Denver Conference: 2017
Table of Contents
Ephesians 1:1-5
Reading
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330.
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
What? What?
400 and four times.
That's something you need to.
For everyone.
Stop me alive.
Oh my God.
And why?
No, no reason to go away.
Grind the horse riding from the airport.
The Lord.
To me.
So I'm going to listen to your life angle.
The boy's land I have.
Umm.
Lord Gray pride, the Lord pride up crying and I'll be.
CVS.
Lord, everyone dressed up and may I go?
God and Father, we did his book today as we open up thy word or the treasure it is we hold in our hands.
By reveal mind for us.
So we just pray that our guide and direct us to a motion that would be suited for.
For the occasion for the company to this year again, we just thank Thee for this opportunity to once again to be my presence. Would Thy word open before we just pray for the time in the name of our Lord's and Savior Jesus Christ.
What her brother brethren might consider taking up Ephesians chapter one? I was just thinking of a little expression used in verse 11.
According to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the council of his own will.
00:05:29
It's always a good chapter.
Gosh.
If someone else has a different exercise, I'd be.
Certainly willing to.
Hear another suggestion.
Vision Chapter one.
All an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.
To the Saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
According as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the blood.
In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He hath purpose in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of time.
He might gather together in one.
All things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in Him.
In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who work on all things, after the council of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ.
In whom ye also trusted. After that ye heard the word of truth.
The gospel of your salvation, in whom also after ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of His glory.
Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the Saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened.
That ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches are, the glory of His inheritance in the Saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to Oxford, who believe according to the working of His mighty power.
That he wrought, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.
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Far above all principalities and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.
And has put all things under his feet, and given him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth All in all.
Well, we know that this epistle gives us heavenly teaching. It really presents to us the.
Fact that all of our blessings are heavenly, they're eternal. They have to do with the spiritual things. Those things in connection with Israel were all earthly. They had an earthly inheritance, things were temporal, they were passing away. They had a Kingdom which would be shaken. And but we have those things that can never be shaken. So the apostle brings before these believers into all of us really. He writes by the will of God to the Saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. He speaks really to the whole Church of God.
And gives this revelation, this teaching is in connection with the revelation that Christianity is heavenly in its character and all of its hopes are heavenly bound up in the person of Christ. And so this chapter really brings before us the heavenly aspects of Christianity and raises our sight above this earthly scene.
That is why I said it's all I said. It's always a good chapter. Robert and of the.
I was noticing how the expression the will of God.
I'm not very good at counting, but I it was at least five times that the will of God is mentioned in our in what we read, and it's a wonderful thing to that God has been able to reveal himself now.
One of the things that most all of us struggle with is our own will, and it's a hard thing to learn not to do your own well.
You really can't learn to know what God's will is and.
Unless you learn to cease doing your own will.
It's a struggle in the human heart.
The Lord Jesus who came and lived here on earth.
When he was about to leave.
He expressed one of the few times I said the only that I got corrected by another brother. One of the few times that the Lord expressed his own will was in connection with our subject that we're having here.
When he was about to go back to the Father in John 17 and he prayed for us, it's a prayer about us, and it's a prayer where He asked the Father to allow him to take His beloved, the ones the Father gave Him, to be with Him there in glory. If it weren't for that prayer, brethren, we wouldn't be studying this chapter.
The Lord Jesus chose to have a people in heaven.
And this is only been revealed to us through the Apostle Paul. He was the special vessel used to make this known to us. And it's a truth that has been handed down to us.
For close to 200 years now.
That truth was lost sight of in the church history since the apostle's time.
During the Reformation, there were many brilliant, valiant and many truths that were recovered.
But this chapter was not properly understood until later date. God in His mercy made it known, brought it out.
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And it's been taught to us, those of us who have been brought up under the sound of this ministry, we can be very thankful for it.
The thing that that that burdened them on my heart about this subject is it's not to be treated as just an intellectual thing that we know about.
It won't do us very much goodwill, Robert, if we don't, if it doesn't get passed our head into our heart and our feet. And so as we take this up and it's a good subject, I, I trust that it will, the outcome will be that not only we talk about it in reading meetings, but we will learn to live it in our lives.
If we don't walk in it, we will lose it.
This chapter lays the foundation for the latter half of the book, which is exceedingly practical, isn't it? But if we don't know what we are in Christ, how can we know how to behave? We can't. So, as you say, far from being, it is locked.
It is high, but far from being impractical, it is the basis for the practical truth that follows.
It's good to realize that different epistles and different books, different characters that you can in Romans, were looked at as being responsible.
And and, and then God comes in and meeting that responsibility. But here you're not looked at as being responsible, you're looked at as being dead. And that's where it starts dead.
You're not responsible if you're a dead man.
And God, then he, in a second chapter, we're going to find that.
The forest birds of that second chapter. But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sin.
Dead have quickened us, made us alive with the Christ.
And raised us up together and made us sit together and heavenly pleases in Christ Jesus. So this is a purpose of God.
He finds us dead and there's not that process. We're talking about a process and other books. We get the process in which we're brought into these things. We're we're born again and then we're sealed with the Spirit of God. But here goes from dead right into being placed with Christ in heaven. It's the God's purpose. And so God is indulging his affections and telling us what he has done, not what we're going to what we're going to do.
That he's saying relax and just bask and I want to tell you what I've done for you.
When I get dead.
And I've raised you to this position. It's a purpose to go.
The apostle Paul here starts out with talking about his the will of God that saved him and brought him into apostleship and made him the message, the mouthpiece of this chapter or this book. And when God does things that he does it the way he does it confirms what he's teaching to the very fact that Paul, the persecutor of Christians, was the one God took up and changed.
And brought into the understanding of this and revealed it and that made him the communicator of it to the people of God is a demonstration of what we're talking about God. It was God's purpose to do this to a people. And so Paul becomes the pattern, the example, the the best sample of all of what God, the will of God can do to a dead Christian dead any sins.
And make him.
Participant of the Church of God.
Uses that language in first Timothy chapter one. We might just read it in chapter one verse 16. He says, how be it for this, 'cause I attain mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern or a model to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting. So Paul was a model of how God would save a soul and how he would be used for the glory of God.
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Chapter 2 of Ephesians gives us the material that he had to work with. It was dead material. But now we're seeing in this chapter as Quicken raised, seated in heavenly places in the heavenlies in Christ. And so he goes through this in the epistle. But I think it's nice to see as we begin here that it's on the principle of the sovereignty of God and His will that these things take place.
And so and so also we might add the love of God. What he did in his sovereignty is he acted in love because God is love. And so that's why you have love brought out throughout this passage. You might just say that verse that you quoted Brother Doug and John 17 says, Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me.
That they may behold my glory, which thou keepest me to come. And maybe not quoting it quite right, but for thou loveth me before the foundation of the world. So he wanted the church to be with him. It's one of the little expressions that the Lord Jesus uses throughout the New Testament, throughout the Gospels and in the book of the Revelation, that little expression with me. And so he wanted the church to be with him, but he wanted us to know that what he had done was on the.
Because he loves us. The source was love, the love of God.
It doesn't begin with us, it began with Him. And so He begins by presenting the prior you and God really great, be true you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and bless us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places or in the heavenlies in Christ.
So he wants us to know that we're brought into this wonderful relationship, that we know God is our Father, and as a result, we've been brought into these blessings. And brother, I think it's Brother Darby that said that.
A Christian cannot live in the right way in this world without knowing Paul's doctrine, without knowing the heavenly character that he is called in to live in in this world. So this book, this epistle.
Presents to us the fact that we are quickened, raised, seated in the heavenly, and Our Calling is entirely heavenly.
And because of the love of God.
I want to finish the verse that I think you were thinking to finish quoting in John 17, and that's the last verse. The last part says that's a love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. Isn't that wonderful?
That same love, that flow between the Father and the Son is what the Lord wanted to bring his own into that. That's a perfect circle of, of, of love. And Paul seems to have got a hold of that here. And when he starts writing this and he can't write about it without praising God for it.
Is a good verse for us. The 2nd chapter in the 10th verse. That would kind of explain it well. We are his workmanship.
Created in Christ Jesus under good works with God of the poor, ordained that we should walk in, but we're a new creation.
When the Lord Jesus rose from the dead.
He breathed into his disciples the Spirit of God, and he said, Oh Mary, to go and tell them, I have send it to my God, that your God and my father and your father.
And then he breathed into the, the, uh, the.
Breath of God. Well, in the first creation, God breathed into Adam, the breath of light, and became a living soul and soul. We've been brought into a new creation where everything, everything in that creation is according to God.
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And there is a day coming when our body will catch up.
But at the end of the day, they pull this man up and he takes off his helmet and he doesn't have to have the air, you know, the pressure, everything caters to the life that he has up above that water. And that's the little picture of what we've been brought into. Now we can we have that in our life, in the life that we have. We're in Christ that we have that and.
In mind and spirit we can live in that sphere.
It's a practical thing, it's a real thing, it's something that in the coming day we'll have a glorified body and we will be there where everything caters to that life without the flesh.
And then?
In a moment after the rapture, we'll all see everything one way. There won't be any argument. We'll all see it one way. Christ will be in the center. All the praise of Lord of Heaven.
We are in Christ. We have Christ's place and favor before the Father right now.
Proverbs, chapter 8.
The Spirit of God tells us that the sun's delights were with the children of men and in the habitable parts of desert.
How much more must he delight in what he has taken manhood to now?
In the establishment of this new order of life, after delighting in in man as a creature, as a child of Adam, how much more now?
How the cost of what was before it must have sustained the Lord Jesus. Here it says in Hebrews that for the joy that was before.
This joy that that was soon joined to be realized and the spending of this chosen vessel all to communicate these things that had never been revealed in the word of God before that are revealed from an ascended Christ.
The pulse falls. I was thinking this dog was speaking about the will of God and his desire to communicate these precious things. How Joseph, when his brethren came back to to Egypt and he spoke harshly to them at first because he had a purpose to work in their souls. And I mean, I know and we know it's a picture of the restoration of this. We want to come today. But he couldn't take it anymore. He had no.
Find a place we this is bowels yearned in itself the anticipation of allowing his love to flow forth to that and to be.
United to them you know proper way as soon as the work in their souls was done.
How what's the light to the Lord Jesus is sending up on high even before he ascended and he was raised from the dead. You quoted to say, I say to my father, your Father, my God, your God and.
I would must delay his heart to hear one of his own now to the youngest believer now to depress God as father in this chapter. That's what he has starts out in the second verse and it's sprinkled right through to the God and father. You know God is your father. You know something that that the ancient men and women of faith never knew he inspired to to.
Know more of God than of His.
Counsel and his purposes and it was not revealed to them it was revealed to you and me now to be able since the work of Christ has been accomplished. Holy Spirit sat down you and I can cry Father and when I was off. So it's not just in passing that this reference is made to God as Father. He's a bright bright light in these passages of Scripture and I know in in many assemblies. You know the brother young brothers they start to pray and.
And, uh, they're thanking the Father for dangling the cross and all that kind of thing, and they're getting it all switched up. And we just bear with it in this fight. And then they start to appreciate more the place that they have and they grow in their understanding. And then you start to hear them address the Lord. This is man in the glory in Christ Jesus. And then you hear them address God's fault.
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How, How the Lord yearn for this time that we now enjoy, and the best is yet to go.
In the end of that good bus, since you're a blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, New translation says bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly in Christ. Again, just emphasize the practical side of it and to I think tie back something that I may have said. What practical implications does this really have? Well, Christianity by and large.
Is has not recognized this truth.
The Protestant Reformation is called Protestant as a result of a protest. That protest was a protest organized by the Princess the the Those in government authority not. They weren't ecclesiastic, they were in government they protested against an edict that said that they could no longer govern the religious affairs of their.
This takes in Germany, it just goes to show, and I was very characteristic of the Reformation was that it was a national movement and it never got above that in the Reformation in England really was very much.
Taken control of. Well, I'm not, I'm not worrying it very well, but by Henry the Eighth, who?
Chose to throw out the puck's authority for his own benefit. He was highly could hardly be described as a partisan himself. It was very much in the hands of the political leaders and in to this day this has affected Christianity to this country where we still see a strong desire of Christians to control the political process.
But we have no place here in this. We do not look for a inheritance in this world like Israel did in this chapter. We find out that we have an inheritance. It's an inheritance in Christ and it's not here in this earth. So these things really do affect us and the face of Christianity and has her her centuries up to this present day still affecting us because.
These truths are not understood and not acted upon, or if they are known, they are very much watered down.
I shared some examples of.
The blessings we've been given, the spiritual blessings, we don't have to wait. We can join them now.
Can you turn to Joshua 14?
Help explain this, but I've enjoyed it. Our family readings at home.
Umm, OK, first.
Start with verse 8. Nevertheless, my brother went up with me and made the heart of the people melt, but I only followed the Lord my God. And then verse 10. And now behold, the Lord has kept me alive. He said he's 40 and five years even since the words fake this word unto Moses, while the shoulder is no longer in the wilderness. Now, lo, I am this day four scoring five years old.
And yet I am strong this day, as I was in this day that Moses did we as my strength was then, even though my strength now for war to both to go out and to come in and then.
Yeah, I've enjoyed the chair that these verses looks like.
It's actually here, he's 85 years old. But she laid a hold on the the blessings and just showed his wife he was still strong.
But I enjoy the verse 12 too.
Is down there, therefore give me this mountain.
Therefore, the Lord's faith in that day is for the owners and that David and I can were there.
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And still be the Lord will be with me. Then I should go to try to come out as Lord said Joshua blessed him and gave him the calendar Harrison.
I've heard this shirt too, but.
It requires phase two chesting award. I think of the first state space move mountains and mustard seeds holding that right but.
Faith and trust me, Lord, you can lay hold of that and He'll bless us and He'll honor that He's been on me, I will honour. And what was neat, is it the way all of our children will follow in that example?
And that and look at Joshua 15 verse 17.
And osteonec the brothers Caleb took it and he gave him access his daughter to wife and it came to pass and she came on to him that she moved him to after but her father appealed that she lied in off her act and she was under her **** with a spouse who I answered Jimmy a blessing for thou that's doing the Southland Jimmy all through the springs of water he gave without the spring and another spring.
So they she asked her blessings. Not only did he just give her the.
Brings the water, but he gave her the upper swings and another swing and I've heard that shared somebody. I don't know what that is the help there, but one last thing in Exodus.
33.
Genesee, sorry.
Where Jacob rest with the with the Angel Lord.
And there's 24 the Jacob was left alone. The wrestled the man with them until the breaking of day, when he saw that he prevailed not against him.
That's.
That's the whole of his time in the hall of Fylos out of joint as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go for the day Breakers. And he said, I will not let you go, since I'll bless me. He said, what is thy name? He said Jacob. He said thy name shall be called no more Jacob than Israel. For as a Prince of power with God and with men, and prevailed.
So Jacob had to go through a hard time, and we may have to go through a hard time, but the worst bring it and view it. Do that.
Hold on.
And he can reverently, almost not let go of the Lord until we get that way.
These are nice examples of faithfulness Old Testament Saints who laid hold of what they believed in and and fought valiantly in the fight of faith and overcame and.
They they are good examples to us.
We must make the distinction of the two, the two worlds, the two spheres of blessing. Our chapter talks about heavenly things.
But it also talks about the things in earth. And verse 10, there are two spheres where God wants to bless in the Old Testament only revealed one of them. That's the earth, and that's what they fought for. And these ones that you've spoken of are examples of those who are diligent. And it was right for them to go out and kill the enemy that had taken position of God's heritage. And God wanted it for Israel to have it. And so they were right.
But that wouldn't be right for us to go out as Christians and quite earthly battles because this is not our sphere. This is not what God has given us. He's got chosen to give us heaven. He's called us there. But there is also a warfare for heavenly things. And that's in our last, last chapter of this book. And so these examples that you're Speaking of can be examples to us to apply in the heavenly sphere.
They are. That's the spirit world. There is a spirit world going on up there and that would seek to keep Christians from laying hold of their true relationship with the Lord Jesus and to just get occupied with earthly things.
And so if they can succeed in that, then they have kept real believers from enjoying what this chapter is talking about.
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And so that's the the fight of faith that we fight in the world today. And it's not for us to go out and being and worrying against the Muslims nations, for example, because that Muslim faith is wrong. That's not the Christians calling today. We should be out to save them. We should be out to win their souls to Christ and some are being won.
So we need to distinguish heavenly things from earthly things.
The book of Joshua really has been called the Ephesians of the old settlement. And so they went into the land and they fought the enemy, a physical enemy. But you and I just, you were mentioning we're engaged in a spiritual warfare. It's just as real and there's just a serious anonymous face. But we have those Old Testament passages as illustrations, as God's.
Picture book, you might say. And then we have the teaching, the real application of the teaching of it in the New Testament. And So what he's revealing here too is a brother Vern referred to, is that there's a new race of men, a heavenly race of men that didn't exist in the Old Testament. They were, they had new life and so on.
Those that belong to the Lord, but you and I.
Are a part of new creation, and we're a part of a new race of men.
In the Old Testament, there was God over all, and then there was the angelic powers. Then we had man that's created, a very intelligent being in the image of God. He was created, and then we had the lower creation. But after Christ died, rose again from the dead and glorified, there was a fuse, the head of a glorified race of men, and now there's God over all.
And then that heavenly race of men associated with Christ, what are their blessings? What are the purpose? God tells us the purposes to bless that race, that heavenly race. And He wants us to enjoy them, those blessings. Now then we have the angelic beings. We, you and I, are part of a higher creation than even the angels. And then we have fallen race of men. Then we have the lower creation. So it's good for us to recognize that we're blessed.
In a spiritual sphere, we don't have an earthly inheritance.
We have a heavenly inheritance and all of our blessings are associated in Christ because he is a heavenly man.
Not to sidetrack too far is in connection with Joshua again in the first chapter. We want other buses in every place we saw your first that have I given you, I will give you, but that have I given you. So these blessings that you read in this chapter I also enjoy. But we do have to walk in. We do have to make them good to ourselves. You know, we've been going through the book of Joshua during our Bible reading during the Sunday school time.
Here in in this local assembly, and it's been wonderful, wonderfully encouraging. But it struck me as we went through it, that, and I'm just gonna throw a number out because I don't have a way of measuring, but I would suspect that 90% of ministry that you find available in Christian bookstores and so on is wilderness ministry. That is provision for our pathway through this, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But if that's our only diet, we won't grow. And the ministry that is lacking is that which is connected with our heavenly portion, that which corresponds to Ephesians, that which corresponds to Canaan. You know, the manna ended when they went into the land of Canaan. And that's a man is a subject that.
Is a whole subject in itself, so I wanna get sidetracked. But they they ate of the old cone of the land, which was speak of Christ and resurrection.
He was that cold that went down to death in John 12 to and now has brought forth, uh, much fruit. Otherwise he would have abided alone. So it was Christ and resurrection that they ate all. And as I said, these have the implications of this in our life are very important. There was a, a, an issue of the Christians, a little magazine that PTP publishes recently on spiritual food. There was some very good articles in that. Speaker, If we just restrict our diet so that, which pertains to our daily needs down here, God's provision for us in our wildness journey, we will be stunted in growth.
00:45:15
Ask questions.
He addresses the Saints, not the Church of God which is in Ephesus.
The address is the Saints. Perhaps it's twofold reason. First of all, the 1St chapter, until we get to the very last verses, takes up individual truth, truth process, individual believers. It doesn't really touch on the church until the end of the chapter. Secondly, when you look at the epistles to Timothy, first Timothy, he says for this cause.
He is the sought Pennsylvania emphasis that some might not teach any other doctrine than what the apostle Paul had given them. They were already letting it slip.
2nd Epistle is Timothy. He says I sent Titicus to Africa. It's imperative that the truth that I gave to the Saints in Ephesus be maintained.
So perhaps A2 fold reason the assembly is not addressed. Perhaps there's assets with the apostle already at this point that they were letting slip.
The truth that had been given to them. And he writes this epistle, reinforcing it. That's an encouragement in a way.
Because we're in a day where these things have been left slick, they haven't been maintained, but it's still good truth for us. It's still what we need. It's still imperative to maintain efficient proof.
But their address that saves individually because what is individual is taking up first, and that's a right order. And that's an order for us. As an example, when we meet other believers, the first truth to take up with them is not necessarily the ground of gathering our church true. Get a sense of where their soul is at.
They may need harm or to be established than what is individual and Roman's troops, perhaps gospel truth things. If if I'm not settled as to where my soul is at before God, how can I go on to take up the deeper things I need to be established and where my soul is. And here with the Ephesians, first he takes up individual truth and he establishes that and from that vantage point.
Once their souls are settled in that, then he unfolds.
Church True. And So what has he established them in first of all?
Their place as sons before God. Their blessings in heavenly places. Their election.
By God, their relationship to God as God and Father, He establishes those things first.
Resting there as the elect sons of God and the circle of Father's love blessed with every heavenly blessing. Now he says I'm going to unfold to you more. And so really he takes up what is individual looking at that.
He says.
And he gives has already been mentioned the title of God, that God our Father or the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because God has blessed us in that two fold character. He's blessed us as God and he's blessed us as Father.
He has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world as God, sovereign election. He's blessed us in that way. He's predestinated those he chose as God, as Father. He's predestinated us to a relationship with himself as sons. So he blessed us both as God and as Father, but specifically as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Genesis, when Joseph is blessed by Jacob, Jacob speaks of all the blessings that exceeded anything that has been known by himself or any before him, being on the head of Joseph.
All the blessings that heaven has to give are on the head of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we come into those as being blessed, being blessed by God.
00:50:06
As common objects with Christ as associated with them, we come into his place before God. We come in and we share his inheritance with him. We come in and share everything that he has won and that God has blessed him with, because he is the victor of Calvary and Son and heir. And we come in and we share all that within every heavenly blessing.
Common objects of the father's lump with his son. And so the thing that he takes up first is on ship. We've been brought into that place before God as son, and there's a difference between sons and children.
It's sons of full age. It's not little children, it's grown up sons.
Wonderful difference, all who have had little children and that and they've grown up, you know, the enjoyment of being.
Able to talk to your grown up children in a way that you couldn't talk to them when they were little. There were things that weren't fit for them, things they couldn't know. But now they've grown up, you enjoy a fellowship within that they that you've never had with them before. And God has brought us into the place of full grown son. And what does he want to talk to us about? Because I want to tell you everything about my beloved son and all that I purposed in him and how.
My eternal counsel centers all around him in every detail of it, like the hub of a wagon wheel, and all the spokes radiate out from that till you get to its circumference. The wheel itself, it's all centered in that hub. Everything is centered in the sun, and you have been brought into that.
By sovereign grace that it all centers in him. He wants to comply with all of His thoughts about His Son to us for our enjoyment, fellowship with him and his thoughts of His Son. But we had to be grown up son's purse. And that's the place that He has brought us into sovereign grace.
It might be good too, because you're talking about the fifth verse where it speaks of adoption. And we tend to think of adoption, uh, and, and bring it and place it in this, uh, this verse. But adoption in this world, the meaning of that word is far different. It means that a family finds a child who doesn't have a, a father or mother or family and he adopts it into that family.
Well, that's not what adoption means in the Scripture. It's the placing of sun to the takes child and saying it. So when a person is born again, he's a child, but he's placed in that place of sonship where he brings us into full intelligence as to God's purposes. So it's a far different thing. It's a wrong idea to use the meaning of the world of adoption. It just means.
Placing a child in a higher position.
You never see a truck going down a road that says Smith and children. It's always Smith and sons because a child doesn't understand how to run that business, but a son, daughter, and he takes them into the full knowledge of how to run that business. And God has taken us into the full knowledge of sonship. There's a beautiful example of that brother Vernon Genesis.
And the blessing of.
Else is sung by Jacob.
Pepper 48.
Joseph.
Brings Ephraim of Manassas to Jacob to be blessed and going to just.
Look at one portion.
Verse 5.
And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine as Reuben and Simeon. They shall be mine. So he says their mind. Well, they certainly were. They were his grandsons. He says, no, I'm going to define us. They're mine, just like Ruben and Simeon are mine.
00:55:15
Reuben and Simeon were not grandsons. They were his sons, his sons all.
Would have an equal share in the inheritance and they would pass their inheritance down to their children and it would be divided among their children, he said. That's not how it's going to be with Ikram and Manasseh. I'm going to bring them into the same place as all the rest of my sons. Just like Ruben and Simeon, they are going to be on the same.
Plane the same elevation as all of my sons and they are going to share the inheritance equally with their uncles.
Their minds, just like Ruben and Simeon, are mine. He brings them into the place of his son to have an equal share in the inheritance of those sons. And it's a beautiful picture of what Funship is. Yes, they were his children in that sense, grandchildren as part of the family. They were his. But he's specifying the waiter there is in a different sense.
They're his as full grown sons to share equally in the inheritance the children of God in the Old Testament.
Were gods, they're part of his family, they were born again, they were his children, but when we come to the blessings of Christianity, we have been brought into the place of sun adoption and as we get in Paul's doctrine.
Is not how we get into the family.
Adoption as we know it naturally in this world is how you get into a family that you weren't in before. Adoption in Scripture and Paul's doctrine is not how you get into the family, it's the place you have in the family.
And so Mr. Darby rightly translates it, not adoption, but sonship or Sun Place.
With the deadly is what the Greek word actually says. It's not something he came up with. It's really what it's tough to play, but just the connection with sons and children because John speaks of his children of God and Paul tends to they're not exclusively speaks whether the tongues of God sons as being said speaks of place and privilege. Children speak of the family, but in connection with John. So you pointed out that Church of Israel where a part of the family of God in John's ministry.
I I think it's a mistake. Just suppose when John speaks of us as being children of God, he's speaking nothing lesser than Paul and we should just focus on what all said. John speaks with a character nature of God and because of that he speaks with the family of God. And in John's gospel we have those eternal life is expressed in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his epistles. We post epistles especially, we have that eternal life now as expressed in the believer. We now have that common life we as that we're sharing DNA.
So we have been brought into the family's children of God. It's not a lesser truth in that sense. We we need to be very careful of pitting 1 Johnstock turn against Paul soccer and vice versa. We need both types of it's important because they're different things and that's also important to recognize. But I just have a question.
Uh, it's not really a question but something I think someone should clarify. What sense was God to God of the Lord Jesus Christ? Isn't he God already? In fact the Muslim will pick that up and chooses a fame. Umm you know, basically say that Jesus is not mine because God is his God. So maybe someone should explain in what sense he is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ as man, as a man, if God was his God.
Thought it was equal to God, right? And when it's he's a threat. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
You know, he was, he was the Son of God too on the cross, but as man, he could cry out to God. And when he's addressed his father, when he addresses God as his father, then his relationship with the Son, with the Father.
I was just thinking too of the Galatians 4 We might read verse four down to verse seven in connection with sonship, because there's a contrast between what the children of Israel had.
That you had and what we have in Christianity, Galatians 4 verse four. When the fullness of the time was come, God sent for His Son, made of the woman, made under the law to redeem them, that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons or the sonship. Because ye are sons. God has set forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying of a father. Therefore thou art no more servant, but a son.
01:00:29
And if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
So there you have in Paul's ministry the fact that you and I have sonship. We no longer called ourselves servants of God. Yes, we can do a work of service and so on, but God doesn't look at you and say you're a servant. He doesn't even look at you and say you're a saved Sinner. He says you're a Saint of God. And he addresses us. He gives us a higher place of favor as those that are sons.
And so we enjoy the favor of even.
What God has presented in connection with His own Son, He loves us as He loves His own Son and has given us a place of blessing and favor before Him as those that are sons.
Did you have a better, can you say that better? No, no, I, I think it's just important to see when it speaks to God about Lord Jesus Christ, Speaking of him in manhood, when it speaks to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Speaking of him, the Son. So, you know, I do think this is important. It may seem like, you know, one of those details that brethren like to get bogged down in, but I think it's important because today we here at the Lord constantly referred to as Jesus and there's a time and place.
