.
None.
This family was actually.
In the bloodline of Joseph, the Lord Jesus Father.
What a what a privilege that would be, right? And yet, when, when Joseph's genealogy is mentioned, this family is blotted out of the book.
There's 3 kings of Judah that are eliminated from the genealogy.
Because they're the closest descendants to this family.
I'll second, excuse me, First Kings.
And.
Chapter 16 and verse 28.
So Omri slept with his fathers and was buried in Samaria, and Ahab, his son, reigned in his stead.
And that's who I'm talking about.
In the 30 and 8th year of ASA, king of Judah, began Ahab, the son of Omri, to reign over Israel.
Then they have the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria 20 and two years.
And Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him.
Does that mean God stopped caring about him?
No it didn't.
You know you may die unsaved, but you won't die unloved.
That's what happened with these people.
You know.
I'm not going to go into all the details here. We don't begin to have time. I just want you to notice a few things that God records about this person and about his family.
00:45:03
If we turn over to.
I hope sometime you'll read it for yourself.
He had just his wife had just gotten rid of a man in order to steal his inheritance.
And he was met when he went to claim it by Elijah the prophet, and he was speaking the word of the Lord.
And he says in chapter 21 and verse.
21 Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will make thine house like the House of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the House of Baasha the son of Ahijah. For the provocation wherewith us provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin. And of Jezebel also spake the Lord, saying, The dog shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel him that.
They have in the city the dog shall eat, and him that dieth in the fields of the fowls of the air eat.
Well, you say that's pretty awful, though. That's quite a judgment.
You know what God says about you. The wages of sin is death.
Don't think that you're in a different ballpark than Ahab.
You know it tells us in Hebrews chapter 2 and verse three it says how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?
And you know, there's this family, they all tried different ways of getting around what God said about them because they didn't believe it.
Just like you.
If you don't know Jesus.
Ahab, I'm not like I said, we don't have time. But when he heard this, he well, maybe I could read verse 27. It came to pass when Ahab heard those words that he rent his clothes and put sackcloth upon his flesh and fasted and lay in sackcloth and went softly. And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite saying, See us thou how Ahab humboth himself before me, because he humbled himself before me. I will not bring the evil.
Days, but it is his son's days. Will I bring the evil upon his house?
You know, that was nice. It's a good thing when you feel bad about your sin. But God, like that verse we read earlier. It says repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Tells us another place that the word didn't profit because it wasn't mixed with faith. And then heard them heard it. He he did feel bad, he was scared and that's a good thing. And God, God honored it.
But it wasn't good enough, because he didn't turn and really believe what God had said, and turned to God himself.
And we find the proof of that in the very next chapter.
You know, God had given him some tremendous victories. God had helped him in so many ways. He'd done so many miracles in front of this man.
But here he comes to the.
Last few days of his life he's gotten together with Jehoshaphat and they're going to go up and they're going to fight the Syrians and he gets a word from the Lord.
He.
I suppose I didn't read one part of his what Elijah said to him. He said in the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth. Shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine?
That was the guy he got killed so he could take his inheritance.
So.
He was going to go up to battle, and all these false prophets came and encouraged him to go. And finally Joshua said, whoa, isn't there a prophet of the Lord here? And so he said, yeah, but I don't like him. He always says bad stuff about me.
But they called them in.
00:50:02
And.
He warned him, he said.
Let's see.
He said, I saw all this real scattered upon the hills of sheep that have not a shepherd, and the Lord said these have no master.
Let them return every man to his house in peace.
And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell thee that he had prophesied no good concerning me, but evil?
You know.
Sometimes we don't like what the Bible has to say to us.
And so we think about the Bible and we say.
Well, you know what, like Ahab could have said, well, you know what? They can't wash, they can't lick my blood and Jezreel if I'm going to die up and Ramoth Gilead. I mean, there's there's some contradictions here. I can't believe this stuff. There's a lot of people that do that. They say, oh, there's some so many contradictions in the Bible and they don't.
You can't trust any of that stuff.
You know what happened? He did die. Even though he disguised himself, he did die up at Rammeth Gilead and they brought his chariot home and they washed it out right there were named.
And the dogs licked his blood. And if I could read the passage where it says that.
Verse I want you to notice this in particular. One washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up this blood, and they washed his armor according to the word of the Lord, which he spake, you know.
He tried to get around it. He had his reasons, he had his arguments. He even thought he could fool people by who he was. Maybe. Maybe like you.
And it didn't work. What the Lord said happened.
And I want to tell you.
This book.
Isn't lies. Take it seriously.
The next one is his son. He got to be the next king.
And, you know, he didn't rain very long before he fell out of a window and he got hurt really bad.
So he was.
I thought, well, I'm not going to mistake, make the mistake of asking the prophet of the Lord. He never says anything good. I am going to go ask.
What is it? Bale Zebub, the God of Akron.
So off he goes.
You know what? I found that there's a lot of people who think if I could just get out from under my dad and mom's thumb and I could get out of the meeting room, I wouldn't have to answer to God.
It's not true. Look at the end of his life.
Verse 17 So he died according to the word of the Lord and she lied, she had spoken. You know, you can walk out of here, you can get it, move away from home, you can do what you think is right. You're not going to get away from God.
It doesn't change a thing.
God is still God no matter how far you run.
So don't try.
The next one.
He saw his dad. He saw his brother.
Name was Johorum.
And in verse chapter 3, Now Johor the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel and Samaria the 18th year of Jehoshaphat, and reign 12 years.
And he wrought evil in the sight of the Lord, but not like his father and like his mother, for he put away the image of Baal that his father had made.
Still sin, but he got rid of some of the bad stuff. He turned over a new leaf. He was going to straighten out his act and live a better life.
You know, as soon as things got real rough, though, he was just about cut off the prophet's head. He would have cut off God's head, but he couldn't do that. So he had to cut the profits, try and cut the prophet's head off.
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You know.
And you come to the end of his life.
It's.
It's over in chapter nine of Second Kings and verse 24 says in Jihad, who drew a bow with his full strength and smote Durham between his arms and the arrow went out of his heart at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot. And if I could go down to verse 26 in the end, he Jihu quotes this he says.
I've seen yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his son, saith the Lord. And I will require thee in this plat, saith the Lord.
Now therefore take and cast him into the Platt of ground, according to the word of the Lord.
You know what? That didn't help him either.
And then there was Jezebel, same chapter and.
She's faced with the judgment and she just paints her face and she makes a mock of it.
There's a lot of people that do that too. There's all kinds of people. I've heard so many people make jokes about hell.
They aren't going to joke when they get there.
You know, I could go further there. There's AB seventy sons and you might say you'd think, well, perhaps they thought there was safety in numbers.
They were going to hide in the crowd, but not one of them escaped.
According to the word of the Lord, it goes on, but I, I just want to tell you.
I've set before you life and death.
Therefore, choose life.
It may seem foolish. It may seem stupid to people who are raised in a culture like we're raised in.
With the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Let's.
Sing a song.
#19.
Umm.
Just the 1St 2 verses were short on time.
Somebody to start that?
Christ and.
Joy, I saw.
The blessed now I know.
No one but Christ.
There's love and life and lasting joy.
Lord Jesus.
Found in me.
YP Sing
Colossians 1:13-19
Reading
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.
285.
Verse 2 Thou glorious light of courts above, joy of the Saints below, to us still manifest thy love, that we its depths may know.
Jesus.
Thy hand was.
From.
Is.
From.
Android.
Love my heart.
Holy man, God.
'S son with a Lord, I hope.
Sorry.
Be together.
I know we're not done with the chapter yet, but if we could use this meeting to go back to the first chapter and meditate on the glories of the Lord Jesus in chapter one.
From verse 13 down to 99. Just make that a suggestion.
That is not.
Thought, well, why? I'm glad to go back to the other two so.
What did my brethren say?
We've had such focus on the person of the Lord Jesus at him, thou glorious light of courts above.
I don't know, I just suggest that.
Amen.
Brother.
Perhaps verse 13 down through 19. Is that all right?
Colossians chapter one. We'll start at verse 13.
Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son?
In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be Thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.
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And he is the head of the Body, the Church, who is the beginning, the first born from the dead.
And in all things he might have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell.
There's three places in the New Testament where the.
Glories of the person of our Lord Jesus are particularly focused on.
1St chapter of John. The 1St chapter of Colossians. The 1St chapter of Hebrews.
And each in a little different focus, but I find it.
And rapturing to the heart to just be occupied with something of his glory. When he came into this world, He veiled that glory. And so when they saw him, they said we know him. He's the Carpenter.
That human form that he took was the veil.
So that they didn't recognize who he really was.
Sometimes the glory shone through that human veil. When he was on the ship, and he calmed the winds and the waves, His disciples said, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?
Something of his Creator glory shone through that human veil.
And of course we know that at the transfiguration.
His face shone as the sun, and his garments were white as the light.
Then when they came to take him at.
The end.
He goes forth to meet them, and says, Whom seek you? And they say, Jesus of Nazareth.
He says I am and they go backward to the ground.
Certainly must have been something of his Godhead glory that shone through that human veil.
But oh brethren, we don't grasp.
The immensity of the glory. So in this portion, I suggest that we have the.
Title first born used twice.
In verse 15.
Also in verse 18.
So he that first born is not a matter of being born, because David was called the first born of the kings of the earth in Psalm 89.
It's as tie the love preeminence.
And so there's two spheres.
In this chapter in which the Lord Jesus is the preeminent one. So the first part is from verse 1516, seventeen and then.
That's that's the first creation.
And then from verse 18 and 19, he.
Is the first born from the dead the one who has preeminence in new creation, because new creation begins with Christ in resurrection?
So I just suggest that as kind of an outline of these verses, I have found it so thrilling just to meditate on His glory.
In that 12Th verse.
Giving thanks.
Unto the Father.
Remember 1.
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All evening October, I believe.
I drive to Montreal.
And the sun was setting.
And I don't remember seeing.
Such beautiful skies.
It was like coals and fire.
The sun was setting.
And it looked like coals of fire.
And it moved me to consider.
The setting of the sun as a wind.
And I caused a fire. This creation bears witness in how God has made it to to him.
To the Lord Jesus. So he has translated as the Father has translated us into the Kingdom, and I think Mr. Darby translated and the Kingdom of the Son of his love.
This is the relationship that we have with the father has his children. So if my wife had been with me, I was allowed in the car. If my kids had been with me, if anybody had been, I would have said look at that, look at that sunset. Never saw anything so beautiful.
And I think the Father says to us, look, look at that sunset. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful, so glorious?
He's translated us, transported us into the Kingdom of the Son, of His love, to enjoy in a small measure what He is to the Father and share with him that enjoyment and fellowship, that delight he's found in Him. He would say that isn't he glorious and beautiful? Say, he sure is, Father, He sure is.
Verse 15 he says first of all he is the image.
Of the invisible God.
When God made man, He made him in his.
Image and likeness.
But here the Lord Jesus is called the image of the.
Invisible God, because God necessarily in the grander and the greatness and the Infinity of his person.
It's impossible for creatures to be able to grasp it.
And so God became a man in the person of the Lord Jesus.
And now we can say that the image is the visible representation.
Of that which is infinite.
Amazing wonder. And that's why I think in Matthew's Gospel.
The morning. Read that the other day.
And where it says the father.
Knoweth the Son. They had better rate it because it is interesting. Matthew 11.