Where he should be reposed to as Jesus because that's Jesus. He was that man that walked us up. So later in this book in the 4th chapter, we read in the 21St verse as the truth is in Jesus. So what does that expression mean? Is that just some general expression? What caused he said I am the way, the truth of the life. So the truth is in him. Well, I think it's Speaking of specifically his walk through this world as the man Jesus. He is the example and it fits perfectly in the context of the chapter here in the 4th, 4th chapter.
So I think it's important to, to realize that he's not just, umm, uh, things to quibble about, but nuances that create the full picture that that bring out the scripture and his clarity. Otherwise it becomes a very blurred and muddy picture. But God in his word is, uses these expressions with specific purpose and it's something that we can dig into to enjoy, not to.
To load it over others or find fault with the way that others say. But it's nice to recognize the distinctions and to learn as we speak. And we pray to use them correctly.
So when you said I sent them to my dog and your God, my father and your Father, he said my Father, that's a relationship from a past eternity that had no beginning, has no ending, was not new to that, but he says my God, that was a new relationship to him in incarnation.
When he says to us, your God, that's all we ever knew from birth. We may not have known God, we may not have acknowledged it, but nonetheless, as his creatures, He was our God.
That was an old relationship for us. When he says your father, that's a new relationship for us. So you get both old and new relationships for us and for him expressed in that verse.
Going back a bit to the to your comments earlier, Steven, when you first spoke about how the pistol Lephesian starts out being addressed to individuals and then almost immediately he takes up the subject of election and that he shows us as individuals. He chose you as an individual, the place that he assigned you and me to. He also chose that destiny that he would.
Place us into. So why does he start with that? I think there's a little foretaste of it even with Old Testament Saints, where the children of Israel were encouraged when they showed up three times of the year. And so the place for the Lord would place his name.
That they were to stand with their offering before the Lord and say a Syrian ready to perish was my father. If they were to go back to their very history of their father, the father of faith, and our father in that sense too of Abraham, and recall mentally in their spirit and soul where they had come from and how they got, where they got to into that land of Canaan. And this is not just an academic thing as as Nick has been.
01:05:29
Saying about other truths, it's very important for a soul at the very beginning to get established as as a brother. Back in my early days in Maine, my brother came in and just gotten saved. And he said to an older brother in the meeting, I found the Lord and the brother Arnold, we used to call him, he says brother, that's wonderful. But just remember, you didn't find him. He found you and, and, and that's an important thing to see.
Because it leads your soul into a place where you say.
Why me?
You know, Joe complained in the bitterness of his soul. He was an upright and a righteous man, but God wanted to perfect that which concerned him, and he allowed some trial of his life.
And Job, as as Satan stated to the Lord.
You watch what happens when you touch him. You hedge him all about don't touch him. See what happens. Well, it kind of did happen. Joe kind of started to cry like a little girl in a spiritual sense.
And then, uh, I think it's about the 7th chapter. He says, why me? Why are you even bothering me? I'm not a whale. You said a watch on. I'll just leave me alone until I swallow down my spit. Why me? Well, she goes, God had a purpose. And many of us have received later in life, we can look back on our experiences before our salvation and we can identify with that 7th chapter of Joel, you feel like what is going on here somebody.
Is giving me a message that somebody is the Lord is seeking you out.
Then after you get saved and you say in a different sense, I mean there's really no no real. What's the answer to that? It's about this really distracted to do it and there's nothing in yourself. And so the foundation of worship and that's what God seeks. The Father's seeketh worshippers. The Lord Jesus told the woman at the well he seeks worshippers.
He has.
Millions of things that he created to do his bidding without fail. And it's a privilege if he gives us, you and me, something to serve him with.
What's worshipers? And you're never going to be in liberty and freedom as a worshiper before God if you have one. Shred in your heart that you deserve what you have because you don't. It's all because of what He did. The Lord Jesus of Calvary's cross and the Father looked at you and me going with hundreds of thousands of mothers down Broad Rd.
He said no, not you.
The rest of us brought us into His grace unimaginable blessings a little while ago. And you come on the Lord's Day morning, sit there.
Probably the answer to that, brother, is I wanted to. It's a wonderful thing. He's sovereign, did it because he wanted to. There's no other answer. Yeah. And it's a wonderful thing to go through life seeking to figure that out, what that purpose was.
In your life and mine, there is a purpose that he chose you and me and to go through life figuring it out in your own practical way and it's all connected here. It's.
Is the purpose that He has for each one of us. But there is no cause in us intrinsically that He chose us. We need to be very careful. We distinguish that. Otherwise we say we're a better stock than the rest. There was something in US that He chose us. No, He has a purpose and each one of us individually in our path, but it's not because we were from good.
Dark and I know sun had problems.
I'm from I fell in here and breathing.
01:10:04
And now I'm seeing more like I say.
When joyful clouds fall kindly.
When sleep starts on here as well as when.
Rainforests.
Are dead.
Thou get thy name, dear Lord.
And give your brain and goddess and all I want to hear you, and we'll gain anything.
Spare time and goodnight swearing. Wow, I'm a dream, come along.
Joy.
Life against love and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Umm.
Oh.
The loving God and the Father.
Portion we've had before us we.
Are thankful that we enjoy the privileges of being the sons of God that have been brought into a position of blessing, one that we can come to Thee and call the have a father.
We thank these use the.
First verse of our chapter stated through the Saints that are at Ephesus.
You know that That's saying there's one that is holy.
Consecrated to God and sacred. And we pray that his sons and daughters of God.
Our lives would be not only enjoy the benefits of sonship that we would reflect that which would you tell us Saints of God which is.
Commit the remainder of the day in my hands and pray that all would be done. Thy honor, thy glory.
Thank you for though.
Ministry that has been given us and we've enjoyed this.
Ask all these things and we're getting precious Lord Jesus Christ, my beloved Christ, Amen.
They complemented 2.
What is the Church?
Address—Robert Boulard
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.
Let's sing together #29 There are many little hymns in this book that were written by our beloved brother JG Deck, and they're of a worthwhile quality. And the sentiments of this little hymn really bring us into the portion that we had before us this morning and somewhat of what I'd like to speak of this afternoon, so #29.
Someone maybe started for us.
I'm trying to do.
Oh my God, Savior, Son of God.
Will hide his breaking without land crying love number.
Providing the general plans down and shrimp who is the story I'm praying by giving it all to you, Lord grow Lord glory, glory.
Anything for all of the same.
And also by the Father and the Father.
Our frozen power and collapse came out of the long run. I heard that. I thought I'd like to get in the ground.
Where the Sun had reckoned shelter our Mercury in my life.
Blood and.
Life.
Of all dangerously hard driven.
And all of them turned out in the sun.
Thy never. First of all, God blessed me to share.
My birthday, Lord, is Lord.
Our hearts, our thumb and Grange. I'm not a strange.
By strengthen God in the extreme games all over again.
Smile and smile for them.
I am considering a day and a lot of all your breathing for college. The tough life rise shall be reached 7 years by making full and all the lands, all the highway of the views begin to begin to end.
Oh great, my daughter yelled my grandmother. See there anything? Is there anything else?
Whatever it has to come by.
And everything. So I love grill and see.
Let's ask the Lord's blessing on our meeting.
Our loving God, our Father, we thank thee for Thy love, we thank Thee for Thy purpose of love and how it was displayed in the work of Thy Son, and that Thou hast glorified Thy Son, raised him from among the dead, seated him at thy right hand, and greatest glory and majesty, and more than this.
00:05:08
Thou has said all things in the heavens and the earth under his feet.
And thou said him to be head over all things to the Church, which is his body. And so we thank thee.
Are gone for such a wise plan for the power.
The might to accomplish it and the work is just about done.
My church is just about complete blessed Savior. And so we just ask thee for grace this afternoon, that as we open up thy precious word, that each one of us might receive a little portion from thyself and that we might value something more of the person and the work of our blessed Savior. So we just ask thee for thy blessing, clarity of thought, and that thou it's in my goodness, bless us. So we ask it and give thanks now in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
I'd like to read just to open up in Ephesians chapter one again, just a couple of verses that were alluded to but weren't read.
Ephesians chapter one weren't commented on specifically, they were read this morning.
The Fusion's One, verse 22 and 23.
Ephesians one and verse 22 It says, And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head.
Over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him.
That filleth All in all.
And so, you know, the Lord is forming his church today. I'd like to just look a little bit at the church, and I've had the question ask me several times, many times over the last few months, not only in Brazil, but here in North America. What is the church? How is it? What's the difference between the church and the assembly?
What is God doing in connection with the Church?
And umm, we can understand this question coming from those that are saved.
Out of another denomination, perhaps saved out of Roman Catholicism.
And everything that they've ever learned about the church, you might say, is wrong, and they don't know anymore.
And I would just suggest this. I hope you don't mind that I take it up in a very simple way.
But we need to be clear as to what God is doing and that the church is his vessel of testimony in this world.
And he is working, and Christ is the head of the Church, which is his body.
And you know, you and I as a part of the Church of God, in that future day, we're going to be seen as the fullness or the completeness of Christ in that scene. Christ would not be complete in heaven as it were, without His body, the church. And you and I, that no Christ as Savior were made a part of that church. Let's just look at Matthew 16, verse 16.
To get.
I'd like to look at just a few basic points.
Matthew 16, verse 16.
This is the first point that we want to make that is that.
The church is being built presently. It was not in existence when the Lord Jesus was in this world.
It was something future that he spoke of that he was going to build and he is currently building it.
And so here it says that Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona.
For flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father, which is in heaven.
And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.
Or my assembly and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then charged to his disciples, that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. And so the Lord Jesus was presented as the Messiah of Israel. He was their true king. And in the Gospel of Matthew we.
So that he was rejected as that king. In all of the Gospels he's presented as rejected, but in Matthew's Gospel, he's presented as a true king of Israel and he's rejected as that king. And then he says in verse 20, he says, don't tell them anymore that I'm the king. Now he's going to do a new work. He's going to do something else. He's going to form his church. Instead of having the children of Israel or the Jews as his testimony in this world, he was going to take up something that was entirely.
00:10:12
Knew, and he didn't tell them. In the Old Testament, the Lord Jesus was revealing something entirely new.
He was going to begin a new work and it was going to be his church.
His assembly and it's a wonderful thing for us to recognize that what God is doing in this world.
Is building something? The Lord Jesus is building his church. It's for himself.
And so he's the one, he's the source, and he's the builder.
And it's wonderful to recognize the sovereignty of God in connection with building his church. Now, the second point that I'd like to make is in Ephesians in Matthew chapter 18, You know, and you probably know and have heard before that Matthew is the only gospel in which the church is mentioned.
And so the Jews during the Tribulation period, perhaps the beginning of sorrows and into the Great Tribulation, will begin to read.
Some of the New Testament scriptures, they'll read the book of the Gospel of Matthew and they'll begin to discover.
That God was working in the day of grace and that He was forming a church for himself.
And that the Church is no longer on earth, but that is in heaven. That it was a heavenly Organism.
And it didn't belong to this earth. They're going to discover this, and they're going to discover that they crucified their Messiah, but that he's going to take up with them again. So they're going to read this and I believe they'll start to understand what he was doing in the day of grace. So Matthew chapter 18, let's just for the sake of time, just read.
Verse 17 If he neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be as unto thee.
As an heathen man in a public. And verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Again I say unto you, that if any, if two of you shall agree on earth, as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father, which is in heaven. For where two or three?
Are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them and then just hold your place there. And I'd like to read in Ephesians chapter 5.
Where we read at prayer meeting last night, Ephesians chapter 5.
And, umm, let's read just part way through verse 23.
Christ is the head of the church or the head of the assembly, and He is the Savior of the body.
Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wise be subject unto their own husbands, and everything. Husbands, love your wives. Even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that he might present it to Himself. A glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish, so ought men to love their.
And then in verse 32.
Well, let's read verse 31 for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.
This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.
So we find in umm Matthew chapter 18, we might say a definition of the church. So somebody might ask what is the church? What is the assembly? And I would just say this, Mr. Darby translates in his translation almost exclusively assembly, not church. It's the same word really, and it means a company of those that are called out ones.
So you and I have been called out by grace to be a part of the Church of God, called out from among the Jews and Gentiles.
To be a testimony for him in this scene and so in verse 20.
Of Matthew chapter 18, he says for where two or three are gathered.
Together in my name, or unto my name, there am I, in the midst of them. Any Speaking of the church there, the assembly. I would just say that there are two aspects to the church, and that is that one aspect is the church universally. We just read that in Ephesians chapter 5. Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it.
So everyone that is a born again believer, one that is not only born again, but sealed with the Spirit of God.
00:15:04
Is a part of that church. You do not become a part of the church by being baptized.
You do not become a part of the church by signing a church role.
On some church denominational register.
You become a member of the Church of God, the sovereign act of God.
When he seals the work in your soul, when you trust Christ, the finished work of Christ, you say Christ died for me.
I accept Christ as my Savior. He died on the cross, the Son of God who loved me.
And gave himself for me. When you can say that you become a part of the Church of God, not your entrance really into that Organism, that living Organism. So we have the universal Church. But then there's a, you might say, the local aspect of the church. And it is evident here in the city of Englewood, there is a little assembly gathered to the Lord's name.
On divine ground and where the Lord is in the midst.
And so he says here in Matthew's Gospel chapter 1020.
18 I'm sorry, verse 20 for where two or three, even a company of two.
Or three are gathered together, not gather themselves together.
But those that are gathered by the Spirit of God.
They are gathered in my name or unto My name together.
There am I in the midst of them.
You know there's been mischief among the Saints of God in connection with the false translation of this verse.
And oftentimes I've had it quoted to me myself in different venues, you might say, and people that say wherever two or three gather themselves together, there's the Lord in the midst, you know, He is with you and I individually, he says, lo, I am with you always, even under the end of the age, but he is.
With the Saints individually, but he delights to be among his people.
In a collective sense when they're gathered together by his Spirit. And so this verse doesn't speak of a voluntary group of Christians that gather themselves together. It speaks of those that are gathered by the Spirit of God and are brought together from a working of the Spirit outside of themselves. Because we spoke of the sovereignty of God this morning, I would just say this.
That you and I who are truly gathered to the Lord's name by faith, we say it, we don't say it by pride. We don't have to say those things. And consider that it's prideful to say that we're gathered to the Lord's name, but by faith.
Upon the word of God, we can say that we trust that we're gathered to the Lord's name.
But we are gathered, it's on the it's because of the sovereignty of God. You and I are saved by the grace of God and by the sovereignty of God. None of us would ever be saved apart from the sovereignty of God. None of us.
It was an act of God to save your soul. He worked individually with you to bring you to the knowledge of the truth and to have your sins forgiven. And so it is in connection with the truth of God. It's a sovereignty of God that anyone of us has a desire to read the Word of God and to study the Word of God and to walk in the truth.
And then it's a sovereignty of God if he exposes us to the teaching of the truth of what it is to be gathered to the Lord's name.
And we take our place at the Lord's table. It's the sovereignty of God. It's all his work, brethren. And then to be kept by the power of God through faith. What's a wonderful thing to be kept by the power of God? And I would just say this as we live in the days just before we hear the voice of the Lord calling us home. I'd re echo the words of dear brother Gordon Hale.
He used to say this to us many times. He'd say to us as young people, it's a good thing to have a good beginning.
It's a good thing to have a good beginning and the things of God to be brought up in the assembly.
To read the word of God, to become, to come to an understanding of the truth of God. But it's a better thing to have a good ending.
Make sure you have a good ending. Make sure that you follow through.
And buy the truth for yourself and walk in the truth for yourself, and then be found at the end of life.
As it were, and perhaps at the time of the coming of the Lord going on in the truth.
00:20:02
So we have in Matthew's Gospel chapter 16, we have the builder of the church. It's the Lord Jesus.
And then we have the definition of the church really given to us in.
Matthew 18 and verse 20 and it's where two or three are gathered.
In a local sense, they're gathered by the Spirit of God and only take the name of the Lord Jesus.
And then they find him in the midst.
Well, let's look at.
Acts Chapter 11.
Want to just touch on this passage of scripture because you might say.
Wonder how an assembly is established and how it is nourished by the Lord.
Because we have in Ephesians chapter 5 the work that the Lord Jesus is doing presently in the church.
And during the church period, he is, it says.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ gave himself for it. And then it says that he's going to present it or he cleanses it. He's sanctified and he's cleansing it with the washing of water by the Word, and then in the future he's going to present it to himself. There's three aspects here. In the past, Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.
Not wonderful to think that he loved you and he gave himself for you, but he gave himself for the church.
Which is his body. He loved that church and he gave himself for it.
In the present time, he is sanctifying it and cleansing it.
He set it apart for himself and he's cleansing it with the washing of water by the word and then in the future.
By the grace of God, we have written in the Holy Canon of Scripture.
That he's going to present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
And so those three things in the past, he gave himself for it in the presence. He's cleansing it with the washing of water by the word, and in the future he's going to present it to himself. But in this aspect of which I want to speak of here in Chapter 11 is the work in which he is currently doing and raising up little individual testimonies, local testimonies to the truth that there is one body.
And how he does it, the principles of it. And we might read from verse 19.
Acts Chapter 11 and verse 19. Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, traveled as far as finesse.
And Cyprus and Antioch preaching the word.
To none, but unto the Jews only, and some of them.
We're men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus, and the hand of the Lord was with them.
And a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord then.
Tidings of these things came under the years of the Church, which was in Jerusalem, and they sent forth Barnabas.
That he should go as far as Antioch, who, when he came and had seen the grace of God, was glad.
And exhorted the mall, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord, For he was a Goodman, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.
And much people was added under the Lord.
Then departed Barnabas Sitarsis for as they seek Saul.
And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch, And it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves.
With the church and taught much people and the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.
And in these days came profits from Jerusalem unto Antioch. And there stood up one of them named Agavis.
And signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world.
Which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar, then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief under the brethren which dwelt in Judea.
Which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. And we might just turn to a companion passage in the Epistle to Ephesians, chapter 4.
00:25:06
Ephesians chapter 4. This also was read at the prayer meeting last night.
Let's read from verse 7. Unto everyone of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts on demand.
Now that he ascended, what is that? What is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things. And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors, and teaching teachers for the perfecting of the Saints.
For the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith.
And of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, or a full grown man.
Unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. Well, we notice here that there was a purpose that these gifts were given.
There were gifts given. The apostles are mentioned first. Why are the apostles mentioned in connection with the church period? Why are they mentioned first?
A little picture is given to us in the book of Joshua.
That those elders that outlived Joshua, they were used of God to stem the tide of evil.
And the enemies to engage the enemy that was, seek to take the children of Israel, and to displace them in that land. And so the apostles were specially prepared of God, raised up of God to face the enemy, and to oppose the evil, and to minister the truth. An example of this is John the Apostle in connection with the epistles. First, second and third John. He was used of God in a special way to minister the truth and to oppose.
The work of the enemy to sully the name of Christ, and the glory of the person, and the deity of Christ. And so he gave those apostles, and then he gave others that, as it says here in this passage in Ephesians chapter 4. But we haven't told out in action in Acts Chapter 11. And it speaks of those that were scattered abroad, and there were evangelists among them.
It says preaching the word.
And you know when the evangelist preaches the word, there's going to be blessing.
If it's done in the power of the Spirit, the Word is preached. My word shall not return unto me void. It shall accomplish that whereunto it is sent. And so these dear men, they went out, and they were preaching the word to none but the Jews only. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch, spake under the Grecians. These were actual Greeks preaching the Lord Jesus, and so souls were saved.
They were saved. They were added to the church.
They were sealed by the Spirit. They were quickened. They could hear the voice of the Lord.
And then they were sealed by the Spirit. They were added to the church. You know what's interesting? The language that's used. I'd like to just turn to Acts chapter 2 because it's the Lord that adds to the church. You and I don't add to the church. It's the Lord that does. Let's just read the last verse of Acts chapter 2. They were praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to the church or to the assembly daily, such as should.
Be saved, and so the Lord added, and so the evangelist as he does his work.
One is often said that the evangelist does his work and his work is outside the assembly.
His work is largely outside the assembly. Now, he may be given the liberty to preach the gospel of the grace of God in the assembly meeting room, in the hall that the Saints meet in. And he may have hobby classes or Sunday school works and that sort of thing. Those are not assembly meetings. And he's working with those that are outside the assembly, and then he directs them to the assembly as a result of his work. You know, dear brother Mario in.
00:30:03
Brazil is an evangelist and he has this three minute gospel on YouTube. That's his work in his gospel work for the Lord and the Lord has blessed that work and when he gets something like 40 inquiries a day as to from different individuals as a result of that gospel work and his other website.
And he directs those that are saved by the grace of God.
And come into some knowledge of the truth. He directs them to the assembly. He tells them, they they call and they say, or they e-mail them and text them. They say, I just got saved. I've left the Roman Catholic Church. I've taken Christ as my savior. What do I do now? I can't go back to the Roman Catholic Church. He says it's normal to be gathered to the Lord's name and to be gathered by the Spirit of God.
And to come to meet with the Lord in the midst where the Lord.
Has his people and so these people they say well where is this place and so he.
Puts them in contact with brethren in the different cities that there are assemblies. And so that's when assembly, that's what an evangelist does. He preaches the Word. And I need to stress this is when you preach the gospel, preach facts.
Preach the truth. Preach the word.
I was in a meeting room not too long ago working.
We're going to fixing some doors in the meeting room and as I was working on this door I I noticed the shadow of something cross.
The light that I was working in and so I turned around and there was a car parked at the front door.
And there was a lady sitting in that car with a man. And so I went out to the car and I asked them if I could help them. And the lady said to me, she said.
I I'm looking for a church. I'm looking.
I want to have.
Assurance of salvation. I want to know my sins are forgiven. I'm afraid of meeting God as a judge.
She said. I've taken Christ as my savior. I've asked them to wash my sins away, but I've gone to every mega church in this.
In this city, I've gone to every church and she says I still don't have assurance.
That I'm not going to face God as a judge. I've joined the Roman Catholic Church. I still don't have peace.
Brethren.
But pulled the Bible off the shelf in that meeting room and took my highlighter and sat down with that sister and the Lord and.
I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.
Past, present and future.
We highlighted and put bookmarks in and umm, she went away.
She came back a little bit later. She I had said something about the judgment seat of Christ and she wanted to know about the judgment seat of Christ. Well, I'll pull the booklet out of my bins and gave her a booklet and had a word of prayer with her and said, you know, it's not your feelings.
That are going to give you peace. It's the Word of God. Lay your hopes upon the finished work of Christ and the word of God.
And I gave her some of these verses to memorize and to say, just lay your heart.
Lay your hopes on your security, your internal security on those verses, the evangelist has the privilege.
Of preaching Christ, and preaching the Word, and preaching facts.
That Christ died, the work is finished, it's complete. And so that's what took place in this place in Antioch, says the Lord. The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. So the Lord added to the church individuals. And then we have that in verse 22. The tidings of these things came under the ears of the church, which was in Jerusalem. There was an assembly in Jerusalem.
There was.
A local expression.
Of the church meeting in that place, Christians gathered to the Lord's name.
Not connected with Judaism. Not connected with any of the other systems of men.
And so they heard of that work that was going on in Antioch, and they sent Barnabas.
Tells us about Barnabas. He had seen the grace of God and was glad he exhorted the mall.
That with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. You know Barnabas was a pastor. He was a shepherd.
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You'll notice that this is very orderly in Acts Chapter 11. First we have the evangelist, then we have the pastor, the shepherd.
Then we have the teacher Paul. He wasn't the apostle Paul he saw right here.
And then we have the prophet Agabus. We have all four, and the key gifts that God has given to the church that the church might.
Be built up and might be edified, we might say that's just another word of.
To express that term built up.
But it's very orderly. They leave these dear ones labored together. Isn't it wonderful to labor together in this way? The evangelists with the pastor and shepherd. And this pastor and shepherd saw the work and he exhorted, encouraged the Saints to go on. And then it says there was a teacher. And Barnabas, you know, he knew his limitations.
It's a good thing to know your limitations and what you don't know.
And I used to have when we were in business a little.
Umm, job. Not a job description, but a interview list and a couple of the questions I've already mentioned here in these meetings, prayer meeting, I think the other night. But one of the questions I used to ask those that came at an interview was what are your strengths? What do you really, what are you really good at?
And so they would give me a little bit of a list of the things that they thought they were really qualified to do in the work.
And then I would ask them the second question, a companion question. What are you not good at?
What should I not ask you to do?
And I got all kinds of wild answers for this question. Some people said, I, you know, I know it all. I, I don't, I don't have any weaknesses. Well, I said to them, I would say to these people, you know, I know what my weaknesses are. I'm not an accountant. And I hire good accountants because I need to have a good accountant. But, you know, Barnabas wasn't selfish. He was a pastor. He wanted the good of the Saints of God, and he knew.
He could not help them beyond a certain way, at a certain distance, you might say in spiritual things.
And he knew about Saul and he wanted, he knew that Saul was a teacher. And he went, he walked perhaps something like 150 miles. I think as the crow flies, it's like about 115 miles. Maybe somebody knows what the distances are. But he went a long way to get a teacher.
And Paul was a teacher and there was fruit as a result of it. It says they assembled themselves with the church or the assembly there.
It speaks of believers being saved first.
They quicken sealed with the Spirit individually, and then it speaks of an assembly being formed in that place in fellowship with the assembly in Jerusalem. And it says that Paul or Saul came down and he taught much people and the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch, you know, really true ministry.
True ministry, Christ exalting ministry will make us more like Christ.
Saul's ministry was heavenly. It made the Saints more like Christ.
They were first called Christians there in Antioch, the Gentile city. They weren't called Christians in Jerusalem. First, Noah was an in Gentile city, the place that they had come out of idolatry and everything else associated with it. They were called Christians, Christ's ones. And then it speaks of the prophets that came down from Jerusalem. I just like to turn to 1St Corinthians chapter 14. We'll read what a prophet does.
His work.
In verse 3.
First Corinthians chapter 14 and verse 3.
But he that prophecy speaketh unto men to edification.
And exhortation. And comfort.
And so edification is the building up.
And so the building up of the mine, perhaps our intelligence or our knowledge in connection with scriptural things. So prophet has a knowledge of the scriptures and desires the Saints to come into more of the knowledge that is necessary.
At a particular time. A prophet is not one that speaks of future events, although that was part of the work that God gave prophets in the Old Testament. You and I are given. Those that are prophets that do the work of a prophet are given the work to deliver a message to the people of God what they need to hear at a particular time, and God raises up individuals to tell.
00:40:11
To deliver a message from his heart of love for the people of God. To build them up.
And then it says exhortation to stir them up, because sometimes become sleepy and complacent in the things of God. And so a prophet can use the Scriptures in a right way and right spirit to stir up the consciences of the brethren. And then it speaks of comfort too.
So a profit can use the word of God to comfort the Saints. And so we have.
These four different gifts used and the principles of how God.
Raises up an assembly here in Antioch in connection with the.
Testimony at that time. And so he uses those principles even in the Old Testament. I'm just going to turn to Isaiah chapter.
Uh, 27 Will read just one verse here in closing.
Verse 12. Let's just read the last part of verse 12. Isaiah chapter 27. Verse 12.
Ye shall be gathered one by one. O ye children of Israel shall come to pass in that day.
That the great trumpet shall be blown and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria. You know, the Lord is going to call the children of Israel the 10 lost tribe. He's going to call them. They're going to come into the land of Israel. They're going to be tested outside the borders of Israel and they'll be gathered to the Lord just one by one. And I just want to impress upon our hearts this this afternoon.
The great work of God in connection with salvation. It's a wonderful thing.