And verse 27 he says, All things are delivered unto me of my father.
And no man N the sun.
But the father?
Neither N any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
So that the person of the father is revealed by the son.
It doesn't say that the person of the Son is revealed. It's a mystery, brethren, that God in all His fullness could be represented in a human body.
In the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It's something that just fills the soul and what with wonder to think of it, but the Lord Jesus is the visible.
Representation of that which is infinite and eternal.
00:15:06
Could be Colossians 2 and 9 is that?
For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
Timothy, Chapter 6.
A very striking passage, it seems to me. Pick it up from verse 15.
The blessed and only Potentate first Kings. 615 The King of kings and Lord of Lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach, unto whom no man hath seen nor can see, To whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen.
The essential.
Glory of glories where God has always dwelled, man could never approach to.
But God has been pleased to come out of that place in the person of His Son.
And John exalts in this in John chapter one and in passages like this.
And to think that in that coming out as the Lord Jesus could say, I came out from God and nothing was left behind of God had glory, we could say because God was able to include if, if I could put it this way, it's holy ground.
Everything as we as our brother read in verse 9, all the fullness of the Godhead.
Dwelt bodily in him. I can remember as a young fresh Christian reading this for the first time, I had just put the Bible back down on the tape.
Nothing left out. The greatest artist in the world seeks to express himself in some painting or in some sculpture.
And the greatest that has ever lived, Leonardo, whoever it is, Rembrandt couldn't really express everything in a little human heart, But God has been able to express all that he is in the person of his Son, and he's come out to us that we might behold his Lord.
Thinking of the thought that here is the glorious one. But it begins by telling us that He deliver us. He came to deliver us from the power of darkness. That makes it even more amazing, isn't it? This world was under the authority of that darkness, and now light, the full exhibition of light, came to deliver us from that.
Sometimes in my work we get involved in transit systems and cities and to rebuild them or whatever, and you'll go to the city. We're not really familiar with it. We look at a map, we go to the full, the very first stop. Sometimes it's out in a very rough part of town. We get on the very, very beginning and we ride it all the way to the end.
And that's what God has done for you and me. We got on in the dark, dark place. We couldn't have been lower.
The Lord Jesus was with the wild beasts, and they never laid a paw on him.
He walks among men who were the delight of God in the original creation. We know what happened.
We were in darkness and under the power of darkness, but he's taken us to the last stop.
Because what else more could He have done than assign us a place with His Son as we were speaking the other night, We stand accepted in the place, and none but Christ could claim.
Problems. Sometimes we have as many. We don't recognize the majestic power of our Lord. We need to be told. We need to be manifest. I was thinking of the loop in Luke's Gospel when the demon call himself the Legion. Actually, let's turn to that. I can't hold it right. Luke's Gospel, chapter 8.
In verse 27 there we came into this man and who would dwell in tombs. In verse 28, just read that. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee Jesus?
00:20:15
Thou son of God, Most High, I beseech thee.
Torment me not. These are the devil who sees Jesus coming in, perhaps for the first time in this place. They recognize who he is without introduction. They know. And if you notice, they didn't just say Jesus go away from us. Look at the title. Look at what they recognized that Jesus.
Thou son of God, the devil believe, and they tremble because they know who he is.
And not just the Son of God, they even acknowledge that the Son of God.
Most High, and they also know the place they ought to be. Why torment us? Thou? They even beg Him and the following verses not to send them into that bottomless pitch, at least not for now. So the these unseen world recognize the power of our Lord, but we as men often forget.
Chapter tells us that he is the one who created.
Those invisible beings, whether angels or archangels, and the fallen ones too, He is the creator of all things.
You're occupied with visible things mainly, aren't we? In this light? It seems like there's so much occupation with that which is visible, and there's no way to avoid it but to realize that there is a world that is invisible, the spirit world. And so he created not only that which is in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be Thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.
All things were created by him and for him.
Incredible power when we consider the vastness of the visible universe.
They say they can see out approximately about 13 billion light years.
But what is billions of years to God means nothing, because God inhabits eternity.
So it's the vastness of it and I, I don't think frankly rather than that.
There will ever be any get into the end of the visible universe as far as man's concerned.
I do believe there is an end to it because of the fact that that's the way we know creation. It's measurable and so there is an end. But where is that end? I don't think man will get to it because it's part of the revelation of the greatness of our God. How great is He?
Beyond.
Our ability to grasp.
Can I use a corrected word, brother? And taking the occasion, I'm going to say something brother about Tony, you said incredible power.
No. We think it's credible power. We believe. Thank you. We believe that. Don't we believe that? I can't measure it. It's unfathomable beyond my capacity to lay hold of it, but I believe it.
I'm sure you wouldn't mind that brother. Thank you.
Thank the Lord too. We believe not because we're smarter than the rest. He even have to give us the light to understand and believing. So I was just thinking as you're quoting this billions of years away. Well man, what are the thought is well, perhaps we can find a place out there knowing this world was coming to this end that we can escape to it. But in reality, even their own thinking is fraud because first of all, if it's so many light years away, well #1.
Man without body, the physics tells us that nothing with a mask and travel at the speed of light, so you can't get there if it's a billion years away. And even if you could have traveled at the speed of life, well our lifespan wouldn't last that long. So really all this discovery is a fraud that man wants to justify that we can do things ourselves and leave God out of the picture.
00:25:08
You look at creation and.
What holds the atoms together and then the nucleus of the atom that, that power, that atomic power, they, they kind of have that. What's holding all that together? What are, what are there's physical laws, you know, but it says here that all things by him subsist. He made the things and he's holding it. It's by him. When he decides that it's over, it's going to disappear. He's not going to hold it together.
Anymore faith goes beyond science, and what it reaches is God and his power. And God says this is true. My son, the humble Jesus who hung on the cross, in whose face we spit, He's the one that's holding the universe together by the word of his power.
Look at that first expression again. Who is the image of the invisible God? That we've had these contemplations of his immense power, his glory, and yet.
In John's gospel when he performs his first miracle.
And he manifests his glory.
He goes to a wedding and they run out of wine and he provides.
Wine for that wedding.
And it says He this was his first miracle, and he manifested his glory. What kind of glory is that?
Well, what it tells me here was here was God manifest on the earth, and he cared about this little detail of the wine at a wedding.
And he thought it was glorious to intervene in a little tiny circumstance in a little tiny village.
The marriage.
And you know what it tells me who's interested in the little details of your life.
It's somebody that loves you.
You know, that's the glory that he manifested here.
Not only in the greatness of the universe, but in the minuteness of detail that he's interested in.
And I often think.
Of him standing there.
In the counsel of the Jews.
And.
One place it says that when the chief priest comes up and spits in his face.
I can't think of a more dehumanizing act towards another human being.
What is the reaction?
No reaction.
Oh, brother.
This is our God.
The meekness.
Beautiful.
It's so much greater than our smallness, isn't he?
There's two aspects here 2 That are important, I think, for our souls. One is fitness and the other's capacity. The apostle is giving thanks here as he presents the glory of the Son of God's love to us, that first of all the Saints were made fit.
To participate in and to be able to share in the glory that's being revealed in the person, that's a wonderful aspect to us, that there's glory.
But there are many who will never see it.
And never enjoy it, because you have to be made fit in order to be brought into the Kingdom of the Son of His love, where that glory can be enjoyed and seen. And so, brethren, we give thanks to God this morning that we have been made fit to be able to enter into that sphere of things where we can behold the glory.
The second is capacity.
00:30:00
God.
Didn't make known this glory to the ants or the fish.
It says in Psalm 19 that He created mankind to be able to see some of the glory. We've been hearing about. The immensity and the greatness of the universe and mankind in general is so made that He can see that glory of God and recognize that it had a Creator.
And appreciate and measure that glory, even whether he's a believer or not. Albert Einstein, for example, one of the most well known.
Scientists. Philosophers.
Saw the glory, and God had given him the capacity that he recognized and acknowledged.
There must be a creator.
As he saw the visible display of glory, God has created angels. Angels have the capacity to see something of the glory of their Creator.
But they don't have the capacity that you and I have.
They don't have the capacity to actually sit and enjoy the revelation of the greatness of the person.
Why first of all?
They don't. They were not created with that capacity.
They don't have the relationship of redemption that brings them into out of the darkness, into the greatness of the light. Yesterday we talked a lot about the life.
That we have. What is it? It's the life of Christ. What does that do for us? It gives us the capacity to enjoy the glory in a way that no other creature can. A man that's not saved can't do it. He doesn't have the capacity for it. He's not fit to see it in the 1St place, to be in the presence of it. You can see the glory of creation, but he can't see the full glory of the person.
That is the son of God's love and the relationship of that son to his Father that we have been brought into the enjoyment of that and Paul's prayer here is at where is and what he's bringing out is I thank God that he's done that for us and brought us into this place in which we enjoy as having the life of Christ.
And Christ in us that this very person in all his glory is brought into such an intimate connection with us that we are enabled of God to appreciate it, to enjoy it, and to be found in the wonder of it. It's been said rightly, we don't understand it. Will that in that one aspect we do not. And it's the aspect that we always remain creatures.
So we're always finite.
He is infinite in His person and we can never grasp that. We can never lay hold of the fullness of the Infinity of His person and the Infinity of His love and so on. But God has said, no, you can't.
But I'm going to take what you are and the capacity of the vessel that I have made you to be, and I'm going to fill you full with himself and my love, and you'll just overflow and worship and pray. And that's what we are, those vessels that have been filled to the fullness of the capacity to enjoy himself, to produce in us eternal worshippers and praise of himself.
Part of the invisible creation is the angelic creation, and it's an interesting thing to look through the scriptures as to what it says. He makes his angels spirits, so they are spirit beings.
00:35:03
And they are of a higher order than the human creation, because when the Lord Jesus became a man, he was made a little lower than the angels.
Somebody has said he passed up Angels twice.
He passed angels on his word descent to becoming a man.
And then?
In glory as a man.
He goes far above, and angels and all things are.
Subjected to him as a man. Amazing to think there's a man, a human being in the glory of God today that is at the pinnacle of all power and authority, and we are associated with him. But it's interesting in these portions.
And the part that is connected with our association with Him is from verse 18 and 19, where it speaks of him as the head of the body, the church who is the beginning, the first born of from the dead, because there could be no union with Him until redemption was accomplished. And so here in this second sphere that it's speaking about, that he is the first born.
In verse 18.
It's in resurrection because.
New creation begins with the Lord Jesus in resurrection.
And as such, He is the head of a new creation, and there is union with us who are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. Wonderful.
Weekend before the work of redemption was accomplished, there were those who knew God, who had fellowship with God in the Old Testament. Amazing how much they did know Job and.
David and Abraham and so many others and Moses who actually saw the glory of God from behind. But it was only to a certain point. But rather than to think that now we are brought into union with this glorious person only in resurrection, and so he is the head of the body, the Church.
Who is the beginning? Now that's the beginning of new creation. If you look at Revelation chapter 3, you have that same expression, and I think it relates to what we have here. When he's talking to the Church of the Laodiceans. He says this in verse 14 of Revelation 3. These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness.
This part the beginning of the creation of God. If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new, and all things are of God. In new creation, everything is of God. Brethren, we are still connected to this first creation, but by new birth we've been brought into new creation.
Wonderful truth, brethren, to enjoy.
Was thinking of those expression there delivered us from the power of darkness.
And he mentions in the 16th verse.
Drones, dominions, principalities and powers.