To be saved by the grace of God. It's a wonderful thing to come into the knowledge of the truth and the heavenly truth, that we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ. And it's a wonderful thing to recognize that we're a part of the Church of God, our responsibilities there, but also that it's Christ Church and that he's building it and that we are.
Individuals and in the sovereignty of God, he's brought us into that blessing. So once again.
The Lord Jesus is the builder of the church. That's Matthew chapter 16. We have a definition of the church.
In Matthew chapter 18 and then the universal aspect of the church is taught to us in different portions of Scripture. But we looked at Ephesians chapter 5 there and then the really the local aspect of the church is brought before us in different passages of Scripture. Then we have the privileges that are ours in connection with working with the Lord and.
Working in harmony.
With those different gifts in connection with the church that we might be built up, the church might be built up and that the Lord might be glorified as a result of the time that we're here. So let's commend ourselves. Our loving God, our Father, we thank the for our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank thee, our God, that thou hast determined that thy Son would have a bride.
And that that bride in this coming day would be displayed.
Beside him, and in this scene that we live in, the assembly is to be.
A picture of that glorious bride going on together.
For thy glory and umm in testimony representing the fact that there is one body.
And two, we thank the blessed Savior that the Church is almost complete. We thank Thee for the privilege of being a part of that.
Heavenly testimony, that heavenly body is soon going to be removed from this scene. We thank Thee that our portion is heavenly in Christ. So we ask you to bless our time together and Thy word as it has been before us. We commend it to thee, our God and our Father, in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Ephesians 1:6-9
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.
Say 112.
Terminal phrase. Our God shall rise from mansions. Barbara. Beyond the sky. My name.
Before 112.
Eternal friend.
Our all great work right now brought a beginner.
When thou shalt come forward.
We wait.
We hand, shall we, and go out of grave. Thor gave the grace, Lord.
Look at us, it's a scripture and 1St year third chapter.
I.
The 18th verse.
I'd read this this scripture. I often think you know different. Just speak up brother, please. When I read this scripture, sometimes I think of myself, although I knew different.
Are you putting me on? Can this really be true?
15 thirds for Christ also have once suffered for standards of the dust, and for sin, the just for the unjust.
That he might bring us to God.
Bring us to the One who created the universe.
That's almost mind boggling.
And brought to God.
Our audacious God and the Father.
Exactly. Realize that we're not going to learn anything that we don't already know.
But we pray that the Spirit of God might minister these things to our soul, that we might realize who we are in Christ.
00:05:09
And I rejoice our heart.
That it might give us incentive.
To go on, we'll see and realize the hope that's before us. Again, we say that was called us to glory. It's the object before us and virtue, the ability, as they know, to send and say yes to myself, our God and our Father.
So we just have, you know, again for thy blessing, that we might fast in these things that seem almost.
Impossible.
But we thank you that they're true in the Lord Jesus.
And thank you for it on the 98 and then.
OK.
Where do you suggest that we didn't do an orderly verse by verse?
What do you suggest, Robert? Well, we might start at verse six, but be free to comment on anything someone might have an exercise to mention in the previous versions.
This is only one of two. I guess we only have two more reading meanings, right? One opposite. And this is a short one, an hour long, OK.
Vision Chapter one.
Verse six. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein hath made us accepted in the Beloved.
In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in himself.
That in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one.
All things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him in Whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the council of His own will.
That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ, in whom ye also trusted.
After that he heard the words of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believe, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of His glory.
Wherefore I also after I heard of your face in the Lord Jesus.
And love unto all the Saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling.
And what the riches?
Of the glory of his inheritance in the Saints. And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to Oxford, who believed according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places?
Far above all principality and power and might and dominion.
And every name that is named not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.
00:10:02
Full and half put all things under his feet, and given him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth All in all.
So the apostle, he does. The apostle prays that we might know what our blessing was in the third chapter. He's going to pray that we might.
That we might enjoy this but here it's we might know them and we might just say a word. The difference between chosen and predestined chosen is persons is tested a person but predestination is to the place that.
He's given to those who have chosen and it's before the foundation of the world. So we we said before that our responsibility are not even taken in here. This is what God is doing, His own purpose and councils. So it doesn't even figure in your responsibility.
That's different at the moment, taking that up and being alive and and needing.
To die in order to get outside of his sins with Christ. But here it's not even taking up the responsibility, it's what God has purpose to do.
Another distinction in those two words.
Election is God's sovereign choice of some out of many.
Predestination is not that thought.
Predestination is not the thought of God's sovereign choice of a few out of many.
It's the relationship to which those who have been chosen are destined to, or that He is purpose for them. Election is God's sovereign choice of a few out of many, but not predestination. And those words are mixed up. Predestination is very often used for the current election.
And that results in some confusion in the word.
Another distinction we might note is that the election is always individual. It's not an elect assembly. I will just point this out in first Peter chapter 5. It says in verse 13 it and it really in here it says in the King James that the church that is at Babylon elected together with you, salute you. It really should read the she that is elected with you in Babylon salutes you and so individuals are elected.
Not companies that believers and so there's as you stated before beginning of these meetings is that we have the individual aspect of Christianity here and our individual blessings.
And why is that important? Why is it important to understand that election is not a collective thing?
Because those who would like to deny the truth of the election.
Put a construction on these verses that he elected the church.
As an entity.
But that the members of their own free will receive Christ and time and became part of the church. But it was the church as an entity that he elected, not the individuals. No, they came in of their own free will. And so they clearly denied the truth of election by making election a collective thing. They say the church was elected, but not the individuals in it. And they try and put a construction on this verse to support that doctrine. And that's why it's important to understand.
And see in this context this is individual.
Run is a 29. It says for whom he did for no, he also did predestinate and it's important for two reasons. One, I think it confirms fitted out what you were just being saying, but the other doesn't say what he what he told you. In other words, again repeating what you said in the last meeting. He didn't look down upon us because so I see something good in you. Therefore I will choose you. It's not what he did for now. It's whom he did for you know.
00:15:05
Person not actions, persons not actions, and individuals not the collectively.
But they would say in the Foreign Office that he looked down through the corridor of time and he saw who would receive the gospel.
So that's what they think for knowledge. But poor knowledge is not something that God thought up in a certain part of eternity. We always.
He always knew that. He always.
How am I going to say it? Christ was born on. Yeah. From before the foundation of the world. Does that mean God looked down a long quarter of time and saw his Son? But hum, may come in to this world and and an incarnation become a man and go to the cross. Or is it that he knew from a past eternity and eternal counsels that his Son would come? That's it. The same word. Yeah. It's you that he knew. Yeah.
Chromopathy, kind of the tornado by God.
Well, I would ask you a question in regard to our verse we're Speaking of. More particularly, we didn't touch much on the fourth verse of our chapter that speaks of death as He had chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world. How does that compare parallelism?
Little long ribs, what we have in Matthew 25 where it speaks over, and I believe it's this, it speaks of Israel when it speaks of Israel.
Five. Then shall the king stand within on his right hand. Come, blessed are coming, blessed in my father, inherit the Kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. I'd like to hear a distinction of that.
In contrast to hard groups.
Those things that have to do with the earth and that says the earth really can't come established by Christ are confined to those bounds, but the Church is going to have its existence.
Distinctly as the Church for all eternity, and ourselves as sons of God, and so that which really was furthest back in the thoughts of God, so to speak, and His eternal purpose and counsel in Christ.
Brought out last in time is going to continue for eternity long after the Kingdom is folded up, delivered back up to God, long after the nation ceased to exist. Israel ceased to exist in that earthly Kingdom, and there's a new heaven and new earth. And someone that speaks of that which has to do with the earth is from the foundation of the earth. But when it speaks of that which is going to really go on for eternity, it's from before the foundation of the earth.
Maybe somebody else has another.
I guess you mentioned, I mentioned last meeting that Mister Darby translates adoption, sonship, and thankfully John Brockmire came pointing out to me that no, he doesn't. He translates it an option. And you have to actually look at his note where he says it's the same as punctured. He does translate that word sunship in Galatians, which John also pointed out. But I thought maybe it'd be better if we can correct that. Yeah, I was thinking about that when you said that.
If somebody just asked me that question.
Last week or so, you find the same note enrollment date. Yeah, refine the same word.
Well, the next verse in six says that it's for the praise of His, of His grace, the glory of His grace, wherein yet made us accepted in the Beloved. And the new translation is a little clear, very nice thought where He has taken us into favor in the beloved.
You and I are brought into favor with God because of the work of Christ and because we have been given that place of sunshine. It's a place of favor before God. The children of Israel, the Jews, they knew a place of servitude, and they rightfully called themselves servants of God.
00:20:01
But you and I are sons, and we're brought into a place of favor and blessing, the poor God as sons.
OK.
Could so are you saying that say in the Old Testament they were accepted, they could be accepted in the beloved?
But taking them into favor is.
That privilege of sonship.
I'm just wondering if this would fit in here. I have just had the thought about.
The correlation between.
Deserve it.
And umm, the chronicle son. When the chronicle son came home, he was already unwilling his father. HD is one of the highest servants.
Did the father do that? No. He put it in that high spot.
So I, I can't lose my blood everywhere but uh.
Well, let's look at it in Luke's gospel. It illustrates this principle. It illustrates the proof of what God is bringing out here. It says in Luke 15, they could read from verse 20. He arose and came to his father, but when he was a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on him and kissed his neck some or kissed him or covered him with kisses. Someone had said this is just.
It illustrates the kiss of reconciliation. We're reconciled to God. And then a little further on it says in verse 22, the father said to his servants, bring forth the best rule and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. And so it brings before the place of a believer sonship. It's illustrated in this story. Sonship we don't have, we're not a servant. He thought he was good enough to be a servant.
But in actual fact, he wasn't good enough to be anything. He was nothing. And so in grace He's given the sun place. You were worth nothing and I was worth nothing. God gives us the place that we're accepted in favor before God in the beloved.
And we're given that place of sonship. So these truths are illustrated. Reconciliation is illustrated in this passage, as well as the relationship of sonship. One of our hands puts it this way. We stand accepted in the place that none but Christ could claim.
And so to be in Christ, as often been put, is to be in Christ's place before God.
Think of the delight and tone of satisfaction that God has found in the man Christ Jesus risen, ascended now.
And we are looked upon as those who share that place before God.
Almost beyond what we can begin, the law of wherewithal the Father loves the Son is his love to us.
Favor that he has sun smelled in draped upon us, we had his life.
Uh, joint errors, joint bodies and so on. I remember as a young brother.
Holding a hem I I can't remember off the top of me.
Which him it was, but it's a hymn that expresses those thoughts that a person would.
Just feel it would be blasphemy almost to say it if it wasn't the truth of the word of God that we were assigned such a place. And I must have quoted to him in a prayer.
And, uh, an older brother went to another older brother and said that young man blasphemous. And, uh, unfortunately there was a laborer there and, uh, they grabbed him and he, he, I found this out afterwards and he showed him the hymn that was quoted and showed him some verses in Scripture. But I can sympathize with the older brother because if we didn't look upon those Scriptures like in John 17 that were quoted in other verses like in this chapter.
We would never dare to even dream of such a place, let alone to express with the happiness that we've been given such a place as this. And #18 in the back of the book. And is it so? It shall be like thy son.
00:25:06
I'll research.
They get him #27.
Thank you. That's it. Him #27 in the back. But that's another nice 1218.
So nice, so very nice to God. I cannot hear or be for in the person of His Son I am his near be so dear, so very dear to God or dear. I cannot be the love or what He loves the Son, such as His love to be beautiful.
Oh my God could take a ruined condition that the world got into and and foreknow it all ahead of time and make provision for it. Nothing ever took him by surprise and all the wickedness and that man has invented and fallen into. And now after coming back like that, I think that the story of the prodigal senses beautifully with this because it shows us how the highest thoughts of a of a wayward center could never rise up to what the father really wanted to do for him.
And so there's two ways to read the story of the prodigal son. One is about the sun and what happened to them. But it's a better thing to look at the story as the story about the father and what his thoughts were. And that's what our chapter is about. It's about the purpose of God to to bless and all that God has allowed to come into the world. He did it purposefully, knowing how it was going to turn out. And that man was going to come short and never be able to recover himself.
And then he says, now I'm going to introduce my way, I'm going to send my son and he's going to do it all. He's going to glorify me. And he then he's going to take the wicked, the the chief of sinners, and he's going to make him the example of the glory of my grace to take such a person and elevate him and make him fit for God's presence. And so when this gets a hold of your soul, brethren, it, it moves you. It really.
We ought to respond in kind to him when we when this gets a hold of us.
In the, uh, third chapter and the 20th verse and the verse that really goes with what's being brought out by the verse. Often misunderstood.
320 valid to him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in US under any glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. We often apply this verse to trials and to present circumstances that He's able to do abundantly far above all that we might come to Him in our trials.
And ask him poor in those trials and so on. But it really refers to the fullness of blessing that we have been brought into. It exceeds anything that we could have ever come to him and thought of and asked for.
Only his mind, I'm saying, and that him the beginning of the meetings. You know who what raised the wondrous Father? Who did suggest thine? Only it could be thine only no one has so great a heart.
In mind if we can even use that word to come up with these things and purpose them other than God. So it's exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. And I've really enjoyed the little picture in Marks gospel of where the parents bring their children to the Lord Jesus and they have in their thoughts that he would touch them.
Disciples, of course, you know, drive them back and the Lord brings them back in, but it doesn't say He touched them. It says He laid His hands on them. He took them up in His arms and He blessed them unto Him. They brought Him to the right person that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. I just enjoyed that He far exceeded any expectations that they had had.
When they brought their children.
Harry Hagel used to say it uses illustration.
Listen to it on tape of this, taping him into favor. Back in the days when they used to ride trains, you'd buy a ticket to get on that train. Well, like the Old Testament Saints, they had a place on that train. So the man, he bought this ticket and he was sitting there, and then when the Ticketmaster came through, he looked at his ticket.
00:30:09
And he said, Sir, why are you sitting here in this, this, this, this.
Coach, thank you. So this, this entitles you to go up there. There's a, there's a coach up there that's made just for the owner of this railroad, son, he said. You belong up there. You don't belong back here.
That's.
HAIR inside that gives us a lovely example of accepted in the beloved.
He was on a farm and there was a sheep farm. And he was watching out in the pasture. He saw this strange creature run across, maybe through the story, run across the field at like 6 legs. And his skin was all kind of raggedy and torn. And he said the farm and what is that? And the man ran and grabbed this creature and brought it back. And it was a lamb, but it had the skin of another lamb hide around it. And he said, well, what happened? He said, well.
Birthing time, there was a you that died in inverts and this is, is her land. And we had another, uh, you, that it's Lambda. And so we thought we'd, we'd, uh, get them together and she could, uh, nurse this, uh, orphan lamb, but she refused it. She kept pushing it away. It wasn't hers. So we skinned out the dead lamb and we tied the skin around it. And when she sniffed that lamb over, then she accepted it as hers. And he just thought of that lamb and that skin accepted in.
The Beloved.
But in all of these things, as you read down through these verses, there's one thing that keeps coming back up just looking at it.
And, uh, who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, in Christ our position, and then as he have chosen us in him, and having predestinated vessels in the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, to the praise of the glory of His grace, where He has made us accepted in the beloved, all the blessings are commensurate.
With his estimation and his value for Christ. And they're all worthy of Christ. He's the one who is the center of all God's thoughts and all the blessings and the privilege and the place we've been brought into is worthy of Christ and commensurate with God's God of Christ.
And all those blessings are in Christ.
It's a common, anyway I can explain my thought is to sort of get the negative. It's a common thought of Christmas. The merits of Christ is essentially, and especially his righteousness has been transferred to us. It's not a scriptural tour. They have not His righteousness has not been imputed to us. We have seen as righteous in Christ. All these blessings are in Christ inseparable from Christ. There's a vast difference between in fact, it's, it's really just the old Roman Catholic thought of the mayor's Saints being transferred to us. I mean, the merits of Christ are infinitely more than the merits of the Saints, but they're still not transferred to us.
15 is righteous in Christ we are accepted in Christ we have redemption in whom this is, and in whom we have redemption. So the business of sins, these are all inseparable from Christ we have seen in Him.
Yes, the right choice cannot be.
God cannot take his righteousness and give it to somebody else. It's his righteousness. Righteousness, it's not a commodity. I listened one time to Catholic radio and then he phoned in. It was a question and answer period. And he said, I don't know that I'm I'm righteous enough. He said we'll just ask Mary, she's got too much. She'll give you some hurt. But righteousness is not fast. God does because of the work of Christ, reckon us righteous.
But it's not Christ right, is it? Christ righteousness is Christ is righteousness. Christ is right. God's righteousness is how he can be righteous and still forgive sinners. It's his righteousness. So it's not something that is community. We say he's clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You know, that's not the right thought, is it? But because of Christ death, we've been.
Uh, uh, what? What do I want to say?
00:35:02
Declared righteous.
That justification, but it's not. It's not something that is transferred from Christ to us. Righteousness is not that. That's a wrong thought of righteousness altogether.
It's interesting that as the Spirit of God inspired Paul to write this, these truths are given to us in a very distinct order, not haphazardly, and so goes through things in a very orderly way. And so he brings in the fact that we are elect predestinated and that were accepted in the beloved and then in verse seven that we have redemption.
Is through his blood the forgiveness of sin, according to the riches of his grace? Well, when he speaks of redemption, it really always has the thought of liberty in his presence.
You could be a son but really not have perfect liberty in your Father's house because of some failure or some weakness or whatever it is, but when it comes to redemption, we have not only been purchased with the precious blood of Christ.
But we've been set free at liberty in his presence and to enjoy his fellowship.
It's far more to be said at liberty and then he says forgive them. Forgiveness always brings out the thought of our guilt before God being forgiven, but on a righteous basis. God doesn't just pass over sin and we can be forgiven on the principle that God has dealt with Christ about our sins on the cross and someone made the price.
And now you and I can be forgiven, and we are no longer guilty before God.
God doesn't look at you and say you're guilty. He's never going to mention a sin to you. Even if the judgment seat of Christ, he'll review my life, He'll review your life, and He'll delight to tell us about those things that pleased Him. Any reproach that we bore for His name's sake, any faithfulness, any devotedness at all. He'll delight to tell us about those things, but He'll never mention a sin because they're gone.
They're gone forever gone and but he wanted us to know that we have redemption. We not only are purchased, we now have purchased as the thought of new ownership. We have a new master. We don't belong to the old master Satan anymore. We belong to Christ who serve him and live for his glory. But we do it in perfect liberty as the sons of God.
He bought the whole field.
So in a certain sense, you know, I know we often say so and so the Lord.
And we know what we mean by that. We mean, are they believers?
But then another, in a truly scriptural sense, I believe it is safe to say that everyone belongs to the Lord because He bought the whole field, the treasure that was in it. But a believer is not just purchased, He's also, as you put it so nicely redeemed. He set free to purchase and set free. And because God has given us a nature that is patterned after His own, we have eternal life as a present possession, a nature that that enjoys and desires and goes towards the light, not from it.
That it is the light set free not to take it out from 1 typo restraint or ******* and put it onto another. And so that is the liberty of that when you're brought into.
2 verses for like to read and search Tribune chapter one.
1St 30 it says but of him.
Are we in Christ Jesus who has been made made to us, wisdom from God and righteousness and wholeness and Egyptian according to his written heated, both written most in the Lord's and then Ephesians.
Two.
9 is not on the principal works that no one might lose or just enjoy that it's nothing enough that we can boast from, but I enjoyed that thought that it's in Christ. We can't like you said, it's not been transferred to us within Him.
00:40:05
Might just mention too that redemption is spoken of in different ways in Scripture. So we have the redemption of our souls. Our souls are set at liberty and but our bodies are not yet set at liberty from the power of sin. We're still under the ******* of sin. And let's look at it in Romans chapter 8.
It's necessary when we read this term that we make that distinction of what the Lord is really speaking about South Romans chapter 8 and the three for verse 22. For we know that the whole creation grown us and travail us in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption with the redemption of our body.
And so He speaks of the reduction of our body. Our bodies are going to finally be set free at the rapture. Our body is the very bodies that we have will bear no mark of sin, not one, and will be set free forever from the power of flesh. The flesh will be eradicated in the believer. If the Lord was to come this afternoon, we no longer have the flesh they set free. And then He also speaks in Ephesians chapter 5.
In verse 16 of redeeming the time because the days are evil, so you and I need to set free, set at liberty time for the glory of Christ. He speaks of it too in Galatians in a different sense. But I just made this comment, this suggestion that in my Bible I make a little bit of a note as to which one of these.
What the distinction is in connection with redemption in this particular passage so that.
Make sure it's clear because we might get mixed up in our terminology and how we use these terms if we mix it up.
So you're just saying we're just half reading?
Well, brother, Chapter Brown used to say we're just partly redeemed. Our spirits and our souls are redeemed, but we're waiting for our bodies to be redeemed.
OK.
Notice we have the glory of his grace in verse six talked about redemption and then after that we have the riches of his grace. Going to suggest that what was commented earlier about the prodigal son, the glory of his grace is this reading the story the prodigal son from the father's perspective and the riches of his grace is reading the story from the the prodigies perspective.
Yeah.
The riches of his grace are according to our need, but the glory of his grace is that He's taken us into sonship. Is that right? It's the height of the blessing of the glory but the riches, you know for the poor needs good as a man with.
Unnumbered funds were to see somebody over in India laying in the gutter and almost ready to die. And he told him, pick this man out, but take him to the hospital and nursing the Phillies until he's well. And so I'll I'll pay whatever it's whatever it costs. Well, that would be the richest of his graves, wouldn't it? That'd be better be after the man got well. And he said, I want you to come and live with me in my castle.
And be like my Son. That's glory. That'll be the glorious Christ.
Sounds like to me that God doesn't do anything halfway.
So you're going to be completely redeemed.
Your body and your and your soul. You already got your soul, having received it, having received the the salvation of your soul doesn't say it here. And that's the ninth verse of the first chapter.
And, and but then he said he speaks of redemption being reserved in heaven for you. So you looked at him both ways. One is the soul is already redeemed, but the body is not yet redeemed and will be. And if you don't believe that.
00:45:00
Just go look in the mirror.
It's going to show you you're not yet.
It's not even. Go ahead, this will be great.
Why I remember, and someone else might remember it better and more, but mercy is great. The greatness of the need. It's really what characterized God's feelings with the Israelites. Grace is great in the greatness of the giver. That's what characterizes New Testament truth. It's all about Him alluded to before. But once the particle common citizens feel, you never hear a single word from the particle Son again. It's all about the Father. And so when we talk about grace.
It's not to have our focus on us, it's to have our focus on on him.
It's all about him, the great, His greatest. Grace is great and the greatest.
I think it's good to to remember that in our worship or in our remembrance of the Lord and his death to it's appropriate for us to speak about the greatness of our sin. But we shouldn't stop there. We should get onto what God's thoughts are and the greatness of His grace and what He has done for us and our acceptance before Him and worship Him in that way. I don't really think we can worship God.
In the fullness of the sense until unless we do realize our position that way, in fact, if we try to measure the greatness of God's grace by our sins, we will come way short. It helps a little bit, though. It helps a little bit.
It goes far beyond that. I think it's a different uses many spoken before, but the difference between the count of David and his sin.
The second Samuel versus what we have in Chronicles in one where it speaks to redemption, it gives the price in silver in Chronicles. It gives really what David gave not purchased because he gave and speaks an amount in gold which far exceeds, far, far exceeds the values that were connected with his responsibility and what he did in silver in second thing. So again, we tried to measure what God has done from ourselves, yes.
It's important to to to see what God has done in connection with ourselves. But if we try to measure God's love we got trying to measure his grace by what he by by myself, we're going to come up short, way short.
As your remembrance of the Lord one time and Dorothy, we've kind of been a little preoccupied with a place of blessing we've been brought into and remembrance. Old brother Ralph Reed pulled me aside. He said feet. He said think if there was an artist who made his his masterpiece of his life and he wants to show it to everybody to see you and I come on over here and hold it up so the crowd can see it and we hold it up and we look at each other.
What a place of blessing we've been brought into. Isn't this wonderful truth?
And the artist said no, look, look at what you're holding up.
So there's a place for each one, isn't there?
Do you have that illustrated perhaps in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 2?
Christ also have loved us and have given himself for us. But the second part is more important.
An offering and a sacrifice to God.
For a sweet smelling savor.
It's not burnt offering, isn't it? Yeah. Off her laid his head on the hands of the sacrifice. All the acceptance of that one.
So we get the righteous foundation.
And verse in verse seven, for the place we've been brought into as well, blood had to be shed. We were sinners and that had to be met.
But now this position of blessing, we've been brought into the righteous foundation is there. There's no more anxiety in the soul. We're perfectly at rest. And now from that vantage point, he says, now I want to unfold my counsel and purpose and my beloved son. And we're in a place now that we can take it in and enjoy it. And that's what he now goes on. And the next verse is he's abounded towards us and all this.
00:50:04
Everything is known to us what He is going to do in connection with Christ.
So when Joseph was exalted by Pharaoh.
He was given a name, I think, which means that my Bible margin is right revealer of secrets. So he had delivered them and he is savior of the world and reveal our secrets. But I I appreciate what you say, Steven, that the order is to satisfy man with everything that he might be preoccupied about, get him settled in, so to speak. And now God steps further because it's his desire to share.
The things that he enjoys himself.
Him writer has put a deep eternal councils. He was really a deep eternal counsel as we were sharing breakfast this morning. It's one council and concerns everything about his beloved son.
He could have just saved us from our from the guilt of our sins and not given us a new nature.
He could have delivered us from our sins and not even told us and let us live in anxiety and fear. He could have forgiven our sins and told us and just said, OK, everything's good now. We have, we, we, we are, we are forgiven and we're just going to go home. But it just keeps adding and adding and adding to the point where now he's fitted us with the capacity that we might enter into the things.
There are the things that he enjoys himself. It's really staggering. John takes this up, I suppose, as much as Paul, in his sublime way. Truly, our fellowship is with your father and with his son.
How to write this chapter is the longest sentence in the Bible.
Right. Isn't that chapter 211?
So you say that the seventh verse comes in between the past councils and the coming glory.
This is the way the same pattern and John right is brother Bruce quoted the verse our fellowship is with the Father and with his son. But then in that chapter he says and the blood of Jesus Christ comes with us from all sin. There has to be a righteous foundation for that fellowship and communion. That's how we could bring us into it. Really. This is the foundation of the blood has to be shed. There were things there were things that had to be.
Dealt with.
In the Old Testament, they knew little about God, didn't they? They really didn't know a whole lot because God was in darkness. Didn't but.
In the New Testament and we find out that God is just opened up.
Whole panorama of unseen things, hasn't he?
Your brother used to say there's not a glimmer of darkness.
In the inky blackness of eternity.
That, uh, accepted this book. There's not a glimmer of light in the inky darkness of eternity except in this book. Just think of what you would know if you didn't have this book. But in the Old Testament, he wasn't really revealed. But in the New Testament, he just opened that up. What a privilege to know this about the unseen world, about God.
This is the world we're headed for. We better, you know, and take it in and enjoy it.
Epistle to the Romans tells us what God has done for man's blessing. And Paul preach the gospel, taught the gospel, I suppose, in the epistles of the Romans. So he says, he tells us what God has done for the blessing of man. But here he tells us what God has done for his own pleasure, for his own glory, until he uses that term in verse five at the end, according to the good pleasure of his will.
And then a little later on in verse 9, umm, having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He had purposed in Himself. So we not only know what He has done in connection with redemption or the purchase that was made at the cross to purchase the whole field and everything in it, but we know His purpose is in connection with His own joy.
00:55:17
The person is a son.
And that all would be brought unto under his dominion, and that he would glorify God in connection with it all. So it goes way beyond anything that we can enjoy just in connection with our own sin, forgiven, so to speak. We're brought into the enjoyment of what God has done for His own pleasure.