When he made them, there was no darkness, but there was rebellion, wasn't there? And.
When you read in Ephesians chapter 6.
Verse 12. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
For description there of these invisible powers, you might say that we've been delivered from.
I've enjoyed that David. He slew Goliath. Parallel that with Lord's victory over Satan at the cross.
00:40:06
But then four of David's servants.
They slew four sons of the giant.
And so these are the enemies that we face. And so in Ephesians chapter 6, it says that finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
His power and might is way above that of spiritual wickedness and darkness in high places. So we put on the armor of God provided for us. All things are new, all of God.
They're bulletproof. If I could use the expression, you know.
So I just thought of that in connection with those four elements now, powers of darkness, that God has given us the resources from Himself to withstand these and to be victorious like our Lord was victorious on the cross.
How important it is to recognize that there is this invisible world and the what you are mentioning there in Ephesians six of the need of having on the armor of God. Brethren, in these last days. It does seem to me that the spiritual warfare is quite intense here in this country. It's interesting somebody has pointed out years ago to me and I found it very interesting that.
In the book of Daniel, you find Daniel praying in Chapter 9.
And in chapter 10, in Chapter 9, he gets his prayer answered immediately that man Gabriel came, which was an Angel, really came and gave him the answer to his prayer.
Chapter 10.
There's a delay of three weeks.
And when the answer does come, the messenger says the reason I was delayed was because I was with the Prince of Persia. And now that I'm going to return, I'm going to go to the Prince of Greece. Was the time when the Persian Empire was changing to the Grecian Empire?
And if we would realize, brethren, the intensity and the reality of the spiritual warfare that goes on in government circles, it certainly becomes us to be praying for those in authority.
You know, sometimes in our prayer meetings barely hear a reference to.
Those in authority, we need to pray for him, brethren. This is part, very real, part of the creation that we are part of.
Verse 17 it says He is before all things and.
Via him, all things consist or subsist.
It's bringing before us something of the glory of the person that we're enjoying. His person and His glory is the Son of God's love.
Telling us that before there was anything any of this, we've been talking about the creation and the immensity of it and the beauty of it and the glory of it and so on. Before any of that existed, He was.
In this person that brings glory and majesty. When we think of it, here's one that was before any created thing existed. He was not created. He was the Son of God from all eternity. It is person, and so it's brought before us. He's before all things.
But then the next statement is wonderful as well.
By him all things obsessed.
We can talk about what was before time, even though we can't understand it really, because we're creatures of time, but we can talk about it anyways.
But what about today? What about this morning? I think it's in Job. The question is raised well. What happens if God just took his eye off the world for a moment?
That would be the end of the world.
God, by his power it isn't. A man, studies all the laws of nature and all the rest of it, and that's as far as he can go. But what sustains the law of nature?
00:45:01
Why do those laws continue to exist? Why are they what they are?
It's because the Creator God creates the not only created them, but sustains them moment by moment. And that's the person of the Creator and the Son of His love. By Him we're all things created and by Him.
We bless the glory of His person that this morning He's keeping the sun up there working.
He's providing the natural laws, as man calls them. He's keeping him operating moment by moment. And so that's the immensity of his present work according to his glory. But I'd also like to make a comment on the matter of the powers of evil and the unseen powers that work today in connection with the glory of his person, and that's this.
As long as there's sin, there's going to be conflict. As long as they exist, the flesh, the world and the devil in a place of sin, there's going to be conflict involved in it. And we tend to perhaps worry some about what's going to happen tomorrow or the next day. We have responsibility, as is mentioned, pray for the powers that be we were told to put to death and put into the state of death and live daily.
In the subsequent exhortation out the life, but.
Can't we sit here and not worry?
Well, the end of this later in this very first chapter, with respect to all those things, verse 27 says the end of the verse, Christ in you, the hope of glory. What's that say?
Says your destiny is as sure as the glory of this person.
Is there any question mark that Satan will have the last word? The world will have the last word, your flesh will have the last word that will keep you from the destiny of glory and from sitting down with the Father at His table to have the person of this glorious Christ before your heart forever to start a feast that has no end.
Can it happen?
Well, only if this Christ who's in you fails.
That's impossible, can't even think about it. And your destiny and mine is as sure as the greatness of the person that we're enjoying this morning. Praise the Lord, Amen.
David.
When he slew Goliath.
It's interesting it almost the language almost seems like he kills him twice.
Because he hits him with a stone in his foot, and he falls to the earth, and it says David slew him.
But then he goes up. He takes Goliath's own sword through death. He destroyed him that had the power of death. He takes the sword, cuts off his head, and it says he slew it.
But that's not then. Later on, he takes his head to Jerusalem. It's displayed gruesome.
But he takes his armor into his own tent, and so there was a V1 at Calvary's Cross.
There's the power of his victory evident in your life and mine now in this world, despite the adversary that we've been talking about adversaries. But as Paul wrote in the end of Romans, the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. There's no.
Going to come a time when he's all this wicked, this wicked creation fallen, a heavenly creation, spiritual creation will be cast out of heaven.
Then God will deal with the same on earth, and He's going to bruise Satan under our feet shortly. As the God of peace and His counsel, His purpose will be fulfilled. We'll be part of it.
Say the same things that have just been said, but in slightly different words.
When the army of Israel looked at Goliath, they looked at themselves and compared themselves to Goliath, and they were afraid.
00:50:01
When David came into the camp, he did not compare himself to Goliath. He said, who is this man to defy the armies of the living God? He compared the battle, the conflict between the living God and Goliath. What do we compare?
All the conflict of today to ourselves, hope not. It's between the living God, the person, that of our chapter, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he has done, the victories that he has won, the work that he will still do, between everything that is supposed to God and man. And so we can look at the person of the Lord Jesus this morning.
And say all the battles are in his hands.