It's actually in the chapter I have No, I didn't just count them six times according to or according as so versus 545791119 according to according as his will pleasure purpose, pal.
We could never know this unless we had a new life, new nature, the very life of Christ where they dwell with the Spirit of God and the Lord. Jesus told the disciples, I can't, I there's some things I just can't tell you right now. You couldn't take them in. But now he tells us because we are interested. We are a part of that new creation race of men and we have the capacity to enjoy it with him.
Not just to know about it, but to enjoy it with him. And that's really the purpose that he gives us this knowledge.
117.
117.
Not your.
Real.
Umm.
It is a long ranging with you and.
Don't worry.
About gravity.
And Father Nation.
Come on.
Pray without our souls.
I'm blowing nowhere.
It's so big and we're crying, flying. Never again.
When the night starts at the time.
No salary is being.
That.
Rest.
Hairy Glory is crying.
Our loving God, our Father, he thank Thee that it is indeed above all that we can ask or think. We thank Thee for the glory of Thy grace. Thank Thee for the riches, Thy grace, our God our Father, and the precious name for our Lord Jesus Christ.
Baptism
Address—Steve Stewart
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.
Could we, uh, start with hymn #91 I'll make a confession that him really is more with what we have in the previous meeting rather than the subject that's before me. I, I couldn't come up with a hymn that was fitting to the subject I'd like to take up, but let's say number.
91.
Uh, rotation and.
All the time.
Will be followed around in the end of the day.
Good night on everything.
Our God and our Father, we look up to Thee for thy help this afternoon.
We do thank thee again for thy well beloved Son, that one object, that holy.
Satisfy thee which thy heart could fully.
Rest upon in perfect complacency. We thank Thee for all that we have been brought into in Christ Jesus.
And we look to thee now.
That thou bless the reading of thy word together as we look into its pages.
And Lord Jesus again, we look to thee as head of the church, that thou.
Undertake for us this afternoon.
To minister to our needs is how to see them.
We trust what they have before us this afternoon will be a help and blessing.
And are able to make it a blessing. So we just commit this time to thee now.
And to thee, our God and Father, giving thanks and asking these things in the precious name.
Of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.
For the Lord's help, I'd like to take up a subject of baptism.
This afternoon and I know it's kind of a completely different line of things and what we have had before us.
But I think it's a subject that perhaps isn't taken up too much and might be a help to us to look into it. And baptism is often looked at amongst believers as a sign, as a witness.
Of something that has been done, but we'd like to look in and see what the scriptures say about baptism.
What is it, does it do anything and how does it apply to us and to get our thoughts from the Word of God? And so there's a number of things we'll look at that that baptism does. Baptism does something, I believe it's not just a witness of something done.
And so we'll look at the scriptures and they'll need some explanation.
Baptism saves.
Baptism as well as saves, it saves us from this unto our generation, this world heading on in opposition to God and unwilling to bend to His will.
And baptism washes away sins, you know, we're going to see that.
00:05:06
Saves and washing away sends is in an outward way, not in this, in the sense of the soul salvation. But we'll look at that baptism.
Gives me part of the death of in the death of Christ. And baptism buries me with Christ. Baptism puts me in a place where Christ is my leader.
And baptism also puts me in the place of being a disciple.
Baptism puts Christ on me, the Scripture says, and it brings me.
Into the sphere of Christian profession and also.
Allows me to demand a good conscience before gone. There are many things baptism does. We like to look at those scriptures together. But let's look at the Gospel of Luke 1St and look at.
The baptism.
At the River Jordan by John the Baptist.
Luke's Gospel.
In chapter 3.
Verse 3.
And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance.
Further remission of sins.
Down to verse 7. Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him.
Oh generation of Vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father. For I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. Now also the acts laid unto the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire.
And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?
He answered and said unto them, He that hath 2 Coats led him in part to him.
That hath none, and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also the publicans to be baptized, and said unto a master, What shall we do? And he said, Exact no more than that which has appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages.
Now, John's baptism is different.
Then Christian baptism, they will hold our place there and justice. Turn over to Acts to see that.
Before we make a few comments on John's baptism, when the apostle Paul came to Ephesus, he found some there who had been baptized with John's baptism, Chapter 19 of Acts.
Verse Two. And he said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost, since ye believed?
And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what then?
Re baptized, and they said unto John's baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they spake with tongues and prophesied.
They had only had the testimony of John. They didn't know.
That the Lord had actually come, that he had gone to the cross, died, was buried and raised again and received up into glory.
They only had part of the truth, and they had been baptized with John's baptism waiting for that coming one.
But now they have the whole gospel presented, and they were baptized again.
Not with John's baptism, but now with Christian baptism and.
We see in that little account that after they were baptized, then they received the Holy Spirit. And so we will find in the scriptures that things are not always in the order that is commonly thought of as being the only right order that someone needs to be.
00:10:07
Saved and they need to be sealed with the Spirit before they can be baptized.
Here were some who were believers, but they.
Were not sealed with the Spirit until after they were baptized and as you go through the book of Acts.
You'll find that order in different ways among different companies. Some who believe but were didn't receive the spirit, some who.
I didn't receive the Spirit till after they were baptized or the apostles laid their hands on them. Some who were saved and received the seal of the Spirit before they were baptized. So there's not always things exactly in order of time the way it's commonly perceived that it needs to be for baptism.
But going back to John's baptism, what did he say to this company that came out to be baptized of them? You generation of Vipers? Who was John baptizing? He was baptizing a generation of Vipers.
That's who he was baptizing.
And what was he baptizing? After he baptized them, they came to him and said, What shall we do?
Now he didn't say to them, Listen.
Like to the soldiers?
When you soldiers learn to stop doing violence to people, and when you start being content with your wages and you stop falsely accusing people, then you come on and you can be baptized.
No, he baptized them as we see these different ones who asked with a view to the fact that there was going to be a change in their life.
There was going to be a change. It was a generation of Vipers and so we get some principles here, he says the axe is laid to the root of the tree. God is able to of these stones raise up children to Abraham. You think you have an old connection that.
Through Abraham that is should be acceptable in the sight of God. But I tell you that's all done and there needs to be a new connection and baptism.
Really was going to bring them into that new connection with what God was doing in His testimony at that time in the earth.
And it was an in a view to a change of life.
And so it wasn't an order of.
Saved.
And then baptized. Here it was, if we can use it that term that way.
Baptized and then to go on and walk in accordance with that baptism in view of a change of life, and so in the truth of baptism as it's unfolded in Scripture.
It's not always first saved, then baptized. Here with John, we see it. He baptized the generation of Vipers with a view to there being a change in their life. But I'd just like to.
Look now at the first of those.
Uh, points that we mentioned, and the first one is in the Gospel of Mark, the End of the Gospel, chapter 16.
This is the risen Lord Jesus.
Speaking to the disciples, the apostles.
Just before he ascended.
And verse 15 And he said unto them, Go ye.
Into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. And he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. But he that believeth not shall be damned, or really judged. Notice the order in this verse. He that believeth and is baptized shall.
Be saved, he doesn't say.
He that believeth and is saved shall be baptized.
But he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. But notice what else he says he that believeth not.
Shall be judged. He doesn't say. He that believeth not and is baptized not shall be judged.
00:15:04
Salvation has two different aspects. There is the salvation of the soul and when it comes to the second part of that verse, he that believeth not shall be judged has to do with the salvation of the soul.
But baptism saves us in an outward way, and as we go on looking at the Scriptures, we're going to hopefully see that a little more clearly.
So at first he says he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. That takes up both.
Aspects of salvation. But then he says he that believeth not because that's the vital thing.
Faith. When it comes to faith, he that believeth not.
Shall be judged.
Now let's look over at the book of the Acts.
Where Peter is preaching to the multitude.
In chapter 2.
They're convicted as to what they have done and crucifying the Lord Jesus.
And in verse 37 of Acts 2 it says, Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles.
Men and brethren, what shall we do? What are we going to do? We they are convicted, they have crucified their own Messiah. Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
For the promises unto you and to your children, and all, to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.
And with many other words that he testify and exhort, saying save yourselves.
From this untoward generation.
And so convicted of their sin. What does Peter say? He says repent and be baptized for their remission of sins. They stood there as part of that guilty nation, guilty of crucifying their Lord and Messiah, and convicted of that. He tells them to repent.
What a necessity and to be baptized for the remission.
Of sins he doesn't say here. Repent and you'll receive the Holy Ghost and then be baptized. Doesn't give it in that order, but it's repent, be baptized for the remission of sins, then you'll receive the Holy Ghost.
What was baptism going to do for them? It was going to save them from that untoward generation, the rest of the nation.
That was refusing and would go on to refuse the testimony of the Spirit of God till Stephen can say.
You have resisted the Holy Spirit and baptism was going to put them on a holy new ground.
No longer on the ground and associated with the guilt of that nation that had crucified their Messiah.
It was going to deliver them, save them from that untoward generation that was heading on.
To the judgment of God, because of what they had done to their Messiah.
Baptism does something. It puts us on a new ground.
We who were once part of this world and its guilt and crucifying.
The Lord Jesus Christ. It puts us in a holy new place, just like John's baptism.
Put that generation of Vipers into a new place associated with God's testimony at that time.
And so in that way, in an outward way, it saved them from that unto our generation. Now let's look a little further in Acts and trust will see the connections as we go along. The apostle Paul when he was.
Giving a testimony to the Jews.
And.
Speaking to them as to his conversion in.
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Chapter 21 or 22.
He recall, he re he recalls about when Ananias sent to the Lord, came to him, verse 12. And one Ananias, a devout man, according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there, came unto me, and stood and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight the same hour I looked up upon him.
And he said the God of our fathers had chosen thee, that thou should just know his will, and see that just one, and should us hear the voice?
Of his mouth, for thou shalt be his witness unto all men, of what thou hast seen and heard.
And now why, Tarius, thou arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins.
Calling on the name of the Lord.
He was already saved.
Ananias calls him Brother Saul.
He couldn't have called him that if he was not a believer.
But he says to him, be baptized and wash away.
Thy sins Now it's interesting when the apostle Paul.
Recounts his conversion to the Gentiles. He does not mention this.
This was important, though, to be mentioned in connection with the Jews.
Because again.
The guilt of crucifying their Messiah was on that nation, and Saul of Tarsus had certainly taken part in that guilt, persecuting the Church of God.
And even though he had been saved.
He was still standing on the ground and associated with the guilt of that nation.
But baptism was going to put him on holy new ground, in a new place.
And so his sins as to the need of the purgation of sins, as to the expiation of sins, as to the need of his soul.
Was taken care of. He was a believer, but the outward sin and guilt.
That was his as to association with that guilty nation was going to be washed away by baptism and he was going to be put on holy.
New ground?
And so baptism washes away sins in an outward way, not the soul.
But as to this association with guilt in that way?
In an outward way.
Let's look at.
Romance.
Chapter 6 I know we're going over these very briefly because I there's some other points I'd like to get to at the end so.
You pardon me if we just kind of touch on each one. Romans 6.
Verse One. What shall we say then? Shall we continue, and sin, that grace may abound?
God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ?
Were baptized unto his death, I believe that should be unto. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, Even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Now the Romans that Paul was writing to had been saved and baptized long ago.
But Paul is bringing them back in connection with this truth of being dead to sin, to their baptism. And he says, don't you know that your baptism gave you part in the death of Christ?
That your baptism really, umm, speaks of.
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That place that you have as dead to sin, it gave you part in the death of Christ.
That is how you can say I'm dead to sin.
The truth, the baptism.
Was in correspondence with that truth, and so he reminds them of it, that baptism.
Had given them part in the death of Christ. Then he says the second thing.
We were buried with him by baptism.
Unto death.
So not only given part of the death of Christ, but buried with him.
By baptism unto death, and so baptism speaks of.
Being dead with Christ and really all that we were.
Left in the grave, buried with Christ.
It doesn't quite put the picture of saying you're saved.
And you're a Newman, and you have new life with Christ. Now let's bury you.
Now let's bury you. We don't bury a living man. We bury a dead one. Bury a dead one. It really speaks of all that we were before and now put away from before the sight of God.
But baptism is looked at when it's looked at justice, a witness of and a testimony to my salvation. That's kind of like burying.
A living man we don't we bury a dead man. Let's look on.
To First Corinthians.
10.
1St Corinthians 10.
And verse one Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and passed all passed through the sea.
And we're all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them. In that rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now Paul had been taking up in the previous chapter.
That there was a possibility that one.
Could even be a preacher.
Christian preacher and still be a castaway, still not really be saved. And then he goes and he takes up Israel. In the Old Testament, he says these things were examples for us. And here were those who had come out of Egypt, he says they were baptized.
Unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea. And they all ate of that same spiritual meat, drank of that same spiritual drink. What he's bringing out is that.
These two Christian ordinances, Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
Partaking of them being baptized does not necessarily save the soul. It doesn't save the soul. And it doesn't mean that those who are partaking of those things or have been baptized are saved their soul salvation because there are those who fell in the wilderness. And he says that's an example for us, a warning for us. Someone could be.
Baptized and be a partaker of the Lord's Supper and still.
Lost still be lost, but.
The principles given, and them being baptized unto Moses and the cloud and in the sea, as we want to apply it and understand it in connection with baptism, is that this place Israel under Moses as their leader. Moses was now their leader.
It's not the other way around, saying because Moses is your leader will baptize you unto Moses. That was really an order that he would be placed firmly as their leader, and so we're all baptized. They were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, now as their leader and leaving them out.
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Of Egypt.
In a similar thought.
Our baptism baptized unto Christ has put us under Christ now as our leader. He is our leader. It has put us into that position. It has made us under Christ as our new leader, who were never under Him before in that way.
Now let's look at a similar thought back in the Gospel of.
Matthew.
Again, the end of the book.
Chapter 28.
And.
Verse 19.
Matthew 2819 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.
If you have a marginal reference for verse 19 where you have the word teach, it says in my Bible, or make disciples. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Doesn't say go to all nations and make believers out of them.
But disciples, the point here is baptism makes us disciples. It puts us into the place of being disciples. And then disciples are those who are learners. He says make them disciples and then teach them. Then teach them to do all things that he had.
Commanded them.
He doesn't say the other way around now. When you've learned all these things and you've become a good disciple now.
Come and will baptize you. No, he says. Baptize.
Make them disciples and then you teach them. Bring them into this place.
Of being disciples, because disciples are those that get taught. So baptism makes me a disciple. Baptism saves me in an outward way, it washes my sins away in an outward way, saves me from this unto her generation in an outward way, buries me with Christ, gives me part of the death of Christ.
Makes Christ my leader, puts me under Christ as my new leader, and here it makes me a disciple.
Of Christ, where I can be taught baptism does something, doesn't it?
It's not just a witness of something that's been done, it does something.
To us.
Well, let's look now at.
Galatians.
Galatians 3.
And verse 26 For ye are all the children of God.
By faith in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as have been baptized into or unto Christ have put on Christ, have put on Christ.
You know, a soldier, I think perhaps we've heard this example, has a uniform that identifies him.
With whatever country that he belongs to and serves and fights for.
And here baptism puts Christ on us like a soldier puts on a uniform.
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Were identified with Christ, put on us in that way.
As many have been baptized unto Christ, we put on the uniform.
Now we read in Corinthians that there could be those who partake of.
Or have been baptized but are not believers. And one might be a soldier and have no love for his country. Or no.
Devotion to his country or allegiance to his country, but he's still got the uniform on.
There are many who have the uniform on.
But it doesn't mean that they all necessarily are believers.
Our believers, but it nonetheless puts Christ.
On the one who has been baptized, so it puts Christ.
On us.
Now let's look at Ephesians and chapter 4.
Ephesians 4.
And verse four, there is one body and one spirit.
Even as ye are called and won. Hope of your calling. 1 Lord, 1 Faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all, and in you all. This has been often likened to.
Three circles, one within another, just as if you threw a stone in a pond and its ripples go out. There's one circle, and another, and another, and here we have.
Three. The first one, the innermost one is verse 4, and that's.
The sphere of reality, the circle of reality. One body. All who are part of the body of Christ are real believers. They're all indwelt by 1 spirit. They all have one hope of their calling. Everyone will be raptured when the Lord comes, not one left behind. That's the unity of reality. But then there's a larger sphere.
Beyond that, it includes verse four, but it's bigger. 1 Lord, 1 faith, one Christian faith.
One baptism.
Baptism really opens the door and puts us on the ground of Christian profession, of the Christian faith owning Christ as Lord. That's a sphere that includes more than just the reality of verse 41 body one spirit 1 hope of your calling. This includes.
Christian profession, but no one is properly on Christian ground.
Unless they have been baptized in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
That is what really brings them into this sphere of profession.
Baptism 1. Baptism. And then outside there's a further circle that includes all creation, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all. And then he comes back to the center again in you all believers.
Baptism brings me into the sphere of Christian profession.
And then lastly.
Like to look over at Peter?
OK.
First, Peter.
And chapter 3.
And verse 20, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah.
While the arc was.
A preparing.
Wherein few, that is, 8 souls were saved by water, The like figure, where unto even baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of the request or demand of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so when those waters of judgment poured down on this earth.
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They lifted that arc up above this guilty world that came under the judgment of God.
It says here they were saved not by the ark, but by water.
By water a white figure, where unto baptism also saves us. Here were these believing Jews Christians now.
That Peter is writing to.
And they may have looked around at the rest of the nation and said we're just a few that believe. Look how few.
There are while most of the nation is heading on to judgment, having refused the testimony of the Spirit of God.
Peter says there were a few before. There was another time when there was just a few. Remember Noah? Remember just eight souls saved.
That were brought into that ark.
They were saved by water.
And Peter says to them, your baptism.
Has put you on new ground.
And separation from that untoward generation and all its guilt.
And now you can go to God and request or demand.
A good conscience in connection with the association you once had.
With that guilty nation, not a purged conscience, the blood does that, but a good conscience and taking that new ground through baptism, that new ground that they were put on separate from that nation, they could say, I, I can request a good conscience now. I don't have to have the guilt and sin of the nation that I belong to.
On me anymore and so.
Baptism in that way saved them just like it saved those few.
And the ark. Now if we go to Hebrews, we would find that Noah built an ark to the saving.
Of his house to the saving of his house.
But here we find that it was the water that saved Hebrews is the faith chapter, and there it is faith he that believeth.
And in Peter we get, and is baptized shall be saved, we get.
Both truths brought together in Mark 16. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. Both.
Aspects of salvation, that which is outward, that which puts us on new ground, separates us from this guilty world, brings us into the sphere of Christian profession, puts Christ on us, makes us his disciples, our new leader, buries us with him, gives us part in his death.
That is one aspect of salvation. The other is the salvation of our souls, the salvation of our souls. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. And so we get both of those aspects with Peter and in Hebrews.
My time done.
OK, then I'll leave it there. I was going to touch a little on household baptism, but we'll leave that for another time. Let's look to the Lord.
Our God and our Father, we do as Thy blessing on my word just to look at these few points together on the truth of baptism, and we just pray that they'll help us to have a better understanding of it from Thy precious Word. And so we do commit this time to Thee and the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Gospel 1
Gospel—Bruce Conrad
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Welcome to the Gospel meeting.
Gospel means good news.
We have good news tonight.
Let's start by singing a hymn in the Echoes of Grace hymn sheet. Hymn #25 will just sing the 1St.
And the last verses verses one and four of 25.
Time.
13 years old wandering boys, say the Lord your hath destroyed, and I don't have been crowned.
Take him from thy name come from God has been through life from nowhere until the prominence from what I want to make started before you're having to give him a lot of money and giving him anything giving him anything in his life.
Embarrassed and you're crying because you may be in time.
Let's pray.
For God our Father, we thank Thee for this opportunity to have thy word before us. We thank Thee that.
Are still interested in the lives, the souls, the destinies of men and women. Children, we thank Thee for sending Thy Son from the glory down into this world to make a way whereby lost sinners might be recovered, might be redeemed, might be returned unto Thee in righteousness. And so we ask Thy help as we would seek to open Thy word.
And read passages from it that would tell the great, great story.
Of thy great love, and the wondrous things that thou hast done for the children of men. So we ask thy blessing our God and Father, and the worthy and precious name of our God and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Let's start by turning to the 33rd Psalm, please. If you're new to the Bible, I.
Remember being told that you just hold the Bible up and split it right down in the middle. You come into the Psalms.
Sometimes you preach in places where people are opening the Bible for the first time.
I want to speak in the time that we have tonight.
Really about.
Seven things. I know, it sounds like a lot of things.
It says in the word of God that wisdom is justified of all her children.
And I am one of Wisdom's children.
And I want to justify God tonight. I want to speak on his behalf and make a defense of him.
I want to speak about man's responsibility to God.
I want to speak about man's ruin.
I want to speak about God's love for you and for me, and the provision God has made in love for you and me.
I want to speak about the work of Christ, about God's purpose in Christ.
Then I want to speak at the end about the destiny of those that accept God's offer of salvation.
And those that reject it, if you were counting, I think that's about 7. We'll see if we get through them all.
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But to start with, I'd like to read Psalm 33, just a part of it.
Verse 6.
By the word of the Lord, where the heavens made, and all the hosts of them, by the breath of his mouth, he gathereth the waters of the sea together as in heap.
He layeth up the depth in storehouses that all the earth.
The Lord let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
For he spake, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast. The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought. He maketh the devices of the people of none effect.
The Council of the Lord standeth forever the thoughts of his heart to all.
Generations.
Particularly had in mind that eighth verse, Let all the earth fear the Lord, Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
I sometimes marvel when I read in the New Testament about a coming day when those in the favored western lands especially, who have been exposed to the light of the Word of God.
And have rejected it that receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved.
We will be given over to a strong delusion.
The Word of God, you'll notice. Never.
Exaggerates or overstates anything.
If there's something you know about specifically and then you read God's testimony or explanation of it, you know that if anything, He understates the things that you've seen and experienced in your life.
When God says it's a strong delusion, it's going to be strong.
And what I marvel about is the illusion that men and women are under today, because this one that we're under right now.
Seems to me very very strong.
We read in Romans chapter one.
That God designed man with the innate ability.
To look upon created things and to know that there was a God.
Romans chapter one.
He created you with that innate sense and ability.
And he created everyone that way. And what has man done?
I the older I get, the more I marvel almost every day.
That people don't wake up in the morning and go outside and look around at a tree.
Or an apple. Or a frog, or the sun. Or go out at night and see the stars.
And acknowledge that there is a God who is all powerful.
And all wise and is beyond our wildest imagination of what?
Has been put together around us and what we're a part of.
In the engineering business, people invent stuff and design stuff. I think Robert used to do that for a living.
And if you're I don't have an exalted.
Livelihood like that, we've just built things that people drive on and things like that. But in order to build those things, you need to build like tools and and, and like things to build other things. And, and that's where the real challenge is, is building these these temporary structures in order to get so you can build something.
And we carry budgets to design and build these things and anybody with any Gray hair at all, the young guys come in and they got it all figured out and they got it all the tonnage and all the bolts and all the everything. And and then a guy like me looks at us as checks their work and their take off and says, OK, that's very good and I'll double it.
And then we double it and then we spend more than that usually because there's a lot of failure.
And if a person designs something that's really necessary or unique to do something necessary and unique, you fail more than you succeed.
Have you ever seen in the universe that there's a failure around anywhere?
Is there an animal? Is there a planet? Is there a star? Is there some part of the natural creation?
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That shows the slightest bit of failure or lack of perfection.
You won't find it.
Look at your hand.
You know, I I dropped something in my vehicle and.
It's really tight in that down there and I can't see it.
And I'm just trying to feel it.
And I got to thinking about your hand. It's just So what a design just the human hand is.
The other day in the meeting room, we broke some glass shattered in the in the dishwasher and I'm trying to clean it out and I thought I got it all and I just put my hand in there just ever so lightly. And your finger can feel the slightest little thing. A slight little bit class will stick to it and you can brush it off. What up? What up?
And then you can make a fist and hold onto a rope or a cable or something and you can pull.
Or you can push and you can hit.
Or you can caress.
On and on and on. It's just a hand.
And you could go through the universe like that.
And you go to school and you learn science. True science.
And you learn about everything goes from a solid to a liquid to a gas, except one thing, water.
Water is the only thing that changes its density in the opposite way.
When it goes from a liquid to a solid and you stop and think about why is that? Well.
You know if the.
If it was the normal way everything else is, then as soon as the ice froze it would get heavier than the liquid and it would sink and it just pretty soon. No fresh water in most of the world.
The northern world and things like that, there's just thousands of things like that.
And what has man done?
Has ignored the plain testimony of God instead of, as it says in this Psalm, let all the world stand in awe of Him.
So I tell you, I don't know how this strong illusion is going to be.
But right now?
An intelligent human being.
With a graduate education or a pH DI, have some pH D's are working around us and they can walk out. And I said how did you get here?
Did God create you or did you evolve?
And they think they evolved.
I don't know. I hate to keep harping about evolution. You know, even before I saved, I thought it was ridiculous. How could that happen? Nothing ever observed in the in the world of nature or science. Thermodynamics goes up. It goes the other way.
If men you know if you run for political office, I have some friends that are in the political world from my childhood.
If you decide to run for office and most of this country and you say.
And they they find out you're a Christian and you say they start to quiz you on your beliefs.
Yes, I believe the Son of God came and was born of a virgin.
And you say, well, do you believe in evolution? No, I don't believe in evolution. I believe that God created me. You are branded an absolute kook and a nut in this very sophisticated world that we live in. It's amazing to me. I marvel at it almost every day.
That we are considered such crazy kooks and all we've done is act normally and stand in awe of Him who created you and me and everything.
It seems to me that men deny.
God is creator. It's almost as if they know where you're going with that.
Because if you say, if I say OK, I acknowledge that God created me.
Boom, there is a God. Hmm. If there's a God, what's the deal with me?
What's my relationship to this God? And things start to flow from there.
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And so I want to turn now to Daniel chapter 5 and read about a man.
There's a man in a high position, Belshazzar.
OK.
Daniel chapter 5 and verse 5.
In the same hour came forth the fingers of a man's hand and wrote.
Over against the Candlestick, upon the plaster of the wall of the King's palace.
And the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the King's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loose, and his knees smote one against another.
The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers.
And the king spake, and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and show me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet.
And have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the Kingdom, and so on.
The Queen instructs King Belshazzar that there was a wise man in the Kingdom who had performed a similar function for his father. Maybe it was his grandfather. I'm not sure whether Nebuchadnezzar was the father or the grandfather.
And so they called Daniel, and Daniel comes in.
And Daniel?
In verse.
21 And in that part of the chapter begins to relate to Belshazzar.
That something had happened with his father.
That his father had been given great responsibility and given the headship or leadership of a great Kingdom not very long before. And then he had become lifted up with pride, and God humbled him, made him and made him like a beast, made his heart like a beast, and he was out in the eating grass and so on like an animal until God restored him.
So in verse 21 he recounts this and says He was driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made like the beast, and his dwelling was with the wild *****. They fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he knew that the most High God ruled in the Kingdom of men, and that the he appointed over it whomsoever he will. And thou his son, O Balshazar, hast not humble thine heart, though thou knewest all this.
But thou hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven.
And they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou and thy Lords, thy wives and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them.
And thou has praised the gods of silver and gold, of brass, ironwood, and stone, which see not.
Nor here, nor no. And the God in whose hand thy breath is.
And whose are all thy ways? Hast thou not glorified? We'll stop there for a moment if we were to read there in Romans chapter one, which we didn't, and I will just quote it for you in Romans 1.
I quoted the part which says in verse 19 that which may be known of God is manifest to them.
God has showed it unto them.
And then in verse 21, because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God.
Neither were thankful. That became vain in their imaginations. Their foolish heart was darkened.