Children of Israel, when David slew Goliath, he fell to the ground. I believe he was dead.
But the children of Israel, they were still afraid. If this guy gets up, man, is he going to be mad, you know? But when David cut off his head.
What? There was no doubt. So the Lord vanquished him in death. What's the proof of it? He comes out of death.
Arisen Christ now the other side, the ones that he rose from the dead in this life, Lazarus and the young young girl of 12 and the widow of named her son, they came back on this side of death.
But he rose up from the dead on the other side of death. No more question of death ever. And we should be like the children say, wow, what a victory.
To be continued, maybe in the glory, if not here on earth. Time's up #132.
Great praise 1 slaying by now.
Again.
In.
Mind.
Sorry.
I.
God.
And praise the church.
And.
Lord.
Of all.
Angry.
1 Thessalonians 1
Address—David So
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Thank you for still sitting still.
Went I looked onto schedule and see.
Closing meeting.
I perhaps look at things differently. It gave me a different thought. Closing as if, well, depending on how you look at it, as the last meeting or is this the very last meeting we can have?
Wouldn't it be nice? This is truly the closing meeting. You know, some of you may have flown here or some of you been on a plane before. If you ever listened to the captain as he come down the runway, he said. We're making our final approach.
As if we're not going to fly anymore. This is it. And let's trust that this is it. Let's look to the Lord for help. I'd like to turn to the first chapter.
First Thessalonians. The thought may seem similar, but let's trust the Lord.
Give us fresh thoughts.
First Thessalonians chapter, chapter one.
It's been on my heart with this this book for a while.
I like to contrast that with contrast that with Ephesians.
You know, I'll often say he fees the book of Ephesians gave us the highest church truth. And as I look around and many of us here, I have known many of you for many years and I know some of the sisters, I'm careful not to use the word odor. Some of you have watched me grow up and seen my foolish years or my fun years, depending on how you look at it.
And so you know that many of us been in the faith for a while, but the Ephesians we know had a problem.
When the 2nd epistle was written to them, they were reminded that the Lord still know the works. You remember that, right? But then he said.
Into King James is I have somewhat against thee. Now, can you picture you say to your kids I have somewhat having a problem with you? I don't think that's the proper thoughts there. I really think the Lords I have against thee. Oh, that's terrible thought, isn't it? What did they do wrong? Paul, you're looking at me. Are you associating that maybe Mom and Dad has something to say to you in that home?
I got a problem with you that's that's hard, isn't it?
But we ought to listen. Theirs wasn't what they have done, but it's not the worked. But they have left their first love.
So easy, brethren. You know I've been wrestling with this thought.
The one breath we enjoy speaking to one another. And shall we see thy face, and see and hear that welcoming voice?
We need to seek and live in glory. We've been exalted and rightly so. But then.
I know I can't speak for others. Sometimes we the minute we'll go outside.
Our thoughts, our hearts start going.
Well, worldly. Well, perhaps that's the right word. Become earthly again.
S difficult, isn't it?
We say we would rather be with the Lord and then.
We admit it, Lord, the one whom thou love us. Love us? No, no, sorry, Lord, the one who is close to me, why are you taking him home?
Do we not wrestle with that? And then?
Perhaps a circumstance change. You're the one that with the illness, the Lord may take you home.
Do we have to faith? Do we? I wrestle with that. So the book of Thessalonians, I enjoy that because these are new Christians.
New in faith and sometimes it's nice to go back to the beginning as Bruce reminded us sometimes it's nice to take the bus from the beginning to the end to see what that route truly is like. So I enjoy that I not my intention to go through the book just depict our few thoughts how they were exalted by the apostle as new believers. Remember he was only in Thessalonica for three Sabbath. We found that in the.
I think the 17th chapter of Acts and he didn't leave the city under good term. He was chased away. So he didn't even have time to say, OK, now before I go, I would like to No, he didn't couldn't even do that. And by the way, the Spirit of God worked wonderfully, didn't it? The word was presented, an assembly was formed. We, I don't believe we know even who, what, how, but an assembly.
00:05:18
Was formed.
So sometimes you have to remember it. In our chapter, we go further. He's the head of the church. And you know, often we have difficulties and we forget. Wait a minute, there's a head here.
To the sea need me. Does he need you to make sure that it's done right? And if it's not done right, do we believe there's a head? And you know, sometimes too, even what works we go, we often get reminded the harvest is right to be as white ready to be harvest. But the laborers are few and some of us feel burdened. But then we have to read on. Wait a minute. Is that there is the Lord of the harvest.
We need to be calm.
But before we get called, we need to be ready, sanctify and be ready for the master's use, don't we?
So let's turn to 1St Thessalonians chapter one. I'm going to begin from the beginning, verse one.
Paul and Sylvanas and Timotheus unto the Church of Thessalonians, which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, there is so much said in this one verse.
And I know there will be many things that I will miss.
Paul. Now notice he said, Paul, you go to Galatians, you go to some epistle.
He said the apostle.
Interesting this is just Paul.
We are equal when we say accommodate an apostle. In fact, he said, do I need to come with a rod to correct you? No, not in this case. This is exaltation. In fact, when you get to the second chapter, which we won't go into, he talked about how he was like a father nursing. Wonderful, isn't it?
Paul.
Oh, just Paul and Sylvanus and Timotheus. We know he was so worried about them he sent Timotheus to check them out and he was didn't have good peace until Timothy can come back and give them a report. So he wrote to the Church of the Assembly of the Thessalonians now.
I believe we took some of these up, but perhaps we didn't say it loudly. He addressed this, which is in God the Father.
Do we recognize that God the Father is involved?
Israel, of all they knew there is a God. Jehovah is the one whom they fear.
They did not know Him as a father. They know Him as a God. Do you as redeem one, know that He is a God? Not only a God, but our Father. So often when we pray, we can say our God. And by the way, I believe that's proper, addressing Him as God first and our Father.
Isn't it wonderful to have that close relationship?
If you remember, if you recall the.
Parables of the prodigal son. We often speaks of him, but if you go further at the end of the chapter, it speaks of his older brother. It's interesting. If you spend the time to look at it, you'll find that the older brother heard music and dancing in the father's house. And what did he do? What would you do if you heard something in your dad's house?
I would run over to see what's going on. No, he called one of the servants over and said, hey, what's going on in dad's house? What kind of relationship he had with his father? He did not even know the father planned for this big party. He wouldn't even kill the fatted calf. And you can look up into that fatted calf picture, too. There's so much in there. What is your relationship? Do you need to talk to the?
God through a mediator, No, He's your father. We can address him. So he reminded them that in God the Father.
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And.
In the Lord Jesus Christ.
His full title, He is our Lord, the one whom we have given our life over to him. That's what the Lord is. He can demand for our life. We think that Him sometimes our life, our awe, well, He's our Lord. His name is Jesus, the one who came to save his people from their sins.
And how beautiful. This weekend, we look at both sides of redemption.
Propitiation God's side and man South side, but he is our Lord, He is Jesus and he is the anointed. 1 Jesus Christ. Then he's able to say to them, grace be unto you and peace, and it's from our Father our God, and from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. You find God's work often the Trinity is working together.
Especially when we look carefully.
God the Father and the Spirit and through his Spirit that he teach us more about our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Now I'm going to skip some of the verses. I'm going to go down part way through verse 3. The apostle recognized three things which we know we ourselves.
So as Christian as we are call, there are three characteristics that Christians are known for.
You know that faith.
Love and hope, but it's interesting in here now you find in Colossians he mentioned that too, but the wording used here a little bit different. Verse three he says, remembering without ceasing.
Your work of faith.
Work of faith. Not just faith, not just work, but your work of faith.
Sometimes we have work. Sometimes we think we have faith. Sometimes we don't have work. We don't have faith. Show me your work and I'll show you my faith. And sometimes we think work and faith goes together.
Or does it? I enjoy reading one time this isn't I don't remember the article.
Perhaps you, as I say, through one of the BTP publications, that should help you find that. And this brother explained to us, it's like fire and smoke. We often use that phrase, well, if there is smoke, there is fire. You heard of that? But it's not quite true. It's true that if there's smoke, chances that there is fire. But fire is not smoke and smoke is not fire.
Smoke.
Smoke. You can cry. You can. I should say you can tear smoke come into your face. It doesn't give you any warmth. Right? I heard there was a bonfire the other night. I don't know if it ever did. And some of the young people would remember. Is fun to have a bonfire. Well, the problem is you mean the front row is too hot. You stand behind at the second or third row. You don't feel the heat because it's blocked, but you may feel the smoke coming by.
And makes you cry. And makes your clothes smell smoke for days.
Fire give heat, fire have other purposes or usefulness were smoke don't.
Smoke is the evidence there is a fire, but it doesn't mean there is a fire. So when we look at one's work, is it the work of faith? And I'm not going to use examples because then you can point fingers back. You have to judge that faith is simply believing what God wanted you to do. Faith is very simple. You don't need to go through these scientific explanations.
Why? That's your faith. Faith is simple work of faith, not just work. It's not good to just pick up someone else's work. You call and do you have the faith in doing so. The apostle recognized this new Christians, they have to work our faith. There is evidence. You don't need to prove it.
Then he said the labor of love, not just love.
Their work to do that.
Often hear this expression.
00:15:01
There's no love shown here.
What is love?
Is this spoon feeding?
A brother loved me because he would do everything I asked him to do.
And do it for me. Is that love?
I spoke at this briefly last weekend in Vesto. Now use a similar illustration. I was able to pick on a young man and I won't do it here. And because everybody know that young man so was OK, I said, well, what if he as a teenager said to his mom, mom, I want firecrackers.
What? Mom, just say, well, because I love you so much that I'll let you buy as much as many firecrackers as possible. Well, I don't think so. I know his mother.
Now, yes, maybe he'll find a way to get it, but that's another story. But our love, a mother would say to a young child, no, firecrackers wouldn't be a good toy, even though you might think it's fun to have. Is that love? I think that's love. The mother is teaching him that is not something he ought to have.
Here What about love, one toward another?
We know Scripture said, where to do unto the least of our brethren.
And I'll confess something else with you.
It's difficult. I find it difficult.
If a brother from an unknown place, we know of him, but no, but from away from us coming look destitute.
And perhaps he's been homeless for a while, and you know that you can smell him from down the hallway.
How many of us would be that eager to be the first one to run up the sea if this brother truly need help?
I'll confess I have trouble with that.
But we know we ought to. In fact, I know I should tell you that you should.
Is that love?
It's hard, isn't it? But as Christian walk, it's not just the love. We'll find a three go hand in hand together. Because when you have that work of faith, I believe the label of love will come a lot easier when we are reminded what the Lord has done for us. How destitute were you? I can't say I was.
How blind were we? How poor?
In the power of darkness.
Yet he came down.
That's the true exhibition of love for God.
So loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Then he said.
Perhaps it's easy to reread the whole verse again, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father.
It's not in the sight of our brethren.
It's easy to talk to you and tell you my faith.
It's not easy to walk, is it? It's not easy when we are with our coworkers, with our friends at schools.
But here do we have and are reminded of the hope. Now notice here not just the hope is the patience of hope.
How long do we have to wait?
How long?
Not only that, we are brethren who waited and now.
The absent in the body.
That's why when you get to the 4th chapter, they actually did raise that question, didn't they? How long do we wait? Well, we need to learn that. Let me change that.
Many of my brethren who have gone ahead of me, now the body, they are absent in the body.