They glorified him not.
I doubt I'm speaking to anybody in this room that's a king.
And maybe there's no one in this room that has these kind of special responsibilities.
But all of us had the same responsibility in general that our duty.
Our responsibility to the One who made us as God, the Creator, to glorify Him.
The general statement in Romans one about the world at that time was that they have not. They did not glory, they glorified him, not when they knew him.
And so Belshazzar here is in the same boat.
He ought to have known better. He had a clear testimony in the life of another.
Verse 24 Daniel says then was the part of the hand sent from him, and this writing was written, and this is the writing that was written meaning.
Meanie techo farson, but this is the interpretation of the thing meaning God hath numbered thy Kingdom and finished it.
00:20:06
Tackle Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Perez, thy Kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.
As you read in the next few verses you you find that life indeed was very brief for Belshazzar.
I believe he died that night. His life was required of him.
And I'm not trying to scare anybody tonight and say that you're going to hear the gospel for the last time and you're going to go out that door and your life will be taken from you. I don't know that.
But God holds you accountable for what you know, and you know in your heart what you know, that there is a God in heaven.
In whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways?
Have you glorified him? He said. I never really thought about glorifying God.
Maybe you gave some thoughts about being a little good.
Or a little better. But you never thought about glorifying God. I wouldn't have thought about it really either.
Except from reading God's Word.
And I've learned that that is God's standard.
When God wants to measure man, and that's what he's done here. It's interesting meaning meaning, I think it means as it says here.
Numbered and numbered. Why does he say that twice? He says it twice Numbered, numbered or weighed.
Numbered. Numbered.
Weighed and divided.
I think the reason maybe this is that God is profoundly careful.
When it comes to the destiny of a soul.
I learned a lesson when I started out working. I worked as a Carpenter at times.
And once in a while, in the residential line of things, you have to cut something.
Commercial line of things that's very expensive and it makes you a little nervous.
And you know a piece of walnut or something, You know that, right? And.
I wish our guys would be more careful sometimes that way today, but so I it's pretty confident, you know, I read a tape measure.
And sure enough, I've measured it out and I cut it like 2.
Couldn't add anything to it.
Cut it too short and I couldn't add anything to it.
And so the older carpenters have this saying, I'm sure they have it today, measured twice, cut once, right? You've all heard that. Measure twice, cut once. And to this day, I don't think I cut hardly a piece of junk if around the house, but I don't measure it twice to check myself or measure it from another direction.
And God is serious about the destiny of a soul, because the soul lives forever.
You are going to be you forever.
You're either going to be you and outer darkness by yourself in hell.
Or you're going to be you in the presence of the Lord Jesus and all the redeemed in the bright light of glory with Christ.
It's forever.
Velshazar went out, probably into a lost eternity.
Numbered.
Numbered measure twice weighed gone.
What about you? How do you measure up?
The gospel message says in Romans chapter 3 that all have sinned and come short of.
The glory of God.
That's the measuring standard.
God has nothing less than that. God has God like standards.
Excellence in everything and perfection.
Come short of the glory of God.
And just as Belshazzar was weighed by the testimony of God, you and I are weighed too.
Man, woman, child, everyone, everyone shall give account of themselves before God.
And to save you all the homework and introspection and evaluation and hand wringing.
00:25:04
God says you've come short of the glory of God. He not only says you're a Sinner.
Or that you have sinned but that you are a Sinner.
You've got bad fruit on your resume.
And you're a bad tree. And you've been like that since you were born.
Man is born unto trouble like the sparks flow upward.
And then he drinks iniquity like water. That's man from the top of the head to the sole of the feet. Wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.
And when man tries to be righteous, he puts his own righteousness together and tries to present that to God. It's an obnoxious, odious thing to God.
All your righteousness is prophet, Isaiah said. Are like filthy rags. They are menstrual rags, to be blunt.
That's your condition. You have a problem if you're outside of Christ.
And it's only going to get worse.
Some years ago, maybe 20 or 30 years ago.
Maybe longer 35.
I was visiting my father, I think my wife was with me and I asked to speak to him.
He was not saved and is still not saved today unless it happened today.
And we sat down in the living room. I can remember it. And I said, Dad, I want to talk to you and I.
I said.
You know, I lived far away and I said I don't want to hear you just keeled over, you know, at work or something.
Where you got hit by a car.
And are laying there with you and you'll take in your last breaths.
And you don't know how to be saved.
So if you don't mind, I'd like to tell you how to be saved right now.
So if that happens, I'll know that you know.
And I won't have to wonder.
And so I didn't take 45 minutes like we have tonight.
But I tried to put before him methodically.
The gospel of the grace of God. And he listened very politely.
And has always been that way.
But his real problem is, he says, I can't imagine myself being a Christian and liking to do the things you do.
I can't imagine enjoying that.
I'm not sure how I answered that.
I don't remember how I answered it. I'm sure I answered it.
If that's your feeling, I would say today that is the least of your worries my friend.
In your sins if you've ever seen somebody thrashing around.
On a bed trying to get their last breath.
They're not going to ask the composition of the gas that the nurse brings to their mouth or somebody thrashing in the water is not going to care whether it's a hamper or a nylon rope.
I'm going to say help me.
And cry out.
To be saved.
Don't worry about being a Christian. Worry about the fact that right now you're guilty before God.
And that God looks upon you right now and not in a neutral zone between being a saved person and eventually a lost person.
You're in judgment already. He that believeth not it says in John chapter 3 is judged already.
You're like a person walking around with that dark cloud over you, judged.
Just waiting to fall upon you. Why will you live that way?
That your life is in the balance all the time.
And there's a step between you and a lost eternity.
My mom said to me later on, I wish you wouldn't speak my mom, I believe.
Was a believer. I believe she's with Christ right now.
Absent from the body and present with the Lord, she said. I wish you wouldn't speak to your father that way. It hurts his feelings.
I was in a construction meeting one time.
00:30:02
Where we the project was so chaotic I got parachuted in trying to bail the situation out.
And uh, we had a large staff and I'd meet with the staff every afternoon. I don't know if like 5:00 or something and just.
Get everybody's status and update.
And then they there's a night shift and all that stuff. And so I'm trying to process.
Where we're at and.
Maybe 60-70 staff people and my boss comes in.
And he's a little upset and he listens to part of the meeting and he listens to the guys responding to my inquiries and my questions.
And uh.
This has been 20/21/22 years ago now and I'll never forget he just in a natural context.
He stood up and he says, you know, tired of listening to all these excuses.
Says you guys ought to be ashamed of yourself.
This is in our company. There's no excuses.
In Romans chapter one I think it's three times or Romans chapter one and chapter 2 it says that they might be without excuse.
You might be attempting to offer excuses right now in your mind, or you may think that you have an excuse that you're going to use in that day before the great white throne of God.
Before you're cast into the Lake of Fire.
There's no adequate excuse. There is no excuse, Belshazzar. No excuse.
My boss stepped forward and he said.
He said.
I don't care about your feelings. I don't care if I hurt your feelings.
He says I care about you.
And I care about your families.
I care about this company.
I don't care about your feelings.
I never forgot that.
I wish I had had something.
Wise and prudent to say to my mom, I don't think I had a good answer. I was disappointed.
And I hope I haven't. Well, let me back up.
I don't intend to hurt your feelings tonight.
But I care about your soul.
And I'd rather have your feelings hurt.
And you get right with God.
And bow the knee and accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
Even if it means it hurt feelings for a little while.
That's man's ruin. Against the backdrop of man's ruin, God comes in.
Is put very nicely today.
The gospel is concerning his Son. That's what the gospel is about. It's about God's Son. Romans chapter one, The gospel concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, it's about him.
And it's not a contingency plan. It's not a response to something unanticipated.
It's part of His eternal purpose and His counsel.
That the 1St man would fail.
In his independence.
And the second man, the last Adam, the Lord from heaven.
Would accomplish.
All for God's glory.
And so God, as we know, so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son.
And God sent one into this world.
His own son that took humanity into his person.
And as a man here, he displayed everything that God.
Is nothing left out?
In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
And if that that would have been.
The greatest blessing and display for mankind that ever would have would have been if he had lived 30 or 33 years here and displayed that and gone.
Still the greatest thing, the greatest 33 years the world would have ever seen.
But not only did he display God in his own person, he could say, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.
I and my father are one.
But then he proceeded, as you know, to Calvary's cross.
00:35:03
The wages of sin is death.
And it costs to himself he proceeded into that place where God would judge sin.
And the wrath of God was poured out upon the only sinless man on Calvary's cross.
Everybody was fussing around about watching the eclipse traveling.
Miles and miles to see it where we were. One of my daughters had the little thing.
Saw the little.
I'm sure probably everybody in this room thought about a different eclipse that happened.
During those three hours of darkness.
When in divine respect.
For the man Christ Jesus.
The sun didn't even shine. There was darkness over all the land.
Christ died for my sins.
Shed his blood.
To put away my sins.
And I can tell you on the authority of this book without even knowing anything about you.
I can say, based upon the authority of this book, that God loves you.
I don't know if my wife loves you or my kids love you or my or Robert loves you. I don't know.
I can tell you that God loves you. God loves you.
I can say that Christ died for you and he gave himself a propitiation for our sins. And what's that? And what that means is.
That he accomplished on Calvary's cross.
A work to address the question of sin that is such a foundation.
That God can now bless the vilest Sinner who puts his trust in him and still be just in doing it.
That's the part of the mystery of the gospel.
And so, on the authority of God's word, I can say God loved you.
That Christ died for you.
But I cannot say to each and everyone of you that he bore your sins.
On Calvary St.
I can say he bore mine. He bore my sins because I put my trust in Him.
He was my substitute.
But I can't say he's yours. You have to decide that. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thou shalt be saved, the work is done, all things are ready, and to think that God himself invites you now.
To come.
Does it say go a worldly religion, say go do this, go do that?
He says come.
Luke chapter 16 is sometimes called a parable.
Luke 16 and verse 19 There was a certain rich man clothed with a in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.
There was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate, full source desiring to be fed.
With the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table, moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores.
And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abram's bosom.
The rich man also died and was buried and in hell were Hades.
The unseen place.
He lifted up, his eyes being in torments.
I'll stop there.
You die in your sins.
You're not going away. You're going to be you.
Death is the separation of you from your body.
It's temporary.
There is such a thing as the resurrection of the unjust.
You die in your sins, the Lord Jesus says. Whither I go, he cannot come.
Your fate will be determined where the tree falls. That's where the tree lies.
00:40:02
You die in your sins. You end up immediately according to this verse.
In Torment.
And sometime in the future, you will be.
Resurrected resurrection has to do with the body, and there's such a thing as a resurrection of the unjust.
The resurrection of judgment.
And you'll stand before a great white throne.
And God will check.
You'll review your works.
And then he'll make a second check.
To see if your name.
Speaking reverently, maybe there's a mistake.
See if your name is in the Book of Life.
If your name is not in the Book of Life, you'll be cast in the Lake of Fire.
That hurts your feelings. I'm sorry. That's your destiny.
If you continue to reject the love of God.
The Lord Jesus came and glorified God.
And he, in so doing, has made provision for you.
Don't go on in your sins.
Let's turn to Luke 23.
A well known story by many.
Of the two thieves that were in crosses on either side of the Lord Jesus, when they were put up there, they pierced their hands and their feet.
And they were both cursing him.
But one of them had a change of heart, and he turns to the Lord.
In verse 39.
Verse 40.
The other answering rebuked him. He rebuked the other thief, saying.
Dost thou not fear God?
Seeing thou art in the same condemnation, and we indeed justly.
For we receive the due reward of our deeds. What this man hath nothing done nothing amiss.
And he said unto Jesus, Lord, Remember Me when thou comest into thy Kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee.
Today or this day, thou shalt be with me.
In paradise.
He was there today.
He was there yesterday.
Is there last week?
It's there right now. It's in paradise.
And it's going to get even better.
When that special moment comes.
And the father.
Gives the word to the sun. The sun will arise again from glory.
Come down into the clouds of heaven.
And the dead in Christ will be raised from the grave.
In their changed resurrection bodies.
We which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. You'll be you, and I'll be me.
But we're going to be like Christ.
We're going to be like Christ.
Let's close by turning to 2nd Thessalonians Chapter 2.
We mentioned the strong delusion from verse 11 to 2nd Thessalonians 2 verse 11 for this 'cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie. It did not receive the love of the truth.
But then dropped down to verse 14. I'm sorry, verse.
Verse 14.
He called you by our Gospel to the obtaining of the glory.
Of our Lord Jesus Christ.
There's so many of us that got saved, we didn't know what was in store for us.
We thought to be spared from the judgment of God would be.
Priceless.
To have a new life, how wonderful.
I don't know about you, but I never signed up.
In my first days of salvation at the slightest clue.
00:45:00
That I would be.
Obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That I would be brought, as we had in a reading meeting today, into a place like, into a position like that with himself.
Never signed up for that, but it's true. There are glories that the Son of God had.
Before the worlds were made. That will always be his and his alone.
The glory which I had with thee before the worlds were made. He has it still, and always will.
But he added to that as a man glories that he acquired down here.
As the victorious man over sin and death and hell.
And he stands, going to stand before God in that day, the first born amongst many brethren, and be able to say, Behold, I and the children which God had given me.
You'll see of the fruit of the travail of his soul.
Be satisfied.
You and I are going to share in that place. Why?
Because we heard the call.
We responded to the call. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
So tonight you've heard, perhaps one more time, a gospel message.
I hope if you remember nothing else, it will be implanted in your mind.
That God loves you.
That he sent his son to die for you, and that his hands are outstretched even tonight.
Wanting you to come and to receive eternal life and peace at such a time as now. Let's just bow in prayer.
Our God and our Father we.
Thank thee that we are understanding has been open to.
Take in these wonderful things, my love for us, despite all that we were and had done.
I was pleased to send thy son to deliver us from so great a death.
And to bring us into fellowship with himself.
You feel so inadequate. Our God and Father to.
Be able to express adequately the love, the glory that belongs to thee and to thy Son.
But we ask thy blessing upon thy precious word in the gospel invitation that has.
Gone out one more time.
We pray for each one that has been under the sound of Thy word tonight here and in every other place.
And asked that by word would not return unto thee void, but bring forth fruit.
For thine own eternal glory we ask thy blessing. We thank thee for all thy love.
And for the unspeakable gift of thy beloved Son, we give thee thanks in his worthy and precious name. Amen.
Bible Animal Lessons
Children—Dave Whitaker
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
OK, who would like to have the first him? How about you, young man? Do you have one?
What song should we sing?
Try this in the back here.
Can you read?
You pick a number.
Well, let's sing together #41 That be OK good #41.
And I don't think I'll cry when I'm always in bed. And I don't mind. I'm thinking like Angel wires and everything. Glory.
I'll bring peace and joy and 1 LB came to civil granddaughter screaming in the whole morning glory.
Thing to God.
By.
Because I'm saying that again, why didn't you provide shallow land and.
Now watch them done from precious one being home and wide and clean the dreams. They can be in the world of the dreams blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Amassed the older brothers here. How come camels are mentioned?
18 times in Genesis chapter 24.
At least 18-70 maybe.
Do you have a song you'd like to sing?
Go ahead, you can, anybody can choose #4 All right, see what number 4 is.
Christ is the Savior.
And the rest is that standard for me.
Long time when chase and take time. Now by his grace, I am afraid.
Staying interrupted and everything. There is no respite me.
Shedding his blood on my grandson.
And the standard for me.
I can say I am far again. I've been just in my dream, staying by my right friend. Crazy man, that's been such a standard for me.
And everything.
******** his Bloodborne by grand tongue. This is the same girl for me.
You're as bad as I want to increase breathing from judgment.
Now there is no condemnation.
00:05:01
Let's just unfavor for me.
Standing in several trillion.
And everything else standards like me.
Shaking his blood for my grandson and it's in touch already.
Love with my love the sun change change. But I swear to God blessings so pretty.
I shall I tell up his praise God, then spend the day there for me.
Staying in the house today and then drunk, they had a very slightly.
Letting him fly, blown by the rat and some There's been some stranger flowering.
Children, we're going to be talking this morning about some animals.
I remember had a dog, it was a Sheltie and we had a Beagle and had him at the house at the same time.
The Sheltie always wanted to do what I wanted him to do.
But the Beagle never did.
What I want them to do now. Which dog do you think I like the best?
Huh, that good little good one, right? Well, you know it. As children we we appreciated more when we behave and when we do what we're told and instructed to do. And God loves a person, that child that obeys.
You know, four days ago I had a very sad thing happened. A man came, a young man came to the business and he expected his mother to be there. He's 18 years old.
He expected his mother to be there at the business at the same time because he crashed his car and this young man he.
Cursed his mother terribly.
Oh, that made me so sad. And his mother was crying.
And he cursed her again. And he said bad, bad words. And I looked it up in the Bible and you know what it says? It says someone that curses his father and mother should be put to death.
Another man, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't talk about sad stories, but another man, his name is John Derolet and.
We fixed his car and he called his mother on the phone in view of getting a payment.
And I heard him.
Curse his mom.
Terribly. What is going on? And so about two weeks later, John D Roulette was over in Seattle.
And somebody just shot him. Those are terrible things to start off with. But anyway.
It's a it's a serious thing to be disrespectful and to disobey. God wants us to be obedient children.
I didn't plan to start the meeting with that kind of sad story. Does anybody have a cheerful song for us, please?
What about you girls here? Go ahead.
#3.
It's a lovely hymn #3.
On his last name.
Uh-huh. He tried some solid rock Christmas.
Falling grounded, same things fast.
All of their crowns, they can make it and strange things and.
All right, let's see.
How much is 10 students community rather than exchange St. is Gray healing, thinning and everything while I am from our community schedule anything. Thank you all day and then Bellingham.
00:10:35
Thinking that I'm 22.
And frozen stand by him in the Korean, by the way, and.
Falls out of the ground in my life, so it's been great.
And lightning. Lightning.
Sometimes I.
Forget to pray. Sometimes I might pray twice because I get home.
Mixed up, but you know, it's good to pray. So let's pray. Father, thank you for these dear children. Just a few, but how precious they are. God, we just pray for them. Each one speak to their hearts and give them a sense of thy love and care. So help us as we talk about some of thy creatures, animals.
And, and may we derive the lessons from them. Jesus precious name, Amen.
Now I have a question. Do you have a Kitty? No. No. Do you have a doggie? No. No.
You have a kidney? No. A doggy, yes. What's your doggies name?
And what's your doggy's name?
I don't have a dog.
Well, I wanted to talk about animals. You know, if you look in the Scriptures, children, you'll find out that the Bible is full of animals right from the first chapter of Genesis right through the Book of Revelation. And so God has many things to teach us about animals, and we'd like to talk about them this morning. The first experience I had with animals was on the banks of the Zambezi River.
I was four years old.
And yesterday, you know, we're in the meeting. The dear brother is speaking about baptism. That's when you someone gets put down under the water and brought up out of the water. It's a picture of.
Dead, buried with Christ and raised with Him. Now here you had a picture of river flowing by. It's called the Zambezi River. And then here's a shore right here. Okay, then out in the water there's some sticks sticking in, stick, stick, sticks, stick, stick, stick around like that.
And outside there is a man in a canoe with a big long spear. Over here is a man in a canoe.
Spear, What do you think they were going to do inside that?
Circle of sticks that were sticking up and what do you think those men were standing out there in the canoes with these big lone Spears? Can anybody guess about this girl right here?
Just doubling in it. Well, the river was full of crocodiles. And so my dad, he was going to baptize some African Christians and they want to be protected from the crocodile. So I remember standing there four years old and seeing these men with Spears and this fence like that.
And the baptism was going on inside there where they're protected. Now that's a real picture of death, isn't it? The, the, the river there, the water.
00:15:06
Yeah. And so the Bible talks about crocodiles. I think there's crocodiles in the Book of Job, but it has so many stories. Can anybody, can you children tell me any animal that you know about in the Bible?
What animal did you mom and dad read to you about in the Bible?
Name any of them a lion? A lion? Is that what you said?
You're so right. What animal do you hear hear about in the Bible? Do you mommy ever read you a story about what about you?
Donkey.
What story do you know about about an animal? Sheep. Sheep. Oh yes, what about you?
Dance, beer, a bear chest.
That's fair. Steven had an encounter with a bear.
Well, so some of these animals, they teach us lessons. Some are to help us. Yeah. Some are to protect us. Some are for our food. I don't like that idea very well. But some of our friend, when we need a friend, I go into a nursing home and you'll see a Kitty or you'll see a little puppy or something.
Matter of fact, Michael Bryan, some of you know Michael Bryan, he's on a wheelchair and he's in that bed that he's staying.
Can't do anything. One day a dog came to his house.
He didn't know where it came from. It came right in the door and it came and jumped right up on his lap. You know, Mike sits there hour after hour after day after day after month after month after a year after year, and he can't do nothing. But this little dog came in, jumped up on his lap and they said, well, where did this dog come from? Don't know.
Don't know. So they were looking around for what kind of a dog is it, where to come? It couldn't find out. I kind of think the Lord sent that little dog along just to comfort Michael Bryan. Isn't that sweet now?
Can anybody tell me about a dog that comforted somebody in the Bible? Go ahead, young or old, let's hear it.
Lazarus That's what I was thinking of.
Here's poor Lazarus. He's sitting at a gate there. He's got these sores on his body. He's begging for my I see beggars, for the beggars I see don't have sores. This man was a beggar and he had sores, and he was sitting there by a beautiful gate. And you know what? The dogs came and licked his sores.
Was that nice, you think? Yeah, I do too. That was that was comforting that man. Well.
So we can't talk too long on this. So we got to get down to the meat of the matter. That is, there are some animals that are big, some are small, some are strong, some are weak, some are wild, some are beautiful, some are gentle, some are fearless, some are harmless, some are harmful.
Which one is stupid?
Oh God says so. Can anybody tell me which one? It doesn't have any wisdom.
Uh, you'd know, of course.
Uh, what? I didn't exactly say that. Did you say ostrich? Yes, yes, the ostrich God says in the book of Job. God hath withheld wisdom from them.
Yeah.
Just don't have very many brights at all.
Well, so there's some that are wise. That's what we're getting to.
What animal or creature does God say is wise?
Well, we're going to go to the kids here.
Can you tell me an animal that's wise?
Hmm. Hmm.
Well, we better look it up. That's, uh, Proverbs chapter 30.
I talked about this last week in Walla Walla. So those brothers will have to sisters will have to have patients with me there. It's such a wonderful, instructive chapter. God says some of his animals are one of his animals are dumb and some are smart.
What do you think? Better to be smarter, To be wise?
00:20:00
Huh. I think it would be better to be wise than smart.
OK, Proverbs chapter 30 and it says here.
Verse 24.
There's some little things.
God can teach us about wisdom, little things.
And what do you think those little things are? The ants? Oops, verse 24 there before things.
Which are little upon the earth, but they are extremely, exceedingly wise. How can that be?
I thought people and things were wise were in the universities and the colleges of this world that I didn't go to. And it says here they're very wise. But you know something, you can take a man. I was talking to a man in a swimming pool. He was a concert pianist, Conservatory in Toronto, Canada. He retired and he was in the swimming pool.
And I was talking to him and I said Sir.
You ever think about where you go when you leave this world?
He says I just go.
That's what he said. No, I didn't take time to tell him the gospel should have, Maybe.
Sure should have. But you know what says after death? The judgment. So here's well, let me ask you a question. Where do you go after you die? Do you know?
Go to hell. Is that what you said? Is that what you said? Well, you know something if someone doesn't take the Lord Jesus as their savior.
That's where they go. That's where they go.
But if somebody takes the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, where do they go?
In heaven with the Lord Jesus in heaven. That's a beautiful thing to think about.
Well, here we have Can you imagine a little Ant? Little tiny Ant, smarter than a college professor?
I'll tell you why. The little Ant in the summertime he goes crawling out looking for something.
What do you think he's looking for?
For what food exactly? Right now? What does he do with that food?
Bless your heart.
Well, how do you answer that?
My dear, he takes that food and he drags it down into his little house in the ground, doesn't he?
And he stores it up down there.
Very, very wise. Now this professor, concert pianist that I was talking to.
He didn't have anything laid up for the future. It didn't seem like he just said he was going to go.
Off so all he knew.
Well, those are the answer. Little they prepare their meat so their food in the summertime. You know, children, when you hear the gospel, it's like you're getting your spiritual food while you can. In summertime you can hear about the Lord Jesus, his love, his kindness, the fact that he died for you on the cross. He loves you and he wants to save you and you and you accept him. That's like taking that eternal bread from heaven.
And you're hiding it in your heart.
Oh my, what a story that is. The coneys. Let's just call that a rabbit. I don't know what a Coney is. I suppose they're a different kind of animals all around the world that look about the same, that make their houses in the rocks. You go to Mount Rainier and there's a animal about this long, maybe a foot and a half, two feet long. And if you're driving along, he runs in the rock. Now I have a question, children, if you.
See this, let's call it a rabbit. You can see this rabbit and you're driving along in your great big car and the rabbits in the road and he thinks he's going to get run over. And so he runs into the culvert, he runs into a rock, runs into into a hole in the ground or something. Is he safe?
Yes, he's safe.
Why? Because that rock that he ran into is stronger than my car or stronger than my a truck.
Can you imagine a weak little Bunny rabbit or a Coney running into a rock and becoming extremely safe?
00:25:05
Yes, that's a picture of running into the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior.
And we become very, very safe.
That's a beautiful illustration of the goodness of God and giving us a refuge.
So even though these ponies are feeble, they don't have any strength in themselves.
I got some cottontail rabbits that run around in my yard. They're weak little things. I could, I could step on them and hurt them, but they run, they hide. They get in a place that's safe. And you children, because there's judgment coming, you children can run to the Lord Jesus and be safe. Isn't that nice?
Now we get down here to these grasshoppers. I suppose that's a.
That the locusts probably are kind of like a grasshopper, don't you think?
And so they go forth. They have no king. Nobody leads them, nobody guides them.
Or really, is that the case? It looks like nobody guides them.
They have no king yet, though they forth all of them by bands. And you know, in the last three weeks I've had the privilege of visiting 04 or five assemblies, and I just think of these.
Saints, they get together in bands and you look for the leader. There isn't any. The Lord Jesus as their leader, He's not visible. He's up in heaven and he guides them and he leads them along and they appreciate one another and they appreciate their unseen leader and they're guided by him.
Well, spider, a spider. Oh, I was in Bermuda one time and there was a spider walking across the floor and I took my shoe and I went Fang like that. And what happened? I looked real carefully and little tiny white spiders, hundreds of them. That was a mommy spider. And she was about to give birth to a bunch of little baby spiders and they were looked like 100.
Look, real carefully. Very tiny little spiders. You see, they were running all over the place. Well, what does it say here? The spider taketh hold with her hands.
And what is in King's palaces? So I like to think of it this way, children.
Let's just pretend like this is the throne right here, right here. That's the throne. And here's the, in this case, it's kind of a brown carpet. Let's say it's a beautiful red carpet like this. And at the door there are some guards there with their great big guns and bayonets, one over here and one over here. And they're standing there with their big black boots on.
And here comes a little spider. How is that spider going to get by all those guards through that door and everything?
Well, the only way you can make it through is becoming. Becoming, but by being very small.
Very small little tiny spider can go right by those big black boots, go slip right underneath that door, walk right up that red carpet like this. What does the Bible say here?
Let's see what it says it says.
Ah, spider taketh hold of her hands is in King's palaces. Is that possible? Do you think there's ever been a spider on the King's throne or a Queen's throne? I'm sure there has been. And so the little spider comes right up like that and comes right up the steps and sits right there on that throne. And you know something, children, you become little in your eyes.
And just ask the Lord to help you be humble. It says humble yourself. Don't ask the Lord to humble you, just say humble yourself.
Under the mighty hand of God. And he'll lift you up. He'll lift you up.
And so children, we have to realize that we have something inside of us that wants to be proud. Now, children your age are not that proud.
When you get old like me, very proud, you should hear me talk about my grandchildren.
It's terrible. Anyway, it's true. So you understand, we just get proud and So what? We want to don't want to be proud, we want to be thankful and we want to be small so that God can bring us into blessing. He whittles us down into a useful size for Him. So four things. It only takes about four minutes to talk about these four things.
00:30:00
And they're the ants.
They're extremely wise. God says. Do you mean the Ant can be smarter than the than the brightest man in the university? But I got a better story. It goes like this. Eastern Washington, there was a president of a university. I can't give you the name anymore because I forgot. He was over 80 years of age. He's retired and he was sitting in the university there.
And he was reading his what?
Bible, he was reading his Bible. He loved the Lord Jesus. And so there he was retired his manager. This man was a was a child of God, even though he was a very brilliant man. And so Ian walked a man and he walked down the hall to where his child was in the little nursery right there in the same building. And there was a little 4 year old child in there, his child.
And.
There was a lady or a man talking to these children about the Lord Jesus from the Bible.
And so the father went in to pick up his little 4 year old girl, I think it was. And she said when she saw her daddy, she said, daddy, I don't want to go because he's telling me some teachers telling me stories about the Bible. Wait a minute here. You have a man that's over 80 years old on this end of the building and you have a little girl over here, I think a little girl over here that's four years old on this side of the building.
And they're reading the same book.
Whatever.
That's exciting because you know, if you were to hand me a book from the university about the linear physics or whatever geometry or whatever that stuff is.
I wouldn't know what it was about.
And you wouldn't know what it was about for sure.
But here's a book, children, that 100 year old. I know a lady is 105 years old, she reads that book. And then I know children in five, 6-7 years old read that book, same book, and you know one will be reading the story about.
Salem's *** or the rooster that crowed when Peter denied the Lord.
And her four year old will be reading it and interested in a 84 year old or 104 year old lady reading that same book.
The same story. Isn't that amazing? This book takes care of everything, children. I'll give you an example.
For the old folks to think about.
They discovered in recent years that the universe is expanding.
Expanding that means it's going away like this.
Well, you read over and over and over in the scripture that God stretched out the heavens.
In that interesting so and we find out the circle of the earth. It's wonderful how God has told us so many things, but he brings it down to where a four year old and a 5 year old can.
Read it, enjoy it, and somebody that's 10 times older.
20 times will read the same book and enjoy it. That's what's so beautiful about the Bible. So you can ask your mommy and daddy anytime, say tell me an animal story in the Bible and then when you read the story, you'll find out that there's an illustration, a story that goes along with it. Now can anybody tell me about a sheep?
Does the Bible talk about sheep?
Sure does. OK, yeah. So a sheep is like a person is like we are. And you know what sheep do sometimes? They go astray, they go away and.
That's too bad. And so they need a shepherd. And so the Lord Jesus is our shepherd. So as you children get older, look in the Bible for Bible stories about animals, and they'll all teach you a story, teach you a lesson.
All right.
Eliza.
He had birds take care of him.
Noah.
He had all kinds of animals in his boat.
And there was a dove and a Raven that was sent out. You children hear that story. See, all these stories are so interesting. And then you got all those dogs down there in Egypt. When the children of Israel were leaving, God shut their mouths, couldn't bark.
Balaam had a donkey that started talking. You think about the interesting there, isn't it? Yeah.
Peter had that rooster that crowed, so the Bible is full of animal stories.
00:35:05
And they're very, very profitable. And then we just want to.
Thank the Lord for this book we have is good for a four year old. It's good for 104 year old. There's no book like that.
In the world because it's the word of God now, children.
You know how to be saved. That's why we're here. Your mommy and daddy told you how to be saved. It's so wonderful. Can a four year old be saved?
How do you do that? How, how, how would a four year old get saved? Can you tell me?
The microphones will intimidate. Can you tell me how a four year old could get saved? The trust in Jesus trust. Oh, it's so precious. Yes, just trust. That's that's called faith. And uh, it's like God gives you something. God gives you something that is beautiful and pure. It's called eternal life. And you know something? You don't want to add anything to it. If you want to add your works to it, then God says I got nothing for you.
Nothing. But if you want to come like a four year old child and justice, reach out by faith and say, Lord Jesus save my soul, he'll do it. Isn't that beautiful? So we come to know the Lord and we just want to leave you with these few thoughts about these animals, some big, some small, some weak, some wild, some beautiful, some gentle, some fearless, some fearful.
Some harmless, some harmful, some not smart. But we read this morning about poor wise animals.
Or creatures of God. Now who has a song to sing?
Anybody.
Oh, I love it. There once was a wild little donkey. Does that fit in with the story we've been talking about this morning? Yes, it does. Thank you very much. I needed that help. There once was a while ago.
And Jesus was thinking about him. He said go and bring him to me.
And Wednesday has brought him to Jesus.
I have to pray that we have to have a birthday.
That restless and while there's so donkey.
White why they don't begin. And Jesus was riding upon him.
He went just down way back. He should.
Why is the medicine please completely made so I love that son of God and Jesus said they won't give me one 223.
124 and give you a little bit and very clear the thoughts have really answered anything.
You'll talk to the older folks here, you know, when we present the gospel.
To the children, that's such a precious thing. When we present the Lord Jesus to the children and all of his glory and his beauty, that's a precious thing.
We present the Lord Jesus to the lost. Oh, that's a wonderful thing also.
They can hear the good news of salvation.
And it glorifies God the Father when we present the Lord Jesus to one another.
That's a beautiful thing also. But you know what's the most?
Beautiful thing of all when we present the Lord Jesus in all of His glory.
And all of his beauty, and all of his excellencies unto God his Father.
That's worship.
Is not playing a beautiful violin, It's playing how great thou art. That's not exactly it. It's beautiful to sing and all that, but presenting the Lord Jesus.
And all of his glory, virtue, loveliness to God the Father. That's worship. And that's what we're going to do here in about 45 minutes or so. So children, Lord bless you everyone.
The Patience of Christ
Address—Doug Buchanan
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Perhaps we could begin our meeting with him. Number one 291.
Oh, Savior, whom absent we love, whom not having seen, we adore.
Whose name is exalted above all glory, dominion and Power, 1291.
Glory, Lord, Joy.
Thyroid has Bluetooth to come around, that's all.
The Lord Grindel temptations and walls.
Where it's like and it's probably not taken together.
And swallowing problems.
We have to bring them through.
We're getting into that breaks those suddenly shall pray and the heavens of the name of the brain what you want to apply for.
We looked at Lord in prayer.
Blessed God our Father, we thank Thee for sharing Thy Son the Lord Jesus Christ with us here on earth, for sending Him down in our likeness, sin apart, to show out Thy heart of love to us, to bring us into favor.
To make us intelligent as to Thy purposes and desires of blessing, and to capacitate us to be with Thee in glory in that coming day.
Our God, this is a plan that exceeds.
Our ability to comprehend, let alone explain and take in. We thank Thee for giving us these meetings here and for what Thou has brought before us. We cast ourselves on Thee now for this hour and the purpose before us and ask for help and strength.
And ability to.
To say it and to take it in. We are thankful for the Spirit of God, for the Word of God.
Plainly written for us. And so, Lord, we commend ourselves into thy hands with Thanksgiving in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Before I introduce my subject.
I want to say how thoroughly I have enjoyed these meetings.
I felt like in our last remembrance, in the last meeting.
We were up in heaven and.
Enjoying our Savior and worshiping and remembering Him. And I hesitate to come back down to earth again.
And to take up another meeting. We might we could have just stopped right there, couldn't we?
00:05:06
The subject I have is the patience of Christ.
Mm-hmm. There's a verse in Second Thessalonians chapter 3 that perhaps will describe it to us.
2nd Thessalonians chapter 3 and verse 5.
And the Lord, direct your hearts into the love of God.
And into the patient, waiting for Christ.
There's another verse that John the Apostle wrote in the Book of Revelation, Speaking of himself as the companion in the Tribulation and patience.
In the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.
Those two verses would speak, then, of his patience.
And our patients.
I believe everybody in this room is looking forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus.
I trust so if you're not in that group.
You probably don't know him as your Savior and Lord.
But I believe and I trust that what we're going to say here this afternoon, well.
Bring before us a little bit of this situation that we are in right now.
I believe we're very close to the Lord's coming.
And the burden of my heart is to talk about that and how we need to be patient too.
How he is patience patient.
And I want to bring before us some scriptures that would deal with this issue.
You know.
When it rains on Saturday.
The golfers complain.
The farmers praise the Lord.
So it's wonderful that God didn't put in India into any of our hands the weather.
Probably none of us would have planned Hurricane Harvey.
And been able to, out of such a terrible disaster, bring good and blessing in some way or other.
I believe it's happening.
Though I don't understand necessarily, it got a text from Caleb this morning.
Explaining in one paragraph.
How busy they've been, how many opportunities they've had.
God is opening up through a disaster.
Opportunities.
For souls.
I'm going to ask a question.
I'm gonna ask somebody here.
Supposing the Lord put in your hand and came and said.
Who here will pick the day when the Lord Jesus would come?
Do we have any volunteers to tell me?
Down in South America, I usually get three or four right real fast. That's the difference between North America and South America. When you want to take a picture down there, you get a whole group all the time. You want to take a picture here, all of a sudden everybody goes like that.
God loves different personalities.
Usually somebody will say today.
Would you agree with that, Robert?
Yeah, well, and my heart says that too.
Now, I'm not going to try to pick apart your answer.
It's a good answer. It's a desire to have that. I'll ask you a second question.
What about the people that are still not saved?
That the Lord has his eyes on, if the Lord came today.
They would have missed the boat.
It would be too late. So you're going to qualify your answer now, aren't you, Robert?
00:10:06
You're, you're, you're hitting right on with us. We're batting 100% here.
It's the Lord has perfect timing. I think a brother said that in our meeting, he blurted out.
How perfect the timing, the ways of God.
It's wonderful. Only God is wise enough to.
Decide these issues, these are great issues before us because we well know if the Lord comes today.
It's the close of the day of Grace and God is going to introduce a new way of dealing with mankind.
It's a wonderful thing to live in today. My dad used to tell me this is the most privileged time to live on the earth since creation.
There's many ways of looking at that, but we can be blessed God for the privileges He gives us now in this day of grace.
It's been wonderful to go over the purposes and counsels of God and to fill our souls.
Reminding us of the beauty and the grandeur and the perfectness of it and how it all focuses in Jesus Christ and how God accomplishes it through Him and all our blessings are in Him, and so on.
And I believe when the Father says to the Lord Jesus.
The hour has come. You can claim your bride now.
I believe that's going to happen when the last soul is saved.
To fail God's house in heaven. That's what it says in Luke 16.
In the story of the marriage of the nobleman's son, that my house may be full.
It's a wonderful thing to go to a place where every chair is filled. Doesn't happen very often.
Uh, sometimes at weddings it does happen.
Usually none of us are good enough at estimating things to make it all come out perfect, like at our supper table. One of my wife's concern is will I have enough food and it's embarrassing to come out short.
God never comes out short.
His timing is never off. His coming will be.
At the right day.
But.
He has.
And we're going to look at some scriptures about this.
It's wonderful that God has used in the past.
People on Earth.
To determine some of his actions.
One of them was, and we're gonna look at it in a little while.
When whether it was time to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah or not, and we're gonna look at that, and God used a servant here on earth to find that out.
But I wanted to go first of all to the Book of two Peter chapter 3.
And read some verses there that touch on what we're Speaking of.
So if we turn to second Peter chapter 3.
I'd like to read here a few verses.
Verse one.
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you in both which I stir you up, stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of His of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers.
Walking after their own lusts.
And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
00:15:04
For this they willingly are ignorant of that by the word of God, the heavens who are of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.
Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water perished, but the heavens and the earth, which are now by the same word, are kept in store, reserved unto fire, against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as 1000 years, and 1000 years as one day.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness.
But is long-suffering to us word not willing that any should perish, that all should come to repentance?
These verses here explain to me the desire of my soul this afternoon in this meeting.
Why the Lord waits?
And when will be the right time to come back?
When will the Day of grace close and the judgment begins?
To prepare this earth for his Kingdom, because we've been noticing in our readings the two spheres a blessing.
The Lord Jesus is gonna be the head of heaven and earth, and we understand that the next event that we expect has nothing to do really with prophecy. It has to do totally with the relationship of our Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven and His Bride.
Nothing else is going to affect when that moment is.
His love for that brought you.
And there are are not gonna, we are not gonna be, we ought not to be looking around to the world for signs about that.
No rational young man that's waiting for these marriage days is looking out there to the events around the world to decide what day he's going to go and get claim his bride.
It's totally has to do with his relationship with her.
That's as to the rapture. But we know that there are two parts to the Lord's coming, His coming.
For his bride and his coming with his people.
When he will introduce his judgments now I'm not sure. Maybe some of my brethren can tell me, but I'm not sure whether Peter was well taught as to that the difference between those two or not, because Apostle Paul was the one to whom God revealed the truth about the rapture. But certainly in these verses that we're reading.
Peter understood about the Lord's coming and the judgements.
And he gives a word of warning to them because I believe those Christians in those early days were already feeling the rejection and the persecution and the scoffing and the those last days already started at that point. And certainly we see it out there today. Our brother was mentioning last night in the gospel about.
The public acknowledgement of the Lord and if any in any way the Lord Jesus is brought in, that is totally set aside by our the popular opinion of the world.
Around us there are scoffers. It's all around us.
And that is not going to change God's plan and decision as to when He comes. Yes, God looks down at that wickedness and He sees it.
Just as he did then, he reminds the Hebrews to whom he was writing about that concerning Noah and how God there came a day when God said enough is enough and he saw the wickedness and it was time to destroy.
The whole world, with the exception of Noah and his family and those with him in the ark.
So we have witness to these things.
00:20:01
We're then he tells us that the next judgment is not gonna be with a flood, it's gonna be with fire. And so we believe this is true.
And, uh, that time is approaching these things. Yes, we can see.
Events around us that indicate it the immorality #1.
Around us.
The Lord told that it would be that way in the days of the Son of Man.
That's the title the Lord uses when he comes in judgment because it says, man, he's going to judge.
He's not going to judge as they were off at a distance, unrelated. He's going to judge as one who walked this earth and went through every experience that we as human beings feel. And because of His perfection in doing it, God has turned over that totally to him. He has every right to it, and He's going to take it.
At that appointed time.
Now it says here.
This most interesting verse.
That we often quote one day. Be not ignorant of this one thing.
That one day is with the Lord as 1000 years.
Have you ever had the feeling that the 24 hours in a day is not enough time to get done what you want to do?
I have. It happens all the time. I wish their days were longer. In fact, I like summer better than winter because you got a lot longer days and the days are getting shorter. Yeah, you can work at night too, but it's it's better to work in the day.
We are limited by time and distance.
God is not hindered by these things.
With God, one day is 1000 years as 1000 years. God can do in one day what it would take us 1000 years to do. He is not limited. It's a wonderful thing that the one who is in control and who is going to decide when these when the moment of his coming is and when the world is right for judgment.
He's not constrained by this time element.
That we are.
Then on the opposite end of the time spectrum, it says 1000 years is as one day.
Now I'm up in my 70s and when you get to be that old, you start looking. Wow.
Past retirement, my grandpa was already with the Lord at this age, Brother so and so is already gone. How much longer do I have to serve the Lord?
There are time constraints. There are things out there that I have to close in my focus and I can't be planning for another 100 years or another 50 or so years.
God is not constrained by that. It's interesting to me that this dispensation of the day of grace is already the longest of all of them.
That tells you something about GLOT.
What is it that he wants made known? What is the greatness of this day that we're living in? We're not under law. We're not under just authority or government like it was after the time of Noah and so on. And we're not as the other dispensation. God had his dealings with man. We are living in the time when after Jesus Christ has opened up the floodgates of.
That so that God can bless all unconditionally because of Jesus Christ, the perfect man who died for the God's glory, and he died to save us. And God in his abundant grace can open up and bless all unconditionally. And that's what he wants to do.
That's why we need to be preaching the gospel.
Those who don't understand we have this briefly brought before us in the readings about the difference between the the coming the Kingdom to introduce Christ and his reigning and judgment as they used to think.
00:25:04
A few 100 years ago, that the Church was going to prepare the world for his Kingdom, so that the Lord could come down here and bless it and introduce his Son, and then he would reign in peace.
That didn't happen, and it won't happen.
Man has always failed in every dispensation.
God's purpose now is to gather a people for himself to.
Rain or to be with Jesus in heaven. Then he's going to come back with them in his judgments. It was wonderful to me.
In our the breaking of red, this thought came to me.
Of how?
Those of us who have some measure of understanding of this whole plan of God from a past eternity to a future eternity, how we could embrace all those actions back, starting with Abraham and Isaac going up there and the beautiful picture that is of God the Father and God the Son and.
Their communion together in Jesus Christ, coming down here to be the sacrificial lamb, the Lamb of God.
And how it touches our hearts. And in some measure we enter into the feelings that there were between God the Father and God the Son as Jesus came into this world with that. And we praise and worship him. And we went on to future days when the Lord was going to be on the throne in Revelation. And we embrace that and we praise God. It hasn't happened yet, brethren, but our souls have embraced it.
And we worship and adore God. That's what happens when we are understanding the purposes and plan blessings of the counsels of God. We don't have to wait till a future day to already embrace and enjoy those wonderful things. We can already worship the God, the Lord.
Even though it hasn't happened yet.
Wonderful, that's what.
Understanding the counsels of God helps you.
In joining together with our our our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, the Spirit helps us to understand these things, being born again, having that nature that's capable and so we can live our lives now intelligently.
Along with what God is doing.
Now let's let's go over to.
Make sure I finished up here all I wanted to say here.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some, but His long-suffering to us were not willing that any should perish.
And so we understand why the Lord is waiting in patience. He's not slack. He's waiting because all have not been saved that He has His eye on. The elect are not all called in yet. They haven't believed.
There will come that moment.
Now I want to go back and briefly notice in Genesis.
The case of Noah, and there's mainly just one point there that I want to call attention to in Genesis chapter 6 concerning Noah.
We're going to notice some cases here of judgments that came and how God decided and how God did this. My purpose in this subject is that because we are living right now so close to that day.
We need to be aware of what God is doing, and I believe in the measure that we are aware.
And understand the times that we're living in. It will order our conduct and what we are occupying. If you know a ship is sinking, you don't go out and start painting it, for example.
Genesis 6 and verse 7.
00:30:04
And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Now that last expression is what I want to call attention to but Noah.
Found grace in the eyes of the Lord. There was one man and one family.
That please God.
And God wanted to save.
You see?
Looking at it realistically, it would not have been right and God couldn't have in a sense made all the creation.
And then allow men to come and destroy it through violence and corruption.
And then God have to say I made a mistake. It didn't work.
That never happens with God.
Noah is the witness to this.
He found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The Lord looked down to one family and said, I want to bless that family. I am going to use that family to repopulate the earth. I am going to save that family.
God never makes mistakes.
And so Noah is a witness to that. Would you like to be a witness to the grace of God in your life? You can, you may.
How wonderful that is to accept the grace of God that comes to us through Jesus Christ, His favor, on the terms that He has made them good to us, known to us.
And so it is a wonderful opportunity.
To be an object of the grace of God.
I sometimes wonder why it is that we don't like grace.
Is that a true statement?
I believe as a natural man.
Our hearts.
Repel grace.
How many little children have you heard say I want to do it by myself?
I can do it by myself.
You see, grace is favored from somebody else that doesn't necessarily deserve it.
It's a wonderful subject. So Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now let's go over to the next portion I want to look at, and that is Abraham in Genesis.
18.
Genesis 18.
And that verse 17.
And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do?
That thing which I do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations either shall be blessed in him. For I know him that he will command his children in this household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now.
And see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which has come up unto me.
And if not, I will know and then drop down to verse 32.
We have after that those words that we read.
Abraham interceding and he says to the Lord Jehovah, if there's fifty people there, will you destroy the whole city for the 50, including the 50 And the Lord said no. And then Abraham continues to intercede until verse 32 and he said.
Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet, but this once per adventure 10 shall be there.
00:35:05
And he said I will not destroy it for the 10's sake.
Isn't this beautiful here? What Abraham was doing, interceding compassion for that wicked city?
And so Abraham interceded.
Down until 10 people.
I believe if we had gone lower, the Lord would not have destroyed it.
But he stopped at 10.
I wonder sometimes if the Lord may do that again in the coming day.
He may use someone here on earth as a.
Person to help him to be the spokesman who would decide whether the patience of God should go on or stop.
Now, brethren, we're living in a world where there's a lot of wickedness and crime out there. You know, it's easy to get turned off by these things and to hate them or to not love them.
We need to be compassionate for our fellow men.
We need to be like a neighbor an intercede.
When Abraham stopped interceding, then the Lord went on his way and we know the rest of the story.
This is the time that we're living in right now here on Earth. We're so close.
And we see the exact conditions around us that were prevalent both at Noah's time and in.
Lots and Abraham's time, and we're going to notice a little bit about Lot 2.
It's a privilege to walk with God like Abraham did.
He was.
In that land.
But near them? Any help to people around them?
And they did act so kindness, but he wasn't taken up with the preservation of that existing thing. And he dwelt on the mountaintop with God, and he worshipped and communed with God. He was a person who was intelligent to some measure with God, and therefore God said he wouldn't hide from them.
He made known his will, his plan to Abraham because.
Abraham would be faithful with the knowledge that was given.
M and Abraham responded by interceding.
We brethren have understanding of the signs and times that we are living in. We need to be those that act intelligently in our time. It's not for us to be going out and fighting carnal warfares against enemies of Christianity. It's for us to be seeking the salvation of their souls.
How many Christians don't even understand this?
Abraham was a person that God could confide in.
In the next chapter, we know the story, we'll just notice in, uh, in verse umm, 12 and 13, chapter 19 of Genesis.
The men of Sodom is noteworthy that the Lord didn't go along.
The Lord communed with Abraham. He did not commune in Sodom with Lot, but the angels went and they were there to investigate. Was the condition as reported.
It's a pretty gruesome chapter to read.
But it's obvious.
That Sodom was ready for the judgment of God.
The patience of God.
Have been exceeded, and so it says in verse 12. And the men said unto lot, Hast thou any hear, hear any beside sons and laws, and thy sons, and thy daughters, And whatsoever thou hast in this city, bring them out of this place. For I will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxing great before the face of the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.
00:40:23
And the next verse is a rather sad verse.
We see the lack of moral power that there was with law to save very many.
He only saved 2 plus his wife. I don't know where she falls in this.
I'll ask Robert afterwards.
Our power to be a testimony to God at this moment in time that we're living is through walking with God. There's a tendency to think that in order to reach those around us, we need to get down to where they do the things that they do, walk along with them with the things they are and, and be able to reach. Now there is a there is a.
Principle of in the world and not of the world and we don't have time to get into that. But John, I suggest to you that John 17 is the secret gives us the remedy of how to be in the world and have the power to be a testimony without compromising your own position as a believer.
Lot here is a witness to it and all he can do is flee with his family. So this is.
A case of the timing of God's judgment and how God determined it, and then how the the Lord acted in judgment.
No doubt it will be very similar to that in the coming age or down the road here tomorrow, next year, when God sees.
The condition of this world as ready for judgment. You remember that earlier, much earlier, well, maybe not much earlier, but earlier in the life of Abraham. God had promised Abraham that He was going to give him and his children that land. And He said then he told them, but He couldn't give it to them yet because the iniquity of the MRI was not full.
You see, all has to fit together perfectly, and God is the one who knows when the iniquity is right for judgment, when it's time to bring in His judgments in the world.
The patience.
Of God.
Now we'll go on to Jonah.
Jonah chapter one, verse one, verse two, one and two.
Jonah 11 Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of.
Amid the I saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it for their wickedness is come up before me. Now turn over to the third chapter verse one.
And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time.
Now you, we, we'll all remember what happened in between these two times. A hard lesson that Jonah had to learn.
He didn't want to preach to Nineveh. Why did not? Why did Jonah not want to preach to the people of Nineveh?
I think even secular history tells us that the Assyrians at that time were one of the most horrible wicked of all the nations.
Notoriously cruel.
They had carried the 10 tribes away.
Some of us have been struck three years ago when ISIS.
Began taking control of Mosul, Syria.
Iraq.
By the way, that is the very town that we're talking about here, or at least it's right beside it, as I understand.
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These last three years have been an eye opener.
Or something that I must say I never expected to see what had happened over there in these last three years.
I read a book about two young men.
Some of you may have read this book.
That were there in.
Mosul, which is located right beside Nineveh, which was the capital of the Syrian empire at that time.
And these two young men were waiting because they had heard that the prophet of ISIS.
Was about to appear, and sure enough, he did.
And they witnessed.
There were two of them.
They were Muslims and they were both of them enthused.
That their profit was about to come and give them a Kingdom.
Their hopes were high.
I wish I could remember the head of his name.
Umm. Their prophet did appear.
I think he's dead now.
But anyway, he appeared and he gave a speech.
It had a different effect with the two men.
One of them was totally embracing it and praising Allah for this moment that they had long expected the other one.
Began to realize with horror what was about to take place in bloodshed.
Began to doubt his faith in Allah.
Very interesting story.
He ends up getting saved eventually.
That was three years ago, this past, uh, Ramadan, and now the whole thing is basically almost.
Destroyed.
Jonah.
Knew about this evil empire. He knew of the treatment.
That the Assyrians had done to the 10 tribes.
It affected his soul.
He did not want grace to be shown and mercy shown to that nation.
And God had to deal with him.
To bring him down.
And I'm not sure he really learned it, except that he did write the book. And so maybe by that means we.
Understand that he accepted.
The principle of grace.
We are living in a time when right before the world is so bad that God is going to judge it. Maybe our affections are a mercy and grace are affected by it.
Maybe we can withdraw within ourselves and say, oh, I don't wanna show mercy and kindness to that man, He's too bad.
It's not right for us to close the door to grace before God does.
God will close the door while the door is open. We need to continue on with the ministry of the preaching, of the gospel, of the grace of God to all, everywhere.
This may be a hard thing to do at times when you see it is so bad.
Souls are being saved over there in those Muslim countries through these last three years.
The little that I've read about it makes me think that probably more souls have been saved in these last three years through faithful Christians bearing witness to the gospel in spite of the threats of death.
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Maybe this is the last wave of ingathering of souls.
From that those countries. And so May God give us the grace to go on faithful. Maybe we're not to be sent over there, but faithful here. But this is a demonstration to me of what we're reading about here in Jonah.
And in a sense, we're looking at it that way. I can understand why Jonah would say I don't want to preach to those people in Nineveh.
But, brethren, Grace.
Is a wonderful subject.
And we who are lost, were lost and guilty and did not deserve, cannot rightly withhold grace to anyone else. It wouldn't be right. Well, Jonah, then here he, he go, he, he goes to the city and then and.
And verse two I rise, Go to Novena, that's that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Verse five. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them, even to the least of them. Verse 10 And God saw their wickedness, that they turned from their evil way, And God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do, and he did it not.
Chapter 4.
Verse 10.
Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored.
Neither made stick grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I?
And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle?
Very interesting last four words.
God even takes into consideration the lower creation.
In his judgments and he mentions here, he mentions the six score thousand or people that can't discern their right hand from their left as those who are not fully responsible and God would be merciful to them. May the Lord then give us.
This sense of his love and mercy.
The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. We need to use these last few years or days.
Uh, before the Lord comes to make great the mercy and grace of the Lord, it's an opportunity given to us to show what God is like and of his patience in waiting till the right time.
Let's pray.
Blessed God our Father, we marvel at Thy goodness and mercy.