But you know, brethren, we have something that is so wonderful that we don't often look onto.
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We may have the privilege to be to see the Lord taking us home without going through the article of death.
Even if I say I am older, I may do we believe the lawmaker come any moment. So if a brother here is 95 years of age, could he Oh what a wonderful thing that we and.
Again, it's not my thought to go into that, but he further on expounded. Are we waiting for that child from our glorious Lord, That blessed hope, That hope I believe, is more than just Him taking us home. Yes, it's wonderful to know that the dead in Christ shall rise 1St and we which are alive and remain, we will be caught up together in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Believe the book here. The thought really is his coming, The Lord's coming, in fact. Let me digress.
Some of you may have the King James translation. In fact, just for property of time, you can look that up. That section is in bracket. It's a parenthesis. They are looking for the coming of the Lord to take care of everything, all the problems in this world.
But if you look into King James on the 4th chapter, that's in parentheses. SF Well, let me share some secret with you in between that you the one who have gone before, he's going to take us out of this scene. Yes, the Lord's still going to come. So we find at the end of the first chapter in verse 10 there he can say, let me read verse nine first. And for they themselves show us what?
Manner of entering in what we had unto you.
And how he turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. What a wonderful thing that they have learned. They turn to God from idols. You know, sometimes we say in this country, well, we don't have idols. If a brother Tim was here, he can say he can tell us stories of all these idols they have in foreign lands. And I'm sure brother Bob May sees some of those as he travels.
And I said it to a man one day, he said, what do you mean? He said right here in the city of Toronto, or I should say right back at the city of Toronto, he said, we got idols. I go, oh, you mean the new, new Buddhist temple and the mosque. And he go, no, no, look at all those bank buildings.
Idols. Isn't it different forms? Anything that take your heart from our Lord is idle.
Idolatry is a problem for many of us. Still you say no, I don't have that wooden things.
Some of you may enjoy Chinese food. I do know on occasions you go into a Chinese restaurant. Most, if not all, if you look carefully in the back corner somewhere, there's a little, I don't know what they call the sanctuary with incense burning. That's their idol. But you know, The funny thing with their idol is they're like Christians.
It's an idol because one it is an idol 2.
I share with some young people the other day. You notice if you look carefully at the incense.
They're just yellow stick with an LED bulb at the end.
They want to make sure that continually burns.
So it fulfilled their obligation as whatever it is in regard to burning the incense. And sometimes you see some meat or fresh fruit on it, Look carefully.
They're really nicely done, not probably made in China. Plastic fruit almost look real this way they can continually outward appearance they do. I don't know what they have to do required to. Well, we laughed. Do we not do that?
I don't know what your idols are.
That we put an outward front and inwardly we serve something else. Brewing money can be an idol, too.
Food can be an item.
If you live for the food, that's an idol.
Today, exercising, bodybuilding, I said to some young man yesterday, he said he'd go to the gym. I said I don't know what that word means. I haven't been in one yet.
I'm not saying they're wrong. It can be an idol if this is where your heart and your mind is focused on. So they turn from idols in their case, perhaps these real things that they bow and worshipped to God. Many here, I know you have turned to God. Oh.
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But we need to be like these Christians of old. Put away those idols.
And look back to God and be guided by Him.
And verse 10 and to wait for this, for his Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus which deliver us from the wrath to come. That's how we know this is not talking about a rapture. There is a wrath to come. This world is going to face that wrath that Jesus going to come.
Not like he did the first time.
Is to come to execute judgment upon this earth.
Young people learn this phrase.
We know the Son of God, you can look that up to see what it means. I'm sure you understand that. Look up the Son of Man is an interesting phrase or term in there. I'll give you a little hint as you look it up. The Son of Man sneaks off the despised and rejected 1.
The Son of Man is also the one who's going to come and execute judgment. It's interesting to look up that character, the Son of Man. So there is the Son of God with a capital S. There is a Son of Man with a capital's. There are the sons small's of man and the sons of God. It's interesting that I will leave that part with you. They were exhorted.
And be reminded, this world is ripe for judgment.
Now with one more comment.
A lot of people in this world would acknowledge that we're from Adam.
Very few would deny that.
But yet not very many would say we're from Noah. I know I'm from Noah, and I'm pretty sure, in fact I'm 100% sure you are from Noah.
Why do we not talk that way?
Now this is just my own fault.
If I say I'm from Adam Adams bad, he's saying So what? I'm bad too?
Noah Very different. Noah There was a judgment, not just judgment, but judgment was executed.
Only eight souls were saved the whole world, including perhaps some of the angels.
These spiritual beings were put and will find that in Peter is there into those pits chained in the darkness. Oh, I trust that we can be encouraged by looking at these so-called newly saved Christians. I don't know how. Oh I heard someone said perhaps 3 weeks, 3 months. I'm not too sure why I need someone to help me how they determine that because the apostle Paul from what?
And didn't write the first epistle. This is the first epistle we wrote, but it's more likely on the second missionary journey. So there was a little bit of time in between. So either way, it's not important. But to know that, let's read that again instead of me saying it. The work of faith, the labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the sight of God.
And our father, perhaps we'll just.
Singing closing hymn #230.
I know this hymn is not as if lifted up to a different sphere, but I'd be believe it is important to be reminded as we walk here that our Lord Jesus should always be our object and guide. Oh Lord, when we the path we trace, which Thou on earth has trod to man Thy wondrous love and grace.
Thy faithfulness to God. Perhaps we start at verse 2.
Thy love by man.
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Sion.
I hear thy side.
To stay.
Unfaithful.
Light.
Father's name Confess.
And dangerous world.
On good, I say.
My earth with smiles.
I want me to.
Cross.
We wander.
Like.
Holy heart, I'm faithful.
For me.
And pleasure point and burning.