In these cases of judgment.
We marvel at the seriousness of those that thou just take, take away.
And we thank thee for giving us the Lord Jesus Christ, and that for the grace of God that has reached out and picked us up vessels of mercy, and made us intelligent as to these things.
Lord, we are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. Help us to shine. Help us to give character to Thee.
And representing the as Thou is desire help us not to be like Jonah.
We're thankful for the Apostle Paul who is so faithful in his ministry.
And preaching of grace. We're thankful for this conference and for the time together. And Lord, we give thee thanks for all these things in the name and for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Ephesians 1:10-23
Reading
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104.
Have a father, the sweet.
Calling.
Holy name from day-to-day.
Let my honor bring.
Her pray Lord, the greatest 13 of love.
But I understand your mind. Period.
Good morning, Christian, that Christmas.
Jehovah's maintenance.
His father, come on in, the Lord.
'S been in college.
Our remaining service falling down the road.
Three days, including the children. That's the problem from God.
No one is discount, so probably.
Here and still good.
As well.
For in heaven and.
And glory and love Sun.
We just read a couple of verses before we pray. Romans chapter 8.
Romans chapter 8IN connection with this little hymn.
Verse 14.
Romans 814 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
For you have not received the spirit of ******* gained fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry ABBA. Father, the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so be we suffer that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together. Thanks.
Our loving God and our Father, we thank Thee for this little hymn that we've been singing together.
And the expression that we can have upon our lips, Abba's father, to express ourselves, to be our God and our loving Father. To know that thy heart is 100% to Thy people. My desire for us to walk in communion with thyself and in communing with Thy sons. And to know what it is to be associated with Him and all the blessings that are ours as a result of His finished work that has glorified Thee as to the question of sin and then brought us into relationship with myself.
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And so, our God, our Father, we ask thee to bless the reading of thy word as we have it before us here this afternoon, that each one of us might be edified and that there might be that which would encourage and strengthen us in our most holy faith and give us to have a sense of the dignity that is ours as we walk through this scene as the sons of God, heirs of God, and joint heirs with with thy with thyself, Lord Jesus. So we thank Thee for thy mercies to us thus far, and we pray to Thee for a blessing now upon this meeting in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Would you think it's good to start perhaps at 1St 11?
I'm usually not much for going slow, but I'd like to see and hear some comments on check on verse 10. We could maybe back up a verse or two.
810, chapter one, starting at verse 10.
That in the dispensation of the fullness of time, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the council of His own will. That we should be to the praise of His glory.
Who first trusted in Christ?
In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. In whom also after that ye believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of His glory.
Wherefore I also after I heard of your face in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the Saints.
Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.
That ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the same, And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us? Word who believes according to the workings of His mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when He raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places?
Far above all principality.
And power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.
And hath put all things under his feet, and given him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth All in all.
It's a wonderful thing to think that God is going to bring all back into order and perfection, the fullness of time. That's the last dispensation. That's when the Lord Jesus finishes all the work and puts it all in order. I think it's not your connector with chapter 15 and.
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First Corinthians.
Where you have the end of the Millennium.
The Kingdom reign of the Lord Jesus and when he'll deliver it up to the Father in perfect order. I want to emphasize this. I sorry for being forward here on this point, but I think it's so lovely to see that this world is going to be all brought back to it. The order that God intended, and he's going to do it through the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what it's called the dispensation of the fullness of time in First Corinthians 15.
It speaks in verse 24.
Then come at the end, when he shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power, for He must reign till he have put all enemies under his feet, and so on. This is the final end of the dispensation of the fullness of God of times when the Lord Jesus does that. And I just want to emphasize the wonder of God bringing all back through Jesus Christ.
That it's the key to the Bible, this verse.
Death of brother Harry Hail used to say I never met him but I've enjoyed the expressions that he's used as I listened listened to them on recorded ministry that Isaiah chapter 5. I think it's Isaiah chapter 5 and verse four he used to say was the.
Key to understanding the Old Testament, if you just could, we might turn to it and read it because it's perhaps a generation here has never heard these things but Isaiah chapter 5 and verse 4 you could read from verse one down to verse seven. It gives the whole.
Passage there but he said in verse four what could have been done more to my vineyard. My vineyard Israel was a fruitful was planted to be a fruitful vineyard, but really it just brought forth bitter fruit that I have not done in it Wherefore when I looked at it should bring forth great product worthwhile grapes. So he would remind the Saints that he felt that this was the center of the.
Key verse to understanding what God was doing in the Old Testament and he was testing man under all circumstances and then in different conditions. And he was also he chose one nation and blessed them and put a hedge all the way around them and made it. He just gave them every possible advantage that man, even religious man, might bear a fruit before him. The whole thing was bitter fruit. But then in this verse that we began with in verse 10, he would say it's the center.
Of understanding the whole of God's purposes in all of the word of God. And so he's going to have, as you said, drop the forest. He's going to bring all things into order and under the dominion of Christ, God's purpose as being a man would rule over this world. The first Adam failed miserably, but the last, the last atom, the 2nd man is going to be.
Successful, and we have.
The history you've written ahead of time in the books of the prophetic books and the Book of Revelation. So here it's in the future administration of the fullness of time. He might gather together at once all things. His purpose has been to glorify Christ in all things.
So this is really the mystery of His will in verse 9.
Is explained in verse 10.
And there's a lot of young brothers and sisters in here. Uh, and I want to make this suggestion to you that you make it a purpose when you're studying the scriptures and you should study them and not just read them, that you should make it a, a, a purpose to study Paul's doctrine with respect to what is called in the New Testament, the mystery. There are a lot of mysteries referred to in the New Testament. If you look at your comments, there's probably.
A couple dozen. But the term mystery as its impulse doctrine is not something like, well, we just can't understand it. So it's just a mystery to me. It's that's not the way the term is used. It's a technical term referring to a line of truth that the apostle Paul personally received by revelation from an ascended Christ and communicated it by the Holy Spirit, I believe to the other apostles and prophets.
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As we have in the third chapter and to the rest of us and it is a lot of things that scripture tells us was hidden and not revealed throughout the ages of time and not even revealed in the in the earliest days after the church was formed in Acts chapter 2 until Stephen is stoned all partially converted when God unfolds the mystery of his will that in between those great bookmarks of the sufferings of Christ that is coming perfectly glory.
There would be a people called out of this world, Jew and Gentile people for his name.
Knighted to the risen Christ would be his bride, members of his body.
And would be used by him, if I could put it that way, throughout eternity with a display of the glory price. First Corinthians we read that the woman is the glory of the man at the end of this chap. I think it's at the end of this chapter we read not to jump ahead. His body is the fullness of him that filleth All in all.
So without the church and it's.
It's almost, it's really holy ground to even speak about this. Without the existence of the church, there would be that kind of glories of God and of Christ. I would not be able to be displayed.
Fullness of him should have all, and all woman is the glory of that. And so this line of things that Paul takes up in the third chapter and in other places in Colossians is an important thing to lay hold up and to understand the distinction between what is properly Christian and what the Old Testament prophets prophesied. They prophesied of Christ's coming earthly glory.
But it was not revealed to them, nor did they understand.
What Brother Doug just would be for us that he would be head over all things as a risen, victorious man.
All things in the universe, things in heaven and earth, head of the Church of Jesus Father, his heavenly glory was not revealed by Old Testament prophets. God has kept that good wine until now. He revealed it to you and me. It's it's I just encourage you guys to take it in and to embrace it because you're going to need it as as as.
Corrupting, uh.
Doctrine just sweeps through the Christian testimony, fundamental truth after fundamental truth that has been recovered not only in the Reformation, as Nick was telling us the other day.
Rather than gather to the Lord's name in the 19th century.
These things are being chipped away and eroded, and there's nothing like the truth.
Reserves for America.
Like to read it in the new translation of those tests that the administration of the fullness of times took the latest the Millennium to head up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth. The Christ, I believe, will also take his body. And as we get down in this chapter, it speaks of an inheritance. Who in who in Christ we also have attained inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him that work with all things about the castle of his own will.
Just skipping down to verse 14, which is the earnest of our inheritance and the redemption of the purchased possession and the praise of His glory. We mentioned His meeting yesterday and remember when about the pushes, He has purchased the entire field and we participate in that inheritance.
As in Christ.
In the sense that a bride who marries her husband.
Participate in the inheritance that is test. So we participate in that inheritance. I said yesterday, the inheritance we look forward to is not earthly. We're not looking for an earthly inheritance. While in a sense we're going to get an inheritance because those kids and it's out to share. He shares it as it were with us. But there's two spheres, heaven and an earth, which covenant theology and all the other theologies along those lines deny. But it's important to see that there is a heavenly spirit and earthly spirit. They're going to be brought into unity.
Under the headship of the Christ, which also brings in the Church, the body.
Just went on the common connection with the mystery.
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And just repeating what Bruce said, it helped me to realize this must have been something mysterious, but simply something that could only be known by revelation from God. That's simply what it means to not be known by any other way that God has revealed.
This to us, his church, so that we might know umm not to embarrass a young girl in this room, but she has a wedding coming up and I dare say that her bride, her bridegroom brother, has shared with her plans for their future and so.
We God has maybe found in terms here, but in this chapter He shares with us His plans for His Son for the future.
Might be good to turn to chapter 3 verse four. We have that expression that Christ used their connection with the mystery whereby when he reads Ephesians chapter 3 verse 4, whereby when he reads, he may understand my knowledge and the mystery of it, should say the Christ which in other ages was not made known under the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
That the Gentile should be foul heirs, and of the same body partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.
So you say it was not desertable in the Old Testament Scriptures. It was not discernible by the natural intellect of man. It was a divine revelation of God. It was a revelation of God. And I think Doug perhaps touched on it in connection with the second Peter. But Peter was the truth was not delivered to Peter in connection with the rapture and connection with the mystery of Christ in the church.
And he found some of these things a little hard to understand, but he says in Second Peter chapter 3.
Verse 16 or verse 15, and accounts that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him have written unto you, has also in all his epistles speaking in them of these things in which some things hard to be understood. And so.
Peter learned something as the truth of God from Paul himself.
Just to take my analogy a little further, and if I'm not correct, I I'd like to hear a correction, but connection with bride in this room. Imagine if and and I want again going back to the practical nature of this chapter, if the her future husband, the bridegroom shared with her his dreams for their future together and she said, oh, I'm not going interested. Maybe later.
Maybe after you're married.
He would be so disappointed. And yet that's what Christendom has done, exactly what Christendom has done. Oh, I'm not really interested. Just tell me how, you know, I deal with this daily problem, with that daily problem. I just, I'm just trying to get through life and I realize that those things are important and I struggle.
And and as I said, the matter that God provides prayer. What is this journey isn't what it's necessary, but there is also.
The other truth that God has given us that Christendom has shown no interest in whatsoever and and he called the apostle prayed at the end of his chapter when he hopefully will get to and his prayer is that they might the eyes of you understand me in life that he might know what is the hope of of his pulling and so on. He prays he's concerned. So he actually has this prayer written down for our benefit. He was praying for them that they might enter into these things and they couldn't enter into them in a natural way or by human effort either.
It was only by the power of God.
When you refer to the verse in the nutrients of translation saying in the Christ, that means Christ and the church right, And that's your reason for emphasizing that whatever often in Scripture, when it says the Christ, it means Christ with his church. It's one body true, and that that goes along with what you're saying about a new couple enjoying things together. You go off on a trip and all by yourself and you go into a nice restaurant and everything enjoy a wonderful circumstances.
It's not the same if you don't have your loved one with you. You're right.
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Christ wanted somebody to share it with.
So he goes on and speaks with the inheritance, and that's not his bride. We don't inherit bride.
He's going to have his inheritance and it's all created things, all created things, and all created beings.
Are his and he went to the cross and he purchased the field. He bought the field. He's got a right in his title to the creation and all of the created beings because he is the creator. That's Revelation chapter 4 verse 11. And then he also has a right in a title because of his work at Calvary. And so now it's not yet set free.
He doesn't he's not reigning over that inheritance currently he's gone into we haven't loose gospel that he was a nobleman that went into a far country to receive her himself a Kingdom and to return. And so there is a time when he will assert his rights in this scene and he will his the fact that he is the owner and the master of all is going to be abundantly made clear.
And he'll come at his glorious appearing.
Wonderful to think that uh, all things will be brought into order as has already been expressed.
Kings will be in subjection to it. The earth, the land, is going to be wonderfully fruitful.
We'll press it. We'll see.
Name shall no longer be despised. The 72nd Psalm is a beautiful picture of that is a interesting finish to that song, says the prayers of David the son of Jesse rendered and the Lord Jesus gets his way in this world.
There's no need for any more prayer connection to it all. Take care. Although David did say pray after this without, but when everything is brought into direction, the Lord Jesus.
Bend this twisting or lessening away from the enemy and the thought and the organizations of men. All that's going to be might say it might be a violent act taken away and given to the Lord Jesus.
Those of us that know the Lord Jesus, that should be.
A thrilling thing to think about the Lord Jesus getting his way in this poor broken world. Poor broken world.
Peter it's a wilderness book so the inheritance is over experience waiting, but here it's under his feet and so it actually 14th verse. It takes him much more than the Millennium takes on all things the Lord Jesus is going to reign over all creation, stars and everything and I just heard as a son of man.
So I suppose you should say then that you we have the inheritance now.
But in the coming day we'll enter into an wholeness. Meanwhile we have the earnest of it, the down payment of it for our present enjoyment. If you if you look in your in the in the verses we've already covered for the most part, all the verbs used are past tense in things that God has already made good to us presently to see the word half over and over again. He has he passed, he has having done having made having this.
Is past tense.
In other words, we enjoy it now, but there is that which is of course going to be displayed in the future, starting when the Lord comes for us, changes us. You know the last they say commonly in the English language, the other shoe is going to drop.
We've been chosen predestinated to a certain.
Portion and purpose.
Called Justify last steps.
It's going to be displayed. That hasn't happened yet, but we have as Christians this unique ability because of the Holy Spirit indwelling and the revelation given to us in this book, this strange ability we have to presently enjoy future things as if we already have them. Can't remember who was somebody at breakfast or somebody one of these meetings, Sorry, I called blending together right now, but somebody was expressing that very well, maybe in the hallway.
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We can enjoy present future things present, the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and said.
My very last chapter of Second Timothy. Gratitude. Great.
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 here.
Certain there's a crown.
That will be awarded to a believer who walks down the street in Denver or or wherever you live going walking from class to class to school or alcoholic. Your business and your thoughts go forward to heavenly things or to the future glory of the Lord Jesus Christ after his appearing, and you're meditating upon that and thinking about what a joy will be to see that man.
Who was hated without a cause sit upon here in this world, acknowledged and sold and given the honor to through the that will happen in superior and to love his appearance, to believe in spirit now, to live good for that coming, and also these other heavenly things, heavenly spiritual blessings read about already in this chapter.
Sonship goes with Airship, right?
Friendship goes with airship. It's just red thousand. The age of Romans. Cares of God, joint heirs, right son of God.
Going to be brought, the whole of the inheritance will be brought into a condition which is suitable for him to reign over. And he brings this out in verse 14 as well. And he says he were sealed with the holy, that Holy Spirit of promise. So our salvation is sure, which is the earnest or who is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession under the praise of his glory.
And so.
He brings in redemption here and you and I were our bodies are going to be redeemed, they're going to be changed and we'll be with him in a glorified state. But the creation itself needs to be set free from the power of sin and the domination of sin. And so we have a little glimpse of it hold to us in the prophetic, prophetic scriptures. And I just like to read in Isaiah chapter 65 in verse 25, just a little snapshot of it. We could read other passages.
But Isaiah 65 and verse 25, the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the Bullock, and the dust shall be the serpents meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountains, saith the Lord. And so the whole earth is going to be changed. There's going to be a change in the lower creation, and they'll no longer kill. There will no longer be war, and sin will be judged every morning, early in the morning, if there's open sin.
And so the whole of the creation is going to be brought into subjection and it's going to be set free. It has been purchased, but it's going to be redeemed. It's going to be a set of liberty from the power of sin and the effects of sin. And this world is going to know. It's like God is going to have his own way and what he intended to take place at the time that the Garden of Eden was planted and the rest permanent and the the blessedness of that whole of that whole scene.
Going to take place in this world. He's going to have his way. They'll be set free and set at liberty.
It's imperative for God to do that.
It was Ralph Reed senior used to teach us years ago.
This Earth, this, Peter teaches us, is going to reserve until that day.
00:35:03
It would not be enough vindication for the Lord Jesus Christ to have him only have heaven and the redeemed there around himself.
It's imperative for God in computer, and that he acknowledged here.
Think of that if the man never repented that through a cloth over the Lord's face and smote it, she said prophecy to me who smoked you?
That never man never repented. Guess when the next time he's going to see the war.
A great way to come.
I don't know, I I suspect the Lord won't have to say anything.
Just looking.
Horrible, but it's imperative with God, and I believe that's why in the verses read in first previews, 15 says He must reign. It is essential.
To the majesty and glory of God.
That in this very world, not some other, for he was cast out of righteousness. God will have him declare and display.
There's nothing wrong, as Robert, as you indicated, for a believer, and it's good for us, important for us to understand we have the heavenly calling. Our blessings are spiritual, Our citizenship is in heaven. We have a heavenly destiny.
But as brothers just put it, we're joint heirs with Christ and he has everything.
He's going to the overall patient had him in her and there's nothing wrong and it's even encouraged for us to hold even as Christians as believers and understanding and appreciation and a happy anticipation of the coming earthly glory of his earthly people, Israel and then the blessing of the nations. If you read in Matthew 13. I think it is the Lord Jesus asked his disciples after an exposition of of very similar to the Kingdom.
He said. Do you understand all these things? Oh yeah, we understand.
First, they do at all.
You wouldn't be here. But then, he says graciously. Every man that is an helpholder is like a man who who brings out of his treasure things new and old.
And so as believers, we are. It's our privilege and responsibility to be stewards and to properly hold and maintain things, new and old, separately really I believe, not all jumbled together.
My wife knows it drives me crazy when stuff gets all jumbled together. I have this preference for order. So garage you don't want kitchen stuff. Not that she does it, but you don't want kitchen things in the garage.
No one silverware in there. They eat when you have company and you don't want the chainsaw and the dining room table things belong in their place and it's it's unsuitable to have everything all mixed up in your mind, which mean Isaiah 65 and Ephesians chapter one or wherever, but we want to hold them hold the new things and the opens.
The new things were the parables of the Kingdom at the beginning of upholding that. And Robert, you were mentioned in Luke 19 that the Kingdom there, a certain man went into our country to receive the Kingdom and return. You get the order in that verse that was not understood in at that time. We can look back now and see that that verse means the Lord Jesus was going to go back to heaven.
And first of all, he was going to receive the heavenly part of the Kingdom that's going to take place at the rapture, and he's going to receive his bride's air. And that we're going to have the, the marriage of the Lamb in heaven. The earth is going to be taken up from that point onward. That's the transition time that we, we're, we're real. We're so close to when things are going to change from heaven to earth. And then the Lord is going to come back.
And occupied with the redemption of the purchase possession, he's going to start setting in order here on Earth.
Would it be, uh, uh, clarity for some that the verses that were read in first, uh, in 2nd Corinthians 15, verse 24, that takes us beyond the Millennium, isn't it to the eternal state, OK.
And then the next person says that he shall reign. So they're both there, is that right?
You're right on. Yeah, he goes back and describes how that's going to take place, and that's where I started reading.
00:40:00
There's something else here that's very important to see is that He's given us the earnest of the inheritance of our inheritance, and that is that He wanted us to enjoy the thought that we're going to have a part in that inheritance. We're going to be able to enjoy it with the Lord. Jesus will be at his side. But the reason we know and we can have assurance of it is that we're in well with the Spirit of God. He's given a down payment, the thought of the earnest of the Spirit.
Is in connection with a down payment and that he is going to finish the work.
I'd just like to go back to 2nd Corinthians chapter one and just read just.
A couple of verses there, verse 21.
2nd Corinthians chapter one and verse 21. Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ hath anointed us and hath anointed us is God, who hath also sealed us and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. So there's three things, the anointing and the ceiling and the earnest. And when it comes to the thought of the earnest of the inheritance, here is really we're indwelled by the Spirit of God.
And God wanted us to know that He was going to come and complete the work and we are going to have our bodies redeemed. How do we know that our bodies are going to be redeemed? We're in wealth of the Spirit of God. The down payment has been made, so to speak, and He's going to complete work. When it comes to the anointing, it's really having discernment in connection to true doctrine, false doctrine. We don't have time to go into that in first. John, I think it's chapter 2.
And then we have the ceiling, we're sealed with the Spirit when we believe the gospel. And that's what he brings out here, the truth of it. And so these Gentiles had not only had the being quickened by the Spirit, but they had been brought into the knowledge of the truth. They trusted Christ, they were sealed with the Spirit, and they also had an earnest of the Spirit. God has made a down payment, as it were. And you're in well with the Spirit of God. You're going to, you're going to have an inheritance.
Guaranteed he's going to finish the work and you're going to enjoy it with the Savior.
That wood seal, just think of a a tree that was or a letter that was sent 100 or 200 years ago. There was a wax pulled and the steel was put on it locked out the.
The source of that letter, and so we have been mocked out, is marked as a part. That's what that means.
The spirit of the field is like what we have in Romans 8, uh, as a seal where marked as his well for his we need to enjoy our hits. And so the spirit is really the power for the conscious enjoyment of our relationship with the one who were marked out as belonging to. So as sons and heirs, the spirit of God is the evil is the power for that. So the spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are the sons of God.
Conscious relationship with him and as a seal it's something we have earnest we don't have yet the present enjoyment of what's coming. So it's not the feel of the inheritance of the earnings don't have it yet, but the seal of the spirit is a relationship and.
As you say, his mark on us is blowing him. That's hard enough and he wants us to be in present enjoyment and our relationship earnest.
And we might have the enjoyment of what's yet to come to the inheritance. The illustration. Everybody's probably heard it, but it's good that an old man repeat themselves so.
But the man gave the illustration of he went and he bought the sheep, picked the sheep out, and he put a brand on it that was a seal that they belonged to him. And so he took him home, and it was getting night. And so he went in and he told his servant. He said that.
The sheep are out there in that pen, he said. I want you to go out in the field and get some of that sweet Clover.
And throw it into them. Tomorrow we're going to turn them out in that yeah patch so they have the earnest of it tomorrow. They got the reality now.
I I was thinking too that salvation is by blood and it's by power. Remember the children of Israel, they were under the blood in the 12Th chapter, but it was the 15th that God in power delivered them. And so the eighth verse of this chapter is the redemption by blood of the 14th is by power. When He brings everything into conformity, He goes much further than the Millennium. It's all things.
00:45:23
All created things are under his feet.
And that day, another thing, the reason that I've heard this is what I've been taught, because the Lord, the Father gives the Lord.
The place of judge because he was the one that become a man. He was the one who was persecuted. He was the one who took all the Columbia while he was down here. He'll be the one that judges.
The righteous judge, and in the Millennium, you know.
The 101St talent tells us it's a righteous rain, a public lie.
Cost you your life because it's not righteous. Satan is the father of lies, so it'll be a righteous ring. A wonderful time on earth. Look at what's happening. Man's day.
But then the man will reign for the glory of God for 1000 years. A wonderful country, so the fullness of time.
And Galatians we get in the fullness of time, singular God sent forth his son, the time came to send his son. But here's the fullness of times, all the times and the ways of God as to this earth have all run their course and.
Now you're finished and the administration of the fullness of times, plural, they've all run their course has come. But it says in verse 12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. The fullness of times hasn't come. The millennial the unfolding of the the millennial glory, the establishment of the Kingdom hasn't come and Israel's being brought back into national.
Blessing and prominence in this world hasn't come, but there are those who have put their trust in Christ from that nation.
Before that day, and that's what he means, those who first trusted in Christ or pre trusted before that, they unfold. There are those who have really for his glory, pre trusted in Christ, in whom he also trusted. That brings us Gentiles and as well Jew and Gentiles.
And it says there after that you believe you were sealed and that's, that's good to get ahold of.
To be born again is to have divine light, but when we're sealed, we have that technical term of eternal life. It's it's not a different life, but it's abundant life. It's relationships that you will pestimate Saints who were born again knew nothing of.
I bring up one other point of that, just to turn back to First Corinthians 12 to lose a question that was asked earlier and the hope it's not.
I don't want to offend anybody, but just to go back to it, the question was asked, how do you become part of the church, the body of Christ? And the answer was given, salvation. Let's look at First Corinthians 12.
And verse 13 for by 1 Spirit we are all baptized into one's body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit. We're in heaven. And we meet David, the Old Testament, we say, how are you here? He's going to say because of the blood of Christ, and so will every other.
Think of God.
And so God's righteousness has been manifested, Romans 3 tells us.
Now it's been declared in connection with the sins that were passed Old Testament Saints, God is justified in in through the work of the cross, and that He waited until then. And now it's clear how he dealt with those sins through the blood of the cross. There won't be anyone in heaven that's not there through the blood.
What made us part of the Church of God is the indwelling Spirit, that seal of the Spirit when we believe the gospel of our salvation, then when we seal that Holy Spirit of promise. That is what made you a member of the body of Christ. Now he doesn't feel anyone who hasn't believed that gospel. And that's what that verse tells us in our chapter when we trust it, when we heard the gospel of our salvation.
00:50:26
Then we were sealed by that Holy Spirit of promise and that is what made us a member of the body of Christ. He doesn't feel any who haven't received Christ and aren't saved. But it's the indwelling Spirit that united us to our head in heaven and to one another. That's what made us part of the church. Why is that important? Well, I had a man at work saying the church started with Adam. Why is that? He said.
Well, is that Adam gonna be in heaven because of the blood of Christ? I said yes. Well, then we'll look at him and say he was saved. Isn't everyone who's saved in the church? That's how you get in the church. You're saved. Wait a minute.
Church didn't start with Adam. Something's not right here.
It's by the indwelling Spirit of God who are made part of the body of Christ. I think it's easy to understand if you.
Realized in the first In the third chapter of John, he told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again.
Of water in the spirit, so that the Spirit takes the word of God and forms life in my soul. That's divine life. That's something that happens within me sovereignly. But then he says, if you don't understand earthly things, how are you going to understand heavenly things? And then he goes on to say, for God shall love the world.
That he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have a eternal life. This is something that happened outside of you that you believe. And when you believe that, that you see so were you born again something that happens in you believing something you believe that happened outside of you. Does that make it simple? Yes, it does. I mean, it's I, I suppose it's a helpful for people to understand that Old Testament.
Who had faith had it because they were born again, Yes. New birth has always been necessary, yes.
Be brought into connection with God and reality. As you say. It's a different thing now when the Spirit of God begins to work in the soul and not only brings life, and life has faith. And what does faith do? It believes God's present testimony and when we believe the gospel of our salvation.
Received that whole spirit across David was not sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise nor was happened. Another verse that proves that is in Galatians 3 where Paul was reproaching the Galatians and and about their desire to go back on the law and he says in verse two of that chapter. This only will I learn of you receive ye the Spirit by the works of the law.
About a hearing of faith, it was a rhetorical question. They knew they received it by the hearing of faith. And so the Spirit of God occasionally in the Word of God makes these distinctions that that burden has made. And for example, in the book of Acts with Cornelius, we see a man that clearly passed life from God. He was a righteous and upright man in that faith, but he hadn't heard the gospel, and he certainly hadn't believed the gospel of his salvation because he hadn't heard it.
And as soon as Peter came and delivered to him all the words of this life, it was evidence that he had received the Holy Spirit, that he sealed that Holy Spirit cross.
So at times the scriptures kind of pull things apart and lets us look at the unique chords that make up a whole a whole Rd. there.
So this chapter is really perhaps divided into three parts. You have the 1St 3 verses is maybe an introduction or the first couple of verses. And then from verse three down to verse 14, you have the apostle Paul teaching us these different aspects of the blessings that we have as a result of having received the Lord Jesus. And and then we have the prayer of the apostle then in verse 15 and to the end and he prays that we might enter into the knowledge and understanding of these things.
And it's because we are brought in through relationship. We do have eternal life. We are sealed with the Spirit. So we trusted Christ.
Eternal life has those four components. You might say we trusted Christ and the finished work of Christ for ourselves. We applied the blood of Christ to ourselves. We believe that Christ died for ourselves. Then we were indwelled with the Spirit of God. We were sealed. Then we were brought into the knowledge of our relationship with the Father and with the Son and souls.
00:55:20
Abundant life I think that's gone from chapter 10 abundant life. There's something here I'd like to just point out that's in the 15 first says wherefore I also after I heard that the faith in the Lord Jesus and your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love to all the Saints.
You know, we have a tendency to be sectarian.
And so that narrows my heart down to just the gathered things.
But that's not what's on the heart of the Father. And if we're enjoying him?
What's on his heart will be on our heart. All of God's people are on his heart. And so we need to look to the Lord if He would give us a love for all the people of God.
But also that he keep our feet narrow as the word of God.
Makes it that we might walk in the truth, but we need this. Don't we just say that? You know, it's, it's so easy. I'm speaking to myself. It's so easy to think we're the only people and and to make U.S. special. Well, it's not God. God loves all of his people and what's on his heart will be on your heart if you're in communion. Otherwise you become sectarian.
Am I? Am I out of line for saying this? I think it's something that needs to be said.
Because we kind of.
Constrict our heart just down to those were around us. Very very appropriate brother, very. I'm just going to quote again first Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11 he says.
Well, let's read verse 10. He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. They're the perfect thing of the Saints, all the Saints.
Not just the gathered Saints, all the Saints.
And so I'm not a very good example, but when I was in business, I would just enjoy the fellowship of those that were believers in the place that I work. And I thought it was normal to, when the question came up on a doctrinal point, perhaps to give a booklet that I knew that existed that would help that brother in Christ to understand some aspect of Christianity more perfectly. And you might just be a help like the ministry that we have is rich and it is for the whole church.
And so we ought to love our brethren deeply enough to be able to share it with them.
The level of breath is really one of the evidences of the work of Christ in our hearts, isn't it, as we haven't postponed 3 which we had in this conference a year ago.
It's proof of LifeProof, of life.
I'm thinking actually that first John 12 and I know it's not really out of chapter. It's nice to get through some of this prayer. But you know, we had one member self as one member suffer with it. That's not something about you haven't seen. And so I recently read a book similar to what Doug mentioned about the Christians in northern Iraq and it was painful to read. And many of these Christians come out of church systems that have been established for century and.
Uh, Catholic Church being one of them that may not know a whole lot. That's not to belittle them or put them down. They've been in the system where they've been kept from those truths. It isn't changed the fact that most of the real amongst them and think in many cases, the persecution they've suffered has shown a reality with some of faith. And so I think it owes us to, to feel their pain to, to brave with.
Them even though.
I can't go and, and, uh, uh, have communion in their church. That would be dishonouring to the Lord because it's a system that I believe has error and I can't identify with that. And as long as they're identified with that, that may restrict their ability to come and remember the Lord with me. But as other fellows believe it, I can fully embrace them unless it's in there or something like that that might hinder that fellowship, but otherwise.
01:00:21
They're members of the body of Christ.
I have a thinker. This is the thing about.
Something a little different, but this is a little thing that's being gathered to the Lord's name and it's Mr. Darby said this, so it's worth reading. And I think there's good for the young people and for all of us, he said. I am deeply convinced that it is a testimony which God himself has raised up for the last days. I have been walking in this way for 50 years. I've seen weakness in myself and mistakes I do not now in the way of walking, but never doubted for a moment.
That it is the work of God, but it is needful that each one should be convinced of this himself by the Word of God. It's a path of faith, and faith only can sustain the soul in this path. But I know that the peace, the approval of God are there, and those who walk in it by faith are made happy by them. I hope that my love for the brother with whom I cannot walk will always be increasing. We cannot realize the blessing which belongs to us if we do not.
Comprehend all the Saints in our Christian affection. Ephesians 318 But this is good night not to walk with them in a path that is not according to the word is not saying that one does not allow them, but just the conjurer isn't that nice.
I used to get kind of baffled by that as a young believer and I was greatly helped by a brother on the on the 1St 12 months. I was saving that up in an open meeting and he spoke about having a broad heart and narrow feet. Well, I found that skull helpful and so timely for me because.
By by remaining outside of these denominational systems that were just overflowing.
With error and confusion.
Pentecostal systems and in other places my own friends were trying to take me.
You know, I was accused of being, you know.
All kinds of things, but and I used to come to the older brother in the meeting and he had a habit after his chores were done. He was a farmer and he was sitting out on his porch covered porch. And I, I swing in there at times and I'd be kind of dejected and he gave me this verse once and I remembered it ever since. First John 5:00 and 2:00.
I suppose a good degree first one whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and everyone that loveth him that begotten loveth him also to his begotten of him and proof of life. But verse 2 by this we know that we love the children of God and we love God and keep his commandments and so he said, brother, the best thing you can do for all those brethren that you love the brother. Let me do the organs was one of them. Let's just make straight past from your feet.
That's the way to one way to show love to your brethren. You're not going to go from pillar to post in all these places.
Keep your affections for them, love them, walk in the right path. I thought it was good advice.
What can someone sum up this prayer in 5 minutes?
Do it first.
And then three things to begin with, neither you understanding being live, that you may know what is the hope of His calling #1 and your Son that's calling. He has spread the glory of His inheritance in the Saints. He takes up that inheritance in the Saints. And then the third one is one of the exceeding greatness of His power to ask what you believe according to the working of His mighty power, which He brought in Christ, and He raised him up from the dead.
01:05:11
Let it rezone right hand the heavily twice of. There are three things there and someone else can expand on it. Very good.
He wants us to keep growing.
The eyes of our understanding are our hearts being light, the hearts involved, but it's only in the knowledge of Him. It's in the knowledge of Christ, who is the full revelation of God's Father.
And it's really in a growing personal knowledge of Christ and all that concerns him. We're going to grow in the truth of God and wisdom and knowledge. And so there's the means of growth is, is really knowing more and more about Christ. And then there's Our Calling. It's a high calling. It's a holy calling. It's a heavenly calling. And we're exhorted to walk worthy later in the book of the vocation where we've been called.
And there's a glory that's suited to that column that we're going to be brought into that we can be in the present. And John, and I'm not, he wants the Saints to just continue on and keep growing and all of these things. And also this power, the greatness of his power that raised Christ from the dead, that raised us up with him and seated us in heavenly places with him.
The tremendous power of God that accomplished that is available every single day of our lives to help us walk through here below. That is the power that is available to the believer every day. It's the exceeding greatness of His power to usward, who believe according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him.
From the dead and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places was mentioned that Joshua is a book that corresponds with this. And another said the mighty power that rolled the Jordan back and let them cross over dry shod is the same power that was there for them when the captain of the Lord's house stood with that drawn sword in his hand and go before them. And it's the same with us. What's the power that's available to you and I every day?
The same power that raised Christ from the dead.
And put us there, associated with glory, with Him. So the power is not in US.
We have the power really in connection with raising Christ from the dead in the first chapter. We see that power and believer in the second chapter because we were also dead. So and then it's awful to see that the word power actually goes three times in the 1St and each time it's a different words, which is confusing. But the first power is his miraculous power, the greatness of his miraculous power, his ability to us, would you believe according to the working of his mighty power, there is his strength, his might.
Then the other power is in verse 21 Firebar, all principalities and power in there, it's authority. So those 3 words power is not distinguished in English translation often, but so it's miraculous power, strength for light and authority, all of them are hits.
And those are available to us.
I think that.
It's the exceeding greatness of his power to us words who believe I do think that brings in a practical daily is there for.
Like working in our salvation is in end.
Sometimes we think of great things, but really it's a miracle that everyone in this room is still going on to the Lord. It takes a tremendous amount of power in this world to be going against the earth. We're looking maybe for some great thing, but it is a great thing what we're seeing right now.
I believe that's why in Colossians, I think it's in Colossians chapter one. That's quite a good point you made. Paul was speaking about his.
Stuff.
Verse 11 strengthened with all might according to his glorious power. It's a pretty, pretty, pretty well as high as you can get there with respect to power. But what's it for? Unto all patients and long-suffering with joyfulness.
01:10:16
Perhaps the word patients therapy translated to endurance, so I can't recall but.
She has the thought of endurance, long-suffering, thoughtfulness. So there are always an array of things that crash upon us like waves on the on the rocky coast and.
Young people, I hate to scare you, but it doesn't go away as you get older.
Might even increase, but you're going to increase too. And that that's well put the way Stevens put it, that that same power that raised him up and gave him glory. It's available to us every day to be able to to endure, to press on long-suffering. Not like the British used to say, you know, my mom was from the UK. He could stiff upper lip and all that, you know, and.
Just endure it in a grumpy way, No, but long-suffering with joyfulness. Only a believer I think is fitted and capable to be able to.
Be joyful.
In the same time that we're in the mode of long-suffering, and only a Christian can understand that.
Sorrowful. He had always rejoiced. I'm sorry. All right. I like the way you put it. Yeah. We're going on. We, we tend to think that power is some demonstration of vivid, that of of strong evidence. That's not necessarily power. Power is just to go on with, with, with what God has given us. And and and to to keep going on is a demonstration. A steady Christian life is a demonstration of our God.
And even in the last chapter of Ephesians.
Season 6, verse 14.
Or list the different elements of our of our Christian armor. Verse 14 says stand therefore having your or sorry verse 13. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day. And to sum up what you were just saying, Doug indeed, and having done all the stamps so thing #170.
170.
Who he comes from?
And descending.
One for many.
1000 and father's name are standing.
So I love crying.
01:15:50
Oh great, shall now I won't give me an old name.
And sleep.
Lord may be the Lord, thou blast the soul of him.
You're well, I'm still till the journey of the water on the train.
No, no, no, no, no, really.
I don't want anything and it's a little more agreed. Try a lot of the heavens and grains, my love and stuff. I'm telling you about the Lord, sweetie.
In the sun and make it as absolutely right on fire landscape. Never Dustin.
So I wanna go somewhere.
Come on.
Oh my God.
Every day Aww crazy initiative.
Hello, pretty good show. So I'm going to go to the go down to now.
We stand on the lab first.
Can we remain standing and seeing #40 in the appendix that was referred to earlier in the meeting?
Two 100 and 7003.
100 and takes away from thrown.
And grilled and had bread. See.
01:20:06
We have a good job. We're going to be able to.
Found something that's why.
The glory shall bring.
Our rejoice in mind the unity and criminal settlement.
When from there you go.
Straight from my grandfather.
There is a light sink. You remember the beginning of the beginning, so.
He shall come down like a child.
I'm fine, thank you. I love to cry.
And enjoy your clothes like love birds. Shrimp outrightly drop out. Give me more.
Shall fall down.
Before him and Lord and gentle spring.
Hello make your child.
And Grace, not feeling it, falls on stage.
Umm stretched his wide stone and young.
Lord, everything I saw.
Her had seen him go to sleep and he never roars the light rain and so.
1 Corinthians 13
Gospel—Steve Hall
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Good evening.
I'd like to welcome everyone to the Gospel meeting this evening. While everybody's getting settled, let's sing #7.
#7 on the hymn sheet.
God loves the world.
And.
By the fall.
How many Shamrock?
He is a lot of primary screaming.
Come on in the world.
That is my heart, that's why.
Glad.
Low grand flower for never fall never planned and timeline of all the kids no.
And my client and Mary's mind, Lauren Brown.
Freaking and shudding by him and that I am crying and I am flying.
Oh come on, the one is why it's not.
Let's pray.
Our gracious, loving God and our Father, we ask for Thy help this evening as we open Thy precious word.
And read about thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank the our God and our Father that thou has given him as the only Savior of sinners. And so as we preach the gospel this evening, we pray our God and our Father for opening open ears, listening ears, that we would receive what thou does have for us.
We pray for help that what is said would be to the honor and glory of Thy beloved Son, and to Thou salvation of souls.
And now we just ask for Thy help, and we pray this all in the worthy and precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Tonight I want to try something that I have not tried before and a gospel meeting.
But it's something that.
I heard when I was a teenager.
And it really struck my heart.
And so I want to share that with you this evening and what I want to do this evening, if I can, here with the help of the Lord, I would like to paint with words two different portraits.
The first portrait is natural, man. It's a picture of you and of me.
00:05:04
How we stand before God.
And I want to contrast that this evening.
With a portrait of the perfect man, the man Christ Jesus.
And so I would like to turn to begin to Romans chapter one.
Because in the beginning of Romans, here in chapter one we have quite a picture.
The Apostle Paul in Romans chapter one.
Paint the picture of your heart and of my heart.
I ask you to listen.
If I'm going to read some verses here, we're going to start with verse 18 of chapter one of Romans. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth and unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For goddess showed it unto them for the invisible things of him.
From the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood.
By the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so they are without.
Excuse, because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. Neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations. Their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they they became fools and changed the glory of an uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man to birds and four footed beasts and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts.
To dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.
For this 'cause God gave them up unto vile affections. For even their women did change that natural use into that which is against nature. Likewise also men, leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one toward the another, men with men working that which is unseemly, receiving in themselves a recompense of the error which was meat.
Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.
To do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, factbiters, haters of God, despisers, despite full proud boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient unto parents without understanding, covenant Breakers without natural affection.
Impeccable.
Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death?
Not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them.
My friend this evening, that is the accurate description.
Of your heart and mind, God says so.
It's a terrible description. It's completely black.
But it's an accurate description. And if you doubt me, look across the United States of America. Look across this world. Pick up any unit, any newspaper.
Turn on any news channel and you will find the very things that are written in this chapter are glorified.
Go to any movie theater in this nation and you'll find people.
Taking pleasure in these very things that are written.
This is a very, very dark portrait of man.
Turn with me to Chapter 3.
Verse 10 As it is written, there are none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
They are all gone out of the way. They are all together, become unprofitable.
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There is none that doeth good. No, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre.
With their tongues they've used deceit. The poison of asks is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are schwift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, the way of peace. Have they not known there is No Fear of God before their eyes?
Verse 23 For all have sinned and come short.
As the glory of God.
Year one tonight, the first point that I want to make.
To your heart and to mine.
Is that this portrait that we have painted is a portrait of you and me.
Apart from God.
We have all fallen short of God.
Thankfully, that's not the end of the story and I want to paint a picture that stands in stark contrast to the picture that we have just painted with words I want to paint.
If I might, with the Lord's help.
Want to paint a picture of the perfect man?
And in doing so I want to turn first of all.
To First Corinthians chapter 13.
In First Corinthians chapter 13.
We have 4 versus.
That paint a beautiful picture.
I want to read these verses.
In the King James Version, the word charity is used for the word love.
So if you'll bear with me, I'm going to use the word love in this first time reading this. Love suffereth long and is kind.
Love, envy is not love, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, Rejoiceth not in iniquity. Be but rejoiceth in the truth. Beareth all things, believeth all things, Hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love never fails.
When I was about 1516 years old.
I came across at home.
And the poet in this poem?
Use these 4 verses.
And he changed it just a slightly.
And he wrote it this way. The Lord Jesus suffered long.
The Lord Jesus is kind.
He envied not.
The Lord Jesus vaunted, not himself.
He was not puffed up.
He did not behave himself unseemly. He did not seek his own.
He was not easily provoked. He thought no evil.
He did not rejoice in iniquity, but he always rejoiced in the truth.
He bore all things.
He believed all things. He hoped all things. He endured all things. The Lord Jesus never failed.
Recently in our reading meetings at home, we had this chapter and I was reminded.
Of that poem.
And so, with the Lord's help, I want to look into these 16.
Things that love does and I want to look into the life of the Lord Jesus and see how beautifully.
They are illustrated in the life of our Savior and I hope in my prayer tonight.
Is that your heart will be drawn to this blessed, perfect man, and that you will see the wonderful contrast between what your heart is naturally and who he is.
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And that in doing so that you will receive Him as your Lord and Savior.
Romans, chapter 2.
And dear one, tonight I'm going to turn to a awful lot of verses.
I want to encourage you to listen.
If you want any of these references, I'd be happy to share them after this meeting. Romans chapter 2 and verse 4.
We're going to read verse 3 and thinkest thou, O man, the judges them, that do such things.
And do us the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God, or despise us, thou the riches of his goodness, or the forbearance and long-suffering.
Not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. Dear 1:00 tonight.
We had it earlier today.
Why has God tarried?
So long.
Because it is that the Lord Jesus.
Is a long-suffering God not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance?
He's waiting for you there one tonight if you have not received him.
He wants you to be saved, to pass into bliss.
And to be saved from a lost eternity.
The Lord Jesus has suffered long.
With this world, this world that hung him on the cross.
And condemned him when he was the only just man.
Is there anyone who has suffered as long as the Lord Jesus?
I think not. The Lord Jesus suffers long.
Second Peter, chapter 3.
Second Peter chapter 3 and verse 9.
The Lord is not flat concerning his promises. Some men count slackness, but his long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Oh, what a wonderful Savior that he is suffering long for you and for me.
Titus.
Because of time, I'm going to move as rapidly as possible.
Titus, chapter 3.
We'll read from verse 3. For we ourselves were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, and hateful and hating one another. But after that, the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man, appeared, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy. He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing.
Of the Holy Ghost, which is shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. Oh, what kindness, dear one, tonight have you experienced the kindness of God our Savior.
He went to Calvary's cross for you and for me.
Is there any kindness that can be compared to that?
He bore God's wrath.
Against sin for you and for me, the kindness.
And love of God our Savior toward men of here.
Oh, what wonderful kindness.
Kindness that we really cannot comprehend. And those of us that know the Lord Jesus as our Savior, we're going to spend eternity.
Learning about that kindness and love of God our Savior.
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Some of these attributes.
I had to use the inverse and so we never read of the Lord Jesus being envious of anyone.
And in looking into it a little more deeply, I think it means goodwill. The opposite of envy would be goodwill.
Luke chapter 2.
This was on the occasion of the birth of our Savior.
Luke chapter 2, verse 10 And the Angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be unto all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
Verse 13 And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest on earth, peace and goodwill toward men.
The Lord Jesus, as he came into this earth, came for the express purpose of bringing goodwill.
Toward men.
Who else?
As they have been born.
Can anyone say that they came for this express purpose of bringing goodwill toward men? No one.
No one but the Lord Jesus.
What a wonderful savior. He came and he was born into this earth.
As the Savior of sinners.
Do you know him this evening?
Have you received that goodwill that he has towards you?
He came and laid down his life so that we could be spared from the penalty of our sins.
The next one is Vonteth, not himself.
Again, the opposite of that is humility. The next two I want to cover in the same portion.
Turn with me to Philippians Chapter 2.
Philippians chapter 2 will read from the end of verse 5.
Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant.
And was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself.
And became obedient unto death, even the death.
Of the cross.
Dear 1:00 tonight.
There was never a man that walked upon this earth that humbled himself more than our blessed Savior.
He humbled himself unto death, even the death of the Cross.
In this great nation that we live in.
Part of our Constitution.
Makes it illegal to.
Offer cruel and unusual punishment and I can guarantee you one thing tonight we don't know anything about cruel and unusual punishment.
Crucifixion is the most awful way that a person can die.
For him to humble himself and become obedient unto death, even to death.
Of the cross is something that we will never rightly understand.
Very God come into this world.
We won't turn to it, but in another place it says he held everything by the word of his power.
Even while he was on that cross.
All things have their being because of him.
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And yet he was willing to go to the cross for you and for me.
In another place that said he could call 12 legions of angels.
Sometimes we think about that he could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free.
But instead, he went to the cross for you and for me.
What love?
He's also not puffed up.
In him was no pride.
Amicus man that ever walked this earth.
And so earlier in this very passage it says, Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him.
The form of a servant.
And waste made in the likeness of men. Dear. 1:00 tonight.
I know I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that Christ Jesus came into the world. The Son of God became a man.
And he came, and he walked this earth as a perfect servant.
He walked upon this earth doing good, healing all who came to him.
Sure.
What a wonderful, wonderful savior. There is no man.
Like this man, the man Christ Jesus, he was not puffed up.
Does not behave.
Himself unseemly.
I think the opposite of that is goodness.
Romans turn back to Romans chapter 2.
Already read this verse, I don't want to go back to it.
Romans chapter 2 and verse 4. Knowing not that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, there one tonight. Have you found a place of repentance for your sins before a holy righteous God? It is His goodness that draws you to repentance.
And there was no one.
There was number one that ever walked this earth.
Like the Lord Jesus.
Perfectly did his father's will.
He would reach out his hand and he would touch the leper.
The one who never thought of himself. It says of him that he had nowhere to lay his head.
Never thought of himself.
His goodness.
It was wonderful. Have you experienced that goodness, dear one? Tonight you can by simply receiving Him as your Lord and Savior.
Seeketh not his own.
Luke, chapter 19.
Luke chapter 19 verse 10 for the Son of Man is come.
To seek and to save that which was lost.
The Lord Jesus came into this world to seek you.
Dear 1:00 tonight.
He's calling for you.
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Will you listen? Will you receive his offer of salvation?
Or will you reject it?
He didn't seek his own.
He came seeking you, John. Chapter 5.
John chapter 5 and verse 30 I can I can of my own self do nothing.
As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.
Oh, what a beautiful, perfect man.
Dear one tonight, do you know anyone in this world?
That isn't selfish.
I can tell you I have never met someone who is not partially selfish.
And yet the Lord Jesus in his perfection could say, I seek not my own will.
But the will of the Father who sent me.
What a wonderful, blessed Savior he came to seek.
And to save the lost dear one, all you have to do.
To be sought for by him is take your position as being lost.
Turn with me to Matthew, chapter 27.
The next attribute.
Is not provoked Matthew chapter 27.
This is the story of the Lord Jesus as he stood before Pontius Pilate.
Verse 12 And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing.
Then said Pilot unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee?
And he answered him to never a word.
Insomuch that the governor marveled greatly.
This was in the middle of a.
False trial.
If there ever was a false child.
And these false witnesses were brought.
And said all manner of evil against the Lord Jesus.
And yet in his perfection he answered never a word.
How many of us?
Will lay on the horn when somebody cuts us off.
Or at least shake our fist.
Here the Lord Jesus is the perfect man, as He was falsely accused. He never.
Answered a word insomuch that Pilot marveled greatly.
Oh, what a beautiful, perfect man.
Such evenness of character.
We won't turn there, but as the Roman soldiers were nailing his hands and his feet to that cross.
What was his response?
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Oh, he was not easily provoked.
What a wonderful, beautiful man.
Thinketh no evil first John.
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First John, chapter 3.
First John chapter 3 in just the last part.
Verse five in him is.
No SIM.
Peter.
Sorry, 2 Corinthians.
2nd Corinthians, chapter 5.
For he hath made him the Lord Jesus, to be sinned for us.
Who knew no sin?
The Apostle John.
Was the disciple that was closest to the Lord Jesus.
In his testimony was in him is no sin.
The Apostle Paul.
Said he knew no sin.
Absolutely perfect.
How many of us have had an evil thought? How many of us?
Have sinned.
The thought of foolishness is sin.
Oh, that's smites us all.
The Lord Jesus was absolutely perfect.
He came into this world.
And the world knew him not.
But he came.
To save sinners.
What perfection?
Psalms, chapter 40.
The next one is, he rejoiced, not an iniquity. I don't want to turn that around.
So what did he resume in Psalms chapter 40 and verse eight? I delight to do thy will.
Oh my God, yeah, thy law is within my heart.
Oh, what a wonderful savior he delighted in doing.
The Father's will, Proverbs, chapter 8.
Proverbs chapter 8 and verse 30. Then was I by him as one brought up with him?
And that was daily his delight, rejoicing alway before him, rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth, of his earth. And my delights were with the sons of men.
What a wonderful, beautiful savior.
His delight, his rejoicing.
Was to do the Father's will.
And in us, what a wonderful, amazing savior.
John, Chapter 2.
John chapter 2 we'll read from verse 13. And the Jews, Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and found in the temple those that sold oxygen, oxen and sheep and doves, and the changes of money sitting. And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the chargers.
Money and overthrew the tables and said to them that sold doves take these things.
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And make not my father's house and House of merchandise.
He did not rejoice in iniquity.
Chapter 4.
John, Chapter 4.
John chapter 4 and verse 34.
And Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him.
That sent me and to finish his work.
That's what the Lord Jesus rejoiced in.
He rejoiced in the truth. He rejoiced.
And being obedient to his father.
John, Chapter 19.
The next one is bare with all things.
John chapter 19 and verse one. Then Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged him, and the soldiers platted a crown of thorns and put it on his head.
And they put on him a purple robe, and said, Hail King of the Jews, and smote him with their hands.
Verse 5 Then came Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man. When the chief priests and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. And Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him, for I find no fault in him.
There's 25.
Sorry, verse 28. After this Jesus knowing that all things were accomplished.
That the scripture might be fulfilled, saith I thirst now there was set a vessel full of vinegar.
And they filled the sponge with vinegar, and put it upon a hyssop, and put it to his mouth. And when Jesus therefore had received the vinegar.
He said it is finished and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost.
Dear One.
Truly.
No one bore more than the Lord Jesus.
He bore the hatred of man against himself.
As those Roman soldiers planted that crown of thorns and drove it into his brow.
Plucked the hair from his face.
As the Jews spat on him.
And then?
As he hung on that cross.
In those three hours of darkness, he bore the penalty of your sin.
And surely there was number one that bore more than the Lord Jesus.
Just about out of time, Luke chapter 22.
Verse 39.
He came out and went as he was won't to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples also followed him. And when he was entered, and when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me, nevertheless not my will, but thine to be done.
And there appeared an Angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly than his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
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And when he rose from prayer and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow.
And he said unto them, Wisely thee rise and pray, lest she enter into temptation.
Our blessed Savior.
As he prayed in the garden.
He knew.
What it was going to cost him to be made sin for you and me.
And yet, wonder of wonders.
He fully believed what God his Father told him to do.
That in doing so, he would secure a bride to himself.
Oh dear. 1:00 tonight.
There is no example that I can think of of stronger belief.
Then for a holy, righteous, spotless Son of God to be willing.
To go to the cross.
So that he could secure your redemption in mine.
Do you know Him as your savior?
We won't take the time.
To turn to Psalms chapter 22.
But if we did.
We would read of the Lord Jesus that he hoped upon his mother's breast.
In God.
What a wonderful, perfect man.
As he approached the cross, he endured.
More than you and I will ever consider.
He endured God's wrath against sin.
For you and for me.
Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 13.
The last one.
Is the Lord Jesus never fails.
Hebrews, chapter 13.
And verse 5.
For he hath said, I will never leave thee.
Door for safety.
John, Chapter 10.
Verse 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life.
And they shall never perish.
Neither shall any man puck him out of my hand, dear one.
Do you have eternal life?
We trust and we pray that you have eternal life.
Eternal life is.
Being offered by the Lord Jesus, if you will simply accept Him.
As your loving Savior.
You will find that he will never, never fail. Let's pray.
Our gracious, loving God and our Father. What a contrast we've had before our hearts this evening.
The utter ruin of thy creature, man.
And the perfection of thy beloved son.
We pray our God and our Father that if there is anyone in this room.
That is not closed in on that offer of salvation, that they would do so before it is forever too late.
We thank thee for thy beloved Son. We thank Thee that He is the only Savior of sinners.
We thank thee for the salvation that He offers freely to all.
We pray this.
In his worthy and precious name, Amen.